A bullshit free society

I recently came across the following statement in an online discussion on the topic of religion:

"I secretly dream for all religions to be eradicated so that one day we will be able to construct a bullshit free society and be able to do scientific research without being interrupted. [Religious groups] oppress, brainwash, burn for millennia, [and then say] 'We're a religion of peace now.' "

My response to this person was to take the "bullshit" sign and point it right back at his statement, following up with this explanation of how I think the world—and history—really work with regards to this issue:

What do Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism have in common? Each one, along with most other religions, is now and has always been "a religion of peace". Oppression, brainwashing, and "burning" (whatever that is supposed to be) aren't religious practices, but political practices. Religions don't do those things unless they become powerful enough that they have become political forces. When you have an institution such as the "Holy Roman Empire" as an example, it tends to be ruled by people thirsting for power rather than goodness. People of faith want to trust their spiritual leaders, but the more political clout your church/mosque/temple has, the more likely it is to attract the wrong sort of leadership. Jesus knew:

[Jesus] told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds come and perch in its branches.” -Matt. 13:31-32

As skeptics have pointed out, mustard seeds don't become trees. So what is Jesus talking about? You'll find in Jesus' parables, birds are usually symbolic of evil, and I believe this story is suggesting that Jesus fully expected the church He started would be host to evil men who would use it for their own interests.

Does that mean that if religion can be a tool in the hands of evil men, we should then toss it out? Right before the parable of the mustard seed, Jesus tells another that I think is closely related:

Jesus told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared.

“The owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?’

“‘An enemy did this,’ he replied.

“The servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’

“‘No,’ he answered, ‘because while you are pulling the weeds, you may uproot the wheat with them.’” -Matt. 13:24-29 (my emphasis)

In other words, churches—just like all institutions—will have some "bad seeds", but that doesn't mean you toss the good for the sake of the bad.

We actually can know that removing religion from society isn't the solution because it's been tried before, in places such as Russia. The USSR under Stalin was strongly anti-religious. This of course led to "a bullshit free society..."

Stalin created a cult of personality in the Soviet Union around both himself and Lenin...towns, villages and cities were renamed after the Soviet leader and the Stalin Prize and Stalin Peace Prize were named in his honor. He accepted grandiloquent titles..., and helped rewrite Soviet history to provide himself a more significant role in the revolution. At the same time, according to Nikita Khrushchev, he insisted that he be remembered for "the extraordinary modesty characteristic of truly great people."

...freedom "to do scientific research without being interrupted."

Science in the Soviet Union was under strict ideological control by Stalin and his government, along with art and literature. There was significant progress in "ideologically safe" domains, owing to the free Soviet education system and state-financed research. However, the most notable legacy during Stalin's time was his public endorsement of the Agronomist Trofim Lysenko who rejected Mendelian genetics as "bourgeois pseudosciences" and instead supported Hybridization theories that caused widespread agricultural destruction and major setbacks in Soviet knowledge in biology. Although many scientists opposed his views, those who publicly came out were imprisoned and denounced.

...and of course, these enlightened atheists didn't "oppress, brainwash, burn..."

Researchers before the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union attempting to count the number of people killed under Stalin's regime produced estimates ranging from 3 to 60 million.

(The above excerpts are from the Wikipedia article Joseph Stalin.)

Does that mean atheism is evil? Of course not; it means that using political means to force ideology on people—regardless of the ideology—will be unsavory, to put it lightly. It also doesn't mean that communism is a bad thing, mostly because Stalin and the leaders who followed in his office were not practicing communism. In fact, as I wrote some time ago, communism and Christianity have more in common than either is likely to admit.

The point that I am trying to make with all of this in a nutshell is that it's power that corrupts people, not religious ideology. If the day comes when (as many atheists have been suggesting for centuries to be right around the corner) religion is somehow eradicated from the earth by the cleansing light of reason, does anybody really think that there will be no more hatred, stupidity, or violence? I've got to say, even as a Christian, I find myself doubting that would be the case if the whole world were uniformly Christian.

Rose is the new Black...or not

I recently came across a question on the Internet that I found very interesting. To paraphrase: Why did Rebecca Black become so much more viral of an Internet phenomenon as a bad singer (supposedly; remember some people do like her) than Jenna Rose (whom I had never heard of until a few days ago), CathyMay15, or Final Placement, any of which are arguably far worse than Rebecca Black?

I suspect it may have to do with a combination of several factors: Rebecca Black is bad, but not quite so abysmally awful that she's unwatchable; the lyrics of "Friday" are really, really stupid; the WTF/LOL reaction to the appearance of the considerably older rapper who appears in Rebecca's video (Jenna had a semi-random rapper in her video, but he was another kid, at least); the fact that Justin Bieber and Katy Perry took notice of Rebecca; and really the most important factor that I think plays a part in the formation of every meme, a random chance snowballing effect of popularity.

That last one is the wild card that makes all the difference, I think. There are no doubt hundreds of bad singers on YouTube, but for one to become a viral sensation, I think they need to not know they are bad, and yet somehow attract viewers that will share the video link effectively.

On top of that, the "meme community" (that is to say, the people on the Internet who are the ones sharing links effectively; not really a cohesive, united community) will usually reject a new meme that's too similar to an existing one, and while Jenna's video was posted to YouTube first, Rebecca's was discovered first, consigning Jenna to be simply "another Rebecca Black". This is why I feel safe to venture a prediction that there will never be a "bad singer" memetically bigger than Rebecca Black, just like every attempt to brand some random video blogging girl on YouTube as "the new Boxxy!" always fails.

Here are some interesting graphs. Rebecca Black's video was posted to YouTube on February 10th, 2011, and started going viral March 11, 2011. Google Trends shows this growth in March for searches on "Rebecca Black":

The Jenna Rose video was uploaded to YouTube on October 1, 2010, but apparently pretty much nobody heard of her until about two days after Rebecca Black started going viral:

Furthermore, although CathyMay15 had videos on YouTube over a year before Rebecca Black came on the scene, her KnowYourMeme.com entry notes, "At least one interesting thread was spotted on 4chan on March 16, 2011, and her YouTube account was taken down the next day on March 17, 2011." So despite CathyMay15 being happy to stagnate in obscurity for over a year, (1) Rebecca Black appears, (2) somebody somewhere says, "You think Rebecca Black is bad? You should see this!" (3) CathyMay15 realizes she's being ridiculed and takes down her videos, but (4) it's too late and her videos are mirrored by others and she rises on the same tidal wave of popularity that's carrying Rebecca Black:

Nonetheless, it's clear these separately-trending singers are only receiving secondary attention as a comparison to Rebecca Black. There may be other bad singers/songs that got a "Rebecca Black bump" in popularity, and for that matter, this may be a phenomenon that happens with other types of memes, but I'm going to save that for another day's research and wrap this up.

When Richard Dawkins coined the term "meme", he did it with some comparison to biological evolutionary principles. I think there are some parallels in this analogy that haven't been explored as much as they could be, and this latter point of mine is one of them. Just as in biological evolution where a species will seek out and dominate a certain ecological niche and drive out competitors, memes similarly live in a sort of informational ecology. Once a particular meme occupies and dominates a certain niche of the Internet, it tends to block the growth of any others that would try to take the same space.

Notice that there may be tons of "Advice Dog spin-offs", but each one needs a specialized personality to survive. "Technologically Impaired Duck" may not be a huge meme, but it's prominent enough that we'll never see a "Technologically Impaired Goldfish" or a "Technologically Impaired Jackrabbit" take hold as a successful meme. And by a quirk of timing, every bad singer (female, at least) on the Internet will probably be referred to as "the next/latest Rebecca Black" for the foreseeable future.

Little things mean a lot

A lot of my ideas for things to write about come to me when I'm in the shower for some reason. Most of the time it's random, but occasionally, it actually has to do with the act of showering. There I was scrubbing away at my stomach and chest and thinking about something I read in an article somewhere about how essentially our bodies are a horrid mess of bacteria from our navel to our knees because that's where our intestines are, and they are the storehouse for some of the most powerful bacteria we have.

Actually, I think about this a lot, but suddenly I made a connection to another article I had read. You see, while it's true that there's a lot of bacteria in our intestines, we really have a lot of bacteria overall, and in fact I had read that scientists are now saying that the human body contains more bacteria cells than human cells. That's something to think about. Really, historically we've thought of bacteria as some sort of invader of the human body when in reality, we're living in a symbiotic relationship, for the most part.

And they are really a part of us. One researcher came to the conclusion that some people suffering from obesity are really having a hard time dealing with what are profoundly hungry bacteria that keep sending out hormonal messages to the brain, saying "FEED ME!" How else do you suppose our lives are affected by these microscopic life forms?

Then the thought took off, and I made the connection with another article I'd recently read, which is saying that biologists are starting to rethink the validity of Lamarckism. Lamarckism is the idea that things that an organism does in its lifetime has an effect on its offspring in a way that carries on through generations, sort of like a variety of fables about how a particular animal did some action, and that's why hippos have wrinkly skin, or rats have smooth tails. For some time, biologists had pooh-poohed the concept of Lamarckism, saying that it was our genes that define us. What if they're only "sort of" right?

Think of those hungry bacteria causing obesity. Maybe scientists are looking at the genes of obese people looking for a genetic marker for obesity, and they just can't find it...but it turns out they were looking in the wrong place? Perhaps it's not the genes of the humans that causes obesity, but the genes of the bacteria they carry.

If this were so, could there be more to it than that? No article this time (not that it matters, as I'm giving no references), but I have noticed, like several people, that married couples seem to sometimes look very much alike. As they grow together in marriage, sometimes they look more and more like each other over time. Could this be the result of bacteria affecting other physiological changes? When you sleep together in the same bed, when you're sharing bodily fluids, when you eat together, you're sharing your bacteria. Could that be molding us? Or on the other hand, when people talk about having "chemistry", could they sometimes mean that they sense that they have compatible bacteria?

This is all quite theoretical, of course, and I'm combining thoughts from a number of disciplines about which I only know the slightest surface ideas. Yet think of the implications if this is true, and it may very well be. In the debate between nature and nurture, between behavior patterns being learned and inborn, what if there is a sort of third option? I've said before that I don't believe that sexual orientation is in a person's genetic makeup, yet I wouldn't suggest that it is a chosen path, either. Could it be possible that sexual orientation is acquired as one acquires a cold? Certainly not so simply, and not something that I even think one would "cure" through antibiotics, as I do think it has been shown to have something to do with the structure of the brain, but it certainly the brain structures could be caused by physiological influences that we as yet know nothing about.

What makes us act and look the way we do? Our science fiction authors tell fantastical stories about people being controlled by alien beings, but what if we're already under the control of non-human life forms? If so, should we be creeped out by something that after all is completely natural?

This woman is my blogging hero

The Bloggess on going to an inauguration party:

It just occurred to me that this could be some sort of sting, like when they tell wanted felons that they won a boat and then when the felon goes to pick it up it’s all police dogs and mace. If I don’t update this post it’s probably because all of this is some sort of elaborate set-up. And then when the police arrest me John McCain jumps out and is all “Seriously? You thought the black guy won?!” That would totally suck.

Full post...

Now Serving #44

From Obama's inauguration speech:

"This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed - why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration across this magnificent mall, and why a man whose father less than sixty years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath."

Actually, oddly enough, Obama's father probably would have been served.

Many years ago, I read a fascinating article (I wish I could find it!) about a black civil-rights activist in the '60s who was refused service at a lunch counter. If I remember correctly, one day he tried coming to the same counter where he had been denied service many times, only that day, he dressed in traditional African clothing and faked an accent. He was served with no fuss.

He asked the waiter why the other black men were not being served, and an answer was given to him that indicated that apparently many Southerners were racist not against Africans, but African-Americans.

Racism is a strange thing.

From MLK to BHO

We've still got quite a ways to go. Pardon my pessimism, but it seems to me that there are a lot of people who are looking to the inauguration of Barack Obama as the realization in Dr. King's dream, and don't get me wrong, I think it shows we've made great strides, but we're not "there".

A lot of people are talking about the inauguration as though it's this moment in time that is an inflection point between the past and the future, but I don't think it's really so. I think the inauguration is symbolic of the transformation our country has undergone since the days of Dr. King, but it's not as though this day could have come unless we were ready for it, and our readiness as a nation is the real transformation, but it didn't happen suddenly one Tuesday in November, nor will it on a Tuesday in January. It happened slowly and steadily over the course of something like a century and a half.

Some people wonder why it's considered such a big deal, which has a couple of interesting facets to it. On the one hand, there's something almost heartening that a generation should come to pass where people don't see the inauguration of a President not of purely northern European ancestry as a big deal. It shows acceptance, and of a kind that indicates our minds have changed, and gone beyond mere acceptance. On the other hand, the pessimistic one, it may show a kind of ignorance of history. After all, if it's no big deal, why did it take over two hundred years to go from slavery to this? It may be great that we've come as far as we have as a nation, but at the same time, did it need to take so long?

Actually, I think it could have been a little bit sooner. There's a part of me that thinks the national attitude could have managed to elect an African-American President as early as the late '70s, if only there had been the right candidate. If true, this also has (at least) two facets. Maybe it's just easier for me to accept the idea since I was born in the early '70s, and therefore past the most intense turmoil of the civil rights movement, but I don't think the country has suddenly accepted black people; the seeds for the 2008 election results were beginning to sprout towards the end of the '60s. I think on the negative side, it shows some of the reason that mere acceptance is not quite enough for equality. A sufficiently qualified African-American could possibly have been elected in, say, 1980, but there was no such thing yet. Actually, some might argue (and many have) that Obama is not it either, having largely gotten elected on personality rather than an impressive record; after all, he hasn't been in politics very long. The thing is, since African-Americans were kept out of politics for so long, it's hard for them to have a viable candidate since we (rightly) expect our politicians to work their way up from the bottom. White and wealthy George W. Bush, in contrast, is a good example of someone who was never at the bottom. Not that it's his own fault, but there's a certain shame for our society that there really aren't any African-Americans of equivalent status to Bush.

It's unfortunate that we will always have to be performing a balancing act between remembering the tragedies of the past and working to put them behind us. It would be wrong to forget the injustice done--not just to African-Americans, but to various social groups in our history--and yet at the same time, one wonders if we are unable to put the past behind us, how can we let go of bitterness and move into the future? Think about how profound it can be: in some sense, the troubles in the Middle East are the result of a 3,000-year-old case of sibling rivalry. How long will we in America have to keep fighting the civil war? I suppose at least until we're truly the united states.

I sometimes wonder if we'll ever be "there". It seems sometimes like racism in particular, and prejudice in general are simply a part of human nature. Actually, it's pretty natural. When two people meet for the first time, the only thing they have to evaluate the other person is their physical appearance. We like to try to get a handle on other people, so until we get to know them better, most of what we know about them is what color and shape they are. In itself, that's not so bad, so long as we can eventually let go of our preconceived notions and see who we all are on the inside where it counts.

Thank God for small favors

There is a family at my church who's been going through a crisis. I'll probably get the details wrong because I don't know them personally, and I've only heard the story second-hand, but it doesn't matter so much. See, this family has a child, a boy slightly younger than two years old, who right around Christmas time started acting rather strange. Kids that age don't tend to do much anyway, but all of a sudden, he seemed to be especially quiet and inactive, and after he'd been like that for some time, they decided to take him to the hospital, just to be on the safe side.

Well, it turned out that there indeed was something wrong. A scan was taken and indicated that he was bleeding into his brain. Surgery was performed, and it was revealed that the boy had a large tumor which was removed. At the time I am writing this, the boy seems to have recovered; he's back home again and acting normally. He's going to undergo a series of chemotherapy treatments in the coming months, which of course won't be fun, but at least his prospects are good, and his life was saved.

People have sick children all the time. People get cancer. People get treatment. And people recover. Why bring up the story? Because of miracles, and how we perceive them.

Once again, I'm only hearing this story second-hand, but the mother is apparently brimming over with joy and thanksgiving that her son is going to be alright. Through an extensive prayer network, people all over the world have been praying for this boy, and have sent the mother e-mails expressing their thankfulness to God that the boy has recovered. Her response to this crisis is to declare that her son's diagnosis, treatment and recovery are a miracle of God.

Now, I know I wrote about this topic before, but it deserves a brief mention again, that sometimes I suspect the purpose of suffering and misfortune is to turn us to God. If our lives were smooth sailing, we probably would never look to a higher power. This mother was a Christian before all of this transpired, but something about what happened has caused a deepening of her faith. It may very well be that the boy, upon hearing this story when he is old enough to understand it, will also gain great faith from it. From a theistic perspective, suffering can serve a higher purpose (if indeed faith is important).

But I had a little epiphany when I heard the story, and it wasn't the one above, although it comes from the same source. I've spent a lot of time discussing religion, faith and theology with skeptics, and inside my head there's a little voice of a skeptic that goes with me into every conversation. That little voice, speaking out for the skeptics not physically present in the room as the story was told, said, "A kid has a brain tumor, and we're all thanking God for it, simply because he got over it? How stupid is that? If God was really looking out for the kid, wouldn't he have not had a tumor at all?"

I've heard this argument before in one form or another of course, and there does seem to be some logic to it. Wouldn't it be better to not suffer at all? You'd think so, but it's this very argument that tends to lead me to the thoughts I shared above and previously. Suffering leads to introspection, leading some theists to greater faith, some atheists to further skepticism, and various people of both persuasions to reevaluate what they believe. Yet there is another implication.

If indeed to not have a brain tumor is better than having one, what does that imply about those of us who don't have brain tumors? If recovery from a brain tumor can be considered a miracle, then doesn't that imply that not having one in the first place is better than a miracle?

I've heard it said in a sermon or two (paraphrased), "Instead of asking why some kid had a brain tumor, ask why you don't!" Suffering is a fact of life, and whether you are a theist who believes it to be the result of Original Sin or an atheist who sees it as a matter of "nature's red in tooth and claw", or whatever your belief persuasion may be, consider that any moment without suffering may be the biggest miracle of all!

Think of the implications. A couple who suffers from infertility managing to finally have a baby is not nearly as impressive of a miracle as a couple who has no trouble procreating in the first place. A man who survives a nasty automobile accident should, in some sense, not be nearly so thankful as an everyday commuter who manages to spend over an hour each day at speeds up to seventy miles per hour without her car ever coming into contact with an immobile object beyond the road passing beneath her wheels. Every plane that doesn't crash, every surgery that a patient lives through, every bank that doesn't go under when the stock market drops, every job you manage to keep, every walk through your house in the dark without a stubbed toe, and every day you wake up in the morning to find you're still drawing breath into your lungs: those are all profound miracles that we are blind to because we pass through them like a fish through water.

And then there's this: Can an atheist really say that it's better not to have a tumor in the first place? If suffering shows us the "truth" that there is no God, then wouldn't it be better for the boy to not only have a tumor, but to die? Shouldn't we all be wiped out by a plague, or even better, have a huge meteor ram into the earth and destroy all life?

It used to be that theodicies were about theists finding ways to reconcile suffering with the accepted concept of a good and loving God. In the modern age, discussions of the problem of suffering have often been the result of atheists arguing that there is no reconciliation of these concepts. But it seems there is an inherent flaw. If suffering turns us away from God, and it's true that there is no God, and truth is good, then suffering is good. But there can't possibly be enough suffering, because there is a lot of the world that is full of these little miracles.

I don't know that any of this makes any sense. Then again, is there any sense in the suffering of a little boy with a brain tumor? Yet it happens. When we try to make sense of the world, are we losing sight of the bigger picture? Are atheists' preconceived notions blocking their understanding of something profound? Are mine? Probably both.