MiloCast

I realized recently (probably fairly late to the game), that there is a simple refutation to all religious beliefs. It can not be contradicted by any honest person. There are only two possible responses: Think about it honestly, or choose to ignore the truth.

Here it is:

Anyone who believes in any gods does so for no other reason than somebody else telling them to. If their religion has a holy book, they only believe the book to have authority because someone told them it does.

That’s it — plain and simple.

If there was any proof of Islam, Christians would convert.

If there was any proof of Hinduism, Jews would convert.

If there was any proof of Buddhism, Muslims would convert.

The simple truth is that more people de-convert and become atheists than convert from one religion to another. Recent polls show that the fastest growing group on surveys about religious affiliation is “None.” Makes perfect sense to me. As a society, we have moved further from superstition, and have become much more capable of dealing with the natural world as it is. Some of this comes from understanding the previously unexplained.

I am happy to see that reason is overcoming superstition at a growing rate. It has come to the point where theists are publishing books with which desperately try to refute the legitimate criticisms of their preferred religion — and failing in that task.

I have started reading a couple of books in that vein, and will write about them on this site. In the meantime, you may perform an extremely simple test. Go to the book store and find a book which attempts to attack rational arguments about how their particular religious beliefs don’t hold water. You will probably find that their representation of the argument against is pretty accurate — they don’t want to be accused of skirting the issue. Next, read their “refutation.” It will always be wordy, imprecise, and will fail to back up any of its claims with facts.

These are exciting times indeed for human enlightenment.

I was listening to the podcast “A Christian and an Atheist” on my way to work this morning, and I had a lot of thoughts about things which were said, but even more about things which were not said. In my next few posts, I’m going to go over some of those things. In this episode, Emery (an atheist), interviewed Pastor Scott Barger. They discussed a list of questions Barger had prepared for atheists.

The first question from Barger was how so many atheists could claim the knowledge that no god exists. He further claims that such people should more honestly refer to themselves as agnostics.

I have two main thoughts about this. The first one is that atheism is simply disbelief in any gods. The fact that some atheists will go further and claim that no gods exist is simply a matter of choice. This shows a misunderstanding of atheism, which was also hinted at when Barger refers to atheism as a “system” and to atheists as people who follow that system. For more on this, see my article “Everything You’ve Heard About Atheists is Wrong — Except one Thing.”

Secondly, the unstated implication of Scott Barger’s question is that people who claim that no god exists should be agnostics, because agnosticism allows for the question to remain open. Obviously, this sentiment stems from his belief in the existence of a god, and his desire for the rest of us to leave the possibility open in case we’re wrong. There are, however, two major flaws in this idea. First, an atheist is open to new information, and can be convinced of the existence of a god if the evidence is presented to us. Most of us will freely admit that. However, agnostics take the position that it’s impossible to know in either case. So while they would, in theory, be convinced as quickly as an atheist in the presence of evidence, their philosophy precludes even looking for such evidence, since they don’t believe there is any possibility of finding any for or against.

Also, and most importantly from a logical perspective, is the simple fact that leaving yourself open to the possibility that there may be a god does not mean that it is just as likely as the non-existence of a god. It’s not a 50-50 bet. Based upon the evidence we have, there is no reason or evidence which indicates that a god exists. That makes the bet more like 100-0 against than 50-50.

Full credit for civility goes to both Scott and Emery for this conversation. It was a respectful, non-combative conversation, which is rare between theists and non-theists. In fact, I don’t remember ever hearing a conversation in which points were made strongly by one side and conceded by the other. I can only hope that these concessions mean that our global conversation on these issues can begin to shed the tired old arguments which have long since been decided and discuss the core of the matter.

Putting up good content regularly requires a lot of time. I did it for a few months, then I asked for some feedback from you (see most recent post before this). Nearly two weeks have passed since then, and not a single person said so much as “hello.” I intentionally did not post since then so it would remain the top post, and get more exposure.

So, I’ll be posting irregularly when I have something I really want to write about, but I will no longer add content multiple times weekly. I was hoping to have a community of readers who were interested in discussing some of these topics, but maybe most of my readers are hitting the site through Google searches.

Also, I have already posted the most important topics I really wanted to get out there, and I don’t want to be repetitive. I will maintain the site for the foreseeable future in the hope that people will stumble across my favorite essays, and hope that I do some good in the world.

Shawn

In the months that this site has existed and I’ve been posting content, I’ve seen my stats rise steadily. There are now a lot of people who visit MiloCast.com regularly. However, I have received no e-mail from strangers, and almost no comments from people I didn’t already know personally.

In the interest of making this site better, (but mostly out of curiosity), who are you? Send me e-mail (address in the CONTACT/ABOUT tab above), or contact me on IM or Skype. My name is ShawnMilo on both. I’d really like to hear from as many people as possible and see how my writing is being perceived by real people. I don’t care if you have positive or negative things to say, but I’d like this to be more of a two-way conversation. I look forward to hearing from you.

Thanks,

Shawn

Is it just me, or is “Family Guy” one of the greatest shows of our time? And is it just me, or is it going downhill in a sad, stumbling way? Some of the most original, funniest, and wittiest writing I have seen from a network show (animated or otherwise) has come from “Family Guy” writers.

But lately it seems that Seth McFarland is falling out of love with the show that made him what he is, and is instead pouring his creative genius into a second-rate cartoon, namely “American Dad.” Granted I heard it has gotten a lot better since I stopped watching it (around episode one), but that can’t be difficult, considering how much it sucked.

I really don’t have much of a point here other than to gripe in public about the loss of vitality in “Family Guy” — so here’s more. By having Stewie bludgeon and in many other ways mutilate Brian last season, Seth showed that he really doesn’t care about the characters that he created anymore. The latest halfhearted attempt at a plot is even worse — a “simulation” which spanned two full episodes, while being self-aware about how much they were pissing off their fans.

The problem, in my never-humble opinion, is that Seth McFarland made it huge with “Family Guy” because he went with what he thought was amusing, and made the mistake of believing that just because he thought something was fun to do, others would agree. What made “Family Guy” great was that it broke boundaries, violated norms, and shocked people awake. It made us think. It challenged authority in a very serious way, but wrapped in a (sometimes paper-thin) humorous package.

The retarded “American Dad” concept took old, used up, and completely over-done ideas and tried to replicate the success of “Family Guy.” An alien with an accent that shouldn’t be on television from this millennium, a caricature of a caricature fish with a German accent, and brain-dead main characters should have prevented this show from getting any further than McFarland’s garbage can. But he was able to ride his “Family Guy” success (while betraying that creation) to fuel his childish passion for this partial-birth brain dump.

In closing, I’d like to thank Seth for the great time we all shared, and ask him to please stop now, before he embarrasses himself any further, and does any more damage to the remaining legacy of “Family Guy.”

I have come under heavy fire from some local magicians after I called for a vote to remove an officer of my local magic club from office (but not from the group) for a major ethics violation. Of course, those who are attacking me haven’t been able to find fault with what I said — the guy is guilty and they all know it. So they have resorted to ad hominem attacks against me. For fun, and to bridge my freethought and magic categories, let’s talk about them today.

An ad hominem attack is an argument against something a person says to try to discredit the person themselves. Someone says something you don’t like, so you point out what a bad person they are to try to convince others they’re not worth listening to. There really isn’t much more to it than that.

The mistake I made was to stand up and have the guts to say something about someone who is very popular. As is so often the case, people respond emotionally instead of intellectually. They see an attack on “one of their own,” and instinctively rally around them and fight the accuser. It’s a good thing to help out your friends, but it’s not a good thing to spread lies about the person making the accusation in the process.

This is a sad and pathetic thing to do. For example, I have received private e-mail from several people congratulating me for having the courage to do this. However, not one of them has e-mailed the group supporting me. Why not? I’m guessing it’s because they don’t want any backlash. However, the people who are using ad hominem attacks are sending them to the group in some cases, and posting them as comments to this site in others. Considering I never e-mailed the group about my article regarding the case, this is a clear attempt to defame me in retaliation.

One of them even went so far as to make an anonymous comment on one of my older posts about religion and told me I’d have to answer for this deed in heaven. That goes to show you how well-thought-out their argument was. I know those same people are going to read this. I just wonder how they’ll respond.

I am currently embroiled in a messy ethics situation in my local magic club. I’ll get more into the specific details another time, but basically, I have called for a vote to remove an officer of the club from their position for a major ethics violation. The response has been forceful — and most of it is personal attacks on me. A few have congratulated me for standing up and taking action, but they are in the minority.

A major problem in the magic world is that magic is not trademarked or copyrighted. Anyone can read a book or watch a DVD, and then write their own book or record their own DVD teaching the same material, and it’s not illegal. As a result, it has become necessary for members of the magic community (if they care about the art of magic), to support magicians and publishers who produce original work, and shun (and boycott) those who rip off others.

However, the situation is in a continual crisis, as more and more people take up magic as a hobby every day, and have no idea that any of this is going on. In their innocent ignorance, they purchase the knock-off items because they’re cheaper (in every sense of the word), and keep the scumbags in business.

For those who don’t quite see what’s wrong with selling magic instruction knock-offs, let me use an analogy. Let’s say a guy named Jeff wrote a dictionary. He didn’t invent any of the words, but he spent years gathering them into one place. He even learned to pronounce them all and use them properly in conversation. Then let’s say a couple of guys name Eddy and Robby read that dictionary, then published their own dictionary, mostly made up of the words in Jeff’s dictionary. They didn’t use all the words — they skipped the ones they had trouble pronouncing or understanding. They also added in some words not in Jeff’s dictionary, although they weren’t the same language. Then they published their book and called it a thesaurus, so it wouldn’t be so obvious that they copied most of it.

This kind of thing goes on all the time, on both a large scale and a small scale. In some cases, it’s not even obvious which product is the more ethical choice to purchase, and some research is required. But the biggest problem is that too many people just don’t care. Most people aren’t clever enough to write a dictionary, and know they’ll never accomplish anything themselves, so they aren’t worried about any personal loss due to this. So they happily buy the cheaper items and call themselves magicians.

They should be ashamed, but they are not. And they know who they are.

I was discussing the relative worthlessness of “debates” between rationalists and theists with a fellow atheist recently, and he expressed the opinion that it seemed like both sides just spew forth their own dogma, nobody considers the opposing opinion, and nothing positive comes from the effort. I don’t personally feel that debating is a waste of time, although it usually is for most of the audience because they already have their minds made up.

However, my main problem with his statement was that he referred to the position of the rationalist as “dogma.” As everyone knows (or should), dogma is a bad thing. It is taking a position as true and defending it regardless of whether there is any valid reason to believe it, and even when there is clear evidence against. The reasons I gave for the rational point of view not being dogma are as follow:

• They are based upon scientific consensus.
• They are subject to change based upon evidence.
• They are bolstered by an understanding and dismissal of pathetic opposing arguments, not a refusal to listen to opposing arguments.

All three of these are in direct opposition to the way a true believer thinks. They refuse to believe the results of scientific research when it conflicts with their beliefs, they won’t change their minds even when the evidence suggests their beliefs are flawed, and they refuse to listen to or understand opposing arguments.

So, just remember: “Beware of Dogma”

No sane person who believes in any supernatural things — including gods, will claim that there is any evidence or proof. In fact, they find virtue in believing without evidence. Many of them think this makes them better, or at least more enlightened, than the rest of us.

Follow that line of reason logically, and the inescapable conclusion is that these gods prefer more easily-led people who are willing to accept apparent nonsense, even in the face of evidence to the contrary.

To put a slightly finer point on it, Yahweh prefers fools to thinkers.