Evidence

A common theme among most atheists I've come across is the necessity for believers to provide evidence to their belief as a satisfaction of the burden of proof. In fact, several podcasters, just for the sake of isolating one group I am aware of, routinely reference how if the bible were to be the true, inerrant word of an all knowing, timeless god then there should be references to future events or items that people 2000 years ago would be mystified by. Usually these are spoken of in jest but I'm not so sure it is an idea one can easily brush away the severity of.

Just to provide a quick example, an early episode of Thomas and the bible has the host making reference to god showing people something by means of an Xbox, or even a PlayStation. A brief explanation of this podcast for those unfamiliar is that Thomas has dedicated his time to reading the King James Version of the bible but sprinkles the dry content with his brand of wit and humour. So that said, the example given is delivered, I'm assuming, in a tone of jest. But let’s take it seriously for a moment;

 And lo, the Lord put forth a box unto the ground. When Moses inquired to God as to the nature of this thing his eyes did lie upon and God did call it a box of X. He did speak that after this sight, mankind would not see another thing such as this for many a generation.

Sorry Sony fans, I’m an Xbox person so you will have to suffer through my example. So this seemingly innocuous little addition to the KJV, like most prophecies in the bible, is fairly primitive and vague in what it is actually talking about. In fact, it is one so vague that you can retro-fit any number of inventions to meet its description. Perhaps creating something so ambiguous so as to easily be fulfilled by any person seeking to make a god out of their self.

Something as simple as a weak prophecy just won’t do when it comes to proclaiming the truth of a 2000 year old book, let alone the truth of a supposed timeless god it purports to represent. You see, going down the generations there would be countless incarnations and conjugations of “box” and “X.” Every would-be prophet and so-called holy man or even man of the cloth would have their own copyrighted box that somehow incorporated the letter x into its name. This would be done until the horse had not only been beaten, pummelled into a bloody mess and left 6 feet under for a few hundred years, but we would see a modern version of this where every box was somehow sacred and worthy of worship. Don’t even get me started on the boxes that happened to have an alleged appearance of the Virgin Mary or Jesus himself.

It bears repeating that this would not be proof of the inerrant word of god. Or proof of god. However, what this would further prove humanity’s lack of ability to wean itself off of any and every sacred cow. It would demonstrate perfectly that we as a species are hardwired based off of a brain that was developed to operate in survival mode to the point of unshakeable pareidolia. Seeing patterns is what we do to a fault in the modern age. This is just further proof that we bear the stamps of our lowly origins. A hit, no matter how much we have to warp our logical faculties to consider it a hit, is still a hit to people who refuse to question their own preconceived notions and put to the test their beliefs in any theistic doctrine or supernatural claim.

Let’s take an existing demonstration of this; psychics. How many of them put forth yearly predictions? What do those predictions typically constitute of? High probability hits, i.e. an earthquake on a known fault line such as the pacific rim or that some sort of tragedy will befall the US, or events so ambiguous that we will see the prediction be fulfilled so many times as to reach tedium. At the end of each calendar year they tally up the hits, near hits and probably-not-hits-but-they-get-counted-as-successes-anyways and smile while they stroke their egos. And genitals. All the while completely neglecting to mention the numerous hits that they didn’t make.

Once again, we see the believers and the faithful falling all over themselves just to get a taste of the ejaculate of these psychics while failing to factor in the probable rate of occurrence of some of these events with the mental contortions and failed claims to realize the “psychic” really didn’t do a damned thing. Well, didn’t do a thing outside of play off basic functioning of the human brain mixed with some con-artistry.

So when an atheist or unbeliever of any claim, which on its surface is too good to be true, dismisses evidence they’re accused of moving the goal post or being just plain ignorant. When a true believer hoists up some worthless prediction that has more holes in it than my grandmother’s colander and it is held to the burning light of reason or scrupulous testing, it quickly is ignited into a small inferno of cries that “you’re just not listening.” Cries that you need to think the thing is true and only then will you see that it is indeed true. It is a bit of Olympics-level gymnastics for the intellect to suppress any knowledge or awareness of the probability or more importantly, the plausibility of a claim’s truth. Even more contorting is mixing that logic that starts with a conclusion, ignores counter-evidence and then eagerly distorts everything else into some way of comforting and consoling the childish tantrum that is hell-bent on clinging to some emotionally satisfying idea.

There's a comet orbiting Kim Kardashian's ass

According to the news, there was some big thing going on a few billion miles away with a comet and a probing or something, butt Kim Kardashian took off her clothes to get back to being famous and relevant again. She "broke the internet." I actually didn't see the full picture till everyone had had their fun with photoshop, but I can assure you I saw many of the mock-ups done by people trying to make fun of her. Under normal circumstances, I don't give much mind to it, but I enjoy the endless memes and "lulz" that come from such an occurrence.

What does bother me though, is that in all the marvel and wonder that went into landing a space probe on a comet, all I could really find was a large moon that used to give me reason to reach for some kleen-ex. I leave the rest of that image to your imagination.

I ask you to contemplate this; 10 years ago a probe was launched. This probe was to land on a comet that moves at roughly 40km a second. A SECOND. On the highway, at 110km per hour, you're barely going 0.03km a second. Yeah, this thing is moving over 1000 times faster than you at highway speeds, and how many times do you see people freak out moving at that pace while trying to make a lane change, let alone land on a freaking comet without becoming a cloud of debris.

The precision required to accomplish this using technology that is borderline ancient, it's 10 years old since we could not just upgrade its hardware while it was en route, is seemingly unimaginable to one such as I, and yet, all I can find is some worn out cheeks that have been photoshopped to Hell and back. As I hopped onto the internet that night to try to catch up on social media, it became evident that Kimmy's derriere had a greater impact on the internet than Philae did on the comet. What a heart break.

Rockstar games loves you(r money)

Rockstar Games has released a $1,000,000 incentive, in their online currency of course, to pre-order a game that was released a year ago. It is as simple as that. It sounded much better when I said it out loud...

I am not a gamer by any standard. I'm the cannon fodder you put on your team so the other team can waste ammo and hopefully distract other players enough to take heat off of you. That's all I'm really good for. But I enjoy it, so I do like playing video games. In fact, I've thoroughly enjoyed my time in GTA Online, running down innocent civilians and ruining vacation funds for convenience store clerks. I've even established a pretty cool character who has a wicked assortment of funny hats, stylish outfits, fast cars and haa a penchant for hookers and strippers. He's pretty cool.

But my irritation comes from the delayed promises of downloadable content, bait-and-switches with said DLC, hey I know the acronym so maybe I have some gamer cred, and how hard they've enjoyed making it for you to really establish yourself in this world. Now it's like  they're completely forgetting that I exist. It would seem that they are milking the relatively recent releases of the next-gen consoles to sell you a game you probably already bought. Sure, you can trade in your old console version, henceforth known as old 'n busted, for the new console version, which shall now be known as the new hotness.

I own old 'n busted and look forward to spending an evening soon where I can hop on and taunt 12 year olds who are up past their bedtimes, and whose parents haven't caved on buying them the next-gen console. It's a fun experience. But I won't bother buying up the new console just to play the game with the ability to go 1st person, though the clean million smackers seems awesome for making it rain at the virtual strip club. Rockstar already has my money from this version, trading it in doesn't affect their profits to my knowledge, but buying the new hotness would boost their income. Whoa. That's sneaky right there. Don't expect my money boys and girls, I don't plan on buying the new version and I like my old 'n busted console enough to keep hanging onto it for a while.

Lol, you're racist, somehow... Some way

I cannot begin to tell you how sick I am of the phrase "islamophobia." Honestly. You cannot sit and critique a religion, something that is the foundation of all criticism, or so Marx said. Let's set aside those who are bigoted and racially fearful, judging someone based on skin colour is accusing someone of false character because of the chemical pigmentation of their skin. That's a whole other bag of garbage to take out later.

But let's take a quick look at the overwhelming abuse of the word "islamophobia" or the label of "islamophobic" by folks like the brilliant, sarcasm, Ben Affleck. I am fully for criticizing bad ideas or problematic doctrines. In fact, the idea that someone's religious or superstitious beliefs go unquestioned is absolutely reprehensible to me as I feel it should be to all others. Coddling those who we disagree with without lending any genuine criticism is downright insulting and should be offensive to those being "protected" by societal equivalents of helicopter moms who insist that little Johnny or little Suzy cannot possibly be terrible children, even after they have lied, stolen or broken something, or left a pleasant pile of excrement on the floor.

To deny adults criticism of their bad ideas is a hand-holding that encourages bad behaviour and does not offer any push for the person to grow. To say that criticism of a religion is a hate-driven, racially divisive bit of discrimination should be offensive to any follower of Islam who seeks to see peace for their people in any land. Moderate Muslim Tarek Fatah should be a name that comes to mind to any of those seeking to find an internal and well thought out criticism of issues surrounding his culture and religious following.

I will also leave you with this, a quote by Salman Rushdie. Many years ago he wrote a book that took a concept from Islam and put it into a novel, a piece of fiction, and had an international call for his death within the Islamic community. That book was The Satanic Verses.

HeForShe

Hmm, I haven't actually written anything worth sharing in a while, so I suppose it's time I changed that. Allow me to prelude my thoughts on the issue;

I have always, so far back as I can remember, loathed the idea of feminism. It had a strong social connotation that I just didn't like. I hated the idea that women held the sexual power and that they complained about males hitting on them all the time. This piece I always just came back with "Well, I don't see why it isn't a compliment." I was slowly becoming part of the problem, just with this little attitude. Don't get me wrong, I don't consider myself a feminist but I do stand strongly for Humanism, and the idea that no human being, regardless of age, skin colour, religion or gender should feel oppressed or degraded based on such a quality. I thought that that was enough however, which it may have been had I not held my own ignorance. Yes, dear reader, I was an asshole, still am in all likelihood, but I'm accepting my ignorance, struggling to change my attitudes and you can take that for what you wish.

Another issue that always irked me, was how if I was exercising a little of the extra-emotional tendencies with which we stereotype and characterize as feminine, I was always told, by women no less, to just man up.

Back up! In an age where women were fighting to remove the stigma surrounding the notions about there being a greater and lesser gender, in the age where we were striving to make women earn the same as men on average, in the age where girls were fighting a legal battle to join the boy scouts, it was still okay to tell a male to "man up," because he was being extra emotional?! That is an injustice, and I feel it still is.

Fast forward through my petty outbursts and tirades about femi-nazis and man-haters blah blah raging arrogant a-hole blah. A few weeks ago, Emma Watson set the stage for what I consider to be quite the revolutionary idea in her speech to the UN. I will attach the link to the video at the end. She pointed out the major differences, but then she addressed how men are perceived. I have witnessed friends of mine on Facebook denounce this as catering to men, making them the focus and petting the pitbull, but I find that to be a childish critique. Especially since, perhaps an oversimplification but one I make nonetheless, is that it is like bringing a new  baby into a formerly single-child home, where the older child is old enough to know life as an only child. Allow me to explain this analogy;

When you have all the attention, all the focus, you tend to not need to learn how to share. You can dominate those around you and throw tantrums and still be the beloved monster at large. But when suddenly, you have to learn to share and empathy, extremely foreign concepts in spite of their necessity, your natural reactance towards the change goes through the roof. You hate it. You hate your sibling. You hate your parents, those telling you that you need to learn to change. But if you're the parent, it's different. You see what used to be a fairly well behaved child act out, get upset and throw tantrums because they don't understand why they aren't so special. They can't. They never had to. BUT, if you can make that child integral to their own learning, involve them in bringing up the new baby, employ their skills in getting things, let them nurture when reasonable, help them grow WITH their new foe for your attention, you bring a natural change that is warranted and almost unnoticed. You're helping someone grow in a positive light.

This analogy may, as I stated, be oversimplifying, but if you guarantee that men will be helping bring change for the better for all genders on the spectrum, keep there from being an overreaction on their side, a tantrum if you will, you can make them want to change, want to learn to be better. It's not catching bees with honey, it's bringing about a better world for those of all genders,

As promised, here's the video

You might be a racist, but only if you're white

Welp, here we have another Oscar season finally over. Did ya catch it? Me neither. The glamor and glitz of it all is nothing more than superficial, overindulged crybabies who pat each other on the back for pretending to care. But here's a highlight that I think is more of a jab at Hollywood and it's pretentious tendencies than people are willing to admit; the host, Ellen Degeneres, said it was a night where "anything can happen, so many possibilities. " The punchline immediately followed with; "Possibility number one: 12 Years a Slave wins best picture. Possibility number two: You’re all racists." Whoa. You mean to tell me that this movie wasn't favorited by whoever decides winners because it focused on Black History?! Don't get me wrong, I haven't seen the film yet but will, if only so I can update my thoughts on this.

However, I am aware that the Oscar committee has a love of films that focus on sociologically deemed "marginalized groups" or films that they can make iconic so as to appease their white, anglo-saxon, protestant guilt, yes I referenced WASP, and though I would like to add undeservingly wealthy and self righteous, I fear I would drag on. We've seen this in the glorification of Brokeback Mountain and Slumdog Milliomaire, neither of which I have seen to judge quality, but I can only guess that there was this "white, heterosexual guilt" attached. Let's be real, there won't be any movies about little white children from Northern Ireland who were raped and beaten by nuns and priests being a favourite to win an Oscar because the only guilt they could use would be against an organization that has made itself infallible from day 1, and simply twists the evidence, perhaps cherry picks would be a better term, into suiting its own conclusions. No cultural guilt? No Oscar.

Introduction

I suppose if I needed to answer a question as to why I am doing this, I might point to a sojourn of sorts, that through writing my thoughts I can perhaps exercise my appreciation of the written word and my need to maintain a semblance of sanity. I love the idea that I can explore myself and figure out where I stand in the world by writing my reactions to and thoughts on controversies, norms and nuances in the world

In the beginning, I started "meditating" on various issues surrounding the topics of pop culture, politics, religion and anything else worth having an opinion on in the world I live in. They all started with one of my best friends who shared with me an interest in seeing the world and taking it not just for face value but trying to apply a little common sense in the interpretation.

A few reminders, some of these are dated on current events from months ago, so chronologically speaking, they are very out of wack. No, I do not do this regularly, but typically these stem from what I read in newspapers or plastered across magazines. They all come to me in their own context and as such I am tracking down and editing whichever ones are on my old phone or lost in emails, so don't expect a perfect chronology of events.