More Religion Bashing

A lot of decent progressives get really bent out of shape by aggressive atheism. So much that they tend to blurt out ridiculous things. For instance, I'm sure that some of them would have a knee-jerk reaction to this post, and wouldn't be able to resist smugly telling me that my obsessive hatred of religion said more about me than it did about the religious. I was obviously unwittingly playing the part of the fanatical atheist to a tee. For some reason, daily criticisms of capitalism, imperialism or any of my other usual targets wouldn't elicit such a response from them.

Look folks, religious myths were stories that we used to explain our lives before we knew any better. Nowadays, the way that we interpret reality is through science. Imbeciles imagine that they're being clever when the point to how our faith in science bears a [superficial] resemblance to faith in religion. They also gleefully point to the shortcomings of science and scientists as if this somehow, some way, in some bizarre, inexplicable fashion, validates incoherent religious myths.

We start off as infants incapable of comprehending the autonomous existence of other sentient beings. Then, at some point, we become aware of our parents and attribute to them almost god-like abilities and importance.  Let me point out that the errors of the latter view in no way mean that we should return to the former worldview.

I think that will do for the dismissal of glib defenses of religion for now. What about the good that religion supposedly does? It provides some comfort to believers to the extent that it gives them any sense of understanding and control over a confusing, very often painful existence. Of course, to the extent that it makes people fearful for their lives or their imaginary eternal souls at the hands of jealous, wrathful gods, it provides discomfort. To the extent that following the dictates of the imaginary enlightenment of religion fails to pay-out as promised, to that extent does it provide discomfort instead of comfort. To the extent  that it perpetuates belief in obviously idiotic, nonsensical things, to that extent is it a negative, rather than a positive.

I liked something I wrote in that infamous thread from EnMasse, wherein the clueless dolts who attempted to defend religion stammered all the nonsensical arguments I just trashed above. With regards to the way some religions have been able to incorporate obvious realities into their portrait of the world, I wrote:

4. Some people want to point out that religions have been quite adept at adapting to reality and permitting differences.

4a) This is because less and less people want to die for old myths.

4b) This is because religions are like some pathological liar who used to make grandiose claims about his knowledge and abilities but who has been forced, more and more, to admit that he's full of shit, often doesn't know what he's talking about and never could leap tall buildings in a single bound.

That's about it. The good it brings can be achieved in other ways and the evils it causes are insurmountable and inherent in the beast itself. It introduces an almost impenetrable belief in meaningless magic to one's opinions. It provides an armour behind which stupid beliefs can fester.

A Time to Stand and be Counted

I was skeptical that camping out in public parks and critiquing the system a-la "Occupy" was ever going to change things. I was prepared to get involved to the limited extent that I was able to, when it wasn't immediately crushed and in the USA it's message was resonating with the majority of the US-American public (despite the best efforts of fourth-rate political hacks like Josh Trevino).

One thing I know for sure is that the LEFT has to pull its collective head out of its collective anus [!] and have itself a collective grown-up conversation about VIOLENCE. Because all the agonizing over the brutalized members of Occupy Oakland resorting to violence in the face of thuggish police provocations shows that this is very necessary.

Now and forever, absolute bullshit about "Violence is always wrong" is simply not going to cut it. You do not petition monsters. You do not appeal to the hearts of monsters. You do not point to the moral codes of monsters. You fight monsters. You make things difficult for them. And if you don't steel yourselves, and prepare your minds for what genuine struggle actually means, ... then you will become a monster. Because you haven't worked out beforehand what constitutes fighting and what constitutes rage-induced monstrous behaviour.

So, anyway, here's a pretty good essay from Counter Punch: "What Is To Be Done ... Now?" which looks at V. I. Lenin's famous pamphlet and says that it holds some truths still for us today:

The general problem is that the other side – Lenin would have said the capitalist side; in 2011, that designation was effectively replaced by “the one-percent” – is organized.   It has a state to do its bidding, what Marx called an “executive committee” of the entire ruling class.  In these circumstances, “the ninety-nine percent” has no choice but to respond, as best it can, in kind, by doing its utmost to constitute a rival executive committee.

If the Occupy movements peter out entirely, as Cockburn thought they already have, it will illustrate Lenin’s general point.  For a time, they breathed new life into spontaneism.  Indeed, leaderlessness helped them along.  But they eventually reached a point where the choice was posed: make a quantum leap into the vanguardist model they rejected or fade away.   Since the former hasn’t happened and almost certainly won’t, let us hope that, as they fade into historical memory, some of the good the Occupy movements did can be turned into a useful legacy.

Why Don't I Trash Religion Again?

One reason that I blog is to force myself to write every day. I've got a lot to do this morning and I can't decide on anything topical, so I guess I'll rant about religion.

If you read this blog with any frequency you'll know that I have a real bee in my bonnet about religion and the asinine defences of it that some people imagine aren't ridiculous. I agree with the efforts of Richard Dawkins and other atheists that religion should be criticized and exposed so that it will eventually dwindle into insignificance and this primitive way of understanding our existence can be eliminated from our consciousnesses.

The shit-for-brains critique of Dawkins etc., goes like this:

This is "militant atheism" or "fundamentalist atheism" and (Oh! But this is brilliant!) is no different from militant/fundamentalist religious devotion. (Oh! The delicious irony!)

Yes. Apparently silly atheists can't see that believing that explaining the world according to ancient legends about super-powerful or even omnipotent beings, which legends supposedly are based on infallible, eternal truths (whatever present reality might appear to be) is as valid a way to go as any other worldview.

This isn't the viewpoint of the religious of course. Or at least not most of them. There are some religious people who belief that there is some sort of "truth" in all religions, that the religious impulse speaks to some sort of connection with the divine (or whatever): "There are many paths to God" and all that. But most Christians wouldn't say that the Hindus or the Buddhists are just as right as they are. Most Christians believe that the Jews missed the boat about Jesus and that the Muslims foolishly went and built a new boat and are now rowing in the wrong direction.

The idea that the Buddha, who was supposedly enlightened and all-knowing, and Jesus, who was the Son of God who was also all-knowing, and all the other religions from animist beliefs to pantheistic mythologies contain some "truth" even though these religions themselves explicitly deny this ("false gods" "errors" "heathens" "blasphemies" "heresies") can only be true if you water down the religious impulse so as to make the commonality so as to be meaningless, to whit: "All human cultures have struggled to make sense of the world and they have all invented stories to try to explain it to themselves."

Big deal.

Science will never be able to explain reality. The "world" is bigger than our senses. We cannot even begin to fathom what is beyond our senses to even register. Even the world of sense-perception as extended and elevated by science is incomprehensible to us. Isaac Newton didn't know what caused gravity. He just knew that everything attracted everything else to a degree and he could calculate it for the largest objects like the Earth and the Moon and the Sun and he didn't trouble himself to speculate on the source of this power.

But what is explained by religion, besides the obvious fact that we are subject to powerful forces beyond our control? What of these "many paths to God"? When we're sick, should we pray for health? Should we sacrifice an animal on a stone altar? Should we try to expel the angry alien souls from our systems? Should we ingest some magic potion?

"AHA! 'Magic potions' 'eh? What's the difference between YOU (oh superior, rational atheist) taking your doctors' medicine and the devotee who drinks a 'magic potion'???"

Yawn. It's true that when it comes to science a lot of my trust in it is based on faith in its truth. But as David Hume said, we have to believe a lot things on faith. Pretty much everything if you read him correctly. He wasn't an atheist, but he was far from being your typical agnostic. He wasn't prepared to think that it was a toss-up between atheist certainty and certainty in ancient myths. Some things were plausible and some almost certainly nonsense. And I don't think, on a practical level, that he would have cared one way or the other if religious delusions were eradicated by the genuine exercise of reason. So, facile equivalence between trusting in the edifice of science and trusting in some groundless, evidence-free magic, is just that: facile.

In the end, human stupidity can create inquisitions and atomic bombs. But there are far more opportunities for misbegotten fanatical certainty to lead one astray with religious delusion than is the case with scientific inquiry.

I've typed enough for today. I'll type again another day. (Unless I get hit by a bus and go straight to H-E-double hockey-sticks.)

thwap Doesn't Catch Olympic Fever

Sigh. So a television set is playing some Canadian Olympics coverage and there's a commercial for some young male Canadian athlete training and endorsing a product (VISA credit cards I think) and at one point he says "I'm doing it for my country."

That struck me as odd. Really odd. All I could think was "Why? Why do you think you're training for your country?" I should remind people that patriotism is not one of my strong suits. I wrote about that in a post entitled "The Extent of My Patriotism."

Once you say "no" to loving any of those things, or any other unappealing aspect of Canada, then you have to admit the fact that "loving" a country is a ridiculous concept. Nation-states are artificial constructs that have been designed to compel our loyalties and devotion, and they expend considerable resources to ensure that we do so. But there is no natural patriotism.

What we do share as Canadians is a heritage that has its good points and its bad points. But we don't share anything so deep as to justify the exclusion of the rest of humanity from our affections.

I am grateful to have been born in Canada, one of the few countries in the world that provides almost all of its people with a tolerable standard of living. I am grateful for the circumstances of history, and for the people who fought to make this a democratic country. I am saddened that we had to usurp this land from its original Aboriginal inhabitants, and I am ashamed of the way we have tried to eradicate those people and deny our debts to them. I am ashamed of our disgraceful imperialism in Haiti, and I am angry about the lies and deceptions of our imperialism in Afghanistan. I am proud of Canada's international reputation. I am proud of the way we tend to peacefully settle our differences. I am angry at the way that true Quebec nationalists were oppressed and brutalized after 1837, but I feel a little proud to think of the efforts of Baldwin and LaFontaine to work together to support each others' efforts to win their political rights.

I also wrote about the whole revolting spectacle of the Olympics and nationalism here:

What I don't do is slather on some red face paint in the approximation of the maple leaf and cheer like some stupid idiot when the Olympic torch is trotted across this land-mass, just because our government gave the biggest bribes to a bunch of fascists and fuckwads on the International Olympic Committee. Especially if some stupid soda-pop vendor wants me to, since it means turning off my brain, which will then make me more receptive to their soda-pop selling schemes.

 So, that guy wasn't exactly preaching to the converted in my case. But it made me want to return to an idea to write a post that would have been great for Canada Day except that I came up with the idea a few days too late.

Basically, this last Canada Day left me completely cold. The vast majority of our political elites are completely out of touch with the "Canadian values" that supposedly mark us as a people. Our politicians, our state institutions, our punditocracy are all complicit in the degradation of the fundamentals of our parliamentary system. We are a violent, stupid, selfish, ignorant, self-righteous, materialist and deluded people. I can't celebrate a country based on the expropriation of First Nations and, worse (to me in the 21st Century) the continued dehumanization of the First Nations and the complete denial that any of this is happening. Our RCMP kills immigrants, lies about it, and gets away with it. Our CF hand over prisoners to a regime of torturers, the government (which put them in that impossible situation) withholds evidence and sweeps it under the rug, and the majority of my fellow Canadians are so disconnected or delusional or lazy with regards to what we are doing and how it constitutes an assault on our soul as a nation that it all dies with a whimper.

Obviously I'm grateful to have been born in Canada. Although I'm of working-class stock and therefore slightly more prone to being fucked-over than many higher up the income ladder, I had a reasonably good shot to have carved a secure life for myself and I'm still living vastly better than the majority of people alive today or the majority of people who ever lived. But the same could be said for my status as a white male. And I'm not exactly proud of being a white male. I'm glad for it, given material realities and all, but celebrating "White Males Day" sounds like something only stupid neo-Nazis would do. I guess the same thing goes for "Canada Day" for now.

Another Brick in the Wall

Omar Khadr's case is a polarizing one, to say the least. Some people think that he's an evil, psychopathic, Islamofascist terrorist monster, while other people say that he was a victim of circumstances, a child soldier and a Canadian citizen who should have had his legal rights respected and been given a fair trial. These two sides tend to see the other in a hostile light. For those who hate Khadr, people who see him as a child soldier and Canadian citizen and therefore entitled to certain rights and procedures are America hating scum who really love Khadr because he killed an American soldier. We, who think Khadr's rights should have been respected think the other side are documented supporters of the torture of a teenager who have a Nazi/Stalinist disregard for the rule of law.

Tsk-tsk. I do so hate it when political debates become so polarized that people can't see the merit in other people's ideas. Perhaps the truth about the Khadr case comes down somewhere in the middle? Perhaps he was a bad 15-year old who definitely committed an action that isn't quite a war crime and he should only have been tortured a little bit?

Nah.

It's pretty cut-and-dried really. No matter what he might have done, as a child soldier and a Canadian citizen, Khadr was entitled to certain rights and both a Liberal and a Conservative government let the US government ignore those rights. I was around forty years old when Khadr was captured at the age of 15. I'm sure that I wouldn't have had much in common with the lad and the fact that he might have killed an American soldier doesn't endear him to me because I'm not "anti-American" to be perfectly honest. Legal rights and civil rights and human rights belong to everyone. End of story.

"What about Christopher Speer's rights you 'useful idiot'? Did Khadr respect Sgt. Speer's right to life? Or his children's right to their father?" shout Khadr's critics. Which only goes to show their total intellectual bankruptcy. Supposedly, if someone is murdered, we would be able to lock up one of Khadr's supporters for 12 years and respond to the outraged cries for their legal rights with emotional appeals to the dead victim and their family. "But Khadr confessed!" they'd whine, forgetting that Khadr had been tortured and that he was faced with indefinite detention in Guantanamo unless he copped a plea. Obviously, Khadr was in that house when it came under attack, and he might have thrown a grenade (his "war crime") but in the end, withholding evidence, torturing teenagers, and kangaroo courts are not the way to establish guilt and uphold the rule-of-law. (And of course, it goes without saying that one can never mention the innocent civilians murdered by US troops, nor the pain and trauma of the victims' families, to argue anything ever.)

I'm writing about this because today the CBC reports that Vic "DO fuck the babysitter!" Toews is using a report about Khadr written by a US military psychologist, which says that Khadr was suspicious and hostile and saw himself as a victim, as evidence for why the harper government is reneging on its deal with the US government to repatriate him. Toews is being laughable (as usual). This report is bullshit.

Once more, for emphasis: Khadr was a teenager and he was tortured in violation of international law and he was subjected to a legal process not recognized anywhere but in the USA itself (only when it's the USA employing such methods) and craven lick-spittles in the unelected harper government. So ends my contribution to Canada's political conversation for Friday, July 27th, 2012.

Canadians lack confidence in governments' abilities to solve problems

According to a recent poll.

Granted, when governments don't even care if they succeed (as in Haiti and Afghanistan) or when they're dedicated to starving the state of resources so that it will fuck things up, or when (like the Liberals) they're such deluded yet conniving scum-bags that it's hard to tell, ... of course a growing lack of confidence will be the result.

But lest we forget, Canada's private sector hasn't exactly been a paragon of honesty and competence either.

Business and government need to be managed by the people who do the work and who live with the results. A revolution is needed in other words.

Revolution

The post about the $21 TRILLION (minimum!) that the Tax Justice Network estimates is sitting in offshore tax havens is evidence of a very big, very simple reality. The present political-economic system is inhuman and it isn't going to change of its own accord. A revolution is needed. The only lasting revolutionary change must be overwhelmingly peaceful, and based on mass agreement, but the main word is "revolutionary." (I say "overwhelmingly peaceful" because it should be obvious to all that the present ruling class is psychotically attached to their power and won't surrender it without at least a few atrocities. Just look at the level of violence directed at the Occupy Movement (which was essentially nothing more than speeches and camp-sites).

There's a rumor going around that globalization is raising living standards around the world, but I'm going to call bullshit on that. I remember when Indonesia's economy nose-dived during the Asian financial crisis and a lot of observers couldn't understand how a currency crisis could instigate such precipitous drops in nutrition and tax revenues and employment and everything. Turns out that when the World Bank and other assemblers of international economic statistics get their information, they get it from the very same countries that are trying to sell their economic successes to obtain more investment. And those governments make up their figures, sometimes out of whole cloth.

I will admit that inequality between countries is decreasing. Globalization has created Indian and Chinese millionaires and even billionaires. But inequality is increasing WITHIN nations. Poverty is definitely increasing in the developed countries, especially in the USA. This has been masked by doctoring the statistics and by increased household debt. Higher fuel and food prices is definitely wreaking lives in the "developing" countries. As the ecology collapses, things will become more desperate for pretty much everyone, as the wealthy retreat to increasingly threatened and territorially shrinking enclaves.