Showing posts with label Religion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Religion. Show all posts

Saturday, November 7, 2015

The Incels are Restless

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/10/04/1427765/-The-Shootings-are-not-Senseless?detail=email#

Today a growing segment of young adult males will not achieve the material and social success necessary to be attractive mates and form households. By way of comparison, a generation ago in his mid-20s my father had a house, a wife, two kids and a stable job things I was unable to achieve until my ’30s. ...  Today Increased economic opportunity and higher educational attainment for women has removed the economic need to be tied down to undesirable dudes. This is a good thing for almost everyone. But for those on the outside, however, it turns social awkwardness and the tail end of the achievement bell curve into a prison planet of isolation. And that generates rage.
 note: "Incel" a name they call themselves, meaning "involuntary celibate."
Perhaps the rage comes from the tail end of the curve.  The more concerning issue is that the middle of the curve for males is incel. (This may not be a new phenomenon.)  Women now have control not only of not only who they will have a baby with but who they will fuck.  Women it seems have little incentive to have sex per se, hence scriptural admonitions to "pleasure" their husband once a week. 

The cost of sex historically has been disproportionally high for women.  Instinctively, killing a baby is not an option, and abortion was never socially acceptable and the cost both physically and monetarily was high.  So perhaps the sin of Eve was discovering the "apple" method of contraception:  Place an apple between your thighs and hold it there.  That is a woman can choose not to have sex.  This apparently worked fine in Eden, that is a stable agricultural or hunter gatherer society.  Women could choose successful men to father their children, and space them naturally using the apple method until the child was weaned and productive.  Much of this is speculative as stable agricultural and hunter gatherer societies by definition balance consumption and production, with not much left over for kings, priests, and exploitation.  Thus they are easily victimized by kings, priests, and despots with plenty of warriors. Therefore few remain to study and all we have is oral history.  

The invention of exploitive societies demanded a ready supply of warriors.  That is incels who substitute male bonding, possibly with voluntary or involuntary homosexual sex, and killing for sex.  Men get used up rapidly in traditional warfare. In order to produce the required warrior/incels it was necessary exploit women as baby factories.  Women became the property of successful men that is those who were not used up in war or those powerful enough to not have to go to war. Women's choice in such a society was to breed or starve. Encouraged both by social and religious pressure.    
In the west exploitive societies seem to have been invented by Abram's tribe, or perhaps his invention of God as the underlying justification for exploitation was the most successful.  It has certainly been successful and threatens to take over the entire globe.  However it has run out of people and things to exploit, and revolts by those exploited have begun to be successful.  

The most successful revolt has been enabled by contraception, which allows a woman to choose between being a breeder of incels/warriors for a successful man or pursue some other path to social success which may or may not include reproduction. Note that prior to reliable female contraception career paths for women involved avoiding sex as they did not pay enough to support a family: Teaching, nannying, and other service occupations.  

WWII used up enough men that women were introduced to "real" work to produce the war machinery, famously by Rosie the Riveter.  Their success enabled different aspirations for some girls, who could prepare for careers other than the traditional service occupations and many chose to do so.  Boys were still being conditioned for warrior/unskilled labor and generally discouraged from pursuing the "college track" except as athletes.  Which leads us back to the incels perhaps as a majority in most of the west.  The demand for warriors has dropped significantly recently, and unskilled labor no longer supports a family even the current norm of one or two children so the support for sex trade-off no longer works for a large segment of the male population.   

Wednesday, September 9, 2015

Art and Artists



 From a Facebook thread on a misogynist artist.  Take your pick.


 If you cannot evaluate art without evaluating the artist you don't understand art. If a person can overcome fundamentalist bigotry to create a work of genius, more power to herm. [As to the mention of] "all men are created equal" who are you to even mention the artist owned slaves. He had no choice in his culture. That he could transcend his culture to create a better world where all are equal (even though we are not there yet after 200+ years) speaks volumes about his character.  J'Carlin 
An artist and herm art are two entirely separate and distinct entities in all cultures.  The art may live and be meaningful long after the artist has returned to dust.  While it is fun to argue about which composers of famous religious music were atheists,  the fact remains that the music they composed is sung and revered by believers in any culture affected by the religion depicted in the composition.  Religious art is by and large atrocious, and the artists justifiably forgotton.  But the stories told by that atrocious art are fundamental to religious belief.  The few exceptions were created by artists that the current crop of religious fundagelicals would probably hate. 

A "critic" is a man who creates nothing and thereby feels qualified to judge the work of creative men. There is a logic in this; he is unbiased - he hates all creative people equally. Lazarus Long aka Robert A Heinlein

There seems to be a current trend among critics to focus on the artist, especially the things about the artist that the critic hates.  Heinlein was a militarist and jingoist, therefore all of his writing is trash.  L Ron Hubbard was a religious charlatan fuggetabout all the Battlefield Earth books.  Jefferson owned and fathered slaves, therefore the Declaration of Independence means nothing.  There is nothing to see here folks.  Move along. 

I have even done it myself:  Abram was a lying, exploitive pimp.  Therefore the God he invented, and the religions that depend on that God are trash.  In my defense I had come to the conclusion that the religions that grew out of the Abrahamic tradition were trash long before I found out Abram was a prick.  I never liked him from the stories that included him, but until recently I had never followed his family and gang from Ur, to Haram, to Canaan and to Egypt.  They seem to have been a sociopathic bunch.  

[The following is a subsequent edit.  Please note this is a working blog and editing is common before and after comments]

Heinlein was also a misogynist.  Note his use of "man" in the quote.  The fact that in the vernacular it was generic for human is lost on the feminists.  The fact that all of his women characters were generally more competent in all respects than the men counts for nothing since they all were interested in procreation. Their choice of competent men to help not only with the sex but with the family as well is lost on the feminists. 

Hubbard was a brilliant student of human wants and needs, in particular their need for a strong community controlled by an unquestioned belief system.  Whether Scientology works depends on whether you ask a believer, an apostate, or a critic.  The fact that Hubbard made more money from Scientology than from writing Science Fiction "at a penny a word" is probably his greatest sin.  


The Republigelical meme that  Jefferson owned and screwed slaves is a bigot’s apologetic for their own hypocrisy.  His actual views about slavery and in particular Sally Hemmings is available to any intelligent unbiased student of his life and in particular the society in which he was embedded.  He couldn't even call himself an atheist, let alone a humanist and survive politically to keep the Black Regiment of New England Calvinists out of the Constitution and God out of the government.  
 

 

Wednesday, September 2, 2015

Good and Evil and One God.

beliefnet
If they are athiest murders they are clearly INSANE.

If they are christian murders its the religion's fault, - RCCU

With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil — that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg

  Good people which are the overwhelming majority of humans will behave well that is they will conform to the prevailing ethos of their community.  There will be a few sociopaths sane or insane that will violate the norms of the community, but normally they will be removed quickly by the good people in the community. 

It takes a strong belief in the doctrines of a "god" to change the prevailing ethos of the community to promote or tolerate evil.  The religion may be secular in that the "god" is human but it takes a well buttressed belief system in something or someone promoting that something to allow good people to partition off the evil in their minds.  

Miniver Cheevy

A group of people no matter how committed can never accomplish anything.  History shows that on any scale, large or small it is always a single committed individual that for good or usually for not so good can feel the prevailing needs of a large group of followers and provide a focus for their beliefs. Whether it is a genetic imperative as some argue, or a conditioned belief like the major religions, without a committed leader nothing happens.  The leader may be supernatural, which is the power of religions, or human, but H. Sap. need to believe in something or someone to do anything.

Sunday, August 30, 2015

Social Support for Deconverts.

beliefnet
The issue here between beliefs even buddhist and proper humanist will tell you.    It aint that a humanist is better then a buddhist or more logical then catholic or smarter then a bible thumper.  RCCan
A little too much projection there.  There is no humanist way.  Humanists aren't better than any other human, which is what the humanism is about.  At least conditional respect for all humans is part of humanism. Some humanists try to maintain radical respect for all.  Humanists are different however in that there is no belief, not even belief in humans that is required, and humanists are not a group. They do form social groups, that is a human trait, but the social groups are based on a common interest rather than a belief and generally are inclusive.

Many humanists have had a horrible experience in leaving a belief system and may for that reason condition their respect for others on not being a part of that particular belief system.  It is an non-rational condition, but humanists are human, and excommunication, disfellowshipping, shunning, and other denials of social support are the most painful experiences for any social animal, as it is frequently a death sentence, either by being incapable of self-support, depression or overt suicide.  This is especially true for GLBTs, etc. who are cast out as sinners. 

Humanists, in particular humanists who have left dogmatic religions can be especially helpful to the GLBTs who have been forced to leave friends and family over dogmatic differences.  Their inclusive interest based social groups provide major social support for those cast out.  Some are even non-dogmatic religious groups that provide a comfortable Sabbath ritual for former believers. 

Humanists generally separate themselves by not being able to believe any longer, but support groups are easier to find, sometimes within the faith, and the separation from the patriarchs while traumatic is not life threatening.  But trauma, even self-chosen trauma leaves scars, and avoiding additional scars by exposure to the shunning group is at least understandable. 

Tuesday, August 25, 2015

The Brain Preparing for Death

beliefnet
NDEs that is extremely high stress experiences, OBEs, anoxia, awe, wonder and are common human experiences.  Not all humans have all such experiences, but most have experienced many of them.  One might argue logically that how they are interpreted is a clear indication of the fundamental basis of their human experience.  If any God or supernatural entity is the basis of their human experience all will be attributed to that entity.  If not other explanations, including WTFWT, will be considered. If God has never been a reasonable answer to any question it is not likely to be even considered as an answer to WTFWT.  If it remains as an important experience some natural explanation even a speculative one will be found and God will remain a belief for others irrelevant for an atheist who by the way may or may not be a materialist.  

A NDE is commonly described as one's life flashing by as if in a time lapse movie, which is the brains way of either finding a solution to the predicament or preparing a dream like state for death.  Believers attribute this dream like state as heaven or hell, and the anoxia induced light at the end of the tunnel as God.  Believers in reincarnation attribute the dream like state as preparation for the next life.  I know of one atheist who sees the dream like state as indefinite in length as dreams often are, which may last apparently eternally.  He is aware that the appearance of eternal is false, or perhaps has a holographic existence on the fabric of space-time.  But in any event, each person experiences that which will allow the brain to shut down to a calm rest in peace. 

Wednesday, August 19, 2015

A Brief History of Abrahamic Religions

beliefnet
Bottom line: For good or evil, the Bible didn't motivate people to do anything they weren't already doing. freespirit
Who was doing it, and for how long?

The Bible depicts a culture of sheep herding desert marauders.  They were kicked out of or chose to leave three thriving communities.  I think it is safe to assume that their lifestyle made life difficult for them in the civilizations they left.  When they finally got to Egypt their leader sold his followers into slavery, and whored out his beautiful wife to gain power.  What God had to do with all of this is pretty clear from the stories we have.  Who invented God or what culture was invented by God is relatively unimportant.  God was a critical driver for all behavior of this small, uncivilized and unpleasant band of people who chose to live differently from all civilized societies in the region. By the time the Torah/Bible was written it told them to do what that small tribe had done since its founding Patriarch began this uncivilized lifestyle.  The fact that they left or were driven out of four civilizations (including Egypt) suggests that they were doing something very different from what the rest of civilization was already doing.  

At some point the agricultural community of the Canaanites was weakened probably by drought to the point that God could "deliver them" to the marauders.  Whether God had anything to do with the drought is left to the imagination of the reader.  They thrived for a while, and conquered other communities for food, slaves, and wives/concubines.  

But this is the story not of civilization but of a small group of outliers who were driven by their God to an outlying existence wherever they went. 

What Paul did with this story is a sin and a shame, but was successful in North Africa and Europe. The rest of the world went its own civilized ways until the middle of the second millennium when this marauding religion conquered three continents, and colonized much of the rest of the world using modern military killing equipment and mobility provided by large ships to carry it and the poor young men who did the killing.  

Civilization may be finally recovering from this depredation, the moral progress bandied about on this board, but is resisted on all fronts by the God, His followers, and the poor young men who are given hope by this God.  

Whether this God is real or imaginary is really irrelevant.  The fact and it is a fact that he is believed in by followers is critical to their past successes.   

Recognizing that this particular God is not worth believing in is the first step in ridding the world of His depredation. 

Thursday, August 13, 2015

Humanists With Children

beliefnet
Your thesis then, is "the very existence of religion is an affront to womens' progress", correct? IronLDS

Talk about misinterpreting a post and fighting a strawman! But to respond to the strawman, religious influence in Western society is an affront to women's progress, as it is the source of the property status of women and the concept that women should STFU and stay home.  All the talk of separate but equal roles is just more religious BS to justify keeping women barefoot, uneducated and pregnant. 

As noted earlier humanist men support women in all roles totally ignoring their haughty status as made in the image of God.  I even know of humanist men who assume the role of househusband to provide their children with proper nurturing while their wives work full+ time at their economic comparative advantage role in society.  She may well be a better mom than he is but her overall worth to society is higher as a medical professional e.g. than his as contract laborer.  More commonly they share both roles usually to the detriment of their careers, more so for the woman, due to the fact that she is working above her station, but both chose children and careers, rather than not having children.  Which by the way is a common choice for humanists as their service to their society as full+ time professionals may be more important to them than raising cannon fodder.  Their legacy is their social service rather than another mouth for the world to feed.

Sunday, August 9, 2015

Cain, Abel and Yahweh.

beliefnet
People have hypothesized that perhaps the issue wasn't the offerings of Cain and Abel themselves so much as the conditions thereof and the intent behind them. IronLDS

The Yahwistic view of God is clearly the stories of marauders in the desert subsisting on their sheep that they move from one fertile area to another after destroying the earlier ones by overgrazing. 

The Elohim created a beautiful productive earth for humans, men and women created in the image of the Gods. Yahweh didn't like this place it was too nice and easy to live in, and most important men and women had an equal place in it.  A place where men and women worked together to maintain and sustain this paradise.  Note that childbirth was a natural and painless process something else that Yahweh didn't like. 

So Yahweh trumped up some BS about women knowing too much and kicked His Chosen People people out of this agricultural paradise into a hostile environment where life would be difficult, childbirth painful, and agriculture nearly impossible.

Just to make His intentions clear, He rejected Cain's hard won agricultural offering, and blessed Abel's exploitive herding.  Cain wandered off to join his farming brethren and was never heard of again. 

Adam and Eve's other children learned the lesson well, and gave up agriculture entirely as they could count on Yahweh to deliver unto them agricultural communities for plunder, rape and pillage, the plunder being the stored food and seed grain needed for a sustainable community in an arable space.   Oops, my bad, it wasn't rape it was the provision of wives for the conquerors to replace the poor young men lost in the battle.  Not for the poor young men on the front lines, they were all killed for the glory of Yahweh.  Just for the harems of the blessed leaders that directed the war from behind the lines.  

Although the conquered women tried to introduce sustainability into the culture by introducing agriculture timing holidays into the Yahwistic culture, they never really succeeded in creating one.  Speculation on why will be left to the reader. 

This plunder, rape and pillage life style proved to be quite successful, and religions based on the Yahwistic traditions have continued with varying levels of success to this day.   

I don't blame the Yahwist for this life style.  She tried to show in every case what an asshole this God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel was, but apparantly men like assholes that let, yea demand, that they plunder, rape and pillage since it is easier than trying to do something useful for the good of the society.  

Thursday, August 6, 2015

Thinking About Beliefs.

beliefnet
I think at this point the only thing being achieved with this thread is "people from various backgrounds coming together to tell the OP that their methods are unnecessarily offensive."LDS
The OP got your attention, that is at least progress.
Progress towards what?Jewsha
Progress towards thinking about the prevailing misogyny in religion that spills over into the society dominated by those misogynic religions.

Even the attacks, diversions, and lies, make people "see the smoke" most people will simply rubberneck, a few will figure out there is a fire, one or two will try to do something to put out the fire, and as many if not more will scream "Let it burn!"

But just seeing the smoke makes people think about their belief about the cause of the fire.  And that thinking is inside the conceptual blocks that protect the belief.  Thinking inside the blocks is a disaster for beliefs.

Wednesday, August 5, 2015

Positive Religious Memes

beliefnet
The guy most of the positive religious memes came from was executed in a joint effort of religious and secular authorities.  Most of those positive religious memes were buried for most of two millennia by religion many literally at Nag Hammadi.

Empathy and compassion are evolved human traits normally ruthlessly suppressed by religious and political authorities.  It is necessary to get rid of both religion and power politics to create humanistic society. 

Thursday, July 16, 2015

Atheism or Anti-Theism?

beliefnet
Perhaps we can get around to actually discussing atheism?
rockyJew
We are discussing atheism that is: why we are not a believer in the various gods, God or G-d that we are respectfully asked to learn more about, distainfully demanded to learn more about, proselytized to believe in, forced to believe in, or forced to pretend to believe in to avoid ostracism at best.  Historically, non-belief is punishable by torture and death. Whether that continues today is, shall we say, arguable.   

Tuesday, June 23, 2015

The Church Across the Street

In the UU RE Curriculum there is a unit called the Church Across the Street.  A Sunday School class and teacher from a neighbor church, synagogue, or mosque if available is invited for the children's part of the service and join their cohort in RE to discuss, comment and compare.  The next weekend the roles are reversed with the neighboring church, synagogue or mosque hosting the UUs.  When an exchange cannot be arranged the class discusses what they have learned in the previous exchanges.  I can't speak for the exchange RE programs but the tolerance, respect, and humanism learned by the UU kids is incredible.  "They are just like us!"

Wednesday, June 3, 2015

Science, Religionm and the Theory of Everything



Just to be clear:  Science says nothing at all about how the universe(s) came to be.  Science observes the fact that the universe(s) exist and things in them behave in observable ways.  Science also observes than humans are the ultimate top predator, and can even affect the planet which supports them.
  
Many humans have attempted to explain these facts.  Science drops back 15 yards and punts.  Some of the attempted explanations have been shown to be inadequate; others are sloppy enough that they cannot be shown to be inadequate.  One explanation of the facts is that God created everything that exists with many puzzles to keep humans busy not destroying the planet which supports them.  Believers, non-believers, and anti-theists can and are studying this theory to falsify it or prove it to be the correct explanation of all that exists.  None have succeeded and science doesn't care.