die Wurzel alles übels?

Just finished with Richard Dawkins' interesting little documentary, The Root of All Evil?, and its follow-up, The Virus of Faith, which lay out his belief that religion is an intolerable and wholly destructive institution in modern society. Some strong points and interesting interviews. He occasionally comes across as a little undiplomatic, but I didn't detect any fault in his arguments. The first section of the documentary is a little under 20 minutes long. If you find it interesting, there's plenty more where it came from further down. Both halves are each around 45 minutes long.

The Root of All Evil?
Part 1-1:


Part 1-2
Part 1-3

The Virus of Faith
Part 2-1
Part 2-2
Part 2-3
Part 2-4
Part 2-5
Part 2-6

I appreciate, in the final segment, that Dawkins provides a far more reasonable alternative to the Christian moral system that is so often touted as the only possible answer. Content-wise, Dawkin's conclusion is nearly identical to many explanations made in arguments made with fundamentalists that have tended to go completely unanswered: That there are very thorough biological, psychological and sociological explanations for human morality.

A few quotes that I enjoyed:

"The child brain will automatically believe what it’s told even if what it’s told is nonsense." - Richard Dawkins

“Religion is an insult to human dignity. Without it, you’d have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, it takes religion.” – Steven Weinberg, as quoted by Dawkins in 2-5.

Der Kampf um richtig zu sein

Not only do we see what we want to see, we glaze over what we don't want to accept. Such is the nature of the "debate" in the online community. I hesitate to call it "debate", because so much of it is bogged down with fallacy and a bias so strong that it is fatal to the accompanying argument.

Objectivity easily becomes a distant memory here in this electronic sphere that is devoid of any tangible repercussions. It is a false world where the rules of conduct change drastically. We may discuss our views on "reality" while being, perhaps, as far distanced from it as possible. Thus, we may heatedly contest the views of an individual as though they held the masses in sway with their particular opinions when, in reality, they are nobody. They are the voiceless given the illusion of a voice through their fingertips. They are the powerless given the illusion of power through a box, plugged into the wall, and finally plugged into us. It is easy to lose sight of this, to get swept up in the self-importance of it all; to see one's own words published for the priviledged world to see, as though a digital representation of one's opinion gave it more weight.

Then we are struck by the pack mentality, when such heavy narcissism clumps together to reinforce itself. Not only are we struck by it, we can be victims and practitioners of it as well. In the fight to be right, we overlook the method and focus on the message, forgetting that the method was initially how the message was attained... or so it should have been, ideally. This is the main point of this affair: Do we sufficiently question our own peers? Are we critical not only of our opponents, but of our allies?

To provide two examples, at Dani Kekoa's "TRUTH"-proclaiming page, Generation X-Pose, a scholar from the U.K. passed himself off, for a time, as Richard Dawkins, adopting his moniker, likely to lend weight to his arguments. He did, after some skepticism concerning the likelihood of his actually being Richard Dawkins, admit to being someone else. Those that agreed with his message and who opposed Dani's said nothing of the matter. I, myself, only voiced passing skepticism of his identity before the fact, and said nothing afterwards.

Of more grave academic concern, Dani herself has been called out for grossly unscholarly behaviour that has taken the form of plagiarism and quote-mining. The ramifications of such practices, in support of her own quaint system of belief, are a topic for another discussion. What is important is the treatment of this behaviour. Even when confronted about it, not a single person that holds, to any degree, with her belief system has admitted that Dani has done anything wrong. It is to be expected, since she was willing to implement such reprehensible tactics in the first place, that Dani would attempt to deny/dodge the accusations. It is much more interesting that those in support of Dani's views continue support of Dani, herself, in spite of her markedly dishonest tendencies. Would it not be in a group's best interest to denounce such behaviour, rather than avoiding/justifying it and thereby sanctioning it too? Wouldn't a particular camp enhance their reputation and the intellectual validity of their argument by eliminating poor research, poor research tactics, and overall poor morals?

Further, wouldn't it be in Dani's interest to hear, from her own supporters, that such practices are not acceptable? After all, if she receives nothing but praise for her unscholarly tricks, isn't she likely to continue using them? And doesn't that get one further away from the "TRUTH" she is so keen on telling us she's preaching?

Such is the flexibility of "truth", as a result of the kinds of practices undertaken in such circles, that it can be readily bandied around in place of "opinion". This is one reason for why I will not discuss "truth" with such as them.

Seine Gedanken sind wie meine

Skipping tangentially from blog to blog I discovered this interesting little snippet. I post it here for feedback.

I was walking down the street this evening, the time encroaching on the wee hours of the morning, and I got to thinking about sex. How unusual, you’re thinking. Guy thinking about sex. And you’d be right to be cynical. Some studies have tagged the occurrence of sexual thoughts in a guy’s mind at something like once every 30 seconds, or even more often than that. Then I got thinking: What a phenomenon it is that there is really anything at all to think on the matter! If dogs could talk, and one were to ask such a dog what he liked about sex, his answer probably wouldn’t be particularly interesting. After all, there’s not a whole lot to the ritual of a dog’s getting it on. Female dog goes into heat, male dog responds and resolves the situation. Intercourse happens, and life continues as usual. Some might boil down the human experience similarly, but it’s the fact that it requires so much boiling down that is the point of interest. Sex, in its human form and all that surrounds it, has been fetishized to such a degree that all but the very basics of the act are unrecognizable from their original form. Merrian-Webster defines a fetish as “an object or bodily part whose real or fantasied presence is psychologically necessary for sexual gratification and that is an object of fixation to the extent that it may interfere with complete sexual expression”. Ignoring the more blatant associations of the term fetish (bondage, leather, feet, etc), things like clothing and music, or rituals and institutions like dating and marriage are all responsible for compartmentalizing the human experience of sex. In a way, all of these things serve to concentrate the basic act of sex, much the way the petals of certain flowers are concentrated to create a bottle of perfume, so that it can be delivered on command (relatively speaking) in a much more intense and sensual form than simple intercourse. Both men and women wear specific clothing to attract their mates, clothing that, in a purely utilitarian sense, is really a hindrance to the end result. As a culture, we date, listen to the right music, and partake in innumerable courting rituals, all of which ultimately delay the desired result. And yet, they all serve to enhance the experience. We increase our pleasure by making that pleasure more difficult to come by, by delaying the time it takes to arrive at it, and by introducing further complexity to the act itself. Fascinating that the human race could create such social tactics to modify a biological process. Is it to our benefit?

The darker side to this is that, since our social constructs tend to run towards monogamous sex, things like infidelity are also fetishized. There are, I'm sure, heaps of studies declaring that humans are hard-wired for multiple partners, and probably a fair number for the opposite point of view. Regardless, many people cheat, and since we are presented with an allegedly biological predilection for multiple partners, and a constructed social norm that prohibits this (inadvertently making a sort of fetish out of it as a result), the individual member of society is presented with an interesting challenge in this regard. To what degrees are we slaves to our impulses? To our conscience? Or are we slaves at all?

- By Seanny McShawn, from this post.