Scott Adams is the guy who writes the Dilbert cartoons. He also has a very entertaining (and sometimes thought-provoking) blog and has written some very funny and interesting books (which I’ll write about some other time). This is just a random collection of some of his soundbites that I enjoy the most:

“If you have any trouble sounding condescending, find a Unix user to show you how it’s done.”

It’s called a "concept car" because that sounds better than "something we pulled out of our ass and hope to someday shove up yours."
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Thus spake wikipedia. It means fear of the number 666.
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I’ve written before about feeling uneasy about the idea of having ‘respect’ for other people’s religious beliefs.  Respect for religion seems to mean that religion is beyond criticism.  All our other beliefs and opinions are considered fair game for argument, but religious beliefs have special status in our society.

If someone expresses an opinion about taxation, social welfare, relationships or solving traffic problems, it is normal to expect them to explain why they hold this opinion.   We are all generally expected to have good reasons for things that we believe and things that we do (and the things that we believe usually motivate/influence the things that we do).

For instance, the war in Iraq isn’t ipso facto a bad thing.   We expect people to have damn good reasons for doing things like invading other countries, but if they do have those good reasons, many people will support it.   If the invasion was motivated by solid evidence of a nuclear weapons program and those weapons were found and taken out of commission, many people would consider that to be a great result.  If it was motivated by solid evidence of a nuclear weapons program that was later found not to exist, then that wouldn’t be considered such a good result, since the question should rightly be asked why the evidence wasn’t sound.   However, if it was motivated by flimsy inaccurate evidence (or worse, no evidence at all) then people would be understandably upset.  In our society, it’s just not acceptable to do things like that without good reason.

The same thing that applies to countries and Presidents also applies to all of us in our everyday lives.  We expect that the people around us have good reason for behaving the way they do and for believing the things they do.  When people don’t, we consider them abnormal and possibly even mentally ill.

Imagine that a mother tells you that she believes her month-old baby son should eat nothing but pureed strawberries for the first two years of his life in order to grow up healthy and strong.  You would probably be appalled at such stupidity, and would most certainly argue with her that it isn’t healthy.  If she couldn’t be persuaded by arguments about nutrition and the studies showing the need for protein, fat, calcium and other vitamins in the diet, you would probably start becoming a bit concerned for the child’s wellbeing.   If she explained to you that the reason she firmly holds this belief is because her neighbour’s 6-year-old told her so, then you might be inclined to start looking up the number for CYFS and hoping she gets some psychiatric treatment.

Not only are we all expected to have reasons for our beliefs and opinions, we are expected to have good reasons.  It is perfectly socially acceptable to ask someone why they think what they do.  We also think nothing of debating ideas with other people, offering our thoughts and our reasons for them.  Both sides use evidence to back up their arguments, although in most social situations nobody has enough evidence at their disposal to settle the issue one way or the other.

But religion is somehow off limits.  It is not socially acceptable to ask someone for evidence of the truth of their religious beliefs.  Religious beliefs have to be protected from inquiry, shielded from critique.  It’s considered ‘disrespectful’ to point out to someone that you think their religion is just an ancient myth and to give them the reasons why you think so.

I do firmly believe in freedom of speech and freedom of thought.  People have the right to believe whatever they want.  However, part of being a member of human society is that we are expected to have good reasons for the beliefs we hold and the actions we take.  Religion is the only area of life that gets a free pass.  Why?

Surely, if it could withstand criticism, argument and evidence, we would treat religion the same as any other area on which there can be different opinions?   Are we required to ‘respect’ religion because the set of ideas can’t survive on their own merits?

“Even a superstitious man has certain inalienable rights. He has a right to harbor and indulge his imbecilities as long as he pleases, provided only he does not try to inflict them upon other men by force. He has a right to argue for them as eloquently as he can, in season and out of season. He has a right to teach them to his children. But certainly he has no right to be protected against the free criticism of those who do not hold them. He has no right to demand that they be treated as sacred. He has no right to preach them without challenge.”

H. L. Mencken, "Aftermath" (coverage of the Scopes Trial), The Baltimore Evening Sun, September 14, 1925.

Extremism only gets you more extremism.

In the early stages of creating a Jewish homeland in Palestine, most of the Jews and Arabs were happy to coexist together.
A very small minority of Jews weren’t - they wanted Arabs out and the promised land to be for Jews only.
A very small minority of Arabs weren’t - they viewed the Jews as invaders in their territory and wanted them to get the hell away.

Since the vast majority didn’t agree with either minority, the two fringe groups turned to violent tactics.  Jewish groups arrived in the middle of the night and bulldozed villages, sometimes with people still in the houses.  They went through other villages and killed everyone - men, women and children.  Their intention was to scare the Arabs into leaving the country.

Arab groups started bombing Jewish buildings and infrastructure, eventually using suicide bombing as a tactic. Their intention was to scare the Jews into leaving the country.

Unfortunately, the effect is to horrify and terrify the moderate people on both sides.  Their grief and anger overwhelms their empathy for the people on the ‘other side’.  The extremists aren’t really affected - their views are just confirmed.  But people who were previously happy to share the country now just want someone to pay for what happened to their mother, granson, daughter, cousin, nephew, friend.

And so a much larger slice of the people are now willing to take extreme positions, and use extreme measures.  The longer it goes on, the more polarised the two sides become.

I don’t know what happens after that.   Maybe it just escalates until one side wipes the other out.  I’d like to think that isn’t the only outcome.

Perhaps enough people on both sides eventually realise that the battle is futile and only results in more harm and hurt to everyone.  Perhaps getting revenge for past wrongs becomes less important compared to preventing even worse wrongs in the future.

Maybe the people retreat from their poles of extremism and realise that it is the extremists on their side as well as the other bear responsibility.  

Of course, sitting here in nice safe little New Zealand with no actual experience of this sort of thing, it’s quite likely that I’m just talking outta my ass.

I wrote the other day about my tension between wanting to respect the beliefs of others, whilst not agreeing with those beliefs and not condoning the actions that arise from those beliefs (although, I’m not sure I explained it so succinctly).  Today I came across ReligiousTolerance.org, which has some very well thought out ideas on this.

Specifically, religious tolerance includes:

• Accepting that followers of various religions consider their own beliefs to be true.
• Allowing others to hold religious beliefs that are different from yours.
• Allowing others to practice their religious faith, within reasonable limits.
• Refusing to discriminate in employment, accommodation etc. on religious grounds.

And significantly, religious tolerance does not include

• Believing that all sets of religious beliefs are equally true.
• Believing that all faiths are equally beneficial and equally harmless to society.
• Believing that all religious groups are equally beneficial and equally harmless to their followers.
• Refraining from criticizing religious practices of others. 

I like this much better than the concept of according ‘respect’ with the definitional implications of having to agree.    I especially like the distinction drawn between allowing others to hold beliefs that maybe harmful, while being opposed to the harmful actions that may have been motivated by those beliefs.

I guess its similar to the free speech idea of defending someone’s right to say whatever they want even if you are completely opposed to what they are saying.

Watch this: http://www.dumpalink.com/media/1145695609/Fox_News_Baptist_Protestor

The good thing about these people is that they are considered the lunatic fringe by both sides of the US political spectrum.

Their ‘god hates fags’ message probably resonates with the conservative christian right (who are the main demographic of Fox News and Hannity and Colmes in particular).   However, to many on the right of the political spectrum,  saying anything even vaguely anti-war is considered tantamount to treason.

Liberals are likely to be sympathetic to an anti-war message, but no rational and compassionate person is going to agree with a ‘it’s good for soldiers to die because it’s god’s punishment’ message, especially the way they keep phrasing it: "Thank God for 18 dead troops. We wish it were 18,000"

I can’t even stand reading their website.  When I first saw it, I was sure it must be satire, but it’s not.  It is unbelievably hate-filled.  They’re basically convinced that god hates just about everyone but especially gays (and presumably not them).   Their logic with the soldiers is that because there are gays in America, America is evil, and because the soldiers are fighting on behalf of America, they too are evil (and probably gay) and therefore all deserve to die. 

But God must surely hate them for continuing to live in such an evil hate-filled country, right?  They could have emigrated.

The good thing about this is that these people are so far out there that it’s hard to imagine that they can gain any serious political or moral traction.

Now, I believe in free speech, so this woman is within her rights to say what she likes.   I’m just disturbed by the possibility (even likelihood) that there are people who might consider her to make sense, particular since she is a representative of the Westboro Baptist Church.   And frankly, I’m a little sickened that she seems to have such little compassion for others.  I wonder if she is actually a sociopath?

I don’t think ignoring this sort of thing is going to work - if society doesn’t denounce it, it gives it some credibility (if only to the more of the lunatic fringe).  Try god loves fags, for a start.

This subject is not easy to write about.  Like most people, I like to think of myself as relatively tolerant and respectful.  And you often hear that we all should be respectful of other people’s religious beliefs.     But I don’t think I really do respect everyone’s beliefs, and I’m not even sure I should.

I don’t think I really even know what it means to respect someone’s religious convictions.  Respect can mean many things.  If respect means "To have a high opinion of" or "To recognize the worth, quality, importance, or magnitude of", well, quite frankly I don’t.  In fact, I have a pretty damn low opinion of most religious beliefs, and certainly don’t recognise their "worth" and "quality".    And most religious people probably don’t recognise the worth and quality of other religion’s beliefs, and probably never will.  So I don’t think that’s what people are asking for when they say to respect the beliefs of others.

I’m guessing that being respectful probably means that I shouldn’t, for instance, loudly proclaim ‘that’s the stupidest thing I’ve heard since the guy at Noel Leemings told us that a Pentium III 900Mhz computer with 128MB of RAM could play all the latest 3D first person shooters’.  Practically speaking, it seems that respect means that I can think their belief is dumb, but I can’t actually say so out loud.

But what about non-religious beliefs?  What if someone thinks that having sex with a virgin cures HIV?  Or that pregnancy only results after female orgasm, so if a rape victim gets pregnant then she must have enjoyed it?   

I certainly don’t "have a high opinion of" those beliefs, and I have a very low opinion of the knowledge of the people who believe this kind of stuff.  Should I "respect" these beliefs by pretending to agree? 

And there’s the reason that I fear that I’m not tolerant enough.  I don’t see why stupid religious beliefs should be accorded any kind of special status over stupid ordinary beliefs.  I usually do keep my opinion to myself, but I just can’t stop my opinion of the belief from influencing my opinion of the person. If I discover that someone holds irrational religious beliefs, my respect for that person’s intellect goes down a notch.   

Most of the time, this isn’t really an issue.  I mean, there are literally thousands of things about a person that influence our respect for them both positively and negatively.  Someone’s religious beliefs are only a very small part of that picture.  And of course, some of my closest friends are religious

Really, the only place I’m conscious of this is if I happen to be talking to an attractive male (attractive to me, that is, not necessarily good looking).   If the guy happens to mention that he’s going to a Christian camp, or church outing or something similar, my attraction vanishes at light speed.   My interest in the guy ends up the same as if he’d just told me he was a 60-year old married grandfather of 15.

Does that make me a bad person?

I hereby renounce my faith in the Flying Spaghetti Monster, having recognized him as a false god.   Instead, the truth has been revealed to me by the divine Invisible Pink Unicorn.

“The Invisible Pink Unicorn is a being of great spiritual power. We know this because she is capable of being invisible and pink at the same time. Like all religions, the Faith of the Invisible Pink Unicorn is based upon both logic and faith. We have faith that she is pink; we logically know that she is invisible because we can’t see her.” –Steve Eley

Her Holiness’s sustenance of choice is ham and pineapple pizza, and Her divine number is 42 (of course).

Only true followers can reveal Our Lady Unicorn’s image in the following picture:

Blessed Be Her Holy Hooves