The Doom That Came to Cowtown

So an ancient evangelical with a huge amount of fame, wealth, and power died today. He was 93. And in those 93 years, he was a force for oppression in the world, and the world is marginally better without him. But he had his followers, and many current evangelical assholes learned at his feet. His ideology smoulders on, like a tire fire.

(it was Pat Robinson, BTW, but this post isn't about him specifically)

There's been this debate on social media the last decade or so when one of these creeps dies. Basically, don't speak ill of the dead on one side, and now is the perfect time to speak ill of him, because he deserves it. I'm generally on the latter side of that debate. I'm not interested in demonizing such people - to my mind an accurate description of them makes that unnecessary; and I'm certainly not going to sugarcoat it.

The debate itself is settling itself towards the latter. You still get the former (don't speak ill) types, but they're mostly not on the left anymore, whereas ten years ago it was a lot more popular. Now it's just the monster's defenders that call for this. Remember, when someone progressive dies, they're the first to demonize, so maybe don't buy into their bad faith bullshit.

The other big thing I've noticed, especially when the person is a preacher or preacher-adjacent, is a hope that they'll "get their just desserts" in the afterlife, or at least see the error of their ways when confronting god. I don't believe that, because there is no evidence for an afterlife. When we're dead, we're dead. The closest I might come to this reasoning is that I hope they had doubts or regrets that haunted them in their last seconds when their life passed before their eyes. I doubt it though - I think that requires at least a bit of empathy and self-reflection, and that's not a mental skill they spent any time exercising.

But, you know, if imagining such a person is suffering in hell makes you feel better, have at it. If you want to dance on their grave while singing "ding dong the witch is dead", go for it. It communicates to others that what they did is unacceptable, and it's likely cathartic. I'm not convinced it's healthy though, but I get it.

Maybe donate to a cause they'd hate instead? As ways of celebrating a terrible person's demise goes, it's better than just gnashing your teeth over the harm they've done and will never pay for.

A thread on dark_christian poked a memory I hadn't accessed in a long time.

Back when I was still working at Office Depot, the guy who was the head of the computer department was an Evangelical (We'll call him Kurt, because that's not quite his name). Normally this didn't affect the work environment, but every now and then something would set him off. Generally it was talk about the validity of religion. I think at the time I had just been dumped by a girl who worked at the store and I was whining about it. He tried to cheer me up by giving some dating advice. If you had ever met Kurt, you'd know he wasn't the guy to be giving advice on how to pick up women.

"You know where the best place to meet women is? Church!"
"Even if that's true, I'm not going to go to church under false pretenses. For one thing, it's dishonest and for another I'm not religious."

And wouldn't that make great pillow talk later in the relationship? I'm so glad we finally consummated our relationship - by the way, your religion is a lie. I'd be a Grade-A cad.

Anyway, Kurt was surprised by my assertion that I wasn't religious (I didn't flat out state I was an atheist at his point).

"Oh it's all right if you're not religious. I don't believe in religion."
"If you don't believe in religion, what are you doing going to church then?"
"I don't believe in religion - I believe in Truth."
"What?"
"A religion is a false belief. My church isn't a religion, it's the truth."
"That's ridiculous, All religions, including yours, think they're the One True Faith. But nobody honestly has any proof of that."
"I can prove it - I've never lost a debate on God."

At this point I realized that Kurt was impervious to logic and debating him - especially debating him and possibly getting into a shouting match in the middle of the computer aisle at work - was not a thing I cared to do.

"You know what Kurt, I'm not going to discuss religion with you at work."
"I can debate you. I can prove it all to you."
"Kurt. I am not going to discuss religion with you at work."
"Seriously, I know I'll win this argument."
"I. Am. Not. Discussing. Religion. At. Work."

He tried again a few times over the next week, always with me cutting him off. Too bad really, I was willing to have this discussion with him, just not at work. Hell, buy me a coke at the bar and I'd have had a grand old time arguing with him. It would have been interesting because I hadn't refined many of my arguments yet. Things like standards of proof and why circular reasoning is a bad thing were all still things I understood internally but hadn't really articulated properly. It was all still rough draft.

Kurt got fired. Not sure why since he was decent at selling computers. I give the impression of Kurt being a wacky evangelical, but aside from this one occurrence he really did keep it separate from work.

Note: You do not have a right to not be offended.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1136482/Brains-hardwired-believe-God-imaginary-friends.html

Sadly, the authors chicken out in the last two sentences of the article.

I just saw Religulous. It was good, but could have been better.

I don't usually go in for movies that make fun of real people - I always hated Candid Camera and its ilk. I avoided seeing Borat for that reason. I may have to conclude that I'm a bad person though, because when it came time to see this treatment applied to people I don't like (as opposed to people I'm merely indifferent to), I was there, popcorn in hand.

There was a difference though. People were not tricked in this movie. Bill Maher is who he s and is quite upfront about his views. He wasn't Sasha Baron Cohen pretending to be a clueless foreigner. It wasn't Allen Funt setting people up with staged scenarios. The format was simple. Bill would interview people about religion, then try to apply logic to their views. Surprisingly, the Roman Catholics came across the best (Apparently there are Catholic Priests who take a surprisingly ecumenical view of the world, don't like hypocrisy even when it's in their own backyard, and understand that the Bible is not Science. Now if they could only get Benedict XVI to agree). For the most part he dished it out evenly to the major Abrahamic religions. Jews, Christians and Muslims all got a chance to make their beliefs look foolish. He took a few minutes to go after Mormons and Scientologists.

Mostly it was a matter of him pointing out that their beliefs were not supportable and if they applied their skepticism of other religions to their own, they'd realize that.

Here and there, Bill also reminisced about his personal beliefs and how they got there. His Mother and Sister joined in on some of this.

Where the movie breaks down I think is in its turn to the serious towards the end. For most of the movie it's pretty light-hearted. The very end however turns to why atheism is important, and why having a majority of people believing in make-beleive is a unhealthy for all of us.

Short version: If you expect your reward in the afterlife, and you think God is going to end the world, perhaps in our lifetime, you're not going to be making rational decisions in your long-term planning. Why make peace if it's god's will to come back and smite the unbelievers in the next ten years? Why engage in any sort of conservation if you believe God made the world for us and gave us enough resources to meet our needs?

A better movie would have kept coming back to this point over and over again throughout, mixed with the humour of the situation - sugar to the nasty (but necessary) medicine of the message.

All cultures invent myths to explain the mysteries of life. We are able to see the flaws in all of these theories, except for the one which we were taught. - Ra_