I'm Smart. Where's My Crown?

What is the point of intelligence if it only makes it easier to justify stupid ideas?

Trouble In Iraq

More bombings, more dead, unrest in the new government...

I agreed with the war, but I don't like the PCness of the President Bush's current strategy. I understand why he wants an Iraqi police force to deal with the insurgency but there trouble enough getting the new government together for them to properly deal with it.

A strong Iraqi police force can only follow an strong Iraqi government. I don't think we will see that until the Sunnis and the Shiite learn to play nice. The minorities need a larger say in the drafting of their own constitution.

We need more US led operations. Sure it will make us look bad for while but if the president doesn't step it up the alternative will be worse.

Michael Buble

I finally found out the name of the chubby singer from that Starbucks commercial. You know the one with the really cute blonde girl in those cute little glasses. I'm not sure what I like more about the commercial the singer or the girl...What the hell am I thinking?

Anyway the singer's name is the title of this post. I was listening to Glenn Beck and he started talking about him and within two seconds of the song clip he played I knew it was the guy from the commercial.

If you like standards you should check him out. You will not be disappointed.

HEY! WHA' HAPPEN'!

The older I get the less I make of the conection between emotional pain, and the things that happen us.

I'm Feeling Frisky

I feel like making some more enemies.

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Belfast Telegraph Home

Born gay or made gay ... which camp are you in?
Sexual orientation is fixed at birth and not nurtured, a new book claims. Anjana Ahuja reports on its theories
22 July 2005

There are people who can 'cure' you of your sexual orientation. If you are a woman, your eyes will no longer linger on tall, dark, musclebound Lotharios.

If you are a man, your heart will no longer flutter at the sight of a plunging cleavage or a smooth thigh - instead it will thump into action at the glimpse of a broad, taut torso or a neatly-trimmed moustache.

To at least 96% of readers - the heterosexuals - the idea that we can be persuaded to change something as fundamental as sexual orientation seems ridiculous.

So it is to homosexuals, who make up the remaining 4% and who are often told that their 'deviant' behaviour is a lifestyle choice.

Science has so far trodden carefully in the controversial debate about whether gays are born or made. Disparate pieces of evidence - such as homosexuality running in families, and identical twins having more similar sexual preferences than ordinary siblings - have long suggested that biology rather than upbringing shapes sexual preference.

Now two researchers are throwing out the caveats in an attempt to 'out' the bald scientific truth: we are born either straight or gay and nothing can be done to make us otherwise.

In Born Gay, Dr Glenn Wilson, reader in personality at the Institute of Psychiatry in London, and Dr Qazi Rahman, a psychobiologist at the University of East London, declare that "the accumulation of evidence from independent laboratories across the world has shown that the biological differences between gay and straight people cannot be ignored... our sexual preference is a fundamental and immutable component of our human nature".

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What about pedophiles? What makes a fully grown adult want to have sex with a child?

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According to Wilson and Rahman, the biological origin of sexual orientation means that discriminating against gays and lesbians is as justifiable as discriminating on the basis of eye colour or ethnicity. The authors have declined to reveal their own sexual orientation.

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That is what this is all about!

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So, why are some men born gay? Homosexuality tends to run in families, which has prompted a search for the so-called gay gene. Last month, biologists in Austria discovered that fruit flies can be turned gay by altering a single gene.

It is almost impossible that a single gene determining human sexual orientation exists: identical twins, who have identical genes, do not always have the same sexual preferences. But it does point to genetic influence.

"Gay men tend to have more gay brothers than straight men," Rahman says. "Heritability is thought to be around 30 to 40%, which means that around 30 to 40% of the variation in homosexuality is down to genes.

"Strictly speaking, it's better than zero (which would imply no role for genes) but that shows there's significant environmental variance."

And this, Rahman says, is where a "massive misunderstanding of the concept of environment" comes into play. Studies have shown that the popular idea of environment - parental upbringing, peer norms, the family home, schooling - have no effect whatsoever.

For example, the psychoanalytical idea that distant fathers or overbearing mothers sabotage their sons' sexual development is not borne out by evidence.

Wilson and Rahman dismiss such theories as "beyond the pale of science". In conversation, Rahman is more brutal, dismissing "95% of psychology as rubbish".

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That is a philosophical point of view, completely unsupported by any philosophy. Besides, how would you conduct experiments to prove it? How do you do you define what is and what is not a distant father or an overbearing mother?

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The missing environmental link, the authors argue, is the womb. This would fit with findings in the early 90s that the brains of gay and straight men differ slightly.

Rahman explains: "We argue that genes produce differences in the brains of pre-straight and pre-gay foetuses and those differences might affect certain receptors in the brain that influence the activity of male sex hormones."

Put simply, Wilson and Rahman suspect that some male foetuses absorb low amounts of testosterone in certain parts of the brain; full absorption is needed for full masculinisation.

"In a foetus which has a genetic predisposition to be gay, these receptors are not as effective at soaking up testosterone. The result is that this slightly insensitive part of the brain follows the default development route, which is female."

In other words, the neural circuit that promotes sexual desire towards women is never laid down; the result is a male who is attracted to other men.

This also explains, the authors claim, why gay men show a 'mosaic' of female-like and male-like cognitive traits. In their handling of language and in their spatial awareness, for example, gay men are more similar to women than to heterosexual men.

The idea that the womb environment may have consequences for future siblings is interesting because researchers have noted a sibling pattern among gay men, called the 'big brother effect'.

The more older brothers a man has, the more likely he is to be gay. It is possible that maternal antibodies developed in early pregnancies may cross the placenta in later pregnancies to disrupt testosterone absorption.

Lesbianism may also be due to hormonal conditions in the womb (although scientists stress that lesbianism cannot always be examined as a direct parallel of male homosexuality - there is no 'big sister effect,' for example).

"There's a protein in the womb that protects female foetuses from excessive exposure to male sex hormones," Rahman says. "Perhaps this protein doesn't kick in early enough in lesbians."

Some brain circuits then follow the male development; a sexual preference for women may be a consequence.

As for bisexuality, there is no biological evidence that some people are turned on equally by both sexes. Physiological studies show that self-declared bisexuals exposed to straight and gay erotica are aroused by either one or the other - but not both. Academics suggest that bisexuals may be omnisexuals, with libidos so high that the gender of the target doesn't matter.

Homosexuality does not promote reproduction (for every gay father, there are between five and 10 straight fathers). So why haven't the relevant genes vanished from the human gene pool?

One suggestion is that, on the ancestral plains, same-sex social bonding - for both men and women - was necessary to reduce aggression within societies and encourage the sharing of resources. Bonobos, the closest primate species to humans, engage in homosexual behaviour for social purposes.

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Adult bonobos also engage in fondling sexually immature bonobos for social purposes.

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Another intriguing theory is that gay genes feminise men just enough to make them attractive as potential fathers. "You have these very nice heterosexual men who are 'gay-enabled' - who have a low dose of the gay gene," Rahman says. "It might make them more committed, more empathic, more charming and more attractive to women."

The benefits of having empathic men would stop gay genes being weeded out of the gene pool - and thus maintain a gay population. In fact, Rahman suggests, modern women may be altering their ideal of the perfect partner enough to influence evolution: "These days, women may not want these big guys to protect them - they're not necessarily looking for the macho type. We might even see homosexuality increase. It's an idea that Glenn and I have talked about. There's no reason to think that evolution won't change the goalposts - evolution changes us all the time."

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Look, I don't know what makes someone gay or not. And neither do these people. The point here is that they are passing off genetic determinism as a good science. There is just one problem. What if someone finds a homo-phobe (pedophile) gene? If the gay is determined to be gay, then the homo-phobe (pedophile) is determined to be a homo-phobe (pedophile)! If you can't tell the gay he is wrong then you can't tell the homo-phobe (pedophile) is wrong. Or is it that homophobia (pedophilia) is learned? How the hell do you know? You're so sure there is no correlation between environment and homosexuality, but it the only factor in homo-phobia (pedophilia)?

There are better reasons to not hate gays than this. Yes, this is the, "Hate the sin and not the sinner", argument. The Bible calls lots of things sin, and many of them are things I still do, and I do agree that too many Christians use certain verses in the Bible to bash people over the head, but that is a problem that can only be solved with a deeper understanding of the Bible itself.

Think about this: Is every desire something to be attained?

Beside, the centerpiece of Christianity has never been it's moral code. Jesus Christ and His work on the cross is the centerpiece. He takes our sin, any sin, and wipes it clean. He also doesn't simply change what we do. He changes what we want to do.

Paige Pooler is a Genius!

Go here and see why: http://eyeswideapart.blogspot.com/

Stinky Doodoo PooPoo

Just felt like lightning it up around here!

Piece of Cake Part Two

I want to take a closer look at something I overlooked in part one.

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First, there is no God. In fact, all definitions of the word "God" are either self-contradictory, incoherent, meaningless or refuted by empirical, scientific evidence. Although the nature of the disproof will necessarily vary with the god under review, I will usually be raving against the modern monotheistic (or triune) Judeo-Christian-Islamic God, having (in various permutations) the characteristics of being, conscious, all-powerful (omnipotent), all-knowing (omniscient), all-good (omnibenevolent), immaterial, transcendent. immutable, immortal, infinite, omnipresent, disembodied and eternal.

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I find the atheist's singular repugnance of the Abrahamic religions very interesting.

I'm not going to deal much with his talk of empirical or scientific evidence except to remind the class that this goes back to David Hume, who said something to the effect of, "If a statement is not scientifically, empirically or mathematically provable it should be disregarded as mere sophistry." Well, Doesn't that just sound all nice and peachy! Oh, except for the fact that it is not scientifically, mathematically, or empirically provable. "The statement fails it's own truth test," as Ravi Zacharias said.

Which brings me to my next point. If the God of the Abrahamic religions is so far out of the scientific/mathematic/empirical realm, where on earth did we get these ideas from? They might say, it is in our genes. But how did it get in our genes? Because of our ancestral heritage. Where did they get it from? I smell an infinite regress, to which the only answer they can give is: It just is; roll the bones.

And that is the meat of it. Am I supposed to feel intellectually inferior at the thunderous profundity of that answer? They certainly seem to be going for that effect. Why am I so inferior to say that: 1. God does exist in a form that is so beyond our human logic and 2. That He reveals Himself in small ways that fit into our understanding (see the post Hooray for Me for my thoughts on Kant) without losing his absolute "otherness", as G.K. Chesterton put it?

I have a Confession

I've been watching reruns of the Gilmour Girls on ABC Family Network. I'd never really seen it before and I've decided that I actually like it. So there it is. I feel so much cleaner now that I've said it.

Piece of Cake

Found this nonsense at ravingatheist.com

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Basic Assumptions - Sun, Jul 21, 2002

Welcome to the first Rave of The Raving Atheist.

The following are the basic assumptions behind any pronouncements made in this blog:

First, there is no God. In fact, all definitions of the word "God" are either self-contradictory, incoherent, meaningless or refuted by empirical, scientific evidence. Although the nature of the disproof will necessarily vary with the god under review, I will usually be raving against the modern monotheistic (or triune) Judeo-Christian-Islamic God, having (in various permutations) the characteristics of being, conscious, all-powerful (omnipotent), all-knowing (omniscient), all-good (omnibenevolent), immaterial, transcendent. immutable, immortal, infinite, omnipresent, disembodied and eternal.

Such a god is as much a contradiction in terms as a square circle, and thus logically impossible, for numerous reasons including the following:

1) Omnipotence is impossible because God would, at a minimum, be unable to limit his powers, e.g., make a stone he cannot lift; if he could make such a stone, then his inability to lift it would defeat his omnipotence

2) God's omnipotence conflicts with his omniscience, because if God knows everything that is going to happen in advance, he cannot do anything in the present; he must simply watch the future unfold as previously foreseen, because changing anything would falsify his prior belief concerning the future;

3) God's omnipotence precludes him from having knowledge of any sensations or emotions associated with weakness, e.g., fear, frustration, despair, sickness, etc., and thus conflicts with him omniscience;

4) God's omniscience precludes him from having knowledge of any emotions associated with surprise or anticipation, and thus conflicts with itself;

5) God's omniscience conflicts with his disembodiedness, since a being without a body could not know how to drive, swim, or perform any activity associated with having a body;

6) God's omniscience conflicts with his omnibenevolence, since a morally perfect god could not have knowledge of feelings of hate, lust, or envy, or cruelty, etc.

7) God's omniscience and omnipotence conflict with his omnibenevolence, since a god who could prevent evil would do so unless he were unable to do so or unaware of the evil.
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I don't think he even understands the words he is using. It's not exactly his fault. I blame modern evangelicalism. It doesn't seem to understand these words, but talks as if it does. And that is the problem. It has tried to make God fit into a logical system, thereby giving atheists the ability to do likewise. It's quite funny actually, they use dogma from the Bible to "prove" that God is not logical when the Bible clearly teaches that He is not logical. Read the book of Job. The early church fathers coined these words for the very purpose of illustrating that fact.

Congratulations! You just proved something that the Holy Scriptures teach; and something I already believe!

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Second, Atheism is not merely one possible theological theory among many. Rather, it is the only true, provable theory, and all other religious theories are false and delusional. The mere fact that you believe or have faith that god exists does not make it so, anymore than unicorns, ghosts, leprechauns would exist simply because you believed in them or had faith in them. Nor does the fact that you have a legal right to believe in god prove that god exists. Similarly, the fact that American law purports to be "neutral" as between theism and atheism does not mean that the theories are equally plausible.

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How does your world view deal with infinite regress?

How is it that you have proven a universal negative?

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Third, because there is no god, any attempt to premise moral, social or political doctrine upon a belief in god is fruitless and potentially harmful. Laws, judicial decisions or social policies , which promote, accept or accommodate religious beliefs proceed upon false premises and may have harmful and unfair effects. The law should employ the same standards of logic and evidence in evaluating claims based on religious assertions that it does in adjudicating (and frequently rejecting) claims based on every other type of ideology and belief. In fact, the law should be governed by a militantly rationalistic and atheistic presumption that discourages all forms of irrational and superstitious conduct to the extent it conflicts, as it frequently does, with the general welfare or individual rights.

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How do you know logic is true? You believing in it doesn't make it true. How do you know it is not an illusion? Your faith in logic is no different than my faith in God.

Define harmful and unfair. How do you decide what they are? Can you do it without starting from an absolute? If so, how is it that a universe that came into being by chance have any objective standard? If not, how can there be an absolute moral law without an absolute moral law giver?

How do you deal with the law of non-contradiction?

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Fourth, any person asserting a special individual right or attempting to dictate social policy based about a belief in god must first 1) define the god, 2) prove that the god exists and 3) demonstrate how the right or policy follows from the belief in god. Because there is no god, nobody will ever be able to do this.

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I love how you guys apply laws to others that you don't apply to your-selves.

They like to think that they have the philosophical high ground, but they don't. As Emmanuel Kant showed us: the only thing that philosophy has proven is that God can neither be scientifically proven or disproved. Either way, It all comes down to faith. Just like the title to this dribble says: basic assupmtions.

I'm All In

I'm reading Doyle Brunson's Super System (for purely educational reasons((yeah right))) and the first paragraph of the no-limit hold'em chapter he tells a story about how when you see a guy playing very conservative (tight) you would tell him, "You're gonna go like Broomcorn's uncle." The player would respond sharply, "Wadaya mean?" "Well, he anted himself to death."

Yeah that's me. What the hell am I doing anyway? I'm 27. I don't have a job (that's a story for another post). Never had a girlfriend. I still live at home.

I guess it's just taken me this long to realize that being brilliant isn't enough. I kept hoping that I would just keep doing what I'm doing and eventually someone would notice. Like, I would just happen to be in the right place one day and I would say the right thing in ear shot of the right person and he'd be like, "Hey you're a genius. Here is a $1,000,000.00 and a private room, where you can sit on you ass all day to think up brilliant stuff."

I never thought that would happen but it took me a long time to realize I seriously wished it would happen. But I know that if I had anything happen close to it, I would have to start building something before; not after. I would have to take some risks. "You're sittin' on a winning lottery ticket and you're to much of a @#$%! to cash it in!" says Chucky to Will in Good Will Hunting.

Well this blog was step one. My next goal is to get my own band together. I have a bassist who's down. I just need a drummer, (I know who I want, I just have to find him) and maybe another guitarist or keyboard player. I'm also thinking, vaguely, about doing a one man show. Some kind of mix of music comedy apologetics/philosophy. I'm thinking about a setting in a small fictional town. A town that is completely isolated, where I can create a microcosm of my entire world view.

Anyway, I hope my friends read this and hold my feet to the fire. I tired of saying I 'm gonna do stuff and then finding excuses to not do them. I'm all in!

Disregard, if it's already Been Said

I was reading someone's blog a few minutes ago and a thought popped in my head. Do you think the blog world took off like it did because of the sense of community it has?

I'm not one of these "remember the good old days" people, but one thing we have lost in our modern culture is a sense of community. Everyone is so far apart. I long for that sense. And I almost grasped it, reading this person's blog.

I Love Irony

Has anyone noticed that the blogger.com spell check doesn't recognize the word blog! I thought that was hilarious.

P.S. It does recognize blogger.com. Go figure.

Polemics R' Us

There is no good place for bad philosophy.

The power of pain is bad philosophy/theology.

It's Official

I'm a fat lazy American. The other day I was getting ice from the dispenser in my fridge and I got really pissed off because it was taking too long.

HOORAY FOR ME!

If anyone doesn't know who Steve Brown is, go to either of these links: www.keylife.org, www.stevebrownetc.com. His Saturday night talk show, Steve Brown Etc. airs on two radio networks including Radio America, and a bunch of his cohorts (hey you guys!) promote the show on Wednesdays with a live web stream called Etcetera, which is also at the second link I wrote. You should listen to them, You can even hear me call in on the last two episodes of Etcetera. Everyone is really cool and very funny.

But anyway, Steve invites his listeners to send him questions about God and the Bible. So, this is what I wrote.

I've been reading a lot of philosophy lately, Emmanuel
Kant in particular, and I think I've come upon
something interesting. I don't think anyone can
underestimate the influence he has had on modern
culture and I have heard many Christian thinkers,
correctly, criticize Kant for leaving the door wide
open to secularism.

Now if I understand Kant correctly, he basically said
that we have synthetic a priori judgments that enable
us to experience and interpret reality. We cannot
apply these things to God because he exists beyond our
experience. He went on to say that when we, through
experience, come to learn something new, we are not
altering our view of reality. We are altering reality
to fit within this framework of understanding. So far
I think he is right. We are, as Ravi Zacharias puts
it, semi-transcendent beings.

I believe Kant's error was one of omission rather than
commission. He didn't seem to believe, as I do, that
God can, and does, reveal himself within the bounds of
our understanding and that our understanding of
reality must ultimately conform to God's Word. Which
is why the Bible is so important. It is our only
source of ultimate truth.

This is how he left the door open to secularism. We
are left with the idea that reality is subjective when
it clearly is not.

So what is my point? Secularism got it's foot in the
door because of the knee jerk reaction, By Christians,
to Kant. They only railed against the things that he
was wrong about and didn't understand the things he
was right about. Human nature, I guess.

So what do you think? Am I a heretic? Am I delutional?
Or, do I have a point? I'm always willing to hear that
I'm an idiot and I don't know what I'm talking about.

Thanks
Geoff Bosco (just some dude)



This was his response:

July 13, 2005

Mr. Geoff Bosco
gbosco@yahoo.com

Dear Geoff,

Thanks for your email. Appreciated your question on
Kant.

You, of course, are quite right about Kant. He is seen
as a demon... when, in fact, he was nothing of the sort.

The "omission" to which you refer is, however, a
rather big one.

One should read Kant and Kierkegaard, to wit, when
reason has taken one as far as one can go... the "leap"
is a good one. As you may know, Francis Schaeffer
hated Kierkegaard... but, then, he was reacting to the
"mush."

Just so you know, I believe that the "categorical
imperative" of Kant has an element of wishful thinking
to it as it was, I think, with Lewis. And you're
right... that's why the Bible is so important.

You are a good and thoughtful brother.

Bless,
Steve



Yay!!!!

The Significance of Insignificance

I was in the philosophy section of my local Barnes and Noble tonight and I picked up a book, which was called Critiques of God, by Peter A. Angeles. In the preface the author listed some of the classic arguments for the existence for God and explained that the book was supposed to offer arguments to them.

He then explained that he knows that people less sophisticated than he need to believe in God to give their lives purpose and significance. Then he said (paraphrasing as always) he lives an insignificant life on a tiny planet and he didn't need to make himself the center of the universe to find comfort.

So let me get this right Pete, your life is so insignificant you felt the need to write a book about it? And what this center of the universe nonsense? Are you trying to tell me that when you got rid of God you replaced Him with something else besides yourself? If so, what was it? Your family? Service to others? Do onto others what you woul...?

Also, If there is no significance to any of this, why is it wrong to believe in the existence of God? Is it wrong? If it is, how do you posit a epistemological value on it, or anything else, without an absolute? Or, do you know it is wrong because it makes you feel bad? In that case, where do get off implying that my belief is based on emotions when your non-belief is just as emotional?

Or is the problem that, you believe in some sort of objective right and wrong, you just don't like it to be referred to as God? I believe that if you affirm something that is true, regardless of your own intentions, you affirm something about Jesus, because he said he is the Truth.

You "modern" thinkers amaze me! You think you've come so far since the days of Aristotle. You call it progress to rip out the foundations of causality, but all I can see from my side is an infinite regress back into Plato's Cave.

God Is a Relative Term?

I got on Glenn Beck this afternoon! It was after the regular radio show was over so it wasn't on national radio. But all the Glenn Beck insiders, the subscribers to the website, heard it. He had two guests discussing Scientology, one was a skeptic the other a woman who does PR for the Church of Scientology.

First the skeptic went through a litany of claims about the church's beliefs. Among other things, He said that they believe that an alien being from a million years ago did some bad stuff to some other alien beings, rip their spirits out of their bodies, and sent the disembodied spirits to eternally wander the earth. Through time man evolved and these spirits attached themselves and all their bad stuff to us and that is reason for all the bad stuff plaguing mankind.

The other claim relevant to the topic at was that the they don't believe in the existence of God.

When the PR lady came on and was asked about the alien junk, she was like "OH, NO YOU DIDN'T!"...Um sorry, that was on Mauri Povich. Anyway, there were a few of her responses that just didn't fit together. Her answer to the alien stuff was that it was a small part of the religion, you didn't have to believe it, and that if a member did believe it then it was true for them.

Her response about their beliefs about God was truly striking. She quoted L. Ron Hubbard saying something like disbelief in God was stupid and if you want to do bad things to a society you remove the concept of God from it. Therefore proving that you can be a Christian and a Scientologist...Yeah right.

But that isn't what concerns me. I could go off and find some of his other quotes to contradict this, but I'm to lazy. Why waste mental energy when the philosophy here is so shoddy.

Her first answer implied a relativistic point of view. I had heard that the church's view on absolute reality swung this way and this lady just proved it. My question is how do you square that with a belief in an all powerful absolute deity? You can't. If God exists than objective right and wrong must exist. I know, I know. "Our concept of God is different from yours", then it's not the God I worship, and you can't be a Christian and be a Scientologist. At least not a well informed biblical Christian.

So what is my point here? I don't want to give the impression that I'm one of these back-woods fundamentalists but I'm to lazy to get further into right now except to say that I think that relativism is a bastardization of a truth of reality. Absolute truth exists and his name is Jesus. The flaw is our understanding of the truth.

Oh yeah, when I finally got on air I was nervous and all I got out was the relativism part of my argument. But it lead to some good radio so I wasn't too upset. I should have prepared my argument when I was on hold. Oh well, next time.