Lab techs and managers are getting laid off left and right, their duties replaced by poorly trained, or untrained grad students and post-docs.
These post-docs and grad students *need* techs and managers to train them, since most PIs don't have the time or talent...
Since we already see laboratories shifting animal testing to countries with less rigorous animal training standards, part of me, deep inside, thinks that this whole swine flu nonsense is merely 1918 H1N1, preserved despite the damage to Mark Sykes' lead coffin, released into the "wild" by untrained laboratory technicians and animal lab work shipped south of the border. Add to that the fact that EVERY LABORATORY TECHNICIAN I know was at least brushed with "the worst flu ever" within the past month.
So, I'll take a tin foil hat, please.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
UPG, Proselytization and the Oblivion of the soul.
Part One: How the Law of Return Works:
There are very few things I believe in as absolute spiritual truths. I genuinely believe the world is so random that it is possible for just about anything to happen, no matter what we do. I believe the Law of Return changes the probabilities of things, but it does not change the possibilities.
For example, if we imagine that the world works on the roll of a twenty-sided die, and that good events are "high" and bad events are "low," then I believe the Law of Return is very much like a simple number addition to the die result. To give an example, imagine that the d20 of life has the following result:
1-6: something bad happens.
7-14: something happens that is neither bad nor good.
15-20: something good happens.
Imagine, if you will, the following law: Whenever you roll a one, REGARDLESS OF MODIFIERS, something bad happens. Whenever you roll a 20, REGARDLESS OF MODIFIERS, something good happens.
If you do something good, we can imagine a +6 modifier to your roll. Now in our world, anything below 1 counts as 1, and anything above 20 counts as 20. If you get a +6, then the only way something bad happens is if you roll a 1, because a 2 becomes an 8, a 3 becomes a 9, etc. In addition to dramatically reducing your chance of bad stuff happening, you've increased your chance of good stuff, because anything above an 8 (9+6=15) is going to be "good stuff."
The problem with this, of course, is that I think the world is messy, and it's not a twenty sided die, but a bajillion-sided die... and most actions only add a little bit to the die roll or subtract a little bit.
I do believe, however, there are some actions that lead to an automatic 1, or an automatic bajillion, on that bajillion sided die.
Part Two: Automatic Hits and Fumbles on the Bajillion sided die of life.
Automatic hits: These things represent stuff that pretty much assures that good stuff will happen, whether in life or after death. These afterlife things include being remembered by your ancestors, your family going on safely without you and your name being renowned. It also includes stuff I'm less sure of, like having the afterlife of your choice:
Have you ever met someone who used to be a member of a faith that involved a heavy load of proselytization and after they left described their previous actions as leaving them feeling dirty?
Have you ever shaken hands with a proselyte and felt a sensation like you were shaking a skin glove filled with bugs or rotten flesh or other ickies?
Have you even met a person who left a proselytizing faith and ended up proselytizing for their new faith, even if their new faith (or lack thereof) discouraged proselytization? [This includes atheist proselytes.]
Have you ever noticed that the hard-core proselytes, the leaders of the movements to proselytize, end up having massive skeletons in their closet? They end up with gay prostitutes after disclaiming prostitution and homosexuality, or embezzling their flock's money, or being people like Jim Jones, David Koresh and Fred Phelps?
My informed UPG on this is that the act of proselytization is a miasma (a spiritual pollution) that can damage the soul not just, as some feel, in the afterlife, but in this present life... as it piles up, it can reach a point where the person doing it is so polluted, so rotten from the inside, that their actions can only be rotten. They eventually will turn on themselves and abandon their own principles, sometimes taking others out with them. If they grow rotten enough, and they get enough of their followers to get rotten enough, they can make otherwise normal people do all of the things on the "automatic misses" list, above, and more, and it will seem rewarding and natural to these people. Adolph Hitler, for example, would be an archproselyte.
So what is Proseltyization that makes it so wrong? Proselytes will tell you that they are spreading good words or doing something their god commands, which on the surface would seem like a good thing. However, let's look at some of the proven implications and results of the act of proseltyzation:
On the surface, this doesn't sound too bad. After all, you might say, one could proselytize for a good cause, immunizations, for example.
The problem is that proselytizing, unlike campaigning or "getting out the word," requires that the people you are proselytizing accept what you are saying with no proof and often with the inability to ask questions. There is no evidence, or study, or proof. What there is, instead, is propaganda (materials that try to make you abandon reason for an emotional reaction) and conjecture (the world is bad because of a lack of belief) and the belief that the person selling the beliefs is more right then the one being sold to, regardless of any evidence or experience the person has.
To accept the proselyte's view, one has to abandon one's views (and principles) no matter how hard fought. This skirts the idea of "abandoning one's principles needlessly" and often touches upon "following an order you know is wrong." The one doing the proselytizing is following an order he knows is wrong, ordering another to do something he knows is wrong, while often adding hubris, cruelty and violation of guestright to the package.
When a proselyte comes into a person's assumed space unrequested, crashing a funeral, sending an unsolicited email, going door to door, he is voluntarily entering into the guest-host relationship, he is making himself a guest in the other's space. For those of us influenced by the Roman, Hellenic or Abrahamic deities, Guest-Host relationships (guestright) is not a joke. The stories of Penelope's suitors, Helen of Troy, Oedipus, Sodom, Abraham's angelic guests and the hidden Christ of Matthew 25, all revolve around Guestright. In their respective legends, Zeus Xenios and the Abrahamic deity have no problems smiting people, towns and houses where people violate this sacred relationship. Dante, in the Inferno, even categorizes abuse of a guest as the second worst sin of them all....guestright is hardly an obscure concept.
To come into a person's space with the motivation to win them to your side without evidence because you have been told they are wrong cannot, in any way, be seen as an appropriate action towards your host. To assume they should listen to you is HUBRIS. To assume they MUST listen to you is HUBRIS and to assume you have a right to continue to be listened to if asked to leave is HUBRIS.
(And bear in mind the *only* reason that Christian Proselytes can claim that this is a part of their faith is by translating gentes (nations) to mean gentiles (non-Jews) when it means NATIONS OF ISRAEL, and claiming the "great commission" overrules the hundreds of places in the Bible where guestright and pride are discussed....despite their claims to abhor "cherry picking" no less... remember what I said about the action rotting people from the inside?)
Let's look, now, at the second two points on my list, "It often requires a sort of demonstrable show of submission to the proselytizing authority.
Smart Wiccans and Hellenists will already understand why blindly following an unjust authority violates their principles. Christians generally need to be reminded of Isaiah 9:16 "For the leaders of this people cause them to err; and they that are led of them are destroyed." and Matthew 15:14 "Let them alone: they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch." and Proverbs 29:27 "An unjust man is an abomination to the just: and he that is upright in the way is abomination to the wicked."
Proselytizing-requiring leaders feel the need to spread their miasma to subordinates because seeing others supporting their views helps them deal with the next part of my list "It requires people to do things they often understand are wrong on the inside."
As the person gets more and more rotten from their actions, they need to spread it further and further, and often will hide their behavior inside until they are totally rotten, at which point they will begin to violate principles they may've believed in at the start of their journey. Suddenly, the person who thought that god loved everyone starts to claim their god hates people, the person who preached against excess and homosexuality is entertaining gay prostitutes on his yacht, the person who demanded Christians be included in schools is excluding some Christians from his own school, the person who is supposed to protect children is raping them, etc. Is it any wonder that as they decay they need to see proof of others being similarly rotten? How often do we hear that the inner circle suspected or KNEW the misbehaviors of their leader? They need to spread the rot to feel better about their own rot.
Leaving aside the rotten fruits of these people and their leaders for a while, let's turn to the last few bullets.
Most of us have experienced a proselyte telling a lie, from a minor one, like saying they like what they are doing, to a massive one. Some groups actually have lying as a doctrine of their faith, including lying as a missionary. (Note that THIS LINK is to a fairly radical proselytizing group in and of itself, but pay attention to the first point and the "testimony" at the end.) The problem with lying is that it creates "a tangled web." Just as the pollution of hubris gets bigger and bigger, so too the lying thing gets bigger and bigger, until eventually the liar either needs to come clean and fess up (very hard and scary to do) or become okay with the amount of lying he's doing (essentially, allowing himself to become more rotten.)
This seems more important, on the surface, then the next bullet, the one about eroding etiquette and decency. Remember, though, that proselytization works a bit like a cartoon snowball. It starts out small and gets bigger and bigger. First, you might just break the rules of common decency, but how long can you break rules you know are right before the cognitive dissonance backs you into the same corner as the lying thing, either making amends for your rudeness or becoming okay with it, again, allowing oneself to become more rotten.
Our natural reaction to proselytization is to reject it. We know it feels icky, and since we can perceive this wrong on so many of the levels discussed above we often have a difficult time elucidating why it feels so icky. This is why their leaders can say that it's "Satan" making them feel this way. This teaching that those who disagree with you are automatically evil is one reason why proselytes break up families.
Most of the other things on my list of "automatic misses" are things that only cause harm in one way, or cause one clear form of harm we can all agree on. Proselytization gets on the list by virtue of its additive nature. Eventually, it makes a person into something less then a person.
Part Four: The Spiritual Results of Proselytizing.
In traditional Judaism, Traditional Hellenism and most indigenous religions with a concept of an afterlife, very few souls merit eternal punishment after death. In Hellenism, the bad guys were so bad that we all know their names, Sisyphus, for example, punished for violating guestright, Ixion, punished for...violating guestright and Tantalus, punished for cannibalism, disrespecting the gods and, you got it, violating guestright.
The 'punishment' for those not meriting true punishment is usually oblivion, which many people assume to mean some kind of hell, but on the surface of it, really means to be forgotten, or to forget. Most of us take this to believe that these people will simply fade out of existence, their names lost to history, their gravestones scrubbed clean of their names, their lives lacking any impression upon the world. It's not hell, but it still kind of sucks.
We should ask ourselves, however, how bad it must be to violate guestright if our ancestors made such a big stink over it. Even if we don't really believe in the afterlife, the Greeks only thought a handful of people bad enough to warrant eternal (or long term) punishment, and they pretty much all violated guestright... does this mean guestright violation is a terrible, terrible "sin" or is it, instead, a SYMPTOM of a deep spiritual pollution that results in becoming a person worthy of some sort of hell.
What is the lesson of our ancestors here? Is it that guestright violation, which proseltyzation is a form of, sends you to hell or is it that guestright violation starts a chain of events, the aforementioned cartoon snowball, that results in you having to resolve cognitive dissonance or, at the extreme end, holding a DELUSION that you will defend to the degree of psychopathology. Is it a psychological thing, making yourself a terrible person, or a genuine spiritual pollution which can only be purified by making amends of some sort?
Since many proselytes are Christians, they will claim that these lessons of their ancestors do not apply.
Christian mythology, however, is rife with tales of pride and guestright violations (The sin of Sodom, for example, Ezekiel 16:49"Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.") but only one place in the whole of the Bible does Jesus describe a PLACE of punishment, in the story of Lazarus and Dives, which tells the story of a rich man going to hell for refusing to help a beggar... another example of...well, you know.
To assume another man's belief is wrong and attempt to take those beliefs away from him violates that man's right to believe as he will unmolested by you. You leave him be because you want to be allowed to believe as you will without being molested by him... You do unto him as you wish him to do unto you.
To violate etiquette, respect, guestright and the like to do so is to show a complete lack of love for all that that neighbor is. To be the type of person who thinks this violation is just and good, you need to have hatred for yourself. In Christianity, this is the only way to make "loving your neighbor as you love yourself" work with HATING your neighbor...
Hating yourself, however you imagine it, as a spiritual pollution or as a psychological condition, is inherantly unhealthy, a condition that will usually end up resulting in some terrible behavior on your part, and in some extremes, brings us the Hitlers and Jim Joneses of the world.
Part Five: The Point.
I believe that the act of proseltyzation is a type of drug-abuse of the soul, that left untreated will eventually result in death. I have witnessed people go from normal, to uncomfortable proselytes, to fervent proselytes to terrible people. History has witnessed this on the extreme scale, as some people with a lot of charisma or cash have managed to do the proselyzation thing large scale before self-destructing. Some of them have taken others with them, others have just been an embarrassment to their congregations.
Because of the spiritual pollution, psychological results or bad manners of the proselyte, I believe we all have the right to be left alone by them, because when one shows up on your porch or in your inbox, he may be the uncomfortable proselyte, but depending on how long and how deeply he's involved, he may be a terrible person, the hard-core addict and dealer of a disgusting drug...
...and I, for one, don't want to buy that drug.
There are very few things I believe in as absolute spiritual truths. I genuinely believe the world is so random that it is possible for just about anything to happen, no matter what we do. I believe the Law of Return changes the probabilities of things, but it does not change the possibilities.
For example, if we imagine that the world works on the roll of a twenty-sided die, and that good events are "high" and bad events are "low," then I believe the Law of Return is very much like a simple number addition to the die result. To give an example, imagine that the d20 of life has the following result:
1-6: something bad happens.
7-14: something happens that is neither bad nor good.
15-20: something good happens.
Imagine, if you will, the following law: Whenever you roll a one, REGARDLESS OF MODIFIERS, something bad happens. Whenever you roll a 20, REGARDLESS OF MODIFIERS, something good happens.
If you do something good, we can imagine a +6 modifier to your roll. Now in our world, anything below 1 counts as 1, and anything above 20 counts as 20. If you get a +6, then the only way something bad happens is if you roll a 1, because a 2 becomes an 8, a 3 becomes a 9, etc. In addition to dramatically reducing your chance of bad stuff happening, you've increased your chance of good stuff, because anything above an 8 (9+6=15) is going to be "good stuff."
The problem with this, of course, is that I think the world is messy, and it's not a twenty sided die, but a bajillion-sided die... and most actions only add a little bit to the die roll or subtract a little bit.
I do believe, however, there are some actions that lead to an automatic 1, or an automatic bajillion, on that bajillion sided die.
Part Two: Automatic Hits and Fumbles on the Bajillion sided die of life.
Automatic hits: These things represent stuff that pretty much assures that good stuff will happen, whether in life or after death. These afterlife things include being remembered by your ancestors, your family going on safely without you and your name being renowned. It also includes stuff I'm less sure of, like having the afterlife of your choice:
- Dying to protect the life of another.
- Choosing to die rather than have another die.
- Risking your life to protect the lives of others, without regard for who those others are.
- Speaking out at great personal risk.
- Aiding those less fortunate than yourself without concern for reward.
- Standing by your principles when abandoning them would be way easier.
- Suicide in the face of genuinely impossible situations.
- Suicide as a self-punishment for committing some crimes.
- Unpreventable deaths during childbirth.
- Killing for profit.
- Suicide for revenge.
- Genocide.
- Following an order that you know to be wrong.
- Ordering someone to do something that you know to be wrong.
- Intentional pregnancy when doing so severely risks the mother/child's life.
- Abandoning one's principles needlessly.
- Murder for the purpose of Cannibalism.
- Extreme Hubris
- Extreme Cruelty
- Extreme violations of the guest-host relationship
- Being a leader who allows his people to needlessly suffer and/or die.
- Intentional cowardice in the face of extreme situations.
- Proselytization.
Have you ever met someone who used to be a member of a faith that involved a heavy load of proselytization and after they left described their previous actions as leaving them feeling dirty?
Have you ever shaken hands with a proselyte and felt a sensation like you were shaking a skin glove filled with bugs or rotten flesh or other ickies?
Have you even met a person who left a proselytizing faith and ended up proselytizing for their new faith, even if their new faith (or lack thereof) discouraged proselytization? [This includes atheist proselytes.]
Have you ever noticed that the hard-core proselytes, the leaders of the movements to proselytize, end up having massive skeletons in their closet? They end up with gay prostitutes after disclaiming prostitution and homosexuality, or embezzling their flock's money, or being people like Jim Jones, David Koresh and Fred Phelps?
My informed UPG on this is that the act of proselytization is a miasma (a spiritual pollution) that can damage the soul not just, as some feel, in the afterlife, but in this present life... as it piles up, it can reach a point where the person doing it is so polluted, so rotten from the inside, that their actions can only be rotten. They eventually will turn on themselves and abandon their own principles, sometimes taking others out with them. If they grow rotten enough, and they get enough of their followers to get rotten enough, they can make otherwise normal people do all of the things on the "automatic misses" list, above, and more, and it will seem rewarding and natural to these people. Adolph Hitler, for example, would be an archproselyte.
So what is Proseltyization that makes it so wrong? Proselytes will tell you that they are spreading good words or doing something their god commands, which on the surface would seem like a good thing. However, let's look at some of the proven implications and results of the act of proseltyzation:
- It assumes the people that are being proselytized are wrong.
- It assumes the proselyte, or his leader, is right.
- It requires obedience to an authority that is sending out the proselytes.
- It often requires a sort of demonstrable show of submission to the proselytizing authority.
- It requires people to do things they often understand are wrong on the inside.
- It often allows lies and deception for the purposes of adding members.
- It violates basic rules of etiquette and courtesy.
- It creates a negative reaction in people naturally, and the people doing it have to be convinced this negative reaction is the result of things like "Satan" or "Delusion."
- It divides up families and destroys friendships.
On the surface, this doesn't sound too bad. After all, you might say, one could proselytize for a good cause, immunizations, for example.
The problem is that proselytizing, unlike campaigning or "getting out the word," requires that the people you are proselytizing accept what you are saying with no proof and often with the inability to ask questions. There is no evidence, or study, or proof. What there is, instead, is propaganda (materials that try to make you abandon reason for an emotional reaction) and conjecture (the world is bad because of a lack of belief) and the belief that the person selling the beliefs is more right then the one being sold to, regardless of any evidence or experience the person has.
To accept the proselyte's view, one has to abandon one's views (and principles) no matter how hard fought. This skirts the idea of "abandoning one's principles needlessly" and often touches upon "following an order you know is wrong." The one doing the proselytizing is following an order he knows is wrong, ordering another to do something he knows is wrong, while often adding hubris, cruelty and violation of guestright to the package.
When a proselyte comes into a person's assumed space unrequested, crashing a funeral, sending an unsolicited email, going door to door, he is voluntarily entering into the guest-host relationship, he is making himself a guest in the other's space. For those of us influenced by the Roman, Hellenic or Abrahamic deities, Guest-Host relationships (guestright) is not a joke. The stories of Penelope's suitors, Helen of Troy, Oedipus, Sodom, Abraham's angelic guests and the hidden Christ of Matthew 25, all revolve around Guestright. In their respective legends, Zeus Xenios and the Abrahamic deity have no problems smiting people, towns and houses where people violate this sacred relationship. Dante, in the Inferno, even categorizes abuse of a guest as the second worst sin of them all....guestright is hardly an obscure concept.
To come into a person's space with the motivation to win them to your side without evidence because you have been told they are wrong cannot, in any way, be seen as an appropriate action towards your host. To assume they should listen to you is HUBRIS. To assume they MUST listen to you is HUBRIS and to assume you have a right to continue to be listened to if asked to leave is HUBRIS.
(And bear in mind the *only* reason that Christian Proselytes can claim that this is a part of their faith is by translating gentes (nations) to mean gentiles (non-Jews) when it means NATIONS OF ISRAEL, and claiming the "great commission" overrules the hundreds of places in the Bible where guestright and pride are discussed....despite their claims to abhor "cherry picking" no less... remember what I said about the action rotting people from the inside?)
Let's look, now, at the second two points on my list, "It often requires a sort of demonstrable show of submission to the proselytizing authority.
Smart Wiccans and Hellenists will already understand why blindly following an unjust authority violates their principles. Christians generally need to be reminded of Isaiah 9:16 "For the leaders of this people cause them to err; and they that are led of them are destroyed." and Matthew 15:14 "Let them alone: they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch." and Proverbs 29:27 "An unjust man is an abomination to the just: and he that is upright in the way is abomination to the wicked."
Proselytizing-requiring leaders feel the need to spread their miasma to subordinates because seeing others supporting their views helps them deal with the next part of my list "It requires people to do things they often understand are wrong on the inside."
As the person gets more and more rotten from their actions, they need to spread it further and further, and often will hide their behavior inside until they are totally rotten, at which point they will begin to violate principles they may've believed in at the start of their journey. Suddenly, the person who thought that god loved everyone starts to claim their god hates people, the person who preached against excess and homosexuality is entertaining gay prostitutes on his yacht, the person who demanded Christians be included in schools is excluding some Christians from his own school, the person who is supposed to protect children is raping them, etc. Is it any wonder that as they decay they need to see proof of others being similarly rotten? How often do we hear that the inner circle suspected or KNEW the misbehaviors of their leader? They need to spread the rot to feel better about their own rot.
Leaving aside the rotten fruits of these people and their leaders for a while, let's turn to the last few bullets.
Most of us have experienced a proselyte telling a lie, from a minor one, like saying they like what they are doing, to a massive one. Some groups actually have lying as a doctrine of their faith, including lying as a missionary. (Note that THIS LINK is to a fairly radical proselytizing group in and of itself, but pay attention to the first point and the "testimony" at the end.) The problem with lying is that it creates "a tangled web." Just as the pollution of hubris gets bigger and bigger, so too the lying thing gets bigger and bigger, until eventually the liar either needs to come clean and fess up (very hard and scary to do) or become okay with the amount of lying he's doing (essentially, allowing himself to become more rotten.)
This seems more important, on the surface, then the next bullet, the one about eroding etiquette and decency. Remember, though, that proselytization works a bit like a cartoon snowball. It starts out small and gets bigger and bigger. First, you might just break the rules of common decency, but how long can you break rules you know are right before the cognitive dissonance backs you into the same corner as the lying thing, either making amends for your rudeness or becoming okay with it, again, allowing oneself to become more rotten.
Our natural reaction to proselytization is to reject it. We know it feels icky, and since we can perceive this wrong on so many of the levels discussed above we often have a difficult time elucidating why it feels so icky. This is why their leaders can say that it's "Satan" making them feel this way. This teaching that those who disagree with you are automatically evil is one reason why proselytes break up families.
Most of the other things on my list of "automatic misses" are things that only cause harm in one way, or cause one clear form of harm we can all agree on. Proselytization gets on the list by virtue of its additive nature. Eventually, it makes a person into something less then a person.
Part Four: The Spiritual Results of Proselytizing.
In traditional Judaism, Traditional Hellenism and most indigenous religions with a concept of an afterlife, very few souls merit eternal punishment after death. In Hellenism, the bad guys were so bad that we all know their names, Sisyphus, for example, punished for violating guestright, Ixion, punished for...violating guestright and Tantalus, punished for cannibalism, disrespecting the gods and, you got it, violating guestright.
The 'punishment' for those not meriting true punishment is usually oblivion, which many people assume to mean some kind of hell, but on the surface of it, really means to be forgotten, or to forget. Most of us take this to believe that these people will simply fade out of existence, their names lost to history, their gravestones scrubbed clean of their names, their lives lacking any impression upon the world. It's not hell, but it still kind of sucks.
We should ask ourselves, however, how bad it must be to violate guestright if our ancestors made such a big stink over it. Even if we don't really believe in the afterlife, the Greeks only thought a handful of people bad enough to warrant eternal (or long term) punishment, and they pretty much all violated guestright... does this mean guestright violation is a terrible, terrible "sin" or is it, instead, a SYMPTOM of a deep spiritual pollution that results in becoming a person worthy of some sort of hell.
What is the lesson of our ancestors here? Is it that guestright violation, which proseltyzation is a form of, sends you to hell or is it that guestright violation starts a chain of events, the aforementioned cartoon snowball, that results in you having to resolve cognitive dissonance or, at the extreme end, holding a DELUSION that you will defend to the degree of psychopathology. Is it a psychological thing, making yourself a terrible person, or a genuine spiritual pollution which can only be purified by making amends of some sort?
Since many proselytes are Christians, they will claim that these lessons of their ancestors do not apply.
Christian mythology, however, is rife with tales of pride and guestright violations (The sin of Sodom, for example, Ezekiel 16:49"Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.") but only one place in the whole of the Bible does Jesus describe a PLACE of punishment, in the story of Lazarus and Dives, which tells the story of a rich man going to hell for refusing to help a beggar... another example of...well, you know.
To assume another man's belief is wrong and attempt to take those beliefs away from him violates that man's right to believe as he will unmolested by you. You leave him be because you want to be allowed to believe as you will without being molested by him... You do unto him as you wish him to do unto you.
To violate etiquette, respect, guestright and the like to do so is to show a complete lack of love for all that that neighbor is. To be the type of person who thinks this violation is just and good, you need to have hatred for yourself. In Christianity, this is the only way to make "loving your neighbor as you love yourself" work with HATING your neighbor...
Hating yourself, however you imagine it, as a spiritual pollution or as a psychological condition, is inherantly unhealthy, a condition that will usually end up resulting in some terrible behavior on your part, and in some extremes, brings us the Hitlers and Jim Joneses of the world.
Part Five: The Point.
I believe that the act of proseltyzation is a type of drug-abuse of the soul, that left untreated will eventually result in death. I have witnessed people go from normal, to uncomfortable proselytes, to fervent proselytes to terrible people. History has witnessed this on the extreme scale, as some people with a lot of charisma or cash have managed to do the proselyzation thing large scale before self-destructing. Some of them have taken others with them, others have just been an embarrassment to their congregations.
Because of the spiritual pollution, psychological results or bad manners of the proselyte, I believe we all have the right to be left alone by them, because when one shows up on your porch or in your inbox, he may be the uncomfortable proselyte, but depending on how long and how deeply he's involved, he may be a terrible person, the hard-core addict and dealer of a disgusting drug...
...and I, for one, don't want to buy that drug.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
In case anyone thought Bachmann wasn't nuts:
" There isn't one such study because carbon dioxide is not a harmful gas, it is a harmless gas. Carbon dioxide is natural. It is not harmful."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAaDVOd2sRQ
Fast forward to 1:14
How labs euthanize lab animals:
http://research.uiowa.edu/animal/?get=euthanasia#Carbon%20dioxide
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAaDVOd2sRQ
Fast forward to 1:14
How labs euthanize lab animals:
http://research.uiowa.edu/animal/?get=euthanasia#Carbon%20dioxide
If Olympia Snowe is smart, she'll follow suit.
When I was growing up, the Republicans in my Central New York city represented the wacky right, and, as a result, had no power whatsoever. People were not choosing between a socially liberal person or a fiscally conservative person, they were choosing between a socially liberal/fiscally non-conservative person or a socially liberal/fiscally conservative person. The Republicans were not on the table until the local Republicans started to share the SANE views about social justice of the democrats.
Republicans began to get reelected back home, and, indeed, are a majority, because they became pro-choice, pro-gun control (albeit not pro-enough, to my mind) and pro-gay rights. For them, Republicanism is not about insane Southern Theocratic wackiness, but about being against spending taxpayer dollars for services they feel should be public. I disagree with them, but I *respect their views.*
The new Bush-era Republicans are, frankly, insane. No one with a healthy mind could possibly support torture, the type of nonsense represented by "teabaggers" and claiming to be anti-spending while running up the deficit...or the hypocrisy of the Bush Blank check and fighting Obama over every cent. All the while, we are hearing again and again that Republicans are plugging their ears and REFUSING TO LISTEN to their moderates.
So, Republican Moderates, here's a deal for you- Join the real world. We Democrats took LIEBERMAN back, for crying out loud...
Democrats have room for dissent. We don't punish people for holding different views. All you'll be changing is your R to a D, because R has already moved away from you, and you already ARE a D.
Republicans began to get reelected back home, and, indeed, are a majority, because they became pro-choice, pro-gun control (albeit not pro-enough, to my mind) and pro-gay rights. For them, Republicanism is not about insane Southern Theocratic wackiness, but about being against spending taxpayer dollars for services they feel should be public. I disagree with them, but I *respect their views.*
The new Bush-era Republicans are, frankly, insane. No one with a healthy mind could possibly support torture, the type of nonsense represented by "teabaggers" and claiming to be anti-spending while running up the deficit...or the hypocrisy of the Bush Blank check and fighting Obama over every cent. All the while, we are hearing again and again that Republicans are plugging their ears and REFUSING TO LISTEN to their moderates.
So, Republican Moderates, here's a deal for you- Join the real world. We Democrats took LIEBERMAN back, for crying out loud...
Democrats have room for dissent. We don't punish people for holding different views. All you'll be changing is your R to a D, because R has already moved away from you, and you already ARE a D.
but I don't want to twitter.
I've had the labgrrl twitter name for months, and I really don't want to use it, but a friend on the starving authors list to which I am subscribed said he uses his to keep track of his time writing....so, since I'm having a connected day today, as well as uploading all the crap I use all the time into one place, I've decided I'm going to go his track.
http://twitter.com/labgrrl
http://twitter.com/labgrrl
My Transistion to Wicca
This began as a post on Yahoo!Answers, but my wife liked it so much I placed it here.
Me: I am content with my view that there are no gods.
The gods: We are not. (whack)
Me: I cannot reconcile my experiences with my beliefs. I must have a brain tumor.
CT tech: It's not a tumor.
Me: I must be insane.
Overpriced shrink: You're not insane.
Me: I am afraid to trust my experiences.
The gods and several others, in chorus: You are expecting a level of evidence you do not use for anything else. You know what your favorite color and flavor is without independent verification... unless you are told to do something detrimental to yourself, why does it matter?
Me: (grudgingly) I am content to believe there are gods until evidence comes along otherwise. I am unhappy that there has been no independent verification, but I think I can trust myself.
The gods: Here, have some people you've never met approach you out of the blue with their experiences, and here are the events we told you would happen and you discussed with people before they happened.
Me: But that's independent verification!
The gods: eh, we suppose so. Better than being lonely, eh?
Me: I am content to believe in the gods and if they want you to believe in them they will see that you do.
Me: I am content with my view that there are no gods.
The gods: We are not. (whack)
Me: I cannot reconcile my experiences with my beliefs. I must have a brain tumor.
CT tech: It's not a tumor.
Me: I must be insane.
Overpriced shrink: You're not insane.
Me: I am afraid to trust my experiences.
The gods and several others, in chorus: You are expecting a level of evidence you do not use for anything else. You know what your favorite color and flavor is without independent verification... unless you are told to do something detrimental to yourself, why does it matter?
Me: (grudgingly) I am content to believe there are gods until evidence comes along otherwise. I am unhappy that there has been no independent verification, but I think I can trust myself.
The gods: Here, have some people you've never met approach you out of the blue with their experiences, and here are the events we told you would happen and you discussed with people before they happened.
Me: But that's independent verification!
The gods: eh, we suppose so. Better than being lonely, eh?
Me: I am content to believe in the gods and if they want you to believe in them they will see that you do.
The Bubble Graph
Another one of my "teaching graphs" found on the computer. Upload was unkind to it, but clicky for embiggerment.
Venn Diagrams-2009
Wiccans are Pagans
Wiccans are Pagans. Some Wiccans are Witches. Some Pagans who are not Wiccan are Witches. Many Witches are not Pagan.
Above, with types of Witchcraft labeled.
Monday, April 20, 2009
The difference between "Karma" and Return.
Return [The Law of Return] is the belief that positive action tends to result in positive results, and negative action tends to result in negative results. It is "repaid" or "balanced" (pick your term) in *this* life. It is not a promise. It is simply a bias in the Universe's randomizers....no matter how good you are you can still fumble on a 1, and no matter how bad you are you still hit on a 20.
Karma is based on Vedic religions, and is the whole of action. It is good action and bad action, taken as one unit. It is "repaid" or "balanced" (pick your term) in the next life.
Karma is based on Vedic religions, and is the whole of action. It is good action and bad action, taken as one unit. It is "repaid" or "balanced" (pick your term) in the next life.
Sunday, April 19, 2009
The "New Atheists" are just boring.
When I was in Junior High School I knew a young woman named Amy who, despite otherwise being nice, was madly in love with Menudo.
Her love for the Puerto Rican boy band had, in fact,outlasted their popularity in the United States, to the degree that she was the only person I knew of who still listened to them at that point, and she knew not only the names of the band members but their birthdates, favorite colors, favorite foods, city of origin, influences and more.
Around 8th grade I stopped speaking to her because she was just so blasted boring. In the cafeteria, she said that she was eating pizza because one of the Mendudo boys liked it. In English, she brought in a poem about Menudo, in gym, she said she wore the yellow shorts, not the blue ones, because they were in a picture of her favorite guy in the band. Discussions of other music turned into how the latest band wasn't as good as Menudo, or how Menudo CLEARLY influenced them... you get the picture.
When I was in eighth grade, I was an atheist. I told one crazy but nice Mormon girl that I was a Satanist to make her go away (it worked) but I was still an atheist. (I also told her I was a vampire, a werewolf, a zombie, the reincarnation of Joseph Smith and other things...she was persistant...at first.)
I was raised non-religious, so the fact that I was an atheist really wasn't something I went on about. I was both fascinated by and uncomfortable with extremely religious people, because not only did I not believe in any god, but I didn't understand the appeal of being religious.
I could discuss here how my gods decided this was not the way I was to stay and changed it for me, but that's really not the point.
There seems to be a new type of atheist that possesses five major character flaws that result in their inability to talk about anything but "theism" in the exact same disturbing fangirl way Amy the Menudoite spoke of her boyband beaus. These flaws are:
1. A general sudden break with Christianity (specifically) because they realized their former church was wrong, wrong, wrong. They often characterize this as "waking up" from their former faith.
2. The inability to distinguish between theists (all people who believe in any kind of deity) and Christians.
3. The assumption that flaws in any one theism are identical to flaws in another, including holding non-Creationist Christians responsible for Creationism, confronting Jews about original sin and asking Pagan biologists like me why we don't believe in evolution.
4. The inability to see when their behaviors are identical to insane Christians. (I have had two of the same people who I've witnessed declare that it is unfair of Christians to claim ex-Christians were never Christian say that despite the fact that I did not believe in any god, didn't pray and didn't worry about my lack of belief in any god I was never an atheist...because, you know, when Christians do it is the "no true scotsman fallacy" and when atheists do it it is "the truth.")
5. A complete lack of humor, imagination or insight about their beliefs, including such actions as lambasting a fellow atheist for telling someone to go to hell and blocking the Flintstones on their television because it encourages their kids to imagine what it would be like to live with dinosaurs.
For a while I was confrontational with these new atheists, because while I was not emotionally invested in the atheism of my youth (I just was an atheist, I was not an atheist as a reaction to something) I am now emotionally invested in the reality of my beliefs as a young adult and I dislike seeing people declare that atheism (my previous stance) is the same as ex-Christian antitheism.
Now, I find myself avoiding both these new atheists and the Pagans, Christians and long-time atheists who try to correct them....
They are just so damn blasted boring, and I really don't care why they prefer pizza to steak.
Her love for the Puerto Rican boy band had, in fact,outlasted their popularity in the United States, to the degree that she was the only person I knew of who still listened to them at that point, and she knew not only the names of the band members but their birthdates, favorite colors, favorite foods, city of origin, influences and more.
Around 8th grade I stopped speaking to her because she was just so blasted boring. In the cafeteria, she said that she was eating pizza because one of the Mendudo boys liked it. In English, she brought in a poem about Menudo, in gym, she said she wore the yellow shorts, not the blue ones, because they were in a picture of her favorite guy in the band. Discussions of other music turned into how the latest band wasn't as good as Menudo, or how Menudo CLEARLY influenced them... you get the picture.
When I was in eighth grade, I was an atheist. I told one crazy but nice Mormon girl that I was a Satanist to make her go away (it worked) but I was still an atheist. (I also told her I was a vampire, a werewolf, a zombie, the reincarnation of Joseph Smith and other things...she was persistant...at first.)
I was raised non-religious, so the fact that I was an atheist really wasn't something I went on about. I was both fascinated by and uncomfortable with extremely religious people, because not only did I not believe in any god, but I didn't understand the appeal of being religious.
I could discuss here how my gods decided this was not the way I was to stay and changed it for me, but that's really not the point.
There seems to be a new type of atheist that possesses five major character flaws that result in their inability to talk about anything but "theism" in the exact same disturbing fangirl way Amy the Menudoite spoke of her boyband beaus. These flaws are:
1. A general sudden break with Christianity (specifically) because they realized their former church was wrong, wrong, wrong. They often characterize this as "waking up" from their former faith.
2. The inability to distinguish between theists (all people who believe in any kind of deity) and Christians.
3. The assumption that flaws in any one theism are identical to flaws in another, including holding non-Creationist Christians responsible for Creationism, confronting Jews about original sin and asking Pagan biologists like me why we don't believe in evolution.
4. The inability to see when their behaviors are identical to insane Christians. (I have had two of the same people who I've witnessed declare that it is unfair of Christians to claim ex-Christians were never Christian say that despite the fact that I did not believe in any god, didn't pray and didn't worry about my lack of belief in any god I was never an atheist...because, you know, when Christians do it is the "no true scotsman fallacy" and when atheists do it it is "the truth.")
5. A complete lack of humor, imagination or insight about their beliefs, including such actions as lambasting a fellow atheist for telling someone to go to hell and blocking the Flintstones on their television because it encourages their kids to imagine what it would be like to live with dinosaurs.
For a while I was confrontational with these new atheists, because while I was not emotionally invested in the atheism of my youth (I just was an atheist, I was not an atheist as a reaction to something) I am now emotionally invested in the reality of my beliefs as a young adult and I dislike seeing people declare that atheism (my previous stance) is the same as ex-Christian antitheism.
Now, I find myself avoiding both these new atheists and the Pagans, Christians and long-time atheists who try to correct them....
They are just so damn blasted boring, and I really don't care why they prefer pizza to steak.
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