1151. Laugh at Sudan

Comment #97674 by Cartomancer on December 12, 2007 at 2:00 pm

Laugh and the world laughs with you, cry and you cry alone.

Spout vicious theistic nonsense and invent insults where none exist and the world laughs at you. Cry foul and it laughs even harder.

1152. Bah, Hanukkah

Comment #97663 by Cartomancer on December 12, 2007 at 1:50 pm

Everything is cuckoo as far as hardline orthodox Judaism is concerned...

1153. Bah, Hanukkah

Comment #97340 by Cartomancer on December 11, 2007 at 11:18 pm

Louise, Comment #52,

You clearly have some kind of irrational animus against Hellenic civilization. From the tone of your comments it seems that you disapprove of the violent and warlike nature of the Classical and Hellenistic Greek cultures, their misogyny and the conclusions of their science. I can only marvel at your utter inability to see these cultures within their historical context and the ease with which you condemn a civilization two and a half millennia past for not being in line with modern standards of taste and decency. The real comparison is not between the Classical Greeks and us, but between the Classical Greeks and contemporary peoples in other parts of the mediterranean world. As such there really is no contest - the achievements of the Semitic peoples in the fifth to first centuries BC pale into utter insignificance compared to the achievements of the Hellenic peoples and those who adopted their cultural forms.

Yes the Greeks were warlike. Everybody was warlike back then. You had to be in order to survive a world filled with all the other warlike peoples who wanted to enslave you and steal your land for themselves. This goes double for people living in tiny, isolated settlements like the classical Poleis rather than big territorial empires. Greek culture was in general deeply competitive and adversarial as you say, but this is precisely the tension which led to so much of their wonderful creativity. All societies need outlets and channels for the aggression and restless energy of their young males, the Greeks were simply very honest about that fact. They glorified young manhood. They wrote wonderful poems and deeply insightful plays about it, and made breathtaking statues to it. They glorified young womanhood too in many ways. Through the many "agones" or competitions in Greek life these urges were given purpose and direction, and the military benefitted tremendously, creating stable and unified societies - a rare commodity in such a dangerous world. We have other ways of doing this now, facilitated by our modern technologies, but they didn't. Though they tried. The history of Greek diplomacy is full of accords, agreements and "common peaces" proposed in an attempt to find non-violent solutions to inter-state conflict.

Yes Greek athletics were much more violent than modern athletics. That's because they took them much more seriously. It added a drama and tension the likes of which are just not seen in their pale modern equivalents. It was a different culture, a different time, but the competitors knew full well the risks involved and took them anyway - reckless perhaps, but still voluntary. And death in the games was considered glorious, like death in battle, because it was putting your life on the line for the pride of your people - an admirable ethic of self-sacrifice in my opinion, and vital for continued societal stability.

Yes the Greeks kept slaves. So did pretty much everybody else. It's what you did with prisoners of war. Slavery in classical times was a very different animal to the sort of negro slavery we are more familiar with in the early modern period. Although conditions for some slaves were appalling (such as the state slaves who worked Athens' silver mines at Laurium, and who actually lived in their mines), many led almost identical lives to their free counterparts, at least in Athens. One anti-democratic writer, probably from the 440s or 430s, berates the Athenians because it is impossible to distinguish slave from freeman on the streets of Athens - they don't impose a strict dress code to mark out those of lower status. Slaves were generally paid the same wages too, as epigraphic evidence from the acropolis works suggests. In fact certain slave careers were very lucrative, such as banking, and men such as the ex slave Pasion grew quite wealthy from them, before passing their businesses on to their own slaves rather than their free-born children.

Aristotle was reactionary?! What, pray tell, was he reacting against with his ideas on human differences? The egalitarian all-men-are-born-equal attitudes of his predecessors? What you mean is that his views on a small number of topics would be considered reactionary if he came up with them in today's intellectual climate, which is true, but that entirely ignores the fact that he came up with them twenty-three centuries ago! In his own day he was a radical and original thinker, and a highly humane ethicist. He worked on the principle that it is possible to discover morality by thinking about things rationally, rather than following custom and superstition. This was somewhat new, and certainly leagues ahead of what his crazy Jewish contemporaries were spouting. Aristotle was a scientist, he came up with theories based on the evidence he observed in the world around him. Show him some new evidence and he would change his mind. The conclusions he came to were based on observing the society he belonged to - a society in which women were seldom educated and slaves were a fact of life. Plato, by contrast, did consider women the intellectual equals of men, in theory. He even gave them equal political power in the utopian society of his Republic. If that's not a visionary work of enlightened rational thinking I don't know what is. Aristotle simply observed the real differences between the genders and tried to account for it. He was under no politically correct illusions that men and women had precisely the same capacities in ever particular and came up with models to explain gender differences. I repeat, if he were working from different evidence he would have come to different conclusions, and his magisterial works on logic demonstrate his method with great clarity. Compare the theistic blather of the jewish religion at this time, which worked to enshrine gender difference and inequality beneath the shroud of untouchable divine sanction. The two methods could not be more different - on the one hand seeing a phenomenon and trying to explain how it works and why, on the other seeing a phenomenon and simply saying "god did it, so it must be good, and we will unquestioningly keep doing it". Actually, Athens was perhaps more misogynistic than many Greek states. In Sparta, for instance, the women were much more independent and could own property and manage affairs to a far greater degree (and hence the need to distribute them among the men in Agis and Cleomenes' abortive communism experiment). Find me a people at this time who were not misogynistic by our standards.

If anyone taught us to explore and investigate the natural world around us it was Aristotle. He is one of the greatest geniuses that human society has ever produced. He is one of my intellectual heroes par excellence, and his Nicomachean Ethics, Eudamian Ethics and Politics are among the most humane, thoughtful and insigntful pieces I have read on the conduct of human affairs. You do the great man a staggering disservice with your tawdry hang-ups over the details of his tentative conclusions.

And you also miss the point entirely that Greek culture was not enforced on the populations of the Hellenistic world from above, but eagerly adopted by the people, and especially the aristocracies, from below. Alexandria under the pharaohs was a second-rate naval base and royal holiday resort, under the ptolemies it became one of the greatest cities and greatest centres of scholarship in the world. The Seleucids revolutionised the government and economy of Syria, making it greater and more prosperous than it ever was under the Achemenids. Even the dynasty of Lysimachus did a sterling job of repelling the increasingly frequent barbarian invasions into Thrace and maintaining civilized order there while they were in power during the third century BC. One great advantage of Greek culture was its pluralism (though admittedly Persian and Egyptian culture was pretty pluralistic too), and adaptability to local circumstances. The same cannot be said for the cantankerous maccabaean Semites, obsessed with their own nasty god and his unpleasant life-disrupting strictures. It boils down to stability again - good governance facilitates economic and cultural prosperity.

Where is the antique Jewish Sophocles or Phidias or Homer? Where is the antique Jewish Parthenon or Great Lighthouse or Colossus? Where is the antique Jewish Euclid or Plato or Archimedes or Heron? Where is their Antikythera mechanism, their theories of formal logic, their sophisticated siege engines and archimedean screws?

While the Greeks celebrated and revered homosexual love the Jews reviled it. This is pretty much all you need to know about the unquestionable moral superiority of the former over the latter during the centuries BC. (and bear in mind that it is the jewish people in the Middle East during these centuries that I am referring to as "the Jews" here, not their medieval or modern descendants, or at least only inasmuch as those descendants still practice the barbaric backwardness of their forebears).

Yes, it is fashionable nowadays to slate the Greeks and dispel the Renaissance and Enlightenment fascination with their culture. I'm all for that as those who have followed my more usual pro-medieval posts will attest. But once you look at the evidence and divest yourself of needless cultural hero-worship for the Greek and Latin Classics there is still so much there to admire that any sensible account of the period and the culture must rate it as remarkably productive and scintillating indeed.

1154. This deadly religious resistance to vaccinations

Comment #97255 by Cartomancer on December 11, 2007 at 8:17 pm

I still think that the best description of the Daily Mail was the one given on British satirical panel show Mock the Week. "The ideal Daily Mail headline - illegal immigrants carry a new kind of AIDS that lowers house prices".

I was also struck by a channel 4 documentary a few months back, charting the background to the Wolfenden Committee report. It started off setting the scene with a little bit of background: "In the 1960's the Daily Mail was a respectable and influential newspaper..."

1155. An Open Letter to Richard Dawkins

Comment #96626 by Cartomancer on December 10, 2007 at 7:11 pm

After a thorough search through the winding streets of Edinburgh, from the seedy old town boarding houses to the lofty towers of the ancient University, I failed to find one.

Trundling for days on end through the estates of Glasgow, from the Gorbals to the granite buildings of the city centre, I was similarly disappointed.

My quest took me to the highlands, the rugged peaks of the cairngorms and grampians and the tiny villages scattered therein. Still no luck.

I travelled to the very edges of the country, searching isolated lochs, barren islands and stretches of coast. Nothing.

I delved deep into the history and lore of the country, attending to tales of proud kings, stubborn clan chiefs, wise philosophers, great poets and ingenious engineers. My search was in vain, not one turned up, even in the past.

eventually, with a heavy heart, I gave up. Looks like there just aren't any true scotsmen anywhere...

1156. The art of the soluble

Comment #96056 by Cartomancer on December 9, 2007 at 10:25 pm

It would probably be rather mischevious of me to point out that the idea of time being nothing more than a perceptual illusion, existing only as recollection, present experience and expectation, was actually one of Augustine's in Confessions XI...

I was rather fond of the eighties myself. Well, the two thirds of them I was around to see...

(this is much nicer than having to read yet more identikit siphonapterid drivel I must say!)

1157. Mitt Romney's Faith In America address (as prepared for delivery)

Comment #95269 by Cartomancer on December 7, 2007 at 7:43 pm

I suppose it will do until the big interstellar spaceship gets built to take us away from this mess...

Promise me that when we finally do colonise New Earth we won't bother having an America on it ok?

1158. Mitt Romney's Faith In America address (as prepared for delivery)

Comment #95267 by Cartomancer on December 7, 2007 at 7:16 pm

This appalling modern theocrat terrifies me. I only wish there were somewhere far enough to run away to...

1159. Former Evangelical Minister Has a New Message: Jesus Hearts Darwin

Comment #95258 by Cartomancer on December 7, 2007 at 6:23 pm

Is it me or does Mr. Dowd look rather like a cross between Tony Blair and Jay Lenno?

1160. Sherri Shepherd needs to go away now

Comment #94847 by Cartomancer on December 6, 2007 at 8:06 pm

This woman frightens me. Make her go away...

1161. Highway to hysteria

Comment #94846 by Cartomancer on December 6, 2007 at 7:52 pm

Steve99 - Comment #72,

Thank goodness for the Take That revival?! Blimey Steve, you really are gay...

1162. Highway to hysteria

Comment #94418 by Cartomancer on December 5, 2007 at 4:08 pm

Or he could just be using the word fiancee anyway, as many in the gay community do in order to stand up to the condescending linguistic bias imposed by conservative society.

But still, I have things in pots on my windowsill that look less like a plant than him...

1163. Bad Faith Awards: Vote for the winner now

Comment #94404 by Cartomancer on December 5, 2007 at 3:53 pm

Chuck Norris. I hate the bearded gurning Bruce Lee knock off...

No! Wait! I wanna change to Ratzinger!

No! the odious Phelps Cult!

No! the Bishop of Carlisle!

Oh, there are just too many of them to choose from. Maybe I'll just follow Father Ted's advice and leave a pad and pencil out all night in the hope that god writes down who I should vote for.

1164. Springer opera court fight fails

Comment #94402 by Cartomancer on December 5, 2007 at 3:46 pm

All together now... "Cover him in chocolate, and throw him to the lesbians... this is my Jerry Springer Moooooomeeeeeent!"

1165. Chimps beat humans in memory test

Comment #94104 by Cartomancer on December 4, 2007 at 7:24 pm

My brother says that he is not surprised, given that it was undergraduates at a Japanese university they were testing. Apparently they have less academic work to do than most potatoes. He should know, he went to one...

1166. Banishing the Green-Eyed Monster

Comment #94103 by Cartomancer on December 4, 2007 at 7:14 pm

Roedy, comment 362,

I recognise what you are saying about there being much less emphasis on absolute monogamous fidelity in mainstream gay "culture", or at least the mainstream "culture" of some gay men, but my own experience has been very different. It seems to me that this is more a consciously counter-orthodox cultural construction, though to some degree also the result of the biological tendencies of human males to stray much more than human females do. I will admit that there is a certain honesty in recognising this.

Nevertheless, none of my gay friends has anything like the stereotypical open relationship or freedom of sexual gratification that you describe. They are all perfectly and happily monogamous, expect the same of their partners, and in general react to jealousy and infidelity in the same way that all my straight friends do. In fact my gay friends' relationships have generally lasted significantly longer than my straight friends' relationships have (an average of five years at the moment, compared with three and a half for my straight friends). I myself seem to react with an unusually heightened sense of sexual jealousy to be honest - I get very jealous when people who I merely want to go out with sleep with someone else. I am also far more vocal and obsessive about the romantic ideal of a deep, loving, exclusive, monogamous relationship than any of my straight friends (how amusing then that I have never actually had a proper boyfriend).

I think your dichotomy falls down badly here, though I admit that myself and my clique may be somewhat unusual compared to the general population. It would be an interesting sociological study to undertake...

1167. Banishing the Green-Eyed Monster

Comment #94102 by Cartomancer on December 4, 2007 at 7:13 pm

Roedy, comment 362,

I recognise what you are saying about there being much less emphasis on absolute monogamous fidelity in mainstream gay "culture", or at least the mainstream "culture" of some gay men, but my own experience has been very different. It seems to me that this is more a consciously counter-orthodox cultural construction, though to some degree also the result of the biological tendencies of human males to stray much more than human females do.

Nevertheless, none of my gay friends has anything like the stereotypical open relationship or freedom of sexual gratification that you describe. They are all perfectly and happily monogamous, expect the same of their partners, and in general react to jealousy and infidelity in the same way that all my straight friends do. In fact my gay friends' relationships have generally lasted significantly longer than my straight friends' relationships have (an average of five years at the moment, compared with three and a half for my straight friends). I myself seem to react with an unusually heightened sense of sexual jealousy to be honest - I get very jealous when people who I merely want to go out with sleep with someone else. I am also far more vocal and obsessive about the romantic ideal of a deep, loving, exclusive, monogamous relationship than any of my straight friends (how amusing then that I have never actually had a proper boyfriend).

I think your dichotomy falls down badly here, though I admit that myself and my clique may be somewhat unusual compared to the general population. It would be an interesting sociological study to undertake...

1168. Bah, Hanukkah

Comment #94095 by Cartomancer on December 4, 2007 at 6:48 pm

I spent most of today festooning my house with gaudy sparkling things and kitsch seasonal tat. Actually I rather enjoy this sort of thing, but not wishing to conform entirely to the popular stereotypes about my kind I generally do not admit as much in public.

This got me thinking that, as one who has most assuredly turned to Athens and would never set foot in Jerusalem, even for the biggest piece of cake in the world, I should probably do something to mark the fact. An anti-hannukah if you will! Maybe I will make a little model of the Theatre of Dionysius with a production of Aristophanes' Frogs in full swing - much better than a manky old crib. Then we can have crackers with stoic maxims and paper hoplite helmets in them, an olive tree festooned with tinsel and a fat, bearded man dressed as Socrates giving out dialectical advice to the kiddies on the big day. We could sing the lay of Harmodius and Aristogeiton or the Ithyphallic hymn to Demetrius Poliorcetes as a prelude to the Bachanals, and relax in front of Plato's seasonal message at 3pm. Oh, and there would be gymnasiums full of beautiful, muscular young men wearing nothing but a drizzling of olive oil and wrestling with one another. I think I'm gonna like this, who is with me?!

1169. Highway to hysteria

Comment #94075 by Cartomancer on December 4, 2007 at 5:57 pm

Bah! one night with me will cure you of Gay more effectively than any amount of trundling up and down some godforsaken stretch of yankee tarmac!

Or so several potential boyfriends of mine claim...

1170. Atheism's Wrong Turn

Comment #93621 by Cartomancer on December 3, 2007 at 6:34 pm

God bless ye merry gentlemen, should he in fact exist,
But he does not so lets just eat and drink 'till we get pissed,
Oh oh tidings of bleakness and doubt, bleakness and doubt, oh oh tiiidings of bleakness and doubt!

1171. Fear of censure deflects The Golden Compas

Comment #93617 by Cartomancer on December 3, 2007 at 6:28 pm

Ah, life truly does imitate art...

1172. Papal encyclical attacks atheism, lauds hope

Comment #93603 by Cartomancer on December 3, 2007 at 5:35 pm

hungarianelephant -

I know. My latin jokes are a little guilty pleasure I allow myself every now and then (for which read "whenever I can get away with it"). I'm so happy somebody finally laughed at one!

But I am, undoubtedly, the sadder one. I even translate the lyrics of pop songs into Latin and sing along in clubs. You get some strange looks crooning "vivimus enim in mundo materio, et puella materia sum" on a friday night, let me tell you...

Still, I am but an amateur compared with His Holiness. He can come up with some REALLY hilarious stuff in Latin at the drop of a hat. I'm never going to be that good.

1173. Atheism's Wrong Turn

Comment #93350 by Cartomancer on December 2, 2007 at 7:45 pm

Wow, this must be the biggest piece of "I'm-an-atheist-buttery" I have ever seen. Though whether it's "I'm an atheist but New Republic are going to pay me a lot of money to write something controversial" or "I'm an atheist but I'm also jealous that my books don't sell as well as Dawkins's" I am at a loss to say.

Whatever the case this piece has it all - enough straw men to start an army, so many false dichotomies it hurts, misrepresentation, mis-quotation and such a poor understanding of intellectual history that I seriously suspect he just looked up "list of famous atheists" on Wikipedia and invented the rest to make up the word count.

Above all I smell the unmistakeable whiff of self-righteous procrustean points-scoring. He's set out with the notion that this New Atheism movement is clearly a Very Bad Thing and tried his damnedest to furnish it with a shady, intolerant aetiology as if that proves his point. He shied just clear of the old Hitler and Stalin argument, but only just, and the intention was plain for all to see. I can almost hear the facts creaking and groaning in protest as Linker bends, twists or breaks them up to fit his pre-imagined scheme.

And the way he lingers over the words "Liberal" and "Liberalism" as if they were sacred words of command which encapsulate all that is Good more effectively than the Platonic forms. I can just picture him, prancing about, dressed in his home-made Robes of the High Priest of Liberalism, shouting "Illiberal" at the top of his voice like a fifteenth century inquisitor might shout "Heretic". If it's not "liberal" as he defines liberality then it must be evil and wrong, and probably involves eating kittens or murdering the elderly. I'm all for liberality, but the bizarre false precision with which he uses it - as nothing short of an in-group marker, a transcendent shibboleth to end all shibboleths - I find deeply unpalatable. I guess perhaps "Liberal" is much more of a name to conjure with in the states. We generally prefer things like "Polite" and "Civilized" for our marks of outrage.

Atticus of Amber has said it better than I can, and there is little need for me to repeat the valid criticisms of all the other posters. I will however take issue with the idea that one should have to choose between promoting a secular society and trying to eradicate religion. Both are laudable aims, and the second can only be achieved properly through the framework of the first. In fact it is precisely because Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens et. al. are so committed to the secular society that they feel free to criticise religion so. Their vehemence is, in all cases, entirely verbal - they are expressing their right to free speech in the hope they can change people's minds. It is absolutely fundamental to free speech that it includes the freedom to criticise, and to take legitimate criticism. That's why democracy works, that's why good ideas come to the top and bad ones get rejected, or at least that's the theory.

1174. Double-checking Dawkins

Comment #92922 by Cartomancer on December 1, 2007 at 6:52 pm

This complicated modern technosorcery frightens me. Make it go away...

1175. Sudan demo over jailed UK teacher

Comment #92636 by Cartomancer on December 1, 2007 at 2:25 am

If Islam is a religion of peace then I'd hate to see what a warlike one looks like...

1176. Papal encyclical attacks atheism, lauds hope

Comment #92634 by Cartomancer on December 1, 2007 at 2:21 am

I am reminded of the amusing, though anonymous, twelfth century satire "The Gospel according to Mark(s) of Silver" and other excellent pieces of goliardic poetry here. The Roman Catholic Church was the original greedy multi-national company, Europe's greatest sponsor of technological innovation, spinner of political ideology and gatherer of wealth throughout the first millennium of its existence. They're just jealous that other people are doing it far better than they can these days.

1177. Papal encyclical attacks atheism, lauds hope

Comment #92632 by Cartomancer on December 1, 2007 at 2:13 am

"Papal Encyclical attacks atheism"

Look forward to next week folks, when Pope Ratpoison XVI issues the long awaited "Catholicus Sum" encyclical in answer to the most burning question of the day, followed by a definitive theological pronouncement entitled "facient enim ursi stercum in sylvis"...

1178. Boy dies of leukemia after refusing treatment for religious reasons

Comment #92269 by Cartomancer on November 30, 2007 at 7:12 am

Of course he wasn't of sound mind. That's my point. Just because his delusion was contracted through childhood indoctrination at a vulnerable time of his life does not make it any less irrational. If he was ranting about harmful alien brain radiation and wearing a home-made tinfoil helmet would the doctors have accepted that as a good reason not to administer the treatment? Where is the difference?

1179. Banishing the Green-Eyed Monster

Comment #92134 by Cartomancer on November 29, 2007 at 11:22 pm

It appears I have let my emotions get the better of me. I unreservedly apologise for my harsh tone in previous posts. Clear thinking I most certainly have not been tonight, or should I say this morning given that it is now quarter past seven and I have been up all night pondering my woes. This is not the place for me to give full reign to the vitriol and vinegar which runs through my veins. I apologise once again, and goodnight gentlemen - with hope that the morrow brings more by way of rationality on my part.

1180. Banishing the Green-Eyed Monster

Comment #92128 by Cartomancer on November 29, 2007 at 11:03 pm

"The rewards are high but so are the risks."

Oh yes indeed! And none of the gambles I have taken have paid off. The only three people I have ever met who I have felt anything for are either prohibitively taken or do not like me. I have got none of the rewards but paid the highest price each time, and still I pay the price to this day. Slowly it is killing me and thus has it been for the last six years - my entire adult life.

What do you know of misery who do not only misery know?

Of course I've been obsessed with the wrong people. Any fool can see that. But how can I possibly chase anyone else? How can I possibly chase after people I do not love and think nothing on the people I do? I'd love to be more rational about this. That's what I've been saying in all my posts tonight. A rational approach to all this would be, aha aha, a godsend. How am I supposed to take one? How can I alter my feelings thus? What am I meant to do to get one? Answer me that oh oracle of the mind, privy as you are to its innermost secrets.

1181. Banishing the Green-Eyed Monster

Comment #92122 by Cartomancer on November 29, 2007 at 10:47 pm

Diacanu -

Well, yes, of course it's not necessarily an either/or dichotomy. I was just paraphrasing roach's statement with the word "dictating" to be honest.

Though I would point out that, while an emotional approach to relationships is not hindered one bit by inserting rationality - emotions can still bounce off rational thoughts in their largely irrational way without diminution, A rational approach is very much hindered by bringing in the emotions. You can't come to sound logical conclusions if the premises you feed into your logic are not rational ones to start with. In practice of course it is nigh on impossible to separate the two...

Roach -

I'm so very glad you find following your emotions a helpful, enjoyable and life-affirming experience which leaves you all warm and fuzzy inside. It must be so nice living in your world with all the pink fluffy bunnies and the smug, self-satisfied conceit of having put in your best effort, fought the good fight and, well, if it didn't happen this time there are plenty more fish in the sea. Unfortunately for some of us our emotions in this sphere have brought nothing but anguish, suffering and misery and we would very much like to find a better way of dealing with the breakdown or non-existence of sexual relationships than being held to ransome by such ruinous irrationalities.

1182. Interview with Richard Dawkins

Comment #92116 by Cartomancer on November 29, 2007 at 10:30 pm

It is, essentially, an outline of The God Delusion. But good to hear again. Especially since my copy STILL hasn't been returned to me. Or my copy of Hitchens. You know who you are...

1183. Banishing the Green-Eyed Monster

Comment #92106 by Cartomancer on November 29, 2007 at 10:10 pm

I think, roach, that the point is WHY you still allow your feelings to dictate your actions, and whether it would be more helpul if you didn't.

Sadly, I too still allow my feelings to dictate my actions in this sphere. I wish I didn't, but the mental gymnastics I have to perform in order to reach that happy state are, at present, a sacred mystery to me.

Of course, you're more than welcome to go on being irrational about this - as long as you don't go impinging on anybody else's life like the religious people do when they are being irrational - but if being rational about it and discovering a better way forward might lead to greater happiness and fulfilment then why not entertain the notion? Surely it cannot hurt to simply think it through - why stick to a deeply flawed system? for fear of much worse?

1184. Banishing the Green-Eyed Monster

Comment #92082 by Cartomancer on November 29, 2007 at 9:07 pm

Oh the irony of it all!

I have just spent the last fortnight trying to get over three cases of powerful sexual jealousy - first for my best friend, whom I have loved since I was nineteen but never had the chance with because of his boyfriend, one for the man I thought I was in a relationship with for the last two months but it turns out I actually wasn't (not nice having someone tell you they're sleeping with an ex on MSN out of the blue), and now rejection from somebody I slept with last night and felt stronger about than anyone I have slept with before, but who doesn't want to see me again and is now sleeping round and looking for someone else.

I have never actually had anyone love me back in a sexual relationship context, so I cannot comment on whether the jealousy is more profound if this is the case. What I do know however is that my sexual jealousy is certainly not monogamous at all. Maybe if someone were to love me back when I loved them then this would supercede all other concerns, if not scotch them entirely. I cannot say. I shall leave the point to my psychiatrist who is better qualified than I to judge.

And throughout this period I have been constantly telling myself that a) Sexual jealousy is biologically normal, and b) I should try my damnedest to rise above it. And I have been picking arguments with street preachers to make myself feel better, to rail against the judaeo-christian morality their hateful kind promote and which has ruined my feelings on sex for most of my short life.

And now Richard Dawkins, whose sound judgement I trust more than anyone's, comes out and says exactly what I am feeling. I would have chalked it up to Fate if I were the sort to believe in that nonsense. Surely I must have seen it in the cards...

My question is not whether sexual jealousy should be overcome, but how one goes about overcoming it? What am I supposed to do? I want to be able to let these people get on with their lives and not get worked up and hurt when I think about who they might be sleeping with, but I cannot. And it is making me very depressed indeed (well, more depressed that usual at any rate). Just thinking happy thoughts doesn't help, nor does imagining my life without the jealousy. No rationalising I can conjure will dull the pain. If I weren't teetotal I might get horribly drunk at this point.

Maybe that's another one for the psychiatrist too. I do worry about what I put the poor woman though - the university can't be paying her all that much.

Anyway, suffice to say I wholeheartedly agree with the good professor's point about thinking outside the box where love is concerned. Let us subject it to scrutiny with our microscopes and callipers, bound and weigh and measure it until we can pick it apart piece by piece and come to understand it. Only then can we control it and still the raging fires of our hearts. Only then can we stem the pain.

1185. A New Flea in Town!

Comment #92055 by Cartomancer on November 29, 2007 at 7:29 pm

What I would like to see is a satirical take on the flea books in Sellars and Yeatman style. Or, in fact, just a lot more satire on religion in general. Terry Pratchett is always good for your money there of course...

1186. Boy dies of leukemia after refusing treatment for religious reasons

Comment #92052 by Cartomancer on November 29, 2007 at 7:14 pm

In any kind of sensible world they would have been able to tell that the boy was quite clearly incapable of making rational decisions for his own good.

Refusing a life-saving treatment because you believe an imaginary sky-tyrant doesn't want you to have it is a textbook case. Anyone who comes out with that sort of rubbish should be categorically labelled as unable to make rational decisions for their own good.

If he had just said Pastafarian or Jedi instead of Jehovah's Witness the surgeons would have laughed and carried on anyway. That's the real travesty here...

1187. Fear Is Stronger Than Hope When It Comes To Fitness

Comment #92041 by Cartomancer on November 29, 2007 at 6:26 pm

I think it has a place here, even if it isn't exactly the sort of fine upstanding young thing which would be given its spear and hoplon and sent to do battle in the forefront of the war against all gods.

To be honest I kind of knew most of this instinctively already. Fear has pretty much been the only thing that motivates me to do anything for a very long time. Fear of failure, fear of rejection, fear of losing what I have, fear of being too late to make a difference, fear of never getting a boyfriend, fear of change. You name it, I am probably afraid of it.

Well, maybe not everything. Fear of fitting in? Fear of death? Fear of divine punishment. The wider applications in the field of religion are hardly difficult to imagine, and it is only through a proper understanding of human psychology that we will be able to target the causes of religion at their roots - and especially to provide an infinitely superior secular means of finding happiness.

1188. In the name of God: the Saudi rape victim's tale

Comment #91770 by Cartomancer on November 29, 2007 at 7:53 am

Whenever I read a piece like this in a newspaper the little "journalistic sensationalism" alarm bells go off in my head. I keep thinking "yes, but you're obviously spinning it for shock value, what is it that you're not telling us?". They were doing that here too. However, after thinking about it I really cannot see what else could possibly make this sort of thing even remotely acceptable. If there is a theoretical, halfway-credible counterpoint to the story as written then the story as written must have gone beyond journalistic bias and into outright lies. Since it is not an article for the Daily Mail I am thus forced to conclude that what we have here is close enough to the truth of the matter to print.

I really wish it wasn't. It would be so much nicer if things had been blown out of all proportion by the British media.

I am genuinely frightened by this incident. And the teddy bear incident. I find it horrifying that I share a planet, in the 21st century, with people whose mind-set is taken straight out of the 8th. Such importance placed on percieved insults and personal reputation. Such a lack of tolerance or ability to get things in perspective. Such abominable attitudes to women and sexuality. They terrify me, no two ways about it. I can just about understand on a rational level why people can possibly think this way, but on an emotional level I am at a complete loss.

I think I will hide under the covers and hope it all goes away now...

1189. Sunday School for Atheists

Comment #91262 by Cartomancer on November 27, 2007 at 8:14 pm

Ooh, sarky...

Mustn't... rise... to... that... one!

1190. 'Muhammad' teddy teacher arrested

Comment #91260 by Cartomancer on November 27, 2007 at 8:08 pm

Yeah, my point was more that it is a bit silly to say that in the Roman Empire the emperor was actually "chosen". That's not generally how monarchies work! Nevertheless, Julian did manage to secure the support of the army (he was quite a formidable military leader all things considered, whatever mud the Christian partisan Ammianus Marcellinus might wish to throw at him) and that, de facto, was what kept you in power in the later empire.

He was also an amateur philosopher, and wrote a book called "why everyone hates my beard". You've got to love someone who does that.

I really should get some patches for this annoying antiquarian pedantry addiction...

1191. Sunday School for Atheists

Comment #91103 by Cartomancer on November 27, 2007 at 8:24 am

Prettygoodformonkeys, comment 39,

I only claim that it's misrepresenting history to call the entire medieval period the "dark ages", or that they were dark because they were ignorant.

I make no claim that we're not headed for a real dark age of blithering theocratic ignorance some time in the future. In the Holy Kingdom of Merica at least...

1192. 'Muhammad' teddy teacher arrested

Comment #91101 by Cartomancer on November 27, 2007 at 8:14 am

Christian Rome wouldn't appoint a Pagan as emperor? Julian the Apostate anyone...?

1193. 'Muhammad' teddy teacher arrested

Comment #90877 by Cartomancer on November 26, 2007 at 2:41 pm

I suspect they probably couldn't tolerate, or perhaps even understand, this strange western infidel concept of "voting" either. Now if she had said to the children "ok class, somebody come forward and lead a military coup to name the teddy bear" then it would have been fine and dandy.

This is why I loathe such people with boundless vehemence. IT'S CHOOSING A NAME FOR A BLOODY TEDDY BEAR! My mind simply cannot grasp what sort of mental software corruption has occurred in the people of the Sudan to make this happen. The rich irony is apparent also in the fact that, in the Middle Ages at least (I don't know if it still goes on today) it was traditional in most Islamic cultures (in some places even expected) to name one's firstborn son Mohammed.

The idea that ANYTHING, anything at all, should be protected from insults by law offends me to the core. The idea that such things as naming stuffed toys after someone counts as an insult is a vile and ridiculous travesty of human thought.

I make it a point these days to greviously offend every Muslim I meet in as imaginative and infuriating a way as possible to show my utter disdain for their cancerous religion and all its horrific intolerances. They must learn that respect is to be earned and politeness is entirely optional. If mankind started ignoring, accepting and even acknowledging in the insults it receives then all the world's problems would be solved tomorrow.

1194. Sunday School for Atheists

Comment #90750 by Cartomancer on November 26, 2007 at 8:56 am

Well, I could lie and say there was a lot more to my comment than self-serving antiquarian pedantry, but there wasn't.

Though it does go to show that the idea of cosmological dualism is much older still than late antiquity. I'm not entirely sure what Manichaean cosmological dualism has to do with this though. Mani posited, following Zoroaster though changing it round, that matter as we understand it is bad, while spirit or light (also a kind of matter to him) is good. He also thought the universe of light was trying to separate the two into their original unmixed conditions after an incursion by the universe of darkness which created the universe we see ourselves. This is not the same as positing that only the physical world we see around us actually exists with no spiritual dimension at all, and thus anything "spiritual" is by definition unreal. To Mani (and to Descartes, but not in quite the same way) both the physical and the spiritual were real, material things. To the modern thinker the physical is material and real but the spiritual is unreal, intra-mental and imaginary.

1195. Sunday School for Atheists

Comment #90733 by Cartomancer on November 26, 2007 at 8:18 am

Manichaeism? Pffft! Mani nicked cosmological dualism from the Zoroastrians of his native Persia.

1196. Sunday School for Atheists

Comment #90653 by Cartomancer on November 26, 2007 at 3:29 am

I think the point of this article was that in messed-up countries like America, with loopy faith heads roaming the streets quite openly and trying to eat children's brains, it is quite helpful and even necessary to have some sort of corrective that will help these children to avoid this nasty fate.

I find the idea of the American style summer camp and the Sunday School quite sinister myself as it happens. Smells terribly of regimenting and processing children, inculcating group behaviour rather than stressing individuality. At that age all I wanted to do was play independently on my own or with a close friend. I would certainly have resented having half my weekend and most of my summer sacrificed to something I did not choose to do myself and sent away from my parents for a long period of time. Nevertheless, it is a specific cultural construction and if American parents want to have their sprogs tormented in this manner then it is a good thing there are secular, free-thinking alternatives available.

1197. You can't be moral without God!

Comment #90245 by Cartomancer on November 23, 2007 at 4:50 pm

I'm not saying it's universal over here, but I just don't get that impression in the UK. Only the craziest howling nutcases over here would say something like that, and the moderates would scorn them for doing so.

I suspect it would be quite easy to get elected Prime Minister as an open Atheist over here.

1198. You can't be moral without God!

Comment #90240 by Cartomancer on November 23, 2007 at 4:23 pm

Actually, to be fair to the man, even Augustine had some good things to say. I think this one is particularly appropriate for the current thread, and highly ironic given Augustine's stance on the disorderly nature of human morals:

"Dilige, et quod vis fac" - Love, and do what you will" (In. Ep. Iohan. Ad. Parthos viii. 8)

1199. You can't be moral without God!

Comment #90234 by Cartomancer on November 23, 2007 at 4:03 pm

Ugh! It seems to me that Tibor is another one of these "zombie theists" as I call them in honour of the horror film staple. They keep getting bits shot out of them, limbs chopped off and lumps hacked from their thin, shrivelled bodies again and again and again. But still they keep coming at you! And they want nothing but to eat your brains and make you like them!

And just like zombies they're pretty pathetic on their own but extremely dangerous in massive shambling hordes.

Anyway, our do-it-yourself zombie theist said....

"This is exactly what I'm saying. :) If you read back you'll find that I haven't said that there must be an absolute moral standard. I just said that goodness is a quality so 'planet morality' either exists or there is nothing in the universe that has that quality. :) I accept that it is possible that morality doesn't exist, but I don't accept that morality is an emotion. The same goes for beauty, but not for love."

Well well, we do seem to be making some progress at least. So morality as an objective "quality" either exists or it doesn't? It is possible that morality as a "quality" is just a figment of your and many other people's imaginations? That was where my comparison with coming from the planet Vulcan comes in - I wasn't being flippant, there is no difference whatsoever between my argument and yours. So how do we determine whether such a quality actually exists and should be discussed under the communal realm of "fact" or does not exist and should be relegated to the realm of "fiction". Well, we use the only procedure humankind has ever had for determining the likelihood of propositions - the scientific method. That means evidence I'm afraid, and you have none of that whatsoever.

I can see why this does not faze you however. You actually think like a medieval scholastic theologian! As a historian of medieval scholasticism I am very excited by this of course - I thought you all died out in the fifteenth century, I might get some kind of award for demonstrating that you still exist! However, the sort of logic that got you by in the thirteenth century really doesn't cut the mustard today, and many of your terms come straight from the schoolrooms of early Paris and Oxford.

Your understanding of the term "Quality" for instance. I don't know if you're aware of it but it comes straight out of Aristotle's Topics, Categories and metaphysics. Vintage c. 330BCE. If told to you would probably also believe in hylomorphism, substantial and accidental forms, the Great Chain of Being, per se and per accidens causality, terminist logic and all the other things that got John Duns Scotus hot and horny of an afternoon.

"quality" is not a definitive metaphysical term anymore. These days when we say something has a quality we do not mean that it has some positive attribute which is the same everywhere from the same source and coded as a basic instruction into the mathematical fabric of reality. All we mean is that we recognise that it shows characteristics consonant with the words we apply, and as such compare it to other cases we find similar. "Blueness" for instance, to take an earlier example. The medievals would have posited a specific "form of blue", a "caerulitas" if you will, and said that it inheres in all blue things (as a quality projected over prime-matter-signed-by-quantity, blah blah blah). We know today that blueness is simply caused by a certain wavelength of visible light that comes to our eyes. Inasmuch as a surface is blue it is because it reflects that wavelength of light more than the others. "Blueness" is simply an arrangement of atoms. Take atoms arranged for "pinkness" and shift them about a bit and, hey presto, you've got "blueness". No metaphyscial buggery-pokery involved. So much simpler.

Similarly, take "goodness" and try to think about it in modern terms. An act which seems "good" to you seems so not because there is some intrinsic "bonitas" lurking in the act or the person performing that act (there isn't. We've looked. We didn't find any) but because that act registers in our brains, fits in with certain patterns of behaviour that we recognise, and triggers the ancient moral instincts which derive from group behaviours. Just as "blueness" comes from an arrangement of atoms, so "goodness" comes from an arrangement of events. Why do we broadly agree, then, on what is good? Because we are all 99.9% identical as far as our genes go. We all have the same instincts. So do most animals in some form or another. Modern Biology predicts it should be so and, lo and behold, it is.

If your weird pseudo-medieval version of events were true then how do you explain why we recognise images of people doing good things as showing good behaviour? Surely there is none of your intrinsic qualitative "bonitas" in pencils, paint or pixels for us to pick up on, so why does an image of "good" behaviour on canvas or a computer screen trigger the moral response? Let me save you looking up Aquinas' theories of cognition and memory in the Summa Contra Gentiles and tell you flat out that they don't work for this under modern debating conditions either.

Oh, and I'd like to point out at this juncture that Aquinas actually stole his solution to the Euthyphro problem from Augustine. Probably waiting on a fresh shipment of pies to cram into his distended dominican gullet and couldn't be bothered to think up an original piece of convoluted semantic contortionism for himself.

Shakespeare had it right. There is nothing good nor ill in all the world but thinking makes it so. And yes, this probably was a direct response to the scholastic view of morality which predominated up to his time, and still seems to have drawn you in with its ponderous, wordy sorceries.

As for Beauty and Love, what else can they be but instinctive or learned emotional responses to contemplation of physical phenomena? Aristotelian "formositas" and "amabilitas" perhaps? Got any evidence? Are you going to try to dredge up Plato's arguments on the unity of the Goods and the Form of Good now? Objective divinely dictated aesthetics? Pull the other one! How does instinctive or learned emotional response not account fully for either of these phenomena? I love a boy called James. To my eyes he is the most beautiful creature in the world. Nobody else seems to think this way however. Does this mean I have an impaired capacity in my anima sensitiva to pick up the species of formositas emanating from him? Do I have an enhanced capacity to pick them up? Or could it just possibly be that beauty is an entirely subjective response to sense data and unique to each individual? Again, we can establish common ground where the subjective responses converge, but the instinctive basis they are formed on and the upbringing recieved by the individuals concerned is usually very similar. Why is it that Europeans generally find European art more beautiful than Aboriginal Australian or Aztec art for instance? I'll stick my neck out and say that ideas of beauty are generally more influenced by culture than ideas of basic morality, but even then it's not easy to say.

So you see, by abandoning your anachronistic medieval prejudices and thinking like a modern human being for a change the morality problem is solved. All those moral dilemmas can remain moral dilemmas and you don't need any silly ideas about Ultimate Goodness to make reality intelligible. I know it seems so powerful and real to you, but the impression of design seemed so powerful and real to most people until Darwin. Looks like design so it must be. Surely? Darwin proved that it wasn't. It's the same thing here - feels like absolute rules, surely it must be? I mean, we can all agree on the basics, and these rules actually work to regulate our societies. It must be the work of some transcendent divine sky-tyrant surely? No, not at all - there is a perfectly good evolutionary explanation for it all that makes the sky tyrant seem at worst spectacularly unparsimonious and at best just plain silly these days. Looks like yet another thing Darwin's dangerous idea did for us.

1200. You can't be moral without God!

Comment #90184 by Cartomancer on November 23, 2007 at 9:48 am

One can describe objects as "coming from the planet Vulcan" if they want. Coming from the planet Vulcan is a quality, not an impression. Whatever anyone thinks about the origins of a particular Vulcan vase is immaterial, it either came from Vulcan or it didn't. Ergo the planet Vulcan must exist and its green-blooded, pointy-eared denizens (who are definitionally Vulcan and make the planet itself Vulcan) must be real too.

Why is the planet Morality any different? Just because we can conceive of it does not mean that it exists. There is not one atom of Goodness in the universe, not one molecule of Justice, not one ounce of Happiness that you could put in a test tube and label with its atomic weight (435 if you were wondering).

You are convinced that Goodness must be a quality of matter from the following thought process:

1: You have an evolved impression of what is beneficial to the survival of your genes, which you label goodness, and it seems a very powerful conviction to you.

2. You assume that this goodness must be a quality inherent in things rather than your own personal interpretation and analysis of their actual qualities to the extent they affect you. In doing this I strongly suspect you are influenced by religious and folkloric ideas of goodness and false analogies with less problematic phenomena such as colour - you assume they must be the same sorts of things rather than determine that they are from any subjective mental process.

3. You can't find any evidence of physcial Goodness in the world around you, but you are still emotionally convinced that it exists. Thus you assume that there must exist non-physical entities and label them with silly but important-sounding names like Transcendence, God etc.

4. Plug in carefully chosen bits of bronze age nonsense to taste and you're away.

If your conclusions at stage 2 are correct then what you did at stage 3 is logical and consistent. If however they are not correct then stage 3 does not even arise. What you have failed to do is check your conclusion that morality must be an objective quality and assess all the options. All you have to base your conclusion that it is objective on are your own emotional hankerings - if you can see that love and beauty are not objective but subjective, why can you not see the same for morality? Love inheres in beings as much as goodness does - we love a particular person rather than others. Your argument for why morality is different could apply just as much to love.

When you abandon the unecessary baggage of objective morals, god, theology, transcendence and all that rubbish (Ockham's Razor claims another prize) what you are left with is the same confusing, nuanced and difficult moral situation (do you kill one innocent person to save another? do you kill one innocent person to save ten others? and all the genuine moral conundrums we face) but, and here's the thing, now all those moral conundrums DON'T HAVE TO HAVE A SIMPLE AND SATISFYING ANSWER. The very existence of moral conundrums which we cannot solve is good evidence that morality is not a perfect, streamlined, sophisticated absolute.

So stop using language like "but lots of people get away with it easily". Of course they get away with it! There is no divine metaphysical police force to stop them - just the checks and balances they have evolved and later thought up for themselves. Similarly, it doesn't MATTER that our evolved moral instincts are not perfect. Our evolved digestive system is not perfect but we don't go around positing some kind of Original Constipation foist on us to explain that do we?