I Got Tagged OMGLOLWTFBBQ!

Apparently this atheist meme-tag is getting around quick. I alone have been tagged like 5 times this week! The first one to tag me was BEAST of Atheist Haven.

So without further ado, I give you my meme-tag response:

The rules for meme tagging are as follows:

1. We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.

2. Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.

3. People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.

4. At the end of your blog post, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.

5. Don't forget to leave them a comment telling them they're tagged, and to read your blog.

Here are my 8 facts:

1. I have a mild form of Asperger Syndrome, which has given me all kinds of quirks: I learned to read by age 4 and scored very high on standardized tests, but I had lots of behavior problems. I talk too loud, too fast, and too much. I tend to take things literally, and I have excessive amounts of energy. As a child I was absolutely obsessed with airplanes, and to this day I can recite all kinds of obscure aerospace facts. Nowadays I'm obsessed with politics, religion, and cars.

2. I am left-handed, but right-thumbed.

3. I am a Market Anarchist (although my regular readers probably know this already). Market Anarchy is the idea that the only just interaction is a voluntary one, and the only moral social framework is one that is entirely free market, with no room for governments, taxes, enforced monopolies, etc.

4. My favorite blog is Jesus' General.

5. I used to be a devout Lutheran (and my grandpa was a Mormon). I went to church every Sunday, I attended Bible study, and I was in the church youth group. I was even a member of the Boy Scout troop that met at the church, where I reached the rank of Star Scout and did lots of camping trips, including two 50-mile hikes.

6. My favorite band is Tool, and my favorite DJ is Ferry Corsten.

7. Christianity had such a stranglehold on my mind that for the first few months after my deconversion to atheism, I was literally terrified that God was going to cast me to Hell for not being able to believe in him anymore! I know it sounds crazy to be afraid of the wrath of something that you recently realized doesn't exist, but that's how strong my Christian brainwashing was. It was some kind of mental compartmentalization. I really didn't want to become an atheist, but I just couldn't help it. My self-honesty was too relentless and too demanding.

8. If I could have one wish, I would wish to travel 5000 years into the future. Wheeee!

So it looks like everyone I want to tag has already been tagged. I will hunt around and find some people to tag, but finding 8 might be tricky.

New Offspring Murder Club Member: Chris Benoit

Chris Benoit, WWE star, was recently found dead in his home along with his wife and 7 year old son.

The police have not officially revealed a motive, but here at Kill The Afterlife, we have a pretty good idea at what it was:

Pro wrestler Chris Benoit strangled his wife, suffocated his 7-year-old son and placed a Bible next to their bodies before hanging himself with a weight-machine pulley, authorities said Tuesday.

Now why in the world would Mr. Benoit place a Bible next to their bodies? Could it have anything to do with his belief in God, and the afterlife in particular?

Yes.

In Chris Benoit's mind, he delivered two (or three if he counts himself) souls to paradise. In Chris Benoit's mind, placing the Bible next to those bodies was like raising the United States flag on the island of Iwo Jima. In Chris Benoit's mind, this is a victory for Christ.

Congratulations to Chris Benoit, the latest inductee into the world-famous Offspring Murder Club!

I wonder if the WWE is going to give him a golden belt for this Godly victory?

EDITED TO ADD: The WWE is declaring that Benoit recently tested clean for steroids (as of April 10, 2007), and that the murders appear to have been deliberate and planned, and not a case of "roid rage."

Michael Egnor is Retarded

Michael Egnor, Discovery Institute warrior extraordinaire, believes that thoughts are immaterial:

P.Z. Myers' reply to my observation that ideas like altruism have no physical properties, like location, leaves a thoughtful observer to wonder: why do materialists have so much difficulty with this basic philosophical principle? It’s clear that ideas share no properties with matter. Ideas have no mass, or length, or temperature, or location. They’re immaterial. Clearly, under ordinary circumstances the brain is necessary for our ideas to exist, but, because matter and ideas share no properties, it’s hard to see how the brain is sufficient for ideas to exist.

Yes, and the magnetic charges on your hard drive have no mass, length, temperature, or location. I’m also quite sure that the electrons traveling through your brain also have no mass, length, temperature, or location.

Imagine that we can do complete split brain operations. We can separate the hemispheres of the brain completely, and not just partially as we can do now with corpus callosotomies. We can then further subdivide the tissue, keeping the brain parts biologically alive, in quarters, eighths, etc. Ignoring for the time being what would happen to the person’s consciousness (which brain part would mediate the first person experience of the original person, if any?), what would happen to the original person’s altruism? Would each one-eighth brain have one-eighth the altruism? Would each lobe contribute one-eighth of the previous brain’s annual contribution to the United Way? Would the altruism stay in one of the lobes- the left occipital lobe, and leave the other lobes heartless? What if we kept dividing? Is there an altruism neuron? The question seems nonsensical. Altruism, as an idea, doesn’t have ‘parts’. Unlike matter, ideas can’t be divided or localized.

Yes, and next lets open up my USB memory stick and "look" for the electronic documents stored within it. Ooops! I can't see my excel spreadsheets stored on my USB memory stick when I disassemble the thing! I guess that means that my excel files have no mass, length, temperature, or location.

In everyday life, the brain is clearly necessary for ideas, but there are good reasons to think that that brain is not sufficient to cause ideas. This observation is very old; philosophers from Plato to Aquinas to Descartes to Popper and Eccles have known it. Myers seems not even to understand this basic paradox of the mind-body problem. The materialist assertion that ideas are caused entirely by brain matter, with no need for the existence of a soul or other incorporeal substance, is philosophically and scientifically incoherent. It is a materialistic dogma, an act of faith.

Of course! It makes perfect sense! The brain is not sufficient to cause ideas! And neither is my computer sufficient to process data and store it on flash memory! God has been doing it all along!

Michael Egnor is an absolute fucking retard. Thoughts are no more immaterial than data on a computer disk. Does a materialist view of the functions of a wristwatch, or a cellphone, require some crazy leap of faith?

UPDATE: PZ Myers provides a far better analysis than I can.

Austin Cline on Mind vs. Brain

While I often enjoy writing about the absurdity of a non-physical and eternal consciousness or soul, I enjoy reading other people's thoughts on the matter even more. One person who's thoughts on the matter I particularly respect and enjoy is Austin Cline of Atheism.about.com. Austin recently visited the mind vs. brain topic, and provided a perfect application of his own sharp analysis to the confused and jumbled thoughts of others:

Where the real "action" will be in the coming years is with the debate over mind-brain dualism. Are our minds and consciousness products of our physical brains, or are they products of some immaterial force traditionally associated with or identified as a supernatural "soul"? Although the science is not yet as unequivocal as with biological evolution, the fact remains that all evidence points to our minds being purly physical and material; no reliable evidence points to any immaterial souls. As with evolution, though, this doesn't stop religous ideologues.

Niiiiiiiice! Austin just declared afterlife assassination to be the next great frontier in the atheism war. This, of course, flatters me greatly. I've discovered myself to be a bit of a trendsetter at times; I took up the atheist cause a few years before the big names started clogging the New York Times bestseller list with atheistic tomes. I took up the anarchist cause a year or two back, and it seems poised for a popularity explosion as well. Let's hope that Austin proves to be correct, and that the next big frontier is the afterlife, and not God himself. Then again, in this way I will be a trailblazer with my beloved Kill The Afterlife blog.

All right, enough stroking my own ego. I do apologize. Now I don't want to give Austin’s entire article away; you'll have to go read it for yourselves. But I will reveal that Austin provides some JP Moreland quotes, dissects them with the sharpest scalpel in the drawer, and performs a long overdue surgical removal of the vestigial organ that is belief in a separate and eternal soul. I will quote just one more piece of Austin's essay, in which he challenges JP Moreland's assumption that God is the single most important component of a person's worldview:

I don't know JP Moreland, but I'm willing to accept that the question of the existence of his god is the "single most important component" of his "deep belief-structure."

For some reason, though, Moreland isn't willing to accord the same respect and consideration to atheists by allowing that perhaps the existence of his god just isn't important to us — or at least it wouldn't if people like Moreland wouldn't keep bugging others about it. Atheism isn't "the single most important component" of my beliefs and doesn't inform anything I do except insofar as it means that I don't consult any self-proclaimed representatives of alleged gods who want to tell me what their god thinks I should be doing.

Religious Counseling is a Catalyst for Suicide

This one comes from my hometown. Way back in 1979, some poor depressed kid named Kenneth Nally put a gun to his head and blew his brains out.

But what makes this suicide special is what Kenneth did in the events leading up to his suicide. He looked for counseling from one Reverend John MacArthur, the pastor of Grace Community Church in Los Angeles. MacArthur has lots of Biblical knowledge and training, but no psychological training. And when the depressed Kenneth Nally asked the Godly Reverend if he would go to heaven if he were to commit suicide, the Reverend replied:

Oh yes, you would go on home to the Lord.

Hallelujah! Jesus saves! Go blow your brains out and bask in the glorious bliss!

What a motherfucker, that Reverend John MacArthur.

So Kenneth's parents sued the church and lost. And when asked in retrospect about what he thinks went wrong with the counseling of Kenneth, Pastor MacArthur has this to say:

I don't think we went wrong at all. We have absolutely no regrets. My regret is that Ken Nally took his life.

But of course there's nothing wrong with telling a teenager with a death wish that you will end up in heaven, provided that you really believe that bullshit fantasy.

When asked if he thinks he provided good quality counseling, MacArthur replied:

Yes, I think it was exactly the kind of counseling we always do. We've done it with thousands upon thousands of people.

...

We simply approach the issues spiritually. We don't refer them to psychologists or psychiatrists or whatever. We don't attempt to deal with them in those terms. The only real transforming, life-changing guidance is that which God provides through his word to his people. Anything else is going to be the wisdom of man, not the wisdom of God.

And the Godly wisdom that Pastor MacArthur spreads to his flock is this: Blow your brains out and experience total bliss for all eternity in fluffy, happy heaven!

So you see, it’s all very simple. Kenneth got the best of all possible outcomes. And can you imagine what would have happened had Kenneth gotten secular help without any spiritual help? It would have been a disaster!

Kenneth is now in heaven thanks to the diligent efforts of the dear Reverend MacAsshat (oh whoops I mean MacArthur). Kenneth got himself some spiritual help, but no secular help, and now he is in heavenly bliss.

But if Kenneth acquired secular help, and not spiritual help, he instead would be alive in this fallen Earthly realm, suffering in sin, and "spiritually" dead inside (whatever the fuck that means).

So, clearly, this was another win for God and the afterlife!

Superstition Plus Sweatbox Equals Death

While I have authored many a blog post criticizing the afterlife beliefs of Abrahamic religion, it is well known that there are many other varieties of afterlife belief and hocus pocus nonsense. Logically, these other flavors of superstition (which include their own versions of a mind-body disconnection doctrine) should be just as hazardous to your health as the mainstream beliefs.

And they are.

Case in point: Rowan Douglas Cooke, a voodoo-schmoodoo hokey-pokey new ager from Australia, died a horrible death back in 2004 because of his belief in a not as popular - but just as deadly - afterlife/spiritual belief. But to be more technical, it wasn't his belief in this bullshit that got him killed so much as the fact that the people around him also believed in this crap, and didn't take the right actions when warning signs appeared.

News.com.au has more:

Rowan Douglas Cooke, from Melbourne, died on November 3, 2004, hours after he was dragged unconscious from a makeshift sweat lodge constructed on a creekbed in the Gammon Ranges in South Australia's far north.

Mr Cooke had been camping with 10 other Victorians on Yankaninna Station, 325km north of Port Augusta, for a "vision quest", where people fast, meditate and purify themselves in an attempt to see visions.

He had entered the 1.2m high dome - made of 16 bent poles, covered in blankets and heated by hot volcanic rocks - about midnight to meditate but collapsed some hours later.

In evidence before the inquest into Mr Cooke's death this week, South Australian deputy coroner Anthony Schapel heard that as the 37-year-old lay dying from extreme dehydration his fellow campers began to chant and play drums to revive him, believing he was astral-traveling.

This is the perfect example of superstitious morons seeing shit that isn't there. Their friend is having a serious medical episode, and these bozos think that he's simply having a spiritual experience! They can't tell the difference between a meditative trance and massive dehydration! They confuse comas and seizures for astral projection!

In his finding today Mr Schapel referred to the foolhardiness of conducting a ritual of this nature in the manner and circumstances employed.

He was critical of the time it took for those involved to get help for the dying man and said it had not occurred to anyone that emergency assistance might be required, given the intrinsic dangers of the sweat lodge ceremony.

But he said the "critical factor" was the extreme beliefs of the group.

"It has to be placed on the public record that the extreme nature of some of those beliefs, as revealed by the evidence that I heard, played a significant role in the failure to secure timely and appropriate medical attention for the deceased," Mr Schapel said.

...

"However, much of the above tends to pale somewhat when it is remembered that the one thing that really stood in the way of the deceased obtaining timely medical help was the belief system entertained by the group that held the deceased was simply experiencing some kind of detachment from his physical being."

Astral projection, spirits, ghosts, angels, demons, pixie dust, faeries, witchcraft, amulets, blessings, curses, God, and especially the afterlife ARE ALL BULLSHIT!

Kill The Afterlife, not Australians.

The Only Moral Abortion is a Christian Abortion

Equine Shine has a jaw dropping blog post about the hypocrisy of the anti-choice movement. Equine Shine highlights some of the best testimonies from Joyce Arthur's article "The Only Moral Abortion is My Abortion" of doctors who provide abortion services and some of the strange encounters they have had.

Feast on the craziness:

“I have done several abortions on women who have regularly picketed my clinics, including a 16 year old schoolgirl who came back to picket the day after her abortion, about three years ago... Next morning she was with her mother and several school mates in front of the clinic with the usual anti posters and chants. It appears that she got the abortion she needed and still displayed the appropriate anti views expected of her by her parents, teachers, and peers.”

"...She told me that she had been offended by the other women in the abortion clinic waiting room because they were using abortion as a form of birth control, but her condom had broken so she had no choice! I had real difficulty not pointing out that she did have a choice, and she had made it! Just like the other women in the waiting room.”

“I once had a German client who greatly thanked me at the door, leaving after a difficult 22-week abortion. With a gleaming smile, she added: ‘Und doch sind Sie ein Mörderer.’ (‘And you’re still a murderer.’)”

Absolutely unbelievable!

Why is it that when I read these stories of anti-choice women getting abortions, I get the feeling that, fundamentally, they are following the same self-hating and hypocritical pattern of those male Christians who rail against gays, then turn around and pay to suck dick?

Horribly Awkward First Sexual Encounter 'Worth The Wait' For Christian Newlyweds

This is why waiting until marriage before sex sucks. From TheOnion.com:

"I'm so glad we waited until we got married—it made it so much more special," said the 26-year-old Linda, who is "pretty sure" John's penis penetrated her vaginal opening during the brief, fumbling lovemaking session. "I can't imagine what a letdown our first sexual experience would have been if we'd done it at some point during our five years of dating."

...

After an estimated 45 minutes spent in prayer and devotionals to ensure the smoothest possible act of coitus, John made sure the windows and doors were all securely locked, and that all windowshades and blinds were closed. He then reached to his nightstand to turn out the lights "to contribute to the feeling of romance" and "because Linda refused to let me touch her nightgown until the room was completely dark."

It only gets funnier (and possibly more pathetic). You gotta go read the whole thing.

Christopher Hitchens in Los Angeles

I've been rather busy this week, and unfortunately don't have much time to post. But I can at least share with you a recent interview with the "so hot right now" Christopher Hitchens, conducted by the LA Weekly:

I would think it was a bad thing if the species was destroyed by an apocalyptic weapon, but I can’t see how any religious believer would think it was such a bad thing. To them it’s not a tragedy — it can’t be. They’ve repeatedly said so.