Diocese Bankruptcy Count: 4

The Catholic Diocese of Davenport filed for bankruptcy last week:

DAVENPORT, Iowa (CNS) -- The Diocese of Davenport is now the fourth Catholic diocese in the United States to file for bankruptcy protection because of sex abuse lawsuits it faces.

Oh how the mighty have fallen. Or rather, are falling. I expect many more bankruptcy filings in the coming years from the Cathylicks and other Christian cults. Maybe this is one instance, unlike the red scare, where the domino theory actually applies?

Years ago I had a roommate who worked at Calvary Community Church. He was eventually fired for being an agnostic (religious discrimination employment laws don't apply to churches), but before that happened, he told me that there was a sex scandal that took place with one of the pastors who worked there. Unfortunately I don't remember if it was a homosexual or heterosexual scandal, but it was definitely pedophilic.

The funny (or scary) thing was that my former roommate recalled a church counselor or official of some kind as saying in response to the sex scandal that, "this kind of thing doesn't happen here... not at this church."

Wrong, scumbag! It does happen and it did happen, at this very church! If I recall correctly, the sex scandal was kept relatively under wraps and hush/settlement money was paid out.

It’s a shame too, because I would have loved to see Calvary Community Church file for bankruptcy. Their facility is located right off the 101 freeway and their huge torture device (cross) is easily visible from the freeway. Not to mention that their attached high school looks like a minimum-security prison. Their cross, and their entire facility, is ugly as sin. I've seen more aesthetic looking crosses in The Passion of the Christ. The only church I've seen in the Los Angeles area that compares to Calvary in ugly factor is the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in downtown. Babyshit brown, huh? Who chose that color, Jesus?

I would just love to see a church in the Los Angeles area file for bankruptcy due to a pedophilic sex scandal. It doesn't have to be Catholic, hell it doesn't even have to be Christian! Any Abrahamic institution is good enough for me.

Oh holy Flying Spaghetti Monster, please grant me this prayer. May your noodly appendage serve up hot steamy dishes of your marinara-flavored justice.

RAmen.

Even More Evidence That Christianity Views Women as the Property of Men

Craig Sowder, a Christian blogger and all around nice guy, has recently written about the ideas expressed in a book written by another Christian named Doug Wilson.

In his book, Doug Wilson writes about how a Christian man should go about finding a wife. Craig sums up Wilson's ideas of Christian courting by saying:

Wilson has written a little book called Her Hand in Marriage where he explains that, from a Biblical perspective, the father has authority over the daughter, and that an interested young man should approach the father before he ever approaches the daughter about courtship. If the father approves, the young man can begin spending time with his daughter under the supervision of the family. As time goes on, the two can begin spending more time alone together. But throughout the entire process, the father is the authority over the daughter.

Craig says that while he has a bone to pick with Wilson over specifics, he doesn't necessarily disagree with Wilson's general message.

To Craig's (partial) credit, he does say this in response to Wilson's views on women:

Sure, that all sounds good and everything until you actually try doing it that way. I would be willing to bet that if I walked up to the father of a girl I was interested in at church and said, "I'm interested in getting to know your daughter", the father would probably say, "Okay… she's standing right over there, so why don't you go talk to her?" Wilson might say that the father isn't doing his job, but the reality is that, right or wrong, this is the way things work in 21st century American culture.

Notice that while Craig accepts the reality of today's (post-Christian) world as not working that way, he doesn't actually disagree with Wilson's view that "women = property":

Now, as I said, I do believe Wilson's philosophy or vision for Christian courtship and marriage is a good one, so I don't want to give the impression that I disagree with it in theory.

Every time I read anything from a Christian about women, and every time I read any historical or news source concerning Christian treatment of women, the ownership concept is all over the place. What I mean is, that Christian women are owned at all times by someone other than themselves. Either they are owned by God, or their father, or their husband, or even a combination of these! But at any rate, the poor women are constantly treated as property.

But when Christians encounter my charge of sexism and maltreatment of the status of women, they disagree quite vocally. They say that not all Christians agree about this, and that I'm taking things out of context, or adhering to a narrow fundamentalist view of Christianity.

Yet again, I have to call bullshit. Ownership of women is so incredibly widespread in liberal, conservative, and moderate Christian circles, that I've yet to see a single Christian write against the idea. And believe me, I do read a lot of Christian writing. When I read religious/atheist blogs (and I do quite often) about half of my reading is done on Christian blogs, the other half is for atheist blogs. And this is probably the 1000th time I've read some Christian view about women not having ownership over their own person. I've yet to read anything from a Christian who says that a father or husband doesn't own their daughter or wife.

Would I ever accept a doctrine of my mother owning me and a woman having to ask my mother permission to court me? Hell no. And would I ever ask a father permission to court his daughter? Hell no. It's not his choice; its his daughter's choice. If I wanted to court a woman, it would be because I respect her as an equal, and my equals own themselves. It would be an insult to the woman to ask her father and to treat her like a commodity or piece of property.

I don't court pieces of property. I respect myself too much. I court women who are my equal. And I consider women my equal because I am not some chauvinistic insecure sexist bastard. I don't want to marry a piece of property. I want to marry an equal, where the respect and admiration and love between us is equal.

Craig, again to his credit, has experienced both Christian and non-Christian social environments. Craig couldn't ignore the reality of the situation when he compared Christian women to non-Christian women:

let me tell you that Christian women need to take a few lessons from non-Christian women. The non-Christian women I've been around over the years are not afraid to get into relationships with men and actually arrive at conclusions about men far more quickly than Christian women. Sometimes I don't think Christian women will go out for a cup of coffee with a guy without some kind of sign in the heavens telling them to go for it.

I literally LOL'ed at this. I think Craig may have accidentally revealed a bit too much about the detrimental effects that accepting an other-ownership doctrine can have in the mind of a young woman. Craig says here in no uncertain terms that non-Christian women are much more of what a woman should be: thinking for themselves, and taking responsibility for themselves.

Incidentally, Craig's blog is called "Autonomy is Madness," yet he quite clearly is praising secular women for their autonomy, while lamenting the lack of autonomy in Christian women. Craig has also expressed multiple times in the past that he thinks that Christian women are crazy.

So is autonomy madness, or is it the reverse? Craig is obviously implying that the reverse of his blog title's message is true, yet he doesn't seem to realize it. Craig can't seem to see the big picture here - that his religion is detrimental to the social lives of both male and female Christians. The Christian singles simply can't compete with the secular ones.

Anyway, where is the "women own themselves" Christian view? Where can I find the writings of a Christian who says that men do not own women, and that both men and women are equal in the sight of God? Where are the Christian writings that say that the father does not own the maiden, or that the husband does not own the wife?

And perhaps more importantly, where is the Biblical support for a "husband does not own the wife" Christian view?

Obviously the "women are property" Christian view is fucking up the lives of the Christian youth, and they are watching their secular peers live much happier, more fulfilling social and romantic lives, in general. I know that I sure am!

Thanks to Dr. Zachary Moore for writing about this first and bringing this to my attention.

Inquisition: Damning Evidence of Abrahamic Atrocities Towards Women

Austin Cline from atheism.about.com has an excellent picture and accompanying article about the sexual torture used by inquisitors during the witch hunts of the past.

Among other atrocities, the inquisitors used to look for supernatural tits:

Inquisitors were also quick to search for the purported "witches' tits," blemishes which were supposed to be extra nipples used by witches to suckle demons. If the men interrogating the witches were to become aroused, it was assumed that the desire originated not in them, but instead was a projection from the women.

What fun is it for a male authority figure to go through the trouble of torturing and killing a bunch of women if you don't get to fondle some tits and put hot pokers on vaginas in the process?

At least these inquisitors were more preoccupied with adult female sex organs than prepubescent male sex organs. But on the other hand, modern day anally raped altar boys didn’t get burned at the stake after the assault. I can't decide which is worse... I guess they are both equally bad.

The Bible reinforces and legitimizes violence, cruelty, and inhumanity towards women. I've had a number of Christians tell me that only an incorrect interpretation of the Bible allows for this horrible treatment of women.

Bullshit! Next thing you know, we will be hearing Neo-Nazis insisting that Hitler "hijacked" true Naziism through incorrect interpretation.

Britain: Immigrants, Old People Keep Church on Life Support

It is no secret that lip service to faith is in serious short supply in Europe. Churches in Britain particularly have been bitching about decreased church attendance for years now (which obviously carries with it collection plates that are less filled).

Well it seems that the British preachers are reaching for any good news they can get. Immigrants from Africa and senior citizens are slowing the hemorrhage of bodies from the pews, at least temporarily:

One of the biggest surveys among Britain's 37,000 churches, published today, finds that the growth of immigrant-led churches has partly offset dwindling congregations elsewhere.

The news will cheer Church leaders. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, said the phenomenon was having a healthy impact on mainstream Churches.

So immigrants and minorities are getting their pray on. But the whites continue to be less and less keen on Jesus. You know, in Britain, for the most part, whites are more wealthy and educated than the minorities. Why do I get the feeling that significant part of this church attendance difference is based not on ethnic, but on income/class lines? It would be hard to figure it out without prying into everyone's income levels, but I bet that at least a big chunk of this minority/white attendance discrepancy is merely a side effect of an income-and-education-level-based discrepancy.

By the way, click on the link to see a picture of Dr. Rowan Williams. The guy's hairstyle and beard make him look like a cross between a mad scientist and a skinny Santa Claus. It's truly a baffling sight. I don't think that look has been in style anytime since the 1800s!

But enough ad hominem. Even this little morsel of good news for the church is laced with cyanide:

But the survey also shows that congregations are getting older as young people continue to abandon the pews, which could have a devastating impact in a decade.

...

The research, based on questionnaires from 19,000 churches, finds that 29 per cent of churchgoers are 65 or over compared with 16 per cent of the population.

It also finds that nine per cent of churches have no one aged under 11 in their congregations.

This statistic implies that the light at the end of the tunnel is more likely the hot white light of worldly secularism and materialistic atheism. Of course, no other proverbial light bulb shines as bright as the light bulb of atheism, and accordingly, when allowed to shine, it drowns out the black lights of theism with its radiance.

And that's why the youth in Europe are particularly averse to getting on their knees and opening their mouths (and wallets) for Jesus. In a secular world, you get to fuck real humans and spend your money on yourself. Theism simply can't compete.

The old people in Britain cling to the church the way Strom Thurmond clung to racism. He's dead now, and the old British ninnies will be dead soon as well. It looks like across the western world, these concepts of Jesus and Original Sin will die off with the old, just like sexism and racism have done. Who nowadays thinks that slavery is just, or that women shouldn't vote? Only fringe lunatics, poor ignorant trash, and old farts from a by-gone era think like that.

The future for Britain looks bright. These unchurched youth will eventually take the reigns of their homeland, and rule it without false values like racism, sexism, nationalism, and theism. When these youth are all grown up and working in the media, they will write articles about low church attendance with a positive slant, instead of an alarmist slant. They will refer to Christianity as a mythology from a more ignorant time.

But what of the immigrants? Well that depends on how much they can integrate and progress in Britain's society. If they are treated more inclusively by the whites, and given fair opportunity to increase their security and happiness and such, then these immigrants' children will likely follow the secular path that their more-well-off white peers did a generation before. Prosperity = less churchin'.

But perhaps most importantly, the future of Britain will have less Dr. Rowan Williams mad scientist hairstyles.

The Interview With God

Theist: Naked Women Worse than Bombs

Indonesian Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Ba'asyir recently declared that images of naked women on television are worse to society than the Bali nightclub bombings of 2002:

Ba'asyir, who was released from jail on June 14 after serving 26 months for his involvement in the 2002 Bali bombing that killed 202 people, said pornography was more damaging because it destroyed people's morality.

"So if you ask me which one is more dangerous, nude women or the Bali bombs, then my answer would be the women showing off their skin," he said as quoted by Antara.

According to this guy, pornography destroys morality, but bombs don't, and destroying morality is worse than destroying people. Of course, this guy is wrong on all counts.

Seeing naked human female bodies does not destroy a person's ability to determine what is a moral or immoral action. Indeed, people with active sex lives and easy access to sexually stimulating material tend to report feelings of satisfaction and release. People who act mean, bitchy, uptight, or otherwise grumpy are often described behind their backs as in need of a good fuck. People report tensions and stress being released from their bodies immediately after they have a sexual release, even one that is achieved through the viewing of images of naked human females.

So this cleric's morality and porn premise is basically unsupported, as well as contradicted by a collection of reports of the personal experiences of numerous individuals. As I've said before, indulgence leads to healthy expression, while repression leads to unhealthy compulsion.

But more disturbing is this man's belief that bombs somehow do not destroy morality... or at least that they do not destroy morality as much as images of naked human females do. I must contend that bombs destroy morality and much more! Even if porn were to destroy Joe Smith's morality (which it doesn't), a bomb will literally and physically destroy Joe Smith in his entirety, not just his morality.

And what worldview is it that enables Ba'asyir to make such perverse and backwards statements about morality and destruction? It is Abrahamic Theism!

Abrahamic Theism is by far the most popular form of afterlife-belief in the world today. This includes the big three religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. All of their respective holy books declare in no uncertain terms that a woman is worth less than a man. All of their holy books treat the consent of a woman with complete silence, as if it doesn't exist. All of their holy books put restrictions on a woman's appearance and behavior as if it were their fault that men tend to sexually assault them; as if the woman is to blame for being the object of a man's lust.

Applying these concepts to the Bali nightclub bombings, we can envision and evaluate two scenarios:

1) A video of a naked human female is displayed in a nightclub. What happens to the clubbers when they encounter this event?

2) A bomb is detonated in a nightclub. What happens to the clubbers when they encounter this event?

Which scenario will produce the "immoral" results? Which scenario will produce "anti-life" results?

Abrahamic theists just love to attack anyone that expresses sexual pro-life sentiments, because their moral system is ass-backwards. And clubbers are the perfect target, as General JC Christian, Patriot, so cunningly discovered not too long ago.

The act of sex is the expression of life-oriented values. The act of violence is the expression of death-oriented values. Anyone who supports violence, especially as being more "moral" than sexuality, is unmistakably at the height of the anti-life mindset. That person is evil to the core, and wants to destroy himself by proxy through the destruction of the very thing that created him: hot steamy sex.

Abu Bakar Ba'asyir's abhorrent statements bring new meaning and relevance to the phrase "make love, not war."

Varkam Kills Himself Some Afterlife

Friend and commenter Varkam, whom I've posted about before, recently posted an essay at Neural Gourmet. The essay is entitled "The Scars of Religion's Profanity," and in it, he makes some acute observations:

The belief that there is life after death (which, definitionally speaking, is a contradiction of terms) serves to ease the fear of nothingness, but does little to cope with the reality of the situation.

...Religion has murdered humanity. The murder weapon is the afterlife.

The whole essay is good readin', so go read it.

Thanks Varkam!

I Got Tagged by KA!

My good friend KA from Biblioblography has tagged me with a book-reading meme. It took me a little while, but I finally got a response up. Check it out at Goosing the Antithesis here.

Review: "After Life," by Simon Funk

About a month ago, a commenter by the name of Simon Funk stopped by this blog to say hello, and to mention that he had just finished writing and publishing a book, "After Life." I decided to give the book a read, and boy am I glad I did.

Simon Funk is a man of many talents. In addition to being a writer and an all around great thinker, he is also a man who works in the field of Artificial Intelligence, or A.I. And that's what his book, After Life, is about. You see, Simon Funk's book isn't about an immaterial dimension that ghosts go to after their bodies die (a dimension which the title of this blog demands be destroyed), but it is about continuing one's consciousness outside of one's biological body here in the real world. And that is an idea that I wholly support.

The book is written in first-person, through the eyes of the main character, Alex Harris, PhD. Alex has just figured out how to transfer one's consciousness from a biological brain into a man-made computer. He performs the procedure on himself, and as a result, the entire world is changed. Perhaps the most significant change, though, occurs in Alex's own consciousness.

After transferring his consciousness to a machine, Alex experiences a series of unusual events. Some of these events seem like dreams, and some seem all too real. At first, the experiences are very puzzling to the reader (and to Alex himself), and don't make sense. But as the story unfolds, the pieces fall into place and produce a very mind-blowing cohesive picture.

Simon Funk is a very skilled writer. His writing is very personal and involving; I felt like I was Alex himself trying to make sense of the strange situations he kept finding himself to be in. But Simon Funk is not afraid to dig deep into the technological, philosophical, and ethical questions that naturally arise when consciousness, identity, and life itself are permanently altered.

Simon Funk also knows his stuff when it comes to Artificial Intelligence. His writing incorporates technological concepts used in today's A.I. field, yet he presents the ideas in a way that just about any reader can grasp. Simon also provides a familiar, human perspective to these ideas. What the reader ends up getting is an excellent mix of technological, philosophical, ethical, and emotional perspectives on the main character and his story. Allow me to quote a passage from chapter 1:

What makes the process tolerable is that half the drugs we're using are devoted entirely to protecting the brain. Specifically, we completely halt the processes that normally lead to the physical changes underlying the formation of memories. In effect the brain is held in a sort of chemical deep freeze, a state immune to change, but still able to function in a purely reactionary way. Other drugs keep the necessary neurotransmitters and nutrients replenished, and also keep the level of spontaneous activity as low as possible. This latter point would amount to keeping the subject unconscious, except that we then go in and light up their brain with activity much as if they were conscious, but completely under our control. In some sense, we have drugged their will to sleep, closed their eyes and ears, and replaced all of that with a machine that decides exactly what they're going to think, see, hear and feel in each moment. Yes--some day this could lead to the ultimate virtual reality experience, but that's a long time off. Right now there's no real coherent thinking or experience going on. We don't know nearly enough, nor have the compute power, to do that. Right now, it's just a random nightmare of disconnected thoughts, feelings, and sensations, experienced in rapid fire succession and immediately and forever forgotten. But that's enough--that's enough, I believe, for us to reconstruct the mind within the brain.

So, why am I talking about carburetors and grandmothers instead of cheese and mazes, considering we've only really done this with a mouse? Because I've been having nightmares about this for days. Because...I am going to have it done to me. Or maybe I already have.

As you can see, both the story and the writing style in Simon Funk's After Life are delectable.

My one gripe about this book is that it was too short. The book is 25 chapters, and in printed form it is only 160 pages. I literally tore through it as fast as I could, and the end of the story came all too quickly for me. But isn't that what happens with most good books? In addition, the book is short because it's writing style. While it gives you significant morsels of the story, it skips a few details here and there. This was obviously done deliberately as a way of leaving certain things unsaid so that the reader can either fill in the blanks with their imagination, or be left with questions in their head to ponder. This book definitely makes you think, no question about it.

Simon Funk's After Life is an all around excellent book. I can't remember the last time I read a fiction book that got the gears in my head to turn so much. I also forwarded the book to my good friend David Mills, author of the #1 bestseller Atheist Universe, and Mills had nothing but praise for Simon and his book.

I therefore highly recommend that you read After Life by Simon Funk. I also recommend that you purchase the book from Lulu. Simon is currently selling his book from Lulu at cost, so it will only cost you around 8 bucks, and it comes with a beautifully designed cover (also created by the author), and good production quality. I suggest you buy it now while the price is low, because I have been repeatedly trying to convince Simon to sell it for a profit (hey, I am a capitalist).

Finally, be sure to tell your friends about the book, as right now word-of-mouth is the only form of advertising being used to promote it, and the word definitely needs to get out about this excellent book.

Belief in the Afterlife is the Basis for the Hatred of Women

Props to Francois Tremblay for bringing this article to my attention.

Caron Cadle speaks my language. Although she is a Pagan (I used to be one for a short while too), she is definitely in the anti-afterlife camp. She makes a great argument for the afterlife being a realm of women-haters:

It all hangs together: an obsession with impossible purity, hatred and fear of real women, of the dirt and imperfection of real life, even of one's own physicality, one's own body. Mohammed Atta's last will and testament stipulates that no woman be allowed to mourn him, attend his funeral or even go near his grave. He disdained his own body so much that he stipulated that the man who was to wash his genitals after his death wear gloves, so his impure sexual parts would theoretically remain untouched. But let's not kid ourselves that this thought complex is the exclusive property of Islamic fundamentalists. Consider orthodox Judaism, which demands that women cleanse themselves of their menstrual pollution each month, and be banned from synagogue for twice as long after the birth of a female child as after the birth of a male. Any man who touches a menstruating woman has to ritually purify himself and still remains unclean until sunset that day; if he has sex with a menstruating woman, he is unclean for a week. As for Christianity, early "church father" Tertullian (ca. AD 200) makes it clear: "[W]oman [is] the obstacle to purity, the temptress, the enemy. . . her body is the gate of hell." The all-male Catholic church hierarchy couldn't stand the thought that Mary, mother of Jesus, might be a normal, fleshly woman. So the New Testament mentions of Jesus's younger siblings are explained away, to make sure no-one dares think she actually had sex with her husband Joseph, and by the mid-19th century, she was declared a perpetual virgin. Just like the houris. It's a given in male-monotheist religions: the immaculate super-woman, a figment of the imagination, is set up as an impossible standard that we "standard-issue" women can never meet. This fills women with despair and self-hatred, while men may cultivate exaggerated expectations, sure to be disappointed.

Emphasis hers. Be sure to click on the link and read her whole article.

Since both men and women are simply "human," isn't woman-hating just a projected form of self-hate? Look at it from a technical standpoint. For example, I have a sister. She was created by the same material and process that created me. My sister is closer to my "blood" than either my father or mother! In fact, I could have been a female had a different sperm fertilized the egg that I came from. Humanity cannot even survive without women, and vice-versa! What is humanity without both genders? Humanity doesn't even exist unless both "halves" of it are present! A humanity with only one gender is a soon-to-be-extinct humanity!

All this women-hating religious bullshit reminds me of kindergarten. Back in kindergarten, I was much less mature, mentally and emotionally. Me and all my kindergarten pals would play "cooties." Do any of you remember this game? The boys and girls would group together, and try to give each other "cooties" in a game similar to tag. I remember the disgust and grossness of being touched by a girl. If a girl gave me "cooties," then I would need to get a "cootie shot" post-haste. And "cootie shots" could only be administered to the "infected" person by another member of the same sex.

That is the mentality of this gender separation bullshit that is found in religion and afterlife-belief. It is immature, it is divisive, and it is no longer a relatively harmless game when adults with guns and power play it.

Most normal people, when they mature, no longer look at the opposite sex as having "cooties." Instead, most mature adults look at the opposite sex as something beautiful, something desirable, something to want to be close to, and something to want to be joined in emotional, mental, and physical unity with.

Unfortunately, this afterlife voodoo fucks it all up. I swear, it seems like these Abrahamic afterlife concepts were invented by 5-year-old kindergartners! Who else ever thinks that way naturally? Sexism is merely projected fear of the opposite sex, and fear of the opposite sex belongs in kindergarten playgrounds!

Fuck the afterlife, and love the opposite sex.

Phantom Limb Pain and its Afterlife Implications

Ever heard of phantom limb pain? I saw a show about it once a long time ago on the Discovery Channel. Basically it works like this: A person has a significant body part amputated or severed (usually an arm or leg, but sometimes a breast or even an eye). After the limb or body part is gone, the person feels sensations from that missing body part. The sensations are usually painful in nature, but not always.

Wikipedia describes phantom limb pain thusly (I am removing references in the quote for your reading convenience. If you want the references, click on the Wikipedia link):

A phantom limb is the sensation that an amputated or missing limb is still attached to the body and is moving appropriately with other body parts. Approximately 50 to 80% of amputees experience these phantom sensations in their amputated limb, and the majority of these people report that the sensations are painful. Phantom sensations and phantom pain may also occur after the removal of body parts other than the limbs, e.g. after amputation of the breast, extraction of a tooth (phantom tooth pain) or removal of an eye (phantom eye syndrome).

Phantom pains can also occur in people who are born without limbs and people who are paralyzed. Phantom pains occur when the missing limb causes discomfort. Other induced sensations include warmth, cold, itching, squeezing and burning. The missing limb often feels shorter and may feel as if it is in a distorted and painful position. Occasionally, the pain can be made worse by stress, anxiety and weather changes.

For afterlife-scoffing materialists such as myself, phantom limb pain causes no controversy, and creates no explanatory problems:

Some people with phantom limbs find that the limb will gesticulate as they talk. Given the way that the hands and arms are represented on the motor cortex and language centers, this is not surprising. Some people find that their phantom limbs feels and behaves as though it is still there, others find that it begins to take on a life of its own, and doesn't obey their commands.

In the early 1990s, Tim Pons, at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), showed that the brain can reorganize if sensory input is cut off. Hearing about these results. S. Ramachandran realized that phantom limb sensations could be due to "crosswiring" in the somatosenory cortex, which is located in the postcentral gyrus, and which receives input from the limbs and body. Input from the left side of the body goes to the right hemisphere and vice versa. The input from extremities comes into the somatosensory cortex in an ordered way, the representation of which is referred to as the somatosensory homonculus. Input from the hand is located next to the input from the arm, input from the foot is located next to input from the hand, and so on. One oddity is input from the face is located next to input from the hand.

Ramachandran reasoned that if someone were to lose their right hand in an accident, they may then have the feelings of a phantom limb because the input that normally would go from their hand to the left somatosensory cortex would be stopped. The areas in the somatosensory cortex that are near to the ones of the hand (the arm and face) will take over (or "remap") this cortical region that no longer has input. Ramachandran and colleagues first demonstrated this remapping by showing that stroking different parts of the face led to perceptions of being touched on different parts of the missing limb and subsequently demonstrated that the somatosensory cortex reorganizes using magnetoencephalography (MEG) which permits visualization of activity in the human brain.

But what about the afterlife-believing immaterialist? Does phantom limb pain create problems for such a worldview? Well, I believe that it depends on the immaterialist in question.

Some immaterialists may accept the above quoted materialistic explanation for phantom limb pain. This is all well and good, and I would indeed applaud any immaterialist who adopts such a materialistic explanation. But if the immaterialist accepts such a material explanation for phantom limb pain, then why not also accept a material explanation for near-death experiences, or even death itself (in other words, no afterlife and no immaterial consciousness or soul)?

But let's move on to the immaterialist who believes that phantom limb pain is the result of that part of one's spirit or soul continuing to be attached to one's body, while the corresponding physical body part is missing (By the way, the reason I'm bringing this whole topic up in the first place is because I recently had a discussion about phantom limb pain with an afterlife-believing immaterialist).

Why, if the immaterial spirit portion of the amputated limb is still "attached" to one's soul, is it uncontrollable? Shouldn't one be able to still control one's spirit limb just like one can control their own thoughts? Or why wouldn't the spirit limb disappear into the immaterial afterlife dimension and wait for the rest of one's soul to arrive upon their death? Why would a material tool such as a mirror box be so helpful in relieving the phantom limb pain if the cause of the pain is the immaterial and disembodied spiritual portion of the limb?

At one point while discussing phantom limb pain with my immaterialist friend, I took the conversation one step further. I asked, "What if one's head is amputated instead of an arm? Would the person feel phantom head pain?" To this he only laughed, as if my question was totally absurd. I considered his laugh a victory on my part. Why? Because in his laughing dismissal of my question, he revealed that he believed the soul or spirit to be materially limited to the head, and that he was assigning a spiritual-physical disconnect or independence in an arbitrary fashion.

If one's spirit exists in one's arm and one's head, than isn't it logical to conclude that one's spirit exists in the entire body? Why would a spirit be able to control a physical body that is missing an arm, but not a body that is missing a head? Why would a person's immaterial spirit or consciousness experience phantom pain when an arm is severed, but not when one's head is severed?

Isn't the immaterialist's assumption that a severed head results in death some kind of concession to the materialist position? Why can't I just cut off my head and continue to live while experiencing phantom head pain? Isn't the immaterialist's assertions regarding the spirit and various severed body parts totally arbitrary?

If I lose my hand, and I still "sense" it's existence, then why don't I still "sense" the existence of my complete and intact mental facilities when I get a frontal lobotomy? Why don't I still "sense" the existence of my head when it gets blown off? Why do I instead die and (presumably) move on to the afterlife once my head is blasted to bits?

If the destruction of my head but the preservation of the rest of my body results in ascension to the afterlife, then does only my "head" portion of the spirit ascend while my "spiritual" arms and legs remain on Earth? I doubt that any immaterialist would agree with that proposition! So why should my spiritual arm remain with me after physical amputation, if my spirit in its entirety will ascend to Heaven when something as simple as a .22 caliber bullet pierces my brain stem?

As you can see, many unusual questions arise when immaterialism is combined with phantom limb pain (or any biological phenomenon for that matter). When biological hairs are split, such as in the case of phantom limb pain, only the materialist explanation makes any sense at all.

To Sign or Not to Sign?

My friend and fellow atheist, Ka, from Biblioblography says he doesn't want to sign the Wal-Mart Bible Letter. He gives his justification thusly (his post came up with some funny characters in it [’] due to some kind of browser/font issue on my end, so I had to edit out the strange characters the best I could and the quote may not be 100% syntactically correct):

My point here is that we need to contribute more positive items to the world. Charity work, volunteer work, throw some money at a recurring problem, hell, give out free copies of the Atheist Manifesto, or The End of Faith ('cause let's face it, you can get all sorts of bibles for free, or next to nothing) sure, you get what you pay for and all, but when it comes to the Almighty Dollar, people ain't gonna pay extra for something unless the novelty value is extreme, and most think that we believe in "nothing," where's the value in that?).

Short version, is what I'm always trying to teach my 17-year-old niece: pick your battles. Choose the ones you can win.

A fair point, indeed. Incidentally, the esteemed Austin Cline also mentions the same sentiments that Ka points out, yet he still concludes that signing the letter would be a good thing overall:

Is there any chance that this petition will be successful? No, quite frankly, I don't think so. I'll grant that it's nice to imagine companies like Wal-Mart treating Christianity and Christian material in a manner that it ethical and intellectually consistent with how they treat other sorts of material. I agree with Aaron Kinney that the ideal situation would be for Wal-Mart to sell all the material, but also that if they going to ban some of it on the basis of sexual or violent content, then they should evaluate the Bible on the same basis. I doubt that it would survive such a review if conducted fairly and objectively.

...

That doesn't make this petition entirely worthless, though. If nothing else, it may draw people's attention not only to Wal-Mart's censorship policies and how they can negatively impact the distribution of information in America, but also perhaps some of the violence, sex, and hatred conveyed in the Bible. That's not such a bad goal to have as well.

I agree with both Ka's and Austin's sentiments, but I must respectfully part ways with Ka's conclusion.

Both Ka and Austin are right in that this letter has a snowball's chance in Hell of actually getting Wal-Mart to stop selling Bibles. I mean, even if I am wrong about the non-existence of God, surely I am not so delusional to think that this letter would get Wal-Mart to stop selling Bibles?

No, I am not. What I am fairly sure about, though, is that if enough people sign this letter, it will bring the atrocities of the Bible to the attention of the average Joe Six-pack American public. How many self-professed Christians in America are even aware that the Bible has stories of incest-rape committed on Lot by his own daughters? Surely, most self-professed Christians in America are aware that the Bible says not to work on the Sabbath, but how many of them are actually aware that the Bible proscribes execution for those who break the rule? How many self-professed Christians in America today are aware that the Bible says to execute non-Christians?

How many self-professed Christians in America today even realize that their own holy book would be banned from libraries and store shelves if their own anti-obscenity policies were uniformly enforced?

To me, this is about awareness. Not Christian awareness of atheism as Ka states, but Christian awareness of the contents of their own sacred book. Unfortunately, I didn't make this point clear in my original post about the Bible Letter. Instead I argued from effect: The effect of either having obscene books sold in Wal-Mart again, or the (unlikely) effect of having the Bible pulled from their shelves. But after some further thought on the issue, I think that awareness of the Bible itself and it's contents is definitely the most important point in this whole issue. Austin Cline seems to understand that rather well:

If nothing else, it may draw people's attention not only to Wal-Mart's censorship policies and how they can negatively impact the distribution of information in America, but also perhaps some of the violence, sex, and hatred conveyed in the Bible.

Emphasis mine.

So, while I do respect Ka's decision and understand where he is coming from, I think that he should reconsider. I also think that any atheists who are hesitant to sign the letter should think long and hard about the importance of bringing the Bible's full contents into the thoughts of the average Joe Christian, and sign the letter just like Austin Cline, PZ Myers, and myself have done.