Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Just about to finish this. If you’re looking to think about the universe from the cosmic perspective and lose your fear of large numbers, I’d recommend the read. The chapters are nice and short (it is an essay collection) and the points are concise and kind to the layperson, so it’s not at all a chore to read.
Astrophysics is awesome to think about.
Going to reddit's r/atheism page to learn about the atheist community is like reading the comments section on Jezebel to learn about the behaviour of men.

Let's leave the trolls under the bridge and have honest interactions with people who want to make a difference

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Bigfoot, be little


I tried to come up with a more clever title for this post, but alas, my creativity is stifled.
So I’ve been thinking lately about “the old standby’s” of skepticism that often circulate through blogs and news articles when journalists are looking for filler. You know, Bigfoot, Nessie, UFO’s, the Chupacabra, Homeopathy, Psychics, Ghost hunting etc. There’s a whole host of people that buy into all this hokum, and there is real harm in those beliefs (the story of Shawn Hornbeck comes to mind), and they’re still very important to talk about, but I just don’t bother.
The main reason I don’t bother with these issues that much is that I really don’t care about them; for all intensive purposes, my position on bigfoot will not change (at least until some strong positive evidence is shown ie. bring me the body!) and homeopathy will always be at its worst, mathematically impossible. Most people I meet on a regular basis also readily admit that Bigfoot is ridiculous, psychics are just for fun and ghost hunting is irrelivant, unconvincing and at its best may be mildly entertaining.
Now, I’m not going to go about debunking these things because you can do that yourself, you might be more interested than I am, and that’s not the point of this post. My point is that a good deal of skeptics will take arguments against these things and equate them to other beliefs, and I just don’t think that strategy is ultimately effective.
I sense I might not be making complete sense, so I’m going to back up a little bit. I’m going to go ahead and assume that whoever’s reading this doesn’t believe in Bigfoot but believes in God (yeah I know, religion again….) I think it’s reasonable that this combination of beliefs & non beliefs is pretty common. Now, I come along, and in an effort to reach common ground in an argument about the existence of god, I start talking about bigfoot. I refer to the fact that you do not believe in the existence of bigfeet for the exact same reasons as you believe in god, and try to get you to realize that on two separate issues your logic is inconsistent. At this point, you’d probably get pissed off.
It took me a while to realize why people got pissed at such comparisons, and it’s because I was thinking about the logic in a vacuum. The real issue at stake to the person I’m arguing against is: “Wait…. you just equated my entire worldview and spiritual meaning to an imaginary bi pedaled ape!?! FUCK YOU!” And of course, that person would be right in many ways. Seriously, if we’re comparing things to god as a proper analogy, bigfoot belongs in the same category as the watchmaker. It’s just not a good argument, and neither are the comparisons to any other popular pseudosciences. Yes, we can both agree that bigfoot doesn’t exist, but I really don’t think it’s the best way to frame an argument that isn’t purely intellectual. When talking about things like religion, alternative medicine, conspiracy theories and how governments should be structured, there is a lot of emotions, personal histories and whole ways of life at stake — they can’t just be compared to something the believer thinks is ridiculous. It just doesn’t work.
Maybe it depends on the conversation, but when discussing important issues like the origin of life and the universe, I’ve found it more destructive than useful to bring up the old standbys. They can stand by on their own, and while the arguments against bigfoot may still be important for public education, bigfoot belittles people when we’re talking about the elephants in the room (see how I snuck my awful blog title in there… yeah…. I rule…. -_-)