Anniversaries are not always good

A year ago today we buried my grandfather.

It's been a rough weekend.

Math

A fly-by blog post because I love this quote so much:

"If a 'religion' is defined to be a system of ideas that contains unprovable statements, then Gödel taught us that mathematics is not only a religion, it is the only religion that can prove itself to be one."

—John Barrow

My Phlangy

Imagine I told you that there was club that could heal your broken phlangy. Wait a second, you might ask, I don't have a broken phlangy. I'm not even entirely certain I have a phlangy. No problem they tell you, all you have to do is agree that you have a broken phlangy and they'll make-sure your phlangy is in tip-top shape.

That doesn't sound like a great deal does it? The logical thing would be to ask them to prove you have a phlangy correct? They assure you that you do, otherwise you wouldn't be alive. You see you need a phlangy to live you see, and if you're alive that means you must have a phlangy.

But it's broken of course, and desperately needs to be fixed.

Now imagine that the people that are a part of this club think you are a terrible person for walking around with your broken phlangy. How could anyone live like that? You must not be a normal person, there's something wrong with you. Why would anyone choose to have a broken phlangy when there's a club, right there, that can fix it for you? Everyday you hear people talking about how awful it must be to have a broken phlangy, and how grateful they are that they got their phlangy fixed.

Does it sound silly?

I hear this argument, literally, every day. Only they don't call it a phlangy - they call it a soul.

I don't believe I have a soul - at least not in the way a religious person does. I believe that there are things deep in our subconscious that cause us to behave in certain ways and to appreciate art and beauty, but I do not believe in some part of me that was created when I was born and will live on after me when I die.

Religious people, please keep this in mind when you are trying to convert me to whatever doctrine you follow. You may know how to save my soul - but you're offering to fix something I don't believe I have. And as silly as the phlangy club might sound to you, you sound infinitely sillier to me.

Agnostics

Okay, I just want to vent for a moment. If you don't want to read religious related ranting, don't go further.

I have a real problem with people who call themselves Agnostic and try to justify it by saying that they are somehow being more logical than Atheists. The best example of this is a quote from a self-professed agnostic,

"My personal stance is the doctrine of Agnosticism. Because one can neither prove nor disprove the existence of a higher power, I don’t ascribe to Atheism, the belief that there is no God. Nobody knows with certainty, and as a skeptic I feel it’s silly to profess an unsubstantiated belief either way."

-Alpha Dominance
in what otherwise was an interesting article

Are you f'in kidding me?

If you believe that there are fundamental truths about the universe that can never be known, fine. Life, love, happiness, you get down with your bad self. But the existence of a deity is no different than the existence of unicorns. And if someone told you that since we can never know for sure whether unicorns exist and are therefore unicorn-agnostic you would laugh in their face.

Atheists are not going out on a limb here. With absolutely no evidence in support of a deity, we can state with a reasonable amount of certainty that there is no deity. This is not an unsubstantiated belief. Lack of evidence for something is still evidence, just for the opposite claim. If you cannot substantiate your belief in god, then I can use the lack of evidence as evidence that there is no god.

There is no evidence for the existence of unicorns; I do not believe in unicorns.
There is no evidence for the existence of Santa Claus; I do not believe in Santa Claus.
There is no evidence for the existence of the Loch Ness Monster; I do not believe in the Loch Ness Monster.
There is no evidence for the existence of God; I do not believe in God.
Do you see what I did there?

I do not feel any need to qualify any of those statements with a disclaimer about how we can never know for sure one way or the other, so in fact I am a unicorn/ Santa Claus/ Loch Ness Monster/ God agnostic.

Honestly, I think you're silly for calling yourself an agnostic just because you think that belief in god is held to a different standard than belief in anything else. If you call yourself an agnostic in relation to god, then I don't ever want to hear you say that you do not believe in something. From this day forward you are faery agnostic, bigfoot agnostic, and vampire agnostic.

It's all or nothing.

(Of course, if you call yourself unicorn/ Santa Claus/ Loch Ness Monster agnostic then more power to you. I'm cool with that.)