ammon

Believe first, ask questions later.

2010-06-30T15:06:00.000-07:00

I'm not a big fan of the approach Richard Dawkins has taken to religion. By that I mean I'm not a big fan of the approach that he is generally perceived to be taking toward converting the religious. I think he's probably misunderstood, but I don't know cuz I haven't read the God Delusion. If you want to identify me with any current commentator on the issue you can lump me in with Scot Atran.

Personal experience tells me that there are a lot of reasons to be a part of a religious community and few of them have anything to do with conclusive evidence. I think many of these reasons are very respectable. I would never argue against somebodies cherished beliefs if they are indeed cherished. Religious apologists I think are a different fish, and I think they have missed the point of religion, or are like me and cant believe things unless they are true. Thats a separate matter.

Hitchens, Dawkins, the one guy with the beard, and Sam Harris all seem to think that people are just ignorant. Yes, it must be true for some, but we must be talking about majorities and I think its not the case with a majority of religious people. I know a lot of religious people, many of them seem to actually be less religious about religoin than I am, and I'm an atheist. By this I mean that I think and talk more about the beliefs and history of their religion than many of them. I care a lot more about the doctrine than many of them. In talking to many about the things I find difficult to believe, I am usually met with this sort of "you're thinking a little too hard about this" attitude. So yes, technically this is ignorance, but I would argue that it is an adaptive willful ignorance and as such cannot be approached in the same way that other forms of ignorance are approached.

Is it very hard for us to imagine why somebody would be a part of a religion and not know much about the religion? Like do Mormons really know what the church was like during the civil rights movement? No, most kids my age dont, and most active mormon kids my age dont care either. Now is there anybody out there who believes in a religion but doesnt want to? I know there are plenty that do want to but cant. So why are people religious? Maybe the answer is the same as to this question: why are people fiercely loyal to groups like the democrats, republicans, Nazis, libertarians, etc.? I've talked to plenty of democrats, republicans, libertarians, christians, and greenpeace...ers. Most have put very little critical thinking into their beliefs. It seems like people invest very little energy into "knowing" a "truth" until after they already believe it. People are backwards. Believe first, ask questions later. Do any of you know somebody who believes strongly in something, but knows little about it? I'm sure you think everybody who disagrees with you is like that.

I think we are religious because we are social. Knowing the truth is useful, but SOMETIMES believing a lie is even more useful. In a political world, the truth matters less the more far removed the proposition becomes. How much further removed can you get than unpredictable God? So if believing certain things to be true gives you access to a community, then by all means do it, we need each other. We need to be able to trust eachother, what better way to get people to trust you then to believe the same "stupid" thing they do.

I'm not talking about where religion came from, its irrelevant whether it came from evolution or some white guy in a cultish robe. I'm talking about why people are religious. I've noticed that people are very protective of their beliefs. Protective to the point where they are able to control their critical thinking so as not to wander down the wrong avenues of thought. You cant deny this, everybody doubts yet everybody believes. This of course means that on some level religious people know there is a problem with the veracity of their beliefs. I think this is demonstrated by their unwillingness to have critical arguments about their beliefs. Its even more obvious when its institutionalized. "Bear your testimony and walk away" was the oft stated defense when confronted by critics. We were pretty much counseled to subject our critics to a testimony meeting. A meeting where children who have just learned to talk are encouraged, along with adults, to get up and say they know something is true. Does anybody have a problem with parents whispering in the childs ear to say that they, a four year old, know that mormonism is true? I think I can safely say we all have a very quick and in some cases quickly suppressed repulsion to such a thing. I dont need to say why. The evolution of our belief may just start with the community elders whispering in our young ears. In the end we are just believing and some of us are making up reasons to believe and most are just believing and reaping the benefits...or whirlwind.

Am I making a false generalization from my limited religious experience? I dont think so, but maybe. Compare it to your own experience.

So anyway, thats what I think. What do you think? Please give thoughtful responses. And please no passive aggressive statements trying to be too cool for the conversation. That's just annoying and ironic.

2009-11-15T19:17:00.000-08:00

We construct or simulate the future with our evolved memories of the past. We don't have chronological memory. There isn't a mechanism in our minds that keeps track of the order of our memories. We have to logically figure out chronology. We have to compare events to standards with known locations in time and compare the dates. i.e. I was this tall when X happened and I was taller when Y happened. It is a rule that people only grow taller, therefore X happened before Y.

When we remember, it is like we are experiencing the events again. The same neurons are firing as when we first experienced what became a memory. When we re-experience these events (remember) we are also adding the inputs of our current context. These are adding to and changing the meaning of the memory so that the next time we recall the memory these will be lumped in with the original memory, and maybe crowd out other less significant associations. In this way our memories are evolving. Speaking anthropomorphically about the brain (mind), it seems that our minds don't care what actually happened in the past, they are just trying to add to a working model of reality. If reality is changing then our memories of our experience of reality is changing along with it. This would be a more adaptive view of the function of memory. Accurate memory of past experience isn't as adaptive as memory with editing and revision from subsequent experience.

The more we recall events of the past the more we are diluting the past with the present. In short the past isn't as real as we think. Sure it happened and we can reason what must have been true about it, but we don't know with too much certainty exactly what we experienced right at that time. In this way the past is perhaps as unknown as the future.

Why I'm not creative

2009-06-06T11:02:00.000-07:00

Blorp

2008-06-24T17:09:00.000-07:00

The guy in the red shirt is obviously right handed.

2008-06-24T17:08:00.000-07:00

"POOP ON MY HEAD! POOP ON MY HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAD!!!!"

2008-06-24T17:05:00.000-07:00

siamese triplets?

2008-06-17T17:27:00.000-07:00

2008-06-15T16:07:00.000-07:00

My biggest complaint about these boots is that they hide the wearer's tapered jeans. For all I can tell she's wearing flared jeans (I actually know better than that...but what if?)

2008-06-15T15:47:00.000-07:00

2008-06-15T15:43:00.000-07:00

Wow, this never happened when i was a kid. Back then we ate our butts with a fork and knife. civilized.

2008-06-15T15:39:00.000-07:00

vegans think that animals care when we eat them and they will some day eat us. The truth of the matter is animals dont care. I eat them all the time and I dont care so why should they care?

2008-06-15T15:34:00.000-07:00

snob

2008-06-14T10:48:00.000-07:00

Occasionally the truth fish will venture ashore to eat the Darwin rodent. The amphibian truth fish is believed to be the evolutionary link between the older jesus fish and the more evolved darwin rodent.

2008-06-14T10:36:00.000-07:00

el libro de mormon pauses for a moment to pose in a picture with his two girlfriends

2008-06-14T10:33:00.000-07:00

I dont know if the guy to the left is getting ready to catch him or shoot an energy ball into his back

2008-06-14T10:26:00.000-07:00

I've got a lot of questions to ask jesus when I go to heaven

2008-06-14T10:24:00.000-07:00

I tried reading this a couple times but I kept getting turned on

2008-06-14T10:17:00.001-07:00

Before the wrestling match, it is customary for the contenders to pose together for a photo. I'm rooting for the guy on the right...so is a little guy I like to call god...perhaps you've heard of him ;)

2008-06-14T10:02:00.000-07:00

Avril Lavigne is a dangerous person.

2008-06-14T10:00:00.001-07:00

"would you like me to sing a song about life?"

2008-06-14T09:57:00.000-07:00

While I dont condone picking on cannibals, I do laugh when I see it happening

2008-06-14T09:48:00.000-07:00

Every time I look at this I throw up on my shirt

2008-06-14T09:47:00.000-07:00

Perhaps he's alerting her to the fact that her tattoo is showing

2008-06-14T09:39:00.000-07:00

tattoos are a commonly used method of intimidation

cool cat

2008-06-14T09:36:00.000-07:00

i wanna fight that cat

Free money

2007-08-11T09:02:00.000-07:00

I was sitting in my seat in a long distance train when I got a not so light tap on the head. Starting at the feet my eyes traveled up the outside of a bright beautiful dress showing nice womanly curves. My eyes ended on an obviously male face covered in cheep make-up. He put his hand out to me and in Bengali ordered me to fill it with money. As a matter of principal I don't give money to these types, but a Bengali friend of mine told me that they are often times born with both parts and are outcasted by society. Having this increased understanding and sympathy I planted a five in his hand and went back to reading my magazine. Again I get a pat on the head. I am now surrounded by men in dresses telling me that I have to pay ten rupees. These men usually get their way because it makes so many men so uncomfortable to have transsexuals/transvestites standing by them that they do anything to get rid of them. Not me, I took the five out of his hand and said, its five or nothing, and you can stand around me all you want, I'm not going to let your dresses bully me into paying up. So I sat there reading as men in dresses poked and patted me trying to get an extra five rupees. A good exercise in concentration for me. Eventually they gave up and the leader said "Ok, I take five". I handed it over and said "Thank you gentlemen, its been a pleasure doing business with you". I thought it was funny that I had to haggle with transsexuals about how much free money I owed them.

Later on in the train a teenage boy is walking up and down the aisle announcing his amazingly flexible bodies ability to contort. Next thing I know he is doing the splits and to my amazement he is bouncing up and down in that position. It appeared as though he was bouncing on the very things that I considered to be the least bouncable of all the balls in the world. Yet he was bouncing an entire body on them. Perhaps some skulduggery was afoot. I, for one, choose to believe that he is a magic man with bouncy balls.

2007-07-28T08:10:00.000-07:00

Dear Diary,

I was on Park Street headed to a music shop. On the sidewalk was an old dirty bum. His face was so sullen but on his head was this bright colored foam elephant hat with long snout and everything, it was funny looking. He had a whole bunch of these, and he was advertising them the way any article of clothing or exsesory is advertised; through a model. Since he couldnt afford to hire a model he took on the task himself. This man gave the impression that these fun hats were for serious adults, so I bought one, and I wore it around town. Some kids mobbed me and stole the hat off my head. I like these kids, they run up to me grab onto my arms and lead me to the ice cream stand, and then I say "nope, ice cream is bad for you" These kids are trained to beg by their parents, so when they come up to me an grab my arm I let them swing on it and they quickly forget that I am a source of money and start treating me like a jungle jim.

I went to a rock concert last night, it was so cool. The band was awsomely talented at their instruments. Rock and Roll here is an aristocratic institution, the lower classes still listen to the more traditional Bengali music.

We had lunch with a couple of English students at Kolkata University today, we have just hired them to be interpreters for when we go to the villages. This lunch was sort of an orientation for them. It was fun, we had a nice long conversation about western and Indian philosophy and literature. I learned to look at philosophy as being divided into two schools of thought: scientific, and religious. It was fun to sit in a coffie shop having an intellectual conversation with these two girls.

2007-07-26T09:28:00.000-07:00

Hi, I should go to bed.

2007-07-21T05:16:00.000-07:00

I just sat there on the beach as fishermen draped necklace after necklace around my neck. This beach is in Puri. We came here for a little vacation. It feels so nice here, the ocean breeze is everywhere you go, and it intensifies as you get nearer to the beach. I felt so good that I didnt worry about telling the fishermen that I didnt want to buy anything, I just sat there staring at the sea. I ended up buying seven necklaces. They sold me a pearl necklace made from pearls they had collected. I plan on coming back to the beach tonight and making a big fire, depends on how cold it is at night.

Later that day we traveled to a Hindu temple which is a popular hindu pilgrimage site. We were wandering around the wall when we ran into a young guy who said he could hook us up with a good view of the interior of the temple compound, beyond the wall. So he sneakily leads us up these winding pathways of narrow concrete stairwells in an Escher like apartment complex. We make it onto the roof, and the view is into the temple is awesome, first of all there are hundreds of monkeys running around, second of all there are tons of statues of people doing impossible sex positions. We hung out there on the roof with this pot head for about a half hour, he smoked gonga, and we took pictures. Then about 20 monkeys mobbed us and we had to fight them off with bricks. THey had us surrounded, its scary when your attackers can climb up anything and jump very far. One of them came within inches of biting Chris! Man that was exciting! After this attack we left and were followed by a nice parade of beggars, mostly religious beggars, the kind that wear orange sheets.

pilsbury

2007-06-29T07:16:00.000-07:00

I was riding in a taxi today. Whenever your in certain parts of Kolkata and your vehicle is stoped and you look like a wealthy tourist, children come to your window to beg and young mothers come to your window to beg and show you their babies with sores all over their bodies. Today we were in such an area and at my window gathered some children with the English begging vernacular. I respond with the usual "no, rupees" with my shoulders up and hands in the air with an expression like "yea, can you believe it, I don't have any rupees, I'm as confused as you are." I don't think the spokesman for the crew (11 year old boy...don't ask how I know his age) believed me. He pointed at his stomach and said something that means skinny and then he reached in and jabbed me in the stomach and said something that I think means "fat", He looked at me while sinking his finger into my fat rolls, as if to say "see?! look at all that energy your just sitting on, you dont need food for at least a week!" I think this was intended to demonstrate the injustice of my opulence and his poverty, but instead it made me laugh. Something about getting jabbed in the stomach to convince me to pay up made me laugh. This made the kids smile so the kid just kept poking me in the stomach over and over again and I just sat there like a total idiot laughing my head off. Well I never gave them any rupees because I actually didn't have any...but I did give them the gift of laughter and thats worth more than a hundred rupees (about two dollars and fifty cents) the end.

2007-06-27T10:15:00.000-07:00

june 27 2007

a couple days ago Chris and I visited a Kahli temple. If front of the outer walls were the usual gambit of beggers. At the gate an officially hindu looking man greets us and leads us inside, we cant understand his thick accent at first so we just follow and hope he doesnt eat us (I'm an ignoramous). Inside the temple grounds things are different, it feels different, I think because its cleaner. The beggers are no longer just beggers they are special temple beggers and the guy with his eye dangling out of his socket is a special holy eye-dangling-out-of-its-socket man. SO we remove our shoes and are given flowers, and lead into a room full of sweaty men bottlenecked around this opening to a room with an idol in it. There was kind of an urgent feeling in the room, like death was iminent. We get shoved into the center of this bottle neck and amid the shoving, touching, and shouting we frantickly try to remember the chant we were previously taught, for some reason I felt like I had to say the chant right even though nobody would be able to hear me in the loud room. I chucked the flower at the god and moved on. Next I did some strange stuff to an ancient tree that I am ashamed of and then was told after receiving a bracelet that I must donate alot of money. The tour guy, that I thought was a monk or something, led us out of the temple and asked for more money, which I gave, man I have a guilty conscience.

This town has extreme smells. Sometimes when driving down a street full of restaurants I smell smells that are so good that I want to immediatley get out of the taxi, find the source of the smell, and make love to it. Moving just half a block I will be subjected to the most awful smelling thing in the world, garbage heaps. Oh man, its enough to bring a man to his knees.

In the neighborhood where I am staying there are a lot of students from all over the first world. Naturally there are a lot of drug dealers too. They come up to saying "Hey, do you want Hotel...food..." and then in a very hushed tone of voice "mary-wana...hashish" and then the product or services offered remains in the drug sector "opium...cocain..." and then I act like I dont know what drugs are and make them explain it to me, and invariably, due to their very limited english vocabulary, they end up making googly eyes while pointing at their brains in a circular motion, all the while having a very pleased look on their face (they are demonstrating the positive effects of drug taking).

last night in america

2007-06-12T22:21:00.000-07:00

I'm sad cuz I'm leaving my good friends, but I'm happy cuz I'm going to India! I'm gonna have some mad diarrhea.