Ok, how about this. For one day out of the year, everyone gets to swap their religion for someone else’s. Muslims can become Jews, Catholics can become Mormons, Baha’i ’s can become Scientologists.
That way everyone can see the world from anothers perspective and it will promote peace and harmony!
NOTE: ONLY READ FURTHER IF YOU’RE AN ATHEIST. ALL OTHERS, GO CONSULT YOUR MAGIC BOOKS.
Psst.. OK fellow atheists, here’s the deal.
Sure “Annual Swap Religion Day” can promote peace and harmony, but it will also cause people to realize that all religions are completely interchangable, which can then lead them to realize that religion itself is completely empty and pointless.
So, let’s all get out there and promote “Annual Swap Religion Day!”
Which day of the year should it be on? Any suggetions?
King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand
Having lived in Canada and the United States, my trip to Thailand was an interesting experience.
Thailand’s a relatively free country. A democracy and Constitutional monarchy. With a delightful king who loves Jazz, Sailing and even holds a patent for a type of waste water aerator.
And Thai’s love the king:
are some of the things you’ll hear.
Expect for one problem. Criticizing the King of Thailand is a punishable offense that carries a minimum prison sentence of 3 years.
Recently an Australian writer was sentenced to prison for insulting the King. Sentenced for mere words, that he wrote.
For a monarch who loves his country, couldn’t he do even more “wonderful work” with a little constructive criticism from the people?
And doesn’t it undermine the complements the king gets if the people giving them are under a constant threat of prison time?
Criticizing, commenting and even insulting the powerful are a cornerstone of any true democracy.
Just as Arab countries will never be “free” until they learn that Islam can (and should be) criticized, the Thai people and the King himself will never be free until they shed the childish fear of accountability and face reality.
So says skeptic Michael Shermer.
He’s coined a new term called “Agenticity”: The idea that humans assign abilities to inanimate objects and concepts.
It’s basically the belief that an intelligent designer pulls the strings that affect our lives everyday.
There is now substantial evidence from cognitive neuroscience that humans readily find patterns and impart agency to them… Examples: children believe that the sun can think and follows them around; because of such beliefs, they often add smiley faces on sketched suns. Adults typically refuse to wear a mass murderer’s sweater, believing that “evil” is a supernatural force that imparts its negative agency to the wearer…
Thanks to RichardDawkins.net for the link.
My girlfriend and I were in a cab riding home. The conversation with the cabbie started on the mundane topic of the Toronto weather.
The cabbie mentioned that the air force jets affected the weather.
Something I thought was odd. So I asked him “Wait, are you saying the air force jets are affecting the weather we’ll have this week?”
“Not just ‘affect’. They control the weather.” He said.
It turned out to be an interesting cab ride.
There are people who believe that 9/11 was a government cover-up. There are people who believe in secret government programs involving UFOs.
These people have got nothing on the government mind control conspiracy theorists.
Grounded in some amount of truth (as most conspiracies theories can be), these theories attribute basically supernatural powers to the government agencies in the world.
Psychics are frauds. Some psychics are aware they are fakes and some actually believe in their own fraud.
Here’s Orson Welles describing what it was like to be a fortune teller for a day and the “Occupational disease” of believing in your own trickery: called “becoming a shut-eye”.
Quick! Name some famous skeptics! [......Crickets chirping......]
Ok, how about this. Name some famous Magicians. [Harry Houdini, Penn and Teller] And here’s some more… James Randi, Johnny Carson and Orson Welles.
Magic is the art of fooling people for their own entertainment. Charlatanism is the art of fooling people for one’s own gain.
All magicians know they are tricking people, most charlatans do as well. It’s the people who think their ‘tricks’ are real that are the most disturbing, because they actually think they’re doing some good.
How I love 60 minutes. I don’t love baseball, but I love anything that has skepticism applied to its long unchallenged traditions.
Morley Safer profiles at former night watchmen who spent many of those night crunching numbers of debunking many of baseball’s myths…
“[Bill James] says for decades managers used outdated formulas or intuition in making decisions. So night after night, he crunched numbers until he came up with new statistics based on facts that would either support or debunk tradition.”
I was getting a cup of coffee at work, when I started talking to someone who works on my floor.
As my coffee was pouring he mentioned that he’s glad to have stopped drinking coffee, and switched to tea because it’s healthier for the body. I knew were this conversation was going. Detox.
“Cleans the system” he said. “There’s a lot of toxins that build up in your body.” As a rolled my eyes he dropped this one, “I used these pads you put on your feet that drain toxins from your body. I couldn’t believe the stuff that was in my body!”
Now, I get the detox. I have friends at work who detox, despite the fact that a quick trip to Wikipedia can tell you detox is all pseudoscience (citations included).
And I’m not Bill Maher who thinks Americans are stupid, at some point you’ve got lay down the stupid. People who believe in Detox Pads have got to be missing something in their brains and at the very least it’s and understanding of the word “skeptic”.
There Will Be Blood combines three of my favorite things:
Daniel Plainview, the main character, encounters the a young pentecostal preacher Eli Sunday who claims to be able heal the sick and bring fortune to the blessed.
Although the main plot is about Plainview, I also see how Eli Sunday is not much different.
Daniel Plainview is explained as a man who sees the worst in people, and just wants to “earn enough money [to] …get away from everyone.” which does include his own son. He uses slick salesmanship to get what he wants, sometimes not giving people their money’s worth.
Eli Sunday claims to be a righteous man of God but is also keenly aware of the riches of his father’s land and also keenly aware of how that can benefit his church (which always indirectly or directly benefits him).
Sunday learns that Plainview will be starting the Oil well in a ceremony in front of the whole town. Sunday insists the well should be blessed for good fortune, but of course Sunday will also be doing blessing and advertising himself as the spiritual head of the town.
And at the end of the movie, it is revealed just how cynical and shrewed Sunday is.
This movie is mostly about Plainview as a cynical and selfish man, but those qualities also exist in the film’s “man of God”. The only real different between Plainview and Sunday is that Plainview admits it and like most religious charlatans Eli Sunday wouldn’t dare.
This great ape recently took a trip to Thailand (thus the absence of blog posts in February).
The city of Lob Buri, about a 5 hour train ride from Bangkok, contains hundreds of free roaming “Crab-eating Macaque” monkeys. You can find them in scattered bunches in the streets and climbing the telephone wires.
The monkeys tend to conglomerate around an ancient shrine called Sarn Phra Karn, which where this photo was taken.
They aren’t stupid animals, and if you’re not careful they’ll steal your food, knowing that you won’t have the guts to fight back.
It’s quite fascinating to see all these animals living in families, belonging to groups, having fights and competing for food. Exactly what their human cousins do everyday.