One More Thing

Oh, and you know that essay I was writing? IT WAS FULL OF WIN. KNOW WHY? Cuz I totally managed to slip a Douglas Adams reference into a paper about an ectoparasitic isopod of the family Cymothodiae! My talents are totally underrated.

LIFT

This semester I've been working with some other folks to start up a skeptic student's group at CSU. We've recently been registered, under the name Leaders in Free Thought (LIFT). So far, we've had two meetings, and no events, but that's all going to change pretty soon. KNOW WHY? YEAH. Cuz I'm the fucking awesome new Event Coordinator. GO ME.

So right now, I'm planning the following events:

• Blasphemy Day International at CSU, Sept. 30th, 10am-3pm
• Screening of Monty Python's Life of Brian, Sept. 30th, 6pm-8pm (fun blasphemous movie!)
• Lecture by visiting professor Victor Stenger (author of The New Atheism and God: The Failed Hypothesis), either early Oct. or Nov.
  
• Possibly some educational thing about safe sex in mid-October
• Cans Around the Oval: a campus-wide canned food drive, sometime soon (I really should look up the date x___X)

On top of school and work, that's a lot of planning. Jebus. I have so much to do today. And I have a GRE practice test tomorrow at 9am because I'm also applying for grad. school (and law school--yes, at the same time) and I'm still on four hours of sleep from studying for a test I had today, and also finishing an essay, also due today. Someone save me.

New Moon--It's Coming

Trailers for New Moon are up, and it looks unimaginably bad! I haven't read the books, and never will, but I know far more about them than anyone should, because dammit, curiosity is an admirable trait. Sometimes.

I'm totally watching this in theaters. YAY. You may say something about encouraging the industry to keep pumping out crap movies, BUT WHATEVS. I must witness this debacle and pass the story on to future generations! Now I need someone to go with, but all the friends I'd want to invite care more about their own mental health than my amusement. Damn them all.

On another note entirely, I've added my brother Joe to the author list of this blog. He'll (hopefully) post an introduction soon. I claim no responsibility for anything he says here because leik, I'm not his keeper. But be ye fair warned...he leaves no survivors.

Frackin' Hilarious Stuff

I have two tests this week, tomorrow and the day after, that I should TOTALLY BE STUDYING FOR, but I'm junked up on caffeine SO LEIK I CAN'T EVEN SEE MY COMPUTER.

So here's some hilarious shit.

Don'tEvenReply.com
TheBloggess.com (How did I not know of her before?!)
Twilight Review (via The Bloggess)

About Frackin' Time

Some of you who aren't science geeks may not know anything about Alan Turing (b. 1912). He was pretty much the father of computer science, as well as a brilliant mathematician and logician. He's dead now. He took his own life. He wasn't mentally ill, or in chronic pain, or seeking attention: he was just gay. The British government prosecuted Turing for this heinous crime in 1952, and gave him the choice to either go to prison or take female hormones (and thereby chemically castrate himself). Tragically (but understandably), he chose option 3: suicide. This was just fifty-seven years ago. Anyone who thinks we're way beyond this sort of miserable bigotry is sorely mistaken. Anyways, the British government has finally apologized to Turing. Here's the full text of the statement made by Gordon Brown:

2009 has been a year of deep reflection - a chance for Britain, as a nation, to commemorate the profound debts we owe to those who came before. A unique combination of anniversaries and events have stirred in us that sense of pride and gratitude which characterise the British experience. Earlier this year I stood with Presidents Sarkozy and Obama to honour the service and the sacrifice of the heroes who stormed the beaches of Normandy 65 years ago. And just last week, we marked the 70 years which have passed since the British government declared its willingness to take up arms against Fascism and declared the outbreak of World War Two. So I am both pleased and proud that, thanks to a coalition of computer scientists, historians and LGBT activists, we have this year a chance to mark and celebrate another contribution to Britain’s fight against the darkness of dictatorship; that of code-breaker Alan Turing.

Turing was a quite brilliant mathematician, most famous for his work on breaking the German Enigma codes. It is no exaggeration to say that, without his outstanding contribution, the history of World War Two could well have been very different. He truly was one of those individuals we can point to whose unique contribution helped to turn the tide of war. The debt of gratitude he is owed makes it all the more horrifying, therefore, that he was treated so inhumanely. In 1952, he was convicted of ‘gross indecency’ - in effect, tried for being gay. His sentence - and he was faced with the miserable choice of this or prison - was chemical castration by a series of injections of female hormones. He took his own life just two years later.

Thousands of people have come together to demand justice for Alan Turing and recognition of the appalling way he was treated. While Turing was dealt with under the law of the time and we can’t put the clock back, his treatment was of course utterly unfair and I am pleased to have the chance to say how deeply sorry I and we all are for what happened to him. Alan and the many thousands of other gay men who were convicted as he was convicted under homophobic laws were treated terribly. Over the years millions more lived in fear of conviction.

I am proud that those days are gone and that in the last 12 years this government has done so much to make life fairer and more equal for our LGBT community. This recognition of Alan’s status as one of Britain’s most famous victims of homophobia is another step towards equality and long overdue.

But even more than that, Alan deserves recognition for his contribution to humankind. For those of us born after 1945, into a Europe which is united, democratic and at peace, it is hard to imagine that our continent was once the theatre of mankind’s darkest hour. It is difficult to believe that in living memory, people could become so consumed by hate - by anti-Semitism, by homophobia, by xenophobia and other murderous prejudices - that the gas chambers and crematoria became a piece of the European landscape as surely as the galleries and universities and concert halls which had marked out the European civilisation for hundreds of years. It is thanks to men and women who were totally committed to fighting fascism, people like Alan Turing, that the horrors of the Holocaust and of total war are part of Europe’s history and not Europe’s present.

So on behalf of the British government, and all those who live freely thanks to Alan’s work I am very proud to say: we’re sorry, you deserved so much better.

(Via Pharyngula)

Skepticism is Not Faith

I recently started a Facebook discussion group called Theists, Deists, and Infidels. I wanted to make a place for me and my friends to get together and discuss different books about religion (written by both believers and nonbelievers). Right now we're reading The Reason For God, by Timothy Keller. I have to say, I'm not at all impressed with the book. Keller's argumentation is flimsy, and he makes huge, overarching claims that are impossible to verify (more on those later). But possibly the most annoying argument he makes is that skepticism is just as faith-based as religion. Since I have class in like, four minutes, I'm just going to post the response I made on the discussion board.

I think Keller fundamentally misunderstands what it means to be a true skeptic. He says that "skeptics must learn to look for a type of faith hidden within their reasoning" and that "every doubt...is based on a leap of faith" (xvii). Unless Keller and I are talking about different conceptions of "faith", he is entirely mistaken when he says that skepticism is as much based on faith as is religion. Faith, to me (and I daresay, to most people), is belief without proof. You have faith that God exists and somehow influences the world, but you can't prove it. Skepticism is just the rejection of belief without proof, and therefore, the rejection of faith.

Keller responds to the above objection by saying that skeptics have faith that there is no God, and that they can't justify this belief to people who don't share their views (xviii). No. No no no. Skeptics withhold judgment until definitive evidence comes to light. Show us God, and we'll believe. Otherwise, we'll work under the assumption he's not there. Like I said in my introduction, no marginally intelligent atheist would claim that there is certainly no God. I, and many other atheists, merely assert that there is insufficient evidence for any God, much less the specific entity(ies) portrayed in the Christian Bible. Many of us go a step further and say that there is very probably no God. Even this stronger claim, however, is not based on faith.

I'll illustrate this point with a specific example. Think of the Flat Earth Society. These people honestly think that the Earth is flat, and claim that you can't prove they're wrong. Show them evidence disproving their idea, and they have a response. The moon landing was faked. Space photographs are faked. The horizon only appears to bend because of "bendy light" (I'm not kidding here). The "edge" of the world is guarded by government operatives so no one can discover the truth. They can answer any challenge! So do you believe them? No, of course not! Why? Because that's insane! The theory raises more questions than it answers! It's needlessly complicated! Ockham rolls in his grave at the mere suggestion.

When skeptics say "there probably is no God", they're responding as any reasonable person would to the Flat Earth Hypothesis. The "evidence" presented by the Flat Earthers is insubstantial and obviously slanted, as well as closed to scientific investigation (you can't test any of their assertions). So it's useless to assume the earth is flat and all the scientific evidence is faked, because you can't do anything with that assertion. Skepticism is no more "faith-based" than rejecting the Flat Earth Hypothesis. Keller has that completely wrong.

In other words, Science is Real!