Blog posts (#2)
* Blog posts * Adds blog image --------- Co-authored-by: Joe Carstairs <65492573+Sycamost@users.noreply.github.com>
This commit is contained in:
Joe Carstairs
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src/content/blog/2024/04/14/god_is_not_great.md
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---
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title: God Is Not Great, initial thoughts
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description: >-
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My spark notes on Hitchen's classic 2007 polemic against religion, plus some
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initial thoughts on how I want to respond to it.
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pubDate:
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year: 2024
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month: 04
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day: 14
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---
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These are my 'spark notes' on _God Is Not Great_, Christopher Hitchen's classic
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2007 polemic against religion in all its forms, and call to adopt secular
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humanism as its rightful replacement.
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The book can be coherently read as a collection of independent essays. That
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said, with a few exceptions, each chapter in _God Is Not Great_ contributes to
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one of three main themes, and I think this is a helpful way of summarising the
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overall movement of the book. The three themes I've identified are as follows:
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<ol>
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<li>
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<a href="#1-religion-is-evil">Religion is evil</a>
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</li>
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<li>
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<a href="#2-religion-is-untrue">Religion is untrue</a>
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</li>
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<li>
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<a href="#3-secular-humanism-is-a-better-alternative-to-religion">Secular humanism is a better alternative to religion</a>
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</li>
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</ol>
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As for the exceptions: Chapters 13 and 17 in part contribute to both the first
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theme and the third, while Chapters 1, 3, 12 and 14 don't fit into these broad
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themes, and are self-standing.
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## 1. Religion is evil
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- Chp 2
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- Religion is violent, because:
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- It has to be missionary, because it is insecure in its own beliefs (p17)
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- It provokes tribalistic conflict, in a similar manner to racism (pp35-36)
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- Chp 4
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- Religion is bad for your health, because:
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- Faith in medicine is a threat to religion's thrall (p47)
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- Religious doctrines may contradict sound medical advice
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- The right to religious freedom may be abused to deflect criticism of
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unhealthy practices (p50)
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- Religion has a special relationship with child abuse, and is incapable of
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accepting open moral criticism of itself for this
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- Chp 13
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- Religion tends towards evil, because it requires fanaticism in order to
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spread, and fanaticism tends towards evil (p192)
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- Chp 16
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- Religion causes child abuse, because:
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- Terrifying children with eschatology is child abuse
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- Religious education is propaganda and should not be inflicted on children
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who are not yet mature enough to respond to it rationally
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- Religion consistently mandates cruel genital mutilation of children
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- Christians and Muslims have spread misinformation about masturbation,
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which leads to dangerously sexually repressed adult men, which in turn
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leads to sexual abuse of children by those men (as well as sexual abuse of
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women)
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- Child abuse in churches is not a case of a few bad eggs, it is
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institutional and based on an ideological need to control the minds and
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sexual organs of children
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- Religion institutionalised torture in medieval Europe
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- Religion makes honest and nuanced debate about abortion impossible, because:
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- Nuanced debate is pushed out by extreme and implausible religious doctrine
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- Religious people would rather use the unborn as objects of doctrine than
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human beings in need of protection
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- Chp 17
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- Religion is the only reason anti-Semitism is possible
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- Religion in its fullest expression is indistinguishable from
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totalitarianism, because:
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- The defining characteristic of both religion and totalitarianism is the
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absolute right to rule of the ruler, even when they rule with caprice
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- Religion and totalitarianism are also characterised by the need to
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extinguish heresy with violence
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- Religion and totalitarianism alike must propose a total solution to all
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life's problems, require blind faith from its adherents, and demand all
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aspects of life public and private be submitted to total supervision. This
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doesn't bring out the best in us
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- Religious/totalitarian systems are unable to take accountability and
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therefore improve over time, in contrast to secular humanist systems
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- History has proven this as fact:
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- In the ancient world, religious totalitarianism was the normal form of
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government
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- Calvin, the inspiration for the Presbyterian Christian tradition, which
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included South African apartheid, was the epitome of a totalitarian
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dictator, demanding total control on the private lives of his citizens
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in Geneva, on the pain of humiliation in this life and eternal torment
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in the next
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- History has also proven that, rather than standing in opposition to the
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supposedly secular totalitarianisms of the twentieth century, religion
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actually aided and abetted totalitarianism:
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- Rome supported fascist movements throughout Europe, including Italy,
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Hungary, Spain, and Ireland
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- Rome accommodated Naziism by handing over control of its schools,
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permitting the use of parish records to identify those with Jewish
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ancestry, disbanding Catholic opposition political parties, declaring
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Hitler's birthday a Church holiday, and running the 'rat line' to South
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America after the military defeat of Naziism
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- Although not quite as arse-licking as the Vatican, Germany's Protestant
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churches also mostly capitulated to Nazi totalitarianism
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- Japanese soldiers committed enormous atrocities across the Far East in
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the name of their god-emperor, Hirohito
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- The strategy of the Communists was first, to use religion as a prop to
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gain power, and then to replace religion with itself. Notice the
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striking commonalities between religion and communist totalitarianism:
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- Infallible leaders
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- A permanent war on heresy
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- Institutionalised torture
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- Scapegoating the innocent rather than accepting accountability for
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failures
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- Justifying any means necessary in order to achieve an ultimate end
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## 2. Religion is untrue
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- Chp 5
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- Religion was a barbaric attempt to explain physical phenomena. Science now
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does a much better job, so religion can be discarded as a redundant theory
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- Chp 6
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- Religion is 'solipsistic', which is to say:
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- Religion divides the world into an in-group and an out-group
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- When the in-group receives good fortune, that is interpreted as God's
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blessing
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- When the in-group receives bad fortune, this is inexplicable
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- Whatever happens to the out-group is irrelevant
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- This is a redundant theory which explains little, and therefore we should
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not believe it
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- Chp 7
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- We should believe that the Pentateuch is a fiction, because:
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- Exodus is inconsistent with the archaeological evidence
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- Textual evidence in Deuteronomy suggests the texts were written much later
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than the supposed events were supposed to have taken place
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- Throughout the Pentateuch, Moses is referred to in the third person, which
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is not consistent with the claim that Moses himself authored it
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- The Pentateuch contains events we should _hope_ to be false, such as Moses
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ordering multiple massacres, and the Ten Commandments classifying wives as
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their husbands' property
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- The Pentateuch - indeed, the whole Bible - is limited in scope to a small
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corner of the Middle East, which is not consistent with the universal
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nature of the supposed God who is supposed to have inspired its authorship
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- Chp 8
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- We should not believe the Gospels, because:
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- Matthew and Luke disagree on the virgin conception
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- Matthew and Luke disagree on the genealogy of Jesus
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- Matthew and Luke disagree on when Mary and Jesus escaped to Egypt
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- Luke dates the birth of Christ during both the reign of Herod in Judea
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and the governorship of Quirinius in Syria, but these two events did not
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overlap, so this is impossible
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- As far as we know, the Romans did not, and would not, demand that the
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people assemble in one place in order to be counted for a census
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- The Gospels disagree about the Sermon on the Mount
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- The Gospels disagree about the Anointing of Jesus
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- The Gospels disagree about the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus
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- The Gospels disagree about the betrayal of Judas
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- The Gospels disagree about the denial of Peter
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- John suggests he thinks Jesus was probably born in Galilee to an
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ordinary family with no proven link to King David's genealogy
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- Mary's attested behaviour during the ministry of Jesus is not consistent
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with the Nativity story
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- John 8:3-11 (the stoning of the woman caught in adultery) is a later
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insertion to John's Gospel
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- Chp 9: the Koran is borrowed from a hotchpotch of Jewish and Christian
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myths
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- Chp 10
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- Miracles (such as the Resurrection of Jesus) should not be believed,
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because:
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- See Hume's _On Miracles_
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- Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence
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- Believing miracles is comparable to believing reports of aliens (p144)
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- Chp 11
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- Religions are founded in credulity
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- Chp 15
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- The crucifixion story makes no sense, because:
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- I'm supposed to be morally responsible for Adam's sin, but I amn't!
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- Even Adam can't be fully blamed for Adam's sin, because he was set up!
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- The Jews who crucified Jesus are supposed to be blameworthy for their
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crime, even though the crucifixion was allegedly both necessary and
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inevitable
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- I'm allegedly given the free will to either accept or deny the offer,
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even though denying the offer will lead to an eternity of torment: any
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sensible God who cared a mite would not have given me the choice
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- Religious rules are impossible to follow, and this leads to either
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spiritual policing, organised hypocrisy, or both
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## 3. Secular humanism is a better alternative to religion
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- Chp 13
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- Faith has inspired great heroism. But the heroism is better explained by the
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heroes' humanism than it is by their faith itself
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- For example, Martin Luther King Junior didn't really preach Christianity,
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because he preached forgiveness, while Christ preached eternal torment for
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the 'inattentive' (pp175-6)
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- Chp 17
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- Religion is the only thing sustaining anti-Semitism
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- Secular humanist political systems can take accountability, respond to
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criticism and improve over time, while religious systems exempt themselves
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from legitimate criticism, stifling progress
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- The only alternative to totalitarianism is pluralism, which is inherently
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secular
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- Chp 18
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- Secular humanism has been a powerful positive force throughout history in
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face of oppression by religion, as proved by example:
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- Socrates proved that conscience is innate, and that a great way to mock
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dogma is with satire which pretends to accept that dogma
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- Lucretius, Democritus and Epicurus had better explanations for the way the
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world worked than religion (which is why their work was suppressed in
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Christian Europe and nearly lost forever as a result). Once rediscovered,
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their ideas kick-started the Scientific Revolution in Europe
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- Spinoza's deistic ideas had a huge influence despite Jews collaborating
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with their Christian oppressors to try and ban his writing out of
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existence
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- Boyle and Voltaire may have been closet atheists, agnostics or deists
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- Kant 'overthrew' the cosmological and ontological arguments for the
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existence of God, and proved (by means of the Categorical Imperative) that
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human decency does not require any theological assumptions
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- Let's chuck some more names in the ring: Gibbon, Hume, Paine, Franklin,
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Darwin, Einstein
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- Jews were once doubly ghettoed: on the outside by oppressive Christians,
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and on the inside by oppressive self-racialisation. Secular humanism freed
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Jews from both these ghettoes, which in turn led to an outpouring of
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secular Jewish brilliance
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- Ancient Jews were on the road to a quasi-secular Hellenism, before that
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was ruined forever by the tyrannical and fanatical Judas Maccabeus, with
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disastrous consequences for the history of Western civilisation. The
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Abrahamic religions we know today were not inevitable, and it is possible
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to imagine what Western history would have been like without it
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- Chp 19
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- Secular humanism is a better alternative to religion, because:
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- Religion requires clinging to immovable dogma and being unwilling to
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change your mind
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- Seeking truth requires being willing to change your mind
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- Secular humanism is therefore on the side of seeking truth, and religion
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is on the side of wilful ignorance
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- Secular humanism is on the side of progress, because it is what enables the
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expansion of scientific knowledge and the development of new technology
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## The odds and ends
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- Chp 1: an introduction to the themes of the book with little substantial
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- Chp 3: titled 'A Short Digression on the Pig', it does what it says on the tin
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- Chp 12: titled 'A Coda: How Religions End', it does what it says on the tin
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- Chp 14: contrary to the hopes of some Westerners disillusioned with organised
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Western religion, Eastern religions like Buddhism, Hinduism and Taoism are not
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a solution to the problems of religion
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I would be interested to try writing apologetic and/or evangelistic responses to
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these ideas. But it's not a priority for me right now. Anyway, if I ever want to
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come back to it, I'll probably come back to these spark notes to give me a head
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start.
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---
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title: How I made YouTube work for me
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description: >-
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I just learned YouTube channels have an RSS feed. This is terrific news.
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pubDate:
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year: 2024
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month: 05
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day: 02
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---
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One of my bad habits in life is wandering through YouTube. I've always had
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AutoPlay turned off, but I still found myself switching off and sleepwalking
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from one 'recommendation' to the next.
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A lot of what I watch in these times is crap. It's often when I'm tired and just
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want to switch off, so naturally enough, longer, more emotionally or
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intellectually material – in other words, exactly the kind of videos I actually
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**do** want to watch – I ignore. (For me, it's often mediocre sketch comedy
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videos. That's my poison, it turns out.)
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Now, there is a time for switching off and doing something light. But I don't
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want watching junk videos to be my answer. Any more than when I'm hungry after
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a long day of work, I don't want to be resorting to junk food all the time. I
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really want to get out of this bad habit, and though it's not a huge problem,
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I've still not been able to fully kick it, either.
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Still, there are YouTube channels I really _want_ to keep up with. Musicians.
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Short film channels. Video essayists. And, yes, even one or two sketch channels:
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though YouTube is a bit flooded with sketch comedy, some it is really good and
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brings me joy, and that's a good thing!
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This is where RSS comes in.
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So if you don't know, an RSS file is a file someone puts on their website which
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tells you, in a standard format, what pages are on their website. It's a pretty
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old standard in Web terms, and it's very stable. There are a wide range of apps
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out there, called 'feed readers', which you can use to keep track of RSS feeds,
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notifying you when something new gets published in your website and putting it
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in a feed for you to review.
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It turns out YouTube channels have RSS feeds.
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This is terrific news.
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It means I can use my RSS feed reader to subscribe to YouTube channels, instead
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of YouTube's own subscription system.
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And that means I don't need any of YouTube's personalisation features. I can
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delete all my search history, all my watch history, and stop them from
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collecting any more. This means YouTube is now incapable of providing
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recommendations that I'm actually likely to click on. Which is exactly what I
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want.
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This is what my YouTube homepage looks like right now:
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So I can both subscribe to the channels I'm genuinely interested in, and not
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get sucked into watching junk.
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Awesome!
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