Kevin DeGraaf’s Blog

Austin Cline has posted an excellent article about the myth of atheistic intolerance, and that has led me to think about my own position on the matter. I have been accused on many occasions of being too harsh, too dismissive, and/or too mocking toward religion. One such complainant explicitly denounced my position as being that of “fundamentalist” atheism (an appellation which is self-evidently logically incoherent). Other correspondents have urged me to be less disrespectful toward their blind-faith positions.

While I have tried to direct my reproachful critique toward theism itself, rather than at individual theists (”you have a silly belief” vs. “you are a silly person”), my experience has been that religious adherents, whose very identity is linked almost inextricably to their faith, seem to be unable or unwilling to recognize that distinction.

Christianity occupies a position of power in this country, and that fact has given rise to a widespread popular consensus that Christianity should enjoy an exemption from scrutiny. Any criticism of its doctrine, any suggestion that it might be inconsistent with reality, any idea which threatens to displace “faith” from its privileged position as the defining characteristic of one’s entire worldview — these and other insinuations are virtually guaranteed to cause an immediate, swift defensive reaction. I’m intolerant, I’m disrespectful, I’m closed-minded, I’m hateful, I’m an evil fundy. The list goes on and on, and the common theme is that I should just shut up and stop criticizing religion.

Hell, no.

I will not refrain from calling religion exactly what it is: medieval, superstitious, incoherent nonsense, incompatible with reality, dreamed up by scared human beings seeking explanation and comfort, encouraged by opportunistic humans seeking to control others, and used in furtherance of all manner of evil ends (opposing science, oppressing women and gays, causing holy wars, promoting in-group/out-group divisions, killing defenseless children, cheating the gullible, and scaring people into compliance through the grotesque absurdity that is the doctrine of hell, to name just a few examples).

I do not, will not, and indeed cannot show any deference toward a belief system that seeks to undermine reason itself to make room for the acceptance of unprovable and, in many cases, downright ludicrous propositions.

You Christians know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that all other religions are full of crap. You know that Islam and Mormonism and Hinduism and all the others are complete nonsense because (1) your own doctrines say so, and (2) your rational mind is free to come to that obvious conclusion because it is not blinded by any Muslim or Mormon or Hindu dogma.

What you need to realize is that Christianity is no different. Burning bushes and wine-conjuring, donkey-stealing, fig-tree-smiting, virgin-impregnating superheroes are no more rational than flying horses and magical golden plates.  Religion is both utterly absurd and ominously dangerous, and those of us who recognize this owe your ideology no deference whatsoever.

I was hit hard by the flu this week. I spent Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday stuck at home, hanging on for dear life as my body took radical steps to rid itself of these wonderful little guests. Many of my extended family members have had the flu recently, and as one of them aptly put it, “you want to DIE but can’t!”. I was able to return to work today and confront the mountain of tasks that had piled up, but if past illnesses are any guide, I won’t be at 100% for another week or so.

I thought it would be fitting to use part of my illness-induced downtime to start reading a new book: The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design by Richard Dawkins (yes, that Dawkins).

Can any cdesign proponentsists explain to me why any intelligent engineer would create bodies that are vulnerable to viruses, or that defend against them in such grotesque ways as vomiting, diarrhea, fever and malaise (preferably without any cop-outs that involve talking snakes and naked ladies)?

Also, today being “Good” Friday, I would like to bring to your attention this post at The Learned Pig.  Excerpt:

What’s so “good” about a Friday that commemorates someone being nailed to a piece of wood and left to die?

Hudsonville, Michigan, where I attended high school, has attracted media attention over its mission statement:

The City Commission and Administration of the City of Hudsonville strive to serve God through the strengthening of family and community life and are committed to excellence in providing quality municipal services.

The city’s position was defended by the Grand Rapids Press.

I just sent an email to the city’s mayor, Donald VanDoeselaar:

As a former resident of Hudsonville, I’m disappointed to see the city espouse such flagrant disregard for the bedrock Constitutional principle of separation between religion and government.

Our country is a secular democratic republic, not a theocracy. Everyone is free to worship any deity, or no deity, as he/she sees fit. The proper role of the government is to attend to civic business, not to favor any establishments of religion.

If you want to worship an invisible man in the sky, that’s your business, but you have no right to officially endorse such belief in your capacity as a public official, or to use taxpayer funds to promote such an endorsement.

(Hat tip to Austin Cline.)

I finally convinced the management to scrap our hideously awful brain-dead phone system and replace it with a modern Voice-over-IP system.

We purchased one Redfone foneBRIDGE2-EC device, one Rackform iServ R107 server, twenty-eight Linksys SPA942 phones, two Polycom IP4000 conference phones, five Grandstream HT286 analog adapters, and one Grandstream BT101 phone (to connect to a paging amplifier). We also consolidated our jumbled mismash of phone services (analog lines, a BRI, and a set of DIDs) into one T1 PRI connection.

Unfortunately, the management wouldn’t spring for new Ethernet wiring, so we had to piggy-back off our existing infrastructure, making it infeasible to use Power-over-Ethernet and thus requiring a fleet of local power adapters.

That aside, I have been very pleased with our new equipment. I was able to set up centralized provisioning of the Linksys and Polycom phones (using MySQL, Perl, FTP, and TFTP) without much difficulty. The Grandstream units support provisioning as well, but since they are so simple and we have so few of them, I didn’t bother.

On the software side, we’re using Asterisk (of course). That was the first decision we made, and all of the other components were evaluated based on their Asterisk interoperability. I plan to provide, in a future post, more technical details of how the system is set up. Stay tuned.

I would like to solicit feedback from my audience about two policy questions that came up during the planning and implementation of the system.

First: whether to use an automated attendant (AA) to answer the incoming calls. Under the old system, every call was supposed to be answered by a human. This policy inevitably led to dropped, missed, and/or rushed calls. It also annoyed those of us who don’t like to speak to humans unless it’s necessary; transferring calls based on a dialed extension does not and should not require using a human operator.

After strenuous internal negotiations, we convinced the management to let us set up an AA system to handle calls. Unlike the AA systems used by major corporations, ours is extremely simple: “Thank you for calling Blah. To reach the operator, dial zero. If you know your party’s extension, please dial it now. Otherwise, for blah, dial blah; for blah, dial blah, etc.”

Readers: what do you think? Should an AA be used to ensure that (1) every call is answered promptly, (2) extensions can be reached without involving a human, and (3) the human operator is far less busy and can devote more attention to each call for which the caller actually dials zero? Or, should the policy remain “every call is answered by a human”, even though that’s infeasible, inflexible, and old-fashioned?

Interestingly enough, in our discussions, the response was split neatly along gender lines. The guys voted for the AA, and the women lobbied unsuccessfully for the old system which, theoretically, involves “human contact”.

Second: what do you think of individual paging? When I started at this company, I was shocked to discover that the phone system was set up to allow any user to individually page any other user! Specifically: (1) you’d be sitting there working, (2) your phone would beep and immediately enter into an unsolicited full-duplex (two-way) speaker-phone mode, and (3) the caller would start yammering at you. I was astonished: a company actually thinks that barging in on people’s privacy like this is a good idea? What if you’re busy? What if you’re concentrating on something? What if you’re having a private/confidential conversation? In general: WTF?

Asterisk and the SPA942 phones provide for this behavior (you just set a certain SIP header prior to executing the Dial() application), but I strongly lobbied against it. Unlike with the AA debate, however, my technician and I were the only people opposed to this “feature”. Everyone else either argued in favor of it, or took a “meh, no big deal” position. One person even had the gall to suggest that our opposition stemmed from a lack of desire to assist others (like that has any bearing on ringing-vs.-barging). In general: WTF?

Enough for now…

Mitt Romney is a douchebag.

Exhibit A: As a member of a religion so insane that Christianity looks somewhat rational by comparison, Mitt had to perform a careful tap dance two months ago on the subject of faith. Had he emphasized his Mormonism too strongly, or taken the alternate path of overly downplaying the importance of his religion, Romney would have alienated the slack-jawed mouth-breathers of the Religious Right (a crucial segment of the Republican electorate). Behold, the power of political pandering:

Freedom requires religion, just as religion requires freedom. Freedom opens the windows of the soul so that man can discover his most profound beliefs and commune with God. Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone.

How wonderfully generic. “Vote for me — I believe in a Big Sky Daddy (TM) just like you do! (Sort of…) We’re not so different, you and I, especially compared to those damn dirty atheists.”

As a decidedly non-religious person, I was surprised to learn that I oppose freedom. I must be a part of the Evil Atheist Conspiracy (TM) to overthrow democracy. Hmmmm.

Exhibit B: Good riddance — the crazy Moron Mormon is withdrawing his presidential bid. Rather than bowing out with the grace, style and decorum one might naively expect from a would-be leader of the free world, good ‘ol Mitt got off a particularly sanctimonious parting shot:

“Frankly, I’d be making it easier for Senator Clinton or Obama to win” if he stayed in the race, he said. “I simply cannot let my campaign be a part of aiding a surrender to terror.”

Is this asshat actually implying that electing a Democratic president would be surrendering to terrorism? Unfortunately, the implication is quite unmistakable.

News flash, genius: damn near everybody (except for the stupidest one-fifth or so of the country, i.e. the uber-loyal Republican base that overlaps neatly with the aforementioned Religious Right) has figured out that the Republican occupation of Iraq was, to put it gently, a colossal clusterfuck that has ended up creating far more terrorists and anti-American sentiment than ever before.  The “vote for us or TEH TERRORISTS WILL 9/11 GET US!!!!!!!!!!! 9/11 OMGWTF9/11BBQ!!!!!” line of bull is wearing very, very thin.

The people rest their case.

I recently turned down an employment offer. I would have been in a Linux architect role, far away from my current position that includes heading a department (okay, it’s just me and a junior sysadmin) that supports Windows users. The reasons for turning down this job are varied and complicated, but a point was added to the “bail out” column today upon receipt of a particularly whiny email from a sales droid.

“Whaa, whaa, boo hoo, I want administrative access to my laptop! Boo hoo! Whaa!” Okay, moron. The last time we bent the corporate I.T. policy and gave you access, you installed all manner of crapware onto a company-owned laptop (games, widgets, toolbars, P2P filesharing apps, trojan horses, etc.) and physically beat the same laptop almost to death, requiring us to replace four major parts.  I believe I speak for pissed-off I.T. guys everywhere when I say: screw you.

This same droid also complained that a laptop recently assigned to his sales droid colleague, a Dell system, was “unbearably slow”. Mind you, this is a brand-new Dell laptop with an Athlon 64 X2 processor, a gigabyte of RAM, and a clean Windows XP installation. It’s not a dream machine, but it’s no bargain-basement clunker either. Many people, including a number of our own employees, do just freaking dandy on a lot less.

Why must people be stupid?  It burns!

CNN has posted an article stating that “Utility crews have nearly completed restoring power to homes and businesses in Oklahoma, where as many as 600,000 customers were blacked out by last week’s storm.”

What do you suppose this article’s headline was? “Oklahoma power nearly restored”? “Utility crews work tirelessly in Oklahoma?” “Oklahoma storm damage mostly repaired”? Nope: “Prayers answered in Oklahoma“.

Underneath the headline, where you might expect to see a halfway-relevant stock photo (perhaps a downed power line or an iced-over utility pole), they showed a child praying.

What happened to responsible, fact-based journalism? Isn’t the point of the news to, I don’t know, actually investigate the situation and report what happened? Is there any evidence whatsoever that prayer (as opposed to utility crews busting ass, around-the-clock, out in the cold) actually accomplished anything?

It’s one thing to have a quiet personal worldview that attributes every positive event to “God did it!”, but for a major “news” outlet to trumpet that opinion as the headline of a story boggles my mind.

Maybe CNN’s next headline could read “Magic 8-Ball saves stranded family” or “Zeus sends the stock market soaring”…

One of our most fundamental rights as Americans, codified in the Second Amendment to our Constitution, is the freedom to “keep and bear arms”. While it would certainly be nice to live in an environment in which there was never any need to defend ourselves against violent threats, those of us who live in the real world must accept the harsh reality of the situation and deal with it accordingly.

Muggings, home invasions, rapes and murders happen every day, and while the risk of being the victim of one of these crimes is low and can be further minimized through smart decision-making, it can never be eliminated. So we are faced with a question: do we want to rely on the police to protect us, or should we be proactive and be prepared to respond to threats of violence ourselves?

The importance of the right to bear arms becomes even more clear when we remember the circumstances under which the Bill of Rights was ratified. Our country’s freedom was won only after a lengthy war against a brutal, unreasonable, tyrannical government, and the Founding Fathers correctly realized that firearm ownership was an important protection against the new federal government turning into the very type of oppressive regime that had just been violently thrown off.

Make no mistake, I am not advocating the overthrow of our government; I am simply pointing out that if we continue to head down the path of secret prisons, sanctioned torture, surveillance without oversight, the suspension of habeus corpus, and supreme executive power in general, it would be nice to have a way to press a political “reset button” and restore our cherished American liberties.

So, in order to protect myself and those around me, I chose to take a concealed-carry course back in October. Michigan is a “shall-issue” state, meaning that as long as a person meets a stringent list of criteria, the state shall issue him/her a permit to carry a concealed pistol in public. I received my concealed pistol license (CPL) last week, and then purchased a .40-caliber Glock 23 semiautomatic handgun (info, specs).

Those of us with civilian CPLs (as opposed to the CPLs issued to retired police officers) may carry our pistols anywhere in the state, except in the following “gun-free” zones:

• Per state law: schools, day-care centers, sports arenas, bars, houses of delusion worship (unless the presiding official approves), entertainment facilities with 2,500+ seats, hospitals, colleges, casinos, and courthouses.
• Per federal law: federal buildings and Post Offices.

These restrictions are ludicrous and exist only to pacify sheeple who would rather feel safe than actually be safe.

We CPL holders are at least 21 years of age, have been subjected to detailed background checks (no felonies, mental illnesses, restraining orders, dishonorable discharges, DUIs, etc.), have passed training courses covering safe firearm handling, marksmanship and the justifiable use of lethal force, and are legally bound to register our weapons and completely abstain from alcohol while carrying them.

In other words, we are exactly the sort of people who should be carrying firearms in schools, day care centers, arenas and the like. We, as responsible, law-abiding, armed citizens, serve as a useful adjunct to the police. When some deranged nutcase opens fire in a crowded building, having CPL holders around means that the bad guy can be neutralized without waiting for the police to arrive. Where concealed carry is banned, the innocent-bystander body count can soar.

Do proponents of gun control really think that criminals willing to use firearms to commit theft, rape and murder are going to give a second’s thought to laws preventing them from possessing guns in these locations in the first place? As nice as that would be, this isn’t utopia and we can’t stop criminal gun usage by simple legislative fiat. These restrictions simply increase the asymmetry between the good guys (who are shackled by the law) and the bad guys (who aren’t).

In closing, I’d like to quote from this blog post. I disagree with a fair number of the author’s positions, but he’s correct when he says:

I don’t carry a gun to kill people. I carry a gun to keep from being killed.

I don’t carry a gun to scare people. I carry a gun because sometimes this world can be a scary place.

I don’t carry a gun because I’m paranoid. I carry a gun because there are real threats in the world.

I don’t carry a gun because I’m evil. I carry a gun because I have lived long enough to see the evil in the world.

I don’t carry a gun because I hate the government. I carry a gun because I understand the limitations of government.

I don’t carry a gun because I’m angry. I carry a gun so that I don’t have to spend the rest of my life hating myself for failing to be prepared.

I don’t carry a gun because my sex organs are too small. I carry a gun because I want to continue to use those sex organs for the purpose for which they were intended for a good long time to come.

I don’t carry a gun because I want to shoot someone. I carry a gun because I want to die at a ripe old age in my bed, and not on a sidewalk somewhere tomorrow afternoon.

I don’t carry a gun because I’m a cowboy. I carry a gun because, when I die and go to heaven, I want to be a cowboy.

I don’t carry a gun to make me feel like a man. I carry a gun because men know how to take care of themselves and the ones they love.

I don’t carry a gun because I feel inadequate. I carry a gun because unarmed and facing three armed thugs, I am inadequate.

I don’t carry a gun because I love it. I carry a gun because I love life and the people who make it meaningful to me.

The following blog post was brought to my attention this morning: Should Women Discuss Doctrinal Issues Amongst Each Other?

I do not feel that women should be recieving teachings, drawing conclusions and beliefs in areas of doctrine, nor trying to teach other woman (or men!) in areas of theology. [...]

If you as a wife are off studying things for yourself and coming to your own conclusions without the direction, blessing and oversight of her husband, it can easily lead to disunity in the marriage along with the wife feeling superior to her husband and overriding his authority. It can also easily lead to the wife being led astray and decieved.

The primitive, backwards misogyny of these statements left me reeling in disgust. The moral Zeitgeist that lives within civilized society has made tremendous progress since biblical times, and one of the central themes of this post-religious enlightenment is that all people, regardless of gender, deserve freedom of thought, expression, and actions. This principle stands in stark contrast to the biblical sentiments expressed by the author of that post. (The Christian denomination in which I was raised almost tore itself apart over these same issues a decade ago.)

As moral humans in the twenty-first century, we need to emphatically reject any ideology, dogma, or worldview that asserts that some people deserve less freedom simply because they happen to be of a certain gender or race.

As I mentioned, when I read that blog post, my first reactions were anger, disgust, and even pity — after all, if it weren’t for religion, this woman would not feel burdened by archaic, misogynistic dogma and could feel free to express her opinions, on any subject, without subjecting them to the verification of her “man” first.

But now that I’ve thought about it for a while, I’ve decided that I simply don’t care. To each, his/her own. If this woman is so wrapped up in baseless delusion that she wants to ignore the progress of morality over the last two millennia and instead infantilize herself by clinging to a “sacred” text that commands her to be submissive to her husband, fine. Let her persist in her self-created mental prison. She doesn’t deserve our pity.

I thought I’d share a recent reply to a particularly irritating godbot:

It sounded to me that you were saying that the burden of proof was on the Christian for stating positively, “God exists.” and that the Atheist who states negatively, “God does not exist.” is under no obligation to support his/her statement as truth

I do not assert that “God does not exist”. As a general rule, atheism is simply the lack of belief in deities.

There are some atheists who make a positive assertion that there definitely is no God. These so-called “positive” atheists typically support this claim by pointing out that certain properties attributed to the Christian God are logically incompatible, e.g. omnipotence, omniscience, and omnibenevolence.

While they make a good point, I espouse the “negative” atheist position, which rejects the positive assertion that there is a God (on the grounds that no reliable evidence has been presented in support of that claim) without making the opposite positive assertion (that deities absolutely do not exist).

In other words, your Christian God is just another name on a very long list, one which includes Allah, Buddha, Zeus, Thor, Baal, the tooth fairy, the Easter bunny, Santa Claus, and that leprechaun on boxes of Lucky Charms.

These mythical entities cannot be proven to exist, nor can they be proven not to exist; either way, the response of any rational person is to withhold belief in them, until and unless supporting evidence comes to light.