Be skeptical of hasty conclusions drawn from google search suggestions

There's a patheos article going around with an image of google searches beginning with "atheists should" .. I figured it must be grossly exaggerated so I decided to try it and received the same result. Shocking? I'm not surprised. See here below:

That said, it strikes me that these two words are clearly part of a negative statement and so google's algorithm is only returning those search phrases most in line with it ...

But what about other phrases?

Next I tried with Christianity:

And then Islam:

And then for good measure a couple more:

Note that neither children nor cute puppies resulted in any suggestion from google... My educated guess is that there simply aren't enough people inclined to form a negative search string for "children" and "cute puppies." But when I did it with spiders I think I received expected results... The bunnies list of suggestion was odd...

I am not claiming this to be a scientific study, in fact I'm suggesting that this shows that we should be far more skeptical of any data taken from this type of sample: people aiming to look for other negative postings.

Je ne suis pas Charlie, mais je suis irritée

Several things bothering me at the moment regarding the world's reaction the #CharlieHebdo attacks in Paris.

1) Insisting that Muslims publicly, and formally denounce the Charlie Hebdo attacks.

What kind of since does this make? Where is the reciprocation here? Was the christian world called upon to renounce the views and actions of Westboro Baptist Church? How about the Army of God attacks on abortion clinics. What about the Lord's resistance Army

or...

How about Breivik following the Utøya massacre? He referred to himself as a Christian Crusader for Christ's sake ( pun intended ).

2) That we should respect all religions...

Nonsense.

I don't respect any religions at all and consider religion a net-negative in the world. I respect implicitly individual rights to practice religion, pray, and worship. That's very different from actually respecting the religious beliefs themselves. 

3) That the recent attacks have nothing to do with Islam

I think this one annoys me the most. When the perpetrators themselves claim religious justification for their actions then i'm inclined to listen. Any claim to the contrary requires an extraordinary explanation.

A better explanation would be to explain that they're part of a sect. That I can live with .. But even then it's a sect clearly justifying its actions based on the same book.

Is this unique to Islam? Not at all, and I mentioned a few of the others under point one at the top.

Agnostic vs Atheist

Recently, I found myself involved in a lengthy twitter debate on the meanings of a few words: agnostic, theist, atheist and gnostic. At issue is the following table:

	Gnostic	Agnostic
Theist	Gnostic -- Theist	Agnostic -- Theist
Atheist	Gnostic -- Atheist	Agnostic -- Atheist

You can find the same basic table listed in numerous blogs online, but for reference here's one article that tackles the same basic content:

http://freethinker.co.uk/2009/09/25/8419/

And here's yet another in swedish:

http://opponent.se/2010/10/ateism/

The table is laid out according to common assumptions about the meanings of these words. This same basic layout is found referenced in numerous places and is perhaps evidence of a misguided predilection toward order. Systems that inspire us to organize ideas in this way while we tackle the consequences and meaning behind it all appease some higher ideal, and yet I find myself immensely frustrated with the sophomoric attempt to sift these complicated words into simple boxes.

My position is that being an agnostic intrinsically implies being an atheist. The notion of an agnostic theist is nonsense. Gnostic atheism is likewise ridiculous, but for a different reason.

Part of what's at play is, I think, a basic misunderstanding on what these terms actually mean. That or the words truly have been co-opted in recent years and have taken on different meanings. If this is the case it is indeed problematic, because the former connotations carry a lot of weight in philosophy.

So what do these words Mean?

Gnosis: This is a greek noun and means, as expected, knowledge. This word gnosis, however, has a long history of meaning in scholasticism (and patristics) and philosophy alike. Gnosis is a kind of spiritual awareness of god's presence; a mystical insight into one's relationship with the spiritual reality. Words and meaning evolve and this is no where more true than with loaned words, however, in this case I think it remiss of us to ignore the relevance of that original meaning. It's this original meaning of the word from which its antonym is derived. Gnosis is the **reason/cause** for belief in god. Obviously, we're not going to be arguing for hard empirical evidence of god, which means that in any way we can

Theist: Theist is, I think, a far less complicated word. A theist believes in god[s].

Atheist: Like theist, atheist is simple. An atheist lacks belief in god[s]. Though the actions, convictions and rhetoric of many known atheists may be interpreted as manifest to the contrary, the word in fact means nothing more than the lack of this belief. This is in juxtaposition to a theist which as stated above believes in god[s].

Agnostic: For agnosticism it's important to understand the origin of the word and where it comes from. Agnositicism was coined by Thomas Huxley and in direct response to this same gnosis described above.

When I reached intellectual maturity, and began to ask myself whether I was an atheist, a theist, or a pantheist; a materialist or an idealist; a Christian or a freethinker, I found that the more I learned and reflected, the less ready was the answer; until at last I came to the conclusion that I had neither art nor part with any of these denominations, except the last. The one thing in which most of these good people were agreed was the one thing in which I differed from them. They were quite sure that they had attained a certain "gnosis"--had more or less successfully solved the problem of existence; while I was quite sure I had not, and had a pretty strong conviction that the problem was insoluble. And, with Hume and Kant on my side, I could not think myself presumptuous in holding fast by that opinion...

It's clear to me that his notion of agnostic isn't as simple as utter ignorance. It's a statement and response to the notion of gnosis. He's claiming to not have this spiritual awareness of god.

Where does this leave us?

There are really are only two salient positions in the table above that remain cogent: gnostic theist and agnostic atheist. The other two positions though seeminlgy reasonable are in fact incoherent. I will detail them here one by one:

Gnostic Theist: This one is clear. A gnostic theist claims to have spiritual knowledge or understanding of god[s] and, therefore, believes in god[s].

Gnostic Atheist: This one is, I think, absurd. Certainly, according to the definitions I laid out above it's illogical, but I maintain that it has other issues. Other sites (like the two I mentioned at the top) will maintain that gnosis is just simply knowledge, and, therefore, this simply is an expression of knowlege about the lack of gods. Atheist is a lack of belief, so what this really refers to is knowledge about ones lack of belief. This may say something about ones personal insight, but it's hardly a religious utterance. This is where the popular definition of the word atheist rears its head: denial of gods, and so we're left with definitive knowledge about the lack of gods. However, we know it's impossible to be certain of negative knowledge. My detractors will argue that it's theoretically possible to imagine a confused individual who believes that they have knowledge of the lack of god, but that's hardly a reason to keep it in the list. There are loads of bad-faith assumptions and confusions we could come up with, but that doesn't mean that they are sound and should be entered into a matrix to justify its own existence.

Agnostic Theist: The connotation here is that someone who lacks gnosis (which is the only reason to ever believe in god) nevertheless *believes* in god. At this point, I think it's incumbent upon me to discuss the word belief. This word is tricky. Belief in this religious sense is more than the belief associated with the word trust. Do I know the sun will rise tomorrow? No, but I trust that it will based on previous experience. I do, btw, have loads of experience and evidence to corroborate my trust. The same cannot be said of religious belief. Here I have only faith. Faith is a special sort of belief: belief that specifically does *NOT* rest on testable claims or material evidence. Furthermore, the origin of the word agnostic itself is a statement about the lack of conviction behind this belief. Huxley didn't coin this word, because he hadn't seen the empirical evidence supporting god, rather the term stands extant as a repudiation of gnosis. No theist believes, because of evidence. Theism is about belief/faith in spite of the lack of evidence. It's belief because of gnosis.

Agnostic Atheist: Finally. This combination, I think, makes sense but is redundant. An agnostic, lacking gnosis, cannot believe in god and therefore lacks the belief. It's simple.

There we have it. This matrix stands as a model based on common use of the words, but misses, I think, some important background behind what these words mean. Also, I am sure that some will argue that there are loads of atheists who claim to *know* that there are no gods, but I hardly see how this matters. This position is indefensible, and whether they believe (falsely) to have knowledge about the lack of gods or not that position is completely incomprehensible.

Satan: Keeping government secular

This past week Rick Perry made  news when he intimated that Satan was behind the separation of Church and State. I won't quote all of it here as it's been blogged to death about and I've seen it in journals everywhere including national news papers here in Sweden....

He went as far as to invoke the "Iron Curtain" in his remarks, which, actually, is worthy of its own review, but that's not what I want to bring up right now, rather this interesting bit:

We have a biblical responsibility to be involved in the public arena proclaiming God’s truth.

This concerns me for a variety of reasons.

1. He's not just "in the public arena"... He's a governor. He's one of the faces of Government... A figure of authority and one claiming that he has a biblical responsibility to be doing this.
2. Is it even true? I was once a young christian and I remember learning about evangelism, but that seemed to be about the preaching of the gospel with the aim of proselytizing. Given his position in government I rather read this as him saying that he thinks we should be involving christianity more in government... Now, the statement alone doesn't do that, but the rest of what he said absolutely does.
3. Assuming it is true, how are was a nation supposed to come to terms with a country afraid of sharia but itself driving toward what I can only read as dominionism. How am I as an atheist, or other people who are jews, muslims :), hindu or hell even pagans supposed to feel religious freedom in this type of environment... Feels an awful lot like a move toward an Muslim construct known as the Dhimmi (ok, that one was a stretch... but i invite you to challenge me on it).
4. Assuming for a second that we all like this notion... What gives Rick Perry the religious authority to be the one doing this proclamation? Do religious leaders support Rick Perry as the message bearer for what is, I assume, a qualified religious strategy around messaging? 
5. And what about catholics vs protesetants and so on? How the hell is this supposed to work?

Can anyone comment on any of this? Do any of my christian friends feel like this is their "biblical responsibility?" 

Furthermore, I'm absolutely convinced that this type of language in politics is new... Or at least new since when I was growing up? Am I wrong? I just simply don't remember religion being invoked in these terms and so often in the 80's... At least not by so many popular politicians.

In America, our origins matter less than our destination, and that is what democracy is all about.

The title of this blogpost is a quote from Ronald Reagan. Now, I'm not actually a Reagan fan, but I like this quote, because it inspired me to revisit several things that have been on my mind lately: what our founding fathers believed and whether it matters.

It seems to me, and I must admit that I cannot corroborate this at all: it's just my opinion, that with increasing frequency we the people are questioning the political direction of the US and referencing what our founding fathers had designed. I quote Reagan, obviously, because I identify myself as a liberal and find this quote ironic given the tendency on the right to make these bizarre "appeals to tradition," but it's not just the right... We're all doing it.

Now, I should say right away that I'm keenly aware of the context of this quote. This is from a speech he made at the Republican National Convention in 1992. I won't insert in it's entirety, but to put this in at least a slightly broader context I'll post a bit more of it here:

Whether we come from poverty or wealth; whether we are Afro-American or Irish-American, Christian or Jewish, from big cities or small towns, we are all equal in the eyes of God. But as Americans, that is not enough. We must be equal in the eyes of each other. We can no longer judge each other on the basis of what we are, but must, instead, start finding out who we are. In America, our origins matter less than our destinations and that is what democracy is all about.

Now, he's clearly talking more about personal backgrounds with regards to creed or ethnicity, and from the context it's obvious he wasn't talking about the ideas of the founding fathers versus the implementation in a modern day society. Still, I think given the broader context it doesn't miss the mark by much, and so I want to ask...

What difference does it make whether the founding fathers would concur with our current political direction?

Now, in keeping with the full title (and I would argue that this is in closer context with the larger section I quoted above) I should probably reword the question like so:

It is less important whether the founding fathers would agree with our current political direction and more important that we ensure its positive impact for all and that is what democracy is all about.

I'm quite happy with that statement, but I suspect a whole lot of my peers wouldn't be. And why is that? What is this predilection toward reverence of past figures in history. It feels an awful lot like religion to me, and indeed religion is one of the themes I very often see used in reference to the founding fathers. There is so much information on this subject that I think you can pick your sources and land in either camp, but what's indelibly obvious is that there were dissenting opinions on the matter even at the time of the founding of our great nation: just look at how Thomas Paine was largely received by his peers by the time of his death.

But does it matter?

I am an atheist and simply cannot identify even with the deism of Thomas Jefferson. John Adams didn't even believe in the trinity but openly criticized Paine and comes off, I think, like a christianity apologist:

The Christian religion is, above all the religions that ever prevailed or existed in ancient or modern times, the religion of wisdom, virtue, equity and humanity, let the Blackguard [scoundrel, rogue] Paine say what he will.

I'm struggling to imagine a president of the United States in today's world claiming to be a christian, but renouncing the trinity (although I think I've read that he didn't speak of it openly, still)...

And i've really only scratched the surface. If we leave religion and move on to other issues such as women's suffrage and slavery then I think we end up in a very uncomfortable world if we aren't to stray from the worldview of the founding fathers.

So, why can't we agree to pick those pieces of contextual worth from our founding fathers and move on. We have to apply these pieces in the modern world: a post-industrialized world with antibiotics, numerous religions, tv, internet porn and even atheists like myself.