10.31.2015

Why Do I Like Horror Films?

creepy walk in the fog

After mentioning that I am a fan of horror flicks, a friend asked why I thought people liked such films. I said I wasn't sure but that I assumed people liked them for all sorts of reasons. People are different and what they find appealing about horror films varies from fan to fan. I'm sure there are some common reasons but few we could consider universal. "Fair enough," she said, "why do you like them so much?" This should be a much easier question, but it was more difficult to answer than I thought it would be.

Part of what makes the question challenging is that I don't like all or even most of them. There are subgenres within horror I don't care for, though there are exceptions. I don't usually like films described as "torture porn," but there have been a few I have found worthwhile (e.g., Audition). I mention this because the reasons I like one horror subgenre might have little to do with why I like another. For some, the appeal is the special effects or the cinematography. For others, it is the plot and character development. It makes it tough to answer the question in a general sense, but I'll do so anyway.

10.15.2015

Dealing With Bad Ideas: Problems With Suppressing Them

frozen flowers

In my previous post on the subject of dealing with bad ideas, I left off with the question of whether we should seek to suppress the expression of bad ideas through the application of social pressure or if this was something to avoid. Of course, I've already tipped my hand repeatedly by stating that I do not believe that suppressing bad ideas is the best way to deal with them and suggesting that we instead expose them to the light of day, reveal their shortcomings, and offer reasonable alternatives.

In On Liberty, Mill provides us with three reasons to avoid the suppression of ideas we consider to be bad ideas. I'm paraphrasing here since he goes into quite a bit of detail. I'm also adding a fourth reason that he does not address (#4) because it strikes me as worthy of consideration.

  1. None of us are infallible. When we suppress the expression of an idea we consider to be a bad idea, we may be suppressing something that turns out to be at least partially true and/or valuable. That is, our judgment of the idea may be wrong.
  2. Even in the cases where we are probably correct that the idea we want to suppress is a bad idea, it may still contain some small part of the truth, some kernel of wisdom, or have some utility that we may lose by suppressing its expression. Moreover, by suppressing this even mostly bad idea, we give up any benefit that may come from the conflict between it and our preferred ideas.
  3. Even if our viewpoint is largely correct, we lose something valuable by not allowing it to be publicly challenged, criticized, and debated. We cannot claim to fully understand or appreciate our own viewpoint if we've put ourselves in a position where we've seldom had to defend it. Instead, we risk the scenario where our viewpoint turns into dogma and is stripped of its vitality.
  4. When we suppress the expression of bad ideas, we risk driving them underground so that we end up with a false sense of security that they are less influential than they are because we are hearing less about them. Perhaps some bad ideas can be even more detrimental when they are hidden like this (e.g., racism).

10.14.2015

Are Conspiracy Theories Harmless Fun?

Anti-Obama protester at an Austin, Te...
Anti-Obama protester at an Austin, Texas "Tea Party" protest on July 4, 2009 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
January 20, 2017. Remember that date. In fact, you might as well put it on your calendar. It is going to be one of those dates we in the U.S. look back on decades later and say, "That was the day everything changed." What is so special about January 20?

This is the date that is supposed to be President Obama'a last day in office. I say "supposed to" because there are quite a few right-wing conspiracy theorists out there who have been telling us for several years that President Obama is a "tyrant" who will never willingly leave office. And when the sun sets on January 20, 2017 with President Obama still in office, in control of the military, and refusing to leave, they will be proven correct...or not.

If this reminds you of another recent prediction that didn't quite work out, you are not alone. If I was the betting sort, I'd bet that there will be a peaceful exchange of power on January 20. President Obama will move on to do whatever is next for him, and his replacement will assume the responsibilities of office. I'd further bet that we won't hear a peep from the conspiracy theorists when they are proven wrong once again.

10.13.2015

Why Does God Allow Suffering?

Holocaust victims memorial
Of all the questions many religious believers will confront at some point in their lives, this might be the most important and most challenging one. It is a question that requires us to define our terms at the outset if we are to have any hope of answering it. Specifically, I see no way to answer this question until we first determine which god we are discussing.

Once we've selected a particular god, we need to figure out what attributes this particular god is supposed to have. Only then can we begin to make sense out of this question. After all, if the god we were talking about was an evil sort of god, the question would be moot because allowing suffering would be perfectly consistent with what we'd expect from an evil god.

To make things easier for the purpose of this post, I suggest we agree to limit ourselves to the Christian god. What do we know of this god and characteristics it is supposed to have? This is for Christians to figure out, and figure it out they must. After all, it makes no sense to claim to worship something that cannot be defined or understood. Someone worshiping something incomprehensible would have no way to establish that whatever it was he or she was worshiping was distinguishable from anything else or even from nothing at all.

10.12.2015

South Park: I Love the Irreverence

I've written previously about how much I enjoy South Park. I can certainly understand why some people hate it. We all have different preferences, and that may explain some of it. Then again, I suspect that at least some of those who hate South Park and are very public about their hate for the show might have difficulty laughing at themselves.

What I like most about South Park is the irreverence. Nothing is sacred, and they make fun of everyone. This is why the show works so well. We all get our turn at being their targets, and that is how it should be.

In one recent episode, South Park made fun of political correctness and the social justice warrior mentality. In the very next episode, they relentlessly mocked future U.S. president Donald Trump, a figure who is widely considered one of the most high-profile opponents of political correctness today. South Park has poked fun at virtually every religion, and they've mocked atheists. They've made fun of people who drive Hummers, and they've mocked people who drive hybrids. It is difficult to think of a group of people that hasn't been ridiculed at some point on the show.

10.11.2015

Belief in Belief

Daniel Dennett, at the Second World Conference...
Daniel Dennett, at the Second World Conference on the Future of Science, in Venice, 2006 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Daniel Dennett, author of Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, has offered what I consider to be one of the most intriguing arguments about the nature of contemporary religious belief. He suggests that very few people alive today actually believe in gods. But if that's true, why do we atheists often feel like we are surrounded by believers? Obviously, we feel this way because the majority of people around us claim to believe. But why would they do this if they don't actually believe? Dennett suggests that the vast majority of people today believe in belief in gods. That is, even though they do not actually believe in gods, they do believe that trying to believe, promoting belief, and telling others they believe are advantageous.

Dennett's suggestion that few people actually believe in gods certainly seems consistent with the observation many of us have made that most people who claim to believe in gods do not behave as if they believed in gods. As just one example, wouldn't the world be a vastly different place if people really believed in prayer? If religious believers believed much of what they claimed to believe, they would behave in very different ways from how they do behave. Again and again, their behavior betrays them as not really being sincere about their claimed beliefs.

10.08.2015

Criticizing Islam vs. Anti-Muslim Bigotry

Islam and the Future of ToleranceThere is nothing inherent in atheism that prevents an atheist from engaging in bigotry. Not believing in gods provides little in the way of protection against bigotry. We are certainly capable of bigotry. We are capable of bigotry not just against religious persons but against any group of people.

At the same time, there is nothing inherent in atheism that condones, justifies, or promotes bigotry. We have no "holy" book that can be read (or misread) as advocating bigotry. We have no clergy who are assumed to be a conduit to any sort of divine beings that might make it easier for us to justify bigotry. And even if one recognizes that atheists become atheists by traveling many different paths - not all of which involve reason, critical thinking, skepticism, or freethought - it seems that our lack of "holy" books, clergy, and the like could be relevant. Bigotry might be a bit harder for atheists to justify than it is for at least some religious persons to justify.

And yet, there does seem to be at least one are where atheists are regularly accused of engaging in bigotry against members of one religious group. Interestingly, the accusers often seem to be left-leaning atheists, and the accusations typically involve "Islamophobia."

10.07.2015

Gendered Violence and Toxic Masculinity

This is a chart showing trends in violent crim...
This is a chart showing trends in violent crime rates by gender in the U.S. from 1973-2003. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
One of the narratives I have been seeing on Twitter in the aftermath of the recent mass shooting in Oregon (and there are many narratives) involves "gendered violence." The vast majority of mass murderers are men, and those promoting this particular narrative suggest that this observation can be combined with others (e.g., men are more likely to commit homicide, rape, and a host of other violent crimes) to support the claim that men are generally more violent than women. This inevitably leads them to conclude that the manner in which men are socialized is to blame for the difference. The undesirable socialization of men is often referred to as "toxic masculinity" by those pushing this narrative.

It seems to me that men probably are more violent than women and that this is especially evident if we focus on violent crime. It also seems that men raised in the U.S. are more likely to be socialized to be aggressive than women raised in the U.S. I'd stop short of claiming that men are socialized to be violent, but I could go along with the claim that they are more likely to be socialized to be more aggressive. In the sense that this can have adverse effects, I'd even agree that this can seem "toxic." What I probably wouldn't do is completely ignore the role of biology, but we can set that aside for now and keep the focus on socialization to see where it leads us.

10.01.2015

Far More to Political Orientation Than Right-Left

Political chart.svg
"Political chart" by Traced by User:Stannered, via Wikimedia Commons.
I mentioned in a recent post that I grew up with negative attitudes toward libertarianism because I did not adequately understand it. I'm still learning about it, and I've discovered far more nuance than I realized was there. In this post, I'd like to share how moving beyond the simple right-left dimension has helped me understand the complexity of political orientation and led me to find common ground with many people where I would not have expected to find it.

As a child, I thought of political orientation as something that existed along a single right-left dimension. Conservatives could be found on the right of center; liberals could be found on the left of center. It was no more complicated than that because I didn't know any better. As I became a bit more politically aware during late adolescence, I began to recognize that there was more variability along this right-left dimension than I had previously realized. Not all conservatives and not all liberals were the same, and it made far more sense to think about one's relative position along the dimension. Some liberals were much farther out to the left than others; some conservatives were much farther out to the right than others. I discovered that where along the dimension someone landed was more useful in understanding them than applying labels like "liberal" or "conservative."

As I moved into adulthood, I realized that the uni-dimensional right-left continuum was too simplistic and that something else was needed to account for the full range of diversity in political ideology. But I still wasn't sure what it was. A big part of the problem is that I had bought into the idea that the right-left dimension was supposed to be sufficient for modeling all the variability that was out there. For example, I thought that socialism could be found to the left of conventional liberalism on the left side of the dimension and that libertarianism could be found to the right of conservatism on the right side of the dimension. This overly simplistic approach limited my understanding of both. It also didn't help when it came to things like neo-conservatism and neo-liberalism, neither of which seemed to be a matter of just moving a bit more to the right or the left along the single dimension.