Greta Christina's Blog

Carnivals of Liberals #57 and Skeptic's Circle #79

Carnivals of Liberals #57 is up at World Wide Webers. My piece in this Carnival: All I Really Need To Know I Learned From Porn -- Or Not. My favorite other piece in this Carnival: The Zombie of Trust Betrayed, at Trusted Advisor.

And Skeptic's Circle #79 is up at Podblack Blog. Podblack has very thoughtfully made LOLCats for all the contributors to this Circle; hence the cat with the microscope. Hey, anything for a weird life. My pieces in this Circle: What's the Harm in a Little Woo?... and Oscarology: The Readings. My favorite other piece in this Circle: the totally fucking brilliant WHY Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence, at Skeptico.

If you blog about liberalism or skepticism and want to participate in the blog carnivals, here are the submission forms and guidelines for the Carnival of the Liberals and the Skeptic's Circle. Happy reading, and happy blogging!

Defensiveness, Rationalization, Mulishness... What Does That Have To Do With Religion? Mistakes Were Made, Part 2

In yesterday's post, I talked about the book Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts -- a book on cognitive dissonance, and the ways we unconsciously rationalize and justify mistakes, misconceptions, and harm we do to others. I mentioned this book's relevance to both atheists and religious believers several times, and ended the post by asking, "So how does this apply to religion?"

The most obvious relevance is this: For those of us who don't believe in it, religion clearly looks like a prime example of rationalization and justification of a mistaken belief. Religious apologetics especially. Since there's no hard evidence in the world to support the beliefs, the entire exercise -- all the explanations and defenses, all the "mysterious ways"es and "this part isn't meant literally"s and "you just have to take that on faith"s -- it all looks from the outside like one gigantic rationalization for a mistaken belief. It looks like a well-oiled mechanism for refusing to accept that you hold a belief -- and have based your life and your choices on a belief -- that is illogical and unsupported by evidence.

And it looks like a classic example of a social structure built to support one another in maintaining these rationalizations: supporting one another in rejecting alternatives, and repeating the beliefs to one another over and over until they gain the gravitas of authoritative truth.

(This is what I was trying to get at when I called religion a self-referential game of Twister. I dearly wish I'd read this book when I wrote that piece; it would have given me much clearer language to write it in.)

And the more contrary a belief is to reality, the more entrenched this mechanism becomes. The non-literal, science-appreciating, "God is love" believers are usually more ecumenical, better able to think that they don't know everything and that different beliefs may have some truth and validity. It's the literalists, the fundamentalists, the ones who deny well-established realities like evolution and the sanity of gay people and the geological age of the planet, who have the seriously entrenched rationalizations for their beliefs... and the powerful institutional structures for deflecting questions and evidence and doubt. ("Those questions come from Satan" is my current favorite.)

So that's the obvious relevance.

But there's a less obvious relevance as well. This is an important book for believers... but it's also an important book for atheists. And not just as a source of ammunition for our debates.

It's an important book for atheists because of its ideas on how to deal with people who are entrenched in rationalization -- and how really, really not to. One of the most important points this book makes is that there are useful ways to point out other people's rationalizations to them… and some not-so-useful ways. And screaming at someone, "What were you thinking? How could you be so stupid?" is one of the not-so-useful methods. In fact, it usually has the exact undesired effect -- it makes people defensive, and drives them deeper into their rationalizations.

Now, many atheists may decide that screaming, "How could you be so stupid?" is still a valid strategy. And in a larger, long-term sense, it may well be. If religion is the emperor's new clothes, having an increasingly large, increasingly vocal community of people chanting, "Naked! Naked! Naked!" may, in the long run, be quite effective in chipping away at the complicity that religion depends on, and making it widely known that there is an alternative. Especially with younger people, who aren't yet as entrenched in their beliefs. And it's already proven effective in inspiring other atheists to come out of the closet.

In one-on-one discussions and debates, though, it's not going to achieve much. And we need to be aware of that. If we're going to be all rational and evidence-based, we need to accept the reality of what forms of persuasion do and don't work.

But it's not just important for atheists to read this book to learn how to deal with believers' fallibility. It's important for atheists to read it to learn how to deal with our own.

Atheists, oddly enough, are human. And we therefore share the human tendency to rationalize and justify our beliefs and behavior. No matter how rational and evidence-based we like to think of ourselves as, we are not immune to this pattern.

And of particular relevance, I think, is one of the book's main themes: the human tendency to reject any and all ideas coming from people we disagree with. The more entrenched we get in a belief, the more unwilling we are to acknowledge that our opponents have any useful ideas whatsoever, or any valid points to make.

And I've definitely seen that play out in the atheosphere. I've seen an unfortunate tendency among some atheists to tag all believers as stupid; to reject religion as having nothing even remotely positive or useful to offer; to explain the widespread nature of religious belief by saying things like, "People are sheep."

I don’t exempt myself from this. I think I've mostly been good about critiquing ideas rather than people; but I have gotten my back up when I thought someone was being unfair to me, and have refused to acknowledge that maybe I was being unfair as well. And I've definitely fallen prey to the error of thinking, "give 'em an inch and they'll take a mile"; of thinking that any concession at all is the first step to appeasement, and I have to stick to my guns like a mule. A mule with guns.

But this tendency isn't helpful. The issue of religion and not-religion is already polarizing enough on its own, without us artificially divvying the world into Us and Them.

If I'm right, and religion really is (among other things) an elaborate rationalization for hanging on to a mistaken belief... well, that doesn't make believers ridiculous and atheists superior. It puts us all in the same human boat. It puts religion in the same category as hanging onto ugly clothes and shoes that gave me blisters, for years, because I didn't want to admit that I'd made a mistake when I bought them. It puts it in the same category as going through with a disastrous marriage, because I didn't want to admit I'd made a mistake when I got engaged. It puts religion into a particular category of human fallibility... a fallibility that we all fall prey to, every day of our lives.

I'm not saying religion is okay. Let me be very clear about that. I think religion is a mistake; I think it's a harmful mistake; and I'm not going to stop speaking out against it. And I'm not asking anyone else to stop speaking out against it.

But for my own peace of mind, I'm making a sort of New Year's Resolution about cognitive dissonance. I'm resolving to be better about acknowledging when I make mistakes, and correcting them. I'm resolving to be better about acknowledging when people I disagree with make good points. And when I'm in one-on-one debates with people, I'm resolving to think, not just about why I'm right and they're wrong, but about what kind of argument is likely to persuade them.

Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts -- A Review

I am totally having fits about this book. Everyone reading this blog has to read it. Everyone not reading this blog has to read it. I was already more or less familiar with the concepts in it before I started reading... and I am nevertheless finding it a life-changer.

And in particular, anyone interested in religion has to read it. It doesn't talk much about religion specifically; but the ideas in it are spot-on pertinent to the topic.

For believers... and for atheists.

A quick summary. Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts is about cognitive dissonance: the uncomfortable-at-best feeling you get when things you do, or things that happen, contradict your beliefs -- about yourself or the world. It's about the unconscious justifications, rationalizations, and other defense mechanisms we use to keep that dissonance at bay. It's about the ways that these rationalizations perpetuate and entrench themselves. And it's about some of the ways we may be able to derail them. The book is fascinating and readable; it's clear, well-written, well-researched, loaded with examples, and often very funny.

The basic idea: When we believe something that turns out to be untrue, it conflicts with our concept of ourselves as intelligent. When we make a decision that turns out badly, it conflicts with our concept of ourselves as competent. And when we do something that hurts someone, it conflicts with our concept of ourselves as good. That's the dissonance.

And what we do, much if not most of the time, is rationalize. We come up with reasons why our mistake wasn't really a mistake; why our bad deed wasn't really so bad.

"I couldn't help it." "Everyone else does it." "It's not that big a deal." "I was tired/sick." "They made me do it." "I'm sure it'll work out in the long run." "I work hard, I deserve this." "History will prove me right." "I can accept money and gifts and still be impartial." "Actually, spending fifty thousand dollars on a car makes a lot of sense." "When the Leader said the world was going to end on August 22, 1997, he was just speaking metaphorically."

In fact, we have entire social structures based on supporting and perpetuating each other's rationalizations -- from patriotic fervor in wartime to religion and religious apologetics.

More on that in a bit.

I could summarize the book ad nauseum, and this could easily turn into a 5,000 word book review. But I do have my own actual points to make. So here are, IMO, the most important pieces of info to take from this book

1) This process is unconscious. It's incredibly easy to see when someone else is rationalizing a bad decision. It's incredibly difficult to see when we're doing it ourselves. The whole way that this process works hinges on it being unconscious -- if we were conscious of it, it wouldn't work.

2) This process is universal. All human beings do it. In fact, all human beings do it pretty much every day. Every time we take a pen from work and think, "Oh everyone does it, and the company can afford it"; every time we light a cigarette after deciding to quit and think, "Well, I only smoke half a pack a day, that's not going to kill me"; every time we eat a pint of Ben and Jerry's for dinner and think, "It's been a long week, I deserve this"; every time we buy consumer products made in China (i.e., by slave labor) and think, "I really need new sneakers, and I just can't afford to buy union-made"... that's rationalization in action. It is a basic part of human mental functioning. If you think you're immune... I'm sorry to break this to you, but you're mistaken. (See #1 above, re: this process being unconscious, and very hard to detect when we're in the middle of it.)

3) This process is self-perpetuating. The deeper we get into a rationalization, the more likely we are to repeat the bad decision, hang on to the mistaken belief, continue to do harm to others.

This is probably the scariest part of the book. When we hurt someone and convince ourselves that they deserved it, we're more likely to hurt them -- or other people like them -- again. Partly because we've already convinced ourselves that they're bad, so why not... but also, in large part, to bolster our belief that our original decision was right.

The most chilling examples of this are in the justice system and international relations. In the justice system, cops and prosecutors are powerfully resistant to the idea that they might have made a mistake and put the wrong person in prison. As a result, they actively resist revisiting cases, even when new evidence turns up. And the justice system is, in far too many ways, structured to support this pattern.

As for this process playing out in international relations, I have just three words: "The Middle East." Any time you have a decades- or centuries-old "they started it" vendetta, you probably have one of these self-perpetuating rationalization processes on your hands. On all sides.

But this happens on a small scale as well, with individuals. I know that I've said snarky, mean things behind people's backs, for no good reason other than that friends of mine didn't like them and were being mean and snarky about them... and I've then convinced myself that I really couldn't stand that person, and gone on to say even more mean things about them. And I've more than once tried to convince my friends to dislike the people that I disliked... because if my friends liked them, it was harder to convince myself that my dislike was objectively right and true. All unconsciously, of course. It's taken time and perspective to see that that's what I was doing.

4) The more we have at stake in a decision, the harder we hang on to our rationalization for it.

This is a freaky paradox, but it makes a terrible kind of sense when you think about it. The further along we've gone with a bad decision, and the more we've committed to it, the more likely we are to justify it -- and to stick with it, and to invest in it even more heavily.

A perfect example of this is end-of-the-world cults. When people quit their jobs and sell their houses to follow some millennial leader, they're more likely to hang on to their beliefs, even though the world conspicuously did not end on August 22, 1997 like they thought it would. If someone doesn't sell their house to prepare for the end of the world -- if, say, they just take a week off work -- they'll find it easier to admit that they made a mistake.

And this is true, not just for bad decisions and mistaken beliefs, but immoral acts as well. Paradoxically, the worse the thing is that you've done, the more likely you are to rationalize it, and to stick to your rationalization like glue. As I wrote before when I mentioned this book: It's relatively easy to reconcile your belief that you're a good person with the fact that you sometimes make needlessly catty remarks and forget your friends' birthdays. It's a lot harder to reconcile your belief that you're a good person with the fact that you carved up a pregnant woman and smeared her blood on the front door. The more appalling your immoral act was, the more likely you are to have a rock-solid justification for it... or a justification that you think is rock-solid, even if everyone around you thinks it's transparently self-serving or batshit loony.

5) This process is necessary.

This may be the hardest part of all this to grasp. As soon as you start learning about the unconscious rationalization of cognitive dissonance, you start wanting to take an icepick and dig out the part of your brain that's responsible for it.

But in fact, rationalization exists for a reason. It enables us to make decisions without being paralyzed about every possible consequence. It enables us to have confidence and self-esteem, even though we've made mistakes in the past. And it enables us to live with ourselves. Without it, we'd be paralyzed with guilt and shame and self-doubt. Perpetually. We'd never sleep. We'd be second-guessing everything we do. We'd be having dark nights of the soul every night of our lives.

So that's the gist of the book. Cognitive dissonance, and the unconscious rationalizations and justifications we come up with to deal with it, are a basic part of human consciousness. It's a necessary process... but it also does harm, sometimes great harm. So we need to come up with ways, both individually and institutionally, to minimize the harm that it does. And since the process is harder to stop the farther along it's gone, we need to find ways to catch it early.

That's the concept. And I think it's important.

It's important because, in a very practical and down-to-earth way, this concept gives us a partial handle on why dumb mistakes, absurd beliefs, and harmful acts get perpetuated. And it gives us -- again, in a very practical, down-to-earth way -- a handle on what we can do about it.

We have a tendency to think that bad people know they're bad. Our popular culture is full of villains cackling over their beautiful wickedness, or trying to lure their children to The Dark Side. It's a very convenient way of positioning evil outside ourselves, as something we could never do ourselves. Evil is Out There, something done by The Other. (In fact, I'd argue that this whole cultural trope is itself a very effective support for rationalization. "Sure, I set the stove on fire/ shagged the babysitter/ gave my money to a con artist... but it's not like I'm Darth Vader.")

But reality isn't like that. Genuine sociopaths are rare. Most people who do bad things -- even terrible, appalling, flatly evil things -- don't think of themselves as bad people. They think of themselves as good people, and they think of their evil acts as understandable, acceptable, justifiable by the circumstances. In some cases, they even think of their evil acts as positive goods.

If we want to mitigate the effects of foolish beliefs, bad decisions, and hurtful acts, we need to look at the reality of how these things happen. We need to be vigilant about our own tendency to rationalize our mistakes. We need to be knowledgeable about how to effectively deal with other people's rationalizations. We need to create institutional structures designed to catch both our mistakes and our rationalizations, and to support us in acknowledging them. (The scientific method is a pretty good model of this.) And especially in America, we need to create a culture that doesn't see mistakes as proof of incompetence, misconceptions as proof of stupidity, and hurtful acts as proof of evil.

And this book offers us ways to do all of that.

The book isn't perfect. There are, for instance, some very important questions that it neglects to answer. Specifically, I kept finding myself wondering: What's the difference between rationalization and simple optimism, or positive thinking? What's the difference between rationalizing a bad decision, and just having a silver-lining, "seeing the bright side" attitude? And if there is a difference, how can you tell which one you're doing?

And, as a commenter here in the blog asked when I mentioned this book earlier: What's the difference between justifying why your bad behavior wasn't really bad -- and genuinely changing your mind about what is and isn't bad? Think of all the people who believed that homosexual sex was wrong and they were bad people for even thinking about it… until they actually did it, and spent time with other people who did it, and realized that there wasn't actually anything wrong with it. How do you tell the difference between a rationalization and a genuine change of heart?

Somewhat more seriously, the section on "What can we actually do about this?" is rather shorter than I would have liked. The authors do have some excellent practical advice on dealing with cognitive dissonance and rationalization. But while their advice on dealing with other people's rationalizations is helpful, and their ideas on creating institutional structures to nip the process in the bud are inspired, their advice for dealing with one's own dissonance/ rationalization pretty much comes down to, "Just try to be aware of it." Problematic -- since as they themselves point out, rationalization and justification are singularly resistant to introspection.

But it's a grand and inspiring start, an excellent foundation on an important topic. It's been a life-changer, and I recommend it passionately to everyone.

So what does it have to do with religion?

(To be continued tomorrow.)

Democrats, Horse Races, and John Edwards

I've stayed away from "Democratic primary" stuff in this blog until now. Mostly because the election in California is just over a week away and I still have no freaking idea who I'm voting for. But I've been seeing a pattern in progressive writing about the Dem primary; it's a pattern that's bugging me, and I want to talk about it.

The pattern is this: The progressive writing about the Democratic primary is completely buying into the narrative that this election is between Clinton and Obama. Not all of it, but a lot of it. And when Edwards is mentioned, the theme that keeps coming up is, "I like him, but he's behind in the polls, and I don't think he's electable."

And I want to shake these people and scream, "If you would fucking well endorse him, maybe he'd BE electable."

The San Francisco Bay Guardian was the most recent one of these -- and it's the one that pissed me off the most. They're the big progressive alterna-weekly here; their politics are sometimes wacky but are generally good. I really wanted to see what they had to say about Edwards, who I'm seriously considering voting for. And I wanted more information about him than, "We might endorse him if we thought he was electable."

I understand the need to be pragmatic in an election. I've held my nose and voted for the least repulsive candidate more than once. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of candidates for major elective office who I actually felt unqualified excitement about. I get it. Really I do.

And in the general election, I completely get it. Come November, I will vote for whoever the Dems come up with. The Dems could nominate Lyndon Johnson again, and I'd vote for him.

But in a primary, it's different.

In a primary, it seems to me, you're supposed to forget about the horserace. In a primary, you're supposed to vote for the person -- brace yourself -- who you'd most like to see win.

And the fact that people don't vote for the person they most want to win is, I think, one of the main reasons the Democrats have traditionally coughed up such a pathetic succession of hairballs. I think the horserace mentality, the "Is he/she electable?" mentality, is what keeps the attention focused on such a narrow field... and what keeps attention off of anyone outside that field.

It's not 100% different in a primary, I get that. I probably wouldn't vote for Kucinich, after all, even if he hadn't already dropped out of the race, and even if it hadn't been for the UFO thing. I'm enough of a pragmatist to not vote for someone with less than 5% in the polls, even in a primary.

But Edwards is not Kucinich. Edwards could stand a chance, if people acted like he stood a chance. And I like him. So far, at least. I like what he's saying about poverty, and I like what he's saying about the war. I want to know more about him; and it bugs me that the people whose job it is to find out more about the candidates are ignoring him. It bugs me that he's not being scrutinized, solely because of the self-fulfilling prophecy that he's not electable.

Now, I'll be honest. There is a part of me that's thinking, "I really, really don't want Clinton to get the nomination -- so maybe I should just just suck it up and vote for Obama. I don't love him, but I like Clinton even less."

But I hate that. That horserace mentality is a huge part of what's wrong with our electoral system. It's such a self-fulfilling prophecy. We're not supposed to be voting for the person who we think can win. Especially when you consider that the election experts, the ones who are telling us who can and can't win, consistently have their heads up their asses.

It's a democracy. We're not supposed to vote for the person who we think can win. We're supposed to vote for the person who we want to win.

Humanist Symposium #14

The Humanist Symposium #14 is up at Countries Beginning with I. The Symposium is probably my favorite blog carnival; it's the atheist carnival that focuses on the positive aspects of atheism, rather than the negative aspects of religion. (And this particular Symposium is making me especially happy, since the host said such nice things about my blog.)

My piece in this Symposium: The Meaning of Death, Part 2 of Many: Motivation and Mid-Life Crises. My favorite other piece in this Symposium: Hard to say, a lot of them are very good indeed. But the one that jumped out at me was Atheist Spirituality at Atheist Revolution. I'm not personally crazy about the word "spirituality," since I think of it as meaning "metaphysical" (which I don't believe in), and I associate it with woo (which annoys me). But if you go with Vjack's definition of "spirituality" as meaning "vitality, connectedness, transcendence, and meaningfulness," then he makes some really good points. Check it out -- and check out the rest of the Symposium. It's all good.

If you blog about humanism and want to participate in the Humanist Symposium, here's the submission form. Happy reading, and happy blogging!

True Love Waits... And The Rest Of Us Get On With Our Sex Lives

This piece was originally published on the Blowfish Blog.

In my last Blowfish column, I linked you to Scarleteen, the sex information website for teenagers. When I was at the site, I found this letter, "We waited for marriage... but it wasn't worth the wait". It completely broke my heart, and I had to write about it.

The gist, for those who don't have the patience to link: The couple in question (not teenagers, late twenties in fact) had decided for religious reasons to abstain from intercourse until after they got married. The woman had a high libido, and had been very excited about being able to have sex whenever -- and wherever, and however -- they wanted.

But the marriage was a big disappointment sexually. Their sex life was less frequent by far than the woman wanted... and more seriously, it was intensely unsatisfying. Their sexual encounters lacked passion, spontaneity, and fun, and were depressingly brief. Hubby eventually admitted that he just isn't that sexual a person... to which wifey, the person writing the letter, was responding, not unreasonably, "You couldn't have told me that before we got married?"

It broke my heart. Especially since their religious beliefs, and religious community, will probably make them feel pressured into sticking with the marriage, even if they both decide it's an unsalvageable failure.

There are so many directions I could go with this. I could talk about the ridiculous over-emphasis our society places on marriage: the absurdly high expectations we place on it, the idealistic glow we place around it, the assumption that it will magically transform everything, including and especially sex. (And that's speaking as someone who is herself married -- ritually, if not legally -- and who does think that her marriage has changed both the relationship and the sex for the better.)

And of course, I could get on my atheist high horse, and talk about the fucked-up effect religion so often has on sexual happiness. That would certainly be a fruitful direction. Of all the dreadful sources of sexual misinformation and general bad sex advice in the world, religion has to take the cake -- because it can't be argued with. It isn't based on evidence, it's based on scripture and religious authority and personal faith... and it's therefore singularly resistant to change, to adaptation in response to evidence or data. About sex, or anything else.

But I want to go in a different direction here.

I want to express my gratitude for the fact that I -- and most of us -- don't live in that world anymore.

I want to express my gratitude that in my world, having sex with someone, lots of times, before you settle down with them for the long haul, is generally considered, not only normal and acceptable, but sensible, obvious, and even self-evident.

I want to express my gratitude that in my world, premarital sex, never-marital sex, multiple sexual relationships, living together before marriage, living together without ever getting married, and so on, are all commonplace and generally accepted in much of the country, and indeed much of the world.

I want to express my gratitude that in my world, masturbation and oral sex are generally considered normal, mainstream, not even all that interesting... and things like anal sex, spanking, and bondage are generally seen as mildly kinky thrills at most, somewhat outre but really not all that wild compared to all the other freaky stuff people are up to.

I want to express my gratitude that in my world, birth control is widely and easily available, and even advertised on national TV.

I want to express my gratitude that in my world, sex toys, sexual information, and sexual entertainment are widely and anonymously available, and even joked about in sitcoms.

I want to express my gratitude that in my world, gay sex is no longer a crime anywhere in my country... and gay relationships have a fair amount of social and legal recognition in large parts of the country and the world.

Even divorce. Unhappy as it is, I'm grateful for divorce. I'm grateful that unhappy marriages that don't work for anybody can be ended, without bringing ruin and disgrace to the couple and their family. I want to express my gratitude that in my world, it was relatively easy, and almost entirely unstigmatized, for me to get out of a marriage to a guy who was decent but a disastrous choice for me... so I could spend some time getting my shit together before I settled down with a partner who it actually made sense for me to settle down with.

It's easy to take all this for granted. It's easy to forget how different things were in my parents generation... and how radically different they were in my grandparents'.

It's not like things are perfect now. Trust me, I get that. We have, among other things, a world with a glut of sexual imagery and a relative dearth of sexual information. We have a world in which there's a lot of pressure to be an amazing sexual performer... at an increasingly young age. We have a world in which the mere mention of the word "penis" can be effectively used in the movies to generate enormous laffs. We have a world that's still fairly uncomfortable with sex, and that often doesn't know how to deal with it.

What's more, we have a world where even these basic sexual freedoms and privileges are limited to very specific people and regions. Large numbers of people and extensive regions, but still very specific. We have a world where, in large parts of it, gay people are still being put in prison, and women are still being executed for adultery.

And of course, we have a world filled with plenty of people who are working like crazy to turn back the clock to the good old days... the days of sexual ignorance and secrecy and shame.

But things are better now. A lot better. We're beginning, I think, to see sex as a normal part of a happy life... and to see sexual experimentation, with different partners and different kinds of sex, as a natural and sensible way to figure out who you are and what you like and whether you and your honey are compatible.

And I'm never reminded of that more vividly than when I hear about people who still live, for all intents and purposes, in the old world, the world of my parents and grandparents... and who are being made miserable by it.

A Moment of Atheist Sentimentality

I had this kind of sad, kind of sentimental thought a little while ago, and I haven't been able to shake it.

I was thinking about the so-called "new atheist" movement. About atheist books on the bestseller lists. About atheism being widely and hotly discussed in magazines and newspapers and TV talk shows. About atheists coming out of the closet in ever-increasing numbers. About the atheist blogosphere, with hundreds of blogs on the atheist blogrolls.

And I was thinking:

I miss Douglas Adams.

(The "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" author, for those who aren't instantly familiar with his name.)

He would have loved all this. He would have been so excited, so proud, so happy. He was a big atheist, proud and angry and fierce, and he would have loved all this. Maybe he would have written his own atheist book. I want to read that book. It would have been smart, and hilarious, and totally devastating.

And he was a big techno-nerd. He would have loved the blogosphere, and he would have completely loved the atheist blogosphere. He would have had the best atheist blog ever.

Dammit to hell. I want to read Douglas Adams' atheist blog. Right now. I want it in my blogroll. I want to comment on it, and to get into silly comment threads on it that never seem to end. I want to check it obsessively every day to see if there's something new.

I miss him something awful.

Lesbian Sex With Men: The Blowfish Blog

Note to family members and others who don't want to read about my personal sex life: This post, and the post it links to, talks about my personal sex life and my sexual history. If you don't want to read about that, this would be a good post to skip.

I have a new piece up on the Blowfish Blog. It's about the first time I had sex with a man after I'd started having sex with women. And a little more generally, it's about how being bisexual, and especially the experience of having sex with women, changed the entire way I experienced sex -- with everybody. It's called Lesbian Sex With Men, and here's the teaser:

Before I'd started having sex with women, my reaction to a guy's premature ejaculation had been pretty traditional: disappointment, frustration, embarrassment on his behalf, attempts to soothe his ego, feeling like I'd done something wrong.

But this time, my reaction was to say, casually and matter-of-factly, "Oh. Well, is that any reason to stop?"

To find out more, read the rest of the piece. Enjoy!

"A corner of their minds..."

"Even though the vast majority of believers apply rational thought processes in most areas of their lives, there is a corner of their minds, especially for religious conservatives, in which they refuse to shine the light of reason."

The Chaplain has completely hit it out of the park with this one. Her recent post at An Apostate's Chapel, What’s So Bad About Religion?, is a must-read. It lays out the case clearly, succinctly, and eloquently. It's one of the best short critiques of religion that I've read.

In particular, I was struck by the apt examples in her "second problem" argument, her argument against "Why do you care what other people believe?" I think this is a point that needs to be made more often and more clearly: If religion were purely a private matter, very few of us would care about it very much. But it isn't. Religious beliefs affects how people act in the world, how they treat other people. Especially when it's a powerful mainstream religion. It affects all of us. And therefore, as The Chaplain says:

"The moment they open their church doors and let their ideas drip all over the pavement is the moment they invite me, regardless of whether they intend to do so, to examine those ideas."

Just go read it.

Carnivals: Godless and Feminists

Carnival of the Godless #83 is up at Tangled Up in Blue Guy. My pieces in this Carnival: The 100% Solution: On Uncertainty, And Why It Doesn't Matter So Much, and What's the Harm in a Little Woo? My favorite other piece in this Carnival: The Religious Right vs. Young People at Letters from a Broad.

And Carnival of Feminists #52 is up at Figure: Demystifying the Feminist Mystique. My piece in this Carnival: All I Really Need To Know I Learned From Porn -- Or Not. My favorite other piece in this Carnival: High School, Hair Color and Choices, at Me, My Kid and Life.

If you blog about godlessness or feminism and want to participate in the Carnivals, here are the submission forms for the Carnival of the Godless and the Carnival of the Feminists. Happy reading, and happy blogging!

Is Altruism Real?

There's been a discussion -- okay, a tangent that Ive gotten sucked into -- over at Daylight Atheism. It's about whether altruism is real... and since I've had rather a lot to say about it over there, I thought I should come say it back here as well.

I've always been bugged by people who insist that there's no such thing as altruism; that everyone is basically selfish, and only they themselves are honest enough to admit it. The core of the argument seems to be that even the most altruistic acts -- running into a burning building to save people, devoting your entire life to medical research or social justice, driving to shithole towns twice a month to take care of prisoners with HIV, etc. -- are done for reasons of one's own. They're done to make yourself feel good, to make people like you, etc. Therefore, the acts are selfish -- and therefore, there is no difference between the selfishness of, say, an Albert Schweitzer and that of a Donald Trump.

So here's my problem.

If you're going to define the word "selfish" as any and all behavior that benefits you even in the slightest -- even if that gain is only that you get a marginal increase in social status, or that you get to privately feel like a good person -- then that makes the word "selfish" pretty much meaningless. It's basically re-defining the word "selfish" as "voluntary." (Tip o' the hat to Tim Walters for this catchy phrasing.)

Let's take a look at the definition of the word "selfish," shall we? According to Merriam Webster Online, "selfish" means:

1: concerned excessively or exclusively with oneself: seeking or concentrating on one's own advantage, pleasure, or well-being without regard for others

2: arising from concern with one's own welfare or advantage in disregard of others (a selfish act)

Please note that the definition doesn't say "concerned with oneself; seeking or concentrating on one's own advantage, pleasure, or well-being; arising from concern with one's own welfare or advantage." Doing those things does not make you selfish. Doing those things makes you sane. The key words are "excessively or exclusively," "without regard for others," "in disregard of others." That's what defines "selfish."

This is a useful word. It's a useful idea, a useful distinction to make. And it draws a clear distinction between the "you're just doing that to feel good about yourself" kind of selfishness, and the kind of selfishness that's what most of people mean when they use the word. Between, if you will, Albert Schweitzer selfishness and Donald Trump selfishness. These are different concepts. They're different experiences. The experience of, "It makes me feel ecstatic and connected to make a contribution to humanity" is significantly different from the experience of, "Screw you, Jack, I've got mine." It's absurd to try to call them by the same name.

But there are other issues here, and they're more than just semantics.

I am troubled by the idea that human beings are "really" any one thing. Human feelings, human motives, human nature itself, are all a big, complex, self-contradictory mess, and I find it very troubling when people insist on denying one part of human nature simply because we have another part that contradicts it. In particular, I'm troubled by the idea that, because our motivations are often a mixture of selfishness and altruism, and because altruism has a selfish component to it, this somehow negates the altruism, and only the selfishness is real. (And I find it interesting that the people arguing this don't consider the possibility that this conflict negates the selfishness, and only the altruism is real.)

And perhaps most importantly:

Arguing that altruism isn't real isn't just unethical. It's also factually inaccurate.

There is, in fact, increasing evidence that altruism is an essential part of human nature. Literally. It seems to be hard-wired into us genetically. As it is in other social species. (As is selfishness, of course. Both qualities exist, in pretty much everyone.) Denying its existence is like denying the existence of social hierarchies or sexual desire.

I never cease to be amazed by people who insist that everyone else really experiences life exactly the way they do, if only they'd be honest and admit it. And in particular, I never cease to be amazed by selfish people who insist that everyone else is fundamentally selfish, too, and just won't admit it. It's so obviously self-serving that it's laughable.

No, there's probably no such thing as "pure altruism." Any completely self-sacrificing tendency would have been selected out by evolution in a hurry. But the fact that it isn't pure doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.

If people want to behave selfishly -- i.e., concerned excessively or exclusively with themselves without regard for others -- I doubt that I can argue them out of it. I just wish they'd stop fooling themselves into believing that everyone else is really just like them and simply won't admit it. If you genuinely lack altruistic feelings... well, everyone else is not just like you. There are people in the world who care about other people, who have empathy for them, who want to make the world better for everyone and not just for themselves. And the world is a better place because of it.

Yes, the care for other people is mixed with self-care. But that doesn't negate it. The fact that you are missing out on a fundamental human experience is no reason to deny that experience's very existence.

Sex, Lies, and Contraception: The Male Pill: The Blowfish Blog

I have a new piece up on the Blowfish Blog, a rethinking about the science, the economics, and the gender politics of the question, "Why don’t they make a birth control pill for men?" The piece is titled, Sex, Lies, and Contraception: The Male Pill, and here's the teaser:

The reality is that both women and men have sex with people they don’t entirely trust. They have sex with people they trust enough: people they trust not to beat them up, not to steal their car, not to paint their living room hot pink while they sleep. But both women and men have sex with people who they don’t trust enough to let them handle the responsibility, and make the decisions, about pregnancy and children. I think plenty of men would be happy to take a pill to ensure that their decisions about pregnancy and children weren’t being made by the hot number they met on Craig’s List three weeks ago.

If I were a single man, I’d sure as hell want that.

To find out more, read the rest of the piece. Enjoy!

It Isn't Like That

Ingrid and I are going away for our 10th anniversary. (No, we're not going to the French Laundry -- we decided on the Madonna Inn, where we had our fifth anniversary, and where we got engaged.) I won't be back on the blog until Tuesday.

While I'm gone, I wanted to leave you with this. I wrote this piece about ten days after my first date with Ingrid... and I'm astonished at how true it still is, ten years later. I still can't get over how lucky I am.

It Isn't Like That
by Greta Christina

"My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun..."
-William Shakespeare, Sonnet 130

She is not the sun and the moon and the stars, and she is definitely not my sole reason for living. I wake up in the morning and go to sleep at night for many reasons, of which her existence is only one. She is not all I can think about; I spend time thinking about work, and friends, and what to have for dinner, without too terribly much trouble. I don't feel the earth move or the sky fall, although I do feel a bit like I've been conked on the head by a giant vaudeville rubber mallet. I can talk to other people when she's around, and I can keep my hands off her if I have to. I don't feel that every minute spent without her is wasted, and there is at least some sunshine when she's gone. I do not believe we were destined to meet, or that my life would be empty, or hollow, or even incomplete, without her. And her eyes, while large and lovely and the color of the ocean on a dark day, are, in fact, nothing like the sun, except in that they are big and round and bright. It isn't like that.

It's just that I grin and giggle and blush when I think of her, and sulk when she's far away. It's just that I feel a cold terrified rage at the thought that anyone, myself included, might hurt her. It's just that I feel brave when I'm with her; not brave enough to slay dragons, but brave enough to feel what I feel and say what's on my mind, which for me is plenty brave. It's just that she knows what I mean, and I know what she means; not always, not as if we were soul-sisters or psychically linked, but enough, and much more than enough. It's just that so many of the things that are good about her are things that are good about myself, things I would be happy to have grow stronger from being in her presence. It's just that there isn't anyone else, not even gorgeous movie stars, that I'd rather have in my bed. It's just that a part of me that is hard and cool and distant, a part I rely on but don't much care for, turns into oatmeal when I think about her. It's just that I feel that my life is not entirely in my own hands, and, rather uncharacteristically, am not feeling that this is a problem. It's just that she's smart and funny and sane and thoughtful and cheerful and playful and good and sexy and beautiful, and it feels like a miracle -- not a huge miracle, just a small one -- that she seems to see me the same way.

I like it this way better. Much.

GOP Candidates and Buffy Villains: Separated At Birth?

If you're not a Buffy fan, you probably won't get this at all. If you are a Buffy fan, do not imbibe liquids while reading this, as you will spit them all over your keyboard.

It's The GOP Primary Field in Buffy Villains -- a guide to the Republican Presidential candidates, explaining them by comparing them to villains from "Buffy the Vampire Slayer."

My very favorite is Fred Thompson as The Judge: "His backers got all excited and made a big effort to assemble him. When they finally put him together, he turned out to be a lethargic mess and didn't accomplish very much."

And there's quite a bit of debate over where to put Rudy Giuliani. It's a toughie, but after giving it way too much thought, here's my suggestion:

Illyria.

Constantly obsessing about a moment of glory in his past, to the point where it's become pathetic. Convinced that this past moment of glory still makes him impressive and intimidating and worthy of respect... and prone to getting very agitated when people don't share this opinion. Nowhere near as powerful as he used to be, but still a threat. Not completely incapable of human feeling, but ultimately craven and self-centered.

What are y'all's thoughts? And what about the Dems? What Buffy villains -- or flawed heroes -- are they?

And thanks to Rebecca for the tip!

Friday Cat Blogging: Catfish In Blanket

And now, a cute picture of our cat.

No explanation is needed, I don't think. Just the disembodied head of Catfish nestled in a blanket.

All I Really Need To Know I Learned From Porn -- Or Not

This piece originally appeared on the Blowfish Blog.

Porn is not sex education.

I'll say it again: Porn is not sex education.

I'm saying this to everyone who's reading this. But I'm especially saying it to parents: Porn is not sex education. So you need to make sure your kids are getting actual sex education. Because if you don't, then all they really need to know about sex they'll learn from porn -- and they're going to get it completely wrong.

This came up because of a piece I heard on the NPR radio show, "This American Life." The program was on the topic of "talking to kids," and it had a whole segment on talking to kids and teenagers about sex. The entire segment was excellent... but the part that jumped out at me was the teenagers saying that they didn't have good information about sex. Specifically, they didn't have good information about the actual mechanics of sex, what goes where and how.

And so they looked at porn.

And I didn't know whether to vomit, throw things, or cry.

It wasn't just the appalling state of sex education in our country that made me want to cry. Although that was a big part of it. The sex education these kids are getting from their schools is pathetic and insulting, and they know it.

No, what was really making me want to throw bricks through windows was that these teenagers were getting their sex education from porn... and I know, in great and vivid detail from the many years I've been watching porn, exactly how lousy that education will be.

Here is a very short list of things that people will get grotesquely wrong if they get their sex education from porn.

What women's genitals look like. This is a biggie. If you're looking at porn video to satisfy your curiosity about what a pussy looks like -- well, standards of female beauty in porn are almost as rigid with pussies as they are with basic body types, and female genital cosmetic surgery in the porn industry is getting increasingly and depressingly common.

What male genitals look like. Another biggie -- literally. Every time I read a letter to a sex advice columnist from a guy complaining that his dick is pathetically small -- not like the guys in the porn videos -- I want to scream and bite people. Male porn actors are specifically selected for their large genitalia. They are not a statistically representative sampling. Statistically speaking, they represent the far, far end of the bell curve.

The realities of female sexual response. This may be the worst offender of the bunch. There's already enough ignorance about what gives women sexual pleasure and what gets us off, without "porn as sex ed" adding to the mix. Look, I have no doubt that there are some women out there who don't need foreplay, get very aroused by giving blowjobs, have intense multiple orgasms from intercourse alone, and couldn't care less if you touched their clit. But if that's how you're trying to get a woman off, you're really not playing the percentages. Trust me on this.

The realities of male sexual response. If you're getting your sex education from porn, you're going to think that it's normal for men to get rock-hard immediately, at will, and to stay rock-hard throughout the encounter until they come. You won't necessarily know that (a) male porn actors are specifically selected for their ability to get wood and keep it; and (b) the omnipresence of wood in porn videos is due in large part to the miracle of video editing (and more recently to the miracle of Viagra).

To round it all off, we have the actual mechanics; the "What happens during sex?" stuff that the teenagers in the NPR story were desperately looking for. The sex in porn videos is choreographed to give a clear, unobstructed view of the penetration. It's choreographed to look good -- not to feel good. I shudder to think of a generation coming into their sexual prime thinking that reverse cowgirl and that stupid position where the woman sticks her leg up on the wall are the gold standard of the sexual nuts and bolts.

And all of that is just the tip of the sexual misinformation iceberg.

So I want to say a few things to parents:

1. Sex education in our country is in an appalling state. It has huge holes in it at best, and dispenses gross misinformation at worst.

2. If you think your kids aren't seeing porn, think again. Even before the Internet, kids and teenagers were looking at porn. (How many of us swiped our dad's Playboys for a peek? I sure did.) And with the Internet, the horse is definitely out of the barn

So do something. If you're not comfortable talking frankly with your kids about sex yourself -- and I have more sympathy for that position than you might imagine, I sure didn't want to talk with my parents about sex -- you need to make sure they have a way to get the information they want and need. Get them books. Point them at the Scarleteen or San Francisco Sex Information websites. Send them to the sex education programs offered by the Unitarians. Make sure there's an adult in their life they can talk about sex with. Or suck it up, get over your discomfort, and talk to them yourself.

But for the love of all that is beautiful in this world, do not let them grow up thinking that they can get accurate, useful sex information from porn. They can -- once they're adults, of course -- use porn to get entertainment, inspiration, arousal, even some interesting new ideas. But the sex information they'll get from porn will be, if possible, even more useless and misleading than the sex information they're getting from their schools.

Carnivals and Circles: Skeptics, Feminists, and Liberals

Blog carnival time!

Skeptic's Circle #78 is up at The Skeptical Surfer. My piece in this Circle: Untested by Definition: A Rant on Alternative Medicine. My favorite other pieces in this Circle: At Least a Skeptic by Whiskey Before Breakfast, on why skepticism matters in political leaders; and How to be a nice skeptic (and its follow-up piece, Bodytalk follow up), by The 327th Male, on a subject near and dear to my heart -- how to question people's beliefs without being a jerk about it.

Carnival of Feminists #51 is up at Philobiblon. My piece in this carnival: Which Side Are You On? Pro-Porn and Anti-Porn Arguments. My favorite other piece in this Carnival: A Feminist Critique of Superbad (You Heard Me) by Persephone's Box.

Carnival of the Liberals #56 is up at Blue Gal. My piece in this Carnival: Hypocrisy or Bigotry -- Which Is Worse? Huckabee and Guiliani on Gay Rights. My favorite other piece in this Carnival: Overshooting the Goal by Tangled Up in Blue Guy, on universal health care -- and why it's important, in politics as in other endeavors, to reach for more than what you ultimately want or will settle for.

(And I somehow missed this one when it came out, but Carnival of the Liberals #55 is up at The Greenbelt. I don't have anything in this Carnival, but it's still a good time, as always. My favorite piece: O NOES!! TEH SANCTITY!!!11!, by The Digital Cuttlefish, who completely outdoes himself in this hilarious poetic parody on same-sex marriage.)

If you're a skeptical, feminist, or liberal blogger and want to get in on the Carnival Fun (and I strongly encourage you to do so, it's a great way to expand your blog's reach), here are submission forms/ info for the Skeptic's Circle, Carnival of Feminists, and Carnival of the Liberals. Happy reading, and happy blogging!

A Reality Show About Art: Project Runway

It's somewhat alarming how quickly this happened.

I went from catching the last half hour of a rerun on the TV at the gym, to obsessively Tivoing every new episode plus every rerun from every single season that has ever aired... in the space of about four weeks.

I've sucked Ingrid into it as well. And we have totally gone to the bad place, watching hours-long marathons and even renting the season we missed on Netflix. In a matter of a few weeks, this silly reality show has become like "The Daily Show" or "The Office" -- one of the very few TV shows that I never, ever want to miss.

So here's the thing about this show, the thing you might not be expecting, the thing that surprised the hell out of me:

"Project Runway" is actually smart and interesting.

Yes, it's fun, entertaining, easy-to-swallow pop culture fluff. But it's fun, entertaining, easy-to-swallow pop culture fluff with some thought and substance behind it, and with perspective and light to shed on the reality of the human world.

Maybe I'm just rationalizing. But I don't think so. And I have backup for my opinion. I mean, the whole reason I watched the damn show at the gym in the first place was that I'd read more than one article, by more than one smart and thoughtful TV or culture critic, with a headline reading something like, "Project Runway: Actually A Good TV Show."

Subhead: "No, Really. Stop Laughing. I'm Serious."

So here's my Grand Theory of what I think makes "Project Runway" smart and interesting:

It's a reality show about art.

Chopped Salad

This one goes out to everyone who hates salad. Or who just doesn't like it.

I've never been a salad fan. It's not my sworn enemy the way broccoli is, and there have been individual salads in my life that I've quite enjoyed. But as a rule, I find salads tedious. A chore. Unobjectionable, but still something I eat because I feel that I should, not because I actually want to.

But I had this dish at a dinner party recently, a salad that I loved and actively enjoyed. I'd never even heard of it before this dinner, so I wanted to share it with the rest of y'all who don't much like salads but wish you did.

It's chopped salad.

It's pretty much exactly what it sounds like. It's a salad, with greens and stuff; but instead of the greens being in big leaves that you have to chew through like a cow, the whole thing is chopped up together into fairly fine pieces. The contents are totally green salad contents; but the vibe is more like a relish than a green salad.

And I had this flash of realization. The reason I don't like salads isn't that I object to the taste of lettuce or spinach or whatever. The reason I don't like salads is the whole "chewing through the leaves like a cow" thing. That's what makes it feel like a chore. When the greens and the goodies are all chopped up together, you get the deliciousness, without the "chewing your cud" experience. Plus you don't have to wade through the big chewy leaves to get to the yummy treat parts; it's all chopped up together, and you get little bits of the whole salad in every bite. And somehow, chopping it up into smaller bits brings out the flavor of the greens in a really nice way.

The one we had at the dinner party had nuts and cheeses chopped into the greens; so I made one last night with spinach and walnuts and blue cheese (which is what we happened to have around the house). It was marvelous. And easy-shmeezy. You basically just make your salad, chop it up as finely as you want (which took about five minutes), and dress it however you normally would. (Although I'd personally stay away from gloppy creamy dressings like ranch or blue cheese, since I think that would just make it a mess. I'd stick with oil and vinegar, oil and lemon juice, things like that.)

I'm not sure how it would work with a regular salad with lots of vegetables, like tomatoes and cucumbers and stuff. Although it might work just fine. But for the sort of salad with greens and nuts and bits of cheese, it's yummers. I am now completely sold on the whole salad issue. Kudos to Jimmy, who has opened my eyes like no-one else before to the way of the salad.

What's the Harm in a Little Woo?

When I write about religion and religious belief, I tend to write about the Big Ones. The famous ones, the powerful ones, the well-organized ones with millions of followers or more. The multinational brands; the Coke and Pepsi of spirituality. (Christianity, mostly, since, as an American, it's the one I'm most familiar with, and the one that's most in my face.)

But a comment on this blog made me realize that I need to talk about woo as well. In my Bringing Up Kids Without God post, I'd said, "It took me years -- many, many years -- to figure out that, 'God/ the soul/ etc. can't be definitively disproven' didn't mean, 'It's okay to believe anything I want.'" The commenter replied:

Ok, maybe here's where the believer in me comes out, but... what's wrong with believing in anything you want? Why ISN'T it ok? It's one of the fundamental things our country was built on. It's considered part of freedom. Freedom of (and I add "from" as well) belief.

I can see why belief in God can be problematic (well, actually, I don't see why belief in just simply the concept of God itself is problematic, but rather the belief in all the dogma and crap that the Church piles on with it), but what about the other things? How does believing in, say, subatomic particles with free will hurt? As long as you're not being held back by dogma, as long as something isn't hurting you emotionally, as long as you don't hurt others with it, why not do it? You once said you were GOOD at reading tarot cards back in your woo-woo days... if it works for you and it works for others, as long as reason stays the guiding point of your life, why not do it?

I've seen this attitude a fair amount among progressives and lefties. "The problem with religion isn't the spiritual belief, but the power structure." "I don't belong to any organized religion, but I have my own spirituality."

And while I see where this attitude comes from -- and while many people I respect hold it, including this commenter -- I don't agree with it at all. Yes, I think the power structure of religion is harmful... but I think that spiritual beliefs are harmful as well. Even without the power structure.

So I want to talk about woo.

Neo-paganism. Wicca. Goddess worship. Astrology. Telepathy. Visualization. Psychic healing. The hodgepodge of Eastern and pre-modern religious beliefs imported into modern America -- reincarnation, karma, chakras, shamanism etc. -- that have been jumbled together and made palatable to a Western audience (what I call "Pier 1 spirituality"). Channeling. Tarot cards. Etc.

And I want to talk about why I have a problem with it.

Dream diary, 1/13/08: The dream job

I dreamed that I was applying for a job as a professional dreamer. Specifically, I was applying for the job of United States Dreamer Laureate. The job basically involved having interesting dreams; writing about them was a part of it, but just having the dreams was the primary responsibility. I really wanted the job, and was concerned that my more recent dreams hadn't been interesting enough to qualify me. I woke up feeling somewhat disappointed that there was no such thing as Dreamer Laureate.

Friday Cat Blogging on Sunday: Lydia: The Belly-Rub Series

And now, three cute picture of our cat.

Last week, we had a photo of Lydia looking uncharacteristically noble and dignified. So this week, in the interest of full disclosure, I thought we should have some much more typical views of Lydia.

Lydia is an unbelievably sweet cat: a little dim, but affectionate, good-natured, unlikely to start fights with the other cats... and completely shameless in her bid to get scritching and belly-rubs. In many ways, she's more dog-like than cat-like: she doesn't have the aloof, stand-offish thing at all, and she sees no point in playing hard to get. And as a result, she probably gets more attention than both of the other cats combined. I feel that I have a lot to learn from her.

The top picture is of Lydia getting a belly-rub from our friend Tim (of Christmas Rhapsody fame). The second is of Lydia getting a belly-rub from Ingrid. And the third is of Lydia getting a belly-rub from me. The girl likes her belly-rubs.

The 100% Solution: On Uncertainty, And Why It Doesn't Matter So Much

There's a good piece over at Daylight Atheism, and I wanted to call it out and blog about it a little. It's called The Curiously Postmodern Modern Apologists, and it's about... well, the curiously post-modern twist that many modern apologetics for religion have been taking.

The gist of these apologetics: Nobody knows anything for 100% certain. Atheists and believers, scientists and philosophers: nobody can be 100% certain that the things they believe are true. Whether secular or religious, we all have some version of faith.

Therefore, religious faith is as valid as any secular kind. Believing in God, in angels, in reincarnation, in 72 virgins awaiting us when we die, in Jesus dying to save our souls, is every bit as valid as believing that the earth goes around the sun.

Let's take a look at this thought process, and see if we can spot the logical flaw.

The thought process goes like this:

One: You can never be 100% certain that you're right about anything.

Two: Therefore, all ideas are equally likely to be true, and equally valid.

(Three: Therefore, my idea is right. But I think it's pretty obvious why that one's wrong, so I'm not going to bother shooting that particularly slow fish in that particularly small barrel.)

Okay. First of all, Two does not follow from One. Yes, it's true, we can never be 100% sure of anything (except perhaps our own existence). The history of knowledge is full of mis-steps and false assumptions... and besides, everything we see and experience could all be an illusion. We could all be in the Matrix, or something.

But the fact that we can't be 100% sure of any idea doesn't mean that all ideas are equally likely or unlikely.

The fact that we can't have 100% certainty doesn't mean that we can't assess which ideas are more or less likely. We can't know for 100% certain that the earth orbits the sun -- it could all be some horrible Satanic deception, or space aliens playing a practical joke -- but we can be pretty darned sure that it's very likely indeed. And we can't be 100% sure that Bertrand Russell's china teapot isn't orbiting the sun -- maybe it's too small to be seen by our telescopes, or maybe it's an intelligent teapot and is playing a cheeky game of hide and seek -- but we can be pretty darned sure that it almost certainly isn't.

And of course our beliefs are influenced by our preconceptions and assumptions, biases we can never completely filter out. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't try. That's the whole point of the scientific method. Everything about it -- control groups, double-blinding, placebo controls, peer review, transparent methodology, the expectation of replicability, all of it -- is an open acknowledgment that scientists are just as prone to seeing what they want and expect to see as everyone else. It's an open acknowledgment that scientists are fallible... and that they therefore need to try to screen out fallacy, as much as they can. These techniques don't eliminate uncertainty -- but they reduce it, and by a fair amount. They give us a significantly better chance that our theories might be right. They can’t give us absolute truth, but they can give us a pretty good approximation of the truth... an approximation that gets better and better over time.

That's why I'm always astonished by religious believers who accuse scientists of being arrogant... when it's the scientists who are saying, "Yes, we can make mistakes; no, we're never 100% sure that we're right," and the believers who are saying, "I know in my heart that I'm right, and my faith is all the evidence I need."

And yes, for the record, I do think religious belief, while not 100% disprovable, is highly implausible. I've discussed why I think that elsewhere -- here, and here and here and here, and here, and here, and here, and here and here, and here -- and I'm not going to do it again here. Besides, I digress.

The point is this:

No, none of us can ever be 100% certain that anything we know is really true.

So what?

Does that mean we should give up on trying to understand the world? Does that mean we should give up on trying to separate the implausible from the plausible, the likely from the unlikely?

No, we can't be 100% sure of anything. But we can be sure enough. We can be sure enough to make reasonable assumptions, and to make further explorations and investigations based on those assumptions. And if it turns out that one of our assumptions is wrong after all... well, okay. We'll change it, and move on from there. Yes, it's important to understand that we can't have total certainty... but it's also important to accept that fact, and move on.

Wanting certainty is understandable. We all want it, and try to create it, and feel betrayed when we don't get it. But I think it's something of a childish desire. Grown-ups are supposed to understand that there are no guarantees in this world. We're supposed to understand this, we're supposed to accept it, and we're supposed to work within the world we have: the world of likelihood and probability and reasonable educated guesses.

To do otherwise -- to assume that, because we can never be absolutely certain about the world, therefore we shouldn't even try to understand it -- is like a child crying for the moon. It's like never falling in love because you might get your heart broken. It's like a stoned college freshman being backed into a corner in an argument, and trying to get out of it by saying, "What is reality?"

It's an abdication of responsibility.

And grown-ups aren't supposed to do that.

On Punishment, and the Lack Thereof: The Blowfish Blog

Note to family members and others who don't want to read about my personal sex life: While the focus of this post is on sexual things that I don't engage in rather than sexual things that I do, it still discusses my personal sex life, as well as my fantasy life, in quite a bit of detail. If you don't want to read about that stuff, please don't.

I have a new piece up on the Blowfish Blog. It's a bit of a departure for me; instead of talking about sexual stuff that I have experience with, I talk about some sexual stuff that I've tended to stay away from... and why I find it both interesting and unsettling. It's called On Punishment, and the Lack Thereof, and here's the teaser:

It may seem strange, but although I've been practicing SM for about twenty years now, I have almost never done what is almost certainly the most common form of SM play. As a top, I've done punishment less than a handful of times... and I've done it as a bottom exactly never, except in a jokey, "wink-wink," kidding around way.

It's not that I haven't done role-playing. But the role-playing I've done hasn't been about, "You've been bad, so I'm going to punish you." It's been about, "I have power over you, so I'm going to do what I want with you." Punishment has just never interested me.

No, more than that. Punishment has actively freaked me out.

Lately, however, punishment has been sneaking into my fantasies with increasing insistence, and increasing stubbornness.

So I want to look at what it is about punishment that freaks me out... and what it is about it that I'm beginning to find so compelling.

For more on why I find this form of play both compelling and freaky, read the rest of the piece. Enjoy!

On Forgiveness

I've been reading this excellent, wildly life-changing book that absolutely everyone has to read. It's called "Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts," and it's about cognitive dissonance -- the uncomfortable-at-best feeling you get when things you do, or things that happen, contradict your beliefs, about yourself or the world. And it's about the justifications, rationalizations, and other defense mechanisms we use to keep that dissonance at bay.

I'll be blogging about this book a lot, and of course I'll be talking about religious apologetics as a prime example of "rationalization to avoid cognitive dissonance." But right now, the thing this book is making me think about is actually something that religion -- Christianity, at any rate -- does right.

It's an important thing, a genuinely useful thing. And it's a thing that atheists are going to have to find a replacement for if we're serious about creating a more secular world.

What Christianity does is provide a framework for forgiveness.

We all want to think of ourselves as good people. No, strike that. We all do think of ourselves as good people. Contrary to all the movie villains cackling over their beautiful wickedness or trying to lure the hero to the dark side, even people who most of us would call certifiably evil usually think of themselves as good.

And when we do harmful things that contradict our belief in our goodness, we're extremely adept at coming up with reasons why the bad things we did weren't actually bad. "I couldn't help it." "Everyone does it." "The person I hurt was a bad person, so they deserved it." "That resource-rich country will be so much better off if we invade it." Etc. Like the Threadbare Excuse in the Phantom Tollbooth, chanting endlessly to itself, "Well, I've been sick -- but the page was torn out -- I missed the bus -- but no-one else did it..."

All of us. You, me, everyone. This seems to be a universal human trait.

And the worse the thing that we did was, the more likely it is that we'll rationalize it... and hang onto that rationalization like we're glued to it. I mean, it's relatively easy to reconcile your belief that you're a good person with the fact that you sometimes make needlessly catty remarks and forget your friends' birthdays. It's a lot harder to reconcile your belief that you're a good person with the fact that you carved up a pregnant woman and smeared her blood on the front door.

So we have a truly fucked-up paradox: The more appalling your immoral act was, the more likely you are to have a rock-solid justification for it... or a justification that you think is rock-solid, even if everyone around you thinks it's transparently self-serving or batshit loony. And the more solid you think your justification is, the more likely you are to do the bad thing again.

The concept of Christian forgiveness cuts through this conundrum very neatly. It allows you to accept the fact that you've done genuinely bad things, and at the same time lets you continue to think of yourself as a good person... without coming up with a bunch of cockamamie justifications for why the bad stuff you did really wasn't bad after all.

Which is important. Justifications are very self-perpetuating... and they're stubbornly resistant to logic and evidence. When we hang on to them, we're a lot more likely to repeat the unethical things we've done. But when we can find ways to let go of them and accept that we've done wrong, we find it a lot easier to change, and to move on.

And I think the Christian concept of forgiveness helps with that.

Don't get me wrong. I don't think this is an argument for Christianity. I still think religion does more harm than good, by a wide margin. If for no other reason, I think religion is mistaken, and I think mistaken ideas almost always do harm. What's more, as Daniel Dennett points out at length in "Breaking the Spell," religion is shot through with a whole passel of its own rationalizations and justifications... which stalwartly defend it against facts and ideas that contradict it, and serve to both justify and perpetuate its more grossly unethical practices.

Besides, Christian forgiveness is arguably just another elaborate rationalization. There's a whole class of rationalization that basically involves saying, "It wasn't really me." I was sick; I was tired; I was drunk or high; I wasn't in my right mind; etc. I did that bad thing, but I wasn't myself... so it wasn't actually me who did it. And it could be argued that Christian forgiveness is just another version of that. "Yes, I slept with the babysitter and told my boss I was visiting my sick mother when I was really in the Bahamas... but I did it before I was saved, and I was a completely different person then, so it wasn't really me who did it."

And in any case, an argument for why a religion is useful isn't an argument for why it's true.

Besides, it's clear that Christian forgiveness isn't the only way for us to accept our bad deeds and move on with our lives. Atheists -- and for that matter, believers in non-Christian religions -- are clearly able to accept responsibility for bad things that we've done, deal with it, and move on. At least some of the time.

In fact, there are already examples of secular structures for contrition and forgiveness. The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission at the end of apartheid leaps to mind. So it's not like we'd have to start from scratch.

I'm just saying: The tendency of human beings to justify our bad decisions and bad behavior isn't going away. And we probably wouldn't want it to. It can be very irritating and very harmful... but it's also necessary. Without it, we'd be paralyzed with guilt and shame. Perpetually. We'd be having dark nights of the soul every night of our lives.

As long as there are people, people are going to make bad decisions and do bad things. And as long as people make bad decisions and do bad things, people are going to rationalize and justify those decisions and things, even when they're neither rational nor just. We need ways of getting ourselves out of the self-justification loop... and we need structures to support ourselves and one another in doing it. I think this is one of the reasons people find Christianity -- and the Christian idea of forgiveness -- appealing. And if we want to move towards a more secular world, we need to find a replacement for it.

Dearly Beloved Pastor...

I just got this religious spam email that was so hilariously inappropriate, I had to share.

Dearly Beloved Pastor ,

Greetings from India! We are so glad to meet you through this mail. I happened to visit your website just now and so happy after reading the contents. First of all, I would like to introduce myself and my ministry: I am pastor Ravi, serving the Lord full-time for the last over 8 years. I am married and have a daughter & son. My wife Christina also works full-time in the ministry. We would like to fellowship and connect with your ministry. Would you please let us know your heart for our nation so that I can share more about my vision and burden of the Ministry. Thank you. !

In Christ,
Pastor Ravi (last name, city, phone number deleted), India

Okay. Let's take this one step at a time.

Clue Number One that this is spam: "Dearly Beloved Pastor."

Clue Number Two that this is spam: "I happened to visit your website just now and so happy after reading the contents."

Really.

Which part of my site made you happiest, Pastor? Was it Why Religion Is Like Fanfic? If not that, was it perhaps A Self-Referential Game of Twister: What Religion Looks Like From the Outside? Or was that beloved classic, Atheists and Anger?

Or maybe Christian Spanking Porn?

Clue Number Three that this is not only spam, but a scam spam, the opening gambit in what will almost certainly turn out to be a version of the Nigerian scam:

"...so that I can share more about my vision and burden of the Ministry."

In other words: Let me tell you about my burdens, so I can then hit you up for money.

I'm almost tempted to reply. If I had time and energy, I would. But I'm not sure if I'd go the "stringing him along and pretending to be a real pastor while gradually becoming more and more outlandish" route, or the more direct "Do tell, which part of my atheist porn blog did you like the best?" route. It's a tough call.

How Can You Choose Just One? Bisexuality, Blonds, and Monogamy: The Blowfish Blog

I have a new piece up on the Blowfish Blog. It's called How Can You Choose Just One? Bisexuality, Blonds, and Monogamy, and it begins very much like this:

There's an odd assumption that often gets made about bisexuals. (It got repeated recently in a letter to Savage Love -- third letter from the top -- which reminded me that I've been wanting to write about it.) The assumption: Bisexuals are constitutionally incapable of being monogamous.

The logic goes something like this:

Bisexuals are sexually attracted to both women and men.

Bisexuals enjoy sex with both women and men.

Therefore, bisexuals are unwilling -- even unable -- to give up sex with one of those genders. We must have sexual access to both women and men at all times in our lives. Without both, we'll be dissatisfied, restless... and eventually, we'll be tempted to stray. We're attracted to both women and men -- how could we choose just one, forever?

Here's an analogy, to show exactly where this logic goes wrong.

To find out exactly where this logic goes wrong, read the rest of the piece. Enjoy!

Carnivals: Humanist, Godless, and Liberal

Blog carnival time!

Humanist Symposium #13 is up at Faith in Honest Doubt. My pieces in this Symposium: "Let Them Make Up Their Own Minds": Bringing Up Kids Without God, and Atheist Funerals. My favorite other pieces in this Symposium: How can we console others (and ourselves) without heaven or an afterlife? at Mind on Fire, and Political Considerations for Religious Belief at Atheist Ethicist.

Carnival of the Godless #82 is up at Axis of Jared. My piece in this Carnival: The Meaning of Death, Part 2 of Many: Motivation and Mid-Life Crises. My favorite other piece in this Carnival: Respect is a two-way street at The Mutt's Nuts.

And Carnival of the Liberals #54 is up at Neural Gourmet. I don't have any pieces in it this time, but it's still a great carnival. My favorite piece: A Comedy Writer on Strike at Writopia Lab.

If you're a humanist, godless, or liberal blogger, and want to get in on the blog carnival fun, here are submission forms for the Humanist Symposium, Carnival of the Godless, and Carnival of the Liberals. Happy reading, and happy blogging!

Oscarology: The Readings

The readings are in!

A quick recap, for those of you just joining us: Oscarology is a system of astrology I invented -- excuse me, that was revealed to me in a powerful mystical experience -- based on what movie won the Best Picture Oscar for the year you were born. I blogged about it a couple of days ago, asking for people's birth years... and have been spending the time since then communing with the Spirit of the Oscars and transcribing the visions it has vouchsafed to me.

First, to answer a burning question that has been asked: In Oscarology, your movie is the Best Picture that was released the year you were born. Not the one that was granted the award in the ceremony in the year you were born. (So John, if you were born in 1983, you are not a Gandhi. You are a Terms of Endearment. And Stacey, you're not an Annie Hall -- you're a The Deer Hunter.)

FYI, some of these movies I haven't seen, and am totally guessing based on the little I do know and what I looked up on Wikipedia. Unlike real astrologers...

So let's get this started! And if you haven't chimed in with your year yet, it's not too late. Give me your birth year, and I'll fill in the gaps. (Readings start after the jump.)

Atheism in Pop Culture Part 8: Oliver Sacks

I've been reading the new Oliver Sacks book, Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain (a wonderful birthday present -- thanks, L & K!). And on Page 35, he's talking about how music can be triggered in our minds by association, and he says this:

As I write, in New York in mid-December, the city is full of Christmas trees and menorahs. I would be inclined to say, as an old Jewish atheist, that these things mean nothing to me, but Hannukah songs are evoked in my mind whenever an image of a menorah impinges on my retina, even when I am not consciously aware of it.

Neat! I like how casually he mentions it; not as a big "I Am An Atheist" announcement, but as a passing reference to explain a point. This may be the first time he's come out in print as an atheist, though; he's currently listed on the Celebrity Atheists site under the Ambiguous category. If that's true, it makes me like the casualness of it all the better. It makes me think that the atheist movement is having an effect, and making it less of a big deal for people to declare their atheism in public.

Anyway. Neat.

*****

Addendum: He's no longer listed as Ambiguous in the Celebrity Atheists list. I just updated the listing.

Rain and Feet

I don't plug consumer products very often in my blog (unless you count books and dirty videos as consumer products). But the rainy season has started with a vengeance here in the Bay Area, and just about everybody I've mentioned these to has gone, "Oo! Oo! Oo!" So I thought I'd spread the word a little wider:

Crocs makes rain boots.

You know Crocs, right? Those ridiculously comfortable, kind of silly-looking plastic shoes with the holes in them? The ones that come in eight million clown-shoe colors?

The people who make them make rain boots. Totally comfy (although not quite as comfortable as the regular Crocs). Keep my feet totally dry, even when it's pouring buckets. And the black ones are actually pretty stylin', if you like that "big stompy boots" thing, which I do. (Ingrid tried to convince me to get them in red, but big red rain boots with my bright yellow rain slicker would have made me look like Christopher Robin: a look you can pull off when you're twenty, but not when you're 46.)

Anyway. Crocs rain boots. If you're searching for them, they're called Crocs Georgies. (FYI, I did have to search for mine, since the Crocs store was out of the size and color I wanted.) And no, I'm not getting any kickbacks from the Crocs company. I just think they're cool.

Oscarology

Years ago, I invented a system of astrology based on what movie won the Best Picture Oscar for the year you were born. (It's more like Chinese astrology than Western astrology: you share your personality with an entire year's worth of people, instead of just a month's worth. But in Oscarology, the signs never repeat. Your year is special and unique.)

The Skeptical Surfer recently asked me about Oscarology, and I realized I've never blogged about it. I've discussed it in more than one discussion group and bulletin board (my favorite response: someone asked me what had won for 1991 and 1992, and when I said it was "Silence of the Lambs" and "Unforgiven," she replied, "No wonder the kids are so weird!"). But I've never mentioned it here.

So let's play! Tell me what year you were born, and I'll tell you all about your personality based on what won the Oscar for that year. (Assuming I've seen the movie, that is.)

I'll get the ball rolling with my own reading.

Birth year: 1961.
Best Picture: West Side Story.
Analysis: Although I tend to feel like an outsider in almost any group, I am very concerned with communicating and with making connections and forming bridges with/between people who seem unalterably opposed. Music and dancing are central to my life and identity. I have a somewhat tough exterior, but I dance like a big sissy boy and am as queer as a three-dollar bill.

So what's your sign, baby?

Oh, and for the record: Astrology doesn't work. It flat-out doesn't work. There are many spiritual beliefs -- such as the belief in God -- that, while highly implausible, can't be definitely disproven. Astrology is not one of them. It makes testable claims; the claims have been tested; the claims have been consistently and without a doubt shown not to work at all.

Just so we're clear.

Friday Cat Blogging: Lydia Posing

And now, here's a cute picture of our cat.

In most of our pictures of Lydia, she looks somewhat undignified: she tends to sprawl about in a rather abject, "please rub my belly now" manner. But in this picture, I think she looks very dignified, and beautiful in a very classic way.

The Blogroll Meme

I thought I'd start out the new year by trying to start up a blog meme. Let's see how it goes!

This is actually a very easy meme to execute. And it's a neat way to give props to your fellow bloggers... while taking a little bow for whatever it is that's special about your own blog.

It goes like this:

Pick three blogs from your blogroll that you think encapsulate the unique nature of your blog. And post them on your blog, with links of course.

Then tag three other bloggers with the meme. (The bloggers that you tag can be the bloggers from your meme, or they can be different ones.)

That's it.

Another way to think of it is this: Pick a combination of three blogs from your blogroll that you think nobody else has. Any individual blog can be one that lots of other people have in their blogroll -- it's the combination of the three that should be unique (or at least, likely to be unique).

You can explain your reasoning if you like. Or you can leave it self-explanatory.

So here's mine. The three blogs from my blogroll that I think sum up the essence of my blog -- the three-blog combo that I think may be unique -- are as follows:

Daylight Atheism
Spanking Blog
Cute Overload

And I don't think I'm going to explain my reasoning, as I think the choices are pretty self-explanatory.

So I'm tagging three blogs to try to get the meme going. But if you think this sounds fun and want to play, consider yourself tagged!

I am tagging:

An Apostate's Chapel
Daylight Atheism
Letters from a Broad

Happy blogging! And if you run with this meme, please drop me a line and let me know.

Skeptic's Circle #77

Skeptic's Circle #77 is up at WhiteCoat Underground. My pieces in this Circle: "Let Them Make Up Their Own Minds": Bringing Up Kids Without God, and Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness Against Thy Neighbor.

My favorite other pieces in this Circle: No vaccine for arrogance by Cuttlefish (in verse, no less!); An Appeal to Skeptics... by Happy Jihad's House of Pancakes, on scientific illiteracy in the humanities (my favorite quote: "Oh, it's theory. It doesn't have to correspond to the real world."); and "It's not a miracle" does not mean "I don't care" by Ranting Daddy.

If you're a skeptical blogger and want to participate in the Skeptic's Circle, here's the schedule and guidelines. Happy reading, and happy blogging!

Which Side Are You On? Pro-Porn and Anti-Porn Arguments

Note to family members and others who don't want to read about my personal sex life: This post talks about my personal sex life, including a few details you may not want to know about. If you don't want to read that stuff, please don't read this post.

This post was originally published on the Blowfish Blog.

You'd think this would be a no-brainer. I've performed in porn. I've produced porn. I've sold porn. I've written porn. I've reviewed porn. And I've read and looked at porn, many many times, purely for my own libidinous pleasure. And whenever I read someone reflexively attacking porn, railing about how horrible it is and how it's degrading and ruinous to all that is good and wonderful about sex, I get very cranky and argumentative.

But here's the kicker. When I read people reflexively defending porn, raving about how wonderful and uplifting it is and how all criticisms of it are absurd and unfair, I get cranky and argumentative as well.

You might conclude from this behavior that I am a cranky, argumentative person.

You might be right.

But there's more to it than that. (She said, crankily and argumentatively.)

The core problem, I think, is this. Critics of porn often focus exclusively on the specifics of how porn commonly plays out in contemporary culture. They see the body fascism, the rigidly narrow and male-oriented vision of sexuality, the sexism (and yes, there is sexism in porn, just like there's sexism in every other part of popular culture). And they conclude that the particular is the same as the general. They conclude that because that's how porn commonly plays out in contemporary culture, therefore that's what porn is always like, de facto and by its very definition.

(They also focus on video porn to the exclusion of all other forms. Not entirely unfairly, as that is the lion's share of the porn market... but somewhat narrow-mindedly as well. And there's an unfortunate confirmation bias when feminist critiques of porn focus on video, since written fiction is a far more woman-driven form of erotica than video has ever been. Especially when you look at the vanishing line between the erotica and romance genres.)

By the same token, though, defenders of porn often focus exclusively on the ideal of what porn could be, while ignoring the ugly realities of what it very often is. And I'll include myself in that critique. I've definitely been guilty of saying, "But what about Candida Royalle? What about Libido Productions? What about the dozens of other wonderful indie porn productions I could name?"... while ignoring the over 10,000 pieces of formula-driven, factory-made, tedious pieces of sex in a box that come out every single year, and that porn customers snap up like candy.

I'm not going to say that the truth lies somewhere in the middle. I think the idea that the truth of two opposing extremes usually lies somewhere in the middle is total bullshit. I am, on the whole, very much pro-porn, if for no other reasons than (a) I think there's no way to stop the fucked-up kinds of porn without stopping healthy sex information and expression, and (b) I like to get off on it.

And I think anti-porn writers have a very bad habit of ignoring Sturgeon's Law. They fail to recognize that, yes, 90% of porn is crap... but 90% of everything is crap. And in a sexist society, 90% of everything is sexist crap. I've seen some very good arguments on how most porn is sexist and patriarchal with rigid and misleading images of women... but I've never seen a good argument for why, in a world of sexist TV and movies and pop music and video games, porn should be singled out for special condemnation -- to the point of trying to eliminate the genre altogether.

But I also think that pro-porn advocates -- myself included -- need to stop pretending that there isn't a problem. We need to recognize that the overwhelming majority of porn -- or rather, the overwhelming majority of video porn, which is the overwhelming majority of porn -- is sexist, is patriarchal, does perpetuate body fascism, does create unrealistic sexual expectations for both women and men, does depict sex in ways that are not only overwhelmingly focused on male pleasure, but are rigid and formulaic and mind-numbingly tedious to boot. And we need to be trying to do something about it.

What I think is often missing, from both sides of this debate, is nuance. I think anti-porn writers need to acknowledge that the crappy realities of average porn don't automatically prove that all porn is evil by definition. And I think pro-porn advocates need to acknowledge... well, the crappy realities of average porn.

And goddamn it, this cranky and argumentative sex writer wants nuance. If I have to scream myself blue in the face to get it.

Are You Smarter Than A Celebrity Psychic?

Skeptico did this neat thing last year, where he made predictions about events of the year 2007... and then compared his results to that of several famous professional "psychics." (Surprise, surprise -- Skeptico did as well or better.)

Rebecca suggested that we steal this idea and turn it into a contest. And I'm all for stealing other people's good ideas, as long as I give due credit as I run off with the loot. So I hereby present the 2008 "Are You Smarter Than A Celebrity Psychic?" contest, with due credit to Skeptico.

The rules: Make five predictions about world events in 2008: political events, natural disasters, celebrity gossip, etc. Post them in the comments here, no later than January 15, 2008. Predictions should be things that reasonably might or might not happen; totally obvious predictions such as "The sun will continue to rise in the East" and "Saturn will not crash into Jupiter" will not be accepted. However, credit will be given for partially correct answers, since the celebrity psychics do that when they score themselves. Credit will also be given if events can be interpreted to fit the prediction -- ditto.

The winner will be announced on January 1, 2009. The winner will be told, "That's amazing! You must actually be psychic and not be aware of it!" in this blog.

My predictions, to get the crystal ball rolling:

1. John Edwards will get the Democratic nomination for President, and will go on to win the election in November.

2. At least one new atheist book will make the New York Times bestseller list.

3. A new drug will be released treating female sexual dysfunction.

4. Hal Holbrook will be nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his role in "Into the Wild." He will not win.

5. Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, and Lindsay Lohan will get into legal trouble for out-of-control behavior related to drugs or alcohol.

So what are your guesses -- excuse me, psychic predictions?

*****

Addendum to the rules, inspired by the first round of predictions:

You have to score your own predictions. I am not bloody well going to try to stay up on German politics, scandals in the Australian cabinet, or tech industry lawsuits, solely to keep track of this silly game. And besides, scoring your own predictions is much more in keeping with the spirit of the game.

900!

Atheists and Anger now has over 900 comments!

Comments have been continuing to trickle in on this post ever since the original surge when I wrote it in October; it's been getting at least one comment a day on most days ever since it was published. But special thanks are due to Friendly Atheist and to Memoirs of a Skepchick for the recent links that put it over the top. Thanks! And thanks to everyone who linked to the piece on their blog or forum or discussion group. This thing really has turned into the blog post that ate the Internet. I am still completely blown away by how many people were touched by it... and I'm very touched that so many people were moved to spread the word about it. Thanks, y'all. If it hits 1000, I think I'll throw a party.