My Wedding And The Seductive Lure Of Magical Thinking
Lessons can be learned from almost any experience. Lessons about reason and logical thinking are no different. I got married yesterday (pictures here) and while the ceremony was beautiful and was deverything I wished it could be, the events of the day or so leading up to it was anything but.
Things did not go well starting from the day before the wedding. Both my wife and I went shopping and bill paying separately. Well, turns out that by the time we were done and got back together, a check of the bank accounts showed that we might no have enough to pay for the reception at the restaurant. It took returning some stuff and cashing a check with my bank’s line of credit to make sure that we had enough.
The next problem came the morning of the wedding. We went to the florists to pickup the floral circlet for her hair so she could take it to the hair dressers. We got to the florists and instead of the circlet with sweetheart roses, the clerk handed her some loose roses. No circlet. To top it off, her bouquet, which was supposed to include red roses, star tiger lilies, and lilly grass. looked like something that a child might have thrown together. She had specifically picked out a design from a catalogue two days before, except replacing orchids with star tiger lilies. To be blunt, it was a piece of crap. We canceled our order and left with her in tears. Fortunately, went to the local supermarket with a florist and found the perfect bouquet and other flowers we needed
The next almost disaster was about half an hour before we were to leave for the wedding. Our rings and the marriage license were locked in a fire proof box. The key for the box was on her keyring, which, despite us and our kids looking, we could not find. Disaster was adverted after five minutes with a hammer and screwdriver busted open the box.
Finally, we arrive at the restaurant where the ceremony and reception was being held. We had eight vases for the place settings in a bag, which I handed to my soon-to-be-wife. Unfortunately, she didn’t have a good hold of the bad and it dropped onto the parking lot, breaking six of the vases. The good thing? We didn’t have as many people show up so that we were able to place one vase per table with the flowers.
You might be wondering what all this has to do with magical thinking or supernatural belief. It was very tempting, even for me, to want to attribute the streak of bad things that happened to some kind of mystical force, be it fate, luck, the evil eye, God, satan, or leprechauns. The reality is that these events were just a random series of adverse events the effects which were amplified by the significance of the day and the associated stress.
We both fought the impulse to attribute the bad things that happened to some kind of cosmic fate or karma and that actually made it easier to deal with. A superstitious person might have allowed their superstitious beliefs to convince them that because things had started off so badly, that meant that their marriage was somehow cursed. Even if they didn’t take it to that extreme, the thought that they were the victims of bad luck could easily have made it harder for them to enjoy that special day, as they waited for, as it were, the other shoe to drop.
We knew that there really wasn’t any rhyme or reason to these upsetting events. This knowledge made it much easier for us to put them out of our minds and enjoy our wedding.
In hindsight it was obvious to us that just as many, actually more, good things happen than bad. Way more, in fact. If we had allowed ourselves to believe in the delusion of bad luck, or karma, or whatever you like to call it, we might still be lamenting these events, or at least allowing them to taint our memories of the day,
Things happen. And as our parents always told us, the reason is, “Just because.”
Share And Enjoy!
I was heating something up for breakfast in my microwave this morning. My microwave is a pretty cool one. I particularly love the sensor reheat and sensor defrost. They both do an excellent job at what they are designed to do. That’s not what I want to write about, though.
I took notice of a feature of my microwave that I’d seen plenty of times before, but never really noticed. You know; you’ve seen something, like maybe that little chili shop you drive by every day, but never really paid any attention to, until one day, maybe your stuck in traffic right across from it and have time to take a real look at it. Suddenly you realize that, hey, you’ve driven by this place hundreds of times but never really noticed that it was a chili place. Of course, after that, you can’t help BUT notice it every time you drive by.
Ok, hopefully you have the idea. Now back to my microwave. When my microwave beeped at me, to let me know that my food was done, I was busy and didn’t hear it. My stepson walked in and asked me if there was something in the microwave. I said yes. He said that it was done. He said that he could tell by the message that was scrolling across the LED display. I looked over at the microwave and read the message: “ENJOY YOUR MEAL”.
It struck me as a bit odd that a company that makes microwave oven would bother to take the time to not only think of, but actually make, a microwave that actually wishes you, “BON APPETIT!”. I couldn’t help think that this might be the first sign of the rise of the Robot Overlords. At a minimum, it is the eerily reminiscent of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation. After all, their motto is, “Share and Enjoy!”
The Luck Of Numbers
Numbers are part of everyone’s life. We use numbers to count things, to label things, even to describe the universe in which we live. They help us organize and make sense of the world around us. Numbers are practical. How much food do we have? How many weeks before the harvest begins? Numbers allow us to divide the day into manageable chunks, those days into weeks, weeks into months, and months into years.
Given this, it is easy to believe that numbers play an important role in our day-to-day lives, but due to how our brains work, we ascribe special significance to numbers that goes beyond their practical value.
Lucky numbers. Unlucky numbers. We are all familiar with these, even if we don’t believe in their reputed powers. In the west, 13 is considered unlucky, while 2, 4, and 12 are considered lucky. In contrast, the number 4 is considered particularly unlucky in Chinese and other asian cultures because the word for the number 4 sounds like the word for death.
If number were truly lucky or unlucky you would think that the numbers that are considered lucky or unlucky, like the number 4, would be consistent across cultures. Of course, they are not, because there is no correlation between a particular number and any good or bad things that happen to us, except in the misguided significant we assign to them due to confirmation bias.
Humans have a need to make sense out of everything around us. This leads us to try to find purpose for events that actually have no purpose. We find it hard, if not impossible, to accept that things that happen to us could have no reason or purpose behind them. Our brains just aren’t evolved to think that way. Because of this, our brains construct explanations for inexplicable events. If something bad happens to us, then someone, either ourselves, someone else, or even a god or spirit must have done something to cause it to happen. The same goes for good things that happen. While the event was likely completely random, we need to make sense of it so we come up with a reason, no matter how strange or unlikely, to explain it.
This is where the ancient myths first came from. Our ancestors needed to understand why things happened, be it rain, drought, famine, or disease. These kinds of events brought great fear and much of this fear was due to the lack of control they had over these events. To understand how something works is to have control over it. To try to regain control and reduce the fear, they came up with stories of gods or spirits that cause these things. If they could somehow appease these gods or spirits, perhaps they could ward off these events in the future.
Of course, despite their efforts, diseases, famines and such kept coming, but now they could explain them by their actions of either doing what the gods wanted (when things went well) or displeasing them (when bad things happened). While the reality was that these events were mostly random, the need for their explanations to be true caused them to remember the times when events seemed to support their beliefs and forget the times that they didn’t. This confirmation bias continues to be the basis for our faith in gods, spirits, mysticism, and luck right up until today.
Science Versus Faith
Most of us want to understand the world we live it. We seek to make sense out of our lives; why we are here; what the purpose of our existence is. Not knowing is unsettling, even scary.
For thousands of years, likely since humans could actually think as we understand that wold, we have tried to find ways to understand how things work. We tried to explain the forces of nature that we can’t control. Weather, seasons, earthquakes, volcanos. These things frightened us. To try to reduce the fear and uncertainty, we tried to explain these things as best we could. We created spirits, demons, monsters, and gods.
These creations varied from culture to culture. The Greeks had their Zeus, the Romans Jupiter, Bushmen had Cagn, Babylonians worshiped Marduk , Jews had Yahweh, Christians, Jesus. All of these deities had mostly similar traits, but also differences that varied according to the particular culture.
Some people, however, tried to find a different way to explain the world around them. Ancient Greeks had Plato, Aristotle, and others who tried to use reason and observation to explain things. The were often wrong, but it was a departure from just explaining things away as acts by a deity or deities.
In the 15th century, Galileo used his telescope to discover truths about the universe: that the planets were worlds like our own and not just points of light on the backdrop of the celestial sphere. Kepler, Copernicus, and later Newton, added to our understanding of the cosmos. The defining idea of these endeavors was that they used careful observations and reason to explain how things worked and, for the first time in history, accurately made predictions about the world that we could rely on. By the 18th century, the discipline of science was born. Engineering, medicine, communication, and other practical areas of study emerged that were different from the old ways of explaining the world. This way of learning about and explaining the world had two major differences from the mythologies that tried to explain things before: it was able to accurately make predictions, and it worked.
This leads to the most important difference between the mindset of religious and magical thinking, and reason and scientific thinking: People who rely on faith, hunches, and the like are afraid not to know. They seek solace in their faith in their god or gods. Their gods love them, watch over them, and will even save them from death by allowing an afterlife of rewards for being faithful.
Those who believe in the scientific way of thinking are not afraid of the unknown, in fact, they embrace it. The unknown is where we lean, where we can grow in understanding. It allows us to beat back the fear and uncertainly. It lets us make predictions about how the world works that can be tested and proved or disproved. This is how we can understand how our bodies work, which has lead to a doubling of our life spans in just over a hundred years. It is how we have provided ways to communicate across the globe, to share our thoughts and ideas, our emotions, our hopes and dreams.
It has been said by some that science is just another religion. This is false. The reason it is false is that science, unlike faith, can cause us to modify our ideas about the world as new information is discovered, giving us ever more accurate explanations for how the universe works. This allows the technological advances that save millions of lives and make our lives more comfortable. Unlike faith, it allows us to make predictions about the world that are accurate and reproducible, bringing certainty to the previously unknown, and pushing back the fear that the unknown brings. And unlike faith, science just works.
Your Religion Is Your Religion, Not Everyone Elses
I’ve been pretty harsh in my views toward superstitious beliefs in general and religion in particular. You find what I have to say offensive. Thats fine, because I find things you have to say offensive as well. There is nothing wrong with being offended. It happens to everyone about something or other at some point.
What I find annoying and sad is when you feel that I am somehow persecuting you by my stance on these issues. This is just plain wrong. That you feel persecuted reflects your sense of privilege and superiority because you feel that you are right because your god tells you so. It is exactly this self righteous attitude that I despise and rail against. It isn’t your beliefs I find offensive, but the effects of those beliefs upon everyone else.
I believe that everyone has a right to believe whatever they want to believe; to worship (or not) as they wish. The one caveat is that your beliefs and your worshiping are yours, not everyone else’s. Talk about them to others if you (and they) wish, but don’t preach. Express your views on morality, but don’t seek to impose your morality upon others.
This also goes for your actions. If you believe that prayer alone can cure you, great. Just don’t insist on only using prayer when your child or someone else you love is ill. If they are receiving medical treatment and you think prayer will help, fine. But don’t insist that god will save your loved one by prayer alone because plenty of people have died needlessly because prayer was substituted for sound medical treatment.
Also, don’t try to legislate your morality so that it is imposed upon all of us. The current GOP/Religious Right’s war against women and LGTB’s is a perfect example. It is religion that causes the party of small government that does not intrude into our private lives to perpatrate the hypocrisy of passing laws that intrude into the most private parts of our lives: reproductive rights and the right to chose who to love and who to commit your life to.
It has often been said that religion cause good people to do terrible things. History certainly seems to bear this out. The imposition of Islam upon those that they conquered; the crusades where the Christian did the same to the Muslims and Jews; the hundreds of years of wars and the burning of thousands at the stake over differing versions of Christianity; the thousands of Muslim and Hindus killed in the partitioning of India.
So, feel free to hold your beliefs dear to you. Worship as you wish. But, keep these things out of the public sphere where they can do no harm, or infringe upon the rights of the rest of us.
Jesus Loves Me, This I Know Because My Wallet Tells Me So
James Inahoff is a U.S. Senator. He is also a climate change denier. He has claimed in the past that he is against the theory of anthropogenic global warming because the Bible says that it can’t happen. He explained this by quoting Genesis 8:22:
“…as long as the earth remains there will be springtime and harvest, cold and heat, winter and summer, day and night.”
His reasoning was that God has promised to keep the climate stable. There would be spring, winter and summer. If you read this verse carefully and accept his argument, you will quickly find that this “promise” was void as soon as it was given. Why? The area around the earth’s equator essentially has no seasons. The temperatures there are stable year round. Springtime, winter and summer are all the same. So much for seasons. This isn’t a small area either. The Torrid Zone, which is the area of earth around the equator and which has the same basic climate is over 126,000,000 sq. km. It also contains a large percentage of the world’s population.
As stupid as Senator Inahoff’s biblical based beliefs about why there can’t be anthropogenic global warming is, it is also a lie meant to justify the real reason the senator and others like him are against the theory of climate change. The climate deniers use the Bible to support their case in a cynical attempt to sway the majority of American’s who believe in the Bible.
The reason this explanation is a lie can be found in a statement by James Inahoff to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow last month. When discussing global warming, the senator said,
“I was actually on your side of this issue when I was chairing that committee and I first heard about this. I thought it must be true until I found out what it cost.”
This is par for the course for the GOP and the religious right. They use the Bible to support the real reason they are against global warming; Money. Specifically, profits for corporations in which they have an a professional or financial interest. They apply the same tactic to other issued like , clean air initiatives, environmental conversation, or oil drilling, as well as social issues such as universal health care, welfare, school lunches, and student loans.
They use religion to support and pass legislation that is anti-science, anti-poor, anti-woman, and racist when the real reason they support these views is greed.
Jesus is quoted in their Bible as saying that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle that for a rich man to enter into heaven. I don’t hear them throwing that particular quote, or other’s like it, around very much. Their cynical use of the Bible to support their greed is nothing new, but it is having a dangerous and frightening effect upon society, and the very earth we live on.
Slow Blogging
I’ve been crazy busy with work and planning for our wedding in May, hence the paucity of blog posts. It isn’t that I can’t write, but that I don’t feel that I can give the time and focus needed to write quality posts right now. Rather than submit you to posts that are less than my best, I’m only posting when I have something really important to say.
I’ll try to throw some interesting links and pics your way as I come across them.
The American Taliban: For Real
Many writers and bloggers have used the term, “American Taliban”, over the past decade or so as a metaphor for the growing influence of the religious right in politics and the public sphere. It is meant to highlight those on the right who would like to see everyone live by their religious standards. It has often been used as hyperbole in order to show the potential dangers of letting religion hijack the political process in this country. Until now. It is hyperbole no longer, but a frightening fact.
In Arizona, the state legislature is considering a bill that could require that employees provide proof to their employers that any contraceptives they use are proscribed for medical reasons.
Arizona House Bill 2625, authored by Majority Whip Debbie Lesko, R-Glendale, would permit employers to ask their employees for proof of medical prescription if they seek contraceptives for non-reproductive purposes, such as hormone control or acne treatment.
“I believe we live in America. We don’t live in the Soviet Union,” Lesko said. “So, government should not be telling the organizations or mom and pop employers to do something against their moral beliefs.” *
This is a blatant attempt by the religious right to force their views on everyone else. Given that this law and other similar ones being passed by state legislatures across the country, this is no longer the propagation of fanatic religious ideology in principle, but in practice. This is the real American Taliban.
The Taliban in Afganistan forced their version of Islamic Shari’a law, based upon their reading go the Quran, upon the people of that country. Not only could women not control what happened to their own bodies, they were forbidden to vote, to receive an education, and to even go outside without covering themselves from head to toe in burkas. Women who were suspected of committing adultery were stoned to death or beheaded.
This is, of course, extreme, but at its core it is no different than the American Taliban who wish to enforce their Christian shari’a law, based on the Bible, upon the rest of us. Many of the leaders and prominent members of the religious right have stated unequivocally that their goal is nothing less than to turn this country into a Christian nation and replace the U.S. Constitution with the Bible as the guiding document of our laws and government.
Some of these same people have called for the imprisonment, or even death, of homosexuals, and the complete and total submission of women to men. They call for the abandonment of science and reason, the guiding principles of which have made this country the world power it is today. They would joyfully lead us to become a population of ignorant servants to their god who will quickly fall behind the rest of the world in technology, just as other great civilizations such as Rome, Egypt, and Persia have done after religious dogma replaced education and reason.
If you think I am being alarmist, think again. Laws have already been passed to force women to submit to humiliating medical examinations in order to get an abortion, to force the teaching of religious dogma in place of science in classrooms, and to force doctors to lie to women about the health of their unborn child. These laws are real and they are just the beginning, unless we, as voters, put a stop to it.
For you Christian women out there, if you ever felt sorry for the poor women of Afghanistan under the Taliban, or the Ayatollahs in Iran, just look no further than these examples to see what your life could eventually be like if the American Taliban continue to push their fanatical agenda upon the American people.
Wether you believe that this country was found upon Christianity or not, you can’t deny that it was built upon the idea of religious freedom. Religious freedom means not just being able to practice your own religion and to live your life as your personal set of morals tell you, it also means freedom from having to bend to others’ particular religious beliefs. You would never want someone to tell you how you can worship or live your life, but that is exactly what the American Taliban is trying to accomplish. Unfortunately, alarmingly, they are starting to succeed.
Paying For Sex With Your Taxes
Rush Limbaugh has sparked an intense controversy with his sexist, misogynistic, and immoral statements about Sandra Fluke’s testimony supporting mandated provision of contraceptives by health insurers. Besides his horrendous comments and personal attacks against Sandra Fluke, his comments also begat a strange, terribly misinformed notion that American taxpayers are paying for women to get free contraception, in essence, we are all paying for women to have sex.
First of all, the foundation of this argument is totally bogus. Taxpayers are not paying for anything here. Insurers are paying for it. These insurers pass the cost of free contraception (just as they do free pre-natal care, yearly physicals, etc) onto employers in the form of insurance premiums. The employers then pay their portion of the premiums and the employee pays their’s. Nowhere does the taxpayer pay one penny for contraceptives, except for government programs like Medicaid.
So Limbaugh’s argument, which is being taken up by the religious right, is false. I might give him and others the benefit of doubt that they are just clueless, but I find it hard to believe that anyone in the public sphere, especially legislators, are ignorant of the reality. They are simple liars, lying to promote their particular political agendas.
But, for sake of argument, let’s assume that Limbaugh’s argument it valid and that taxpayer money is being spent to provide contraceptives. If that is the case, then it is no different than paying for Viagra for old, impotent men. Why should we pay for these men to have sex? There isn’t even any corollary argument for it, as with contraceptive. Contraceptives prevent pregnancy, STDs (in the case of condoms), help some women regulate periods and treat ovarian cysts. Viagra has no other benefit except to give a man a hard-on. So all these aging white men can stop getting viagra at taxpayer expense. I don’t know about you, but I sure don’t want to pay for Rush Limbaugh to have sex, never mind actually watching him do it on video (as he suggested Sandra Fluke do).
Of course, the above argument is just a spurious as Limbaugh’s. The real lesson here is that this is one more attempt by privileged men to control women. The latest outrage is taking place in Arizona (that hotbed of radical religious inspired insanity). Read Rebecca Watson’s take on the new law that would force doctors to lie to their female patients about the health of their unborn child.
If you don’t think that there is a war on women being waged by the religious right and the GOP (which have become one and the same), there have been dozens of similar attempts to allow the state to control a woman’s body. For a party that claims that they are for less government and putting a stop to government’s intrusion into our personal lives, they sure don’t seem to think that applies to women. I supposed that as long as the government isn’t trying to regulate your guns or property, everything else is fair game.
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