Background:
Geert Wilders [29 March 2008] [29 March 2008] [4 May 2008] [11 September 2008] [28 September 2008] [10 June 2009] [3 September 2009] [3 November 2009]
Pin Fortuyn [6 May 2009] [1 July 2009] [21 October 2009] [3 November 2009]
Theo van Gogh [14 February 2008] [17 May 2008] [3 September 2009] [11 September 2008] [10 June 2009] [1 July 2009] [3 November 2009] [5 November 2009]
Wikipedia:
Cryonics is the low-temperature preservation of humans and animals that can no longer be sustained by contemporary medicine until resuscitation may be possible in the future. Currently, human cryopreservation is not reversible, which means that it is not currently possible to bring people out of cryopreservation alive. The rationale for cryonics is that people who are considered dead by the current legal or medical definitions will not necessarily be dead by future standards – the most stringent standard being the information-theoretic definition of death – and that such people could be brought out of cryopreservation in the future.
Two recent articles at the remarkable lesswrong.com reminded me of cryonics.
Eliezer Yudkowsky, That Magical Click:
Yesterday I spoke of that cryonics gathering I recently attended, where travel by young cryonicists was fully subsidized, leading to extremely different demographics from conventions of self-funded activists. 34% female, half of those in couples, many couples with kids – THAT HAD BEEN SIGNED UP FOR CRYONICS FROM BIRTH LIKE A GODDAMNED SANE CIVILIZATION WOULD REQUIRE – 25% computer industry, 25% scientists, 15% entertainment industry at a rough estimate, and in most ways seeming (for smart people) pretty damned normal. Except for one thing.
During one conversation, I said something about there being no magic in our universe. And an ordinary-seeming woman responded, “But there are still lots of things science doesn’t understand, right?” Sigh. We all know how this conversation is going to go, right? So I wearily replied with my usual, “If I’m ignorant about a phenomenon, that is a fact about my state of mind, not a fact about the phenomenon itself; a blank map does not correspond to a blank territory -” “Oh,” she interrupted excitedly, “so the concept of ‘magic’ isn’t even consistent, then!”
Click.
She got it, just like that.
There is a wonderful episode of the radio program ‘This American Life’ on cryonics titled Mistakes Were Made. + I first encountered cryonics around 1979-1980 in the book Cosmic Trigger by Robert Anton Wilson. Currently I practice passive cryonics. My scattered atoms and memories will not necessarily be considered dead by future standards, with no effort on my part necessary.
A friend recently asked me for recommended reading on the subject of ethics. Here’s my reply, along with… “Note well that these are sometimes at odds with each other. That conflict will help you ask the right questions, which counts more than having the right answers. I’ve ordered the links from shortest to longest, from one-page comics to entire books.”
“Nice” books…
Tsai Chih Chung: Zen Speaks.
Some examples…
http://www.duke.edu/web/meditation/image/carrying.gif
http://homepage.mac.com/dave_rogers/ZenMtnPaths.jpg
http://c2.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images02/25/l_4c4c6e8e509048599029ac0584e7ec5d.jpg
http://c1.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images02/55/l_370aef5ce1e14275938aff692bae0b58.jpg
http://c3.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images02/66/l_8c90f97ed3d848a99c34f197249d9156.jpg
Julian Baggini: Atheism / A Very Short Introduction.
Chapter 3, on atheist ethics…
http://www.andrsib.com/dt/moral.htm
Epicureanism:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epicureanism
“Not Nice” books…
Anton LaVey: The Satanic Bible.
Related, but not necessarily in this book…
http://www.churchofsatan.com/Pages/Eleven.html
http://www.churchofsatan.com/Pages/NineStatements.html
http://www.churchofsatan.com/Pages/Sins.html
http://www.churchofsatan.com/Pages/MostPower.html
Ragnar Redbeard: Might is Right.
A sample chapter, the whole thing and where to buy the best edition…
http://www.feastofhateandfear.com/archives/redbeard.html
http://tinyurl.com/ycfb6lx
http://ninebandedbooks.com/?p=329
Egoism:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethical_egoism
http://www.df.lth.se/~triad/stirner/theego/theego.html
Niccolò Machiavelli: The Prince.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prince
Olivia Lang, Hindu Sacrifice of 250,000 Animals Begins:
The government, which donated £36,500 to the event, has shown no sign of discontinuing the centuries-old tradition. An attempt by the previous government to cut the budget for animal sacrifice provoked street protests. Chandan Dev Chaudhary, a Hindu priest, said he was pleased with the festival’s high turnout and insisted tradition had to be kept. “The goddess needs blood,” he said. “Then that person can make his wishes come true.”
BBC, Taking the Global Pulse of Healthcare:
Rahul Bose, a community worker in West Bengal tells a story [...] “There was this lady who came to my house at eight in the morning,” he says. “She had been bitten by a snake at four in the morning, but since there were no male members in the house, she was not able to leave the house. When I took her to the hospital, the doctors delayed treatment for two hours and so she died in my car.” Cultural attitudes towards women in rural areas, as well as problems of distances from health centres both prove major challenges for improving health.
Robin Hanson, Social Science Cuts Religiosity:
A new NBER paper compares college majors for their effect on student religiosity. Majoring in biological sciences, engineering, or vocational areas all increase religiosity about the same relative to not going to college. Majoring in education encourages religion even more, while majoring in physical science has about the same effect as no college. Majoring in humanities reduces religiosity relative to no college, and majoring in social science reduces it the most.
Jeanna Bryner, Teen Birth Rates Higher in Highly Religious States:
U.S. states whose residents have more conservative religious beliefs on average tend to have higher rates of teenagers giving birth, a new study suggests. The relationship could be due to the fact that communities with such religious beliefs (a literal interpretation of the Bible, for instance) may frown upon contraception, researchers say. If that same culture isn’t successfully discouraging teen sex, the pregnancy and birth rates rise. Mississippi topped the list for conservative religious beliefs and teen birth rates, according to the study results, which will be detailed in a forthcoming issue of the journal Reproductive Health. However, the results don’t say anything about cause and effect, though study researcher Joseph Strayhorn of Drexel University College of Medicine and University of Pittsburgh offers a speculation of the most probable explanation: “We conjecture that religious communities in the U.S. are more successful in discouraging the use of contraception among their teenagers than they are in discouraging sexual intercourse itself.”
Alex DeMetrick, Trial Postponed For Cult Members In Baby’s Death:
Home video of Javon Thompson and his mother Ria Ramkissoon doesn’t hint at the dark future awaiting them, when they became swept up in the religious cult of Queen Antoinettte. Authorities say cult members starved 1-year-old Javon Thompson because the boy did not say “Amen” after meals. His body was packed in a suitcase and taken to Philadelphia, where it was abandoned in a storage room.
Jennifer Viegas, Superstitious Beliefs Cemented Before Birth:
The propensity to believe in paranormal phenomena and superstitions appears to arise in the womb, suggests new research. The findings, published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, further indicate that a reduced ability for analytical thinking may correspond with increased intuitive thinking, which has been associated with a belief in extrasensory perception (ESP), ghosts, telepathy and other paranormal phenomena. Author Martin Voracek claims his new study’s determinations “suggest (there are) biologically based, prenatally programmed influences on paranormal and superstitious beliefs.” [...] Prior research had determined that relative finger length, also known as digit ratio, can be a marker for individual differences affected by hormones. Men tend to have ring fingers that are slightly longer than their index fingers. In women, these fingers are usually about the same length, or the index digit is slightly longer. In some cases, however, women exhibit a digit ratio more associated with men, while men may exhibit the ratio associated more with women. The ratio is “a putative marker of prenatal androgen exposure, with paranormal as well as negative and positive superstitious beliefs,” Voracek explained, mentioning that exposure to testosterone and other male sex hormones in the womb are thought to underlie the observed differences. Voracek found that “higher feminized” digit ratio in men correlated with stronger paranormal and superstitious beliefs, “even when controlled for age, education, adult height and weight, and birth length and weight.” “Shorter feminized” digit ratios in women also correlated with a greater likelihood of superstitious beliefs, as did a woman’s lighter weight at birth. For both sexes, shorter body length at birth was associated with later beliefs in superstitions and the paranormal. The findings help to support the conclusions of Kia Aarnio and Marjaana Lindeman, both University of Helsinki psychologists who have extensively studied the propensity for paranormal and superstitious beliefs. They found that women are much more likely to have such beliefs, which the researchers attribute to “higher intuitiveness and lower analytical thinking.”
All articles continue at links. “The way to deal with superstition is not to be polite to it, but to tackle it with all arms, and so rout it, cripple it, and make it forever infamous and ridiculous… Then their folly should be brought out into the light of day, and exhibited there in all its hideousness until they flee from it, hiding their heads in shame… True enough, even a superstitious man has certain inalienable rights. He has a right to harbor and indulge his imbecilities as long as he pleases, provided only he does not try to inflict them upon other men by force… But certainly he has no right to be protected against the free criticism of those who do not hold them… He has no right to preach them without challenge.”- H. L. Mencken, The Baltimore Evening Sun, September 14, 1925.
While the mainstream media outlets continue their politically-correct embrace of one another, rallying around the propaganda point that Hasan’s killing of 13 soldiers and civilians at Ft. Hood had nothing to do with his Islamic beliefs, even the more gimlet-eyed feel compelled to use terms like “extremist” to describe Hasan’s worldview. For example, Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT), in calling for possible Senate hearings into the murders, said he was doing so because “there had been strong warning signs that Hasan was an ‘Islamic extremist.’”
But was—is—he? The “Washington Post” today is reporting on the Power Point presentation Nidal gave to fellow doctors in 2007, entitled “The Koranic [sic] Worldview As It Relates to Muslims in the US Military.” The “Post” even has copies of the 50 slides he used for this lecture, a number of which detail the Qur’anic-prescribed afterlife rewards for “believers”—Muslims—and punishments for non-Muslims. The slides themselves simply provide the Qur’anic citations for these (and other) Islamic beliefs, and the “Post” story is ambiguous about whether Hasan was reporting dispassionately on these beliefs or advocating them. However, according to a story yesterday in the U.K. “Telegraph,” at that same talk Hasan “had told US military colleagues that infidels should have their throats cut,” as well as “be beheaded and have boiling oil poured down their throat.” [...]Until it becomes acceptable in Sunni Islam to read such verses as metaphor—as, for example, rhetorical “decapitation” of non-Muslim arguments against Islam—and/or to limit them to the 7th century AD, the Hasans of the world will continue to find rational justification within the Islamic fold for personal jihad against “infidels”—totally apart from any connections to, or encouragement from, al-Qa`idah or any other Islamic terrorist group. Far from being an “extremist,” Hasan was, and is, simply a literalist Sunni Muslim who acted upon the teachings of his holy book, rather than merely pay it lip service. We should be thankful that, so far, the bulk of the world’s, and America’s, Muslims remain hypocrites–unlike Hasan.
Article continues. Links added by OVO. The Christian world is a fine model for the benefits of hypocrisy. The Bible contains a comparable list of injunctions to kill non-believers. Deuteronomy 13:6-10 is the most clear example of what Christians are expected to do to non-believers, and Matthew 5:18-19 the most clear example of Jesus Christ confirming the commandments of the LORD. But somewhere along the way the Christian world lost that old time religion. Christianity even lost its taste for slavery, although all the verses for slavery remain and there are still exactly zero verses against slavery to be found in the Bible. Secular morals advance and religious moralists fight against them with everything they’ve got. Until religious moralists adopt secular morals and say that’s what they believed all along. Thus Christianity will bang the drum all day long that Christians like Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. led the civil rights movement and speak not at all regarding the few thousand years of history in which Christianity advocated and practiced slavery. There’s no reason the Muslim world cannot engage in the same hypocrisy, double-talk and lying that has made the Christian world a more peaceful and productive superstition.
I’m not sure about the legal status of this first book. Consult a legal professional before proceeding. I’ll wait. Done? Okay, here’s The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins translated into Arabic. Irshad Manji’s recommended The Trouble with Islam Today is available in Arabic, this time with the blessing of the author herself. While you’re at it visit the Institute for the Secularization of Islamic Society.