ovo

Two years ago (24 November 2007) I wrote about Mamie Manneh. Manneh was accused of illegally importing monkey meat “for religious ceremonies.”  Her lawyer wanted the charges dismissed “because they impinge on the importer’s right to freedom of religion,” that “bushmeat has spiritual significance and Ms. Manneh’s actions were protected under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.” “From her baptism in Liberia to Christmas years later in her adopted New York City, Mamie Manneh never lost the longing to celebrate religious rituals by eating monkey meat.”  Here is what I had to say about that…

Mamie Manneh is an attempted murderer who illegally imported the remains of endangered species into the USA for the purpose of eating them. Handling and consuming this animal can lead to some of the most nightmarish diseases known to humanity. Only spongiform encephalopathy and religion can soften the mind enough to cause a person to hold Mamie’s ‘culture’ or ’sincere beliefs’ worthy of consideration in this regard. It’s easy to look around and see that no one around you is eating monkey and that almost anyone you ask would be horrified at the idea. It’s easy to not lie to customs. It’s easy to not run over people in cars. It’s easy to not have nine kids that you can’t take care of because you’re in prison for trying to kill a woman. I wish it was easy for judges to laugh and scowl and toss her superstitions out of the courtroom. But that would mean tossing out superstitions that are in better favor with the majority, such as Christianity and Judaism and Islam. How much better it would be if the Constitution of the United States were in effect, and there was no establishment of religion in America.

Time marches on.  In the past two years Manneh has had two more children, bringing the total to eleven.  And for her crime?  A crime Jane Goodall wrote could have “grave consequences on public health?”  A crime which could cause outbreaks of Ebola, measles, tuberculosis and retroviruses similar to HIV among even those who do not eat monkey meat as part of their superstition?  Probation.

Once again, religion is the get-out-of-jail free card.  You can chew off part of a baby’s penis, causing the baby to get herpes which leads to the baby’s death, then another, then another, and get… a warning.  You can neglect your child until they die of curable diseases… but if you are able to demonstrate you mumbled magic spells to an invisible monster that lives in the sky while you watched your child die and did nothing, you can get a reduced sentence.

Spitting contempt is all these morally retarded creeps deserve, and it’s all I have for them.  How much worse, though, that they are given leniency in court.

This week Stansfield was given a 27-month prison sentence for his misdeed – buying perfectly ordinary food (pork pies, salmon, chickens …) from high street supermarkets, re-packaging it in reassuringly expensive wrapping, calling it organic, and selling it on at inflated prices to other retailers and via mail order. His wife and Russell Hudson, the operations manager, got community service for their part in it. Considering the scale of his offence – an annual turnover of £2.5m, a nauseating trading name (Swaddles Organic), a massive client base that, intoxicatingly, included Fortnum & Mason – 27 months is not a lengthy sentence, but it feels harsh. Sure, the crime wasn’t victimless. It had victims. But they were all asking for it. It’s a huge swindle, the organic market. The first and simplest reason is this emperor’s new clothes aspect that Stansfield made his money from: organic food is meant to taste so much better, and yet nobody can actually taste the difference. [...]

What’s the lesson to the buyer, though? Well, mainly, stop buying it. There is no consistent, demonstrable superiority to organic food. We already knew this, of course, because the Food Standards Agency has always stood against the organic industry making any health claims. This position it reasserted in July, having commissioned research that showed, again, “no important differences in the nutrition content, or any additional health benefits, of organic food”. David Pickering, the lead investigations officer from Trading Standards, said equably that buyers maybe weren’t looking for health benefits, they were looking for standards of sustainability and respect for the land. And this brings us to the other big swindle of the organic industry, the way it has appropriated concerns that reasonable people might well have – the humane treatment of farm animals, the avoidance of unnecessary foodmiles, seasonal eating – and grouped them all under its own umbrella, so that it is now impossible to be a person who cares about cruelty to a pig, and yet isn’t opposed to antibiotics. And it is impossible to be a person who is happy to eat seasonally, who actually isn’t spoilt and doesn’t want asparagus at Christmas, and yet isn’t against the use of pesticides. It is impossible to be a person who cares about food, but doesn’t need every cut of meat to be the best ever, who doesn’t need an Olympian chicken, who would happily eat a tough old campaigner. Even though almost all of us are this person.

Article continues.  I’ve come to believe that people will believe anything.  PETA will protest the killing of a fly by someone else while putting to death 95% of the animals in its own care.  Vegans, those most peaceful of all eaters, have to kill to get their point across once in a while.  It turns out trees have rights too, and the power of the State is necessary to preserve the dignity of plants and the rights of apes.  I’m all for consenting and informed adults eating or not eating what they please.  You can eat meat (the only source of the necessary nutrient B12 – just ask the Vegan Society) [thanks to Klint Finley for pointing out my error: animal products such as milk and eggs contain B12] and protect your brain in old age, or you can not eat meat and have your brain shrink.  Not feeding your child what your child needs is murder and deserves to be punished as such.  But for goodness sakes, if you’re going to indulge in food superstition then have a sense of humor about it, enjoy what you eat and try not to fall for every health hoax that comes your way.

Terrorist hid explosives in his bottom: Suicide bomber Abdullah Hassan Tali al-Asiri attempted to kill a Saudi prince by detonating explosives hidden in his bottom.

Scandinavia Fights Female Genital Mutilation: When she was 11, a Swedish-born girl was taken on vacation to her mother’s native Somalia. The mother wanted to “make her daughter clean” and paid a man to cut off her daughter’s clitoris and labia while two women held her down. Afterward, the girl was stitched to her urethra. No anesthesia was used.

Threats for breaking Morocco fast: A Moroccan man campaigning to change the law banning eating in public during the Muslim Ramadan fast says he has received 100 death threats this week. Radi Omar denied that his group was anti-Islam. “We are in favour of individual freedom,” he told the BBC. Six of his colleagues are in custody after planning to eat in public last Sunday and he demanded their release.

Florida Investigation Finds No Credible Threat to Teen Christian Convert: She has said she is afraid of becoming the victim of an “honor killing” if she stays with her father and mother. Her parents have said they have no intention of harming their daughter.

‘The result of an absurd religious war’: A Moroccan man allegedly killed his 18-year-old Muslim daughter in northeastern Italy after she moved in with an older Catholic Italian man.

How Islamist gangs use internet to track, torture and kill Iraq’s gays: Sitting on the floor, wearing traditional Islamic clothes and holding an old notebook, Abu Hamizi, 22, spends at least six hours a day searching internet chatrooms linked to gay websites. He is not looking for new friends, but for victims.

Child-bride, 12, dies in Yemen after struggling to give birth for three days: A 12-year-old Yemeni child bride died after struggling to give birth for three days, a local human rights organisation said.

All articles continue at links.  These are the stories that one person found, in a short period of time, in English-language news sources. Is it possible there are many more such stories to be found?  Many more, many more every day?  How about a corresponding number – or 1/10,000th of a corresponding number – of similar stories about atheists beating and mutilating and killing people as part of their atheism?

The Internet Archive suggests that The Raving Atheist started some time in 2002.  By September 2002 the site described itself as “an atheistic examination of the culture of belief: how religious devotion trivializes American law and politics.”  The site and its author have had a curious history.

The Raving Atheist (TRA) was influential on me in three ways when I found it in 2004.  First, TRA’s essays clarified for me the importance of distinguishing between religious belief and theocracy.  TRA wrote (quote): “any person asserting a special individual right or attempting to dictate social policy based about a belief in god must first 1) define the god, 2) prove that the god exists and 3) demonstrate how the right or policy follows from the belief in god.” Religious belief can be foolish, harmful and sad (or clever, helpful and joyous) but it is largely a matter of personal choice.  The trouble for all of us starts when religion is enfranchised into law.  The Raving Atheist helped me understand theocracy is where my criticism should primarily be addressed, with criticism of religion in general coming behind.  I often fail, but I’ve tried to criticize theocracy more harshly than religion or any particular religion.

Second, TRA reminded me that no set of beliefs is a package deal.  Just because a person is an atheist does not mean they are necessarily also a capitalist or a communist, although some capitalists and some communists would like to claim otherwise.  In this case, the reminder came in the form of TRA being strongly in favor of atheism and strongly against abortion.  That’s a combination I’d never seen before, TRA himself said it was rare and which remains a minority view.  TRA was banned from anti-abortion Christian sites for being an atheist, and looked at askance for being anti-abortion by atheists.  This rare combination of beliefs was helpful to me, whether or not I shared them.  Just as the Dalai Lama is not a vegetarian, The Raving Atheist and you and I pick and choose and invent our beliefs from a variety of inspirations.  Sometimes they seem to go together, sometimes we find others that share our beliefs and they appear to form a self-consistent ideology.  But it is just as likely we’re dressing up our preferences in fine justifications.

Third, for better and for worse The Raving Atheist influenced my writing style.  He didn’t just use reasoned criticism to address his concern.  He also heaped scorn and mockery on those he opposed.  TRA took news stories about theocracy and changed the wording so their absurdity and cruelty was emphasized.  I do these things as well.  If you like my work in this style, thank TRA.  If you don’t, blame me.

The better influences that TRA has given me remain, I hope, as I’ve changed in being an atheist and a writer.  TRA has also changed. There were few posts to the blog between 2006 and 2009.  Among them was a June 2006 post stating TRA “will never write another bad word about Jesus or Christianity on The Raving Atheist.” TRA also wrote:

“Neither Christ nor Christianity shall ever again be maligned on this site, I have vowed. In contemporary America continuing this blog under such constraints might appear to rival the composition of a thousand-page novel without the letter ‘e.’ Or perhaps without the alphabet, given that Christianity equates Christ with God, and that the denial of His existence could be fairly construed as an insult. The seeming impossibility of the challenge might suggest an abandonment of disbelief. Consequently charges of atheist heresy, of conversion to theism, have now been lodged against me. With such conversions I am well familiar. Often I have questioned whether a committed, well-read atheist has ever come to faith. No one is better able to recognize the symptoms of a religious transformation than I. But my own diagnosis I will not disclose. [...] I can only assure you that I will not be acting indifferently or agnostically. What has led me to this point, whatever this point is, is a firm conviction that I must go beyond words and set an example. I will not say whether what lies behind that conviction is God or not. You will have to content yourselves with the understanding that the truth of His existence, whether founded in fact, logic, or a combination of both could not possibly vary with what my words might command you to believe. But I will not tell you what I believe. And I will not tell you why I will not, and you will never trick it out of me.”

Reading that I wondered if I could write in favor of atheism without criticizing religion. I haven’t done so online, but I do have a book manuscript that attempts to do just that. Perhaps someday it will get that last bit of editing and see print.

On December 22, 2008, TRA wrote: “Three years ago, I promoted and appeared in the atheist documentary The God Who Wasn’t There, dedicated to the proposition that Jesus never existed. TODAY I DEDICATE THIS SITE AND MY LIFE TO THE WORSHIP AND SERVICE OF OUR LORD AND SAVIOR, JESUS CHRIST.”  Is this evidence that some beliefs are package deals, that it’s impossible to stay atheist if you’re against abortion?  Some say yes.  But I’m going to stick with no.  Just because you’re a vegetarian or a nature-worshiper or an occultist doesn’t mean you’re also a fascist.  Just because you’re an homosexual it doesn’t mean you’re gay.  You are what you are by choice and by chance, and political correctness of every stripe be damned. I am still puzzled when friends have a mix of heresies that don’t match my own.  But it doesn’t threaten me like it used to.

As of September 2009 a Google search for “Raving Atheist” returns his blog as the first match, with the byline “Atheistic examination of American law and politics.”  The site’s own byline is “Dedicated to Jesus Christ, Now and Forever.”  The back content is mostly there, and what isn’t there is usually at the Internet Archive. TRA’s site isn’t as funny or inspirational to me as it used to be.  But the number of anti-abortion atheists was small, and the number of atheists-turned-Christian is also small.  TRA’s site is worth reading at minimum for its rarity.

eat food at night

Late Night – pdx PLATE

The Guardian quotes the Wall Street Journal quoting the founder of the Whole Foods chain of grocery stores:

“Basically, we used to think it was enough just to sell healthy food, but we know it is not enough. We sell all kinds of candy. We sell a bunch of junk.” [John Mackey] said the store would now attempt to educate in the ways of healthy eating: “There will be someone in a kiosk to answer questions, they’ll have cookbooks and health books, there will be some cooking classes. It will be about how to select food, because people don’t know.”

Mr. Mackey is claiming that people would eat healthy if they knew how to, or knew the benefits of doing so.  He is bringing in books and teachers to combat akrasia, or acting against one’s own best interests (in this case by eating a bunch of junk).  But will he succeed?  We know more about nutrition than we used to, but it is likely that there is much to learn.  Even acting on the best knowledge available at present might be going against our best interests in light of future discoveries. We may eat as healthily as possible and still fall sick, or be killed in an accident that eating well could not have prevented.  This is not an argument against attempting to act in one’s best interests but it is a warning that we may not always succeed.

There are a number of explanations for akrasia. Each has its limitations.  In stating “No one goes willingly toward the bad,” Socrates claimed that akrasia simply does not exist.  If you can think of a single instance in your life when you’ve willingly gone toward the bad, you’ve demonstrated that Socrates was mistaken.  The ethical school called enlightened self-interest claims we always act in our own self-interest even when we appear to or intend to do otherwise.  But if we always and only act in our self-interests, we have to ask what other sort of interests there might be – thus enlightened self-interest doesn’t really explain anything.  Akrasia is explained as being weak willed when we judge it harshly and deferment to a greater good when we judge it favorably. Stated in this way, our interests are more like our preferences.  If there is a conflict of interests we may engage in akrasia, such as when it is equally in a person’s best interests to stay in the city they love and to move to another city for a good-paying job.  Where we cannot determine which conflicting self-interest is lesser, there is no way to identify akrasia.  An explanation for akrasia found especially among the politically left is that people act against their self-interests through lack of knowledge only, and that being exposed to knowledge will spontaneously and always result in self-interest choices.  Mr. Mackey of Whole Foods is banking on exposure to information as the key to lessening akrasia.  But every day experience shows that people will believe what they want in spite of the information they are exposed to.  Knowledge is not hidden in objects and experiences like a gift in a box, waiting for us to unwrap it.  And exposure to information does not equal acceptance or agreement or action.  Perhaps by having books and teachers on-hand Mr. Mackey hopes to be ‘forgiven’ for selling a bunch of junk.  Me, I like books and teachers and junk.

I claim the political left tends to use the lack of knowledge explanation for akrasia for two reasons.  First, at present the left is where intellectuals are valued, and this is an intellectual sort of explanation.  Intellectuals consider options and make nuanced choices.  Intellectuals also forget considering options and making nuanced choices is not always in one’s self interest – for future reference, go ahead and fight an attacker to the death, don’t debate them.  Second, the political left is deeply invested in the claim that there is an equality and sameness found in all people.  The political left thinks that being an intellectual will come to people and be their preference if they are exposed to the idea of being an intellectual, and that having become an intellectual they will consider options and make nuanced choices.  Part of why I’ve found less to agree with in the political left is my claim that there are a great deal of people (some of them quite smart) who are not intellectuals and who don’t value or prefer intellectual perspectives; there are a great many people who are not capable of being intellectuals even if they might value or prefer to be; and there are a great many people who use violence to get what they want and not the intellect.  Bluntly stated, I claim that akrasia exists in part because some people at some times are stupid and evil.  Fortunately for most people, my claims are next to ineffectual in the world.  I make no public policy, I control no one and influence very few, and eventually I won’t be around at all.  If I’m wrong, just be patient and I’ll go away.

Why do you think akrasia exists?  What do others think?  What is to be done?

Perfect Pandas » Blog Archive » Panda Bread

Announced at Comic-Con 2009, Hurley appears to be the proud owner of a new chicken franchise!

Mr. Cluck’s – Hurley’s New Chicken Shack!

acceptable concept

A Good Appetite: Oatmeal Stout and Heath Bar Ice Cream

“A delicious source of fiber! My family have them almost every morning. Great healthy muffins! You may substitute dates for the raisins if you wish.”

Classic Bran Muffins – All Recipes