Religious Hate-Fest!

1: Christianity

Christianity is the largest religion on Earth, with ~2 billion adherents worldwide. This effectively makes it the largest reactionary force and hindrance to science in the world. I also hate its self-contradictory and faux-righteous position on stem cell research. It’s also the #1 big social problem plaguing America, which pisses me off because America rules. For example, it put that dolt Bush in office for two fucking terms. And I hate the Pope, the old fart, with his big money and his billion reactionary adherents.

Redeeming Features: It’s adaptable. I can respect that. It adopted multiple pagan rituals, and gifts and chocolate eggs rule. Also, I like the Christian Scientists because they don’t take medicine, and hence die off a lot faster.

2: Islam

Islam is the second largest religion on Earth, and the fastest growing. Also, although most Muslims aren’t international terrorists, most international terrorists are Muslim. Eat shit, you politically correct assholes. It also happens to be the #2 threat to both America and Israel (after Christianity and Judaism respectively). I hate the Ayatollah. I hate the fact that its adherents tend to be among the most reactionary in the world. I hate almost everything about it.

Redeeming Features: None. The whole religion is inflexible bullshit.

3: Judaism

Judaism is the ‘parent’ religion of both Christianity and Islam and happens to be the #1 threat to Israel’s survival, because the religious right wing in Israel is full of fascists who want to massacre every Arab within 1000 km. It also bans pork, shrimp, and cheese-steaks, which is bullshit as all three are delicious. And it’s ‘holy’ book is about the most vitriolic, vile, racist (the Chosen People? come on, you assholes!), classist (except for Hinduism) thing around (this article may be vitriolic, but it ain’t racist – religion is not race, motherfuckers).

Redeeming Features: Hanukkah (latkes!), Purim (Hamantashen!), Woody Allen, Jon Stewart, and Albert Einstein – although I attribute these features more to the ethnic side of Judaism (which I love – it’s why I love Israel) than the religion.

4: Confucianism

Confucianism is the main reason China went from superpower of the medieval world to scared, pathetic giant being crushed by Japan during WWII. It’s focus on family and being close to home meant that China never expanded its economy and never developed the colonies that made Britain the uberpower it eventually became. Also, most of my mom’s bullshit ideas about how I should live come from here.

Redeeming Features: “If we cannot understand men, how can you expect us to understand ghosts and gods? For me, I respect them and I stay away from them.”

5: Lamaism

The most retarded religion in history. And actively trying to ruin its own country. ‘Nuff said.

Redeeming Features: Funny hats

6: Hinduism

One of the biggest religions of all time, thus one of the most damaging. Also is to this day inherently classist and racist, with the caste system one of the main reasons the Indian mathematical super-genius Ramanujan was not able to achieve the entirety of his enormous potential. Also, it says cows are sacred, which is stupid.

Redeeming Features: The Kama Sutra, baby.

7: Buddhism

Deliberately made up of contradictions. “Buddha is Mind and Buddha is not Mind”. If you assume a contradiction any statement is provably true (logic, motherfuckers!), so guess what, jackass, your pants are now officially and provably on fire.

Redeeming Features: The original version as laid down by Siddhartha Gautama seems quite reasonable and moderated (more a philosophy than a religion), but I don’t know enough. If it did start out well, it sure didn’t end so well. Also, not violent enough to be hyper-destructive like the Western religions.

8: Scientology

These people are dumb enough to believe some shit some guy made up – and to pay him for the privilege of hearing more. I mean, it has both “science” and “ology” in it as well – it must be true! All this happened while he (the founder) was alive. At least the authors of the Qu’ran and the Bible and the Torah are all dead, so it doesn’t feel as much like shit some guy made up last night while reading bad fanfiction. The adherents of this religion are the dumbest people on Earth.

Redeeming Features: Aside from being hilarious, it was started for the profit motive and worked damn well. L Ron Hubbard, I salute you for your sheer balls and the way you suckered thousands of people out of their money. Also, it’s one of the few religions to actively and directly make its members poorer.

Free Will

Free Will is one of the central questions in philosophy. The question is simple: can sentient beings 'choose' outcomes somehow independently of random variables and causality? I remain neutral (while still leaning towards 'yes' on the question, thanks to Heisenberg Uncertainty, the Free Will Theorem, and the existence of consciousness) on the question "is Free Will true?". I have no actual idea whether it is, with only vague evidence that it is. In fact, since the evidence that it is true is mostly my own conscious experience, if I were an observer outside the system looking at the universe from a wholly objective viewpoint, it's more than likely that I would believe the opposite.

However, I have a very definite answer to a more important question: Should I believe in Free Will? The answer is "YES".

To demonstrate how I got to this conclusion let us analyze the possibilities:

(1) Suppose I believe in Free Will. Either Free Will is true or it is not true. If Free Will is true, then I am correct in my belief, which is important for helping me make the correct decisions (which is, as the Axiom of Utility says, what this whole exercise of philosophy is all about). If Free Will is false, then although I am wrong, it won't screw up any of my decisions since if Free Will is false I can't make decisions anyhow. So if I believe in Free Will, either I am right, or the point is moot.

(2) Suppose I don't believe in Free Will. Then, if Free Will is true, I am wrong and this error in my belief will screw up my decision-making. If Free Will is false, I am right (yippee for me) but this belief cannot help me make my decisions, so it's pointless anyways. Thus, if I don't believe in Free Will, I'm either wrong or the point is moot anyway.

Thus, the worst outcome in (1) is the same as the best outcome in (2), so it is better for me in EVERY CASE to believe in Free Will. So, I believe in Free Will.

(A cute way to sum up my argument that my father came up with was "Free Will is my choice because it is the only choice" - if I am allowed to choose, then Free Will must be true)

A note to those who think that scientific evidence favors determinism: yes, General Relativity and Newtonian Mechanics are deterministic sciences - but Quantum Mechanics says otherwise. Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle makes exact measurements impossible, making the Free Will question scientifically unanswerable. The existence of consciousness proves that something unknown to science is taking place in our neurons - allowing a space for free will (unproven by science) to slip into. And thanks to scientific models and the Free Will theorem of the brilliant Princeton mathematics professors Conway and Kochen, we have seen that human Free Will implies particle Free Will - again pointing to the potential of Quantum Mechanics, which deals with particles, to be the source of a physical process that produces Free Will. Thus scientific evidence is actually, by my own sense, slightly (though by no means strongly) in favor of Free Will.

And even if all the evidence were against me, I would still believe in Free Will - because belief in Free Will is, as belief in my own existence is, a no-lose situation.

The Greatest Enemy

Sentience that desires its own destruction can never last long in this universe, for, as soon as it acquires the means, it ends its own existence. Therefore, as a general rule, sentience desires its own continual existence. Non-sentience has no desires, as it is non-sentient (gotta love the tautologies). Thus, when a non-sentient entity comes up against (i.e. becomes mutually exclusive with) a sentient entity, all morality and preferred outcomes lie with the latter.

It is for this reason that I wish to see sentience spread across the universe; from our launching point on a blue water planet orbiting Sol in the Milky Way, and from our other probable launching points throughout space and time, the goal is the projection and preservation of sentience throughout space and time. Even if individual sources are snuffed (like Earth would be in the event of a major nuclear showdown), given the enormity of the universe and the possibility of new wellsprings, sentience should eventually spread to every habitable corner and preserve itself there.

What stands in the way of the progress and growth of sentience throughout the universe? What is it that will, inevitably as it seems now, end the dream of everlasting life?

Our Great Enemy is what seems like a harmless physical construct - but one that stands ready to destroy any civilization no matter how strong and advanced and widespread.

The enemy is Entropy. Should entropy prevail over the universe, there will be no more energy, no more sentience, no more order in the chaos. To prevent this is the ultimate goal of science: the victory of sentience over entropy, of life over death. This is why science and free thought cannot, MUST NOT be hindered. The rewards of success are infinite, as are the consequences of failure. If there is the slightest chance of success, we must attack the problem with all the energy we possess.

Perhaps Entropy is unbeatable, a law with no exceptions. Perhaps all the time and effort will not pay off with infinite sentience and civilization. But, perhaps sentience can find a cure. Hell, perhaps sentience IS the cure (this is not as dumb as it sounds). And then we will not need to look to other lives for our eternal rewards that we crave. We'll have truly earned it - in this life.

A Quick Acknowledgement

Since I've been billing myself as a fresh start in philosophy (indeed, just like every other philosopher, I consider myself the first to get it completely right), I might as well take a moment to prove my own marketing wrong by acknowledging those philosophers to whom I owe a great deal of my ideas:

Hobbes and Descartes: I owe to them the idea of axiomatic philosophy inspired by mathematics

Bentham: I owe to him (one of the few I can really agree with) my utilitarianism

Hume: I owe to him the general direction of my system (passions expressed through reason)

Popper: I owe to him my analysis of scientific progress

Yudkowsky: I owe to him my views on scientific progress

Rand: I owe to her my individualistic and self-centered focus

Marx: I owe to him my general background (as I am a citizen of the People's Republic of Berkeley)

Yeah. I'm that unoriginal.

Eschew Obfuscation

To "deconstruct" philosophy [...] would be to think - in the most faithful, interior way - the structured genealogy of philosophy's concepts, but at the same time to determine - from a certain exterior [...] - what this history has been able to dissimulate or forbid [...] By means of this simultaneously faithful and violent circulation between the inside and the outside of philosophy [...a] putting into question the meaning of Being as presence.

- Jacques Derrida, taken from my favorite all-time source of truth, Wikipedia.

"In order to make myself recognized by the Other, I must risk my own life. To risk one's life, in fact, is to reveal oneself as not-bound to the objective form or to any determined existence--as not-bound to life", meaning the value of the Other's recognition of me depends on the value of my recognition of the Other In this sense to the extent that the Other apprehends me as bound to a body and immersed in life, I am myself only an Other as Ego.

- Jean-Paul Sartre (with explanation, which is even sadder, also from Wikipedia)

A student asked Master Yun-Men (949 C.E.) "Not even a thought has arisen; is there still a sin or not?" Master replied, "Mount Sumeru!"

A monk asked Dongshan Shouchu, "What is Buddha?" Dongshan said, "Three pounds of flax".

- Two Zen Koans. You have three guesses as to where I got it.

It is perhaps with extreme risk of ridicule for committing the same sins in my "My System" posts that I criticize what seems to be a staple of philosophical thought, especially starting with Existentialism and much of Eastern thought (i.e. Zen and Taoism - Confucianism I condemn as harmful and short-sighted, but it is at least comprehensible and makes some good points). This staple is what appears to be the deliberate use of confusing language in philosophy. This is not good philosophy! If a philosophy is so tangled and confused as to be completely incomprehensible, this means (a) nobody can check the underlying logic, so it probably has logical holes you could drive an aircraft carrier through, and (b) it actually probably is too vague and the terms it uses too ill-defined to be logical anyway, which is a much worse form of (a), since the good use of logic usually straightens out a system by default. And this makes the philosophy (a) probably wrong, as in its assertions are flat-out not true, or (b) almost definitely useless, as a car with unusable controls or a map with no relation to the territory is useless - any attempt to use it will either lead to a horrible accident (car analogy) or to getting completely lost (map analogy). That is all I have to say for Derrida and Sartre - I feel that is already enough to dismiss them as lost causes.

For Zen, I have an even bigger problem. They use not confusing language - indeed that koan was absolutely crystal clear in the sense of the literal meaning of the words. But they deliberately cloud the ideas they attempt to transmit, as if trying to let only a select few in on the Big Secret. However, their Enlightenment simply doesn't hold up to even the most feeble analysis. For example, suppose you replaced the Student in the koan with a dreamy show-off eager to ask the Big Important Questions and the master with an eight-year-old with ADD that has just been given a big bowl of candy and shiny objects. Would the koan really run that much differently? The student asks a typical show-off question whose meaning is not easily understood - and being not easily understood is (I cannot stress this enough) NOT GOOD - and the master, being completely distracted, answers with a total non-sequitur. A good check of whether the philosophy can be said to make sense is whether the switching the answers to the questions would radically alter the result. For the two koans I present, the answer is a clear NO. The questions are immensely different, but the answers are both non-sequiturs. This attitude leads monks on 30-year quests for truth when any reasonable truth that this bullshit is hiding could be transmitted in around 3 seconds of plain, logical language.

The Axiom of Utility and the Non-Importance of Truth

My next axiom I hope to be somewhat justifiable on its own (as axioms should ideally be), and it is the basis for pretty much everything to come. It states simply that:

Any philosophy I choose to adopt must give me some direction as to how to make decisions. Otherwise, I have no reason to adopt said philosophy.

And that's it! I can start deducing immediately, and get some pretty nontrivial results too. Here's one:

Theorem 1 (yes, math has influenced me that much. So what? It's better than not justifying things): I exist.

Proof: If my philosophy has the clause "I don't exist", it logically cannot assign actions to me. Therefore, by the Axiom of Utility, it's worthless for me to adopt it.

Theorem 2: There must exist things I can do, collectively called my Action Set. The Action Set must have cardinality greater than 1, and must somehow determine the choosing of an element from the set of possible outcomes (the imaginatively-named Outcome Set) - i.e. there exist two distinct actions for which the probabilities (as in, how likely that outcome is to actually happen given that action) assigned to the members of the Outcome Set differ. Basically, this says that I can choose actions which will cause some change my real-world experiences.

Proof: If there weren't such actions and outcomes, no two actions would be at all distinguishable and so the philosophy would not help me decide between actions. Thus any philosophy I adopt must have such actions and outcomes.

And another:

Theorem 3: Some outcomes are are to be preferred over others (the mapping of the set of outcomes to the set of values they hold for me is called my Utility Function. I'll talk about that later on.)

Proof: If no outcome is preferred to any other outcome, no action is preferred since actions both partially determine and are part of the outcomes. Thus, no action can be logically prescribed by my philosophy. Thus, some outcomes must be preferred over others.

Note that none of these theorems have anything to do with truth! If reality really excludes me, it still doesn't help me to believe in my own non-existence - so of course I believe in my existence. By believing in my existence I allow two outcomes to happen: (a) I exist and I am right, or (b) I don't exist, so, although I seem wrong, I'm not since I don't exist and therefore can't hold this wrong opinion. Thus either I'm right, or I don't exist so it doesn't matter anyhow. This is provably superior to the belief that I don't exist, which is either wrong or moot.

These are the first theorems that can be deduced from the axiom of utility. Theorem 2 is essentially my statement on the loaded question of Free Will; however, I feel Free Will to be important enough to merit its own post, which I will write next time.

My First Axioms

In my last post ('Axiomatic Thought') I pointed out that all systems need one or more (usually many more than one) axiom from which to build. However, none of my reasoning during any of the previous posts was formal or complete; the reason is simply that I had not posted my own axioms, so I was working in an axiomatic vacuum. Indeed, while people are creating their own axioms, they work in a vacuum devoid of any logical justification whatsoever; the only alternative is emotional and psychological justification. From this perspective, it is easy to see the appeal of religion - and this appeal is exactly what I hope to counter.

As a cure to this axiomatic null, I introduce my first two, self-justifying axioms:

Axiom 1:

For every set of beliefs, there is an axiomatic set defined to be the minimal set of beliefs needed to be taken on faith before the remainder of the system can be logically (as defined by the system) deducted. Each axiom is a weakness - it is vulnerable to simply not being accepted by virtue of not having justification to back it up - so the smaller and more emotionally acceptable the axiomatic set, the stronger the system.

Axiom 2:

For my second axiom, I assume the rules of mathematical logic and set theory. I feel safe in this assumption since anyone who is reading this is probably operating (consciously or implicitly) by these rules anyhow (anyone who doesn't accept these rules probably isn't in a position to read this anyhow, being either a toddler or in a psych ward). This axiom (a) defines a few terms I used in axiom 1 and (b) gives me the tools to begin deduction. Note that this axiom is actually a small set of axioms (far smaller than any comparable religious axiom set, since (a) all of God's opinions are separate axioms, and (b) religious people probably use these axioms too).

With these minimal and necessary axioms in place, I am free now to begin building my system, as they lay the foundation for my system to be axiomatic and deductive in the first place.

Axiomatic Thought

It seems a very common occurrence amongst children of a certain age who are beginning to perceive the causal relationship to begin to ask the question 'why?' whenever they are presented with a fact of any sort. I know I was one. And I, like, I suspect, many children, took it further. Whenever I was presented with the answer to my question, I immediately asked again, 'why?'. As in, why was the answer really an answer that solved my query? And I would ask it again and again - an infinite regression of causalities. My father, who almost always bore the brunt of this, began to respond by simply saying 'because'. I thought that was a cop-out at the time, a way to gloss over the fact that he indeed had no justification. But now I realize that there was a deep (perhaps unintentional on his part - I can't tell) truth in that response. It is this: that all reasoning must start from some firm base whose justification is by fiat. If there is no such base, then there is no system. Each step must be justified by another, necessitating an infinite amount of reasoning for any logical step, no matter how small - and no mind can build and maintain such a system.

I can hear the response now in my head: if all reasoning must start from axioms, why do you attack religion so much? Why is the axiom: 'God is all powerful and this is what God says' inferior to your own axiomatic system? I maintain that my axiomatic system is so fundamental that few, if any, could dispute the premises. And by this axiomatic system, God is excluded and sent back to the dark irrational parts of the human psyche from which he emerged.

The key is that not all axiomatic systems are created equal. Critically, each axiom within a system represents a vulnerability, a weakness, of that system. It is a point that is self-justified, and self-justification is the weakest of all justifications, since self-justification means it is true only because it is assumed to be so. Nothing else supports it. Thus, an axiomatic system grows weaker and leakier as it grows in size - more axioms means more trouble spots that had to be patched up. A collection of axioms as large as the Bible, Torah, Koran, or Vedas is rife with problems. Their reasoning is so shaky that virtually every argument must introduce new axioms (every time God says another thing, it is another axiom) to help it stumble feebly from one conclusion to the next. By the time it's interpreted and argued, the whole mess is full of logical errors and sore spots, ready to collapse with the first insightful attack on it.

Ideally, axiomatic thought should work by Ockham's Razor: as few and as emotionally and psychologically acceptable axioms as possible, and reasoning from then on. With an axiomatic system like that, the weaknesses are fewer and firmer, and although attacks are still possible, they do not cause the immediate self-destruction of the system.

The Parable of Doubting Thomas

I just noticed that despite my blog's title, there are no rants on it. Just a long boring account of my failure by fiat to create a universal philosophy. Therefore, I figured I'd post a rant on a topic that's close to my heart, and thus by it's sheer stupidity occasionally gives me heartburn.

I speak of the story of Doubting Thomas.

To make a long and mostly nonsensical story (the story of the crucifixion of Christ) short, Christ goes up on the cross, dies because God is too much of an evil bastard to stop his suffering, and a few days later wakes up again with holes in his hands and feet. After appearing to Mary Magdalene and most of the disciples, except for Thomas:

²⁴Now Thomas (called Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. ²⁵So the other disciples told him, "We have seen the Lord!"
But he said to them, "Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it."

²⁶A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you!" ²⁷Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe."

²⁸Thomas said to him, "My Lord and my God!"

²⁹Then Jesus told him, "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed."

(from http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+20&version=NIV)

It's that last sentence that really does it for me, that brings my piss to a boil, that has skull-fucked the world for the last 2000-odd years. It might seem a natural thing for a religion to say - it is. But it's totally, completely, unspeakably evil. Let me paraphrase: that last sentence essentially says "'Tis a virtue to hold beliefs in total contradiction to any and all evidence encountered before - especially the beliefs I tell you to believe". Sound cultish? It is this attitude towards evidence-gathering and rational thought that has fostered the scientific decay of the Dark Ages, caused the most vile and cruel regimes to thrive (think of the treatment of the "science" of Marxism in the supposedly atheist USSR; they share more with God than they'd like to think) and in general has destroyed millions by the sword and billions by the delay of technical progress (think Galileo or Darwin). Now explain to me again why Christianity (or any other religion, for that matter, especially Hinduism, which disgusts me even more than Christianity - Christianity was at least theoretically egalitarian, while Hinduism is based upon discrimination and callousness towards the lower castes, especially the 'untouchables' who suffer to this day) has been a net positive towards humanity? It certainly didn't save or improve lives, given things like religious conquests and the hindering of scientific progress; it's debatable that religion caused the great artistic achievements, since most people in history lived in a religious context and thus produced religiously-influenced works - and anyway, it's a horribly elitist and callous idea that lives are worth sacrificing for the sake of 'high art' to appease the more 'civilized' people. So, for this one line, and for this whole attitude on rational thought (which a religion is by definition opposed to), I condemn Christianity and all other religions (including Marxism, though Marx himself is probably innocent; he worked with his own data and never insisted on belief without evidence) for the most inconceivably evil crime ever committed against the human species.

Blessed be Doubting Thomas, who insisted on proof and submitted to the evidence. His attitude would much improve the world, and we should all remember his example. That is the true moral of the parable of Doubting Thomas.

A note on historical perspective

As a student of philosophy in high school, I was often struck by the transience of the claims of all of the philosophers we studied. Each and every one of them made an attempt at what I considered the ultimate ambition of philosophy (by virtue of being attempted by all philosophers): the construction of a system that held true over all times and cultures, whose truth was inherent in this universe and not particular to their circumstances. And each and every one of them failed. Even if their views were accepted in their own time - by no means entirely common - they became outdated in time by shifting cultural emphases and values, as the culture they worked from (and thus the base assumptions and logic they worked from) was replaced. For example, Hobbes' logic of absolute monarchy, though seemingly axiomatic and rigorous, and Aristotle's arguments for slavery, though accepted for thousands of years, were made obsolete during the Enlightenment-era culture's shift towards republicanism and liberty. Because they worked from fixed cultural reference points, they ended up obsolete.

Were they 'right' nonetheless? In short, No (In long, No, you idiotic twat, of course not). Evidence has shown modern, free democracies to not only be more prosperous, happier, and more powerful, but even more stable than the despotic world powers (compare the USA, which, based on republicanism went from newly-freed colony to world hyperpower in 150 years or so and is still far and away the strongest country on Earth by any measure, and the USSR, an absolute despotism from 1924 onward, which rose to prominence very quickly but collapsed of its own accord after a mere 70 years). It seems clear that had Hobbes' or Aristotle's arguments prevailed, the world would be a worse place than it is now, and places that still follow their ideas are typically backwards and poor. That alone should be sufficient to consider their philosophies fatally flawed.

As a philosopher, I wish to escape this kind of trend - in theory, a good philosophy should ring true though time and cultures. In fact, my ambitions are even greater than that. I wish my philosophy to be truly universal, so that even cultures I have never heard of, alien cultures on distant planets, or even cultures living in a hyperbolic spatial environment, should be able to agree on its logic (given its premises). But already, cracks are appearing in my ambitions. First of all, to be truly universal, the philosophy must hold in cultures and environments I cannot begin to understand - and I of course cannot craft a philosophy that holds in a particular instance unless I know at least something, even the smallest thing, about that instance. Thus, I must restrict my philosophical ambitions to instances for which a series of axioms (which I will introduce in a later post) hold. Secondly, my ideas are already betraying signs of my culture and upbringing - bad news if I truly want to be universal. Because I come from a very self-conscious culture, my ambitions are patently self-conscious (the fact that I'm writing a post addressing this confirms that). Because I come from a capitalist republic (the good ol' US of A), my ideas are very individualistic, self-centered and libertarian. Because I come from a very left-wing area of said republic, my ideas on society end up being very common-good oriented (I will discuss the apparent contradiction here in a later post). And because I am a mathematics student in college, and the son of a mathematician, I tend to insist on axiomatic, rigorous logic in my attempt to be universal. Thus, by my very ambition to escape the mistakes of fixed cultural reference, I fail this ambition - a logical Catch-22 (see? another instance where my background influences my language and logic!).

So, we have already established that I have, by any reasonable measure, failed. But that's o.k. By aiming so high with my philosophy, I've made it so that even in failure, I might produce something not totally pointless. That's a good trick to know: if you aim high enough, even your failures might not be total shit. Or at least you can pretend they're not.