Advocatus Atheist

I came to Japan in my mid-twenties and started my career as an English teaching professional teaching TESOL to Japanese students at elementary and Junior high school. One of the first experiences any foreign teacher has the privilege of experiencing in Japan is the infamous "kancho."  It's basically a physical gag where a school child will sneak up behind you and wait till you bend over to wash your hands or drink from the drinking fountain, and then, placing their hands together, their index fingers pointed toward your nether regions like a gun--they jam their fingers into your anus with as much force as possible. Many foreigners yelp out in shock at the first time small probing fingers try to enter their asshole. If you're a guy, sometimes the little kids miss and mash your balls, which really smarts. If you're a girl, sometimes they hit you right in the glory hole. Either way, none are immune to this childish prank. During my first week ...

Over the past 10 years, I’ve developed the concept of ignosticism into a formal demonstration that can either prove or disprove the existence of God. In a nutshell, ignosticism asks you to describe “God.” Simple enough, right? It’s not as easy as it sounds. When a person says they have a belief in God, what is it they mean by "God"? One might say God is three in one. Another might say none is greater than God. Both are fine definitions. The problem arises when competing definitions for the same God negate each other. Three is not one. So, what is it we are talking about? How can we talk about a self-negating concept? It’s nonsensical. We can’t speak meaningfully of it. Hence, the ignostic holds religious people tend to presume too much about God. The description part is to test the coherence of the object being described. Many theological descriptions of God are sophisticated but incoherent. So, what is it we are talking abou...

I probably should have known better than to get embroiled in a stupid Facebook argument with conservative Trump supporters. Trying to explain to them how Mike Pence as VP, an elected official of the Republic, represents all American citizens and not just conservative Americans was, predictably, all in vain. It is inconceivable to me that the VP can pull a stunt like this and not get ousted from office. It's a complete overreach of the VP's power, not only because he's using the White House and taxpayer dollars to send a message as Mike Pence the VP (not Mike Pence the citizen), not only is his protest of peaceful protesters a denial of their message and what they're protesting in the first place (if he even is aware of what that is), but his staged Diva walk-out, when we know (for a fact) that he was scheduled to be in a different state that same day anyway and so had no intention of watching the game, is such a slight against American values as to be utterly g...

Pointing out that Monogamous marriage has the highest divorce rate of any marriage model is merely an incontrovertible fact.  You may not like it, but it's true.  It also suggests that maybe (maybe!) we shouldn't make monogamy the golden standard by which we value ours (or any other) relationships by and that perhaps (perhaps!) we shouldn't practice it at all (just a logical inference! Don't kill the messenger). Of course, if you want to be monogamous or are happily monogamous, that's fine. But there's nothing in human biology to suggest humans are truly monogamous or that monogamy is natural to us as a species. Our pair bonds are dependent on proximity and familiarity and do not share the permanent pair bonds that voles or ravens create. We are semi-monogamous, you might say. Kayt Sukel's research into this is quite revealing. https://www.amazon.com/Dirty-Minds-Brains-Influence-Relationships/dp/1451611552/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8 Our...

Let's imagine... you had a book that said it's perfectly fine to shit where you eat. And because of your devotion to this book, you formed a belief early on that it was perfectly all right to shit where you eat. And this you treated as a sacred truth. After all, your parents always shat where they ate. They taught you it was okay. Moreover, everyone in your community shits where they eat. And when they come over to your house, they love to shit where you eat too--and so do you! Then, one day you mature into adulthood and go out into the world to learn the ways of your fellow mankind. And you visit a distant land and the people there are friendly and welcome you with open arms and smiling faces. Then, that evening, while breaking bread with them, you climb up onto the dinner table, drop trou, and shit right in the middle of the dinner table. Right beside the roasted chicken and mashed potatoes. You drop a big, steaming, duce. To your...

Abortion: It's only still a "debate" because the pro-life side refuses to accurately define life, they refuse to define what legal status a fetus should have, whether it is limited as with other minors, whether it shares the same legal standing as the mother, or whether it has its own legal standing yet to be defined, or none at all. In every case, in which the pro-life side talks about "baby killing" and "murder" they turn around and strip the mother of her autonomy, try to force her to bear a child without the proper medical expertise to even discuss such concerns, and in many cases try to erect laws to punish and jail the woman who chooses to have an abortion in defiance of their attempt at authoritarian control over her and her body. It is telling then that the entire abortion controversy is still a "debate." It is still a debate because the pro-life side refuses to do the necessary legwork in creating a defensible po...

Is the GOP on drugs?  I mean, they must all be on drugs. Right?  In 50 days of the Trump presidency, we see the GOP write up a health care bill that sucks so bad it will actually do real harm to Americans. And all because there are members of the Grand Ole Party that just cannot accept that Obama care is working--barely, since they blocked it at every turn, repealed it numerous times, and forced terrible rewrites into it effectively neutering a decent healthcare package and making it into a nightmare--but it's still better than nothing. And they want to replace a barely functioning health care bill that, as bare-bones as it is, is actually doing some good with a health care plan that wants to ass-rape 50 million Americans. If this wasn't bad enough, we have a POTUS who passes an *unconstitutional* anti-Muslim ban that then gets suspended then stricken down as unconstitutional only to write another Muslim ban, as if that was going to go over well. But the GO...

Did you know that being irreligious or irreverent toward religious belief isn't wrong if you're NOT religious? To a non-religious person, irreligion and irreverence toward specific theological claims are simply what being non-religious is about. Non-religious people put no emotional stock in the God proposition because they find the entire concept, not to mention belief system, bogus. Many religious people perceive this as being rude because they are emotionally invested in their beliefs. And if someone doesn't love their beliefs as much as they love their own beliefs, then they think you're looking down on them. I'm sure some non-religious folks might actually be looking down on religious people. But the point is, the religious person can't tell who is looking down and who just doesn't care. Because in either case, in their religious eyes both points of view appear to degrade their personal beliefs by not taking them at face value. They don't actually. ...

I wonder if all these no-platforming proponents realize that that's the same thing as censorship.  Not letting someone publish something because you find it *offensive* is censorship. Canceling a television show or radio program because it's *offensive* is censorship. Canceling a speaker from holding a public discourse is *censorship*. Suspending or firing a talking head in the media, because you don't like what she is saying, is *censorship*. Attacking the free press and calling everything they write "alternative news" or "fake news" is obfuscation (usually done to make an excuse to invoke censorship), but barring the press from the room and reporting on important matters (looking at you Sean Spice / Trump Whitehouse) is *censorship*. Now, I'm not saying giving certain folks a platform isn't always a great idea (sometimes it's most definitely not). Broadcasting pernicious, vile, and grotesque ideologies out in...