Official announcement to anyone still checking this blog:

My plan to have two blogs, one for book/tv/music stuff and one for freethought stuff has failed. I’ve decided to just post everything over at Breathless Mind on blogspot. Hopefully the people already reading over there won’t be put off by my heathen ways…

Apparently there’s a proposal for my university’s campus to become completely smoke-free, except for a few designated areas. As it is, you can’t smoke inside or within a certain distance of buildings. Also, as background info, smoking in bars was outlawed here a few years ago (after a fair amount of controversy). Apart from some concerns over night-time safety in the proposed smoking zones, the debate seems to come down to a clash between the rights of those who choose to smoke to do so freely, and the rights of non-smokers to not have to breathe in second-hand smoke every now and then.

The reason for the ban in bars was that breathing in such a smoky atmosphere is unhealthy (according our weekly student magazine). It’s far from proven that the amount of second-hand smoke on the campus poses a health risk to non-smokers. I suppose it depends on who you hang out with and where, but I could easily go a week without getting an inadvertent lungfull. So, if health risks to non-smokers aren’t a compelling reason for the new policy, what is? Having the university take an anti-smoking stance in an attempt to make smoking seem less acceptable and thus persuade people to quit/not take it up? I got the impression from the magazine article that this was an important motivation for many of the policy’s advocates. 

Problem is, everybody already knows that smoking is incredibly bad for you. We learned it in primary school, again in intermediate, in high school we wrote speeches on the topic ‘Smoking is for suckers,’ and we’ve all seen the pictures of blackened lungs and grotesque throat cancers. You’d have to have lived under a rock for the last decade at least to have missed that message. It’s not uncool to be a non-smoker – most people are.  If you’re not put off by all the health stuff, is the inconvenience of only being able to smoke in certain places on the campus going to stop you? Maybe it will, I suppose inconvenience today might mean more to some people than lung problems and dying young in the distant future.

However, my point is that people who smoke on campus have made an informed decision. A bad one, probably, but an informed one. So is it right for the university to intervene? To restrict smokers for their own good? I’m going to bring in John Stuart Mill here (*feels educated*), because I agree with him and he says it better than I can:

That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinions of others, to do so would be wise, or even right. These are good reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him, or visiting him with any evil, in case he do otherwise. To justify that, the conduct from which it is desired to deter him must be calculated to produce evil to some one else. The only part of the conduct of any one, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.

So, unless smoking on campus causes harm to non-smokers (which is apparently doubtful on current information), “society” is not justified in banning it. We can plead and reason with them as much as we like but if in the end they still want to smoke, that’s their choice to make and there’s nothing we can do about it.

Of course there might be other ways in which smoking causes harm to others apart from the smoker: cost to the tax-payer if the smoker ends up sick and needing expensive medical care, pain of the friends and family of the smoker in the same situation… With friends and family, well, I think that’s something smokers ought to seriously think about, but I don’t think upsetting loved ones is a good enough reason to limit yourself, as a rule. Maybe if it was a law that smokers will have to pay their own way for any medical costs they incur as a result of choosing to smoke? I’m not sure how I feel about that. It seems fair but not very compassionate. However, if it is the case that some individuals smoking has a significantly negative effect on others then something should be done about it. One person’s freedom extends only until it bumps into the next person’s. And after all, smoking is not a basic right like food and education. It must have its benefits, given its popularity, but I’m sure most people would agree that things like being able to speak and breathe without difficulty in your sixties and seventies, live a few years longer, and being able to go a day without needing a cigarette outweigh them.

In summary:

1. I don’t understand why anyone, given what is common knowledge about the health risks, would take up smoking today.

2. Unless it becomes apparent that second-hand smoke on campus is harming people, I don’t think smoking should be banned there. 

3. There may well be a case for making smoking completely illegal on grounds of it causing more harm (to those other than the smoker) than it does good.

On a lighter note, ‘Smoking is for suckers’ really was a speech topic for my fifth form (halfway through high school) English class. (Some of you who were there may see where this is going!) You know how in ye olde writing styles, the letters ‘s’ and ‘f’ can look very similar? Like in this amusing example (which I found on this interesting looking blog):

 

 

I probably don’t need to say any more, except that our teacher’s handwriting shared this trait. At 15 this was highly amusing.

 

Good judgement comes from experience; experience comes from bad judgement.

Yesterday I did a short survey for a pair of seminary students from Korea. I’ve forgotten the name of their denomination/church but they seemed to have an interpretation of the Bible which featured a goddess figure. Whether this was alongside, or perhaps another ‘face’ of ‘God the Father’ I’m not sure. I followed my usual strategy (be honest, smile a lot, and leave quickly – it needs work, I know) so I didn’t learn much, unfortunately. I got a bit of a giggle when I circled ‘none’ for the question ‘What is your religion?’ and the guy responded, sounding surprised, “You have no religion?” Maybe he thought I’d accidentally circled the wrong thing, I don’t know.

I was surprised that my feminist side (not that I have an unfeminist side, but you know what I mean) found the idea of ‘our mother in Heaven’ quite appealing. I guess it fits in with the current gender-egalitarian ideals – seems more fitting that there would be two Gods, male and female, balance, equality, etc. So I had to remind myself that Godette is at least as implausible as God.

The two doing the survey were very friendly, so apart from kicking myself for not finding out more about their ideas (which I’d never heard before) it was, like all the chats I’ve had with Jehovah’s Witnesses and campus evangelicals, painless, interesting, and yet completely ineffective in changing my opinions.

I still say a church steeple with a lightning rod on top shows a lack of confidence. Doug McLeod

The picture isn’t relevant. It’s just my attempt to add some perspective to the issue. The three shiny dots are (from bottom to top) the moon, Venus, and Mercury. 

 

I’m going to jump on the bandwagon and offer up my two cents about the updated deadly sins – better late than never right?. That’s a lot of clichés.

 

First of all, does anyone else find it funny that there’s a link on the homepage that says ‘Vatican Secret Archives’? Anyway. Here are the new mortal sins, as listed by the BBC:

 

Environmental pollution

Genetic manipulation

Accumulating excessive wealth

Inflicting poverty

Drug trafficking and consumption

Morally debatable experiments

Violation of fundamental rights of human nature

 

And here are the original, or traditional ones:

 

Pride

Envy

Gluttony

Lust

Anger

Greed

Sloth

 

I applaud that the Catholic Church wants to use its power to improve the world. And good on them for looking beyond individual failings to problems that whole societies are facing. But wouldn’t it be even better to stop doing these things, rather than confess to doing them? The consequences of polluting the world are more far-reaching than personal damnation. We, and our descendants, have to live on this planet. (Until our space programs are better that is, and even then, I suspect someone will want to preserve the mother-planet.) My point is that saying ’sorry’ to God doesn’t make it all better. If God forgave you in the form of cleaning up an oil spill, maybe. But as it is, if you think pollution is a bad thing to do, don’t do it! And if you do, forget asking for God’s forgiveness and clean it up! I suppose you could do both, and I suppose most people would, but the idea that confession somehow rights the wrong is simply not true. One wonders whether this is about reducing the amount of sin in the world or about increasing the number of bums in confession boxes.

 

Also, Holly raises the point that, well, you can read it yourself here.

 

Something I’d like to know is, who picked these new sins? They sound more man-made than divinely inspired to me. If God is perfect and unchanging, why didn’t he warn us about these sins earlier? What about Uncle Joe who died last month without receiving absolution for being excessively wealthy? Or does it not count as a sin until the official announcement? And why didn’t God inform the other denominations too? On the other hand, if the mortal inhabitants of the Vatican came up with them, what weight to they carry? And how can we tell the difference between God-given and Bishop-given anyway?

 

Whoever it was, they did a good job. Who of us hasn’t committed, however indirectly, one of these new sins? You are reading this right now on a computer that, really, you don’t need. Excessive wealth much? (I’m not saying excessive wealth isn’t a bad thing. In fact, it is by definition.)

 

(Just as an aside, I am aware that some of the points I’m making may not apply, depending on whether some assumptions I’ve made are true or not.)

 

About the sins themselves: I fully support inflicting poverty, drug trafficking, and accumulating excessive wealth (depending on the definition of excessive) being on the bad list. Environmental pollution too, although that one is a bit more context-dependent.

 

The others I’m not so sure about. Genetic manipulation covers all manner of…activities. It’s what happens when a guy breeds his mare to a champion stallion in order to get a talented foal. God is going to have to give us some specifics. I’m assuming what he had in mind was something along the lines of putting pig genes into humans to cure diseases, or preventing the genes for horrific childhood diseases being activated (if these are crap examples, I’m sorry – I know bugger-all about genetics), but that’s a debate for another day.

 

Morally debatable experiments. Again, the Devil’s in the details… I think if would be difficult to find an experiment that didn’t have some tiny element that could potentially be debated. Slavery is morally debatable, in the sense that one could debate it. But that’s being pedantic. The fact is, there will always be someone who disagrees. Especially on topics like stem-cell research, cloning, etc. This shouldn’t preclude progress. I’m not sure I used the word preclude correctly there. Oh well. If we are going to advance in science, we are going to have to start doing things without everyone agreeing. Not without a lot of thought of course, but ignoring potentially ground-breaking science because the morality involved is complicated, difficult, or challenging to religious positions would be a waste.

 

What haven’t I mentioned yet? Oh. Violation of fundamental rights of human nature. I’m going to leave that one out. Partly because it’s late and I’m sleepy but mostly because I don’t know what the fundamental rights of human nature are or even if there are such things (is that bad?).

 

I understand Bishop Girotti mentioned a few other things as well, including abortion and paedophilia. Paedophilia I think requires no discussion. Abortion I’m saving for a later post.

 

The seven traditional sins aren’t perfect either. In a nutshell, as long as it doesn’t harm anyone else, I don’t have a problem with any of them. I’ll try to elaborate on that in another post.

 

On sin in general… I find the whole concept of sin unjustified, in terms of truth, and these new ones are no better than the original seven. If someone is going to claim I risk eternal damnation every time I overeat or sleep in, I want a more convincing reason to believe them than any I’ve heard so far. Especially if they’re telling me I must ask forgiveness for sin I was born with.

 

Hell? Eternal damnation? Really? First, the so-called mortal sins are none of them deserving of this extreme a punishment. Or so our legal systems judge. If we really thought lust was that bad wouldn’t it at least be a finable offence? Second, I have a real problem with the idea of Hell, specifically the idea of it being forever. If eternal damnation is fictional (and I have no reason to believe otherwise), that’s really, really, really mean. There must be an awful lot of people who are living in the belief that their friends and family are in Hell and will be forever. There must also be a lot of people who are scared shitless of ending up there. It scares me just thinking about it. I take issue with Heaven too, but I’ll save that for another time.

 

Finally, a question: how many mortal sins have you committed today? I’ve done all seven of the traditional ones. I’m doing pretty well on the new ones though. No morally debatable experiments in my basement. Actually, I don’t have a basement.

  

 

Be great in act, as you have been in thought.  Shakespeare

A while ago I posted this, in which I began to answer a list of questions posed by an evangelical Christian group on my campus. Now that laziness has kicked in I’m regretting my initial enthusiasm (there are something like 40 questions on the list) but I can’t think of a good reason to give up, so here’s the second instalment. I’m going to make the answers brief – I’m not out to conclusively refute Christianity, just to give my own responses, pretty much off the top of my head (man that’s a weird saying!) with a bit of googling if I feel like it.

Without further ado, here’s question two (hey, it rhymes ): How do you account for the vast archaeological documentation of Biblical stories, places, and people?

Short answer: I don’t. Nor do I accept it.

Longer answer: Actually, I’m not the slightest bit convinced that such documentation exists. I’m not an archaeologist (although I did want to be one when I was at high school) so I have to trust the experts. If the archaeological evidence conclusively (or even just strongly) supported the Biblical account of history, I’m pretty sure we’d have heard about it. Since I haven’t, and I’m not completely uninformed (New Zealand may be in the middle of nowhere but we do keep tabs on the rest of the world), I think it’s reasonable for me to assume that that’s not the case.

I have heard the argument that academia is anti-religious and there are historians and scientists who have the facts to prove the Bible true but are too afraid to say anything for fear of ridicule or censure. I’m not buying it. I have several reasons but I won’t go into that now because I want to get to the next question.

Question three: Since absolutely no Bible prophecy has ever failed (and there are hundreds), how can one realistically remain unconvinced that the Bible is of Divine origin?That’s a big claim. First of all, you’d think, if it’s true that no Bible prophecy has ever failed, that more people would be talking about it. Personally, I’ve heard a lot more about Jesus dying for my sins than I have about prophecies coming true.

Anyway. Here’s my answer: prove it. All it takes for this claim (that absolutely no Bible prophecy has ever failed) to be false is one failed prophecy. Here’s a whole bunch. And some more. There also appears to be some debate over when certain ‘prophecies’ were written… You might say I’m doing biased googling, and I am. But I don’t think it matters. Obviously I’d need to do some proper research if I wanted say informedly (if that’s not a word, it should be) that Biblical prophecy is either miraculous or bollocks, but for now, I’m applying Occam’s Razor. It’s just way too implausible.

I have to get up early (for me) tomorrow so that’s all for now. Next up: more of these frustrating questions and probably a rant about Easter being a public holiday or something about the seven ‘updated’ deadly sins.

The true civilization is where every man gives to every other every right that he claims for himself. Robert G. Ingersoll

Courtesy of Holly

1. How and when did you learn to swim?

At school. My primary school had a pool then it got demolished and every year after that the entire school would go by bus to a public pool. (I enjoyed the bus ride the most.) Despite all this, I ended up in the “so crap they need to have extra lessons” group at intermediate. I HATED swimming classes at intermediate. The pool was freezing and somehow my class always got first thing in the morning to use it. This question brings back some bad memories!

2. How and when did you learn to drive?

I don’t have my full license yet so I guess I’m still learning. Actually, I learned something today: it is very, very easy to forget to turn the lights off and flatten the battery of your mum’s car. And very, very embarrassing. I learned from my parents plus a few lessons from an AA guy.

3. How and when did you learn to tie your shoelaces?

I don’t remember. Before I started school, I think.

4. How and when did you learn to cook?

From Mum, mostly. Not that I can cook all that well, but I can do a lot of stuff with cheese and my baking is pretty good.

5. How and when did you learn to type?

I don’t know. Just picked it up by practise I guess.

Five vices…

1. Indolence

Aka laziness or sloth. It can take me hours to get up in the morning if I don’t have anywhere I have to be. I’m just generally lazy, like most people I suspect. Although I think I’m getting less so, except for the sleeping thing.

2. Procrastination

‘Never do today what you can put off tomorrow.’ Depends what it is, but I find it’s better to just get stuff out of the way, ‘cos I’m a worrier and it’s less stressful that way. In theory that is.

3. Secretiveness

Haha. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

4. Escapism

I don’t think this is a vice unless indulged in to excess, but it’s something I’m quite prone to.

5. Child sacrifice.

Don’t worry, I’m kidding. I just couldn’t decide on one. Greed, materialism, slackness, immorality, impiety, worldiness? Purposelessness sounds good. I don’t believe anyone has a predetermined purpose, but it would be nice if I could come up with one for myself.

Update on the ‘Sex, Guilt and Captain Kirk’ post:

Just checked the email address I used to email a link to my blog to the Briomag people (for the first time in about a fortnight) and found a response from them, which I really appreciate given the amount of email they must get. I won’t quote the whole thing, but the gist was that they appreciated the link and thought we had better “agree to disagree.”

I know it’s about as far from Tuesday as it gets, but this looked fun.

1. 5 of your favorite words.

2. 5 of your favorite quotes.

3. 5 things you like about your job (if you have one).

4. 5 places you would like to live.

5. 5 things you like about blogging (or the internet in general).

 

1. Eucatastrophe, passion, Zhai’helleva, serenity, and 遺伝子組み換え作物 (idenshikumikaesakumotsu, the most impressive Japanese word I know. It means genetically modified crops).

 

2. Hahaha. See the bottoms of my posts. “Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened” is probably my favourite. Not that it helps much.

 

3. Well, the only work I’m doing at the moment is some tutoring. I like that my tutoree is nice and we get on well. I like that I get to go back to my high school. I like remembering all the good times I had doing IB. I like that I can now drive there by myself. I like it when my tutoree points out something interesting that I missed.

 

4. In a little apartment in a huge city, somewhere I can see the horizon and millions of stars, in a gypsy-style caravan travelling in Europe, Japan, and, (just to be totally unrealistic) in Valdemar or on Voyager. Yes, that’s six, but what could I leave out?

 

5. Having time to express things exactly how I want to. How the weirdest phenomena get combined, such as the Lolcats Bible and Star Trek inspirational posters. That you occasionally find people with the same odd combination of interests as you. That there’s always someone more obsessed than I am. That ANYTHING you want to know is just a google away (”I don’t know, but Wikipedia does!”)

 

Another of my favourite quotes: “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes.” Mark Twain

I scored 20.5% making me an ordinary Geek. If you do the test, please leave a comment with your score.

On Monday I start back at university. (Yay!) I use the phrase ’start back’ loosely, since I only have one lecture, but I’m sure there will be some queues to stand in for the rest of the day. Anyway, at some time during the first few weeks I will probably be approached by a member of Student Life, a campus club whose mission, according to their website, is to “[change] the world by turning lost students into Christ-centred labourers through out movements on campuses across New Zealand.” You may have heard of them since I understand they’re part of an international evangelism effort. I’m fairly sure they mean “lost” in a spiritual sense…

Incidentally, we also have a club called Christians on Campus but I have yet to encounter them. Actually, we have about half a dozen different Christian clubs, plus a few for other religions. Fortunately not all of them are evangelical, but it still seems a bit odd considering how un-religious New Zealanders generally are.

Background info: New Zealand is extremely secular. Click here and scroll down for the 2001 census stats. Being not-religious, agnostic or atheistic doesn’t raise eyebrows and, for the most part, has no stigma attached. The same is true of being a Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, or any other religion, provided you’re either fairly moderate or keep your fundamentalism to yourself. I’d say we care about what you do than whose name you do it in. Interestingly, most of the Student Life people I’ve spoken with have had American accents…

In our first year, my friends and I were approached by friendly pairs of survey-wielding Student Lifers so many times we lost count. Hopefully this was because we looked an affable bunch and not because we were sending out some kind of subconscious heathen vibes. We (two atheists and an agnostic) joked about finding some ‘tracts’ of our own to exchange for theirs and in second year I got as far writing a little pamphlet. Unfortunately, I chickened out when it came to actually handing it out (I’m like that. I’m working on it.) but we did have some interesting conversations.

Anyway, with round three imminent I’m again determined to be well-prepped to make my points. To that end, I’m going to try to answer all of these ‘Questions for non-believers’ which one of my aforementioned friends found on the local Student Life webpage. I’ll post my answers here and hopefully be able to articulate them more or less coherently should the occasion arise in the ‘real world’. Here goes:

1. How do you explain the high degree of design and order in the universe?

In a nutshell, I don’t. I leave that up to the experts. Expert biologists agree that a designer/creator is not necessary for the animals and plants they study to be as complex as they are. Evolution does the job just fine. As far as I know, expert physicists haven’t conceded the necessity of a deity for the creation of the universe yet either.

Perhaps one day I’ll be expert enough in my field to offer some insight on the subject myself (unlikely, given my chosen subjects, but you never know) but until then I’ll go to the doctor for medical advice and to books like Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene for advice on how the human eye got so complicated. I really should get around to reading that…

To give credit to God for “design and order” is to use a ‘God-of-the-gaps’ argument. That is, to say “I don’t know/understand any other possibility, therefore God did it.” Not good logic. Sometimes we just have to accept the unknown.

Anyway, what does this have to do with my becoming a “Christ-centred labourer?” If I am suddenly convinced that a supernatural explanation for the universe is the way to go, what’s to stop me giving the credit to pixies? It’s a massive leap from ‘we can’t explain the universe,’ or ‘a deity must have created the universe’ to ‘the Christian God described in the Bible designed the universe and sent his only son to Earth to pay for our sins and now wants us to worship him, rest on the Sabbath, and deny same-sex couples the right to marry.’ Right?

I was going to do two questions in this post but looking at the next one (How do you account for the vast archaeological documentation of Biblical stories, places and people?), I think I’ll leave it for another day.

Make your stumbling stones stepping stones. Mr H, a teacher at my high school, said this during a supervised study period. It was one of the few teacher quotes we wrote down that wasn’t funny, stupid or slightly dodgy.