From Keith Yandell’s The Epistemology of Religious Experience (Cambridge University Press, 1994):
We can now put the view that religious experience provides evidence in favor of [the claim that] God exists along these lines: If one has an apparent experience of God under conditions in which there is no reason to think either that one would seem to experience God even if there were no God or that one could not discover, if God does not exist, that this is so, then one has experiential evidence that God exists.
Well, the devil’s in the details.
If you’re having trouble navigating Yandell’s syntax (and God knows I don’t blame you) you may be wondering why I find this so amusing. Okay, here’s what Yandell is saying:
If you feel like you’re personally experiencing God, then this feeling counts as solid evidence for God’s existence if the following two things are true —
- There’s no chance you could just be imagining things, and
- There’s no real way that God’s existence or non-existence could be empirically determined.
Right. Just sort out those two minor, minor points — mere bagatelles, really — and we’re good to go.
Meanwhile, I’m busy organizing our new religion. The encyclical is coming soon.
Posted by The Ghost of Violet under Religion on December 30, 2007, 8:16 pm EST
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Other bloggers would use an artsy-fartsy fey kind of glimmering sunray image for this post. But not me.
The solstices, both of them, are two of my favorite holidays. Not holidays in the sense that I observe social rituals involving other people, but holidays in the sense that I mark them, and feel them, each year. They are natural holidays, natural punctuation points in the rhythm of life on earth.
At the summer solstice the girls and I (the girls being my dogs) used to go out to a small glade where lots of fireflies lived, and we would sit in the wet grass as the sun went down and watch the fireflies wink in and out in the twilight. I don’t do that any more, because I no longer live in a place with fireflies. I miss them.
In winter the darkness smothers me like a blanket as the days grow shorter and shorter. Each day the sun peels away and leaves me alone in the void, unable to breathe. More light! said Goethe. And then the solstice comes, and after that the light, and the oxygen, return. Every year I breathe relief as the days grow longer; every year I say to myself — spontaneously, joyously, in the same way I’ve been saying it since I was a child, and as countless humans have said it for a hundred thousand years — sun’s coming back!
The solstice occurred at 1:08 AM Eastern Standard Time today. Sun’s coming back.
Posted by The Ghost of Violet under Holidays on December 22, 2007, 6:22 pm EST
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I know we’re still creating the religion, but I can’t hold off on this: the Rev. B. Dagger Lee has already composed our first carol. It seems the Rev. Lee is a Charles Wesley type, combining song-writing with preaching. In truth I don’t think she actually had our new religion in mind when she wrote this, but as soon as I saw it (on another board) I begged her to let me co-opt it.
Voilà:
“The Little Hummer Toy”
Spend they told me,
pa rum pum pum pum.
A new charge card, low fee,
pa rum pum pum pum.
Cash registers CA-CHING!
Pa rum pum pum pum.
They take the dough we fling,
pa rum pum pum pum,
rum pum pum pum,
rum pum pum pum.
So our wages go,
pa rum pum pum pum.
We are numb.
Little dollar,
pa rum pum pum pum.
Is destroyed by now,
pa rum pum pum pum.
I have no say-ay-vings!
Pa rum pum pum pum.
To feed me in the spring,
pa rum pum pum pum
rum pum pum pum
rum pum pum pum.
Shall I go bankrupt?
Pa rum pum pum pum,
or steal some?
Cheney nodded,
pa rum pum pum pum.
He took my last last dime,
pa rum pum pum pum.
I prayed the bum would burn!
Pa rum pum pum pum.
I prayed the tide would turn,
pa rum pum pum pum
rum pum pum pum
rum pum pum pum.
Then he cursed at me,
pa rum pum pum pum.
And called me scum.
–The Obtusely Rev. B. Dagger Lee
Posted by The Ghost of Violet under Various and Sundry on December 21, 2007, 2:32 pm EST
12 Comments »
If you look over to the left you’ll see that I’m running an ad from the Sassafras Collection, the first time I’ve done any ad stuff in over a year. The women behind the Sassafras Collection really are feminists, though it doesn’t say that on the website (apparently that sort of thing isn’t a good idea in retail, unless of course you’re a wingnut selling red-white-and-blue bald eagle Support Our Troops beer coasters with matching “Footprints” wall plaque, but I digress). The Sassafras folks are nice people and their stuff is amazing, so check ‘em out.
Posted by The Ghost of Violet under Various and Sundry on December 18, 2007, 7:08 pm EST
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Inspirational image: World’s First Festivus Pole Lot — Milwaukee, Dec. 7, 2007
Foilwoman kicked us off a few days ago:
Oh, I think we need a new religion, where those of us who are worthy get to spend the afterlife (and if we’re really good, the next year or so) drinking wine of our choice in the Spirit Lounge with Dr. Violet either in Holy Ghostly of Fleshly Incarnate form. I’d follow most commandments (except any requiring me to give up chocolate or most pleasurable things for that matter) to have that opportunity.
Okay, we got wine, we got chocolate, we got the Smoking Lounge. What else do we need? What should be forbidden? What should be commanded? Do we need priests and/or priestesses? Do we need churches, temples, votive candles, golden idols, 3D bobble heads to hang from the rearview window? Do we need Sai Baba? What about rituals and holidays? Oh, and beliefs — should we have some beliefs?
Add your suggestions in the comments and we’ll see what we come up with. Don’t be shy — put in anything you like. I’ll wrap it all up, sprinkle in a little Dr. Socks bullshit magic, and have our new religion all ready in time for a Christmas unveiling.
Go!
Posted by The Ghost of Violet under Various and Sundry on December 17, 2007, 11:12 pm EST
28 Comments »
Just in time for Christmas, Junior Prostitute Wear:
I see this as meshing well with Walmart’s whole philosophy. This is the company that’s notorious for refusing to fill women’s prescriptions for contraception, the company that yanked a “Someday a Woman Will Be President” T-shirt from their shelves because it didn’t “fit in with family values,” the company that was hit with the biggest class-action suit in history because of its discrimination against female employees. It’s a Republican Jesus kind of place, where guns are cheap, the employees are paid in small increments of dirt, and books by Jon Stewart are banned. And speaking of books, have you ever checked out the book section at Walmart? It’s 90% Left Behind (the entire series, which apparently runs to about 75 volumes) and insipid “how to be a happy Christian woman” things with clouds and crucifixes on the covers. The whole goddamn store is like an audiovisual demonstration of Patriarchy At Work.
Which is why the prostitution thing fits in so well. Under patriarchy, women are the sexual property of men. Either we’re the private exclusive property of one man, in which case we’ll want to stock up on those cloud-and-crucifix books, or the publicly fuckable property of whoever’s paying, in which case we’ll need those panties.
Personally I’m waiting for Walmart to take the next step and start actually selling women. Always Low Prices!
Posted by The Ghost of Violet under Various and Sundry on December 13, 2007, 10:41 am EST
15 Comments »
One of the central claims of evolutionary psychology is that virtually all human behavior was hard-wired into the brain during the “Era of Evolutionary Adaptation,” a mythical time deep in the Stone Age that bore an uncanny resemblance to The Flintstones. According to ev psychos this golden age ended 10,000 years ago, and the human brain hasn’t evolved since, leading to a cottage industry in self-help books and speaking engagements by would-be brain gurus endlessly repeating that “our modern skulls house stone age minds.” It’s a ridiculous concept that has never made a lick of sense, because it was invented by psychologists who know even less about evolution (biological or cultural) than they do about psychology.
I could go into a lengthy discussion here of why it makes no sense, but instead I’ll just point you to this lovely new genetic study (New York Times, Science Daily) showing that human evolution has in fact sped up — enormously so — in the past 40,000 years, and especially in the past 10,000. Those dates line up nicely with two key transitions in our species’ history. The Upper Paleolithic explosion 40,000 years ago marks the point when modern humans started spreading over the planet and creating complex culture: art, jewelry, burial rituals, vastly more complex tools and technology, everything. And 10,000 years ago we had the Neolithic revolution, with the invention of agriculture and all that brought. If this new study is accurate, the rate of genetic change in humans during the past 5,000 years alone has been 100 times higher than in any other period of our evolution.
A caution: some people are already misunderstanding the import of this, thinking it means that biology rules and cultural evolution is unimportant. That couldn’t be more wrong. As powerful as genetic evolution is, it’s still grindingly slow and small compared to the speed and breadth of human cultural change. Culture is what made our genetic evolution speed up and is what’s keeping it on the boil. Our physical evolution for the past 40,000 years has been an interlocking, spiraling dance of cultural change and biological adaptation. And “human nature” — which the ev psychos are so fond of imagining was carved in stone hundreds of thousands of years ago — is a moving target. You cannot talk about the “nature” of women or the “nature” of men or anything else. The human species is in a slipstream of constant flux as our culture and our genes ceaselessly interact.
Posted by The Ghost of Violet under Ev-Psych Bullshit on December 11, 2007, 6:35 am EST
5 Comments »
The blogosphere is picking up on a story that started coming in over the wires last week: religious vigilantes in Basra have murdered at least 40 women in the past year for various infractions of Islamic law. Typically the victim’s body is mutilated and dumped with a note pinned to it explaining whatever monumental death-worthy crime against the universe the woman had committed (wearing lipstick, not wearing a headscarf, etc.)
The Washington Post first ran this story last week, and here’s what the page looked like:
Okay, see the internal banner ad up there above the article? The one that’s floating context-sensitively over a story about batshit crazy god-botherers who are on a killing spree against women in the name of religion? Here’s what it says, in case the type is too small for you to read:
“On Faith | Join Two Nobel Prize winners, Iran’s former president, the author of “The Purpose Driven Life” and others in a dynamic conversation about faith and its impact on the world.”
Click on that banner ad and you’ll be whisked to a soft, gooey, bluish page with padded walls where the Washington Post is hosting a tasteful symposium on “faith.” Contributors include Rick Warren, he of the purpose driven life, a particularly piquant presence in this instance since Warren is basically the modern American corporocraptastic Ray Kroc billions-and-billions-served version of the serial killers in Basra. Theocracy in a Hawaiian shirt with a side order of fries.
Here’s my contribution to this oh-so-dynamic paid endorsement of horseshit: let’s stop calling it “faith.” Let’s call it something else, something more accurate. How about “rationale for the most evil bloodthirsty shit ever committed in the history of the world”? Or “age-old excuse to persecute women”? Or just “festering brain sickness”?
It would put a different spin on things, wouldn’t it?
President Jesus would deliver faux-earnest sound bites about the importance of Festering Brain Sickness-Based Initiatives. Wanna-Be President Romney would give a speech on “Festering Brain Sickness in America” (money quote: “Festering brain sickness requires freedom, but freedom also requires festering brain sickness”). The Washington Post would lure readers to its blue padded room with a banner urging them to “Join Two Nobel Prize winners and others in a dynamic conversation about festering brain sickness and its impact on the world.” Once there, readers would find a selection of articles on “choosing a festering brain sickness” that’s right for them.
I like it.
Posted by The Ghost of Violet under Godbags, Religion on December 10, 2007, 4:05 pm EST
6 Comments »
Mitt Romney’s religion speech has had more advance publicity than “The Passion of the Christ.” Every goddamn day for the past month, it seems, the media has been pumping it. “Romney schedules religious speech.” “Romney to discuss Mormonism.” “Romney will seek to allay fears.” “The most important speech of Romney’s career.” “Is this Romney’s JFK moment?”
Jesus H. Christ on a starship to Kolob.
Romney is a Republican. That means he’ll say whatever he thinks will soothe the wingnut batshit evangelicals who are the useful-idiot voting core of the Republican party. If he’s elected (bog help us) he’ll do what all Republican presidents do, which is run the country as a slush fund for the military-industrial-corporacracy while simultaneously backing whatever regressive social policies will continue to soothe the wingnut batshit evangelicals.
The main similarity between Mitt Romney and JFK is in their jawlines. Romney’s got that square-jawed look, same as JFK. Oh, and the hair — good thick head of hair.
Posted by The Ghost of Violet under Politics on December 6, 2007, 7:16 pm EST
7 Comments »
From the story about Huckabee’s parole of rapist Wayne DuMond:
It has all the markings of salacious, tabloidian detail that can haunt a candidate, a lawmaker, an elected official, who walks and stalks the halls of criminal justice, who has, as he has said, weighed decisions on whether to impose capital punishment, and has ordered death.
Salacious?
Main Entry: sa·la·cious
Function: adjective
1 : arousing or appealing to sexual desire or imagination : lascivious
2 : lecherous, lustful
DuMond was convicted of raping a 17-year old girl. After he was paroled he went on to rape and murder two more women.
I’m not feeling turned on, are you?
UPDATE: The magic of the tubes. The Times has removed the word “salacious” from the article. Poof!
Posted by The Ghost of Violet under Rape on December 6, 2007, 12:04 am EST
9 Comments »
I know, I know, you’re thinking, “Jesus H. Christ, Violet is so old and out of it she doesn’t know that ‘pimp’ and ‘ho’ have long since entered the mainstream as acceptable monikers for hip, happenin’ men and women!” Well, Mr. Rhetorical Device, it just so happens that I do know that, but since I strive mightily to keep as much distance between myself and popular culture as ghostily possible, it’s not something I usually have to think about.
But now some creep named “Pimp C” is dead (I know he was a creep because his stage name was “Pimp C,” for chrissake), and instead of bewailing the loss of a young life, as I ought to be doing, I just keep thinking about that goddamn name. Pimps are people who, by definition, exploit women. They exploit women, they beat them up, they rape them, sometimes they kill them. You might as well call yourself “Rapist.”
Posted by The Ghost of Violet under Various and Sundry on December 5, 2007, 11:42 am EST
1 Comment »
My favorite lede from today’s news stories:
Great Britain and Sudan are in high-level talks to free a British schoolteacher who was sentenced to 15 days imprisonment after allowing her class to name a teddy bear ‘Mohammed.’
You know, when I was a kid we had high-level talks over nuclear detente. Now we’re down to teddy bears.
Maybe this whole thing is just Khartoum’s bid to change its brand image from “genocidal maniacs” to “laughing stock of the world.”
Posted by The Ghost of Violet under Various and Sundry on December 2, 2007, 3:44 pm EST
12 Comments »
