Very quick update: We went out this morning, a bunch of my work mates and I, and shot the hell out of each other with paintballs fired at high velocity.

The back of my calf.

I didn’t come out of it too bad, and I’ve counted least 20 welts on me. That was helped by the fact that I had the best frakking gun money could hire, which gave me an extra 10 metres of range over most of the other players. I mitigated this by volunteering to wear the bright orange flouro vest which designated me as a general. Turns out the generals could only be killed with a direct hit below the knees. Once my team (aka my guards) all died, I did a runner for the opposite end of the field — figuring (a) a moving target is harder to hit, and (b) it’s even harder still to hit a moving target below the knees. I almost made it, too…

My other thigh.

One of my mates brought a video camera with a snake-like telescopic aperture, which he duct-taped to his helmet, giving us a good helmet-cam video. I’m looking forward to seeing the footage.

By the end of the day, I’d been hit so many times that I no longer cared that much. So when the free-for-all happened at the end, I simply walked out like the Terminator and started picking people off. Got a few good head shots, and since my gun (modelled after the Heckler & Koch MP5) could fire off 8 rounds per second, I rarely hit anyone just once. Photos will follow, and video will come once I get a copy of the video.

side view

Arm and shoulder

Bicep

“Take my love. Take my land. Take me where I cannot stand.
Don’t forget, I’m still free. You can’t take the sky from me.
Take me out, into the black. Tell ‘em I ain’t coming back.
Burn the land and boil the sea. You can’t take the sky from me.”

NASA has a poll up to name the new ISS node, and Serenity is one of the options.

You know what to do.

http://www.nasa.gov/externalflash/name_ISS/index.html

Totally ganked from rightc0ast who posted in food_pill

But with competition like Earthrise¹, Legacy, and Venture, I doubt they expected any result BUT Serenity.

And those top suggestions? Who the hell suggested Endor? I thought the Ewoks were universally reviled — possibly surpassed only by Jar Jar Binks?

We can certainly do better. Here are a few more worthy suggestions:

1. Caprica
2. Hoth
3. Thedus (points if you know where this one comes from without looking it up)
4. Kobol
5. Federation Starbase 12187

Gimme your best.

¹: Okay, I lied. Earthrise is a pretty cool name. I’m totally stealing it for the next time I need to name a spaceship.

Last week my wife (who is a theist) challenged me with this question: Why this sudden obsession with atheism? Okay, she didn’t use those words, but her message was clear, as was the reason she asked. I do have a tendency to “adopt a cause” and do it passionately for a while before it fades into the background — like a favoured t-shirt than eventually gets tucked into the back of the wardrobe to be pulled out when convenient.

Another part of the thrust of her question was “Why do you have to raise this issue? How have you been disadvantaged by being an atheist?” Keep in mind, dear reader, that I live in Australia, which is nowhere nearly so dominated by religion-in-politics (a very deadly combination). Coming from the United States as I do, I argued that even if religion wasn’t front-and-centre in the political scene, it must be one of the silent ever-present factors determining which politicians actually get elected. In this, I was happy to be shown wrong. Bob Hawke, Prime Minister of Australia from 1983 to 1991, was an agnostic. Bill Hayden, Governor-general from 1989 to 1996, was an atheist (although in my defense, the G-G is not popularly elected, but appointed by the PM, meaning that in this case, the atheist was appointed by the agnostic).

So why then, did I feel the need to make such a big deal about atheism? It would be easy to dismiss this as a “shut up, that’s why” argument — designed to do nothing but stop the discussion there — but E- isn’t the kind of person to make those arguments. I think her question was more one of trying to understand where I’m coming from and so it warranted further thought.

The question germinated in the back of my head all week long, and I turned my motivations over in my head, examining them from all angles. I read, and thought, and read some more. Why did I care so much about atheism and religion, when it had so little immediate effect on my life?

I’ve come up with a few answers:

It does have an immediate effect in my life. Particularly when it comes to familial relationships. My family are all devout Southern Baptists (except my brother, who rebelled and became a Presbyterian). They have no knowledge of my atheism (although my brother may have a clue, and has said he’s deeply concerned), and they probably still think of me as Christian. This isn’t a huge deal, since they remain state-side, but it’s a deception, and it means that when we do talk, it has to be about non-religious topics. When you consider the fact that I’m a liberal and my family are conservatives, it doesn’t leave us with much to talk about.

E-’s parents definitely think of me as a Christian, and here the impact is much more immediate. Instead of being 26,112 km (according to google maps, who prefer kayaks to aeroplanes) away, E’s parents live a whole 3 km away. We see them on a regular basis, and this includes a bunch of their religious functions — they are largely social events, but the Christian trappings make me feel uncomfortable. At Easter, the traditional greeting is “Christ is risen,” to which you are expected to respond “Truly he is risen.” I cannot, because that would be an affirmation of something I do not believe.

I know for a fact that if I “came out” to them as an atheist, it would strain relationships all around — between them and me, and E would be caught in the middle as they’d approach her about me. That’s not something I’m willing to do, so my little charade continues for now.

But it’s going to come out one day. I will not lie to my children about my beliefs. And they will probably ask around about the same time that they start going to scripture classes (another post on this for another time). Once they ask, it will almost certainly come out somehow.

It’s late here, so I’ll post some of my other thoughts on the matter tomorrow.

My better half (E) and I were watching an old episode of BattleStar Galactica the other day, when Brother Cavil was counselling Chief Tyrol. We paused the episode and had a long discussion about religion and atheism in the context of our lives.

To make this part brief, I can be described as an atheist — I believe that the only definition of god that fits is “the Universe as god.” If it has a consciousness, it’s so far beyond our comprehension and we are so far beneath its notice as to make the question of religion moot. It’s not going to intercede on your behalf, and you certainly don’t pray to it. Any afterlife (as part of the universe) will not be in any form that we recognise or imagine now. E has described herself to me as a Christian — her faith is personal, while her membership in her church is social.

One of the comments I made was something along the lines of “atheism now is where homosexuals were a few years ago.” E’s reply was “That’s ridiculous; no one’s getting beaten to death because they’re an atheist.” And she’s right. That wasn’t where my main argument meant to go. But I think my comment is also right; it just needed clarification.

And it’s here, in Greta Christina’s article 10 Myths and Truths About Atheists that I found the same argument, only worded much better than I could put it. It neatly sums up what I meant:

6. Atheists are just being trendy.

Yes, atheism is everywhere now. In bookstores, on the news, in the blogosphere. Just like gay people were in the early ’90s. African Americans in the late ’50s. Women in the early ’70s. There’s a point in any major social movement when it reaches critical mass. It gathers adherents and sympathizers, who become more visible and vocal … a process that’s self-perpetuating.

The movement picks up steam. It can no longer be ignored. At which point the mass media has a collective “WTF?” freakout. Who are these atheists (gays, African Americans, women), and where did they come from all of a sudden? Like we haven’t been here all along.

Does that make atheism trivial? A fad, something people do to be cool? Of course not. No more than being queer is. Coming out as atheist is often a big deal. It can mean losing friends, being cut off from family. It can mean getting threatened by neighbors or kicked out of school, losing job opportunities or custody of your kids. And it often means a major upheaval in how you see yourself and your life. People don’t do this to be trendy. People do it to be true to themselves.

The rest of the article can be read here: http://www.alternet.org/story/126118/10_myths_and_truths_about_atheists_/?page=entire
Greta Christina’s blog can be found here: http://gretachristina.typepad.com/

This post was originally published at my old blog over at Livejournal.com. Because it forms the starting point for most of my atheism discussions, I thought I’d port it over here. The post has been edited only to add references to bible passages, and links to the Council of Trent.

Posted 2007 June 01:

I’m having a “crisis” of faith. It’s not really a crisis (as my death is far from impending, as far as I can tell), but that’s the popular terminology.

Now I’ve had this crisis for the last several years, but I’ve only just now been able to kind of boil it down to some core principles.

First, some background info… I was born into a Christian family, and raised in a Southern Baptist church — I’d say it was a liberal southern Baptist church, but the truth is that I never saw that put to any sort of test. I have absolutely no problem with any of the people in that church. They were all great role models, and morally upright people. Great parents, and supportive people all. I had no reason to challenge my faith back then.

So when my wife met me, I was still quite happily Christian, and devoutly but not antagonistically so.

We met, fell in love, I moved to Australia, and we got married. I ended up not attending any church for a long time. Was this a catalytic event? I have no idea. I don’t even know if it factors or not, but there it is.

The more I looked at the world, the more I started to see religion used to justify all sorts of evil. Hell, it’s been happening for centuries. The Crusades, the long-lasting conflict between Israel and Palestine, the modern-day terrorist attacks — these are all religiously motivated. When questioned, these people all use the religious texts of their flavour to justify their actions.

In a less extreme example, most of these religions encourage social intolerance by mandating that the practitioners’ of the faith go out and convert others to the same faith. When the world was being explored, missionaries went with the explorers to bring civilisation (meaning religion) to the savages, showing an assumption of superiority (these people must be converted) — and great evils were done. Look at the Stolen Generation as one example. Pushing our beliefs on other people is still done today. Look at the debate over creationism vs evolutionism. Creationists are demanding to have their religious beliefs taught alongside something which is demonstrably provable, and I think that’s wrong. Believe what you like, but don’t you dare tell me what to believe.

Another thing that’s also bothered me: Christian recruiting (or testimony, if you must). Every day I walk past a church sign on the way to the train station (actually, I walk past two churches, but one of them has a sign), and every week they have one or two new pithy sayings: “Jesus didn’t save himself so that he could save you,” and “It’s a shame Aussies don’t love the son as much as they love the sun,” and “If Jesus scored 100 wickets would you worship him then?” are some examples. While the above are not good examples for my following argument, many of these sayings seem to focus around fear: “Accept Christ, follow Christianity, or burn in hell for eternity.” In fact, now I remember one…

You could leave salvation to the last minute… if you knew when that was going to be.

And “evangelising” like that is nothing more than preying on people’s fear of the unknown.

So right from the beginning of my questioning, I found myself completely turned off any form of organised religion. I was content to describe myself at that point as a “generic, non-church-going, not denominational Christian.” But I couldn’t help but look further.

Now there’s no denying that the Bible (and I’m assuming the Qur’an and the Torah as well) were written by men. If you seriously believe that it is the literal word of god, then I think you have something wrong with your head. There’s been entirely too much messing about by people to even begin to seriously think that. Look at the events of the Council of Trent for one example.

So the Bible (and assumedly the other religion texts which form the basis of the Abrahamic religions: Christianity, Islam, and Judaism) was written and edited by men. It was and it still used quite easily to justify so much that is clearly evil.

And it occurred to me: if it’s written in a way that people can use to justify their actions now, perhaps it was written THEN to justify another set of actions. After all human motivation and actions haven’t changed all that much in the last 2000 years, let alone the last 500 years (Council of Trent again). Look at the early parts of the Bible to see just how gruesome some of the early “righteous” were: there’s gang rape (Judges 19:20-29) and incest sanctioned by the righteous (2 Samuel 13), and ethnic cleansing sanctioned by god directly (Joshua 6:16-21, Joshua 8, and Joshua 10:28-41).

And when I started to look at the Bible again, this time asking myself what benefit could the author of this book (individual chapters of the Bible) have for writing what they did.

For much of the New Testament, this is obvious. Paul, through his letters, stood to gain (and has gained) much influence over the infant religion by influencing these early churches.

As for the gospels… I’m satisfied that a person named Jesus existed and said the things he said. As for his divinity there’s still a question mark… why were the other gospels not included in the Bible at the Council of Trent? What was in them, and who stood to benefit by their exclusion?

I’m not advocating conspiracy here… but I am thinking critically, and it’s led me to doubt many things.

Thanks for listening.

Edited to add: I’m not swearing myself to be an atheist here. I’ve been an avowed Christian for more than 2/3 of my life, and that’s not something shed lightly. I know I’m not satisfied with the dogma any more, and so I’m looking for my own answers. If you’ve found yours, more power to you… so long as you don’t try to force your answers on me.

After almost half a decade, I’ve decided to move my primary blog from the excellent LiveJournal to my own domain. Patchwolf.com’s main domain had been sitting largely unused since almost 2004, and I decided it was time to put it to some use.

So what’s this blog going to be about? Pretty much anything that comes to mind. Politics, religion, martial arts, psychology, raising a family, technology, and the like. Anything that comes to mind, really. What I will try to avoid is pointless “my computer’s messing up again! *Grrr*” style posts. I want every post I make to still hold some value three months down the track. The tricky part of this will be trying to find something of value frequently enough to make this worthwhile. I’ve written a few of these posts in my time at LJ, and at some point I will migrate those posts to this platform as well.