I walked into this class at the beginning of the semester as a very confident atheist and, now at the end of the semester, long story short, nothing has changed.

We touched on religion only a handful of times in this course, and while I understand that the class is about race relations, religion plays into race relations a great deal so I wished we would have delved into it a little more; also, because it’s a personal favorite subject of mine. That said, the times that religion was brought up in class seemed pretty tame to me. Maybe it is because I have spent a lot of time during my initial transition from Christianity to Atheism during high school looking into not only Christianity, but religion overall quite deeply. However, there were a few times that Sam brought up some ridiculous points. My personal favorite being the story of the shaman he met that healed his ankle instantly by being able to go into a trance-like state and then walk through the forest and have plants talk to him to tell him to use their roots to heal his patient. He followed this up with there being some sort of “life energy” in the Universe, possibly in place of a god for atheists. I rambled on about this “claim” for an entire blog in previous weeks so I won’t repeat it here, but it was topics like this that I feel Sam was giving an unrealistic, or even unreal “hope”, to theists in the class, that their religion may be correct. It really comes down to this in many ways, there are thousands of different religions in the world, millions or even billions if you consider each person to have their own slightly different version of one of the major religions, so what makes yours the right one? According to only the major religions, everyone on Earth is damned to some version of hell if you don’t follow every religion. But then what if there is a single god whom instilled all these different versions of religion on the people of Earth? If so, one should be able to do just about anything according to one religion or another and still be granted access to paradise, or whatever version of that a specific religion believes in.
In all, the inconsistencies in any religion are just too great to be taken seriously. I’m a computer programmer so my life revolves around very strict logic and religion is anything but logical and if something is logical, I can refuse to accept it. So until religion and align its differences with modern science and correct the inconsistencies with popular topics such as the origin of life, and morality, I refuse to accept it because when I’m writing a computer program, if a single character in the source code of the program is wrong, the whole program falls apart, and that’s what religion is like for me; once one part of it is illogical, it’s entire ideology is illogical and must be considered invalid.

It seems that modern revolves around fear-mongering in a way. TV and movies portrays horrible crimes as common occurrences, the media heavily reports on when these crimes actually occur. The government wants us all to believe that we're at imminent danger of being blown up by terrorists. There are so many people telling us that we're not safe and need to be afraid. Why? Because it makes money. Why else? Everything goes back to money so would this be any different? The media wants you to think that you'll be safe if you watch their programs; that by watching their programs you'll be better prepared for the new, big bad, scary threat X. It's all a game because that's what gets views and views get advertisers and advertisers bring in money. Then we have the government. Oh, the government. Let's look at the worst of the fear-mongerers, the TSA. The TSA wants you to believe that without their protection the terrorists are going to blow up every plane in the sky. That's hilarious since anyone can easily get past current airport security, but no planes have fallen out of the sky. Over the last decade Americans have been conditioned to be afraid to fly. That flying is inherently dangerous because of the risk of terrorism. Look at the numbers. How many people have flown in the last decade and how many have been harmed due to some sort of terrorism? I don't have exact numbers, but common sense will tell you chances are absurdly low, especially when compared to something like car accidents.

It basically comes down to this, in 2010 Bruce Scheinder, considered to be the world's foremost expert on security, specifically computer security, but all types of security nonetheless, spoke at TEDxPSU. He said something that stuck with me when I heard it there, “if it's on the news, don't worry about it.” It's a remarkably true statement. Think about some of the things that were supposed to kill us all over the last decade: H1N1, Anthrax, Fukushima, North Korea launching a long range missile, and so many more. How many of those had any affect on the average person's life? None. Zero. So why worry? It's much more realistic to worry about more common occurrences like burglary, identify theft, car accidents, drunk drivers, etc. But you never hear about those because they happen all the time. Why would the media try to get more viewers with something that happens all the time? Bruce Scheinder also said at TEDxPSU 2010 that the news is, by definition, a reporting on rare events. Therefore, if it's on the news, it's pointless to live in fear over. Bottom line, there are much more common events to be fearful of than the big scary item the government or the media is going nuts over for a given week.

It seems almost human nature for one to feel a need to have someone to talk to about their problems. Religion provides fulfills this need in providing a person either someone who they think is wiser than themselves to talk to or even better, an all-knowing entity, god. It is comforting for one to feel that their life is out of their hands; to think that 'everything happens for a reason', 'it's all part of god's plan', or 'god works in mysterious ways'. This allows a person to relieve some of the pressures on them. Praying is a perfect example of this. It seems a little ridiculous to think that just by asking for something it will be given to you for really no reason whatsoever. But then again, logic isn't one of religion's strong points. This need to talk to someone stems from the thought that someone maybe older, more wise will be able to offer advice to help a person solve their problems. In fact, it seems as though that religion is just this concept taken to the extreme. At some point in history, man was looking for answers and created a being that was all-knowing, perfect, and never wrong. What better being to ask for the answers to your problems? However, not everyone wants to pray to an imaginary man in the sky and hope for some sort of a sign, because they might be impatient or realize the futility of asking someone that never talks back a question. So pastors and priests came along. These are people that are somehow disciples of god and do god’s work, even though it’s impossible for him to appoint them since he refuses to make himself known. Nevertheless, people go to these pastors with their problems in hopes that through divine intervention or some equally as powerful magic they will be given the answers to their problems. It all seems completely redundant if you ask me. Here’s a better idea: take responsibility for your own life and instead of spending your time praying that your problems will be solved by you doing nothing but talking to an imaginary man in the sky, figure out a solution to your problem and actively pursue said solution. Granted, this does entail releasing the thought that everything is following “god’s plan” and that you might do something that isn’t in your best interest—this scares most people. Regardless, life post-determinism can be much more optimistic than thinking that everything happens for a reason because one can easily have the thought that their life follows the path they want it to take and that nothing is already pre-determined. This opens up the door to amazing possibilities, but only if a person is willing to take a step back from the indoctrination that is organized religion and realize that life moves on, in many cases in much better ways, without the support of organized religion and the pseudo-support of directly asking religious figures for solutions to problems that can be solved in much more realistic ways.

It seems as though when you walk into school in a poor neighborhood there is a much higher level of security than a school in a rich neighborhood. And since blacks and Hispanics are more likely to live in poor neighborhoods it would seem as though there is discrimination against these racial groups. That is, just because they are black or Hispanic, they are watched more closely by the police while whites are given a much longer leash. Then, even if a white person is arrested for some crime, they are much more likely to have any potential criminal charges dropped, or greatly reduced while the black or Hispanic person is prosecuted. Is it really that cut and dry? That there is active discrimination by police against certain racial groups? Or are there other forces at play here?

Let’s look at it from a class point of view. In lower class neighborhoods, there is a higher crime rate. Granted, in more wealthy areas, there may be white-collar crime, unreported crimes, etc., but in general, it’s a safe assumption that crime rates are higher in less wealthy areas. Furthermore, blacks and Hispanics are more likely to be in a lower class, and live in the areas with higher crime rates. Thus, the police focus their efforts in areas with the most crime. This inevitably leads to higher security in the schools in low wealth areas than the schools in high wealth areas. Additionally, it’s not like if a white person living in a low wealth area would be exempt from the security at a school in these areas. Now, if said white person is arrested for some crime, the way the judicial system would handle him is another topic entirely, and we’re discussing strictly security at schools here. By the same token, a black or Hispanic in a high wealth area school would not be treated with a higher level of security separate from any other student of the school.

It really boils down to this: the crime rate in low wealth neighborhoods is higher. Police are going to target the areas with the highest crime rates. Thus, they target low wealth areas where there are high populations of blacks and Hispanics. In fact, it would be wrong of the police to shift their resources from these low wealth, high crime areas, to high wealth, low crime areas. Their job is to protect citizens, in this case, students, and statistically speaking, students at schools in low wealth areas are more at risk than those in high wealth areas. Thus, the police should have a larger presence in low wealth schools. The fact that there is a high black and Hispanic population in these areas is simply a side-effect of the low wealth neighborhood, not because there is active discrimination against these groups.

So this question was really if we, European descents, should give back the land our ancestors took from the Native Americans back to them? When this question was originally asked to the class I said no, and I still stand by my answer. However, we still have to deal with the consequences of our ancestors decisions and that involves accommodating those that we took land from. That said, the idea of sharing the land is a very feasible idea and one that is, in some respects, already implemented. While history cannot back the claim that our ancestors directly tried to force the Native Americans out of the eastern half of the early United States, their posterity has tried to accommodate them. We no longer try to force Native Americans to leave and it has been a long time since any bigot has had a problem with them living alongside us in modern society. In fact, our government has allocated reserves for those that wish to not live alongside the descendents of those that took their land from them. This seems like a fair compromise that accommodates both groups of people whom had no relation to those who originally caused the problem. This sounds great on paper and all, but in practice, the reality of the situation is much different.

However, there is essentially no equality between Native American society and the descents of the Europeans. Granted, this is only a subset of a much larger problem of inequality between all races, but in this case, do we have a responsibility to help the Native Americans since our ancestors were directly responsible for their current position in society? Or are we actually helping them right now because just by living in the United States they are arguably better off than they would have been if we had not adopted them into our society? What I’m getting at is that just by living in the United States, even the lowest classes are privileged to a higher standard of living that that of many (not all, or even most) countries. On the other hand, equality by comparison is a weak argument. Saying that one group is better off than another group does not mean that they should not have a right to be more equal to an even higher group. Normally, I would say the one social group has no responsibility for the welfare of another group, but when that group is directly responsible for the another groups inequality then the higher group does has a responsibility to make the two groups more equal. However, how to do this is another discussion entirely that is also part of a the much larger problem of class inequality in general.

I’m not proud to be an American just because I was born here. There I said it.

This whole “you don’t support America” mantra is very disturbing. It’s like a religion in a sense; you blindly follow what you’re told by your “leaders” and from social tyranny. If you question it, you’re branded as “un-American”, or “un-patriotic”. As an atheist that firmly believes in how dangerous organized religion is, this extreme pride in one’s country is no different from the dangers of organized religion.

So you were born in America? So what? That automatically makes you a part of the greatest country ever? Have you ever experienced other countries? Why are we better than them? I’m un-American for asking those questions? Okay, sure.

There’s this idea that if you question military action, you’re un-American or you don’t support America. If you don’t “support the troops” you’re a bad person. What does “support the troops” mean? Hope that they aren’t killed while fighting for something that someone told them they care about? Or is it just sticking a bumper sticker on your car? Get over yourself. “Support the troops” is a meaningless, feel-good statement. I don’t want these men and women to be harmed, nor does anyone that says “support the troops”, but then we as a country allow them to go to war? If you really support them, you would be against them even going to war.

Getting more philosophical, once you realize just how fragile and meaningless life is, war, fighting, violence, all of it seems completely pointless and childish. As Carl Sagan said reflecting on a photograph of the Earth taken from Voyager 1 as it passed Saturn, “Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.” We are on a rock floating through space in a Universe that is ~80 billion light years across and we kill each other to gain control of a few square miles of that Universe for an amount of time, in comparison to the age of the Universe, is less than a nanosecond. Seems kind of pointless, huh? Seems a little ridiculous that anyone would feel justified to take another human’s life to help some “supreme leader” capture a victory that is going to mean nothing in nothing more than a few short trips around our star. That’s where I stand on war. Call me a pacifist if you will, it doesn’t bother me. That last few Soc classes haven’t changed my stance in the slightest. If anything, seeing the harm that came to some of the people in that very class only made me realize how unnecessary and unjustified war is.

Since there seems to be a lot of confusion and outright lies being thrown around mainly be the right wing media about the topic of legalizing gay marriage I thought I would attack the inconsistencies in the anti-gay marriage rhetoric.

First off, the political group that is currently greatly opposed to gay marriage is the Republican Party. Now, Republicans are supposedly in favor of minimal intervention from the government in citizen’s lives and favor small government; the whole “the government that governs least, governs best” mantra. However, they feel it is okay for the government to regulate who can and can’t get married. Who the hell are you (the Republicans) to say who can and can’t get married. Last I checked, two consenting adults are free to love whom they wish. The government cannot say otherwise.

But what about marriage being a religious construct? Republicans love to argue that the government cannot interfere with their right to practice religion as they see fit under the idea of the separation of church and state, however, when beneficial to them, they feel it okay for the government to place regulation on marriage, something they consider a religious practice. Granted, marriage is not solely religious anymore—that is, a male and female atheist can marry without anyone saying a word about it.

Moreover, the Declaration of Independence states that all men are created equal. Now, when written, that statement really did not apply to everyone, but has since been redefined to include men and women alike from all backgrounds and races. Therefore, if a man and women are allowed to marry and it is considered a right that they are allowed to do so, but two men or two women are not allowed to marry, then the government is granting a right to some citizens, while denying it to others. This is a clear violation of “all men are created equal”. Therefore, for anyone that believes that all men are equal, it is given that it is not the government’s place to restrict the right to marriage to any two consenting adults.

Furthermore, another flawed Republican argument against gay marriage is that it will lead to the destruction of marriage itself. Beyond the fact that society is okay with celebrities getting married and then almost immediately divorcing and the over 50% divorce rate of all marriages, there is the idea that gay marriage is going to lead to people marrying objects or animals. This is pretty simple, marriage is defined as the union of consenting adults. Animals and objects are neither human, nor consenting so a human may not marry them. Additionally, by the argument above, animals and objects are not citizens and the government is not required to give them the same rights as humans. All in all, it’s clear that gay marriage poses no threat to the institution of marriage, nor the church, and to keep it illegal is nothing short of unconsititutional.

I have been through my fair share of technical interviews where I am asked to solve complex problems. Whether or not you are able to solve the problem is mostly irrelevant. Rather, the interviewer wants to see your thought process as you work through the problem. This is the important part of the interview—the communication between interviewer and interviewee. It is the interviewer’s job to select a candidate that is not only technically competent in the field he is interviewing for, but to also select a candidate that will be able to mesh with the corporate culture and work well with other employees. It is obvious that a person is most comfortable around others of the same race and that comfort directly translates to productivity. Furthermore, it is a corporation’s job to be as productive as possible so it easy to see why a company would prefer to hire a white person over a person of color if the existing workforce was predominately white. To this end, companies should be applauded for hiring non-whites into their workforce when they are on the same technical competency level as white applicants. Is this system skewed towards whites? Yes, of course.

That being said, what can be done to correct this imbalance? Well, if the underlying reason is that humans are more comfortable around others with the same skin color, fixing the problem at the root involves overturning that notion. Unfortunately, that’s easier said than done considering the current people in these companies have been working and living with others of the same skin color for the majority of their lives. Thus, the only way to correct something like this is to play the long game and hope that as younger people advance into the higher ranks of corporations, they have been around people of different skin colors growing up and are more at ease with working with people of a different skin color. From this point, interviews and a candidates’ select-ability will be based solely on merit, rather than who the interviewer is most comfortable with. This is a long term solution, however. It would be irresponsible to try to flip this inequality overnight as it could hurt the working dynamic of corporations that are not ready for change. People are resistant to change in general, especially fast change, but slow change is tolerable, so that is the best that can be asked for.

How do I feel about this whole inequality regarding interviews? A candidate should be awarded a job on merit, not by skin color, but a large part of selecting a candidate is how well that person is going to fit into the company. If the company is predominately white, and those white people are uncomfortable working with non-whites, the person is not a good fit. It will take a much larger societal change for people to become comfortable working with people of different skin color before this imbalance is evened out.

I consider myself a pretty ingrained atheist and existentialist so to answer the question in short: There is no life energy, only coincidence.

It seems that what Sam is really getting at with this question is where did everything come from. The Universe is seemingly infinite (current models show a finite Universe, but regardless), and contains billions upon billions of galaxies each with millions of stars in them, most of those with planets orbiting them, and each of those planets with the possibility of life (I wonder how religion will cope with the discovery of extraterrestrial life, because it is without a doubt out there; look up the Drake equation for evidence). It’s nice to sit here in our cozy little corner of the Universe, look up at the night sky, and say “Wow, it’s all so beautiful and organized.” While it is certainly beautiful, the Universe is anything but organized. In fact, despite humans best efforts to understand it completely, we still have some huge problems with our current models of Universe. For example, if our current ideas of physics are correct, we’re missing (read: not observing) 70% of the mass in the Universe. Dark matter hopefully resolves this problem, and hopefully the LHC finds it, but until then it’s a huge gap in our understanding of the Universe. The point? The Universe is a chaotic and random place. There is no structure, no organization, no goal in sight for its evolution. If there was some type of “life energy” or god, there would be structure and order, but we find the complete opposite. We may not know for sure what started everything we see around us, but we have some pretty good ideas based on years of research and that is orders of magnitude more reliable than any religion.

Everything we know about the Universe, about the evolution of life, is that it is all random. Everything is coincidence. Religion is nothing more than the basic human want to look at something bigger than himself and try to find meaning in the meaningless because that’s all that life is, completely meaningless. Some people are afraid of that and turn to religion to find meaning. I, however, take comfort in that fact. It means that it is up to me to give life meaning; it can be what I make of it. There is no life energy, only coincidence and in that regard it’s fascinating that we’re all here, living in the society that we’ve built for ourselves. A basic understanding of chaos theory is all one needs to stand back and wonder at the remote chance that we’re all here, that life decided to evolve in the way it did, because evolution has no end point in mind, no goal, no rhyme or reason for what it does, it simply evolves. So why did we evolve to the conscious beings that we are? Chance. We got lucky. That’s the life energy, nothing more than random chances of some chemicals coming together at the right time, in the right situation to start life and then it continuing to evolve to the point of consciousness. In the words of Carl Sagan: “We are the cosmos’ way of experiencing itself.”

Any claim to spiritual or faith healing is absolute nonsense.

The idea that a person is able to simply enter into a trance state at will, either on one’s own or with the assist of hallucinogenic drugs is complete absurdity. Ignoring the fact that a claim such as this defies even the most lacking of one’s common sense, a simple thought will show that if something like this true, why has modern science not been able to offer an explanation as to how it works, or better, confirm that it even exists? We live in a world with MRI imaging, CAT scans and many other avenues to peer inside the brain in order to analyze what’s going on. If there is even a shred of credibility to this supposed spiritual healing; I am sure that there are plenty of scientists that would be interested in studying such a phenomenon, if it exists.

Moreover, not only is the notion of spiritual/faith healing ridiculous in its own right, it is also extremely dangerous. I do not have exact numbers, but just imagine how many people die each year from preventable diseases and easily treatable injuries just because they put their lives in the faith of another person who promises that a greater, non-earthly power will save them. This is even worse when applied to children. There are parents out there that refuse medical treatment for their children based on the false belief that a god figure will somehow magically heal their children. The children have no say in the matter and have their lives in the hands their parents outdated and morally incorrect belief system. In all honesty, it should be illegal (and may be, I haven’t looked into the laws surrounding the issue) to keep a children from professional medical care.

In all, Sam’s story about his experience with spiritual healing is, at least to me, completely fabricated, or at the very least grossly exaggerated. If it did happen, the knowledge that any spiritual healer has would have been passed on from previous healers whom would have acquired said knowledge essentially by trial and error over many generations. The idea that someone can enter a trance state and simply learn information then take said information and go for a walk through the woods and have plants speak to him telling him to feed its root to the person in need of healing is a joke at best. I feel that it was irresponsible of Sam to tell such a story in class. There are many people in class that value his opinion highly and take what he has to says at face value (this is clearly evident by reading the other posts about this topic) for better or for worse. For him to spread such incorrect and potentially dangerous information to so many people was reckless behavior and caused him to lose a great deal of credibility with me.