“For a start, the earth is four and a half billion years old, for gods sake. That unsavoury taste is the palpable palette of your faith-fucked goals.” And so opens the most reasoned atheistic punk and/or rock album I’ve ever heard.

Lungs are an east-coast Australian band headed by ex-Staying at Home guitarist Adam Lees, and musically I find the fast-paced under-40-minute album An Anatomical Guide to be plain orgasmic. Maybe I find the bass a bit boring, but I am a bassist, and as long as it is following Lees’ guitaring then it is going to be good enough for me. Lees, the author of the rationalistic prose contained in the songs, is rather evidently a fan Dawkins and even includes images from The Blind Watchmaker in the album artwork.

Opening track Tens of Thousands doesn’t show any mercy to faith-based religion:

“You can euphemise these insane holy wars to ethnic cleansings of terrorisings, but there’s such an obvious obtrusion behind it all. You’re all just as bad as each other. You’re just as stupid. Promptly decloud your heads and put them together instead”

And the closing track Alone in a Godless Universe makes it even more explicable, paraphrasing Douglas Adams:

“Consciousness beholds the garden in its various beauty. It’s natural. But isn’t it enough without having to believe in fairies at the bottom of it too?”

Backing up popular culture with reason:

“Complexity could never be explained by merely postulating further complexity. An infinite regress.”

Lastly deserving a mention, from their previous EP, off the song Huxley (which I can’t help assume is about T.H. Huxley, agnostic and famously labelled ‘Darwin’s Bulldog’ for his loyal support of Darwinism):

“It’s true that to know is delusional… but not knowing is driving me crazy”

Huxley’s agnosticism was the result of his scientific world view, in which he proposed that beliefs should only be formed on the basis of evidence. Asserting that one could know in such cases that there is no evidence is dogmatism and clearly incorrect. Problem is, most of our everyday beliefs, including much of our social interactions, are based on assumptions that we can’t live without; ie, the notion of another consciousness, or the notion of an outside world. Sceptical arguments from classical empiricists like Locke and Hume seem to be impossible to decisively refute, and yet impossible to rationally accept. This is basis of Camus’ absurdism; that we know things like the outside world (through living in it) and yet can never know such things (through the necessary, if ever-so-small, possibility of intellectual errors). Sure, Camus might have exaggerated how much indeterminate evidence can suck, but he had the right idea. Karl Popper can also be classed an agnostic in this case; falsification only eliminates whatever is incorrect within controlled premises and a controlled environment, but can never give us positive knowledge.

Anyone interested in pop punk that is technical, intelligent, melodic, critical and poetic should check these guys out.

Um… pizza is cool too

     During my earlier school years, my publicly owned school decided that we should get some Religious Instruction classes for those parents who didn’t throw up at the notion. My parents, being more indifferent to religion than to the non-existent hairs on my pre-pubescent back, didn’t see why this was such a bad idea. So those crazy missionaries came and penetrated our school and undoubtedly countless minds in a ideological rape that we’ve all grown to despise in our godless lives. (Only the Christian story too, of course.)

It was quite an exciting story mind you; this god who now sits up in heaven and talks to us all after he decided to kill himself who wasn’t really him or something something… my parents got to hear me ramble about it for about a day before Good Grief, Charlie Brown stole my attention and the Great Pumpkin began his conversations.

Obviously I left this near-accident relatively unscathed. But one memory of this god-time really stands out in my mind as engagingly symbolic (or prophetic) : sitting on the toilet, reflecting on the story that was told to me earlier, I wondered why I could never hear god talking to me. Ah! The magnificent parent (read: father-figure) of the universe! At that point, I began to wonder who god’s parents were and when his birthday was. In fact, after pushing out that giant shit that kept me occupied in there for some time, I began to worry if anyone else had even bothered to check when god’s birthday was. How offended he must have been!

In show of good spirit I hummed ‘happy birthday’ to god in my head while I wiped my asshole clean. And that was all.

Preaching to the choir.

Gives no compelling moral reason to reject certain aspect of religious belief, such as faith (Sam Harris).
Gives no intellectual (edit: epistemological) reason to question its plurality and origin (Daniel Dennett).

I want a documentary written by these two and hosted by Richard Dawkins (but only for his charm and sexy accent). And probably edited by someone with a qualification - I mean really, even 9/11 conspiracy docos have better production.

Sorry Flemming, but you’re not going to make people think focusing on a singular religion.

Camus on Suffering

I would name Albert Camus as being one of the most under-rated atheists of last century. Unfortunately, The Simpsons got it wrong with the whole ‘Sartre is smartre’ thing. Also, Sartre was an inconsiderate twat who practiced personal hygiene less than even the most devout arts-school drop-out. Camus’ arguments are equally applicable to realists as they are to phenomenologists, which is quite nice considering the metaphysical mumbo-jumbo of Heidegger and similar metaphysicians. Who would have thought using common language could be so effective. Sigh.

Anyhoo… Camus makes an interesting attack on theism.

In Camus’ The Plague there is a character by the name of Father Paneloux. His first real mention in the novel sees him delivering a sermon preaching the god-given nature of the plague that has infected, exiled and alienated the town of Oran in which the novel is set. He offers the same belittling opinion of humanity as is necessary in Christian thought - necessary because we must all be lowly sinners if Christ’s sacrifice is to be meaningful. It is the rational stance to be taken by someone assuming the truth of Christianity. In a theoretical perspective it makes sense to him that god should be punishing these wicked creatures. But upon seeing first-hand the enduring torment that the plague inflicts upon a small boy he falls to his knees and is horribly shaken.

Paneloux knows that this intense suffering (followed by the child’s slow death) must be for the greater good if God is to exist. Let me go back to my earlier Scrubs post in which I laid out the general argument from evil. Those who already feel that they know the existence of god can simply deny this argument by denying P5 on faith. Considering how unsuccessful most theodicies are, it is no surprise that this is the most general position taken. Theists, Paneloux included, assume on faith that all seemingly gratuitous suffering is actually for the greater good and they just don’t understand how. God does work in mysterious ways, after all. While the argument from evil is not objective, it is objective that from what follows from the argument is either god does not exist or there is no gratuitous suffering. Thus, when Paneloux is presented with the intense suffering of the boy he is given two choices; he can abandon his faith or convince himself that these horrors are necessary. Logically following his predictable choice he has to admit that the cause of this boy’s suffering is not an unnecessary evil; that the plague bacillus, killing hundreds a day in the same manner, is there for the greater good. Paneloux does not encourage going out and deliberately infecting himself with the plague, but insists by analogy:

For the true Christian, one who has a logically consistent faith in god, it is unreasonable to not welcome suffering that has made others in the same circumstances suffer.

No one is sure if Paneloux dies of the plague or some other disease and is ironically marked as ‘a doubtful case’. Truth being, if he had have doubted his Kierkegaardian ‘leap of faith’ he may not have died.

This is about as far as the text goes in the way of argument. But I have a couple of criticisms of this argument that I’ll put in my next post. I have a feeling that I can strengthen it afterwards.