The Age of Accountability

Most Christians think that death leads to one of two places: Heaven or Hell. They also believe that the only way to enter Heaven is to is to have faith in the divinity of Jesus of Nazareth*. When people point out that this system is monstrously unfair, since many people are not exposed to the idea of Jesus, believers shrug their shoulders and say something about god being mysterious.

Oddly, confronted with an almost identical situation, many Christians reverse their position. When a child dies without having an opportunity to believe in Jesus, Christians invent the idea of an "Age of Accountability". If you don't reach the Age of Accountability before you die, then you're saved regardless of the state of your belief. There is literally no support in the Bible for this theory.

So what's the difference between damning people in distant countries and children that are only a few years old? The answer is obvious: People don't mind damning foreigners, but it makes them feel bad to think that their kids might go to Hell.

I personally like the Jehovah's Witnesses' take on the whole thing: they believe that everyone is simply dead and "asleep" until the coming of the "Kingdom of God". This has two plusses: it doesn't make god look like a complete jerk, and it's more supported by the bible than most interpretations.

*Both of these things are not very well supported by the actual bible. It's remarkable how many things in modern belief are based on incredibly vague or obtuse passages. Particularly the entire idea of The Antichrist being a person.

The Logical Impossibility of the Trinity

If I told you two "persons" were in the same body, had the same abilities, are made of the same material, and had the same mind, you'd say I was stupid.

You'd say the "two" persons were actually just one dude.

I would concede, "yes, they're the same nature, and the same being, but they're different persons."

Again, you'd say I was stupid. What's the point of being two persons, if you're obviously only one thing, you may ask.

"See, when they are active, they're one person. When they are simply existing, they're the other. It can be difficult to impossible to tell which person is being displayed at a given time, since there's no evident difference between the two, since they're made of the same stuff, and have the same abilities, as I said earlier."

You probably think this entire argument is stupid, and doesn't make any sense at all. What's the difference between a person and a being? Why should we care which is which, if no one can tell the difference? You would probably argue that they're not two people, it's more like two moods, or attitudes, of one person.

My theoretical dual person is self-evidently absurd, but this is precisely the position of the Divine Trinity celebrated by the majority of Christians. God is supposedly three persons at all time, but the "Holy Spirit" and the "Father" are essentially indistinguishable. They're both omnipresent and omniscient, and have the same intent. It's superfluous to describe such an organization as two persons, especially since the Bible doesn't describe the Divinity as three persons, it's inferred from indirect references to "the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit". There's nothing to say that the Holy Spirit is a person, whatever that means, especially since "Spirit" means "Breath", and has obvious other potential meanings.

It seems to me the "Holy Spirit" is simply the feeling or attitude or ethos that a person has when they are holy. A person infused with the "Holy Spirit" isn't being ridden by a divinity*, they are living the divine life.
 

This diagram from Wikipedia is self-evidently absurd. Any first-year logic student knows that if A=B=C, then A = C.

The worst part is, none of this effects a single thing. Even the Bible doesn't indicate that belief in a Trinitarian God will affect a part of your life, or determine what happens in the afterlife. All of the endless debates about the nature of God are absurd and semantic, yet people have died for their belief in a non-trinitarian God.

*It's clear the Bible does not think that God is omnipresent, but if God is omnipresent, he can't be more or less with you at any given time.

God's Evolution

In a theological debate, Richard Dawkins was challenged thusly: "Religious convictions are common; why have we evolved to believe in god?" He answered along the lines of reasons why humans get psychological and social benefits from religion.

I would respond differently. Humans haven't evolved to believe in gods, god has evolved to fit into humans' beliefs. We've seen a steady development of religious concepts, shaping themselves to fit into our understanding of science, etc.

Video:

The "Ground Zero Mosque"

Since the beginning of the War On Terror, even George Bush was canny enough to repeatedly announce that we are not at war with Islam. No one is going to war with Muslims, or their faith. It's insane to say that Islam is responsible for 9/11, even if you think it's true; it alienates all Muslims, where we need all the Muslim allies we can get.

This is why the reaction to the so-called "Ground Zero Mosque*" is completely insane. When people object to building any Islamic building because it's associated with Terrorism, they are saying that the War on Terror is actually a War on Islam. They're saying that all Islam is responsible for 9/11. It's like objecting to building a Catholic Church near the site of a Baptist Evangelical White Supremacist lynching.

Let's be honest. This is another political controversy. There's no way that anyone seriously believes that this is a problem. The Republicans have adopted this attitude of vaguely complaining about it because they know they can score points. There's no attempt to make this building illegal, or to do anything other than complain. They know Fox News will broadcast every criticism of the President even on something this meaningless and ephemeral.

So if the objection isn't real, then why does it matter?

1. The news can only focus on one thing at a time. Every moment dedicated to this nonsense is a moment taken from actual problems
2. It needlessly antagonizes people who know that Islam isn't a monolithic culture, and weakens our ability to form alliances with Islamic countries and peoples.
3. It makes a mockery of the liberties that we want to "export" to other countries. If we want to have liberty in other nations, we should show why the liberties are so good here.

*Which is not at Ground Zero, and is not a Mosque.

Game Morality Systems

Lots of games try to model ethics, but I don't think any of them have really nailed it, mainly because ethics aren't formalized rules for most people.

The system I like the most is Mass Effect's Paragon/Renegade system, but it's not really a system of ethics so much as a scale of Friendliness/Politeness - Brusque/Selfish. It works really well with the game, since it still makes sense to follow the mission if you're really Renegade, where it wouldn't really work if you were Chaotic Evil. Games that let you be Evil, then still force you into the same story as someone that is Lawful Good, inevitably end up with characters politely ignoring the fact that you just killed someone just for the fun of it.

Everyone knows about the D&D system of Chaotic/Neutral/Lawful and Evil/Neutral/Good. I'll just mention that it's rather silly. It also has the dumbest philosophy of all time: Druidic True Neutral, whose practitioners will join whichever side is losing to help even the odds. Apparently the writers didn't realize that this philosophy will lead to the Druid only being able to rest when every single non-Neutral person is dead.

A much more obscure one is the system for In Nomine. It does a good job of summarizing "goodness" without being sectarian about it. It defines "good" as Selfless, and "evil" and Selfish. I think a lot of people would agree with that idea, at least in general terms. Of course, when people are being "Selfless" for a religion, they're generally not being selfless at all. Consider someone who gives a thousand dollars to a bank, only to withdraw it later with interest. Both the bank and the person get a benefit out of the arrangement, but no one's going to say our investor is being Selfless for giving the money to the bank, he only did it because he was expecting a larger return. In this same way, religious people aren't selfless, they're investors. When Mother Theresa went to the poor to teach them about Jesus,* she was simply investing time in this world with the expectation of greater returns in the next. When In Nomine says "Selfless", it only means selfless in this world.

*She didn't have the time to teach them about what food was like, you have to prioritize. Religion tells us that it's alright to let children die, so long as they've been converted to whichever sect you believe in.

The Invention of Lying

Ricky Gervais' The Invention of Lying begins as a single-premise comedy: wouldn't it be funny if everyone was brutally honest, all the time? (Answer: sorta) But it becomes The Invention of Religion about halfway through. By boldly asserting that Religion doesn't exist without lies, Gervais isn't being particularly subtle about his thesis.

There is one point that I think bears more examination: when the film's characters are exposed to religion for the first time ever, they take it much differently than someone in our world; they take it deadly serious. The reasoning is obvious; if you have a chance to enjoy eternal happiness in the future, all other parts of life become trivial in comparison. So when the film's characters are told they are allowed two sins (Like baseball, three strikes and you're out) some characters wisely decide to drink themselves into a stupor, since it helps keep you out of trouble sin-wise, and it accelerates their deaths, after which, their "life" will be better.

Why don't we see people "gaming" the system in our world? Why don't people spend their formative years figuring out how to get into heaven, then spending every bit of labour for the remainder of their lives trying to secure that place in heaven?

They Don't Believe.

Genealogy Of Jesus

The author(s) of the bible take a peculiar interest in the ancestors of Jesus. In fact, they're so interested, they write two independent and different genealogies for the same person.

Two interesting pieces of trivia about this:

• Shouldn't a person only have one father? Surely Joseph can have only one father, unless "alternative lifestyles" were popular in the late Roman Republic.
• It's odd that the bible spends so much time describing Joseph's parentage, considering that the modern Christian faith insists that Jesus and Joseph have no biological relationship whatsoever.

It's almost as though the author(s) of the bible didn't know that Jesus was born of a god in a literal sense. It's seems they thought he was a "Son of God" in the sense that we owe our loyalty to God as we owe our loyalties to our biological father. After all, he was known to speak in metaphor.

Anyway, for those who believe that Jesus was physically born of a god and a human, where did he get half of his genetic data? Does your omnipotent, Omnipresent Energy Field God have 46 chromosomes?

This would make the idea of Jesus fathering children even more troubling.