The religious life

Every so often you hear about one of these "right to life" bills or "personhood amendments" being proposed in some state or other.  Every so often I write about it.  They are something that really annoys me.  Basically, these folks believe for some twisted reason that a human is a human from the moment that the sperm penetrates the egg.  You know conception.  It is a silly notion for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that many eggs never implant.  They believe this because they think that this moment is when the soul is ever so gently inserted by god.  Anyhow, I would like to look today at another reason why I think that these bills based on the teachings of a certain religion are a bad idea.

Let's imagine I have decided to form a new religion.  There are many mysteries that we could delve into.  We could talk about how it has been know to make grown men weep and yada yada yada.  But the core of the religion, I shall call it Identificationalism or IDism for short, is that your soul comes from your name.  In fact, you don't just have one soul.  You have many souls.  For instance, if you are a computer programmer, the title "head computer programmer" would be one of your souls.  If you are a gamer, your gamer tags and what not would be other souls.  All the titles and names and nicknames that you receive become souls, and all of these souls add up to one bigger soul that is your given name.  But there is more!  Your family also shares one, let's say, oversoul that is your family name.  This is the soul that is immortal.  There is an even bigger soul/name as well that belongs to and is shared by the church as a whole.  That soul is god.  You can imagine that apostasy would not be very smiled upon, as removing a name from the church rolls would have a direct negative effect on god (assuming there is only one in IDism).

In IDism, let's imagine that there is a strict rule about naming children before they are born.  They believe that if a child is named before it is born and for some reason it does not make it to term, then that soul will be damned forever.  The tradition is that the child is named exactly one month after it is born.  They see this as a way to make sure that the body fully enters the world before the soul is implanted, just to avoid any accidental damnation (incidentally, Google spell check has just informed me that damnation is uncountable.  The things you learn!).  Thus, on the day of the child's, we'll say, monthday there is a big ceremony with the family and the priests and the church members.  It is considered a very happy occasion.

You can probably see where I am going with this.  Basically, the believers of IDism would believe that life begins at monthday.  They are taught from early childhood that until babies are given a name, they are only hollow shells made to look like people.  In short, they are not human until given a name.  If IDists were in the majority and laws were based on their religion, not only would all abortions be legal, but infanticide as well.

This is a pretty extreme example, but I see no reason that, if IDists existed, we should not give any less consideration to their idea that souls are implanted when children are named, than we do to Christians who believe that souls are implanted at conception.  This is trouble with souls.  They are are 100% undetectable.  The truth is, even if souls existed, and I would be very surprised to learn that they did, we would have no idea when they enter a body.  The Christians could be right, the IDists could be right, or some other religion that believes souls enter a person before conception could be right.  This is yet another reason why I think that this subject should be determined outside the authority of any religion.

Geocentrism? Sure, why not...

I was reading about geocentrists today.  I have to admit, they are a strange lot.  The more I thought about it, however, the more I realized that their beliefs, while strange, are not really that far out their.  Relatively speaking, of course.  I mean a large portion of the worlds population believes that an invisible spirit of unlimited power got some girl pregnant and then when the child grew up he was killed so that we could all have an invisible, undetectable part of ourselves go for eternity to an invisible, undetectable place that no one has ever seen.  Compared to that the sun going around the earth seems pretty straight forward.  Hell, it even looks that way from our perspective.  Perhaps the reason that the geocentrists views are considered strange even among the religious is that they have been so thoroughly proven false.  Of course, this make me wonder why people who choose not to believe in evolution and climate change are not equally shunned.

The trouble with evil

Having once struggled with theodicy myself, I really enjoyed this comic from SMBC.  

What would it take?

I posted at the end of an entry (the only one :/) that I would remain skeptical even if Christ was to come down from the skies flanked by angels.  It got me thinking, what would it take to make me believe in the supernatural.  I wasn't always this skeptical.  It has come from years of first pondering religion (Christianity), then finding religion to be inconsistent, just pondering god, until finally, I just found myself one day realizing that there is just not enough evidence to support such a grand claim.  Since then I have read quite a bit of atheist literature, and found much of it to be quite in line with that realization.  Are you sleeping yet?  Yada yada, first I was....yada yada...finally,  yada.  Yes, I know, pretty boring stuff. 

Anyhow, today I am very skeptical, especially of any claim regarding something supernatural.  Really think about what that word means: supernatural.  What would be supernatural.  If fire-breathing dragons were real would they be supernatural?  Nope.  Psychics?  Nope.  Magic?  Depends on how you define it.  The problem is, if we find one of these "supernatural" phenomena to be true, then that would simply change our view of nature. 

So, what could make me believe in a supernatural god (without simply using some natural technique to change my mind for me)?  I think it would take something supernatural.  Har har.

P.S. I also kept thinking about an old episode of Star Trek TNG that this thought always reminds me of.  TNG fans probably already know, but for you uninitiated, it is called "the Devil's Due".  Check it out if you can.