Hey, Jason!

It isn't really expertise, either.

Excuse My Absence From The Blogosphere . . .

. . . while I try to make something happen that I can't talk about yet.

This Atheist Thinks That Accommodationism Hurts Magical Thinkers Like The One I Was, Part 1

Science bloggers DuWayne Brayton and Chris Mooney have recently written on the utility of the “New Atheism” for encouraging magical thinkers to abandon magical thinking. Specifically, they each address to some extent the issue of whether or not atheists should go on the offensive with everything we’ve got. Should we publicly deride the idea of supernatural authorities whose whims we must obey, or should we respect the idea that we can reconcile theism and science with one another? Should we exclusively use civil language to discuss religious ideas? Should we treat Christian (and Jewish, Muslim Buddhist and other mainline) ideologies with the same scorn with which most atheists and theists alike unhesitatingly treat minority superstitions (e.g., adult belief in garden fairies)?

DuWayne suggested to me that I post my response to his argument on my own blog. Here it is. This will constitute the beginning of my discussion of my opposition to "accommodationism".
Read more. . .

DuWayne closes his argument with his assertion that his personal concern is for people with whom he can identify:

The only reason that I spent twenty years in an abusive, painful and sometimes debilitating relationship with Faith, is because I was constantly running into people who told me that it is possible to make the very reconciliations that you are so adamantly defending. Were it not for Christians who accept homosexuality, were it not for Christians who accept evolution, were it not for Christians who are sex-positive, were it not for Christians who perform incredible feats of mental gymnastics and convinced me I could do the same, I would have become an atheist a very long time ago. I would have been saved the pain, the doubts - the trauma, of fighting so desperately to make the absolutely incoherent, fit together coherently.

And were it not for the uncivil, ill-mannered "new atheists" you disagree with, I would probably still be suffering that relationship today...

This was my response:

I think this is key. My experience has been very different than yours (no shit!), but I feel similarly about my phasic abandonment of theism and magical thinking for skeptical thinking and atheism. It's harmful to pretend that something so important is real when it's not, and "accommodation" often entails exactly this. Additionally, it's especially harmful to certain groups of people.

My parents were lapsed Protestants when I was growing up. (They returned to churchgoing and active worship after my mother got and recovered from breast cancer. They presently attend a military chapel, where their pastor "proves" the righteousness of the US war in Iraq with items such as this.) They refrained from baptizing or regularly catechizing me or my sister out of some vague desire to "let us choose for ourselves".

However, they wished us to adopt "Christian ideology", and I did. I believed in my conception of a Christian God-- buffered as it was by classic English literature, random KJV (and, later, New American Bible) verses and my own shamed but vigorous imagination-- strongly enough to make every one of my decisions based on what I "felt" that God wanted me to do. And I did this to varying degrees until I was twenty-seven years old.

I refrain from "unleashing the asshole" with respect to religion in the sciblogosphere solely because I know what it's like to always be the minority; one of my favorite scibloggers, who has been kind to me both in and out of the blogosphere, is a theist among a sea of non-believers. I said this once and got praised for my "open mindedness". It's not "open mindedness", though. It's a personal decision to modify my behavior that does not constitute any sort of argument against "New Atheism". Bullshit is bullshit. Why pussyfoot around it?

I can attribute all of my career and academic decisions from my eighteenth to my twenty-seventh year to magical thinking. I have to live the rest of my life knowing that I never took charge of my life until I was thirty as a result. This kind of experience isn't a big deal to a lot of people. However, I don't have the personality type to deal with this knowledge without constantly and ferociously struggling with self-loathing-- namely in the form of a conviction that I will never do anything special with my life, and that I'll be relegated to the mediocrity that I can't, can't, cannot stand. My propensity for magical thinking has only made my life less enjoyable.

In practice, there is no reconciliation of theism with science. Science is not merely a methodology but an ontology as well, and there is far more evidence that all phenomena can be explained in terms of matter and energy than there is in favor of dualism. Just because scientists can explain no more than the tip of the iceberg at present doesn't automatically mean that there are mysteries that are inexplicable. I have no idea why it makes sense to acknowledge this in the laboratory only to completely abandon your awareness of it in every other type of problem solving you must undertake in the world.

I know there are lots of privileged kids who grew up discussing existentialism around the dinner table with moms who have PhDs in psych from Harvard and dads with JDs from Yale Law School, and who thus wound up more intellectually assertive and productive despite all the woo they may have been subjected to. But I am interested helping kids like the one I was and adults like the one I am. New Atheism has done me a world of good; neither theism or accomodationism has.

More later.

Bite Me, Jukebox

Oh, for fuck's sake.  This is a TOTALLY UNSUBSTANTIVE meme-tag post!  (Yes, beware!  TOTALLY UNSUBSTANTIVE!  If you are looking for Method and Theory, stand back!)  Properly light as bubbles, yet halfway depressing nonetheless!  Way to go, Juniper!  Way to go!

Look!  Thankfully, Hermitage tagged me (a billionteen days ago in February) with one music meme, and Leigh with another.  Yay!  I could use a little blogorific musical levity. 

I have shirked blogging.  Again.  I like blogging, but, for me, it remains an unwieldly enterprise.  Unpleasant ruminations over "identity politics" combined with academic developments I can't yet publicly discuss and my growing desire to blog under my real name have scared me into blogging procrastination.  This one weird dude I'm rather fond of has been provokingly tenderly counseling me to stay the fuckety-fuck on get back on the horse.  This is what I think I am doing now.
Read more. . .     



Oh, and, meanwhile, I've done this nonsense to my hair:



That's right.  I cut off my hair.  Specifically, I cut off the chemically straightened parts of my hair.  Because I did chemically straighten my hair.  I'd been doing it since 2005. 

Pictured above is my unadulterated, ringletted hair.  My real hair isn't nappy-- Mom's Korean genes won most of the turf here--so it straightens well; people think that it's growing in straight and they exclaim, "Oh, honey!  You're so lucky you didn't get the black part!"  Or some variation thereof.  That's supposed to be a compliment.  It represents the kind of unsolicited and grotesquely backhanded compliment that I've frequently received from impertinent strangers-- most of whom were white-- all of my life, and it ranks up there with, "Gosh, but you're so smart!  That's got to be your mother-- Asians are really smart, you know."  Yeah.  'Cause Lt. Col. Shoemaker is some kind of dumb ass.  Right.  That's how he got to be a decorated senior officer in the first place.

Last week, after I retreated to the park across the street from my parents' house to talk to DuWayne on my cell?  For privacy?  And I got interrupted by some young white male cop who didn't believe that I lived in my largely white, relatively upscale suburban neighborhood, and who yelled at me like a criminal and made me parrot, "Yes, sir.  Thank you, sir.  I'm sorry, sir," before leaving me alone?  I woke up the next morning and sliced off my straightened locks where they ended and the grow-out began.  Because what the fuck was the point?

But.  No.  I refuse to blog about this now.  I will get angry and write something unnuanced and unfair, and I do not have the heart to look at either others or myself through those lenses right now.

Recourse to humor!  The last time I cut my hair this short, I was an ugly duckling in college.  It took a year and a half to grow back past my shoulders.  Now I feel ugly.  I am extremely vain, and feeling ugly makes me sulky.  It's possible that I'll sulk over it through 2010.  In a wide world of ghastly problems, I am just that mature.  I'll try to be covert about it, though.  I cross my heart.  I pinky swear.

Yeah.  Like I said.  I welcomed these tags, 'cause I could use a little joshin' around.

Here were the rules for Hermitage's tag (which the rest of you did a billionteen days ago):

a) Put your MP3 player, iTunes, Windows Media Player, etc. on shuffle
b) For each question, press the next button to get your answer.
c) YOU MUST WRITE THAT SONG NAME DOWN NO MATTER HOW SILLY IT SOUNDS

Well, tonight, I complied all of my favorite playlists into "Hermitage's Meme Tag List", toggled on the "Shuffle" function and acceded.  Good Golly.  Maybe I should've left out "Radio Juniper's Teenhood of Angst".  I even tried answering some of the questions with lyrics instead of song titles for comic effect, and, yet, I still generated a meme mostly as brooding as Jane Eyre:

1. IF SOMEONE SAYS 'ARE YOU OKAY' YOU SAY?

Well, don’t you please make me real--
Fuck you!
Make me sick--
Fuck you!
Make me real--
Fuck you!

("Rock Star", by Hole.  Blame it on high school.)

2. HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOURSELF?

"Endless Summer Nights". 

(It is summer.  And this limbo started feeling endless last summer.)

(Wait, Richard Marx? How did that get in there?  Ahem.)

3. WHAT DO YOU LIKE IN A GUY/GIRL?

"You Oughta Know"!

4. HOW DO YOU FEEL TODAY?

Why do I get cut no slack?

("Jurassitol", by Filter.)

5. WHAT IS YOUR LIFE'S PURPOSE?

"Since U Been Gone", you mean?  *goofy chortle*

6. WHAT'S YOUR MOTTO?

Maybe if I act like that, that guy will call me back?
Porno Paparazzi Girl, I don’t wanna be a Stupid Girl.

("Stupid Girls", by Pink.  Not bad, iTunes Jukebox!)

7. WHAT DO YOUR FRIENDS THINK OF YOU?

And if you want beautiful, pitiful—have me in a picture . . .

("Photograph", by the Verve Pipe.  Jukebox is both sentient and catty, I see.)

8. WHAT DO YOUR PARENTS THINK OF YOU?

Maybe I’m just too demanding
Maybe I’m just like my father, too bold
Maybe I’m just like my mother—she’s never satisfied . . .

(“When Doves Cry” by Prince, covered by the Be Good Tanyas.  This shuffle result disturbs me greatly.  On multiple levels.)

9. WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT VERY OFTEN?

Looking out I want to know someone might care
Looking out I want a reason to be there
‘Cause I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve you
And I don’t know what I’d do without you

("Nylon Smile", by Portishead)

10. WHAT IS 2 + 2?

"Today".

11. WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR BEST FRIEND?

"The Man Who Sold The World".

(Um.  Yeah, Jukebox.  Except my best friend's a woman.)

12. WHAT IS YOUR LIFE STORY?

ARRGH!  I SWEAR I REALLY DID PUT THIS SHIT ON SHUFFLE!

Elliott Smith's "Angeles" happens to have been one of my secret "theme songs" for years.  If anything, because this is what my depression feels/felt like:

Someone’s always coming ‘round here, trailing some new kill.
Bet I’ve seen your picture on a hundred dollar bill.
What’s a game of chance to you?
Here’s one with real skill.
So glad to meet you, angeles.

Picking up the ticket shows there’s money to be made.
Go on, lose the gamble, that’s the history of the trade.
Did you add up all the cards left to play to zero?
Sign up with evil, angeles.

Don’t start me trying now
Uh huh, uh huh, uh huh
‘Cause I’m all over it, angeles

I can make you satisfied in everything you do.
All your secret wishes right now could be coming true.
Be forever with my poison arms around you—
No one’s gonna fool around with us,
No one’s gonna fool around with us,
I’m so glad to meet you, angeles.

Not to be a downer or anything . . . at least it's a beautiful song . . .

13. WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP?

With eyes so dilated I become your pupil
You taught me everything about a poison apple
The water is so yellow
I’m a healthy student . . .

("Drain You", by Nirvana.  When I grow up?!  ITUNES FAIL.)

14. WHAT DO YOU THINK WHEN YOU SEE THE PERSON YOU LIKE?

"Falling Man".

(Blonde Redhead.  Whaa?  Though this could be construed in a perfectly positive light.)

15. WHAT WILL YOU DANCE TO AT YOUR WEDDING?

“I Burn”, by the Toadies. 

16. WHAT WILL THEY PLAY AT YOUR FUNERAL?

Apparently, “Food”, by Nellie McKay.  GROSS.  Answers 15 and 16 are ass-backwards.

17. WHAT IS YOUR HOBBY/INTEREST?

I’ve got Fergie’s “Fergalicious”.   I’m up in the gym all working on my fitness . . .

18. WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST FEAR?

“The Long Way Around”.  (Dixie Chicks.  Appropriate:)

Well I fought with a stranger and I met myself
I opened my mouth and I heard myself
It can get pretty lonely when you show yourself
Guess I could’ve made it easier on myself

But I could never follow
No I could never follow

Well, I never seem to do it like anybody else
Maybe someday I’m gonna settle down
If you ever want to find me I can still be found
Taking the long way
Taking the long way around
Taking the long way
Taking the long way around

19. WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST SECRET?

“When I Come Around”.  (Green Day.)

20. WHAT DO YOU WANT RIGHT NOW?

“Luck”.  (Cesaria Evora.   AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!  Whatever that is.)

21. WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR FRIENDS?

“Saving My Face”.  (KT Tunstall.  Neither lyrics nor song title will salvage this go-around into coherence.  I think this meme came straight from the desks of starry-eyed middle-schoolers.)

22. WHAT WILL YOU POST THIS AS?

“Love Is a Losing Game”, by Amy Winehouse.
 
"Girl All The Bad Guys Want", by Bowling for Soup

Bite me, Jukebox.

Time for cover songs!

I love numerous covers of songs.  It's so hard to choose "bests" from among them.  My favorite "cover" at present is the Be Good Tanyas' rendition of "Lakes of Pontchartrain".

Know what else is good?  Hole's cover of "Gold Dust Woman":

 

Know what else is good?  Flunk's cover of "Blue Monday":

So, so bad, but irresistibly good?  Halifax's punk cover of Paula Abdul's "Straight Up":

Admittedly silly, but candy sweet?  INOJ's cover of "Time After Time":

Bad, bad, bad?  Victoria Beckham:

Is this last a cover?  No.  However, it is the worst song in my Music Library.  I thought you should know.



I'll be back, guys.  I need breakfast.