stevesbets

Lately a friend has begun calling me an “atheist extremist” in some sort of misguided attempt to diminish the credibility of my arguments. Any of you who concur with this description need to better understand what extremist means. An extremist is merely someone who takes his beliefs to the most extreme extent he can. He TRULY believes them and acts on those beliefs. I do not preach “beliefs”, I preach facts. While I agree that I am passionate about my distaste for religion, even religious moderates are “extreme” in a far greater way than I ever will be. In a future blog I will discuss why I think in some ways, moderate religious people are crazier (though also better) than extremists. Extremists just take the religious texts at face value. If you truly believed them, you would too. The Koran tells muslims to kill all nonbelievers in the most brutal way possible because like most religions, it is a violent vestige from an ancient time. The “extremists” truly believe this just as I “believe” that 2+2=4 and therefore they kill nonbelievers. Calling me an extremist is just blowing smoke. As someone on two plus two said, “Historically, I believe religion takes the cake in expending resources to ‘convince’ others. Has an atheist ever knocked on your door and asked to be invited into your home to talk to you about Richard Dawkins?”

Over the past several months I have sustained intellectual debate with some good friends and some readers about my commentary regarding “faith”. I first want to say that anyone who feels the need to email me about how “arrogant” my tone is on this subject, please spare both of us the time. If you cannot confidently state your opinions, that is not humble, it is simply that you don’t really have an opinion on the subject. If you can, as I do on religion, it does not signal arrogance, it signals that I have a firm opinion that it would take true logic to sway me from. Logic that I have yet to hear from anyone who argues in favor of religious tenets, or value.

On that note, one of my good friends is unrelenting in claiming that while he agrees our concept of higher power is “highly unlikely”, he states that there is value that religion adds to society that is far greater than it’s negative effects. When I point to the death and intolerance caused by religion, he simply says, “History is filled with examples of death and intolerance not caused by religion, so it would happen anyway”. His argument is massively illogical, but this doesn’t sway him until I am able to recite with historical certainly that bad things happened purely because of religion. This is a strict burden of proof but I am so confident of not just the irrationality, but also the evil INHERENT in pretty much every major religion that I am doing research to be able to win the argument, even on his absurd terms.

I just started “The End of Faith” by Sam Harris and even in the first few pages I feel the need to share a quote. “Our past is not sacred for being past, and there is much that is behind us that we are struggling to keep behind us, and to which, it is to be hoped, we coudl never return with a clear conscience: the divine right of kings, feudalism, the caste system, slavery, political executions, forced castration, vivisection, bearbaiting, honorable duels, chastity belts, trial by ordeal, child labor, human and animal sacrifice, the stoning of heretics, cannabalism, sodomy laws, taboos against contraception, human radiation experiments-the list is nearly endless, and if it were extended indefinitely, the proportion of abuses for which religion could be foudn directly responsible is likely to remain undiminished. In fact, almost every indignity just mentioned can be attributed to an insufficient taste for evidence, to an uncritical faith in one dogma or another. The idea, therefore, that religious faith is somehow a sacred human convention-distinguished, as it is, both by the extravagance of its claims and by the paucity of its evidence-is really too great a monstrosity to be appreciated in all its glory”. With this in mind I want to point back to my first complaint about readers calling me arrogant and intolerant. I argue back that to be intolerant of something that produces such unadulterated disrespect and evil is something that all good people should try to be. Even if religion isnt the direct cause of the evil, the acting based on “faith”, making a VIRTUE out of not thinking is absurd and needs to be purged from humanity.

A friend of mine is travelling internationally and he has some minor points he would like to make on the airport scene. While these opinions do not necessarily reflect those of Stevesbets, feel free to respond in comments and I will be able to post his response. Without further adieu, The first Stevesbets.com guest blog, courtesy of Seth:

Musings from flying international.

At the airport, for many years, check-in as been self-service. Typically, I’m all for this — it’s a smart way to cut costs, and it typically speeds up transaction times (such as at the supermarket). However, when it comes to airports, it’s a total disaster.

1. Old people and technophobes cannot figure out how to use the kiosks, and as a result, they hold up the whole line while they wait for the one customer service representative that airline keeps in the terminal to show them how to use it.
2. For international flights, you need to swipe your passport through a scanner. I have an older passport with a soft back. It never goes through the reader correctly and I have to spend 5 minutes hand entering all the information on it. Not surprising, newer passports have hard backs.
3. If you’re checking luggage, only the customer service representative can print the tag. Remember, there is only one representative in the terminal. I had to check a bag, so despite the system being self-service, I had to wait 5 minutes for someone to print the tag for my suitcase. I suppose they do this to make sure that no one checks a bag that is too large or too heavy.

I was shocked by the number of husbands who insist on holding their wife’s passport and ticket. At check-in, the security check points, and plane boarding, you see all the husbands hand their wives their passport and ticket, and then promptly take it back once it has been reviewed. And this isn’t limited to older couples — I saw it with a lot of couples in their 50s.

Speaking of security, here’s a design flaw in the layout of Philadelphia’s international terminal. Thanks to living in a post 9/11 world, you have to strip down before going through the metal detector. This includes taking off your shoes, belt, and jacket. Once you get through the metal detector, there’s no area with seating on the other side to put your shoes and belt on; everyone hastily carries their clothing and bags over to the nearest gate where there is seating. The terminal was built only a few years ago, so some kind of post metal dector seating area could have been included in the design.

At the check-in area at the gate, one of the workers was reading Dan Quayle’s biography. Now that’s a hardcore Republican.

On the plane, a woman across the aisle proved to be a bigger asshole than me. There was a kid, probably 4 years old sitting behind her, who was using his “outside voice.” Very early in the flight, she looked back in the direction of the kid’s parents, and said to her husband, “do I have to listen to that all the way to Paris.” You should expect loud kids on a flight. I do. That’s why I purchase headphones that act as ear plugs. That being said, airlines should have a policy where all families traveling with children under 8 years of age are seated in the back of the plane. Having to listen to a baby scream for hours is quite painful, and some attempt to try and isolate where they are located in the plane could be made.

This women reached her apogee of rudeness when dinner came out. The choices were: chicken or pasta, and she grilled flight attendant on what was in each, and complained about the options. Understandably, the flight attendant said, “look, it’s airplane food. We have to quickly and cheaply feed 200 people. Pick one.” If you’re that concerned about the food, bring your own. Despite all the complaining about the food, I heard her say to her husband, “this is actually pretty good.”

I unfortunately had no choice but to fly US Air, and true to form, they didn’t miss a chance to show why they are still the worst airline. This was the first plane I’ve been in since probably 2005 that did not have power outlets. Like many other people on the flight, I brought my laptop on board with the intention of watching a movie or playing a game on it to help pass the time. I think it’s totally reasonable to expect electrical outlets on an international flight. It’s pretty sad that the BoltBus outdoes US Air — they not only provide electricity, but even free WiFi.

Well my 26th birthday proved to be not so lucky at the WSOP. I started off fairly short stacked and then when I lost a race with 77 to and very short stacks AK, I was down to 15k in chips with 300 600 blinds coming up. For the next 2 hours I just sat and waited and finally saw JJ which I got in preflop against someones KK, I magically hit a J on the river to stay alive and get back to 26k or so. A half hour later after playing zero hands I got 77 on the button and called Antonio Esfandiari (who had a super big stack after his aces had beaten qq and AQ??? all in preflop for a monster pot). After a flop of 356 with 2 hearts I called his C bet vowing to get in on any reasonable turn. After a black queen hit, he bet 5k and I shoved 25k total. He made a fairly reluctant call with AA and that was the end of my tournament.