This is just a quick post. I was watching a video last night by a guy called Angry Aussie on youtube. Basically he posts about things that irritate him whether it be idiots, religion, stupid people doing stupid things and while he doesn't hold back on them he manages to remain at least moderatly well informed about things - he generally doesn't post solely on opinion, he will also use fact or general consensus to insult and point out flaws.

He said something which interested me greatly in the middle of one of his posts. He argued that atheists were theists also. How does he do this considering that an atheist is someone who doesn't believe in a god, hence a-theist (no theos (god). He says that in his opinion defining yourself in terms of a God even though you're arguing that there is no God makes you a theist. People then say to him that he is Agnostic (someone who doesn't know whether there is a God, or in the case of Dr Karl, definitely doesn't know), something which he isn't sure about. As far as I can tell he is one a rare breed of people. In his mind, he does know that there is no God and yet he doesn't care.

Then he comes out with an incredibly profound statement about the nature of hell. As far as his catholic education went (being an ex-alter boy) hell was where God wasn't. he then goes on to quotes the parable of the rich and poor man to say that despite this separation, you can still see heaven and this is the greatest torture of hell. In his words (slightly paraphrased) you may be being burned alive and being tortured by demons, but the greatest torture of hell is that you can see paradise.

Just found it interesting that someone who doesn't agree with Christianity can see parts of it's theology clearer than many Christians often can.

Two and a half men

True, this title may not fit with what you've seen so far up here, but let me explain. The sitcom (for those who don't know) centres around a man, his brother and nephew and his various exploits with girls. This isn't what I wanted to talk about. What I wanted to talk about was a 'half man', or someone who is a man in all but actions, ie, someone who looks like a man, talks like a man etc but doesn't act like a man. He may be a 'kid', he may be a chauvinist or a misogynist, he may be a slob but what ever he is, he isn't a Man. Read here what you will about my views on certain things; I hope to explain.

A man (according to the dictionary) is any human male, but we tag extras on this definition, requiring a man to be 'manly' - or courageous, strong and masculine (note here not effeminate, a trap that I think that the modern man has fallen into) - to become what is referred to as a 'real man'. This doesn't mean that a man is, to quote Mark Driscoll, someone who can belch the loudest or fart the stinkiest (despite these being qualities that we associate with the male of the species), but someone, I would argue, who is a) willing to stand up for himself, his family and friends (especially those who need help in these things) and what he believes in and is willing to stick his neck out for these things and b) able to pull his own weight in life, business (if that's what he's in). There are other criteria that may feature, but these are the main ones.

Does this mean that a female can be a man? No; a woman may be manlike or mannish, but we tend to look at this as something that isn't normal. But what about what Sandra Bartky says about "We are born male or female, but not masculine or feminine" Not really; if you stick the average 3 year old boy in a room and give him the choice to play babies or cops and robbers he will in 9 out of 10 cases pick cops and robbers and the reverse is true of the average 3 year old girl - these things are wired into our brains at birth. Should we allow children to make up their own minds about whether they are really a boy or a girl? Why not, most of the time they will stick with what they know.

Now I hope that the crux of this is a call for males to be MEN: people who will look after himself and his 'peeps'. This is something that we all should do, but especially men who have been (depending on which view you subscribe to) seemingly designed or evolved for this purpose - something that we have lost in this day and age.

2 B R 0 2 B - a critical review - A body is a body

I just re-read Kurt Vonnegut's short story '2 B R 0 2 B' (it can be read here if you want although a word of warning, it isn't a nice story). It's a piece that I think would be universally regarded as "not right" and yet, logically and, if we keep it outside of anything else and in a strictly humanistic sense, its premise is quite brilliant and should probably be implemented as soon as we can. It is focused around the happenings in a maternity ward waiting area, but it isn't as happy as we would expect due to the fact that since the population needs to remain stable, ie, for every birth, there needs to be a death - and there are triplets. The father only has one person willing to die for his kids (their great grand father), and so he will have to choose two of the three to die - I said it wasn't nice. For those who want more information on it I recommend reading, I haven't given much of a spoiler at all and so the story won't be ruined. For a little while (due to the fact that otherwise I'm going to have a very long post) I'm going to show how this view that he puts forward (but I don't think affirms or is a proponent of) is wrong.

As I say, humanisticaly and indeed evolutionarily, it is not just true, it is also a brilliant idea - the old, sick and those unable to care for themselves should die so that the young can live, they are only holding back the evolution and survival of the species. However, only one person that I know of (name withheld due to my inability to remember his name) that would support this (and surprisingly, he takes it to the conclusion that if ever he becomes useless for the survival of the species he should also die). This means that it will be hard to do without calling on some other power other (and definitely greater) than humanity so to do it I will take parts of it out that make up the premise of the story and hopefully refute them.

"A body's a body". In one sense, yes this is true. A dead body is nothing more than a dead body no matter what you say or do about it. The difference is with a live body, more commonly known as a person. A person is not simply the sum total of their experiences, nor is a body merely a vessel for a brain. When a person dies, that person is dead and they become a body, but (and here comes my personal views which means a Christian view) the soul lives on. What happens after that is irrelevant for the purposes of this post, but that means that at some stage the body and soul were connected and therefore, the death of a person for the purposes of making easier the life of another person or even for what is laughingly referred to in many circles as the greater good is wrong. Christians, Jews, Most Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Animists, those who have ancestor worship and others all agree with me on this point (even satanists agree with this in principle - the Satanic Bible puts it plainly that you shouldn't harm a child as children are innocents, and this idea of not harming innocents is carried through the entire book). We can play at disagreeing, but even the staunchest Darwinist, the one that would say that death always improves the species due to death being part of some defect (and there are none of these that I know of) would say that the death of a person so that someone can take their wallet or other personal belongings (note that I have used a different example to the book, but I think that it is an appropriate example) and thus afford to eat, therefore carrying on the species while weeding out a weakness (alertness, strength, speed etc) is wrong and should be punished. This is because every person feels the gravity and enormity of Death and most try to avoid it. Even in the story, this is acknowledged. read this short excerpt
"I want those kids," said Wehling quietly. "I want all three of them."
"Of course you do," said Dr. Hitz. "That's only human."
"I don't want my grandfather to die, either," said Wehling.
"Nobody's really happy about taking a close relative to the Catbox, [the place that people are taken to die, a glorified gas chamber otherwise known as 'Ethical Suicide Studios']" said Dr. Hitz gently, sympathetically.

And yet, this other view that is put forward is the logical conclusion that you must come to. As humans we pride ourselves on being Homo Sapien - Human, The Wise. We should be able to accept this without any qualms and yet, we feel sad when people that we know die. Interesting isn't it. Either we aren't as wise as we think we are or there is something important about life that should be held on to. Dylan Moran puts it this way; we should be as alive as we can until we're totally dead.

Watch this space for another couple of arguments in this vein.