I've realized that people read this blog and so I've been stumped as to what to write about next. Now that summer is here and college is not, I thought I don't really need this blog as an outlet as much since I have time to write about what I want with more forethought. Then I actually tried to do that and it did not happen.

Also I don't have as much time as I thought since I screwed up my sleep schedule severely. I became nocturnal again :( but it's ok because I will fix it (I have been saying this for the past two weeks and it has not improved).

Actually side note: how do you spell “ok”? Well it's hard to ask that question in writing because I'm throwing my preferred spelling at you and biasing you. “Ok” is really one of those words that's spelled in many ways. Wikipedia has the primary spelling as “OK”, like in capitals, and this is because it is presumably an abbreviation for something lost. But the word is so common that I feel like it's weird to capitalize it all the time, so I just do “ok”. “Ok” if it's at the beginning of a sentence. What I have caught myself doing is writing “okay” which does not make sense if it's a long lost abbreviation; plus it's longer for no reason. I think I started doing this to include the word in an essay and keep the tone formal, and I thought “okay” was the full spelling or something. I mean I can't remember, just like how we collectively can't remember the origin of the word “ok”. Actually according to Wikipedia, it might have come from the Choctaw, which has the word “oke” for “it is”, so it might not be an abbreviation after all. But “okay” is still longer unnecessarily and so I will never write it again definitely not

So I'm writing in the blog again. But about what? Well firstly, I want to stop making these metareferences to the blog and just write. But I think I might need this to start writing and I really don't edit this shit at all (evidenced by the long ass paragraph above) so this is what you get. I thought I would just write about the various ideas that I plan to write about more formally.

Actually, additional side note: I know there's a big thing about using the word “so” willy-nilly and honestly I get it. I think you should just get to the point. At the same time it is a useful transition word so I think you should be able to use it sometimes. It's also a conjunction and for that you shouldn't restrict yourself. I don't care too much in this blog because it's the equivalent of shitting on the page but I did just catch myself doing that so I thought I would write about it.

I'm gonna be real though, I'm scared. I'm super scared guys. I don't want to use my brain. And that's what's stopping me from writing. But you know what? This blog requires almost zero thought. That's actually what I was thinking about when considering to talk about big ideas on the blog because I don't want to diverge from its original purpose of word vomit, which is pretty hecking fun. But then I realized that if I don't talk about stuff, I'm not talking about anything, which is bad. To be dumb I have to be smart.

Man, this sucks. Wait actually, additional side note: is “man” sexist– *gets fucking shot in the head*

Man, this sucks. I hate using my brain. You know who else hates using their brains? Religious people. (*JOKE*) Guys I'm starting this out with a BANGER. I've been debating some people at college about this and I have developed a pretty rock-solid argument against faith-based religion.

I use the term “faith-based religion” because “religion” is just too broad. The term “religion” is also really charged and I would rather not get into the debate on what is a religion and what is not. I'm more interested in why things are bad, and then we can use those reasons to determine what is bad later. I guess I could just say “faith”, and I definitely do, but I think it's important to recognize that faith is most prevalent in, and actually encouraged in, religion.

What is faith, exactly? There's the colloquial definition of simply “strong belief” but I don't think that's what religious people are talking about. It's hard to define since many religious people who hold faith to be integral to their beliefs say that faith is not “blind”. I don't want to disregard what these people say, but when you examine how faith differs from reason, it is in the absence of examining evidence. This is where I think there's a major issue.

If you're trying to develop a method of belief, you would want it to reflect truth. This is the whole point of belief; like you can't believe something is true if you believe it's not true — that's just irreconcilable because it's contradictory at an inherent level. Like you're never going to think that you're incorrect in any individual belief you have, even if you also believe in the abstract that you're wrong about something you believe. Of course, your beliefs can carry recognition of uncertainty, but again, belief in a level of uncertainty is still a belief, and so you'll think you're correct in the certainty of your beliefs. This probably made no sense, but that's because it should be self-evident. Unfortunately, I can't take rationality for granted, thus this is included.

Observations are used to test a belief because they are reflections of the objective reality — reflections that can be verified and examined. There are varying qualities of observation because, as anyone who has taken psychedelic drugs will attest, sensation is ultimately fallible, since it is a mere reflection of reality. This is why we rely on others to verify our observations (of course this is also an observation, but that gets into the whole solipsism debate that I don't want to get into right at this moment). When we lose the ability to verify our perception of reality due to social phenomena that discourage critical thinking, it can lead to bad shit. Hannah Arendt points this out in her 1951 book The Origins of Totalitarianism; I would extend her thoughts to identify Nazism and Stalinism (the ideologies behind what she claims are the only two instances of totalitarianism, Nazi Germany and the Stalinist USSR) as political religions.

Faith, due to its unfalsifiability, is antagonistic to critical (critical as in critique) thinking. Faith pluralism (usually called religious pluralism) is in some ways even more dangerous than traditional faith. Pluralism is the encouragement of the coexistence and validity of multiple groups — in this case, faith-based beliefs. This sounds good at first, but pluralist faith denies any ability of a common reality of any type. Faith is sometimes accidental — a way of belief that people just fall into — and once people are called out, they attempt to revert back to reason. Faith pluralism, on the other hand, acknowledges faith and endorses it as a legitimate method of belief. Under faith pluralism, there are no bad types of beliefs; there is no such thing as fact because everything is fact.

Right now in the United States, we see the dangers of tolerating faith. We are in the midst of a neo-fascist movement primarily targeting queer people (specifically gender nonconforming people, epitomized by transgender people). I don't think it's stated enough just how dangerous this movement is — and will be — as it continues to grow. But fighting this movement requires fighting the source, and underlying this anti-queer bigotry is religion. Anti-queer bigotry is obviously not defensible by reason; however, like everything else, it is defensible by faith. That's part of the reason why we see so much overlap between religiosity and anti-queer extremists.

This may be where progressive religion comes in. And sure, I'm in favor of progressive religion in the same way that I'm in support of rainbow capitalism. But I can't in good conscience give my support to progressive religion, because they are still giving legitimacy to faith as a method of belief. If you give legitimacy to one faith-based church with a rainbow flag, you give legitimacy to all faith-based churches, including shit like the Westboro Baptist Church. This is different from reason-based institutions. Reason allows you to argue that your view is logically valid and the competing view is invalid. Faith only allows you to present an equally valid alternative, since the foundations of all faith-based beliefs are identical: “because I say so”.

I can hear you saying that faith is ok if it doesn't affect anyone else. But herein lies the problem: your beliefs, especially beliefs on the fundamental issues touched upon by religion, affect others. If you use your faith-based beliefs in determining your personal political views, but then you vote, your faith is affecting others. If you use your faith-based beliefs in determining your personal lifestyle, but then you raise children according to your lifestyle, your faith is affecting others. I would argue that these things are extremely common across the political spectrum. And this doesn't even get into the tiny decisions made every day that are made with the influence, conscious or otherwise, of faith-based beliefs.

I would like to bring up some other issues I have with religion, like how cherry picking quotes from scripture (from all areas of the political soup) is complete nonsense. But these critiques don't work, because faith-based religion is inherently nonsensical. Cherry picking quotes is nonsensical, but so is giving faith to any of these quotes at all.

Obviously I don't think that we should eliminate religion through means of the state. I don't even want to entertain this idea but I think I have to in order to cover my ass. When I've talked with some people, they think that my antireligion is linked to some sort of belief in state atheism. Obviously not. Not even touching the concerning ethics of such a system, it wouldn't work anyway. We need the freedom to practice religion in the same way we need the freedom to practice hate speech. But we also need, and have, the freedom to challenge them. We need to stop tolerating faith in the social sphere. Religion can no longer be a sacred area that is not discussed to avoid discomfort.

Antireligion also needs to be a part of leftist politics. If we seriously want to fight this anti-trans movement, we need to fight its foundation: religion. This includes not just Christianity, but other religions too, including Islam (that's a whole other subject for another time). Leftists have become (or maybe always have been) cowards in regards to religion. It has been the justification for slavery, patriarchy, child abuse, and endless violence. Again, I'm not arguing that religion is all bad; rather, I'm arguing that you cannot separate the good and the bad in the way you can with reason.

I would definitely identify myself with New Atheism, but obviously not with all of the positions of all its proponents. There is this stereotype of New Atheism as being full of white male anti-SJW debate bros, and as a white male debate bro, I might not be the best messenger. But I'm also queer and leftist, and the “debate bro” label is not self-imposed, so there's that. This is obviously not an excuse, but I think some New Atheists have been turned away from leftism in part because of leftists' willingness to protect religion. I also think that the aesthetic of New Atheism certainly matches the right-libertarian/conservative aesthetic of “facts don't care about your feelings” in a way it doesn't match the leftist aesthetic of “everything is relative” postmodernism. Again, leftism is too soft, and that's killing people.

The comparison of New Atheism to religious fundamentalism is one I've found unhelpful. Perhaps this is a strawman argument since it is ridiculous, but I hear that the issue is that both insist that their position is the correct opinion. But what is wrong about this? Like I've stated previously, how are you to believe that your belief is not correct on a specific issue? They are alike in that they don't take the faith pluralist approach of validating everyone regardless of their correctness. But religion is not like race, it is like ideology — scratch that, it is ideology. Some people are correct and some people are incorrect. Allowing falsehoods to spread unchecked is extremely dangerous. I fucking hate centrism.

I recently came across a word that astounded me: “scientism”. It is a pejorative term that means, according to Wikipedia, the “principle that science is the best or only means to truth”. Of course it is! But apparently it's too extreme? Another word I came across in my time at college is “secularism”, the ideology of attempting to reach “secularity”, where religion and civic affairs are separate. Again, I came across it as a pejorative; in this case by a professor who I obviously won't name. Now I'm not at the level of a theologian with a doctorate, but I am smart enough to read. The argument being made was that secularism was used in the past to enforce the dominant religion, where “secular” means endorsing the dominant religion. This is stupid; this phenomenon is merely co-opting “secularism”. A responsible scholar would differentiate between these two phenomena, but I guess that's not as snappy.

But this teaches us what happens when “religious studies” is limited to examining those who do have religion and not examining those who do not. Irreligion is just another faith in their eyes, with no epistemological differences. In their eyes, promoting irreligion is equivalent to promoting Catholicism. But the various religions are alike in a way that does not include reason: faith.

I recognize that my words have likely convinced no one. Reason cannot permeate faith, which I have iterated before. But I think that individuals are more complex than this binary. In most actual people (likely including myself), beliefs are based on a mix of reason, faith, and other shit that probably exists but I can't think of at this moment. I also hope that people deep down operate by rationality and that faith is merely a farce that can be dissuaded. Hopefully the length of this has discouraged those of you who don't want to engage in an intelligent discussion.

And sorry if my blog isn't as lighthearted as you wanted.