The Problem with True Atheism

So, I've promised to write this out sometime, and here it is, at least in part. I have a bunch of things I want to talk about, and it will, in all likelihood, take more than one blog. I also will be talking about some Chicago machine politics soon, which should be fairly interesting - but is a totally separate topic.



Well, the title sort of says it all, and I am in part responding to a number of comments by friends about constructing a "rational" system of morality. I have already detailed a number of problems with this approach, and I will reiterate some of them here. I will also detail the history of the growth of the "atheist" movement in America (and, to a lesser extent, worldwide).



And note that I did put atheist in quotes, as this is my first point. Most people who claim to be atheists are, as far as I am concerned, agnostic. The may not acknowledge this or even be aware of it themselves, this seems to me to be the case. The reason that I say this is because they do not embrace the full ramifications of the nonexistence of any transcendent nature. The true ramifications of this are really fully explore by Nietzsche (and Machiavelli did significant work in this direction as well). Nietzsche is one of very few philosophers who truly embraced all the ramifications of the fact that there is no God.



Before I go much further, I must say this - I am nominally Latin Catholic (most people call it Roman Catholic, but it's correct name is the Latin Catholic Rite, one of what I believe is 13 Catholic rites), still practicing to a certain extent, and very well educated on the philosophy of my religion. This is not to say that I blindly follow dogma - much of the dogmatic has been removed from the religion with the advent of the Second Vatican Council, though there is still some dogma. One of the main responsibilities of adult Catholics is to be "persons of conscience" - meaning that each person is an individual moral agent, and they are responsible to their own conscience, which should be informed by the teachings of the church. I make this point so that you do not think that I am blindly trying to verify the existence of God because I have my beliefs.

Of course, in part this is true - my belief must extend in part from my upbringing in this tradition, but I have gone through a protracted period of non-belief; the main issue in this is that I have, over a number of years rediscovered my belief (which I still sometimes question) and looked at the ramifications of trying to construct a moral system without some kind of divinity.

And here is the crux of the issue. If we remove the sense of "specialness" from humanity, if we are just animals, and if existence is merely a random coincidence, there is no absolute morality. While this does not seem to be a problem on its face, it is quite a huge problem in trying to decide what can make something right or wrong. In fact, the very concept of right and wrong must be thrown out if you believe this. We must then, as Nietzsche says, move "beyond good and evil". The labels become ridiculous without some kind of transcendent nature. Try and define these terms without reference to God or to humanity being "special" in some way.

What is "good"? What is "evil"? If one tries to define these in a purely rational way, it is totally impossible. I challenge anyone to attempt this, and I can find fault with it. And please do not bother quoting from John Stuart Mill and Utilitarianism - he makes a number of mistakes that are easily observed, and in fact the mistakes that he makes are many of the same ones that modern atheists make.

Most people feel that there is no longer a need for God because people are basically good, and that blind adherence to dogma diminishes people because they are not allowed to think. In part they are correct - complete adherence to dogma does diminish people - but complete rejection of it is just as foolish. Belief that because people are currently good regardless of the hundreds of years of social history that molded their morality is giving yourself an enormous blind spot.

Let me give you an example in terms of science - obviously, this is simply an analogy, not an attempt to say that faith and science are interchangeable - they are not. If every generation decides that because we have more knowledge than the previous generation we can simply discard everything that they have done, there would never be any growth in society. If, for example, Jonas Salk discovered the polio vaccine and moved the world of vaccinations forward by leaps and bounds. If we just assumed that we know more now than he did then, we could discard all of his work. Same in terms of space exploration - they got to the moon with calculations on slide rules using Newton's laws. If we did not keep using the good that has been previously discovered, we cannot progress forward.

The same does work on a moral level. If we simply discard all that previous generations have done in terms of morality, our social and moral systems wouold never advance. One of the best examples of this is in the case of Martin Luther King, Jr. The reason his message caught hold so well all over is not because it was new, but because it was founded on the moral and religious principles that many people already claimed allegiance to. (and yes I know I ended with a preposition, I just don't want to rewrite it) He called people to task on their original religious beliefs and called them to look at how they were treating other people and how it was inconsistent with their professed faith.

I have to stop for now, and I really have not finished (I've barely even begun) but I will continue soon.

The Joy of Wargaming

So, I am sure you all want to hear about my reflections on the nerdish pastime of wargaming - for me, the principle games are Warhammer 40k and Infinity (though I've dabbled in Warhammer Fantasy as well). I just started wondering why it is that I like it - and I really don't know.

I don't really care about winning, though I do try to win when I fight; winning is not a high priority - having a good time is. If I win, that is fine, but only if, in the process, the person I am playing also had a good time. I like the strategic thinking elements, I like the numbers game of constructing an army - but these are secondary pleasures for me. I guess it is the social context in which the game occurs that I enjoy the most - it is why I tend to play with only a select group of people.

After my attempts at a couple of games in conventions, finding min/maxing running rampant and attempts at cheating an obfuscation being more the norm than civility, I prefer to stick with people I know - from our group or from the group that I know at the local game store.

Not that min/maxing is really wrong - of course there has to be an element of mathematical efficiency in terms of army selection, but the tourny version consists of mathematical and army min/maxing. Using lists from armies that everyone knows are unbalanced with the rest of the game - but everyone at the tournament is using those armies, so it doesn't matter to them - it only matters if you are not playing one of the uber-optimized armies, like Tyranids or Imperial Guard...

But enough complaining - on to my critique of 5th Edition of 40k. On the whole, the rules are actually an improvement - they allow for an increase in tactical thought, while preserving the rapid play elements. For the most part the rules are very balanced, but then they had to release the Space Marine codex - of course, marines are even tougher now. With their new ability of being able to break 10 man squads into two five man squads (vital in the new troop based objectives of the game) and the ability to choose to pass or fail any morale test they want, in addition to the "And They Shall Know No Fear" special rule makes them a formidable foe for any assault based army. Terminators assaulted by Genestealers, no problem - voluntarily fall back (risking the wipeout from sweeping advance - some small balance at least) - then unload on them with stormbolters shredding them to bits. That coupled with the alteration of the "Rending Claw" rule that leads to a drop of an average of 22% in my lethal efficiency, and you can see why I am a tad upset over the turn of events.

But on the whole, the game is pretty balanced if you do not play space marines. Apocalypse is another story - Eldar and Space Marines rule the day in this game, but the 'Nids have a few tricks up their sleeves (if they ever wore sleeves). Since everyone has access to ridiculousness, it can be fun, but you run into the problem of since there are no restrictions, the person who spent the most money getting the cool Forge World models will likely win. But if you do not play douche-bags, it is still fun, and honestly, many people have had those Forge World models a long time and dumped a good deal of cash on them - why shouldn't they get the joy of playing them in a battle every now and then? As long as they are doing it for the fun and not trying to just overpower everyone because they spent the most money, thats cool.

But on to my latest joy - Infinity. This game is very, very cool, allowing for a great deal of flexibility in assembling armies while still maintaining balance. It is a skirmish based game (not unlike Necromunda or Mordheim) but it is so much better than any other it is ridiculous. The story is that we are several hundred years in the future, the makeup of the power structure on earth has changed dramatically, as well as wormhole travel opening up various planets for exploration. The fluff behind the game is really cool, but it really shines because of its mechanics.

You have an "order pool" based on the number of model, and you may spend those orders on any of your models in a turn (for example if you have 8 orders, you could spend all 8 on 1 model, 1 each on 8 models, or anything in between). This allows for immense tactical flexibility, but there is a price. Unlike most games, both players act on each turn. Any action by the offensive player generates a "reaction order" in any model from the opposing side that can see it. Use of smoke, crawling and keeping models in cover is very much the order of the day, and if you take a shot at someone who can see you, they may jump behind cover as a reaction, or they may shoot back - and if they are a better shot than you, you could lose your model on your own turn. Add to this the high tech doctors, engineers, and hackers on the board, and you have a very diverse game - with one side shooting while moving hackers up to try and take control of enemy mechs, while the other side responds with anti-hacking protocols and return fire - you get the idea - it is a very dynamic game.

Plus the number of special abilities that add depth to the game but do not overpower, and the special weapons that offer the same advantages - they introduced a value called "SWC" in addition to points cost for models. SWC is the special weapons cost, and you can have as many SWC as points in your army divided by 50. Since most games are 300 points, this means you can have 6 SWC - making you choose what you want your army to specialize in. Because of this you absolutely cannot have everything - for example, a heavy infantry with a missile launcher costs 70 points and 2 SWC, while a trooper costs 10 points and 0 SWC, and there are a ton of other options - you could field an army of all remotes and robots, or a infiltration based force, or an airborne deployment force, or even an undisciplined force of irregulars (they do not contribute to your order pool - each model keeps his own order, limiting, but much cheaper on points and SWC), or you can mix it up. I would love more people to give this game a try. Raveboy tryed it and really enjoyed it, and NTT's Brain enjoyed watching it (and I think he even tried a game). I think that the Acupuncturist played a game or two as well, so maybe we can play a few games with more of us next time...

Also, I am putting together a larger skirmish/battle game for L5R so that we can actually use some of the mass quantities of models that I own. My laptop charge is almost gone, however, and I am done blabbing for now.

So much to say, so little time

Well, I have a ton of stuff that has been rolling around in my noggin over the last week or so, from mundane inanities like the Rubik's cube as a metaphor for both positive and negative views of life, to topics about which I have a great deal of passion - say the existence of god(s), end of life issues, rational construction of a moral system, and on and on and on...

But I don't really feel like writing much of the heavy s**t right know, so I will content myself with my Rubik's cube metaphor... this has occured to me on more than one occasion over the last two weeks, and I feel like writing it down (BTW, hit my best time yesterday - 55.4 seconds, and I haven't been close since, still averaging around 1 minute 30 seconds, dropping down to 1:15 every once in a shile and going up to 1:50 every once in a while, but consistently howvering around the minute -thirty mark)

Anyway...

It seems to me that the cube could be a metaphor for the pessimist's view of life (though some cynics might argue that this is the realist's view, and on my worst days I tend to agree, but then again, I am clinically depressed, so what the hell does that tell you?). You see the cube is really about perfecting an ultimately mindless and useless task, then repeating that task over and over and over, even if you can't get any better. It is much like Sysiphus (sp?) constantly rolling the boulder up the hill, but with an added cynical twist - you screw up the cube yourself then try to solve it, only to screw it up again. How like many jobs, where we rush to complete one mindless task, and in the process create other mindless tasks for ourselves, all of which are ultimately pointless... Or relationships that we hasten to fix and then break apart and remend in an endless cycle of misery... Or life in general where we hurry to get noplace so that we can save time to spend it on nothing, hurrying and scurrying until we meet our end having accomplished nothing except for endlessly repeating the same pattern... Which could go for the human race - endlessly repeating the same mistakes, not because of institutions, governments, or religions, but simply because we are people and that is our nature (incidentally, blaming religion or society or republicans or democrats or whatever group for being the root of evil is purest sophistry -all those groups have done great good and great evil, like virtually every group every, and they all have one common denominator - human beings - who ultimately choose good or evil).

Or on the lighter side, one could point to the zen-like state that you enter in the solution of the cube, performing a mindless task with a religious devotion like a mantra taking one to a state of non-existence of self, of other, of anything, just perfecting the task - like a swordsman trying to perfect the art of the draw, or a potter losing himself in his craft, etc., etc. Obviously this one is not as well thought out as the other - I am in a bit of a bitter mood, and have been for a couple of weeks - no good reason, just where I am, so this positive crap feels phony to me, but I think there might be a kernel of truth in it somewhere - it just doesn't seem like it right now.

But on to other things; I am going to be out of town for most of the next two weeks, and when I am in town, I don't know if I can game or not, but I am going to be adding a blog to this - an L5R blog. I am going to indicate whether a post is for the High or Low power group, and anyone can respond to the post (in character of course) and tell me how they interact with the situation. I figure that this way I can keep up my ideas for the games, have a place to post summaries, and be able to give experience for players who are out of the area... Oh yeah and I can post all the house rules in detail and see if anyone wants to volunteer ideas for other rules or getting rid of rules.

I think it should work out pretty well - look for it in the next few hours. Here is the link, it is in my list of blogs to the side as well: http://tosavethesteelthrone.blogspot.com/

Rubik's Cube and L5R new stuff

So it's been a week since I learned to solve the Cube (simple 3x3 only, I am starting to look for patterns that would help me solve the 4x4 and larger, but that will take a while). I have been practicing fairly regularly - maybe 20-30 minutes a day, maybe a little longer on some days, none on others, but I got my best time of 1 minute and 18.56 seconds today (of course, listing the decimal is somewhat spurious in terms of the significance, because of the delay of pressing the button, picking up the cube, an pressing again when finished, but what the hell). That doesn't seem too bad for a week, but I would like to get sub-one minute, I figure it may take another couple of weeks to do that. Cutting from 3 minutes to 1:20 is pretty easy, but there comes a point where until you learn how to process the color differences faster and learn some finger techniques that you hit a wall. I'll note when I achieve that. One of the kids who taught me has a best time of 40 seconds ish, the other has a best time of 8.56 seconds - I saw him do it in my classroom at a Rubik's Cube Club meeting - he has one of those timeing pads and everything.

He is phenomenal - able to do it blindfolded, behind his back, one in each hand simultaneously (that is the most impressive for my money). He can even solve a 7x7 cube in under 5 minutes - look up Vcube on you tube and you'll find a number of solutions to this puzzle and get an idea of just how hard it is. He has even come up with an algorithm of his own for solving the cube -pretty cool!

I've also been teaching myself multi-variable calculus over the past couple of weeks - it is surprising how easy it is to pick it up. The basics of three dimensional vectors make a lot of sense, and the proofs of how the basics work is not that bad - mostly a pretty simple extension of analytic geometry... but reparameterizing equations seems kind of silly, I am going to have to look up why anyone would want to do it - there must be something I am missing, but it could have something to do with integral multivariable -since the reparameterized equations are in terms of the parameter s, the length along the curve (so the x, y, and z coordinates are in terms of the distance travelled along the curve rather than the arbitrary parameter of t that has no actual representation on the curve - and I suppose I just answered my own question - the new parameter has physical "reality" on the curve). But I just realized that this is probably terribly boring, and you would rather hear about the L5R stuff.

3rd Edition Revised came out a couple of weeks ago, and Masters of Magic (to go with Masters of War and Masters of Court) came out a couple of days ago. Revised fixed quite ofew ofthe errata, and introduced more errata with some of their corrections. It also added in the Spider Clan (Daigotsu's Shadowlands clan) for more interesting characters and NPCs. Here are the major new bits, all of which I'll be incorporating.

• Defense Skill while in "Full Attack" posture - Always add 2x your def skill to your TN when in full attack - this is a very good reason to buy it up, especially for the Lion characters. I am not sure if this is too good, but I think it balances out. At rank 3 you add it to your TN at all times (except full attack), so a character with defense rank 3 adds 6 to his TN in full attack, but the opponent still gets 3 free raises so he effectively only gets a -9 to his TN instead of a -15 if the raises are used to lower TN
• Defense Skill while in "Attack" posture - allows characters to use the defense skill even if they choose the attack posture; this makes no sense under their rules, but with us still declaring postures in reverse initiative, it is a very good option. You may make a defense skill roll, and the total replaces your TN from your reflexes. So a character with a 3 Ref and a 3 Def will average a base TN of 25 if they use this skill, rather than a base of 15. A normal Defense Roll would give plus 25 instead of the plus 10, but you did not need to be in full defense to use it.
• Full Defense - the full defense bonus only applies against as many opponents as your insight rank. Abilities that allow you to use your full def on someone else means both of you have the bonus against the same attackers. You can only use this bonus if you know you are being attacked.
• Heavy weapons and carapace - the Tetsubo only takes 2 off of the carapace, but removes the 10 bonus from armor, Dai Tsuchi removes 1 from carapace and 5 from armor bonus. Much more realistic, and there are still mastery bonuses.
• Feint Manuever - this is now worthwhile. Make an attack roll. If you succeed, you do no damage, but for every successful raise you called towards a feint, you get two free raises on your next attack against the same opponent, as long as you attack befor the end of the next round.
• Extra Attack - both attacks must be made against the same opponent unless you are attacking with a second weapon in your off hand. This can make dragons very dangerous, and can make some peasant weapons extremely effective (watch out for those wandering budoka masters who just look like peasants ;)
• Movement Penalties and damage - When you are hurt (+10 TN) you also take a penalty of 1 to your water ring for movement purposes, when crippled, you take a penalty of 3.
• Movement - Move Water x 10 feet per round. Full defense you may move half that distance. If you are in "Full Attack" posture, you may also attack after a full move. In "attack" posture, you may attack after a half move, or after a full move if you make a raise.
• Attacking after getting up - getting up takes a full action - If you make two raises, you may attack as well.
• Raises on contested rolls - simply declare raises and then subtract 5 x the number of raises from your final roll - this simplifies contests with multiple opponents (a very important rule with Winter Court forthcoming)
• Raises for Damage - 1 raise adds 1k0, two raises adds 1k1, three raises adds 2k1, four raises adds 2k2, etc.
• Raises for spells - a bunch of new stuff here, they basically systematized the raises for duration, range, and casting time. Each raise increases the duration by an amount equal to the base duration, each raise for range increases range by the base amount (ie 50 feet base, 100 ft with one raise, 150 with 2, etc). Each spell takes its mastery level in actions to cast, each raise reduces the casting time by 1, to a minimum of one action. (rituals take 10 minutes per mastery level, and require multiple casters). Raises are capped by Void or Ranks in Spellcraft, spellcraft of 5 gives a free raise on all spells. If you have an emphasis, at rank 7 you add that amount to your spell casting roll (mucho dangerous for specialists, putting them more on par with their bushi counterparts)
• Void points for extra actions - you may spend 2 void points to gain an additional action on a turn. It can't be an attack, but it can be anything else (including a spell - so it is possible to cast two spells if you have enough Void). You can only gain one action this way, and it could be a spell after a normal attack (for example - the Maho Tsukai attacks someone to fuel his spell and then casts the spell - so he stabs you and uses your blood to fuel the evil magic that he casts at you - risky and difficult, but oh so scary)
• You may spend a Void to add +10 to your TN for a round.

Those are the main differences, there are a couple of others that I may phase in gradually, but these are pretty straightforward, and are also pretty cool. I have a couple of house rules that we have been playing with so far, but I may as well systematize them here.

House rules:

• Delaying actions - if you have a higher initiative and you delay your action to try and see what someone will do, you can make a contested reflexes roll to act before they do - no modifiers for being "quick" or having a technique that mods initiative - you already used that and are then delaying. This way, you can see what someone will do, and then make a move based on that if you are willing to take the risk.
• Casting a spell that targets an individual you take a penalty to the TN of the spell equal to twice the ring that opposes the spell you are casting if the person is aware of the spell and actively resisting the effects (for example, you cast a Jade Strike at an Oni. The oni has an Air ring of 3, your TN to cast the spell is 6 higher). This gives people some actual resistance to spell casting, but not the full +10 TN that the books give now - it is halfway between the old system and the new one, and we'll see how it works ( I might change it to ring times 1/2 Insight rank, rounding insight up before multiplying, but I am not sure yet)
• Declaring posture in reverse initiative order, this still gives the initiative winner a big advantage.
• (NEW) Penalties for being in "Full Attack" posture happen when you declare the posture and last until your next action.

That's all for now, I am going to watch Two and a Half Men with the wife (funniest new show on TV, BTW).

Rubik's Cube

So I finally learned the algorithms to solve a rubik's cube today - it is pretty easy, only took me a day to learn them, and I can finish a cube in sub-three minutes. I won't consider it much of an accomplishment until I can get below the one minute marker.

BTW, supergoober, thanks for the reminder on The Hospital... I had forgotten about that (don't worry, I still remember how it ends, just forgot to finish writing it). Incidentally, I am in a better mood now - four days averaging less than two hours of sleep a night does some strange things to your mind - lets just say the gun barrel joke came from a serious curiousity and leave it at that :)

But I got five hours of sleep last night and I feel much better. Though the good thing about sleep disorders is that you do burn more calories being awake - I did nothing different in the past four days (except not sleep) and lost five pounds from the anxiety - what a perfect crash diet - I wonder if I could sell it to Hollywood model/actress types?

Well, that's it for right now, I might do a more serious one tomorrow, if I finish writing my practice final exams for my classes and posting them on my website in a timely fashion - they dont have the final until december 19th, but I figure that they can have more time to study this way.

Maybe one of these days, I will just right a post listing a bunch of hotbutton issues and topics, but never actually discuss them, and see how many hits I get from people who just monitor this stuff because they have little else to do... seems like fun, huh?

So, it's three am and I can't sleep...

So, it's 3 a.m. and I can't sleep, so I figured I'd get a bit of writing done and briefly foray back into the online world after a prolonged absence - due in part to being extremely busy prepping student leaders for a Kairos Retreat and due in part to struggling with some depressive tendencies - a weird combo, busy and depressed, but not so weird... depression can at once paralyze and also cause a person to be unnecessarily busy to avoid confronting him/herself... and what luck, I just used both unhealthy strategies :)

I have two stories and a poem floating in my head right now, but I don't feel like writing them - one story is too upbeat for the way I feel right now, and would just sound phony, and the poem and other story are just too depressing to put down on paper (or the electronic equivalent), so I will just resort to telling a few jokes - somewhat in the vein of the gallows humor of the comment at the end of the last paragraph.

I was just thinking in all the distopian futures, they always have suicide booths/parlors etc. This always seemed somewhat profligate to me - I know that you want to encourage such things in the dark times of the future (Soylent Green comes to mind), but I just got to thinking that it would be a lot cheaper and more effective if they just made flavored gun barrels - because who really wants that metally taste in their mouth before they die?

I guess that isn't as funny as I thought it was, but sometimes it helps to make a joke out of the more bizarre thoughts... maybe I'll go on to something a little less ... uh ... dark.

I always wanted to run my own mortuary, just so I could put truth back in advertising - my slogan would be "Your pain is our gain" - coffin sales are the most ridiculously exploitative businesses.

Guess that's not really any lighter is it?

What if alien abductions are happening? Their tech would be so far advanced it would be like us catching fish - just imagine the little fish posters underwater showing all the missing persons (or fish, I guess) and the fish police who have no leads - it's like these fish just disappeared completely from the world. And what about the ones who are caught and released - they just come back with a bizarre story of how they were swimming along like normal - spotted a tasty morsel and ate it, then they felt a searing pain in the mouth got yanked up out of the world where they couldn't breath, had a probe shoved in their mouth to remove a device (or maybe implant one??????) under the glaring light that they've never seen before, only to be thrown back in a different part of the lake than where they were eating...

Then they have to go home and explain what happened - and try to convince the other fish that it is not the cheap gin they been drinking or the methamphetamines they've been smoking, but it actually happened.

For my money, I still bet on the cheap gin and meth being the cause of human abductions...


Okay, so I'm not that funny right now, but whatever, at least I wrote something - get off my back.

Coming soon: a post on Voltaire's expression, "If God didn't exist, it would be necessary for us to invent him" in this post, then in my fiction post, a poem called "gossamer threads" and part two and three of "A Butterfly Caught in a Spider's Web"

Talk to you soon