Guns Blazing Drums of Death

So, before reading any more of this, you've got to get some background:
Most people reading here haven't been aware of the Belief-O-Matic and the swath of destruction it has cut through the 'sphere. This is mostly due to the fact that it has been contained within Dean's little slice of the pie. Basically, click the link and take the quiz now in order to know what I talk about for the next however long this takes.

So, you took the quiz? Interesting. Maybe. But clearly poorly written (more on that in a moment). Now, before we go any further, hopefully you were also tempted to find out just what Dean's slice of the pie is. They're all nice folks. CS Students at Fanshawe, I believe (FF2.0's suggestions for correcting the spelling of Fanshawe: Deanship, penmanship, peshawar's). It appears that Emily first found the B-O-M, posted it, and brought its vile menace to the rest of us. Dean dropped it next, followed by me (although I didn't end up posting it for reasons mentioned earlier [6th one down]), followed by a guy named Shane (who got "pie" in the above round of linkage). Out of all of us who've taken it, Shane was the only one who got a first-place score for anything close to a serious mainstream religion. He also mentioned that it was his actual religion. Now, no one has commented on that post, but apparently he took enough flak for it in RL that he wrote another entire post defending his religious freedom and basically fleshing out his beliefs a little.

He didn't allow commentary on it, which is a huge shame, because now I've had to go and write an entire post of my own to let him know that I think he's completely right, and even though I scored 100% on Unitarian Universalism (more on that in a moment as well) we agree on a whole lot of important things:

I don't believe in any sort of god, higher power, or shaping force in the world. But I don't yell it from the roof-tops either. I seriously don't care what other people believe. But if someone wants to come after me for my beliefs or prattle on aimlessly about theirs in some sort attempt to win me over, you can be damn sure they'll be getting both barrels.

"If you lived my life than you would believe". Undoubtedly true. Shane makes that point plainly, and doesn't fuck around with it. It's not like I've lived a life of hardship where I was forced to reject the idea of god, but I'm not stupid enough to think that my experiences haven't shaped my beliefs more than any other single thing.

The man unequivocally states that he's afraid of the person that he'd be without god in his life. I'd have to say the same... but sort of opposite.

But now the crux of the post: As I mentioned above, Shane and I don't really enjoy parading our beliefs, and really the best way to get them out of us is to either insult or otherwise challenge them. Usually I can use my biting sarcasm to make my opponents/detractors rethink their strategies and leave it at that. It's not like either of us could actually "win". But, Shane makes the point a little better: "don't you dare be ignorant enough to call what I believe in 'Stupid'". And he's perfectly correct. Here's the major shocker: I'm an atheist, there's no two ways about it. Agnosticism doesn't even come close to entering the argument (more on that later, too). But I can accept that my position will never be proven. Ever. Atheism (at least for me) is as much a faith-based position any other. So if you want to get up in my grill, go right ahead. Chances are that I'll make you a lot more angry than you can make me. Because I am unshakeably faithful in my beliefs, not that my beliefs are right or the best. So I'm just going to make fun of you until you stop.

So, there ends my little solidarity piece. Congratulations, Shane, your interesting posts have won you (and Emily and Pook) spots on my link list. It seems like I check your blogs every time I check Dean's anyway, so you can all enjoy your own little subgroup within my links to make it easier for me.

So, onto the miscellaneous "I'll get to this in a minute" things:

The Belief-O-Matic is a pretty severely flawed quiz, especially form an atheist perspective. Basically, if you want the machine to give you a 100% rating for "non theist", you've got to answer "No X because god does not exist. Or not sure. Or not important". Now, let's hold on a minute. First of all, being lumped in with agnostics (oh, their turn's coming), and people who... don't care? isn't exactly flattering. But, what rankles is that it also means that even though I have a serious stance on pretty much everything discussed in that quiz, the authors believe that my beliefs, which have been honed and rethought and clarified throughout the entirety of my spiritually conscious life, can all be simplified to "not important". So, no, go fuck yourself. There's no way that I can answer "not important" to every single question. That's idiotic. That being said, I did manage to say most of the time. But there were some questions that I couldn't. Example:

Question 9. Baptism (or initiation) Ceremonies
a) Required
b) Not Required
c) Not Applicable

What's the difference between not required and not applicable? The question was referencing whether or not baptism (or initiation) ceremonies were needed to attain salvation (or enlightenment, or whatever), and since I think that some sort of enlightenment or happiness is a desirable goal in life, I chose "not required". Because, clearly, that's what it is.

The underlying premise of this quiz is that to be a "non theist" you need to either have no morals and beliefs, or not care about them. And the section on non-theists reflects this. It's barely 4 sentences long. They could barely contain their information on the other 26 religions mentioned. I challenge anyone to find one that had less than a page of concentrated information. I will bravely assert here that I have morals as strong, or significantly stronger, than most of my "religious" friends. And I'll also say that I don't think it's a coincidence that my morals are forged from my own thoughts and experiences instead of dictated to me from someone else (or someone else's book).

I sit back in my chair and attempt to remember where I was going with this. Oh yeah, Unitarian Universalism.

UU managed to also get ahead of "non theism" in terms of the detailed information that was presented about it after the quiz. This information was divided into a number of interesting sections like "Belief in Diety", "Origin of Universe and Life", and "Why Evil?". Basically the answer in every category for UU is "anyone believes whatever they want. Some people believe the exact opposite of others, but that's OK". Wow, and I scored 100% for this church? No kidding. Imagine all of my answers managing to fall within the bounds of a church where anyone can say anything and have it become part of the official doctrine. What are the chances?

It makes me sick that this pathetic excuse for a belief system manages to get more attention as a serious way for people to live their lives than mine. It drives me up the wall.

Here's my theory: The B-O-M contains 27 seperate categories for one to score under. Of those, 10 are christian sects. That's 37%, and it outnumbers the number of different choices for a faith by a pretty significant margin: 2 for Buddhism and Judaism, and Islam rating only a single category. New-age sort of stuff also rates pretty high. But faith without a god only rates the category of "non theism". Personally, having sampled a lot of what's on offer in the non-theistic world, I'd say that we deserve a few categories of our own. But the B-O-M doesn't have the energy to give them, I guess. So it attempts to lump them all together, and ends up having nothing to say about them except:

Atheists do not believe in a god or deity. Atheists' beliefs are similar to those of the Secular Humanists but do not necessarily include the emphasis on humanity's ability to improve the human condition. Views on contemporary issues vary widely.

Agnostics are inclined to question the existence of supernatural being(s) or a force, e.g., the answer to whether or not God (or Deity) exists would be: "We do not and/or cannot know."

There. That's it. Luckily, this ties in nicely with my next point: Fucking agnostics.

Anyone who calls refers to themselves as an agnostic is either 12 years old, or an idiot. Especially if they want to be taken seriously. When the B-O-M questions say "[something]. Or Don't know. Or not important", they might as well lump the last two together and call it agnosticism. As I mentioned above, I don't think that anyone will ever prove God's existence one way or the other. Ooh, wait, does that make me an agnotic? No, because I have a belief on the matter anyway, because it's something that I care about, regardless of whether or not it has an conclusive answer. Agnostics don't care at all. They cheapen existence by choosing not to think about it. If theism and atheism are two sides of the "coin of faith", then agnostics live on the rim of the coin, at a right angle to the other two sides. Maybe they can invite the UUs over to talk about nothing. And when the coin starts to roll across... I dunno, the tabletop of reality, they'll all get crushed.

Good.

Fuck 'em.