I have lived in Utah Valley for most of my life in the midst of a particular religious majority: a successful sect of Mormonism (which, of course, is a sect of Christianity which is a sect of Judaism; Christopher Hitchens expands this idea with the fabulous quote: "monotheistic religion is a plagiarism of a plagiarism of a hearsay of a hearsay, of an illusion of an illusion, extending all the way back to a fabrication of a few nonevents".) People without need for the religious products that churches peddle usually find themselves in a variety of emotional states in relation to its omnipresence. Because a religious body is largely a set of social relations, it can be tempting - being social animals - to be drawn into it. I, naturally, have felt the pull of the social body but I soon found that any benefits were attached to far too many strings and quickly distanced myself from it. I remember one of my first experiences with a mormon friend. He had invited me to church. I think I hesitantly agreed but then thought better about it and decided I wasn't interested. I was later told how if I had gone I would have received, for free, my own copy of the religious book as well as a beautiful - and expensive - leather case. I found myself a little unimpressed then and today... my eyebrows simply can't go high enough.

Anyway, I made it through that and by now I've found enough people with alternative perspectives that only for a few years in junior high school I have ever felt oppressed or that I might be "missing something" The social groups that I have found have made the offerings of the church seem pathetic, flaccid, and unstimulating. Recently, however, I have within certain counter-cultures new competition to the tedious, yawny, and irksome. This foul beast is the hopeful feel-good "spirituality" that has found itself termed "new-age."

It is both infuriating and depressing to find the prehistoric tendencies to explain mystery with "magic!" operating so strongly within Utah's subculture. My revulsion comes from not understanding how people who readily see (and reject) the ugliness, stupidity, and cruelty of the larger system bounce so quickly into embracing another equally stupid - but less omnipresent - set of beliefs. I've had conversations which have quickly become steamed arguments over whether or not people can make bugs spontaneously generate from crystals. When I, flabbergasted, explain that the scientists everywhere would be roaring with excitement and trying to reproduce this phenomenon, I was met with disdain for the scientific community - who of course was actively suppressing information like this because it would be seen as a challenge to their authority. Luckily, in this case I actuallyfollowed up on the sources for this information. The speaker showed me a video that had been put together to prove this stuff which was immediately recognized as being footage from the X-files. It was a rare occasion in dogma retreating.

But even more powerful is quantum mechanics appropriation, which has been taken up as some sort of scientific legitimization of spirituality. One of the reasons why it is so difficult to combat q-mechanical spirituality is that reasonable people are often aware that they simply do not understand the mathematics behind to a degree that they can explain away the confusion. People on both sides stumble through rudimentary explanations of the Heisenburg uncertainty principle or the double-slit experiments as if they explain anything or support anything. One party understands that a good knowledge and criticism can only be had from years and years of mathematical study; the other party simply has heard a few of the popular conclusions which seem to support a slightly mystical worldview and so they seize it.

One main problem is that there is such a large gap between an introductory, glossed-over primer on quantum mechanics and a firm comprehension. There's basically nowhere to go for better information. I may not be scouring the web as I could, but I've made several dedicated efforts to try and broaden my understanding of these beyond the few popular examples that seem to fill just about every book on the subject. It's either beginner or professional, and it seems that there is nothing that adequately builds on beginning understandings of the subject.

So, how can more developed arguments be built to engage the new-agey? It seems that there is little that unites followers. Things like astrology underlie the mindset, but it seems like attacks at astrology simply shift into less easily criticized subjects like the golden ratio and other examples of pattern-searching coincidence.

I am a hobbyist photographer and have thought about attempting a Philosophy of Photography blog for a while. I think I may simply try to write for a while here in order to develop my thoughts and see if it generates enough thought for a more specific blog.

One of my photographic specialization is a kind of photojournalism of the local parties, especially in the electronic music scene. I just got back from a night of photos.

Bias is a sensitive issue in photojournalism because, as most people have internalized and understand, photographs are small slices in time aimed at a narrow field from a single perspective. Although most know this, deep in the collective gut still lives a weird little feeling that there is an objective truth within an image. It isn't something to dismiss because photos can become stronger than memories, or at least color and shape those memories. If we gain a lot of our own identity through our own memories that means that photographs have the power to alter who we are. I'm not saying anything very radical here, and most who have spent a fair amount of time in the contemporary, photo-splurging world are aware of these issues.

Yet, I am often amazed at how easy it is for a bias, a world view, to be spread by the process of selection. For example, although just about every club has a vastly disproportionate male/female ratio, photographs produced from these events would lead one to believe otherwise. Look at any photo set and count how many times a female is the focalpoint. These sets distort reality in a way that is obvious, but what about the biases that aren't so? What biases are represented in the photo set that I published and made available publically? The full set can be accessed by clicking the following image.

I don't post every photo I take. It's been a matter of personal discipline to pay a lot of attention to editing down, especially to ease the suffering of viewers who might otherwise be met with blurry swarms of photographs and hordes of repetitions. However, as a goal, I attempt to represent - through 50-odd photographic perspectives - a kind of summary or approximation for what I felt encompassed the "vibe" of the night. By doing so, I may be removing images that did represent the night but did not represent what I wanted the night to have meant. Take the following two images:



The first images was selected for the set. The other was eliminated and would never have made it to the glow of lcd screens if not for this particular digression. The photos are similar in composition and split-seconds apart, but the meanings are radically different. In the selected image, the focus is on camaraderie, whereas the other takes on a sexual tinge (by freezing time, there is no way to know how long this hug lasted; it may have only been a moment, but the impression is that it could last forever). If I was a club owner who wanted to portray a place as sexual dynamite or a phenomenal paradise (as many do), my selection would probably have been inverted. By examining both, the case could probably be made easily for my selection being the "truer" in representing the actual relationship of the two females, that they are indeed good friends and not overtly into one another. But does the trueness of their relationship reflect the truness of the party?

The image was selected because it captures a rare, semi-intimate moment of joy between two people. Was the night completely filled with these kinds of moments as a viewer might be led to believe? I've heard people say that my photo sets made a shitty party look like it was great. So where is the truth? If photographs aim to be some sort of anthropological record at all, I think these questions must constantly be asked. My set could have easily been shaped to give another impression. Any photo set anywhere is produced from the biases of the photographer and a reality - or a desire for a reality - that existed in their head.

The recent victory for Gay marriage in California seems to be making way for social movements that have long been due. It's not that people want to marry their cats or cacti just yet, the slippery slope slips into unexpected areas. Now that marriage is seen as gluey cohesion for the similar sexed as well as the opposite, what else could be beneficial to the stability of our society that was hardly noticed before? Friendship! A movement has emerged (reported in the Boston Globe which feels that friendships should be quantified just like marriages have been in the past. Doesn't it all come down to the fact that married people are less prone to do risky or frisky things because they don't want to devastate their spouses?

If that is the case, then why can't friends get marriage benefits from being friends with other people. People with friends are much less likely to commit suicide or be unpredictable in a socially debilitating way. Without friends, who would be there to pressure you to buy new clothes and neat gadgets? Without needing gadgets, why would you need a job? For that matter, why clean your room or do the dishes? Without friends, the brisk, lucrative world simply, sadly stops spinning. It's not coffee that greases the gears of a smooth economy, it's friendship! Isn't that just marvelous?

Of course, one of the reasons that marriage has been so easy to quantify as a stabilizing union is because it's so much of an miserable operation to separate. It seems that unless we want to get into more legally binding contracts with the people we like to hang out with, it does not really matter if we throw a crowbar and wedge a friend off. Actually, that's what most people do when they get married!

Mark Vernon, author of The Philosophy of Friendship, on the same subject, offers perspective on what's to come:

there is that excellent new institution, the civil partnership. Personally, I think of civil partnerships as a specifically committed friendship that is marriage-like rather than identical to marriage (though I think the legal entitlements should be equal).

How popular widespread, and common can make civil unions get? I guess the next step is to look into exactly how annoying they are to get. I started to look, but the first google results just made me laugh too hard. Of course it had to be:

obtaining civil unions - Google Search

How to obtain a dissolution of marriage or civil union
Civil unions, which were introduced on 26 April 2005 by the CIVIL UNION ACT 2004, are dissolved by the same process as marriages. ...

Oye vey.

I ran across a nice little quote by Jason Rosenhouse which accurately sums up and combats a mischaracterization of the "atheist plot" that I seem to see now and then.

It is often said that atheists want to eliminate or get rid of religion. That is not really an accurate way of putting things, since it suggests a desire for some external force to come in and remove religion from society. What atheists really want is for people to become persuaded on their own that religion does not deserve the respect it so frequently given. If that were to happen, we argue, civilization would be a lot better for it.

It's often portrayed that atheism is some kind of political force which will seize the powers of the judiciary and enforce "enlightenment," when really, as Rosenhouse points out, is simply the spread of rationality.

I am a little hesitant, however, because many atheists seem to think that the rational mind will lead all to the same conclusion. However, it can only lead to the same conclusion in one area, and that is the demystification of fairy tales (especially the popular, dominant ones that seem to think they have a status above Little Red Riding Hood and the Three Little Pigs), which actually are a lot simpler than social phenomenon. Rationality simply sets the stage for serious discussion on problems much more relevant, complex, and serious. A conversation I just saw echoes this sentiment, in which Bill Maher(youtube) was touted as a hero and a villain in a tug-of war over the topic of being anti-religious as well as against animal testing. Saerain makes the following poignant point:

'Trailer for Religulous' by Bill Maher - RichardDawkins.net

I don't understand why our allies in the fight against religious delusion should be in concord on other topics. Aren't we constantly telling theists how atheists agree only on the nonexistence of deities?

I'm voting for Barack Obama despite his theistic rhetoric. I consider myself a Liberal despite my irritation over most Liberals' opposition to nuclear energy. Like many of you, I relish Christopher Hitchens in debates despite disagreeing with him politically. You get the idea.

Exactly! Atheism simply stops you from wasting so much time arguing about the things that are simplistic and stupid and forces you to meet the challenges of actually living with 6.4 billion other people on the planet. The analogy for this whole conversational black whole is not put better than a certain Roger on PZ's blog, "would you enjoy a debate with a paranoid schizophrenic about how they really ARE out to get him?". Oh yes. Oh no.