Skeptic Freethought

Many economist’s only job is to model reality. This means that they must make certain assumptions to make their models practical. A model airplane that can fly and carry passengers ceases to be a model. Apparently, the modeling nature of economics is lost on one of its most senior practitioners, and critics. Rob Johnson, currently president of the “Institute for New Economic Thinking” and former Chief Economist for the Senate’s Banking Committee. In an article posted on May 14 to Yahoo! Finance, Mr. Johnson claimed that economics had become inhuman. Criticizing economic’s  ideal of objectivity, he claimed that “Without admitting it, or even worse, at times without even knowing it, economists make powerful value judgments about what matters in our society.” Of course that much is true. Economists often must measure, quantitatively,…Read More

I received a comment on my previous post, "On Islamophobia", and I felt it needed a post of its own to respond. Below is the full text of the comment, followed by my response. Posted by: anon Email: kattor8@xxxxx.xxx "I’m a general religiophobe. I have an aversion to organized religion because I feel it stunts our intellectual growth and makes us reactive and belligerent" One can make the same argument for secular democracy---I could point out WW1 and 2 and the number of people killed ---or the american wars since---Vietnam and the atrocities committed then---those mines the Americans left behind are still exploding in Cambodia---or Hiroshhima and Nagasaki---the worst war crime humanity has faced---or falluja Iraq--where even as we speak babies are being born with horrible cancers and mutations because…Read More

I've studied many religions at college and outside of it, but the one religion I didn't really get an opportunity to study academically (and I really wished I had) is Islam. My academic experience with Islam comes in the form of two classes I took, one in middle school (during a world religions study unit) and one in junior college (when I took a course on Islam from a bona fide Muslim imam from the mosque in my old hometown). Aside from those two courses, my knowledge of Islam in a historical context is pretty weak. My studies of Arabic at university have been helpful in my readings of the Qur'an. I've had a Qur'an since the mid 1990s when I took that junior college course on Islam. Over the…Read More

Why Time’s Millennials Cover Story Says More About Joel Stein Than It Does About Millennials Seriously, what an asshole... *inhale* Sorry my lazy, technology-addicted generation has been tasked with cleaning up your post-war, leisure-oriented lifestyle with big gas-guzzling cars and overconsumption and that my generation has fought and died for your over-emotional pointless rage-war in the middle east because you want more oil for your Lincoln SUV and less brown people muddling up your upper class religious politicking, you bigoted, ageist ass-train. *ahem* ... The 90's generation was taught things like having positive self-esteem and over-rewarded with things like participation ribbons so "everyone wins" and told things like, "You can be anything you want to be when you grow up!" Why do you think we're a "me, me, me" generation. Because…Read More

If you've never understood depression, this is a great description of how my life was for many years.... http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2013/05/depression-part-two.html It waxed and waned from suicidal to hatred and anger, to complete apathy and eventually acceptance which allowed me to move on. Slowly. Realizing I was depressed in 6th grade, I probably accepted the fact in 10th grade, but it took me until college to actually get help and do something about it rather than flounder away on my own. The happy part is, I'm beyond the point in this last panel. That was me maybe... a year or two ago? Things are pretty peachy-keen these days. I've finally found the combo of antidepressants that seems to manage both my severe anxiety and mild depression after two years of tweaking. Yay…Read More

[Author's Note: This was originally written in April 2012 as an impromptu rant on my formerly active Google Plus page. I deleted my G+ account in February 2013, but thanks to a reblog, this post was preserved. I'm posting it here in all its rantiness for posterity.] Okay, so you know how effective birth control has only been with us for about sixty years? (Yeah, I know that there have been forms of birth control dating way back into history, but the ability to really manage the menstrual cycle didn't really come about until the 20th century.) Anyway, sixty plus years and culture is still scrambling to catch up with this heady technology. In that same range of time, beginning in the 20th century, the first transsexual surgeries occurred. For…Read More

I went to the mall today to go watch Iron Man 3, and I stopped by the food court for lunch. The kid shilling Philly cheesesteak sandwiches called me "sir". When someone misreads my gender, I usually just blow it off. Not a big deal. Nevertheless, afterward I went out of my way to find the gender-irrelevant single-stall bathroom in the movie theater before the show, and even though after the movie my bowels were full again and ready to burst after the soda at lunch, I didn't pee until I rode my bike back home. Thankfully my apartment is only a five-minute bike ride away from the mall. Even though I present as female, socialize as female, and more-or-less look and sound female, when I get read as male…Read More

I can only barely conceal my melancholy at the issues on which the illustrious students of Grand Valley State University seize. The United Students Against Sweatshops has recently been the most prominent litigator, yet it seems no one has had the wherewithal to ask what sweatshops in Indonesia have to do with contracts in the U.S. This is not a trick question. The USAS is protesting GVSU’s contract with Adidas, on the grounds of a particularly emotional case regarding PT Kizone, a clothing manufacturer in Indonesia. PT Kizone did supply Adidas. What’s conveniently unmentioned is that PT Kizone also sold “collegiate apparel” (dumbass sports jingoism) for Nike, and similarly useless products for the Dallas Cowboys. Adidas is only one customer, and no convincing argument has been made to link the PT Kizone debacle to…Read More

Many people who want to defend religion against "strident" atheists like Jerry Coyne, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and other New Atheists make the claim that these sort of thinkers have an overly simplistic view of religion. To the contrary, I think many such defenders-of-religion have overly simplistic views of religious violence. People often conceptualize violence and conflict in ways that serve the overly simplistic narratives that they tell themselves about the world and their place in it. As a non-religious example, sexual violence is often treated as a monolithic category; we're told that it is a reflection of the exertion of one group's (the patriarchy's) power over another and that it has nothing to do with sex. While the former statement -- that it reflects an exertion of power --…Read More

My friend Dave Muscato, PR director for American Atheists, posted the following to his Facebook wall: What is it with Christians insisting that atheists are religious? I've heard this at least three times in the past couple of weeks, if not more. Two problems with this: First, atheism is not a religion, and neither is secular humanism, by any standard definition. Religion requires some sort of belief in SOMETHING supernatural, which secular humanism categorically rejects, and which atheism doesn't address, except for the narrow disbelief in gods specifically. Second, the way Christians say it, it's like saying we're religious is an *accusation.* It's like they're saying, "You're religious, too!!" Well, even if it were true that we are (it's not)... what are you saying? That being religious is bad and…Read More