Maybe it's because I have lots of atheist friends on Facebook, or maybe it really is becoming more prevalent; either way, I'm seeing lots of snarky comments in the aftermath of the devastation in Moore, OK about how stupid and pointless it is to offer prayers in the aftermath of a natural disaster.
While I don't personally know anyone who was hurt, killed, or had their home destroyed (Tulsa is a good ways from Moore), I'm only a couple degrees of separation from those who have. And yes, lots of people are talking about "sending prayers".
Yeah yeah, I'm an atheist and I think praying is stupid. Like George Carlin said – what's the point of praying if God's just going to do his will anyway? And what good is a Divine Plan if every asshole with a two-dollar prayer book can come along and screw it all up? You gotta love the selective believer logic which says that God isn't at fault for not stopping a massive tornado from wreaking havoc, but it was totally God who stopped a beam from falling on the family dog or some little kid who barely made it out alive.
BUT...
To my knowledge, no one is saying something like, "Hey, don't send money – just pray! What people really need are lots of prayers!" What I've seen instead is an outpouring of empathy and condolences. For believers, saying something like "You are in my prayers" is simply a way of expressing those feelings. It's not a call to stop volunteer aid and/or donations in lieu of divine magic.
So in the aftermath of all this, don't be a dick. When someone religious uses the word prayer in an expression of empathy, fucking let it go. Don't use it as a springboard to mock people for their belief. There's a time and a place for mockery, but this ain't it.
p.s. – Props to my buddy Mike (pictured) who is at ground zero helping those in need after the school at which he works was leveled.
The other day, the popular Facebook page I Fucking Love Science posted this picture:
Aside from basically being meaningless drivel, the more glaring problem is that Albert Einstein never actually said this. His Wikiquote page keeps a healthy list of quotes frequently misattributed to him (there are many), but new ones like this seem to pop up all the time. And yet, at the time of this writing, the picture had over 10,000 shares.
On a more personal note, an alert reader called my attention to a statistic I had used in the previous post – that Christians are over-represented in the prison population. It's a statistic that's been bandied about for years, and I'd never heard it challenged, but it turns out even the crack team at Friendly Atheist was aware of the dubious validity of the statistics.
It reminds me of the time that I hastily reposted a survey on religion and sex conducted by Darrel Ray, the results of which formed the basis of the book Sex & God: How Religion Distorts Sexuality. Problem is, the study upon which the book is based was both unpublished and poorly conducted. I ended up retracting my earlier post, and this is despite the fact that I think there are lots of good reasons to think that in many cases, conservative religious views of sex can have a profoundly adverse effect on sexual health. But if there's a study to demonstrate that, it wasn't the one Darrel Ray did.
I'd like to think I use my rational faculties as best I can, but the reality is that none of us are immune to errors like these – in my case, good old fashioned confirmation bias. We're more likely to trust sources that align with our views and, in many cases, can get lazy about double-checking the sources for ourselves.
If, like me, you grew up in the youth group culture of the 1990s, you've probably heard the term "backsliding" to denote those who fell back into the worldly ways of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. Y'know, because you're either a pious, chaste Christian or a self-loathing angry hedonist – no middle ground!
Anyway, if you haven't caught the story in the news yet, here it is: Tim Lambesis is the singer for the mediocre metalcore band As I Lay Dying and the vastly more awesome Austrian Death Machine. He's now facing serious charges after allegedly meeting with an undercover cop who was posing as a hitman, whose services he (Lambesis) solicited to have his estranged wife killed.
According to the prosecution, Lambesis met the officer (whom he knew only as "Red") and gave him his wife's name, the security codes to her house, told the 'hitman' a time to do the deed (when he had the kids, so he'd have an alibi), and when asked if he wanted her killed replied "yes".
The initial defense is that it was a setup. It's hard to believe, even if it was a setup, that he'd be so easily duped into saying he wanted his wife killed and giving this stranger the security codes to her house. And now, in a move that really smacks of desperation, the defense is trying to blame steroids. It's incredibly stupid because not only is there scant solid evidence that so-called "roid rage" even exists, but even if it did it would lead to impulsive behavior – not a clandestine meeting with a hitman.
It's all interesting because Lambesis, along with his bandmates in As I Lay Dying, has always been an outspoken devout Christian. The band itself isn't what you'd call "Christian rock" in that unlike say DC Talk or Jars of Clay, ministry isn't really the point of their music – they're just Christians in a band, not a "Christian band". As part of the most recent defense, Lambesis' lawyer said that he "lost God".
According to NBCSanDiego.com,
the lawyer added, “It has been a terrible tragedy. He was a very
caring, gentle man [before taking steroids] and we need to get him
back.” Lambesis reportedly ballooned in size from 170 pounds to 220
pounds and in his lawyer’s words “was not the same person. He was
irritable and lost God.”
I want to be clear here – Lambesis is both innocent until proven guilty and solely responsible for his actions. He is not representative of any other believers. Still, I have to sort of chuckle at the pathetic plea for sympathy from his lawyer on account of him having supposedly "lost God". It doesn't matter what he believes about God, and I personally couldn't care less whether he has "Jesus in his heart" or not.
This is all just an anecdotal example of something I've harped on a lot in the past – Christians don't live better lives than non-believers. They're not happier, they're not less likely to be criminals, they're actually more likely to get divorced than non-believers, they're not less likely to suffer from depression or other mental illnesses, etc. etc. One of the big "sells" of Christianity is that your life sucks. You're being seduced by "the world" or "the flesh" and you won't be truly happy until you have Jesus. The reality is that believing in God doesn't make a lick of difference, and Christians are every bit as screwed up as the rest of us.
The other day I came across this great video: an interview with Neil Carter, who participated in an interview at a church in Jackson, MS, in conjunction with the "National Interview an Atheist at Church Day", which is apparently a thing. The longer interview is here, but I enjoyed this excerpt in which he lists 11 things atheists wished Christians knew about them.
If you don't want to watch the whole video, they are:
We have morals, too!
You don't know us better than we know ourselves
We don't deep down believe in your particular god (sorry, Ray Comfort)
We don't hate your particular god
We don't all disbelieve because something bad happened to us
Believing isn't a choice
Most of us used to be Christians, too
Quoting the Bible doesn't work like a Jedi mind trick
We don't worship the devil
Hell doesn't scare us; to us, it doesn't even make sense
We aren't all anti-theists
The last one is sort of soft-ball accommodationism, but I think that's a good list. But over the last couple days several things popped into my head that I thought would make fine additions to that list. So without further ado, here are....
10 More Things Atheists Wish Christians Knew About Them
1. We don't think that nothing created everything
With a nod to the odious Ray Comfort, who uses this canard often, the most common "zinger" used against atheists is something like this: "If there's no God, then where did the universe come from?" as though it's a foregone conclusion that God must have created the universe.
The simple fact is that most atheists are agnostic regarding the origin of the universe. I don't know where it came from – or if it's even sensible to ask if it came from anything else at all, much less assume that it did. It's not a coincidence that when we look at some of the foremost cosmologists of our day – Lisa Randall, Brian Greene, Stephen Hawking, Alan Guth, Alexander Vilenkin, Brian Cox, etc. – they are overwhelmingly non-believers. That's because the origin of the universe – or even whether the universe had an origin – is considered an open question in science. We simply do not know.
In fact, if there's any truism in physics, it's that we're more aware of our ignorance than we've ever been. It's possible, per Stephen Hawking, that the universe has no beginning nor is infinite in the past – that it simply "is". It's possible, per Guth and Vilenkin, that the universe emerged from a "quantum tunneling event" in what they call a "closed spacelike hypersurface". Oy. That's heady stuff. And that's okay! We don't have to have the answers. It's perfectly fine to admit there are big questions to which we do not know the answer. Being that the origin of the universe is perhaps the biggest question of all, we owe it that much more humility.
2. Atheism is not a worldview
Many Christians seem to view atheism as another "channel" on the television of beliefs. But, as the saying goes, saying atheism is a religion is like saying "off" is a television channel. Atheism simply means that one does not believe in the existence of a god or gods. It says nothing about morals, meaning, cosmology, philosophical realism, or whatever else. As my blogger-in-crime Michael Hawkins often emphasizes, atheism is not normative.
Where, then, do atheists get things like morals, meaning, or their views on various philosophical issues? The answer is from subsets of those disciplines. For example, most modern atheists are humanists. All humanists are non-believers, but not all non-believers are humanists. All materialists are atheists, but not all atheists are materialists. Get it?
An atheist might likewise believe in a humanistic view of morality, or they might be moral nihilists (among other possibilities). You can't know just from someone saying they are an atheist whether they believe in objective moral values (a la Sam Harris), moral relativism, or moral nihilism. Since atheism is strictly descriptive, not normative, you can be an atheist and still take on any of these particular views.
Saying "I'm an atheist" is similar to saying "I'm a theist". A "theist" could be a Christian, a pagan, a Wiccan, a deist, a pantheist, a Buddhist, a Taoist, a Muslim, whatever. "Theism" isn't normative, either. So when someone says they're an atheist, you have to talk to them to understand their views on particular issues – and since we don't have some unifying doctrine or dogma, don't ever assume that one atheist's views is representative of others.
3. Atheists aren't (usually) certain that no God exists
Atheism and agnosticism are not mutually exclusive positions. Often, when an atheist "concedes" that they're not 100% certain there is no God whatsoever, Christians pounce: "Aha! You're really an agnostic!" (Case in point: Alister McGrath) The vast majority of atheists, though, are agnostic atheists, as this handy chart from another blogging compatriot of mine, Bud Uzoras, illustrates:
That's because a/theism deals with belief, while a/gnosticism deals with knowledge. We've heard the arguments for God's existence. Many of us used to be religious. And ya know what? We're not convinced. But any intellectually honest person will admit they can be wrong, simply because there is much that we do not and perhaps even cannot know (see #4).
Our degree of agnosticism tends to vary depending on the belief itself. For example, I'm quite confident that the god of Christianity is a fabrication of human minds, for a litany of reasons one can easily find throughout the archives of this blog. But I can't know for certain that no God of any kind exists. Perhaps there is a God that is so powerful that it defies human comprehension. In that case, God might exist but his/her/its existence is irrelevant to me. Or perhaps there is some argument for pantheism or heck, even Christianity, that I haven't given due consideration. My belief is based upon the best evidence available to me, and I've found the "God hypothesis" to be logically self-defeating and explanatorily vacuous. But I've never claimed to be absolutely certain of anything.
4. Atheist don't think they know everything
Continuing along that spectrum of a/gnosticism, most of us readily accept that the universe is filled with innumerable mind-boggling mysteries. There is much that we not only do not understand, but in fact may never understand. However, we also recognize that to use those gaps in our knowledge as places to insert a god is to commit the fallacy of an argument from ignorance.
To me, the notion that "atheists think they know everything", coming from Christians, seems like the epitome of irony. It's Christians who, in my experience at least, often insist that they know God created the universe, that God is the absolute moral arbiter, that their interpretation of their religious text is the one correct one out of literally tens of thousands of denominations, that the creator of the universe speaks to them and gives them sage advice, and that our entire 14.8 billion-year-old and unfathomably vast universe was created with them in mind. That, to me, seems to demand far more hubris than atheism.
5. Atheists find meaning in the same things you do
Christians often speak as though without God, nothing matters. Take for example this comment from a lengthy discussion on Facebook:
I've never quite gotten why it's so difficult to communicate this concept: sure, in the sense that Christians often talk about it, we don't believe in meaning. We don't believe the universe was put here with us in mind, or that human life possess some objective intrinsic value. But it doesn't follow that because we don't believe in objective meaning, that we cannot find both subjective and shared meaning. Atheists tend to believe that our lives are what we make of them. We have one chance to live, and we can spend it being bitter and destructive or sharing in peace and happiness. We find meaning in the same things that Christians do – in time spent with family and friends (and pets!), in wondrous admiration of nature, in enjoyment of the arts, in helping others, and all the myriad of other ways we can enjoy life.
And I'm not sure why that should be such a mystery. How we choose to treat others directly affects us. If we are dishonest, cruel and manipulative, we'll be ostracized and marginalized. And even we're able to stay a step ahead of the most direct consequences to such behavior, we'll have missed out on a litany of opportunities to experience friendship, knowledge, and happiness.
Rabbi Harold Kusher, author of the book When Bad Things Happen to Good People, has often expressed similarly pragmatic views: a man who always cheats on his girlfriends and wives might get away with it, but he'll never know the joys of a committed and loving relationship. Those who manipulate or exploit others might elude justice, but they'll never know what it is to have loyal and trustworthy friends.
In other words, we have all the reasons in the world to value this life. We don't need the promise of another one.
6. Atheists value your religious freedom
Reading the excellent blog Friendly Atheist, whose staff does an outstanding job of documenting the struggles of non-believers across the country, I'm often astounded at how easily the most simple message in the world is lost on many Christians: You don't get special privileges because of your beliefs.
Story after story finds children coerced by public school staff into sectarian prayer; state legislatures trying to erect monuments to their religion at courthouses or in schools, and insisting on leading hearings with Christian prayer; or even ostracizing soldiers who fail to conform to Christian beliefs. When we non-believers stand up to this kind of behavior, we're often branded the enemy of religious freedom and scorned as though we want nothing but atheism everywhere. Well, okay, we do want that, but we want it by people's own free will – not through legal coercion. What we want is simple – to get rid of religious privilege. No one's belief, particularly when tax dollars are involved, deserves special treatment. Our schools, our courthouses, our government and our military are mandated by the Constitution to be secular. Secular doesn't mean anti-religious or atheistic; it just means free from sectarian religious influence.
I'll never forget the uproar that happened when peaceful Muslim citizens in New York City wanted to erect a community center a few blocks from 9/11 Ground Zero. There was outrage and protest from Christians, who shouted that Muslims were the enemy. But across the atheist blogosphere was nothing but support for the freedom of those Muslims to build their community center within their legal rights. We want religious equality – not religious privilege, for ourselves or for anyone else.
7. Atheists get through hardship the same way you do
I frequently encounter Christians who have a difficult time so much as fathoming how any atheist can get through a difficult time – loss of a loved one, a failed relationship, tragic illness, whatever. When I was a Christian, I had the same thoughts. God was such a central part of my reality that I couldn't imagine how anyone could go through tough times without ending up on a ledge somewhere.
In the years since my deconversion, I've gone through plenty of tough times. And what I have found is that aside from abandoning my once frequent prayers, nothing else really changed in how I deal with hardship. I find solace in friends and family, sometimes seeking their counsel and other times just needing a shoulder to lean on. I spend time with my own thoughts, and let my toughest emotions run their course – as I've learned from experience they do. I try to gleam positive things from the experience, growing wiser and more resilient with each challenge.
Truth be told, I think that this is exactly how Christians get through tough times. I think that what Christians claim to be God's "voice" is little more than self-talk. They rely on the support of their families and friends, and they try to make the best out of bad situations. Whether God's voice is real or not doesn't really matter, as long as it's telling you the right thing.
8. We don't have "faith"
Much along the lines of confusing atheism with a world view, Christians have often (in my experience, at least) claimed that atheists have faith in one thing or another. They say we have faith in evolution, in scientific authorities, in the non-existence of God, or in materialism. I think a far more simple and accurate description of what we have are provisional assumptions.
That means that we've made certain assumptions based on our assessment of the evidence available to us. We've heard the arguments for God's existence and found them unpersuasive, so we operate on the assumption that no God exists – provisional, though, precisely for the reasons outlined in points three and four above.
I wrote some time back, for example, about why I subscribe to the view of ontological naturalism. Even many atheists are hesitant to subscribe to this philosophy, which is the belief that the material is all that exists. Christians often counter that we can't disprove the existence of the supernatural, so it's irrational to hold a positive believe in materialism (I know that's oversimplifying a bit, but it'll have to do for the space here). But when you view ontological naturalism as a provisional assumption based on the best evidence we have, and therefor an assumption that could be demonstrated as wrong, it's clear that it doesn't require "faith" – at least not in the sense of religious faith.
9. We've heard that one
I have an FAQ here on my blog, part of which is as follows:
I have an argument that totally undermines atheism. What do you have to say about that?
Please, use the search button. And the "New to the A-Unicornist?" tab at the top of the page. I've spent years talking
with theists. I've read many apologetics books and heck, as a believer I
spent many years making and defending those arguments. So before you
trot out the cosmological argument, or the design argument, or the
objective moral argument, or quote your holy book of choice, or say that
atheists can't have any meaning in their lives and expect me to discuss
it with you... use the search button. The archives are full of topical
posts on just about every subject imaginable, many of which have very
lengthy discussions in the subsequent comment threads. I'm not going to
rehash the same arguments for every new visitor who comes along.
Often Christians who are new to the blog will find an old post and trot out their favorite apologetic arguments or even some Bible scriptures as though I've never heard them before. I have. Not only that, but practically every non-believer I know is intimately familiar with a great deal of Christian apologetics and Biblical exegesis. Being that many atheists come from a religious background, we're often quite knowledgeable about scripture, religious philosophy, and Christian culture. Give us the benefit of the doubt and listen to what we have to say (or read, as it were) for a bit first before electing to enlighten us.
10. We live normal, happy lives – and we're not that different from you
It may seem like we're "them". The unsaved, the unholy, the worldly, the god-haters... but the truth is that we just don't believe in the supernatural stuff that you do. We believe in lots of the same things that you do – like the importance of family and friends, in treating others as we would like to be treated, in the awesomeness of Star Trek, in the lameness of Nicki Minaj. In all seriousness though, it's important to remember that we have much more in common than we disagree about. We're sharing a small patch of earth on a tiny planet in a microscopic speck of the universe, and our needs, interests and values are often aligned.
We're not bitter at the world, resentful toward Christians, or angry at anything more than injustices that we think are well-justified in getting angry about. We're nice people who eat Chinese take-out and go to baseball games; who have friends, parents, and children of our own whom we love dearly; and who want a better world for all of us. We may not always agree on the best way to get there, but the sooner we stop fearing each other, the sooner we can get there together.
It's perhaps not particularly well known that the theologian William Lane Craig is what biologist Larry Moran would call an IDiot – an advocate of Intelligent Design Creationism. In fact, he's a fellow at the ironically named Discovery Institute, along with a litany of other theologians, lawyers, and lots of other people who aren't, golly I dunno, biologists. He took a crack at debating Fransisco Ayala, who is notable for being both a biologist and an evangelical Christian (and a darling of the John Templeton Foundation). I didn't watch the debate because, well, I don't give a shit what a theologian thinks about biology. But sometimes (well... lots of times) they make such stupid remarks that I can't resist the urge for rebuke.
Which brings me to my recent visit to Reasonablefaith.org, Craig's website. In a recent "Question of the Week" segment, he's asked to clarify his view of evolution. He doesn't specifically mention Intelligent Design, but he lays his cards on the table pretty clearly:
I am not yet convinced that the mechanisms posited by the current
evolutionary paradigm are adequate to explain the biological diversity
that we observe today.
This should be interesting!
You might think that if we could show that random mutation and natural
selection could explain, say, how a bat and a whale evolved from a
common ancestor, that would certainly show the power of these
mechanisms. Think again! A bat and a whale are both mammals, which is
just one of the groups of the phylum Vertebrates. Even the evolution of a
bat and a whale from a common ancestor is an utter triviality compared
to the vast range of the animal kingdom. Such a demonstration would do
nothing to explain, for example, how a bat and a sea urchin evolved from
a common ancestor, not to speak of a bat and a sponge. This represents
an extrapolation of gargantuan proportions. Indeed, it represents an
enormous leap of faith in the efficacy of the Darwinian mechanisms.
Actually, all it requires is a study of molecular genetics, which acts as a virtual mirror-image of the fossil record in showing the evolutionary relationship of animals. This produces the well-known phylogenetic tree of life, which shows precisely how animals evolved from common ancestors dating back hundreds of millions of years, including how bacteria, jellyfish and mammals all evolved along different lines.
So, I ask, where is the evidence for the extraordinary extrapolation the
current paradigm involves? Michael Behe says that “the evidence for
common descent seems compelling,” but “. . . except at life’s periphery
the evidence for a pivotal role for random mutations is terrible.” Now
if he’s wrong about this, then what is the evidence? I’m genuinely open
to it. But what is it? When I, as an objective observer, look at the
evidence, it seems to me that we haven’t been shown any good reason to
think that the neo-Darwinian mechanisms are sufficient to explain the
evolution of the extraordinary diversity of life that we see on this
planet during the time available.
What Craig is saying is that even if evolutionary theory explains tons and tons of stuff, there's still lots of stuff it hasn't explained. Which is, of course, quite true! But the fact that Craig thinks this is a a boon for his theology just betrays his ignorance of how science actually works.
Science is not in the business of proving things. Instead, science accumulates evidence that explains known facts. A theory, like evolution, makes falsifiable predictions – not necessarily about past events (since they already happened, obviously), but about what we will discover. Kenneth Miller did a great video about one example that could have falsified evolution: the fusion of Chromosome-2. Perhaps a better-known and simpler example is that if we ever found human remains in the Cambrian sediment layers, evolution would be falsified.
But like most theories, evolutionary theory is incomplete. A great deal remains to be understood, and like a proper theologian Craig pounces on such gaps as places to insert his God, and charges that those of us who think evolution will probably fill in those gaps as having "faith in Darwinian mechanisms".
However, Craig overlooks the fact that any theory which competes with evolution must not only be falsifiable (ID is not, since you can always claim after the fact that God would design something just-so regardless of what it looks like), but it must account for everything for which the theory of evolution already accounts. And man, that is a ton of stuff. Evolution elegantly explains so much that it is the unifying theory of all modern biology and sits atop a veritable mountain of supporting evidence from the fossil record, molecular biology, homologies, genetics... the works. The evidence is so overwhelming and the facts explained so innumerable that we're justified in our confidence that evolution will most likely be able to fill in those gaps. That's a provisional assumption based on an abundance of evidence – no faith required.
So sure, it's certainly possible that evolution isn't true; perhaps some other yet-unknown theory both accounts for that which evolution already explains and accounts for that which evolution cannot yet explain. But Craig, like most IDiots, insists that in order to be accepted as true evolution must absolutely and thoroughly explain every possibly detail of biology throughout all of history and disprove the possibility of supernatural intervention. That's why he's a theologian and not a biologist – biologists usually have to understand how science works.
Speaking of divine intervention, it should come as no surprise that Craig's view of life includes precisely such a magical mechanism that by definition cannot make falsifiable predictions:
It seems to me that so-called progressive creationism fits the evidence
quite nicely. Progressive creationism suggests that God intervenes
periodically to bring about miraculously new forms of life and then
allows evolutionary change to take place with respect to those life
forms. But as for grand evolutionary change, this would not take place
by the mechanisms of natural selection and mutation undirected by God.
Rather we would need miraculous interventions of God in the process of
biological evolution to bring about broad evolutionary change.
It's the old macro-vs.-micro evolution canard in a slightly less flagrantly idiotic disguise. But one has to wonder: Craig and others like him spend so much time extolling the elegance with which the universe is designed by God, so why, then, does God need "miraculous interventions" at all? Why couldn't he have just designed the universe to work without his intervention?
p.s. – It occurred to me that this could actually be a great way to make a falsifiable prediction using Intelligent Design. Craig asserts that a certain level of diversity and complexity is allowed within the parameters of biological evolution, but that others require a miraculous intervention. So, ID 'theorists' could pinpoint precisely the point along the continuum of complexity in which the mechanisms of mutation and adaptation are no longer sufficient, then predict the moments when there was a dramatic change in complexity – i.e., the spontaneous emergence of a new species. If ID is true, this would help us find and identify new species.
If you've followed this blog for any significant length of time, you've undoubtedly noticed that I tend to go in spurts. I'll be churning out blasphemous content practically daily, and then... nothing. Well, this is one of those 'nothing' times.
Part of it is old-fashioned writer's block. I've got a post drafted about the nature of apologetic arguments, but y'know, inspiration isn't exactly overflowing. I find myself caring less about apologists, anyway.
The other part of it is that I'm spending lots of time with my girlfriend and with my guitar. My two favorite things! I also nabbed a new guitar and amp this week, which means even writing this took an unusually high degree of self-motivation.
In any case, I'm sure inspiration will strike soon. In the meantime... well, I dunno. Karate.
Oh, and on another note, my blog is right around the 300,000 view mark. That's pretty pathetic, actually – Jerry Coyne has something like 20 million views and over 18,000 followers. He's a blue whale in the Atlantic (or wherever blue whales are) and I'm a bluegill in the pond at the neighborhood park. But still, I'm always kind of amazed that anyone cares about what I think. After all, I'm not a professional philosopher or physicist or a former pastor. I'm just a regular guy who used to be religious and is now an atheist. So, thanks for reading and especially a big thanks to those who contribute.
I have a friend, whom I'll call Robocop for privacy purposes, who some time ago got pulled into an MLM. It seemed pretty innocuous at first, but as time has gone on I've been reminded more and more why I really, really hate MLMs – it's no exaggeration to say that they destroy lives.
So the MLM that Robocop has gotten into sells what I'll call Product X. Product X, so the claims go, is not like similar products you can find for significantly less money in the store; rather, it has a myriad of health benefits that might range from lifting your mood and helping mental focus to putting cancer in remission. As with most such products, a search through Google Scholar will reveal a paucity of data supporting such grandiose claims.
Then there are the promises of wealth. Robocop has heard one pitch after another telling him about the high life he'll live as a successful entrepreneur. There are pamphlets with pictures of big mansions and expensive sports cars, all with the clear message that this is the lifestyle you can live by selling Product X.
But then comes a problem – after you've made your investment in Product X and you have a stash in your house, to whom are you supposed to sell it? Remember, it's "not available in stores". So instead, you sell it to friends... friends who quickly get annoyed with you pushing your overpriced miracle product on them. It's worse than that, though – part of the idea behind MLMs is that you, to use the exact words this company used with my friend, "build a sales team". That means that you get cash for signing up other people who will theoretically sell this product.
In the case of Product X, Robocop insisted it wasn't technically an MLM for reasons I can't recall. But if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it's a fucking duck. And this duck has quacked its way into Robocop's personal life in big ways. Recently, Robocop invited me and my girlfriend over for dinner. However, it wasn't just going to be dinner – it was also going to be a sales pitch. It's to the point now that whenever Robocop calls or texts me or invites me to some party at the Detroit police station, it's inevitably laced with some spiel about Product X.
Understandably to the rest of us, Robocop's friends are a bit put off by the whole thing. They just want to hang out with their friend without getting roped into some MLM. But Robocop isn't taking it very well, as evidenced by Facebook posts that include being upset that his friends won't "take an hour of their time to support my business" (i.e., come to the events that are more than obviously designed to rope you into an MLM), and complaining that people are being negative. These are laced with threats of cutting certain people out of his life entirely, and are inevitably followed with comments from his new friends in the MLM saying that he has a "new family".
Promises of riches, cutting out friends and joining a new "family"... sounds vaguely cultish to me. Perhaps what I find most interesting about MLMs is that nobody ever really buys the product. Instead, you make money by signing other people up as your "sales associates" or whatever bullshit term they have for it. Sure, you might sell some of the product, but it's highly unlikely for it to be your sole source of income. Eventually, the bottom drops out – you have an unsold stockpile of Product X in your pantry, and you've run out of people to make into "sales associates". You're left with no money and a bunch of ticked-off friends. MLMs are scams, full stop, and they really do destroy lives.
I began playing guitar when I was 17. Well... there was a two-year stint when I was nine, but it's safe to say I lost most of what I had learned in the years between (spent as a drummer, incidentally). When I started, I was practically the world's biggest Dave Matthews Band fan. Coming from a drum background, I like Matthews' percussive playing style. Quite randomly, I dabbled in some classical and fingerstyle guitar as well, including a year-long stint under the tutelage of a local classical virtuoso.
During college though, I lost interest in progressing at guitar. I'd jam fairly regularly, but I didn't really practice. Nothing really stood out to me that I wanted to learn, and my ability was to the point that I could learn most rock and pop pretty easily by ear. But there wasn't really much of anything that lit a fire in me and drove me to be a better player. That all changed around 2006, when I got deeper into the metal scene. I'd been listening to heavier music for a while, but when I started hearing bands like Children of Bodom, Trivium and Nevermore with their blazing, virtuosic guitar solos, it hit me – that's what I want to play!
I don't think it really hit me though just how much more difficult metal is than most other genres. It's really, really difficult. It wasn't enough for me to just look at some notation, learn the notes and practice for 30 minutes until I got it. I had to start doing exercises to develop speed and accuracy in my left hand, and precision speed-picking in my right hand. While those Dave Matthews Band songs usually meandered along at 120 beats per minute (bpm), metal songs regularly hit 200bpm and beyond. It's not unusual for a metal solo to cram in a whopping 14 notes per second. That's fast. Really fast. And very, very difficult to achieve.
It wasn't until 2010 that I really honed my practice time. Whereas I used to spend my nights playing video games or going to bars with friends, I started spending them practicing. I shot for a minimum of three hours a day, which is still what I aim for. It takes some discipline and time management, but I rarely fail to hit it. Still, the virtuosic skill of my idols has seemed impossibly distant. It seemed like every bit of progress served equally as a reminder of how hard I'd worked and how far I still had to go. Worse, it seems like every time I hop onto Youtube I can find videos of other guitarists – some of them just teenagers – who have already achieved or surpassed many of my goals. Why can they do it, and I still can't after all this hard work? Are they just gifted? Maybe I'll never be that good. What's the point of investing all this time if I just need some genetic 'gift' to be as good as I want to be?
As a personal trainer, I encounter this attitude a great deal in my clients. Many people seem so overwhelmed by the seemingly vast distance between themselves and their goals that instead of really putting in the hard work, they just get by with as little effort as they can. They find excuses to miss workouts, to eat poorly, or to avoid activity on their off-gym days. Perhaps if you don't try that hard, you can save yourself the frustration of failure.
Some time back, I had the goal of playing 10 notes per second. It seemed absolutely insurmountable. I practiced for years and still could not do it. And then, one day, I turned on the metronome and tested my progress. I did it. In fact, I surpassed it. Not by much, but I surpassed it. But the celebration was short lived, as I could only play a couple of exercises at that speed, and the goal just moved higher. Recently, I played a section of music that requires six notes per beat at 132bpm. That's just over 13 notes per second, and it was a section of a song that had long seemed to require superhuman talent. And yet, I did it. Again I find myself only able to play a few things at such speed and for relatively short bursts, but I did it. The goal moves higher again and I keep at it.
The lesson is one that goes back to a famous quote from Michael Jordan: I can't accept not trying. The truth is, I have no idea whether I'll ever be remotely as good as my guitar heroes. But I know that the surest way to guarantee I fail is to quit trying altogether. If there is a chance I can achieve that level of skill, I will do it.
Along the way I'm destined to be frustrated at times and optimistic at others, but I don't let my feelings dictate my actions. Remember that three hours of practice a day I shoot for? I do it regardless of whether I'm in the mood or not. That's not to say I don't give myself a break occasionally, but if I let my whims decide my actions I'll never make progress. Besides, I find that even if I'm not really in the mood, once I get playing the time flies by. I put in the work and let the chips fall where they may.
I think many people view failure as something to be feared, and they tend to focus too much on the destination rather than the journey. Even if I don't achieve guitar virtuosity, I'll still be a great player and I'll still love playing. But no matter how far I go or how much I fall short of my admittedly lofty goals, you're never going to hear me making excuses for my lack of progress.
And that's how I went from noodling on Dave Matthews Band riffs to playing 13 notes per second: old-fashioned tenacity. I don't quit when it's hard, and if I'm frustrated I don't let my emotions get the best of me. In all of life's endeavors, most people protect themselves from failure. They make excuses for not putting in the work in the first place, or give up when frustration hits because that's easier than sucking it up and moving on. Everybody wants success in what they do – I mean really, what guitarist wouldn't love to have virtuosic ability? – but few are prepared to put in the work at all, much less for getting past the inevitable bumps along the way. We live in an instant-gratification culture, so when things don't come as easily as we expected we can just tell ourselves that those who have succeeded must possess some gift that we lack. Maybe it's just easier for them.
And ya know, maybe it is. But even those who have a gift will fail if they don't put in the work. For those of us who aren't so gifted – that is, the vast majority of people on life's giant bell curve – all we can do is take it one day at a time. Do the work. Because as soon as we accept that failure is the best we can do, that will be the reality. Maybe we'll achieve our goals, maybe not. None of us know. I sure don't, but I can't accept not trying.
I leave you with a demonstration of the virtuosic guitar playing to which I aspire, courtesy of the mighty Andy James from England:
The other week I went to a local restaurant and had their $12 "prime burger". It was cooked to a perfect medium and had cheddar, bacon, spinach, grilled onions and remoulade. It was easily one of the best burgers I'd ever had and I enjoyed every sinful calorie.
In terms of calories and nutrients, that's easily as bad or worse as anything you can get at McDonald's or any other fast-food chain. Ditto with major chains like Chili's, Applebees, etc. -- you can easily throw down a massive excess of fat, sugar and salt.
And yet for some reason, McDonald's often gets singled out as some sort of bane of the civilized world; an evil organization that wants to fill your belly with cancer-causing junk and chemicals while they laugh all the way to the bank. True to that image, I spied this on Facebook today, from the page "Godless Liberal Social Society":
It's hard to even know where to begin.
The salt, saturated fat and simple carbohydrates in McDonald's food are naturally occurring. There's no evidence that specific ratios of macro-nutrients are more addictive than other ratios, much less that McDonald's is "engineering" their food to contain such ratios.
So if it's not macro-nutrients, maybe it's some sort of additive or preservative. But what, exactly, and what is the evidence that it is addictive?
And finally, all food is made up of chemicals. Everything you eat is a chemical. Your body is a giant cauldron of chemicals. Get used to it. So maybe they're referring to some synthetic chemical in McDonald's food. Okay... what is it, and where is the evidence it's addictive? People spreading FUD just like the word "chemicals" because it sounds scary.
See what I'm getting at? Guess how much guilt I felt eating that burger the other week... that's right, none. That's because I don't eat that way very often. My diet consists of whole grains, seeds and nuts, fresh fruits and vegetables, and lean meats. I watch my portions carefully. That means that now and again, I can splurge. And it just so happens that last week I was in Oklahoma City for a concert with some friends, and we grabbed some McDonald's beforehand. I had a Big Mac, and it tasted awesome (not remotely as good as the prime burger, but still tasty). On the way back to Tulsa, I got hungry and had McDonald's again... a grilled chicken sandwich. It also tasted good and I've lived through the experience.
Wait, what? Grilled chicken? Well, it turns out that McDonald's has a variety of food, some of which is total junk and some of which is at least reasonably healthy. They leave it to the consumer to decide. The fact that their burgers are their popular mainstays is evidence that people like that type of food, not that McDonald's Corporation is engaging in some conspiracy to lace their food with addictive chemicals.
Strike a balance, people. Quit scapegoating restaurants for your poor eating habits and your excuses for avoiding the gym. And as I like to say, all things in moderation -- including moderation!
p.s. - While I'm at it, here's a great article debunking the old "McDonald's food doesn't spoil" pseudoscience that's popular on social media:
It’s impossible to be wrong about feelings: we feel what we feel, and
that’s it. It’s also impossible for me to persuade another person that
my feelings rightly, truly, and justly rule over his or hers, because of
course they don’t. There’s nothing really there even to talk about
except as statements about ourselves — which provides no basis for
discussion, much less agreement, on common principles or beliefs.
So the basis for agreement is being cast aside; and yet we must come to some agreement in order to make and to practice public policy.
In the comments section, he clarified:
I didn’t say our processes must be guided by “this transcendent truth,” as if we have to agree on what is true before we begin; that would be silly. I said rather that a healthy debate pursues the joint discovery of what is true.
Actually he didn't say that, although I'm fine with him clarifying that that's what he meant to say. Anyway, I left a reply to this clarification, which I'm reprinting here in its entirety:
________________
It's interesting you say this, because this is precisely what frustrates me so greatly about the almost exclusively religious opposition to gay marriage.
Per your particular brand of theology, you are compelled to believe that homosexuality is sinful and destructive. As a non-believer, I'm not bound to any particular position; if the evidence shows that homosexual relationships are contrary to the best interests of individuals, families, and society at large, I would not be easily persuaded to support gay rights.
But in years of research and anecdotal experience (I've had many gay friends and acquaintances over the years), I've never come across any hard evidence that homosexuality is dangerous; on the contrary, the evidence is overwhelming in showing that if there's anything that makes gay people miserable, it's the stigma, discrimination and ostracization they often suffer. But in every other way, gay relationships are just as happy, healthy and emotionally well-adjusted as those of straight people – as are children raised by gay parents. That is why major health science organizations like the AMA and APA support gay marriage.
American Medical Association (see H-65.973 for gay marriage specifically):
http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/about-ama/our-people/member-groups-sections/glbt-advisory-committee/ama-policy-regarding-sexual-orientation.page
American Psychiatric Association:
http://www.psychiatry.org/advocacy--newsroom/position-statements
The American Psychological Assocation:
http://www.apa.org/topics/divorce/same-sex-marriage.aspx
The American Academy of Pediatrics:
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/131/4/827
So the way I see it, all opponents of gay marriage like yourself have to fall back on are religious arguments, because the science is simply not on your side. That's the real trouble for you – the truth is that the evidence indicates that homosexual relationships, marriages and parenting are not detrimental to humanity. So your option is to either accept the science and alter your theology accordingly (or at least adopt a 'live and let live' ideology) or deny the science, claim these health science organizations are acting on some political agenda – anything you can do to ease yourself of the dissonance between reality and your theology. If your theology won't change, you are left with no choice but to forge your own insular reality. But if it's really a battle for the truth in which you're engaging, then your theology ought to be the first casualty of war.
Yeah yeah, I'm an atheist and I think praying is stupid. Like George Carlin said – what's the point of praying if God's just going to do his will anyway? And what good is a Divine Plan if every asshole with a two-dollar prayer book can come along and screw it all up? You gotta love the selective believer logic which says that God isn't at fault for not stopping a massive tornado from wreaking havoc, but it was totally God who stopped a beam from falling on the family dog or some little kid who barely made it out alive.
