My conversation with Daisy “#AndImaMormon” Chou on 4/23/12

You’ve seen the ads. They usually pop up right before the YouTube video of your friend’s baby saying, “kitty,” or, in my case, some Super Mario/Star Trek/Star Wars mash-up video. They start off pleasant enough. They’re of some normal-looking, everyday person, someone who could work with you, who could live right down the street. They talk about their normal days, their normal jobs, their normal families. It’s not nutty or crazy or chalk-full-of-made-up-bullshit at all.

Then it comes. “And I’m a Mormon.”

You’ve just been brain-raped. You thought you were gonna see some pleasant, slightly annoying, but ultimately inoffensive ad for home insurance or laundry detergent, or, worse, the latest E! reality show glorifying some famous-because-they’re-famous flavor-of-the-month celebrity.

But no.

You’ve been lulled, through Americana stereotypes, to consider, even if only for a second, that Mormons are JUST LIKE YOU! And hey, if they’re JUST LIKE YOU, then they can’t be too nutty, can they? Sure they wear magic underwear. Sure they overwhelmingly supported the legislation to strip gays of their civil rights in California in ’08, but they’re not a pack of dicks. They’re Susie, who works with you in accounts receivable. Or Dave, who’s kid plays softball with your kid. Or maybe even Chuck, your X-Box Live acquaintance who occasionally and handily whoops you at multi-player in the latest Halo incarnation.

Or Daisy.

Daisy’s not white. Daisy’s not a guy. Daisy’s not wearing that preppie shirt-and-tie-and-pants. Daisy’s not the stereotypical white (male) Mormon. She’s JUST LIKE YOU! And if that’s the case, then the LDS church can’t be all that bad, can it?

After I wrote about Daisy here, she contacted me. And here’s what she had to say to me (I’m in italics, she’s in bold, and other stuff is in italics bold):

I’m so flattered that you took the time to come to my lil old blog.

You’re welcome. You did say you were a “dedicated” blogger, so I figured I’d check out your dedicated blog.

Lil ol me, convert who became Momo for her hottie husband.

Notice I did say “presumed.” I obviously was and am not privy to the specific reasons why you became a Mormon.

Right… cuz I couldn’t find any hot and decent guys before he came along.

I never said that.

Right… cuz I am anti-social,

Never said that either.

weird blogger who decided she would give up her raging party and alcohol filled lifestyle

Or that.

Thank you, #ExposingReligion, for proving my point!

The owner of ExposingReligion on Facebook recently wrote me this:

“Good article. Very professional. Good luck with your wrong beliefs. I hope you find evidence to support them. Other people’s opinions and assumptions are not proof. Those people have to supply proof as well. Without religious indoctrination and religious hatred, 911 could not have been pulled off.”

–Exposing Religion

I was gonna reply with something like this:

“Wrong beliefs?? What’s wrong about them? I alraedy have found evidence to support them. America = 1; Sweden = 0. Both are ‘infidel’ countries in the eyes of al Qaeda. One is rich,
militaristic, and arguably acting like an empire. And that’s the one that was attacked. You’d have to point out which ‘opinions and assumptions’ I cited because, as I recall, the only ‘opinion’ I mentioned was bin Laden’s. Now, I’m no expert on al Qaeda, but I’m pretty sure he was. I agree that without religious indoctrination, 9/11 may not have happened, but you can’t deny that there were most likely other factors involved. If you choose to deny those other factors, then I suggest you are operating out of confirmation bias just as much as the religious tend to. Your insistence of my ‘wrong’ beliefs illustrates that quite elegantly.”

–Me

But when I navigated to the page, I saw I no longer had access to the ExposingReligion Wall. For verification, I clicked on the comment response link. I saw this:

For re-verification, I navigated to the original page. It was still there.

I’m not heartbroken. I was thinking of leaving anyway, based mostly on the above comment response, but I also considered that maybe they had some legitimate means for booting me. I checked their policy, which says:

“Please be thoughtful and respectful of what you share. I’d like this page to be PG 13. We have child members, as young as 10 years old. It is important that children can use this site. We want are members to feel comfortable, letting their kids become members. Children are a major priority to our cause. We need to help them and have them involved. Please keep foul language down. This page is about the mission that we have shared. This will be accomplished by being positive and by using facts. This page is not about bashing, satanism, drug promotion, discrimination or any obscene things. Members who break these rules or go against our mission will have their posts deleted and possibly banned.”

–ExposingReligion

To be fair, I can’t swear that I didn’t swear. I don’t think I did. And if I did prior to my most recent comment, it’s awfully convenient that I’m banned now. I suppose that the name of this site would be reason enough to ban me, but I’m sure I’ve posted links to
ExposingReligion before obviously without being banned.

At the same time, there’s the whole “respectful of what you share” clause. And the “This will be accomplished by…” sentence. If that truly is their goal, I wonder why they allowed the idiots who attacked me to attack me and keep on with the group. Plus, in
ExposingReligion’s own response comment quoted above, they cite no facts.

Sigh. Can’t say there’s much love lost. I wasn’t really satisfied with them. They clearly weren’t with me. It’s just so fucking annoying that as unpopular within the atheist community as my “religion didn’t cause 9/11″ opinion is, and as backed up by facts as it is, that just doesn’t seem to matter to some atheists and atheist groups. Not only that, but even the discussion of my opinion is often silenced. I guess it’s true what some religious criticize. We can be just as dogmatic and faith-based as they often are.

Fuck you, lazy hypocrite #atheists, who can’t be bothered to fucking read!

It all started on the ExposingReligion page on Facebook. This idiot, whose name I’ve forgotten and whose text I’ve not found, claimed that religion kills. I pointed out that religion, a social construct, can’t kill.

Oops.

He and two other morons vicously attacked me, using not one bit of evidence to back up their claims and all the fallacy and ad hominems you can shake a cross at. When I pointed out their poor reasoning and how it was poor, they ignored me and lobbed more insults.

I was ashamed. Not for what I had said, but that these were atheists saying these things. Atheists! People who normally pride themselves on logical reasoning and evidence. Yet all that seemed to matter to them was attacking religion solely for the sake of it.

Less than two weeks later, BionicDance posted a video in which she said this:

“Know what caused 9/11? Religion!”

–BionicDance

I took her to task in “…On Atheist Fallacy” (linked at the right). She claimed I was trying to make a semantic argument. So did Captain Pants (Jacob Kramer?) of Support Atheism when I tried to have my article published there. Here’s what I had to say to him about that.

A couple of days ago, I got the following comment on the above article after my call-in to Atheist Experience. I’d forgotten that, temporarily, comments were allowed under the article.

“Head about you on the atheist experience, checked out your website, read this incredibly frustrating pseudo-sceptical debate with BD, now I’m leaving the site because you think it’s prodcutive to waste time playing semantics aguing a point re 911 that is demonstrably false. It is established beyond all doubt that al qaeda has islamic motivations.

“Yes, it’s good to challenge the beliefs and claims of everyone, but this was just completely inappropriate and unproductive.”

–Dontaskmeformyname

Here’s my response:

“Hey Don’t,

“Thanks for dropping by. Funny you say ‘pseudo-skeptical.’ Since I was skeptical of BionicDance’s claims, that seems to be, well, skeptical, not ‘pseudo.’ I’m not sure what you mean by ‘leaving’ the site. It’s not a destination like Disneyland. It’s just a site. Funny, too, that you call my article ‘playing semantics’ and ‘demonstrably false.’ Can you prove that there is a direct, absolute causal relationship between Islam and the 9/11 attacks? No? Didn’t think so. That’s because despite religious motivations being present, one can’t prove a direct causal relationship. So much for ‘demonstrably false.’ I doubt whether you actually paid attention to my article as I never, I repeat NEVER said that there are no religious motivations to al Qaeda. What I said was that there is no causal relationship from those motivations to the 9/11 attacks without also considering political, social, and economic factors, among others. Notice that I cited Sweden, one of the more secular nations in the world, which al Qaeda did not attack and which bin Laden specifically cited as not being a target. Given that Sweden is a secular country and given the asserted religious motivations of al Qaeda, it would stand to reason that al Qaeda would be interested in pursuing jidad against ALL offending nations, not just the big, militaristic, wealthy ones who arguably impose their imperialist agendas on the rest of the fucking world. Yet Sweden remains unscathed. So much for religion being the primary motivating factor behind al Qaeda’s actions.

“How was my article inappropriate or unproductive? Simply asserting such doesn’t prove such.

“Look, Don’t, I’m happy to have an honest discussion about this issue seeing as there obviously is some grey area here. If you’re willing to do that, I invite you to come on back and discuss it with me like an adult. If, however, all you wanted to do was act like a pissy child and toss in your pithy rejoinder (like certain RoboticBallets I could mention), then, by all means, don’t let the proverbial door hit you in the ass.”

–Me

Both comments and a pingback have been removed from the article because I didn’t like how they looked and never intended comments to be allowed on the article in the first place.

As a linguist, I understand there are such things as connotation, tone, and other subtleties among words of seemingly similar or identical definitions. It’s in fact a linguistic law that if word A and word B mean exactly the same thing, then one of them falls out of use. Thus, if two words exist that SEEM to mean exactly the same thing, there is most likely some connotative or tonal difference between the two that necessitates each existence. To be completely fair, here are the definitions of “semantics”, “motivation”, and “cause”, respectively, per Dictionary.com.

se·man·tics
[si-man-tiks] Show IPA
–noun ( used with a singular verb )
1.
Linguistics .
a.
the study of meaning.
b.
the study of linguistic development by classifying and examining changes in meaning and form.
2.
Also called significs. the branch of semiotics dealing with the relations between signs and what they denote.
3.
the meaning, or an interpretation of the meaning, of a word, sign, sentence, etc.: Let’s not argue about semantics.

mo·ti·va·tion
[moh-tuh-vey-shuhn] Show IPA
–noun
1.
the act or an instance of motivating.
2.
the state or condition of being motivated.
3.
something that motivates; inducement; incentive.

cause
[kawz] Show IPA
noun, verb, caused, caus·ing.
–noun
1.
a person or thing that acts, happens, or exists in such a way that some specific thing happens as a result; the producer of an effect: You have been the cause of much anxiety. what was the cause of the accident?
2.
the reason or motive for some human action: The good news was a cause for rejoicing.
3.
good or sufficient reason: to complain without cause; to be dismissed for cause.

It seems that definition 2 of “cause” closely enough matches the definitions of “motivation” to suggest that, at least in that sense, the two are synonyms. In that respect, I agree with BionicDance, Captain Pants, and Don’t. I admitted such in my article. If we call religion “motivation” and we call “motivation” “cause”, then we can say that religion “caused” 9/11. But no one was discussing “cause” per definition 2 above as purely a “motivation.” We were discussing “cause” as X MAKING Y HAPPEN, which, per the above definitions, is NOT what “motivation” means.

For a real-world example, since we don’t convict criminals based on their motivations, as that would be thought-crime, it’s pretty fucking obvious that MOTIVATION and CAUSE, specifically as I discussed them in “…On Atheist Fallacy”, semantically similar definitely are NOT.

I’ve since thought about my response to Don’t and I rescind my offer. If Don’t is gonna be stupid enough to disagree with and completely ignore one piece of material in order to support his anti-religious agenda, and dismiss the other material on the site, such as my articles and others’ de-conversion stories, not to mention doing so from the cowardly, cry-baby sleeping bag of on-line anonymity, all just because of his disagreement, well, Don’t, do us all a favor and go fuck yourself with a rusty razor. In a dirty bathroom. In Calcutta. (No offense to Calcutta!)

I get that it’s easy to hate Islam. I really do. But, just as Matt Dillahunty pointed out my own causal claims in an article I wrote, did I throw a hissy like BionicDance did here?

Of course not. I separated my emotional connection to the issue and dealt rationally with what Matt was saying. And I told him so.

I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating. As atheists, we must apply logic and evidence to all issues, not just the ones that are easy or convenient or fun. I’m talking to you, nameless Facebook idiots, you BionicDance, you Captain Pants, and you Don’t. The point of ethics is that we must apply them even when, especially when, we don’t want to.

Thank you, #CaptainPants aka #JacobKramer (?), for setting me straight on my recent #AtheistConnect article.

(This is long with no “more” tags.) The article you can find here and under the Articles page to the right. (My oft-appearing tone to the contrary, I assure everyone that my “thank you” is sincere, NOT sarcastic.) After posting this yesterday, I got the following as a comment:

“Nope, Anthony. It wasn’t published because I felt it was a debate of semantics.

“But, no, we would never publish a argument between two contributors that devolved into insults or bickering. I didn’t feel this
conversation between you and Keight did this at all, but I also just didn’t feel it offered to much to reflect upon. You are a great writer and we are elated to have you as a part of the team, but one thing you should know now:

“I don’t lie or mince my words, I try not to play favorites. I was worried when it was first brought to my attention (I wasn’t the assigned editor for that piece) that it was n mean-spirited argument and not a discussion. I felt it was more a discussion, but I didn’t think it merited publishing.

“I will tell you that if we had thought it worth publishing, we would have sought Keight’s permission as a professional courtesy.

“Additionally, every editor considered it, and we came to a quick and unanimous decision on the matter. No, hidden agendas here. If we had not wanted to publish it due to the reasons you assert here, rest assured I respect you and myself enough to tell you the truth.”

–Captain Pants

The only correction I have to make is that my name’s “Anton”, not “Anthony”, but that’s really all.

I’ve sure had to eat my words a lot lately. Today is no different. (Too many smileys??)

To the good Captain’s first point. His and BionicDance’s assertion is my discussion with her was ultimately one of semantics. I disagree. This is why. To claim that the 9/11 attacks were caused by religion, which is exactly what Bionic claimed, is to assert a direct causal relationship, a relationship that ignores any other possible causes, at least one of which I’d quoted bin Laden to have. In my article and in my later discussion on the Support Atheism forum, I never once suggested that religion had nothing to do with the attacks, didn’t motivate them at all. All I was saying about the issue was that to assert a direct causual relationship is fallacious. And not only do I stand by that criticism, but I challenge anyone to, er, challenge it.

To suggest that A caused B and to suggest that A motivated B mean two very different things. And this isn’t “two very different things” like Granny Smiths and Sweet Delicious are two different kinds of apples. This is closer to “I destroy the apple” and “I eat the apple” mean completely different things. Yes, the apple no longer exists in either scenario, but each scenario has a completely different meaning and connotation.

Let’s get more specific. Al Qaeda and bin Laden seem to at least have a surface mandate of expanding the Muslim world as they see it, at most destroying all infidels. One can find quotes to support this. America, being primarily a Christian-populated country, certainly does fit the description of “infidel.”

But wait a minute.

Sweden, which I cite because bin Laden did as well, is one of the most secular nations in the world. That means that they’re predominantly populated by people who identify as having no religion (or they simply don’t give a shit one way or the other). That means if we’re to compare America and Sweden on each level of infidelity, we’d have to at least admit that there is a comparison to be made, and more likely that Sweden is the more infidel because rather than being a wrong “fidel”, it is an IN-fidel. So if we’re to claim that religion–>9/11 and we’re to point out that Islam carries with it a mandate to kill infidels, and we’re to take al Qaeda at its word that it definitely wants to kill infidels, then we must take into account not only countries like Swden, but also the fact that never, not once, has al Qaeda attacked them.

Why?

Most likely because they’re not a massive, empire-like, economic, military, and cultural threat to al Qaeda’s world as al Qaeda sees it.

Wait a minute.

Am I suggesting that Country A, a rich, militaristic, economically superior, infidel country was attacked when Country B, a poorer, non-militaristic, economically inferior, infidel country was not?

Yes.

Once we remove the asserted primary motivating factor of religion, we reveal some more likely reasons behind the 9/11 attacks. Am I suggesting that religion had nothing to do with the attacks? No. I’m suggesting that it did not have a direct, causal relationship. And to suggest that my argument was “only” a debate on semantics is to ignore all of the above. How is that possibly responsible? If we were to change the issue to a less controversial one and apply the same reasoning that BionicDance did, how would that not be scrutinized and criticized as I did her reasoning on the attacks?

To assert a direct causal relationship where there are additional obvious factors is to commit logical fallacy. BionicDance can deny this. So can the good Captain. But the logic, reason, and evidence stand on their own.

“…didn’t offer too much to reflect upon.”

So are you suggesting, Captain, that either 1. atheists NEVER use logical fallacy nor rely on the popular community sentiment that religion is bad and so they can say whatever they like or 2. that such a practice isn’t worth discussing? If either is true, then how intellectually honest can you claim yourself to be? Are you critical of fallacious reasoning only when it suits you? Only when it’s convenient? Only when it’s about the evils of religion? As I said in the forum, as atheists, we must hold ourselves to a higher ethical standard than the religious we criticize, otherwise, how, truly, are we any different? I guess you disagree.

“I don’t lie or mince words…”

I appreciate that. I really do. And if the killing of my story at SA truly had nothing to do with one contributor attacking the fallacious argument of the other and trying to raise awareness of such fallacious arguments within the atheist community, then I sit corrected and thus the title of this post.

I suggested otherwise because of the flurry of anti-me comments that flooded the SA forum within minutes of my submission, most of which not only ignored my point, but also threw in their own batch of fallacies and irrelevancies. Oh, and then there was the vehement defense of Bionic. A little hard to claim a lack of “playing favorites” there.

“…elated…”

Oops. Skipped this. Sorry. Thank you. I absolutely appreciate that.

“…professional courtesy.”

I can certainly appreciate that, but as she accused me of being “butthurt“, I think it can be argued that she hardly displayed the maturity of being able to take honest and fair constructive criticism, and I suggest that the piece would’ve been killed anyway.

“…every editor considered it…”

That’s all fine and good except that I know at least one editor who pretty much liked it the way it was (though I can’t speak for the alluded-to editor), agreed with my criticism of Bionic’s fallacious argument, and supported my notion that such fallacious arguments should never be tolerated within the community, no matter how popular the video makers who make those arguments may be.

The article’s up on AC. It’s up on here. I’ve said what I needed to say. As far as I’m concerned, this is settled. So until I hear otherwise, I’ll consider it so.

Thank you, Carpe Diem Tomorrow, for your great 9/11 cartoon!

I stumbled upon this on Carpe Diem Tomorrow. It’s admittedly an over-simplification of a complex issue, but it does accurately assess at least one aspect of that issue.

Obviously there was more going on in the attacks than simply they were Muslims and did it for Allah. As I’ve heard theorized, the 9/11 hijackers (and bin Laden) cited the U.S. involvement in Israel and Saudi Arabia–in short, its foreign policy–as reasons. If even one of them, though, did it believing that he’d go to Islam heaven with the virgins and whatnot, well, that’s a pretty scary thing, and for him, a pretty shitty thing, since it doesn’t fucking exist.