I’ve been learning a lot about Mormonism, which is coming in handy now, as for the first time in history a Mormon has received a presidential nomination from a major political party. I took a few swipes at Mitt Romney recently, calling his religion “crazy”.

Romney: Vote for me, a businessman of faith. Now please ask me anything except questions about my crazy religion or my secret finances.

— Mark Jaquith (@markjaquith) September 2, 2012

But is Mormonism really any crazier than, say, Christianity? Well no, not in terms of its supernatural claims. Mormonism was built on the foundation of Christianity, much like Christianity was built on Judaism. It’s “Christianity+”. The Book of Mormon borrows heavily from Biblical language. And in terms of “events”, miracles, visions and divine revelations feature heavily in the church’s history. So yes, if you look at the mystical beliefs of Latter Day Saints versus those of Christians, they are both irrational, and both lacking in supporting evidence. It is no more crazy, per se, to believe that the creator of the universe lives on a planet orbiting the star “Kolob” than it is to believe that the first female human was created from the first male human’s rib. Both religions have crossed over into fantasy land. There are, however, two key differences between the religions: specificity, and the freshness and clarity of their origins.

In terms of specificity, Joseph Smith was incredibly ambitious in the claims he made in The Book of Mormon. He claims that native American tribes are descended from a lost Israelite tribe. No. They’re not. Conclusively. Smith claimed that one of these Israelites (Lehi) came across horses in America. No. He didn’t. There were no horses in America for 10,000 years before the Spaniards brought them over. I could go on, but there’s no point. Smith made far too many specific claims, especially about genealogy and American history that are outright false. Whereas the Bible speaks in poetry, metaphor, and euphemisms, Smith made many clear statements that we now know to be unequivocally false.

The origins of Christianity are mysterious. Paul of Tarsus just started writing about it, and Paul expressed zero interest in the life story of Jesus or in the origins of the religion. The gospel accounts came later, by unknown authors, and weren’t contemporary to the alleged events. Christianity benefits from that cloak of mystery. Myths without a clear origin story seem to have a better foundation, as that foundation can be imagined to stretch infinitely into the fog.

The origins of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints are anything but mysterious. A mere 190 years old, it is by far the youngest of the four Abrahamic faiths. Good records exist about the story of Joseph Smith, an admitted liar and fraud, and the golden plates he claimed to have found and magically translated from a non-existent language he said they were written in. We know how the sausage was made. We know that when 116 pages of the translated manuscript were lost (or possibly stolen), he was not able to retranslate that portion of the plates, knowing that there was no way he could bullshit his way through those same 116 pages again and have it match up.

No thinking person can look at the history of the LDS church and conclude anything other than that it is all a giant hoax, perpetrated by a charismatic fraud. The same is not as clear with Christianity, shrouded as it is by blurry language, historical cobwebs, and an uncertain origin. In terms of claiming supernatural things for which there is no evidence, Christianity and Mormonism aren’t all that different. In terms of how crazy it is to believe either one, Mormonism is the uncontested all-American champion. And it is absolutely fair to question the judgment of a man who is so utterly convinced by this obvious fraud.

Michael Arrington on not voting for Republicans anymore

Ayn Rand was pro-life in the most meaningful sense of the phrase:

For centuries, the battle of morality was fought between those who claimed that your life belongs to God and those who claimed that it belongs to your neighbors — between those who preached that the good is self-sacrifice for the sake of ghosts in heaven and those who preached that the good is self-sacrifice for the sake of incompetents on earth. And no one came to say that your life belongs to you and that the good is to live it.

The world would be a much better place if people took ownership of their lives and lived them for something grander than superstition and servility to power.

Inconsolata-dz

There’s an easy solution to Apple UK being in the awkward position of having a court order to take out “advertisements” outlining that they lost the lawsuit alleging that the Samsung Galaxy tablet was a copy of the iPad.

On further inspection of the shoddy user interface and inferior built quality of the Samsung Galaxy tablet, it became clear to us — and the courts — that no reasonable person would think that the Samsung tablet is anything approaching a copy of the iPad. The two devices aren’t remotely in the same league.

Egypt’s New President

Both. I am an agnostic atheist.

Theism is a belief in a god (or gods). Atheism is a lack of belief in a god (or gods). Consider the question: “do you believe in any gods?” If your answer is “no”, “I don’t know”, silence, or anything except “yes”… you’re an atheist. That’s the first dimension.

Gnosticism is knowingness or certainty. Agnosticism is non-knowingness, or uncertainty. Consider the question: “Do you know for certain that a god exists or doesn’t exist?” If your answer is “no”, “I don’t know”, silence, or anything except “yes”… you’re agnostic.

You can be an agnostic theist, a gnostic theist, an agnostic atheist, or a gnostic atheist. Though, in practice, gnostic atheists tend not to exist. The sort of person who is skeptical about supernatural claims tends not to express absolute knowledge of something for which they have no evidence. Most people who say “God does not exist” or “no gods exist”, when pressed, would be shown to be technically agnostic, even if they only give an infinitesimally small bit of consideration to their uncertainty.

It’s true, I will sometimes say “God does not exist” or “there is no god”. But this is little more than a colloquial shortcut. What would you say if a child asked you if monsters hide under their bed? Would you say “I don’t know… maybe…”? I sure hope not. You’d say “no”. Even though the concept of monsters existing and being under a child’s bed is not unfathomable and you cannot say for sure that it never happens, you say “no”, because this is how we talk casually about things for which there is no evidence. It is an artifact of being asked a yes or no question to something which is neither “yes” nor “no” — it is simply unknown.

Now that I’ve made things clear, let’s complicate them. I am an agnostic atheist in general. What I mean, is, I cannot say for sure that no conceptions of “God” exist. You could always come up with a conception of a god that could never be disproven. You could make complete undetectability one of this god’s attributes. But you could also attribute very specific attributes or even interference in specific worldly events to this god. That changes the game. If you say, for example, that God exists because rain is his tears, falling from heaven, then I could say for sure that your idea of God is false, and that god doesn’t exist. I could be a gnostic atheist about that god, because the conditions of his existence are testable, and the idea of this god doesn’t past the test.

So while in general I am an agnostic atheist, with regards to specific ideas of gods that have been shown to be false, I may express more certainty about their non-existence.

My inspirational video of the day.

Sarah and I did a lot of research into baby gear when we had Atticus. We wanted to buy quality products that would last us at least for another child. We wanted products that wouldn’t frustrate us (parenthood is stressful enough). We didn’t want to buy products that we didn’t need, or that only had a limited utility. Now, we’ve taken that effort and shared it with the world, with the launch of Have Baby. Need Stuff!

With this site, we cut past the mountain of junky products that are shoved in parents’ faces. You get to skip all the laborious research and get right to the answer for “but which one should I get?” Check it out, and share it with any new parents you might know!

Dan Savage takes on the hypocrisy of Christians who follow Leviticus with regards to dehumanizing homosexuals, but ignore its promotion of slavery and its issuance of capital punishment for female fornicators.