Were I the smartest man in the world, the sexiest man, the best athlete, the most creative and most successful, and yet I demanded that all of my friends and loved ones continually tell me how smart, sexy, athletic, and talented I was, observers would immediately spot the flaw in my character. My weakness would be glaringly apparent. Such Narcissism would immediately indicate issues of insecurity and low self-esteem. Most people would consider such behaviors pathetic and find me intolerable to be around. The demand for constant praise and reassurance is a sign of doubt and weakness and we recognize it as such except when it comes to our imaginary deities. Such a flaw is pitiful and obnoxious enough in a man but in a god?
The idea that an omnipotent creator would require its inferior creations to constantly praise and fawn over him, write hymns and prayers celebrating his virtues, build shrines and temples and perform complex rituals in celebration of his omnipotence is a silly one. It is ridiculous. It is near definitive proof that religion is man made, a reflection of man's own insecurities. Why would a being that dwarfs the universe care if you prostrated yourself before him every night? Why would an all-powerful being care if you repeated prerehearsed compliments in concert with a few dozen acquaintances at the same time every week? Why would he require that you continually reaffirm how great he is and how flawed and unworthy you are and reward those who were the most flattering and self-effacing, those who debased and degraded themselves the most, those who showed the lowest self-esteem? Why would such a being need his ego stroked? And what self-respecting person would give in to such egotistical demands? What type of submissive slave would so willingly prostrate themselves before such an egomaniac? What degree of cowardice and self-loathing must this take?
The idea of worship and God's seemingly fetishistic need for it should discount any notion of God's perfection. This is a great and obvious character flaw. It is God wearing his insecurities on his sleeve.
The demand for subservience and submission that seems to be a prerequisite of all religions is more indicative of a totalitarian regime than of an ideology of love and peace. These are the egoistic mandates of a dictator, a fascist, not of a loving father. These are the demands of the master to his slave or pet. The idea that any Black person in America would so willing submit to this type of slavery, so willingly bow to even a benevolent master, is surprising and, quite frankly, embarrasing. It makes my stomach turn to see my people on their knees begging and groveling before their imaginary overseer. It is the very definition of the happy slave. It is Uncle Tom smiling and tap-dancing to please his massa.
A loved one dies and the faithful praise God for his mercy. They lose their jobs, their homes, their savings, catch debilitating diseases, suffer any number of tragedies both minor and major and still this imaginary deity demands that they flatter and thank him for not making them suffer even greater tragedies and the faithful eagerly comply, cowering and quivering in fear, drooling in adoration of their abusive parent-figure like whipped dogs that kiss the hand that smacks them. This is the very definition of tyranny, yet rather than resistance which would be considered the honorable response to any earthly despot, it is expected that you would respond to this fanciful creation with praise? It is considered a virtue to bow to this tyrant and evil to question even the most amoral and absurd of the biblical laws. Again, what coward would consider such a response virtuous? Who but the biggest pussy on earth would, after even a momentary examination of what this great overseer above demands of his slaves would respond with anything but scorn and rebellion?
"Tell me again how wonderful I am. Tell me I'm great. Tell me about how pathetic, wretched and worthless you are and how magnanimous I am to even tolerate your existence."
Great guy this God. Well, here's my answer to this imaginary tyrant, this man-made overseer. FUCK YOU! I don't bow to anyone. Stroke your own damn ego. Even if God were more than simply the manifestation of man's fears and desires, even were he a living being and every word of the bible true, the act of worship would still be unjustified, unwarranted, and pathetic. It would still be pitiful,cowardly and disgusting and any deity that would demand this of their creations would be anything but benevolent. The act of worship would still be beneath me and should be beneath all of us, especially my Black brothers and sisters who struggled for so many centuries to free themselves of their masters but now so wretchedly grovel at the feet of a master who is little more than a myth, a lie, a sham. We ought to be ashamed. We ought to be embarrased. I hope to see the day when every knee finally unbends, when every head is finally held high and every man and woman learns to stand on their own without need of illusions. When mankind emerges from its emotional and intellectual infancy and finally shrugs off its dependence on imaginary gods and accepts that humanity alone is responsible for its own destiny. When we can accept that there are no all-powerful puppet masters pulling our strings and understand and acknowledge the cause and affect relationships between our own choices and decisions and their consequences and not look to imaginary beings to rescue us when we fuck up. When we can accept that God is a creation of man and not the other way around and finally sacrifice this myth to the good of humanity after millenia of humanity sacrificing itself to imaginary god's. Wake up. Wake the fuck up!
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Friday, June 12, 2009
Faithless
It has been said recently by believers and even, surprisingly, a few agnostics, that everyone has faith. A recent acquaintance made this remark "... I, personally, don't believe there is such a thing as atheism--but more agnostic[s]. Atheism means without faith, correct? But everyone has faith and belief! Whether it's in God, or [themselves], or faith and belief that if they drop something-it will fall... " This seems to be an increasingly popular opinion. My good friend and ideological antithesis, Maurice Broaddus has expressed a similar opinion saying "We are both men of faith in our ways" and my friend and mentor in the writing business, Brian Keene, during a panel on "religious and secular influences in horror" made an almost identical statement about me having faith which allows me to enter the ring and fight.
This word "faith" has been expanded to encompass more than the word was ever intended to in an effort to justify itself. Faith is belief without evidence. Merriam-Webster describes it as:
1 a: allegiance to duty or a person : loyalty b (1): fidelity to one's promises (2): sincerity of intentions 2 a (1): belief and trust in and loyalty to God (2): belief in the traditional doctrines of a religion b (1): firm belief in something for which there is no proof (2): complete trust 3: something that is believed especially with strong conviction ; especially : a system of religious beliefs
None of these definitions describe what allows me to enter the ring confident of a win or what allows me to believe that if I drop something that it will fall. A firm belief in something for which there is no proof would not move me to fight another 250lb man using knees, elbows, punches, and kicks. Hard training and a history of knocking opponents on their asses in the gym, the street, and in the ring is the only thing that could make me agree to take such a fight.
There is a difference between faith, inductive reasoning, hope, and calculated risks. Let me start by defining inductive reasoning so that you can see how greatly it differs from the wishful, magical thinking that is faith.
Inductive reasoning is defined as the inference of a generalized conclusion based on a series of particular instances. It is drawing probable conclusions based on statistical evidence. To apply this to my fighting career, when I walk into the ring it is not faith that instills me with the confidence that I will probably win but the fact that I have won numerous times in the past. An 18 and 6 record with 15 knockouts means that there is a high statistical probability that I will knockout my next opponent but this is not a certainty and I know this. I have lost on six occasions. That means that there is a statistical possibility even though less of a probability of me losing again and I know this. I have no delusions. Unlike the faithful, I am aware of the possibility that I could be wrong, that I might lose despite all of my hard training and past accomplishments. The fact that I have trained hard, done my roadwork, my bag work, my pad work, crushed one sparring partner after another makes me confident of my chances but I am still aware of the fact that my opponent has likely trained just as hard and also believes himself to have a good chance of victory based on his own past accomplishments. I hold no delusions of a guaranteed victory unlike the faithful and when I win I do not thank God or Allah or Buddha or Krishna. I thank my trainers and sparring partners and maybe even the fans and judges.
This is also true of the Law of Gravity. My belief in gravity is not faith. That's a rather curious and absurd accusation. The belief that one might break the Laws of Gravity would require faith but believing in something that conforms to all the known facts and everything else in my experience requires no faith. As I said, it would require faith not to believe in it. The fact that everything in my experience, with the exception of things like helium balloons which are lighter than air, has fallen when dropped gives me more than a statistical probability but near certainty that if I drop something which is not lighter than air that it will also fall. It is simple inductive reasoning. Everything that I have dropped has fallen therefore if I drop this object it will also fall. There is no faith involved in this conclusion.
A calculated risk is a chance taken after careful estimation of the probable outcome. Last year, at the age of 37, I entered the ring again after a four-year retirement. The day before my fight I caught a cold. I knew very little about my opponent. Some may say that my choice to fight him anyway despite all the obstacle against me, age, inactivity, a chest cold, was an act of faith, faith in myself. This was not faith but a calculated risk. I was counting on the fact that I would have retained some of my former talent, enough to win. I was thinking of those 17 past victories. I was thinking of those 15 opponents that I had previously rendered unconscious. I was thinking about how I looked in sparring and counting on my skill, my experience, and my physical strength to win the day. I weighed the evidence for and against the chances of me winning and I took the risk. My calculated risk paid off and I won every round against an overmatched opponent. Had it ended differently I would have simply smiled, shook my opponent's hand and said, "Oh well, I tried my best." I would have accepted the loss for what it was not the judgement of the divine or of fate but my own failing.
When I get into my car and take it on the freeway at 70 miles an hour I am taking a calculated risk based on the fairly low statistical probability of me getting into a fatal accident based on the relatively few such accidents when compared with the millions of drivers on the road and the fact that of the thousands of times that I have driven on the freeway I have had no high-speed collisions. I make the same reassuring mental calculations when getting on airplanes and rollercoasters. No faith involved. If it did, in fact, require faith to get onto airplanes, rollercoasters, and America's freeways because there was no evidence at all that such actions were safe then I would simply not do them. That's why I don't shoot heroine or smoke cigarettes. Because all evidence indicates that these practices are unsafe. Doing these things despite this evidence would require either faith or stupidity which by all accounts are nearly synonymous.
In March of last year I decided to take another fight. I knew that I had been much slower in my comeback fight earlier that year but I chalked it up to being 9 or 10 pounds above my ideal weight and being rusty from inactivity. So, I dropped down to 229 pounds and fought in Chuck Norris's World Combat League. I was hoping that I still had it. I had no faith just a burning desire to return to the speed and athleticism of my youth. I was, of course, aware of the possibility that it had not been my weight or the inactivity that had slowed my reflexes in my previous fight but rather my age. Still I had hope and courage. I wanted to believe that I still had it but I was only slightly surprised when I missed a left hook in the opening seconds of the first round and ate a perfectly timed right hand that dropped me onto my back. These things happen. Anyone who enters the ring knows that there is the possibility of serious injury, contusions, lacerations, broken bones, concussions, and even death. It is the price we pay to do what we love, for that chance of victory, fame, and glory. We all know that we, even the best of us, can be knocked out at anytime.
Some people play the lottery because they hope that they will win even knowing the staggering odds against it. Others play it convinced that they will win, seemingly unmindful of the odds against them. These are usually the ones who tell you that they read it in their horoscope or tarot cards or had a dream or that God told them they would win. The former are merely hopeful while the ladder are faithful. Faith is belief without evidence and against all contradictory evidence. Common sense made my old ass retire again after my loss, saving me much future embarrassment and perhaps irreparable physical damage. Faith keeps an old and vastly diminished Evander Hollyfield still climbing in the ring for fights convinced that God has proclaimed that he will be the undisputed world heavyweight champion again. Faith will undoubtedly turn his story into a tragedy.
The faithful do not accept the possibility that their God may at any time be proven false. They do not accept the possibility that their bible may at any moment be proven to be a piecemeal collection of conflicting and often contradictory myths and fairytales from the illiterate, ignorant, and superstitious. They do not accept the possibility that their prayers may be vain words spoken to empty air, little more than, as Bill Maher once said "wishing it were so". They do not accept the possibility that they have been brainwashed and deluded since birth by their parents, families, culture and society to believe in the nonsensical. Their beliefs are not based on statistical probabilities. They are not based on facts. They are not calculated risks. They are not merely hopes. These are the blind unsubstantiated convictions of the willfully ignorant. Faith, like romantic love, is blind. It is irrational. It requires no evidence and none can refute it. And just like love, faith is most often misguided and wrong. The faithful, like the infatuated, are often so overcome with emotion that they cannot see the obvious. They are heedless of the evidence against their belief and are defensive and hostile toward any attempt to point out the errors in their convictions. The very fact that any hypothesis requires faith as a neccessary condition of its belief should be proof enough of its falsehood.
So, do we all act on faith? Not I. Does everyone have faith? Again, I at the very least, do not and it would appear that many many others also do not have faith whether it is in imaginary megalomaniacal sky fathers or witches or unicorns or winning lottery numbers or the perfect man or woman. Some of us rely on evidence to form our opinions and in the absence of evidence we hope and take calculated risks and often fail but accept and learn from those failures and alter our opinions accordingly.
This word "faith" has been expanded to encompass more than the word was ever intended to in an effort to justify itself. Faith is belief without evidence. Merriam-Webster describes it as:
1 a: allegiance to duty or a person : loyalty b (1): fidelity to one's promises (2): sincerity of intentions 2 a (1): belief and trust in and loyalty to God (2): belief in the traditional doctrines of a religion b (1): firm belief in something for which there is no proof (2): complete trust 3: something that is believed especially with strong conviction ; especially : a system of religious beliefs
None of these definitions describe what allows me to enter the ring confident of a win or what allows me to believe that if I drop something that it will fall. A firm belief in something for which there is no proof would not move me to fight another 250lb man using knees, elbows, punches, and kicks. Hard training and a history of knocking opponents on their asses in the gym, the street, and in the ring is the only thing that could make me agree to take such a fight.
There is a difference between faith, inductive reasoning, hope, and calculated risks. Let me start by defining inductive reasoning so that you can see how greatly it differs from the wishful, magical thinking that is faith.
Inductive reasoning is defined as the inference of a generalized conclusion based on a series of particular instances. It is drawing probable conclusions based on statistical evidence. To apply this to my fighting career, when I walk into the ring it is not faith that instills me with the confidence that I will probably win but the fact that I have won numerous times in the past. An 18 and 6 record with 15 knockouts means that there is a high statistical probability that I will knockout my next opponent but this is not a certainty and I know this. I have lost on six occasions. That means that there is a statistical possibility even though less of a probability of me losing again and I know this. I have no delusions. Unlike the faithful, I am aware of the possibility that I could be wrong, that I might lose despite all of my hard training and past accomplishments. The fact that I have trained hard, done my roadwork, my bag work, my pad work, crushed one sparring partner after another makes me confident of my chances but I am still aware of the fact that my opponent has likely trained just as hard and also believes himself to have a good chance of victory based on his own past accomplishments. I hold no delusions of a guaranteed victory unlike the faithful and when I win I do not thank God or Allah or Buddha or Krishna. I thank my trainers and sparring partners and maybe even the fans and judges.
This is also true of the Law of Gravity. My belief in gravity is not faith. That's a rather curious and absurd accusation. The belief that one might break the Laws of Gravity would require faith but believing in something that conforms to all the known facts and everything else in my experience requires no faith. As I said, it would require faith not to believe in it. The fact that everything in my experience, with the exception of things like helium balloons which are lighter than air, has fallen when dropped gives me more than a statistical probability but near certainty that if I drop something which is not lighter than air that it will also fall. It is simple inductive reasoning. Everything that I have dropped has fallen therefore if I drop this object it will also fall. There is no faith involved in this conclusion.
A calculated risk is a chance taken after careful estimation of the probable outcome. Last year, at the age of 37, I entered the ring again after a four-year retirement. The day before my fight I caught a cold. I knew very little about my opponent. Some may say that my choice to fight him anyway despite all the obstacle against me, age, inactivity, a chest cold, was an act of faith, faith in myself. This was not faith but a calculated risk. I was counting on the fact that I would have retained some of my former talent, enough to win. I was thinking of those 17 past victories. I was thinking of those 15 opponents that I had previously rendered unconscious. I was thinking about how I looked in sparring and counting on my skill, my experience, and my physical strength to win the day. I weighed the evidence for and against the chances of me winning and I took the risk. My calculated risk paid off and I won every round against an overmatched opponent. Had it ended differently I would have simply smiled, shook my opponent's hand and said, "Oh well, I tried my best." I would have accepted the loss for what it was not the judgement of the divine or of fate but my own failing.
When I get into my car and take it on the freeway at 70 miles an hour I am taking a calculated risk based on the fairly low statistical probability of me getting into a fatal accident based on the relatively few such accidents when compared with the millions of drivers on the road and the fact that of the thousands of times that I have driven on the freeway I have had no high-speed collisions. I make the same reassuring mental calculations when getting on airplanes and rollercoasters. No faith involved. If it did, in fact, require faith to get onto airplanes, rollercoasters, and America's freeways because there was no evidence at all that such actions were safe then I would simply not do them. That's why I don't shoot heroine or smoke cigarettes. Because all evidence indicates that these practices are unsafe. Doing these things despite this evidence would require either faith or stupidity which by all accounts are nearly synonymous.
In March of last year I decided to take another fight. I knew that I had been much slower in my comeback fight earlier that year but I chalked it up to being 9 or 10 pounds above my ideal weight and being rusty from inactivity. So, I dropped down to 229 pounds and fought in Chuck Norris's World Combat League. I was hoping that I still had it. I had no faith just a burning desire to return to the speed and athleticism of my youth. I was, of course, aware of the possibility that it had not been my weight or the inactivity that had slowed my reflexes in my previous fight but rather my age. Still I had hope and courage. I wanted to believe that I still had it but I was only slightly surprised when I missed a left hook in the opening seconds of the first round and ate a perfectly timed right hand that dropped me onto my back. These things happen. Anyone who enters the ring knows that there is the possibility of serious injury, contusions, lacerations, broken bones, concussions, and even death. It is the price we pay to do what we love, for that chance of victory, fame, and glory. We all know that we, even the best of us, can be knocked out at anytime.
Some people play the lottery because they hope that they will win even knowing the staggering odds against it. Others play it convinced that they will win, seemingly unmindful of the odds against them. These are usually the ones who tell you that they read it in their horoscope or tarot cards or had a dream or that God told them they would win. The former are merely hopeful while the ladder are faithful. Faith is belief without evidence and against all contradictory evidence. Common sense made my old ass retire again after my loss, saving me much future embarrassment and perhaps irreparable physical damage. Faith keeps an old and vastly diminished Evander Hollyfield still climbing in the ring for fights convinced that God has proclaimed that he will be the undisputed world heavyweight champion again. Faith will undoubtedly turn his story into a tragedy.
The faithful do not accept the possibility that their God may at any time be proven false. They do not accept the possibility that their bible may at any moment be proven to be a piecemeal collection of conflicting and often contradictory myths and fairytales from the illiterate, ignorant, and superstitious. They do not accept the possibility that their prayers may be vain words spoken to empty air, little more than, as Bill Maher once said "wishing it were so". They do not accept the possibility that they have been brainwashed and deluded since birth by their parents, families, culture and society to believe in the nonsensical. Their beliefs are not based on statistical probabilities. They are not based on facts. They are not calculated risks. They are not merely hopes. These are the blind unsubstantiated convictions of the willfully ignorant. Faith, like romantic love, is blind. It is irrational. It requires no evidence and none can refute it. And just like love, faith is most often misguided and wrong. The faithful, like the infatuated, are often so overcome with emotion that they cannot see the obvious. They are heedless of the evidence against their belief and are defensive and hostile toward any attempt to point out the errors in their convictions. The very fact that any hypothesis requires faith as a neccessary condition of its belief should be proof enough of its falsehood.
So, do we all act on faith? Not I. Does everyone have faith? Again, I at the very least, do not and it would appear that many many others also do not have faith whether it is in imaginary megalomaniacal sky fathers or witches or unicorns or winning lottery numbers or the perfect man or woman. Some of us rely on evidence to form our opinions and in the absence of evidence we hope and take calculated risks and often fail but accept and learn from those failures and alter our opinions accordingly.
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