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Gun Rights and Gun Culture

On December 8, 2009, In Gun Rights, Politics, By The Armchair Antichrist

Should people have the right to own firearms? Yes, provided you are of the age of majority and do not have a history of violent crime it should be legal for you to own a firearm.

But, legal ownership of such dangerous weapons should be accompanied by control. This role is usually taken up by the government and rightly so (if you don’t “trust” your government you can just piss off). For example, licensing of firearm owners is very important. And so are waiting periods for buying firearms, and other reasonable controls.

I also believe that precision shooting can be a enjoyable activity much like archery. And it can benefit the hobbyist with increased hand-eye coordination and patience among other things.

The problem I have is not with gun ownership, but gun culture. Specifically, I am against what I would call the protectionist culture that has emerged in some parts of the United States. There is this misguided notion that the only way you can adequately protect yourself is with a firearm.

Contrary to this belief, increased ownership of firearms for this use is not conducive to public safety. You are more likely to use your firearm to harm or even kill someone you know in the heat of the moment (e.g. argument) than use your firearm for protection. A comparison of murder rates between western countries will easily reveal the gulf between those with low gun control and high gun control (which is a reflection of the gun culture in the country).

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Tagged with: archery • firearm • gun control • licensing • murder • public safety • United States

If God Does Not Exist, Everything is Permitted?

On October 16, 2009, In Christianity, Media Critiques, Morality, By The Armchair Antichrist

This quote is one of the most widely used by theists (e.g., William Lane Craig). But, is there any basis for this quote? Did Dostoyevsky even make this quote? And is this quote valid in reality? In this post I will attempt to answer these questions.

Firstly, this quote cannot be found anywhere in The Brothers Karamazov. It is an accurate summary of the beliefs held by one of the characters, Ivan Karamazov, in the early chapters of the novel. But, the character himself does not utter this sentence. To recap, this sentence or anything close to it does not appear in The Brothers Karamazov or four other famous Dostoyevsky novels for that matter. Dostoyevsky simply did not make this quote.

This attempt at deceit is beyond the practice of quote-mining which theists have been known to use. It is a blatant misattribution of a quote to one of the world’s most famous writers and complete intellectual dishonesty. Nonetheless, even if Dostoyevsky did make this quote, using it as evidence for anything on the sole basis that he said it would only be an appeal to authority.

But, lets look at the content of the quote. Again it is one of those quasi-arguments that assumes something before trying to provide evidence for it. And of course it assumes that God does exist because we know that everything is not permitted in the world. But, logic doesn’t work that way.

You can’t start by assuming something is true to prove that it is true. That is the mark of backwards religious thinking: you start with something you want to believe is true and then find what complies with that, all the while ignoring disconfirming evidence.

Even with a general knowledge of Christianity it is possible to see that the quote is wrong. In Christianity all your sins will be forgiven as long as you sincerely beg for forgiveness. It doesn’t matter how severe the crime is. It could be theft, arson, rape, murder, even genocide. As long as you ask for forgiveness it will be granted. It seems that, contrary to the quote, all is permissible as long as there is a God.

Furthermore, Christians will say that we do not always get justice in this world. In fact, there seems to be a lot of injustice in this world: many good people live bad lives and many bad people live good lives. So, they believe that this necessitates an ultimate court beyond our world to apply justice when it can’t be found in our own. This is merely an appeal to consequences and wishful thinking. The existence of injustice in this world does not mean that there must be a source of ultimate source of justice beyond it. Theists are just invoking God to hide from reality.

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Tagged with: brothers karamazov • christian • Christianity • dostoevsky • genocide • justice • logic • murder • quote mining • rape • religious • william lane craig

The Question of Morality

On August 23, 2009, In Atheism, Christianity, Morality, Philosophy, By The Armchair Antichrist

Christians say that their morality comes from God, but there are some problems with that. Is something good because God commands it, or does God command what is good? The typical Christian response is that goodness is in God’s nature. However, since God is eternal his nature is also eternal and he would have no control over it. Therefore, his nature would be arbitrary. So, we must have things which are good in and of themselves and not solely because God commands them.

I prefer morality that is of natural origin rather than supernatural. Since, humans are products of evolution it is not hard to understand that morality is also partially a product of evolution. When humans lived in small groups which were more or less composed of their own kin it was beneficial to be good to each other in evolutionary terms. This type of biological morality has survived and is the basis for our morality today.

But, our brains have evolved and we can rationally understand why some things are moral and other things are not. For example, the Golden Rule, do not do to others which you would not like done to yourself, is not hard to come by rationally. Many cultures around the globe have developed this ethic of reciprocity independently, much earlier than Christianity claimed to have first introduced it.

Furthermore, Kant tells us that we should never treat people only as a means but always as ends. He also said that we should imagine a world in which everybody did something and if it would be a world we like to live in. For example, if we lived in a world where everybody lied, then promises and contracts would be meaningless.

Morality above all else is inside us and not imposed from above by authority. If God is the only thing stopping you from theft, murder and rape are you really a moral person? You are just following the commands of an authority figure to escape punishment. There is no morality in that at all.

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