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Monthly Archives: November 2012

Despising God

12 Monday Nov 2012

Posted by in My Philosophy, The Conversion, The Questioning

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As atheists, we are sometimes posed the question; If the positive existence of God was proven to your satisfaction, would you worship him? My answer to that question is; No.

Now, before you assume that my reason for rejecting God is personal, rather than epistemological, let me assure you that I believe wholeheartedly that the God of the Bible does not exist. My reason for believing so is quite simply that I do not find that the evidence warrants a belief in the existence of such a God.

When I first began questioning the existence of God, I was racked with guilt. I believed that my questions were blasphemous and that blasphemy was an unforgivable sin but I could not quell them.

As time went on and the questions became more pronounced, I began to wonder how a being intelligent enough to create this universe, could torture someone like me for all eternity. According to the Bible, I was headed straight for hell. I didn’t feel evil.  All I ever wanted was to know the truth. How could an all-powerful being, torture me for following the truth? Was it really my fault if circumstances conspired to make me question his existence? How could he hide from me and then punish me for not believing in him? If he was God, could he not easily convince me beyond the shadow of a doubt, that he exists?

At the time, I still wanted God to exist. I feared an existence devoid of such a protector. I concluded that if God really did exist, then he must be nothing like he is portrayed in the Bible. I could not believe in a benevolent God and in hell at the same time. I could not believe that an omniscient being would resort to eternal torture.

As time went on, my definition of God shrinked until it vanished into nothingness. I no longer believe in the existence of God, benevolent or otherwise. I do not believe that the God of the Bible exists. I do not even believe that anything remotely god-like exists. If something god-like actually does exist, I would find it hard to believe that it would be like the God of the Bible. However, I can look at the hypothetical, ‘What if the God of the Bible really exists’ and develop an opinion of such a God.

The God of the Bible can be blamed for the mass murders of hundreds of thousands of people. He can be blamed for rapes, pillage, plunder, slavery, child abuse, and rampant destruction. He tells us that happiness can be achieved by smashing children against rocks, and he tells us that homosexuality is evil. Since he takes credit for it, we might as well blame God for all the natural disasters, evil, and suffering that humanity and the animal kingdom have ever endured. It doesn’t stop there. God claims that he’s really a nice guy and we have to worship him or else he will torture us for eternity.

After I stopped believing in God and my case of Stockholm Syndrome faded away, I stopped seeing the God of the Bible as a benevolent being, and started seeing the things that are really written therein. Any person or being that engages in the things that are attributed to God, is unimaginably evil in my opinion. As a matter of moral principle, I would never worship such a being. At this point, I believe I would rather be a martyr and be tortured for eternity, than to worship a narcissistic terrorist like God. Oh, and by the way… if I was God, I would be way nicer!

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Atheism vs. Christianity: The Insults aren’t Working

09 Friday Nov 2012

Posted by in Other

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When people believe that their worldviews are epistemologically superior to others (which most do), the temptation is high to disparage other worldviews with condescending insults. Atheists and Christians are equally guilty of this. Members of both sides are constantly attacking each other in an attempt to make the opposition appear ridiculous.

Insult against atheism

Insult against Christianity

Many atheists believe that Christians are stupid and vice versa. This belief is particularly present when in the middle of a heated debate with a member of the other side. Even I am often tempted to insult the intelligence of the other side until I remember that not too long ago, I was on their side.

It is a rather weird anecdote of human psychology that I, 1) Always consider myself intelligent, 2) Am constantly updating my belief system, and 3) Several months later I tend to think of anyone holding any of my old beliefs, as being “stupid”. It’s hypocrisy, I know, and it may just be me but I suspect it applies to many other people as well. It’s something I need to think about before silently or vocally insulting someone else’s intelligence.

Those insults do not help change the mind of the religious person or the atheist. I know this after experiencing both sides. All that an insult accomplishes is to anger the other person and destroy all chance of a continued dialogue. Insults probably do more harm than good.

As hard as it might be to believe, there really are intelligent Christians that wholeheartedly believe in the literal truth of the Bible. I should know–I used to be one. It is a testament to the power of indoctrination, and the atheist hoping to change religious minds would do well to understand this power. The Christian would do well to understand that the atheist is intelligent, and that he is also a seeker of truth, and not intrinsically evil.

Based once again only on my experience on both sides of the argument, here are some tips I have for encouraging a shift in a worldview. They will be written from the perspective of an atheist trying to change a Christian’s worldview.

1) Be an ethical and an intelligent person. Show the other side, by your speech and actions, that you’re not stupid or intrinsically evil.

2) Begin a dialogue. The tone of the dialogue is important. It should be friendly and never confrontational. Give the (truthful) impression that you are also seeking truth and not just manufacturing counter-arguments for the sake of disagreeing.

3) Take it slowly. It took me about ten years of thought to go from fundamental Christian (Amish) to atheist. What you’re seeking is a radical shift in worldview and it’s not going to happen overnight. In fact, if you throw too much “evidence” at the other side all at once, you’re more likely to push the other person away than to change their mind. Judge the other person’s position and level of knowledge and seek only a small victory in any given conversation. If you achieve it, leave it at that and let it ferment in the other person’s mind. Remember, you are trying to undermine years and years of indoctrination.

4) This may or may not be effective for everyone, but it seems to work for me: Guide the other person to the answer rather than giving it to them. I find that it is more effective to ask the right questions than it is to state the answers.

5) Provide well-written and easy to understand resources to help your fellow truth-seeker to understand the more technical aspects of your worldview. For example, several of Richard Dawkin’s books were instrumental in helping me understand evolution and grasping the general idea of evolution was a turning point in my transition from fundamental Christian to atheist.

So in conclusion; be nice. How nice? Pretend that the person you’re debating with is your best friend, your significant other, or your mother. They really are mine.

TLC’s Breaking Amish: Timeline of a Scandal

07 Wednesday Nov 2012

Posted by in Breaking Amish

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It all started several months ago when I found some articles about an upcoming television series called “Breaking Amish”. It sounded interesting, so I read the articles and discovered some pictures. Immediately, I recognized Jeremiah, and thought, “Well he hasn’t been Amish for years.”

Now, thanks to international awareness of TLC’s deception, most people probably know that Breaking Amish is not entirely true. But how exactly, did the scandal evolve from a handful of pissed off ex-Amish people posting their displeasure on Facebook, to a scandal heard around the world? Here I take a look back at how it all started, and attempt to construct a timeline. Need to take down the latest lying television network? Hopefully you’ll find some tips here. Okay, so we didn’t exactly take them down… but at least we caused some headaches for them.

September 9, 2012 (31 pageviews)

Episode 1 plays at 10:00 PM EST. In this episode, we are introduced to the cast and they talk about the Amish and how they have been given the opportunity to break away and visit New York City.

I didn’t watch the episode when it ran the first time, but I watched it when it came back on at midnight. I wasn’t really that interested in watching it at all since most television shows about the Amish are way off and we mostly just make fun of them when they do come on. But, I thought it would be a good opportunity for me to write a review and perhaps boost the viewers on this little blog (I was averaging from 30-60 page views a day on here). So I guess in that sense I was seeking attention when I posted my angry thoughts about Breaking Amish.

Watching the first episode made me angry. I had no idea the extent to which Breaking Amish was going to be deceiving its viewers. On the show they were being billed as “Amish” and thinking of leaving “for the first time”. In reality, I had met Jeremiah several years ago and he hadn’t been Amish for years. He was driving a pretty nice SUV for Christ’s sake!

September 10, 2012 (1,793 pageviews)

Today Facebook came alive with hopping mad ex-Amish people. They knew that Breaking Amish was fake and they rightfully believed that the show was putting the Amish in an unfairly negative light. A lot of ex-Amish are talking to each other (wall-to-wall) and also on a page titled “Breaking Amish” that was promoting the show.

Today I wrote a review of the first episode (TLC’s Breaking Amish: An Analysis of Episode 1 by a Former Amish) and posted it to this blog.

Then, because I wanted to reveal to the world that Jeremiah wasn’t who he was claiming to be on the show, I spent several hours looking for evidence to back me up. I looked through my old photos thinking I might find some of him (I didn’t) and I scoured the internet. Finally, I found his deleted Myspace page in Google’s cache. It showed thumbnail pictures of him back in 2007, and he wasn’t dressed Amish.

A former roommate of Jeremiah’s posted on Facebook, and suggested that we might be able to find court records for him in several Ohio counties, so I searched high and low for those. I finally found his divorce records from 2011 which showed that he had married in 2005 and has three children.

I wrote up a post (TLC’s Breaking Amish: The Scandal of Jeremiah Raber) detailing the evidence I had found and posted it to the blog. Note to anyone wanting to expose the truth; Choice of words is important when trying to get the attention of the internet. Notice that I made sure to add “TLC” and “Breaking Amish” to the page title. Those are highly searched keywords. Also, I added “Scandal” to the title, thinking that it would bring in a lot of traffic once the truth became widely known. In retrospect, I should have used something along the lines of “Breaking Amish is Fake” since that brought in a lot more traffic.

After publishing those two posts, I started commenting on news articles about Breaking Amish. Hoping to reveal the truth and generate some traffic, I would include a link back to one of my articles. It worked. People started coming in and also telling other people about my damning posts.

September 11, 2012 (4,193 pageviews)

The Facebook page (Breaking Amish) is still very active with angry ex-Amish. I write and publish a post about it (Ex-Amish Unite in Vicious Protests Against TLC’s “Breaking Amish”).

Somebody starts a new page on Facebook (Breaking Amish the Truth) and they proceed to post evidence of Breaking Amish’s deceptions. The start with a picture of Abe and Rebecca together with a baby, a picture of Sabrina looking decidedly non-Mennonite, and some information about Jeremiah’s past that was listed in one of my posts.

September 12, 2012 (4,121 pageviews)

The first Facebook page (Breaking Amish) disappears. I’m guessing it was kicked off of Facebook because of some of the vicious attacks and counter-attacks going on between ex-Amish and fans of the show.

A picture of Jeremiah surrounded by beer-drinking buddies emerges on Facebook.

September 13, 2012 (3,110 pageviews)

Another Facebook page (Breaking Amish the Exposé) that’s very similar to Breaking Amish the Truth, is created.

Sabrina’s marriage license from 2009 pops up on Facebook.

Crushable.com runs a story suggesting that Breaking Amish might not be as real as they’d like you to think. They refer to this blog and the Breaking Amish the Truth Facebook page as their sources. It is encouraging to see that are websites are starting to take notice.

September 14, 2012 (1,678 pageviews)

CBS Philly runs a story on Breaking Amish. They interview a Mennonite man who took offense of Breaking Amish’s false claim that these kids wouldn’t be allowed back in the Amish. The show’s production company rebuts by saying they never claimed the cast would be permanently shunned.

Today I found Facebook pages for the Abe’s brother Andy and for the two Bens that appeared on the show. None of them appear to have been Amish for some time. I wrote up another post (Update on Breaking Amish: The Scandal) and published it to this blog.

September 15, 2012 (1,580 pageviews)

The Niagara Gazette publishes an opinion piece calling Breaking Amish “ignorant and disrespectful”.

September 16, 2012 (11,267 pageviews)

Episode 2 of Breaking Amish played tonight for the first time. In this episode, the cast leave the Amish “for the first time” and go to New York where they pretend to experience showers and microwave ovens for the first time.

Abe’s arrest record from 2008 for public intoxication in Kentucky, is revealed on Facebook.

A photo of Kate that was submitted to a modeling website in 2010, appears on Facebook.

September 17, 2012 (29,819 pageviews)

CBS 21, a small television news station in Pennsylvania runs a story questioning the show’s authenticity. One of the people interviewed, thanked me for my posts and said he used some of my findings in the interview. I am glad that a news station has finally picked up the story.

I published TLC’s Breaking Amish: Episode 2 Brings us More Lies on this blog.

September 18, 2012 (26,232 pageviews)

Examiner.com, starts posting a ridiculous number of articles about the possibility that Breaking Amish is fake. As is typical of “news” sites that pay their “writers” based on page views and barrage you with irritating popups, they post half a dozen articles about other articles whenever a bona fide news news site runs an article about Breaking Amish. As you might guess from my word choices, I’m not fond of websites that, instead of doing real journalism, simply grab the work of other journalists and re-package it in half a dozen different ways for the sake of making money. Anyway, I digress…

WetPaint.com and Starcasm.com publish articles about the allegations of fakery and cite this blog as one of the sources.

I published TLC’s Breaking Amish: Is Kate Fake too? on this blog.

Someone from a post-production company that worked on Breaking Amish, attacked this blog with false comments, using multiple names and email addresses.

September 19, 2012 (16,995 pageviews)

CBS 21 runs another story about Breaking Amish. This time they get TLC to respond to the allegations. TLC has the following to say; “There is a lot of information floating around about the group featured on ‘Breaking Amish’. Much of it is not true, but some of it is – and is addressed in upcoming episodes.”

September 20, 2012 (15,655 pageviews)

Variety runs a story about the fakery. In the article they say that TLC claimed it does not advertise that the cast of Breaking Amish is leaving the community for the first time.

In reality, TLC advertises the show on its website as, “Breaking Amish, premiering Sunday, Sept. 9 at 10|9c, provides a never-before-seen look inside the lives of young men and women as they, for the first time, trade horse and buggy with taxi cabs to break out from their respective Amish/Mennonite communities in their pursuit to chase big dreams in the Big Apple.” (emphasis is mine) It was also explicitly stated at the beginning of episode 2, that the cast are leaving their Amish communities for the first time.

The scandal appears to have gone viral as Google’s top search results for “breaking amish” are peppered with keywords like “fake” and “fraud”.

September 21, 2012 (19,024 pageviews)

The New York Daily News gives us a few more details and a person associated with the show claims that as filming progressed, it became clear that at least one of the cast members had misrepresented themselves.

Great! Let’s blame it all on the cast!

In the same article, TLC says that the issues will be addressed in future episodes.

Time to start re-writing and re-editing.

The Daily Mail Online (a British news site) questions the authenticity of Breaking Amish. The link back to one of my posts. It’s a good feeling to see the truth going international for the first time. It only took 12 days.

September 22, 2012 (10,636 pageviews)

News of the fakery appears on Good Morning America (ABC).

A private investigator with veiled threats of a lawsuit, pays a visit to the person that they believed was responsible for this blog. Did they think they could just scare these scandalous revelations into disappearing?

September 23, 2012 (27,871 pageviews)

Episode 3 airs on TV. Jeremiah admits that he was kicked out of the Amish three times before. Remember how, TLC stated that they are leaving their Amish communities for the first time? The said this at the beginning of the second (and maybe the first) episode, and also advertise it online as such.

September 24, 2012 (42, 030 pageviews)

A picture of Rebecca in a skimpy two-piece bikini from 2010, pops up on Facebook.

I published TLC’s Breaking Amish: Episode 3 Brings us Fewer Lies.

September 25, 2012 (20,765 pageviews)

CBS 21 gets hold of Jeremiah’s ex-wife, who says the show is fake, and runs a story about it.

September 26, 2012 (18,184 pageviews)

Evidence that Sabrina and another person from Breaking Amish appeared in Amish at the Altar, a National Geographic show that aired in 2010, emerges on Facebook.

September 27, 2012 (12,320 pageviews)

Pictures from two of Sabrina’s deleted Twitter accounts, appear online. Included are pictures of her non-Mennonite wedding.

Summary

At this point, Breaking Amish has been thoroughly debunked and shown to be fake on a number of levels. It has also been demonstrated that TLC lied to its viewers when they explicitly said, on screen, “They’ll leave their community for the first time.“

Our Responsibility to the Truth

05 Monday Nov 2012

Posted by in Ethics, My Philosophy

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We tend to think that our responsibility to the truth is satisfied if we refrain from uttering hurtful lies. Even the most ethical among us seem to think that we’re fine as long as we don’t intentionally deceive others. Is our responsibility really limited to that?

Many people tell white lies to their spouses, lie on their tax returns, commit warranty fraud, propagate rumors, emphatically state things which they have no evidence for, and allow people and organizations to get away with saying things that aren’t truthful. The same people feel hurt when someone lies to them.

Lying can be intentional or unintentional. When done intentionally, it is often because some advantage is to be gained by the deceit. When unintentional, it can usually be blamed on carelessness or intellectual laziness. Just as we are culpable for intentional lies, I believe we are also blameworthy for our unintentional lies.

Lying damages society in a number of ways. That is true whether the lie is intentional or unintentional but we tend blame only those that lie intentionally because we assume that unintentional lies can’t be avoided. That assumption is wrong.

Most unintentional lies can be avoided by doing some simple fact-checking. A lot of the rest can be avoided by doing more in-depth research. The rest can be avoided by rephrasing our statements to note our level of uncertainty. All unintentional lies can be avoided by being aware of our own ignorance. We are all ignorant, to an extent, in different areas of knowledge. That is fine as long as we are aware of what we are ignorant about and refrain from speaking with an air of knowledge on those subjects.

Take for example, the person who hears that homeopathy works wonders and recommends it to a friend with cancer–as an alternative to a hospital visit. Later that friend dies, partially because he wasted time with an ineffectual treatment instead of getting chemotherapy. The person who recommended the ineffectual treatment is at least partially to blame for the death.

It is not enough to believe that what we are saying is the truth. To ensure that our statement doesn’t bring harm to society, we must investigate the truth of the statement before stating it. We must ask ourselves in what ways the statement could be false. Even when we have gathered evidence to support our assertion, we should caveat it with a reference to the evidence or to our level of uncertainty. There is nothing wrong with prefacing some statements with “I think” and concluding them with “but I could be wrong about that.” Too many people are too quick to assert something. If they would only add a reference to the evidence they are basing that assertion on, we could more easily determine its validity for ourselves.

If a scientist tells us that we are safe from an earthquake and then a deadly earthquake occurs, we are rightfully angry. How could that scientist not look at all the evidence? How could that scientist not end the statement with a comment about the uncertainty involved with such a statement? We are angry about this and yet we continue to propagate rumors about people we don’t like particularly well.

Perhaps the amount of blame we assign to the unintentional liar should be based on the intellectual ease with which the lie could have been avoided. If someone makes a false statement that couldn’t have been avoided without considerable research then perhaps that person is not as blameworthy as the one whose lie could have been avoided by doing some simple fact-checking.

We must become critical thinkers (I believe this skill should be formally taught in elementary school). After my parents and most of society deceived me, albeit unintentionally, for more than ten years, is it any wonder that I hate deception? It is our responsibility to learn how people deceive each other both intentionally and unintentionally. By studying the art of truth we also learn about cognitive biases–how our brains deceive us and how we go on to deceive others because of that.

Before I conclude this post, I want to talk briefly about something that really irritates me; rumors. I was once accused of committing a crime (I was never charged and the real perps admitted to it several weeks later), so I know the power of slander/rumors and the damage that they can cause to their subjects. By being responsible for the things that we say, we become one less person that starts a rumor–one less person that hurts another. When I hear what sounds like a rumor, rather than spreading it further, I find it more productive to offer alternative explanations to the rumored one. It often takes the gossiper aback and causes him or her to reconsider their evidence.

I encourage you not to blindly believe the things I’ve said here but to reason through it yourself. By learning the skills of critical thought, we become filters for the information that flows through society. Not only can we stop ourselves from uttering unintentional lies, we can offer commentary on the ones that others utter. And always remember… we are to blame for our lies, the intentional ones and the unintentional ones.