This week, my special guest is Dr. Andy Thomson, author of the book Why We Believe in Gods, and a psychiatrist with his own private practice in Charlottesville, VA. When he’s not also teaching students at the University of Virginia, he’s also a forensic psychiatrist and writes on evolutionary psychology. We talk about his book, Lee Harvey Oswald and the JFK conspiracy, and the future of psychology.
This week, my guest is fellow podcaster George Hrab of the Geologic Podcast. We discuss the pros and cons of Internet stardom, Why Iron Man is better than Batman, and how we can change our image among believers.
This week, part 2 of our Bible Stories Book of Samuel, featuring David, his bromance with Jonathan, the fight with Goliath, and King Saul tries to kill him. Come and get your fix!
This week, we confront my ‘Ageism’ and discuss ‘generational theory’ and why the world is as crappy as it is. Plus, more on the Tea Party and who comprises their ranks. It’s a must for any political junkie.
SHOW NOTES
Introduction: Lecture on Tea Party by Prof. Theda Skocpol lecture at Oxford:[5]
1980-2000 – Millennials or Generation Y
1965-1979 – Generation X
1946-1964 – Baby Boom
1925-1945 – Silent Generation
1900-1924 – G.I. Generation
What are generational differences dependent on? What factors influence generations?
First, members of a generation share what the authors call an age location in history: they encounter key historical events and social trends while occupying the same phase of life.[3]
Generations tend to go through cycles
– High: Period of strong institutions but weak individualism. Things get comfortable, but people begin to tire of such strong social obligations and the stifling of creativity and expression
– Awakening: Period when institutions are questioned. Boomers make up this demographic. Individualism is strong, (sometimes referred to as summer).
– Unraveling: Institutions are weak, distrusted, (Reagan era of individualism, ‘small government’). This is the generation, shortly after the boomers, which have now come of ‘voting age’. This generation leads inevitably to
– Crisis: (My generation) Institutional life is rebuilt, stock market crash, the 2008 market crash all happened in Crisis eras. These are moments that redefine national identities (perhaps global identities with the coming of the Internet. Rising civic engagement, (winter).
In these times, Archetypes appear –
Prophets: come of age as self-absorbed young crusaders of an Awakening, focus on morals and principles in midlife, and emerge as elders guiding another Crisis
Nomads: born during an Awakening, a time of social ideals and spiritual agendas, when young adults are passionately attacking the established institutional order. These were shrewd realists who preferred individualistic, pragmatic solutions to problems.
Heroes: Tend to be more militaristic, strong political leaders. They are overly confident, having grown up as cocky young adults during a time of crisis. This tends to shape them into leaders.
Artistic: The strong, political overbearingness makes the previous generation more prone to compromise and pragmatism.
Prophet Nomad Hero Artist
High Childhood Elderhood Midlife Young Adult
Awakening Young Adult Childhood Elderhood Midlife
Unraveling Midlife Young Adult Childhood Elderhood
Crisis Elderhood Midlife Young Adult Childhood
We share more in common with the old. Hence, now the fashion of our grandfathers become present day affectations. What is old is fresh again. We reject those values of the midlife of our parents, cling to those of our grandparents instead, but influenced by the different phases.
Voting Statistics
Age Size Voters Percent
18-20 11.7 m 2.05m (17%)
20-24 15.6m 4m (24%)
25-34 41.2m 12.85m (31%)
35-44 39.9m 17.19m (43.1%)
45-65 80m 43.9m (54.4%)
65-99 39m 23.7m (60.4%)
If Generational theory is correct, that would mean 66 million people are 55 or older
Voting and registration rates tend to increase with age. In the United States in 2010, only 21 percent of 18 to 24 year old citizens voted, compared with 61 percent of those 65 and older.
Many Generation Xers came of age during the Reagan-Bush years (1980 to 1992) or the ‘Republican Revolution’ marked by the 1994 midterm elections. Today’s Generation Y has reached maturity in a time period largely marked by the administration of George W. Bush, and certainly for many the nascent Obama administration is a major formative factor in their political orientation.[1]
Perhaps the most striking change since 2004 has come among voters born between 1956 and 1976 — the members of Generation X and the later Baby Boomers. People in this age group tended to be more Republican during the 1990s, and the GOP still maintained a slight edge in partisan affiliation among Gen X and the late boomers in 2004 (47% identified with or leaned toward the GOP while 44% described themselves as Democrats or leaned Democratic).[2]
Among racial demographics, Asians have the worse voting record (30%), as did Hispanics (31%)
I hate the 33-47 year old Generation (Gen X) and The Silent (who share both politically conservative views, and who are now overwhelming voting majorities. Their combined voting strength will undoubtedly lead to a crisis.
Americans who tend to have more income, slightly more educated than average, and of 65- years and older increasingly dissatisfied with these institutions that they nevertheless have benefitted from, considering their wealth.
Coddled children of the Post War high and the coddled children of hippies who went the other spectrum politically.
Misc:
– Cool Pumpkin carvings [6] [7]
– Very unemployed people less likely to get work [8]
[1] http://www.gallup.com/poll/118285/democrats-best-among-generation-baby-boomers.aspx
[2] http://pewresearch.org/pubs/813/gen-dems
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss-Howe_generational_theory#Defining_a_generation
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Uspop.svg&page=1
[5] http://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/tea-party-and-remaking-republican-conservatism-audio
[6] http://www.examiner.com/slideshow/ray-villafane-s-pumpkins?cid=PROG-redesign-bottom-dontmiss-2-Slideshow-RayVillafanesPumpkins101212#slide=54003821
[7] http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.examiner.com%2Fslideshow%2Fray-villafane-s-pumpkins%3Fcid%3DPROG-redesign-bottom-dontmiss-2-Slideshow-RayVillafanesPumpkins101212%23slide%3D54003821&h=9AQGlbt8I
[8] http://jaredbernsteinblog.com/without-work-work-based-welfare-does-not-fare-well/
This week, Carisa joins me as we review the movie Prometheus. If you haven’t seen the movie, we recommend you do (unless you don’t want to waste 2 hours of your precious time).
This week, my special guest is Dan Fincke from the blog Camels with Hammers, and we discuss the level of discourse in the atheism community; and we voice our differences about the Atheism + movement.
(update: The Blog is no longer up)
This week, Ryan joins me for another exciting episode of Bible Stories, featuring The Book of Samuel, part 1. Clocking in at almost 2 hours, this episode features the birth of Samuel and the rise of King Saul.
This week, my special guest is Deon Barnard, a former pastor and now atheist organizer, and we discuss his past, his current weird-ass job, and why we both love comic books. Check out his podcast at primordial-soup.org.
This week, Ryan joins me for a discussion about group polarization and its effect on society and the atheist community at large. Also on the show, the realities of Abortion, and why no one puts Baby in a corner.
SHOW NOTES
Psychologists have found that social media outlets such as Facebook and Twitter demonstrate that group polarization can occur even when a group is not physically together. As long as the group of individuals begins with the same fundamental opinion on the topic and a consistent dialogue is kept going, group polarization can be observed.[1]
– 1961, an MIT student named James Stoner wrote a thesis that was never published on ‘risky shift’, how groups tended to push each other towards more extreme positions.
– Polarization is an attempt to de-unify an organization, like a kind of cell mitosis. Like a genetic shift that causes ant colonies to suddenly rebel and fight.
– Natural cure for this is a ‘Tit for Tat ‘strategy, and many times, this strategy involves often taking abuse without retaliating. This kind of passive resistance helps to break ‘death spirals’, a time when two opponents playing a game decide that each side perceives itself as preferring to cooperate, if only the other side would. But each is forced by the strategy into repeatedly punishing an opponent who continues to attack despite being punished in every game cycle. Both sides come to think of themselves as innocent and acting in self-defense, and their opponent as either evil or too stupid to learn to cooperate.
Tit for two tats is similar to tit for tat in that it is nice, retaliating, forgiving and non-envious, the only difference between the two being how nice the strategy is. In a tit for tat strategy, once an opponent defects, the tit for tat player immediately responds by defecting on the next move. This has the unfortunate consequence of causing two retaliatory strategies to continuously defect against one another resulting in a poor outcome for both players. A tit for two tats player will let the first defection go unchallenged as a means to avoid the ‘death spiral’ of the previous example. If the opponent defects twice in a row, the tit for two tats player will respond by defecting. [2]
Example: The Game of Monopoly. Many games will end with stalemates because two parties have reached a limit to their ability to cooperate with each other once they are faced with the possibility of losing the perceived advantage.
Abortion as subplot in Dirty Dancing [3]
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_polarization
This week, Taylor Muse of the band “Quiet Company” takes some time from his busy schedule to come on the show and talk about his new album: We Are All Where We Belong, as well as his journey towards Humanism.
This week, Ryan joins me for another Bible Stories show, featuring The Book of Ruth. It’s a short show (the book is, after all, one of the shortest in the Bible), but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a good one.
This week, my special guest is singer/songwriter Dan Ingala of the band, Plushgun. He’s come to discuss the messed up political situation in America, and he’s even written a song about it!
This week, Carisa joins me as we talk about the movie “Talk to Me”, as well as the horrors of depression,
This week, my special guest is Jerry DeWitt, former pastor turned ‘atheist leader’ (that’s the New York Times talking, not him). Be sure to tune into this episode, and make sure you keep him on his toes and working on a book!
This week, Ryan joins me as we tackle the problem of Orthodox Jews giving herpes to poor little babies, and a scumbag Imam tries to frame a disabled Christian girl for blasphemy in Pakistan.
SHOW NOTES
Topics
New York Rabbis to defy circumcision law, Pakistan Imam accused of planting burnt Qur’an as evidence to prosecute disabled girl
Introduction: 2 day vacation in Banff, Alberta and why I understand why people thought the gods lived in mountains. Fossils for sale make it a poor destination for creationists.
Part 1: Scumbag Rabbis won’t stop dangerous practice despite law.
In New York, many Ultra-Orthodox Jews engage in the practice of metzitzah b’peh, where the Mohel is instructed to place the infant’s penis in his mouth to suck the blood. It comes from a passage in the Torah, that claims this helps prevent infection. However, the exact opposite tends to happen, resulting in serious infections, including herpes.
Less than a year after a Brooklyn tot died following an ancient circumcision ritual, the rabbis say they will ignore a proposed law that would mandate parental-consent forms before performing the dangerous procedure…Over the past decade, at least one other newborn died after contracting herpes from the rite, in which the rabbi draws blood from the penis with his mouth.[1]
Because Jews are weird, since the 18th century man may use a glass tube to perform this ceremony, however, to accommodate the fact that the government was threatening to ban circumcision, and so many orthodox Jews seized on Talmudic interpretations that allowed them to stop this practice. [2]
New York City and federal health authorities issued a public advisory Thursday cautioning against the sucking practice because it has been linked to 11 infants becoming infected with the herpes simplex virus type 1 since 2000. Ten of the infected newborns were hospitalized, two developed brain damage and two died, the health officials said.
The city had tried to prosecute Rabbi Yitzchok Fischer for infecting 3 infants (one of them eventually died), but somehow failed to conclusively prove his guilt. When the city was thinking of suing him to enforce a ban on him performing the ritual, to avoid political fallout Bloomberg allowed the matter to move on to rabbinical court. As expected, he continues to do operate today. [4]
In 2006 Mayor Bloomberg held a meeting with rabbinical leaders which proved to be pointless:[3]
“The Orthodox Jewish community will continue the practice that has been practiced for over 5,000 years,” said Rabbi David Niederman of the United Jewish Organization in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, after the meeting with the mayor. “We do not change. And we will not change.”
Part 2: Imam accused of fabricating evidence to accuse Christian girl of blasphemy
Part of this law also makes it clear that it is intended to persecute an offshoot of Islam called the Ahmadiyya [5], who believe that their 19th century prophet was the legendary Mujaddid (a man said to appear every century to ‘revive’ Islam) [6]. who came back on earth to spread his religion peacefully. Muslims in Pakistan consider them using the label Muslim to be offensive enough to make a law against it.
Since 1987, almost 700 people have been arrested, and 20 died while in custody. Back in 2009, a woman named Asia Bibi was accused of insulting Muhammad and sentenced to death by hanging. Salman Taseer, the governor of Punjab, was shot and killed by despite the man being one of his bodyguards, his murderer managed to pump over 40 bullets in his body. Government officials went on the record to say he deserved it and celebrated the killer. [7][8] He was sentenced to death, which pleased him greatly. [9]
The latest story is of this type of persecution involves a 14 year old disabled Christian girl called Rimsha Masih. After allegedly hanging around a dump site, her accusers claim she was carrying the burnt remains of the Qur’an in her bag. Barnabas Fund reported that enraged Muslims severely beat the little girl and members of her family, and torched the houses of two Christian families…Muslim shopkeepers vowed not to sell food and other essentials to Christians and that Muslim landlords would end tenancy agreements with them [10]
It’s recently come to light that the whole affair was intended to fabricate a false charge to drive local Christians out.
Imam Khalid Chishti allegedly told a witness, after tampering with the girl’s bag, that this was a “way of getting rid of Christians”, according to a prosecutor.
He has already paraded on TV making volatile and threatening remarks about Christians in the community. The government will try to make an example out of him, but they have yet to release Rimsha. [11]
