The Great Woo-Woo-Skeptic Culture War: A Cautionary Tale

[Jeff Corkern]

THE GREAT WOO-WOO-SKEPTIC CULTURE WAR: A CAUTIONARY TALE
by Jeffrey A. Corkern

Long, long ago, and far, far away, there lived a number of tiny little tribes in tiny little connected mountain valleys.

These tribes were divided into two groups, the Woo-Woos and the Skeptics. The Woo-Woos were called Woo-Woos because they were a religious people, and “Woo-Woo” was the name of their god. The Skeptics, on the other hand, were the complete opposite of the Woo-Woos. They didn’t believe in religion or a god of any kind whatsoever. They were firm believers in the strict scientific method, and the strict scientific method only. They knew anything religious was automatically wrong. The Skeptics looked down on the Woo-Woos with pitying eyes, because they knew the Woo-Woos were doomed in the long run. They knew Skeptics were fated by evolution to move in and take over all Woo-Woo valleys after the Woo-Woos had choked on their own self-contradictions and disappeared into the mists of history. The Skeptics knew from their study of history that only societies whose practices were rational, in conformity with physical law, survived over the long course of history, and therefore the Woo-Woos didn’t have the slightest chance of surviving as history proceeded and evolution did its cruel thing. History demonstrated beyond all possible doubt that evolution was really, REALLY rough on societies whose practices had no basis in physical law, whose practices were in sad fact COMPLETELY irrational. History showed that cultures whose customs violated physical law vanished FAST, baby, and the poor, benighted Woo-Woos certainly had plenty of those. They had all sorts of weird, nonsensical rules, beliefs, and customs, not one of which the Skeptics knew had even the slightest basis in physical law.

Take the way they worshiped their god, for example. The Woo-Woos had a highly entertaining way of worshiping their god and made a great deal of money from selling tickets to watch their services to Skeptic tourists. Each Sunday Skeptics would go to a Woo-Woo church---a Woo-Woo church was a large flat piece of ground marked off in squares---buy a ticket, find a seat in the stands set up for Skeptic tourists and wait expectantly.

The first sign would be a booming sound coming from far off. Every Skeptic would raise his camera and focus it on the horizon. A mass of hundreds of Woo-Woos would come marching into view, arranged in a huge square and all marching together in synchronization. Each Woo-Woo would be barefoot, wearing a skimpy tight-fitting tunic, and be carrying a tom-tom underneath his right arm, with a bucket and a sack hanging off his left shoulder, and each one would be chanting the same thing over and over in rhythm with his marching.

“GREAT God Woo-Woo! GREAT God Woo-Woo!” they would chant, hitting their tom-tom with a tremendous BOOM at the beginning of every sentence, creating a roll of continuous thunder that washed over the Skeptics like an ocean wave. Chanting and banging their toms-toms, the Woo-Woos would march onto the great flat squares, each Woo-Woo onto his own particular square, and when each Woo-Woo was marching in place in his own square they would bang their tom-toms and do their all-sit-down ritual.

“BOOM-chakka-lakka-lakka-BOOM-chakka-lakka-lakka-BOOM-chakka-lakka-lakka-all-sit-DOWN!”

And they would all sit down with a great crash.

This was all performed with such surgical drill-team precision that Skeptics seeing this for the first time would quite often burst into spontaneous applause.

But the service wasn’t over yet. Each Woo-Woo would set his tom-tom down to his right, then unsling his bucket and sack and place them in front of him. Each Woo-Woo would pick up his bucket and hold it up high in front of him until every Woo-Woo had his bucket up. Then with a massive cry of “Great God Woo-Woo is great!” each Woo-Woo would pour the contents of his bucket---The Holy Red Molasses---all over himself and spread it uniformly over his body. When he was finished, each Woo-Woo would set his bucket to his right, pick up his sack and hold it high, and wait.

When the last Woo-Woo held up his sack, they would again cry in unison “Great God Woo-Woo is great!” and empty the contents of the sack---The Holy Green Chicken Feathers---all over himself. All the Skeptic cameras would click at this point. A cloud of Holy Green Chicken Feathers erupting into the Sunday morning air was quite a spectacular sight.

From out of nowhere would come the sound of music---Sixties rock-and-roll, to be precise (Great God Woo-Woo alone knew how they had gotten hold of it)---and each Woo-Woo would jump up and explode into The Holy Funky Green Chicken dance, putting his hands in his armpits, flapping them like they were wings, scratching at the ground with his feet, and making pecking motions with his head, dancing The Holy Funky Green Chicken for Great God Woo-Woo as Great God Woo-Woo had commanded they do, as Sixties rock-and-roll lilted upon the air.

“If there’s a smile upon my face, it’s only there to fool the public---“

(“Tears Of A Clown” was a particular favorite.)

Each Woo-Woo was allowed to express himself in the dance as he liked, dancing The Holy Funky Green Chicken for Great God Woo-Woo in his own particular fashion. Most of the Woo-Woos were no more than average at this, as you might imagine, but a few were true artists, dancing The Holy Funky Green Chicken so convincingly more than one Skeptic found himself looking for Holy Green Chicken Eggs.

Each Skeptic tourist made sure he took lots and lots of pictures, because they all knew the Woo-Woos were doomed in the long run, and the time would one day come when clouds of Holy Green Chicken Feathers erupting into the air and Woo-Woos dancing The Holy Funky Green Chicken would exist only in pictures in some Skeptic museum built as a memorial in some former Woo-Woo valley.

When the last Woo-Woo had collapsed onto the ground exhausted, the service was over, and the Skeptics went home to develop their pictures and keep them where they could be preserved for future generations of Skeptics to laugh at.

One day one particular tribe of Skeptics decided they had had enough of this silliness, that while what the Woo-Woos did was entertaining, it was time to civilize the Woo-Woos, to drag them out of the darkness of ignorance and superstition they lived in. So they sat down to try and find the best way to convert the Woo-Woos to the one true way of Skepticism.

This wasn’t the first time Skeptics had tried to do this. Previous Skeptic tribes had tried to do the same thing by sending missionaries to the Woo-Woos to demonstrate with ice-cold logic the irrationality of their beliefs, to no avail. No Skeptic had ever been able to argue any Woo-Woo out of his belief in Great God Woo-Woo.

So this tribe decided to try something new. Instead of trying to argue them out of it, they decided to SHOW them their beliefs made no sense. They decided to randomly pick one of Great God Woo-Woo’s laws and publicly break it. They decided to break one of Great God Woo-Woo’s laws and let the Woo-Woos see that breaking one of Great God Woo-Woo’s laws had NO effect whatsoever. And when the Woo-Woos saw that breaking one of Great God Woo-Woo’s laws had no effect, it was hard to see how any Woo-Woo could avoid the conclusion that Great God Woo-Woo wasn’t actually there, had in fact NEVER been there.

The Woo-Woo’s had a great book, “Great God Woo-Woo’s Laws”, that listed all Great God Woo-Woo’s laws in numerical order. The Skeptics got a copy of Great God Woo-Woo’s Laws, rolled some dice and came up with 78. Great God Woo-Woo’s Law 78 was a law regarding the planting of crops. Great God Woo-Woo stated that certain crops could only be planted when certain stars were above certain mountain peaks. He had a quite precise, rigid, arbitrary schedule for planting crops, which was mostly in the springtime and a few in early summer, which is when the right stars lined up over the right mountain peaks. This tribe of Skeptics decided to break that law and plant their crops at any time other than the Great God Woo-Woo designated time, and they made sure the Woo-Woos knew what they were about to do. Quite a few Woo-Woos begged them not to do it, because Great God Woo-Woo didn’t like it when his laws were broken, and promised great punishment to all those who broke Great God Woo-Woo’s laws. This tribe of Skeptics just laughed and laughed and said “Watch this!” and went ahead and planted their crops whenever they wanted.

All their crops failed, and every single member of that particular tribe of Skeptics starved to death that winter.

Since that valley was empty, the Woo-Woos moved in and took it over.

This result caught the remaining Skeptic tribes by surprise. Laboratory investigation of the catastrophe by Skeptic scientists showed that plants---and seeds, unfortunately---contained biological clocks. Skeptic scientists determined that seeds, alas, would not germinate and grow unless planted at the correct time of the year. Great God Woo-Woo, it seemed, had known what He was doing when He laid down Law 78. That law had been rational, in complete conformity with physical law.

There was a great deal of I-told-you-so from the Woo-Woos. More than one Woo-Woo took a great deal of delight in rubbing his Skeptic friends’ nose in the fact that an experiment designed to show Great God Woo-Woo didn’t exist had turned out exactly the opposite of what the Skeptics had expected.

This got the remaining tribes of Skeptics mad. So mad one tribe decided to try again. That poor previous tribe had just happened to hit on the one Great God Woo-Woo law that turned out to be rational. So what, Great God Woo-Woo had just happened to get lucky. There was NO way that could happen again!

This time, instead of picking out a law at random without thinking about it, this new tribe sat down, thought about it a little and picked one of Great God Woo-Woo’s truly crazy laws, just about the nuttiest one they could find, Law 32. Law 32 said no Woo-Woo could eat pork. This Skeptic tribe defied that law with a vengeance. The entire tribe went on a pork binge. They lived and breathed pork. They had pork for breakfast, pork for lunch, pork for supper, and pork for dessert, and they made sure the Woo-Woos knew all about it and were watching. Every Skeptic tribal member couldn’t wait to see the expression on the Woo-Woo’s faces when as they watched them break one of Great God Woo-Woo’s laws---and NOTHING happened.

That tribe of Skeptics all got trichinosis and died in agony.

The Woo-Woos were not converted.

The Woo-Woos again moved in and took over the deserted valley.

More after-the-fact laboratory investigation by Skeptic scientists showed Great God Woo-Woo had somehow managed to make a rational law again, a rule that actually was in conformity with physical law. Skeptic scientists turned up the fact pigs carried trichinosis and all pork products had to be VERY carefully checked to make sure they didn’t carry the trichinosis parasite. The Woo-Woos shook their heads sadly and pointed out Great God Woo-Woo had just gone two-for-two. A number of Woo-Woos offered to teach the Skeptics some basic Holy Funky Green Chicken dance steps and sent them some Sixties rock-and-roll records.

Now EVERY Skeptic got boiling mad. Now every single Skeptic was bound and determined to find SOME way of demonstrating to the Woo-Woos the ultimate irrationality of their beliefs. The Skeptic tribes all got together and had a great council of war. The method of breaking a law and letting the Woo-Woos see there were no resulting bad consequences, they decided, was perfectly sound, the error had been in picking the wrong law to break. What the Skeptics had to do was find the most impossible, the most irrational, the most absolutely insane Great God Woo-Woo law there was, and break THAT law. When the Skeptics finally showed that breaking Great God Woo-Woo’s law had no effect, the Woo-Woos would have no choice except to become Skeptics.

What was the Woo-Woos’ craziest, most irrational belief?

Actually, when they got down and dirty with it and looked as hard as they could, the Skeptics realized they had overlooked what was easily the stupidest beliefs in the world, Great God Woo-Woo Law 1 and Law 2.

Great God Woo-Woo’s Law 2 stated that every human being was an eternal being and, since their bodies were certainly not eternal, everybody therefore had a soul and survived the death of his physical body. This was the central belief of the Woo-Woos. All of Great God Woo-Woo’s power over his subjects was based on the idea that Great God Woo-Woo judged everybody’s soul, Woo-Woo and Skeptic alike, AFTER they died, and would reward or punish each according to whether or not they had broken Great God Woo-Woo’s most fundamental law, Law 1, which was “Great God Woo-Woo loves everybody forever.”

Both those notions---that everybody was an eternally existing being who had a soul, and Great God Woo-Woo loved everybody forever---was enough to make every Skeptic at the council just fall down and roll around on the ground laughing until the tears rolled down his face. Of all the stupid, irrational, idiotic notions that had no chance whatsoever of being real, this one was the most stupid, irrational, and idiotic of them all. Somebody surviving his physical body’s death, what a supremely absurd notion! It was obvious at a glance death was the total destruction of the personality. No Skeptic had ever seen a soul. (Although there were Skeptics and Woo-Woos alike that reported very strange experiences from time to time, these stories were dismissed as the product of a hysterical fear of death, wishful thinking, and overactive imaginations.)

And Great God Woo-Woo loving everybody forever? This was such a ridiculous notion it wasn’t even discussed. The Universe had so many ways of hurting people it was flatly impossible for anything even close to that to be true. The Skeptic council decided to concentrate on the souls law, Law 2.

How to break this law? It wasn’t at all obvious what the Skeptics had to do to break this law, and there was a deal of loud arguing, until one brilliant Skeptic genius pointed out that the most important thing the Woo-Woos did with that law was TEACH it to their children. They taught their Woo-Woo children Great God Woo-Woo said EVERYBODY had souls.

So the way for Skeptics to break this law was to TEACH their Skeptic children that NOBODY had souls.

This was the perfect solution, absolutely perfect! Although every Skeptic already believed nobody had a soul, there was no formal program of teaching this in their schools. The Skeptic council immediately decided to institute a program of pounding into their children’s heads over and over again that nobody survived his physical body’s death, that NOBODY HAD SOULS. And they would toss in the statement that the Universe didn’t care about anybody.

The Woo-Woos heard about this. They sent a delegation to the Skeptic council.

“We beg you not do this,” they said. “You are deliberately breaking Great God Woo-Woo’s most fundamental laws. Twice you have broken Great God Woo-Woo’s laws, and twice it has led to disaster. Have you not learned? We warn you. Doing this will start a fire that will consume you all.”

The Skeptic council sneered a mighty sneer and did it anyway.

The school program went on for years and years and years. Ten, fifteen, TWENTY years.

Nothing happened.

The Skeptics began to grin from ear to ear as each year went by. They took great joy in pointing out to the Woo-Woos that they had broken Great God Woo-Woo’s most basic laws, and there hadn’t been even the first bad consequence.

The response from the Woo-Woos was always---silence. There wasn’t the first Woo-Woo convert.

One fine day a couple of Skeptic teenagers took two assault rifles to school and massacred twenty-three students and a teacher. When the cops closed in, they put the muzzles of their assault rifles in their mouths and blew their brains out. The cops found a note the teenagers left behind.

“The Universe doesn’t care about me---I don’t care about the Universe. Screw you all.”

The Woo-Woos finally broke their silence. They asked “Is this not perfect Skeptic logic?”

Now it was the Skeptics turn to be silent, because there was no question that it was. But they decided it was best to just forget the incident, because there was no way such a horrible thing would ever happen again.

It happened again a week later, eleven children dead in a murder-suicide committed by another child. With another note, longer this time. “The Universe doesn’t care about me---I don’t care about the Universe. Human life means nothing, not even mine. It’s all going to Hell. It’s all going straight to Hell. Screw you all.”

And again, a few months later, ten children dead. Then a year later, six children dead, then eighteen months later, with a new record of thirty students dead, over and over, until the Skeptics got used to hearing about the occasional school massacre, with the record for the number of children murdered being constantly broken, until it seemed strange to them that there was ever a time when school massacres were not routine.

Some Skeptic scientists were more than a little discomfited by this, and they investigated, trying to discover why their children were doing such terrible things they had never done before. They discovered the social environment their children were living in was a horror.

The first thing they discovered was their children were rude to each other. Their children had evolved a society where the insult was considered to be high art and the resulting anger a way of life. The way their children were screaming at each other had to be seen to be believed.

The second more shocking thing they discovered was their children were heavy drug users, as an escape from all their pain and anger. They couldn’t achieve happiness with all the rudeness and anger in their daily lives, so they achieved it with drugs designed to force their brains into feeling happiness, emotion drugs. Alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, meth, mescaline, LSD, peyote, barbiturates, mushrooms, cocaine, crack, uppers, downers, the Skeptic scientists found a new emotion drug their children were using every day.

The Skeptic children had invented a dead-on-target term to describe somebody under the influence of emotion drugs. They observed that when somebody was under the influence of emotion drugs, he just faded away and stopped interacting with the rest of the Universe. He interacted with the Universe exactly as much as a rock did, and so the Skeptic kids called using emotion drugs “getting stoned.”

The Skeptics launched a “Just-Say-No” program to get their kids to stop using emotion drugs. They pointed out all the bad things that emotion drugs did to people and society. Some emotion drugs could even lead to the user’s death.

It didn’t have the slightest effect.

“Screw you all, dudes,” the kids said with their ingrained rudeness. “One day I will die and disappear completely from the Universe. I want to be happy while I’m here. Emotion drugs MAKE me happy. They are the easiest and cheapest way. Why should I care what happens to society? Why should I care what you freaking idiots think? I’m all alone in the Universe. The Universe doesn’t care about me. I’m not really connected to anything. There’s no real reason why I should care. Why should I care if it kills me? I’m gonna die and disappear anyway. At least this way I’ll be guaranteed to die happy. Screw you all, dudes. I’m tired of all this talk. I’m gonna go get stoned.”

The Woo-Woos commented “You have trained your children well. Is this not also perfect Skeptic logic?”

The Skeptics had to acknowledge it was. In fact their kids had struck right to the heart of an issue, as children do, and from that moment on the “Just-Say-No” program stopped and the use of emotion drugs began spreading through the rest of Skeptic society. Particularly the smart Skeptics. From that moment on, intellectual and scientific progress slowed down in Skeptic society. The smarter and smarter a Skeptic was, the more and more likely he was to spend his time stoned rather than doing scientific research, or writing books, or composing music, or painting pictures, or whatever it was creative he did.

Emotion drug use became so common and pervasive in Skeptic society the Skeptics were eventually forced to make emotion drugs legal. The Skeptics didn’t really like this, but there was nothing they could do about it, so in the end they shrugged their shoulders and decided if the occasional school massacre, lots and lots of their smartest people getting stoned and staying that way, and a general slowing down of Skeptic society was the worst bad consequence, they could live with it.

But it didn’t stop there.

The killing got worse and spread out of the schools. Massacres began happening at totally unexpected times and places, and the child killers got better at it with practice, building massive bombs that killed hundreds, then thousands.

The Skeptics felt a cold wind on their backs. They tried to stop it. The killers were few, never more than one in a thousand. The vast majority of their kids were content with getting stoned. They asked their kids why some of them kept turning killer.

“You absolute, complete, utter fools,” their kids replied. “Nothing could be simpler. Because they feel like it. Because it makes them feel happy.”

The Skeptics were nonplused.

“You really don’t see it, do you?” their kids asked. “You’re all going to die screaming, and you all deserve to die screaming for being stupid. Everything’s meaningless. The Universe doesn’t care about anything. You can do anything you want. You can kill if you want. If there are no souls, the only rational thing to be is a sociopath.”

The Woo-Woos commented “Perfect Skeptic logic. Your children are geniuses. We now understand Great God Woo-Woo’s purpose in making us eternal beings.”

Again the Skeptic kids had struck to the heart of an issue, and again this perfect reasoning spread through the rest of Skeptic society. The smarter and smarter a Skeptic was, the more and more likely he was to turn killer, until murder was as common as rain in Skeptic valleys, until no Skeptic dared leave his house at night. Murder became another high art among Skeptics. Skeptic geniuses found thousands and thousands of ways of killing people, in whatever number you wanted.

Some of the smarter Skeptics sensed the end was near. They began quietly trying to leave their respective valleys and emigrate to the Woo-Woo valleys.

The Woo-Woos barred their way.

“No,” they said. “A Skeptic now stands a good chance of being an angry, homicidal, emotion-drug-using sociopath capable of murdering millions. We are NOT going to take that kind of chance with our decent, civilized, stable society. YOU MAY NOT PASS. You created this disaster, and you will suffer the consequences.”

The end came quickly and explosively. A child Skeptic genius realized the only way he would ever be safe from other Skeptics killing him was if he killed all the other Skeptics first. He created and released a virus that killed only Skeptics. He left the Woo-Woos alone because they had always been polite and kind to him and once had even tried to convince him he mattered.

The virus made Skeptics feel like they were being roasted alive. It burned through all the Skeptics like fire through dry grass. As they got sick and began dying, a number of Skeptic scientists saw that breaking Great God Woo-Woo Law 1 and Law 2 had once again led to total disaster, as if those loony-tune laws might somehow have been rational too, and wondered to themselves if perhaps they should’ve tested those laws in the lab first before breaking them, but it was now way the hell too late, and they died screaming just like all the other Skeptics.

And so in this fashion the Skeptics all annihilated themselves and died out. And the Woo-Woos moved in, cleaned up all the bodies, colonized all that now-empty land, and the sound of The Holy Funky Green Chicken now echoes through their peaceful mountain valleys forever and ever, amen.

“If there’s a smile upon my face, it’s only there to fool the public---“

END

[calebprime]

In 2007, it was an Op with a theory.

Now, it's a story.

Next, I think you should do it as opera.

[athon]

I'll save others the pain of needing to read such tripe - If people don't believe that they have a soul or that there is more to the universe than scientific laws, they will kill people and commit suicide.

Ho hum. Don't give up your day job (unless it is writing stories...in which case, start saving food stamps).

Athon

[jhunter1163]

tl(oony);dr

[JFrankA]

Just like the bible.

....a work of fiction.....

[xXMoshtradamusXx]

I honestly loved the story. Very close parallel to reality.
It has but one fatal flaw. Only the weak willed and minded NEED a God to give their life meaning.
You can believe in God for a lot of reasons. But rationalizing my existence was never one of them even when I believed. *shrug*

[Piscivore]

"And the moral of the story is, boys and girls: it's easy to make events come out the way you want to if you fabricate them out of whole cloth."

[Baby Nemesis]

That story doesn't explain how it was that the slave trade, the practice of regularly going to war with your neighbour countries for glory and gain, unrestrained Capitalism that led to gross exploitation, permissive attitudes to sadistic corporal punishment in schools, and other such things, all happened in the era when most people believed in souls. The story suggests those things shouldn't have gone on till recently with secularisation.

[Twiler]

In addition, it assumes that all the woo-woos agree on everything. Which is odd.

[jakesteele]

Originally Posted by Baby Nemesis

That story doesn't explain how it was that the slave trade, the practice of regularly going to war with your neighbour countries for glory and gain, unrestrained Capitalism that led to gross exploitation, permissive attitudes to sadistic corporal punishment in schools, and other such things, all happened in the era when most people believed in souls. The story suggests those things shouldn't have gone on till recently with secularisation.

Even though wars constitute a small portion of causes of war
(Encyclopedia of War vol. 1,2,3 says that only about 17% of wars have been purely religious. Most wars are fought for expansionism and greed.)

and atheists constitute a very small percentage of the earth's population (6-17%, depending on whether one is hard, strong, etc.) I think what would be a good rebuttal is if you could find some stats that compare the crime rate, especially murder/rape, of theists vs atheists. I would be willing to bet that we atheists commit noticeably less that the theists.

I'm looking, but so far haven't had much luck.

[Maia]

Originally Posted by Baby Nemesis

That story doesn't explain how it was that the slave trade, the practice of regularly going to war with your neighbour countries for glory and gain, unrestrained Capitalism that led to gross exploitation, permissive attitudes to sadistic corporal punishment in schools, and other such things, all happened in the era when most people believed in souls. The story suggests those things shouldn't have gone on till recently with secularisation.

Well, it does more than just that, and the list would be a lot longer than the story itself (which was a VERY long post!!) But one thing is that it assumes from the very beginning that there only two groups, and that everyone can be neatly divided into one of those two groups. And this is just isn't true. People simply do not fall into "skeptics' and "woo-woos", or "religious" and "non-religious", or "Christians" and "atheists", or any other two supposedly diametrically opposed categories that anybody wants to come up with. Beliefs do not fall neatly into these two categories. Evidence does not do this. Events do not do this. Reality does not do this. Do we really need to go on here? This is the central error of this kind of nonsense.

[Jeff Corkern]

Originally Posted by calebprime

In 2007, it was an Op with a theory.

Now, it's a story.

Next, I think you should do it as opera.

I am amazed and flattered somebody remembers. I must have made an impact. As a writer, there can be no greater compliment.

Actually, it's a number of stories. And a few essays.

An opera. An idea, but I have no talent for music.

[Ysidro]

tl;dr;dc

[Cavemonster]

I much prefer the stories of jhuger, particularly "The physician and the Priest"
http://www.jhuger.com/phandpr

[Jeff Corkern]

Originally Posted by xXMoshtradamusXx

I honestly loved the story. Very close parallel to reality.
It has but one fatal flaw. Only the weak willed and minded NEED a God to give their life meaning.
You can believe in God for a lot of reasons. But rationalizing my existence was never one of them even when I believed. *shrug*

Thank you.

I have to point out the "weak-willed and minded" i.e., the Woo-Woos, don't do anything significant in this story. Only the Skeptics take significant action. All the Woo-Woos do is dance The Holy Funky Green Chicken, talk, and move into Skeptic valleys after the Skeptics have wiped themselves out by doing something stupid. Your comment is off the mark.

You guys are missing the main point of this story.

[Cavemonster]

Originally Posted by Jeff Corkern

You guys are missing the main point of this story.

No, we get your intended point, it's as subtle as an anvil. We just don't think it has any value or reflection of reality.

[Cavemonster]

I feel enormously sad for you that you can't imagine logical reasons for us to be good and compassionate and not kill each other without believing in fairy tales.

I find people who can honestly ask "Why be good without God or a soul" to be terrifying. You honestly can't see the very real reasons for us to treat each other well?

[Cavemonster]

error

[themusicteacher]

That has got to be one of the longest strawmen I've ever seen but, then again, I've never read anything by Anne "Skeletor" Coulter.

[fls]

I kinda liked the chicken dance. It seemed like it would have some potential.

But I will admit I stopped reading it after a while. The demonstration of substantial ignorance of what it means to take a scientific or skeptical approach to asking and answering question from the author does a grave disservice to religion (I hope) by giving me the impression that their beliefs are based on ignorance. It inadvertently forms a strawman for religion (to go along with the deliberate erection of a strawman for skepticism, I suppose) and I don't think it's a fair approach (or useful or anything but dumb). If I were religious I suspect my response would be, "with friends like this, who needs enemies."

ETA: I'm also with Cavemonster. It is very disturbing to discover that it cannot occur to some people to be good without the threat of a Magic Sky Daddy, and I will admit that I would like to continue to pretend to myself that these people are rare, rather than having my face rubbed in it.

Linda

[Think_Tank]

Originally Posted by Jeff Corkern

The Woo-Woo’s had a great book, “Great God Woo-Woo’s Laws”, that listed all Great God Woo-Woo’s laws in numerical order. The Skeptics got a copy of Great God Woo-Woo’s Laws, rolled some dice and came up with 78. Great God Woo-Woo’s Law 78 was a law regarding the planting of crops. Great God Woo-Woo stated that certain crops could only be planted when certain stars were above certain mountain peaks. He had a quite precise, rigid, arbitrary schedule for planting crops, which was mostly in the springtime and a few in early summer, which is when the right stars lined up over the right mountain peaks. This tribe of Skeptics decided to break that law and plant their crops at any time other than the Great God Woo-Woo designated time, and they made sure the Woo-Woos knew what they were about to do. Quite a few Woo-Woos begged them not to do it, because Great God Woo-Woo didn’t like it when his laws were broken, and promised great punishment to all those who broke Great God Woo-Woo’s laws. This tribe of Skeptics just laughed and laughed and said “Watch this!” and went ahead and planted their crops whenever they wanted.

All their crops failed, and every single member of that particular tribe of Skeptics starved to death that winter.

Since that valley was empty, the Woo-Woos moved in and took it over.

This result caught the remaining Skeptic tribes by surprise. Laboratory investigation of the catastrophe by Skeptic scientists showed that plants---and seeds, unfortunately---contained biological clocks. Skeptic scientists determined that seeds, alas, would not germinate and grow unless planted at the correct time of the year. Great God Woo-Woo, it seemed, had known what He was doing when He laid down Law 78. That law had been rational, in complete conformity with physical law.

Your analogy might (just might) be even slightly applicable if you can show me a crop that will fail to germinate if planted on a Sunday.

[Twiler]

Actually, if it's only a concern for the afterlife that stops people killing each other and taking drugs, wouldn't any afterlife be full of people doing those things? After all, they'd have nothing left to worry about.

[Baby Nemesis]

Originally Posted by Jeff Corkern

You guys are missing the main point of this story.

If you mean that drumming the idea into people that they don't have souls and there is no superior being who cares for them and they live in an uncaring universe would automatically drive people off the rails, it would all depend on what else was going on in their lives. If they had people on earth who did care for them, if they were doing activities that gave them meaning in life, and if they were brought up with good moral values and taught to respect themselves enough to take care of themselves, because they had intrinsic value as a human or had proven they were worthwhile individuals, then it would mitigate any message from a teacher who said life was meaningless and that when they died they'd just plop into oblivion never to be heard of again. For example, if someone was convinced they could make the world a better place while they lived, they wouldn't think life was futile just because they were going to drop out of existence. If they believed that though they might come to nothingness their achievements wouldn't, they wouldn't be disheartened by some teacher going on about how they were all going to end up as mere food for maggots. See a post I wrote once about how school children can be encouraged to think more of themselves and look after themselves better. It does discuss the religious aspect at the very beginning.

Your take on things is simplistic, for there are multiple reasons why crime might rise and moral values be lowered.

One is the availability of things like drugs. You don't hear much about 18th-century cocaine addicts. That isn't because more people believed in souls then, but because the drug just wasn't around. However, one thing that was, and which caused a lot of problems in families and communities despite the prevalence of the belief in souls, was cheap gin. It was known as "mother's ruin". Here's an article about it. According to this:

Quote:

In the mid-eighteenth century the effects of gin-drinking on English society makes the use of drugs today seem almost benign!

Gin started out as a medicine - it was thought it could be a cure for gout and indigestion, but most attractive of all, it was cheap.

In the 1730's notices could be seen all over London. The message was short and to the point

'Drunk for 1 penny, Dead drunk for tuppence, Straw for nothing'!!

In London alone, there were more than 7,000 'dram shops', and 10 million gallons of gin were being distilled annually in the capital ...

The government of the day became alarmed when it was found that the average Londoner drank 14 gallons of spirit each year!

The government decided that the tax must be raised on gin, but this put many reputable sellers out of business, and made way for the 'bootleggers' who sold their wares under such fancy names as Cuckold's Comfort, Ladies Delight and Knock Me Down.

Overnight, gin sales went underground! Dealers, pushers and runners sold their illegal 'hooch' in what became a Black Market.

Much of the gin was drunk by women, consequently the children were neglected, daughters were sold into prostitution, and wet nurses gave gin to babies to quieten them. This worked provided they were given a large enough dose!

People would do anything to get gin…a cattle drover sold his eleven-year-old daughter to a trader for a gallon of gin, and a coachman pawned his wife for a quart bottle.

[Apology]

Doesn't this forum limit the number of characters allowed in a single post?

I think it's time to consider some sort of restriction on that

[Baby Nemesis]

Originally Posted by jakesteele

Even though wars constitute a small portion of causes of war
(Encyclopedia of War vol. 1,2,3 says that only about 17% of wars have been purely religious. Most wars are fought for expansionism and greed.)

and atheists constitute a very small percentage of the earth's population (6-17%, depending on whether one is hard, strong, etc.) I think what would be a good rebuttal is if you could find some stats that compare the crime rate, especially murder/rape, of theists vs atheists. I would be willing to bet that we atheists commit noticeably less that the theists.

I'm looking, but so far haven't had much luck.

Most wars will have been fought for mixed motives. Often several motives. See an article called The First Crusade - Causes.

It probably wouldn't be possible to find reliable data on the percentage of crime committed by theists vs atheists. But there is research that has found that the proportion of theists in prison is very much higher than atheists, certainly in America. In fact, the statistics say atheists are a very small minority of the prison population indeed. Here are some statistics.

That doesn't, naturally, mean religion causes crime. There's also a correlation between poverty and crime in America. And most prisoners will come from poorer backgrounds.

The statistics do suggest atheists aren't any more immoral than theists.

However, one reason the statistics don't tell the whole story is that just because a person labels themselves as belonging to a particular religion, it doesn't mean they have a conviction that that religion's true. They may be a cultural follower - having been born into it and thus assuming they're a member, but not actually following the religion's precepts, never having really thought about it much. However, in a country where religion is the norm, many atheists will likely be people at least educated enough to have given the matter quite a bit of thought; and on average, the more educated a person is, the less likely they are to end up in prison.

Also, I've heard that in America, many criminals in prison might declare themselves theists because it makes a good impression on the parole board.

So the statistics would need to be analysed to give a clear picture.

[leafman91]

Good show, good show, I do applaud you. You seem to have directed the whole thing while being part of the play, clever you. The analogy is missing something, the lack of realism. In reality, cold hard logic fails on a regular basis, for lack of information, or for the simple twisting of it. While your story shows a pinch of it, I think quite a bit more would have been in order. What's more you seem to have missed out the whole interpretation of laws stage in a religious society, which is how the Taliban have power, and how religious massacres end up taking place. Somehow, I think the Woo-Woos would have had exceedingly excellent border patrol. Lastly, what I think the story really needs is some more variety. Categorizing people has always been a bitch of a job to undertake, and this story should take no exception.

Otherwise, excellent job.

[vIQleS]

I did read the whole thing.

I'm very sorry that you wasted so much time writing that...

[voidx]

I'm torn whether I should be impressed, or just bewildered that people actual made the effort to read that entire thing. Leaning towards the latter.

[Baby Nemesis]

Originally Posted by voidx

I'm torn whether I should be impressed, or just bewildered that people actual made the effort to read that entire thing. Leaning towards the latter.

I like stories. ... Well, some of 'em.

[Aepervius]

I will make my own story.

long long ago there were a group of woo-woo. A skeptic came to them. He observed them as they took a weeping woman. Then bound her on a wooden stake, then started to pile wood on her. After a while a woo-woo in chief came and said some words. Then he lit a fire under the woman and let her burn down. The skeptic horrified asked why the woman was burnt down. The woo-woo answered that's because she is a witch. And the skeptic asked "how do you know she is a witch", to which the woo-woo answered they have an old book telling them how to treat and find witch. And after torturing her, i mean "questioning" her, they found her guilty. To which the skeptic answered "but there are no proof witch exists !". The woo-woo then promptly burned him down as a witch.

I have another story with a women bound to an altar and getting her heart ripped by a woo-woo priest out to attract rain, and another one where a rapped girl get stoned to death for having slept with a man.

My story are more probable to have happened than yours.

But so what ? Both are drivel.

[arthwollipot]

Hm. It's not a bad story, except that it's based on a strawman of legendary proportions. That kinda spoils it, quite frankly.

[gambling_cruiser]

I started reading, jumped after the first long paragraph to the end, moved back ten lines and was glad to havn't read the whole tripe.
What a bunch of nonsense and waste of time I just avoided! Lucky me.

[Baby Nemesis]

Originally Posted by Baby Nemesis

I like stories. ... Well, some of 'em.

Originally Posted by Aepervius

I will make my own story.

long long ago there were a group of woo-woo. A skeptic came to them. He observed them as they took a weeping woman. Then bound her on a wooden stake, then started to pile wood on her. ...

Well, I didn't like that one.

Still, it is more likely to have happened, in Medieval times in the West, but also still in some cultures today, which you can see in my gruesome thread all about it.

The story in the OP caricatures both skeptics and religious people.

[tsig]

Originally Posted by Twiler

In addition, it assumes that all the woo-woos agree on everything. Which is odd.

At some point the Funky green Chicken believers will clash with the Holy Red Rooster followers and the feathers will fly.

[Dave Rogers]

Originally Posted by Jeff Corkern

Each Sunday Skeptics would go to a Woo-Woo church---a Woo-Woo church was a large flat piece of ground marked off in squares---buy a ticket, find a seat in the stands set up for Skeptic tourists and wait expectantly.

At this point, you lost your audience. Skeptics, in general, like to avoid having to pay woo-woos to do stupid things.

Originally Posted by Jeff Corkern

Great God Woo-Woo’s Law 78 was a law regarding the planting of crops. Great God Woo-Woo stated that certain crops could only be planted when certain stars were above certain mountain peaks. He had a quite precise, rigid, arbitrary schedule for planting crops, which was mostly in the springtime and a few in early summer, which is when the right stars lined up over the right mountain peaks. This tribe of Skeptics decided to break that law and plant their crops at any time other than the Great God Woo-Woo designated time, and they made sure the Woo-Woos knew what they were about to do.

It's remarkable that the skeptics had survived so long without knowing that crops need to be planted at a specific time and harvested at another specific time, a piece of basic knowledge for every agrarian society in history. How, in your universe, had they managed to feed themselves in the past without knowing this?

Originally Posted by Jeff Corkern

This time, instead of picking out a law at random without thinking about it, this new tribe sat down, thought about it a little and picked one of Great God Woo-Woo’s truly crazy laws, just about the nuttiest one they could find, Law 32. Law 32 said no Woo-Woo could eat pork. This Skeptic tribe defied that law with a vengeance. The entire tribe went on a pork binge. They lived and breathed pork. They had pork for breakfast, pork for lunch, pork for supper, and pork for dessert, and they made sure the Woo-Woos knew all about it and were watching. Every Skeptic tribal member couldn’t wait to see the expression on the Woo-Woo’s faces when as they watched them break one of Great God Woo-Woo’s laws---and NOTHING happened.

That tribe of Skeptics all got trichinosis and died in agony.

Again, assuming that they lived in a society that ate pork, how would they not have known that it needed to be properly cooked?

Originally Posted by Jeff Corkern

One fine day a couple of Skeptic teenagers took two assault rifles to school and massacred twenty-three students and a teacher. When the cops closed in, they put the muzzles of their assault rifles in their mouths and blew their brains out. The cops found a note the teenagers left behind.

Strange how this seems to happen less in the UK, where atheism is so unexceptional as to be a completely dead issue, than in the USA, where atheism is sufficiently rare as to be stigmatised.

Originally Posted by Jeff Corkern

The Woo-Woos commented “You have trained your children well. Is this not also perfect Skeptic logic?”

Well, no, it isn't. Skeptics are allowed to exhibit enlightened self-interest.

Originally Posted by Jeff Corkern

And so in this fashion the Skeptics all annihilated themselves and died out.

Strangely, though, in the more atheistic societies of western Europe, that doesn't seem to be happening.

So, reality doesn't agree with your conclusions. What's your preference, to reconsider your conclusions, or to deny reality? If it's the second, doesn't that make you delusional? And if it's the first, doesn't that make you a skeptic?

Funnily enough, there isn't a third choice.

Dave

[leafman91]

I think the main point to be made is around Karl Marx's view that religion is the opiate of the masses. A load of tripe really, but a good principle to stick by, if you think the same. Just remember that religion is an opiate. Don't force society to go cold turkey, it'll rip itself to shreds. And have some decency, and replace one opiate with another, or the world will pick one by itself (a thoroughly bad idea). Like putting society on nicotene patches or something, instead of letting it just substitute binge dieting instead.

[leafman91]

And for the record, when I said good show, I was referring to the comments, not the OP. Intensely interesting, and some good entertainment to boot.

[Baby Nemesis]

Jeff Corkern, I'd like to see you put up a more spirited defence of your story. I'm disappointed you haven't. Is there anything we've got wrong?