POLITICS

Progress Note: Writing A Book Is A Second Job

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Fully completed revising and citing all of Part I, finished revising and citing the sections on Original Sin and Judaism, and currently in the process of revising and citing the section about Christianity for Part II. I spent too much time on revising the section on Islam for the third time, but admittedly I did think it was necessary because it helped for me to write further clarifications on the problems of Islam. I haven’t spent as much time on the section of Buddhism and I didn’t even begin Hinduism, but I do have the outline set and after researching further, I haven’t found any reasons why the outline would need revision before I begin writing the chapters down for the section on Hinduism.

It feels surreal that this four year journey of writing, revising, and trying to improve will finally be coming to an end soon. I had felt bad about it taking so long until I read that most authors take 4-10 years to finish a book, read up on the book Getting Things Done and realized writing a book wasn’t easy, and recalled the difficulty of the entire endeavor from Hank Green’s explanation on distinguishing tasks from projects. A book is a long-term project. People who believe it is easy probably don’t think about the numerous steps required for writing an exceptionally good book. It requires knowing your audience for the book, selecting a fitting genre that hopefully won’t drown out your book from the tens of thousands of others, it requires knowledge of copyright so you don’t get scammed out of your money both in your own country and overseas, possibly hiring an editor to fix your grammar mistakes (I won’t be doing this and instead rely upon my essay writing abilities from years of college — potentially to my detriment), paying someone to make a good cover that’ll attract readers (I used fiverr.com), and purchasing a ISBN from your home country. All of that is before marketing your book, which I’m not sure I have a good plan for. The most daunting prospect throughout all of this is that you can spend so much of your time and effort and you may not even make a single sale. The three books I’ve written, the political ones I could have admittedly done a better job in, didn’t really sell much beyond $60 combined throughout all the years they were available up to the present moment and I spent over $50 on advertising. Alternatively, when I released my first ever book for free, it was downloaded just above 100 times, but the moment it was on sale, there was maybe 5 or 6 sales at best over several years. And only one review which didn’t go into any details on any criticisms they had about the book and gave it a 3/5. The dystopian-comedy fantasy novel I wrote to mock Neo-Nazis and their ilk did marginally better since it made 4 sales within the first year and got 2 positive reviews. To be clear though, I don’t really mind since I didn’t put in my best effort, but rather just wanted to prove to myself that I could write about such topics. I think it was probably a detriment overall and I wonder whether I should just pull all the books I’ve written thus far off of Amazon permanently and have only this specific book I’m writing to be the only one available for sale. The only reason I don’t is because if a reader ever gets curious as to how much I’ve changed in my thought process over political issues, they can read about my previous beliefs and compare them to my contemporary ones.

I’m not sure how many of you who are unfamiliar with the habits of writing will believe this, but I honestly feel that writing a book is harder than most mundane physical labor jobs and even the job I had at the Veteran’s home as a Health Unit Coordinator for patients with dementia. I’ve been an unloader, taking palettes off of trucks, and I think that writing a book is several orders of magnitude harder. As an unloader, I had to physically pull things, flee whenever a badly formed palette off a truck began to fall near me, and move it to specific locations in a store. It’s quite a thoughtless job. By contrast, writing a book requires making an outline, researching several topics at great lengths to give an informed opinion, and possibly making additions or changes. For fantasy or Sci-fi writers, its several orders of magnitude more difficult since you have to make a culture that feels authentic or possibly multiple cultures that feel authentic to readers, focus on other aspects of the setting, make interesting subplot points, foreshadowing specific twists in stories, making realistic characters, pinpoint an entire journey and the overarching theme of the journey, write everyone’s dialogue, and provide an engaging motivation to hook readers. Moreover, regardless of if its non-fiction or fiction, you’re competing with every other book in your genre. And even after all that, you may not make a single penny for all of your effort. George R.R. Martin is right to say that writing a book is a gamble. In fact, according to fictional writers who report on their experiences, the average fictional novel may take anywhere from 4 – 10 years to complete. People really underestimate the difficulty. For example, if you’re working two jobs and one of your free days from one job overlap with a day you’re off of work in your other job, then you’ll probably find it practically impossible to work on a book. Laundry, possibly taking care of kids, groceries, and so forth will all take time. And you need time to unwind especially if just one of your jobs is physically or mentally taxing and demands a high level of work performance. It may not seem important, but writing a books table of contents, chapters, and even taking free time to think over the book (especially if you’re writing a fantasy or Sci-fi novel) is important. You can’t concentrate and think over such aspects when doing rudimentary chores or when doing tasks at your job. Even free time at lunch isn’t enough to think over concrete stories or methods of researching new information. At best, you’ll be jotting down a couple of notes that you could never get to or potentially could forget. Writing takes concentration and habit; it is a job all on its own and its one that you may never get paid for and possibly never even finish. You really do run the risk of wasting so much of your time and effort on something that yielded nothing valuable as a return of investment.

Despite all that, I really do feel what I’m working on warrants the risk and is vitally important to write. At best, it’ll hopefully inspire others. I’m sure every author who has ever written a book wishes to become famous and I’m not going to pretend I’m an exception as that would be dishonest. I do hope it is financially successful too, but I doubt it judging from my own track record and some of the responses I get for some arguments I share online. I hope religious believers at least give the book a shot and that it gets decent reviews at least. I want it to be the sum-total of all my arguments against religion and a critique of different religions methods and assumptions about the world. I suspect that all I’ll be seen as is arrogant though, but I hope not. I’m still focused on trying to finish this and hopefully it’ll be done by either this month or early next month.

Rape Culture Comes From Religion; Stop Defending It

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Patriarchy, rape culture, and violence against women. It’s long past the point where we should acknowledge religious teachings are culpable. The plethora of abuses should at least give people pause by now.

The most recent case of Ex-Muslims being hunted down to be killed by their father and brother for the crime of changing their beliefs about Islam; this particular case is one where the pair of sisters are stranded in the Eastern European country of Georgia.

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The Intolerance of Nerdfighteria: How Discussing Human Rights Gets You Muted And Banned

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So, awhile back I attempted to share Ex-Muslims of North America content on Nerdfighteria Discords in an effort to join their communities while sharing information on an important human rights topic. When doing this, I was immediately accused of bigotry, when talking about human rights I was accused of making a strawman (even though no opposing argument was given nor any discernible information regarding any opposing argument), and I was told that I was posting on “incorrect channels” — the channels I selected were related to Politics and stated it was for divisive and controversial topics. Evidently, human rights wasn’t included in that package as I was muted by one Nerdfighteria community and the other refused to respond to my question of whether they valued the human rights of Ex-Muslims.

A part of me just didn’t want to believe that Nerdfighteria, a community that seemed so calm, compassionate, and open to polite communication of ideas could be so intolerant towards the human rights of some of the most vulnerable people in the world today who live in fear within their own societies for the crime of having their own opinions. So, I made and used an alternative account to check and see if I could open discussions about the human rights of Ex-Muslims who essentially have to live in fear for their very lives and the human rights abuses that women in Islamic majority communities suffer. I primarily did this because as far as cost-benefits analysis, the human rights of people should outweigh the woeful ideal of religious tolerance. If that seems like an excuse for “trolling” then I would honestly respond by pointing out that the human rights of these people and the ability to give their human rights issues a platform should be paramount to the public discourse. Just as we discuss Yazidi and Christian women being abused as sex slaves by ISIS, Ex-Muslims being hunted down and killed for the crime of freedom of thought is just as relevant of a human rights issue. Also, I find it astonishing and sickening that fellow Liberals can dismiss the human rights of these people so callously without any regard for what they’re condemning these people too. I suspect it’s because people don’t want to open the discussion on the hot topic of religion in order to protect their own religious traditions. As such, I suspect that their own religion is more important than people’s human rights. Furthermore, trolling seems to just be a meaningless personal attack for shutting down discussion whenever a topic that is personally uncomfortable comes up. It’s a meaningless term that ignores critical examination of the content in order to swipe away all nuanced discussion due to personal comfort levels. I personally feel a sense of frustration and disbelief that this crucial human rights issue hasn’t found a stronger acceptance in Left-leaning public discourse.

For this new attempt, I used another username and shared videos of human rights crimes.

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Why I became an Atheist

/ Jove / 2 Comments

I had come to the realization in 10th grade that Christianity and Hinduism couldn’t both be true due to irreconcilable differences. Growing up in the USA, you get a lot of Christian symbolism in television, movies, and sometimes in music. Even the use of the term “God” during the pledge of allegiance made me feel different because as a Hindu, I had been led to believe in a polytheistic view when growing up. I seriously began to wonder if Hinduism was really true around middle school. When I visited India as a kid (at age 12 for my cousin’s wedding), I realized that people really did believe in Hinduism and that Christianity was as vacant in the parts of India I visited just like Hinduism is vacant in the U.S., because there was no frickin’ way people danced around a fire pot for 8 hours to gain blessings for a wedding from various deities. That takes dedication . . . and I was on a rooftop with a bunch of other people sitting in the cold as some Hindu priest rambled on in some nonsensical ceremony while the bride and groom occasionally had to circle around the fire pot with him.

It was later on that I realized people just used their personal surroundings as a sort of “proof” that their religion was real because so many around them believe it. Moreover, I had to come to terms with the fact that if Hinduism is true then the majority of the 300 million people living in the U.S. and millions living in Europe were fooling themselves. By contrast, if Christianity was true, then 1.2 billion Hindus were fooling themselves. Worse than that, I had believed if Hinduism is true then believers of the Abrahamic faiths were condemned to live in misery in the world unless they recognized Hinduism – or in some cases end-up in some Hindu version of hell or reincarnation. To clarify, my belief on that was misguided as the Bhagavad Gita which I read years later clarified that all you have to be is a good moral person and that it doesn’t matter your religion (Hindu or not) to obtain Moksha (Self-liberation to either become one with Brahman or to beyond depending on the interpretation of whichever Hindu school of thought is believed in). Conversely, if the Abrahamic faiths were true then my entire extended family was being sent to hell since before I was born. So, I decided not to lie to myself about the negatives of religion.

By age 14, I became agnostic and began to question the meaning of life. Although, it was more accurate to say agnostic-theist; that is, I didn’t know whether there was a God or gods or not, but still believed. By age 15, I became an atheist-agnostic. And to be honest, I felt the shift from agnostic – that is, the feeling of being unsure of whether a God existed or not – to an atheist-agnostic was more profound and impactful to me personally. It was with the understanding that I couldn’t know whether a God existed or not, but that I didn’t believe in it on a personal level due to the comparisons I kept making. I was confused how anyone else could have confidence. If you were a Christian, then you must believe all non-Christians are going to hell. Muslim? Same thing. Jewish? It wouldn’t matter how many Christians or Muslims there were in the world and the appeal to conversion would stop mattering if Judaism was the truth. Hinduism, same thing.

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Why There Is No God by Armin Navabi

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This book is an excellent introductory for theists, agnostics, and atheists unsure of their atheism on the basic arguments that atheists have against the belief in a God or Gods. Armin Navabi, an ex-Muslim who grew up in Iran and became Canadian after leaving the faith, gives a thorough examination of the most common criticisms of religion that atheists give to theists. If you’re one of the aforementioned people that is genuinely curious about why atheists don’t believe in a God or Gods, then I highly recommend this book. It offers the most thorough explanations about the most common arguments that atheists have against the existence of a God.

Unfortunately, even in today’s time, many theists often pretend to know what atheists think and believe about faith in a God or Gods. There is this erroneous belief that atheists hate or fear a God because of something that happened in their personal life or because that’s what holy books like the Bible give as reasons for why someone would be an atheist instead of simply talking to atheists and asking them why. The belief that atheists fear or hate God or love to wallow in sin is the wrong assessment about most atheists. Many atheists point to scientific evidence and criticisms of theology for their reasons on why they don’t believe in any sort of higher power anymore. Armin thoroughly explains these lines of reasoning. He goes on to dismiss the most common theistic comebacks that have been debunked for decades now such as Pascal’s Wager, arguments from ignorance of how little humans know as a reason to believe in a God, and using smart or famous people as reasons to believe in a God or Gods.

If you’re looking for sincere reasons why atheists don’t believe in a God or why people of your faith are leaving your religion, this book is for you. If you want to sincerely understand the basic reasons, then this book will be incredibly useful in understanding the atheist mindset. If you’re a theist or an agnostic who thinks atheists want to live in sin, or are fearful, or hate God; then I honestly recommend this book so that your misconceptions will be cleared away and you can focus on the real reasons that people are leaving religion and think about them. If you’re so concerned about the increase in atheism and view it as a negative occurrence, why not take a leap of faith and read this book to understand the real motivations and reasons on why people leave? If you don’t understand the real reasons, how will you ever hope to change the mind of an atheist? The reasons why people leave religion and become atheist won’t be found in the Bible or the Quran. They’ll only be found by actually listening to atheists. Perhaps, start with this book?

Score: 8/10.

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Why Criticize Islam?

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Islam is an innately violent, hateful, racist, sexist, and bigoted religion. It is the most barbaric of the Major religions.

Islam is a hateful and dangerous death cult. The Sharia (Islamic Divine Law of the Abrahamic God) must be accepted as unquestioned fact that nobody can argue against to be a Muslim. The only people allowed to interpret the Hadiths are so-called “Islamic Scholars” which are composed of people who know Arabic and are an Islamic theologian (Imam or some other priestly equivalent) so a “scholar” is a theologian who accepts the Quran as unquestioned fact that can’t be challenged. Obviously, there is no room for critical thinking there.

The average Muslim will then seek the Islamic “scholar’s” advice on how to live and the Theologian’s duty is to categorically assess what parts of the outside world are allowed or not allowed for a Muslim to follow. Two more rules further solidify Muslims largely being incapable of critical thinking or even thinking in general. Fitna, i.e. you can’t distress a Muslim for believing in Islam or make them question it. And finally, Bidah which is referred to as “invention” i.e. you can’t change any aspect of Islam with a new teaching or idea because the Quran is suppose to be the perfect book on how to live life for all-time for Muslims.

In effect, this religion categorically goes to war with all outside logic and reasoning so that Muslims learn only to value other Muslims. It’s a cult in every sense of the word. The highest authority is considered the Quran and Muslims must seek Imams or equivalent “Islamic scholars” for their opinions. Oh, and Muhammad is regarded as the perfect human being to model after.

Therefore, Muslims can’t possibly be critical thinkers, they’re largely incapable of thinking itself, and they threaten to harass, insult, and kill any and all who leave the faith of Islam and who make Muslims question it.

A few facts for you:

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Why Islam Is Currently The Dumbest Religion Ever

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Note: The Cartoon above was by Nahed Hattar, a Christian political activist who was murdered in Jordan for blaspheming by making that cartoon above. 

Satan laughs when you yawn: https://quranx.com/Hadith/Bukhari/USC-MSA/Volume-8/Book-73/Hadith-242/

Bad dreams from Satan: https://muflihun.com/bukhari/87/124

Bell is Satan’s instrument: https://sunnah.com/muslim/37/159

Satan touches babies: https://muflihun.com/bukhari/55/641

Donkeys bray because they see Satan: https://quranx.com/Hadith/Bukhari/USC-MSA/Volume-4/Book-54/Hadith-522/

Satan eats food from ground: https://quranx.com/Hadith/Muslim/USC-MSA/Book-23/Hadith-5046/

Satan eats with left hand: https://quranx.com/Hadith/Malik/USC-MSA/Book-49/Hadith-6/

Satan steals food: https://muflihun.com/bukhari/38/505

Satan ties knots when you sleep: https://quranx.com/Hadith/Bukhari/USC-MSA/Volume-4/Book-54/Hadith-491/

Satan pees in your ears: https://quranx.com/Hadith/Bukhari/USC-MSA/Volume-2/Book-21/Hadith-245/

Satan rests in your nose: https://quranx.com/Hadith/Muslim/USC-MSA/Book-2/Hadith-462/

Black dog is a devil: https://quranx.com/Hadith/Muslim/USC-MSA/Book-4/Hadith-1032/

Satan watches you have intercourse: https://quranx.com/Hadith/Bukhari/USC-MSA/Volume-4/Book-54/Hadith-493/

Satan gives you ideas: https://sunnah.com/muslim/1/253

Women come in shape of devil: https://quranx.com/Hadith/Muslim/USC-MSA/Book-8/Hadith-3240/

Satan makes menstruation bleeding worse: https://sunnah.com/bulugh/1/169

Satan roams among Muslims who pray: https://sunnah.com/riyadussaliheen/9/102

Satan likes poetry: https://sunnah.com/urn/1281560

Satan makes you forget: https://sunnah.com/bukhari/60/73

Satan “passes wind” during call for prayer: https://muflihun.com/bukhari/11/582

Links to Hadiths and Quranic Verses were courtesy of Youtuber Apostate Prophet

Please Donate or Help Out Ex-Muslims struggling to save fellow Ex-Muslim Christians and Atheists who are being abandoned by the West; Christian organizations tend to help Ex-Muslim Christians, but generally abandon Ex-Muslim Atheists:

Political Goals: https://atheist-refugees.com/en/political-demands/

If you’d like to Participate your time: https://atheist-refugees.com/en/participate/

Please Donate Here: https://www.gofundme.com/call-for-donations

Click Here for the Podcast With Armin Navabi’s Atheist Republic To Learn More About Who They Are.

 

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The United States of America Is Finished At This Pace

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Note: I no longer have any faith in the US Republic. I bet a bunch of Trump supporters will say go back to your own country, well news flash: I was born and raised in the US, but hey, keep espousing the same hateful comments that Neo-Nazis do right before they murder Sikhs, rape Native Americans, murder Jews, beat helplessly upon Muslims or kill them, and kill people of my descent. All I’m saying is, I wholeheartedly cannot bring myself to say or do anything but give up on the US Republic and the US Constitution. I’ve participated in donating to political causes I care about, I’ve participated in knocking on doors for democracy up to and during Get Out The Vote events, done cold calling for candidates I support, and I’ve tried my best protesting and reading political news. I’ve sent emails to the US Congress, even the current President, and spoken out against corruption. Trump is still in power, he recently added to his fountain pen corruption with even more taxpayer money waste on decorations up to 200,000 dollars in taxpayer monies, and none of the politicians I try to contact ever try to address my concerns. Half the time, calling goes directly to a dead phone line. None of it means anything. I give up. I’ve grown up here in the US for all my life and apart from some social issues that look like they’ll be reversed anyway, everything has gotten worse from the economy to the debt (Trump added another trillion and nobody is doing anything to stop his idiocy), and it’s clear none of these politicians have any coherent or realistic plan to fix anything from the infrastructure to the debt or to ending the war in Afghanistan. They’re all Trump-lite, utterly incompetent and in power being utterly incompetent for far too long but you in the US public keep voting for them because you’re dumber than they are. In short, the economy’s going to collapse, the US Republic is de-legitimizing and headed for collapse, Climate Change will kill the entire human species in an estimated 80 years, and I’m probably going to be murdered and forgotten about as just another minority victim on the news killed by Neo-Nazis. I’m sharing this to let you all know, this is why young people typically don’t even bother, from a millennial who tried to give a shit and gave up because you all are too dumb to keep the US Republic from turning into a genocidal dictatorship. If Trump keeps his full 4 year term, it means the US really is dumb enough to allow a dictator with murderous intentions in power, who could willingly commit a genocide with the support of you right-wing Trump supporters. Go ahead and laugh as you say “fu liberals” while you and your children’s future die a slow death along with the rest of humanity at this pace.

The following is an email I sent to my US Congressional representatives and I’m sharing it here to explain why I feel the way I do and what my thoughts on the US Republic are now. I know, deep down, it just doesn’t fucking matter what I think and I can no longer rationally expect to ever achieve any of my personal dream goals when this threat of violence keeps escalating. Call me a crazy idiot, whatever. I’m sure most of you won’t even read, just like the US Congress people I constantly tried contacting. I didn’t care to change any mistakes in sentence structure, because I don’t believe they’ll even read it and I forced myself to email it as-is against this overwhelming feeling of existential dread at the future of humanity.

This email was titled: “I No Longer Have Faith in the US Republic”

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Shin Megami Tensei Discussions with Beadman

/ Jove

Spoiler Warning: This discussion contains spoilers for the mainline Shin Megami Tensei series and other MegaTen related series such as: Majin Tensei I and II, Digital Devil Saga Duology, the Persona series, Devil Survivor series, and well . . . potentially everything MegaTen / Shin Megami Tensei related, but those are the main video game series that get spoiled.

Content Warning: In general dialogue with others online, I tend to use expletives. Not in a way to insult in this context, but as a general habit of discourse. I don’t mean any insults towards Beadman, and apologize if any such comment was inferred or directly made by me. I do admit to purposefully using expletives to properly articulate by annoyance with Eirikjrs in this discussion at one instance. More importantly, Beadman and I have an outspoken and frank discussion on Abrahamic religious theology, its plausibility, and its history based on the evidence given by modern Western academics. I hold very negative views and am frank in my crass humor when talking about religion in general. Although, if you’ve checked my blog, then you probably knew that already.

Below is a backstory if you’re curious to learn more about who Beadman and I are, why I decided to have this lengthy discussion and asked Beadman if it was okay to share it with you all, and why I believe such discussions have value. If you would like to skip it due to lack of interest, please just scroll down below to the slideshow. 

For those who may be curious or hold interest in learning about either of us more personally, I am a self-described Hindu Atheist and Beadman is a Transtheist and Surrelativist (an identifying name for the position of Emerging Theism). We had a separate discussion about how he defines his personal beliefs, but I felt it was wrong to add that to the discussion as I don’t want this to be construed as an attempt to shame or insult his beliefs as that is not my intention.

Having thought over the SMT discussion, I couldn’t help but ruminate on the many, many changes on both my beliefs and my interactions with Beadman over such a short span of time. I first met Beadman in 2013 and we had thoroughly diametrically opposed views on the Neutral ending of Shin Megami Tensei IV on the MegaTen Reddit website. He couldn’t believe that the people of the Eastern Kingdom of Mikado could be herded through Naraku in a mass exodus without casualties and criticized them all fitting into Cafe Florida at the end of Neutral. I felt he was focused on the wrong details, making a mountain out of a molehill, and quite liked the ending. I stopped following Shin Megami Tensei for awhile, because I was under the false impression that there wouldn’t be another game for another 9-10 years due to the trackrecord of mainline games usually being that far apart on initial releases. To my pleasant surprise, I was wrong, and I got to enjoy a duology from the mainline series. And… a bunch of extremely personal stuff involving my near-death from a car crash happened, and I was not in the best of emotional states because my family basically told me that it didn’t matter that I almost died, didn’t believe I was in severe pain, didn’t believe I’m suffering from lifelong neck pain no matter how many times I tell them clearly and calmly, and well…. I took it out on Beadman at one point. I repeatedly apologized to him since then, but to my surprise, he didn’t remember the incident and he generally gives me the impression that he’s aloof from such things. I think it was because he was practicing Stoicism at the time, but I don’t think that he does anymore and I think he’s better off from it. He seemed to have his own bottled up annoyances, and I don’t believe that it was due to me, per se. I didn’t inquire though, but if there is anything of substance, I sincerely wish him the best in dealing with it.

I came to terms with my own personal issues upon recognizing my family, specifically my parents, are completely awful at articulating that they care in explicit terms. They’re the unique kind of… special that can’t verbally articulate or explicitly show they care, but instead do so with actions… and ignoring social problems deliberately because they’re awful at dealing with stress; but still support me through and through. It’s a very bizarre relationship; I’m living it and I don’t know how to fully describe it. I don’t go into too much detail because they have this fear and paranoia of being judged by the public that I never quite understood so on the off-chance they ever read this and know its from me, I’ve made sure to keep terms vague, because I just don’t want to deal with any potential future melodrama from them. I’m of the personal opinion that it largely doesn’t matter, anything you say about your life to the public will be absorbed for like five minutes of conversation, maybe an insulting text or a slew of insulting texts for a little while, and then promptly forgotten about because nobody truly cares about such gossip or melodrama beyond feeling better than some stranger online for however long the emotional superiority feels good to an individual.

As you can well imagine, I had to work on my own existential dread for awhile and my ire with politics, which I think affected me more deeply than most people since I am a political scientist albeit a low-level one, Beadman has publicly mentioned on Reddit that he minored in Philosophy while majoring in a STEM related field. For my part, I’ve read every major book of Friedrich Nietzsche’s and criticized his depiction of Nietzschean philosophy as it seemed to be based on Bertrand Russell’s godawful strawman depiction rather than genuine Nietzschean philosophy. At the same time, I’ve had to modify my views on Consequentialism and Utilitarianism, because that was his main focus and he clearly knows far more about it than I do. Due to Beadman’s influence, I read and finished John Stuart Mill’s Three Essays on Religion and I find it to be a fairly good critique of the failings of religion connected to State politics, but I also discovered that Mill was a racist moron. Beadman had once criticized Atlus for the “unclean” but I pointed out that if he’s right and I’m wrong about contentions I had against Law being Utilitarianism, then Atlus was completely justified in depicting Angels borderline racists against Japanese people. Mill repeatedly, and I do mean nauseatingly so, goes on and on about how Asians are untrustworthy thieves and diseased. Even if one were to argue that Atlus should focus on the philosophy and not the person, you have to keep in mind that if they did read Mill, it would be earnestly taking the time to read this man’s philosophy while he goes on paragraph upon paragraph about how diseased their culture is, how they aren’t worth trusting and should be looked upon with suspicion, and how their culture and society is a garbage heap. Atlus depicting Angels saying Japanese are “Unclean Ones” or “the Filth” is . . . incredibly benevolent and mild compared to the asinine comments that John Stuart Mill wrote repeatedly about Asian culture. Please believe me when I say that I’m not overstating this. It’s the equivalent of I, as a US-born and raised person, reading a book which falsely claims that the US is a disease-ridden group of morons with no moral values or positives repeatedly strewn across various paragraphs while a foreign person is passionately discussing their moral philosophy. It might credibly be the case that Atlus is trying their best to depict Utilitarianism in a neutral context from the standpoint of what Mill actually said about Asian societies as a culture and people in his own very homogenized context. Please keep in mind that I actually liked what I read about John Stuart Mill’s philosophy when he kept focus on the philosophy itself, but when he went into foreign cultures . . . it got very stupid, very fast. This judgment of mine is also based upon one small book of his, I have no idea how Mill addresses Asians within the context of his larger philosophical works. Nevertheless, I now realize I misunderstood what Beadman meant since I thought he was saying Law was focused on John Stuart Mill’s Pleasure-Pain principle, but in fact, he places more emphasis on Bentham before John Stuart Mill. To the best of my knowledge and based on what I read from Mill about his own personal teacher, Bentham’s views are more vague and less focused on pleasures in his Consequentialist ideology. Mill is the one who fleshed out the philosophy to be more coherent and it seems Beadman was emphasizing the more vague version of Consequentialist ethics when critiquing Law.

Anyhow, before I began the discussion presented below, I had given him my explanation for why Nietzsche has a very big emphasis with Atlus’s work. I’m fairly sure my essay had an impact as I showed the various forms of symbolism and allegories to Nietzschean philosophy throughout the Shin Megami Tensei IV-IVA duology. I had always wanted this sort of discussion with him because I feel such a discussion, and publicly sharing such a discussion, has far more to offer than the nonsensical travesty that has become Eirikrjs blog. To emphasize this further, and to give more credence to my argument about the Anarchy route foreshadowing from a year ago, consider the fact that Dagda’s Theme is a remix of The White’s Theme.

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To all readers who follow the Abrahamic faiths, please read your holy book

/ Jove / 1 Comment

For the purposes of this post, I’d like to declare a challenge to anyone who follows the Abrahamic faiths, or any religious faith in general, but mainly those who follow the Abrahamic faith traditions.

I have three things I’d like to say, consider each of the following seriously:

First: Assume any religion is true. Just any. Every other religion is thereby false.

For example, in the book I am currently writing, I argue the following: if Judaism is true, then it doesn’t matter however many Christians or Muslims there are in the world or how many Christians or Muslims died for their religious faith. None of it would matter; the history, the sacrifices, the population size, or the culture. It wouldn’t mean anything because Judaism is proven true.

Second: What’s the evidence any of these so-called miracles ever even happened? Nothing. Literally nothing.

Welcome to my worldview when I was just 14 years old. I’m now well into adulthood. I still can’t believe people don’t grow out of that rubbish when they’re adults. I can’t believe there are adults who literally believe in these so-called holy books. It took me awhile to process this, because I was thinking about it in terms of my IQ level compared to theirs.

For awhile, I thought I was the ignorant one and that surely there was some grounding, some small worm of usefulness of some sort, that led people to convince themselves to believe in these poorly written fantasy novels. Instead, I discovered that unlike Hinduism or Buddhism, you’re not allowed to question in Islam or Christianity.

It took me some time to understand how vacuous those beliefs that people had were. The New Atheists were pointing out common sense and the religious couldn’t handle it; so they came up with insults like “angtheists”, “edgelords”, or “Islamaphobia” in order to ignore the actual criticisms.

I don’t understand how others can still live like they do; living with unquestioned obedience to a book they don’t even read based on a personal relationship with a man they don’t know from a time period before they were even born. I don’t understand how people can honestly believe that any of it is associated with “love” while telling you to hate your body, the physical world, and seeing “sin” in your own children. I don’t understand any of you, and I don’t think I ever want to.

If you believe anything I said was bigoted, well then . . .

Third, Here is a proposal for you all:

If you truly believe I’m wrong, then I challenge you to read your holy book from beginning to end. No scholars, no community advice, and no sparknotes. You are choosing this book to live by and define your entire life; you should consider spending at least an hour a day reading the holy book from beginning to end, finishing it, and having your own thoughts on it. Not for me, not for your immediate community, but just for yourself. Seriously consider this proposal, don’t just live under a system because your family, community, or even country say it is the literal word of a God. Decide on your own terms whether you believe in it and believe it is good for you to live by it after reading through all of it. If you’re willing to place such strong faith and argue in favor of it, you should be willing to read the entirety of your holy book. What would you have to lose besides becoming more informed, if I am so wrong about my beliefs about your book?

Just. Read. It. All.