Flee! Flee from arguments you're losing!

So this one guy decided to chip into a discussion over at Blag Hag with a heartfelt Bible verse, showing his/her contempt for homosexuality or atheism or something, and since he/she decided to link to his/her blog, I figured he/she was fair game to go argue with.

So I did. And you can see the argument here.

What's that? The link isn't working? "Page not found"? Pity; it was such a fun conversation, too. Here's what his/her post looked kinda like, ohne Jesus picture:

Yes, for those of you who don't know [as if we wouldn't guess from the content on your blog] — Yes, I am Christian!

I think there was an extra sentence after that, but I can't remember it. It was a really short entry.

Anyway, I commented on that post saying how genuinely sorry I was for him/her that he/she took pride in following a religion that proclaimed how worthless he/she was. I then proceeded to explain why we were anything but worthless, demonstrating how amazingly clever, devious, ingenious, and intelligent we humans are. We have such an understanding of the universe we live in that we can fucking fly probes over the north pole of Neptune! How can anyone think we need "saving" from our "flawed" nature? We are the gods of our surroundings!

He/she then threw the cosmological argument at me — "Matter can't come from nothing," "If the universe were just a little bit different we wouldn't be able to exist," blah blah blah — which I happen to be very, very familiar with. And, in my rebuttal, I think I also did an excellent job of being factual while being non-confrontational (according to my highly-extroverted socialite friend whom I had proofread my comment before I posted it). And yes, I'm blowing my own horn — so sue me; it's my blog.

I responded to the cosmological argument like everyone, theists included, should: How could we know? Atheists aren't claiming the universe popped out of nowhere; we're claiming that we have absolutely no idea. There's a Nobel prize waiting for you if you know the answer. And, furthermore, asking "what happened before the Big Bang" is a bit of a nonsense question, since "before" is a concept that requires time to exist — and time started with the Big Bang. And what the hell is time, anyway?

And I figured it was best to respond to the "if atoms were a little different they couldn't form molecules" thing with my favorite Douglas Adams quote:

Imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in, an interesting hole I find myself in, fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!'

This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it's still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for.'

I had been eagerly awaiting his/her response for the last few days, expecting either more Ravi Zacharias apologetics or maybe even a new argument I hadn't heard before. (I know, it's not likely, but I'm allowed to dream, aren't I?)

If nothing else, it was good practice. It gave me an opportunity to flaunt my knowledge about physics, cosmology, and astronomy, and gave me a chance to work on arguing so my tone wasn't what scared my opponent away.

... although I'd be lying if I said I didn't find it annoying as hell that he/she deleted the whole post to end the conversation. Coward.

_____________________________

EDIT: While I was discussing cosmology with him, another person hopped into the conversation and commented that, if Savage Spirit would actually read the Bible, he'd/she'd see that the God he/she worships was actually an evil one. As a rebuttal to that, Savage Spirit posted a lengthy rant about how "Islam was actually the evil religion" and posted a bunch of verses from Deuteronomy where God is all like "I will crush them without mercy because I'm petty, vindictive, vengeful, and horrifically violent."

I had responded, saying, "So... to prove your God isn't evil, you post a bunch of verses showing how evil He is?"

How amusing that his/her next post was all about love. All that "you can dispense justice and still love" stuff... ignoring the fact that there is no justice in eternal punishment for finite crimes.

Scherzo Fantastique, by Josef Suk

Every now and then I find myself in the pleasant and unpleasant situation where, sitting in the car outside some pressing commitment, a piece is playing on KUSC that is just too beautiful to stop listening to. And at times like that, I typically exhale a nice "fuck it; I'll suffer the punishment for being late" and enjoy it.

Yesterday happened to be another of those days, though thankfully I only ended up being late for a Reach party, so it wasn't going to threaten my grades or the job I don't have.

Anyway, on the way over my ears chanced upon this amazingly gorgeous piece I've never heard of, by a composer I've never heard of either — The Scherzo Fantastique, by Josef Suk:





Let me again remind you: I was late to a Reach party because of this song. And if that isn't enough to convince you to listen to it, I have no idea what will.

"Why'd you change majors?"

Not a week goes by without someone asking me why I switched from Music Performance to Physics. Typically, it's the music majors I used to perform with (and so desperately want to keep performing with, but I'm taking too many units to throw in performance classes, too) who ask, most often with a kind of dejected, heartbroken disappointment.

"Was it," they inquire, "just not for you? Does it not pay enough?"

Now, I wasn't majoring in music for the money, and I'm not pursuing physics for the money, either. Not that there's anything wrong with picking a job for the money; money, after all, is the key to happiness.

But no, I'm pursuing physics because it proclaims things which don't make any sense at all. It asserts things which are remarkably counter-intuitive, saying only "because Einstein's equations say so" or "you're just a three-dimension chauvinist" to defend those assertions. Space is bending, not light? Really? And you expect me to accept that just 'cause some guy said so?

I'm done with believing things just because authorities say so.

Science, unlike religion, has this beautiful quality to it. When I say "Okay, prove it" to science, it turns around and says, "All right, here's how we know this" and proceeds to supply studies, evidence, alternate theories and why they're less preferable, and ultimately ending with a thoroughly satisfying "Okay, there's all the evidence. What do you think?"

Religion, on the other hand, when asked to prove something, chastises me for a lack of faith, appeals to authorities (the highest one being fictitious), and keeps its eye on me to make sure I don't "corrupt" anyone else with my despicable skepticism.

And this is the problem. Physics, especially the more complex physics, bears the same demeanor as religion. Einstein said so. Newton said so. Who are you to question these two incredibly smart guys? Do you think you're smarter than them? What bold audacity, what shameless naivete you must have, thinking you — you! — are qualified to challenge established science!

But it's not just anti-religion sentiments that are driving me. If the current physics are true, the universe I find myself in is a very, very bizarre place. A very counter-intuitive place. A place which could challenge the very assumptions and preconceptions I hold by being a two-meter tall human in an infinite and incomprehensibly large universe made up of particles that are incomprehensibly small.

I must know the nature of the universe in which, for such a brief and beautiful instant, I find myself. I'm majoring in physics because my personal happiness and contentment demand that I know. And as immensely satisfying as music is, the intellectual in me needs a closure that music, no matter how beautiful, can't give me.

Plus, physics is just badass. Give me a year or so and I'll be able to tell you, with incredible precision, what would happen to us if the Earth stopped in its orbit around the Sun. Would we just fall back onto the Earth? Would we fall into the Sun? Or, most awesomely, would we all become little Halley's Comets, destined to come screaming into the solar system once every hundred years?

How am I?

There's this little game I play every now and then, whenever I'm feeling particularly assholish.

I know why I do it. I have a deep respect for grammar, syntax, language, vocabulary, and proper spelling. It's how we communicate and remember incredibly complex ideas, and how we formulate new ones. Language, especially precise language, is incredibly important.

So, sometimes, just to make a point, I respond to the question "How are you?" as though it were asked precisely, rather than colloquially.

How am I? Well, following the Big Bang, there was a massive explosion of energy from which, possibly, the four known physical forces — gravity, electromagnetism, and the weak and strong nuclear forces — separated from a single force. These forces, along with the rate of expansion of what is now called the universe, caused matter to coalesce into spinning disks of gas with a high concentration of hydrogen in the center. This concentration of hydrogen gas starts to build up pressure due to gravity and nuclear fusion begins to happen.

These "stars," as we call them, also begin building up bigger atoms at their centers, like carbon and oxygen, which then get propelled out into the universe when the stars explode.

Ten billion years after the Big Bang, another star was being formed in the middle of its own accretion disk, but this one was polluted with some of the bigger atoms, too, which (because of their density) collected near the center of the disk. As bits of debris in the accretion disk coalesced into planets, one made mostly of iron happened to form about 93,000,000 miles away from its star.

And then we have amino acids, evolution, four billion years... Homo sapiens sapiens, my grand parents, my parents — me. This is how it is that I exist. This is how I am. Why did you ask such a nightmarishly complicating question five minutes before class started?

Usually I'm stopped long before I get to the end, and usually I'm either asked "Wait, what's cosmology got to do with anything?" or "What...? Okay, how do you feel?"

Well, how do I feel? Physically, I feel because pressure causes neural receptors to react, triggering stuff in my brain, or something. Emotionally, I experience emotion due to a bunch of released hormones and chemicals and all kinds of other biochemical stuff I wish I knew more about than I actually do. You should probably take a class on neurology or biochemistry if you really want to know how I feel. In fact, I should probably take those classes, too, since I clearly don't know how I feel, either.

And then, I've noticed, I have two categories of friends. One category responds with "Blah blah blah, don't be such a smartass, lol" and the other pauses for a moment and says, "Okay, what is your present emotional state, and what past events are, within a reasonable number of degrees, causally responsible for that aforementioned emotional state?"

Okay, so the inquiry about my present emotional state and its cause is certainly impersonal. When typed, it seems cold, distant, and calculated. But by God, there's no doubt whatsoever what information the asker was trying to get. I can't weasel my way out of answering his/her question by being a syntactical literalist. I'm trapped.

So fine. I'm doing alright. How are you?

You can talk about God in Philosophy, Part II

Back when I took Philosophy, I was a little annoyed that several people ditched during the second half of the class.

And now I know why!

I just finished talking to an old high school friend of mine who was ditching his Philosophy class today:

Me: "Oh really? Why're you ditching?"

Him: "The subject. I'm going to wait until the teacher's wrapped it up before I go back, and he should be done tomorrow."

Me: "What subject is it you're ditching, if you don't mind saying?"

Him: "The existence of God."

("Oooooooh," I think, "I wish I was in his class!")

Me: "Duuude! I loved it when we got there!"

Him: "I'm not too fond of it. It just makes me mad. I don't like me when I'm mad, other people don't like me when I'm mad, so I was just like 'screw it, I'll come back when it's over.'"

I was initially struck by how bizarre a reaction that was. How could anyone, when faced with such an important question as "Does God exist?", just get mad and run from the issue?

And then I remembered that, when my Biology teacher in high school brought up the "white moths getting eaten because the Industrial Revolution made trees black" example of natural selection, my old Mormon self reacted exactly the same way as my friend is acting now. I didn't know how to combat it. I didn't know how to argue with it. And I hated it for challenging what I believed, so I reacted purely emotionally against it. I wanted the question to just go away. It made me mad.

I wish I'd spent a little more time with my friend, in retrospect, to find out what, specifically, made him mad, but he knew I was a rather open and opinionated Atheist and I knew he was in his church's band, and it was clear he was trying to steer clear of that subject.

And now it gets me thinking. Maybe everyone who runs from the "Does God exist?" question does so because they, at some level, have doubts. They don't think He exists, but don't want to think about it for fear of emotional or social repercussions. Or maybe it's just that the whole topic is one that requires a lot of time and thought and they'd just rather not deal with it.

My entire experience so far with the God Debate has been with outspoken advocates of each side — the titans of Atheism and Theism — battling it out in an apocalyptic war for souls. Each side takes up arms, presents arguments, presents counterarguments (and, in the case of the Theists, makes shit up and argues emotionally), and tries to get to the truth of the issue. And now, it seems, I'm seeing a third group. A group that has a concept of God, is familiar with the idea that it exists, but doesn't want to think about it. Much like political moderates who see both Democrats and Republicans and say, "I don't care; leave me out of it."

"You can't change your mind," Part II

While I mentioned in my last post that sometimes you've just gotta shut up, there are certainly times where shutting up is the last thing you want to do. Especially when you are the one who's wrong.

This, too, is a bizarre reaction I see from people. Yes, people will get defensive, irrational, and highly emotional when you argue with them, but you suddenly become their best friend if you concede defeat when you're wrong.

This happened to me just last week, in fact, when I got into a discussion with this uppity know-it-all about cosmology, astronomy, and science in general. He was arguing that the Sahara desert changed from forest to desert and back again every twenty- to forty-thousand years due to the "oscillation of the solar system," and proclaimed this with the kind of stupid, shallow authority that comes from having no sources whatsoever. Add to this the fact that he dared to utter the phrase "it's just a theory," and my SIWOTI syndrome kicked in hardcore — although I guess it's actually SIWIRL syndrome since the argument took place IRL.

But anyway, our first discussion ended with me saying, "That just doesn't sound right. Lemme do a little research."

Our second got a little heated, and was promptly cut off by our Physics class starting.

It's Newton's first law, for crying out loud! An object in motion stays in motion, gravity is a constant and unchanging force, so the Earth's orbit, while elliptical, should remain constant. And yet this guy had the nerve to say that the Earth swings closer and farther from the Sun every twenty- to forty-thousand years! And he had the nerve to say there was evidence that "flew in the face of" evolution! How could this guy possibly be right about anything?!

And why did he have to make things worse by being an athletic, attractive track-and-field guy with an understanding of music and the arts? This goddamned Renaissance Man had the audacity to enter my field of expertise and tell me how the solar system worked!

Well.

It is with great chagrin that I learned that he was, in fact, correct. The Sahara has been changing between forest and desert (due to receding ice sheets and the ensuing monsoons), and ice ages are affected in part by Milankovitch cycles.

So the Sahara is to some extent affected by the "oscillation of the solar system."

And so, since owning up to what you say is important to me, I couldn't really be at peace until I told him that yes, he was right and I was wrong. But isn't it more satisfying to learn you're wrong than to learn you're right? How different my understanding of the universe is now, thanks to this guy! (Although, I'm not letting him off the hook for his little "Evolution is just a theory" shtick — yet)

Why is it that people like you when you admit you're wrong?

Whoa whoa whoa, when did this happen?

After a lengthy session of Red Dead Redemption with a friend of mine, I come back home to find my inbox flooded with messages about how a judge declared DADT unconstitutional.

Very, very awesome. Just a month ago Prop 8 was repealed, and now this. Either DADT soon (and finally) gets axed, or the vicious legal battle to axe it begins.

I don't even know what to say. When Prop 8 was on the ballot, I was arguing with anyone and everyone, trying to show them that their motivation was either thinly veiled bigotry or "I'm a sheep who's only doing what the Prophet says." I had precisely one convert, but otherwise spent a massive amount of energy and time ensuring that everyone I knew hated me for being contentious. There was no reason to support Prop 8 whatsoever, and no one I knew who was voting for it seemed to realize why they were actually voting for it.

It passed. I cried. I ditched my classes that day. I probably ate way too much junkfood (though I can't quite remember; the whole day remains a fiery, hot-emotional blur in my memory) and raged at the world for being filled with narrow-minded, simplistic bigots with no understanding of what they had actually done.

And now, in the space of a month, it's been repealed and DADT is being acted on. Actually being acted on, not just passively mentioned. Stuff is actually happening. Can things get any more surreal?

There's this grand, grand future I imagine, like in the Mass Effect or Star Trek universes, where men, women, whites, blacks, hetero- and homosexuals are all there, all present, but without the unnecessary and bigoted significance we give it — where humanity is massively diverse, but where that diversity is seen as beautiful, unique, interesting, and as a fundamental part of what humanity means.

And that grand future, today, in my naive and possibly sleep-deprived state, seems just a little bit closer now than it did a few months ago.

"You can't change your mind"

If you've been in the arguing business for a while, you'll no doubt have come across the "you're not listening to me" gambit that people who have no experience debating (i.e. Mormons) like to use so very, very much. Typically, the argument goes something like this:

Him/Her: You have to drink eight glasses of water a day or else you get dehydrated.

You: Umm... no. Snopes did a thing on that, like, forever ago. Basically, you just have to drink when you're thirsty.

Him/Her: You never listen to me! You just have to disagree with everything I ever say! You can't change your mind about anything!

You: I change my mind about stuff all the time. I left my religion and turned to Atheism, after all. Isn't that the biggest act of changing your mind someone can ever make?

Him/Her: Look! You're doing it again! You simply cannot accept views that are different than your own!

Now, let me impart to you a bit of wisdom I unfortunately learned the hard way. Responding with something like "Well, I would agree with you if you were right on this" would be a bad move because it will no doubt be interpreted as "You are always wrong, and that's why I never agree with you," instead of your intended "I consider ideas based on evidence, and in this specific instance your claim is lacking sufficient evidence."

One of the most difficult lessons to learn when arguing, I've found, is that, while knowing a whole list of logical fallacies and having a desperate desire to separate truth from untruth are awesome, most people don't put any effort into excluding emotion from the debate, so sometimes you just gotta shut up. Maybe you can bring up the subject again later. Maybe not. But if you're ever getting "You never listen to what I say" or "You're just being obnoxiously contrarian to keep arguing," chances are you should've shut up a loooong time ago.

In any argument worth having, be it about water consumption, abortion, marriage equality, or GGW's recent appearance in the news, people will no doubt bring all kinds of emotion into the discussion. (If you weren't emotionally invested in the argument, after all, why would you bother arguing about it?) But it's important that you enter every discussion fully aware that your opponent might dive into irrationality as time goes on.

And, most importantly, it might end up being you that takes that dive.

Letter to BYU's Daily Universe

I'll confess right off the bat that I'm shamelessly stealing this from The Whore of All the Earth, but it's definitely worth reposting.

Cary Crall, a student at Brigham Young University, wrote a letter to the editor of BYU's student newspaper, The Daily Universe, saying in no uncertain terms that there was no substantial reason to support Prop 8. The letter was published on The Universe's website (which, I confess, seems really odd) but was then taken down soon after (which, I confess, doesn't seem odd at all).

I'll post the letter here, but you really should just head over to USU SHAFT's post about this whole thing. And, if you're feeling especially masochistic, you can read the comments there, too.

Anyway, the letter. What follows is the whole of Crall's letter, with the bracketed part being what The Daily Universe didn't print.

Viewpoint: Defending Proposition 8 — It’s time to admit the reasons

By CARY CRALL

Perry v. Schwarzenegger, the recent United States District Court case that overturned Proposition 8, highlighted a disturbing inconsistency in the pro-Prop 8 camp.

The arguments put forth so aggressively by the Protect Marriage coalition and by LDS church leaders at all levels of church organization during the campaign were noticeably absent from the proceedings of the trial. This discrepancy between the arguments in favor of Proposition 8 presented to voters and the arguments presented in court shows that at some point, proponents of Prop 8 stopped believing in their purported rational and non-religious arguments for the amendment.

Claims that defeat of Prop 8 would force religious organizations to recognize homosexual marriages and perform such marriages in their privately owned facilities, including LDS temples, were never mentioned in court. Similarly, the defense was unable to find a single expert witness willing to testify that state-recognized homosexual marriage would lead to forcing religious adoption agencies to allow homosexual parents to adopt children or that children would be required to learn about homosexual marriage in school.

Four of the proponents’ six expert witnesses who may have been planning on testifying to these points withdrew as witnesses on the first day of the trial. Why did they go and why did no one step up to replace them? Perhaps it is because they knew that their arguments would suffer much the same fate as those of David Blankenhorn and Kenneth Miller, the two expert witnesses who did agree to testify.

Judge Vaughn Walker, who heard the case, spent 11 pages of his 138-page decision meticulously tearing down every argument advanced by Blankenhorn before concluding that his testimony was “unreliable and entitled to essentially no weight.” Miller suffered similar censure after it was shown that he was unfamiliar with even basic sources on the subject in which he sought to testify as an expert.

The court was left with lopsided, persuasive testimony leading to the conclusion that Proposition 8 was not in the interest of the state and was discriminatory against gays and lesbians. Walker’s decision is a must-read for anyone who is yet to be convinced of this opinion. The question remains that if proponents of Prop 8 were both unwilling and unable to support even one rational argument in favor of the amendment in court, why did they seek to present their arguments as rational during the campaign?

It is time for LDS supporters of Prop 8 to be honest about their reasons for supporting the amendment. It’s not about adoption rights, or the first amendment, or tradition. These arguments were not found worthy of the standards for finding facts set up by our judicial system. The real reason is that a man who most of us believe is a prophet of God told us to support the amendment. [This is a privately held religious belief that we are using to support legislation that takes away a right from a minority group. If our government were to enact legislation based solely on such beliefs, it would set a dangerous precedent, possibly even more so than allowing a homosexual to marry the person he or she loves.] We must be honest about our motivation, and consider what it means to the delicate balance between our relationship with God and with His children here on earth. Maybe then we will stop thoughtlessly spouting arguments that are offensive to gays and lesbians and indefensible to those not of our faith.

QFT

_________________________

EDIT:  It looks like The Daily Universe tried to justify themselves:

The Daily Universe made an independent decision to remove the student viewpoint titled “Defending Proposition 8” after being alerted by various readers that the content of the editorial was offensive.  The publication of this viewpoint was not intended to offend, but after further review we recognized that it contained offensive content.

This is consistent with policy that The Daily Universe has, on rare occasions, exercised in the past.

Craig has an awesome response over at the Loathsome Joy that is also a must-read.

Another song I love with lyrics I hate

I've noticed something about myself. When I listen to music, I listen to anything and everything except the words. It probably has something to do with being a classically trained clarinetist and playing lyricless music for ten years or so, but whenever one of my friends or siblings are like, "Here, you gotta listen to this song!" I find myself kinda bored by it.

"Isn't it beautiful?" They ask.

"No," I say. "It's just the same two chords over and over, and the melody only has two notes to it."

"But it's about a guy who likes a girl and (something mushy and romantic)."

"No," I say again. "It's about an F major chord and a C major chord that can't get enough of each other."

This isn't to say that I only listen to music analytically. When I'm listening to, say, the greatest piece of music the world has ever seen, I don't care about the rhythm, the harmonies, or anything — I'm being swept away by the brooding and dark contrabassoon to a sonic vista of introspection.

Now, I'm not one of those classical music chauvinists that look down their noses in disdain at anything not written exclusively by Mozart, Beethoven, or Have you heard this exquisite piece by Stockhausen? Webern? Oh how barbaric you must be, then, you uncivilized fool, for not indulging in all the awful compositions simply because they're mentioned in History of Western Music! — No, I listen to other stuff, too. I have a guilty pleasure for anything with brazenly sexual lyrics, for example, and a not-so-guilty pleasure for metal.

Last time I whined about System of a Down's awesome song Science, with its truly revolting lyrics, and this time I'm writing about Disturbed's Innocence, right off their new album, Asylum.



For those who are either at work (you lucky little bastards; I'd love to read blogs and get paid for it), who would rather not listen to music that is just too awesome for you, or who would just like to have some of the lyrics posted so you don't have to listen to the song just yet, here they are (the relevant parts, anyway):

(Who is innocent? No one is innocent. Who is innocent?)

Who is innocent?
Is it relevant in the world today?
I shake my head in disbelief.
The killer walks again,
Freed by evil men in their dark charade.
This can't be happening.
A mother's selfish pride,
Her child's homicide,
Can she be to blame?
The suited vultures circling.
A father's cruelty,
A murdered family,
Is the world insane?
Their defenders ready to embrace their lies,
With their devious smiles.

<Chorus>Your corruption is like
A cancer growing inside.
You owe the world an apology.
You've been taught all your life
That truth is easy to hide.
You'll face your judgement another day,
And suffer eternally.</Chorus>

Presumed innocent,
Justice fails again in the masquerade.
A battered woman trembling,
Her lover drunk again,
When will the torture end
In her web of shame?
Is death the only way?
A child victimized,
The crime politicized
For the counselor's gain.
The rabid media congregates.
His tortured memories,
A pervert's fantasies,
Is the world insane?
The parasitic devastation seen,
On your TV screen.

False defender, burn forever,
Cold and spineless, have you no soul?
Wicked-minded, out of control and guided
By their hunger, they will find new
Ways to betray us.

In short, Disturbed: Yes, innocence is relevant in the world today.

I used to ride comfortably on the lawyer-bashing bandwagon — but then I served on a jury. When I was nineteen, I was called in for jury duty and (to the envy of both my parents) actually was put on a case. It was an eye-opening and opinion-altering experience, to say the least.

Yes, lawyers make a lot of money. Yes, many lawyers go into law just for the money. Yes, lawyers defend blatant and obvious liars. Yes, they probably do so just because they want the money. And yes, there is certainly corruption in our legal system.

But even taking that into account, I think it doesn't matter. Criminals are convicted based on evidence, and it doesn't matter whether the evidence was supplied to ensure justice or to ensure a new HD TV. Evidence is evidence, a lack of evidence is a lack of evidence, and the entire system is built around excluding bias and preventing logical missteps. Lawyers call out "objection" when they see the opposition arguing emotionally, goading the witness into providing a certain answer, etc.

As I sat there on the jury, it was very clear to me that our legal system operates under one incredibly important assumption:

It is better that a guilty person go free, than for an innocent person to be punished.

The defending attorney's job isn't, as Disturbed is saying, to free guilty people for money. His/her job is to ensure that the prosecuting attorney's case leaves no doubt whatsoever that the person is guilty. His/her job is to poke the prosecuting attorney's case full of holes if there are holes to be poked, seed doubt if there is doubt to be had, and make absolutely sure that, if the person on trial gets punished, the person deserved it.

And, most importantly, I think, it doesn't matter whether all the lawyers involved are only doing it for the money. They have to operate within a system that takes every precaution possible to be fair.

The real hatred should be placed on the jurors, not the defenders. A jury of our peers is filled with CSI-watching buffoons who wouldn't know a logical fallacy if I robbed them blind with it. A jury of our peers convicts people based on intuition. A jury of our peers convicts people based on their clothing, their mannerisms, their accents, whether the defendant "looks guilty"...

If there is any flaw in our legal system, it is the same flaw present in our political system — we let the laypeople participate.

So yeah, sorry Disturbed, I totally disagree with you on this one. But damn, you wrote a totally kick-ass song about it.

My mom got me Asylum!!!

OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG!!!!

Okay... let me back up for those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about.

Some time ago, I discovered one of the greatest bands ever, and have been stoked for their fifth studio album, Asylum, since I first heard in mid-July that it was coming out on August 31^st. I'd been counting down the days and bringing it up in conversation over and over and over again.

Now, of course, being the unfortunately unemployed college student I am, I have no way of actually buying said album whatsoever, so I was intending to spend the totality of the 31^st glued to YouTube.

So I had made it through the third song on the CD before my mom comes home from work and hands me this:

I am so fucking psyched about this. Not just because it is easily the best album by the best band ever, and not just because I had been looking forward to it for a month and a half, but — let me put the emphasis where it actually is:

My MOM got me Asylum!!!

My incredibly Mormon mother, who took issue with my Die Prophezeiung album because it detracted from the spirit. My incredibly Mormon mother, who would no doubt feel the need to take a spiritual shower after hearing the album she just got me. My incredibly Mormon mother, who just got me a pointedly not-Mormon album without asking for anything in return.

This is now, unquestionably, my favorite Disturbed album ever. Hell, it's my favorite album ever. But because of context, rather than content.

This album, to me, is a powerful gesture of a kind of live-and-let-live love. We have our polarizing ideological differences — as exemplified by my taste in music and hers — but she still bought me something I really wanted, as a gift, no strings attached, without dwelling on what it was.

This really means a lot to me. I still loathe your stance on gay marriage, mom, but damn it, this means a lot. Your fellow Mormons may look down on you for losing your husband and your eldest son to Atheism. Maybe that makes you a bad Mormon.

But god damn, you're a fucking awesome mom.