The Lamentable Case of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

"It's devilish, Mr. Holmes; devilish!" cried Mortimer Tregennis. "It is not of this world. Something has come into that room which has dashed the light of reason from their minds. What human contrivance could do that?"

"I fear," said Holmes, "that if the matter is beyond humanity it is certainly beyond me. Yet we must exhaust all natural explanations before we fall back on such a theory as this."

- Sherlock Holmes, The Adventure of the Devil's Foot

As written by the celebrated author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes and his friend and colleague Doctor Watson were men of science. Holmes was exquisitely educated on a vast array of subjects, from Neolithic artifacts to chemistry all the way down to the make and composition of cigar ash and bicycle tires. He possessed a great library of rare and informative books, a variety of clever disguises, and a keen imagination. Using these tools, he fueled a deductive mental power that made the public cheer and Scotland Yard scratch their heads in bewilderment. No puzzle was unsolvable by the great Sherlock Holmes, and having read every one of his stories and having grown up watching the excellent series by Grenada Television, Holmes was always one of my own favorite fictional characters. He made me glad to be smart in a world that nurtures ignorance and disdains critical thinking.

From time to time in his mysteries, Holmes was encountered with strange and frightening phenomena that others in their hysteria and ignorance were quick to credit to the supernatural. But Holmes, always the cold, analytical realist, pursued the cases with real world expectations and indeed always concluded them with perfectly earthly explanations. Even the dreaded Hound of the Baskervilles, a demonic, spectral dog that stalked the moors at night, turned out to be nothing so fanciful in the end.

When it came to ego, Holmes had this to say:

"I cannot agree with those who rank modesty among the virtues. To the logician all things should be seen exactly as they are, and to underestimate one's self is as much a departure from truth as to exaggerate one's own powers."

Excellently put, and one of my most favorite quotes…but this truth only applies if someone’s deductions are clear, i.e. if they are accurately gauging their own abilities. As we shall see, if we lack such discretion our egos can run away with us, and it is generally agreed that this is at least a contributing factor in what happened to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Needless to say, after his Holmes stories in particular, Doyle enjoyed tremendous success. He had truly achieved worldwide acclaim and was even knighted by the Queen. But the time was the 1920s, and the spiritualist movement was in full swing. Seances, auras, ghostly photography, ectoplasm and other such hoo-ha were all the rage, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle evidently promptly forgot about such things as gullibility, half-truths, exaggerations, false expertise, selective reporting, and good ol’ needing to believe…at least as they applied to himself. In other words, he dove into the bullshit pit head first and never came up for air again.

Indeed, Conan Doyle became one of spiritualism’s leading torchbearers, even as his friend Harry Houdini was making the rounds debunking the same nonsense. We are thus faced with a very confusing dichotomy between the writing and the man. To be sure, Sherlock Holmes was not his only rational work. He also wrote such novels as The Lost World which, while based on a fundamentally flawed concept, proceeded in the footsteps of reality and scientific inquiry.

So what the hell happened to him? I do not know for certain. I have never fully understood this grotesque transformation. The compartmentalization of the human mind is lamentably common, but a seemingly complete reversal of the rational mind of this magnitude is extremely rare and is utterly inscrutable to me. In Conan Doyle’s case it is sometimes speculated that the traumatic death of his son in World War I drove him to emotional desperation that destroyed his reason, but it is more generally agreed that he simply fell victim to his own fame. People figured that if Holmes was so brilliant, the man who created him must have been at least as much so. How could the “father” of the great Sherlock Homes, one of the most powerful minds in literature, possibly be wrong? Thus, Conan Doyle wrote his articles and spouted his nonsense fundamentally unopposed.

Perhaps his best known blunder involved a series of photographs that are now referred to as the “Cottingley Fairies.” On a lark, two little girls in Cottingley took a few trick photographs using paper cutouts and some simple developing techniques to create what superficially appear to be photographs of the girls interacting with fairies and gnomes. Frances and Elsie and their family placed no importance on the photographs until a friend of Conan Doyle’s wrote him a letter suggesting that the pictures were in fact real.

Conan Doyle immediately attacked the photographs with what I can comfortably call idiotic glee. He was reinforced in his error by a man named Edward Gardner, who was a believer in theosophy (a very long word that just means “retarded crap”). In turn, Gardner fed off of Conan Doyle’s fame, and together the two began building their massive castle of stupid.

Here are two of the pictures:

In the age of Photoshop and other illusory art forms in particular, these are perhaps too obviously phony to us, let alone to any expert in photography, even during the period in question, but the errors committed by Conan Doyle and Gardner in their “investigation” of the photographs are legion, far more than I have room for here, and they led the great author inexorably to the conclusion that these pictures were “utterly beyond any possibility of faking!” To cite one consistent example, Conan Doyle gobbled up special pleadings left and right. When it was observed in the first photograph that Elsie is not even looking at the fairy but a tad sideways, he became convinced that this is because looking directly at fey folk disconcerts them and will cause them to vanish. Thus, Elsie had learned to look askew at them! Excuses for why the second photo in particular must be depicting a moving fairy that is strangely clear and not blurry – something that would be common even in more modern cameras – are even more blatant and ludicrous. There was no attempt at proving any of it, only the barest and most shameless rationalizing that Conan Doyle could pull from his ass, and the list goes on.

And on and on...so long that it eventually resulted in a published volume. Conan Doyle released The Coming of the Fairies in 1922. Spiritualists crowed and non-retarded people facepalmed...but never in front of the man himself. I believe that if Sherlock Holmes had seen his creator chasing fairies he would have hung his head in shame. For where were Conan Doyle's own powers of reason and deduction? Where was his education? Can we really pin all the blame on ego? If so, how might things have been different had someone simply tapped him on the shoulder and said, "Hey Art, all this fairy crap of yours...well, it's making you look pretty freaking dumb. Maybe you’d better give it a rest.”

Of course, Conan Doyle is not the only person who is guilty of this sort of queer rational inconsistency, nor even the only author - An excellent modern example is Michael Crichton. Though his novels overflow with scientific modus, the man himself needed a good kick in the brain. From Wikipedia:

At Harvard he (Crichton) developed the belief that all diseases, including heart attacks, are direct effects of a patient's state of mind. He later wrote: "We cause our diseases. We are directly responsible for any illness that happens to us." Eventually he came to believe in auras, spoon bending, and clairvoyance.

If these are the sorts of things one learns at Harvard, then I'm inclined to think the school does not deserve its stellar reputation. I wonder what state of mind of his own Crichton took to be the cause of the throat cancer that rotted out his neck and eventually killed him.

He was also an outspoken critic of global warming, though I wonder how much he knew about warmth at all judging by his roughly 47 failed marriages. Ah, but I ad hom. Well, good riddance to him in any case.

I suppose what's important about these men is that their writings are what will live on, and if the authors themselves turned out to be fruit loops, at least their stories are purveyors of rationality and science.

But there are still people who believe that the Cottingley Fairies are entirely real thanks to the inventor of Sherlock Holmes.

Freedom of Speech Goes Both Ways

Not long ago I engaged in a disagreement with a random person online who was of the opinion that a British cockney accent is the same as a New Zealand accent.

Yeah this one is starting out weird, but bear with me.

Anyway, it is not. To anyone who has an ear for language, the differences are distinct and notable. Certainly, any New Zealander or Brit will tell you so. But this person evidently did not have a good ear (or brain, since his claim didn't make any lingustic or geographical sense), and couldn't discern the difference. When I told him he was wrong, he uttered the following sentence:

"Oh, I guess we're not allowed to have our own opinions anymore!"

I've heard this before, and it has always left me confused. When arguing, I've expressed that my opponent's statements are incorrect, ill-informed, or sometimes outright stupid, but at no point have I ever suggested that they not be allowed to state them, let alone have them! (Incidentally, if I want them to shut up, I sure shoot myself in the foot by pursuing an argument with them.) There is no parallel here whatsoever, and yet I've heard similar things everywhere, from matters of frivolous opinion to statements that are definitely and demonstrably false. If there's anything worse than a stupid argument, it's an irrelevant one. However, I think I have an idea of what its origins are.

I think it's a massive, distorted overflow from the political correctness movement. Specifically, we've been told that the best (if not the only) thing to do in an argument is to agree to disagree (and I fucking hate that phrase, by the way). Certainly, this is sometimes the most logical solution...or a solution to use in order to avoid pointless or unnecessary conflict, but these people have apparently taken it to mean that we should never express criticism of anybody's statements ever, even when they can be proven false! In turn, this jives with the notion that all opinions are created equal, and it's the same reason why politicians, TV shows, and news programs consult homeopaths and psychics alongside doctors and detectives as a means of "balance."

In addition to being close to impossible as well as completely unproductive, the whole idea carries with it a fundamental hypocrisy. Look carefully at my example. Who is really trying to squelch whom? By suggesting that I'm not allowed to express my opinion that someone is wrong, they are in fact censoring me! People educated in sociology or political science know very well that the Conservative/Liberal divide is in fact not a left or right division at all - it's a circle. Become so liberal that you begin suppressing free speech in the interest of not offending anyone, and you've crossed the midpoint and become exactly the same as any radical conservative who censors people he doesn't like to hear. Many liberals would balk at this, but it's absolutely true. Perhaps they really do dream of a day when a person can say that Richard Simmons is Indian or that pineapples can grow on the surface on the moon and be met with smiles and the phrase, "well, you're entitled to your opinion." I don't know about you, but living in a society like that sounds just as horrible to me as living in any Fascist state.

I would be remiss if I did not also state the obvious - that all opinions are not created equal, and how coincidental it is that the people trying to get others to shut up often have positions that are very weak in the logic and evidence department. Gee whiz, I wonder why that is?

Here's the bottom line: You have a right to have your own thoughts and opinions as well as the right to state them, and I have the right to express that they are moronic. Free speech does not mean "free speech as long as you agree or as long as you're nice about it." The moment you open your mouth in a public forum, everyone in earshot has free reign to chew up your brain droppings and spit them out along with everybody else. That's how it is, that's how it should be, and any outside attempt to protect your fragile sensibilities will inevitably infringe on the rights of others. If you want your ideas to go unchallenged, then you can always go find a place where everyone else agrees with you and express yourself there. But the free market of ideas is dog-eat-dog, and free speech goes both ways. Deal with it.

Sorry Buddhists, Your Religion Sucks Too

The first time I posted this blog, it was on Myspace. I was agitated by the opposition I received to it, not because of the opposition itself, but because much of it was at the hands of fellow so-called atheists and freethinkers. This seems to me to be a big problem, and so I feel it necessary to repost here.

Strictly speaking, I’m growing rather tired of Buddhists and their nonsense. I often see them worming themselves in with the freethinkers, no doubt convinced that they belong with us. Perhaps even more annoyingly, many in our court are granting them free reign to do so. In fact, it rather seems that the Buddhists are given, if not a free ride, then a dishonorable mention at best. Even among our most volatile atheist commentators Buddhism is hardly even mentioned.

Of course I understand that this is mainly because Western Buddhists cause so little trouble here. No doubt there are a lot more destructive and powerful religions running rampant in our society that deserve much more attention, but that's not the point, and it certainly doesn’t let Buddhism off the hook...except in Sam Harris’s case, because I’m told he actually considers himself a Buddhist!

Clearly, there is a great deal of misconception as to what Buddhism even is. Therefore, I'd like to begin by noting the distinction between Eastern Buddhism (i.e. real Buddhism) and its pop culture Western equivalent. Modern Buddhism in the West is essentially the same as any foreign import - just a castrated, mutated version of its true form. It’s molded to our culture and tastes in a way that fits us best for the purposes of selling it to us, often losing a great deal of its original purpose and meaning in the process. I think it’s very important to note that Buddhism in the East does not have the ever-so-cuddly track record that a lot of Westerners are told it does.

I should also take this time to note that unlike most, I actually do have an accurate concept of Buddhism. This is because I have an education, specifically five years of Japanese history, culture, and language. Par for such a course is an extensive study of all relevant Asian history, language, politics and religion, and this included Buddhism and its many applications throughout history. After my fellow supposed freethinkers read this blog, I was disgusted to see that all of their "facts" to the contrary consisted of decrees and descriptions made by Buddhist priests and practitioners, with only their titles as the source of their expertise! This should be an obvious red flag for the Appeal to Authority logical fallacy. Indeed, it's a complete given due to the simple reason that a holy man is not an objective resource. All holy men have a vested interest not only in the delusion to which they've attached themselves, but to selling that delusion to you. Can you think of a less trustworthy source than that? Would you go to a Catholic priest to hear objective, historical facts about Catholicism? Not I, and nor would any serious researcher. Yet my unfortunate fellows were stricken with the blinds of compartmentalization and did not see this tremendous flaw in their thinking.

Of course Coke is good! Michael Jordan says so! Well, pour the Coke in your eyes and you may have an idea of what that level of stupid felt like to me.

In any case, when faced with facts about Buddhism that do not jive with their preconceived ideas, Westerners (whether Buddhist or not) inevitably still have the balls to opt for the defense that many religious people attempt…namely declaring that these more savage Eastern Buddhists must not be real Buddhists, that they must be doing it wrong. This is a fallacy, and one that should be easily recognizable to the practiced skeptic.

What makes this fallacy all the more outrageous is its source. Specifically, having most Westerners “educate” you on Buddhism is a lot like a dude from California trying to tell you that real Italian pizza has pineapples on it. In fact, Buddhism is so warped and diluted in the West that some insist it’s not even a religion at all!

Well then, they seem to be unaware of their biggest adversary...our government. We've given Buddhism tax exempt status as a religion, and yet I’ve never heard a Buddhist declare mistrial on this. My usual policy is to declare that the day I see these people disputing Buddhism’s tax exempt status is the day I'll listen to their assertions, and as I’ve never heard a single one of them utter a peep, I usually invite them to shut the fuck up. 

But in this blog I will deign to address these people and their claims about the cruddy neutered version of their religion. Don’t relax yet, Buddhists – it’s still not much better.

To address the “Buddhism is not a religion” claim, I quote from John Horgan’s excellent article Buddhist Retreat – Why I gave up on finding my religion:

“For many, a chief selling point of Buddhism is its supposed de-emphasis of supernatural notions such as immortal souls and God. Buddhism "rejects the theological impulse," the philosopher Owen Flanagan declares approvingly in The Problem of the Soul. Actually, Buddhism is functionally theistic, even if it avoids the "G" word. Like its parent religion Hinduism, Buddhism espouses reincarnation, which holds that after death our souls are re-instantiated in new bodies, and karma, the law of moral cause and effect. Together, these tenets imply the existence of some cosmic judge who, like Santa Claus, tallies up our naughtiness and niceness before rewarding us with rebirth as a cockroach or as a saintly lama.”

Quite so. The notion inherent in reincarnation and karma indicates a supernatural force working on our behalf. It assures that justice is served, punishment and rewards are meted out, and everything will turn out hunky-dory in the end. In other words, Buddhism offers us the same two major outs for avoiding responsibility for ourselves and each other that the Christian god or any other actively theistic religion offers.

So there's your religion, Buddhists. Suck on it.

The problem is that people in the West have diluted Buddhism down to something so vague and meaningless that the very core tenets of the religion itself have been sacrificed, even including karma and reincarnation! This makes it annoying and tiresome to try and pin down anything that a Buddhist must believe in order to so title him or herself, but I think that as a Buddhist you must at least contemplate what are so very humbly (haha) referred to as the Four Noble Truths, which summarize Buddhism’s entire view and purpose. Here they are in all their divine glory: 

1. Life means suffering.

To live means to suffer, because the human nature is not perfect and neither is the world we live in. During our lifetime, we inevitably have to endure physical suffering such as pain, sickness, injury, tiredness, old age, and eventually death; and we have to endure psychological suffering like sadness, fear, frustration, disappointment, and depression. Although there are different degrees of suffering and there are also positive experiences in life that we perceive as the opposite of suffering, such as ease, comfort and happiness, life in its totality is imperfect and incomplete, because our world is subject to impermanence. This means we are never able to keep permanently what we strive for, and just as happy moments pass by, we ourselves and our loved ones will pass away one day, too. 

2. The origin of suffering is attachment. 

The origin of suffering is attachment to transient things and the ignorance thereof. Transient things do not only include the physical objects that surround us, but also ideas, and -in a greater sense- all objects of our perception. Ignorance is the lack of understanding of how our mind is attached to impermanent things. The reasons for suffering are desire, passion, ardour, pursuit of wealth and prestige, striving for fame and popularity, or in short: craving and clinging. Because the objects of our attachment are transient, their loss is inevitable, thus suffering will necessarily follow. Objects of attachment also include the idea of a "self" which is a delusion, because there is no abiding self. What we call "self" is just an imagined entity, and we are merely a part of the ceaseless becoming of the universe. 

3. The cessation of suffering is attainable.

The cessation of suffering can be attained through nirodha. Nirodha means the unmaking of sensual craving and conceptual attachment. The third noble truth expresses the idea that suffering can be ended by attaining dispassion. Nirodha extinguishes all forms of clinging and attachment. This means that suffering can be overcome through human activity, simply by removing the cause of suffering. Attaining and perfecting dispassion is a process of many levels that ultimately results in the state of Nirvana. Nirvana means freedom from all worries, troubles, complexes, fabrications and ideas. Nirvana is not comprehensible for those who have not attained it. 

4. The path to the cessation of suffering.

There is a path to the end of suffering - a gradual path of self-improvement, which is described more detailed in the eightfold Path. It is the middle way between the two extremes of excessive self-indulgence (hedonism) and excessive self-mortification (asceticism); and it leads to the end of the cycle of rebirth. The latter quality discerns it from other paths which are merely "wandering on the wheel of becoming", because these do not have a final object. The path to the end of suffering can extend over many lifetimes, throughout which every individual rebirth is subject to karmic conditioning. Craving, ignorance, delusions, and its effects will disappear gradually, as progress is made on the path.

I ought to mention that these passages are among the most intelligible Buddhism has to offer. Buddhism often takes things much farther however, traipsing freely within the walls of the metaphysically pretentious looney bin. Here’s a quick sample, the likes of which you can find on any Buddhist website:

The Seven Cosmic Laws of the Universe emanate from the Divine, and then descend through the four Octaves of Reality to finally manifest as the Laws of Nature in the Material World.

There is Enlightenment in seeing how things actually are, while recognizing the possibilities of what could be. From this, one figures out how to get there from here. You are the part of the Equation who fills in the blank.

What does that even mean?

I’ll save you the headache – it doesn’t mean anything. It’s fluff, it’s mind-waste, it’s as meaningful and substantive as a fart on the wind, and it serves only to appeal to pretentious dimwits who are impressed by pretty colors and who like to pretend they’re learned and sophisticated, but I'm sorry, I've forgotten how vague Buddhism is that such things may not be canon for every tofu-eater, so let's return to the Four Noble Truths.

Starting with #1, I guess my question would be…why focus on the negative? Life does mean suffering, but it means joy as well. It is odd that I of all people should have to defend this, but I do so on the strongest possible terms. Perhaps our periods of happiness and comfort are temporary…but by that same statement, so are our periods of sadness and suffering! Why say that life is just a shit sandwich peppered here and there by meaningless pleasures? Why not say that life is beautiful, with hardships and pain along the way?

When we place things in historical context, this makes more sense. In 500 B.C.E., when this philosophy first arose, life certainly was pretty damned awful. But things have changed. I’d be the last person to call our civilization ideal, but comparing it to the way it was 2,500 years ago is no contest. Today we have medicine and clean water and ample food and wet tee shirt contests and movies to go to and gifts to give. We can treat our loved ones with medicine and marvel at the wonders of nature with profound understanding. We can tuck ourselves in at night and not be afraid of wild animals and demons lurking in the dark. I rather think it would have been impossible to have what we would call a “good day” at all in 500 B.C.E.

But whether we set Rule #1 then or now does not change the fact that sadness and joy, pain and pleasure, wants and fulfillment are merely two sides of the same coin that is human life and experience. Emotions go up and down, we laugh and we cry...and the pleasures become all the sweeter when we come through the pain to reach them.

So I’m going to have to call bullshit on Noble Truth #1.

As for the other three “truths,” which constitute the bulk of Buddhism's outlook and sales pitch, I defer again to John Horgan:

“Buddha's first step toward enlightenment was his abandonment of his wife and child, and Buddhism (like Catholicism) still exalts male monasticism as the epitome of spirituality. It seems legitimate to ask whether a path that turns away from aspects of life as essential as sexuality and parenthood is truly spiritual. From this perspective, the very concept of enlightenment begins to look anti-spiritual: It suggests that life is a problem that can be solved, a cul-de-sac that can be, and should be, escaped.” 

Ridding yourself of desire is not a solution to life’s problems any more than not playing soccer is the way to win a game. “I’m going to go sit on my ass over here and I’ll win!” No, you’re not winning. You’re copping out, you’re taking your dolly and going home, and in the process you’re needlessly abstaining from the fun of a game of soccer.

As always, Buddha had some stock bumper sticker phrases to relate this idea:

“He who loves 50 people has 50 woes; he who loves no one has no woes.”

And no love either, douche. Talk about throwing the baby out with the bathwater! I have something to knock that one out:

“It’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” 

Apathy is not a solution. It’s giving up. It’s an escape. At best, it’s a coping mechanism. Apathy doesn’t bring you joy any more than not eating a hamburger makes you appreciate its flavor.

Because apathy is apathy, stupid.

Personally, I don’t want to not desire. I don’t want to learn to do without. Yearning for things outside of life is life, and denying it is what people in prison have to do.

Taking things to the next level, what proof do we have that adopting the Buddhist canon and being apathetic about life will make us better, more compassionate people?

"Much more dubious is Buddhism's claim that perceiving yourself as in some sense unreal will make you happier and more compassionate. Ideally, as the British psychologist and Zen practitioner Susan Blackmore writes in The Meme Machine, when you embrace your essential selflessness, "guilt, shame, embarrassment, self-doubt, and fear of failure ebb away and you become, contrary to expectation, a better neighbor." But most people are distressed by sensations of unreality, which are quite common and can be induced by drugs, fatigue, trauma, and mental illness as well as by meditation.

Even if you achieve a blissful acceptance of the illusory nature of your self, this perspective may not transform you into a saintly bodhisattva, brimming with love and compassion for all other creatures. Far from it—and this is where the distance between certain humanistic values and Buddhism becomes most apparent. To someone who sees himself and others as unreal, human suffering and death may appear laughably trivial. This may explain why some Buddhist masters have behaved more like nihilists than saints. Chogyam Trungpa, who helped introduce Tibetan Buddhism to the United States in the 1970s, was a promiscuous drunk and bully, and he died of alcohol-related illness in 1987. Zen lore celebrates the sadistic or masochistic behavior of sages such as Bodhidharma, who is said to have sat in meditation for so long that his legs became gangrenous.”

Excusing the speculative conclusion in the second paragraph, let's focus on the example. For what could make one do something so hideously awful - and what could make one praise someone else who did it - but religion? Common sense would have anyone looking at this man and calling him what he was – a huge dick. Only through the delusional veil of religious praise and infallibility (or in Buddhism’s case, “enlightenment”) are such things so easily excused, let alone celebrated.

Speaking of Buddha and his catchphrases, I count their constant dispersion among the most obnoxious practices of active Buddhists. These people are like the free samples lady at the grocery store, popping in to dispense what they consider to be little nuggets of wisdom. Then they expect us all to be blown away by the amazing insight contained in the wisdom of Buddha. Well I have heard the words of wisdom decreed by their great prophet, and I am nonplussed.

Here are a few:

“A dog is not considered a good dog because he is a good barker. A man is not considered a good man because he is a good talker.”

“A jug fills drop by drop.”

“Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love; this is the eternal rule.”

“He is able who thinks he is able.”

Uh…seriously guys, are these fortune cookie rejects really what makes Buddhists all starry-eyed and groveling? Most of them are no different from the little cultural taglines we throw out every day:

“A penny saved is a penny earned.”

“A watched pot never boils.”

“He who can hear is not the same as he who will listen.”

You like that last one? I just made it up on the spot. Now make statues of me, build a shrine and worship me, and pay $1,000 to come listen to me talk about stupid shit like the Dalai Lama does.

Granted, I did pick some of the more insipid little tee shirt snatches in my examples, but that’s not the point. Even if some of these sound bites have some worth (as many of them do), none of them are anything even remotely profound or brain-bustingly wise. We certainly have far better moral and intellectual teachers today. You don’t need the titles and trappings of Buddhism to help you realize these things and far better, so why bother defining them as such?

Because it sounds cooler when you say it in Buddha-ese I suppose, you poseurs.

This touches on another point, one that culminates against the Western Buddhists: If you dilute Buddhism down so far that it has lost its very tenets of life-as-suffering and reincarnation, then what you’re left with is something so incredibly bare bones that putting on the Buddhist label…or perhaps even any label at all…is pointless. In my foray to meeting PZ Myers, a self-professed atheist/Buddhist accosted PZ about his denial of “spirituality.” In his rejection of religion, she said, he was eliminating the proven(?) benefits of such things as meditation and self-reflection.

“You mean spirituality without spirits, right?” PZ asked, and when she confirmed this, he replied that there was certainly nothing wrong with being calm and introspective and contemplative. In fact, it could probably do some of us a great deal of good. But in its incredibly watered down form, what need did she have to dress her habits in Buddhism, or even spirituality?

The question cuts to the heart of the issue. If you want to meditate, why can’t you just go meditate? Is all this talk of spirituality merely a way for people to define themselves as part of a hip group, or do they have an obsession with the ritual aspect of such things? And how beneficial is meditation anyway? As it turns out, not very. Its effects have been quite exhaustively tested for decades, and it has been shown to do things such as lower blood pressure and calm nerves.

The problem is that you can get the exact same effects by sitting still for a bit.

Ah, but don’t tell Buddhists – there’s a profit to be made on these meditation cushions.

Look at that floral pattern. How chintzy.

Here’s where I meditate:

Hey, I bet you’ve got one too! Try using it. It works.

In summary, sorry Western Buddhists, but you’re the ones who are doing it wrong.

Buddhism is a religion...inasmuch as you allow it to be anything at all, and you’re actually better off calling it a religion because as a philosophy, it sucks.

For a rationalist and skeptic any delusion is harmful, and Buddhism is no exception. So Buddhists, stay out of our territory, because you don't belong here.

A Fun Guide to 10 Popular Logical Fallacies

Welcome to the wild world of logical fallacies, kiddies! We’re going to have lots of fun, but first, what is a logical fallacy?

Briefly stated, logical fallacies are tactics utilized by the intellectually dishonest or mentally deficient in place of legitimate reasoning in arguments. Logical fallacies are as ancient as human civilization and are still just as rampant today as ever. Part of being a proper skeptic and/or rationalist is to become familiar with these tactics so that you can nip them in the bud whenever someone tries to put one over on you. Once you're practiced at this, it can actually be kind of fun to play “spot the crock” and pick them out like rotten apples in a barrel.

If you want to see logical fallacies in their natural habitat, listen to the arguments of a Creationist. Fallacies not only make up virtually the entire Creationist arsenal, they’re the very backbone of the Creationist position itself. I wouldn’t recommend starting out by engaging a Creationist or conspiracy theorist, as the sheer volume of infractions will almost certainly overwhelm you (more on this later).

I'm going to begin with ten of the more prominent logical fallacies by defining them, describing them, and offering examples. I’ve also noticed people using these terms erroneously, both due to ignorance of their actual meaning or as a spiteful attempt to throw our weapons back at us. For this reason, I’ve also attempted to define what these terms are not.

#1  Ad hominem Latin: "Against the man"

When a claim or argument is rejected on the basis of some irrelevant fact about the person presenting it.

Example 1:

A: "I think that affirmative action is a bad idea."

B: "Well you would say that - you're white."

Example 2:

A: "There is no evidence that your claim is true."

B: "Oh yeah? Well you're a poop head."

The idea of this fallacy is to attempt to discredit an argument by attacking the person stating the argument instead of the argument itself. As a critical thinker, it is important to realize that the source of an argument is irrelevant - the only question that really matters should be the question of whether or not it's true. It doesn't matter if it was conceived by Carl Sagan, Adolf Hitler, or the urine-stained homeless man who shouts at traffic. But the one-track human mind is well practiced at making erroneous associations.

Child actor turned evangelical douchebag Kirk Cameron released 50,000 copies of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species, with a small addendum - an added prologue that attempted to attack Darwin as a racist and woman-hater. See an article on it here. What Kirk does not understand (among many other things) is that science does not give two shits about Darwin's personal beliefs. We celebrate him and owe him gratitude for his discovery and insight, but beyond that, the man is irrelevant as far as science is concerned. Whether he was a racist or anything else simply does not matter.

Example 2 above should be obvious as the lowest and most obvious form of ad hom, but don't let this fact fool you - it's still very prominently practiced.

What it is NOT: Calling a spade a spade, as long as it’s still relevant to the argument:

(In a debate about racial equality)

A: “I believe that black people are inferior to white people.”

B: “Then you're a racist.”

#2  Straw Man

Interpreting someone's position in an unfairly weak way, thus allowing you to argue against a position that nobody holds. This caricaturing (or stereotyping) of a position makes it easier to attack.

Example 1:

"Evolution is nonsense. Was your father a monkey?"

Example 2:

"Obama wants to decrease the funding to homeland security. I don't know why he wants to aid terrorists."

One of the favorites of Creationists, as demonstrated above. They like to use it along with appeal to ignorance and/or appeal to ridicule, all three of which are present in Example 1! No, your father was not a monkey. If evolutionary theory actually did make such claims, then they would be easily refuted. The problem with the statement is, of course, that evolution does not state that your relatives should be monkeys. Evolutionary theory posits that humans and monkeys did share a common ancestor many millions of years ago, but this is not as easy to attack. Thus the strawman.

What it is NOT: When used as a weapon against Weasel Words (see below), an arguer may be accused of straw man when in fact they’re simply bringing the correct description back to the table:

A: "That human sacrifice was a traditional and highly spiritual expression of faith and devotion by a culture and its religious belief."

B: "It was still murder."

#3  Slippery Slope

When a person asserts that some event must inevitably follow from another without any argument for the inevitability of that event.

Example:

"Don't give anyone a break. Next thing you know, they'll be walking all over you."

A tactic that is a subset of non-sequitur and goes very well with Appeal to Fear. One of the more prevalent and retarded examples in common practice is shown in the cartoon to the left. When faced with a proposition, users of this fallacy will make a logical leap into "next thing you know" territory without offering any sufficient evidence of correlation between premise and outcome.

What it is NOT: When an effect is proven to be a consequence of the first event, then the intermediate steps may be skipped merely for reasons of convenience:

"If we ban abortion, next thing you know more women will be paying money for dangerous back-alley procedures." (Evidence thoroughly supports this correlation, so it’s not a non-sequitur.)

#4  Middle Ground Fallacy (a.k.a. Golden Mean Fallacy, Fallacy of Moderation)

When it is assumed that the middle position between two extremes must be correct simply because it is the middle position.

Example 1: 

"Some think that autism is caused by childhood vaccinations, but others say there is no correlation at all. The truth must be somewhere in between."

Example 2:

"Both the Bible and Origin of Species were written by human beings, so they should both be considered equally valid."

A favorite of spineless weaklings as well as the lazy, as it allows them to easily “settle” something without having to actually engage in the stress of arguing it properly. I recently posited that its current popularity is a possible function of the PC movement, which likes to assert that compromise is the optimum solution for pretty much anything. The enormous problem with this rationale (and I use the term loosely) is that the fallacy has no interest in addressing the fact that some positions are correct, supported, or otherwise valid, while opposing arguments may not be. It automatically defaults to compromise without first evaluating the efficacy of each side, which can result in conclusions just as unsubstantiated, implausible, and outright ridiculous as the above cartoon parodies.

What it is NOT: Conversely, the existence of this fallacy does not infer that legitimate compromise should be avoided. There are many instances in which middle ground is indeed the best option.

#5  Burden of Proof or Appeal to Ignorance

When the burden of proof is placed on the wrong side (Example 2, below). Another version occurs when a lack of evidence for side A is taken to be evidence for side B in cases in which the burden of proof actually rests on side B (Example 1, below).

 

Example 1:

"Well you can’t prove that the universe came from nothing, so God must exist."

Example 2:

A: “Where is your proof of the existence of ghosts?”

B: “Well you can’t disprove that they exist either, can you?”

Essentially, this fallacy posits that whatever has not been proven false (to the arguer's satisfaction) must therefore be true! Though they might believe in all sorts of ludicrous crap, they will often insist that it’s not up to them to prove any of it - No, it’s up to you to disprove it. This false dichotomy is a very popular fallacy, particularly among conspiracy theorists, who demand that their claims be addressed despite the fact that they have no evidence to support any of it. That is not how it works - you provide the evidence first, and only then will we be obligated to take you seriously.

This fallacy can often be as simple as a religious person asking why you’re an atheist - I don’t have to explain my lack of belief in things that aren’t proven to exist, do I?

What it is NOT: I’m not sure how this particular fallacy can be directly abused or misinterpreted. Just be certain that all of your claims have sufficient evidence to back them up.

#6  Red Herring

When an irrelevant topic is presented in order to divert attention from the original issue. The basic idea is to "win" an argument by leading attention away from the argument and to another topic.

Example 1 (Paraphrased from Here Be Dragons):

A: “Who was behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks?”

B: “Dick Cheney had business interests in the Middle East!”

A: “Who was behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks?”

B: “The leaseholder had an insurance policy on his skyscrapers!”

A: “Who was behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks?”

B: “George Bush’s younger brother Marvin was a stockholder in an insurance company, and the World Trade Center was one of their clients!”

As shown above, a delicious favorite of conspiracy theorists. 9/11 “Truthers” in particular are so fond of red herrings that one might expect their words to have a fishy stench (this occasionally happens anyway, but for unrelated reasons). Conspiracy theorists are necessarily unable to discern good information from bad, and for avoiding coincidence at every opportunity. Their tactic of weaving virtually every scrap of irrelevant circumstance into a massive quilt of fail means that red herrings are almost guaranteed to result. Just because some of the names and places are the same does not infer evidence or even relevance to the topic. Keep your nose on the trail.

What it is NOT: Your opponent may use red herring as an excuse to cut you off before you’ve come to the part of your point that’s pertinent to the discussion. It’s also misused by people who are simply too stupid to understand how your point relates to the argument in the first place.

#7  Appeal to Authority

When the arguer or a source cited is not a legitimate authority on the subject.

  

Example 1:

Celebrity product endorsements.

Example 2:

“The Pope was saying on the news that condoms often break and are ineffective in stopping the spread of AIDS.”

This fallacy can in some ways prove to be a polar opposite of the Ad Hominem logical fallacy; Ad hom seeks to attack a person's argument on the basis of the person him or herself while Appeal to Authority seeks to exploit positive impressions of the person in order to promote the argument, but both depend upon the same misguided associations we have between a statement and the irrelevant status of the one making it.

What it is NOT: Conspiracy theorists, in their infinite ineptitude, believe this fallacy to mean that nobody in authority should be trusted at all, simply based on the fact that they are in a position of authority. Aside from being literally impossible, this is of course entirely wrong. What matters is the validity of the argument itself.

Another problem can occur when people are too stupid to understand the statement at all. In such cases, there is little choice but to outright choose a position. In such cases this fallacy can cause problems, particularly when the wrong definition is dumber, simpler, and otherwise more comprehensible. When faced with physicists and their theory of gravity verses a fat guy in his basement who thinks that the earth is pulling us towards it due to its magnetic field, you must not misinterpret Appeal to Authority in your decision of which party to believe. Simply stated, sometimes people have authority FOR A REASON.

#8  Proof by Verbosity

Overwhelming someone with such a volume of material that the argument sounds plausible, superficially appears to be well-researched, and is so laborious to untangle and check supporting facts that much of it slides by unchallenged.

Example:

“Blah blah blah New World Order blah blah blah reptile aliens blah blah blah 9/11 blah blah blah psychic phenomena…”

Another favorite of the usual suspects. They fire so much nonsense at you so quickly that it becomes impossible to address it all properly. It’s the reason why I suggested not taking on one of these loons as your first exercise.

What it is NOT: This shouldn’t be confused with someone’s inability to counter an argument for legitimate reasons. If you have that much good information, then present it!

#9  Weasel Words

Purposely using words that are vague, ambiguous, or otherwise misleading in order to manipulate perception.

Example 1:

The government calling the Vietnam War a “police action.” The Patriot Act.

Example 2:

“I’m not a slut, I’m polyamorous!”

The weapon of choice for politicians everywhere and at all times, as it’s the bread and butter for political “spin.” It’s used in many different ways, but the goal is always to squirm away from any descriptors that are perceived to have negative connotations. Recently, there has been a movement for Christians to call themselves “Followers of Christ,” since the real word has (legitimately) earned so much baggage.

Here's a simple summary: If they're using fake words to describe something, then that something is probably fake too.

What it is NOT: Sometimes people who are confused about big words (or words in general) will infer that two terms mean the same thing, or even that they’re made up.

#10  Appeal to Common Practice

The idea that something is correct/reasonable/justified/etc. because it’s a common action.

 

Example 1:

“I heard on the news that over 85% of Americans are Christian. There must be something to it then…how could so many people be wrong?”

Example 2:

“Sure cheating on a test is wrong, but everybody does it, so it’s okay.”

A strange attempt at justification, since we can usually count on the majority of people to not do something right. Discounting this fallacy is so easy your mother can do it, i.e. "If all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you do it too?" Well as it turns out, depending on the circumstances, many people would without a second thought. Or a first thought. Or if the influence is strong enough, any thought at all.

What it is NOT: Notable exceptions are certain cultural and moral social norms. Such standards are by definition determined solely by the majority of common perception, so majority does rule in those cases.

Well, that does it for an unfortunately paltry ten. Remember, if you’re aware of logical fallacies, then they can’t get you. If you find that your own usual arguments contain them, well, you ought to know what to do about that!