Behold, a valid sentence in Polish:

- Je.

In context:

- Co robi? (What's he doing?)
- Je. (He's eating.)*

In Polish verbs reflect the actor, so "je" is the singular, present form of eat. This makes saying "he's eating" (On je.) unnecessary because the he is already given in the form of the verb.

Behold, the same in French:

- Il mange. (He's eating.)
- Ils mangent. (They're eating.)

Same story? Not quite. You see, in Polish you pronounce every single letter. In French you don't. Il mange and Ils mangent sound exactly alike (singular and plural). Which means it's impossible to infer from that sentence alone what the hell is happening.

Let's step back and think about that for a while. Here you have all these verb forms that change depending on the pronoun. But they're pronounced the same anyway. So what the hell is the point? Ils mangent is no more insightful in speech than Ils mange would have been. It's only in writing that it makes a difference. And in writing there's obviously no need to have the special form because the pronoun is sitting right next to it!

Let's try the first sentence again:

- Mange. (Pronounced the same whether it's je, tu, il/elle, ils/elles.)

Now, despite the fact that you have all these different forms, the only thing you can rule out is that it isn't nous or vous. Very insightful, isn't it?

Incroyable!

* Can also be "she" or "it".

Have you noticed that every language seems to deamonize a particular letter of the alphabet? Users of the language either refuse to pronounce it, or they pronounce it as a different sound, or they banish it altogether.

Polish

Polish has excommunicated the V. This is really strange, because all its linguistic neighbors use the V all the time. All words get rewritten with Ws instead.

Norwegian

Norwegian vowels are heavy, industrial strength. Somehow this has made the O into a Polish U or an English OO. To compensate for this lacking, the Å was invented as a makeshift O.

English

English has caught onto the fact that V and W are really the same sound, and have co-opted the W for a completely different sound. Polish has a ready made letter for this sound: the Ł.

English also disfavors the J, and uses the Y as a J when need be.

Needless to say, the R was mutated into a sound that defies definition. This is lost on many English natives who plainly assume that the crazy English R is the standard for all languages.

French

French refuses to pronounce the H, yet it keeps using it in written form.

French also uses the J as a Polish Ż.

The R, of course, is the most eccentric of them. It was made into a gargling sound that stings the throat.

Dutch

Dutch will pronounce the G only as an H. And the H.. er.. also as an H. It may be that the G and the H are slightly different in speech, but if so it still eludes me how.

Spanish

Spanish doesn't like the J. In its place it improvised the LL (but also the Y is used for this). The J is used as an H, in place of the real H, which refuses to be pronounced. Sounds pretty obsessive, doesn't it?

And the V becomes a B, depending on who you ask.

Italian

Like all its latin friends, Italian pretends the H doesn't exist, but still keeps writing it.

One thing that has been pretty much a constant in my life is the regular attempts I observe at cultural stigma by condemning someone to be a fan of "bad music". Of course, this type of cultural stigma is no different from other kinds of stigma based mechanisms that play a part in the daily social power struggles and hustles over group membership.

But it's interesting to me that it works despite how flawed it is. Obviously, the premise for the "bad music" stigma is that we all agree on some common standard for what makes good music. This may have been possible in the past, with three radio stations to choose from and little selection in a record store. But today, with the amount of choice we have, and especially among people who discover music online, it just isn't.

You just can't make a meaningful statement about bad music when just about every person you meet has something in their collection that's just awful. And half the people (or more) consider this something a cornerstone of their collection.

As far as I'm concerned, metal was invented to help us agree on the definition of bad music. But that's actually not the whole story. It turns out that if you take groups like Metallica and Linkin Park, and make them stfu, they do sometimes produce interesting instrumental music. It's just that all the yelling gets in the way.

There are subtler examples. Take Katie Melua. She has a nice voice, her melodies are pleasant, nothing wrong with her it would seem. But then you hear the lyrics. And I often don't even notice (or care) about the lyrics, but hers are so simple minded and annoying that I can't stand it. Same goes for Maria Mena.

And so forth.

But the practical impossibility of a consensus is not even the biggest problem with the "bad music" category. The more serious problem is that we still don't know why or how music affects the brain. In the future, perhaps, we will know why particular harmonies or rhythms induce a positive response. And composers over the ages have surely understood this intuitively, using precisely those "atoms" of composition that please us. But noone has been able to explain why those. So for the time being, musical taste can only be a purely subjective matter. And "bad music" continues to be a contradiction in terms.

I was recommended this book by a friend and it is above and beyond the most relevant address of the question of religion I have so far encountered. George Smith sets out to argue that the notion of a god in general, and the god of Christianity in particular, cannot be supported rationally. Other authors of atheist books have addressed the social and historical impact of religion, but none have gone straight to the foundation of religion in order to refute its logical premises. To follow Smith's reasoning takes effort, but he is persuasive.

After discussing the concept of god in the most general sense, Smith proceeds to show that Christianity is stacked high with self contradictions in its various doctrines, all of which makes it even more absurd (if one can say such a thing) than merely the idea of a god itself. The central problem in knowing god is that of assigning attributes to an inherently supernatural and transcendental (that is to say unknowable) being. Either a proposition is unknowable or it isn't. It makes no sense to accept the premise of unknowabability only to then assign attributes that are contingent upon knowability. Christianity attempts to jump the fence by making all attributes infinite. Instead of temporal he is eternal. Instead of finite he is infinite. The obvious problem is that the meaning of such attributes is predicated upon finiteness. To make an attribute infinite is to make it meaningless. So all that can be accomplished is to assign unintelligible attributes to an unintelligible being. This is most characteristic of the Christian doctrine, which essentially drapes layers of rhetoric in order to create the illusion of a god that is effectively not distinguishable from nothing at all.

Disclaimer: Depending on your definition of atheism and agnosticism, I may actually be advocating agnosticism in this text. These two terms have any number of definitions and what follows simply reflects my perception of them. The point is not that one term is better than the other. What I'm trying to argue is simply that one type of thought process associated with agnosticism is not particularly useful.

The more I think about agnosticism the more I think it's just the politically correct face of atheism. It's a way to say "Hey, listen guys, you say you know god exists, and we're skeptical. But that doesn't imply we think we're better than you, we just think it's impossible to know at all." That is the gist of it, but does it really differ from the atheist position in any important way? I don't think it does.

Does an agnostic believe in god? If he did he would be a believer. Which he isn't. So the answer is no. Of course, the agnostic slogan is "I don't know", but in a question of belief, there is no such thing. There is no way to not know if you believe in something. You either believe or you don't, and if you "don't know" that means you don't. You fail to give a positive answer.

The problem with agnosticism is that it gets you into meaningless statements about probability. An agnostic who adamantly repeats "I don't know" is likely to be seen as low hanging fruit for believers and unbelievers alike. "Okay then, what do you think is more likely?" Agnostics in their drive to be even handed get pushed into saying that both are 'equally likely'. Well, what on earth does that mean? Is that a statement about statistical probability? So in a repeatable experiment where the universe is created god appears 50% of the time? That's absurd reasoning. We are not talking about something measurable and therefore there is no way to say 'how likely' it is.

Wrong question, wrong answer

A philosopher once said "as a philosopher it is not that I can produce more answers, but I can make sure we don't ask the wrong questions".

Religious people claim to know with absolute certainty that god exists. And thus they seek the equivalent answer from the unbeliever. "Can you say with absolute certainty that god does not exist?" It is the wrong question. And to see why we need only ask a different, obvious, question. "Is there anything at all you believe with absolute certainty?" Again, the answer is no.

What does 'absolute certainty' even mean? It would have to mean, I think, that notwithstanding circumstances you know nothing about, your faith would still hold. If nothing else, that strikes me as just about the most foolish statement imaginable. Religious people claim to have this certainty, and that's their business.

In any case, we know that life is unpredictable, and it is possible that anything one has established as knowledge may be overturned. Is there any knowledge at all you have that holds beyond the constraints of sensory perception and reason? No, there isn't. Everything is theoretically subject to change.

So why on earth should I have to answer the question of god to a greater degree of certainty than I have about any other question in life? Agnosticism exists only because we need an answer to this incorrect question.

Atheism is the realization that the question is incorrect. An unbeliever simply does not have an equivalent answer to the question of absolute certainty. Atheism is not about absolute certainty, it is about giving an answer to a question that has a reasonable answer. Does god exist? No. Do you know this with absolute certainty? Irrelevant. I know god doesn't exist with the same certainty that I know Superman doesn't exist, and that's perfectly sufficient.

Atheism is the realization that the difference between a hypothetical "no" and a practical "no" isn't worth dwelling on. Because when it comes down to choosing how to live life, there is no agnostic option. You either live your life according to religious observance or you don't. No agnostic will sit in the 'waiting room' until the answer comes in. Thus there is no practical difference between the agnostic and the atheist, only a theoretical one.

This also resolves the misunderstanding that "atheism is faith just like theism". Atheists do not have an equivalent belief, that is what the a in atheism means.

Political correctness

How does political correctness factor into it? I think the answer is obvious. Religion is such a big issue in our culture that we have the intuition not to take these questions lightly. Religion is not just an issue of faith, it's also a question of world view, of social institution, of tradition, of family ties. To reject the god hypothesis is to reject religion, because what sensible religious observance could follow if you eliminate the cornerstone of religion itself? And to reject religion is to make a big life decision.

That is the paradox of the god question. The fallout may be complicated, but the question isn't. So people hesitate to say what they would so easily say if it wasn't for the collateral damage.

To say "I don't know" to a question of belief, I think, is to say "I don't believe, but I'm not sure what the consequences are going to be". We are not so hesitant to answer other questions of faith. Do people say "wait a minute, you can't be dead certain that Superman doesn't exist"? Actually, I can. He's a fictional character from a comic book. Do I need to be more guarded in my reasoning? No, I don't. I'm never going to get a more useful answer than "no".

Are you still on the fence about Santa Claus? Of course not. Because there is no reason not to say just say "no".