Why do Mormons cut Christmas services short if they fall on a Sunday?

Nobody asked:

Dear Daniel: In other churches, people go to church on Christmas. There's a Christmas Eve service at midnight, another in the morning, and maybe even again that night! It's all they do! But Mormons seem to do it differently. They don't go to church at all on Christmas if it's not on a Sunday, and if it is, they actually reduce the length of the meetings. Why do Latter-day Saints do it this way?

Dear Nobody:

It's because Mormons secretly loathe and detest their church meetings, and look for any way to avoid them if they have anything better to do. And who can blame them? Between the well-meaning but excruciating ward choir numbers, amateurish talks, infantile lesson manuals, and other people's screechy children, many Mormons are under the (probably correct) impression that their meetings are the worst part of being in the church.

The Mormon method of worship has a lot to do with this. At their meetings, Mormons try to 'feel the Spirit'. This essentially involves boring themselves into a quasi-meditative state in which any sensation they feel is assumed to be the Holy Ghost. No wonder they gratefully escape when there's an opportunity to do something fun with family.

As for other churches, they ramp up their Christmas services because they secretly loathe and detest themselves.

Tim Minchin's Xmas song: Woody Allen Jesus

If you liked "White Wine in the Sun", you'll be sure to enjoy his new offering for the season: Woody Allen Jesus.



Sadly cut from the Jonathan Ross show, due to an unscheduled failure of courage from some contemptible executive.

Dollar coins

Americans: Y u no like dollar coins?

The U.S. government, its vaults stuffed with 1.4 billion one-dollar coins bearing the likenesses of dead presidents, has had enough of them. It is going to curtail production.

"Nobody wants them," Vice President Joe Biden said Tuesday. That is for sure: The Mint says there are enough $1 coins sitting in Federal Reserve vaults to meet demand for a decade, and the inventory was on track to hit two billion by 2016.

More than 40 percent of the coins that are minted are returned to the government unwanted, the Treasury said. The rest apparently sit in vending machines -- one of the few places they are widely used -- or in the drawers of coin collectors.

Dollar bills are kind of dumb. They only last somewhere around 18 months to 3 years (estimates vary), whereas coins last for decades, making them more cost effective. But people are inertia-driven critters -- they won't use coins until paper is phased out. That's something that would take more political will than US politicians seem to have, because they're also inertia-driven critters.

But dollar coins are used in other countries (like Australia), and they're great! Make them gold in colour, a little heavier, different from other coins, and they're a fine upstanding member of your numismatic repertoire -- something you'd be proud to have in your pocket.

Unlike pennies. Thin, and not worth the trouble. Seriously, Americans: You don't like dollar coins, but you still use pennies? Really?

Ex-Mormon tries coffee

Even though I'm no longer a Mormon, I still act like one in some ways. I still haven't drunk alcohol (ever). Never smoked or tried illegal drugs. I guess arbitrary religious rules can exert quite a hold on one, especially rules pertaining to food and drink. Or maybe I was just never curious. Either way, breaking the Mormon "Word of Wisdom" still seems terribly transgressive. Sex before marriage? Yes, please. Deny the holy ghost? Why not? But trying coffee? Whoa, that's really out there. Totally badass, yo.

Miss Perfect, my girlfriend/partner/fiancée, does drink coffee, and at a café once I timidly ventured a slurp of her demon drink. I say "demon drink" because it tasted like it came out of the ass of one of the legions of hell. No, wait -- you know how you burn an entire pot of beans, and then you have to labouriously scrape it out to clean it? It tasted like the water at the bottom of the pot.

"That wasn't very good coffee," said she.

I thought it was probably a flawed concept from the beginning. Sure, you could make it taste okay if you added enough sugar and milk. But as Sandra Boynton said of carob, the same argument could be convincingly advanced in favour of dirt. I thought I'd stick to chocolate as my bean derivative of choice.

But I kept taking the occasional slurp (and making the occasional face). Some people say you can push past it. It got better.

And so when we found ourselves in Seattle, we sat down with a Starbucks latté and a Cinnabon, and I found myself sampling more than usual of the brew. The aroma reminded me of supermarket trips when I would eye the forbidden coffee beans (lined up in plexiglas containers, singing their tiny sirens' song) with trepidation and fascination. And this time the taste, bitter by design, was just right for cutting the extreme sweetness of the sticky buttery bun. Complementary.

I could never do a whole cup though.

The entirely understandable evasion of Neil deGrasse Tyson

Neil deGrasse Tyson describes himself as an 'agnostic', and that's okay. I'm an agnostic myself, just an atheistic one.

But this tweet seems like an evasion:

"Am I an Atheist, you ask? Labels are mentally lazy ways by which people assert they know you without knowing you."

Hmm. I didn't ask him for his label; I asked a question about his stand on some issue, to which one could reasonably answer 'yes' or 'no'.

Sometimes I've seen people shun labels as a subtle method of self-flattery. "Oh, I'm so deep and complex and interesting that I can't be put into a box." Well, yes, you are interesting, and yes, you can be put into a box. We're not all special snowflakes; in many ways we're terribly like other people. I am, anyway. I consume the same products, read the same books and websites, and have the same thoughts as other people with my interests. Hopefully, once in a while I create something interesting and original, and that's what makes me kind of special.

Anyway, I can understand NdGT not wanting to tick the box for firm atheism. He's influential in science communication, so he wants more people to listen to him, and perhaps not turn off those who would be turned off by an atheist. We need him doing what he's doing, and others of us can wear the atheist tag. As for me, if atheism is a label, it's a label I'm proud to wear.

Still a wonderful life

Last night I sat down with the boys and Miss Perfect, and watched It's a Wonderful Life. It may not be my favourite Christmas movie (that would be Brazil), but I find it lives up to its feel-good status.

And what's not to feel good about? George Bailey is a heroic everyman who's not out to gouge the people who borrow from him. Mr Potter is an old-school plutocrat.

Just remember this, Mr. Potter, that this rabble you're talking about... they do most of the working and paying and living and dying in this community. Well, is it too much to have them work and pay and live and die in a couple of decent rooms and a bath? Anyway, my father didn't think so. People were human beings to him. But to you, a warped, frustrated old man, they're cattle. Well in my book, my father died a much richer man than you'll ever be!

Remember when wealthy "fat cat" bankers were villains in movies, instead of being held up as paragons of virtue and job creation? And when George is down and money goes missing from the bank, the 99% step in and save his building-and-loan from closure and him from arrest. Thanks goodness these themes are becoming relevant again.

For me, though, the peak is George's new-found elation at being alive, his joy for life, even with its unmet ambitions and frustrations. Okay, so there's a warning for religious themes (what the hell was Zuzu's teacher thinking, telling schoolkids that?), but all that aside, it's still worth a watch if you haven't seen it for a few years.

Why I engage

I had an online discussion (or perhaps a "run-in") with a Mormon guy who I disagreed with on some issue. The issue isn't important (gay people). What was interesting was his way of dealing with the disagreement. His response was essentially: I don't expect you to agree with me. I'm a Mormon. You're an ex-Mormon atheist. Our worldviews are too different.

Now I think this is a cop-out. I'm very open to hearing other views, and if they're based on sound evidence and logic, I'll even change my mind. But his "different worldview" view allowed him to miscast my reasons for not accepting his argument. It wasn't that his reasons or his argument weren't good ones; no, no. It was that I wasn't open to change, or that our views just weren't reconcilable.

I think this is projection on his part. While reason and evidence would change my mind, I seriously doubt that it would change his. He's the one who is immune to reasoned argument because reason isn't how he arrived at his religious opinion. And if he tries to use secular arguments, they'll be hollow because they're not his real reasons. He's just using them to justify his religious reasons. He hauls out the secular reasons when he's talking to secular people, but if those arguments are faulty, it won't affect him at all. He'll just shrug and keep believing.

I mentioned the discussion to an ex-Mormon friend who knows him, and to my surprise she said essentially the same thing: What did you expect? He's a Mormon. He lives in Provo, for crying out loud.

I find this baffling. Here I am on the blog, and a lot of readers probably agree with things I write because, after all, we can't read everything, and we like to pick things to read that make us feel good about our worldview. (Or I do.) But I'm also happy to engage with readers who disagree, and in fact I hope I get a lot of them. I learn a lot more that way, and it's more interesting. But I feel like I'm standing on a chasm, shouting to ideological opposites.

Is there any point to discussing things? (Have I done any good on the blog today?) Or are we doomed to be divided into two camps that can never understand each other because of our different worldviews? I don't think so. I think there's a point to engaging in the Great Debates for two reasons.

First, people do change their views. I have, quite a lot, and I'll do it again. Engaging with others is my way of saying that maybe no one's beyond hope. Okay, maybe an online discussion won't change the committed, in which case I'll still keep arguing and discussing because I'm not trying to convince the committed -- I'm trying to convince uncommitted bystanders.

The other reason I engage is that if I'm wrong about something, I want to know about it. How is it that I can say so confidently that there's no evidence for the Book of Mormon? that that arguments for gods are uniformly awful? Because I'm here on the blog, and anyone who wants to can tell me something I don't know, and I'll consider it and change my mind if necessary. It's not just meme propagation. It's my continuing education.

The Debunking Handbook

It doesn't always work to debunk a myth just by presenting facts. Sometimes your careful presentation could actually entrench the wrong information. If your presentation is overly long or complicated, people may only remember the simple myth. And when you're talking to people who are committed to the myth, your explanation may drive them further into it.

Wait -- I'm doing this all wrong. I'm starting with the myth. Let me try again.

Step 1: Present the core fact.
John Cook and Stephen Lewandowsky (of UWA) have released The Debunking Handbook. All science communicators need to read it, if they want to avoid reinforcing the very myths they want to debunk.

Step 2: Give the reader an explicit warning to cue them that misinformation is coming.
One incorrect perception people sometimes have is that people change their views when facts are laid before them. This is a myth.

Step 3: Now that you've ripped the misinformation out of the reader's head, fill the gap with simple, correct information.
Cook and Lewandowsky suggest a few simple ways to communicate scientific ideas clearly, and avoid psychological "backfire effects".

That's better. Boy, this science communication can be tricky.

h/t Lara from the "exmormon-atheists" group