Skeptical Fallout from "Secular Heresy"

Who here disagrees with the following statements?:

Just because someone can kill you for disobedience does not mean that their authority over you is somehow "valid": Does the mugger have authority over you because he's got a gun and wants your wallet? What if he donates the money to a school? Does that make it okay to steal from you?
` Just because someone has been coerced into doing something, it doesn't mean that anyone has had the "right" to coerce them. It simply means that they were coerced. Is that simple to understand?

A relevant example of the logical fallacy called Argument from Force would be: "We're right because we will revoke your privileges if you disagree." Another one is, "Our god's laws apply to you because we force everyone to comply."
` A different logical fallacy, called Argument from Consequences, goes, "I know that Santa Claus has been here because there's presents under the tree." Or, in keeping with my theme here, "we have already punished people for breaking our rule; therefore this rule applies to you."
` Note: The morality of these actions is another issue, which is why punishment for violence or theft (mala in se) is a different matter than punishment for drug possession or parking violation (mala prohibita).

That was essentially my point in a previous article Anatomy of a Secular Heresy. In it, I argued that laws cannot apply, period, because governmental authority is not based on facts and evidence. Instead, it is based on violent coercion, the opinions of dead lawyers, and propaganda.
` Rather than voluntary reciprocity and win-win outcomes, the violence at its core creates an abusive relationship between the government and the governed.

When so-called government authorities are asked for evidence that laws apply to people living on the land, they don't even attempt to provide any. Instead, they either stay silent, issue threats, or spew logical fallacies, distortions, and platitudes on par with such famed shysters as Duane Gish, the young earth creationist for which the Gish Gallop is named.
` Marc Stevens, which I mentioned in my article, has won this kind of debate in front of courts, because no one could provide evidence that the law applies to him. The burden of proof is on the lawyers, judges, etc. to provide evidence that the laws apply -- and even they fail at this.

Rules are a good thing, in my book -- the problem is that people are initiating force in the name of the state, an assumption that's not valid. The state is an abstraction that does not correspond to anything that exists outside of people's imaginations and beliefs -- it is fictional. Even if it did exist, that would not in itself be evidence that laws apply.
` Acting as though it is real does not make it real any more than acting as though gods exist mean that they do exist, much less have authority over people's lives. And so, just saying that laws apply to people because they believe in it, or because they live within the imaginary borders of a fictitious state, is not evidence that the laws apply.

Atheists of course understand that one cannot break the laws of a deity (fictional entity) if that deity does not exist. They also understand that if nutball church leaders, Scientologists, ISIS, etc. turn on them for heresy, that does not in any way validate any presumed religious authority.
` Besides Antarctica, there is no land one can escape to in order to avoid people with guns imposing laws upon them. So, it isn't a matter of 'just move somewhere else' -- it can't be done, unless you can somehow support yourself in a frozen wasteland.

My point was that the world's governmental "authorities" have no evidence to back up their position of power. Because of this, they must use the initiation of force and beguiling legalese to confuse dissenters. Therefore, the relationship between the rulers and the ruled is based on abuse and parasitism, not evidence, much less respect or cooperation.
` I did not propose a solution to this problem, other than to mention that it is possible to use private companies for emergency services and to build roads, schools, etc., without coercing people to pay for them. After all, who builds the roads? People do.
` Saying that the state builds roads is like saying that God builds churches. The difference is where the money comes from: At the point of a gun, or a voluntary agreement?

For the purposes of my argument, however, it is not important whether it is possible to be governed voluntarily, based on agreement rather than coercion. My argument was that government authority is grounded in abuse rather than evidence, and it is invalid because it is unproven by those who assert its validity.
` Importantly, there is no possible way to vote for someone who can end this abuse, since by definition, the system is based on it. You can only vote for rulers who aren't as abusive as the ones before, rather than voting for leaders who will end this abuse altogether.

I suppose I should have made these points more explicit before inviting Skeptic-type people to try to poke holes in my reasoning via Facebook. I can at least say Luc Vande Casteele, Vince Lynch and Robert von Schryvers 'liked' my article on Facebook, and others told me they agreed with it.
` I posted this article on Facebook in order to get feedback, but was not prepared for the sheer amount of logical fallacies which came with it. I found it to be quite instructive as far as what distortions to address before inviting people to critique the argument. Here are the comments in all their glory, plus additional commentary from me:

Anatomy of a Secular Heresy

This post started as an email to a prominent skeptic about the most shocking heresy in all of skepticdom. Though I never got a response, I am nevertheless eager to plaster it all over my blog.

Back in the days of Borders Books, I remember finding a book there on critical thinking and scanning the introduction. It concerned posing a simple question about the separation of church and state to an online forum of college students; should the words "under God" be removed from the Pledge of Allegiance?
` If you didn't already know, the original pledge was written in 1892, and these two words were added in 1954 in order to distinguish the U.S. from the godless commie countries (along with the slogan 'In God We Trust' on U.S. currency).
` Even so, many of the students responded with something along the lines of, "No, because we should honor what our founding fathers wanted." Thus it was revealed that these students had evidently never thought to ask who wrote the pledge or when.

Over the years, I've heard the "under God" discussion ad nauseum in Skeptic and atheist media, but it had never even occurred to me to ask why children were supposed to recite the pledge in the first place.
` To me, it was just "something that you do in school," something that seemed so inconsequential that it never occurred to me to think of how this practice got started. Of course, the first place I would look for information on this particular topic is... Wikipedia:

The original "Pledge of Allegiance" was published in the September 8 issue of the popular children's magazine The Youth's Companion as part of the National Public-School Celebration of Columbus Day, a celebration of the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the Americas. The event was conceived and promoted by James B. Upham, a marketer for the magazine, as a campaign to instill the idea of American nationalism in students and sell flags to public schools.^[7] According to author Margarette S. Miller this was in line with Upham's vision which he "would often say to his wife: 'Mary, if I can instill into the minds of our American youth a love for their country and the principles on which it was founded, and create in them an ambition to carry on with the ideals which the early founders wrote into The Constitution, I shall not have lived in vain.'"^[8]

This may seem innocuous at a glance, but first, imagine a flock of birds flying over the border between two countries. For a moment, you naively think to yourself, "I wonder if they know that they are flying into a different country," and then you realize that these birds are not in any countries.

There are no countries, only areas of land. I should note here that the belief that the state is real is an example of the Reification Fallacy. One of the most important things I've ever learned is that the map is not the territory -- we eat the food, not the menu.

And now that I can see that the state is just an abstraction, largely enforced by lying sociopaths with weapons, I can ask what is the virtue of making children essentially worship a complete fiction?
` Let's start with the fact that the government claims a monopoly on the initiation of force. In other words, they get to push people around and say who can do what, in the name of the state, and any interference with this can be legally met with violence. How has this been determined?

If there's one thing I've been learning about more over the past couple of years, it's the fact that we're all caught up in a giant fallacious belief system and are made to at least pretend to take it seriously -- or else we're heretics! Here's what I mean:

Atheists of course concede that the idea of God didn't exist until humans made it up. There are real buildings called churches, there are real people who play the role of church authority, there's a real book purported to be the law of God, but these consequences do not mean that God exists.

Similarly, the idea of states/countries didn't exist until humans made them up. There are real government buildings, real people who play the role of authority and law enforcement, there are real documents purported to be the law of the state, but these consequences do not mean that the state exists.
` Under the threat of lethal force, people pay this nonexistent entity, and are allowed to vote in the hopes that their tax money is spent in a particular way.

Most importantly, this system is based on violence, because it trains people to put you in prison for not paying taxes, and to shoot you if you try to resist. Over money. And the person who shot you doesn't get in trouble because they were 'upholding the law'.
` Of course, this also happens for people who have the wrong bit of plant material in their pockets. How can this punishment possibly be justified? I cannot help but think of how this is like the idea of God sending people to infinite burning in hell for something they did within a finite lifespan.
` When you go to court for such victimless crimes, there is of course no victim to oppose you, so instead you go up against The State. The same State that The Judge works for. If the judge works for the same fictional entity that you are going up against in court, then how can it be a fair trial?

I hope to have inspired at least a few people into considering these matters just now, before the entire can of worms is writhing on the floor:

A real-life death-defying tale... and some unrelated cool photos!

In my cathartic deluge last post, I left out the part about something else that happened on January 30, (the day Michael Shermer came to Town Hall). It concerns a woman around my age, who used to seem rather straight-laced, worked at a bank, and who briefly knew Dr. Hypno before a bizarre downward spiral took her to life on the streets.

` Because of his problem-solving and reframing brilliance, and his blunt honesty, she prefers to consult DH for advice when she is in a serious jam. Though she doesn't always take this advice, partly due to poor impulse control and planning ability, she did take to heart what to do if her psycho ex-boyfriend ever tried to come back and kill her:

` Puncture an artery/lung by stabbing him under the arm with a screwdriver.

Cloudy solar eclipse Oct 23, 2014 through a filter from a welding mask.

Not related, but ominous-looking nonetheless!

As I was thinking about what I'd do at Town Hall with some friends that evening, her homicidal ex found her campsite and attacked her with a ball peen hammer. She held her hands up in self-defense and slashed his face with a razor knife, while he swung the hammer at her arms, breaking both of them.

` He then cracked her skull with the hammer, causing her to lose her balance. He pulled off her pants and raped her, all the while choking her and beating her face in.

` Luckily, her screwdriver was just within reach of her broken arm, and by sheer force of will she was able to stab him under the arm. With the screwdriver jammed to the hilt in his chest cavity, he ran off, spluttering and gurgling. On the unlikelihood of his survival, the police told her, "Good."

Although she needed some intensive medical care, including a hole drilled into her skull, she is now recovering -- on the streets. (She did return to Dr. Hypno for some thanks, company, advice, and hospitality.) She continues to be ebullient, talkative, and optimistic as ever, and now knows the power of her own survival drive.

I had taken a photo of her last winter, on my previous phone, which was stolen. I remember becoming overwhelmed by her personality and high energy -- and that was after she had walked miles in the cold with her knee bandaged from a necrotic insect bite.

` I figured I'd try getting a photo on my new phone, and when she came by briefly on January 16, I got a candid shot of both of us, having a laugh -- alas it didn't come out so well.
` I include it anyway because it could well have been the last time I would have a chance to see her. Thank goodness she's a regular Indestructible Bastardess -- this is not even the first time she's had to fight for her life, nor the first time I thought she might be dead. And she's still finding more to laugh about.

Though she may not seem like someone to look up to, I do find her determination and strength to be inspirational. On top of that, any time that I think my life is bad, and that my ex is psycho... well, I have to ask myself, compared to what?

` Honestly, I have nothing to whine about. I'm fine. Stop worrying about me so much.

Now, before I go, I'd like to point out that there are some more photos up on Flickr, and I shall continue uploading more. Next up will be the photos that I was able to back up from my previous phone, which got stolen last July.

` But first... here are a few I've taken after The Amazing Meeting last year:

Grateful to still be alive and thinking -- and skepticalof 'gaslighting' abuse!

If it weren't for my interest in science and the skeptical movement, plus a need for recovering from so many traumas, I wouldn't have also gotten into psychology, cognitive reframing, denominalization, hypnosis, meditation, psychedelic research, or gaslighting, nor would I have discovered my role as a narcissistic source.
` Without my taste for critical thinking and unlocking the mind, I wouldn't have been able to overcome most of my trauma-related impairments, see my way out of a trap I didn't even know I was in, as well as discover more delusions of the world that aren't even talked about in the skeptical community.

Last week, I went to Michael Shermer's lecture at Town Hall concerning the subject of his latest book, The Moral Arc. It got me thinking about the information I was processing from the night before, a realization about my ex -- who I'll call "X" from now on.
` Basically, I had just realized that X's acting as though nothing was wrong was all part of his trying to make me doubt my grasp of reality, and that's why I can't stand him when he's being really nice.
` After telling me that I was crazy, "killing" him slowly, and that I had been hypnotized into being some sort of 'attack robot', and that I shouldn't talk to other people about it because they don't know what's "really going on", etc. he has continued pretending as though everything is fine.
` Wait -- what!?

It's not just that he won't acknowledge the extreme damage he's done to my sanity and health, but that he acts as though it never happened. I haven't been the same since the significance of this fact hit me so hard that I was physically recoiling as though I was being beaten.
` In those moments, when I told a friend about what was going through my head, my voice came from so close to my spleen that I could barely even spit out words over the grunts of involuntary rhythmic recoiling.
` My voice was so guttural that I imagine I sounded like one of the hypnotized victims in Bob Larson's exorcism games. "What kind of sick person does this to someone?" I kept growling. "Oh my GOD!! OH my GOD!!! WHAT!??!!"

As Shermer was going on about how reason has helped us to overcome senseless brutality, slavery, ignorance, fear, prejudice, superstition, etc., I thought about how it could be that people started out that way to begin with. I realized it was because everyone acted as though it was normal.
` That is the most insidious part, yet finally I can appreciate it. When no one bats an eye, it seems as though everything is being done the right way, and that you're crazy for saying otherwise. Of course, people today are not generally near the pinnacle of morality -- there is probably quite a ways to go. And how is it that this goes so unnoticed?
` Because we act as though nothing is wrong. To take an extreme example, how is it that parents can allow a tumor on their daughter's head to grow to the size of a soccer ball until she dies in agonizing pain? Because, to that family, it's just normal to believe this is all part of God's plan.
` It's not just abuse and neglect that is the problem, but the mentality that this is the way things should be. And to someone who has been severely damaged by this, acting as though they have not been harmed only hurts them on a deeper level -- or kills them in some cases.

This is why so many false beliefs are dangerous. Even if you don't believe the BS that supports some sort of abuse, but are are surrounded by people who do, and who act like it's normal, that alone is damaging to you:

Controversy and yet more adventures in Hypno-Land

Though I've written many more emails to people (besides poor Geo), they don't have much to do with mad science, warping minds, or pictures of my back side, and thus would be out of place on this blog. Facebook, on the other hand, has some material I could use, although being a social media spot, it comes in bits and pieces.
` That can only mean one thing -- I must put some time into editing posts for this blog. Not only that, but getting onto the internet so that I can do research and check facts. I did none of that for my last post, Adventures in Hypno-Land which was an email I wrote almost a year ago.
` Though I've learned a lot since then, I'm still going to need to learn more in order to continue writing about hypnosis, and pretty much anything else that interests me.

As for this post, this is actually late in coming because my first draft got deleted. So, I shall do what I can to put forth even less effort than my last attempt -- by using Facebook material that I saved on WordPad from the last time I connected my computer to the internet.

I have noticed that hypnosis is one of those little-understood topics on which people in the skeptical community have a wide range of opinions, and occasionally I wind up with pieces of this on Facebook.
` Some skeptics are stage hypnotists while others have told me that stage hypnotism is nothing but fakery. Some are hypnotherapists, and some, like the California Skeptics, kicked a hypnotherapist off their Facebook page for not "admitting" that he's a fraud.

As for me, I have an unusual angle on hypnosis in that I've experienced a lot of it, have been dramatically changed by some of it, although have studied a lot more practical methodology than the actual science involved.
` At the bare minimum, hypnosis involves establishing contact with someone, a first suggestion, penetrating through the critical faculties, and producing phenomena that the subject commonly feels are involuntarily.
` It could involve what is informally called "trance", or could be done during what looks like a normal conversation.

Case in point, my podcasting co-host "Dr. Hypno" was once at a bar where he met someone who thought that hypnotherapy was interesting. This guy wanted to quit smoking but didn't think that he could be hypnotized.
` After a hypnotic conversation that started with "I don't think I can hypnotize you, so lets just talk about it", the guy went out for a smoke and couldn't even get the cigarette to his face. He started laughing and said "no way, what the f!"
` He was so shocked that he was afraid to talk to Dr. Hypno ever again. Such is the curse of that level of effectiveness.

Indeed, Dr. Hypno is one of those people who can walk up to a complete stranger on the sidewalk and hypnotize them in seconds without using the word 'hypnosis' or 'trance'. Just as quickly, he can stick a person's hand to a table using conversational hypnosis.
` Unsettlingly, he has even installed an instant induction shortcut on me, and then hypnotized me to forget what this shortcut is. As far as I know, he didn't use it until six months later, and when he did, I could only see multi-colored stars when he activated it.
` It still worked last summer at a workshop by Rintu Basu, before Dr. Hypno handed me off to another hypnotist for further phenomena, some of which worked and some which did not.

You may think it's tremendously creepazoidal to know that some mysterious hypnotic 'induction switch' has been installed in your own psyche. I agree, and would add that my mind contains several other post-hypnotic suggestions, just waiting to be unleashed at the right time. All I can do is to warn others not to trigger them.

Even more creepazoidally, I used to know a hypnotist who would orgasm in response to anyone snapping their fingers. Why she chose such a non-specific cue for a bedroom-related suggestion, I'll never know, but I've seen what it does to her first hand, in public, and found it to be hilarious.

Let's just say, after this incident, she was sent a YouTube link to the Addams Family theme song in appreciation.

This same hypnotist has also been to a lot of hypnosis seminars that were recorded, and thus appears on many training DVDs. One of them is a stage hypnosis course, and when the teacher snaps his fingers and makes an off-color joke, you can hear a burst of laughter from her.
` Later, in a segment when she is sitting up on stage, he snaps his fingers several times and you can see the look of terror on her face as she squirms in her chair and tries to play it cool. I rolled with laughter at this, thinking about how nobody else there had a clue about what was happening.

I am no expert in hypnosis, but I am acquainted with hypnotists who test whether the books match the street. It's an evolving art form and every year they discard more obsolete models, such as the trance model, and the conscious/unconscious model.
` And, I would argue, that although psychology-oriented academics who are not specialized in hypnosis may know a lot about it, they are also not experts. So, imagine my surprise when I ran into two of these on Facebook, both of which are prominent in Skepticdom.

Adventures in Hypno-Land

I actually began this piece last winter, when my ex was still claiming that I had been hypnotized to physically attack him and then forget afterward. That, he said, would explain why I had no idea what he was talking about.
` I asked several people, including hypnotists, and even Jamy Ian Swiss, whether or not this made any sense. They helped me to trust my own judgment and see that he was just trying to make me think that I was crazy. (See: gaslighting.)

Just after finishing this piece in early May, I witnessed my very own podcasting co-host, "Dr. Hypno" actually hypnotize one of his clients on our way out of the grocery store. She told me that she had been smoking since age 11 and had stopped after one session with him.
` Since the tar was finally leaving her lungs, she had developed bronchitis. Although she was recovering, she said she had wanted a suggestion to help her breathe freely again. Once we were in the parking lot, he did a handshake induction and made the appropriate suggestions as her husband and I watched in awe.
` She was astonished and elated at how she could suddenly breathe better -- apparently, even your lung functioning has a great deal to do with suggestible involuntary responses, as with asthma.

I confess that pieces of this article started out as a blog post last winter, yet I had neither the brain functioning or internet access to make into a proper article with lots of info and references aside from my own notes, knowledge, and personal experiences.
` So, I decided it would be best to adapt into an email for the edification of, yes, Mr. George Hrab -- a process which I have mentioned in this post.

As it would take a great deal of work to adapt it into a blog post, I'm going to leave it fairly much as-is. So, now you get to see the 'missing link' between my occasional (and relatively short) "normal" fan emails to Geo and the others I've already posted on this blog:

Here's to a better year, and better neural and muscular hypertrophy!

If you've been reading my posts about the past few years of my life, you'll know that things have turned unbelievably bad after I thought I was in the clear. Though it's been rough without such things as internet access and a central place to put all my belongings, I'm sure I can make things better in 2015.
` I haven't written about hypnosis as I said I would because I've decided to devote my computer time to edit and upload all my photos from my camera since The Amazing Meeting 2014 in July -- just to get it off my mind and onto the internet for all to see!

And speaking of photos, I would like to mention that I've been highly annoyed by the preview frame on the YouTube video of Brian Dunning's talk at TAM 2012, called Your Brain Sucks -- it's me turned around! Here's a photo that my friend Greg Dorais took of this moment:
` Not only was my hair unflatteringly damaged and frizzy, but my ass was completely flat, thanks to an untreated injury from sixteen years previously. I didn't know it at the time, but my glutes were the size of a lemon and a lime, thus impeding my ability to walk properly and sit up straight.
` Thanks to Dr. Hypno, who was a personal trainer for 15 years, I've been doing physical rehab for about two years now. At TAM 2014, I wanted to get an 'after' photo, wearing the same clothes, but forgot to in all the brain-draining excitement.
` So, I took one shortly after returning from TAM, upon moving some of my belongings into a temporary home. Not only were my glutes almost normal-sized (they're even bigger now!), but my hair was laying flat against my head like it's supposed to!

As for Brian Dunning, he may not look so great since he's been in prison. Although he's done a heck of a lot of good to help people be aware of scams and tricks of the mind, he was recently found guilty of wire fraud from before his Skeptoid days.
` While this development doesn't exactly impress me, I'll bet the True Believers^TM have been having a field day. I could Google that, since I'm connected to the internet, but would rather write about how I uploaded my photos:

In order to get them up on Flickr, I had to put them into proper sequential order by checking my camera, and then edit the ones I hadn't gotten to yet -- mostly shrinking the size 50% so they aren't blurry. (Taking smaller photos results in smaller blurry pictures, so that idea is out.)
` Why hadn't I done this before? Besides the insanity of my life, this has been difficult because my photo editing computer stopped working and I couldn't figure out how to quickly edit photos without Microsoft Photo Editor.

That's a really big deal because if the new way to edit takes 6x the amount of time as the old way, then one hour of photo editing becomes an unacceptable six hours. I managed to speed up my method with Microsoft Paint, although cropping photos was more time-consuming, so I mostly didn't bother.
` As for adjusting the color, I either skipped it or used GIMP, so there are some photos on Flickr that are too dark. Nevertheless, I managed to complete the task within three days. Happily, although I discovered that my payment to Flickr Pro didn't go through, I now have a terabyte of space with just a free Flickr account anyway. Hooray! It even takes videos longer than 90 seconds!

Getting through the editing process should also be easier now that I've stopped taking one photo for every day that it's sunny outside. Originally, this was to show people that it doesn't rain "all the time" as is stereotypical around Seattle -- on the contrary, we have a 'dry season' every summer, and all the grass dies at least by August.
` Since proving that it's sunny a lot around here is not my job, I stopped that practice in September, and have barely taken any photos since then -- at least with my camera. As for my iPhone, I cannot download my photos and videos onto my laptop, so I'm still puzzling over what to do with them besides upload them all to Facebook -- that is the next step!
` Whatever the solution, I'd better not dawdle -- I lost my chance with my last iPhone when it was stolen by a crackhead! Who I have a photo of. On my new iPhone. Sigh.

While I don't have my iPhone photos from TAM up on Flickr, at least my camera ones are -- check it out! I even got a video in the Monkey Room with Penn and Teller!

Now that I can finally stop stressing about my camera photos, it's easier to focus on writing and podcasting, which I'll probably be doing more of now that I can escape the ridiculous abuse I've been going through.
` Can you imagine? The Spoony Show? For real? Me!?! A podcast host? Believe it!!

For now, I'm still letting Dr. Hypno borrow my car, as his own vehicle is still not starting for whatever mysterious reason: He recently paid a mechanic $200 to fix it, but the guy had an aneurysm before he could start, and his chances of fully recovering are not good.

I can't make this stuff up, it just keeps coming.

Whatever this flip of the calendar throws at me, I shall work hard to write and podcast amazingly, and yes, continue to gain muscle mass and reprogram the firing of my motor neurons until I can walk at least 99% correctly.
` What's more, I'm even planning to go back to college to study neuroscience, because BRAAAINS! It should be much easier to do homework without crazy roommates to antagonize me daily, steal food from me, and keep me awake all night.
` Now that the life of a narcissistic abuser no longer depends on me, I can finally think about what I want in life, and I've decided that I want to do my own neuroscience research on perception, consciousness, and voluntary versus involuntary impulses. I've decided it really is that fascinating.

Wish me luck!