Jumper and Atheism

No these two are not related. Far from it. These are just the two topics I am discussing. First, I will begin with my movie of the week Jumper. I knew before going into the theater this was going to be a horrible film, partly because of Ebert's review that I read ahead of time, and I have to say I was not disappointed. This moving picture was absolutely atrocious for the its twisted disgusting theme. I give the movie one star. I would have given it a half a star, but Samuel L. Jackson was alright and his villain was actually pretty good. I will begin my review by pointing out the smaller problems. Small problem number one: the acting was atrocious. This is probably because the only real actor in the film is Samuel L. Jackson. It appears Samuel L. Jackson is an incredibly expensive actor because all the movie could afford for the other roles were Abercrombie & Fitch models. They may look good in their hip modern day clothes, but they have no idea how to make pretend appear to be reality. Every words they spoke just pulled me right out of the film and sat me back in my seat. In all seriousness studios are probably purposefully hiring these people just because they look good and not because they act well. The reason for this is because it sells. The majority of people are just going to go see the movie because Female Abercrombie & Fitch Model from One Tree Hill is going to be with Male Abercrombie & Fitch Model without foreign accent and Male Abercrombie & Fitch Model with foreign accent. The majority of people are interested in watching pretty young hip cats and kittens on the silver screen together. The majority of people are not interested in seeing a good movie. Small problem number two: illogical element. When David (Male Abercrombie & Fitch model without foreign accent) and Griffin (Male Abercrombie & Fitch model with foreign accent) teleport themselves they cause significant damage to the area they are leaving from and arriving in, but nobody notices. For example David (Male Abercrombie & Fitch model without foreign accent) teleports himself from a lake to a library knocking books on the floor and bringing a whole bunch of water with him, but no one says, "Hey, where the hell did all that water come from," or more importantly, "Hey, where the hell did that person come from." A similar instance is when he creates a crater in when he teleports himself into a hospital room. Now the major thematic problem with this movie is that David (Male Abercrombie & Fitch model without foreign accent) and Griffin (Male Abercrombie & Fitch model with foreign accent) steal all the time. They are nothing more than common thieves with the ability to teleport. However, the film portrays these people as heroes. Therefore, the theme of the film is, "Hey, if you can teleport it's alright for you to violate other people's property rights." Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. Teleportation is not a free pass to violate another's natural rights despite what the prestigious motion picture Jumper may say. Now if the jumpers were just stealing stuff the whole movie and detective Samuel L. Jackson came and busted them saying, "I have had it with these motherfucking jumpers stealing all this motherfucking shit," that would have been just fine. However, Samuel L. Jackson was a real villain. He was a religious crazy who thought only God should have the right to teleport. Also, very wrong. Man should always try to progress regardless of what their contradictory incomprehensible imaginary friends say. However, by putting such a villain in the movie, trying to kill the jumpers, the vicious jumpers become heroes. What would have been interesting is if one jumper was vicious and the other was virtuous and Samuel L. Jackson was still a villain. Then there could be a excellent theme developed. The virtuous jumper using his teleportation to produce and create greatness could save the thieving jumper from the murderous Samuel L. Jackson only to turn him into the authorities for stealing. Also, another problem I have with these movies is that these people have the power to teleport and they have decided to steal. How lame. They could have robbed banks before. If they want these jumpers to be real vicious make them use their power for world domination or something. These jumpers could teleport themselves into the homes of world leaders and kill them, but no they rob banks and car dealerships. Boring. Unfortunately, I smell a sequel to this piece of garbage.
Now onto a discussion on atheism because over the past week I have been involved with much discussion on the topic. As one can see in my previous post on "Anonymous," or even in this post I do not much care for religion or the belief in supernatural beings. As I understand it one should have some convincing scientific evidence to believe in something. See I am not even calling for conclusive scientific evidence. For example there is no conclusive scientific evidence for how gravity works or that evolution exists; however, there is some convincing scientific evidence. All the pieces are not there to prove it, but there are enough to be pretty sure it exists and understand a few things about it. It is kind of like a puzzle. It is not like there are two pieces on the table and someone is saying or its a picture of an invisible pink unicorn. This person does not have enough evidence to prove it is a picture of an invisible pink unicorn. In reality there are many pieces of these puzzles on the board and one can actually see a few hooves, the mane, the horn, some pink, some invisibility. No one is quite sure what pose this invisible pink unicorn is in, but they know it's there. This is not the case for God. There are no pieces on the board of the God puzzle but people keep saying God exists. This is a blatant logical fallacy. Faith is just an excuse to be ignorant, and I do not buy it. I believe people should have to logically answer for their beliefs, and if someone believes in a supernatural being I accept that there is something faulty in that person's logic. This is the reason I am an atheist, or what I call a weak atheist. I will not believe in God until there are enough puzzle pieces on the board. This is actually points to the problem I have with agnostics. Agnostics argues they are not sure whether God exists or not so they will not choose a side. The problem with this is that no one needs to prove that God does not exist. This is the essence of skepticism. The skeptic is not required to prove that something is untrue, it is the believer who is required the prove that something is true. Agnosticism removes all responsibility from the believer. As I said before believers have to answer for what they believe in. However, there is another element of my atheism. Even if someone proves to me God does exist does not necessarily mean I will follow him. If God does exist I assume he is like the God religious texts like the Bible, Torah, and Qur'an, meaning if God does exist I assume he is a bastard. Read the Bible sometimes God is not a good being. He does not want Adam and Eve to eat from the tree of knowledge, he kills everyone by drowning them when they do not please him, he tortures an innocent man to see if he has strong faith in Him so He can win a bet with the devil, and He allows His innocent son to die as collective payment for all man's sins. What a complete asshole. Furthermore, He claims He provides man with free will and throughout the Bible He keeps interrupting man's life. The best example I can think of is when he rapes Mary. How much more intrusive on someone's free will can someone get. God is a tyrannical bastard, and if He existed I would do everything within my power to destroy him. Actually, everything I just spoke about summarizes another problem I have with God and believers in God. The being is contradictory. He is completely amoral. He sets up these standards, such as thou shalt not kill, and He kills people all the time. The being is incomprehensible and contradictory. It completely stuns me as to how people could believe in this. When someone says he believes in God he is saying I follow the orders of an incomprehensible, contradictory, imaginary being. Holy shit I say. Run away as fast as you can this person could do anything. This person is just as dangerous as a moral relativist. He believes in an imaginary being. It cannot be seen, there is no proof of its existence. It is incomprehensible on two levels. First, it is consciousness without reason, and it is energy without matter. That cannot exist. Secondly, it is incomprehensible because no one knows what the hell it's going to do. Incomprehensible also serves as an excuse for God. Believers say this all the time, "Oh, He is far too complex to understand." That means people should accept whatever he does without question. Such as initiating force against innocent people.
All these reasons are exactly why I believe Church and state should be completely separated. The state is already messed up beyond all recognition. The state is already completely illogical. Adding religion to the equation just adds another layer of irrationality, but even worse it adds an accepted excuse for being irrational. I do not accept this excuse. "Because God said so," is never a free pass in my book, but plenty of people think it is. Another reason I believe Church and state should be separated is because religion is against the search for truth. Religion is a pseudo-philosophy. It comes along and tells people this is what to believe and people say, "Oh, okay," and then they stop searching for the truth. Stefan Molyneux talked about this on Freedomain Radio podcast 1001. He argues religion provides non-answers that stop people from searching for the real answers. The metaphor he makes is that if someone is driving a car and thinks he is home, then he stops driving. Religion is shouting, "You are home! You are home!" when the driving is miles away from home, but the driving stops anyway and just says, "Well I guess I live out here in the woods." To have anyone especially the state operate on these non-answers is completely ridiculous, but people do it all the time. Knowing all this it appears fairly obvious that Church and state should not be mixed, but in my Political Theory class my professor discussed John Locke's Letter Concerning Toleration. Apparently, Locke wanted a separation of Church and state, but he wanted the Church to still exist. As he saw it the Church provided some good civic purpose such as good morals and it naturally divided the people so they would not all give into to government. Firstly, religious morality, altruism, is horrible. It is completely wrong, and it significantly impacts people and man as a whole in a negative way. However, that will be discussed another time. In regards to splitting people up naturally I have a better idea. Instead of a whole bunch of irrational groups with a variety of non-answers providing a check against the government how about the people actually search for the real truth. How about people act logically; therefore, there would be a virtuous check not a moronic amoral check on the government. Of course, Locke also takes a crack at atheists saying all religions should be tolerated except atheists. I somewhat have to side with Locke on this one, but only partially. When Locke wrote this the reason atheists were a cause for fear was because they were amoral. Other religions at least provided some, yet severely warped, objective morality. Today, moral relativists are still to fear, but rational atheists are actually the best people. Atheists accept there is not enough proof for God, and this is already a step in the right direction to requiring a logical argument for all beliefs and actions. Of course, many atheists do not make it all the way. Some atheists just want to act amorally and they should be feared, but there is still a significant number that have taken the next step to Objectivism. In response to Locke's attack on atheists my professor brought up that all atheists regimes that existed were communist regimes; therefore, he argued that atheism is probably still a bad idea. The problem is these atheists are plagued by moral altruism. They were atheistic and collective, so without a God they adopt the community, the greater good, as the highest priority. In turn one gets a large, aggressive, and ultimately unsuccessful government. If atheists are logical they will be individualistic; therefore, without God their self takes the highest priority. In order to preserve one's self a small, weak, possibly successful state takes form. In this case a state would not be at all necessary. Of course, these arguments receive no credit in class because, "My God, it is John Locke. John Locke is infallible." To this I say read his Second Treatise on Government, he provides a cloaked defense of slavery. The problem with proclaiming someone is infallible, is that they never have to answer for their beliefs and actions.