A (Hopefully) Thoughtful Response to Angry Atheists

So I recently was perusing facebook, cause it’s summer and I don’t really have anything to do, and while I was on facebook I saw a post that made me an odd mixture of angry, sad, and aroused (Not sexually! My gosh, in like an ‘I want to do something about that’ kind of way - you people and your sexual deviancies.) Anyway the post was one of those really long essay posts entitled Why Atheists are Angry. Rather than directly quoting it or screen capping it, I’ll just summarize in order to save space. The essay-post lists several really tragic occurrences, such as the pregnancy of a young girl due to her father’s sexual abuse (and the church’s subsequent excommunication of her due to her abortion of the child, even though she would have likely died had she gone through with the birth), the Catholic Church’s money laundering, the criminalization of atheism in foreign countries, the one that makes me the saddest: the persecution of a girl trying to separate church and state by a group of children and adults who call themselves Christians, as well as many others.

The reason I had such a strong emotional reaction to this particular post wasn’t because it demonized Christians, because far too often those who call themselves followers of Christ have earned their own demonization. No I was so profoundly affected by this tirade because it missed the major problem consistent throughout these issues: the fault of man. All of the problems listed in the essay-post are absolutely tragic. And they make me angry too. However, this is not an issue inherent in the religion itself, just like how terrorism is not a problem inherent in Islam and immorality is not a problem inherent in atheists and agnostics. The problem here stems from a human tendency to value rules and preconceived definitions as a constant more than we do the situation or the person rules are meant to protect. This is a tendency known as legalism. It is why certain laws persist even though they’re silly and it is why often times conservative Christians are cold and careless. It is horrible and it assumes that everyone can live a perfect life, even though no evidence has ever existed that suggests humans can live mistakeless lives. I do not defend what these people do and in fact condemn them just as much as the person who posted the essay-post.

However, to blame such problems on religion excuses them as results of religion exclusively and not on human fault. These problems stem from a human failure to be consistently compassionate to those who need it. And the only way to improve such a failure is to make the decision yourself to stop. To stand up for what is right and work towards a better world. To suggest that horrible travesties such as these, which are admittedly performed in the name of religion, are caused by religion supposes two things detrimental to the improvement of our world. The first supposition is that without religion these things would not happen. This shows a fundamental lack of knowledge as to the horrible things that have been done in the name of things completely separate from religion, such as greed (which though often experienced by religious people is not a requirement for religion, see Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, etc). If it were not for our human penchant for greed we wouldn’t even be in the war in which we are currently participating. The second supposition is that all religious people perform these atrocities or ignore them happening. There have been a number of religious people have done very little other than improve this world, Mahatma Gandhi and Mother Theresa to name just a couple. Many effective charities, such as Jewish World Watch and Islamic Relief, were founded by religious people or operate based on religious beliefs.

In conclusion my point with this post isn’t to defend religious people over nonreligious people. But just to warn that blaming religion for many of the atrocities committed across the world is missing the problem. The problem isn’t in religion. It’s in us. And the only way it can be stopped is if those of us who see these atrocities and get angry actual do something about it. Improving our world isn’t dependent on abolishing belief systems that have both guided people towards evil acts and towards good acts, but in we as humans fighting these atrocities and actual focusing on something greater than ourselves. Think about it. 

Do you agree? Disagree? Have questions? Tell me or ask them in the comments!

(Oh yeah and by the far less solemn way, I wrote a review of The Five Year Engagement for SidewalkOnline Magazine right here)

Why You Shouldn't Freak Out About the Frame Rate for The Hobbit

So odds are if you’ve been on the internet at all today then you’ve heard that at CinemaCon, which is a convention put on by cinema owners, Peter Jackson recently revealed ten minutes of footage from The Hobbit, which he presented at 48 frames per second (The Hobbit will be the first Hollywood movie released in 48 fps). And if you’ve seen any of these posts about this footage, you’ve probably also read an article saying how everyone thinks the footage looks awful, like a soap opera or live broadcast. So before I get to why you really don’t need to freak out about this, I’m gonna go into a little detail on WHY Peter Jackson has committed this apparently atrocious sin and what it actual means as well as what the haters are hating on. 

Other than these guys:

History! For Fun!

So real quick for those of you who don’t know what 48 fps means, fps stands for frames per second and is the amount of images that flash on the screen each second so as to trick your eye into thinking it’s seeing one continuous image. The human eye blurs together images at about 16 fps and movies are traditionally shot and shown at 24 fps. So 48 fps second then is twice as much information for your brain to process while watching a film. Peter Jackson asserts that this increase in information results in a far more detailed experience in its higher quality footage and less strenuous 3D viewing experience, which many of us would be thankful for. However that’s not the reaction people seem to have had.

People Don't Like Revolution!

People are freaking out. Here, here, and all these here. No journalists seem to be happy with the footage they saw. People have been freaking out about this so much you’d think Peter Jackson added an aquatic elf that was a really bad parody of black stereotypes. Honestly based on some of these articles I’m surprised there wasn’t a sudden influx of journalists thrown in prison on charges of assaulting Peter Jackson by flinging their own feces. The basic agreement seems to be that it looked weird. A common argument also is that the quality of the picture is so high that things like sets and CGI (which, if it’s anything like The Lord of the Rings, are two things really heavily used in The Hobbit) are really obvious and look out of place.

Hold On to Your Feces!

I know there's a joke here about Andy Serkis
as a monkey flinging poo but I can't find it

Now I haven’t seen the footage, so I may be wrong about what I’m about to say and if so I’ll be the first to throw my poo in reaction to the destruction of my beloved Lord of the Rings series, but I honestly think people are overreacting and we really don’t have anything to worry about. Here are a few reasons why. One, before the footage, Peter Jackson said that it isn’t finished yet. It is partially completed footage. I’m gonna say that a third time just to make it clear; he’s not done editing the footage. That means that they could still have stuff to do like color correction, lighting correction, CG imaging and rendering, all of which would make the footage a whole lot more immersive and complete looking. Two, as some of the articles mention, people complained primarily about the little snippet scenes that they didn’t get to see extended footage of.The long clip featuring Gollum (Andy Serkis) and Bilbo (Martin Freeman [who I am really excited for in this role by the way]) having a riddle competition was fine and not as off-putting as the other footage was, which suggests that perhaps once our eyes have adjusted to the new frame rate it might not be as big a deal, especially considering we’ve only been experiencing 24 fps for the entire history of cinema. 

This doesn't even need a punchline.

Or maybe more complete footage such as this scene will look better and the only problem with the other footage was that it was incomplete. So in conclusion, let’s hold off judgment until a 48 fps trailer is released with some completed footage, keep our feces in toilets for now, and just not freak out. Again, I haven’t seen the footage yet but really, let Peter finish the film before you freak out.

P.S. Sorry this isn't a review of Starkid's Holy Musical B@tman! But I felt this article needed to be posted sooner. I'll post the review in the next week. As an apology please accept this random and hilarious picture I found while googling 'Andy Serkis Poo':