Chubby Nickel Audio Vlog

The burden of proof is essentially the responsibility of the party that claims something to be true to provide the evidence that led to that conclusion. It is also often said that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I think we can give a quick judgment as to whether the evidence satisfies the requirement by just evaluating how much the claim is useful to us.

On the low value end the burden and evidence requirements are almost unnecessary. If some one comes up to you and tells you that they had a tuna sandwich for lunch, you wouldn’t require evidence of any kind. Why not? Because it’s not important or useful. Even if the person were lying, it doesn’t affect you at all. Maybe a tiny bit if just the mention of the sandwich gives you a little craving for one. The point is: if the claim has little to no use to you, you require little to no evidence.

If someone comes up to you and says I don’t believe in unicorns, it doesn’t matter at all to you because whether the person believes in a mythological creature or not doesn’t affect your life. It affects it even less of the person doesn’t believe. It requires no evidence at all to say that you don’t hold a claim. The thing is that there are those that will try to claim that the lack of belief in a certain god (the one they irrationally believe in), causes harm and therefore should be fixed. The claim that no belief in something causes harm is a positive claim that requires evidence, while just saying that you don’t believe somethings requires no evidence.

Of course in the end, I have no problems and don’t demand any evidence of those that keep their beliefs to themselves. If I go around telling people they should believe in any god, you’d be damned sure that I’m going to be bringing in evidence and logic to the conversation, just as I demand of those that go around telling me that I need to believe in a god.

I have been having discussion about how we as a free society should handle the thinly veiled threats and violence coming from Muslim extremists. I’ve heard people say we should respond with violence, that we should start an effort to remove them from the free world and in extreme nutters, to remove them from the world. Well fuck those intolerant assholes. Not just the intolerant Muslims, but the anti-Muslims as well.

The Muslim extremists want violence, they want threats, it’s the best way for them to recruit and rally members. The extremists are telling their followers that the outside world wants to destroy them, the very best way to ensure that people will keep listening to the idiot, fear mongers is to show them violence. Think of it from your perspective, would you follow someone saying “they’re making fun of us, let’s go kill them” or “they’re killing us, let’s defend ourselves?”

I will not stand by and just let these religious Muslim idiots silence free speech with fear, but I’m a long way from going out and attacking someone because they’re afraid I’m going to attack them. Take away the extremists tool of fear and their followers will eventually stop listening to them. But if you’re go and do exactly what these extremists say we will do… well then they will continue to listen to the the extremist fucks.

The best way to handle the threats of violence and acts of violence is stand tall and respond with non-violent, non-threatening, fearless resolve. Don’t stop practicing your free speech by never criticizing their beliefs, but don’t go around threatening and attacking them.

No one’s beliefs should be protected from criticism and/or satire. If some comedian starts telling people how ridiculous my “Belief” in gravity is, I have no problem with that. They can make fun of gravity till bovine meander back to their place of living and I won’t care a lick. Why then is it not ok to make fun of or criticize ones belief in god?

Maybe that’s not in the same line of reasoning, as drawing and mocking Mohamed is more of a rule than just the belief in something. So if someone comes up and tells me how silly it is to practice free speech or just to criticize it, I don’t care. I won’t force others to practice free speech, they can if they want to. Why then is it ok to limit my ability to make fun of something I see as an irrational belief? I make fun of people that think that the world is flat (yes, some of them are still around). I make fun of people that think that a space ship is hiding behind a comet and that they must kill themselves in order to hitch a ride (because they forgot their towels?).

Now an example switched to my point of view: When I was very young I had the belief that atom bombs were called mushroom bombs because they used mushrooms and that the use of the mushrooms is what caused the shape of the explosion. So when some jerk started making fun of me, it deeply offended and hurt me. But after that I realized that if any idea I had could not stand up to scrutiny and satire, then I had no right in believing it in the first place.

If someone gets offended by anything I say, draw or type then they have that right, what they don’t have a right to do is to prevent me from saying, drawing or typing it by means of intimidation, making it a law or killing me. The point is, no idea should beyond the limits of satire and criticism. There is no sacred cow in the realm of free speech.

Chubby Nickel Audio Vlog

Recorded: 2010-04-30

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