Guiding Principles and a Threat of Violence

Hear me O Throng, for the time is nigh.

Whilst we breathlessly anticipate the arrival of the first post on the first book of this project, let's engage in some masturbatorial filler necessary and substantial prefatory remarks. Here I shall provide the following: a rough sketch of how I plan to proceed vis a vis blogging my way through the books on the Ultimate Truth-Seeker Challenge, a few of the intellectual guiding principles I'll be using throughout this process, and finally, a threat of violence which must be heeded at all cost.

Rough Sketch. I plan to...umm...not have a plan in blogging through these books. I'mma be like water, like Bruce Lee, like Ali, like Anderson Silva. I'll let the blog posts write themselves, guided by the light touch of my ever-accurate, laser-like intuitions, which are to be trusted above all else. Obviously, I'm going to have more to say about some books than others, so I'll try to walk the fine line between boring the Throng to death with 30 posts on a particular book and giving a book such short shrift that I risk missing the point and/or misrepresenting its arguments.

Guiding Principles. I have three intellectual guiding principles. While veering close to the sin of bathos, here they are with some brief annotation regarding what they mean to me.

"The unexamined life is not worth living." - Socrates
The essence of this quote is at the heart of what I'm doing with this blog. I operated by this principle long before I read it in Plato's Apology. I felt it long before I understood it. To paraphrase Savage Garden, "I knew I loved this quote before I met it." And until recently, I thought I continued to live by it. However, I'm afraid I've fallen away from the aim of this principle. And so, with this blog, I hope to get back on track, re-focus, and truly examine my beliefs about things in a much more rigorous way than I ever have before. Not to sound grandiose, but I will be the embodiment of Socrates' dream fulfillified.

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." - Carl Sagan
People make all kinds of claims every day. Some are a little more bizarre than others. This skeptical maxim admonishes us to seek evidence for bizarre or extraordinary claims. We all have a sort of common sense about the world that is built up from our own experiences and (sometimes) it is (or at least, should be) based on what science and reason tell us about life, the universe, and everything. For the commonplace, trivial, quotidian claims that people make, we often already have our own background knowledge to use in support of them. These are rather ordinary claims for which ordinary evidence is sufficient. (Such claims may still be wrong or made up out of whole cloth, but the point is that such claims are not extraordinary; thus they don't need extraordinary evidence to support them.) However, claims about the supernatural, claims that purport to overturn science and claims made by politicians and used-car salesmen, are indeed extraordinary. Therefore, we need incredibly strong evidence to support them. Appeals to faith, intuition, and eye-witness testimony will not work here. Attempts to dodge the need for evidence will not be tolerated. Without reliance on evidence, we are rudderless ships on the Sea of Metaphor, subject to the waves of confusion and undercurrents of charlatanry, to be taken in by the pirate hucksters who steal our souls and bury our treasures. (Interestingly, scientists make extraordinary claims all the time. However, unlike cranks, real scientists support their extraordinary claims with extraordinary evidence.)

"We should be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brain falls out." - Richard Dawkins
I hold open-mindedness to be among the highest intellectual virtues. However, I don't think open-mindedness is synonymous with gullibility or credulity. Nor do I think skepticism is the opposite of open-mindedness. In fact, I see skepticism and open-mindedness as symbiotic with one another. They aid each other at every turn. We don't want to be narrow-minded or closed off to new ideas, because we might miss out on some new insight that shakes us from our torporific slumber. But we don't want to be so fluffy-headed as to accept every weird idea that comes down the pike, because we could end up in some dangerous freaky cult. We should be open to new ideas, but subject them to a rigorous process of skeptical evaluation in order to assess their accuracy, usefulness, and value. And we can be happy to incorporate the ideas that pass this test, while unapologetically discarding those that fail.

Apply these principles throughout this process to the best of my abilities, I shall.

Threat of Violence. As I've said before, there will probably never be a proper "end" to this process. However, for the sake of book deals and drug-riddled orgies selflessly documenting this journey, I will make a tentative conclusion once I complete the Ultimate Truth-Seeker Challenge. This will inevitably piss off multitudinous hordes of people. If I become a theist, many atheists will say that I went soft or was never a true atheist in the first place or that I'm just stupid for being convinced by shite arguments, etc. If I remain an atheist, many theists will accuse me of having my mind made up all along or of never genuinely giving their arguments a fair shake or they'll say I'm stupid for being convinced by shite arguments, etc. Basically, I prophecy that in the end, my motivations will be challenged rather than the substance of the arguments leading me to that eventual conclusion, whatever it may be.

Know this, Throng: I've changed my mind on numerous occasions throughout my life. This has occurred a few times on some pretty huge issues, and I change my mind all the time on smaller (though still important) matters. My point is that I'm capable of overcoming my own biases and predispositions. While I'm a dirty, filthy, fallen, fallible, irrational human being, my hearts and motivations are in the right place. I intend to do the best I can with what the good lord gave me. I may come to the wrong conclusion. I may argue poorly along the way. In these areas, I welcome challenges and criticism. (Seriously, come at me, bro. Jesus didn't tap!)

And now, the threat of violence: If anyone accuses me of any of the above (or anything similar), I will be forced to post fully nude photographs of myself on this blog. Trust me; you do not want to see this! If pictures of my naked junk flapping in the breeze appear on this blog, then the terrorists have won! For the love of all that is holy, and for the good of humanity, we cannot let this happen! Think of the children! Do not challenge my motives...Or else! You've been warned.

This will be the last of the preliminary posts. Prepare yourselves. Now we ride into hell.

Dork-Thug Till I Die, Bitches!
--Reverend Pudgemuffin