Bass Ackwards

Three of us decided to head out to a small concert at a local venue. Being the tech-savvy guy I am, I looked up the ticket prices at the venue's website: $17.50 a piece. Perfectly reasonable. I should have known better when the "Buy Tickets" link redirected to Ticketmaster.

In addition to $17.50 a ticket, Ticketmaster tacks on an additional $5.00 per ticket "convenience fee" - though only on the final checkout screen. In addition, they want to charge $2.50 for me to print out my own tickets. Add that up and you get $17.50. That's right: at Ticketmaster, you can get three tickets for the price of four!

I understand that Ticketmaster needs to make money. I have no problem with a tech company providing technical services and charging for them. Hell, that's how I make a living. I even understand the technical challenges with managing a "gold rush" sale - an event where lots of people try to buy something at once, like, say, when a big blockbuster concert goes on sale.

It's still inexcusable.

What drives me nuts is that Ticketmaster manages to charge so much more over the Internet than a brick and mortar venue. You see, Amazon made a killing by leveraging the inherent efficiencies of the Web to sell things cheaper. There's no salespeople to hire, no rent to pay, no shrink (retail for theft). In fact, there was a huge outcry when it hit the scene - Amazon could undercut everybody by intelligently leveraging technology.

So...why does it take Ticketmaster 33% more to sell a ticket? I know my technology and I know people who work with "gold rush" scenarios as bad or worse than Ticketmaster - technology costs are no excuse.

And seriously: does it really cost more to have me print my ticket than for them to print it and distribute it to the venue?

Make no mistake - this is about wringing every last cent from customers.

I was about to hit publish on this post when Tera arrived. She'd taken the time yesterday to drive all the way to the venue to pick up tickets in person in order to avoid the Ticketmaster fees. I'm now watching her frown.

In person, it seems, the "convenience fee" is merely $4.50.

That Was Awesome

Watched Star Trek last night. 'Nuf said.

The Power to Define...

I've been talking around atheism for a while and have had several people ask me exactly what I believe. Even though this should probably have been Monday's post, let me take some time to explain my definition of an "atheist."

First, some bad definitions:

"Someone who does not believe in God."
"Someone who denies the existence of God."
"Someone who believes there is no God."

For starters, I feel that most atheists are not absolutists. Due to more scientific epistemologies, most atheists - at least, myself - don't believe that there are no gods, they believe that there are probably no gods.

I cannot prove that there isn't a flying plaid unicorn behind me, but I'm pretty sure there isn't. I will keep my mind open to evidence to the contrary, but I am certain enough to live my life as though my office is unicorn-free. I approach religion the same way.

The common threads that makes these definitions truly terrible, however, are semantic: pluralization and capitalization.

In leaving the word "God" as singular, we've placed the discussion into the context of monotheism. By then capitalizing "God," the definitions turn the word into a proper noun. This isn't just some god, it is THE god. Almost subliminally, we've jumped into the Judeo-Christian theology.

Semantics matter. Through definition, the discussion of atheism is suddenly a discussion on Judeo-Christian terms. This makes it easy for those religions followers to make it an us v. them discussion, making it much tougher to have a more open conversation.

When I discuss atheism, I prefer to define an atheist as, "one who lacks belief in gods." An atheist isn't someone attacking your religion, he or she is someone that does not believe in any religion.

This is the same kind of issue framing that can be seen when discussing an "estate tax" versus a "death tax," or when you hear a talk-radio host ironically attacking the "liberal media." If we are to have an open and honest conversation about atheism, we need to start with our own definition.

Good Social Sinners?

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...

- U.S. Constitution, First Ammendment

I've always loved that the first things our founders decided to put in the Bill of Rights are the separation of church and state and religious freedom.

I've always hated how they worded it.

You see, written into the text of that amendment is an inherent contradiction. In order to protect religious freedom, Congress does, indeed, need to craft laws targeted towards particular religious establishments.

Let's consider that part of a religion mandates that religious organizations do something illegal. It's a big religion, let's say, 70-80% of the public, so Congress doesn't want to step on toes. In the name of freedom of religion, it exempts religious organizations from that law.

Nonsense? Churches are exempt from anti-discrimination laws, specifically because, well, most religions are fairly discriminatory. For instance, women cannot be priests (nor can, say, Jews, for that matter). If Christian churches (amongst others) had to obey the same laws on discrimination as the rest of the nation, plenty of people would be up in arms.

(Aside: I have to confess that I'd find it bizarrely fun to apply to a job opening for a priest as an atheist, then threaten to sue the church for discrimination when I got turned down.)

Most would say that this is no problem - all religious institutions are treated the same, regardless of religion, so it's not a law about Christianity. So why is this "respecting an establishment of religion?" Because while it applies to all religions equally, it was crafted specifically for one of them. There is no blanket exception from all laws, only those laws that are specifically inconvenient, yet somehow still socially acceptable.

And for good reason. Imagine if there were just such a blanket legal exemption and some silly religion had a commandment to stone sinners or kill infidels or some such.

So we can't give religious groups a blanket pass - that could prove tremendously destructive to our social contract. On the other hand, don't treat religious institutions as special cases and we will wind up inadvertently criminalizing tradition. Damned if we do, damned if we don't.

Instead, we've crafted laws to allow specific religions that we find acceptable to break laws in ways we find acceptable, on a case by case basis. The law might not mention specific "establishments of religion," but those exemptions were implicitly created for certain religions.

So what's the answer? Break the establishment clause or risk breaking the free exercise clause?

For what it's worth, I have no interest in deciding how the Catholic church is run (or in working for it). I also don't care about the words "In God We Trust" on dollar bills or the contents of the Pledge of Allegiance.

But I also have no illusions: we have decided that religion is so special that churches can do things that we find deplorable in any other context.

Why The Bible Has No Moral Authority

Politicians and world leaders will often say something along the lines of, "Sure, I accept a separation of church and state, but we can still look to the world's religions for moral guidance on tough issues." I feel the following (badly formatted) table debunks this position soundly.

	My Reaction	Bible's Reaction
Man Mows Lawn on Sunday	Probably needs a beer	Stone him to death
Man sells daughter into slavery	Beat the living %&#! out of him	Okie dokie

Whipped

In a recent discussion over the future of the Republican party, House Minority Whip Eric Cantor defined his party's beliefs thusly:

"the essence of being a Republican is a belief in free markets, a belief in individual responsibility, faith in the individual, faith in God."

Well, for starters, I'm an atheist (just in case you haven't figured that out yet). You just told me not to vote for you.

But Cantor didn't just single out me and my (growing) ilk. Cantor declared, "faith in God." Not any general religiousness, not some deep-seated profound American spirituality. He didn't say "gods" or even "god or gods," there's no reference to spirituality or upstanding moral virtue. Make no mistake, "faith in God" means, "Christianity."

I'm not quite sure how this is supposed to mesh with Cantor's other statement: "We should be an inclusive party."

One would expect a national party to be interested in governing the entire country, but the GOP...eh, not so much. Depending on the survey (I find The Pew Forum very usable), broadly defined Christianity makes up around 70-80% of Americans. What about the rest of us?

Take the attitude that you can ignore and marginalize 20-30% of your countrymen and Democracy will come back to bite you. Take a read over the constitution, look back over history: Democracy is designed to protect the minority from the majority.

Also: you lost.

Slippin' Away

Kurt's been having a lively discussion about same-sex marriage, which, as usual, gets me thinking.

Inevitably, the good ol' "slippery slope" argument comes up when discussing the topic, and someone throws out, "but if allow same-sex marriage, then polygamy and interspecies marriage and all kind of nasty things will happen!" I don't want to rehash why that's a ridiculous argument - Kurt's already done that nicely. My concern is another slippery slope:

What if we allow religious doctrine to dictate legal definitions?

We might wind up with all manner of ridiculous things. We might decide that the criteria for being a safe and legal driver simply excludes women. We might decide that it is perfectly fine to execute minors, despite a global consensus to the contrary. And hey - there's no problem with religion in school. They're just trying to help the community, right?

As for that all-holy institution? We might decide that the definition of a perfectly acceptable marriage is one between an unwilling eight year-old girl and a fifty year-old man that paid the girl's father $13,000.

Think this is ridiculous? I can find biblical passages that would support each and every one of these.