Why I am not a Satanist.

I'm having a bad day.

I've come across almost nothing intelligent in the last 24 hours, and much that is infuriatingly stupid.

I was first infuriated last night, when I was reminded of this wonderful man, James Randi. Randi has been offering a substantial cash prize since 1964 to anyone who can experimentally prove paranormal abilities. For many years now, the prize has been $1million U.S., and still no-one has passed even the preliminary tests. Here is a log of correspondence between Randi's institute and the most recent applicants. The key point to note is that they are all completely insane. They cannot produce coherent sentences, let alone a conclusive experimental proof. Obviously, the sane, intelligent "psychics" are sane, intelligent con-men and -women, who stay well away from this prize. The only people it attracts are those who actually believe in their own abilities, who are all insane. Surely the mere existence of this annually unclaimed prize should prove to any reasonable person that there are no people with genuine paranormal abilities?

My second gripe is with academia. I came across a well-written journal article yesterday. I've lost the link, and besides, it was some obscure piece of sociology about the "Ur-myth of revolution." The content may well have been drivel, but man, it had style! Every word was faultlessly chosen and impeccably placed. It was deliciously well-written. Which alerted me to fact that, out of every twenty-five journal articles I read, only one of them is likely to be even fairly well-written. I've come to accept that in most articles I'll have to read many of the sentences over twice or thrice before I get their meaning, and that there will be mistakes in the spelling or grammar. Science student friends assure me it's even worse outside of the Arts. Why? The people who write these things are the people we're paying to be well-educated. They're the appointed thinkers of our society. Why should we accept that the average newspaper article 100 years ago was better written than a modern doctoral thesis?

Maybe the declining standard of academic writing has something to do with the declining standard of students? I picked up the latest copy of my uni's student magazine today, and I found:
3 pages of "best procrastination websites" (myspace, youtube, stuffonmycat....)
2 pages of spoilers for American TV shows
2 pages about how funny goats are
5 pages of CD reviews
2 pages of "campus fashions"
and 3 pages of ads.
And this in a 32 page magazine. Thank god I didn't pay my union fees, if this is what they're being spent on.

Oddly enough, one of the least benightedly unintelligent (to quote Marvin the Paranoid Android) things I've encountered is the Satanic Bible. I like it. It's full of good solid humanism, and a sensible rejection of Christian self-hatred. What I don't like is the religious aspect. Posing himself the question "why call it Satanism? Why not just Humanism?" Anton LaVey responds that humanism is not a religion. While we might have intellectually outgrown Christianity, he says we still emotionally need the ritual and dogma of religion.

I say the last thing we need is comforting fictions. If we're going to make any progress, we need to be serious and ruthless with our faculty of reason. So much time and effort are being wasted by accepting low standards and continuing to debate what should be long-dead issues. I wrote a letter last month objecting that one of my uni courses "lacked intellectual rigour." Recently, it seems it might just be that most of the things we do lack intellectual rigour.