What is Normal?

How do we define what is "normal?" I assume that normal is defined by a scientific consensus, but this is clearly not the case as we can see by the current state of the economy, ecology, social and political structures.

The term "normal" is currently based on belief systems contaminated with faith, because faith is easy. "Normal" is defined by mob rule instead of scientific consensus.

The will of the masses be damned if we are going to save our planet. We are going to base our decisions on pure scientific research in spite of the marketplace which tunes itself to insatiable and destructive appetites which make up the majority of people.

After years of observing atheists attempt to plea, negotiate, bribe, debate, insult and criticize believers it has become clear that there is no reasoning with the faithful. A pattern of futility is emerging in the discourse between reason and faith. The evidence seems to point toward a subtle difference in neurological development which tends to further validate theories of Jean Piaget.

Normal is skewed because the wrong people are allowed to "be fruitful and multiply" without consideration for the availability of resources such as food, shelter and employment. The minority of people capable of reason are culpable because they are lured by profit into maintaining an economic structure conducive to indiscriminate overpopulation. Thus is born the cycle of poverty.

Exploration of Semiotics with Cognitive Development may provide key information necessary for examining the critical thinking skills of an individual prior to wasting your time in futile discourse, or lending support to an organization that perpetuates flawed thinking.

Eugenics has been vilified because it was attempted under flawed thinking. I'm not trying to start a master race of rational thinkers, I'm only suggesting that rational thinkers stop enabling those who are irrational and destructive.

Since atheism is a direct consequence of highly developed rational thought, it's a pretty good starting point to convey this important message of disengagement from support of the rest of society. I don't mean to suggest isolationism. We still need to get the word out to everyone about secular society, we just need to stop wasting our time debating with religious trolls whose only purpose is to distract us from engaging with potential atheist converts.

The importance of Semiotics

First, here's the Wikipedia entry for Semiotics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiotics

My power went out yesterday so I started reading Semiotics: The Basics by Daniel Chandler. This should be the very first book read by students of Communication. To get a taste of what's in store for you, visit http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/semiotic.html for Semiotics for Beginners by the same author.

The section I'm currently reading in the 'Basics' book describes anthropological language studies of primitive cultures and language development in children. The important part of this regarding atheism is the development of distinctions between things and the words that represent them. I found this quote on page 284 of my ebook:

Thus for the child, words do not seem at all arbitrary. Similarly Sylvia Scribner and Michael Cole found that unschooled Vai people in Liberia felt that the names of sun and moon could not be changed, one of them expressing the view that these were God-given names (Scribner and Cole 1981, 141)
The anthropologist Lucien Levy-Bruhl claimed that people in primitive cultures had difficulty in distinguishing between names and the things to which they referred, regarding such signifiers as an intrinsic part of their signifieds (Olson 1994, 28). The fear of 'graven images' within the Judeo-Christian tradition and also magical practices such as Voodoo are clearly related to such phenomenon.

The author goes on to describe "...in the Middle Ages words and images were still seen as having a natural connection to things (which had 'true names' given by Adam at the creation). Words were seen as the names of things rather than as representations."

Semiotics: The Basics by Daniel Chandler describes ways in which we perceive and identify the world around us. There are numerous studies cited throughout that allude to mental development of perception that may be inhibited in some people, which I suspect may explain why some people refuse to dispense with their religion.

I'm beginning to more readily catch myself making false assumptions about things or when I take things for granted. As a writer, this book helps me understand the more fine details of abstraction in writing that allows me to defer more accurately, details of a story to the imagination of the reader and I'm only a third of the way through the book.