That argument again?

New Scientist, which seems to run hot and cold out of the sensible science tap, is chilling our tootsies off with an icy-cold flow: an unattributed editorial titled The Genesis problem. In it, they make one of the oldest, lamest arguments that attempt to support creation myths over the Big Bang theory:

The big bang is now part of the furniture of modern cosmology, but Hoyle’s unease has not gone away. Many physicists have been fighting a rearguard action against it for decades, largely because of its theological overtones. If you have an instant of creation, don’t you need a creator?

Cosmologists, the editorial goes on to say, thought they had a workaround.

Well, no... no workaround is needed. The argument is that my creation story (the big bang) involves an entity that itself needed to be created, but your creation story works because it involves the creator misses the point that your creator is also an entity that itself needed to be created. You don’t get to make a set of rules for the one and ignore them for the other, and if one creation entity can exist without creation, then so can another.

No, what’s needed isn’t a workaround, but an explanation, an understanding. You, perhaps, have your understanding because someone made up an answer and you believe it: God has always been, and always will be. Cosmologists — at least the majority, who aren’t trying to fit cosmology into a theistic system — still have a piece that they don’t understand, because they’re not willing to make up an answer that doesn’t follow from the data. If they were, of course, their explanation could be very similar to the theistic one: the primeval atom always existed, and created the universe through the big bang.

We come into a clash of aspects of human understanding when we discuss any genesis explanation. People understand things to have beginnings and ends, and have a hard time coping with things without beginnings. And people like to have questions answered, definitively. When each answer uncovers more questions, we tend to be unsettled. That it seems easier to accept a God with no beginning than a primeval atom with no beginning is perhaps odd, but there it is. God can then be used to explain anything, wrapping things up nicely... for those who are willing to believe those explanations.

I’d rather accept that we don’t yet understand, than to make up facile answers that have no basis in reality. I even accept that we might never really understand it, might never have the real answers. We’ll keep looking at what’s actually there, and we’ll find what we’re able to find.

Separation of church and Texas?

In a wonderful display of why we need to get religious nuttiness away from the halls of gummint, Governor of Rick Perry of Texas ranted thus yesterday in an executive proclamation that’s just in time for Earth Day:

WHEREAS, throughout our history, both as a state and as individuals, Texans have been strengthened, assured and lifted up through prayer; it seems right and fitting that the people of Texas should join together in prayer to humbly seek an end to this devastating drought and these dangerous wildfires;

NOW, THEREFORE, I, RICK PERRY, Governor of Texas, under the authority vested in me by the Constitution and Statutes of the State of Texas, do hereby proclaim the three-day period from Friday, April 22, 2011, to Sunday, April 24, 2011, as Days of Prayer for Rain in the State of Texas. I urge Texans of all faiths and traditions to offer prayers on that day for the healing of our land, the rebuilding of our communities and the restoration of our normal way of life.

Texas has as a state ... been strengthened, assured and lifted up through prayer?

Indeed.

This proclamation seems as clear a violation of the Establishment Clause in the First Amendment as I’ve seen in a while.

One might say that it does no harm. One might say that he makes it clear that it’s not just Rick Perry’s prayer, not just Christian prayer... that Governor Perry explicitly calls on all faiths and traditions.

The problem is that he still shoves some sort of faith in prayer into the faces of many, many people who consider prayer to be so much bullshit. This is totally inappropriate — just as inappropriate as if he’d said we should pray to Jesus, we should beseech Allah, or we should ask for the intercession of the spirit of Elvis.

It’s fine if Mr Perry thinks putting his hands together and muttering will do some good in relieving the drought. It’s fine if he wants to get his friends to join him in it. It’s even fine if he says so on statewide television when some talk-show host interviews him.

It’s not fine when it becomes an official proclamation. That’s crossing a line.

But here: I intend to draw an outline of Texas in the dirt in my garden today, and bury a ceremonial dried bluebonnet blossom in the approximate position of Austin therein. I will say Light-beam feelie! three times while holding my hand over the buried bluebonnet, and I am certain that within the month, it will have worked its magic and Texas will have had much-needed rain.

I know this to be the true answer, and far more effective than that prayer stuff. See if it isn’t!

Why is this night different?

Last night began the Jewish festival of Passover, one of several Jewish holidays (as was the recent Purim) whose stories can be summed up somewhat as, Someone tried to kill the Jews. The Jews survived. It’s time to eat. In this case, the someone involved the ancient Egyptians, or at least their Pharaoh and his advisors. Legend has it that the Jews were enslaved in Egypt, Moses led a revolt, with God’s assistance it succeeded, the Jews wandered in the desert for forty years, and wound up in Canaan. Somewhere along the way were a burning bush, plagues on the Egyptians, parting of the Red Sea, a pillar of fire, manna from heaven, and the handing down of the ten commandments. The story is told in the biblical book Exodus, in a 1956 movie with Charlton Heston and Yul Brynner, and every year at two seders — ceremonial dinners on the first and second evenings of Passover.

Tonight, for the second seder, I’ll be joining Murray Spiegel for a very different seder, indeed. That Times article is from 2002, but Murray’s been doing this for years, and continues to. Last year’s theme was the musical Oliver, with bits of the story set to tunes from the musical, clips of The Four Questions spoken in various languages, including Na’vi (from the movie Avatar), and a bizarre puzzle to solve to find the afikomen, the hidden piece of matzah that’s part of the ritual.

We don’t know what the theme will be — we never do, until we arrive — but we know there’ll be about 30 people there, and we’re told to expect a late night.

Why is this night different from all other nights?

On all other nights we eat either leavened bread or matzah; on this night, only matzah.

On all other nights we eat all kinds of herbs; on this night, only bitter herbs.

On all other night, we do not dip even once; on this night, we dip twice.

On all other nights, we eat either sitting up or reclining; on this night, we recline.

מה נשתנה הלילה הזה מכל הלילות
?

שבכל הלילות אנו אוכלין חמץ ומצה; הלילה הזה, כלו מצה

שבכל הלילות אנו אוכלין שאר ירקות; הלילה הזה, מרור

שבכל הלילות אין אנו מטבילין אפילו פעם אחת; הלילה הזה, שתי פעמים

שבכל הלילות אנו אוכלין בין יושבין ובין מסבין; הלילה הזה, כלנו מסבין

What to teach children

On Tuesday, a local radio talk show hosted by Brian Lehrer included a call-in segment about sleep-over parties for children. It seems that some parents don’t allow their children to host or to attend them. Who knew? The guest for the segment was a pediatrician called Perri Klass.

I wasn’t especially interested in the topic (and some of the commentors on the web page agree in ridiculing tones), and I’m not especially interested in talking about it here. But I happened to be in my car and I heard it... and what did interest me was the last caller, Max in Larchmont. Here’s my transcript starting at about 12:35 into the audio stream:

Max: I’m calling because I’m wondering if the doctor has heard about people having problems with religious and political differences. I have three kids, and when they sleep over at other people’s houses, especially if they’re religious... my wife and I, we teach our children that religion is a pernicious force in the world, and is a terrible thing, and sometimes the parents of other kids get upset if my kids tell them that while they’re doing their prayers or something.

Lehrer: Well, while they’re doing their prayers may not be very nice. But, all right, so how do you handle it... Max, how do you handle it?

Max: We just... I don’t know if the doctor agrees, I think children should be legally shielded from religion until they’re sixteen. I think it’s crazy to expose children to superstitious ideas like that; it makes them dumb. And I think a lot of the kids are swayed when my kids meet their kids and they stop going to Hebrew school and so forth, and I think that’s a good thing.

Lehrer: Thank you, Max. Doctor Klass, any response?

Klass: Well, I’ll just make a general response, which is that if you’re gonna let your children go over to other people’s houses, either for sleep-overs or during the day, you’re gonna have to teach ’em to be good guests. Leaving aside your politics and leaving aside your religious issues, if you’re going to go into somebody’s house and you’re going to accept their hospitality, part of growing up is learning to be a good and respectful guest. Now, that doesn’t mean that you have to agree with things that you absolutely don’t agree with, and it doesn’t mean you have to necessarily join in practices which aren’t yours, but you do have to learn how to be polite, or, in the great way of the world, you won’t be invited back.

Some of the last batch of comments talk about Max’s call (unfortunately, they’re not numbered, but start with MP from Brooklyn at 11:58, and read up from there). Some think it’s a prank call, and not real. Some support the attitude (Robin from NYC, YZ from Brooklyn). One, Samantha from Sunny Riverdale seems to think the kids should be shunned for their parents’ attitude. That certainly seems the good, Christian thing to do, eh?

I agree with Max: as I’ve said many times, I consider religious indoctrination to be tantamount to child abuse. Teaching children made-up nonsense as truth, whether it be...

• about Xenu the space dictator abducting his citizens, bringing them to Earth, and then killing them by blowing up volcanoes, or
• about Apollo driving his chariot across the sky, carrying the sun through the day, or
• about a talking snake convincing a primordial couple to sin by eating the wrong fruit, or
• about a virgin who had been separated from that original sin giving birth to God’s son, who was then tortured to death but rose from the dead to rule in heaven, or
• about Isildur defeating Sauron and severing his finger (and ring) in the Battle of Dagorlad,

...is ludicrous, and, yes, often makes them dumb. It certainly ill prepares them to think critically, when we demand that they accept preposterous stories without question, simply because it is written, it’s God’s word, and they must have faith. We spend far too much time either actively promoting belief in fantasy or passively allowing it to interfere with the education we need to be giving children — see, for example, this article.

All that said, though, I agree with Dr Klass: we don’t call people our friends, go to their houses, eat their food, sleep in their beds, and tell them, while we’re there, that their beliefs are stupid and ridiculous. Whatever we think, and however public we are about it otherwise, when we’re invited to people’s homes we make a choice: we decline the invitation if we’re unwilling to be civil, or we accept the invitation and stay clear of things that we know will upset them.

And, so, it’s a pity that Max and his wife have what I think is an admirable approach to teaching their children sense and reason... and yet have chosen not to teach them civility and the polite behaviour of a guest.

When do your wacky ideas get in the way of your job?

There’s been a lot of talk around blogland about the case of Martin Gaskell. Dr Gaskell is an astronomer, and was, in 2007, up for a position at University of Kentucky, where he would be director of the MacAdam Student Observatory. According to all reports, he was highly qualified, and would have been likely to get the job. They then, as we Internet technologists refer to it in very technical terms, Googled him, and found aspects of his religious beliefs that led them to hire someone else.

This, of course, is where the accounts begin to differ. Dr Gaskell sued the University of Kentucky on grounds of religious discrimination; the university said that it wasn’t his religion, in general, that was a problem, but his specific views on things like the age of the universe, things that have direct bearing on the job at hand, that informed their decision.

In November of 2010 (things don’t always move quickly in the court system), a federal judge ruled that the case could go forward, and a date was set for February. Last week — what has prompted the new interest in talking about it — they settled out of court, ending the legal proceedings. The University of Kentucky will pay Dr Gaskell $125,000, without making any admission of wrongdoing.

Paying to make the problem go away is common, but unfortunate: it leaves everything fuzzy. Dr Gaskell’s supporters will claim that they won, and that there was, indeed, improper discrimination against him. His detractors will say that he extorted money from the university. Neither is really true.

More broadly, though, this case isn’t just about Dr Gaskell, and settling with him leaves open the question of when a person’s beliefs — religious or otherwise — make it reasonable to rule that person out for certain jobs. And should religious beliefs have any more protection in that regard than beliefs rooted elsewhere?

Richard Dawkins, in a BoingBoing guest post, has given his opinion on the matter. I mostly agree with him, but I can’t say that unequivocally. Read his essay, either now or after you’re done here.

I’ll answer the second of my questions two paragraphs up before I discuss the first: No, I do not think the reason one believes what one does has any bearing on how we should treat that belief. If you believe, say, that people should be at peace with each other, and that war is always evil, it shouldn’t matter whether you’re a Quaker or you come by that from somewhere else. If you’re vegetarian, what’s the difference whether it’s because you’re Hindu or because you simply can’t bear to see animals die? If you believe that the Universe is about 6000 years old, whether you get that from the bible, from a science fiction story you once read, or from a private sense that came to you one evening, it’s all the same. We shouldn’t be any more critical of what you think because you learnt it in church... but neither should we be more tolerant of it for that reason, if it gets in the way of what we’re working with you for.

And that leads us to the other question: When is it acceptable to say that what you believe is inconsistent with the job we’re hiring you for? Can a vegetarian expect to get a job as the sole food critic for a small newspaper? There’s an obvious issue there, but, surely, a vegetarian Hindu couldn’t reasonably sue the paper and claim religious discrimination. You have to be able to do your job.

Of course, there’d be no reason to prevent a vegetarian from, say, being the director of a university astronomical observatory. It’s likely we’ll all agree on that point.

At issue here, though, is that certain beliefs can damage your credibility to the point that, while they might not stop you doing your job, they could easily make it impossible for people to take you seriously in it. Were I, for instance, to apply for a job as Internet technology advisor for a right-wing tea-party senator, I might very well be able to give sound technical advice while choking back my revulsion to the senator’s political agenda... but could the senator ever trust that I wasn’t trying to undermine her in some way, given what I’ve written in these pages? Of course not.

Where I have a little trouble fully agreeing with Professor Dawkins is about where we draw the line. Between beliefs that can live in the background without having any effect and those that clearly whack one’s job in the face, there’s a continuum, and we have to decide when there’s enough effect to matter.

To be sure, we often think of college professors as being a bit kooky. It’s clear to me that the University of Kentucky people made a reasonable decision in this case, and it bothers me that they had to agree to pay Dr Gaskell off. But other cases are bound to be less clear, and it may be fine to hire the professor with the nutty ideas sometimes... even if the students do have a laugh once in a while, he’ll still have enough credibility to teach them what needs to be taught.

Ideally, of course, I fully agree with Professor Dawkins: we want clear thinkers in our universities, and accepting people who support discredited or fringe ideas in areas not connected to their main expertise still pollutes the clear-thinking pond. We’d like to select, say, Holocaust denialists, moon-landing skeptics, homeopathists, and idiots who still think that President Obama was not really born in Hawaii, and make sure none of them are teaching at our colleges and universities. It’s a nice goal. In practice, though, we have that sort of situation all the time, and I’m not sure how rigorous I want to be in avoiding it. Should Stanford University have distanced themselves from William Shockley because of his ideas about eugenics? Perhaps, perhaps not.

What’s clear, though, is that we have to prevent every employment decision from being the basis of a religious discrimination suit. In this case, the judge who allowed it to go forward made the wrong choice. It only cost the university $125,000, but it’s set a precedent that makes me very queasy.

Good vs God

This morning, a friend pointed me to this article about a Catholic priest from Belgium who was being considered for the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize, when it came out that he had sexually abused a boy some 40 years ago.

Reading about that can lead one’s thoughts in various directions. Good people do bad things. Bad people do good things. Is this (this case in particular, and the whole Catholic-priests-raping-children issue in general) an example of the one or of the other? Or is it just that people aren’t black and white, and there’s good and bad in everyone?

What role does religion play in this? Maybe the teachings of the priest’s church had a role in moving him toward the good work he’d done, the stuff that put him on the short list for the Nobel prize. Then again, maybe he was inclined to do that sort of thing from the start, and that led him to the priesthood, with thoughts of service.

How do we judge causes and effects in situations like this?

And, ultimately, why does the Catholic church as an organization continue to try to hide these reports and downplay their importance, and why does it refuse to just open the whole thing up, admit and apologize for it, and seriously clean house? It’s clear that the scandal has harmed the church’s reputation and driven people away from it, and that attempts to cover it up aren’t working and are only exacerbating the ill effects.

Besides: trying to hide it is simply wrong, morally and ethically. I don’t need God to tell me that; I’ve talked before about people who wave their belief in God as a moral flag, yet do bad things every day, and we have a book about how people find morality outside of religion. If the Catholic church aims to give moral guidance to a billion people, it needs to be morally secure itself.

Of course, it’s all about power: those in power want to stay there, and being fully open about the sexual abuse would result in the downfall of many at and near the top of the hierarchy, likely including the odious Benedict XVI. The work has to come from below; those at the lower levels of the church hierarchy who do have the moral stability for it, and who are as outraged as I am about what has gone on and what continues to go on, have to be the ones to get the cleanup moving.

Can you be “pro-life” when there's no life there?

The Ridger, pointed out an item in the Washington Post magazine section, citing a particular section. The article is by a religion writer called Julia Duin, and it describes her bus ride from New York to D.C. for the Stewart/Colbert rally at the end of October. She talks with a number of folks on the bus, along the way.

But Ms Duin is a writer, not a reporter, and her story isn’t an attempt at unbiased reporting, but a piece that includes her opinions — sometimes strongly. Here’s the part that The Ridger noted, where Ms Duin is talking with her seatmate, Robert Woudenberg, a 46-year-old man from Rockland County, just across the river from me:

[...] But I decline to argue with Woudenberg about this, as the conversation soon shifts to his 21-month-old daughter, whom he dotes on. Before she was born, I learn, there was another pregnancy. Doctors told Woudenberg and his wife that the fetus had no heartbeat, and she was advised to abort.

Why couldn’t you have at least allowed your child to live out its short life in the womb? I ask.

I have strong feelings on this, not just because of my faith but because of a 2009 article I wrote about a Silver Spring organization called Isaiah’s Promise, which encourages women with problem pregnancies to bring their babies to term. The women I had interviewed told me that doing so was less traumatic than aborting the babies would have been.

Woudenberg responds with a line I often hear: that if an unborn child has some kind of abnormality, it’s best to abort him or her sooner and let the mother get on with her life. He argues that my position is a minority one; I say it’s the more compassionate one for the mother, for whom an abortion is an added trauma, and for her helpless child, for whom nine months in the womb will be the only life he or she knows.

I talked this over with a sonographer who does ultrasounds on pregnant women. She spends all day, every work day, looking at babies in utero, mostly with good news for the mothers, sometimes with sad. Here’s an approximation of her response to the above:

No, no, that doesn’t make sense at all. There’s no grey area here. Dead [she extends her left hand]. Not dead [she extends her right hand]. A fetus with no heartbeat is dead [she waves her left hand]. That’s it: it’s dead. There’s no life for it to live out, in the womb or anywhere else. It doesn’t know anything, it’s not enjoying being in there, it’s not growing (in fact, it will probably atrophy if it’s left inside), it’s not kicking or moving around. It’s not alive.

This woman is confusing a problem pregnancy, perhaps a congenital defect that will result in the baby’s death soon after birth... with a fetus that’s dead now. It’s not a problem pregnancy; there is no pregnancy any more. And removing it isn’t an abortion. Abortion is terminating a pregnancy; this has already terminated.

Indeed. It’s certainly a valid choice for a woman to make, if she wants to leave her dead fetus inside her for a while, until her body expels it. If she feels that will be less disturbing to her, less traumatic, than having a doctor help remove it, that’s fine. But there’s no sense in which she’d be doing it for her unborn child. Her unborn child is dead, and that’s a terrible thing for her to have to face. If softening it in some way helps her... good.

We don’t know how far along the pregnancy was — perhaps Mr Woudenberg didn’t say, or perhaps Ms Duin just prefers to leave that out to help make her point, just as she does by referring to the helpless child as he or she. The heartbeat should first have shown up at 6 weeks, so it could have been lost any time after that. The current standard for viability is 24 weeks. And, of course, full term is 40 weeks. If it died after 24 weeks, we’d consider it a stillbirth. But no matter what, it’s not a helpless child.

It’s dead.

Ms Duin is a religious-fanatic, nonsensical moron, looking to try to preserve some sense of life and sentience for an erstwhile being that has none of either to preserve. And insisting that it’s the right thing to do. And berating a man who probably still feels horrible about having lost his first child before it was born, expecting him to share her delusional fantasy of a happy baby soul floating contentedly inside its mother.

I continue to be puzzled that we accept such fantasy from otherwise thinking adults, that we actually encourage and praise such magical thinking, and that we publish garbage like this in reputable media.

Beer and penitence

I was sitting at a sidewalk table the other day, having a beer. At the next table were three women in their forties, speaking with southern accents. Why is it that southern accents seem so often to mean Christian? As I sipped, I overheard fragments, here and there, of their conversation, and every fragment had something to do with God, praying, or being Christian.

Every day I get up, and I ask God to forgive me for anything I did yesterday.

My first thought on hearing that was to wonder what value there would be — to God or to a real person — in such a series of generic apologies. Whatever I might have done, I’m sorry. No, that doesn’t cut it. Be specific. Acknowledge what you did, and apologize specifically for it. And then don’t do it again.

That ties into this one, of course:

If you’re Christian, even if you make a mistake, every day’s new.

If you’re Jewish or Muslim or Buddhist... or, of course, and especially, atheist... you’re screwed. You make a mistake, and that’s it. Christian, though, well, just get up every morning and tell God you’re sorry, and everything resets.

On the other hand, the Jews, who just went through this process the other week on Yom Kippur, batch it all up for once a year. Spend a day fasting and gathering in prayer, asking generic forgiveness for all the bad things that you’ve all, collectively done over the past year. But feel guilty from day to day; it’s good for the soul.

Later in the conversation, as they talked about their children, one said this:

I pray that I won’t pass down to them all of my dysfunction.

But she is, of course: she’s undoubtedly teaching them her silly superstitions, and showing them how to be dysfunctional and yet start over every day.

More on the Koran-burning moron

What I said here, Minstrel Hussein Boy says rather more colourfully over on Cogitamus. I love the third paragraph, particularly, and also the lovely bit of paralipsis in the second.

Maybe there’s something to using Bad Words on one’s blog after all.

Doves? Not so much.

More stuff related to the Islamic Cultural Center planned in lower Manhattan: the delightful Dove World Outreach Center, in Gainesville, Florida, is planning a Koran-burning day on 11 September, though they have been denied a permit for it (and no surprise on either point). It is, of course, the Christian thing to do.

Well, not specifically. Religion is, by its nature, divisive, separating us (those who believe a certain way) from them (those who don’t). Lots of things are divisive, of course, but when what’s dividing people is a belief in what’s divinely, cosmically right and true, and when one’s scripture dooms them to eternal damnation and suffering, things get a bit hairy.

That said, most of us, certainly in America and lots of other places, accept people as neighbours and friends even if they be them — even if they don’t believe in the same cosmic reality as we do. Most of us don’t wish them ill, most of us don’t carry signs, wear t-shirts, and shout in the streets against our neighbours. And most of us certainly don’t defile their cultural artifacts.

Of course, we’re just talking about books, and there’s no harm really done by burning them, apart from the general distaste we have for the burning of books (and perhaps the small amount of air pollution generated). There’s no difference, here, between their burning Korans, the Westboro idiots and their equally hateful God hates fags message as they picket soldiers’ funerals, the jamming of a nail into a Catholic communion wafer, and other similar things.

These acts all say more about the people doing them than anything else, and the acts don’t harm the intended victims — unless they allow themselves to be offended.

We all just need to shake our heads, say What a bunch of nutbag fools, and then forget about it. Outrage fuels their hate. Apathy, and even pity for their small-mindedness, takes the wind out of their sails.

Bill Irwin, who lives in Gainesville, has blogged about this crazy church before, noting the signs and t-shirts they have, saying Islam is of the devil. While we’re here, here’s Bill’s note of support for the Islamic center.

Sunday God thoughts

The local church with the marquee-style sign has another new one:

GOD COMFORTS THE DISTURBED
DISTURBS THE COMFORTABLE

Hm. So God doesn’t leave anything alone. God’s a micromanager, but worse than that, an annoyance, a nuisance. Just when God’s comfort helps you out of the hole you were in, just when you get to a good place... he kicks into disturbance mode and spins you around again.

Is it a wonder that we have schizophrenics, given that?

Mickey Mosque

I don’t know whether the rest of the country has to cope with the same lower-Manhattan mosque Islamic center news flood that we’re being subjected to here in the New York City area. I suspect so, because New York tends to feed the news, and anything to do with September 11th and the former World Trade Center site is always a fun topic for the media to grab onto.

Let’s consider a few things.

If you lost someone dear to you in the World Trade Center buildings, you get to be very, very sad about that. You get to have a share in the victims’ compensation payouts. You get my eternal sympathy, along with that of many, many others throughout the world.

You don’t get to tell other people what to do, and you don’t get to decide what’s done with the land.

The area is a chunk of real estate in lower Manhattan, some of the most expensive land in the world. It’s in a business area. It’s not a tomb; it’s not hallowed ground. It’s owned by people, and the city of New York has rules about how they approve construction projects. Those rules don’t include asking citizens and doing what they want, regardless of what a particular square of ground means to them, emotionally. We’re all sorry about what happened, but this is how it is.

If you’re a politician, and you’ve decided to stick this issue into your political witch’s brew, well, you don’t get to tell other people what to do nor decide what’s done with that land either. I could expand on that, and say that you’re a bottom-feeding scum-sucker who’ll feast on any misfortune or bigotry you can get your teeth into, but that seems unnecessary, so I won’t.

For my part, I’d just as soon not have anyone build any places for people to gather and spout nonsense about fantasy beliefs, ever again, anywhere. I don’t want to see land, money, time, and other resources wasted on mosques, synagogues, churches, cathedrals, or, for that matter, Fox News studios.

But, you know, I don’t get to tell people what to do or decide any of this either. None of us have any more say in what happens with this Islamic center, or anything else to do with that ten acres or the area near it, than we do about any other block of ground in the city.

So let’s all leave it alone now, and go find some real news to talk about.

[Here’s the New York Times editorial on the topic.]

...but only God can make a slick.

According to the “Green” blog in the New York Times, Texas governor Rick Perry says that the oil-rig disaster in the Gulf of Mexico was “an act of God.”

Indeed, hm.

Why would God do that? This isn’t like the Great Flood, cleaning things up and sorting things out. In fact, quite the opposite: it’s making a horrible mess of things. Only a relatively few people will suffer greatly. Louisiana fishermen and oil workers are out of work; did God do it to test the mettle of the fishermen, maybe?

Some animal species in the area will be seriously affected, so perhaps God did it to punish those animals. But, again, it’s only a portion of their population, those in the area, that are affected. The ones down by the Yucatan, or over by Florida will manage. And the ones by Texas, since Reverend Governor Perry prophesies that there will be “no impact on the Texas coast.”

And has God considered the long-term consequences of this? We presume so, omnipotent being, and all. But if we can’t contain this, the oil could spread and contaminate a large area of sea for a very long time. If God did it, will God act to stop it before it goes too far? Or is God now off causing a disaster in the neighbourhood of Antares now, and not paying attention to us at the moment?

The part I find the most fascinating about this is that Governor Perry is so hung up on not blaming BP that he’s willing to put it out there and blame God.

But maybe that makes sense: I guess God has the chops to take it, eh?

Demographics and The Supremes

Yesterday evening, as I browsed the NY Times RSS feed, I saw a headline about retiring Supreme Court justice John Paul Stevens: “Justice Stevens, the Only Protestant on the Supreme Court”. The summary in the RSS feed said this:

The Supreme Court is made up of six Roman Catholics, two Jews and Justice John Paul Stevens. His retirement makes possible a court without a single member of the nation’s majority religion.

“Say what?”, said I, bristling. “Have we gone so far back in time that we’re going to worry about the religious affiliations of our Supreme Court justices?”

I clicked through to the article, though, and I was relieved: no; indeed, that’s exactly the point of the article, that we used to care about that, but we don’t any more. It used to be a big deal to consider appointing Catholics or Jews, but now it’s not remarkable.

Instead, we pay attention to other things, for better or for worse:

On the other hand, society seems to demand that the court carry a certain demographic mix.

It is hard to imagine the court without a black justice, for instance, and it may well turn out that Justice Sonia Sotomayor is sitting in a new “Hispanic seat.” It would surprise no one if President Obama tried to increase the number of women on the court to three.

I prefer that, but what I’m really waiting for is when it doesn’t matter at all. When we put people in positions based purely on their qualifications, and we honestly don’t think it matters whether they’re men or women, and what their ethnic backgrounds are. We’re a long way from that now, of course, and for now, it’s important to have a mix. I’m glad to see — especially considering the resurgence of the importance of religion in politics — that religion is not part of that mix today.

Mark Tushnet, a law professor at Harvard, had another suggestion.

President Obama, he said, could use Justice Stevens’s retirement as an opportunity both to honor tradition and to break new ground.

“The smartest political move,” he said, “would be to nominate an openly gay, Protestant guy.”

No, that’s not it. Let’s really show that it doesn’t matter. Pick an atheist.

Or is that still beyond the pale?

In memory of Bertrand Russell

Forty years ago today, mathematician, philosopher, peace and human rights activist Bertrand Russell died at the age of 97. Russell has appeared in these pages before, in a discussion of Russell’s paradox.

Today, in Russell’s memory, we’ll give him this page to speak for himself. Specifically, he’ll talk about his view of religious belief, in this clip on YouTube, embedded below. I’ll help him out by posting a transcript below the video.

Q: Why are you not a Christian?

Russell: Because I see no evidence whatever for any of the Christian dogmas. I’ve examined all the stock arguments in favour of the existence of God, and none of them seem to me to be logically valid.

Q: Do you think there’s a practical reason for having a religious belief, for many people?

Russell: Well, there can’t be a practical reason for believing what isn’t true. That’s quite... at least, I rule it out as impossible. Either the thing is true, or it isn’t. If it is true, you should believe it, and if it isn’t, you shouldn’t. And if you can’t find out whether it’s true or whether it isn’t, you should suspend judgment. But you can’t... it seems to me a fundamental dishonesty and a fundamental treachery to intellectual integrity to hold a belief because you think it’s useful, and not because you think it’s true.

Q: I was thinking of those people who find that some kind of religious code helps them to live their lives. It gives them a very strict set of rules, the rights and the wrongs.

Russell: Yes, but those rules are generally quite mistaken. A great many of them do more harm than good. And they would probably be able to find a rational morality that they could live by if they dropped this irrational traditional taboo morality that comes down from savage ages.

Q: But are we, perhaps the ordinary person perhaps isn’t strong enough to find this own personal ethic. They have to have something imposed upon them from outside.

Russell: Oh, I don’t think that’s true, and what is imposed on you from outside is of no value whatever. It doesn’t count.

Q: Well, you were brought up, of course, as a Christian. When did you first decide that you did not want to remain a believer in the Christian ethic?

Russell: I never decided that I didn’t want to remain a believer. I decided... between the ages of 15 and 18, I spent almost all my spare time thinking about Christian dogmas, and trying to find out whether there was any reason to believe them. And by the time I was 18, I’d discarded the last of them.

Q: Do you think that that gave you an extra strength in your life?

Russell: Oh, I don’t... no, I should’t have said so, neither extra strength nor the opposite. I mean, I was just engaged in the pursuit of knowledge.

Q: As you approach the end of life, do you have any fear of some kind of afterlife, or do you feel that that is just...

Russell: Oh, no, I think that’s nonsense.

Q: There is no afterlife?

Russell: None whatever.

Q: Do you have any fear of something that is common amongst atheists and agnostics, who have been atheists or agnostics all their lives, who are converted just before they die, to a form of religion?

Russell: Well, you know, it doesn’t happen nearly as often as religious people think it does. Because religious people, most of them, think that it’s a virtuous act to tell lies about the death beds of agnostics and such. As a matter of fact, it doesn’t happen very often.

Skepticism and atheism

The New York City Skeptics just had an event last weekend, SkepticampNYC. I didn’t attend, but I read the blog: on their blog, Gotham Skeptic, there’s a post this week that stems from a session at the event. The post is exploring whether one must be an atheist if one is a skeptic. A speaker at SkepticampNYC thought one did; the blogger disagrees.

A lot of the discussion about it involves defining "atheist" in some precise way, and distinguishing that clearly from "agnostic". I think that’s a red herring. I don’t care what you wants to call yourself; if you think you’re an atheist, you don’t have to fit my definition of it. And if you don’t believe in God, but prefer to apply “agnostic” to yourself (or “non-theist”, or “spiritual, but not religious”, or something else) that’s OK too. The point isn’t semantics.

The point, really, is whether belief in God is consistent with skepticism. I think it can be, but that it’s somewhat of a tough sell. If skepticism involves looking at evidence and making conclusions from the evidence, it’s certainly possible that one might analyze the evidence and decide that it points to God. There isn’t a defined “skeptic position” on things, and we don’t all have to agree.

But many people keep trying to pull it back to faith. There are frequent claims that atheists (or skeptics, or scientists, depending upon the context of the discussion) are “believers” too, but we just believe in different things. (Contrast that with the claims that atheists “believe in nothing,” whatever that might mean.) Many argue that atheism is as much a religion as any other.

Along that line, in a related discussion, someone made this comment:

Are you claiming that scientists don’t have faith?! I bet there are many things in the science text books that you believe, but have never seen direct evidence for yourself.

The writer, here, misunderstands — perhaps intentionally, as a rhetorical mechanism — the point of evidence. There’s far too much to know for us all to see everything for ourselves. Yes, we rely on others to record it for us. And what’s been recorded has detailed observations, measurements, and other clear data. It’s well documented by multiple observers. It’s reproducible, and it’s been reproduced. We can go check these things out for ourselves; it’s because it’s so well documented that we generally don’t have to.

There’s a vast difference between that and what some believe on faith. “I measured the effect of the moon’s gravity, and here are my methods and data for your inspection,” is a very different thing from, “I felt the hand of God protecting me,” or, “I saw Jesus in the sunlight of my window,” or, “God spoke to me and told me what I must do.” These may be very real to the people who are saying them, and they may serve to convince the ones who had the experiences. But they are not evidence that can be examined by anyone else, and they’ll get not a moment’s consideration from a skeptic.

But, say some, if atheism is not a religion, why are there atheists trying to convert people? Why don’t all atheists go off happily disbelieving, and leave the believers alone. Indeed, most of us do, most of the time. I’ve often said that I don’t make a point of insulting people for what they believe, and I’m mostly OK with consenting adults believing anything they like.

There are two problems.

One is in how this affects children. We find it acceptable, by way of encouraging their natural imagination, to let them believe in unicorns, ghosts, witches, and Santa Claus for a time, but as they begin to mature, we wean them from such fantasies and steer them toward learning about the real world. It’s still OK, of course, for an older child to like unicorns... as long as the child understands that it’s just imagination.

And, yet, as we pull them away from one fantasy, we lead them to another, teaching them that they’re being watched over, that they will be protected, that their prayers will be answered, if only they believe. It’s easy to look at all the devout believers who are not protected, and whose prayers are not answered to see how demonstrably false this is, but many children are taught it as truth, and go on believing it into adulthood. Can we really be thought to consent, as adults, to a belief system that was loaded into our programming when we were children?

The second problem comes in adulthood, in the way we set up our society. By encouraging belief in fantasy, we blur the line between pseudoscience and real science, as one fantasy leads to another. If we can take one thing without evidence, why not others as well?: astrology, dowsing, auras, homeopathy, fortune telling, and all manner of other nonsense — all of which are shown not to work when we put them down to real tests, when we try to look at the evidence.

Worse, we give people divine support for whatever they decide to believe in, and whatever they choose to do about it. People moved by religion will starve their children waiting for God to provide, drown their children to keep them away from Satan, kill and threaten to kill those who disagree with them. They will fly planes into buildings to kill non-believers, incite deadly riots over cartoons they find insulting, and limit the rights of others because they think they know what God wants.

“You can’t blame God for that!”, you say? No, I don’t; there’s no God to blame. What I blame is our acceptance of belief in fantasy. It’s more than acceptance, in fact: we consider it a great honour to have faith, a show of strength to maintain belief despite all evidence to the contrary. One result is that we don’t need to think for ourselves and reason out what makes sense. We know what God wants, we know that God will take care of us, we know what we need to do in God’s name and in His defense. Only, each one “knows” something different; each side of every war has God on its side. They can’t all be right.

To be sure, everything I linked two paragraphs above comes from extremists. Most of us can put a teaspoon or so of belief into our teacup, and live a mostly rational life with just a little fantasy to make us feel good from time to time. That isn’t what most atheists are on about. We’re concerned with the big picture. We truly worry about a society that puts value on living outside reality. We see the importance of understanding the real world. And we know that we must choose our leaders not on the basis of what God they believe in, or don’t, but on the basis of what actions they will take, and how they will lead.
 

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Update, 9 a.m.: And then, on the extreme side, there’s this guy. Oy.

I am God’s co-pilot

A new study gives us an unsurprising result: that when believers are asked to characterize God’s political, social, and moral views, what the respondents say God thinks closely matches their own opinions. I can’t find the paper on the web site of the author nor that of the journal, but according to New Scientist:

“Intuiting God’s beliefs on important issues may not produce an independent guide, but may instead serve as an echo chamber to validate and justify one’s own beliefs,” writes a team led by Nicholas Epley of the University of Chicago in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The first thing that comes to mind, here, is that it’s obvious, but backward: that it’s not that we attribute our views to God, but that we derive our views from our parents and our religious training, so it’s natural that our own moral and socio-political opinions match what we think God wants.

Of course, the researchers looked into that, and that’s the part that makes this study interesting:

Next, the team asked another group of volunteers to undertake tasks designed to soften their existing views, such as preparing speeches on the death penalty in which they had to take the opposite view to their own. They found that this led to shifts in the beliefs attributed to God, but not in those attributed to other people.

Play that back: when people were steered toward softening their own views, they correspondingly softened what they thought God’s views were. That looks like people are using God to support what they, themselves think, and that’s much less obvious (if still unsurprising to some of us). The researchers also used brain scans to collect more (and less subjective) evidence of this effect.

Of course, we see this taken to extremes all the time, when preachers and other leaders with strong religious leanings claim that God supports whatever it is that they’re trying to push. We see that, and we often recognize it for the manipulation that it is. But do we really understand that people are doing that all the time, every day, without even knowing it themselves?

The majority of the subjects of this study were Christian, and all “professed beliefs in an Abrahamic God.” I’d like to see whether there’s any difference with Hindus, Buddhists, and followers of other religions and philosophies. I suspect so: we’re very strongly inclined to imagine that what we, ourselves believe is closely tied to the “correctness” of the universe around us. It seems a form of self-validation that likely keeps us emotionally centered.

This also appears to be related to what researchers have seen from people who believe in reincarnation: the past lives they describe closely match what they already believe about past lives. Those who believe, for example, that your past lives can only be as non-human animals only remember past lives as non-human animals. Those who believe otherwise remember past lives as humans. It’s all spiritual confirmation bias.

Religious characters

The local Methodist church’s marquee sign has changed again, and there’s another new blurb there:

WHAT DOES UR RELIGION
DO TO UR CHARACTER?

I find that one odd. I’ll give them the IM-speak “UR”, because they need to save space; it’s pushing the margins of the sign, as it is. But...

...it’s the preposition that seems wrong. What does it do to your character? I should think that for would be more apt. I mean, there’s a great difference between, “Look what that guy did to me,” and “Look what that guy did for me,” isn’t there?

But, OK, I’ll bite:

Since I have no religion, I’ll substitute “absence of religion,” instead. What does my absence of religion do to my character?

It makes me less credulous, unwilling to accept things with no evidence. It makes me question what I hear; it makes me look at what I see with an eye toward reasonable explanation and understanding. It makes me derive my moral values for myself, considering what my parents taught me, what I see around me, and what I understand to be best for co-existing in a civilized, peaceful society.

And imagine: I’ve come to the same conclusion as others have, with regard to morality. War is to be avoided, used as a last resort only. Hurting and abusing others, as with torture, is wrong. Everyone has a right to live her own life, make her own choices, take her own path, unimpeded by others. All people are equal, and should be treated with respect.

That’s what all the religious folk believe, too, right?

Um. Oh, wait. That  isn’t  how  it is  at all.

Hm.

Another church in the area has a sign, too. I saw this one a week ago at the nearby First Presbyterian Church:

THE ROAD TO
PERFECTION
IS ALWAYS UNDER
CONSTRUCTION

Yes, that seems apt.

Lacrimae

I’ve mentioned that the local Methodist church with the marquee sign seems to have come up with some new  aphorisms to put there. Maybe their source puts out updates periodically. I wonder whether they have to buy a subscription. Or maybe they get it from the mother church as part of the franchise.

The current blurb is another new one:

EYES WASHED BY TEARS
CAN SEE CLEARLY

I thought about that for a bit. (I guess that’s part of the point.)

I wondered whether there might be some relation of tears to Methodist tenets. There’s certainly a lot of tears and crying in Biblical religions. An old friend used to enjoy the bit of trivia that the shortest verse in the (King James) Bible is “Jesus wept.” (John 11:35)

The Catholic Requiem mass contains the Lacrimosa verse in the Dies Irae (day of judgment) sequence, referring to a tearful day:

Lacrimosa dies illa
Qua resurget ex favilla
Judicandus homo reus
Huic ergo parce, Deus

At the Passover seder, Jews use salted water to represent tears of the enslaved Jews in Egypt... and dip out some of the celebratory wine to acknowledge the suffering of the Egyptians under the ten plagues.

It’s not clear how any of this relates to seeing clearly, though. Is it that only through tears of suffering can people understand life (or God)? Maybe it’s that through the tears, we learn to appreciate what we have.

Another thought: the tears aren’t literal, here, but the slogan is a metaphor, reminding us to be compassionate toward others. If we weep for those less fortunate, maybe we’ll see our way to helping them, as well.

Sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt.

— Virgil, from “The Aeneid”

The world is a world of tears, and the burdens of mortality touch the heart.

— Translation by Robert Fagles

Of all the displays on that sign, I think I like this one best.

And it brought to mind a different view of “seeing clearly”, from my high school days:

I can see clearly now; the rain is gone.
I can see all obstacles in my way.
Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind.
It’s gonna be a bright, bright sun-shiny day.

— Johnny Nash

Reality, versus...

Remember the marquee-style sign on the church that I used to pass on the way to the office, back when I had an office to go to? Well, I still pass it often — not every day, but at least once a week — so I still see the sign. And this week, the sign says...

STEEP YOUR LIFE
IN GOD-REALITY

I found that interesting. They have actually acknowledged that there’s a distinction between “God-reality” and, you know, reality. There seems to be some progress there, I think.

Of course, they’re still promoting the alternative-universe God-reality over the real thing. Forget about reality, they urge, and come with us to... something else. Something comforting, but unreal.

I’m reminded, here, of Piers Anthony’s[1] “Apprentice Adept” series. The series involves parallel worlds, Proton and Phaze, situated in alternative universes and connected through a “curtain” through which only certain people can pass. On Proton, scientific rules apply, and magic doesn’t work. On Phaze, it’s all magic. In keeping with the religious message above, Phaze is a beautiful planet of sun and gardens and fields, while Proton is a dull place. Of course, anyone with a choice would want to be on Phaze.

Earth, though, wasn’t written by Piers Anthony. I’ll stick with reality, thank you. Real reality.
 

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[1] Yes, yes, Piers Anthony, I know; leave it off.