Secular Perspectives

Virginia GOP vs Jefferson and Madison

2012-01-26T13:21:00.002-05:00

This letter was published in the Washington Examiner on 1/26/12 ---

'Vouchers would violate Virginia constitution'

Virginia Republicans' plan to provide tax-code vouchers for church-related private schools clearly violates the spirit and intent of Articles I and IV of the Virginia constitution. It is hard to believe that legislators in Virginia would thumb their noses at the religious freedom provisions that were originated by Virginians Thomas Jefferson and James Madison that became the pattern for our whole country.

This plan is especially objectionable when we see public school budgets being slashed.

Edd Doerr, President
Americans for Religious Liberty
Silver Spring, Md

Why gravity is real but god is not

2012-01-24T02:11:00.043-05:00

Christian Platt, in his recent article "Atheism: A Null Hypothesis on God", admits that "I have tried in vain over the years to understand atheism.". He then goes on to make various analogies for acquiring knowledge of various phenomena empirically, such as our seeing things from reflected light, and our verifying gravity by its effects, with his claims of witnessing god by god's reflections and effects. He, and other people like him, will continue to have difficulty understanding atheism because he is not understanding the difference between arguments based on empirical evidence and his arguments for god. This distinction is not difficult to grasp, and after understanding this distinction, he may come closer to his positive goal of "getting" atheism.

But first, lets dispell the unbalanced notion, which Christian Platt mistakenly promotes, that agnosticism is consistent with Christian theism but inconsistent with atheism. He appears to confuse uncertainity that god exists with faith that god exists, and since atheists don't have faith that god exists he concludes atheists are not agnostic. But all agnostics do not have faith that god exists. Not having perfect and direct knowledge that something exists does not equate with faith that it does exist.

Christian Platt is correct that everyone should be agnostic because humans are not omniscient. But he is incorrect to say that atheism precludes agnosticism. Richard Dawkins, for example, has acknowledged that he has such uncertainty. All atheists who are thoughtful acknowledge agnosticism. He also claims that atheism 'implies the same kind of certitude that a religious fundamentalist might claim is arguing they "know without any doubt that God exists."'. Some atheists may say that, but in my experience most atheists either say they don't believe and stop there, or say they believe there is no god, instead of saying they "know without any doubt". This notion of disbelief isn't difficult, and there is no good reason for intelligent people to have difficulty with this concept of disbelief in the singular context of god belief when everyone disbelieves lots of things. The real issue here isn't whether someone has any particular conviction, nor whether that conviction is definite or indefinite, nor whether the conviction is in the middle, or towards one end, of a true versus false spectrum line. The real issue is whether the belief, or disbelief, is well justified and held in proper proportion to the evidence.

Christian Platt then approvingly quotes John D. Caputo for his argument that God belief "insists, so that the rest of creation might exist.". This sounds like an argument that the universe must have a creator. That is a dubious assumption. For example, insects exist, but they do not have a creator. Insects exist because of abiogenesis and evolution. Some cosmologists think that the universe was spontaneously created, or self-created, and most cosmologists think that a self created or spontaneously created universe is consistent with all of the known laws of physics. While the notion of a creator is intuitive, we know from the very long list of non-intuitive and counter-intuitive conclusions found within modern knowledge, that intuition is not a good guide to, let alone a good source of, knowledge.

Christian Platt then declares: 'God is the impetus, the spark, the divine breath, the "inspiration," if you will from which all the rest of creation finds meaning.' I think this is silly, and I will try to explain why. Meaning is found in our experiencing and living our lives. Merely declaring otherwise does not constitute a justification for claiming otherwise, let alone constitute a compelling argument for a god. The notion of creation finding meaning makes no sense. There is no meaning to be had outside the context of minds capable of contemplating the concept, and all such minds that are known to exist reside in physical brains that are attached to physical bodies of animals. Saying that "creation finds" a concept or sentiment, such as meaning, is a category error. This is poetic language, but evidence and argument is not found in poetry. If it were then we would go to poets instead of medical doctors for our annual medical health checks.

Christian Platt then argues that God is found "conspiring with the physical world to create something that makes sense." Here is where he indulges the flawed analogy with seeing an object indirectly as "the result of the interaction between the light and the observed object.". Light is a physical entity that is measurable, it has amplitude and wavelength, it is empirically observed and evidenced. This is very different from the assertion about the vague concepts "something that makes sense" and "conspiring". This analogy doesn't work at all, since the foundation of our knowledge in the second case is precisely the empirical evidence that is completely absent in the first case.

Christian Platt then tries to argue that empirical evidence is not necessary because in the past we didn't know about atomic particles, or dark matter. He appears to be confusing what we know, a.k.a. ontology, with how we know, a.k.a. epistemology. It would be nice if we could just eliminate the effort and time needed to acquire knowledge and magically skip to having knowledge through some unspecified direct mechanism to this particular truth claim (god). However, such magical and instant capability to directly possess knowledge has not demonstrated much success as a non-empirical, alternative method for acquiring knowledge. There is a time sequence constraint here that applies to everyone. Time travels in a single direction from past to present to future. Before we can have knowledge about what is true we must first obtain the evidence to justify the conclusion that it is true. The latter achievement precedes the former achievement in time, we cannot properly leap directly to a conclusion without the evidence needed to justify the conclusion.

Christian Platt cites gravity a second time, saying it 'cannot be directly observed: only measured as it affects other objects. It's not a "thing" that can be pinned down.'. Gravity is due to curvature in space-time, and space-time curvature is a thing that can be, and is, predicted and indirectly measured. It is true that all empirical measurements and observations and knowledge can be said to be indirectly acquired. But the critical and essential attribute of evidence is that it is repeatedly measureable and observable, attributes that are entirely missing from poetic "evidences", if we can call them that, for god. Even if it is true that everything that is empirically evidenced is evidenced indirectly, it doesn't follow that everything that is argued for indirectly is therefore also properly evidenced.

Christian Platt then asserts "to say that even science is entirely constrained by the scientific method is to ignore the creative imagination required to stretch the boundaries, to imagine what might be, beyond what is now understood to be. It's this kind of imagination that pushes humanity to create new tools that have allowed us to observe things we never knew existed before.". The notion that atheists define the scientific method so narrowly as to preclude a role for imagination is false. Imagination, when married with empiricism, can be an important contributor to getting productive ideas. But imagination is no substitute for grounding existence claims in empirical evidence. Undiscplined imagination unfettered by empiricism has been a path to much fictional fantasy falsely claiming to be knowledge. There is excellent reason to think that imagination by itself is a source of fiction only.

Christian Platt then argues "making room for those possibilities, seem, to me, to be at the heart of science as much as the rigorous processes defined by the scientific method.". If by "those possibilities" he means all of the possibilities that have no empirical support then the fact is that the scientific method does not endorse, and cannot arbitrarily endorse, any such possibilities. But the issue here is not "scientific method". The issue is the need for empirical evidence in support of existence claims to justify the corresponding existence beliefs.

The article concludes with this comment: "However, to leap from that to certitude of God's non-existence is to violate the principles of the scientific method, isn't it?". Explicit atheism is not a conclusion of science. It is a belief based on an assessment that the overall direction and weight of the available evidence favors the conclusion that there are no non-material actors with non-material super intelligent minds that created the universe or that take some special interest in humans or that intervene, monitor, or oversee human affairs on earth, nor that humans continue to live forever as material or non-material entities after they die under circumstances dictated by such a god, nor anything of this sort. Instead, the available evidences best fits the conclusion that all god stories are human created fictions that have no relationship to anything that is true.

How to mess with a Moonie's head

2012-01-23T16:43:00.002-05:00

by Edd Doerr

Several years ago, when the Moonie (Unification Church) missionaries were pushing their wares in airports, I was stuck at Chicago-O'Hare for several hours. A young woman Moonie missionary approached and tried to engage in conversation. I shrugged my shoulders and said, "Jeg forstor de ikke. Jeg snakker ikke Engelsk." She walked away.

An hour later I was still waiting for my flight, but in a different location. The Moonie missionary walked up again. This time I responded, "Ich verstehe sie nicht. Ich spreche kein englisch", and shook my head. She turned and left with a puzzled look in her face.

About an hour or so after that, as I was leaving an airport restaurant, the same young woman came up with a handful of Moonie literature. This time I said, "Yo no le entiendo a Usted. Yo no hablo ingles." She got all wide-eyed, dropped her literature and literally ran off at top speed.

Throwing Norwegian, German and Spanish at her probably made the poor kid's head hurt.

Well, reading the Moonie-owned Washington Times, with its ultraconservative rants against Obama every day makes me nauseous. I am comforted by the realization that the paper has lost the Moonies over a billion dollars over the past 25 years.

Roe v Wade at 39

2012-01-23T13:09:00.002-05:00

by Edd Doerr

Roe v Wade's 39th anniversary came and went this past weekend with scarcely a mention in the media. Yet Roe v Wade was one of the most important rulings ever handed down by the Supreme Court. It ranks with the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution in importance. It liberated women from the bonds of misogynism endemic in society for millenia.

Roe did not "create" the right to terminate problem pregnancies. It acknowledged a right already there in the 1st, 9th, 13th and 14th Amendments, a right that existed throughout the lifetimes of the Founders. Roe consolidated in one fell swoop women's freedom of conscience and freedom of religion.

But conservative misogynists have not given up, not by a long shot. In 2011 conservatives in state legislatures passed more anti-choice laws than ever. And while President Obama praised the ruling over the weekend, all -- ALL -- of the Republican White House aspirants have made it clear that they will press on to reinslave women to the "fetal personhood" nonsense emanating from ultraconservative religious forces.

Humanists who value freedom of conscience for all cannot back down.

Epistemological Styles

2012-01-22T16:05:00.013-05:00

by Gary Berg-Cross

I see that recent Blog posts, such as The incomprehensible, everything good, god, explore some theist-revised god-concepts:

"What if there were concepts of God that had something to offer or add to the fulfilled?
What if we had concepts of God based on creativity?
On a positive definition of incomprehensible peace?
On imaginative joy?

This subverts some Greek-old questions about existence and dresses it up in new clothes. The Greeks were the first we know of to develop elaborate reasoning on the nature of existence and reality. But this was more on an exploration of naturalist concepts of what we see existing as part of a continuous fabric of reality. Parmenides put it this way:

“We can speak and think only of what exists. And what exists is uncreated and imperishable for it is whole and unchanging and complete. It was not or nor shall be different since it is now, all at once, one and continuous...”

He wasn’t speaking about god’s existence, so much as about his world, but people push the discussions that way with an unseen spirit in back of everything. Some call it metaphysical, but in his Metaphysics Aristotle defined the scope as 2 important philosophical questions:

‘What exists?' and ‘How do I know?'

They are separate questions, but related. The first question he discussed as Ontology - the meta-philosophy or world view of reality. The seminal ontological question wasn’t so religious as psychological - ‘Is there a "real" world out there that is independent of our knowledge of it?'

Naturalist assume a natural world out there existing on its own one, not invented by our conceptions. Theists say reality isn’t a human invention, but a godly one. God must exist to explain the complex ontology of things we find in nature. Discussions about god as an existing object are therefore ontological too. The argument is that god is as real as a tree and maybe more so.

People whose ontology posits a god, angels, devils, miracles etc, want to talk about these concepts, while Naturalists, such as Dawkins aren't so interested. When Dawkins dismisses these subjects, such as in revealed text, he is criticized as not knowing anything about Religion. That is, he knows nothing about the ontological entities that religion believes exist and have value. True enough because an atheist's ontology doesn’t include them. Why talk about what an enormous list of ancient writers might have invented as part of their psychology a long time ago?

Others may be willing to talk about God as a “scientific hypothesis. ” But looked at this way shouldn't it be tested? But even that moderate position is a divisive questions to some...

"He who is not with Me is against Me;
and he who does not gather with Me scatters abroad."

—Jesus of Nazareth, Matthew, xii, 30

It's clear that there are big differences between religious believers and non-believer's ontology. This is often discussed in detail, at least by theists. But how do believers know that god exists? This brings in the 2^nd questions and Epistemology, which is the philosophy of how we come to knowledge and how we justify arriving at something as known. The epistemological positions that brings people to a particular ontology is also important, but less discussed. Unlike the clarity of the question it’s complicated, at least in part because people aren't pure philosophers and their "knowing" gets intertwined with personality and values as they grow up in a culture which has implicit positions on styles of knowing and believing.

Even science has different investigatory styles/paradigms that can lead to alternative views. Scientific historian Alistair C. Crombie described several main styles in the Western tradition of scientific thinking:

the simple method of postulation exemplified by classic Greek sciences
the deployment of experiment to explore postulation with controlled observation and measurement,
hypothetical construction of analogical models
ordering of variety by comparison and taxonomy,
statistical analysis of regularities of populations etc.

To these styles, philosopher Ian Hacking added a contemporary laboratory scientific style in “Statistical Language, Statistical Truth and Statistical Reason:The Self-Authentification of a Style of Scientific Reasoning" (Hacking’s thesis is that ontological truth conditions for certain kinds of propositions are given by a style of scientific reasoning – that is the method of inquiry constructs the truth of a proposition.)

One might argue that people in general are like this in that they approach the question of truth and reality through styles of inquiry. Some come to a style by reflection, experience and reason, but most of us are strongly influenced by existing patterns of inquiry which may come from groups we identify with. These styles might be thought of as composed from many, mutually supporting parts, engineered to work together over time. But for social transmission they often get packaged as meme-like labels such as realist, skeptic, theists, atheists, liberals, conservatives etc.

For example, at a broad level a theist may have an approach to knowledge as revealed and they take that on faith and they take faith as supported by group belief. An alternative approach to knowledge relies on evidence proof and reason.

But there are finer aspects to people’s style of thinking epistemologically and people’s preferences for things that is more like what psychologists call styles of personality . For example, there is familiar thinking versus open ended thinking. We accept something if it is familiar and described in commonsense terms. This is often part of a layman's style of knowing.

When talking about personality styles some use binary, common sense distinctions about reasoning and investigation styles. So some people are curious while others are intellectually lazy – George Bush comes to find for the latter category. We might build a better model by adding a scale along which people fall from lazy at one end and curious at the other. That’s better, but there are other dimensions of reasoning to consider. Some people are skeptical while others are not. Now we have 2 dimensions and we could add a 3^rd of critical thinking. These dimensions seem somewhat related but not identical. We can add more orthogonal dimensions like simplicity vs. appreciation of complexity. John Wayne illustrates simplicity when he was reported to have said in an interview, "They tell me that things aren't always black and white. I say, 'Why the hell not?'" This is a simple, common sense view that affects how much energy we might bring to investigating a topic. It speaks in a common language and thus has popular appeal and has the advantage of being able to spread meme-like.

But people’s epistemological styles are even more complex than that and can be thought of as existing in epistemological layers and frameworks. The framework includes, and is influenced by, people's ontology and pre-existing assumptions about such things as diverse as:

objectivity,
what is real and
group values.

These serve as broad guides for reasoning. Other factors include the nature of evidence and the value of observation, the role of theory (what is a theory?), what are acceptable method to test ideas, and what they define as logical or reasonable.

People and groups are stunningly different in attitudes towards such things as to what constitutes truth. As Hacking noted for scientific styles the approaches are put together and maintained by networks of people to answer their needs, interests and ideology. This is illustrated by the work of Psychologist Jonathan Haidt, for example, who studied on liberal-conservative differences in style and arguments. The style supports and is maintained by people who share a strong desire for unity and group membership which is guided by ideas of truth, rightness etc. This is a light, morality based epistemological stance. “Conservatives”, for example, quickly get disgusted with ideas that violate their ideas of reality and means of determining it. At the political level Republicans, more than Democrats, tap into universal moral passions to foster in-group solidarity. This goes along with concerns about being contaminated by outgroups and their thinking.

A related style is seen in people who value the idea of ancient, private wisdom existing inside people or available via divine revelation. These are believed to give access to a body of eternal truth independent of scientific investigation. To protect this stance it helps to distrust experts - at least some types of experts whose opinions may challenge existing social bonds. Better to keep hold of an ancient view, wrapped up and supported by your own justification. With defenses like these it is hard to have a conversation on why people believe as they do. Thus a reasoning style with its ontological beliefs has mutually supporting factors that provide a defense against foreign reasoning styles.

A natural science orientation, in contrast, views truth as derived from a method of public, empirical observations. One needs some methodological expertise to qualify to achieve knowledge. This is challenging to some who like to attack it by characterizing it as dogmatic. The dogma here is one of method and a testable one that can lead to what seems closer to the true.

Indonesian atheist arrested for blasphemy

2012-01-20T22:42:00.010-05:00

By Mathew Goldstein

English is a compulsory subject in the Indonesian national curriculum for students. Many universities require students in all subjects to show they meet a certain minimum standard of English proficiency before they are allowed to graduate. There are two national English-language daily newspapers, and a number of radio and TV stations produce programs in English. So among Islamic majority countries (Indonesia is around 85% Islamic) Indonesia is a country that is relatively accessible to Americans. It is a country known in its past for respecting religious pluralism. So it is sad to see some of the vile religious extremism that afflicts countries such as Pakistan also making inroads in Indonesia.

In 2008, the government made it illegal for the Ahmadiya, who are Muslims that do not believe Mohammed was the final prophet, to publicly promote their religious beliefs. The Indonesian government restricts the freedom of its citizens to adhere to any religion other than Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Catholicism, Christianity, or Confucianism. Today, it was reported in the English language Jakarta Post that an atheist was detained by police for blasphemy. A police chief is identified as saying that the man was arrested because of his writings on the internet and his direct statements saying that he did not believe in God. He was apprehended by people who entered his workplace, beat him, and then transported him to the police station. If found guilty, he could spend five years in prison.

Islamist supremecist intolerance directly affects other religious minorities as well, even among the five minority religions that are legal, such as Indonesia’s approximately 20 million Christians. It can be difficult to obtain the necessary permits to build a church in some parts of Indonesua. Even when all the requirements have been fulfilled, Christians sometimes cannot gain final approval for the construction of houses of worship. Churches and prayer halls have also been subject to vandalism, and their congregations face various forms of intimidation. Every year the U.S. State Department documents the forced closure of churches by extremist groups, often with government inaction or complicity.

The Indonesian constitution declares that the state is based on, among other things, “the belief in the One and Only God,” while guaranteeing “each and every citizen the freedom of religion and of worship in accordance with his or her religion and belief.". The constitution explicitly guarantees that “Every person shall be free to embrace and to practice the religion of his/her choice“; that “Every person shall have the right to the freedom to hold beliefs (kepercayaan), and to express his/her views and thoughts, in accordance with his/her conscience“; and that “Every person shall have the right of freedom to associate, to assemble and to express opinions.” The document asserts that freedom of thought and conscience, as well as freedom of religion, are “human rights that cannot be limited under any circumstances." Words are cheap, and apparently Indonesia's constitution is worth little more than ink on paper.

Newsweek/Sullivan/Obama/Ferguson . . . . .

2012-01-20T13:57:00.002-05:00

by Edd Doerr

While I have never been a fan of writer and former New Republic editor Andrew Sullivan, I must say that his 4-page piece on Obama, "The Long Game", in the Jan 23 Newsweek is a pretty good defense of Obama's record of accomplishment. I recommend it.

The same issue of Newsweek also contains a rather dumb 4-pager titled "Rich America, Poor America" by conservative British historian and Newsweek columnist Niall Ferguson that features praise for discredited American Enterprise Institute writer ("The Bell Curve") Charles Murray. But what is most peculiar about Ferguson's piece is that in the penultimate paragraph he makes this totally unconnected recommendation: "Finally, end the state monopolies in public education to launch a new era of school choice and competition." In other words, Ferguson is advocating tax support for a growing multiplicity of mostly discriminatory faith-based private schools that would fragment American education along religious, ideological, class, ethnic and other lines. I have been writing on this subject for over 45 years and thus recognize that Ferguson is regurgitating the endless nonsense of the religious right.

Ferguson's weird attack on public education and church-state separation is all the more peculiar because his wife is -- take a breath here -- none other than Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali woman who escaped a forced Islamic marriage by moving to the Netherlands, where she was elected to Parliament. In that position she stirred up an investigation into Islamic "honor killings", which in turn led to threats on her life that required 24/7 police protection. When it was found that she had entered the Netherlands illegally she lost her seat in Parliament and immigrated to the US, where she is reportedly working for the conservative think tank, the American Enterprise Institute.

So, if Ferguson gets his way with "school choice" and school vouchers (which AEI supports), wouldn't that mean tax support for Islamic as well as other church-related private schools? And how would that square with his wife's antipathy toward Islam particularly and religion generally?

In the same paragraph Ferguson also recommends: "Scrap the failing welfare programs of the '30s and '60s ... [and] Ensure that everyone has a basic income." Will someone please explain how one can espouse the ultraconservative line and its socialist opposite in the same breath.

Great example fo Christopher Hitchens

2012-01-19T05:59:00.002-05:00

18 January 2012 12:12 PM

Christopher Hitchens. Funeral and Memorial arrangements

First may I once again thank the many people who visited this site to express condolences on the death of my late brother, Christopher. I was most moved that so many people crossed the divide of opinion to do so.

Second, I felt I should post here two facts that, although they are to be found on the Internet, are still unknown to many.

Some people have asked me when and where my brother’s funeral took place. In fact, as Christopher donated his body to medical science, there has not been and will not be any funeral. He took this decision partly because of his religious (or rather non-religious) opinions, and partly because, much influenced by his friend Jessica Mitford and her book ‘The American Way of Death’, he disliked what he regarded as the excesses of the American funeral industry.

There are many discussions now taking place about various other forms of commemoration. There will certainly be a memorial gathering in New York City during the Spring, most probably in April. I would expect that, later on, there will also be some sort of event in London. I would hope to be able to post details when these are clear.

January 18, 2012 Comments (46) Categories: Christopher Hitchens | Permalink

posted Innaiah Narisetti

The incomprehensible, everything good, god

2012-01-17T21:14:00.011-05:00

By Mathew Goldstein

When I wrote, in my previous post, that theists argue for irreducible complexity in biology as evidence for god, I was not (of course) referring to all theists. So what about a god that is not to be found in biology, chemistry, or physics? Victor Udoewa, in his recent Huffington article titled "Does Science Make Belief in God Obsolete?", wrote "it is clear that science may make belief in a certain concept of God obsolete. But it is a hard task to make belief in every concept of God obsolete.". Seeking funding from the Templeton Foundation to promote his timeless and undefeatable version of theism, he asks: "What if there were concepts of God that had something to offer or add to the fulfilled? What if we had concepts of God based on creativity? On a positive definition of incomprehensible peace? On imaginative joy? On creative, problem-solving love?"

The god that is creativity, peace, joy, imagination, love, and other such general and positive capabilities, outcomes, feelings, and sentiments is a favorite gambit of liberal theists. Its strength is its weakness, in equal measure. There can be no evidence against this god nor can there be any evidence for this god. This god is claimed to be real but is defined as a fantasy. And that is why no one has any proper justification to believe in this god. Evidence is the proper foundation to justify beliefs about what is true or false regarding the reality of entities that are to be worshipped or otherwise asserted to really exist. Conservatives want evidence, but they don't respect evidence that contradicts their theism, so they tend to manufacture their own, alternative world "evidence". Liberals want to follow the real evidence, but they don't want the evidence to contradict their theism, so they tend to place their cherished theism out of harms way by defining their god to be beyond the reach of any possible evidence. Either way, it's the same failure, they are both failing to put the evidence first and follow it.

Debating the Concept-Labels of Secular Humanism and Atheism

2012-01-17T11:31:00.010-05:00

By Gary Berg-Cross

A proposed Washington Area Secular Humanists (WASH) Name Change was announced in the December 2011 issue of WASHline, after the WASH Board of Directors has voted to change the organization’s legal name from “The Washington Area Secular Humanists” to “The Washington-area Atheists and Secular Humanists.” This compromise vote allowed the acronym, WASH, to be retained. But the bylaws requires further votes before the name change goes into effect. So some discussion continues.

Over the last 6 months or so there was considerable discussion, available to WASH members, on the monthly WAShline newletter on the pros and cons of adding “atheist” to the name. This may not have been available to some Secular Perspective blog readers (a motivator to join?), but might be of interest. So here is a small take on it.

On the pro side WASH Board of Directors member Don Wharton kicked things off in the August WASHline with the something of a practical, “marketing” argument to achieve our goals:

Clearly most of our members identify as “secular humanists.” It is a wonderful term which accurately and comfortably reflects me and my views; thus, raising the issue of a name change for WASH does not reflect my personal preferences. It is a matter of better marketing and achieving WASH’s mission as an organization. The terms “secular humanist” and “secular humanism” are now far less visible and meaningful than before. For WASH’s May board meeting I gathered some statistics on the majority of US adults who are also Facebook members. Adding the numbers who specified atheist and atheism as an interest totaled 138,000. Only 5,700 reported an interest in the term “secular humanism and none in secular humanist.”

WASH co-founder Lois Porter responded with an opposing letter in the August WASHline arguing to retain the current organization name because it will:

“attract young new members” and that they “would be especially good at giving the world a picture of what secular humanism looks like in the 21^st century.”

WASH Board Member and Baltimore chapter coordinator Bill Creasy also responded in a letter in the August WASHline supporting keeping the name. His analysis used data available on Meetup.com that suggested that “atheist” is a label that serves a within group function. It is more used for secular people to meet other secular people. Don later responded with additional data challenging Bill’s data and so on.

The debate also got the attention of our November MDC WASH chapter speaker Tom Flynn of
the Council for Secular Humanism. Tom wrote an article ("Whither Secular Humanism") in the Secular Humanist Bulletin (available to Associate members of the Council, such as WASH) defending keeping the original name. He notes an obvious personal bias as director of the Council, but acknowledges Don’s point about the
growing usage of the atheist label:

“Particularly among young people the term is well known and generally understood. In contrast secular humanism is less strongly recognized among folks under 20.”

On the other side he notes that atheism is generally (but unfairly) associated with “stridency and intolerance.” He goes on to say that the Council has:

“striven to achieve a tone and level of sophistication in discourse above that seen in at least some purely atheist groups. But there is a larger problem with atheism: strictly understood it is only a position on the question of whether God…exists.”

To later goes on to note a discussion of this in his edited The New Encyclopedia of Unbelief reflecting the point that:

“Once one has realized that there are no gods, anything at all can follow… Secular humanism has dimensions that atheism alone cannot offer.”

I generally agree with the idea that atheism (A) is only the beginning of the story of our identity. SH is broader and wider than the big A. I enjoyed reading Tom’s further ideas on the unfortunate shrinkage of the Humanist idea as Secular has become more widespread.

I’m sure we will continue to have discussion on this issue. What you've got here is a rich but vague concept-dish covered in a historical-intellectual sauce, served up on a platter of underlying questions and projections into the future.

So much fun and so important!

V-ATPase proton pump and biological complexity

2012-01-16T15:31:00.003-05:00

By Mathew Goldstein

Vacuolar-type H+-ATPase (V-ATPase) is a highly conserved evolutionarily ancient enzyme. A proton pump is an integral membrane protein that is capable of moving protons across a cell membrane, mitochondrion, or other organelle. The V-ATPase proton pump helps maintain the proper acidity of compartments within the cell. The pump has a ring that is made up of a total of six copies of two different proteins, but in fungi a third type of protein has been incorporated into the complex. There are many molecular machines like this in cells. Theists assert that these molecular machines are irreducibly complex and therefore must have been created by a god (a.k.a. Intelligent Designer). How could a ring that consists of three different proteins be created without an Intelligent Designer?

A team of scientists from the University of Chicago and the University of Oregon worked out an answer: "It's counterintuitive but simple: complexity increased because protein functions were lost, not gained," The lead author of the study, Dr. Thornton said. "Just as in society, complexity increases when individuals and institutions forget how to be generalists and come to depend on specialists with increasingly narrow capacities."

Hundreds of millions years ago the proton pump ring consisted of two proteins, similar to those found in animals today. However, these older versions of the protein were more versatile, their functionality was broader than the equivelant proteins seen today so they could substitute for each other in the ring. A gene coding for one of the subunits of the older two-protein ring was duplicated, and the daughter genes then diverged on their own evolutionary paths. The functions of the ancestral proteins were partitioned among the duplicate copies, and the increase in complexity was due to complementary loss of ancestral functions rather than gaining new ones. In other words, since the proteins were now assembled by different genes, the proteins diverged, becoming more specialized.

"The mechanisms for this increase in complexity are incredibly simple, common occurrences," Thornton said. "Gene duplications happen frequently in cells, and it's easy for errors in copying to DNA to knock out a protein's ability to interact with certain partners. It's not as if evolution needed to happen upon some special combination of 100 mutations that created some complicated new function.". Thornton proposes that the accumulation of simple, degenerative changes over long periods of times could have created many of the complex molecular machines present in organisms today. Such a mechanism argues against the intelligent design concept of "irreducible complexity," the claim that molecular machines are too complicated to have formed stepwise through evolution. "I expect that when more studies like this are done, a similar dynamic will be observed for the evolution of many molecular complexes," Thornton said. "These really aren't like precision-engineered machines at all," he added. "They're groups of molecules that happen to stick to each other, cobbled together during evolution by tinkering, degradation, and good luck, and preserved because they helped our ancestors to survive."

Favors

2012-01-16T12:11:00.002-05:00

a short story by Edd Doerr

Brendan was twenty-two when he met Anne. He was working full time and taking night classes to finish his degree. Anne was nineteen and working as a receptionist in an office downtown. They hit it off immediately and after a few weeks decided to get married. But where? Neither was a member of a church. Brendan was indifferent, but he knew that his Irish grandmother would be more than merely mystified if the wedding were not in a Catholic church.

But Brendan, though raised Catholic, considered himself to be a naturalistic humanist. His transition from Catholic to humanist had been fairly rapid and quite painless, unlike the situations of others he knew of. The problem was that Brendan had discussed his transition with a priest from his old parish, Father Steiner. So he went to see Steiner to see if he would officiate at the wedding, knowing that Brendan was asking him only in his "civil" capacity. Steiner was friendly but not really sold on the idea. Brendan made the point that it all had to do with his grandmother's feelings and happiness. Steiner acceded and the wedding was held in the church rectory, as Anne had never been a Catholic.

The marriage lasted two years and ended with an amicable enough divorce. Two years later, after Brendan had finished his degree and was teaching school, he met Ingrid, also a teacher, and they got married, this time by a Unitarian minister.

Not long afterward, Brendan learned that a Catholic diocesan marriage tribunal was investigating him to see if there might be grounds for a church annulment of his marriage to Anne, who had become engaged to a Catholic. Pissed off, Brendan phoned the priest at the marriage tribunal and told him to butt out, that if he had any questions about his religious beliefs to ask him and quit annoying his friends and relatives. He assumed that the marriage tribunal people could find no grounds for an annulment.

A few months later Brendan heard that Father Steiner had been killed in a car accident. Too bad, he thought, Steiner was really a nice guy. Then he thought to ring up the marriage tribunal priest. He told him that he had the solution to the annulment problem, that the priest who had officiated at his an Anne's wedding had known that he had left the church. The marriage tribunal priest got angry and yelled, "Why didn't you tell us this before?"

Brendan replied, "Look, Father Steiner bent or broke the rules to do a favor for my grandmother. It would have been unethical for me to rat out a guy who had done me a big favor. So put that in your pipe and smoke it."

Rick Santorum and Opus Dei

2012-01-16T11:43:00.002-05:00

by Edd Doerr

Is Rick Santorum a member of Opus Dei, the secretive, ultraconservative outfit founded by a Spanish priest in 1928 that came to practically run Spain during the last years of the Franco dictatorship? The outfit exposed, sort of, in Dan Brown's popular novel and film The Da Vinci Code? We may never know. Opus Dei, a "Personal Prelature of the Catholic Church", discourages its members from revealing their connection with the outfit that is so bizarre that most Catholics would have nothing to do with it.

What we do know is this. In early 2002 then-senator Santorum led a delegation from the US to Rome for a week long celebration of the Spanish founder of Opus Dei. Santorum sent two of his sons to The Heights, a males-only private prep school in Potomac, Maryland, connected to Opus Dei. The school's web site says that "The spiritual direction of The Heights School is entrusted to Opus Dei." Other bigshots who have sent their sons to The Heights include former GOP senators Chuck Hagel and Mel Martinez and former FBI director Louis Freeh.

Santorum's extremist views on contraception are essentially those of Opus Dei.

On January 14 the 150 or so evangelical leaders meeting in Texas to find an alternative to Willard Romney agreed to coalesce around Santorum.

(Lest there be some misunderstanding, let me make clear that all of the GOP presidential aspirants strike me as less suitable for high office than the Three Stooges.)

Christian values of family !!

2012-01-16T08:47:00.001-05:00

How can the christians who value family life and family values explain this Biblical gospel wording?
Matthew;10:34-37
Jesus: I have come to set a man against his father: and a daughter against her mother: and a daughter in law against her mother in law:And a man`s foes will be those of his own household. He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and he who loves son or daughter more than me is not wothy of me"
These are divine values. They are against human values. Let people choose either divine values or human values.
Humanists, Atheists, Rationalists, skeptics, agnostics, secularists stand for human values
Innaiah Narisetti

Understanding Complex Issues: Lessons from the Life of a Pebble

2012-01-15T16:54:00.006-05:00

By Gary Berg-Cross

Recent posts have addressed some complex issues including free will (and fine tuning) as well as the psychology of religion. Often complicated issues are dumbed down to make them more acceptable and digestible to a broad swath of folks. But this is often done disingenuously using fallacious arguments and/or false data to lead people to targeted conclusions and opinions. See for example, Mathew Goldstein’s blog Theists' defense against atheism and human invention fails.

Presidential campaigns, like chit-chat, often tend to avoid difficult issues. Appealing to preconceptions, using simplifying language and binary thinking frames are all part of a dumbing down to fit the narrative styles of contemporary life. Complex social and natural phenomena like climate change just aren’t sexy items and get discussed in bumper sticker phrases. This telegraphic style comes despite that fact that most of us would acknowledge that there nuances and shades of gray on issues. We just don’t routinely take them into account.

It is plausible that complexity emerges from multi-causal factors and the fact that many issues are composite being made up of several parts. Further such parts are often in conflict. National security, for example, is composed of many factors supposedly organized in defense of our concept of freedom.

But national security polices can be in conflict with some established ideas of freedom and liberty. And what about a seemly distant concept like climate change? As some have noted the world-wide costs and consequences of changing climate (increases in global average air/ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow & ice and rising global average sea level) is one strong factor influencing how the 21st century will unfold. The totality of such effects they will have serious implications for U.S. national security interests, as well as global stability. Defense analysts talk about a range of problems from the mundane of coastal military installations more sustainable to the supporting the stability of “friendly” nations that lack the suite of resources, good governance, & resiliency needed to respond to the many adverse consequences of climate change. The subtleties and depth of understanding needed for such things tens to get thrown aside in political campaigns as they put issues into neatly categorized little boxes often for ideological ideas. Such is the case with things like climate change denial which often seems based on a mis-uderstanding of the underlying science. It's just too hard to unscramble the egg of deep time and understand our current circumstances in earth historical time.

But science is quite different and complex phenomena, such as evolution, get their due. It’s a contrasting pleasure to read an exposition of complex issues by a scientist to a talking point snipptet of a gabby politician like Newt Gingrich. It was therefore a great joy to run across a guided trip through geological complexity in a book The Planet in a Pebble: A Journey into Earth's Deep History by geologist Jan Zalasiewicz. There is an online copy of much of it including pictures!

If you or I pick up a rock at the beach we might see some small beauty and a portion of the composite nature. But Zalasiewicz know how to pick a special rock whose existence is entwined with the history of the whole Earth. He picks a pebble “of gray slate from a Welsh beach - perhaps from somewhere like Aberystwyth, or Clarach, or Borth on the west Wales coast." But Zalasiewicz knows about the inherent complexity in the pebble which he compares to a dense computer chip –“ tightly packed with more information than one could ever surmise from gazing on its smooth surface." It’s the unpack of this information with modern techniques that makes such an interesting story.

It does take Jan a while to elucidate the complexity in 13 chapters, each exploring a different stage in the history of the material from which the pebble is made and ways we have of dating these events and what happened in them. Along the way we learn geologist’s lingo and come to love ‘strata” and such.

He starts all the way back with a cosmological view Big Bang expansion at a time before there were elements for a pebble is be composed of. This is followed by plenty of violence periods including exploding stars to product the elements from which the slate-based pebble emerged. Then there is the formation of the sun and the planets followed by the formation of continents and seas.

Today, almost everything that happened to the pebble and its constituent parts can be inferred from lab measurement. One of the most interesting is zircon, a high-density accessory mineral that often turns up in trace quantities in rocks such as granites and quartzes. Zircon crystals aren’t pretty to a layman or a jeweler, but they were born 4.4 billion years ago - only a hundred million years or so after the Earth was formed, and are our oldest terrestrial material. Besides they are geologically adventuresome and have unique chemical properties that allow geologists to reconstruct their birth in ancient landscapes. Zircons act as eerily accurate atomic clocks with small amounts of radioactive uranium and thorium that they contain decaying constantly to provide a radiometric clock that can tell us when as well as where they first appeared. This gives earth scientists access to what Zalasiewicz calls a virtual “time machine” to Earth’s beginnings” nearly four and half billion years ago. Zalasiewicz’s isotopic tales of ancient continents and explanations of how geologists have learned to unravel such complex geochemical matrices are just as gripping as his detailed accounts of the pebble’s eventful history. For example, Neodymium isotopes tell when the stuff that makes up the pebble was released from the Earth's mantle.

Among the intertwined topics showing the complex processes that lead to a small pebble we follow the formation of ancient continents. Runoff from these provides the sediment that made the pebble’s slate was derived. When this sediment was deposited in ancient oceans it included hydrocarbons formed from buried organic matter. Biology is a surprisingly powerful part of the story. It turns out that Jan’s pebble contains fossils of graptolites, animals that date the rock with fine precision. There is even lichenometry, a method by which the stubbornly slow,steady growth of lichen gives us clues about how long its rock-host has had a surface for its growth. Such events leave traces that can now be dated from isotopic methods. This allows Zalasiewicz to tell not only us a story of various aged components of the pebble but also how we know this. This is not a story on faith, but one of scientific method and the resulting understanding. Unlike religious mysteries these are painstakingly uncovered. And each part encodes and reveals a different part of commensurate fabric. Truly a wonderful experience and a lesson in knowing.

Note, the title is a bit of a take on William Blake rhapsody about the possibility of seeing “ a world in a grain of sand." Where Blake was poetic and a bit mystical in Auguries of Innocence Zalasiewicz is being more like the Newton that Blake feared and seeing the beauty of a rainbow that is not decreased by natural understanding, but is heightened. I wish that more of our thought leaders would take on such a project and educate the public in the honest possibilities After John McPhee’s works it is one of the most accessible works on geology that can be enjoyed by a layman.

Free will and fine tuning

2012-01-13T19:37:00.019-05:00

By Mathew Goldstein

There is good reason to think that we do not have free will and that the fundamental constants of physics are not fine tuned. Some people defend theism on the grounds that both phenomena are evidence that naturalism is insufficient to describe or explain the universe. So the evidence that both are false assumptions has some significance in the debate over whether or not we should believe that there are no gods.

I will utilize biologist Jerry Coyne's definition of free will: When faced with two or more alternatives, it's your ability to freely and consciously choose one, either on the spot or after some deliberation. A practical test of free will would be this: If you were put in the same position twice — if the tape of your life could be rewound to the exact moment when you made a decision, with every circumstance leading up to that moment the same and all the molecules in the universe aligned in the same way — you could have chosen differently.

If we had free will then we would be self-aware of the action we have selected before we have irreversibly committed to that action. If our choices are unconscious, having been determined well before the moment we think we've made them, then we don't have free will in any meaningful sense. Scans of brain activity favor the latter scenario. First we irreversibly commit to an action and we become aware of which action we are taking only after the decision was made. For example, brain scans show that when a subject "decides" to push a button on the left or right side of a computer, the choice can be predicted by brain activity before the subject is consciously aware of having made it. We then convince ourselves post-hoc that we decided on our action after conscious deliberation. Thus, our feeling that we consciously choose may be a deeply ingrained and automatic self-deception, a trick our mind plays on us.

In his new book "Who's in Charge: Free Will and the Science of the Brain", neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga explains how the right brain hemisphere is driven by the senses and acts on an immediate, subconscious level. The left brain hemisphere applies a conscious after-the-fact reasoning that attempts to make sense of the actions that the subconscious mind has already taken. The left-brain's "interpreter module" is always at work inventing theories to "explain" what the right half of the brain has already "decided" on the basis of reflexive subconscious instinct.

Our intuition that we have free will is very strong. The concept of free will is fundamental to the way people assign meaning to their lives and is perceived as continuously being in play except when we are sleeping. But from a biological perspective, conscious self-awareness of actions came later in the history of life. Life originally selected among alternative available actions without self-awareness. So it makes sense that animals which later acquired conscious self-awareness still tend to make decisions prior to being self-aware of those decisions.

The premise of the fine-tuned universe assertion is that a small change in several of the dimensionless fundamental physical constants would result in a universe that cannot support life. The current standard model of particle physics has 25 freely adjustable parameters. However, the standard model is not mathematically self-consistent under certain conditions, so most physicists believe that it is incomplete. In some candidate replacement theories, the actual number of independent physical constants may be as small as 1. But, for the sake of argument, let's accept that there are 25 and that a small change to any single one of these constants makes the universe radically different.

Fine tuning can be cited as evidence for an intelligently designed universe only if the probability that the universe would be able to support life is tiny over the entire spectrum of all possible combinations of all possible values of all the constants. Even if the fine-tuning premise were true, there is theoretical evidence for a multiverse which provides a naturalistic explanation for fine-tuning. But is the premise true? Varying the value of just one constant while leaving all of the other values at their actual values may result in no other universe that can support life. Yet varying the values of all 25 constants simultaneously may result in many universes that can support life. The former result can thus be misleading, because the latter result, if true, would outnumber, and thus defeat, the former result.

Simulating universes while simultaneously varying the values of all 25 constants may be computationally very difficult, but several attempts have been made with a subset. Victor Stenger has simulated different universes in which four fundamental parameters are varied. He found that long-lived stars could exist over a wide parameter range. Fred Adams has done a similar study to Stenger, investigating the structure of stars in universes with different values of the gravitational constant, the fine-structure constant, and a nuclear reaction rate parameter. His study suggests that roughly 25% of this parameter space allows stars to exist.

So the free-will and fine tuning arguments may both be wrong. Certainly, both arguments have been premature in the sense that neither phenomena has been established to be true by the evidence. It is only very recently that we have acquired the tools to start to tackle the question of whether these two premises are true. The early results suggest both premises are false.

The Ledge review

2012-01-13T16:23:00.001-05:00

The Ledge (2011)

Written and Directed by Matthew Chapman

Reviewed by Bill Creasy

Matthew Chapman is known in atheist circles as the great-great-grandson of Charles Darwin, and he is also a noted film writer and director. He wrote a book on the Dover, Pa., Intelligent Design trial, 40 Days and 40 Nights. He was a speaker at the 2007 AAI Conference in Crystal City.

His movie The Ledge received some publicity as an "atheist" movie, as the plot centers around a conflict between an atheist and a fundamentalist. But it is a serious, unusual independent movie with multi-faceted characters. It is not preachy, and the atheism is only one of several major plot points. Chapman described the movie as a thriller, and there is also a touching love story.

The movie begins with Gavin (played by Charlie Hunnam) on the ledge of a tall building, getting ready to jump. A police officer Hollis (Terrence Howard) tries to talk him into coming off the ledge. Gavin says that if he doesn't jump, someone else will die. Gavin tells him the story of why he is there.

Gavin met a married couple, Joe (Patrick Wilson) and Shauna Harris (Liv Tyler), living in an apartment across the hall. Later, the woman applied for a job at the hotel that Gavin managed, without knowing he worked there. Gavin's roommate, a gay man, said there must be meaning to this event, but Gavin, an atheist, scoffed that it was only a coincidence that she came to his hotel. But the relationship with the couple went quickly downhill when the four of them had dinner together and Joe, a Christian fundamentalist, prayed for God to forgive the abomination of homosexuality. Gavin (who was straight) was outraged, but he privately became sexually attracted to Shauna and decided to liberate her from Joe.

Gavin got to know Shauna. It turned out that all the characters were dealing with difficult personal problems. Joe, in particular, became born again to recover from addiction, but he had anger that was not far below the surface.

One could agree with the late Christopher Hitchens's way of thinking, that Joe was more dangerous because of his religious certainty of forgiveness and life after death. He admitted that he was an "Old Testament kind of guy." However, jealousy has been the cause of many murders, with or without religion. I'll let the audience make that decision.

The plot point that is not surprising to atheists, but which may be surprising to the religious, is the idea that Gavin could care enough about someone to consider sacrificing himself. In that sense, it is good publicity for atheists.

The film is rated R and it is available on DVD from Netflix.

This review was previous published in the January issue of WASHline.

A Freethinker’s Inspiration of Atheist Posters

2012-01-13T15:07:00.008-05:00

By Gary Berg-Cross

I ran across some new atheist posters at the recent Humanlight celebration. What got my attention there was a poster of the Last Supper with Jesus replaced by the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM). I’ve heard there another poster with the disciples replaced by famous freethinkers – sort of like below I guess but structured around a table. I haven’t run into that one yet.

But the experience got me thinking about what might be a list of some of the best posters. You tube has a good start on this and more than one although if you go there you get a warning that the content has been identified by the YouTube community as being potentially offensive or inappropriate!!s just to represent freethinkers in some way, sort of a variation on the fish symbol.

Viewer discretion is advised, as they say.

Below are a few of the ones that grabbed my attention.

One type is is just to represent freethinkers in some way, sort of a variation on the fish symbol.

Another type is with Darwin in it. Side note, Darwin Day Feb 12 is here in less than a month and I hope the DC area has a good celebration.

Darwin gets into many posters, but so does the Last Supper theme. One shows imaginary figures.

As a side note I also like a take on OWS as a Christian assembly.

FSM makes an appearance again in a Sistine chapel creation poster.

I’m sure there are many good ones I’ve missed so perhaps readers will post comments on their favorites.

Some Notes from John Shook’s’ Talk - "The Psychology of Religion, the Sociology of Theology, and the Humanist Strategic Response".

2012-01-13T11:29:00.014-05:00

by Gary Berg-Cross

John Shook, author of The God Debates has much to say about the
public critics of religion, but at a recent WSH MDC chapter his
topic was “The Psychology of Religion, the Sociology of
Theology, and the Humanist Strategic Response". The talk was
partially inspired by Dan Dennett’s Breaking the Spell and
the new research advances to the scientific study of religion. One
expression of the idea is to: “study religion as a natural
phenomenon, as carefully as you might study the trajectory of a
baseball or the embryology of the mouse”. Recently,
the Center for Inquiry (CFI) held a conference called "Daniel Dennett and the
Scientific Study of Religion: A Celebration of the Fifth
Anniversary of Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural
Phenomenon. " Shook interviewed Dennett as part
of this workshop and this talk represented an update to
some the thinking in Dennett’s earlier book. Three type of
scientific studies have emerged those of brain, Behvipr
(cognition) & Belief (e.g.commitment) – as shown in the Picture at the top of this
Blog. Group practices, such as ritual conformity, can be seen as
connecting the Belief and behavior making it “ meaningful
belief” for such things as existential coping.

Only a small portion of these from Shook’s talk are covered in
these notes (and non of Lee's great food/snacks is available, for that you have
to come to the meetings), but an important point of departure concerns the
question of why religious belief phenomena happens. Why are
there religions? <As many have suggested there are
many explanations of why religion exists: as an

explanation for what we don’t understand;

psychological reaction to our lives and surroundings; as an expression of social needs;

tool of the status quo to keep some people in power and others out;

focus upon supernatural and “sacred” aspects of our lives; and

evolutionary strategy for survival.

The old story is that such belief is based on some mixture of
fear, ignorance and mistake. The new view is a bit
different and argues that religious belief naturally
develops as part of human cognition. This makes sense when
we consider human curiosity mixed with such things as
reaction to tragedy within small group. Groups must
develop habits of correct conduct so we see the eventual
purposes of churches for group support. Deep
evolution of communication in human species from 1-2
million years ago, which allowed simple rituals which
religion evolved from and builds on. We’re not
sure when more organized beliefs to support group
dynamics arose as what we now think of as religion, but
a working guess is between 50 -100,000 yrs ago when
biological anthropologists and others speculate that a
superior narrative ability arose as a systematization of
earlier animism & magic into one with priests and
other baggage - a position of early researchers E.B. Tylor & James
Frazer. The good news is that religious evolution and
transformation is a step towards more intellectual
discovery. But this means more than disproving older theories that are
wrong if it is to lead to secularism. Among the points made and
argued in John’s talk were:

Brain Studies:

There is no religion brain or modules but religious thinking uses existing modules..
No amount of research helps provide evidence forsupernasturalism.But believers like that we see differences in brain activity during meditation and other quasi-religious
activities. It is really not surprising that we get brain activity responses that correlate with a
variety of unusual experiences.

Some will appeal to the brain as a direct cause of religion. But there are no pure brains. Brains are connected and encultured. It co-changes with culture.

And brains won't do everything, there are limits to what it does in isolation

But to do this the beliefs must conform to older universalmoral intuitions and must be able to explain some things in Why are the Gods of this era like us? Human-like error helps

Belief commitment:
There are consistencies between belief systems.

But belief correlates with error, sacrifice and risk are
problematic for believers and their supporters. How do such
systems survive?

The idea is that there are benefits/yields to consistent social benefits that
outweigh the downsides. So religions get social payoffs for
trust in some beliefs and committed behavior. They can get
away with false positive because we are not killed for false
belief like believing in spirits as we would about a belief
of wolves being in the woods.

Such beliefs helps groups get though hard times when there
are no rational solution.

But to do this the beliefs must conform to older universal moral intuitions and must be able to explain some things in some fashion.

So religions tend to use slightly, but only slightly, unnatural beings, usually anthropomorphic, like Gods that have human like qualities.

Stewart Elliot Guthrie argues that “Religion is Anthropomorphization Gone Awry”

They may employ naive psychology that most people have like the idea of
a mind without body. These are simple narratives and as
noted before seem to part of the human makeup.

Cultural anthropology is making progress on real roots of religion in terms of social
functions, animism, totenismm, ancestor worship (assuming
common ancestors), and magic to deal with problems. These
older ideas seem to have been systematized several thousand
years ago especially as part of “urbanization”.

As the river valley civilizations arose religion evolved like language.

Cities required shared duties and religion helped pass through the crisis of having
unrelated people living there by increased inclusiveness and
commonality. A group of people from diverse previously small
tribes are brought together as part if early city life. They
may then learn new skills - they may now be easily replaced
so they must learn skills. To conform they must converge
dialects and start to dress alike. They start to eat the
same foods from the same sources and they endure the same
hardships of living in close quarters (meeting many new
people each day), drought, shortages, prevent cheating etc
(See picture below). It takes quite a bit of work
to indoctrinate kids into all of this.

So early cities became
religious to handle high density and its problems. The Gods of religion had to evolve. People had
moved so were gods far away of not? Now they became gods for all people to relate people of different kinship.

This phenomena was seen early in Egypt & Dowism, but was an obvious solution
happened all around the world and was not a unique idea as was later claimed as part of Jewish
tradition. It had apath and polytheism was intermediate stage explaining how gods are related. The trend is seen from 3000 - 1000 BC where monotheism wipe out polytheism as an aid to managing
great empires.

During this time politics controls religion getting a lid on all them to help
perpetuate empire. Theology evolves to try to enhance
devotion with higher values that serve empire and religion.

With a common god the new urban masses have to becomes
‘fictitious kin’ to get along and make city life work.
Organized religion arose in these circumstances to serve
these needs. One of the new ideas is of a commonality to
humans, We are more than individual but we are also unique. A soul idea helps
explain that so religions start selling the idea of immortal
soul. It makes us we feel good as we are more than a small cog in big wheel of
city and empire, but there is always a tension, Do we have a soul capable of being punished?

John mentioned the work
of Scott Atran [Anthropologist, University of Michigan; Author of In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion and Pascal Boyer as people who help us understand some of the transition.

One of the important contemporary lessons that John argued is that religious
belief collapses when given social support. Evidence of this
is Western Europe is one phenomena that worries American
fundamentalists and explains some of their urgent efforts to
gain cultural influence and diminish secular influence.

Sociology can't say what theological religions are adaptive
or natural. It may have been in long past, but with cultural
change has forced a theological position.

John finished on some lessons for Ethical Secularist and these are shown in the
picture below. Lessons for humanists include the idea that
naturalism by itself can't handle ethics and that we need a
philosophy for modern morality and secular social justice to
relieve stress.

There was a spirited Q and A that followed including:

Can science prove religion wrong?

Sam Harris argument that science can provide morality.

Harris bridges it with normative principles.

Naturalism can serve, but not prove an ethics.

How enlightened self interest serves group interest in a consequentialist
stance

How control by
narratives comes in and precedes powerful rational thought

Anthropomorphism
of god vs animals.

Secular attitude of founding fathers

2012-01-13T07:24:00.000-05:00

Let sanity prevail among the candidates who are contesting for President post in USA. Here is link for details about founding father`s attitude towards religion;
http://www.alternet.org/story/153727/5_founding_fathers_whose_skepticism_about_christianity_would_make_them_unelectable_today?akid=8109.140959.zhAJsp&rd=1&t=2
Innaiah Narisetti

All Mixed Up: Perplexing Hyphenated Identity, 50-50 Concepts and Mixed up Ethnicity

2012-01-09T19:30:00.015-05:00

By Gary Berg-Cross

Mary Bellamy recently noted her perplexity at the meaning of the words “Merry Christmas" in the context of mixed salad of multi-ethic, religious and racial society. Different people with different cultural-religious background interpret it differently. One may ask how religious is it or how American?

I was thinking of this of this multi-ethic, religious and racial context and perplexity while listening to Pete Seeger's song "All Mixed up" about how races mixed to give us a rich stew the English language. Then I read that Pat Buchanan has gotten into trouble for what seems like ethnic and racial charged views promoted in his new book Suicide of a Superpower. One of the chapters is entitled "The End Of White America." He's very worried about the mix of races (e.g. Black and White/Caucasian), ethnic culture with Nationality (e.g. American or Mexican). One can add a 3^rd category of religious identity (e.g. Christian or Hindu) as a broad category that is gets mixed into the discussion. We are used to checking these categories off on questionnaire along with age or gender as if they are unitary-atomic things. The categories can seem pretty clear captured in simple words but these denotations are simpler than the implied connotations that people have. As a result terms like American are often used in head spinning ways and allow us to talk past each other in conversations about things like identity & loyalty. To channel New Gingrich talking about Palestine and Palestinians, American is an invented nationality with many ingredients.

I recently wrote about vague language which is partly the reason we get perplexed about the concept of Christmas, but also identity. Differing concepts creep into the language that people use describe themselves (e.g. American, Secular Italian, or Christian Humanist). We can do a good deal of my head scratching about religious and non-religious people describe themselves, which is one part of 3 basic dimensions, but it probably easier to start with national identities which seem to bother some reactionary politicians/commentators like Buchanan and is a dog-whistle item in political campaigns.

One of the things that historically gets American conservatives off about nationality is the hyphenated American label phenomena – Italian-American, Irish-American, German- American etc. That hyphenation epithet seems to have come in vogue in the late 19^th century a surge of immigrants. World War 1 sparked a bit of consternation since German-& Irish Americans (i.e. Catholics) were big on U.S. neutrality in that war. This earned the enmity of former President Teddy Roosevelt. In a speech in 1916 before a luncheon given by Astor, TR "eschews" hyphenated Americans such as Italian-Americans, German-Americans and Jewish-Americans as being 50-50 Americans and the former colonel said:

"The effort to keep our citizenship divided against itself by the use of the hyphen and along the lines of national origin is certain to a breed of spirit of bitterness and
prejudice and dislike between great bodies of our citizens. If some
citizens band together as German-Americans or Irish-Americans, then
after a while others are certain to band together as English-Americans
or Scandinavian-Americans, and every such banding together, every
attempt to make for political purposes a German-American alliance or a
Scandinavian-American alliance, means down at the bottom an effort
against the interest of straight-out American citizenship, an effort to
bring into our nation the bitter Old World rivalries and jealousies and
hatreds "

There is a history to talking like this. It reflects the old melting pot hope of a majority identity and loyalty to a simplified, unified national identity. Well, as Mary noted, the fact is we live in more of a mutli-racial/ethnic nation now and the fact is that hyphenated groups abound. The melting pot aspiration of TR's time came under fire when it became apparent that the mainstream public had no intention of "melting" with (certain) "other" races and cultures or of giving up their historical religions. In the face of this fact subsequent immigration policies became restrictive based on race,but immigration ground forth to produce today's synthetic multi-racial-ethnic America.

Over time many have softened into tacit acceptance of what seems like a quasi-compromise. We have what is described as a tossed salad society where the racial ingredients remain somewhat recognizable distinct, but also leads to some identity vagaries.

To some, like Buchanan, there is no real agreement and we are drifting into danger down the road. It raises issues like loyalty. If your are Chinese-American or Mexican American to which label are you loyal too? Buchanan thinks the Mexican-American hybrid might eventually annex and take back the American West.

Nationality is only part of the problem of labeled identity, because there are other ways of identifying oneself. Usually in parceling out identity, as on a biographic form, we again use our 3 simple labels of seemingly independent categories of:

Nationality/Country (US),
Race (Negroid)
Religion (Muslim).

So you can be a Negroid US citizen (say of Egyptian descent) and a member of the Muslim religion. Seems like a simple, atomic formula. Sort of like chemistry. We can switch the labels around to have Italians who are Catholic or make compounding distinctions. So we can construct Southern American of African descent who are Southern Baptist Christians. But there are some vagaries here. Not everyone fits into nice compound labels. In reality things get a bit fluid in the compound mixing of labels since there are dependencies between the concepts.

There are many things that can be seen in different ways. The Black-American category is too big a racial and ethnic grouping, and many of us don’t see a West African or Central African distinction. Biologists tell us that there are actually more historical genetic differences between groups in Africa than anywhere else in the world groups. But skin color tends to be used to overwhelm this deeper distinctions and we tend ignore the use of different languages and customs that might mark the difference. We do make these distinctions for Asian-Americans, so Chinese and Japanese are easily distinguished as is their language.

The religious categories can also be vague. As some one noted when discussing Christians in the Middle East :

"Yes, all Assyrians are Christians. But we are Christians in different ways, of course."

We can cite the usual major categories from Christian to Muslim to Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist etc. But as a Mormon can we agree that Romney is a Christian or just a Christian in a different way? Fundamentalists don’t see it that way and are concerned about the beliefs and values that Mormonism has imbedded into its culture.There is lots of baggage and stretching Christianity to accommodate Mormonism seems as dangerous to them as accommodating Mexican-American hybridization to Buchanan. It’s like the meaning of Christmas. It will change depending on which group is doing the interpreting.

Here is a final example where simple, atomic labeling yields to a complex of underlying . meanings . Does it make sense to say that one is an atheist Catholic? It doesn’t seem like it. I can be an atheist who is a White, English person, but atheist and Catholic are both in what seems the “religion” dimension with no overlap on the Venn diagram. Does it make sense, then to call a person an Atheist Jew then? I’ve heard several people describe themselves that way, but does it make any more sense than being a Protestant Atheist?

Here the perplexity seems to be about Jewish as a religion as opposed to an ethnic group label. When listing religious categories Jewish gets thrown into the mix with Muslim etc. Maybe we want to say the religion isn’t “Jewish” but Judaism. Then Jewish becomes an ethic identity label which relates to a mix cultural factors such as nationality, culture, customs, ancestry, language and beliefs.

Our simple categories have become all mixed in ethnicity and this is more generally true than we like to admit. It allows some flexibility, but probably some confusion. Maybe we want to allow atheist or secular Catholics. These would be folks who hold onto cultural and historical experience and celebrate Easter, like secular Jews celebrate Passover which has religious roots and ceremony. Machar (The Washington Congregation for Secular Humanistic Judaism) is perhaps an example of this hybrid. They may meet in a temple with religious culture and tradition evident and talk of humanist values.

It seems a mixed message and doesn’t appeal to me particularly, but perhaps that is a half-way house for transitioning people slowing out of a faith culture into a more secular stance, while keeping the comfits of cultural identity while waiting for a secular humanism with its own building and cultural tradition. This might mean a half-way, more Humanist type of Christmas season celebrate mixed with Humanlight. Or maybe this is all too mixed up and leads to that competition between groups to celebrate in their own way in the winter season. Hanukkah is a minor holiday in Israel but Jewish culture in America has what a Washington Post called The Christmas effect: How Hanukkah became a big holiday.

In part, as the article says, the importance of Hanukkah among American Jews is driven by its proximity (in the time dimension) to Christmas and the need to "resist conversion" to the alien Christian culture. No melting pot there. More of adding some new humanist ingredients to an existing mixed salad.

Maybe there are pluses to go along with the minus in allowing some hyphenation of religious/ethnic culture and a stance like atheism or secular humanism. It’s the old tossed salad rather than melting pot again where religious culture and tradition sort of remain in a form that hyphenates with an identity like atheist. Perhaps it is what atheists and theists talk about at Inter-faith meetings. It might lead to some compromise or perhaps it is just one of those unsatisfying compromises that is compromising. It takes us sideways and puts off the harder decisions about identity.

Theists' defense against atheism and human invention fails

2012-01-08T02:24:00.050-05:00

By Mathew Goldstein

Sean McDowell and Jonathan Marrow wrote a book "Is God Just a Human Invention? And Seventeen Other Questions Raised by the New Atheists", published in August 2010, that claims to defeat the arguments for atheism and show that Christian theism is true. I have not read the book, instead I recently read a book review. Sometimes, reading a favorable book review is enough to conclude that the book fails to achieve its claimed objective. Why and how does this book fail to make a convincing argument against atheism, contrary to the enthusiastic book reviewer's assertions that the book succeeds? Let's take a look at some of the arguments from the book as cited by the book reviewer.

All people, including atheists, have faith in some things, therefore atheist attacks against religious faith are said to be mistaken. One trusts the unfamiliar pilot of a plane one boards; one has faith that the electrician properly wires your house; one trusts the cook at the restaurant where one eats, etc. The problem with this argument is that it is confusing our day to day faith in the behavior, skills, and good will of other people with faith in factual claims made by religions. It doesn't follow that because we trust pilots to not try to kill their passengers that we are justified in trusting that the angel Moroni communicated the wisdom of God to Joseph Smith as asserted by the book of Mormon.

Atheists are then accused of having blind faith in the ideas that the universe came into existence from nothing, that life emerged from non-life, and the human mind arose from mere matter. None of this is true. Atheists follow the opinions of the experts in cosmology, biology, and neurology: Cosmologists, Biologists, and Neuroscientists. These are the people who have devoted their time and efforts to studying and pursuing the evidence about our universe, life, and brains, including their origins. The evidence suggests that our universe contains a near balance of negative and positive energy consistent with its emerging from an unstable, initial "nothing". Nothing is in quotes here because the evidence suggests that absolute nothingness could be impossible, it exists in the minds of theologians but has no evidenced reality. The evidence suggests that the brain is a completely materialistic entity that is the sole source, together with its supporting body, of our minds. The evidence suggests that life emerged from chemistry and is entirely a chemical and physical process. These are, in fact, the conclusions favored by the available evidence. I, and most other atheists, are absolutely convinced that these are the conclusions that are the best fit with the evidence.

The authors of the book are then quoted as asserting "there is no inherent conflict between Christianity and science”. As evidence for this it is noted that most of the early pioneering scientists were theists. However, time passes and more evidence is accumulated. Today, more scientists are atheists than a hundred years ago. People hold inconsistent beliefs, so the fact that there are many people who hold two beliefs is not sufficient to establish that both beliefs are not in conflict.

The authors claim naturalism “ultimately undermines any basis for confidence” in nature’s order and the powers of reason. It is claimed that under a naturalistic worldview, there’s no reason to trust our reason or our senses; they were merely the result of blind Darwinian accidents. Again, this is false. Our reason and senses are effective precisely because they competitively evolved. To the extent animal reasoning and senses were less trustworthy they were out competed by animals whose reasoning and senses were more trustworthy. The process of evolution is thus not only accidental, it is also directional, it necessarily follows a path that "puts us in touch with reality", because the outcome is shaped by competition for survival. A tendency to walk over cliffs is not an outcome favored by evolution.

The authors defend the concept of miracles, “if a transcendent God exists, then it seems eminently possible that He has acted in the universe”. This if x then y is possible logic is sensible here. But we could just as logically say if not x then not y. While the authors seem to be impressed by the standard philosophical arguments for God, those arguments fail by the only criteria that counts, they don't reach conclusions by following the overall weight of the overall evidence. So the authors are mistaken to consider those various traditional arguments for god to be convincing. Arguing from one possibility to another possibility only makes sense when the evidence favors the first possibility.

The authors claim that Hume mistakenly presumes to know the uniformity of human experience prior to considering the evidence. Indeed, we should always start with the evidences. So do the available evidences favor the conclusion that the universe consistently follows a set of laws? Yes, very much so. Pieces of icebergs break off and fall down into the ocean, but equivalent amounts of ice don't jump up and attach itself to the side of the iceberg. Hume was correct regarding this "presumption" of his. Time has a clear direction from past to future because our universe unfolds uniformly according to fixed laws.

The authors then attack Hume’s argument that one should be skeptical about the improbable. “But surely it is perfectly reasonable to believe that an improbable event can occasionally occur”. No, that is not a reasonable conclusion for any particular imaginable event. Again, this depends on the evidence. We know that Royal Flushes in poker are both improbable and an occasional occurrence, while a human language talking donkey is not only improbable, but physically impossible and thus a never occurred fiction. Believing in any such tall tale events that violate the evidences regarding what is possible, a.k.a. a miracle, is, by definition, unreasonable.

The authors claim that there is not good evidence for macroevolution (changes from one species into another different species), only good evidence for microevolution (small changes within a kind). This is false. The evidence for evolution transcends this micro/macro distinction and is strong for both. Macroevolution is also an unavoidable logical consequence of microevolution.

The authors claim that a purely material reality cannot produce consciousness. Again, this is contrary to the evidence. The evidence that we have favors the conclusion that consciousness is an emergent property of purely material brains. Near death experiences are like dreams, we have lots of evidence that they are fictions, they reflect activity internal to the brain, not what it is true beyond the confines of the person. Intention and free will are not sufficient evidence for consciousness being immaterial. We literally don't have evidence that free will is anything more than an illusion, or that if it is in any sense real, that it is in that sense also non-material.

The authors note that atheism lacks an objective and perfect ground to issue objective moral commandments as well as the means to hold all moral lawbreakers to an account. But neither does theism. The authors claim that “In the theistic view, objective moral laws are grounded in the reality of a Moral Lawgiver." That is a circular argument, it fails to establish what are objective moral laws, or how that is determined. Citing the Christian (or Hebrew or Islamic, etc.) bible as the guide for "Morality" is untenable. Those documents are more distant from being a decent, let alone perfect, guide to moral behavior, or laws, than most atheists could write themselves. Furthermore, it is rather obvious that the content of these documents reflect the state of knowledge and attitudes of the people of the place and time where they originated. Again, the evidence strongly favors the conclusion that the only Lawgivers behind these documents are people.

The book reviewer concludes "They offer several of the leading arguments for Christian theism while toppling some of the most belligerent of the objections promoted by the New Atheists. They have written, with abundant care, to attain a thoroughness that is not often established in popular books. The wisdom and excellence with which each chapter is written makes this a crucial volume for the budding apologist’s library."

The arguments for Christian theism, and more generally for religious theisms, in this book, and in the many similar arguments found in other such books, are often seriously flawed, in conflict with the available evidence, and very weak overall. That books like these are popular is an indication that more debate regarding religious beliefs is needed. There is nothing belligerent, or impolite, or counter-productive, in arguing that everyone should believe in macroevolution, in abiogenesis, in global warming, in atheism, and generally in that set of conclusions which are best supported by the available evidence.

A Philosopher for our Times - John Dewey

2012-01-06T08:42:00.010-05:00

By Gary Berg-Cross

John Shook will be talking Saturday Dec. 7^th at the WASH MDC chapter about "The Psychology of Religion, the Sociology of Theology, and the Humanist Strategic Response." As part of this we are likely to hear a bit aobut John Dewey and Pragmatism as evidenced by his recent book, John Dewey's Philosophy of Spirit by John R. Shook and James A. Good, published by Fordham University Press, in 2010.

John has woven together the threads of some of Dewey philosophical concepts and values into a poem.

A Philosopher's Faith
Inspired by John Dewey

My person returns to unwind all its threads,
Woven by language into the habits of heads;
An old wearied head must bow down one final eve,
But my lively thought shines in cloth I helped to weave.

Your gift by my leave is but some seeds yet to grow,
Whose value was found in times of need long ago;
Sow all of these seeds in our vast garden with care,
Protect and defend the greater harvest to share.

To view such swift change, see truths melt under new suns,
To watch how scared souls kept on refining their guns;
My nation was home despite such strife with no cease,
My freedom was here while humbly searching for peace.

By trial did I live, by more trial find my thought’s worth,
My death you will get if you conceive no new birth;
No life without doubt, for the best fail now and then,
No rest for my faith, that each new day tests again.

--John Shook

It’s fair to say that I’m a fan or John Dewey’s life and thoughts. I was dimly aware of him as one of America's premier "public intellectuals,". I had run into philosophic and pragmatic influence on progressive education, which served as a testing ground for some of his psychological-philosophical thinking.Some of that was readily available

“It was no accident”, he observed in Philosophy of education (see Middle works of John Dewey 1912-13, “that like himself many great philosophers had taken a keen interest in the problems of education because there was ‘an intimate and vital relation between the need for philosophy and the necessity for education.’ If philosophy was wisdom, a vision of ‘the better kind of life to be led’, then consciously guided education was the praxis of the philosopher. ‘If philosophy is to be other than an idle and unverifiable speculation, it must be animated by the conviction that its theory of experience is a hypothesis that is realized only as experience is actually shaped in accord with it. And this realization demands that man’s dispositions be made such as to desire and strive for that kind of experience.’ The shaping of dispositions might take place in various institutions, but in modern societies the school was the most crucial, and as such it was an indispensable arena for the shaping of a philosophy into a ‘living fact’ “(Dewey, 1912-13, p. 298, 306-7 quoted in JOHN DEWEY (1859-1952) by Robert B. Westbrook).

My formal education didn’t include much of Dewey’s thinking but his unifying concept critiquing the simple Reflex Arc concept. In his "Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology" (1896) paper, Dewey advanced a Functional School of Psychology by integrating his early Hegelianism with William James' recent take on evolutionary naturalism. Dewey's critique argues made the point that the idea of a stimulus based reflex arc account of human action fails because it contains an apparent logical paradox based on physical-mental dualism. What really is needed is an intentional level of analysis including feedback as the R of response affects the environment and changes the stimulus situation - see Figure on the left).

An "explanatory" account of animal or human action, he argues, needs to include this larger, intentional unit of analysis, which reconceptualized sensori-motor coordination.

Thus he added a cognitive, coordinating aspect that transcended and reformed old dualistic theories. A more thoughtful reflex arc provided the space and structure to reconceptualize stimulus-response behavior into a cognitive theory of habit. It emphasized active conceptualization and adaptive reconstruction as part of learning, an idea pursued in his experimental educational endeavors.

As a graduate student dating a Teacher’s College student at Columbia I got a bit closer to Dewey whose name I could see along with other famous educators on engraved on the building. I had time later in life to select one of Dewey’s works as vacation reading and there I discovered that Dewey’s middle and later books were all on topics of interest to me (How we think ,1910, Democracy and education, 1916, Experience and Nature, 1925 etc.).

It was only more recently that I learned enough to see Dewey life and progression as a whole and understand how his early work and teaching in Psychology (e.g. pushing social theory beyond an instincts explanation) became an adjunct to his philosophy and work on broader public problems. He reconstruction idea for philosophy reflected his own life’s journey. When asked if he would update a book for a 2^nd edition he was know it say, “it will be a different book.” His ideas were always evolving.

Coming from an idealist background of Kant and Hegel Dewey intellectual life was tempered by the pragmatist influence of Charles Peirce and William James. Trained in emerging experimental psychology Dewey constructed a natural philosophy in which vague concepts of mind were forged in cognitive models. There human thought was understood as instrumental practical problem-solving, which advances incrementally by testing rival hypotheses against experience in order to achieve the "warranted assertability" that grounds coherent action.

Dewey continually updated to his ideas in a search for truth and progress. The process of inquiry was central to his stance and the problems of society consumed him. We can also say that he provided many good ideas to the modern Secular Humanism movement along with scientific/pan-objectiveness. In the 50s his voice could still be heard on cultural controversies and Dewey still provides a good model for the combined role of philosophy and philosophy to address the larger problems of society.

Rhymes for the Times

2012-01-05T10:37:00.002-05:00

by Edd Doerr

There was an old man from Potsdam
Whose odor was like rotten spam.
To my query theoretical
He replied philosophical,
"I stink, therefore I am."

A pianist named Phelonius Phrunk
Performed best when blind stinking drunk.
He'd begin to drool
And slide off his stool,
Then play better than you would have thunk.

Old King Vlad was a nasty old sod.
A nasty old sod was he.
He called for his mace and his sharp snickersnee
And summoned his assassins three.
Each assassin had a dagger, a very fine dagger had he.
Oh, there's none so rare as can compare
With Old King Vlad as his assassins three.

Little miss Gable sat at the table
Stuffing her maw with grub.
Along came a spider and sat down beside her,
So she smashed it flat with her club.

Peas porridge heiss,
Peas porridge kalt.
Peas porridge schmeckt wie Scheiss
Neun Tage alt.

Towards Better New Year’s Resolutions

2012-01-04T10:22:00.011-05:00

by Gary Berg-Cross

I’m not a big one for making New Year’s resolutions. Mark Twain touched on it-
“New Year's is a harmless annual institution, of no particular use to anybody save as a scapegoat for promiscuous drunks, and friendly calls and humbug resolutions.” Further, according to Wikipedia New Year's Resolutions come from the old Summerian-Judeo-Christian concepts of human imperfection. This has evolved to institutionalize the idea of getting God’s mercy by apologies for one’s wrong doing over the past year. It also fits the Protestant idea of self-improvement which is OK.

It also fits what Barbara Ehrenreich calls America’s love affair with positive thinking, which is taken to task (along with an urgent call for a new commitment to realism) in Bright-sided How Positive Thinking is Undermining America.

There’s the older Catholic ethic of giving up pleasures (e.g. alcohol and meat) during pre-Easter Lent as an act of discipline. Discipline is good, self discipline better and looking as these as personal vows not religiously dictated makes sense as a secularist. It;a a gift we give ourselves to enhance the self, others or the world in a way that makes sense to oneself.

I see that people are still getting and giving advice on how to get personal improvements. It is understandable that people try to take possession of 2012 by setting a reasonable personal goals. There are some smaller scale, modern ones such as Nick Bilton’s promise to take breaks from his tech devices (see his Bits blog post “Disruptions: Resolved in 2012: To Enjoy the View Without Help From an iPhone,” )

Getting a job, living the American dreams, change a lifestyle, and losing weight are all popular. More denotations to the poor, become more reflective or becoming more environmentally responsible are all grander goals and sets them apart from ordinary resolutions. In this category I’ve seen worthy goals/projects listed on this blog:

· “Turn-off the TV,

· elect intelligent School Board members,

· void excessive debts from student loans,

· support Head Start”

Edd Doerr might add a resolution to write more letters to the editor on topics of interest.

But as Tara Parker-Pope noted in her New York Times column, a third of resolutions are ditched by the end of January. Four out of five people simply give their resolutions up (see Why Your New Year's Resolution Will Fail by February 1.

One problem comes from the type of resolutions we make. Many of then are just too extreme all-or-nothing New Year’s decisions. Taking on a big challenge is heroic and it is nice to start the year that way, but this one step transformation is often something that is so unrealistic we can’t possibly keep the commitment. Eric Zorn, put it this way-

“Making resolutions is a cleansing ritual of self assessment and repentance that demands personal honesty and, ultimately, reinforces humility. Breaking them is part of the cycle.”

People know they will have difficulty especially losing weight or making health gains. Deep down we might not expect ourselves to keep to such a goal, but are proud to start. But as CNN noted in its Why bother with resolutions? Because failure inspires there is value in trying. And maybe there is value in just developing the self control that resolutions require. It may be a dramatic end to procrastination. It seems good in itself to commit to developing what Psychologists call our own “locus of control”

OK, so let’s try. Does Social Science suggest anything useful? Dan Ariely, Decision Scientist at Duke University, has several ideas. They aren’t exactly new, but being based on study have some value.

A place to start is that many resolutions are general and vague (support Head Start might be vague). We don’t really believe we can hit them because the goal is uncertain. So the obvious remedy is Be specific, very specific. Ariely suggests the obvious fact that:

“the more clear cut your resolutions are, the easier they are to handle. Very specific restrictions make it easy to know if you are following the resolution.”

Maybe there is time to rescue that vague resolution before February. So to lose weight it helps to understand where your calories are coming from. You may need to cut down on desserts, but “ don't say you'll simply eat fewer desserts." Instead locate the action in space and/or time. Maybe you have the will power to avoid eating desserts late at night or on weekdays or at that expensive restaurant. This becomes a pragmatic/operational definition of what “fewer” means.

What else? Here are 4 more I’ve adapted from a summary by Ariely and his Duke Colleagues:

Get inspired. That is, make it meaningful to you (but also concrete as noted above). Meaningful resolutions have sticking power even if they aren’t grand challenges. Beth Reardon, director of integrative nutrition at Duke Integrative Medicine put it this way:

"If you want your resolution to act like Velcro rather than Teflon, be sure to link it to deep, authentic intentions. For example, resolving to order more food from Community Supported Agriculture is more powerful if you link it to your desire to support local businesses as well as your own health."

Reflective, Planned Readiness Resolutions are most effective if they are based on a genuine readiness to change a behavior – evidenced by development of a plan and consideration of likely effects, difficulty etc. Don’t just jump into it, but consider it.

Andy Silberman, director of Duke's Personal Assistance Program counsels not resolving to take on a big change until “you can explain how concerned you are about the behavior. It is also useful to outline what your motivation is to change, what specifically you want to accomplish and how confident you are that you can make the change.”

Environment & setting yourself up for success. Scott Huettel, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke who studies decision-making, cites pre-committing to, and expecting, changed circumstances. Environmental structuring is a powerful tool for making a resolution stick. An example might be changing your environment to help reduce monthly spending. OK, so pre-commitment to cutting up a credit card (or placing one in the freezer) to slow down spending.

The right circumstances just help one to make better decisions that are less impulse driven. That’s a step towards more control & less procrastination which is a good end in itself. And it may help avoid Mark Twain’s observation about New Year's Day… “now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual.”

Book of the Year

2012-01-01T13:37:00.000-05:00

by Luis Granados

It’s delightful to see a humanist-oriented book win something, especially something as prestigious as the National Book Foundation’s annual award for nonfiction. Stephen Greenblatt’s The Swerve: How the World Became Modern is a deserving winner, for taking an event little noted when it happened and demonstrating in an entertaining way its impact on the world ever since.

The central story of The Swerve is the discovery by an ex-Papal bureaucrat of a long lost Roman manuscript called De Rerum Natura, or “The Nature of Things.” Greenblatt’s recounting of how and why the book resurfaced in the 15^th century is fascinating, but for me what’s far more important is the text of The Nature of Things itself, and the light it sheds on pre-Christian humanism.

The Pope today speaks often of Europe’s “Christian roots,” as though before Christianity arrived Europe was a kind of caveman chaos. In a 2008 message, for example, Benedict XVI proclaimed that:

Contemporary Europe, peering into the third millennium, is the fruit of two millennia of civilization. … Europe appears to us today as a precious fabric, whose weave is made up of the principles and values of the Gospel … though unfortunately many Europeans seem to forget Europe's Christian roots, the latter are alive and should trace the path and nourish the hope of millions of citizens who share the same values.

So before the “two millennia of civilization,” there was what? Last September, he told the German Bundestag that “The conviction that there is a Creator God is what gave rise to the idea of human rights, the idea of equality of all before the law, the recognition of the inviolability of human dignity in every single person and the awareness of one’s responsibility for one’s actions.” So before Christianity, human rights, equality before the law, human dignity, and responsibility for one’s actions had not yet been invented.

The Nature of Things puts the lie to this. It was written around 50 years before Christ by a Roman poet named Lucretius, of whose life we know almost nothing. What we do know from reading The Nature of Things is that Lucretius was a devotee of the Greek philosopher Epicurus, who had lived over two centuries earlier: “the man in genius who o’er-topped the human race.” Epicurus was a dyed-in-the-wool humanist, who put man and his happiness at the center of his world. He did not deny the possibility of Gods, but didn’t regard them as important; if they existed, they were so far above us that they couldn’t possibly care about what happens here on earth, any more than we care about the affairs of paramecia. So forget about fearing the Gods, he argued, and live your life in a way that maximizes pleasure and minimizes pain.

This does not mean leading a life of unrestrained debauchery. On the contrary, Epicurus and his followers spent a lot of time working out what truly produces the most happiness in the long run. They concluded that pleasure maximization not only means planning at least a bit further ahead than the next glass of wine, but even involves matters beyond physical sensation, such as friendship, family, and contentment of the mind. Decent treatment of others also plays a role, because otherwise one could have no expectation of decent treatment for oneself, resulting in a most unpleasant state of uncertainty and fear. Some even demonstrated the conundrum that a certain degree of asceticism could help maximize ultimate pleasure; toning down the level of desires made them easier to satisfy. “To accustom one’s self, therefore, to simple and inexpensive habits is a great ingredient in the perfecting of health, and makes a man free from hesitation with respect to the necessary uses of life.”

Lucretius focused less on the ethics of Epicurus and more on the Epicurean explanation of the natural world – i.e., on “the nature of things.” As Lucretius described it, everything in the world, even the human soul, consists of tiny indivisible particles. Everything that occurs is the result of these particles colliding and interacting with one another, with no supernatural purpose or plan behind their motions. This doesn’t mean a deterministic world where everything is preordained by the physics of particle bounces; according to Lucretius, particles have a slight degree of unpredictableness to their actions, which he called a “swerve,” somewhat akin to free will. (Quantum physics theories today have vaguely similar notions of unpredictability about subatomic particles, but don’t expect me to explain them for you.)

Lucretius builds from the particles concept to a general explanation of everything, from optics to sex to volcanos. Many of his theories we know today to be wrong; volcanos are not really caused by subterranean winds. Others are closer to the mark: “The moon she possibly doth shine because strook by the rays of the sun.” He even hinted at Darwinian natural selection, observing that certain species of “monsters” died out because they didn’t have what it takes to survive and propagate.

For Lucretius, the pursuit of material knowledge was part of pleasure maximization, by removing unpleasant fear of the unknown:

For just as children tremble and fear all in the viewless dark, so even we at times dread in the light so many things that be no whit more fearsome than what children feign, shuddering, will be upon them in the dark. This terror, then, this darkness of the mind, not sunrise with its flaring spokes of light, nor glittering arrows of morning sun disperse, but only nature’s aspect and her law.

Ascribing natural causes to natural phenomena led Lucretius to far greater peace of mind than living in fear of the wrath of unpredictable Gods, from whom no form of prayer or sacrifice seemed to produce reliable results. Besides, he argued, if a power greater than us had fashioned the world, it would have made a better job of it: “In no wise the nature of all things for us was fashioned by a power divine – so great the faults it stands encumbered with.”

As Greenblatt points out, scientific knowledge in the era before the Pope tells us civilization began grew at an impressive rate. Euclid gave us geometry, Archimedes discovered pi and laid the foundation for calculus. Galen made immense contributions to the systematic study of medicine, Alexandrian astronomers described a spherical earth that revolved about the sun, engineers advanced practical uses of hydraulics and pneumatics. Lucretius marveled that “Even now some arts are being still refined, still increased: now unto ships is being added many a new device.”

What the Christianity the Pope says started civilization two millennia ago did was to shut that all down. Christian God experts liked the fear of the unknown, and the power of being the intermediaries with the spirit world that they said controlled everything. Augustine of Hippo, the most important early Christian theoretician, despised all forms of what he called “the vain and curious desire of investigation, known as knowledge and science”:

There is another form of temptation, even more fraught with danger. This is the disease of Curiosity. It is this which drives us to try and discover the secrets of nature, those secrets which are beyond our understanding, which can avail us nothing and which man should not wish to learn.

Augustine insisted that there is no need to be “dismayed if Christians are ignorant about the properties and the number of the basic elements of nature, or about the motion, order, and deviations of the stars, the map of the heavens, the kinds and nature of animals, plants, stones, springs, rivers, and mountains. … For the Christian, it is enough to believe that the cause of all created things . . . is . . the goodness of the Creator.”

By the brute force of Roman emperors, Augustine’s worldview prevailed, and that of Lucretius and Epicurus became a thought-crime. That’s why The Nature of Things disappeared for a thousand years, and why only the decadence of Papal court intrigue that Greenblatt so vividly recounts allowed it to resurface. Next time you hear a God expert declaim about western civilization’s “Christian roots,” think about old pre-Christian Lucretius, the fellow who warned us about the priests of his own time:

With civic blood a fortune they amass. They double their riches, greedy heapers-up of corpse on corpse, they have a cruel laugh for the sad burial of a brother-born.

Great Thoughts at the Library of Congress

2011-12-31T13:10:00.006-05:00

by Gary Berg-Cross

Washington DC is a great city to visit for scientific and humanities treasures. One repository of humanist and intellectual expression is the Jefferson building of the Library of Congress. This Beaux-Arts palace was constructed from the wealth of the Gilded Age which yielded its prosperity to the more hopeful reform of a Progressive era. It was an age of science and technology celebrating in World Fairs and Edison seeming to invent just what we needed.

In this atmosphere the Library of Congress building was constructed,. The building as a whole reflects a Jeffersonian spirit, child of the Enlightenment idea that intelligence and an informed public is necessary for democracy and society. One can enjoy the joyful expression of this principle and many supporting ideas on the walls of the Jefferson building of the Library.

Above the windows of the great hall’s East corridor on the 2^nd floor there are, for example, some very humanistic quotations:

SCIENCE IS ORGANIZED KNOWLEDGE
Herbert Spencer, Essays, "The Genesis of Science," Vol. ii, 1.

Around the corner, facing the staircase, a poet speaks:

BEAUTY IS TRUTH, TRUTH BEAUTY
Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn

On the other side of the staircase a 17th mediation on life and death:

TOO LOW THEY BUILD WHO BUILD BENEATH THE STARS
Edward Young, Night Thoughts, "Night," viii, 215

And around the corner, facing the Great Hall is something naturalistic philosophy:

THERE IS BUT ONE TEMPLE IN THE UNIVERSE
AND THAT IS THE BODY OF MAN
Novalis, Philosophy and Physics

The feeling of historical wisdom washes over me in the presence of these thoughts. Lucky visitors can enjoy these and more that show some of humanistic cultural wisdom inherited from Greco-Roman times up to the great writers, thinkers and artists of the 19^th century. They have much to say that is worth reflecting about in our times.

THE NOBLEST MOTIVE IS THE PUBLIC GOOD Virgil

Read Thought and action: magazine from India

2011-12-31T11:51:00.002-05:00

see the website magazine from Pune,India edited by Mr Prabhakar Nanawaty, rationalist: Thought and action.
Read articles and not to miss Mr Narendra Naik`s devastating exposure of Nadi Sastram ( palm study) which is prevalent in South India.
link: https://mail-attachment.googleusercontent.com/attachment?ui=2&ik=0bb21f1470&view=att&th=13494e4f4df43067&attid=0.1&disp=inline&safe=1&zw&saduie=AG9B_P8vUBtJAyuxXYPax51xeJVO&sadet=1325349946592&sads=jYmA02_ZbCifcrKmXnKYV53H-L4
Innaiah Narisetti

Perplexed by the Language of the Christian Warriors

2011-12-30T23:43:00.001-05:00

Now that the whole season of the “War on Christmas” is hopefully over for another year, I do want to raise one question that has been puzzling me. Please bear with me.

Stores are criticized for having employees say “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas”. Thus presumably the warriors (those who have declared that a war exists) want employees to say “Merry Christmas” to not only Christians, but also to Jews, Hindus and atheists, among others. What are the words “Merry Christmas” supposed to mean in that context?

The phrase “Merry Christmas” can’t have a religious meaning if uttered as a matter of course to non-Christians because surely even the warriors aren’t saying that stores should proselytize to their non-Christian customers for a month every year. The phrase, if directed to every customer, must be expanded beyond its original religious meaning to mean something like “Happy Holidays” – it’s just that the warriors want Christian customers to be directed to have happy holidays in words that are familiar to them and if that means that non-Christians are directed to have happy holidays in words which originally had a specifically Christian meaning, then that is okay.

If I am correct, then the phrase “Merry Christmas” in the warriors’ minds must have at least two meanings. One specifically religious, to be used while keeping Christ in Christmas and uttered by Christians to each other as they leave church on December 24, and another non-religious, general meaning when used out in the world where people may be followers of different religions or no religion.

If a phrase that is so special that it contains the Christian’s savior’s name can be used in multiple ways, why can’t the word marriage similarly be used in multiple ways with one meaning describing a religiously blessed union and another describing a legal union available to all?

Away with Anti-Islamic activity!

2011-12-30T18:41:00.003-05:00

By Hos

What do you do if you are a devout Muslim nation and your main source of revenue is tourism?
You start with public floggings and banning other faiths, while trying to keep the visitors away from the mess.
But ultimately...
You shoot yourself in the foot.

Opus Dei

2011-12-30T16:04:00.003-05:00

by Edd Doerr

Opus Dei is a secretive ultraconservative Catholic organization founded in Spain in 1928 by a priest, Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer. It is active in the US and elsewhere. It was given a bit of a slam in Dan Brown's book and movie The Da Vinci Code. Numerous books have exposed its cultlike operation.

Abundant info on the group is available from the Opus Dei Awareness Network (ODAN), Box 4333, Pittsfield, MA 01202. See their web site --- odan@odan.org

2011-12-30T14:32:00.000-05:00

If you have not already come across this great eye opener, I advice that it should be read. Wafa Sultan is eye opener. All lovers of secularism should see this.

A God Who Hates: The Courageous Woman Who Inflamed the Muslim World Speaks Out Against the Evils of Islam

Wafa Sultan

Posted by Innaiah N

Velasquez

2011-12-30T13:25:00.003-05:00

by Edd Doerr

Peter Schjeldahl's long review of Anthony Bailey's new book "Velasquez and the Surrender of Breda: The Making of a Masterpiece" in the Jan 2, 2012, New Yorker is superb. And it contains a half-page reproduction of the painting ("La rendicion de Breda" in Spanish) by the early 17th century master of an incident in Spain's long and stupid war in the Netherlands. (I might note that the painting contains an image that some today would regard as a portrayal of either George W. Bush or Newt Gingrich.) The painting reminds me of something that happened thirty years or so ago when I was in Spain for a conference. I had a five hour layover at Madrid's Barajas Airport, so I took the short cab ride to downtown Madrid to the Corte Ingles department store, where I bought two full-size replica antique swords (at $15 each they were a steal).

On returning to the airport (my bags had already been checked through to New York) I walked up to an airport cop, held out the two swords, and asked "Donde se rinden las armas?" (Literally, "Where does one surrender one's weapons?") The cop was not amused. Either he didn't get the joke or he was not familiar with his country's most well known painter.

When I got to New York the swords had gone missing, but two days later they turned up and were sent to my office in Washington.

The moral: Don't expect airport cops to know much about art history -- or have a sense of humor.

The Disgust & Contamination Explanations for Prejudices

2011-12-28T19:50:00.007-05:00

By Gary Berg-Cross

American culture has a bit of a prejudice against secular humanists and atheists (see for example Margaret Downey’s Discrimination Against Atheists -The Facts). As widely noted the atheist/non-theist/freethinker group is highly unpopular, although it may be scant comfort to know we are more popular than the tea party.

Why this seemingly deep down prejudice, feeling of disgust and “yuck” response towards non-believers? A partial explanation seems to involve an interplay of how primitive emotions are evoked in a socially intelligent beings and how some stereotypical views frame these. Social Psychology has studied such things as part of inter-group prejudice and offers some explanations to help understand the basis of out-group perception.

A naive psychology thinks of prejudice and discrimination as a simple summative response of positive and negative affects. So if non-believers are seen as say “untrustworthy” with great affect then it may cancel out any good affects for being “intelligent”. But it turns out that a simple additive-subtractive model doesn’t capture what is observed in such things as prejudice and aversion. One obvious problem is that not all affects are the same and can’t be summed along one dimension. Anger, fear sadness and disgust are all negative affects, but they tend to produce different behaviors which seem to have a long evolutionary history. For example anger tends to prompt aggression, while fear prompts avoidance/escape. Paul Rozin, University of Pennsylvania psychology professor, notes that humans and animals express emotions in similar ways which suggests that a core of affective reactions were conserved during evolution and have a common form. Disgust, for example, produces a characteristic facial expression that includes a grimace, the lower jaw dropping, the tongue sticks out, and a wrinkled nose (part of which is seem in the picture above). A consistent emotional response is evidence that it is functional for species survival. We can easily imagine how anger and fear would serve survival. An emotion like disgust is a bit harder to understand, but probably has to do with avoiding contagious illness or consistent sickness problems with food sources. Young humans are cautious about new foods, which probably has survival value.

But it’s not just young children that show a yuck factor/response to unfamiliar food. Research suggests that while there is a core of universally repugnant items (bodily emissions like feces, vomit & spit seem like universal avoidances) but the yuck response is often culturally based too. We see that often in food biases some of which involve religious taboos, such as kosher food commands. But some are not forbidden, but discouraged. You wouldn’t expose your kids to eating insects would you? Well many cultures do. In 2007 a California referendum banned restaurants from selling dog or horse meat because the majority of voters viewed their consumption by people as repugnant. But throughout Africa & Asia, both these meats are about as popular as hot dogs and hamburgers.

The point is that disgust/repugnance is the emotional expression of something deep down and when it is evoked it seems an intuitive wisdom that people don’t need to explain - “I just don’t like it.”When cultures pick these up they can make some behaviors seem as detestable by evoking negative emotion works - "yuck".

So humans come with these deep seated animal feelings but they now lie under and serve newly social cognitive abilities used by our species to communicate and interact within a larger culture. The older emotions now have a greater sphere to play in and more than a summative pattern. When different groups argue (e.g. non-theists and theist) it matters what emotion word-concepts are used, what mix of emotions are evoked, how they are conceptualized and how the groups respond to these.

The new reality is that for a highly cognitive animal affect doesn’t remain an isolated quantity, but usually is harnesses to serve a cognitive construct that mediates understanding. Thus an affect like disgust can be dynamically framed and made to serve interpretations. Consider the idea that atheists may be “smart” but also “unethical”. People can isolate the smart aspect and categorize it as high status which may be construed as “uppity” or “too good” and thus dangerous for the rest of us. Thus positive characteristics may be interpreted in a way that categorizes them as something else, something dangerously manipulative – Machiavellian perhaps. Machiavelli, Marx these are people that "yuck" responses are attached to reflexively. This construct could be assembled to evoke a disgusting image such as intelligence being unmercifully used to batter innocent beliefs. This idea of disgustingly unethical, untrustworthy but intelligent nonbelievers may produce considerable negative feelings which, as Paul Meade suggests, trigger a defense mechanism to an assumed threat:

When a theist, who considers himself a well informed person, see's people he considers as intelligent or more intelligent than himself, who do not agree with his religious views, he may feel that his views are possibly not 100% correct. This may trigger a defense mechanism, and a necessity to pigeonhole those persons into a definition of character that is acceptable to his peer group. So atheists become immoral, untrustworthy, etc. This predefined identity is easier to accept then having to discover the truth personally.

This formulation touches on what social psychologies call the "social contamination" hypothesis of group prejudice. This is the idea that a hated group may be seen, not primarily as a direct threat to physical survival or to resources, but as a bearer of pollution or disease. Framed this way non-theists are a danger to the integrity, rightness and purity of an individual or group of theists. Likewise Marx is a danger to all right thinking capitalists. If we are successfully exposed to these "dangerous ideas" we become contaminated and therefore contagious. Something like this view may help explain the feelings of danger and the need for protection from their thoughts that freethinkers evoke. The contaminated label makes the aggressive brand of atheists and freethinkers unclean, dangerous and socially unacceptable.But all types of freethinkers get a bit of this branding.

But of course this type of construct is not unique to religious believers. The angst and disgust many atheists have with religious culture is just as likely to be based on a fear of being contaminated by dangerous religious ideas. In this way there is a symmetry of views with each having its reasons not to think well of the other. So are theists and non-theists equally guilty of prejudice towards the other? Not exactly.

One of the things that breaks this simple symmetry is that freethinkers tend to use a validated method of reason and empiricism for their concerns. Indeed on the average they seem to know more about some aspects of religion and its history that theists. This is partly due to intellectual curiosity, valuing knowledge and reasoning. Another is that religions are the majority culture and most people get to swim, often unconsciously, in its constructs enshrined in language, the arts and institutions. This cultural combination, combined with a style that does not question social conventions, makes it seem natural for theists to have a feeling of contamination-driven disgust accompanies feelings of fear and perhaps anger or sadness when something comes along to challenge their religious taste for ideas. The response then is to seek separation from these ideas and the people who espouse them. The contaminating people then are seen as a of an out-group from the larger society who evokes a mix of emotions like anger followed by aggression or sadness followed by withdrawal.

All emotions we’ve probably experienced with religious friends or perhaps in debates on blogs. Understanding the phenomena helps a bit, but it still leaves open the question of how best to battle a prejudice that is felt deep down and not in need of analysis and justification by experience. As with all group conflicts actual interaction in favorable settings can help dispel the misconceptions between groups. Participating in inter-faith conversations is one direction and this may be good in that many do not know what non-theists are like and the basis of our values and beliefs. But of course to actually challenge other people's beliefs in these conversations may be perceived as out of bounds. Some inter-faith discussions seem more like pro-forma affairs than honest inquiries.

And alas changing people's prejudices is a long process.
Understanding is slow to take effect may be localized to an individual or small group.

Secularism-Indian style!!

2011-12-27T16:02:00.003-05:00

India is following its own peculiar secularism. Often the political parties, especially the religious oriented, dub Secularism as “Western”. It all started with the perverted interpretation of Secularism by Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan ( the president of India and interpreter of Hinduism). Dr Radhakrishnan defined secularism as equal respect to all religions and never should be considered as irreligious. Political parties in power follow this definition and take advantage of the situation to their advantage. Mahatma Gandhi realized in the last days of his life the need for separation of religion from politics, especially the state. Gandhiji always practiced religion in politics through prayers. He followed the principle of equal respect to all religions. At the fag end of his life Gandhi wanted non-interference of State in the religious matters. He also emphasized the separation of religion so that it can be practiced only at personal level. But that was too late. He did not live long enough to propagate the separation of religion from politics. Jawaharlal Nehru as first prime minister of India always stood for secularism. But he could not take it to the logical end due to pressures from political and religious lobbies. He even failed to bring uniform civil code in the country.

Indian Constitution:

The founding fathers of Indian Constitution makers clearly stated, “that nothing in this article shall affect the operation of any existing law or prevent the state from making any law regulating or restricting any economic, financial, political or other secular activity which may be associated with religious practice.” (Article 25 (2) (a) constitution.

Through 42nd amendment to the Constitution in 1976, the preamble clearly stated: "We the people of India having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a Sovereign Secular Democratic Republic." Yet the political parties who oppose the secular principle and who support the practice of Secularism dare not interpret in proper perspective.

Congress Party: Usually the Congress party is considered to be secular-by and large. Barring Jawaharlal Nehru, all the congress prime ministers, ministers, and others at various levels followed religious practices “officially”.

The invite Hindu priests on the occasion of oath taking ceremonies, inaugurations, opening of new projects, laying foundations, etc. To avoid criticism they involve Christian priests and Muslim Mullahs too. They visit temples and receive honors “officially”. They exhibit their faith publicly at the cost of government funds, which means peoples money. The government officially declares holidays to all religious festivals. Temples, Masjid and churches are allowed in the premises of government offices. During office hours the prayers are allowed. Persons bring their own individual Guru’s pictures, images into the offices. Government officially patronage the pilgrimages, provide all facilities and extend financial concessions. Government lands are allotted to religious purposes.

Each religion took advantage of the weakness of political parties and gained much to benefit in several ways. Religious establishments became powerful institutions with huge amounts accumulated. All religions get exemptions from taxes. There is no accountability either for the illegal money or business affairs conducted in the name spiritual activity. Cult Babas, holy women gather around politicians and built empires of ashrams. Even criminal activity of holy persons goes undetected except in rare cases.

Dhirendra Brahmachari a cult holy persons was very powerful during Mrs. Indira Gandhi`s tenure of Prime Minister ship. Chanda Swami, a cult person emerged as spiritual ambassador during the time of Mr. P .V.Narasimharao`s premiership. In each state several holy cult persons amassed wealth and established powerful empires. They developed connections with politicians who always come to their support in need. Presidents of India prostrated before the holy persons and visited several of them “officially”. Similarly prime ministers, ministers, judges, officials made their religious visits official. All these practices made secularism more difficult in public life. The confusion about secularism percolated to all levels. The compulsion of elections, made the political parties impotent before cults, religious holy persons.

Communist parties too! The left parties are supposed to be secular and non-religious, if not irreligious. But this is not so. Communists gained power in states several times. They did not practice secularism. Take the example of Kerala. Communists ruled the south Indian state quite for some time. There is Ayyappa cult in Kerala. People annually visit the Ayyappa temple located on the top of a hill Sabarmalai. Neighboring state devoted visit in thousands. On the last day of the visit during January month, the government officially involves electricity department, forest department, and temple administration in the function. On the other hill near Sabarimalai, the government arranges to light camphor so

that devotees see the light. It is described as Divine Light. Of course it is make belief. This practice is going every year. Communists also practice this anti secular make belief.

When there were protests, the chief minister of communist party

defended the practice saying that the state gains much through revenue from pilgrims and hence there should be no protest.

Communist party (Marxist) is in power in West Bengal state. Every

year Durga cult religious sacrifices were performed for 9 days with all pomp. The State government makes all arrangements and encourages the religious practice. The communist government described this practice as “cultural” and continues to gain popularity among people.

This is another compromising attitude to perpetuate political power.

Communists never tried to educate people about wrong notions of

Durga cult, lest they should lose cheap popularity. Mr. Surjit Singh, communist party leader from Punjab state wear Sikh turban, grows beard and moustache. He looks like typical Sikh religious person. Sikh religion insists that hair should not be cut; turban

is must and so on and so forth. The communist leader never resisted

this Sikh religious practice nor tried to educate the Sikhs that dress is personal. On the other hand they defend these cult practices in dress, food as “cultural” and follow them!

Scientist President Kalam`s Secularism Mr. Kalam is the scientist from South India. When he was elected as president of India, secularists felt happy and expected genuine secular practice from the highest dignitary. But Mr. Kalam started visiting cult holy persons like Satya Sai Baba, Matha Amrithananda Mayi and Brahma Kumaris. This practice of encouraging holy persons

started with the first President of India Mr. Rajendra Prasad. The first president not only visited the religious persons but also even went to the extent of washing their feet in public. The Presidents Sankar Dayal Sarma, Venkataraman officially exhibited their faith.

The Bharatiya Janata Party was in power for some time in the center and in some states. They stood for religion and hence there is no expectation from them to practice secularism. The disappointment came from Congress party and left parties.

Muslims and Christians, Sikhs etc took advantage of misinterpretation of secularism and gained much for their religious practices. Muslims started ignoring the rulings of Supreme Court regarding noise pollution at the time of prayers. Muslims use mikes and loud speakers causing nuisance to residents, students during examination time. Christians and Hindus also imitate them and started using mikes and loud speakers as though god is deaf! Religious churches, masjids, Hindu mandirs are built obstructing the roads and traffic. In the name of religion it is shown as though anything and everything is possible.

Thousands of holy persons emerge to earn illegal money, property since exemptions are there and accountability is absent. Most religious places involve in business that has become very lucrative and powerful centers. Tirumala-Tirupati has become largest pilgrimage center with enormous amounts of income. The money source at this temple is not questioned. Hence much illegal amount reaches the holy place and government accepts this practice in the name of religion. All such illegal and anti-secular activity is rampant throughout the country, shared by all the political parties.

Is there future for Secularism in India? India has to begin the practice of Secularism, somewhere. To start with there should be clear understanding that Secularism means separation of State and religion in all matters. Religion is faith based and hence confine to individual belief related to god and supernatural spirituality. In the matters of state the law should be equal to all irrespective of

religion. There should be no exemptions to the principle that all are

equal before law. Some people including religious persons should not be kept above law under any circumstance. In India some judges visit holy persons “publicly”. This creates problems. It would be difficult for victims of holy persons to fight against injustice when judges openly prostrate before the holy persons.

Justice cannot be expected from such persons.

Similarly law officers, Police should not exhibit their personal faith

openly. Holy persons who indulge criminal activity take shelter with the support of police devotees. These things are happening continuously in India. Religious crimes also are crimes. There should be no exemptions

to spiritual and religious persons so far as crimes, misappropriation of funds, sexual abuses are concerned. Religious practices of untouchbility, castes, child marriages, burning of wife when husband dies, oppression of minorities, discrimination against women, child labor should not be tolerated and there should be

no exemption to those who practice them. In the field of education, scientific method should be inculcated from primary level. Religious instruction should not be included in texts curriculum since that belongs to faith and belief. Holy loafers should not get any exemption from law, answerability and accountability.

Rights of minorities so far as religion is concerned should be confined to personal level. This includes prayer, holidays, dress, food habits and civil law. They must not be brought to the streets.

In India Religion encroached into politics and public life. Thus religious belief system vitiated the moral life of the people.

Religious morality should not be confused with values and ethics.

Religious values, morality are strictly confined to divine laws and

supernatural realm. There is no verification, nor proof for religious

belief systems and religious values including moral faith. They should not be confused with human rights, human values and human morals. Secular values are moral, and human. Secular values are not in any way connected with supernatural and para normal systems. Human rights and religions often don’t go together. When human rights and values emphasize that all are equal, men and women have the same rights, religions don’t accept. That is the crux of the point. In such cases religions wish to follow their holy texts like Gita, Koran, Bible which preach inequality between men and women. Secularism stands for sincere equality and genuine practice human rights and values.

India needs secular practices in all walks of life. That will put India in futuristic stance. All state and Central governments can observe secular holidays leaving the religious holidays to those who observe them.That will make a good beginning for secular practice in India

The fighters for Dalits, depressed groups, scheduled castes think that temple entry on euqal footing with Hindus will solve the problem. Some reformers mistakenly think that if Dalits can be taught to become temple priests and marriage performance priests, that will uplift them. They are mistaken. In fact they are leading blindly into the Hindu caste system, gradation method and accepting Karma theory!

Exactly that is the reason why B R Ambedkar wanted the Dalits to

leave Hinduism so that they can bid good bye to untouchbility, caste degradation. Temples , priesthood and religion will not uplift the Dalits and suppressed classes. On the other hand those deceitful practices lure the weak minds to accept suppression. Secular practices with human dignity, human values and human

morality will alone bring them into great future.

N.Innaiah

PH.D

Strangely Believe It

2011-12-26T15:38:00.002-05:00

by Edd Doerr

Our state commemorative 25-cent coins contain a couple of oddities. Alabama, one of our most conservative states religiously and politically, honors Helen Keller on its quarter. Yet she was a humanist/freethinker and liberal. And Kentucky's two-bit piece has a portrait of former president George W. Bush smack in the center, though there are some who think that the portrayal, lacking a name, is that of Jerry Falwell from the neighboring state of Virginia. Check it out and see what you think.

Happy Times at the 2011 Maryland-DC HumanLight Celebration

2011-12-26T15:28:00.012-05:00

By Gary Berg-Cross

This Dec. 23^rd the Kalmansons of Laurel MD hosted the annual Maryland-DC Humanlight Celebration. It was wonderful chance to spend time with friends seeking to “illuminate Humanism's positive secular vision” and “affirm the positive values of humanism during the time period of the 'traditional' winter holidays.”

This year was again a special time to cultivate an attitude of clarity, tolerance and openness. It was also a family affair with an Ingresoll of bright, happy children, the next generation of secular humanists, in playful attendance. Phil Kalmanson’s 3 aquariums, including the corals in salt water, were a hit with everyone and you had only ask and he would was ready with a friendly tutorial on the fish filled ecology. Jenny provided explanations on the latest puzzles secured from Marbles: The Brain Store in the Columbia mall.

WASH members were in attendance and the adult conversation was as diverse as humanism allows with plenty of time to meet new folks, each of whom is invited to post their memories of the event. A C Grayling wasn't there, but one felt his ideas on Humanism in play:

Humanism in the modern sense of the term is the view that whatever your ethical system, it derives from your best understanding of human nature and the human condition in the real world. This means that it does not, in its thinking about the good and about our responsibilities to ourselves and one another, premise putative data from astrology, fairy tales, supernaturalistic beliefs, animism, polytheism, or any other inheritances from the ages of humankind's remote and more ignorant past.

A C Grayling, Against All Gods: Six Polemics on Religion and an Essay on Kindness

Maggie Ardiente from AHA was there sprinkling interesting comments on every topic from plans from Darwin Day 2012 (including legislation) to national politics, to the varieties of atheism, to a discussion of atheist posters – the last-supper-flying-spaghetti-monster poster sits among the Kalmanson’s art collection. Comments on the cuisine flowed as easily as the potables. This year the pot luck items were anchored by the venison Phil’s stew and Jenny’s the vegetarian chili. Many were so good, I asked for the recipe including of course the theme appropriate Sun Cookies, which included a dash of cardamon for spice.

I’m already looking forward to next year. Thanks to all for driving away gloom and darkness with an enlightening time.

St Anthony and the Man of Importance

2011-12-25T14:24:00.002-05:00

a short story by Edd Doerr

Don Nepomuceno climbed from the back seat of his Mercedes, smoothed his silk suit, adjusted his white Panama hat, and instructed his driver to wait. The street was deserted, but for a mangy mutt examining orange peels in the middle of the dusty thoroughfare. It was not yet noon, but the heat was already intense. All the windows to the street were closed, though faint sounds of children could be heard.

Don Nepomuceno looked up and down the street and then strode into the dark cavernous church, dimly lit by candles at the various side altars, down the center aisle to the communion rail, made a sharp left turn, stopped, and knelt before the statue of St Anthony.

"Dear San Antonio," he mumbled, elbows on the rail, looking up at the statue, "I know that I am not very regular in my mass attendance, but I assure you that that is because I am a man of many responsibilities, which keep me far more occupied than most of the riff-raff in this town.
But you know all about me, how this town would go to rack and ruin without the leadership which I exercise through the mayor and the chief of police.

"Today I wish to appeal to you for help, you who are the patron saint of those who are looking for things, deserving people, of course. It's like this, you see. Coffee and banana export prices are down and my costs are going up. My wife is in Miami spending my money. My son at the university is pestering me to buy him a new car to replace the BMW he smashed up. My daughter's clothes are costing me more than I pay the servants. My Mercedes is beginning to look almost as shabby as the one that viejo pendejo Galindez drives. And as if that were not enough, my girlfriend's period is late again.

"So you can surely see, San Antonio, that I need your help. It should be a simple matter for you to help me find oil on one of my haciendas, or maybe emeralds on my property in the mountains, or maybe the nomination for the Chamber of Deputies from this district. Anything at all. And if you help me this time, I promise that I will donate five percent of all new income to the church, even though Padre Fernando is a lazy bastard hijodeputa who has tried to sleep with my girlfriend. . . . "

At that moment, Don Nepomuceno became aware that someone else had entered the church. He looked around. It seems that a beggar, a vile-smelling peasant, had crept into the church and was kneeling in the shadows, hands clasped together, eyes downcast. He was a skinny devil, dressed in filthy rags, shoeless, unshaven, hair unkempt.

Don Nepomuceno heard the creature whisper. "San Antonio, I know that you must be busy with many very important matters, with people vastly more important than I. I am an undeserving wretch, unfit even to lift my eyes to look upon your statue. I hate to ask you for anything, but, you see, I have had nothing to eat for three days, nothing whatever. I have no money, not even one centavo. I have tried to find work doing anything, cleaning toilets or shovelling manure, but there simply is no work.

"I do not ask for much, perhaps only to help me find some scraps of food the dogs and pigs do not want, maybe a piece of moldy discarded bread, anything. Maybe even a few centavos so I can by some old hard bread. I know that I am completely undeserving, and I will pray to the Virgin to assist you with your work even if you do not help me. But please . . . ."

Don Nepomuceno had heard quite enough. He pulled a wad of bills from his pocket and threw them in the direction of the beggar. "Here," he called out, "take this and get the hell out of here. Can't you see that you are distracting the saint from dealing with more important matters?"

Vague Policy, Agreements & Political Language

2011-12-22T09:32:00.010-05:00

by Gary Berg-Cross

Politicians, lawyers and ad men make a living exploiting the vagaries of language. This is not always bad since it may be used to circumvent some prejudices that are fired up by particular language. Growing up Abe Lincoln read the philosophical works of the deist Thomas Paine which greatly influenced his thinking. Historian Craig Nelson reports that Lincoln’s friends & neighbors believed the Lincoln largely agreed with Paine’s deist and infidel position expressed in The Age of Reason. But in his political life Lincoln employed masterfully vague & deferential speech when he referred to religion, marshalling it in his efforts to save the Union. Indeed he was pragmatic in his need for the support of ministers and their congregations in the civil war effort. See for example Abraham Lincoln's Humanistic. Religious Beliefs. We live far from an age of politicians like Lincoln but vague language remains a factor for good or bad in society.

Some people’s efforts to be ambiguous is intentional, but our everyday language used for ordinary activities is often vague even though it serves non-exploitative interests. Certainly, that are particular parts of the physical world where there is a strong connection between that reality, our experience of reality and the words we use. A word like rock is precise because it describes a well–defined set of objects. So we may feel confident with a claim like, “a rock in on the table.” By contrast, words like “tall”, “kind”, “justice”, “soul”, & “life” seem open ended and vague.

Consider, for example, the word “tall.” There is no precise, known height which defines the line between a person who is tall and a person who is not. There is no fixed agreement on the meaning. I may say that my grandson Caden is tall because he is taller than other boys his age that I see. But he would not be tall in comparison to an adult. Or in olden days we might have said that a man 5’10 was tall. In today’s world 5’10 isn’t tall and on the basketball court maybe 6”3 isn’t either. Tallness is a relative term and is understood in some context or by some fiat, such as declaring that 6’4’’ is tall for a man. This provides some additional information to base a judgment and we might reach an agreement on what “tall” means. But even with context some word-concepts like “kind”, “good”, “enemy combatant” or “justice” remain vague and people don’t agree on their meaning.

I might believe and say that Barak Obama is “kind” or that people are by nature “good” or that Muslims are “enemies”, but what does this mean? The meaning of an individual belief might be pragmatically tied ultimately and necessarily to some observed experience for justification. I might say that Obama was seen performing acts of “kindness” and I have some personal notion of what this is, but it may differ from other peoples. While a pragmatic approach to the concept helps provide a context it also pushes the problem a bit further on since it implies some way of identifying a kind or good act. They can’t be easily localized to an object or act or some easy combination of them. Thus there remain entire sections of Philosophy devoted to understanding the concept of values like goodness.

I was thinking of the vagaries of language and agreements on meaning recently as I read about the debate over the 2012 National Defense Authorization Bill which taken as a whole includes powers for indefinite detention of alleged terrorists (aka ‘terrorist sympathizers’) anywhere in the world (including the US). The bill gives the US military the duty to arrest, imprison and interrogate suspects without benefit of counsel. In the bill one finds Orwellian doublespeak phrasing including: ‘substantially supports’ and ‘associated forces.’ The later seems to allow rendition of suspects to other countries for interrogation.

One worries about vague language getting into legislation and being interpreted politically according to intentions not stated in the Bill. There was a similar problem with the recent
climate change agreement and the convoluted language of the agreement. Here one may subscribe better intentions to the effort, but an equally troubling result which relies on vague language. Clearly climate change is a complex topic, even if measurements of average temperatures are not. As with many advanced scientific areas our understanding is based on a mixture of historical data, current measurement and interpretation via models. Still taken as a whole the scientific case is strong and growing stronger rapidly so the question is what can be done to mitigate the likely effects?

This was what the Climate Change meeting was about and brings me to the so called “agreement” reached after 2 weeks of grueling negotiations held at the 94-party climate conference in Durban South Africa. On the verge of collapse in the final days, the parties reached not exactly an immediately binding protocol. So they formulated a vaguer concept expressed in clause in the documents that called on countries, within three years, to complete negotiations on ‘a protocol, another legal instrument, or a legal outcome’ that would succeed the Kyoto Protocol. But the EU objected to the wording of this phrase ‘legal outcome,’ which it said would allow countries to wriggle out of commitments. The final compromise, reached at 3:30 a.m., changed the final option to ‘an agreed outcome with legal force.’ Better, but what does this mean? It might seem clear to a layman, but it is a technical term and will take on different meanings to different people.

The agreement gives about five years for ratification. So we face more negotiations to reach a later new global climate agreement by 2015 with this agreement to come into effect by 2020. It's better than "the worst" possible outcome, but as some said it's still a cowardly, and builds in an unacceptable delay on global climate action. To some of us delay seems like and a recipe for climate disasters. The so-called Durban platform is not exactly the plain language of Science, or the inspired phrasing of a Lincoln. It’s more of a dose of artful diplomatic wording that glosses over political divisions and makes some feel that success progress has been achieved. What seems less unambiguous is that it is unambitious and kicks a can down the road and heads mitigation pledges and efforts in a sideways direction. Climate science gives us an increasingly detailed projection of a warming and changing earth ecology that will take the world of our children into a red zone of catastrophe. It’s language of urgency grows clearer while the political and diplomatic effort lack courage to commit to reasonable mitigation actions.

Secular Studies

2011-12-21T16:12:00.002-05:00

by Edd Doerr

This letter was published in the Washington Post on 12/21/11 (which happens, by the way, to be Paul Kurtz's birthday as well as mine).

"On a secularist course"

"Jacques Berlinerblau and Georgetown University are to be commended for offering a course on secularism ['Delving into the study of secularism,' On Faith, Dec 17]. Americans across the religious and nonreligious spectrum come together to support the Jeffersonian/Madisonian principle of separation of church and state, which protects the religious freedom of all.

"Such courses are vital, especially now that opponents of secularism (i.e., respectful government neutrality on religious matters) have virtually taken over one of our two political parties with the aim of wrecking one of our country's most important contributions to political thinking.

"Edd Doerr, Silver Spring

"The writer is president of Americans for Religious Liberty"

M N Roy books on line

2011-12-20T08:50:00.002-05:00

The Humanist philosopher M N Roy books are now available on line.Please see link:
http://www.theradicalhumanist.com/index.php?option=com_radical&controller=literatures&Itemid=61

Narisetti Innaiah

The Nature of Consciousness

2011-12-19T16:30:00.001-05:00

by Don Wharton

I treasure Sam Harris is a great many ways. However, he recently posted a two part essay on consciousness which demonstrate complete confusion about the subject (link1, link2). I think that we should start with the obvious point that some objects are complex biological machines which are conscious. Humans are the preeminent examples and they can more richly demonstrate their consciousness by verbal reports on the content and nature of what they are conscious of. There are an increasingly well understood array of cognitive function which support that activity.

What does Sam Harris do in response to the fact of human consciousness? He basically assumes that something magical happens that cannot be explained. He has many statements such as the following:

“How is it that unconscious events can give rise to consciousness? Not only do we have no idea, but it seems impossible to imagine what sort of idea could fit in the space provided. Therefore, although science may ultimately show us how to truly maximize human well-being, it may still fail to dispel the fundamental mystery of our mental life.”

It not difficult in the slightest for me to imagine that science will explain this phenomenon. Our universe is profoundly and completely natural with no supernatural elements. Our instrumentation is increasingly sophisticated in deriving data about how the brain works and where various types of emotion and cognition occur. The entirety of our subjective experience is created by these various brain functions combined with the sensory and support mechanisms for the brain supplied by the rest of our bodies. I an not only certain that this is true; I am certain that when we eventually build systems that adequately emulate the entire array of these functions we will have a system that is aware and will be able to demonstrate that subjective awareness as well as any person. If it is built on a computer system (as is most likely) we might have a feeling of incredulity in response to our relationship to the invented system. However, it should be an undeniable fact when it is achieved.

The fact is that nothing is ever proved by incredulity. Sam Harris, simply repeats one layer of incredulity after another with the expectation that we will accept his assertion that there is something that cannot be explained. For example: “Consciousness—the sheer fact that this universe is illuminated by sentience—is precisely what unconsciousness is not. And I believe that no description of unconscious complexity will fully account for it. It seems to me that just as “something” and “nothing,” however juxtaposed, can do no explanatory work, an analysis of purely physical processes will never yield a picture of consciousness.”

What should we do in the face of such claims. I think it is appropriate to approach these claims with the scorn we express for all unsupported religious claims. That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence. That was a standard line used by Christopher Hitchens and it fully applies here. There simply is no reason to assume that subjective experience is anything other than the well integrated collection of more primitive functions in the system that experiences.

There is the obvious fact that no description of any object, such as a brick, would ever be equal to the brick itself. Reality is different from any of our maps of that reality. This is not rocket science. However somehow very bright people can trip over this very obvious and simple distinction when it comes to consciousness.

Great Loss to Humanist world-Hitchens dies

2011-12-16T10:26:00.001-05:00

Christopher Hitchens, the author of GOD IS NOT GREAT
died on 15 dec 2011. It is great loss to atheist, humanist,rationalist, secular world. I express my deep sorrow at his demise.
I translated his best seller: God is not great into Telugu ( Indian language) with his permission and presented a copy to him on the stage at CFI function in Washington DC. Earlier I met him during the Atheist allinace convention organised by Margaret Downey in Washington DC during 2008.He told me his tour experiences in India and wished to travel again.

Innaiah Narisetti

scientific analysis of present trends in Journalism

2011-12-14T18:32:00.002-05:00

Here is the scientific analysis as to why print journalism is declining day by day and digital journalism is going on with leaps and bounds.
Mr Raju Narisetti, managing editor of Washington post did this.Please read:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7C80Ghqhez8

The Unbeknownst Media!

2011-12-13T12:41:00.002-05:00

by Edd Doerr

Three common English misuses have been annoying me.

Journalists and broadcasters, some of whom I like, have taken of late to using "media" as a singular noun. Hey, "media" is plural; "medium" is singular. What next? "Phenomena is"? "Men is"? "Barack Obama are"? Did George Bush start this with his utterance "Is our children learning"?

"Unbeknownst". Aargh! A half century ago ago I was teaching high school students that the word is archaic. Use "unknown". Gad zooks and Od's bodkins, what next? Thee, thou, thine and prithee?

And the ubiquitous "the". It's a DEFINITE article. Saying "the" writer Joe Blow, or "the" fashion model Jane Roe, suggests that they are the only two in their professions. And think of all the trees wasted with all the extra "the"s.

Yeah, I know that languages evolve. But DEvolve? No, thank you.

Time to Break Gridlock & Get Something Done about Climate Change

2011-12-10T16:25:00.006-05:00

By Gary Berg-Cross

I had to turn to the inner pages in the Washington Post to find out what was happening on the final days of the 17th Conference of the Parties (COP17) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Durbin. It seems to have been crowded out by a mix of political hot topics such as the Euro Debt crisis, the Blagovish sentence and troop ashes put in a landfill. All news. But perhaps no more so than news of the U.N. Summit Conference effort to negotiate a successor to the Kyoto accord in a meaningful time frame (before 2020) that also would put countries under legal obligations. Americans looking to follow events in Durbin have to hunt around a bit in most corporate media takes on this topic. This is a bit paradoxical since the US puts more than its share of greenhouse gases in the atmospheric. Yet we push for the meekist emissions reduction pledge and put it off till 2020 when the best science says this is too late to avoid warming that will be costly and punishing. We will fail to limit warming to 2 degrees above pre-industrial temperatures.

On Thursday, US special climate change envoy Todd Stern was asked to clarify reports that he had described the 2 degree goal as "aspirational." What he said was interesting:

"that knowing ahead of time that we will overshoot the warming limit that the IPCC has identified as the point after which the globe and all of its people are thrust into out-of-control climate change did not amount to 'some kind of mandatory obligation to change what you're doing, whether you are in the United States or Europe, China or wherever you might be..."

Google News didn’t have any space for such on its front news either. On the final scheduled day of the COP Google’s priority news was:

Indian Hospital Fire Death Toll Rises to 88

Tensions Rise at EU Summit

Twitter redesigns to take on Facebook

Samsung wins in Australia against Apple, Galaxy Tab 10.1 injunction lifted

Gaza rocket fire continues: 3 more Kassams fired at Israel

This was not the same news I heard from the only US news group that seemed to be on site and covering the daily activities – Pacifica’s Democracy now. There I could hear Anjali Appadurai, a student at the College of the Atlantic in Maine, addressed the U.N. Summit Conference on behalf of youth non-governmental organizations & delegates. Her message urged climate justice and getting something done. Her short, moving & impassioned speech is reproduced below:

“I speak for more than half the world’s population. We are the silent majority. You’ve given us a seat in this hall, but our interests are not on the table. What does it take to get a stake in this game? Lobbyists? Corporate influence? Money? You’ve been negotiating all my life. In that time, you’ve failed to meet pledges, you’ve missed targets, and you’ve broken promises. But you’ve heard this all before.

We’re in Africa, home to communities on the front line of climate change. The world’s poorest countries need funding for adaptation now. The Horn of Africa and those nearby in KwaMashu needed it yesterday. But as 2012 dawns, our Green Climate Fund remains empty. The International Energy Agency tells us we have five years until the window to avoid irreversible climate change closes. The science tells us that we have five years maximum. You’re saying, "Give us 10."

The most stark betrayal of your generation’s responsibility to ours is that you call this "ambition." Where is the courage in these rooms? Now is not the time for incremental action. In the long run, these will be seen as the defining moments of an era in which narrow self-interest prevailed over science, reason and common compassion.

There is real ambition in this room, but it’s been dismissed as radical, deemed not politically possible. Stand with Africa. Long-term thinking is not radical. What’s radical is to completely alter the planet’s climate, to betray the future of my generation, and to condemn millions to death by climate change. What’s radical is to write off the fact that change is within our reach. 2011 was the year in which the silent majority found their voice, the year when the bottom shook the top. 2011 was the year when the radical became reality.

Common, but differentiated, and historical responsibility are not up for debate. Respect the foundational principles of this convention. Respect the integral values of humanity. Respect the future of your descendants. Mandela said, "It always seems impossible, until it’s done." So, distinguished delegates and governments around the world, governments of the developed world, deep cuts now. Get it done.

Mic check!”

I love this mix of passion, insight and courage. Good for a younger generation of leaders Perhaps this generation will have the courage to face the prospects of a different Earth with more than talk and aspirations .

HumanLight Celebrations A Chance to Illuminate Humanism's Positive Secular Vision

2011-12-09T09:59:00.009-05:00

By Gary Berg-Cross

Here in DC, late December comes with darkening and colder evenings which we compensate for with events that promote cheerfulness. As in other Western countries there’s a post harvest tradition of settling in by a fire with some time for food-centric gatherings of friends and families. Fred Edwords has a nice summary on the origins of celebrating holiday events in a Keynote address given at Bridgewater, NJ, 12/18/05.

Religious cultures have colonized these winter days in a variety of ways. The result is a “traditional holiday season” aha Christmas. It’s veined through with old and new supernatural religious spirit and beliefs and now peppered with shopping fever. For many people in modern society aren’t comfortable with late December as a Christian religious holiday. To be sure there are people of different faiths who also have their holidays and want to occupy late December with their cultural message and style of celebrating. More recently that interesting secular minority of Americans without religious faith have elbowed themselves into the December holiday window. In 2001 a new Humanist way to observe the winter season was inaugurated in New Jersey by members of the New Jersey Humanist Network. It's call HumanLight.

On Dec 23^rd (between the Winter Solstice and Christmas) an increasing number of secularists celebrate HumanLight. It’s an event that the HumanLight organization promotes to “illuminate Humanism's positive secular vision” and as the AHA said in a 2009 announcement – “affirm the positive values of humanism during the time period of the “traditional” winter holidays.”

Gary Brill, who co-founded the holiday, says that HumanLight events or parties are usually family occasions. Here is DC we are lucky to have a community holiday party event due to the Kalmanson’s (Jenny and Phil) WASH members of Laurel MD. In past years dozens of guests have gathered in his home to celebrate a secular holiday. You can see details on the WASH community event page. But now there are more events in the area.

The Baltimore Coalition of Reason also has a cerebration at 7:00 pm, Friday, December 23, 2011 at the First Unitarian Church of Baltimore, 12 W. Franklin St. (Corner of Charles and Franklin) (Directions at http://firstunitarian.net )

The Alexandria HumanLight and Solstice Celebration is Tuesday, December 20, 2011, 6:00 PM at Hard Times Cafe 1404 King St, Alexandria, VA (map). This is a "low-key celebration with plans to deliver about 5 minutes of presentation to contemplate what science tells about about our place in the universe (Solstice) and to celebrate the awesome responsibility and inspiration we gain by making our universe a better place."

Last year there were 27 places around the world that had community events and if the DC-Baltimore area is any indication the # is growing. It’s just a small, fun step towards a new tradition and something to make the December a little bit fuller time for non-believers.

See http://www.voanews.com/english/news/usa/Some-American-Atheists-Celebrate-Their-Own-Holiday-112438494.html for an interview with the Kalmansons.

Bill Baird, Unsung Hero

2011-12-08T17:02:00.002-05:00

by Edd Doerr

While I gave Bill Baird a mention in my Nov 9, 2011, post I did not follow up with a longer piece. Let me remedy that by quoting in its entirety Bill's wife Joni's letter to the editor in the Dec 12, 2011, New Yorker ---

"Jill Lepore, in her article on Planned Parenthood, mentions that the Griswold v Connecticut case 'placed contraception under the protection of a constitutional right to privacy' ("Birthright." Nov 14). She also says that the case meant that the 'last legal obstacles to contraception were overcome.' It is important to note, however, that the Griswold decision, rendered in 1965, legalized birth control for married couples only; it was illegal for unmarried people to use contraception until 1972, when my husband, Bill Baird, helped win the Supreme Court case Eisenstadt v Baird. That case supplanted Griswold and legalized birth control for all citizens. In 1965, my husband was arrested in New York under the same statute that Margaret Sanger was arrested under in 1916. Two years later, he was charged with a felony for giving contraceptives to an unmarried young woman after a speech to Boston University students - a violation of the Massachusetts laws covering Crimes Against Chastity, Morality, Decency, and Good Order. He spent 37 days in the Charles Street Jail before he was released on appeal. Over the years, my husband has been arrested eight times in five states and has been involved in five US Supreme Court victories on behalf of reproductive freedom. He picked up where Sanger left off.

"Joni Baird, Huntington, NY"

Joni left out the fact that Eisenstadt v Baird actually made an indispensable contribution to the Roe v Wade ruling, allowing Justice William Brennan to expand the ruling well beyond merely the freedom of physicians to perform abortions to include the privacy right of women to follow their consciences.

I first heard Bill speak at Trinity College, a Catholic women's college in Washington, about 40 years ago. He had the large audience of young Catholic women agreeing with him. When one student got up to disagree with him, the other students told her to sit down and shut up. When a male student got up and threatened to beat Bill up, Bill just reamed him out verbally until he turned around amd slunk away.

Bill Baird has always been a fearless champion of women's reproductive choice. He never backs down. He is a hero.

Rationalizing Irrational Choices: That $45 entree and presidential choices

2011-12-04T19:06:00.012-05:00

By Gary Berg-Cross

The size of the Sunday supplement is one sign that officially holiday shopping season. Modern day products and their ads presents us many choices of conflicting quality, quantity and various extras (such as free delivery, insurance, return policy.) Cognitive Psychology & Decision Science tells us quite a bit about human choice behavior and it is in part a story of irrational decisions and inadequate knowledge employed in the service of “shopping”, but also with such things as political choices.

To be sure there is an external element of advertizing manipulation and demand characteristics of over stimulating, shopping environments that pump us full of misleading facts. Something similar might be said of political choices and their campaigns. The combo of exploding stimuli and controlled circumstances sometimes leads us to hasty decisions. Both commercial and political interests want this to be the case. But these type of manipulations works because there are cognitive biases built into the human info processing system by evolution. We are a mix of lofty reasoning layered on top of some tendencies for hasty, impression-based decisions that makes us prone to error.

The basic understanding of this comes from psychological theory, but there is a big, applied area of work done is other areas of Social Science. Economists investigate cognitive biases in a sub-area they call Behavioral Economics which uses experiments to study what people actually do when they buy, sell, change jobs, date, marry and make other real-life decisions such as what gifts to buy. (I find the behavioral term a bit of a misnomer since the behavior they observe is based on a thinking process, but it does get the point across that we are looking at realistic behavior, often scaled down a bit to be studied. Dan Ariely, formerly of MIT and now a Duke University professor of psychology and behavioral economics is one of the many researcher in this area. An overview of his findings on human quirks is in his book “Predictably Irrational as well as in an entertaining TED video here . Ariely studied,” which is a captivating read for those curious about the oddities of human nature starting with the role that relative choices have on our decisions.

The starting point for Ariely’s work, now a famous example in his book, came to him while browsing the Web he contemplated an ad, on the Web site of the Economist. A portion of his discussion of this is described below.

There were 3 subscription options:

Internet subscription for $59 seemed reasonable.
$125 print subscription-seemed a bit expensive, but still reasonable.
a print and Internet subscription for $125 – expensive, but no more than print only????

Ariely wondered would want to buy the print option alone since both the Internet and the print subscriptions were offered for the same price. Reasoning through this he realized that the Economist folks, like political advisers, were actually manipulating readers using an important aspect of human behavior: humans rarely choose things in absolute terms. We don’t have an internal value meter that tells us how much such things as a magazine subscription is worth. The same is sort of true in judging the value of candidates. How bad is it for a candidate to be extreme on immigration, but good on the environment? Such situations amount to a cognitive dilemma so we use a simplifying strategy. We focus on the relative values. We often ask how does one thing compare to another?

In the case of the Economist, we may not be certain that a $59 Internet- only subscription was a better deal than the $125 print- only option. But he could believe that:

“the print and-Internet option for $125 was better than the print- only option at $125. In fact, you could reasonably deduce that in the combination package, the Internet subscription is free! “

We might say that our choice in the print-only option slants us towards a different. The print-only choice is a phony choice because it makes us think relatively that the print-and-internet option is a better deal because it has something ‘free’, when in fact , this impression is just created because we’ve just been presented with a fake, worse deal.

Something similar happens with restaurant choices. A few years ago people noted a sudden rise of $40 entrees. It wasn’t just a price creep, but the result of sophisticated calculation by a new breed of menu “engineers” using what we know of relative choice. Research had proved that highly priced menu entrees increase revenue even if no one orders them. Why? Because a $45 steak entree makes a $36 lamb choice seem like “a deal.” As one of the menu consultant put it:

“Just putting one high price on the menu will take your average check up, …. “My mom taught me to never order the most expensive thing on the menu, but you’ll order the second.”

And looking at some of the political candidates it occurred to me that political engineers are counting of similar 'entree" strategies. It’s much more complicated than a restaurant situation, but I get the impression that the presence of some candidates slants voters towards other candidates as the reasonable choice. If there were not, for example, so many extreme conservative candidates in the Republican field than other candidates would seem too conservative to “independent voters.” If there were not so many choices on the right Obama would look more like the centrist politician he is and couldn't be portrayed as a socialist.

The political issues are too complex for most people to know exactly what they want in a candidate. But seeing them and reading about them in a particular context gives a hasty impression of who is extreme and who is moderate. Of course if candidates were like cars we could test drive one, but the closest we get to this is in these very artificial candidate debates with talking point sound bites. Not much rationality and knowledge of the facts shown there. It’s a sorry state for political shopping. A problem is that we can't easily exit this restaurant of inadequate choices for an old fashion political diner down the road serving better entrees.

The Insidious Librarian

2011-12-04T10:41:00.001-05:00

By Luis Granados

The world of 80 years ago this month: Adolf Hitler remained in a deep depression over the recent death of his niece and alleged lover, Geli Raubal, who was officially ruled to have committed suicide inside Hitler’s Munich apartment. In Albany, New York, legendary gangster Legs Diamond was gunned down after crossing one rival too many. In Washington, Congress approved a moratorium on the payment of European debts to help address a credit crunch threatening the stability of the entire continent. (Sound familiar?) And in Ireland, a librarian was transferred from her post in County Mayo to a position in Dublin.

That last item doesn’t sound so exciting, does it? Well, it was, especially for those of us interested in the power that God experts have wielded over the centuries (and still do today). For the librarian in question was a Protestant, County Mayo was mostly Catholic, and the war of wills between politicians who thought that librarians ought to be hired on their library skills versus those who thought they ought to be hired based on which band of God experts they followed was fought all the way to the national parliament.

Ireland had only been independent for a decade in December, 1931; the Anglo-Irish Treaty that led to the establishment of the Irish Free State was signed 90 years ago this Tuesday. The southern portion of the island was overwhelmingly Catholic, and one of the great obstacles to Irish independence from Great Britain ever since the Wolfe Tone uprising of 1798 had been a fear for what would happen to Ireland’s Protestant minority if the Catholics ever took the upper hand.

Post-independence events proved that this concern was not just British propaganda. Witness the case of Miss Letitia Dunbar-Harrison, a Protestant from Dublin, and an honors graduate of Trinity College. In July, 1930, she was assigned by the central government to the post of chief librarian of the Carnegie Library in Castlebar, with advisory functions covering the whole of County Mayo.

Being Protestant was bad enough; attending Trinity College, the bastion of Irish Protestantism, was even worse. Ireland’s bishops had pronounced doing so to be a mortal sin, growling that “The prohibition is not a mere arbitrary one. It is based on the natural divine law itself. … Subjects should not oppose their bishops’ teaching by word, by act, or in any other way.”

The local branch of Catholic Action, the political arm of the Catholic Church, sprang into action to protest the outrage. Rev. Denis O’Connor, chairman of the library committee, took the lead:

A Protestant young lady … has been appointed as our library adviser. Her culture and philosophy are, on many vital questions, diametrically opposed to Catholic principles and Catholic ideas, and therefore we, as Catholics, cannot be guided by her in selecting the literature that we need.

The tactic used was a tax strike: Catholics were commanded to stop paying local rates until the outrage was resolved. Archbishop Gilmartin encouraged the boycott:

It is gratifying to see how the representatives of our Catholic people are unwilling to subsidize libraries not under Catholic control. Not to speak of those who are alien to our faith, it is not every Catholic who is fit to be in charge of a public library for Catholic readers. Such an onerous position should be assigned to an educated Catholic who would be as remarkable for his loyalty to his religion as for his literary and intellectual attainments.

Public libraries were a particular sore spot for the Church, because they were the principal source of ideas in competition with God’s truth. There was no internet, no television, and no radio; there was the pulpit and little else. In Catholic-controlled Quebec, there was no library donated by philanthropist Andrew Carnegie corresponding to the one in County Mayo, because the local government was successful in keeping it out. As a Catholic pamphleteer in Quebec put it in 1890, a public library is “a pestilential spot … where the public goes to poison itself.” It wasn’t until 1959, when Catholic strongman Maurice Duplessis finally died, that Quebec enacted a law establishing public libraries.

Catholic Ireland rivaled the Soviet Union as the censorship capital of the world. The Irish Constitution itself proclaimed that “The State recognizes the special position of the Holy Catholic and Roman Church as the guardian of the faith professed by the great majority of the citizens … The publication or utterance of blasphemous, seditious, or indecent matter is an offence which shall be punishable in accordance with law.”

Paul Blanshard’s book The Irish and Catholic Power devotes several pages to listing books and movies banned in Ireland, including works as innocuous as Michener’s Tales of the South Pacific, Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath, and Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men. The Irish Times characterized the official censorship list as “a concise index to modern literature.” At one Catholic college, even books by priests condemning contraception were kept under lock and key, lest the arguments they were refuting somehow pollute innocent minds. But censors couldn’t screen every single publication; imagine the damage a wrong-thinking librarian might do to the souls of County Mayo’s young readers.

The County Mayo authorities defied the central government by refusing to pay the new librarian’s salary. The “local rights” issue was used in exactly the same way that “states’ rights” was used in America to deny justice to black people for decades. Soon the Irish parliament got involved, with a bitter debate that nearly brought down the government. The battle lines were the same as on so many issues in so many places: religious vs. secular, rural vs. urban, local nabobs vs. federal authorities. Eamon de Valera, the fiercely Catholic independence fighter who was then part of the not-so-loyal opposition, played it for all it was worth:

If there were two qualified people who had to deal with a Catholic community, and if one was a Catholic and the other a Protestant, I would unhesitatingly vote for the Catholic. Let us be clear and let us know where we are. … Do not try to force upon a Catholic community a librarian in the quality, so to speak, of a teacher to whom they object. You have the result that the whole library system has been nullified and rendered naught as far as Mayo is concerned. … It is a fundamental teaching, a fundamental matter for Catholics. Every Catholic Deputy in the House knows I am speaking the truth.

After a lot more histrionics, the Catholics prevailed. Eighty years ago this month, the government offered Miss Dunbar-Harrison a transfer to the Military Library in Dublin, which she accepted. She changed her first name as well as her last when she married a Protestant minister, and later gave up on fighting the bigotry of the Republic of Ireland altogether by moving to Ulster. She was far from alone in this decision: approximately half of Ireland’s Protestants fled the country, mostly to the north, by 1950.

As for librarians, when Blanshard wrote in 1953, the Irish Republic did not have a single Protestant county librarian. Today, of course, God expert pressure on librarians is a thing of the past. Or is it? Just what books was Mayor Sarah Palin concerned about when she tried to fire the librarian back in Wasilla?

Callimachus - Father of Bibliography and Organizer of Library Knowledge

2011-12-03T10:49:00.013-05:00

By Gary Berg-Cross

The other day while listening to a talk about finding things on the Web I learned about Callimachus/ Kallimachus. He was born in Cyrene , Africa (c. 305-240 BC) which today is part of Libya. He was a noted poet and hymn maker, critic & elite scholar who taught in Eleusina near Athens. He was one of those polymaths it is fascinating to read about at the beginnings of modern culture. He was known then for elite, erudite wit claiming to "abhor all common things." Callimachus is apparently well known for his short poems and epigrams rejecting the larger and heavy epics that were modeled after Homer’s work - Big book, big evil". Instead Callimachus urged poets to "drive their wagons on untrodden fields," and off the rutted paths of Homer. His resulting poetry was elegiac, brief, and carefully formed and worded perhaps like Emily Dickinson.

This was all new to me but I ran into a reference to him as the Father of Bibliography. This is based on his cataloging work as the scholar (some say Chief Librarian) at the Great Secular Library in Alexandria. As discussed in Wikipedia Callimachus' most famous prose work is the Pinakes (Tablets or Lists for short, but the full title is List of those who distinguished themselves in all branches of learning, and their writings). It was not simple and comprised 120 books. This is a bibliographical survey of authors of the 500,000 or so works held in the Library of Alexandria at that time. Most notably the Pinakes is apparently one of the first known card catalog attempts. Obviously a great library needs a meta-document to list, identify, and categorize holdings. Facing the task of classifying the scrolls, Callimachus sighed: "Mega biblion, mega kakon" (many writings equals many worries). So the question was how to organize a scholar’s fondest fantasy in the place where all human knowledge, all the books of the world, were being collected? Zenodotus, the 1^st Library had inventoried the Library’s holdings and tried organized them into three major categories. The first category included history books, edited and standardized literary works, and new works of Ptolemaic literature. This was just not detailed enough. Callimachus' applied his genius around 250 BCE to developing a good catalog and he seemed to invent it all by himself without having workable models to base it on. Certainly the Alexandrian holdings were different in depth and scope but also reflected the new work of the Greeks. Aristotle had developed a scheme to systematize and organize knowledge as part of his development of ontology. But these taxonomic schemes were somewhat arbitrary.

More importantly when you looked at the knowledge being captured in the Great Library holding they didn’t seem to work. Callimachus’ particular quandary was that he could not categorize his own works using Aristotle’s hierarchy for knowledge! That's a motivator.

In response Callimachus' came up with his own system that divided works into 6 genres and 5 sections of prose. These were rhetoric, law, epic, tragedy, comedy, lyric poetry, history, medicine, mathematics, natural science and miscellanies. Authors within each were listed alphabetically so there was a 2nd organization scheme, which now seems obvious but was new. But he went further by also annotated his catalog in ways that we now call “metadata”. Callimachus liked things brief and the info on a modern card catalog maybe is too brief. Callimachus added short biographical notes on authors, which prefaced that author’s entry within his catalog. We have only tanatalizing scraps of his notes remaining (as shown on the side picture), but we know his system was useful and used.

“This helped avoid confusion in the works of authors with similar or identical names, but separating works of the original author and works of namesakes was often extremely difficult. In addition, Callimachus noted the first words of the work, and the total number of lines in the document. Later librarians were to make marginal notations in the pinakes, which provided even more information on the nature of the cataloged document.” From The Great Library of Alexandria?

By consulting the Pinakes catalog, a library patron could find out if the library contained a work by a particular author, how it was categorized, and where it might be found. It’s still an ininfluence on the way we organize library material since it affected later organizational approaches by Jefferson and Dewey. And there remains the parallel efforts to organize large collection of books using some idea of how knowledge is organized. The challenge these days is to organize knowledge on the Web where there are no natural librarians. Each posting person has an opportunity to tag information in some way but these can be arbitrary. It's one reason that the deluge of mostly unstructured digital data, documents, e-mail, and instant messages raises serious organizational issues.

We could use a combination of Callimachus and Aristotle for updated ideas to organize human knowledge which grows dramatically each day.

For more on the dream of the Great Library see The Ancient Library of Alexandria.

A Model for Classical Scholarship in the Age of Million Book Libraries and Kallimachos: The Alexandrian Library and the Origins of Bibliography (Wisconsin Studies in Classics)

'Public Rejects School Vouchers'

2011-12-02T13:55:00.002-05:00

by Edd Doerr

This letter was published in the Washington Examiner on 12/2/11.

"Public overwhelmingly rejects school vouchers"

"Marcus Winters is wrong about 2011 being the 'Year of the School Voucher' (Nov 17). This year's Gallup poll on education, released in August, registered opposition to school vouchers nationally at 65% to 34%. That is almost exactly the same percentage by which vouchers or their variants have been voted down by millions of Americans in over two dozen statewide referenda from conservative Utah to liberal Massachusetts.

"Voucher plans exist in only those states -- such as Wisconsin, Ohio and Indiana -- where taxpayers were not given the chance to vote on them. Just this year, the Wisconsin Department of Education found that kids in Milwaukee voucher schools, the oldest voucher plan in existence, are not doing as well as kids in the city's public schools.

"Simply put, most Americans think that tax aid to sectarian private schools violates their religious freedom and harms their publixc schools/

"Edd Doerr, President, Americans for Religious Liberty, Silver Spring, Md"

Strong, Steady, and, of course, Secular!

2011-12-01T13:30:00.001-05:00

By Naima Cabelle Washington

I believe that it was the African American poet, Sterling Brown who wrote that “the strong men keep on coming!” During a recent visit to Houston, Texas for the 4th Annual Texas Freethought Convention, I was privileged to meet Glenn Ellison, Jr., a man with a gentle smile and a friendly easy-going approach. I'm not a real fan of poetry but the words of that poem came to mind..."the strong men keep on coming," each time I spoke with Glenn. Perhaps, that because he's built like a Sherman tank, and when it comes down to foolish talk and religious nonsense, he easily shifts gears and uses an intellectual steamroller approach to effortlessly flatten every bit of superstitious claptrap which dares to raise its head around him. Born in Woodland, Georgia in 1942, Mr. Ellison is the eldest son in his family; there were eight children including a stepsister. According to Glenn, his initial rebellion against religion came at an early age. "It was all her fault," he tells me, referring to an aunt. One Sunday, she saw him with a math book and told him he had no business reading it; he should have been reading the Bible. Glenn wanted to know, "Why?" Still sounding very much like a mischievous nephew, and still sticking to his story, he says, "It’s all her fault! She started it!"

As the saying goes, he's been around a while, including around the world a few times as a member of the United States Air Force. Just listen to Glenn and it won't take long to conclude that he's a man who lives according to his own conscience. While stationed in Vietnam he decided to read the Bible "...from beginning to end...and when I put it down, I said, 'this is all bullshit!'" He says that up until that point, "I played the game," but after reading the Bible he was finished with religion because according to him, "nothing matched." He saw through the Bible's many contradictions. His travels were so extensive that he's lost count of the many countries he's visited, but he's been on every continent. I've met many people who have traveled extensively and some seem to lack any interest in other people or their cultures. Not so with Mr. Ellison who is upbeat and seems to thrive on personal interaction and intellectual stimulus. He sat attentively through many of the presentations at the convention, soaking up every word; evaluating every idea, but at the same time, doesn't mind having a good laugh.

Despite his robust appearance, he's had some very serious health challenges and in 1992 was hospitalized to undergo grueling surgical procedures. When his wife, who is a believer, was asked by the hospital administrator who filled out her husband's paperwork for his religious denomination, she said 'none.' According to Glenn, when his wife was asked if she wanted to put down a religious affiliation on his behalf, she bluntly said 'no' and warned them not to do it either!

Some time before his surgery, Mr. Ellison was asked if he wanted to see the Chaplain; he wanted to know, "What for?" I happen to think it is cruel and insensitive to badger a patient about to undergo surgery with such questions. People who are religious won't hesitate to request a priest, rabbi, etc. and I really become angry when I hear stories like this. But, in my own jaded way, I also can imagine a 'bright' side to this: A dying man's spiritual adviser assures him that his place in paradise is guaranteed if he is willing to confess his sins. The dying man says that he not only wants to confess his sins, but has a special ‘thanks’ for his spiritual adviser as well. He confesses that for the past 25 years he's committed adultery―with the wife of his spiritual advisor; he also wants to thank him for supporting all of the ten children that he fathered with his advisor's wife as well as putting each of them through college! Anyway, after his surgery, Glenn was asked again if he wanted to see the Chaplin, and he asked, "Can he get rid of this pain? ...Then I don't want to see him!"

He views San Antonio, his hometown, as a place where most of the people, especially Hispanics, are controlled and impoverished mainly by the Catholic Church. In 1992, he joined the Texas Alliance of San Antonio, the freethought organization that he has belonged to ever since. The group meets monthly and closes out the year with a celebration of the Winter Solstice. When he dropped his religious baggage, he says that he also "removed the shackles, the doubts and fears." He would do anything or suffer any consequence for the sake of his wife and children, but, "I have no fears for my own life." He also expressed a sentiment that I and probably many other atheists share. Once freed from the burden of religious dogma, we feel relieved and happier than ever. A man who is intent on living life to the fullest, Glenn is 'living quite well and wanting for nothing!'

Since this was his first secular convention, I wondered if he had any expectations; he said, "I came with no expectations, but neither am I disappointed!" I understand that there were over 600 people in attendance, and during the two-and-a-half days of the convention, I had conversations with many people including Glenn, who mentioned many times how much he enjoyed being around so many like-minded people. He had a good impression of everyone he met; they were "well-informed, intelligent, and well-educated...Education is what's needed to break the bonds of religions. It's hard to forget what one learns at their mother's breast."

Atheism, of course, cannot be forced on anyone and he compared the introduction to non-theistic ideas to a believer with farming, "Plant the seed, step back, and watch it grow." He’d advise anyone who is still grappling with religious questions to "not trust anything outside of the laws of physics." I told him about my visit to the Central branch of the Houston Public Library. I was surprised that there were a number of very good books on non-theism; but that number shrivels when compared to the several hundred books available on religion. He's visited the library at Cambridge University in England and spoke of the tremendous volumes dedicated to religion as well as an equally impressive number of books dedicated to non-theism. When he retired from the Air Force after 26 years of service, his wife who was teaching at that time encouraged him to also become a teacher because she felt he had a real passion for it. And, so he became a teacher. He also heard his share of criticism with respect to his lack of religiosity. Eventually, he was promoted to the position of Vice Principal where he taught school, perhaps to the dismay of some of his more narrow-minded colleagues. Glenn said that one teacher, who apparently noted his refusal to bow to peer pressure by claiming to be religious, also didn't understand how someone who didn't believe God still enjoyed professional advancement. His colleague noted in amazement, "But, you don't believe," to which Glenn replied, "And, yet I prosper. Go figure."

Glenn is well aware of the racial turmoil of this country. In the 1960's, America the Beautiful would once again expose its ugliness as groups of people desperate to maintain control of other human beings spewed hatred, acted-out violently, and told others which of their fellow human beings deserved to be hated. Glenn who is a proud African American wasn't about to have anyone tell him who to hate or love. In December of 2011, he and his wife Manuela, a native of Spain, will celebrate their 49th wedding anniversary. I'm sure they both know that it takes no character to indulge in hatred, but they each have the character and internal resources needed to resist and overcome the ugliness that fills the hearts and minds of pathetic and narrow-minded human beings. He also expressed dismay over the fact that African Americans spend more money than any other group and own less than one percent of the GNP. A person with his character, discipline, intelligence, and life experiences often has little patience for those who are undisciplined, foolish, and wasteful. Yet, our current economic system teases and tantalizes especially impoverished people, with both unobtainable and useless status symbols. Corporate America encourages nearly everyone to be foolish and wasteful; few are educated to understand the difference between substance and symbolism; between necessities and desires; between price and value. Compare the amount of advertising dollars spent encouraging people to attend college, to develop their intellect, and the amount of money spent on ads encouraging people to buy showy cars, designer clothes, flashy jewelry, cell phones, etc. There's no doubt that the corporations peddling manufactured goods will win their way into the wallets of most people. Many people, especially those living on the margins of society, are aware of how often the necessities of life are simply out of their reach: a decent education, affordable housing in quality neighborhoods, health care, and a living wage. Many poor people have also learned from their priests, rabbis, imams, etc., that it is sinful to be poor, but also learned that poverty is also the punishment for sins and yet can be a 'blessing' in disguise. Advertisers preach a gospel of mindless consumerism that says if we are poor we certainly don't have to go around looking poor; while the rest of us are told that we can look and feel better and richer with every purchase that we make―affordable or not. So in many respects, we are all targeted to become servants to the corporations; our loyalty is expected by the US politicians at the voting booth as well as by Corporate America at the cash register! The doors to the public library can lead to an unlimited access to knowledge, but when is the last time that an ad on the TV, radio, or in a newspaper encouraged the public to obtain a library card? The cost of a library card that might lead to the eradication of ignorance: zero. The cost of a wallet full of credit cards that can lead to a life of debt and poverty: priceless!

When Glenn was no longer willing to "play the game," to indulge in religious pretense, he was more easily able to do so because he is intelligent, clearheaded, and saw the benefit of no longer playing any self-destructive games. I recently heard a talk given on the topic of ethics and the benefits of developing an ethical society―not just ethical individuals. According to the speaker, when people live in an environment which encourages and promotes ways for them to do good, most of them, in fact, will do good. Conversely, when people are in an environment that encourages and promotes ways for them to behave negatively, most of them will behave negatively. By creating a society that invests in the total development of human beings, by creating communities where people are encouraged and supported to do what is good, fewer people will end up making wasteful and foolish choices. We will always be a little better off with a few more individuals like Glenn; we will much better off in a society that teaches, supports, promotes, and therefore expects its members to do what is good and to make intelligent choices.

There are many who have traded a fearful, burdensome existence for one where they are free to enjoy the beauty of nature and the company of good people; who have rejected the demands of religious obedience and empty rituals, and have accepted the responsibility to do the right thing but not in hopes of obtaining a reward or avoiding punishment. They accept the responsibility for doing the right thing for no reason other than the fact that it’s the right thing to do. The world is a better place with people like that in it; and I’m certainly better off for having met the genuine article: Mr. Glenn Ellison, Jr.!

'The God Virus'

2011-12-01T12:20:00.002-05:00

by Edd Doerr

The God Virus: How Religion Infects Our Lives and Culture, by psychologist Darrel W. Ray (IPC Press, Bonner Springs, KS, 2009, 241 pp), presents a fascinating exploration of how most religions persist and spread, using throughout such biological metaphors as viruses, infections, vectors, natural selection, and competition. Ray writes from his personal experience as someone who grew up in a conservative Protestant milieu and evolved into a humanist, freethinker and psychologist. His analysis is quite persuasive, his warnings about the consequences of unchecked "God virus" infections useful and scary.

Ray tops off the book with a psychologist's sound guidance as to how to get along in a world infected by "god viruses" of various sorts.

Unfortunately, Ray's book stops short of acknowledging that "god viruses" can become attenuated and rendered less harmful (more benign?) or become "compartmentalized" and moved away from center stage. It is this attenuation and/or compartmentalization that makes it possible for humanists to work with a broad spectrum of people who bear assorted religious labels. Indeed, this broad working together across lines of religious/lifestance identification is the only hope for turning back the virulent drives to (in no special order) weaken women's rights of conscience on abortion and contraception; open pipelines between public treasuries and religious schools and other institutions; sabotage the religious neutrality of public education; undermine science; derail efforts to deal with climate change and global warming; ensconce fanatic theocrats in the seats of political power; return society to the neo-feudalism advocated today by whole phalanxes of aspirants to high office. I think that Darrel Ray would agree.

'Darwin the Writer'

2011-12-01T10:10:00.002-05:00

by Edd Doerr

Darwin the Writer, by George Levine (Oxford University Press, 2011, 244 pp) is not just another book about evolution. Rather, it is a book about Darwin the man, Darwin the writer, Darwin the thinker, Darwin the scientist. In examining Darwin's On the Origin of Species, Levine, a professor of Victorian literature and an expert on the relations between science and literature, takes us on an extended tour through Darwin's head. Not only did Darwin produce the breakthrough and now well established theory of evolution through natural selection over vast expanses of time, but he did so in a book for ordinary readers of such transparency and step by step detail that put his ideas across in a way that no paper in a scientific journal could have.

Levine shows how Darwin takes the reader by the hand and walks him or her through Darwin's observations of geological and biological complexities during his long trip on the Beagle and subsequent studies of nature. We are shown "how" Darwin wrote sold his new theory to a broad Victorian audience. Let me quote one of Levine's sparkling paragraphs --

"The greatest paradox of Darwin's work ... is that the world's design is not designed -- it is the product of the absence of intelligence. It emerges (in an entangled way, of course) from the mindless movements of nature. The implication is ... that to account for the fact that all living things are adapted to their niches, we have invented the idea of a designer. That the world begins not with the fiat of an intelligent being but through the slow hit and miss movements of nature is a reversal of common sense; think about it for a moment and one realizes that such a reversal entails the view that it is the mind itself, not nature, that creates order. Darwin wasn't a philosopher and certainly not an idealist: but his prose regularly finds ways to dramatize the mind's power to make up order, all of which is almost burlesqued in the second chapter of the Origin, in which he discusses the reality of species. He talks of varieties that have been called species, species that have been seen as varieties, and of a Mr Babbington, who "gives us 251 species, whereas Mr Bentham gives only 112, -- a difference of 139 doubtful forms!" (p. 48), and the exclamation point is, of course, Darwin's own. ... His point here is not to provide a surer count of species and varieties but to lead us out of the idea that species is even a real category (it is merely a useful one, which allows us to impose an order on the world that does not correspond to its reality.)" (p. 118)

Moving on from the bare science of evolution, Levine shows how Darwin influenced such writers as Hardy, Conrad, Dreiser, Kipling, Wilde, Eliot and London.

I give this book five stars.

Odumegwu Ojukwu

2011-11-30T13:09:00.002-05:00

by Edd Doerr

On Nov 30 the Washington Post ran an obituary for Odumegwu Ojukwu, who ran the secessionist Nigerian state of Biafra from 1966 to 1970. Ojukwu died only a couple of days after my article "Nigeria's Civil War: The Untold Story" appeared on this blog on Nov 22.

The obit contained the sort of short, "sanitized" account of that civil conflict that my article was written to correct.

O Tanenbaum

2011-11-30T12:25:00.003-05:00

by Edd Doerr

The Nov 30 Washington Times (you know, the rag founded by the Moonies) ran not one but two stories on the same page about the fuss being made in Rhode Island over Governor Lincoln Chafee putting a "holiday tree" in the statehouse instead of a "Christmas tree". Chafee pointed out that the tree "stands mere feet from the Royal Charter that, more than three centuries ago, granted 'a full liberty in religious concernments' and 'the free exercise and enjoyment of all their civil and religious rights' to the inhabitants of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations." Chafee added that "I would encourage all those engaged in this discussion -- whatever their opinion on the matter -- to use their energy and enthusiasm to make a positive difference in the lives of their fellow Rhode Islanders." Good for the guv!

Some reminders for the Christmasphiles in Rhode Island: 1. Your state was founded by Roger Willians, the guy who introduced the idea of separation of church and state to America. 2. The Puritans who settled New England strongly opposed the celebration of Christmas -- it was too Catholic or Anglican -- and they were the spiritual ancestors of the conservative Christians who today have hissy fits about the "secular humanist" efforts to drive God out of the US of A. 3. Christmas was not a legal holiday in all states until late in the 19th century. 4. The "Christmas tree" is an adaptation of the winter solstice tree used in pre-Christian pagan northern Europe to herald the return of the sun.

Fifty years ago I lived for a couple of years in predominantly Catholic Colombia. Christmas was celebrated there for a week with fireworks. And Christmas trees were a recent innovation imported from the US.

An aside: If Jesus were to visit the US today, one wonders what he would think of the potlatch of outdoor illuminated junk -- Santas, reindeer, lights, etc -- proliferating like a new disease in our neighborhoods, using coal-generated electricity and wasting zillions of dollars while millions of our fellow citizens go hungry.

Catholics for Choice to Obama

2011-11-28T17:45:00.002-05:00

by Edd Doerr

"President Obama, Don't Turn Your Back on Women" is the head on a quarter-page ad on the op ed page of the November 28 New York Times. Because this organization of Catholics has credibility, I would like to quite the entire text here ---

"Providing no-cost family planning is good public health policy and an important advance under the Affordable Care Act. But if you grant the refusal clause the Catholic bishops want, you will be supporting discrimination against millions of Americans, both Catholic and non-Catholic, simply because of where they work or go to school.

"The majority of American Catholics support affordable access to contraception for all women and men, especially during these touch economic times. Catholics themselves use contraception: 98% of sexually active Catholic women have used the family planning the bishops want you tp exclude from healthcare coverage.

"Expanding refusal clauses to allow some institutions and universities to refuse to provide coverage for contraception is not what you promised in healthcare reform. Giving in to the bishops' demands will mean preventive healthcare will cost more -- not less -- for millions of healthcare and social service employees, teachers and university students and their families.

"American taxpayers' dollars should be used for the common good and to enable people to exercise their conscience-based healthcare decisions.

"If you want to do what's right by American Catholics, don't make this deal with the bishops. Listen to the majority of the 68 million Catholics who want contraception coverage for everyone, not the 271 active bishops in the United States who don't.

"Catholics for Choice, 1436 U St NW, Suite 301, Wash. DC 20009. www.catholicsforchoice.org"

Americans of all persuasions should tell Mr Obama the same.

American Atheists Billboard campaign

2011-11-27T16:40:00.002-05:00

Here is a link to a CNN story about this year's American Atheist billboard campaign, along with a picture of the billboard.

http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-706810?hpt=hp_bn2

(WASH just became a local affiliate of AA.)