tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-108560482024-03-26T04:47:16.962-04:00Secular PerspectivesSponsored by the Washington Area Secular Humanists (WASH).Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger1295125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10856048.post-1998414829297212382024-03-23T22:14:00.003-04:002024-03-25T09:54:04.907-04:00Do US citizens distinguish opinions from facts?<p> <span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">By Mathew Goldstein</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><span>A recent study by political science professor Jeffery J. Mondak and graduate student Matthew Mettler at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign [</span><span face=""Nexus Sans Pro", sans-serif" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(102, 102, 102); color: #666666;">Mettler, M.</span><span face=""Nexus Sans Pro", sans-serif" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(102, 102, 102); color: #666666;">, & Mondak, J. J.</span><span face=""Nexus Sans Pro", sans-serif" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(102, 102, 102); color: #666666;"> (2024). </span><span face=""Nexus Sans Pro", sans-serif" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(102, 102, 102); color: #666666;">Fact-opinion differentiation</span><span face=""Nexus Sans Pro", sans-serif" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(102, 102, 102); color: #666666;">. </span><span face=""Nexus Sans Pro", sans-serif" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(102, 102, 102); color: #666666;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review</em></span><span face=""Nexus Sans Pro", sans-serif" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(102, 102, 102); color: #666666;">. </span><span face=""Nexus Sans Pro", sans-serif" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(102, 102, 102); color: #666666;">https://doi.org/10.37016/mr-2020-136</span><span>]</span><span face=""Nexus Sans Pro", sans-serif" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(102, 102, 102); color: #666666;"> </span><span>found that almost half of the people quizzed on 12 statements about current events failed to correctly identify which statements were factual and which were opinion. For respondents who were no more accurate overall in categorizing the questions than a coin toss, the failures were not random. Instead, the failures were positively correlated with the respondents partisan orientation for both Democratic and Republican respondents.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><span>Facts that were unfavorable to the partisan orientation of the respondent were more often mis-categorized as opinion while opinions favorable to the partisan orientation of the respondent were more often mis-categorized as fact. </span><span>Republicans exhibited a larger partisan bias when mis-categorizing the questions than Democrats.</span><span> </span><span>A confounding factor is that factual statements which are false are likely to be mis-categorized as being opinion. A false factual statement was included to measure that tendency. The study did not include any statements that qualify as assumptions (speculation on a future fact). For more information see <a href="https://news.illinois.edu/view/6367/1254104642" target="_blank">Study: Americans struggle to distinguish factual claims from opinions amid partisan bias</a></span>. </span></p>Explicit Atheisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05501109533475045969noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10856048.post-71211479250555305872024-01-22T18:59:00.007-05:002024-01-22T23:59:35.703-05:00Robert P. Jones on the hidden roots of white supremacy<p> <span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">By Mathew Goldstein</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #333333;">Robert P. Jones is the president and founder of Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI). He is the author of </span><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Roots-White-Supremacy-American/dp/166800951X/" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #348ed8; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size-adjust: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; min-height: 0px; min-width: 0px; outline: currentcolor; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size-adjust: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; min-height: 0px; min-width: 0px; outline: currentcolor; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; vertical-align: baseline;">The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy and the Path to a Shared American Future</em></a><span style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #333333;"> (published September 5, 2023). His talk at the FFRF Convention is good, if you have not yet seen it then you may want to take a listen below. Protestants inherited a religiously based supremacist attitude from the Catholic Church predating the start of Protestantism that they brought with them to America. Native Americans and Africans were guilty of not being Christian and ipso facto were disrespected as justified in the 1452-1493 <a href=" https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-resources/spotlight-primary-source/doctrine-discovery-1493" target="_blank">Doctrine of Discovery</a> which was repudiated by the Catholic Church last year. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #333333;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #333333;">I have not read his book but I skeptical there is a strong argument that this Christian history was very influential in the writing of the constitution and laws here hundreds of years later. By the time of the Declaration of Independence there appears to have been a considerable amount of tolerance for religious pluralism, at least among the signers, who were determined to try to avoid repeating the religious rancor and warfare between Christians in Europe. They went as far as rejecting any religious test for government office and decreeing free exercise and non-establishment of religion. But this does not mean that Christian supremacist beliefs had no role in promoting the mistreatment of Native Americans and Africans.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Z3AKq1jWLQs" width="320" youtube-src-id="Z3AKq1jWLQs"></iframe></div><br /><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><br /></span><p></p>Explicit Atheisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05501109533475045969noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10856048.post-19025921142842714082024-01-20T11:31:00.020-05:002024-01-22T14:57:40.940-05:00Biologist wrongly demonized by Harvard University<p> <span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">By Mathew Goldstein</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span><span><a href="http://www.carolehooven.com/about.html" target="_blank">Carole Hooven</a> </span><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; caret-color: rgb(102, 51, 51); color: #663333;">was a lecturer in the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology. </span><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; caret-color: rgb(102, 51, 51); color: #663333;">She’s also the author of the popular book </span><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Story-Testosterone-Hormone-Dominates-Divides/dp/1250236061" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; box-sizing: inherit; color: #990001; text-decoration: none;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">T: The Story of Testosterone, the Hormone that Dominates and Divides Us</em></a><span style="color: #663333;">. Her story, which she describes in her article, <a href="https://www.thefp.com/p/carole-hooven-why-i-left-harvard" target="_blank">W</a></span></span><span style="color: #663333;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(102, 51, 51);"><a href="https://www.thefp.com/p/carole-hooven-why-i-left-harvard" target="_blank">hy I left Harvard</a></span></span>, <span><span style="color: #663333;">is one of multiple instances of various public institutions systematically promoting an intolerant, narrow, censorious, overly politicized, opinion conforming demanding, climate. In this particular example, personal attacks were deployed against Hooven by various individuals who had the authority to speak on behalf of Harvard. </span></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span><span style="color: #663333;"><br /></span></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span><span style="color: #663333;">The goal of these attacks is to indiscriminately suppress any conclusion, regardless of how epistemologically valid that conclusion is, that conflicts with conclusions promoted under the misleading banner of “DEI”. Conflicting conclusions </span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(102, 51, 51); color: #663333; font-family: verdana;">that are epistemological valid </span><span style="color: #663333; font-family: verdana;">pose a bigger threat to critical social justice ideology by virtue of being epistemological valid, thus provoking a stronger counter reaction. Critical social justice promotes a fundamentally illiberal framework that prioritizes the ideology over epistemological validity and over merit.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span><span style="color: #663333;"><br /></span></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span><span style="color: #663333;"></span></span></span></span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; box-sizing: inherit; color: #663333; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">What Hooven says that makes her a target of vitriol is absolutely true: there are just two biological sexes, defined by whether a body is set up to produce large, immobile gametes (females) or small mobile gametes (males). People who are hermaphrodites are almost invariably sterile, and they, along with intersex individuals, <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12476264/" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: #990001; text-decoration: none;">comprise about 0.018% of the population</a>. </span><span style="font-family: verdana;">There are no intermediate gametes and thus there is no third sex across the entire animal and plant kingdoms. </span><span style="font-family: verdana;">The English language word that most accurately characterizes this probability distribution is “binary”. </span></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">This is not a matter of controversy among sensible biologists.</span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> </span></span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; box-sizing: inherit; color: #663333; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; box-sizing: inherit; color: #663333; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">In contrast, the sociocultural and mental construct known as “gender” is more of a continuum. The gender probability distribution is difficult to characterize or draw because different people self-identify with many different genders that sometimes may change year to year or even day to day. Most biological males and females match their gender with their biological sex so that the probability distribution resembles a bimodal distribution.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span><span style="color: #663333;"><br /></span></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span><span style="color: #663333;">Some</span><span style="color: #663333;"><span> of the innocent people </span></span></span><span style="caret-color: rgb(102, 51, 51); color: #663333;">being tarred this way, such as </span><span style="caret-color: rgb(102, 51, 51); color: #663333;">Carole Hooven, are secular liberals. Some of the people demonizing innocent people are also secular liberals. </span></span><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="color: #663333;">The problem is not who is targeting who, although it needs to be said that the intramural aspect of this conflict between liberals is not good for liberalism. The problem is the wielding of a simplistic, dubious, and narrow conception of “social justice” with a religiously ideological and self-righteously intolerant zeal as a cudgel to excuse an ugly demonization of innocent people</span></span><span style="caret-color: rgb(102, 51, 51); color: #663333; font-family: verdana;"> for the purposes of </span><span style="caret-color: rgb(102, 51, 51); color: #663333; font-family: verdana;">punishing those who do not self-censor and </span><span style="caret-color: rgb(102, 51, 51); color: #663333; font-family: verdana;">intimidating other people into selective silence. </span></span><span style="color: #663333; font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(102, 51, 51);">DEI initiatives can be valuable insofar as they overcome obstacles that were created from bigoted discrimination. But insofar as DEI initiatives instead focus on denigrating and abandoning merit as a tactic to promote equality of outcomes, a.k.a. equity, promoting identity based reverse discrimination, a.k.a. antiracism, defining individuals as oppressors or oppressed by their group memberships, a.k.a. intersectionality, and the like, while also insisting that everyone pledge allegiance to, and endorse, these conclusions to qualify for admission or employment, it becomes more of a problem than an asset.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #663333; font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(102, 51, 51);"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #663333; font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(102, 51, 51);"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">To attempt to justify this the left cites the right. The left and right are both committed to this tactic of playing off of each. They both adopt unreasonable ideology driven positions and then claim anyone who does not adopt the same unreasonable position is abetting the other side. This is a fallacious and cynical game of burdening innocent reasonable people with responsibility for the unreasonableness of others that should be rejected. So to avoid any misunderstanding, those of us who say biological sex has a binary probability distribution will also say that </span>transgender medical technology </span></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(102, 51, 51); color: #663333; font-family: verdana;">is justified because there is evidence that it benefits some people and therefore </span><span style="caret-color: rgb(102, 51, 51); color: #663333; font-family: verdana;">should be legal (with restrictions when needed to reduce the risk of harm, particularly for young people). Equal opportunity is a bedrock ethical principle (unlike equality of outcome). Immutable traits that define who we are should not be grounds for denying equality of opportunity. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(102, 51, 51); color: #663333; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(102, 51, 51); color: #663333; font-family: verdana;">Male puberty alters sports related physical capabilities, to some extent irreversibly, and this has genuine, practical implications for sports that are sex segregated. It is unfair to female athletes to allow transgender women to participate wholesale in female segregated sports. Transgender women with sexually functionally penises pose a potential real world risk to other women in some contexts (for example, shared prison cells). Insofar as the left refuses to acknowledge this, the left is wrong. Sometimes the people who are the most insane are on the left.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #663333; font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(102, 51, 51);"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #663333; font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(102, 51, 51);">Two related videos and related link <a href="https://www.thefire.org/news/lawsuit-fire-sues-stop-california-forcing-professors-teach-dei" target="_blank">FIRE sues to stop California from forcing professors to teach DEI</a> (I agree with the plaintiffs and hope they win).</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #663333; font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(102, 51, 51);"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #663333; font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #663333; font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/rgrknXtqfxY" width="320" youtube-src-id="rgrknXtqfxY"></iframe></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #663333; font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #663333; font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/8ksrvkEDpig" width="320" youtube-src-id="8ksrvkEDpig"></iframe></span></div><span style="color: #663333; font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><br /><span style="caret-color: rgb(102, 51, 51);"><br /></span></span><p></p><p><span style="color: #663333; font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(102, 51, 51);"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #663333; font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(102, 51, 51);"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(102, 51, 51); color: #663333; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; box-sizing: inherit; color: #663333; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"><br /></p>Explicit Atheisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05501109533475045969noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10856048.post-29190059189225086882024-01-01T11:58:00.016-05:002024-01-01T19:25:19.281-05:00Concerns about gender affirming care<p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">By Mathew Goldstein</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">Dr. </span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; animation-delay: 0s; animation-direction: normal; animation-fill-mode: none; animation-iteration-count: 1; animation-name: none; animation-play-state: running; animation-timing-function: ease; box-sizing: border-box; transition: none;">Riittakerttu Kaltiala</span> was the chief psychiatrist in Finland at one of the first clinics devoted to the treatment of gender-distressed young people. She recently went public with her opposition to the gender affirming protocol where adolescents self-diagnose themselves that she claims originated in the United States and is still widely practiced in the United States with the ongoing support of the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Both organizations arrogantly deny credentialed experts within the profession who are </span><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: large;">dissenters an opportunity to argue in favor of adopting more guardrails at their conferences</span><span style="font-size: x-large;">. </span></span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">Read her article </span><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><a href="https://open.substack.com/pub/bariweiss/p/gender-affirming-care-dangerous-finland-doctor?r=19ipin&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post" target="_blank">Gender-Affirming Care Is Dangerous. I Know Because I Helped Pioneer It</a>.</span></span><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; font-family: AGaramondPro, "Adobe Garamond Pro", garamond, Times, serif; font-size: 22px;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;">Scientists and public-health officials in </span><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;">Finland, Sweden, France, Norway, and the U.K. </span><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;">are warning that, for some young people, gender transition medical interventions may be doing more harm than good. Handing off the responsibility for deciding how to proceed to self-diagnosing pre-adolescents and adolescents and their parents is arguably more a self-serving shirking of responsibility than an act of benevolence </span></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; font-family: verdana;">by the medical establishment. </span></span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">Medical treatment policies should be set to match the available evidence regarding what works best regardless of the agenda of activists. </span><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: large;">To reduce the substantial risk of doing harm clinicians should adopt a more skeptical, restrained, conservative approach to gender transitioning medical interventions, including hormone blockers, when treating young people</span><span style="font-size: x-large;">.</span></span></p><p></p>Explicit Atheisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05501109533475045969noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10856048.post-30741299951185942732023-12-17T10:44:00.023-05:002023-12-31T21:24:54.972-05:00U..S. Government misrepresents presidential oath history again<p> <span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">By Mathew Goldstein</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">The United States Government Publishing Office hosts <a href="https://bensguide.gpo.gov/j-oath-office" target="_blank">Ben’s Guide</a>, which is self-described thusly: “</span><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">Ben's Guide to the U.S. Government, a service of the Government Publishing Office (GPO), is designed to inform students, parents, and educators about the Federal Government, which issues the publications and information products disseminated by the GPO’s Federal Depository Library Program. It is our hope that Ben’s Guide to the U.S. Government fulfills that role.” They feature a web page titled <a href="https://bensguide.gpo.gov/j-oath-office" target="_blank">Oath of Office</a> which makes several misleading claims about presidential oath history.</span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white;">Until recently they made the following statement with no qualifications: “</span><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: white;">The President-elect places the left hand on the Bible, raises the right hand, and takes the Oath as directed by the Chief Justice.“ Recognizing that this was not always true, they removed that sentence and added this short paragraph: “</span></span><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">The Constitution does not say what the swearing-in must include. While most Presidents-elect chose a Bible, as George Washington did, John Quincy Adams used a book of law, and Teddy Roosevelt did not use any book.” While this is now arguably more accurate, it is still wrong.</span></span></p><p><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">First of all, George Washington’s second inauguration did not feature a Bible, so this must be referring to his first inauguration. There was no federal Chief Justice nor any applicable federal oath law (aside from the words of the presidential oath in the constitution) at that time. The oath was therefore administered in New York by the New York State chief judge, Chancellor Robert Robert Livingston, pursuant to New York State law. Swearing on, and kissing, the Bible were <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=sno4AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA49&dq=1778+++gospels+kiss+%22new+york%22+oath" target="_blank">state legal mandates</a> (the only legal alternative was to uplift one hand, or both hands , and swear to the “everliving God”) that were repealed in the early 1800’s. </span></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">George Washington did not choose a Bible, the Bible was imposed on him.</span></p><p><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">Secondly, John Quincy Adams did not swear his oath of office on a book of laws as an alternative to doing so on a Bible as implied. He read the oath of office from the law book, see</span></span><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"> </span><a href="https://en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=File%3ANiles%27_Weekly_Register%2C_v28.djvu&page=35" target="_blank"><span style="color: #757575; font-family: verdana; font-size: large; text-decoration: none;">March 12, 1825 Niles Weekly Registe</span><span style="color: #757575; font-family: verdana; font-size: large; text-decoration: none;">r</span></a></span><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">. It is of historical significance that Chief Justice Marshall relied on a law book for the presidential oath recitations. He administered the oath of office nine times, more often than any other Chief Justice, </span></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">starting with Thomas Jefferson in 1801. It is likely that most (maybe all) of those early inaugural oath recitations were read from a small law book (a Bible was added for Andrew Jackson’s inauguration). </span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white;">Adams wrote that he witnessed the identical oath protocol four years earlier at James Monroe inauguration, see</span><span><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: white;"> </span><span style="color: #757575;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><a href="https://www.masshist.org/publications/jqadiaries/index.php/document/jqadiaries-v31-1821-03-05-p540" rel="nofollow">J. Q. Adam’s diary for 6 March 1821</a></span></span></span>. <span style="background-color: white;">Therefore, it is misleading to imply that John Q. Adams’ inauguration was unique in this regard by singling him out as an exception.</span></span></p>Explicit Atheisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05501109533475045969noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10856048.post-77864935578405141772023-11-23T20:09:00.024-05:002023-11-28T12:29:05.285-05:00Meaningless, substance less, anything goes, DEI epistemology<p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"> By Mathew Goldstein</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">Tragically, nonsense is being promoted in academia by professors under the rubric of scholarship. This foolishness is well entrenched at prestigious secular universities and repeatedly appears in renown academic journals. This unfortunate phenomena spills over from the humanities to the sciences. It is often associated with postmodernist <a href="https://newdiscourses.com/2020/02/naming-enemy-critical-social-justice/" target="_blank">Critical Social Justice</a> ideology (not be confused with actual social justice) which in turn is linked to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). DEI is then linked to civil rights, which provides a compelling excuse for smuggling highly dubious Critical Social Justice ideology into all sorts of topics and institutions. This is a big topic, and I am not an expert, but even with a cursory reading of what it is about it is all too obvious that it is both fundamentally mistaken and counter-productive. So called “<a href=" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decolonization_of_knowledge?wprov=sfti1#" target="_blank">Epistemological decolonization</a>” is an example. Read the afore-linked Wikipedia article for a description of the destructive hijacking of epistemology by Critical Social Justice ideology.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">Unfairness, injustice, colonization, bigotry, economic exploitation, and the like, are not remedied by refusing to take seriously our responsibility to reliably identify what is non-fictional. If there is one reliable method (empirically anchored reasoning), and that method was utilized most successfully historically by white males in Europe, and Europeans unjustly exploited non-Europeans, and utilizing that one method fictionalizes traditional beliefs that were, and still are, considered to be non-fictional by many people, then it does not follow that we need to replace that one reliable method with a plurality of other, unreliable methods, in the name of social justice, diversity, equity, and inclusiveness, or civil rights. This is why the entire enterprise of re-defining epistemology for the purpose of achieving social justice, diversity, equity, and inclusivity, and civil rights, is flat out silly. </span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">Yet over and over again, lots of people are proudly claiming to be doing just that. They are corrupting one field of scholarship after another by mistakenly reframing almost all scholarship as being primarily about the single minded pursuit of an ideologically distorted conception of social justice.</span></p><p><br /></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">The proponents of Critical Social Justice typically refuse to condescend to debating with their opponents.</span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"> </span><span style="font-family: verdana;">It is not good enough for the opponents of Critical Social Justice to have studied, and be knowledgeable, regarding the claims made by Critical Social Justice advocates. The proponents </span><span style="font-family: verdana;">arrogantly and presumptuously insist everyone must first decolonize epistemology, etc., and actively incorporate such Critical Social Justice advocacy into their worldview to qualify as being competent enough to publicly discuss social justice. </span></span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">This circular, doxastically closed, approach is a classic indicator/symptom of dogmatism which goes together, hand and glove, with intolerance and authoritarianism. It is anti-intellectualism covered up with a supe</span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">rficial gloss of intellectualism. It lacks integrity.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">Solicitations of statements of adherence to the tenets of Critical Social Justice, partially disguised as being solicitations for DEI statements, are being included in employment applications as mandatory competitive qualifications for being hired at secular institutions, much like statements of religious self-belief are included as conditions for employment at religious institutions. Instead of deity to worship and serve, there is systemic injustice to destroy. Penitence and evangelism are deemed essential. Students, to qualify as decent people and citizens, are obligated to endorse the complete set of doctrines and practices as instructed by the clerics. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">It is difficult to avoid noticing how deeply rooted in resentment Critical Social Justice is. Some resentment is good, we should resent unfairness. There are a surfeit of injustices that we should resent. However, epistemology is about how we should go about distinguishing non-fiction from fiction. </span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Resentment has no place here.</span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">And yes, the true versus false distinction does make a meaningful difference, it is the difference between our beliefs, and our belief based behaviors, being rational versus being irrational. Epistemology is merely one of the academic subjects </span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">being undermined by this all encompassing secular ideology, much like epistemology is merely one of the academic subjects undermined by all encompassing religious ideologies (most of theology).</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">Advocates of populist, almost anything goes, DEI epistemology should consider European white male Aldous Huxley’s accurate observation in his 1932 book “Texts and Pretexts” that what we claim to know is true is often actually false when we fail to anchor our factual claims in publicly available and verifiable, external to ourself, evidence:</span></p><p><span face="ui-sans-serif, system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Noto Sans", Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Helvetica Neue", Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Noto Color Emoji"" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(38, 38, 38); color: #262626;"><br /></span></p><p><span face="ui-sans-serif, system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Noto Sans", Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Helvetica Neue", Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Noto Color Emoji"" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(38, 38, 38); color: #262626;">It is man's intelligence that makes him so often behave more stupidly than the beasts. … Man is impelled to invent theories to account for what happens in the world. Unfortunately, he is not quite intelligent enough, in most cases, to find correct explanations. So that when he acts on his theories, he behaves very often like a lunatic. Thus, no animal is clever enough, when there is a drought, to imagine that the rain is being withheld by evil spirits, or as punishment for its transgressions. Therefore you never see animals going through the absurd and often horrible fooleries of magic and religion. No horse, for example would kill one of its foals to make the wind change direction. Dogs do not ritually urinate in the hope of persuading heaven to do the same and send down rain. Asses do not bray a liturgy to cloudless skies. Nor do cats attempt, by abstinence from cat's meat, to wheedle the feline spirits into benevolence. Only man behaves with such gratuitous folly. It is the price he has to pay for being intelligent but not, as yet, intelligent enough.</span></p>Explicit Atheisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05501109533475045969noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10856048.post-83656335930639053392023-11-06T19:22:00.001-05:002023-11-06T19:23:39.049-05:00Ayaan Hirsi Ali commentary on Hamas<p> <span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">Mathew Goldstein</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">Recent Interview on Fox News</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/tASnNDybPME" width="320" youtube-src-id="tASnNDybPME"></iframe></div><br /><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">Everything she is saying here is accurate.</span><p></p>Explicit Atheisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05501109533475045969noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10856048.post-52719964875180894022023-11-06T15:18:00.012-05:002023-11-07T10:51:43.659-05:00Most state medical boards are too inactive<p> <span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">By Mathew Goldstein</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">Disciplining physicians who exhibit incompetence or whose conduct is illegal or abusive towards patients is a chief responsibility of the state medical boards. State licensing boards and health care entities, including professional societies, are required to report to the National Practitioner Data Bank (NPDB) certain adverse licensing and disciplinary actions taken against individual practitioners. Malpractice insurers and other payers are also required to report all malpractice payments made on behalf of individual practitioners. State level summary information that does not identify individuals is publicly available. </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 40px;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></p><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><span class="s1">Public Citizen’s Health Research Group calculated the rate of serious disciplinary actions per 1,000 physicians in each state per year averaged over three years 2019, 2020, and 2021. They defined “serious disciplinary actions” as those that had a clear impact on a physician’s ability to practice. They utilized the information on the Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB) website (fsmb.org/physician census) to determine the total number of physicians in each state.</span><br /><span class="s1"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><span class="s1"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><span class="s1">Michigan averaged 1.74 serious disciplinary actions per 1000 physicians. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Michigan’s rate is lower than the highest three rates for the years 2017-2019. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I agree with Public Citizen that the highest rate currently observed is unlikely to be the best that can be achieved nor is it likely to be adequate for protecting the public from dangerous physicians. </span></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Many states took no, or little, disciplinary action against physicians promoting disproven or unproven treatments for COVID-19. </span><span style="font-family: verdana;">Public Citizen points out that “</span></span><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(3, 27, 68); color: #031b44;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">data from the NPDB show that by the end of 2021, 9,286 U.S. physicians have had five or more malpractice-payment reports since the NPDB began collecting such information in 1990. This is a malpractice record worse than 99% or more of all physicians who have practiced since then. Yet, dangerously and unacceptably, three-quarters (75%) of these 9,286 physicians have never had a medical board licensure action of any kind, serious or nonserious.” Also “</span></span><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(3, 27, 68); color: #031b44;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">almost half of physicians deemed worthy of discipline by their peers with whom they practice had no action taken by a licensing board.” </span></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">We can nevertheless assign an A+ (100%) grade to the Michigan rate and grade the other states from that sub-optimal starting point.</span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> </span></span></div><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 40px; text-align: left;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><span class="s1"><a href="https://www.mbp.state.md.us/" target="_blank">Maryland’s</a> rate is 0.89 which ranks 25th among all states. That earns Maryland an F grade (51%) relative to Michigan’s rate. <a href="https://www.dhp.virginia.gov/Boards/Medicine/" target="_blank">Virginia’s</a> rate is 1.02 which also earns an F grade (58%).</span></span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><span> </span><span>Marylanders and Virginians, like the citizens of most states, should be concerned about the poor performance of state medical boards. </span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><span><br /></span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><span><span><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(3, 27, 68); color: #031b44;">Public Citizen notes: “For $2.50 per physician per year, boards can purchase “continuous query” from the NPDB for each licensee. </span></span></span><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(3, 27, 68); color: #031b44;">the licensing boards of Florida, Massachusetts, Vermont, and Wyoming enrolled substantially all their licensees in continuous query. </span><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(3, 27, 68); color: #031b44;">All of these states except Wyoming — a low population state for which a relatively few licensure actions could make a relatively large change in ranking position — were among the twenty highest ranked states.” Yet “I</span></span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(3, 27, 68); color: #031b44;">n 2022 the licensing boards of 29 states had no physicians enrolled in the Data Bank’s continuous query service. Six of those 29 state boards made no single name queries to the Data Bank.</span><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(3, 27, 68); color: #031b44;"> Seven </span><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(3, 27, 68); color: #031b44;">state boards only had between one and fifty physicians enrolled.” Those numbers are pathetic.</span></span></p>Explicit Atheisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05501109533475045969noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10856048.post-63191348320705946892023-10-29T14:41:00.018-04:002023-10-29T21:49:02.101-04:00An essayist evangelizes for religious “truths”<p> <span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">By Mathew Goldstein</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><span class="s1">Religion Unplugged published an article by Paul Prather who describes himself as a rural Pentecostal pastor in Kentucky on October 23 titled</span><span class="s2" style="color: #e4af0a;"> </span><span class="s1"><a href=" https://religionunplugged.com/news/2023/10/16/an-essayist-evangelizes-readers-for-atheism" target="_blank">An Essayist Evangelizes Readers For Atheism</a>. His article was a response to an article by Kate Cohen published by the Washington Post on October 3 titled</span><span class="s1"> <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/10/03/kate-cohen-atheism" target="_blank">America doesn’t need more God. It needs more atheists.</a> Paul Prather somewhat misrepresents her article’s content so you may want to read her article if you read his article. His argument will probably be persuasive to some of the people who read it, which is a reason why I decided to publish a response.</span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 43.2px;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">Paul Prather criticizes Kate Cohen’s argument because, he says, “among other things, it fails to understand how people of faith really function in the world.” He starts by claiming that “some myths” were not intended to be taken literally. He then cites the Genesis account of creation as an example. He is correct that myths are not found “in scientific textbooks”, which is a bigger concession to non-theism than he recognizes. He attempts to counter this concession by asserting that the metaphors of his religion are instead “spiritually true” and “eternal, cosmic truths”. The word “truths”, <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>asserted here with nothing of substance to support it, is carrying too much of his argument with too little justification to succeed.</span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 43.2px;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">Religious texts lack credibility for various reasons, including their reliance on stories (a.k.a. myths) that can be interpreted literally or metaphorically with no clear demarcation in the text itself regarding which interpretation is correct. Deities are either ontological facts or fictions. Metaphorical myths, a.k.a. spiritual <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>truths, are incapable of establishing ontological facts. Spiritual truths are subjective and as such cannot be equated with eternal, cosmic truths which are necessarily objective.</span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 43.2px;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">The fact versus fiction dichotomy matters, particularly when we are allegedly discussing eternal, cosmic truth</span></span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: x-large;">.</span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"> If the content of religious texts purporting to reveal the existence of deity are all metaphorical then religious texts are no different than poetry or fictional novels. Yet who worships poetry or novels? Poetry and novels can be alluring, if you enjoy poetry or novels then good for you, consider yourself to be lucky. People can participate in weekly poetry or novel readings and occasional seasonal poetry or novel festivals containing lots of metaphors revealing spiritual truths without any ontological baggage attached. Theistic religions are not like that because they are attached to eternal, cosmic truth claims anchored in ontological fact claims, one of which is the existence of deity.</span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 43.2px;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">Paul Prather says “doubt is part of any healthy faith“. Doubt should be proportional to evidence. The less evidence the more doubt and the more evidence the less doubt. Doubt should be diminished to the point of becoming insignificant when the evidence is strong. The word faith here is an admission that the evidence is insufficient to rationally compel belief and therefore doubt is rationally compelled, which significantly undermines the ambitious assertion that the same faith reveals eternal, cosmic truth.</span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 43.2px;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">Paul Prather then says “Well, on the days that I believe, here’s what I believe.” While our beliefs will change over time as we learn more, for ontological questions it is unlikely that our access to evidence is going to </span></span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">change on a daily basis to justify such daily alternations in our beliefs. When someone says their belief about how the universe operates alternates on an almost daily schedule it indicates that person is probably not anchoring their understanding of how the universe operates in evidence properly. This conclusion is bolstered by the final line in his article, a quote from the Gospels of someone appealing to Jesus for assistance: “I do believe. Help my unbelief!”. If that quote is supposed to qualify as evidence for theism then we disagree about what qualifies as evidence.</span></p>Explicit Atheisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05501109533475045969noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10856048.post-75674723319518381482023-10-09T22:04:00.010-04:002023-10-09T23:58:13.196-04:00What does Hamas want?<p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: x-large;">By Mathew Goldstein</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: x-large;">The mass media does an incredibly, astonishingly, poor (shitty is the word) job of explaining what Hamas wants (the quality of the coverage varies, but a persistently significant portion of news coverage is off-the-rails wrong). At least partly as a result, there is widespread misunderstanding on this subject, even though this is centrally relevant to the conflict and for understanding what is going on. So here is <a href="https://youtu.be/_r7jmHF3qvg" target="_blank">Ismail Haniyeh providing an explanation to an Arabic audience</a> that their political principle is to rule over all of the land currently controlled by Israel with future warfare and they will not relinquish or compromise on that principle for anything less.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_r7jmHF3qvg" width="320" youtube-src-id="_r7jmHF3qvg"></iframe></span></div><p></p><p><a aria-label="Share link" class="ytp-share-panel-link ytp-no-contextmenu" href="Ismail Hayina explains the agenda of Hamas" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; color: white; display: block; font-family: "YouTube Noto", Roboto, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 23.98px; height: 28px; letter-spacing: 1px; margin-top: 18px; outline: 0px; overflow: hidden; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-overflow: ellipsis; transition: color 0.1s cubic-bezier(0.4, 0, 1, 1); white-space: nowrap;" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/_r7jmHF3qvg</a><a aria-label="Share link" class="ytp-share-panel-link ytp-no-contextmenu" href="Ismail Hayina explains the agenda of Hamas" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; color: white; display: block; font-family: "YouTube Noto", Roboto, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 23.98px; height: 28px; letter-spacing: 1px; margin-top: 18px; outline: 0px; overflow: hidden; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-overflow: ellipsis; transition: color 0.1s cubic-bezier(0.4, 0, 1, 1); white-space: nowrap;" target="_blank"><br /></a></p>Explicit Atheisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05501109533475045969noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10856048.post-71410061783296270292023-10-09T14:22:00.007-04:002023-10-11T18:50:11.319-04:00In Defense of Naturalism by Gregory Dawes<p> <span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">By Mathew Goldstein</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">It is common for people to claim that science presupposes methodological naturalism. An overlapping claim that I sometimes encounter is that any how the universe works claim, even if that claim was previously widely deemed to be inherently supernatural, automatically necessarily becomes reclassified as being a natural phenomenon if, and when, it is verified to be true by virtue of its being true, thereby <i>a-priori</i> rendering supernatural ontology an impossibility. </span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">Several years ago Richard Carrier recommended an excellent article on this topic by philosopher </span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(24, 24, 24); color: #181818; text-align: justify;">Gregory Dawes. Carrier said “</span></span><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(24, 24, 24); color: #181818; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">I recently found an article from 2011 making a point I’ve long made myself, that the entire notion of a “presumption of naturalism” being axiomatic to history and the sciences is both an error made by some historians and scientists and an apologetic bluff by Christian apologists—and that, instead, naturalism is an evidence-based conclusion in the sciences reached by long experience, and thus is theoretically revisable; it is also based on evidence, and therefore cannot be “swapped out” by simply changing one’s faith commitment or “preferring” a different axiom. I recommend the whole thing …”</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(24, 24, 24); color: #181818; text-align: justify;"><br /></span></span></p><h1 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">The January 2020 article by Richard Carrier is “<a href="https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/16193" target="_blank">Naturalism Is Not an Axiom of the Sciences but a Conclusion of Them</a>”. The 2011 article by Gregory Dawes is </span><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(24, 24, 24); color: #181818; text-align: justify;">“</span><a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/225102165_In_defense_of_naturalism" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: #3044db; text-align: justify; text-decoration: none; transition: color 0.3s ease-in-out;" target="_blank">In Defense of Naturalism</a><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(24, 24, 24); color: #181818; text-align: justify;">,” </span><em style="box-sizing: inherit; caret-color: rgb(24, 24, 24); color: #181818; text-align: justify;">International Journal for Philosophy of Religion</em><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(24, 24, 24); color: #181818; text-align: justify;"> 70.1 (2011): 3-25. I think it is shame that this understanding that naturalism is a conclusion of the sciences is not more widely acknowledged, recognized, and accepted, even among scientists. Richard Carrier suggests a reason why this is the case: “</span></span></span><span style="color: #181818; font-weight: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">Of course, admitting that would blow up the world. It would be declaring war on religion. And calling conservative Christians delusional. It’s a political conundrum. But </span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">intellectually, Dawes is right.”</span></span></h1>Explicit Atheisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05501109533475045969noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10856048.post-37295647544670434162023-09-10T15:31:00.013-04:002023-09-11T15:14:12.719-04:00Postmodern epistemological relativism found to be destructive<p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><span>By Mathew Goldstein</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">A recently published pair of studies, one from Sweden (Study 1, N = 1005) and the other from the UK (Study 2, N = 417), focused on truth relativism [Julia Aspernäs, Arvid Erlandsson, Artur Nilsson, “Misperceptions in a post-truth world: Effects of subjectivism and cultural relativism on bullshit receptivity and conspiracist ideation”, Journal of Research in Personality, Volume 105, 2023, 104394,</span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;">ISSN 0092-6566, </span></span><span style="font-family: verdana;"><a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2023.104394.">https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2023.104394</a></span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;">(<a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092656623000569">https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092656623000569</a>)]. </span></span><span style="font-family: verdana;">The study did not investigate causality (as is often the case with such studies since evaluating causality is more difficult than evaluating correlations).</span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> <span class="s1">The researchers identified two types of truth relativism. One </span></span><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="s1">that consists of people who believe that truth depends on which culture or group you belong to, known as </span><span class="s2" style="font-style: italic;">cultural relativism.</span><span class="s2"> The other </span></span><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="s1">consists of people who say they primarily rely on their own gut feeling to determine what is true and false. They are convinced that what they personally feel to be true </span><span class="s2" style="font-style: italic;">is </span><span class="s1">true, that is to say, that truth is </span><span class="s2">subjective</span><span class="s2">, henceforward referred to as <i>subjectivism</i></span></span><span class="s1" style="font-family: verdana;">.</span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 43.2px;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><span class="s2" style="font-style: italic;"></span><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;">This study found that subjectivism was correlated with endorsing conspiracy theories, with holding on to beliefs even when faced with facts that contradict them, with claiming to find profound messages in nonsense sentences, and paradoxically, with rejecting the right of others’ to have their own beliefs. The study concluded that subjectivism remained an independent factor for these correlations after controlling for multiple plausible </span></span><span style="font-family: verdana;">alternative </span><span style="font-family: verdana;">factors, including analytical thinking ability, political orientation, age, gender, and educational level. These same correlations were not found among those who believe that truth is culture-bound. Cultural relativism was, however, positively correlated with “bullshit receptivity”.</span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">"I think many people who emphasise a more relativistic view of what truth is mean well. They believe that it's important that everyone should be able to make their voice heard. But these results show that such a view can actually be quite dangerous," says PhD student Julia Aspernäs at the Department of Behavioural Sciences and Learning in Linköping.</span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;">I have seen a video of a local church service where they sing in celebration of “faith facts”, undeterred by the self-contradiction. Our </span></span><span style="font-family: verdana;">experiences can qualify as evidence provided they are experienced objectively from outside of oneself. A</span><span style="font-family: verdana;">lthough the theologian advocates and non-theologian practitioners of Reformed epistemology characterize it as experiencing god, it </span><span style="font-family: verdana;">is actually subjectivism in practice </span><span style="font-family: verdana;">because what they characterize as “experiencing god” is more accurately described as some combination of feeling, imagining, overgeneralizing, over-interpreting, and the like, rendering it a subjective experience that resides primarily inside the head of the person with that experience.</span></span></p>Explicit Atheisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05501109533475045969noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10856048.post-30130797827562485162023-08-21T09:46:00.018-04:002023-09-17T09:52:43.850-04:00The World Health Organization promotes quackery yet again<p> <span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">Mathew Goldstein</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(176, 176, 176);">David Gorski, a veteran commenter on the Science Based Medicine web site, has published criticism of one of the bigger purveyors of homeopathy and other crank products and treatments for illness, the World Health Organization. Faculty from the University of Maryland, ‘</span></span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">an institution that has featured in this blog many times before</span><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"> </span><a href="https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/blatant-pro-alternative-medicine-propaganda/" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">since very early on</a><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">for the uncritical promotion of “integrating” quackery into science-based medicine by </span><a data-reader-unique-id="155" href="https://cim.umaryland.edu/About-CIM/" style="max-width: 100%; text-decoration: none;">its Integrative Medicine program</a>’, <span style="caret-color: rgb(176, 176, 176);">participated in that travesty. I recommend his article </span><a href="https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-world-health-organization-promotes-quackery-yet-again/" target="_blank">The World Health Organization promotes quackery yet again</a></span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><span><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><span>This long-standing problem appears to draw too little attention and criticism. Among the few others criticizing WHO for their brazen endorsement of bad healthcare practices is </span><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; background-color: white;">Jonathan Jarry, who </span><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; background-color: white;">has a Master’s degree in molecular biology, writing for </span><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; background-color: white;">McGill University’s Office for Science and Society, </span>whose motto is “<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;">Separating Sense from Nonsense” in an article titled</span> <span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/critical-thinking-pseudoscience/world-health-organization-has-pseudoscience-problem" target="_blank">The World Health Organization Has a Pseudoscience Problem</a>, and a pair of right wing media publishers, the Spectator in the U.K. and Fox News in the U.S.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; text-align: center;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; caret-color: rgb(45, 45, 45); color: #2d2d2d; font-family: verdana;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; text-align: center;">M</span></span><span style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; caret-color: rgb(45, 45, 45); color: #2d2d2d; font-family: verdana;"><span style="text-align: center;">edicine is licensed, insured, and regulated while the </span><span style="text-align: center;">supplements business is weakly regulated. </span></span></span><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">If you opt for trying to improve your health with natural substances then you may want to consider subscribing to Consumer Labs. They report on what evidence there is regarding various plant, vitamin, and mineral based approaches for addressing various health concerns and which supplement products actually deliver what they claim to provide (for example, they have an article “</span></span></span><span style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; caret-color: rgb(45, 45, 45); color: #2d2d2d;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">Do any supplements help prevent or improve cataracts?”). </span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><span lang="EN" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; box-sizing: inherit; caret-color: rgb(27, 27, 27); color: #1b1b1b;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><span lang="EN" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; box-sizing: inherit; caret-color: rgb(27, 27, 27); color: #1b1b1b;">There is biology based evidence that high doses of some anti-oxidants via supplements increase the risk for some cancers by stimulating the growth of new blood vessels that feed the cancer cells</span></span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">. </span><span><span style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; caret-color: rgb(45, 45, 45); color: #2d2d2d;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">S</span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">tudies show that high levels of v</span></span></span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><span lang="EN" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; box-sizing: inherit; caret-color: rgb(27, 27, 27); color: #1b1b1b;">itamin A, C, and </span><a data-metrics-link="" href="https://www.webmd.com/diet/supplement-guide-vitamin-e" id="12481d62-b20b-4260-9132-6d6750499a3c;medical_reference" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; box-sizing: inherit; color: #3557ff; text-decoration: none; transition: color 0.15s;">E</a> as <span lang="EN" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; box-sizing: inherit; caret-color: rgb(27, 27, 27); color: #1b1b1b;">supplements increases cases of gastrointestinal cancers (stomach, colon, and/or esophageal) in some people, and beta-carotene (a vitamin A precursor) supplementation is similarly positively correlated with lung cancer. Other cancers rely on the same underlying mechanism to form blood vessels, including kidney, skin, and breast cancers.</span></span></p>Explicit Atheisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05501109533475045969noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10856048.post-26418071359378209982023-06-03T18:24:00.010-04:002023-07-04T20:51:54.542-04:00Physics has ruled out free will<p><span style="font-size: large;"> <span style="font-family: verdana;">By Mathew Goldstein</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">There are very smart people who claim we have free will (or who claim there is a need to claim that we have free will)</span><span style="font-family: verdana;">. They cite unpredictability of outcomes, emergent properties from large quantities, human psychological dependency on ideological pre-commitments, and the always available option of changing the definition of the concept so that it becomes impervious to criticism. In this ten minutes video,</span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> </span><span style="font-family: verdana;"><a href="https://backreaction.blogspot.com/2023/06/has-physics-ruled-out-free-will.html " target="_blank">Has Physics Ruled Out Free Will</a>, </span><span style="font-family: verdana;">Sabine Hossenfelder does a good job of explaining why the conclusion that there is no free will has the most integrity. A modern understanding of how the universe operates rules out life after death, talking serpents and donkeys, an Eve created from the rib of an Adam, a flying winged horse, etc., and free will (contra-causal, libertarian free will because these traits are generally considered central to the free will concept). </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Having said that, I need to back peddle some and concede that it is possible to get free-will within the constraints set by physics via strong emergence. However, most physicists reject strong emergence. </span></span><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; caret-color: rgb(44, 45, 48); color: #2c2d30;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">Sabine Hossenfelder defines strong emergence as “the hypothetical possibility that a system with many constituents displays novel behavior which cannot be derived from the properties and interactions of the constituents.” She states that although this is logically possible, there is not a single known example for this in the real world. She also states that strong emergence is “incompatible with what we already know about the laws of nature” and that strong emergence is “in conflict with the standard model in particle physics.”</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">One of the biggest problems humanity has are the myriad problems we ourselves create by our tendency to selectively toss out facts about how the universe works when we consider those facts to be inconvenient. We desire to achieve particular outcomes, or avoid particular outcomes, and there are other people who can interfere with realizing that goal. Our desired goal may be idealistically motivated. For what may be good reasons, including this tendency for people to disregard, or deny, inconvenient facts, we distrust others to share our goal or we are cynical about the willingness or ability of others to adjust their attitudes and behaviors so as to realize the preferred goal. We place ourselves in the role of manipulator, saying and doing whatever we think is most likely to achieve our goals (“motivated reasoning”). </span><span style="font-family: verdana;">Argument is not for the sake of respecting and recognizing what the relevant facts are. Argument is instead for the purpose of convincing others to believe what we want them to believe for the sake of achieving or avoiding some particular outcomes (“confirmation bias”). We are competing to have power, because either power is ours and we win, or it is someone else’s and we lose. We then see how dysfunctional this is and become more cynical and distrustful. This takes us in an authoritarian, ideology over facts, power over truth, downhill spiral. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">The way out of that spiral is for humanity to favor a facts first orientation that is rooted in a competent, empiricist epistemology. To favor a commitment to undertaking the effort needed to suss out, and reject, non-factual ideology. To favor objectivity more than doxastically closed faith, cynical manipulation, or partisan advantage. With this context it becomes more honorable to accept compromise in the face of sincere disagreement whenever the result moves us forward overall, without holding out for nothing less than unachievable victory now. That is a practical way towards an </span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">uphill spiral of more mutual understanding, trust, and progress.</span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span></p><p>“A lot of people seem to think it is merely a philosophical stance that the behavior of a composite object (for example, you) is determined by the behavior of its constituents—that is, subatomic particles. They call it reductionism or materialism or, sometimes, physicalism, as if giving it a name that ends in-ism will somehow make it disappear. But reductionism—according to which the behavior of an object can be deduced from (“ reduced to,” as the philosophers would say) the properties, behavior, and interactions of the object’s constituents—is not a philosophy. It’s one of the best established facts of nature.”</p><p>— Existential Physics: A Scientist's Guide to Life's Biggest Questions by Sabine Hossenfelder</p>Explicit Atheisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05501109533475045969noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10856048.post-72449122191835101372023-04-30T16:25:00.014-04:002023-05-01T10:16:46.914-04:00AA report on Maryland laws commentary<p> <span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">By Mathew Goldstein</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><span>American Atheist’s report on Maryland state laws covers the state government issues of concern across the nation. </span><span>American Atheists did a good job overall. They grouped the laws into subcategories under four major categories, and I will attempt to retain that organization. The focus here is to identify </span></span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><span>some Maryland state law issues that are not mentioned in the American Atheists report. </span><span>Maybe some of these additional issues will be added to their future reports. </span><span style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0);">See Secular Maryland issue statements </span><a href="https://secularmaryland.dorik.io/Issues" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); -webkit-touch-callout: default !important; -webkit-user-drag: none; -webkit-user-select: text !important; box-sizing: border-box; overflow-wrap: break-word;" target="_blank">https://secularmaryland.dorik.io/Issues</a><span style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0);">. Register to join the Secular Maryland email list from </span><a href="https://secularmaryland.dorik.io/" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); -webkit-touch-callout: default !important; -webkit-user-drag: none; -webkit-user-select: text !important; box-sizing: border-box; overflow-wrap: break-word;" target="_blank">https://secularmaryland.dorik.io/</a><span style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0);">.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">But first, some general comments. </span><span style="font-family: verdana;">The laws of concern are categorized by AA as negative, anti-secular laws, we oppose and positive, pro-secular laws, we support. Some of those issues are correlated with our two party duopoly partisan divide. Because Maryland has a Democratic Party majority in both the House and Senate, negative law bills that correlate with a Republican agenda are either not submitted, or when submitted repeatedly fail to reach, let alone pass, a floor vote. Nevertheless, Maryland has negative laws that are supported, or at least not challenged, by lawmakers, and is lacking various positive laws. To some extent both parties exhibit a pro-religion bias (many lawmakers are religious clerics), and to some extent a secularist perspective is not on the Maryland General Assembly agenda because as a community we do not prioritize lobbying Maryland state government. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><span><span>Having said that, Secular Maryland was joined by all of the national secularist organizations, and the ACLU, in submitted testimony this year on behalf of the bills proposing amending the state constitution to remove the unenforceable, offensive, and archaic provisions excluding ontological naturalists (a.k.a. non-theists) from holding government office, being jurors, or testifying in court. The Attorney General’s Office submitted testimony favoring the bills. For the first time this bill was submitted twice, once in each chamber (HB0872 and SB0932 “</span></span>Declaration of Rights - Religious Freedom, Religious Tests, and Oaths and Affirmations”). The first time Senate sponsor, Senator Muse, is a Pentecostal Bishop, the repeat Delegate sponsor is Delegate Hill. Neither copy of the bill was reported out, favorably or unfavorably, by the assigned committees.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Our agenda should not be limited to what is popular, what is high priority or most important, or what is most likely to be accepted and implemented. Nor are laws</span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> the only issues of concern. Sometimes the issue is government actions, or non-actions. The AA report does not cover government sponsored religious displays. Maryland continues to display the Bladensburg Peace Cross. That the Supreme Court endorsed government sponsorship of this religious display does not obligate Maryland to continue to sponsor it. Maryland government would be more inclusive, not less inclusive, without this, or any other, government sponsored crucifixion cross. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">Under the subcategory religious exemptions to enforcement, AA says we lack negative laws for each of four subcategories. The report does not mention that there are religion based exemptions from insurance regulations, health care sharing ministries, and contraceptive insurance coverage. There are also exemptions from cemetery laws. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">The AA report does not mention religious holiday observance as a subcategory. Here we have commercial activity restrictions (Blue laws), Sunday recreational activity restrictions, and government closure laws (Christmas and Friday before, and Monday after, Easter). Omitted from the report is the theistic pledge of allegiance mandate (for public schools, with no opt out for teachers and with self-contradictory language regarding student participation). There is government sponsored prayer during government meetings. When the public is invited to give invocations we (probably?) can volunteer to give an explicitly ontologically naturalist invocation. At the same time we should not shy away from asking that prayer not be on the agenda of government meetings even if people respond with frowns, eye rolls, and falsely accuse us of being “angry” or “militant”. Again, just because the Supreme Court says prayer can be on the agenda of government meetings does not obligate government meetings to do that. Government meetings would be more inclusive, not less inclusive, without prayer on the meeting agenda.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">The AA report lists four denial of care laws. Maryland fails on two of them - it has negative refusal laws for abortion and sterilization. Omitted from the report are negative religion based exemption laws for Syphilis screening, vision and hearing screening, and congenital heart disease screening, all of which are tangibly harmful to innocent children.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">An important issue that is missing from the AA report is medical treatment refusal right to know laws. I know AA supports such right to know laws so maybe this issue will eventually be added to their report. Maryland lacks such a law (as do the other states). A national lobby is needed for this, similar to the national lobbying groups for state end of life laws. Ideally, medical facilities would be required to provide the full range of medical treatments that they are qualified to provide. Given the absence of this mandate we are entitled to know which particular treatments are not being provided by those medical facilities that refuse to provide them, invariably because of non-medical, religion based, edicts.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">I think secularists should actively oppose laws supporting so-called “alternative medicine”. Maryland licenses practitioners of naturopathy who are allowed to sell so-called “treatments” such as homeopathy. The Center for Inquiry has been actively opposing bogus medical treatments. There is a lawsuit against CVS, Walmart, and Amazon for selling junk homeopathic “medicine”. They should win. However, when a religious institution claims that their freedom to exercise their religious beliefs is being infringed we cannot rely on our federal government to consistently uphold common sense, particularly now that Supreme Court has abandoned the wrongly disparaged Lemon Test (which should be reinstated).</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">One more comment. Some of the issues surrounding transgender issues regarding sports participation and medical treatment are multi-faceted. The Freedom from Religion Foundation, the ACLU, and American Atheists, among others, tend to address transgender issues from the point of view of supporting “affirmative” medical treatment and participation in sports aligned with gender orientation without restrictions. I confess that I am more cautious here. Skepticism is an important component of proper medical treatment, there is some evidence that younger people in particular who seek medical transition are likely to have subsequent regrets, and puberty results in physical changes that impact sports performance (for many sports) and persists. These are real complications that should not be disregarded. Facts are neither left wing nor right wing. An eagerness for equity and diversity, should not override a commitment to policies that balance all of the relevant, available, evidence derived, facts. To understand this issue properly I recommend Sabine Hoffensteder’s recent commentary <a href="https://backreaction.blogspot.com/2023/04/is-being-trans-social-fad-among.html" target="_blank">Is being trans a social fad among teenagers?</a> This General Assembly session passed an affirmative transgender care bill.</span></p>Explicit Atheisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05501109533475045969noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10856048.post-47370435117638296842023-04-23T12:50:00.006-04:002023-04-23T13:07:23.816-04:00Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers<p> <span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">By Mathew Goldstein</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span><span style="font-family: verdana;">This recent article in Tablet Magazine, </span></span><a href="https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/community/articles/atheists-foxholes-military-program" style="font-family: verdana;" target="_blank">Atheists in Foxholes</a>, <span style="font-family: verdana;">discusses the military chaplaincy which, in practice, exhibits a bias against non-Christians, especially non-theists, and favors evangelical Protestantism. The Religion Support Office refuses to provide its services to soldiers who reject worship</span><span style="font-family: verdana;">. There is a sizable contingent of elected lawmakers in Congress who openly pressure federal institutions to discriminate against non-theists. If you are not doing so yet, you may want to consider adopting a secular spiritual ritual of donating to MAAF.</span></span></p>Explicit Atheisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05501109533475045969noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10856048.post-62567093966753063602023-01-23T12:35:00.004-05:002023-01-23T12:35:35.545-05:00American Atheists on The State of the Secular States<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">As many of you know I feel that democracy itself is at risk in this
country. January 6, 2020 was but one tiny but very threatening
example of that risk. I think that democracy has a decent chance at
the national level, but at the state level not so much. Some states
are turning into right wing Hell holes of theocratic repression. The
nuts and bolts of the American theocratic assault on democracy needs
to be analyzed in detail across all states.
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">The American
Atheists do precisely this both in their day-to-day operations and in
their annual State of the Secular States reports. The second sentence
of the introduction to that document cites “…a network of
extreme, well-funded, and well-organized groups aligned with the
white Christian nationalist ideology.” Project Blitz was also cited
as a prime example of these groups. Blitz focused on creating very
innovative model legislation making sure that fundamentalist
Christians have a radically greater share of the political and
cultural power throughout many of our social and governmental
institutions.</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">Obviously special
privileges for religion, limitations on health care and reproductive
rights, LGBTQ issues and control of schools have been areas of
primary focus for theocrats. AA does not include many issues that I
see to be central to the assault of the Christian far right on
democracy and simple human decency. This includes opposition to
immigration, gun control, mask-wearing, vaccine requirements or
support for punitive policing, mass incarceration, capital
punishment, gerrymandering and other opportunities for voter
suppression. Any vote by anyone not supporting their extremist agenda
must be avoided if they can find any way for law to select only
voters supporting white Christian supremacy. The war on drugs was
conceived by Nixon as a mechanism to minimize minority and liberal
votes. Christian theocrats love their very incoherent notion of
‘guilt.’ There is the regrettable fact that selective
gerrymandering can give a minority of a state’s voters a super
majority in a state legislature. And do not forget the lowering of
taxes, cutting of spending, and deregulating the economy. A public
social safety net would obviously limit the theocrats desire for the
church to be seen as central in the fulfilling of social needs. These
last issues are not tracked by AA.</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">They do track all
laws that either specifically undermine or protect religious
equality. Last year they tracked 557 such bills undermining religious
liberty and 141 that supported it. Of those undermining, 78 passed
and positive legislation had 24 passed. This is roughly three to one
in favor of bad legislation. The report has a complete profile of
existing legislation for each state. They separated have an on-line
list of proposed and possibly pending legislation for each state. I
highly recommend that people download the report for last year and
consider supporting this superb work by the American Atheists.</p>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10856048.post-56223168808154616372023-01-08T19:17:00.078-05:002023-02-28T10:36:03.216-05:00Thomas Jefferson 2nd inaugural book<p> <span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">By Mathew Goldstein</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><span class="s1">The National Archives has a “Founders Online” web site that focuses on “CORRESPONDENCE AND OTHER WRITINGS OF SEVEN MAJOR SHAPERS OF THE UNITED STATES” one of whom is Thomas Jefferson. A section titled “<a href="https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-45-02-0637-0001" target="_blank">Second Inaugural Address: Editorial Note</a>” cites “</span><span class="s2" style="font-style: italic;">The Papers of Thomas Jefferson</span><span class="s1">, vol. 45, </span><span class="s2" style="font-style: italic;">11 November 1804 to 8 March 1805</span></span><span class="s1" style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 33px;">, </span><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">ed. James P. McClure et al. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2021, pp. 625–638.” The first sentence of the eighth paragraph describes his second inauguration thusly “On finishing the address, Jefferson kissed the Bible, swore the oath of office administered by Chief Justice John Marshall, and bowed.” </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 40px;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222;">In 2010, the National Archives </span><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222;">entered into a cooperative agreement with </span><a href="http://www.upress.virginia.edu/" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; color: #004071;">The University of Virginia Press</a><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222;"> to create the Founders Online site. </span>David Sewell, Manager of Digital Initiatives and the Rotunda Imprint at the University of a Virginia Press,</span></span><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;">contacted James P. McClure, General Editor, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, to verify his source for this. </span></span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><span>It turns out that the source cited for "kissed the Bible" is private correspondence written by British diplomat </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustus_Foster"><span class="s3">Augustus Foster</span></a><span> in a <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Two_Duchesses_Georgiana_Duchess_of_D/-_xGeOGO8_0C?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=July%201,%201805" target="_blank">1 July 1805 letter to Frederick Foster</a>, his older brother. A. Foster was writing a few months after the event. The contents of the letter imply that he attended the inauguration, but the phrase he uses in his letter is "kissed the book". This claim is not corroborated by any other witness. </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 40px;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">McClure acknowledges that Foster wrote “book”, not “Bible”. He explains why he changed “book” to “Bible” as follows: “… but I cannot come up with any other book that would fit the bill. It was established English (and by then American) custom to swear oaths on the Bible in such settings. Jefferson respected those traditions and did not reject the Bible. I assume that the Bible would have been used for the swearing-in by Marshall as a matter of course. As for Jefferson’s kissing of the book, the fact that no one commented on that makes me think that it may have been customary and not out of the ordinary. It is possible too that Jefferson wanted to make a point by demonstrating that he was not in fact an atheist despite opponents’ attacks on him with reference to religion.”</span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 40px;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 40px;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">The Bible in American Law and Politics: A Reference Guide, 2020 - Page 389 (https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Bible_in_American_Law_and_Politics.html?id=s-nyDwAAQBAJ) contains a section titled “Presidential Inaugurations” with the following second paragraph: “In 1969, the National Cathedral displayed all known presidential inaugural Bibles. They were unable to locate inaugural Bibles from [GW’s 2nd inauguration, &] Presidents John Adams through John Tyler or from Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore, or Franklin Pierce (Presidential Inaugural Bibles 1969, 7). John Quincy Adams noted in his diary that Chief Justice John Marshall had brought a volume on laws on which to take the oath, and Marshall might have done so for the previous presidents as well (Presidential Inaugural Bibles 1969, 7).” The wording “on which to take the oath” above is a little sloppy, the oath was actually read <i>from</i> the book, and there was no other book, thus no Bible. John Marshall, a Federalist, was nominated to be Chief Justice by President John Adams and was confirmed by the Senate in late January 1801. His tenure as Chief Justice lasted 34 years. President John Quincy Adams was John Adams’ son.</span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 40px;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 40px;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">A description of J. Q. Adam’s inauguration appears in</span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"> the <a href="https://en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=File%3ANiles%27_Weekly_Register%2C_v28.djvu&page=35" target="_blank">March 12, 1825 Niles Weekly Register</a>. </span><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">John Quincy Adams said that he thought the Bible should be reserved for strictly religious purposes. Four years earlier, he attended James Monroe‘s inauguration with Chief Justice Marshall administering the oath of office. <a href="https://www.masshist.org/publications/jqadiaries/index.php/document/jqadiaries-v31-1821-03-05-p540" target="_blank">J. Q. Adam’s diary for 6 March 1821</a> noted that the previous day “At this Ceremony the Chief-Justice merely held the book, the President repeating the Oath in the words prescribed by the Constitution.” The context implies there was only one book (“the book”) and that book was a law book from which the oath of office was read by President Monroe. So J.Q. Adams inauguration subsequently followed the same law book reading protocol, without a Bible, that he had previously witnessed.</span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 40px;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 40px;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">A recent search of the Library of Congress newspaper databases found, unsurprisingly, no evidence that there was a Bible at Virginian Thomas Jefferson’s second inauguration. Such a no-Bible-is-evidenced result is par for the course for the first six presidents, with an exception for the first inauguration because it was conducted under New York State law that mandated a Bible. K</span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">issing the Bible persisted among northern states after </span></span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">the revolution</span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: x-large;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: verdana;">as a legal requirement that they inherited from the</span><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: verdana;"> </span><a href="http://americancreation.blogspot.com/2011/06/remonstrance-against-book-oath.html" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: verdana;"><span class="s2">legal framework set in place by Royal Governor Sir Edmund Andros</span></a><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: verdana;">. </span></span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">Over time those states changed course and followed the lead of Virginia and the federal government in rejecting the authoritarian and discriminatory theocratic Bible mandates. The last president to kiss a Bible at their inauguration was Truman in 1949.</span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 40px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 40px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: verdana;">The Bible kiss seals the promises just made and as such occurs after the oath recitation, whereas Foster says the book was kissed before the oath recitation. One of the purposes of the British legal mandate to kiss a </span></span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">King James Bible was to publicly demonstrate fealty to the same British monarchy that was militarily defeated by the recent armed rebellion against its rule. The failure to repeat that British legal mandate in U.S. federal law implies somewhat less than full respect for that particular British tradition. Similarly, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_Bible" target="_blank">Thomas Jefferson’s redactions to the Bible</a> imply a less than full acceptance of the Bible on his part. And relevant to the governmental business context of a presidential inauguration, Thomas Jefferson endorsed the phrase “separation of church and state” which links individual freedom of conscience to secular government. One of his projects was creating the University of a Virginia, the first public university in the country. He fought to retain a ban on teaching religion there against the lobbying of evangelical churches and the Federalists.</span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 40px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 4px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">Foster was clearly </span></span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><span>aware of the nationalist perspective that favored a religion attached monarchy. In an April 19, 1802 letter to his mother, discussing “… the great ceremony celebrating the peace and establishment of Religion” in Paris the day before, Foster wrote: “Mounier, Camille Jourdan [a French writer], and most of that set consider it a deathblow</span> <span>to the hopes of Louis 18, who is now called Le Pretedant, as he went till now hand in hand with religion, and as religion was the principle link which linked his interests to the interests of the Honettes Gens [honest people] of France, because Atheism was encouraged and Piety laughed at. Now that the government proclaims Liberty of Conscience, … and that they see they may pray without the aid of Louis, it will weaken his interest very much in the country.”</span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 4px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 40px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Foster’s letter is not only silent about the type book, it is also silent about whose book it was, where the book was located, the size of the book, who was holding the book, etc. The simplest explanation for why Foster said “book” is that he did not know what type of book it was. </span></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">People who are honest tend to refrain from unnecessarily adding assertions that are beyond their knowledge. </span></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The law book likely provided to the president elects by Chief Justice Marshall for them to read their oath of office from was characterized as “small” by a witness at Jackson’s second inauguration </span></span>[THE SALEM GAZETTE (Mass.), Mar. 12, 1833: “ John Marshall rose, ascended the steps, was received by General Jackson standing, to whom he presented a small book with his right hand, containing the oath, and with his left, the Bible. The General took hold of each, and having read the oath, kissed the book and Mr. Van Buren did the same. Here the ceremony ended.”]. <span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">During the 1800 election campaign Thomas Jefferson was characterized by some of his opponents as a radical Jacobin who, if elected president, would unleash a lawless reign of terror on the nation similar to what recently transpired in France. </span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">Maybe Jefferson kissed a small law book, provided to him by Chief Justice Marshall, that contained a copy of the constitution, sometime prior to reading the oath from that same book, to emphasize his respect for those laws?</span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 40px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 40px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">A conclusion regarding what type of book he kissed at his inauguration can go either way when it is based on nothing more substantial than biased cherry picking of conjectures regarding the possible motivations of the president elect and the Chief Justice with assumptions to fill in the gaps. Furthermore, people are not always self-consistent. Jefferson was critical of slavery, which fundamentally conflicted with some of his expressed values, yet he relied on slave labor. </span></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Accordingly, unless some heretofore unknown eyewitness account that there was a Bible at that inauguration is found, notwithstanding the editorial note published on the National Archives web site and The Jefferson Papers claiming he kissed a Bible, there is room for doubt that there was a Bible. The <i>only</i> reliable way for us to know is for someone who witnessed the event to tell us. We lack sufficient justification to declare there was a Bible as an established historical fact without a witness from the past telling us there was a Bible. <i>Anyone</i>, regardless of their credentials or authority, who claims </span></span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">otherwise is overstepping, and should be called out for doing so.</span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 40px;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">Founders Online is funded, in part, by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, a statutory body affiliated with the National Archives and Records Administration whose mission is encouraging the use of documentary sources relating to the history of the United States. The Papers of Thomas Jefferson is also partially government funded by the NHPRC and by the National Endowment for the Humanities</span></span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: x-large;">. </span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">James Sewell averred that the “opinions and interpretations in the notes to documents in Founders Online are those of the editorial projects that created the original editions, and do not represent official views of the NHPRC or National Archives.” However, such a disclaimer does not appear on Founders Online.</span></p>Explicit Atheisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05501109533475045969noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10856048.post-58866011817684868382023-01-08T11:46:00.000-05:002023-01-08T11:46:16.038-05:00British commentary on U.S. atheism taboo<p> <span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">Mathew Goldstein</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">The Economist newspaper’s explanation for why <a href="https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2023/01/06/atheism-is-still-a-taboo-for-american-politicians" target="_blank">Atheism still a taboo for American politicians</a>: Members of Congress are far more religious than their constituents </span>(<a href="https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2023/01/06/atheism-is-still-a-taboo-for-american-politicians">https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2023/01/06/atheism-is-still-a-taboo-for-american-politicians</a>).</p>Explicit Atheisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05501109533475045969noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10856048.post-47090147926824435932022-12-17T20:33:00.031-05:002023-01-04T21:55:36.804-05:00We have free choice and no free will<p> <span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">By Mathew Goldstein</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 4px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">Free will can be a confusing and complicated topic and some people are intellectually or emotionally invested in the notion that we have free will. For these reasons I have hesitated to write about it. Yet there is a wrong perspective regarding free will that merits being debunked, all the more so because it is commonly held. That wrong perspective is that we all have a supernatural, contra-causal, libertarian, free will. Will and choice are not synonyms and conflating the two is a primary cause of confusion.</span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 4px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 4px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">Choice occurs whenever there are alternative courses of action and we select one, inclusive of selecting taking no action when that is an available option. We can characterize our choices as “free” when there is no disproportionate coercion intentionally directed against any of the choices, notwithstanding that our available choices are always limited and/or constrained and often entail tradeoffs. So lack of coercion is all we need to establish that we have meaningfully significant, albeit incomplete/limited/compromised, free choice. We sometimes have more than enough choices, even too many choices. </span></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">We all have freedom of choice.</span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> </span><span style="font-family: verdana;">Free will is different.</span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 4px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 4px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">Free will is a claim that the choices we make when we are free to choose are not inevitable. Defined thusly, free will, if it existed, would be a strictly libertarian phenomena that, unlike all other known phenomena, evinces an other-worldly absence of a causal constraint (it is contra-causal). Some people may think this distinction between free choice and free will is a meaningless distinction. While this is far from the most important issue that humanity confronts, it is still a meaningful distinction. </span></span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">Compatibalists do a very good job of arguing, correctly in my view, that free choice is all we need and all we really want if we consider the question more carefully. They </span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">defend free will anyway by redefining it as free choice (which is why they are called Compatibalists). </span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">I am not going to do that.</span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 4px;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 4px;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">Some compatibalists argue that, even though in principle our future behaviors can be predicted in advance, in practice that will not happen, or will happen only to a limited extent, because of the immensity of the practical obstacles and maybe also the uncertainty principle in physics ruling out our having complete knowledge altogether even in principle. They then link this unpredictability to free will. However, insofar as free will is defined as being dependent on our being unable to predict the future it becomes a product of our unavoidable ignorance and as such is otherwise not a phenomena meaningfully distinct from free choice. </span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Fermions do not have free will because of the uncertainty principle, neither do we. Nor do we obtain an additional degree of freedom from ignorance. Poetic language is sometimes our best option for communicating effectively. We </span><span style="font-family: verdana;">exercise free will poetically. </span><span style="font-family: verdana;">Yet there is also value in precision and clarity that is lost when we communicate poetically. Accordingly, this discussion </span><span style="font-family: verdana;">retains the traditional definition of free will as libertarian in the strong sense that renders it different from free choice.</span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 4px;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p class="p4" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">If we lack free will than the story of a deity punishing serpents and humanity for the first reproducing human pair choosing to eat apples at the behest of the former makes no sense. Not that a talking serpent, a first human couple, eating an apple generating an ability to discern bad versus good behaviors, etc., makes sense even if we did have free will. But that story doubly makes no sense given that the choices people make are inevitable. This is because there is no logical justification for such perpetual retribution against humanity because two people made a bad free choice given that no human could do other than what they freely choose to do.</span></span></p><p class="p4" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="p4" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">The notion that we freely make choices and at the same time the decisions we make are inevitable is somewhat contradictory, which contributes to an unwillingness to accept that we lack free will. What does it mean to have choices when the choices we make are inevitable?<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>It means that we are choice deciding and selecting biological/metabolic machines. The choices we make go a long way towards defining who we are as individuals. Humans are one living animal among many animals, plants, and single cells, confronted with, and freely selecting among, alternative possible actions. Humans uniquely have the capacity to be aware of this, but our additional self awareness and reasoning capabilities are not evidence that we are otherwise distinct and operate very differently from the rest of the universe. The universe may operate stochastically, it may operate deterministically, it may operate both ways, but as far as we have been able to determine, everything operates mechanically (which is one of the defining characteristics of naturalism).</span></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 41px;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><span class="s2"></span><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 41px;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: white;">We no more will our choices/decisions/behaviors than we will the weather. Both are inevitable and outside of our control. The difference is that we are each the agents/actors behind our choices/decisions/behaviors and we are thusly self-responsible for our choices/decisions/behaviors while we have no such self-responsibility for the weather.</span></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 41px;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: white; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="p4" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">Another source of confusion is the notion that justice requires free will. That notion is rooted in an unrealistically idealistic notion of justice. We have a practical need to discourage misbehaviors. It follows that we have a need to punish bad behavior for the purpose of discouraging bad behavior. Against some bad behaviors there is a need to protect ourselves by removing the bad actor from the rest of the community. A lack of free will does not equate to a lack of need to protect ourselves from bad actors. We organize to protect ourselves from bad actors by acting against the transgressors who harm others. </span></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">We are ourselves one person who is similar to other people and this is a reason we are justified in prioritizing human life over other life. Humanity depends on other life and our planet’s ecosystems more generally, so we also cannot safely disregard the rest of life. We do this because it makes for a better life for ourselves and for the rest of humanity. Justice is as much, if not more so, pragmatic, as it is idealistic.</span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> </span></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 41px;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><span class="s2"></span><br /></span></p><p class="p4" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">Justice, to be meaningfully realized, has to be rooted in the facts. Facts come first, there is an always present need to be careful to distinguish what is true from what is false to accurately achieve our goals. Free will (defined as contra-causal and libertarian) is inconsistent with a current science based understanding of how the universe works. Accordingly, vengeful retribution is unjustified and incompatible with justice.</span></span></p>Explicit Atheisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05501109533475045969noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10856048.post-83295261829075073322022-12-03T17:38:00.001-05:002022-12-03T17:38:16.972-05:00Free Inquiry article by Robyn Blumner<p> <span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">By Mathew Goldstein</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">I recommend this article Robyn Blumner, the CEO of CI, published recently in their Free Inquiry magazine </span> <span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><a href="https://secularhumanism.org/2022/12/the-truth-matters-and-secular-humanists-should-defend-it/" target="_blank">The Truth Matters and Secular Humanists Should Defend It</a>.</span></p>Explicit Atheisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05501109533475045969noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10856048.post-83167785864907791442022-11-21T13:47:00.005-05:002022-11-21T13:47:53.289-05:00Catholic Church Abuse in Maryland<p>Brian Frosh, the
Maryland Attorney General, has developed a 463 page document on his
investigation of the Catholic Church in Maryland. Given that some of
the details were developed in Grand Jury testimony he cannot release
this document without court approval. The Religion News Service has
published some of the details of the AG court request for asking for
this release. This includes:
</p><p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</p>
<ul><li><p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">158 Roman
Catholic priests in the Archdiocese of Baltimore who have been
accused of sexually and physically abusing more than 600 victims
over the past 80 years</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"></p>
</li><li><p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">While the court
filing noted that more than 600 victims were identified, it also
said “there are almost certainly hundreds more, as the Department
of Justice’s Annual Crime Victimization Report has demonstrated
that most incidents of sexual assault go unreported.”
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"></p>
</li><li><p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">“One
congregation was assigned eleven sexually abusive priests over 40
years.”
</p>
</li></ul>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">Read the entire
Religion News Service article here:</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><a href="https://religionnews.com/2022/11/18/maryland-probe-finds-158-abusive-priests-over-600-victims/">https://religionnews.com/2022/11/18/maryland-probe-finds-158-abusive-priests-over-600-victims/</a></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</p>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10856048.post-9974654353876712382022-11-20T11:32:00.001-05:002022-11-20T11:42:27.409-05:00American Theocracy after November 2022 Elections<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"> Democracy in our nation dodged a bullet in the recent election. Kay
Ivey was the only election denier elected as the Governor of a state.
It is not as if the Democratic Party is likely to win Alabama in the
near future. To my knowledge there were no state level candidates who
denied Biden’s proper election and achieved state level control
over future elections. However, there were over 100 Big Lie lunatics
elected, mostly to the House of Representatives. The American Taliban
remains alive and well.</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">The primary success
of American theocracy remains the systematic dismantling of women’s
rights to reproductive choice in at least half the states. Gov.
Youngkin very much wants to include Virginia in that group of states.
There is a systematic attack on the school systems with claims of
critical race theory being used to denigrate white people, libraries
peddling LGBT porn, grooming of young children to adopt other sexual
identities, book banning, etc. The radical support for the gun nut
crowd has resulted in a nation nearly choking on a flood of lethal
firepower. This has created a reign of terror with nearly daily mass
shootings. We have five dead and 18 injured late yesterday, at a
Colorado Springs gay night club. The gays have in many ways won the
culture war. They are accepted almost everywhere. Theocrats do not
like that. Their hate speech is the foundational reason for this and
other varieties of mass shootings. Welcome to the culture war where
people actually die.
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">AG Garland appointed
a special counsel to prosecute Trump. It is highly likely that this
will result in his conviction and removal as a candidate for 2024.
That is my expectation. Ron DeSantis released a preposterous
hyper-religious ad declaring that God created a fighter, specifically
him. I am sure the Christian nationalists of his base will love this
“fighter” for their cause. DeSantis won a resounding reelection
in Florida and most people are now saying that Florida is now a
firmly red state. I doubt that, but he does have Trump-like charisma
and ability to inspire the right wing theocratic base. It is
excessively likely that an election between Biden and DeSantis would
lock down the White House into Ron’s variety of hate spewing
theocracy. DeSantis loves to say, “Florida is where woke goes to
die.” Woke is any semblance of compassion or respect for those
outside his preposterous world view. Secular liberalism has no one
who can own a stage as much as this God inspired travesty of
political mayhem.</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">I have been
asserting that our culture, and the wider world, is teetering on the
brink authoritarianism analogous the 1930s. Many tens of millions
died in the resulting WWII. I am now asserting that our present spin
on authoritarian madness can be projected to cause an order of
magnitude more deaths. This is implicit in the ecosystem collapse
from the climate change crisis mandated by right-wing denialism. I
see no possibility for the long term dead to not approach at least a
billion if we do not act more forcefully than permitted by these
theocrats. We currently have many countries that are on a glide path
to becoming failed states ruled by competing drug gangs and private
armies. This is not a good thing.</p><br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10856048.post-30419331212756612332022-11-13T16:30:00.025-05:002022-11-20T22:05:44.309-05:00Blaise Pascal’s argument for truth from faith<p> <span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">By Mathew Goldstein</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">Vance Morgan is the author of “Freelance Christianity” on the Progressive Christianity channel of Patheos. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Patheos describes itself as “… the premier online destination to engage in the global dialogue about religion and spirituality, and to explore and experience the world's beliefs.” His most recent post is “<a href="https://www.patheos.com/blogs/freelancechristianity/the-heart-has-its-reasons-my-evidence-against-atheism/#disqus_thread" target="_blank">The Heart Has Its Reasons . . .: My Evidence Against Atheism</a>”. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>He defends Christianity as a “ first principle”, quoting Blaise Pascal.</span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 41px;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><span class="s2" style="font-weight: bold;"></span><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2" style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">“We know the truth, not only through reason, but also through the heart. It is through the latter that we know first principles, and reason, which has no part in it, tries in vain to challenge them. Reason must use this knowledge from the heart and instinct, and base all its arguments on it.”</span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 41px;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">He says “the problem is the atheist’s refusal to accept that there are more kinds of evidence than rational and more sources of belief than reason.”, again quoting Blaise Pascal.</span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 41px;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><span class="s2" style="font-weight: bold;"></span><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2" style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">“Principles are felt, propositions are proved; all with certainty, though in different ways. And it is as useless and absurd for reason to demand from the heart proofs of its first principles before accepting them, as it would be for the heart to demand from reason an intuition of all demonstrated propositions before receiving them.”</span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 41px;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><span class="s2" style="font-weight: bold;"></span><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">Of course, we disagree. My take is that Blaise Pascal was mistaken. This is not all that surprising given that Pascal was writing in the 17th century. In the 17th century it was arguably easier to be both a top tier intellectual and be a theist, and maybe even be a self-described Christian, without obvious self-contradictions. This is because our knowledge of how the universe works has advanced since the 17th century, and what we have learned over the last three centuries favors ontological naturalism.</span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 41px;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">Mr. Pascal decided that salvation was by grace, not by human merit, and he defended overcoming uncertainty by relying on faith. Yet there is no testable evidence favoring any theological concept of salvation. So there are no reliable grounds, none!, for concluding in favor of the theological concept of grace as a path to salvation, all the more so given that grace also lacks supporting testable evidence. Once we go fishing for conclusions about how the universe works without anchoring our boat in testable evidence, the remaining constraints on which conclusions we reach are far too arbitrary and feeble to give us even a reasonable chance of landing on non-fiction. Insofar as atheists recognize this, and theists do not, it is the theists who are mistaken, not the atheists.</span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 41px;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">Mr. Vance claims that Christianity “provides the best cognitive framework for understanding myself and the world around me than I have ever encountered”. No religion comes close to qualifying as a good framework for understanding the world, let alone the ‘best framework’. This is why scientists are not hired based on their religious credentials, beliefs, or practices. They are hired based on their secular (non-religious) academic training and track record of productive output. </span></span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">The Bible in particular offers a mistaken, pre-scientific, perspective reflecting the ignorance of the people who wrote it.</span><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">In Genesis we learn why people die (retaliation for Eve and Adam eating an apple, a.k.a. original sin), why there are rainbows (rainbows are a sign </span><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">of God’s covenant), where rain comes from (the springs of the deep and the floodgates of the heavens), why snakes slither on the ground (retaliation for a serpent persuading Eve and Adam to eat an apple), why there is pain during childbirth (retaliation for Eve eating an apple), why there are thorns (retaliation for Adam eating an apple), why there are thousands of different languages (retaliation for people disobeying God). We also learn that stars are hung in the firmament above the mountains. </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 41px;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><span class="s1">Mr. Vance ends his defense of Christian theism thusly: <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="s2" style="font-weight: bold;">“Most importantly, the best evidence in support of faith (or whatever you choose to call it) is a changed life. That’s my own story.” </span><span class="s1">There are many factors that go into “a changed life”. </span></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">When people who were theists become atheists they sometimes say the conversion changed their life for the better. </span><span style="font-family: verdana;">Is whether or not our life changed a valid measure, let alone “the best” measure”, of the accuracy of our ontological beliefs? Throughout history there are examples of many happy people being wrong, people who arguably could have been happy without being mistaken. It needs to be said that being mistaken, even when well-intentioned, is a potential source of misdirected, and harmful, behavior. </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 41px;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">Principles and ethics are applied to the factual context. Thusly “the heart”, in the sense of principles and ethics, remains intact and an active participant within a facts chronologically first approach. The sequence is first, determine the relevant facts to the best of our abilities, second, apply ethical concerns to our decisions to the best of our abilities. They are not incompatible with each other. On the contrary, we need the facts to get our ethics right, which is why getting the facts right places first <i>chronologically</i>. This linkage with facts is always needed for everything that needs a non-fictional basis.</span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">This does not mean there are no conflicts or complications. Ethical considerations range from clear cut and easy to ambiguous and difficult</span></span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: x-large;">. </span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">There can be uncertainties about the facts, uncertainties about the past, present, and future, uncertainties about the ethics, multiple competing considerations that favor different conclusions, time constraints along with a slew of other constraints, etc. </span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">My guess is that there are almost enough non-fictional books documenting human weaknesses and flaws to fill a library. Add the fictional literature and the typical library will probably be short of shelf space. </span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">Furthermore, facts regarding how the universe works are not in and of themselves ethical. They are two different to categories. There can be a need to actively intervene to pushback against the negative implications of the </span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">facts when it is feasible to do so to realize better outcomes. For example, global warming, malaria, plastic pollution, carcinogens, poverty, crime, etcetera are examples of facts we should be pushing back against. Blaise Pascal’s argument relies on a category error and special pleading. He is selectively transferring particular fact category claims over to ethical category claims to exempt those particular fact claims from scrutiny. When we start with a commitment to believing that an all knowing and all good god created the universe we have set the stage for conflating factual claims with ethical claims.</span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 41px;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">Any ideology, most definitely including secular ideologies, that disregard, that override, that contradict, that denigrate, the best fit with the available evidence conclusions are potential additional sources of misdirected behaviors. Selectively overlooking, or denigrating, both the available evidence and competent epistemology more generally, are distinguishing traits of ideology. Religion has no monopoly on ideology, secular ideologies are equally remiss and culpable. The difference is that all religions are ideologies. Secular humanists should not be exempting secular ideologies from critical scrutiny. Ideologies tend to do more harm than good.</span></span></p>Explicit Atheisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05501109533475045969noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10856048.post-17853131095677857092022-11-06T12:55:00.000-05:002022-11-06T12:55:44.403-05:00Good News for People who Eat<p>
</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">The American diet, high in animal meat
and fat, isn’t good for people's health or for the environment. It
generates a lot of greenhouse gases from energy consumption and animal
waste, and it requires fertilizers and pesticides. It consumes natural resources and soil, so it can’t be
sustained indefinitely, especially if everyone else in the world
wants to eat the same menu. But there is a solution that may be
coming soon.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">Several companies are making a
plant-based products that are an imitation of meat. The best-known
ones are Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods, which have products on the
market. These products may be more healthful than animal products,
although they are highly processed to give the appearance of meat. </span></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">Artificial milk products are replacing a large fraction of the demand for cow's milk with nut or soy milk. These vegetable "milk" products are also <a href="https://cen.acs.org/food/food-science/s-plant-milk-milk-plant/100/i37?ref=search_results">highly processed</a> to make them seem like animal milk. Some people have the impression that "natural" products are better than processed ones. Actually, they are made from the same chemicals. In some ways, processed food is better, because the quality control and uniformity is better and it is possible to control spoilage and shelf-life.<br /></span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">Another kind of food that is under development is cultured-cell meat,
which is grown from stem cells of animals in growth medium to make
meat products without animals. There are several start-up companies
working on this effort.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">These efforts make products that
can replace the demand for meat. But they require a significant
amount of manufacturing and processing to seem real. They use fewer resources than large herds of animals, but they still require significant amounts of energy and resources. One well-publicized issue is that <a href="https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2015/01/almonds-nuts-crazy-stats-charts/">it takes a gallon of water to grow one almond</a>.<br /></span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">There is an entirely different
approach to a new food source that could save a sigificant amount of energy and
land. This effort could provide a new kind of staple food that
replaces both agricultural animals and plants. It could provide a
much more secure food source that is less vulnerable to bad weather
or changing climate.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">There are two primary companies
involved. A Finnish company called Solar Foods (<a href="http://www.solarfoods.com">www.solarfoods.com</a>)
has produced prototype food they call solien. According
to their website, “Solein is 65-70 % protein, 5-8 % fat (primarily
unsaturated fats), 10-15 % dietary fibres and 3-5 % mineral
nutrients.”</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">An American company called Air Protein
(<a href="http://www.airprotein.com">www.airprotein.com</a>) has received $32 million in investment. They
seem to have a similar approach, but there is less information on
their website.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">The goal of the companies is to grow
edible microorganisms. The species of microorganisms produce energy
from metabolism of hydrogen gas, and grow from carbon dioxide and
water, as well as some nutrients. The product is high in protein and
vitamins.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">This approach has multiple advantages.
It provides a food source as the base of the food pyramid, even
more basic than plants. It doesn’t require using large areas of
agricultural land to grow plants, and then even more area to feed animals and
dispose of animal waste. Each stage has costs in efficiency of producing food
calories, so food from simpler organisms has significant advantages.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">The new method also separates light
collection from food production. Light can be collected by solar
panels or wind generation to produce electricity, which can be used
to generate hydrogen. The hydrogen is transported to the
bioreactors, which use minimal land area. It isn’t necessary to
grow plants in sunlight as light collectors to make chemical energy
in plant tissue. This is another improvement in efficiency.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">Adoption of this food source on a large
scale would alleviate a number of pressing environmental problems.
The overuse of agricultural land and water could be reduced and
potentially eliminated. The use of fertilizer and pesticides could
end, getting rid of environmental run-off with collateral damage to
wild creatures and ecosystems. The large
land areas devoted to wheat, corn, and rice monocultures could be
reduced, returning land to wilderness for use by other species. </span></span>
</p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">It is unlikely that all agriculture
would end, because people will still want variety and some selection
of plants and animals. Natural products will be used for variety and
flavor. But reactors have the advantage of quality control and
protection from weather disasters. The food supply will be more
secure. Production in bioreactors reduces the vulnerability of the
food supply to bad weather. No matter how inhospitable the weather
becomes in agricultural areas due to extreme events or changing
climate, there shouldn’t be mass food shortages. </span></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">Energy for hydrogen production can be
collected in deserts or over water, without a need for arable land. </span></span>This could at
last eliminate hunger and starvation. It could reduce the impact of climate change.<br /></span></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">Further in the future, this kind of food source can be transplanted
to space colonies or colonies on other planets. It would remove a
restriction that keeps people on the Earth.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span>
</p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></span></p>Bill Creasyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07180160207555299260noreply@blogger.com0