The misuse of language

by Gary Berg-Cross

There they go again.  Speaking Words Freely.  Well loosely. GOP presidential candidate Ben Carson danced around the idea of President Obama’s being a “real black president.”

“I wouldn’t even get into such a conversation,” he told host Wolf Blitzer on CNN’s “The Situation Room.” “He’s the president and he’s black. " We’re dealing with semantics," 

Sure we are, and it’s important. You don’t do language math by adding Black and President and get a real meaning for “Black President” which is a phrase that capture a whole culture of meaning.

Socrates, via Plato, is often quoted (in translation) on the impact of corrupting language. It is variously translated as "The misuse of language induces evil in the soul." Notwithstanding the metaphorical allusions to religio-philosophical concept of evil and soul we edge into danger when we express ourselves poorly or use language to disguise the true situation.  There is room enough for this in ordinary conversation when language is used pragmatically to bend the truth, or smooth things over in uncomfortable situations. It is language used in support of a “white lie.”  “I can’t make your Christening, I have a family obligation.”

But the art of group or personal spin has spilled its banks and taken on a corrupting color that is not white at all. One simple example from recent events is the inflamed phrasing such as “criminalization of ... faith” uttered in defense of Kim Davis’ actions. 

Penned in by an avaricious ad strewn society we know that the “buyer” has to beware.  But language is used to get around our conscious defenses. A hospital bill may list a $15 charge for “disposable mucus recovery system,” but this was in reality, just a box of Kleenex.

Since we are likely to hear more language bending (ads and otherwise) in coming days here are a few thoughts on just 2 types we run into:

·        Political talk and

·        Translations

A professional, routinized version of tortured language has emerged called Spinglish—a wordy, devious dialect of English (I’m sure they manifest in other languages) used by professional spin doctors. These are all around us, but a gaggle of them fly over the political scene putting reasoned speech in shadow.

It is common now as the trope of saying “mistakes were made.”  This is a  rhetorical device, allowing a speaker to acknowledge that “a situation was handled poorly or inappropriately but seeks to evade any direct admission or accusation of responsibility by not specifying the person who made the mistakes. That rose to prominence in a political context with Reagan’s Arms-for-hostage or Iran-Contra deal, but some trace of this type of thing goes back to Watergate and  May , 1973, when Nixon’s White House Press Secretary Ron Ziegler confessed to what amounted to sinful, spinful lies:

"I would apologize to the Post, and I would apologize to Mr. Woodward and Mr. Bernstein. We would all have to say that mistakes were made in terms of comments. I was overenthusiastic in my comments about the Post, particularly if you look at them in the context of developments that have taken place."

What context?  On the previous day, White House counsel John Dean and Nixon aides Ehrlichman and  Haldeman had resigned.

The impact can be substantial when false words become an active part of crafted messaging as in the case of the Watergate cover-up or just a cover for policies that would be unpopular if not protected by false narratives.   . The Platonic-era Greeks were getting a dose of this political narrative as part of Athenian democracy and more recently you don’t have to have just read Orwell’s 1984 to understand a the language has the power in politics to mask the truth and mislead the public. Contemporary politics has lots of this along with innuendo so in this era of social media megaphones it is even more important for the public to be aware of this power of false narratives.

In the current political season we depend on the media and competing parties to penetrate the language miasma. Some recent examples within the Republican contest concern people, like Trump, being allowed to imply that President Obama is a secret, and one supposes traitorous, Muslin. It is language labeling one as an enemy.  When polled Trump supporters mostly explained that they found various Trump message  pitched to a 3^rd or 4^th -grade level and wrapped in a pro wrestling atmosphere) appealing because it is “easy to understand”. Sure “Make America great again” has simple semantics (unless you say it in Mexican, I guess). “We know his goal is to make America great.”  This is the vaguest of ends with narry a hint of means unless it means firing a whole House of pols.  The slogan “First we kill all the lawyers” has been updated to imply that conventional, compromising pols are also included.

There have been efforts to take more nuanced stances and explore the implications of statements. Rand Paul scolded generalissimo candidate Donald Trump for “careless language” in general, while Lindsey Graham accused Trump’s language of “playing into this hateful narrative, ” and Chris Christie said Trump had an “obligation” to set the record straight, although Trump has responded that he has no responsibility for such language cleaning.  Just a matter of semantics via dog whistles one assumes.

Trump was, however, offended that Jeb Bush spoke “Mexican” recently in McAllen, Texas.  Apparentely this doesn’t make America great.  In this context “Mexican” also has dog whistle semantic overtones that fire up prejudice as Bush noted:

"Those are dog whistle terms; he knows what he's doing. These are very divisive terms. If we're going to win elections, we need to be much more open, open and optimistic, rather than sending signals that prey on people's angst."

Setting the record straight after it has whistled out is hard to do as Mark Twain noted:

“A Lie Can Travel Halfway Around the World While the Truth Is Putting On Its Shoes.”

Our language and cultural understandings are is also challenged by neat, translations from other languages and their cultures.  So can injustices wrapped in mistranslations and misunderstood expression. Two examples”

The idea that the Koran promises Islamic martyrs 47 virgins in heaven and the Iranian threats to destroy Israel.

Virginal beings  In Islamic mythology, there is a concept of  houris (which are described in a Wikipedia section as

“gazelle-eyed (woman)") or ḥūrīyah  (are commonly translated as "(splendid)^[2] companions of equal age (well-matched)", "lovely eyed", of "modest gaze", "pure beings" or "companions pure" of paradise, denoting humans and jinn who enter Jannah (paradise) after being recreated anew in the hereafter.^”

Among non-Muslims, the concept of the houri received wide publicity as "virgins" (most usually 72 in number for each shahid) promised as a reward to Muslim shahids (martyrs), after their death. However, contrary to such reports, the Quran states that all believers (not just martyrs, and nowhere either is it said it's just men) who go to Heaven shall be granted the company of more than one houris—explicitly mentioned in the plural, and the number 72 comes from a hadith with a weak chain of narrators (i.e. less than totally reliable), and not the Quran.

Up close if is quite a bit different than we hear thrown into conversations about the motivations for martyrs. But of course, the pop image of the 72 virgins has provided a lure for corruption on an historic meaning with a fleshy new one.  Language misuse creates it own reality.

According to no less an intellectual than the very Jewish Noam Chomsky there may be a similar misreading of Iranian statements about Israel’s existence, a topic of some import in the recent arguments about a diplomatic solution to Iran’s nuclear program (see the Haaretz article  Iran Is Not an 'Existential' Threat to Israel - No Matter What Netanyahu Claims)

Chomsky, put it this way:

“To be sure, Israel faces the “existential threat” of Iranian pronouncements: Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad famously threatened it with destruction. Except that they didn’t—and if they had, it would be of little moment. They predicted that “Under God’s grace [the Zionist regime] will be wiped off the map.” Another translation suggests that Ahmadinejad actually said that Israel “must vanish from the page of time”. This is a citation of a statement made by Ayatollah Khomeini, during a period when Iran and Israel were tacitly allied. In other words, they hope that regime change will someday take place. They do not say that they will attack Israel either now or later.”

There’s more of the translation history and its formulations in Steve Rendall’s  2012 Lost in Translation, Iran never threatened to wipe Israel off the map, which includes this:

Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor agreed with interviewer Teymoor Nabili’s suggestion that the supposed remarks were never actually made. Iranian leaders, Meridor said,

come basically ideologically, religiously, with the statement that Israel is an unnatural creature, it will not survive. They didn’t say “we’ll wipe it out,” you are right, but [that] it will not survive, it is a cancerous tumor, it should be removed.

The Persian phrase Meridor was asked about, was used by Ahmadinejad in a 2005 speech in which neither maps nor wiping were mentioned. As Cole explained (Informed Comment, 5/3/06):

The actual quote, which comes from an old speech of Khomeini, does not imply military action, or killing anyone at all…. The phrase is almost metaphysical. He quoted Khomeini that “the occupation regime over Jerusalem should vanish from the page of time.” It is in fact probably a reference to some phrase in a medieval Persian poem. It is not about tanks.

Even the right-wing pro-Israel translation service MEMRI translated the Ahmadine-jad comment as “this regime that is occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time” (CounterPunch, 

8/28/06).

As they say, "The misuse of language induces evil in the soul." So we need to not only choose our words carefully to express ourselves, but interprete them critically. It’s another hard part of a citizen’s task as issues hiding in canned phrases are thrown about.

The Negative Consequences of Believing in Superstition - Part III

This is Part III of a three part series.  (Go read Part II if you've not seen it yet!)

Politics/Law

America is in the middle of a severely dysfunctional period of political and social change.

Over the last hundred years, technology has rocketed us from the horse and buggy days to jet aircraft and rockets to the moon.  From simple telephone tech to cell phones and computers in our pockets.

A hundred years ago, information was limited to those who could read, which for the population of the US as a whole was about 90%.  In 1979, that rate was 0.6%.  The ability of people to distribute information was limited.  For a regional audience, newspapers were the norm, and was limited to what the editors would print.  A wider audience could be reached in book publication, but that was limited to what the major publishing house editors thought would sell.

Accordingly, the public picture of what was normal was limited to what people could read, and that was tightly controlled, even with what was then a fairly free press.  The abnormal was easily ignored and any contradicting speech or dissension was often swept under the rug.

Until women got angry, and began working to change things.  By 1920, the 19th amendment allowed women the right to vote after a long and contentious public debate, including protests outside the White House, often resulting in arrests.

Today, information is everywhere.  The Internet allows instant connection to just about any repository of information that has an online presence.  Many traditional repositories of information, including the Library of Congress, are rapidly digitizing their collections.

The Internet has changed communication as well.  In the early 20th century, overseas telephone calls were expensive and rare, requiring coordination by letter so both parties were available at a coordinated time.  While this got easier with time, even as late as the 1960's, calling overseas often required advance reservations of a time slot, and were still not cheap.

By the 1970-'s, with modern satellite communications systems well under construction, such calls became both cheap and easy compared to just a decade earlier.

The Internet changed all that.  Today, there are multiple methods for connecting to people, even across the globe.  Email, texting, land line calls and even cell phones can be used to connect to people instantaneously.  While the online bulletin boards of the early 90's allowed communications by text, today, with such Internet giants as Facebook and Google, communication with huge numbers of people across wide swaths of the globe are as easy as sending an email, posting to a Facebook page or setting up a web site.  Skype and FaceTime allow instant face to face communication across the globe.

Any of this can be done on a cell phone.

This communication explosion has greatly changed the character of our political discourse.  While Americans slowly and quietly moved away from devout religious observance during the course of the late 20th century, the 21st, with the advent of instant internet communication, has resulted in an explosion of secular movements and groups.  The demographic of "None" as related to religious affiliation is the fastest growing category world-wide, not merely in the US.

Many in the movement attribute this to the Internet and the ability of people of a secular point of view to see - for the first time - that they are not alone and are part of a growing and dynamic community.

The growth of secularism, from the 60's on, resulted in a backlash of religiosity, starting with the Moral Majority, and Ronald Reagan's Presidency.  This backlash has grown in political influence, spurred on by the Republican Party allying itself with the religious right in a bid for increased political influence.  Successfully, I might add.

The Religious Right (RR) has gained influence on a regional and local basis through intense local organizing and political activism.  The resulting political power thus gained has allowed the Republicans control of a substantial majority of State Houses, allowing the RR to bend the political discourse far to the right of center.

A movement known as Dominionism (of which I've written here extensively) has orchestrated much of the successful passage of laws undermining education and science, causing much social controversy and political division, especially in the area of abortion and women's reproductive health.  In many States, there is a virtual dearth of any legal means of abortion, and now the fight is being directed towards a subject everybody thought was won decades ago - contraceptives.

So, today, after decades of successful advancement of women's rights, including the right to vote, the right to divorce, including no fault provisions, the right to contraceptives and abortion, and the right own property (largely won in the 19th century), women's groups are now having to gear up and spend vast amounts of money fighting for the continued existence of rights once thought secure.

Most of this is due to religion.  Patriarchy, biblical proscriptions against women (whether real or not) and a Dominionist movement intent on converting the US from a democracy to a theocracy have all brought the American political scene to a complete and utter standstill.

RR's efforts haven't stopped there.  There is a litany of things they are working on.

abstinence-only education - Instead of medically accurate information and thoughtful conversation about intimacy and childbearing, teens get promise rings and slut shame. 

Opposing protections and rights for children.  Thanks to the influence of biblical Christianity, the U.S. stands alone with Somalia in failing to ratify the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.  

Undermining science - The scientific method has also become an existential threat to Bible belief. We know now that the Genesis creation story is myth, neurotransmitters rather than demons cause mental illness, mandrake roots and dove blood don’t improve female fertility or cure skin diseases, and the cognitive structures of the human mind predispose us to certain kinds of religious belief.

Promoting war - George Bush didn’t need to seek input from his earthly father about the invasion, because he asked his Heavenly Father.  Besides, Jesus is coming soon and war in the Middle East is predicted in the Bible.  That makes it not only inevitable, but—in a manner of speaking—desirable.

Abuse of LGBT persons and refusal of equal rights - They've fought equal rights for these folks for decades, and still are, and it would be bad enough if we were simply talking about history. But homophobic American Christians, thwarted at home, have turned to inciting oppression in Uganda and Nigeria where their hatred still finds fertile ground.

Destroying Earth’s web of life and endangering future generations - Climate change denial and refusal of reasonable methods of keeping our air and water clean and unpolluted is based on biblical scripture giving man "Dominion" (there that word is again) over the earth and all its animals, as well as the believed inevitability of the Second Coming, where God will simply create a new and better Earth guarantees that the RR will refuse to assist in doing anything to protect the environment or protect future generations from the consequences of our irresponsibility today.  Add Republicans' devotion to Corporate welfare, and the die is cast.

(Thanks to Valerie Tarico at Salon.com for her ideas and some of her language.)

I guess the greatest harm in general that religion (right wing fundamentalism in particular) does to this country is through its insistence that we support Israel.  The most vile technique they use is to accuse detractors of being anti-Semitic.  Even people who have reasoned and logical arguments against that support are branded with that epithet.

I am not, in principle, opposed to Israel.  I am not even against some form of support for it.

But our foreign policy regarding Israel is held hostage by the RR for religious reasons (because of the Second Coming) and tolerates no deviation from complete and total support.  Regardless of whether American interests are harmed or even devastated by that support, they insist that we continue to support Israel, blindly and without digression.

This has resulted in anger towards the US and much hatred of us by the Muslim world, and has resulted directly in the attacks on the World Trade Center (both of them), and a continued campaign of terrorist activity against American interests.

Our responses to that have been goaded by the RR to the point that our constitutional rights are now under attack at home and US Intelligence has eroded America's reputation for even handedness and high standards of morality to the point of almost nonexistence.  The RR's toleration and indeed, insistence on, classifying water boarding and "advanced interrogation techniques" as acceptable has completely destroyed the ability of this country to hold other countries accountable for similar actions against our own citizens, resulting in the inability of the government to protect American Citizens overseas.

Even if the Progressive movement (such as it is) managed to gain political ascendancy in the next election by some miracle, it would take decades for us to regain our good reputation for being a humane and law abiding nation.  As it is, forget it.

Obviously, this examination of the negative affects of having the population of this country believe in superstitious Bronze Age beliefs is incomplete.  If I tried to classify it all, I'd have to write a series of books.  One wouldn't be enough.

But the short story is a beginning.  If the only negative affects of religious belief were what I have touched upon here, it would be bad enough to justify organizing the secularists of this country to incite political influence and action to combat it.

But it is far, far worse than this.  The struggle to overcome religiosity and its negative affects on this country will continue into the future, and may never be fully complete.  Christianity, Judaism and Islam have been here, collectively, for over three thousand or more years.  That kind of influence doesn't go away overnight; we've been fighting it since the beginning of the Renaissance in the 12th century.

Let's not allow it to make a comeback.

Robert W. Ahrens
The Cybernetic Atheist

The Negative Consequences of Believing in Superstition - Part II

This is Part II of a three part series.  (Go read Part I if you've not seen it yet!)

Sex

The subject of sex in the US is so screwed up, and it is mainly because of religion.  The system of patriarchy discussed above forces men and women into gender based roles.  While the social aspects of patriarchy are bad enough, the affects on sex and human sexuality are even worse.

As noted above, men are forced into a false and totally artificial image of "manhood", that is as false and artificial as the image of "womanhood" the ladies are forced into.  This produces mental and psychological stress and often damage that hurts the individuals, their families and their friends - often their employers as well.

Why?  Why is it damaging?

Several reasons.  (Stick with me - I'll get to LGBT issues in a bit.)

I think the most obvious is in personal confidence.  Body image, and how a person portrays him or herself sexually is extremely important in this country.  Heck, for that matter, in much of the world.  It affects our social standing, our family and how it is viewed by the larger society, and eventually, how and whether we are accepted as marriage potential.

Accordingly, we are obsessed by sex, we are obsessed with youth and the sexual aspects of it.  The secular commercial realm tells us that sex is good, it is natural and wholesome and, well, whoopee!

But...

In American society, sexual beauty and attractiveness is so skewed from the norm that millions of Americans, both men and women, suffer from severe lack of self confidence because they perceive themselves as unattractive, through failing to live up to an artificial and false vision of beauty.  No, this isn't because of religion, it is because of rampant and unregulated capitalism.

Religion, or the so-called "Judeo-Christian" or "Abrahamic" religions, especially in this country, as mentioned above, enforce a patriarchy.  A large part of that system is the second class status of women, and therefore, control over their public behavior.

Christianity especially, enforces a view of sex that restricts sex to the role of procreation within a family context.  This comes, probably, from the role of the family, or the clan, as the center of Roman life.  The individual wasn't important, the family or family group, was.  Loyalty to that group was paramount, and for women, that meant only having sex with their husband, to preserve the purity of the bloodline.  Hence the religious obsession with sex as procreation, looking down on both abortion and contraception.  One because it is an "illegal" rejection of the man's seed, and the other as rejection of a man's control over his woman.

So, religion forces us into this weird, twisted image of sex - the patriarchal picture of gender roles, mixed with the god-smacked rejection of women as full humans, subservient to men, and under their full control.

This results in our social culture allowing this culture of rape.  Men are supposed to be virile, strong and manly, which is supposed to drive women into raptures of sexual frenzy.  Women are supposed to belong to men, which means they owe us sex, and they owe us their love and devotion.  Women who reject this and refuse to go along are subjected to campaigns of hate and vitriol, threats of rape and violence.

If a guy doesn't fit that manly, virile picture, he is a failure, and is ridiculed as such.

So.

For women, you have to fit this image of womanhood that reflects the stay at home mother, homemaker, sexy wife and willing brood cow, while the larger social milieu tells you that you've got to be beautiful, sexy, and available to any guy that pinches your ass.  If you don't, you're a prude, and you'll never find a husband, especially if you are ugly.

In the meantime, religion tells you that if you DO, you are a slut, a sinner and you'll go to hell.

Guys, largely, get a pass on the religion thing because, you know, patriarchy.  Unless, of course, they aren't manly, so they're failures.  Or if they allow their wives to "hen-peck" them, they aren't following the bible, so they'll go to hell then, too.

Double-failures.

Especially if they are rejected by the ladies.  Since this isn't anticipated by the traditional patriarchal framework, guys that see themselves as manly and virile who get rejected by the ladies anyway can't comprehend that rejection.  They get mad and blame their failure on the ladies, who, of course, OWE them sex.  Severe mental pain and emotional confusion are common resulting from this condition, and has been known to generate violent reactions.

Is it any wonder that Americans are so screwed up about sex?  The true wonder is how any of us manage to grow up with normal pictures of reasonable and responsible relationships in time to have families.

But wait, I'm not finished.  Not everybody is a cis-gendered, heterosexual human being.  Some folks are homosexual.  Some folks are trans-gendered, and some are bi-sexual.  There are other categories, but I don't feel qualified to talk about them.

These traditional roles I spoke of above, as screwed up as they are, aren't the whole picture, especially since they ignore our LGBT friends.  That alone is responsible for untold misery,  family fights and estrangements.  Since these folks don't fit the "normal" categories, they have traditionally been either ignored or forced into playing roles they were not comfortable with, and often beaten or killed for refusing.  All of them are condemned by religion, and totally ignored by the patriarchal system unless they rock the boat.

The 21st century's success in this country in advancing marriage equality for homosexual couples is a remarkable story of the LGBT movement's ability to go mainstream, but is still being fought tooth and nail by the religious right.

Demographics tells us that the religious will lose this fight.

But wait!  That's not all, folks!

Let's examine some other issues, like clergy abuse of both children and adults, sexually.

Everybody knows, by now, of the Roman Catholic child abuse scandal.  The RCC has spent millions of dollars in the US alone just to make this go away.  Not much to actually stop the abuse, but surely to make it go away.

One wonders, as one examines the issue and how the RCC hierarchy responded to the scandal at first.   How prevalent IS the abuse of kids by Catholic clergy?  And how long has it been going on?

There are some clues.

First, in Ireland, we've all heard of the "laundry scandal", where unwed mothers and their children were warehoused by the Church (with complicit authority from the Irish government of the day) in homes, and were made literal slaves in big laundries.  Scorned by the Church for their sexual sins, their children were as badly treated as they were.

This broke even bigger a couple of years ago and again recently when news broke (over here) of the discovery of almost 800 graves in a hidden graveyard, with an unknown number of bodies even hidden in an old unused septic tank.  Graves going back over a hundred years.

Also in Ireland, the scandal of a few years ago of stories of child abuse and murder in Irish Catholic monasteries. possibly going back hundreds of years.  Horrific stories of terrible abuse, both corporal and sexual, often combined.

In Europe a number of decades ago, there were archeological discoveries of monasteries and cloisters, built fairly close by one another, with hidden tunnels linking the two.  The most horrific part of the discovery were chambers off that tunnel containing the graves of infants and fetuses, most of whom were probably buried hours after or before birth.

All of this is evidence of a terrible epidemic of sexual malfunction in a religious hierarchy, over a thousand years old, denied sexual release and access due to official greed, excused and justified by religious scripture.

(For those who don't know, the RCC finally outlawed marriage not for religious reasons, but to end the bleeding of "church" property through inheritance to families of clergy, especially to noble families with large estates.  With no marriage allowed, thus no heirs, their property was "inherited" by the Church.)

Don't think that only the RCC is involved, preachers of almost every Protestant denomination regularly are arrested and either fired or also charged for either child abuse or sexually predatory abuse of adults.

It's all over the place.

Not to be outdone, Islam isn't far behind, as you may have noticed in the recent re-emergence of the quote of Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini.

He says: ‘A man can have sexual pleasure from a child as young as a baby. However, he should not penetrate vaginally, but sodomising the child is acceptable. If a man does penetrate and damage the child then, he should be responsible for her subsistence all her life. This girl will not count as one of his four permanent wives and the man will not be eligible to marry the girl’s sister… It is better for a girl to marry at such a time when she would begin menstruation at her husband’s house, rather than her father’s home. Any father marrying his daughter so young will have a permanent place in heaven.’ 

Read more.

Not only is this considered child abuse, but Islam has doubled down on it and authorized it because Mohammed did it.

At least, the Muslims are honest - they'll tell you God wants this to happen.

Talking about child abuse, let's talk about masturbation, something Christianity in most of its forms doesn't like to do.  In many denominations, it is banned and called out for being sinful and of the devil.

But now, scientifically, we know that it is not only a natural urge (even infants play with themselves) but it is known to be actually good for you!  It releases hormones and endorphins that make you healthier and live longer.

Heck, we know, both from scientific study and from statistics that people who have a long term sexual relationship that is happy for both parties not only stay together longer, but also live longer.  Regardless of whether they have kids or not.

So, in summary, religion in this country (and throughout the world) twists sex and sexuality in humans to the point that millions of people are, at best, dysfunctional and at worst, mentally ill and twisted towards pedophilia and sexual predatory practices, even the clergy.

It taints our marriages, our dating practices, and inculcates a culture of rape that regularly threatens the lives and well being of over a half of all women in the United States and probably causes a significant percentage of our divorces.

It directly harms our LGBT friends through violence and intimidation, forcing them into hidden lives and damaging stress by denying them a happy and healthy lifestyle.

And because sex keeps us healthy and can help us live longer, by discouraging sex in most forms and twisting our sexual practices so badly, religion is also killing us.

Are you mad yet?

(Come back tomorrow for Part III)

Robert W. Ahrens
The Cybernetic Atheist

The Negative Consequences of Believing in Superstition - Part I.

I was perusing Ophelia Benson's Facebook page last Saturday morning and ran across a post she put up Friday about the post on Dave Muscato's wall regarding Jaclyn Glenn's Youtube video slamming feminism and how she is disappointed - no, outraged - that AA is supporting Glenn's anti-feminism.

One of the comments (which I can't find to quote, dang it) made a comment about the negative consequences of believing in superstition.  It rang a bell with me, so here we are!

There are numerous negative things religion brings to society which many religious folks either overlook or are brainwashed into thinking they are good, mainly because they believe it's good because they're told it is, but have never actually examined the issues to see what the reality is.

But today, we're going to look at a few things.

As I see it, there are at lease three major areas in which religion (believing in a superstition) brings negative consequences to society.

1. Patriarchy (Part I)
2. Sex (Part II)
3. Politics/Law (Part III)

Of course, these aren't the only things at issue, but each of these are major, affecting broad areas of society.  So, let's take them one at a time.

(This is going to be a long post, so I will post in installments.  This is the first, the others will follow tomorrow and Monday.)

Patriarchy

Patriarchy is defined as:

1.  social organization marked by the supremacy of the father in the clan or family, the legal dependence of wives and children, and the reckoning of descent and inheritance in the male line; broadly :  control by men of a disproportionately large share of power
2.  a society or institution organized according to the principles or practices of patriarchy

This sounds very clinical, and almost reasonable, doesn't it?  But what are the consequences of these things?

In the modern context of our present day political scene, the relevant part of that is about the legal dependance of women and children, though we will see other consequences of it as well.

In today's western society, especially the US, the practice of patriarchy is at least partially based on religion.  In the Republicans' "War on Women", it IS based on biblical strictures requiring men to be the head of the household, and women being denied the right to be "in charge of" men.

In other words, they are relegated to second class citizens.

Now, in the larger US society, in the last hundred or so years, we've managed to back some of that off.  Women can now own property in their own names, vote, drive cars, work outside the home (and in fact, at jobs traditionally reserved for men), and can marry (or not) according to their own wishes.

But, I am going to back things up a bit and note some negative consequences of allowing the Fundies to begin denying women those rights, as they seem to want to do - which will highlight some ways in which we have failed to progress into a more modern way of thinking about women.

First of all, think about the term "dependance" in that definition above.  Legal dependance, especially. What does that entail?  Briefly, it means a woman (or a child) has no legal rights of her own.  She has to have a male guardian who has the right to "care" for her, as a legal responsibility.

That has two consequences.  The most obvious is that she has no rights of her own.  He can pretty much force her to obey his every wish, and she has no legal recourse, unless he is neglecting her welfare.  She is, in fact, virtually his property.  In many countries, this is in fact, the case.

But wait, there's another side to it.  HE is obligated to care for her.  That means he is responsible, legally, to feed her, clothe her and provide her with shelter.  This isn't something he has a choice in, it becomes his legal obligation, for which he is liable if he fails.

What if he can't?  What if his resources aren't up to the task?  Sure, he can neglect her to her detriment, but that leaves him vulnerable to accusations of neglect which may, if his society cares, cost him.

Either way, this kind of situation isn't exactly fair to either one.  Worse for the lady, since she is the one losing rights, but if she is prevented by the social or legal rules to not be able to work, the whole family suffers.  In fact, the entire society suffers.

This is actually the worst part of the patriarchal system.  The entire society, from the individual, to the family, to the potential employer, to the city, State and the entire country, everybody suffers, both socially and economically.  To stop half of the population from working is to cut your potential GDP in half, at the very least.  Even if you only go halfway and allow women to work, but restrict them to certain jobs (and, equally, restrict men to certain jobs) you are still preventing people from working in their best way and potentially most skilled career.  The potential of people working at their best level and in a skill that they are best suited for is huge, and the frustration (for both men and women) in being prevented from doing that is as huge as the potential.  The cost of such false restrictions based on arbitrary and unnatural reasoning is perhaps not as bad as a complete ban on women working, but it is a non trivial figure.

Society suffers in other ways.  Women are, actually, as smart as men, and as capable of doing anything men can, save perhaps (on average) some jobs or tasks requiring major body strength.  (...and even there, some women exceed that standard and do quite well in those circumstances, as on the other hand, some guys fail!) In the US, after over a century of women working, there is plenty of evidence that many aspects of society are better off with the participation of women.  Corporations find that women make better organizers, deal better with adversity and are better at mediating conflict.  In politics, women (when allowed to work independently) are often better at compromise and negotiations than men.

As costs have risen in recent decades, women have been forced into the workplace, bringing in much needed resources and allowing single women to raise children alone under better economic conditions than once was allowed.

I could go on, but it is obvious from these examples (which are only a few examples of many) that were women forced back into the home, the economy of the US would take a hit that would guarantee our immediate slide into third world status.  Poverty would become, instead of merely commonplace, rampant and virtually the norm.  The middle class would be destroyed, and those in poverty would be devastated completely.

Notice that I haven't even touched on the health care aspects of women's rights, and the devastation the American family would suffer were women no longer allowed to control their reproductive rights.  In fact, the proposed restrictions on contraceptives would be devastating to not only women, but to the entire country, as it would push us back into a time where women were not capable of stopping pregnancy.  (This does, of course, include the prohibitions against abortion.)  The social consequences of this would be to push many women out of the workforce, and reinstate the social pressures against allowing women to work, with the consequences noted in the previous paragraphs.

I haven't addressed the other side of the issue, which is the damage to men a patriarchal system can and does do.

This system not only imposes restrictions on women, but imposes strict (depending on the time period and the culture involved) roles for the two different genders.  (Note here, the refusal of this system to even acknowledge the existence of the LGBT folks!)  This framework of strict roles is restrictive and limiting for both men and women.  Men may have a larger menu of choices, but they are no less prevented from crossing that line than women are.

Some women are great corporate managers.  Some are great politicians.  Some aren't.  Many men just suck at those roles, and choose to do other things, including these days, staying home to take care of the kids.  Numerous articles have been written by guys who have done this, and it is liberating for them to be able to do so.  As it is liberating for women to be able to be corporate managers.

Some guys are fantastic secretaries, or office managers, or nurses.  Men can be social workers, cooks, day care workers, pole dancers and strippers.  And they can be good at it.

Patriarchy would prevent them from doing all this, as those are not "traditional" men's jobs.

Men are forced into a false and totally artificial image of "manhood", that is as false and artificial as the image of "womanhood" the ladies are forced into.  This produces mental and psychological stress and often damage that hurts the individuals, their families and their friends - often their employers as well.

It also forces men into this culture of rape we all know so well, but I'll deal with that in the "sex" topic.

In short, patriarchy is not a system that is supportive of society, but is damaging and harmful to a society that hopes to progress into a modern, peaceful, and productive society which accords equal rights for all citizens.

In short, it is un-American, in accordance with the ideals declared by us in the Declaration of Independence.

Some of the last points I raised also apply in the next section.

Come back tomorrow for Part II!

Robert W. Ahrens
The Cybernetic Atheist

As an atheist, are you a hard core extremist, or are you an accomodationist?

I was perusing FaceBook this morning briefly, and ran into an argument about how Atheism should act as a movement.  There were two sides - those who argued that the Extremists were too harsh and intolerant and those who were defending the position, with the argument centered around Dawkins.  As in, Dawkins is either a Grade A Number One Dick, or he's the best thing to come along since sliced bread, at least for the Atheist Movement.

While I agree that Dawkins can be acerbic at times (especially when confronting Theist idiots), but in general, he is pretty British in arguing his positions.  Meaning that he can be very polite while tearing you a new a**hole.

But he isn't counted as one of the Four Horsemen of Atheism for nothing.  All four - Dawkins, Denning, Harris and Hitchens (may he long be remembered for his cutting wit...) are known as such because they performed a singular function.  They are responsible for awakening the world to the growing number of atheists in this country (and indeed world-wide) by being, in a word, A**holes.

They served the same function as the Gay Pride movement, namely, attracting media attention to our existence and our growing numbers.

High profile, indeed!  They wrote books, gave interviews, went on TV, established web sites, then blogs and have, in general, made themselves into tremendous pains in the a** for influential theist leaders everywhere.  By telling the world that we are here, we are growing in numbers and influence and will NOT go away.  (and by ripping their theology into very small, very insignificant pieces...but that's another discussion.)

And we've got opinions about religion that are in the process of upsetting the balance of power in, especially, the First World.

As for the argument, there is a contingent that argues that being an a**hole and intolerant of the beliefs of theists isn't changing minds.  That it is counter-productive because it turns them off and makes them ultra-defensive.

Of course it does.  So did the in-your-face Gay Pride movement.  They paraded around the country in big cities where they had the numbers to defend themselves and got people talking.  They allowed others like themselves in less gay-populated areas to realize that THEY WERE NOT ALONE!  They made the media pay attention.

As time has gone on, the methods used by the Gay Movement have mellowed.  They do still have Gay Pride parades, but you don't see the radical dressed-up outrageously decked out folks in those parades like you used to.  These days, you can hardly (even if you squint) tell them from the regular folks who also march with them in support!

Which is kinda the point - gays are just like us.  They have lives, loves, jobs, dreams and debts.  Just like straights.

So do atheists.

We, too have lives, loves, jobs, dreams and debts.  Heck, walking down the street, one can hardly tell an atheist from a god-lover these days!  Ahem!  Sorry, I digress...

Which is why the Four Horsemen were and are needed - to wake people up.  To show them that we ARE HERE, and we are NOT going away.  We live alongside you, we are in your schools, your grocery stores, your parks, even in your churches!

And the more people see atheists as normal people, who do not eat babies nor worship Satan, the more they will see that we have common interests - like the Separation of Church and State.

Those who are derisively called "accomodationists" ARE needed.  Yes, it is Ok to be tolerant of others' religious beliefs.  Yes, we need to work with theists to bring together this society to push out the extremists of all kinds so we can learn to live together.  So we can build a country (and a world) that is neutral at the governmental level so everybody can hold and discuss opinions different from others.  So we can have political disagreements and discussions that will not result in violence and hatred.

In short, this is a big world, with a lot of different people in it.  Just as there are as many religious opinions as there are people, there is room in our movement for many differing techniques for approaching the theist audience, depending on who they are, and what interests we may have in common.

Instead of bad-mouthing other atheists who don't approach the subject like you do, try to understand who they are trying to reach, and discuss how to make them more effective in that effort.  Discuss how YOU can be more effective in reaching YOUR audience, too.  Try to see how the different approaches can be used effectively together, instead of accusing each other of being hurtful.

We've got billions of people to reach, and we can't reach them all using just one technique.

Cooperation works better than infighting.

Robert W. Ahrens

The Cybernetic Atheist

Picking Winners

By Gary Berg-Cross

A form of March Madness is leaving the bracket-littered scene, but it provides lingering thoughts about what is given emphasis and effort in our culture and the limits of knowledge and prediction.  It’s all humbling and a bit of a mirror both on our values and also human limitations.  Basketball brackets and the associated discussion are highly structured and “professional.” They are laced with expert observations, data of all kinds and statistical analysis.  There is a run up to the tournament with lots of predictions:

NOTABLE TEAMS RISING: Saint Louis, Florida

NOTABLE TEAMS FALLING: Creighton, Michigan State, Baylor

And on the day after the last regular game newspapers have special sections on all 68 contestants.  The main players on each team are discussed and strengths and weaknesses noted.  You can see a range of predictions. This year one heard of the analysis we had statistical NCAA bracket “optimization” and lots of simulations. You can read about how off or not off predictions were explained as Bracket VooDoo which is way of gesturing that things turned out a bit different than experts believed. 

Of the 11 million people who filled out a bracket on ESPN.com, only 1,780 predicted a Kentucky-UConn final. That’s 0.016% of entrants. It was pointed out that statistically a high school basketball player filling out a bracket on ESPN has twice as much chance of getting drafted by an NBA team (0.03%) as he would have at accurately predicting the final.  Pretty humbling. Our cognitive biases have once again beaten our critical thinking, but there are psychological strategies to consider and use next year.  In America we are optimistic (well not about climate change). 

Bracketology: Somewhere between Art and Science lies perfection

So when we turn to other, important areas of American life, like political campaigns one wonders why predictions seem so much more accurate.  It seems strange that the dynamics are simpler.  Well, of course, there aren’t 68 teams.  But still if we think of an election day there is the notion of predicting the future and winning, which every 4 years involves hundreds of different races at the national, state & local level.  The results of those contests are of much greater importance for the direction of the country than the NCAA tourney, but the culture devotes less consistent, if frustrating, effort to covering it for the citizens and our evolvement seems less focused.  Perhaps this reflects the fact that unlike basketball professionals and experts, pols and their advisors want less intellectual power devoted to help citizens figure out the contests.

So perhaps it is time for the citizenry to bone up on the process of selecting good candidates and what better way than leveraging some ideas from that big elimination contest – March Madness.  Given the disappointments with most of our March brackets we’d probably be far from the ideals of our founders, but I sure would feel better if, as a culture we tried a bit harder and smarter.  

Oh, and of course the bracket metaphor is used widely including for rating religious things as below where people get to vote for their favorite eJsus movie:

Freedom from Religio-Politics

By Gary Berg-Cross

The recent dust up on Arizona’s SB 1062 provides some opportunity to discuss the idea Freedom and the phrase Freedom of Religion. But of course in most circles this isn't an intellectual opportunity as much as one framed by political and ideological differences that generate mind-numbing emotions. There is obviously a long history and associated philosophy to these terms, but increasingly there is political and legal context to them.  Conversations quickly get a bit complex and discussion gets muddled as we jump from a word sense to the history of the concept (The Virginia Act for Establishing Religious Freedom, authored by Thomas Jefferson) to a philosophical perspective and then to an ensnaring political view.

As reported early in the debate SB 1062   expands Arizona's earlier (1999) "Religious Freedom Restoration Act" (RFRA). That law was applied with this idea of Religious Freedom - when the "victim" of religious discrimination is either an individual, a religious assembly or a religious institution. SB 1062 would have added businesses to the list of “victims” and thus to its “protection”. But what was really allowed by the law? Sure we heard loud claims of religious rights violation when a restaurant refused to serve a gay man, and was then sued for discrimination by the man. Under existing RFRA law they could be sued. Under SB 1062, they could not. 

The arguments was that this right to refuse service is a religious freedom. But other’s point out that “Religion” is what you BELIEVE not what you impose on other people. You are free to believe in all sorts of things, but a person's religious belief,s which may be tribal and certainly emotion-laden, stop at the boundary of the next person. My beliefs should not impose a burden on others.  And they should not be imposed in the secular marketplace for society’s transactions take place.  They can be practiced in Mosques, Temples and Churches etc. but not intrude into the secular space.

The problem is that if they overflow from the personal and the temples, we can ask the old question of “where does belief imposition stop?” As a theoretical question we can ask if some employer with a fundamentalist view deny employee coverage of the treatment of cancer because they would inadvertently be using something based on stem cells?

Or we can ask if  the 'Hijab is a fundamental human right of female Muslims since it is part of religious belief.  Can a store owner, with particular preconceived biases insist that any female who enters the stored wear one? Does a Jehovah's Witness owner who won’t employ blood transfusions get to say to an employee policy that pays for blood transfusions violates their faith and hence their fundamental freedom?

Historically we've stayed away from such Big Brother religions since they violate other values such as rights to privacy, private decisions and human dignity. In the 19th century, for example, the idea of American exceptionalism was undeerstood an assembly of special American social features.  We were a relatively free Republic based on democratic ideals and personal liberty, but also freedom from religious control.  As part of the separation idea we didn’t/don’t grant religious institutions the right to muscle into secular culture and mold it to the Procrustean bed of their preconceived ideas of society. Separating the state from religion should mean that there are no additional laws that people with religious beliefs levy upon others.  There is precedent here. We protect children from parents who won’t allow medical treatment for religious reasons. Of course, with things like abortion conservatives have argued that they are protecting a child-like unborn. Cathi Herrod, the president of the Center for Arizona Policy, the conservative Christian group that opposes abortion and same-sex marriage and pushed SB 1062, claims that the bill is:

 "simply about protecting religious liberty and nothing else".

I'm not alone in distrusting the claim. I worry that SB 1062 was not innocently about faith or religious freedom. Rather it and similar efforts, is about political and ideological wedges and precedents. It uses a poorly formulated idea that provides a guise of preserving religious freedom.  What the advocates and activists behind it really want is some social action. In this case making discrimination against gays and the LGBT community legal.

To me it seems that we can keep religious freedom as a fundamental right, but not let it be invoked to harm others. In a proper setting we can have an informed discussion of terms like Freedom, and Freedom of Religion but behind this is a social struggle with a emotional engine driven by a hybrid of politics and religion. It helps to remember legal precedents defining the fine balance between the freedom to exercise one's religion and the civil rights of others.

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Stop Squirming: http://lesfemmesvoice.wordpress.com/

Open : http://kjzz.org/content/20736/after-sb-1062-backlash-gay-rights-advocates-help-businesses-declare-they-are-open-all