Food Prizes and the Compromised Food Issue- the worry of not knowing.

By Gary Berg-Cross
There’s lots of prizes out there for good work, from the most well know Nobel prize, the MacArthur prizes, but also ones for special fields like architecture and mathematics or the Turing Award for Computer Science, all not covered by the Nobel; and even Grand Challenge prizes. One of my favorites is the Right Livelihood Award (aka the Alternative Nobel Prize ) established in 1980 by Jakob von Uexkull awarded in such fields as environmental protection, human rights, sustainable development, health, education, and peace.
It’s good to have a multiplication of prizes for noble work even if there are argments about winners. Raymond Damadian refuses to take his failure to win a Nobel Prize, for a prototype MRI machine as documented in Smithsonian Magazine. But he was not alone 
and I recently learned about a controversy around a prize called the World Food Prize, created by Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Norman Borlaug. This one comes with some a structural controversy.

Borlaug is a familiar name for his Green Revolution work. He was awarded the Noble Peace Prize in 1970, In 1986 with help from General Foods.he created the Food Prize to recognize contributions that expanding the world food supply. Borlaug saw the prize as a means of establishing role models who would inspire others. since 1990 has been sponsored by businessman and philanthropist John Ruan.
This all sounds good. World Food Prize Laureates are formally honored each year at an Award Ceremony in mid October around the time that the UN celebrates World Food Day. Winners receive a healthy $250,000 prize in a televised award ceremony held in Des Moines, Iowa. The week-long World Food Prize attracts corporate leaders, farm interests, economists and academicians and scientists from all over the world who mostly discuss the latest issues in world agriculture. The Award Ceremony is accompanied by the Norman E. Borlaug International Symposium, known as the "Borlaug Dialogue," which addresses an issue related to hunger and food security each year.
What’s the controversy? Well Borlaug created a world Food Prize to recognize contributions in several fields that contribute to expanding the world food supply. The fields include food and agriculture science (agronomy) but also contributions from technology, manufacturing, marketing, nutrition, and economics, poverty alleviation, political leadership and the social sciences.
Included in this long list is a biotech component and thus Biotech seeds. This doesn’t play well with everyone and the Des Moines Register has published objections to what efforts are awarded prizes. On October 25, 2011 it published one objection that started by lauding the Register for presenting both sides on the issue of genetically modified seeds by:

“ including philanthropist Howard Buffett’s warning that we need to be cautious seeing U.S. style farming and genetically modified seeds as being the sole solution to food problems in Africa.
It is also wise to note that among the many sponsors of the World Food Prize activity are large corporations that are in the business of producing these seeds. The main purpose and goal of these corporations, like any company, is to make a profit, not to focus on humanitarian needs. These two factors may be at odds with each other.

There is still great controversy about the effect of these seeds and certain practices, and it is important to keep this in prospective while still giving credit to the efforts of the prize winners.”

More recently the 'Occupy' movement took on World Food Prize, again as reported in the Register and planned protests for the
week-long Food Prize event in October.
The Occupy movement will target what Occupy leader Cordaro called "the corporate ownership of the World Food Prize, especially its dominance by genetically modified seed interests."

"Our goal is to get rid of GMOs," said Cordaro, referencing the term for genetically-modified corn and soybean seeds now in widespread use in Iowa and elsewhere in the U.S.
"We've always supported biotechnology because Dr. Borlaug was a supporter of biotechnology," said Quinn, who added, "both Dr. Borlaug and the Prize are all about feeding hungry people."

Kenneth Quinn, president of the World Food Prize, responded that an annual feature of the World Food Prize week is the Hunger Summit, which features discussions on global hunger topics.

It seems to me that each side has a point. I don’t know enough about this to have an answer or a final position, but I’d like more balanced discussion of the facts and a related, but more general issue,  on compromise.  Or maybe the conversation should be about being compromised.
Is there any possible agreement with genetically modified (GM) foods and genetically modified organisms? Many are suspicious and worried by the danger of possibly reducing the quality of our food. Some argue that the epidemic of allergies, asthma, skin problems, and chronic ailments are partially due to GM foods. In the EU, if a GM product is .9 percent or more it must be labeled. In the US, labeling is not required. Why not have such labeling in the spirit of informed consumer choice? Maybe it is as Occupy argues that what is done is done for the 1% or the .01%.
Some of this was explored in the 2005 documentary 'The Future of Food’(by the widow of Grateful Dead star Jerry Garcia) which presented a selection of facts, legal cases, statistics, and shots of unconscionable scientific procedures as a depiction of a slippery slope for genetic modification in agriculture & the insidious homogenization of American farming. Given an 84% rating on Rotten Tomatoes it’s been described as takinf a complex subject and making it “digestible for anyone who cares about what they put into their stomachs.”
But what are the facts? Are they what activists tell us or corporate mouth pieces and compromised advocate scientists? I don’t know what the effects of adding new genes to organism is.  There is not convincing evidence that it is unsafe, but there also is not concrete convincing  evidence to say that it is safe. Its remains a grey area under investigation & species and human effects research could take a decade. But I worry about corporate lies and expediency. Why the rush to implement before we know the effects?  Who makes such decisions that could affect so many? It's a question a Japanese inquiry asked on Fukushema where there they found "a collusion of decision makers and a conformist culture that let them get away with policies and actions that betrayed the common safety. It would be one thing if this was just directed and evolving to save starving people. It would be one thing if this was just directed to save starving people. Is it just the drive for profit and wealth creation for the few?

The risk depends on what real Science tells us and the evidence is not yet all be in. Good research may not even be funded or fundable in the current atmosphere. So it may be decades and in the meaning we need to grow things and eat. 
So before we know more with certainly we might be prudent & worry that the seed train has left the station risking a crash down the road. In 2010, 93% of all soybeans planted in the US were GM versions. Is Big Ag is pushing to something that will be impossible to change?
Shades of climate change. By one estimate 80% of the American diet consists of processed food and 70% of packaged food is genetically modified in part because our corn and soy is largely GM.
The question remains why is it so hard to grow healthy food in a sustainable and transparently acceptable way? Until we know I will appreciate the thought of some safety in local and Amishly organic.

Image credits:

Pass the genetic corn: http://www.eyeondna.com/2007/12/11/techno-tuesday-cartoon-on-genetically-modified-food/
World Food Prize Logo http://www.worldwatch.org/node/9033
Future of Food Poster http://www.yume.co.uk/the-future-of-food
Tomato: http://humboldtsentinel.com/2012/02/11/a-bumper-year-for-genetically-modified-crops/
Food and Corporate lies: http://benmfood.blogspot.com/2010/06/gm-foods-and-corporate-lies-hurting.html

A Backwater of Barbarism, Complete with Nuclear Weapons

So much for "the land of the pure". (That is what Pakistan means in Urdu.) Angry mobs drag a man out of his prison cell, beat him up and burn him to death- for, allegedly, burning a copy of the Koran. They also blockade roads so the police cannot get back up. Extra-judicial killings are so common in Pakistan they are no longer considered even newsworthy.

I only worry into whose hands one day their nuclear weapons will fall. It will be a nightmare for the whole world.

Separation of unrelated questions

By Mathew Goldstein

The question of whether or not gods are all fictions, and more generally whether or not disembodied minds and disembodied willful agents, or super- capable willful agents operating on our universe from outside our universe, and attributes such as omniscience, omnipotence, etc. are all fictions, can only be confronted properly if it is divorced from unrelated questions. Although this concept of addressing unrelated questions separately is easy to grasp, in practice some people insist on bundling unrelated questions. This is particularly true in contexts such as this where, even though the questions are unrelated, the preferred answers conflict.

A good illustration of this mistaken mixing of unrelated questions having conflicting answers can be found in the Discovery Institute, which asserts "The mission of Discovery Institute is to advance a culture of purpose, creativity and innovation." By focusing on trying to change, or deny, the conclusions of scientific inquiry, especially biological evolution, to support their vision of propagandizing for positive cultural values with religion, they are insisting on bundling questions about how the universe works together with unrelated questions of how to perpetuate and promote the religious beliefs that claim to provide people with their life's proper purpose. Since the latter goal is to some extent based on presuppositions that conflict with the former goal they are, in effect, working to square a circle.

Logically, answers to questions about how the world works must take priority over questions dealing with human purposes, motives, and the like when we are justifying our beliefs. The reason is simple. Our beliefs are our understandings of how the world works. When our beliefs are built instead for the different purpose of justifying our own motivations we undermine the integrity of our beliefs. Our beliefs cannot simultaneously serve this other function without sacrificing their primary function. The Discovery Institute is making exactly this basic logical mistake by giving equal or higher priority to human centered goals of religious beliefs, a.k.a. "purpose" or "culture", in the unrelated context of the different goal of understanding how the world works.

The question of atheism versus theism addresses this broader issue of how the world works and as such is distinct from the narrower and different questions about human emotions, incentives, purpose, morality, popularity, politics, and the like. Few theists seem to recognize or acknowledge this. For many theists, these unrelated questions addressing different domains merge and become confused and entangled with each other. It is wrong to justify a belief about how the world works by measuring that belief's conformance to pre-existing stories intended to provide individuals with particular sets of motivations and incentives, no matter how desirable those motivations or incentives may be. Our universe isn't about human motives and incentives, let alone about the contents of any particular sectarian books or myths. Questions about human motives and incentives are important questions about us. But questions about how the world works, including the question of atheism versus theism, are not questions about us, and are unlikely to be answered correctly when the focus is misdirected to us.

July 4 banner

Presented by Mathew Goldstein

Another opportunity to address "Whether atheists are angry, and if so why?"

By Gary Berg-Cross

"Why are atheists so angry?" is a perennial question. If you do a Google search on that phrase you get 279,000 hits!! This includes the Greta Christina Skepticon 4 talk on whether Atheists are angry & intolerant on YouTube. One might think that Greta's book, Why Are You Atheists So Angry?: 99 Things That Piss Off the Godless answered it, but it remains a popular topic and offers atheists a chance to explain themselves and their thoughts to a wider audience.

Every major publication offers an opportunity. A Sam Harris publication stirs the pot and you get him Debating with Dennis Prager using email exchanges. (Prager is a nationally syndicated talk radio host who trumpets the virtues of the Judeo-Christian tradition)… .

More recently P J Murphy posted a little article on Reddit in response to an earlier one that asked that question again - "Why are atheists so angry?" It's a pretty thoughtful & fact based response framed but with some emotion. I thought it worth sharing.

You can read the posting and its responses at Reddit, but I've copied his post below.


"... A little while back, Ricardo posted a question. It was a simple question, "Why are atheists so angry?", but the post soon evolved into a 100-comment slugfest. I guess he touched a nerve, even if some of the posts were off-topic. I was going to post to it, but I would have got in at the 94 comment mark, and given that the post would be very personal, I decided to answer at length in this note, instead. I didn't want to get lost in the static. For those who don't know me well, let me tell you a little secret. I am an Atheist. That doesn't mean that I hate God, or Jesus, it simply means that I have not been presented with sufficient compelling evidence to conclude that either exists. The same goes for Thor, Odin, Jupiter, Poseidon, Ra, Mithra, Shiva, Zeus, Venus, and all the rest. I don't believe that The Bible, The Torah, The Koran, or any other religious text has much basis in fact. I am explicitly not saying that there are not moral lessons and guidelines to be found in these texts. What I am saying is that I am not convinced that God created the Universe in 6 days, and that stories of Noah's flood have little basis in fact. I don't believe in Heaven, and I don't believe in Hell. (Actually, I do believe in hell. I have worked for Labour Ready.) I don't believe that there is a mighty, omnipotent and omniscient being who is perfectly willing to condemn me to an eternity of torment because I refuse to worship him.
Frankly, I think religion is a load of crap, and was invented by bronze-age cultures that didn't have the slightest clue was was causing the things that were happening around them. Locusts? Floods? Droughts? Diseases? We must have pissed off somebody pretty powerful. If we suck up to him, maybe he'll make things better. I could pepper this note with a bazillion quotes from history, but the best one is still from Seneca, a Roman senator: "Religion is regarded by the Common People as true, by the Wise as false, and by the Powerful as useful"

There is another, by Epicurus: "Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
If he is both able and willing?
Then whence comes evil?
If he is neither able, nor willing
Then why call him God?" It can't be argued that religion has had an impact on human society, from its beginning, to the current time. I could recite episodes throughout history where religion has had an influence on our development. These influences have not always been beneficial, especially to those who have been "influenced". But that was then, and this is now. Ricardo asked, "Why are atheists so angry?" and I will tell you why I, an atheist, am angry. I am angry that, in Brazil, in March 2012, an 11-year-old-girl was taken by her mother to a doctor, who performed an abortion. Apparently, she had become pregnant with twins, as a result of sexual abuse at the hands of her stepfather. He had been fucking her since she was six years old. If she had carried the babies to term, both the twins and the girl would have died. The Catholic church in Brazil excommunicated the girl, her mother, and the doctor, but not the stepfather. After an outcry, the Vatican in Rome upheld the excommunication. But they still refused to excommunicate the stepfather. His sins weren't serious enough to warrant excommunication.
I am angry that, in 2012, a man in Singapore faces 2.5 years in prison for writing "God does not exist" on Facebook. There are six state-sanctioned religions. Atheism is not an option, it's a crime.
I am angry that Jessica Alquist, a 16-year-old girl fought to have a Christian prayer banner taken off the wall of her public school, and had her Facebook, Twitter, and telephone flooded with the most vile and reprehensible filth, generated by so-called Christians. Death threats, saying she should be raped, really, it drops the jaw just to read some of it. For so-called Christians to advocate the immediate murder of all atheists is a little overboard, in my opinion, but certainly not without its examples in history.
I am angry that polls reveal that voters would not elect an atheist to public office. I am even angrier that at least 15 states have laws on the books that prevent atheists from even running for public office. I am angry that the Roman Catholic Church, the only religion with its own goddamned COUNTRY, is so embroiled in money laundering that the scandalous nature of their finances boggles the mind. Nothing new here, folks.
I am angry That that same Catholic Church has engaged has engaged in a decades, perhaps centuries, long coverup of the systematic sexual abuse of little boys. "Just a few bad apples," they say. Well fuck you, and fuck your apples. If you're an apple vendor, it's up to YOU to find those bad apples and throw them out of the barrel. But don't bury the bad apples at the bottom of the barrel, and tell me that the barrel looks good when viewed from above.
I am angry that Islam has conditioned men to believe that women are livestock. There was a Western journalist who was covering the situation in Egypt who was mobbed, stripped and groped by a crowd of Egyptian men. When she went to the police she was treated with indifference, as in "you must have been asking for it". Fuck you, fuck your Burkhas, fuck your attitude toward women. Then again, what can you expect from a religion founded by a man who married a six-year-old? Although, to Mohammed's credit, he waited until she was nine to actually have sex with her.
I am angry that there are people who want prayer brought back into the schools....but not any prayer, just Christian prayer. I am angry that they want their Abrahamic creationist mythology taught with the same credence as evolutionary fact. I am angry that they want to perpetuate their methodology of indoctrination of children in a public and secular school system. Fuck that. Fuck your Creationist Museum, that portrays Jesus riding a raptor. There's an interesting rodeo event for you. Ride a raptor, and if he throws you before 8 seconds, he gets to eat you.

But, I am not completely angry. I am grateful that I can identify as an Atheist in 2012, and not have to worry about being tortured, having my property confiscated, and having my books burned. I am grateful that I will not be shunned, outcast, sent away from family, home, and employment. I am grateful that, even though I am an atheist, I can find someone who will sell me food and clothing, and rent me a warm place to sleep. I am grateful that I can YouTube video recordings of lectures by Dawkins without worry of the Church Police kicking down my door and dragging me away. Did you know that George Carlin would have been burnt at the stake as few as 400 years ago? Did you know that the Catholic Church finally got around to admitting that Galileo had a point, and that the Earth really does revolve around the Sun? They did, they really admitted it. in 1992. I am happy, almost ecstatic, that I am present at the time that humanity finally sheds the shackles of superstition. I am delighted to see the consternation of the power structure of religion quaking in its boots as their membership and their finances dwindle. It fills me with optimism as the youth of our race turn their backs on centuries of oppressive mythology and instead embrace the precepts of knowledge and fact. Religion is a small island of superstition, fear, and control, and I smile as the tide of logical thought, knowledge and fact rises to force it under the waves. So, Ricardo, I have to say that I am angry as I look out the side windows. I am angry as I look out the rear-view mirror. But when I look down the road, I am happy, because I see all religions taking their rightful place amongst the discredited mythology of ancient Egypt, Rome, and Greece. And when Yahweh and Allah dine with Zeus it shall be a glorious day, indeed." P. J. Murphy

The "Good News Club"

By Don Wharton

Katherine Stewart is the author of The Good News Club: The Christian Right's Stealth Assault on America's Children. She has done an important job in making us aware of the 700% plus increase in evangelism directed at our children. Apparently the Child Evangelism Fellowship has leveraged a Supreme Court decision to legally force elementary schools to allow them to set up these clubs.

There is a 4-14 theory based on the notion that people become Christian between the ages of 4 and 14. Very few children younger than four consider themselves to be Christian. After 14 it is relatively rare to become Christian. Under this theory after 14 the situation is “remedial.” This is motivating the focus on children.

The actual views taught are extremely divisive. Catholics are not considered “real” Christians. Children are told to tell other children that they have to have the right beliefs if they want to live.

The Richard Dawkins Foundation has a of couple very informative interviews with Ms. Stewart. The first one with Elisabeth Cornwell doing the interviewing is embedded below:

Blog Success at Mid-Year

by Don Wharton

We need to thank our wonderful team of bloggers and our very wide fan base for an explosive growth in the interest in and knowledge of secularism in our region. The secular world view is growing rapidly and the major reason for that is the increased willingness of our community to be socially visible about our views both to our friends and colleagues and to the wider religious community. I feel a great sense of pride in the effort of this blog in supporting and articulating this wave of change in the wider world. We had almost 12,000 page views in the last month and the general trend looks most promising. Let's keep up the good work folks.

Naturalism has defeated supernaturalism

By Mathew Goldstein

There are at least two possible general approaches to obtain knowledge about how the world works. One way is methodological supernaturalism, another way is methodological naturalism. An example of the former is divine revelation. An example of the latter is matching empirical observation to a logical model by using the model to make predictions and verifying the predictions with reproducible experiments.

It is commonly claimed that science is intrinsically, and therefore a-priori and by definition, dependent on methodological naturalism. As will be shown here, this is false. This false assertion that methodological naturalism is intrinsic to science should not be confused with the similarly common and false claim that science can say nothing about whether the universe is naturalistic or supernaturalistic. Nevertheless, both falsehoods are logically related to each other and most people who assert one of these two falsehoods also asserts the other falsehood.

The fact that methodological naturalism is not intrinsic to science should also not be confused with the claim that methodological supernaturalism is a proper way of obtaining knowledge. This is because methodological supernaturalism is unproductive. Methodological supernaturalism has simply failed to produce any knowledge whatsoever and therefore has been universally abandoned by all knowledge dependent vocations and avocations for being a complete failure. Not just scientists, but everyone employed in any knowledge dependent vocation or avocation relies exclusively on methodological naturalism for obtaining that knowledge because methodological naturalism is the only method for obtaining knowledge that is productive.

Even though in practice it is the case that the universe that we were born into relies exclusively on methodological naturalism for acquiring knowledge about how the university's works, in theory it could have been otherwise. We could have been born into a different universe where the best way, or maybe even the only way, to obtain knowledge about how the universe worked was methodological supernaturalism. In this mirror image universe, all people engaged in knowledge based vocations and avocations would obtain knowledge through divine revelation by worshipping a deity, or deities, and closely following the rituals, rules, practices, beliefs, behaviors, etc. dictated by the deity or deities.

A universe where methodological supernaturalism prevails is the universe that the authors of the Tanakh, Bible, and Quran were convinced they lived in. It is the universe where uneducated and mostly illiterate people intuitively imagined themselves to be living for thousands of years. In those days, the knowledge that was considered most important was to know the future and what displeased and pleased god. Prophets like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel were said to have received divine revelations about God's current opinion of, and the future of, God's chosen people. The Christian bible added more prophets such as John the Baptist. Psalm 119:66 appeals to God to "Teach me good judgment and knowledge, for I believe in your commandments." “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge” is the instruction of Proverbs 1:7. Furthermore, 1 Timothy 6:20-21 indicates divine revelation that supports biblical based religious belief is the only source of knowledge: "Turn away from godless chatter and the opposing ideas of what is falsely called knowledge, which some have professed and in so doing have wandered from the faith”. According to the Quran, all prophets through history, starting with Adam, have consistently preached the same main belief of worshiping Allah, and Muhammed is the final prophet.

If we lived in that mirror image, alternative universe, where knowledge was obtained by divine revelation, then we should all be theists. This is why it is important to understand and appreciate that all knowledge based vocations, and avocations, pragmatically rely exclusively on methodological naturalism provisionally because this method alone works, and not because of some a-priori, ideological bias or logical requirement. Furthermore, for the same reason that the success of methodological supernaturalism would constitute strong empirical justification for theism in a mirror image, imaginary, alternative universe, the exclusive success of methodological naturalism in the real universe that we inhabit is strong empirical justification for atheism. Given the universe we are all born into, we should all be atheists.

The close logical connection between methodological naturalism's monopoly for obtaining knowledge and philosophical naturalism is understandably awkward for those who, regardless of the evidence, are pre-committed to theism. This could explain why we so often hear this falsehood that methodological naturalism is intrinsic to science. If methodological naturalism was intrinsic to science, if methodological naturalism was a-priori a logical necessity, then methodological and philosophical naturalism can be declared to be logically separate and unrelated. But again, this is not true. The truth is that the strong success of methodological naturalism relative to methodological supernaturalism over the previous several hundred years is the primary reason methodological supernaturalism is rejected by scientists. Add to this the consistently naturalistic explanations we have acquired over this time that reliably answer so many questions and the supernatural worldview reflected in the holy books becomes archaic. It is long past time for people to recognize those books are fictional.