by Edd Doerr
The following comment was posted in the Washington Post (on line) on 5/14/2013 ---
News coverage of and opinions voiced about Gosnell's housde of horrors clinic in Philadelphia have generally left out somethng very important: the fact that so many poor women in need of abortions could find no accessible alternative to this disgraceful outfit. The remedies: comprehensive sexuality education in public schools, ready access to contraceptives and family planning services, abortion providers that meet decent medical standards (as most do), broad compliance with the new healthcare law's mandate for insurance coverage for contraception, and, lastly, serious attention to the poverty that is increasing in our country and the growing gap between the small percentage of the wealthy and all the rest of us.
What the vociferous anti-choice and anti-Planned Parenthood movement doesn't grasp is that good comprehensive sexuality education, readier access to contraception and the reduction of poverty would actually shrink the need and demand for abortion, especially procedures after 12 weeks.
Finally, it needs to be recognized that the anti-choice movement is actually seeking to impose their unscientific and unbiblical misogynist patriarchalist religious opinions on all women,in violation of women's religious freedom and rights of conscience.
Edd Doerr (arlinc.org)
Tuesday, May 14, 2013
Hearing the Voice of Freethinking Robert Ingersoll
You may have heard that WASH is holding its
annual banquet in Lynchburg, VA this year on May 25. All are welcome to come. You don't need to be a WASH member to attend. Details and
registration are available at:
http://washbanquet2013.eventbrite.com/
http://washbanquet2013.eventbrite.com/
It’s a chance to join other secularists in
what many call the "belly" of the fundamentalist beast. It’s an easy label since Lynchburg is the
home of the late Rev. Jerry Falwell's evangelical Liberty University and Thomas
Road Bapwill be Dr. J. Anderson Thomson
and the topic will be the cognitive science of religious belief.
This is a topic explored in her new book, The Great Agnostic: Robert Ingersoll
and American Freethought. Jacoby is the perfect person to play the
role of bringing Ingersoll, “mover and
shaker” of the early Republican Party, back into mainstream discussion. Seven score years ago Ingersoll did the
same secular resurrection for Tom Paine.
For most of us Ingersoll, like Paine is largely forgotten
today although earlier he was listened to on topics of the separation of church
and state, Darwin’s theory of evolution, women's rights and much more.
His Centennial Oration gives one a feeling about the timely relevance of his thought:THE Declaration of Independence is the grandest, the bravest, and the profoundest political document that was ever signed by the representatives of a people. It is the embodiment of physical and moral courage and of political wisdom....
Such things had occasionally been said by some political enthusiast in the olden time, but, for the first time in the history of the world, the representatives of a nation, the representatives of a real, living, breathing, hoping people, declared that all men are created equal. With one blow, with one stroke of the pen, they struck down all the cruel, heartless barriers that aristocracy, that priestcraft, that king-craft had raised between man and man. They struck down with one immortal blow that infamous spirit of caste that makes a God almost a beast, and a beast almost a god. With one word, with one blow, they wiped away and utterly destroyed, all that had been done by centuries of war — centuries of hypocrisy — centuries of injustice.
What more did they do? They then declared that each man has a right to live. And what does that mean? It means that he has the right to make his living. It means that he has the right to breathe the air, to work the land, that he stands the equal of every other human being beneath the shining stars; entitled to the product of his labor — the labor of his hand and of his brain.
What more? That every man has the right to pursue his own happiness in his own way. Grander words than. these have never been spoken by man.”
Fifteen speakers will select their favorite pieces to orate some of these ideas. Susan Jacoby will be there as one of the judges making it a great event for secular DC.
Also of note, WASH board member Steven Lowe offers walking tours of Ingersoll’s life in
DC. Upcoming are morning walks June 20th and 29th.
Images
Quote on religious divisions: http://choiceindying.com/2013/02/02/robert-ingersoll-the-great-agnostic/
and http://skepticalteacher.wordpress.com/2012/08/11/happy-birthday-to-robert-green-ingersoll-the-great-agnostic/
Sunday, May 12, 2013
Vacate Humanae Vitae
by Edd Doerr
This letter was published in the National Catholic Reporter (NCR) on May 10, 2013 ----
"Vacate Humanae Vitae"
"Brian Roewe's piece on global warming (NCR, April 12) is an important contribution to the vital conversation on climate change. What needs also to be discussed is the role played by human overpopulation in this huge problem; our numbers have grown from a little more than 2 billion in the 1950s to more than 7 billion today while our damage to the environment has grown on a hockey stick curve.
"Pope Francis could take an important step toward saving our planet by a stroke of the pen, by following the sound advice that Paul VI declined and vacating the 1968 Humanae Vitae condemnation of contraception. The vast majority of Catholics would approve."
"Edd Doerr
"Silver Spring, MD"
This letter was published in the National Catholic Reporter (NCR) on May 10, 2013 ----
"Vacate Humanae Vitae"
"Brian Roewe's piece on global warming (NCR, April 12) is an important contribution to the vital conversation on climate change. What needs also to be discussed is the role played by human overpopulation in this huge problem; our numbers have grown from a little more than 2 billion in the 1950s to more than 7 billion today while our damage to the environment has grown on a hockey stick curve.
"Pope Francis could take an important step toward saving our planet by a stroke of the pen, by following the sound advice that Paul VI declined and vacating the 1968 Humanae Vitae condemnation of contraception. The vast majority of Catholics would approve."
"Edd Doerr
"Silver Spring, MD"
Friday, May 10, 2013
A Really "Must Read" Book
a review by Edd Doerr
Lessons from the Heartland: A Turbulent Half-Century of Public Education in an Iconic American City, by Barbara J. Miner, The New Press, 2013.305 pp, $27.95.
In early May of 2013 the US Department of Justice announced, nearly two years after the complaint was filed, that Milwaukee private schools, mostly sectarian, funded by tax-paid vouchers to the tune of about $6400 per year per student, must not discriminate against students with disabilities. Only about 1.6% of students in Milwaukee's voucher-funded private schools are classified as having disabilities, compared to 20% in the public schools. In March of 2011 the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction reported that, despite their selectivity advantage, Milwaukee's voucher schools were significantly behind the public schools in math and reading. Milwaukee's vaunted school voucher plan, the oldest in the country, then, is an obvious flop, in addition to everything else that is wrong with it.
In this timely and extremely important book veteran Milwaukee journalist and native Barbara Miner traces the history of this pioneering experiment in diverting public funds to private, mostly religious, schools, from rather modest beginnings in 1990, through its expansion to religious schools in 1995, to today's Scott Walker fueled Wisconsin nightmare. She does this by presenting the whole fifty year background of the civil rights and desegregation movements -- touching on race, racism, demographic evolution, white flight, religion, politics, educational pseudo-reforms, court rulings, the influence of zillionaire conservative private foundations, enrollment statistics, and more -- providing a comprehensive picture of developments in Milwaukee, a sort of microcosm of major cities throughout the country.
Sadly, the Wisconsin supreme court approved this tax aid to religious schools in 1998 in defiance of the obvious intent of Article I, Section 18 of the state constitution and the US Supreme Court declined to accept an appeal, perhaps in anticipation of its own mistaken 2002 5-4 ruling to uphold Ohio's equally objectionable voucher plan.
Indiana and Louisiana followed Wisconsin's lead with even more ambitious and damaging voucher plans, as did Florida, though at least Florida voters were allowed to reject vouchers in a referendum in November of 2012. It is abundantly clear that when the voters in a state are allowed to pass on voucher, tax credit or similar plans they invariably reject them, as has happened in 27 statewide referenda from coast to coast. But voucher promoters will do anything to bar the voters from having their say.
Throughout the country conservatives and the religious right are fanatically bent on voucherizing and privatizing our public schools, which serve 90% of our kids, aided and abetted by school pseudo-reformers, fat cat conservative foundations and media, and public ignorance and apathy.
Barbara Miner's explosively important book should be a primary tool for defending public education, religious liberty, and democratic values.
(Edd Doerr is president of Americans for Religious Liberty and author of "The Great School Voucher Fraud", available at arlinc.org.)
Lessons from the Heartland: A Turbulent Half-Century of Public Education in an Iconic American City, by Barbara J. Miner, The New Press, 2013.305 pp, $27.95.
In early May of 2013 the US Department of Justice announced, nearly two years after the complaint was filed, that Milwaukee private schools, mostly sectarian, funded by tax-paid vouchers to the tune of about $6400 per year per student, must not discriminate against students with disabilities. Only about 1.6% of students in Milwaukee's voucher-funded private schools are classified as having disabilities, compared to 20% in the public schools. In March of 2011 the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction reported that, despite their selectivity advantage, Milwaukee's voucher schools were significantly behind the public schools in math and reading. Milwaukee's vaunted school voucher plan, the oldest in the country, then, is an obvious flop, in addition to everything else that is wrong with it.
In this timely and extremely important book veteran Milwaukee journalist and native Barbara Miner traces the history of this pioneering experiment in diverting public funds to private, mostly religious, schools, from rather modest beginnings in 1990, through its expansion to religious schools in 1995, to today's Scott Walker fueled Wisconsin nightmare. She does this by presenting the whole fifty year background of the civil rights and desegregation movements -- touching on race, racism, demographic evolution, white flight, religion, politics, educational pseudo-reforms, court rulings, the influence of zillionaire conservative private foundations, enrollment statistics, and more -- providing a comprehensive picture of developments in Milwaukee, a sort of microcosm of major cities throughout the country.
Sadly, the Wisconsin supreme court approved this tax aid to religious schools in 1998 in defiance of the obvious intent of Article I, Section 18 of the state constitution and the US Supreme Court declined to accept an appeal, perhaps in anticipation of its own mistaken 2002 5-4 ruling to uphold Ohio's equally objectionable voucher plan.
Indiana and Louisiana followed Wisconsin's lead with even more ambitious and damaging voucher plans, as did Florida, though at least Florida voters were allowed to reject vouchers in a referendum in November of 2012. It is abundantly clear that when the voters in a state are allowed to pass on voucher, tax credit or similar plans they invariably reject them, as has happened in 27 statewide referenda from coast to coast. But voucher promoters will do anything to bar the voters from having their say.
Throughout the country conservatives and the religious right are fanatically bent on voucherizing and privatizing our public schools, which serve 90% of our kids, aided and abetted by school pseudo-reformers, fat cat conservative foundations and media, and public ignorance and apathy.
Barbara Miner's explosively important book should be a primary tool for defending public education, religious liberty, and democratic values.
(Edd Doerr is president of Americans for Religious Liberty and author of "The Great School Voucher Fraud", available at arlinc.org.)
Thursday, May 09, 2013
Eden Foods' Fundamentalist Kowtow
by Edd Doerr
I have just sent the following message to Eden Foods, 761 Tecumseh Road, Clinton, MI 49236 (info@edenfoods.com) ----
"Eden Foods: Our family is vegetarian. We have been using your products for years. Now we learn that your company has filed suit in federal court challenging the new healthcare law's contraceptive insurance mandate. We are appalled by this blatant kowtowing to religious fundamentalism. So we will not buy your products until we know that you have withdrawn this malicious lawsuit. Further, as a well-published writer I will be conveying this message far and wide on the internet. --- Edd Doerr (arlinc@verizon.net)
Anyone care to follow our example?
I have just sent the following message to Eden Foods, 761 Tecumseh Road, Clinton, MI 49236 (info@edenfoods.com) ----
"Eden Foods: Our family is vegetarian. We have been using your products for years. Now we learn that your company has filed suit in federal court challenging the new healthcare law's contraceptive insurance mandate. We are appalled by this blatant kowtowing to religious fundamentalism. So we will not buy your products until we know that you have withdrawn this malicious lawsuit. Further, as a well-published writer I will be conveying this message far and wide on the internet. --- Edd Doerr (arlinc@verizon.net)
Anyone care to follow our example?
Why everyone should be an atheist
By Mathew Goldstein
We start from scratch, from the perspective that we will give both possibilities, atheistic naturalism and theistic supernaturalism, equal opportunity to be adopted. We can define supernaturalism as immaterial willful agency and/or immaterial mind, or god. We know nothing and we are born into a universe. What would we experience in a universe where we would be properly justified to be theists, and how does that universe compare to our universe?
We need an unbiased criteria to decide. The bottom line is practical success versus failure, so that is the criteria. Success is whatever works to meet our needs and desires. We need things like food, health, shelter, we desire things like travel and knowledge. So what delivers our needs and desires?
The answer could be divine revelation. By studying the holy texts, adopting the specified beliefs, worshipping, praying, following the rituals, obeying the laws, as revealed to us by deity, we receive food, health, shelter, transportation, and knowledge. In other words, by practicing methodological supernaturalism we are successful. Given a choice of what to believe, we follow the available evidences and become theists because the universe evidences supernaturalism. However, in our universe, agriculture, medicine, housing, and transportation are human built and maintained products of human acquired knowledge, our knowledge is built exclusively on methodological naturalism, and the content of our knowledge is also naturalistic. Therefore, when we follow the available evidences we become atheists because our universe evidences naturalism.
Some theists will probably object to this argument for atheism by saying it is bad theology. Should we respect this objection? If we are committed to holding beliefs that accurately model how the universe works then we should disregard this objection. Success, not self-referencing ideology, must be our guide because success is the most plausibly unbiased criteria available to us, it is the way that our universe itself communicates to us regarding how our universe works. Lacking omniscience we lack certainty that our conclusion is correct. But such unavoidable uncertainty makes no difference. We are rationally obliged to adopt the conclusion favored by a pervasive and unchallenged track record of success.
Monday, May 06, 2013
Abelard's Early Humanist Reasoning
At
a recent conference a lunchtime conversation turned to examples of sound
reasoning and the scholar Peter Abelard was raised as an interesting example. Abelard is better known to most of us as a
tragic love story. Abelard and Heloise remain
one of the more a celebrated couples of all time, in part from their writing
and in part from the classic tragic
events that eventually separated them:
1.
two well-educated people, brought together
by their passion they fell in love;
2.
Heloise became pregnant, so
3.
they married secretly in 1118.
4.
Her uncle Fulbert,
a canon of Paris, had Abelard castrated by thugs believing that he had
abandoned Heloise,
5.
after which he became a monk and
6. Sent to a convent by her
uncle, Heloise later became a nun
In a letter to Abelard,
Heloise reflected on her loss:
"You know, beloved, as the whole world
knows, how much I have lost in you, how at one wretched stroke of fortune that
supreme act of flagrant treachery robbed me of my very self in robbing me of
you; and how my sorrow for my loss is nothing compared with what I feel for the
manner in which I lost you."
This part of the history I knew a bit, but Peter
Abelard (1079-1142) as an12th century medieval French philosopher,
theologian, and logician I had heard less about. After all these are the Middle Ages, so I was
pleasantly surprised to learn the history and form of his thinking.
It goes something like this. A bright boy
he rapidly jumped from school to school gaining an easy rise
to fame. He wound up in a pre-University of Paris
setting to study under William of Champeaux, head of the cathedral school and archdeacon
of Notre Dame. Along the way his brilliant reasoning and debate were matched
by a Chris-Hitchens-like arrogance. As with Hitch he generated many foes as wells as
admirers. His mentor William, for example, was famous
for a realist stance on the nature of universals, while pupil Peter took a nominalist and soundly won a series
of debates. This success lead to a following, among students who
provided a core for what was late to become the great University in Paris. Abélard's deep
understanding of Aristotle's theory of knowledge surpassed anything widely
available in 12th century Europe, which he cultivated in his Paris
students. His was an example of great teaching that came to live as a Liberal Arts curriculum and style of teaching when universities were formally founded.
One of his important contributions was a work on
ethics which took as its title the Socratic admonition, "Know
thyself." In this work Abelard veered
from the established course of strict commandments to stress the importance of
intention in evaluating the moral/immoral character of an action. This was a step towards more nuanced reasoning about moral action.
Some of his early persuasive arguments swayed leaders like Pope Innocent III, who accepted Abelard's Doctrine of
Limbo – children are innocent before the age of reason. But reasoned debate about reason itself was his
real forte and passion - outside of Heloise. A famous debate was with Bernard of
Clairvaux over the conflicts of reason and religion. This conflict that made him a hero of the Enlightenment.
In Dialogue of a Philosopher with a Jew and a Christian Abelard plays a combination of a Socrates and Swift like character as he debated religious dogma. Abélard juxtaposes apparently contradictory quotations from the Church Fathers & the Bible on many of the traditional topics of Judeo-Christian theology (he was the first to use ‘theology’ in its modern sense) only to “discover(ed) the Jews to be stupid and the Christians insane.” As you can imagine making common folks reasoning look foolish does get noticed. His teachings backed by sound reasoning were controversial, and he was repeatedly charged with heresy. His book on the Trinity was condemned to be burnt at Soissons in 1121.
In Dialogue of a Philosopher with a Jew and a Christian Abelard plays a combination of a Socrates and Swift like character as he debated religious dogma. Abélard juxtaposes apparently contradictory quotations from the Church Fathers & the Bible on many of the traditional topics of Judeo-Christian theology (he was the first to use ‘theology’ in its modern sense) only to “discover(ed) the Jews to be stupid and the Christians insane.” As you can imagine making common folks reasoning look foolish does get noticed. His teachings backed by sound reasoning were controversial, and he was repeatedly charged with heresy. His book on the Trinity was condemned to be burnt at Soissons in 1121.
One
can see the controversy in one his works on Logic Reasoning "Sic et
Non," an early scholastic teaching text whose title translates from
Medieval Latin into a simple “Yes and No" dichotomy (for more on limitations of dichotomy see my article on Binary Thinking). As in his previous “Dialog”
we see what happens
when we apply
reason to the teaching of revelation or at least questions that come out of
revealed truths.
In the Prologue, Abélard outlines logical rules for
reconciling contradictions but the core of the book is a list of 158
philosophical and theological questions. The first five questions give a sense of these:
- Must human
faith be completed by reason, or not?
- Does faith
deal only with unseen things, or not?
- Is there
any knowledge of things unseen, or not?
- May one
believe only in God alone, or not?
- Is God a
single unitary being, or not?
Abelard laid down four
basic principles of reasoning:
- Use systematic doubt
and question everything
- Learn the difference between statements of rational proof and those merely of
persuasion
- Be precise
in use of words, and expect precision of others
- Watch for error,
even in Holy Scripture (danger Will Robinson!!)
One can why Peter got in trouble as the rational arguments on the non-doctrinaire
side seem as good as the Church’s position. And rational argument is still getting freethinkers in trouble.
Abelard was probably not the forerunner of modern atheism as some have argued. He seems more comfortably fit into a proud
humanistic tradition–extending from Socrates. He takes a bold Medieval step towards human
centering in ethics by taking moral authority and responsibility away from gods
and their servant. Intentions and reasoning make it our responsibility. Bravo Peter A for your love of reason and
balance along with the worthy Heloise.
Images
A & H : http://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterson/2012/04/sic-et-non-why-the-title.html
and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_philosophy
A Dialogue of a Philosopher With a Jew, and a Christian: http://books.google.com/books/about/A_Dialogue_of_a_Philosopher_With_a_Jew_a.html?id=j6lLgt-bhBAC
Wednesday, May 01, 2013
Ontologists Discuss the God Meme & Its Arguments
By Gary Berg-Cross
The ontolog-forum can be a fun thing to read about semantic topics and our understanding of reality.
It can also generate off-topic discussion thread and a recent one concerned Dennett’s God meme ("an idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture.) as the primary application of memes that seems to interest both Dawkins and Dennett. Memes were already being discussed when someone through in a reference to Giussani's "The Religious Sense"
some reflection of an driving need for truth, goodness, and beauty. Giussani is the founder the lay Catholic ecclesial movement Communion and Liberation (CL), similar to the Neo-Catechumenal Way, Foculare, and Opus Dei. He writes popular books to spread memes, I guess, and in "The Religious Sense" his pushes the idea that values of truth and beauty constitutes the fabric of the religious sense, which is evident in every human being everywhere and in all times. Ontologists on the forum are not shy about taking shabby arguments to task. I thought that
readers of this Blog be interested in here some of the argument and exchange. Polymath John Sowa responded briskly, and tongue in cheek, as it were:
I'm willing to grant that all arguments for the existence of God are unscientific.
But I also believe that all arguments *against* the existence
of God are equally unscientific. It's actually harderto develop
a solid proof that something does *not* exist.
That's why I recommended that any exploration of the "god meme"
should be based on a study of gods such as Zeus, which don't
seem to be tied up with much emotion, either pro or con.
An equally deep
and insightful Pat Hayes added to
the put down with an appeal to the flying spaghetti monster.
The basic scientific argument against the existence of God is that there is
absolutely no observational evidence for the existence of a God, nor any reason to hypothesize such an entity in order to explain anything that is observable. A very straightforward application of Occam's principle then suffices. Of course this is not a *proof*, but it is a sound *scientific* argument. Proofs are irrelevant here. There is no proof that the flying spaghetti monster does not exist, but that does not shake the faith of the true Pastafarian.
Matthew West picked up in the
proof idea to add:
All one can say
scientifically is that the existence of God is a hypothesis that it is unlikely
that we will ever be able to prove or disprove scientifically, because there is
no experiment that we can conduct (or at least I cannot think of any) that
would prove or disprove the hypothesis. (Of course you can always set up God
hypotheses that you can disprove, but they are not generally ones the
"faithful" actually believe in).
As to Pat’s There is no proof that the flying spaghetti monster does not exist, but that does not shake the faith of the true Pastafarian.
Matthew added:
And that is the essence. It is a matter of faith, not science. So any
scientific argument is irrelevant. Irritating though that may be to those
who believe only in science.
Pat disagreed a bit here saying
in this way: one only has a burden to show something that is hypothesized in
order to explain something else. God does not explain anything that cannot be
explained better without using that hypothesis. Every attempt throughout
history to offer an argument for the existence of God (e.g. to explain the
cosmos, to explain life, to explain morality) has turned out to be wrong. Every
one, without exception. I would say that this was pretty convincing argument, myself.
As for experiments, how about the recent empirical tests of the efficacy of prayer? (In sum: it has zero effect.)
Oh brave freethinking people out there.
Images
John Sowa: http://www.jfsowa.com/pubs/
Pat Hayes: http://www.ihmc.us/groups/phayes/
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