by Edd Doerr
"Invasion of the Soul Snatchers" was the title I used three decades ago for articles in The Humanist and the Americans for Religious Liberty journal Voice of Reason. My subject was the incursion into our public schools of evangelical religious operations bent on proselytizing students. The next issue of Free Inquiry (April/May) will have my review, with the same title, of Katherine Stewart's book The Good News Club: The Christian Right's Stealth Assault on America's Chilldren (Prometheus Books, Public Affairs Press, 2012, 291 pp, $25.99).
Stewart's book may well be one of the most important published this year. Since my articles were published nearly 30 years ago the problem has metastisized, largely under the radar, into something truly frightening.
Stewart's book is must reading not only for Humanists but for the overwhelming majority of Americans who are not evangelical fundamentalists. Read my review in the upcoming Free Inquiry.
Monday, March 19, 2012
Sunday, March 18, 2012
Why is there something instead of nothing? Part 1
One of the reasons many people shy away from atheism is the conviction that a creator God is a reasonable explanation, and the only viable explanation, for how the universe came to exist. The commonly held assumption is that nothingness was the initial condition sometime prior to the Big Bang and that nothingness is a condition from which something cannot appear. This perspective underpins deism, although many agnostics and theists also share this perspective and see this need for something to originate from nothing as being the Achilles Heel of atheism. The new book, "A universe from nothing: Why there is something rather than nothing", by Lawrence M. Krauss, disputes this assumption. I will discuss that book in a future blog post. For now, let's take a quick look at another cosmologist's overlapping commentary on this topic.
Sean Carrol of the California Institute of Technology, in his article "Does the Universe Need God?", says this: "Most modern cosmologists are convinced that conventional scientific progress will ultimately result in a self- contained understanding of the origin and evolution of the universe, without the need to invoke God or any other supernatural involvement." Furthermore, citing Hawking, he notes that "nothing in the fact that there is a first moment of time ... necessitates that an external something is required to bring the universe about at that moment." Indeed, "the issue of whether or not there actually is a beginning to time remains open." Instead, the Big Bang may be a "transitional stage in an eternal universe." He also explains that "the multi-verse is not a theory, it is a prediction of a theory", based on combining string theory with inflation. Furthermore, contrary to what theistic critics sometimes assert, a multi-verse complies with the preference for simple explanations because "the simplicity of a theory is a statement about how compactly we can describe the formal structure ..., not how many elements it contains."
Sean Carrol points out that a compelling argument for God "would consist of a demonstration that God provides a better explanation (for whatever reason) than a purely materialistic picture, not an a priori insistence that a purely materialistic picture is unsatisfying." Furthermore, "to refer to this or that event as having some particular cause .... Is just shorthand for what's really going on, namely: things are obeying the laws of physics." Accordingly, "there is no reason ... to think of the existence and persistence and regularity of the universe as things that require external explanation." Furthermore, with theism "we're not simply adding a new element to an existing ontology (like a new field or particle), or even replacing one ontology with a more effective one at a similar level of complexity .... We're adding an entirely new metaphysical category, whose relation to the observable world is unclear." Sean Carrol then notes the discrepancies between the universe we should expect if traditional theisms were true and the universe as it is. God "isn't needed to keep things moving, or to develop the complexity of living creatures, or to account for the existence of the universe." At 14 pages, his article is worth the time investment required to read.
Sean Carrol of the California Institute of Technology, in his article "Does the Universe Need God?", says this: "Most modern cosmologists are convinced that conventional scientific progress will ultimately result in a self- contained understanding of the origin and evolution of the universe, without the need to invoke God or any other supernatural involvement." Furthermore, citing Hawking, he notes that "nothing in the fact that there is a first moment of time ... necessitates that an external something is required to bring the universe about at that moment." Indeed, "the issue of whether or not there actually is a beginning to time remains open." Instead, the Big Bang may be a "transitional stage in an eternal universe." He also explains that "the multi-verse is not a theory, it is a prediction of a theory", based on combining string theory with inflation. Furthermore, contrary to what theistic critics sometimes assert, a multi-verse complies with the preference for simple explanations because "the simplicity of a theory is a statement about how compactly we can describe the formal structure ..., not how many elements it contains."
Sean Carrol points out that a compelling argument for God "would consist of a demonstration that God provides a better explanation (for whatever reason) than a purely materialistic picture, not an a priori insistence that a purely materialistic picture is unsatisfying." Furthermore, "to refer to this or that event as having some particular cause .... Is just shorthand for what's really going on, namely: things are obeying the laws of physics." Accordingly, "there is no reason ... to think of the existence and persistence and regularity of the universe as things that require external explanation." Furthermore, with theism "we're not simply adding a new element to an existing ontology (like a new field or particle), or even replacing one ontology with a more effective one at a similar level of complexity .... We're adding an entirely new metaphysical category, whose relation to the observable world is unclear." Sean Carrol then notes the discrepancies between the universe we should expect if traditional theisms were true and the universe as it is. God "isn't needed to keep things moving, or to develop the complexity of living creatures, or to account for the existence of the universe." At 14 pages, his article is worth the time investment required to read.
Thursday, March 15, 2012
Darwin the Writer
a book review by Edd Doerr
Darwin the Writer, by George Levine. Oxford University Press, 2011, 244 pp., $35.00.
This is not just another book about evolution, but a book about Darwin the man, the writer, the thinker, the scientist. In examining Darwin's classic On the Origin of Species, Levine, a professor of Victorian literature and an expert on the relations between science and literature, takes us on an extended tour through Darwin's head. Not only did Darwin produce the breakthrough and now well established theory of evolution through natural selection over bast expanses of time, but he did so in a book for ordinary readers of such transparency and step-by-step detail that put his ideas across in a way that no paper in a scientific journal could have.
Levine shows how Darwin takes the reader by the hand and walks him or her through Darwin's observations of geological ansd biological complexities during his long trip on the Beagle and subsequent studies of nature. We are shown "how" Darwin sold his new theory to a broad Victorian audience.
Moving on from the bare science of evolution, Levine shows how Darwin influenced such writers as Hardy, Conrad, Dreiser, Kipling, Wilde, Eliot and London.
Darwin the Writer, by George Levine. Oxford University Press, 2011, 244 pp., $35.00.
This is not just another book about evolution, but a book about Darwin the man, the writer, the thinker, the scientist. In examining Darwin's classic On the Origin of Species, Levine, a professor of Victorian literature and an expert on the relations between science and literature, takes us on an extended tour through Darwin's head. Not only did Darwin produce the breakthrough and now well established theory of evolution through natural selection over bast expanses of time, but he did so in a book for ordinary readers of such transparency and step-by-step detail that put his ideas across in a way that no paper in a scientific journal could have.
Levine shows how Darwin takes the reader by the hand and walks him or her through Darwin's observations of geological ansd biological complexities during his long trip on the Beagle and subsequent studies of nature. We are shown "how" Darwin sold his new theory to a broad Victorian audience.
Moving on from the bare science of evolution, Levine shows how Darwin influenced such writers as Hardy, Conrad, Dreiser, Kipling, Wilde, Eliot and London.
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Teenage Rape Victim Commits Suicide After Forced Marriage
By Hos
Deuteronomy 22
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Babalu Aye
by Edd Doerr
Remember Desi ("I Love Lucy") Arnaz singing Babalu Aye years ago? Babalu Aye is a deity in the Afro-Cuban Santeria religion, brought from West Africa's Yoruba culture during the early slave trade years and mixed with elements of Spanish Catholicism. About 80% of Cubans are adherents to Santeria, outnumbering practicing Cuban Catholics by about 8 to 1. Santeria is not uncommon among post-1959 Cuban immigrants to Florida.
Now it is reported that His Arrogance -- sorry, I mean His Holiness -- Pope Benedict XVI will be visiting Cuba March 26-28, and, like his predecessor John Paul II, he has ruled out meeting with Santeria representatives. He probably can't get his head around the idea that a great many Cubans are both Catholics and Santeros. Ah, so much for ecumenism.
Remember Desi ("I Love Lucy") Arnaz singing Babalu Aye years ago? Babalu Aye is a deity in the Afro-Cuban Santeria religion, brought from West Africa's Yoruba culture during the early slave trade years and mixed with elements of Spanish Catholicism. About 80% of Cubans are adherents to Santeria, outnumbering practicing Cuban Catholics by about 8 to 1. Santeria is not uncommon among post-1959 Cuban immigrants to Florida.
Now it is reported that His Arrogance -- sorry, I mean His Holiness -- Pope Benedict XVI will be visiting Cuba March 26-28, and, like his predecessor John Paul II, he has ruled out meeting with Santeria representatives. He probably can't get his head around the idea that a great many Cubans are both Catholics and Santeros. Ah, so much for ecumenism.
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Celebrating Spring in DC & the Reason Rally
By Gary Berg-Cross
It’s March again and after a mild winter the longer daylight hours have sweet sap rising. Bulbs, shoots and buds burst are venturing forth in color along with the witch hazel in my backyard, which still is feeding r
obins. As in 2011 I look forward to the change of seasons and some secular pleasures that DC offers. For sure Saturday, March 17 is St. Patrick's Day. On the 2oth we have the Vernal equinox. Monday, 19 March 2012 at 7P.M.you can celebrate this First Day of Spring (in the Northern Hemisphere) at the Takoma Park Planetarium. As I have said before the Spring equinox is an obvious secular Spring event to. There's a funny write-up by the Onion on “Area Pagan Dreading Big Family Vernal Equinox Celebration”.
obins. As in 2011 I look forward to the change of seasons and some secular pleasures that DC offers. For sure Saturday, March 17 is St. Patrick's Day. On the 2oth we have the Vernal equinox. Monday, 19 March 2012 at 7P.M.you can celebrate this First Day of Spring (in the Northern Hemisphere) at the Takoma Park Planetarium. As I have said before the Spring equinox is an obvious secular Spring event to. There's a funny write-up by the Onion on “Area Pagan Dreading Big Family Vernal Equinox Celebration”.
A few days later w
e have the Reason Rally on March 24th from 10:00AM – 6:00PM on the National Mall. This is expected to be the largest gathering of secular movement in US, if not world history. A great time to be in DC. Washington Area Secular Humanists (WASH) is a sponsor along with:
e have the Reason Rally on March 24th from 10:00AM – 6:00PM on the National Mall. This is expected to be the largest gathering of secular movement in US, if not world history. A great time to be in DC. Washington Area Secular Humanists (WASH) is a sponsor along with:- American Atheists
- American Humanist Association
- Atheist Alliance of America
- Atheist Nexus
- Camp Quest
- Center for Inquiry
- Foundation Beyond Belief
- Freedom From Religion Foundation
- Freethought Society
- Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers
- National Atheist Party
- Secular Coalition for America
- Secular Student Alliance
- Society for Humanistic Judaism
- Stiefel Freethought Foundation
- The Brights
- The James Randi Educational Foundation
- The Richard Dawkins Foundation
- United COR
WASH is looking for volunteers to help at the Reason Rally merchandise table and to usher on the Mall.
While secular people are in town for the Rally those who don’t mind moving indoors can enjoy some of secular treasures such as at the Library of Congress. But there’s an exhibit at the National Archives that is here till May 6th on "Benjamin Franklin: In Search of a Better World" that explores his creative and inspiring 
life from printer, traveler, Founding Father, pioneering scientist, diplomat, humorist, philanthropist, and entrepreneur. The exhibition includes pictures of Franklin I’d never seen before and worth the admission. There are also 20 hands-on interactives, such as games, experiments, demonstrations, animations, and maps.
life from printer, traveler, Founding Father, pioneering scientist, diplomat, humorist, philanthropist, and entrepreneur. The exhibition includes pictures of Franklin I’d never seen before and worth the admission. There are also 20 hands-on interactives, such as games, experiments, demonstrations, animations, and maps.
Another reason it is great to be in DC this Spring.
Oh and yes this year March 31st have the 2012 Earth Hour (8:30pm-9:30 local time). Earth Hour started in 2007 in Sydney Australia when an estimated 2.2 million individuals and more than 2,000 businesses turned their lights off for one hour to take a stand against climate change. It has become an annual global event, organized by the non-profit World Wildlife Fund. In 2008, for example, it became more of a global sustainability movement when over 50 million people who own homes and businesses across 35 countries participated by:
"switch(ing) off their lights and to stop using electrical equipment for one hour in order to raise awareness about the effects of global warming and climate change."
Behind the Prosperity Message of Happy Warriors
By Gary Berg-Cross
It’s great to have a positive attitude, especially if it’s realistically based. But when I consider some well-positioned contemporary figures, such as Bob McDonald and Donald Trump, I get a sense that their bonhomie is more superficial and synthetic than deeply held. Pol Marco Rubio has that happy warrior charm and youthful vigor that makes him seem a popular and attractive figure. His nicknames is McDreamy. But what is behind this projected charm? In part it seems to me part of a conscious tactic to do what Norman Vincent Peale called winning friends and influencing people as part of positive thinking. (Peale published “The Power of Positive Thinking” in 1952). My working hypothesis of the classic, happy attitude and seeming brightness of people like George W. Bush is that it is reflexive strategy implemented as a habit and not necessarily a deep seated trait. As a persona strategy it sometimes combines an ego trip of self-delusion with an ideological certainty of how the world ought to be with an unconscious, habitual need to influence people. This mix can lead to some seemingly paradoxical and awkward behavior when reality and delusional certainty collide.
Willard Mitt Romney seems to be in this mold of an artificially upbeat character. His persona seems to produce moments of false bravado and good, old boy cheer that seemed forced, synthetic and sometimes just weird, "ya'll". His efforts at a common touch strike me and many others as programmed in. Because of this he’s been described as a robotic cheerleader type. Alternately he’s labeled as a Richie Rich (aka Richee Mitt) character that is devoid of “real” emotions. His wealth and privilege seem to prevent him from getting in touch with the common man. He seems ill at ease campaigning in front of various groups around the country. One wonders what world view or vision they reflect. It seems a bit hypocritical as I posted in Becoming what we Hate. Whatever the reason the vision seems to be something that most of us can’t relate to. It produces friendly, global demeanors but at times these seem per-programmed and not quite appropriate to the situation. I posit that these awkward behaviors have roots in both his religious-culture experience, the prosperity gospel, and as a “motivational” corporate leader in late 20th century American. Both exhort believers to be positive, very positive not matter what.
The religious connecti
on apparently started during his over seas Mormon mission work. While there he read Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich on the recommendation of a Mormon church leader in Utah. First published in 1937 and eventually selling 60 million copies, Think and Grow Rich is probably the most widely read book teaching what is called a gospel of positive thinking as a means to financial or business success. In Mitt Romney’s Mormonism Robert M. Bowman Jr. describes Hill’s book as:
on apparently started during his over seas Mormon mission work. While there he read Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich on the recommendation of a Mormon church leader in Utah. First published in 1937 and eventually selling 60 million copies, Think and Grow Rich is probably the most widely read book teaching what is called a gospel of positive thinking as a means to financial or business success. In Mitt Romney’s Mormonism Robert M. Bowman Jr. describes Hill’s book as:
“a thinly veiled version of the New Thought prosperity doctrine, according to which the universe is suffused with “Infinite Intelligence” into which one can tap by thinking and thereby achieve whatever one sets out to do.”
This aspect of a prosperity gospel is well described in Barbara Ehrenreich’s Bright-Sided which explores the “Dark Side of Positive Thinking” in both the religious and corporate world. Ehrenreich, who is beyond wonderful in all her writing, charts the path of the positivity messages such as “When life hands out lemons, squeeze out a smile”. In religion the surprising story is how a positive philosophy has pressed on and partially displaced the older, gloomy message of Calvinism. Its positive message has found a place in religious niches as diverse as Mormon and evangelical mega-churches. There pastors have been celebrities as robed motivational speakers selling a stitched-together faith called “prosperity gospel. Essentially the message of this gospel is that God rewards positive thinking with material riches. God WANTS the faithful to be rich. All that believers have to do is have the right attitude and keep working. It’s a powerful message to blue collar workers. One also sees a message of hope projected by bright aura politicians like Herman Cain, a former motivational speaker. And the positive, prosperity message has a resonance in Corporate American, from which Mitt Romney comes. Enhrereich wrote pitch perfectly about this sunny, guru world of CEOs long before Mitt's 2011-12 campaign. The older Corporate American included pragmatic professionals such as Mitt’s father George, which mixed technical ability, leadership and liberal values. His son Mitt is more of a country club member and celebrity CEO who is proud to say he knows the elite owners of this and that. This connection to the prosperous works in the board room which, aside from the Mormon church, is Romney's natural playing ground. He is probably at home inspiring (or firing) employees. It's a strength and as a motivational speaker he probably expects to pump up an audience of true believers with a few good lines about conservative staples like lower taxes. After all isn’t money - and Mitt has money ranking in the 0.006 percent of Americans - next to godliness? His formula to win people over is a mix of “tribal stories” of hope set in a positive message in which poverty is the fault of the poor for not being better people. Need to stir the emotions? Just a few dog whistles about the “enemy” and evil will do that. Although Rick Santorum seems better than Mitt at that, after all he's brought the devil issue into the campaign. To Rick most things seem to simplify down to a battle of good against evil, which I've blogged on earlier as part of Binary Thinking.
But Mitt expects to win since he is Chosen, and after all he is a proven corporate success with a winning smile. He's a turn around artist that generated wealth for him and his Bain fellows. Turing around the country might just mean acquiring a few governmental things and firing people and, well making a few rich people richer.Perhaps what he is thinking is that what resonates in the Corporate Board room should work as an empowering message to with the mass congregation that is the electorate. Or perhaps the idea is that as a preacher of the positive message he can convert all of us to the prosperity gospel and its implications. It's not clear which it is and when people ask such questions we get what seems disingenuous answers. He seems to not know what answers would be perceived positively by an audience. As a take over artist he has to sell some vision, but as in many take overs, it will all be different when the new management team takes control. They get to dismantle the pieces as a turn around artist.
But converting the populace isn't so easy in an economy that has brought more layoffs and financial turbulence to the middle class. People are skeptical ,as they should be of happy warrior pols whose plans to help seem, upon closer analysis, might be geared to helping the already prosperous. The father, George Romney’s message would probably play better than Mitt's thin veneer of positive thinking. People want to know where’s the beef of these motivational speaker and smiling cobra corporate types. People know that corporate elites have fought for government subsidies, tax benefits and tax havens. And they perhaps wonder if the Richie Rich and famous CEO types are the new emperor who have neither clothing for the masses or beef.
Saturday, March 10, 2012
A Message to His Holiness
by Edd Doerr
New York Times, 3/10/12: "Pope Benedict XVI waded into the American culture wars on Friday, urging visiting American bishops to beef up their teaching about the evils of premarital sex and cohabitation, and denouncing what he called the 'powerful' gay marriage lobby in America. Benedict said there was an urgent need for American Catholics to discover the value of chastity, an essential element of Christian teaching that he said had been subject to unjust 'ridicule'. The pope also told the bishops not to back down in the face of 'powerful political and cultural currents seeking to alter the legal definition of marriage'."
Mr Pontifex Maximus, if I may use the ancient Roman republic appellation that you and your predecessors have arrogantly appropriated, may I suggest that you just butt out. You are out of sync with the majority of US Catholics and with the spirit of the Second Vatican Council called by your greater predecessor John XXIII. You are thumbing your nose at the sound advice articulated by John F. Kennedy, out first Catholic president, in support of the American constitutional principle of separation of church and state. You are out of sync with the great American Catholic jurist William Brennan, who defended the right of unmarried people to use contraception in the US Supreme Court's Baird v Eisenstadt ruling 40 years ago this month and set the stage for the 1973 Roe v Wade abortion rights ruling. You are out of sync with our Catholic Governor O'Malley, who has supported endind the discrimination against same-sex couples. You have more than enough on your plate with the seemingly endless worldwide problem of clergy sexual abuse of minors. You, like the bishops, are treating American Catholics like children and siding with the most reactionary patriarchalist misogynist elements in one of our major parties. You are interfering in our political process.
You are entitled to your opinions, but we Americans of all religious persuasions would prefer that you refrain from behaving like a medieval monarch. We are quite able to do our own moral and political thinking without your gratuitous meddling.
Thank you, and have a nice day.
New York Times, 3/10/12: "Pope Benedict XVI waded into the American culture wars on Friday, urging visiting American bishops to beef up their teaching about the evils of premarital sex and cohabitation, and denouncing what he called the 'powerful' gay marriage lobby in America. Benedict said there was an urgent need for American Catholics to discover the value of chastity, an essential element of Christian teaching that he said had been subject to unjust 'ridicule'. The pope also told the bishops not to back down in the face of 'powerful political and cultural currents seeking to alter the legal definition of marriage'."
Mr Pontifex Maximus, if I may use the ancient Roman republic appellation that you and your predecessors have arrogantly appropriated, may I suggest that you just butt out. You are out of sync with the majority of US Catholics and with the spirit of the Second Vatican Council called by your greater predecessor John XXIII. You are thumbing your nose at the sound advice articulated by John F. Kennedy, out first Catholic president, in support of the American constitutional principle of separation of church and state. You are out of sync with the great American Catholic jurist William Brennan, who defended the right of unmarried people to use contraception in the US Supreme Court's Baird v Eisenstadt ruling 40 years ago this month and set the stage for the 1973 Roe v Wade abortion rights ruling. You are out of sync with our Catholic Governor O'Malley, who has supported endind the discrimination against same-sex couples. You have more than enough on your plate with the seemingly endless worldwide problem of clergy sexual abuse of minors. You, like the bishops, are treating American Catholics like children and siding with the most reactionary patriarchalist misogynist elements in one of our major parties. You are interfering in our political process.
You are entitled to your opinions, but we Americans of all religious persuasions would prefer that you refrain from behaving like a medieval monarch. We are quite able to do our own moral and political thinking without your gratuitous meddling.
Thank you, and have a nice day.
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