Last Friday, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Waxman-Markey cap and trade bill. As a contributor to Repower America, I was invited to be on a conference call the previous Monday afternoon with former Vice President Al Gore. He was incredibly inspirational in his delivery and message. He encouraged everyone to engage in whatever form of grass-roots activism they could. Following that call, I sent an email to my entire address book (about 1,500 people) urging them to call their congressman and demand passage of the bill.

As it turned out, the bill passed by only a razor-thin margin, and faces a very uncertain future in the Senate, because the fossil industry mounted a furious pressure campaign. Phones were running 9-1 against passage. So the congressmen who voted in favor had to buck tremendous political arm-twisting. I also received a fair amount of mail questioning the bill. It was largely based on the overwhelming attitude of Americans that the government should not be setting energy policy, but letting the “private sector work it out.”

Here’s a representative email:

It appears that you are on fire for the environmental cause. You continue to be an articulate and passionate spokesman for what you believe in. You’re certainly not the lukewarm type.

I agree with a number of the points you make. There is one major flaw that leads to other minor flaws in your argument, as I see it; and that is, your expectation that the Federal Government can and should legislate and execute our way to what should be free market solutions to our energy and our environment.

You seem to be ignoring that it’s Big Government Crony Capitalism that is to blame for the oil industry energy monopoly, corruption and the suppression of efficient technologies, such as Nikola Tesla’s, for example. I believe it is naïve to believe that the solution to this can be brought about by more Big Government actions, like this “climate change bill.”

Compared to life before fossil fuels, I don’t see how historians in the future will see mankind’s use of them as “disgraceful.” I struggle to see how using fossil fuels can be compared to slavery or the oppression of women, except that the free market has been abused by the energy monopolists and cronies of the banker-run Federal Government. But, you make no mention of these abuses in you email.

Thanks for including me in your email list on this issue. It’s a very important one for our time and we all have a responsibility in a self-governed society to be properly educated and to help properly educate our elected officials.

Hi _____,

It’s not environmentalism, per se, but sustainability that’s the key. The only reason we’ve been ruining the environment is that we take more from it than we put back. It’s like a bank account.
Prior to the wide use of fossil fuels, human population and food production was severely limited. Once coal, oil, natural gas were discovered, it wildly accelerated progress, living standards, and industry. We have received many benefits. But we have to consider where the fossil fuels came from. They are stored solar energy, having accumulated over 100-200 million years. We’ve burned them about a million times faster than they were formed. We’ve also released carbon stored over millions of years into the atmosphere all at once, leading to CO2 levels more than double as high as they’ve been for all of human history. This is rapidly warming the planet, which will set into motion a number of irreversible processes. As the planet warms, positive feedback ensues:

1. Polar ice reflects the sun much better than the ocean. Once the ice melts, the water absorbs more of the sun’s rays on an ongoing basis, leading to a further increase in warming.
2. Ocean acidification (CO2 mixed with water forms carbonic acid) kills corals which form the basis of the marine food chain. If the marine food chain collapses, it will further reduce the ocean’s ability to absorb carbon (it now absorbs about half what humans produce every year), leading to still more carbon in the atmosphere and further warming.
3. Permafrost melting releases further carbon and methane, which will lead to further warming. It is estimated that 1.5 trillion tons of carbon are locked into the permafrost, an amount double all of the present atmospheric carbon. That figure does not include the methane, a greenhouse gas prevalent in decaying plant matter, and 20 times more potent than CO2 at trapping heat.

If all that runaway positive feedback occurs, it will melt the polar icecaps completely, and the Greenland ice sheet. No one knows precisely where the tipping points are in this system. But what’s important is that we are talking about our very life-support system on this planet. Not because of the animals, other species, nature, etc. It is vitally essential to human life. So it’s not an environmental issue, but a human one. The human race might survive 60 meter (200 foot) sea level rises by mass migrations, but the political order won’t. What new world wars would be in store under such a scenario? Half of humanity lives near coastlines, where expected sea level rises would devastate cities and agriculture. Long before cities were inundated, water tables would fill with brine and exacerbate the suffering of already strapped populations already living in incredibly difficult conditions.

So the comparison to slavery and oppression of women has to do with the old ways of thinking that make people believe it’s OK to live unsustainably, to take these kinds of risks. That it’s OK to benefit now, pay later. Slavery was profiting at the cost of dehumanizing a person’s labor. Oppression of women was dehumanizing women by using them for what men wanted without giving them a chance to be self-realized. Both were short-term strategies that were bound to backfire. Right now, the industrialized world has benefitted tremendously at other people’s expense. We deplete and pollute the world by our tremendous consumption while billions of people live at the subsistence level. Half the world has mighty industry and unbelievably productive mechanized farming, much of which goes toward meat and biofuel production–while billions are dehumanized by performing these same tasks with manual labor just to feed themselves. It’s resource slavery, to coin a phrase. Unlike American slaves, today’s impoverished are not likely to have the resources to become emancipated. That is, unless the world embraces sustainable practices.

Short term thinking is also what brought about the banking crisis you speak of: the failure to “pay as you go.” Nature doesn’t do bailouts. We are in control of the planetary ecosystem now, and we’re running a dangerous experiment with ourselves and our children in the test tube.

Please do not kid yourself that there is any controversy as to whether or not climate change is happening. Take a look at the positions of NASA, the AAAS, the NAS, the British Royal Society, insurance companies, people whose reputations and fortunes are on the line. The earth’s climate is the most extensively studied system in history.

The naysayers are in many cases on the payroll of the fossil energy companies, or contrarians who see an opportunity to gain publicity by being a “climate change skeptic.” But that doesn’t really matter. I’m not a conspiracy theorist. I want to see people look at the facts, independently of their wishes. Unfortunately, the climate change issue will affect everyone, and it will be challenging and difficult to address. So of course people want to deny it. People are grieving the loss of what they perceived as an infinite planet with infinite resources where we could just let the free market sort it out. That day is long past. And after all, denial is the first of the five stages of grief.

The earth has never been infinite. Man was just too insignificant to have much effect. Until he discovered fossil fuels. The atmosphere, like the ocean, is a commons. For example, Los Angeles cleaned up its air, but now receives 25% of its smog from China. We are all connected. Everything each one of us does affects everyone else on the planet. The US has lived in a privileged position for many decades, consuming a disproportionate share of planetary energy and resources. With 5% of the population, we consume 25-30% of the world’s energy and minerals. Long term, that is a prescription for war, instability, and ultimately collapse.

And that’s all before the threat of climate change, which many in the U.S. may perceive as “someone else’s problem.” But we cannot escape the fact that we in the first world have gotten all the benefits of industrialization that other countries now desire. We cannot lead and still remain hypocrites on this issue. If we want China to stop building coal plants, then we have to seriously embrace alternatives like wind and solar. We can do that by agreeing to restrain our carbon output and improving our clean and green technology. That would give us moral authority.

It is the opportunity of the century, and the U.S. should not miss out. If we deny, delay, and waffle, we will be left behind by other countries who see the writing on the wall and are already innovating. And if we act, we can move the world.

This subject can’t be understood quickly or briefly. It took me about 5 years of studying to wrap my head around it. The reason why most people misunderstand energy policy is because it is extremely complicated. Fossil fuels have been encouraged and subsidized to a huge extent by the world’s governments. They’ve been a way of life for so long people can’t envision a world without them. The vast subsidies they receive are in addition to the tremendous blood and treasure expended pursuing Middle East wars. These have only been necessary because of huge U.S. oil imports and the oil intensity of the U.S. economy.

New government policy is needed precisely to reverse decades of bad policy. It’s not a choice between the government and the free market. The government has been neck-deep in the energy market since the beginning, granting dirt cheap oil leases to companies who became fabulously wealthy by drilling a public resource and selling it back to the public. What the government should have done long ago is to establish an oil depletion trust fund, knowing that the supply would eventually run out. US oil production peaked in 1971. Once we realized that, we should have responded accordingly with taxes and fees to encourage conservation and to pay for the inevitable energy transition. We did at first, with the oil intensity (barrels per dollar of GDP) dropping by half between 1973 and 1985. Then, the Reagan administration failed to keep up conservation efforts and allowed U.S. imports to rise dramatically as we began to live off the last orgy of cheap imported oil. Cars got bigger as people switched from compacts to SUVs, which were exempt under CAFE regulations because they were built on truck chassis. That era came to a close last year with $148/barrel oil slamming the international economy into steep decline. We may have been overleveraged, but it was the oil shock that pushed us into insolvency.

Which brings us to where we are today. We are living entirely unsustainably. Meaning that if we wanted to keep our current levels of consumption, we would need 2-3 earths. If everyone lived like Americans, which is where many nations are headed, it would take 12-15 earths. It is something that goes way beyond the petty problems of the bankers. Their swindling ways are just a sideshow compared to the gross warfare that’s being waged on the biosphere. Don’t take my word for it. Please, do your own research.

We should be living in a way that allows humanity to grow and prosper indefinitely–not with the constant fear and anxiety that we will hit the proverbial wall. The train wreck will happen in our lifetime, and our children will be directly and deeply affected. They will not have the opportunities we did, and it will be our fault and the fault of previous generations who contributed to the global inertia we now face.

That is why I am passionate. We must reverse this situation, and that starts with confronting the problem squarely and courageously. It is possible to have growth and sustainability at the same time.

It’s not just fossil fuels, but deforestation and loss of biodiversity that are a major threat. A billion people also now lack adequate clean water, and that number is projected to double in the next 15 years due to deglaciation. Darfur was the first “climate genocide” (it was largely about access to water, not just a murderous Islamic regime) and there will be many more. Global fish stocks have been 75% to 90% depleted. Governments subsidize deep-sea overfishing and they need to stop. If we curtailed fishing right now, it’s conservatively estimated it would take 20-50 years for the marine ecosystem to rebound. And that’s if the coral doesn’t collapse. About 15% of the world’s population eats mostly fish and would die without it. It doesn’t take a genius to understand we can’t continue along this treacherous path.

We will add at least another 2 billion to the world’s population in the next 40 years–if some ecosystem-induced dieoff disaster doesn’t kick in before then. It’s hard to imagine gigadeaths, I know. It’s hard to believe that with all our technology we can’t save these people, many as yet unborn. The mind recoils and immediately enters the safety of denial. But that’s where we’re headed (which is not a matter of opinion, but fact) if something is not done. Most of us have been sleepwalking into this perilous future. Our daily decisions will affect the outcome.

The best solutions are those following the Bright Green model, meaning applying technological innovation to spur growth and transition to sustainability. Putting a price on carbon emissions is the surest way to spur universal economic interest in this vital innovation. It’s the best way to get to win-win, rather than seeing progress vs. the environment as a zero-sum game, or the other false dichotomy of free market vs. government control.

Further Reading:

WWF Living Planet Report (.pdf) 4.3 MB

Hot, Flat, and Crowded by Thomas Friedman

Collapse, by Jared Diamond

Natural Capitalism, Amory Lovins et al

World Changing: A user’s guide to the 21st Century by Alex Steffen et al

Film:

The Home Project

Having said that, there are many circumstances that require us to allow doctors and women to choose a course of action that may cause us revulsion. Modern medical technology allows us to forget that pregnancy and childbirth used to be one of the leading causes of death for women. Sometimes pregnancies don’t go well and the only option is termination.

When we ask a woman to carry a child to propagate our species, we demand of her an heroic act. Her body is quickly comandeered by the fetus to its own purposes. The fetus takes over control of hormone levels, and immediately gets priority on all nutrient intake and bodily systems. The mother gains 30-40% of her body weight, becomes swollen, stretched, and finally torn in the most intimate places to produce a new person who then takes over her life for the next two decades and more.

This is a profound burden we men take for granted.

Conservative foes of late-term abortions consider that medical reasons are often trumped up. But I ask, who can stand between a woman and her doctor? Who else is qualified to decide if something is “medically necessary?” Even if the pregnancy is terminated for psychological or stress-related reasons, depression and stress can kill.

Then there is the matter of 13 or 14-year-old girls who may have been home-schooled or given “abstinence-only” sex education. Having been taught that human sexuality is shameful, that humans are doomed to sin from the start, they are desperately afraid to discuss their pregnancy with their parents. These girls are in a double-bind. They are instinctively sexual beings at that age, but not in any way, shape, or form ready to be mothers. But because of the repressive, judgmental and uncompassionate nature of their families and communities, there they sit with a “shameful” 5 or 6 month pregnancy.

Enter doctors like George Tiller.

It’s amazing how fast parents can change their tune when their own daughters get pregnant. I watched in disbelief as my fanatically “pro-life” mother (Famous quote: “Abortion is first-degree murder of God”)  insisted that my teenage sister have an abortion. George Tiller endured horrific harassment and abuse, and ultimately gave his life to be sure even such hypocrites and repressors had a place to send their daughters when they got into trouble.

It is the Christians who perpetuate the entire dilemma. Why, oh why do they prevent young girls from getting the information and contraception they need? Why do they ignore the results from dozens of countries all over the world who have solved this problem?

Abortion will remain legal in this country, of that we can be assured. No one wants to go back to the dark days of the back alley, not even the evangelicals. Because they know their own daughters will be the ones dying of infection in those butcher shops. But what good will modern clinics do if doctors fear for their lives? Are we really going to allow vigilantism to carry this day?

What about a compassionate approach from all sides? Christians and atheists can all agree we want to reduce the number of abortions, especially of the late-term variety. So let’s come together to endorse mandatory sex-education and pregnancy-reduction programs for teens. Let’s encourage discussion and minimize the despicable shaming of normal human sexual development. Let’s promote, even demand, swift and cheap abortions in the first trimester to minimize fetal suffering.

And finally, let’s hold the “pro-life” groups and their supporters such as Bill O’Reilly accountable for their hate speech that has now led to a tragic murder.

Continued from Part 2

From campaign speeches to tent revivals to late-night talk radio, countless orators throughout human history have influenced, cajoled, inspired, and galvanized the masses. Though Marc Antony’s famous speech upon the occasion of Julius Caesars’ murder is from Shakespeare, we can imagine just such an oratory accomplishing its desired effect. Words well-spoken or carelessly tossed off in a business environment have launched or destroyed many a career. 

When the Jesus character said “By thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned,” (Matt 12:37 KJV) he was citing a well-established principle of human interaction. Awareness of the power of words is universal. Loose lips sink ships. Insulting a person’s family will almost certainly get them to attack you. Failing to follow spoken protocol upon meeting someone will brand you a boor, simpleton, or worse.

Words have profound power. The premise of the Science of the Spoken Word, however, is that words have supernatural power. And that’s what makes it a pseudo-science.

Premise: Try it for yourself. Be open minded.

p. xvii of the introduction employs the classic new-age gambit, the appeal to be open-minded:

If you are open-minded, honest, and impartial, willing to experiment with the science of invocation as a hypothesis of cosmic law, then enter the laboratory of the Spirit and follow the instructions of the masters. For only by so doing will you ever prove to your own satisfaction that decrees do work. Truly you will never know until you try.

This is naked intellectual fraud with a barbed fishhook. The scammer has to get the mark to do the emotional heavy lifting. The mark has to be made to feel as if the con was actually their own idea. The best way to accomplish this is to appeal to a person’s sense of fair play: “See for yourself.” “Don’t take my word for it–test it out.”

With its appropriation of scientific terminology, this is a particularly pernicious sell. It relies on equivocation to redefine the word “laboratory” as including interior subjective constructs. It counts on the known cognitive illusion of confirmation bias. The reward for “success” is a heightened sense of power over the world. What person, feeling disempowered, could remain objective when the prize is the magical ability to change matter and circumstance to one’s favor by simply speaking out loud?

Rational people only need be shown a lack of evidence or false presupposition and the house of cards collapses. But the irrational and superstitious put the cart before the horse. All such successful cons rely on the desires of the mark for a quick fix or easy money. The mark wants the power, and they have told themselves they must believe (”Think positively”) or it won’t work. So of course, they believe.

This is the diametric opposite of the scientific method. I’ve discsussed this common tactic of apologetics as “proof-burden shifting.” But that’s even too charitable. It assumes the New-Age apologist is interested in proof. In actuality, people susceptible to this con have already drawn their conclusions. They’ve dismissed the rigors of science as “too limiting.” But they still try to dress up their unconstrained desires in the garb of scientific respectability.

Premise: Praying out loud is superior to wishing, willing, or silent prayer. The more rapid or intense the prayer, the more likely, effective, and swift the result.

pp. xxiii-xxiv 

The decree is the most powerful of all applications to the Godhead…Fiats are always exclamations of Christ-power, Christ-wisdom, and Christ-love consciously affirmed and accepted in the here and now…Affirmations are used alternately with denials of the reality of evil in all of its forms…The Call…to speak in a loud or distinct voice so as to be heard at a distance; to announce or read loudly or authoritatively…”The call compels the answer.”

The human motivational system developed in pre-history primarily to reinforce good nourishment, reproductive success, and status within small social groups. The hierarchical nature of those groups dictated that only a few people would dominate, along with their family and favored friends. The inescapable lot of most people would be to remain at others’ mercy, out of power, blocked from access to the most desirable mates, lower in the pecking order. People lacking coping skills or the desire to attain them began to seek out ways to compensate. One of these was the development of talismans, spells and ritualistic magic of all types. People out of power could pretend to do something about it to make up for their feelings of inadequacy and shame.

Non-physical intervention became a way of throwing their “mojo” at powerful forces, whether natural or political. Tribes developed rain dances and human sacrifices to please weather or volcano gods. People who were sick or dying could call the witch doctor or court magician to utter some spells to cast out “evil spirits” which might trigger the placebo effect to help them recover, or simply make them feel special as they slipped away. Even kings were not immune: if the battle was going badly, they would call the priest to utter a fervent prayer for the defeat of the enemy (while the enemy generals did the same).

Against the backdrop of unspeakable suffering or desperation, only hope remains. Hope against hope for relief–from whatever source. If that doesn’t work, wish for it. If wishing doesn’t work, then wish harder. If that doesn’t work, pray. If that doesn’t work, cast a spell. If nothing works, pray out loud. If that still doesn’t work, shout louder or longer. Eventually it has to work. “The call compels the answer!”

The Jesus character was facing betrayal and certain death: “And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground.” (Luke 22:44 KJV) It is this very same impulse of desperation which gave us the “Science of the Spoken Word” and the “Law of Attraction.” I’d call it the “anything but doing something” school of conduct. When do people most commonly pray? When they are too powerless or afraid to take concrete action. Rather than reassess their goals, strategies, or take a lesson from past failure, they press on along their failed course of action, (or no course of action), and turn the outcome over to “God” or “the universe.”

But are they really doing anything other than hoping, wishing or begging? Why didn’t the Jesus character just have a frank conversation with Peter and Judas about their lack of loyalty? Knowing he was going to be tortured to death, instead of saving himself, he sat and prayed. His pathetic excuse as to why the prayer wasn’t going to work? He didn’t want it to. It was pre-ordained “that the scriptures be fulfilled.” How convenient for his martyrdom. Likewise for modern believers, fatalistic acceptance of the “Will of God” sets the stage for their personal abdication. Whether at a whisper or shout, prayer is a useless relic of the pre-modern childhood of humanity. It can best be described as “desperate longing out loud.”

Premise: Supernatural beings are compelled by God or “cosmic law” to obey the commands of mortal Earthlings.

 p.3

Understand, then, that this earth is intended to be governed by the souls of light. Therefore, souls of light, I speak to you this night. Take your place in government and stand for truth and stand for freedom. –’Saint Germain’

The dominionist fantasies of the Ascended Masters were continually expressed through the line of so-called messengers. From the I AM activity in the 1930s, through the Summit Lighthouse and its offshoots, this thread ran strong. The “lightbearers” were supposed to rule the Earth. Problem was, the undemocratic extremism of these groups permanently locked them out of politics. Such disenfranchised extremists have only two options left, prayer or violence. Since the masters groups were non-violent by nature, they prayed.

‘Saint Germain’ projected the illusion of divine control. He always had something to say about every political crisis. And it usually centered around the plots and ploys of the “fallen ones” and “power elites” for world domination. His pronouncements of conspiracies would make Alex Jones blush. But none of it mattered. Crises came and went, and nowhere was there ever any sign of divine intervention. The weak rejoinder of believers to every debacle on the world stage was always “but for our prayers, it could have been worse.”

On September 11, 2001, the prayers of jihadists did make it worse. 

Once the terrorist-infested planes took off from Boston, Newark and Washington, the element of surprise made saving three out of the four targets impossible. We didn’t understand the nature of the threat until it was way too late. Knowledge of the plot and the actions of brave citizens aboard Flight 93 saved the fourth target (the U.S. Capitol) from destruction.

So how could we respond to the national humiliation of watching our wives, husbands and children being turned into human projectiles aboard improvised Islamic weapons of mass destruction? We imagine a superhero who could swat down the planes, douse the flames at the World Trade Center, protect the Pentagon. The brave firefighters didn’t stand a chance. They were ineffectual as they stoically marched up stairwells to their deaths but their sacrifices still made them the salient heroes of the day.

The jihadists were far smarter than somnambulant New-Agers. They took decisive action and “answered” their own prayers by paying with their Allah-cheapened lives. In the face of that kind of religion-inspired mass murder, it would be hard for anyone not to wish for some larger benevolent force–some super-firefighter to come to the rescue. In an article I wrote about 9/11, I dreamed about being just such a superhero:

I want to push rewind. I have recurring dreams where I reach up with giant hands to swat those murderous planes. Then I grab them carefully and pull them out of the sky, realizing that they too contain innocents. I board those planes and knock out the terrorists. I wield giant fire hoses to quench the flames. I fly a helicopter to rescue those standing in the windows. I prop up the towers until they can be repaired. I catch those who jumped to their deaths. Please, let me wake from this nightmare. But when awake, and powerless, I feel small.

My own desperate coping mechanism relied on my fantasy of having sufficient power to stop the attack and save lives. But believers are too ostensibly humble to fantasize about being superheroes. They rely on the assumption that a higher power is listening. Someone bigger than them, like Archangel Michael, with the power to do something on their behalf. As I discussed above, prayer has always been about human power or lack thereof. The power of God is the ultimate trump card. This conceit has been skewered in numerous comedies. Still, people take it very seriously. Telling someone no one listens to their prayers would be considered “cruel” in most circles, even in the 21st century. It’s tantamount to telling them to give up hope.

But let’s be real. Given the size and scope of deities, what makes us think that they would intervene on our behalf? We’re insignificant to such beings. It’s not enough that they would have to listen to the prayers of billions on Earth, but there would be quintillions more sentient beings on billions more inhabited worlds each presumably with the authority to command galaxy-sized gods into action.

Like Jim Carrey trying to sort through thousands of Post-It notes in Bruce Almighty, it just strains every fiber of credibility.

Further, if cosmic beings existed, they would be wise. And being wise, they would be bound by a cosmic prime-directive: non-interference in the affairs of mortals.

In the “Science of the Spoken Word,” this distinction is made, cosmic beings cannot intervene unless they are asked. Hence the supposed importance of prayers and decrees. But the cosmic beings are also supposed to act according to “God’s will,” of which they should theoretically have a far better understanding than us mortals. Still, we are told, it is up to us to order them into action, always asking that the prayer be “adjusted in accordance with God’s will.”

What about the other case, where people give imprecatory prayers–for death to their enemies–and fail to ask for “adjustment according to God’s will.” Are we to assume that wise cosmic beings would participate in puny human feuds?

That makes even less sense.

So we see prayer is incompatible with the evolutionary conflicts of human free will. And if compatible with God’s will, it is still wholly redundant.

From AP:

“In a sense, petitioners’ and the attorney general’s complaint is that it is just too easy to amend the California Constitution through the initiative process. But it is not a proper function of this court to curtail that process; we are constitutionally bound to uphold it,” the ruling said.

The justices said the 136-page majority ruling does not speak to whether they agree with Proposition 8 or “believe it should be a part of the California Constitution.”

They said they were “limited to interpreting and applying the principles and rules embodied in the California Constitution, setting aside our own personal beliefs and values.”

In other words, the justices, as they already ruled, think the outcome is a travesty. But they are going to do their jobs, act professionally and leave it to the people to ultimately fix this. And make no mistake, the people will do the right thing. As I’ve mentioned previously, a statistical analysis of trends of declining religiosity predicts California will allow gay marriage by 2010. And it looks like this decision puts that analysis right on target. No question there will be a new initiative, and the people of the Golden State will have the opportunity to undo the damage done to our reputation as a national trendsetter in social and environmental matters.

The religious right should savor this moment, because it is one of their last hollow triumphs to keep marriage on their own narrow-minded terms. They will not turn back the tide. The Supreme Court basically held their noses and did their duty today. Now it’s time for the people of California to do theirs.

The Singularity is a concept first discussed by Vernor Vinge in the 1980s. Later, Ray Kurzweil became one of its chief proponents, culminating in his 2005 book The Singularity is Near. Briefly, it concerns the exponential and double-exponential growth of technology in three areas: information, genetics, and robotics. Extrapolating these accelerating trends out to 2045, we reach a point beyond which is impossible to determine or extrapolate human events. Hence “singularity,” a word chosen because of its use to describe the gravitational singularity, the point at which the traditional laws of physics break down near a black hole. It’s a point which has theoretically infinite mass concentrated in a space of infinitely small dimension. Surrounding the theoretical black hole is an event horizon beyond which it’s impossible for information to pass.

Kurzweil has two films coming out this year, which should finally make the Singularity a household word:

Transcendent Man

 

The Singularity is Near website, no trailer yet.

The very idea of the Singularity scares the hell out of some people. So much so that rational discussion of its potentiality has become all but impossible in many circles. There, it’s gone beyond fear to overt hostility. Two camps seem to be most offended by the concept: the first is a scientific and political establishment accustomed to thinking in the “linear-intuitive” model of discovery, the second is a sort of misanthropic “hubris police,” finger-wagging at past human technological missteps and warning of the inevitable future disasters.  So what we from these two groups is a raft of scorn and mockery directed against Singularity caricatures and straw men.

In human terms, the Singularity holds the promise of radical life extension and expansion, and a growing hybridization of humans and machines. Some of what might be possible would be full-immersion virtual reality indistinguishable from first-person experience, the gradual uploading of human consciousness into artificial (machine) substrates, and the elimination of disease and postponement of death (through constant repair of biological breakdown). In addition, brains and machines would be able to communicate quickly and deeply, connecting everyone together into a giant and far more complex version of the internet. For some people, this sounds like heaven. To others, it sounds like the end of the human race and a techno-hell.

Feelings run very high on both sides of the debate. Long before Kurzweil or Vinge, mythology acquainted us with the most enduring meme in all fiction, the folly of human technological hubris. From Icarus, to Gilgamesh, to the Garden of Eden, the Tower of Babel, and the Frankenstein series, it seems humans have long resisted the idea of anyone becoming too powerful, learning too much about what makes us tick, or messing with or redefining what it means to be human. Cries of “playing God” immediately erupt, as the specter of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice or the Terminator are invoked. This despite the fact that the Singularity holds the promise to permanently defeat the most intractable of all enemies–ignorance–and potentially death itself. Instead of being enthused by this promise, and holding what I would consider to be a healthy sense of anticipation or curiosity about how it might occur, many people become either enraged or paralyzed with fear by the prospect. Then they curl their lip and snarl at the mere mention of the name Kurzweil or the word Singularity. In defiance of all reason, they spew the most vitriolic forms of ridicule. Why?

Atheists and scientists are supposed to be more objective than others. Clearly they aren’t always. It’s just that when scientists get it wrong, it’s more shocking than when the rest of us do. An example of the juxtaposition of brilliance and blindness would be Nobel Prize winner Kary Mullis, whose brilliance in discovering the polymerase chain reaction has been eclipsed by his blindness in denying the climate crisis, and famously claiming to have seen a glowing racoon. So it does happen, even to scientists. We are all fallible.

And the journalists get it even more wrong. John Horgan has written a series of articles and books denouncing the idea of accelerating technological progress–instead claiming we are seeing a law of diminishing returns (!). Horgan’s most famous book is called The End of Science. Most recently he mocked Kurzweil in an article called Science Cult in Newsweek.

P.Z. Myers, proprietor of the famous Pharyngula blog, is both an atheist and a scientist. He was quoted in yet another hatchet-job Newsweek article by Daniel Lyons called I, Robot, and he’s gotten himself all worked up about Kurzweil, with a series of derogatory posts over the past several months. Among other things, Lyons accuses Kurzweil of being too sure of himself, or “speaking in a monotone.” Wow. Straight-up unabashed ad hominem attack–get ready for demagoguery. It’s the easiest content-free way to slam someone. They’re “boring,” they’re overconfident–the surest bullshit alert I know. But then he lays out the “terrifying” future according to Kurzweil. Which is it? Terrifying or wrong? If he’s a kook, what’s there to worry about? This is the secret horror of Kurzweil’s detractors–they’re afraid he might be right, and they want to shoot the messenger with a volley of sarcasm. 

Listen closely, though, and you may be slightly terrified. Kurzweil believes computer intelligence is advancing so rapidly that in a couple of decades, machines will be as intelligent as humans. Soon after that they will surpass humans and start creating even smarter technology. By the middle of this century, the only way for us to keep up will be to merge with the machines so that their superior intelligence can boost our weak little brains and beef up our pitiful, illness-prone bodies. Some of Kurzweil’s fellow futurists believe these superhuman computers will want nothing to do with us—that we will become either their pets or, worse yet, their food. Always an optimist, Kurzweil takes a more upbeat view. He swears these superhuman computers will love us, and honor us, since we’ll be their ancestors. He also thinks we’ll be able to embed our consciousness into silicon, which means we can live on, inside machines, forever and ever, amen.

And this from Myers: 

…this techno-mystical crap is just kookery, plain and simple, and the rationale is disgracefully bad. One thing I will say for Kurzweil, though, is that he seems to be a first-rate bullshit artist. 

It seems to me that the correct approach would be to offer some kind of competing but dispassionate analysis, which Myers sort of does, but then reverts to the smear tactics:

I think we will develop amazing new technologies, and they will affect human evolution, but it will be nothing like what Kurzweil imagines. We have already experienced a ’singularity’ — the combination of agriculture, urbanization, and literacy transformed our species, but did not result in a speciation event, nor did it have quite the abrupt change an Iron Age Kurzweil might have predicted. Probably the most radical evolutionary changes would be found in our immune systems as we adapted to new diets and pathogens, but people are still people, and we can find cultures living a neolithic life style and an information age lifestyle, and they can still communicate and even interbreed. Maybe this information age will have as dramatic and as important an effect on humanity as the invention of writing, but even if it does, don’t expect a nerd rapture to come of it. Just more cool stuff, and a bigger, shinier, fancier playground for humanity to gambol about in.

This is more or less what Kurzweil is claiming! It’s the detractors who have applied the label “nerd rapture.” They want to make the Singluarity appear as outlandish and ridiculous as possible–an easy target which they then knock down. But Kurzweil is well aware that he has taken a great deal of dramatic license, which it seems deliberately and speculatively embellishes some of the potentials of the technology which will affect us all. That’s what makes Kurzweil so interesting and readable. 

I fail to see what is so offensive about this kind of futurism. Everyone understands how quaint it can seem in retrospect: “They promised us Jetpacks and we got Blogs” is a typical rejoinder. So Kurzweil is almost certainly wrong about the details of the Singularity. So what? What he’s dead right about is the incredible pace of change in the short-term. Compounding that change in an exponential manner will lead to disruptive technologies and a radical shift in the direction of governments, companies and humanity itself. Who cares about the details? At the very least, people planning on 30-year timeframes need to prepare themselves for some serious discontinuities. Kurzweil’s speculation and extrapolation helps people do just that.

Here’s an undeniable, if mundane, example of just a small slice on the way to the Singularity: I just got an iPhone, which is a revolutionary device the size of a pack of cigarettes which gives me the computing power of a high-end desktop workstation (600 MHz processor) from 1999. Its 8 GB of RAM is greater than the average hard drive of 10 years ago. In addition, its battery and wireless capability actually gives me more utility than if I was to walk around with that ancient desktop strapped to my back, which had no ability to connect while unplugged.  The old workstation would have also needed several car batteries to operate and a heavy CRT display.

Ten years from now, a similar device will fit in a thimble-sized package–which will do me no good whatsoever if I don’t have some kind of bio-available audio and visual interface. Initially this might be VR goggles. Sometime late in the next decade, early adopters will have the opportunity to have surgery to implant such a device into their body. It will derive its electric power from the breakdown of sugars in the bloodstream, and offer audio and visual connections either to the retina and ear canal or through direct neural interface to the brain, as well as a full suite of medical monitoring and diagnostics (which will call paramedics automatically if it detects a life-threatening condition). For some people, the implant could be paired with drug delivery pumps, and also control the dispensing of insulin or antidepressants. Vast numbers of people will jump at the chance to be connected in this way. That’s 2019, and it just gets more interesting after that. Ten years later in 2029 such computing power will shrink to the size of a blood cell. You figure out the implications. It doesn’t take Kurzweil to spell it out.

Yet P.Z. Myers still thinks it’s appropriate to label Kurzweil a kook for stating the obvious. I just don’t get it.

Perhaps it’s because Kurzweil speaks with the confidence of someone used to aiming at and hitting higher targets. “If you want to go to the moon,” the old saying says, “shoot for the stars.” Kurzweil has always shot for the stars, and it’s given the world OCR, text-to-speech, speech-to-text and ultra-realistic electronic musical instruments. His latest innovation is a camera for use by the blind to read text and identify objects in their environment. Hardly the works of a kook.

What’s gotten P.Z.’s goat, among other things, is Kurzweil’s expressed desire to live forever, and create a functional facsimile of his dead father’s mind. But I don’t see how either of those goals are bad in any way. Audacious, perhaps. But I would jump at the chance to be able to interact with an artificial mind-clone of my dead parents. Who wouldn’t? I’d also gladly take an extra 50 or 100 years of life–if not immortality.

There’s something about the dreamer that’s always infuriated the pragmatists. But in this case it goes deeper than that. It’s a herd mentality that seeks to punish anyone who would dare propose a plausible escape from the human condition. It’s like the inmates dragging back the guy climbing the prison-camp walls. Kurzweil correctly points out that we already have essentially escaped many artificial limits. At 45, for example, I’m far past the life-expectancy of 150 years ago, which was 37 years. Most of us will live double that and more. Yet Singularity detractors literally freak out when Kurzweil says we might double lifespans yet again in the next 30-40 years.

The idea of mind-enhancement also seems to offend many, primarily dogmatic egalitarians. All they see is potential for increased dominance of the many by the few. Politics aside, we have already enhanced our minds, and it’s been empowering and democratizing. Those of us with a web connection realize we don’t have to remember facts as well as we used to. We just look them up. Once that “universal communication implant” (just an improved miniature cell phone)  is in place, arguably a certainty for most humans within 20 years, we will be as functionally different from year 2000 homo sapiens as they were from Neanderthals. Sorry, P.Z., it’s true.

Effectively, every human will have instant access to all the world’s knowledge. It doesn’t mean our brains will have been completely rewired, but it does mean they will have rewired somewhat to function entirely differently in a manner to take advantage of the “always on” web connection and co-location capability. It will become a sixth sense and more. Surrogates (telerobots) will give us arms and legs in far away places–even the surface of the Moon or Mars or whereever we can send a robotic probe. (Cue the Hollywood blockbuster already being produced about this ‘nightmare.’) You’d be crazy to pretend these real-world developments won’t have implications far beyond the narrow field of computer science. They will impact every detail of life–from business, to warfare, to food and energy prodution, to the fabric of social interaction. Hence the concept of the Singularity–the inability to predict events beyond a time of such vast and momentous change.

The naysayers will always be with us. But I’m ashamed that supposed “rationalists” are among them. P.Z. Myers should be more enlightened than to feel justfied in recklessly bashing a fellow scientist. We can see it’s not just the fundies we have to worry about. We all need enlightenment. We all need to become more objective, and I include myself in that category. Seeing the ignorant response of people like Myers gives me still another reason to hope for the universal increase in knowledge and clear thinking the Singularity will bring.

Expedition 19 Commander Gennady Padalka and Flight Engineers Mike Barratt and Koichi Wakata celebrated the decision with a toast in the Destiny laboratory.

“This has been the stuff of science fiction. Everybody’s talked about recycling water in a closed loop system, but nobody’s ever done it before. Here we are today with the first round of recycled water,” said Barratt. “We’re really happy for this day and for the team that put this together. This is the kind of technology that will get us to the moon and further.”

“This is an important milestone in the development of the space station,” said Kirk Shireman, International Space Station deputy program manager at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. “This system will reduce the amount of water we must launch to the station once the shuttle retires and also test out a key technology required for sending humans on long duration missions to the moon and Mars.”

Space shuttle Endeavour’s STS-126 mission delivered the Water Recovery System to the station in November 2008. Mission Specialist Don Pettit and Expedition 18 Commander Mike Fincke installed the equipment before Endeavour’s departure. The system has been processing urine into purified water since shuttle Discovery’s STS-119 crew delivered and installed a replacement Urine Processing Assembly in March. The system is tied into the station’s Waste and Hygiene Compartment toilet and recovers and recycles moisture from the station’s atmosphere.

The crews of STS-126, Expedition 18 and STS-119 returned samples of the recycled water to Earth. A total of 5.28 gallons (20 liters) of recycled water were tested for purity at the Water and Microbiology Laboratories at Johnson. A special Space Station Program Control Board meeting on April 27 reviewed the analysis, which showed contaminants were well below established limits, and concurred that the water is safe and healthy to drink. Mission managers elected to postpone consumption until a sticky check valve in the Urine Processing Assembly was removed May 18.

If purified urine is good enough for the astronauts, then it’s good enough for the rest of us. As climate induced droughts worsen, we’ll have to get used to recycling our water right here on Earth. Water in whatever form is becoming far too precious to use just once.

[Check out Bob Donaldson's excellent previous article on the subject.]

It used to be that the most rancorous online debate was reserved for questions about religion, especially how and what to teach children about their origins. But today as the climate crisis deepens and world leaders begin to act, policies are beginning to shift as they inevitably must. The energy transition is well underway, and the pyromaniac neanderthals are furious. Their lies, disinformation and just plain mean-spirited carping about energy questions have no equal.

They know that the world will eventually stop burning carbon. This inevitable shift will be of a magnitude not seen since the  industrial revolution. It will affect every area of human life and will ultimately save humanity tens of trillions of dollars. It will improve our quality of life dramatically. It will potentially cost some lesser number of trillions to make the shift. We have backed ourselves into a tight fossil-fueled corner. The winners in the transition will be newly industrializing countries, inventors of new energy technology, and consumers. First-world economies also stand to benefit enormously, with the creation of millions of non-exportable jobs actually manufacturing energy locally, instead of simply moving it from underground to above and/or shipping it across oceans.

But there will be huge losses for an establishment who, for generations, have been used to digging dollars out of the earth. And their sheeplike consuming colluders, who only care about direct out-of-pocket costs and short-term “git ‘er done.” Their chief goal seems to be to throw out as much bluster as they can, to scare the public as much as possible, to undermine and water down President Obama’s initiatives, and to prevent change. They paint a picture of renewable energy as something that’s ’socialist,’ expensive, doesn’t work and will leave us not only bankrupt but shivering in the dark. And now, they’ve been exposed over at World Changing as using “denial-bots” to post climate-denialist comment spam. Shameful, but far from surprising. The carbon clan is fighting for its life. It has a death-grip on the world and doesn’t want to let go. Well I’m here to stamp on its bony fingers and watch it fall to its death.

As I’ll show in this article, the carbon clan’s positions are a self-serving, status-quo justifying, fossil-fuel-pollution-apologizing crock of coal-ash-slurry. And that’s putting it very politely. Every day of inaction not only poses potential existential risks to humanity in terms of greenhouse gas production, but imposes other direct social costs far into the future.

Lie #1 “Electricity from wind and solar costs 10 times as much as from coal.”

Source: David Frum on Bill Maher, April 3, 2009.

Truth: Wind has approximately 50% higher capital cost per megawatt as coal or natural gas, but this ignores the fact that it requires no fuel for the life of the turbine (20-40 years). Wind is marginally cheaper than nuclear and has no waste disposal problem. Total global energy usage is 16 TW. The global wind resource has been estimated at 72 TW.

Source: US Energy Information Administration

Lie #2 “New mileage standards will add $1,300 to the cost of an automobile.”

Source: Drudge Report (in red letters) linking to a Yahoo news article.

Truth: Is that the best the conservamorons can do? Automakers have been using this ploy for years, most famously in 1977 to oppose air-bags when they claimed it would add $300 ($1,054 in current dollars). While it’s possible that certain improvements in efficiency temporarily add costs to a vehicle, this differential nearly always narrows with time and competition. Manufacturers find better and cheaper ways of doing things, especially when the changes ripple through the global supply chain and change approaches and methods. The statement is also misleading, because it counts only upfront capital cost, but not the accompanying energy savings, which the same article states will offset the difference in 3 years. This kind of deliberatlely sloppy analysis also ignores the artificially low price of carbon-based fuel, which cost (pollution, future climate mitigation) is borne by the taxpayers. Oddly, this time the automakers stood with the President to support the current standards. Yet the neanderthal testosterone-monkeys are still whining: “No personal monster trucks *snif* it’s socialism, dammit, they’re not making the (oversized and inefficient) cars people want to buy *whinge*.”

Lie #3 “Hybrid cars don’t make a profit for their manufacturers, their batteries wear out, and are polluting, they’re noisy and horrible to drive, and they only make sense for rich, smug eco-nuts who have more money than brains.”

Source: Various hybrid naysayer articles over the years, topped by Jeremy Clarkson’s May 17, 2009 vicious Honda Insight review in the UK Times, one of the meanest, sloppiest and most sarcastic screeds ever written about an automobile. No joke, it’s worth reading just for train-wreck entertainment value. What a horrid little self-important gasbag Clarkson is!

Truth: Lifecycle analysis of hybrid cars shows that they produce only about half the CO2 of conventional cars of the same size. This study was done back in 2001, so I’m confident things have improved since then. The repeating of this lie by detractors is anything but an accident. Hybrid cars continue to grow in popularity, even proving their robustness in San Francisco’s taxi fleet, where rules required the retirement of Ford Escape Hybrids which were still going strong at 300,000 miles. Toyota has sold well over a million of its hybrids, even in a world of mostly cheap oil. Clarkson’s savaging of the hybrid CVT (continuously variable transmission) is just another example of how people would rather keep their conventional auto esthetic at any cost to the planet. I had a similar reaction when driving my Prius for the first time. I was on the freeway and had the distinct sense that the car was as gutless as an old Ford Pinto. That is–until I looked down and saw that I had accelerated to over 80 mph! Problem is, CVTs make it sound as if the engine is in overdrive without accelerating. But the car accelerates by keeping constant engine rpms and changing the gear ratio. A brilliant piece of engineering that saves a ton of fuel. And the Prius has a respectable 0-60 time of 10 seconds. Not a sports car, but not gutless by any stretch. I can break the front tires loose from a dead stop. And the car is still going strong with 55,000 miles, and a lifetime average fuel economy of about 46 mpg. Prediction: Non-hybrid internal combustion engine cars will be reduced to an antique auto-show curiosity by 2020. Get used to it.

Lie #4 “There’s one question that is the test of seriousness on this [alternative energy] issue, and that is nuclear power, yes or no.”

Source: David Frum on Bill Maher, April 3, 2009

Truth: Nuclear power is the most expensive method of electricity production ever devised by humans. And this is without even taking into account the non-existent waste disposal methods. Billed in the 1950’s a miraculous electricity solution that would be “too cheap to meter,” nuclear power has been reduced to a niche player everywhere but France. Nuclear electricity generation contributes about 15% of the global total, with coal plants producing about 41%. So to replace just the existing coal plants (not to mention the one new coal plant per week China is building) would require building triple the existing number of nuclear reactors. That’s a “when pigs fly” kind of goal. Only 4 steel companies in the world can produce reactor vessels, so it would seem a tall order even if it were economic. Frum must know this, and is therefore lying through his teeth. Jon Wellinghoff, head of the US Federal Electrical Regulatory Commission stated in the above linked Bloomberg article that the US has enough wind and solar resources to meet all its needs and “may never need another coal or nuclear plant.”

That’s all the debunking I can stomach for today. On a side note, I’m anxiously awaiting the delivery of my first test unit of a 3000K dimmable LED PAR30 halogen replacement bulb. It’s 500 lumens of precision spot lighting at 14 watts or 1/5 the electricity of a halogen. Expensive? Right now at $89, horribly so. But these will come down in a few years to $10 or less. They’re silicon, for crying out loud, the second most abundant element on earth. So no mercury disposal problem (as with CFLs). Replacing all our bulbs with these solid-state beauties could allow us to close dozens of coal-fired plants. Let’s get started!

Here’s the actual Sykes quote:

Rush Limbaugh said he hopes this administration fails, so you’re saying, ‘I hope America fails’, you’re, like, ‘I dont care about people losing their homes, their jobs, our soldiers in Iraq’. He just wants the country to fail. To me, that’s treason.

He’s not saying anything differently than what Osama bin Laden is saying. You know, you might want to look into this, sir, because I think Rush Limbaugh was the 20th hijacker. But he was just so strung out on OxyContin he missed his flight.

Rush Limbaugh, ‘I hope the country fails,’ I hope his kidneys fail, how about that? He needs a good waterboarding, that’s what he needs.

Honestly, it would probably be better if both sides calmed down. The sad part is comments like this will do more to boost Limbaugh’s popularity than anything else. But after being on national radio for over 20 years, during which time he has slammed just about everyone to the left of Rick Santorum, maybe some perspective is in order. And a little attention to context.

The White House correspondents’ dinner is often edgy and no stranger to controversy. In 2006, comedian Stephen Colbert bitterly insulted President Bush to his face on national television. Bush was visibly upset, but still took it like a gentleman.

In this case, Sykes routine was clearly comedic and I don’t think even the wackiest of the wackaloons actually would say–if pressed–that Sykes really wants Limbaugh dead. Or to waterboard him. It’s a joke, a figure of speech, like you might say to a good friend, “if you take my food again out of the fridge without asking, I’m going to have to kill you.” No one would mistake that for a death wish.

But provocateur Limbaugh waddles to his bully pulpit every day, and gets paid a fortune to spout the worst possible distortions, lies and insults, and that’s ‘free speech.’ He delivers his daily dose of dumb to the slobbering populist masses–or should I say asses? If he could, he’d destroy the careers of every progressive politician in the nation, including the President. He’d turn them out in the streets. He’s spent thousands of hours ranting in support of military adventurism, total inaction on the environment, a corporate free-for-all, social conservatism (while being an admitted Oxycontin addict), and he’d quite likely support a theocracy.

What Limbaugh wants–and what he has devoted his life to–is the continuation of an unchecked and rapacious agenda for enriching and empowering the already powerful. This is far from a joke and is clearly an actual death wish for the nation and eventually the world. Even Republican party chairman Michael Steele called his rhetoric “incendiary and ugly.” Steele later retracted the statement under pressure, but you get the point. If the “mean-factor” could be tallied in dollars, Limbaugh would be richer than Bill Gates. And in actual dollars, he’s not that far behind, worth nearly $1 billion, having parlayed his populist pandering into high political art.

One possibly-over-the-line comedic comment from the left isn’t going to even make a dent in this blowhard. But you can bet that he’ll still milk the President’s laughter for all it’s worth.

Finally, maybe I’m splitting hairs, but Sykes didn’t really wish him dead. After all, you can survive without kidneys. You just have to go in for dialysis six hours a day–which would make it awfully hard for the gasbag to do his hate-filled radio show.

I turned 45 today, and I am hopeful, both for my future and for the future of the world. That is the best gift I could have: a sense of renewed possibilities. That we might actually be on the verge of moving toward real and permanent global sanity and sustainability. Instead of continuing along our previous (and insane) path of using the same old unsustainable methods, the same old buy-now-pay-later mentality, then being surprised when we have the same old problems.

But first, meet the new first lady of BSJ. I got married March 28, 2009 to longtime reader and all around dream-girl Annette Couch, from Adelaide, Australia! We met in early 2008, and had already been waiting since last June to get married. The story is bittersweet, because even though it’s official, we now have to wait for U.S. immigration to process her paperwork before we can be together in Los Angeles. We don’t know how much longer this will take.

Today, I’m going to run down the top 5 issues that have been the most important to me personally this year, and why its inevitable they will change. Tomorrow (or when I get to it) I’m going to discuss the top 5 realizations or changes I’ve made in my thinking or methods during the past year.

To all of you who’ve emailed or sent birthday wishes to me today, thank you from the bottom of my heart.

1. Climate Change

I’ve never experienced anything more discouraging than the mendacious, self-serving, and mean-spirited denialism about climate change and its man-made causes (primarily burning carbon and raising livestock). The kooks, conspiracists, populists, and anti-tax crowd have found their bete noir. It’s their ultimate paranoid wet-dream “socialist/globalist plot.” If you watched Alex Jones’ execrable propaganda film The Obama Deception, he insists carbon-cap legislation is all being planned by the “international bankers.”

Uh, no.

What should be a simple scientific imperative to take appropriate global action has degenerated into a political food fight. And the worst is yet to come. Now that we finally have a US President who will do something about it, the fossil lobby knows its days are numbered. If Congress doesn’t act, the EPA will. Count on the carbon-peddlers to spend their last dollar to delay and derail the inevitable. Count on desperate mooing and bellowing from ‘free-marketers’ who are used to having open season to burn and profit from as much combustible material as they can scrape out of the soil.

It’s why I took the unusual step of donating my birthday to the Alliance For Climate Protection on Facebook. Sorry, everyone, for the annoying messages, and thanks to everyone who contributed. I raised a grand total of $87, which is a drop in the bucket, but still extremely helpful. You can still sign up and donate here.

2. Globalism

Just as climate change is global in scope, so are financial difficulties. We are nearly seven billion interdependent citizens of the world. Without global governance, all citizens are subject to events taking place in foreign lands, with no say in the outcome. This year, we learned the hard way that recessions have no borders. We also took steps for the first time to move closer to a global currency reserve system, as the International Monetary Fund’s mechanism of Special Drawing Rights was beefed up to $250 billion in April.

Some people distrust the idea of global governance, but in my view it is inevitable. Therefore, we should embrace it and work hard to define the new structure based on ironclad political freedoms. We must take the best of Western liberal democracy, and add air-tight constitutional sustainability mandates across all industries and populations.

Given the intransigence of dictatorial and Islamic regimes, and without a gradual move toward a global government, how do we ever expect to prevent genocide and compel universal human rights? No one seems to give a crap about Africa, or women under Islam, and the U.N. is mired in compromise, hamstrung by the OIC and procedural maneuvers–as the years and lives tick by.

Anything less than a full global stand for human freedom is just mealy-mouthed excuses.

3. Health Care

Obama’s health care bill hasn’t even been written and already the GOP slime machine is cranking up to oppose it. Here’s a very simple way to look at health care: The measure of the morality of a society is how well it takes care of its weakest members. Everyone pays lip service to free markets and personal responsibility. I agree–to a point.

Taken to the extreme, what “personal responsibility” means is that some people will fall out of the system and become roadkill–especially during hard times. It makes me ill to think that some people have to choose between rent and seeing a doctor or getting their medication. I would personally pay higher taxes to avoid this.

There but for good luck go I… Everyone thinks it can’t happen to them. Recently I just heard about a good friend who worked hard his whole life, and yet fell victim to a random attack that left him brain-damaged and with blurred vision. He was physically fit, an extreme surfer and skilled construction worker who traveled all over the world. After the attack, he has been in and out of nursing homes for the last 4 years. Now he is completely reliant on public assistance. His speech is slurred and he will need years and years of rehabilitation.

If anything similar were ever to happen to me or a member of my family I would want to know I would be covered. It’s common sense.

What good is it to be the strongest nation in the world, if everyone doesn’t have the right to see a doctor when they need it? As a small business owner who pays for my own health plan, I’m well aware of its limitations. I chose a $2,500 annual deductible. When you’re paying out of your own pocket, it’s amazing what you’ll sacrifice. People say they want to be able to choose their own doctor, and get treated for anything they want. But will they pay? Under a private system, you get what you pay for. Managed care is just that: we have to make compromises and accept limitations to get what we want. Look ahead to higher deductibles and increasing co-pays. It’s coming, private or public.

The devil is in the details. Conservatives throw out the red-herring of “socialism,” and “socialized medicine.” They’re so convinced they’re right, they usually can’t even make a decent argument. Other than an anecdote they possibly heard about some nightmare in Europe or Canada about someone not getting proper treatment or draconian care rationing. At which point I say, “Oh, yeah, let’s deliberately put in a flawed system like that.”

We can design whatever type of system we want. It’s not a question of government-run or private. That’s a false choice. It’s “What are the rules?” There will be tradeoffs. Are we willing to embrace tort reform and arbitration to keep costs down? Are we willing to have more restrictions on our care so that everyone can have the most basic coverage?

The people who argue against national health insurance are likely covered by some private “full-ride” health plan. But they couldn’t give a damn about the small business owner or the working poor who aren’t so lucky. I’m sick of these hypocrites. They won’t prevent the inevitable, but they’ll sure make a lot of noise.

4. Gay Marriage

I’ve often been asked “why do you care so much about gay marriage if you’re not gay?” Aside from the warmth I feel about my gay friends who love each other, there are two very sound reasons: 1) It’s a human rights issue. If people can be denied a social benefit because they’re gay, any other group can be so targeted. 2) The only remaining arguments against gay marriage are scripture and the “yuck factor.” We’re a nation of secular laws, so scripture is disqualified. Churches can refuse to recognize the marriages, but as tax-exempt organizations, they can’t try to influence the laws. The “yuck factor” was used not so long ago against interracial marriages. The “argument from personal distaste” is a primary cause of discrimination and “out-group” dehumanization. It’s a remnant of tribalism, and we need to get over it.

Gay marriage is now legal in five states. A statistical analysis of the remaining states shows it’s inevitable. Even holdout Mississippi will have it by 2024. So again, why fight the inevitable? People still think they’re going to turn back the tide of progress and recapture 1950’s Norman Rockwell America. It ain’t gonna happen. That world is gone for good–and I feel just fine.

Annette and I feel so strongly about gay marriage rights, we included the following statement in our ceremony:

This marriage is a celebration of all types of relationships between all types of people. Sean and Annette are saddened by the fact that in many countries of the world including this one, people of the same gender are forbidden by law from enjoying the full legal rights of marriage. Sean and Annette realize that they enjoy a special privilege to have their marriage recognized by their respective governments. They stand in remembrance of all those of different races who were previously dishonored in their quest for solemnization of their love. And they stand today in solidarity with all those who have had their marriages so denied on the basis of gender. They are saddened by the fact that it is the very institution of religion which is supposed to bind us all together in the expression of our highest humanity has instead been a force for division and has sought to continue denying full marriage rights to all. May all people of good will unite in condemning this outrage.

5. Immigration Reform

The personal is political, and for me this is nowhere more true than about immigration. Long before I found myself and my wife at the mercy of the U.S. bureaucracy, I was aware of others’ difficulties in this regard. An ex-girlfriend of mine had to wait two years to get her Brazilian husband into the country. A man I’ve known since I was eight years old was forced to wait seven months to bring his Kyrgyz bride home.

But it’s not just family immigration. It’s the whole question. To many Americans, themselves children or grandchildren of immigrants, only a few generations removed from other lands, immigrants have morphed into a threat and a symbol of loss of American dominance.

Apparently they haven’t read Thomas Friedman’s excellent book The World is Flat, or the even more topical follow-up, Hot, Flat, and Crowded.

The important point to remember is that immigrants built this country, and they will continue to build it. African slaves built the White House. Irish, Polish, German, and Italian immigrants built New York City. Mexican carpenters built my home. The horrible invective directed at these hard-working people has always come from Americans who are too comfortable, and seek only the extension of their privileges and entitlements. Labor unions have not helped.

The outsourcing of jobs to India and elsewhere has proven that closing borders is not a solution. But still, radical-right hate groups like the Minutemen and others take perverse pleasure in “patrolling” the Mexican border, sometimes by webcam. The governor of Texas put the webcams there in the first place. But it’s vigilanteism, and it’s wrongheaded.

In a truly global society, anyone would have the right to live, sell their labor, or start a business anywhere without fear of retribution or deportation. Or worse, getting arrested by ICE and imprisoned without trial simply for being in this country. Spending a year without the love of my life has given me a visceral sense of how much immigrants, nearly always separated from their families, have suffered and are now suffering.

Reform is desperately needed, and it is inevitable.

The New York Times (!) just ran an article called More Atheists Shout It From The Rooftops. The Los Angeles Times (!) ran one called Are Atheists The Hot New Political Force? Barack Obama stated in his inaugural address that we are a nation–among other things–of nonbelievers (!).

It doesn’t get any better than this.

From the NYT article:

Polls show that the ranks of atheists are growing. The American Religious Identification Survey, a major study released last month, found that those who claimed “no religion” were the only demographic group that grew in all 50 states in the last 18 years.

Nationally, the “nones” in the population nearly doubled, to 15 percent in 2008 from 8 percent in 1990. In South Carolina, they more than tripled, to 10 percent from 3 percent. Not all the “nones” are necessarily committed atheists or agnostics, but they make up a pool of potential supporters.

Local and national atheist organizations have flourished in recent years, fed by outrage over the Bush administration’s embrace of the religious right. A spate of best-selling books on atheism also popularized the notion that nonbelief is not just an argument but a cause, like environmentalism or muscular dystrophy.

Ten national organizations that variously identify themselves as atheists, humanists, freethinkers and others who go without God have recently united to form the Secular Coalition for America, of which Mr. Silverman is president. These groups, once rivals, are now pooling resources to lobby in Washington for separation of church and state.

A wave of donations, some in the millions of dollars, has enabled the hiring of more paid professional organizers, said Fred Edwords, a longtime atheist leader who just started his own umbrella group, the United Coalition of Reason, which plans to spawn 20 local groups around the country in the next year.

From the LAT article:

Now, after President Obama reached out to them with a first-ever mention during his inaugural address (”We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus — and nonbelievers,” Obama said), atheists think the time is right for a return to humanistic principles over religious influences in public policy.

“The climate is right in the country today for a major expansion of humanist ideals and humanist thinking — atheism, free thought,” Louis J. Appignani, the Florida tycoon who has earmarked $30 million for various atheist causes, told the National Journal. “I think we are on the threshold of a counter-revolution from the Bush years.”

Today the New York Times profiled the Secular Humanists of the Lowcountry in Charleston, S.C., the beautiful community of southern gentility where the Civil War began. This time, said the group’s founder, the mission is not to declare war but to declare themselves.

“It’s not about carrying banners or protesting,” said Herb Silverman, a math professor at the College of Charleston who said the group has about 150 members on the coast of the Carolinas. “The most important thing is coming out of the closet.”

As someone who’s been writing about atheism for nearly eight years, here are some of the shallow criticisms and straw-man attacks I’ve heard:

“You’re too harsh, you’re intolerant, you’re going to turn people off.” Or, “you need to engage religion on its own terms, and learn more about why people believe. Or, “If you’re going to discuss religion, learn to make cogent theological arguments–you don’t want to sound like a fool.” Or “No one believes in the absurd God atheists describe.” Or “you’re never going to get people to stop believing in religion, so why even try?”

These objectors are people who pretend to be rational and open-minded. To prove it, many of them sport a “Coexist” bumper sticker on their car, which (while pretending to be impartial) promotes religion over non-religion (as Dennett describes, “belief in belief.”) Some versions of the sticker even include E=mc², showing that the religious sympathizer is trying to lump ‘atheistic science’ in as ‘just another religion.’

These are objections the entire movement has been dealing with ad nauseam. And they’re clearly bunk. This bellyaching has always demonstrated to me more than anything else where a person’s true sympathies lie–with the believers. It’s also self-refuting. Consider these two scenarios:

Scenario 1: Atheists use in-your-face tactics, turn people off, and remain a hated and mistrusted group. That would seem to play right into the hands of theists and their sympathizers (the ’spiritual, not religious’ types), keeping religion and spirituality ‘respected’ as the dominant sociocultural force, and atheism marginalized.

Why the objection, then? Is it because they’re actually afraid of Scenario 2?

Scenario 2: Atheists use in-your-face tactics, and as a result, a groundswell occurs of people who have previously been too timid to come forward. Atheism receives national recognition and is no longer hated and feared, but begins to be respected as a large and growing political force.

It is clear from this triple-play of atheist profile-raising (NYT, LAT, and Inaugural address) that Scenario 2 has already happened or is well underway. Fund raising for secular political action is entering the same orders of magnitude as the top religious lobbying groups. The scare tactics and attempts at intimidation by accommodationists have not only failed, but failed spectacularly.

As the Secular Coalition noted, “This is exactly the kind of visibility and respect we hoped to give you when we started our Coalition in 2002. ”

So a hearty thanks to all my fellow atheist writers, as well as those who have donated funds or come out to their families and friends. Keep up the good work. You are making all the difference in the world.

Re: … the overhyped swine flu scare…

Hi Mark,

Regardless of media hype, let me give you an inside look. The cases in the US are mild because they are caught at the fever stage. If the virus is allowed to morph past the fever stage, then death is one result of this virus. We saw in the 1917 pandemic that during the Spring there were not a lot of deaths, but in the Fall, people died in 24 hours. What can we take from this?

If you can stop the virus at the fever stage, you are pretty much “home free”. I have isolated four medicines to pick–you pick one. Keep on hand. It is the knee-jerk reaction to danger fever medicine that you not only have for THIS flu but EVERY flu.

It will cost about $7 at the health food store. I outline the four and how they are different here:

http://howheal.com/flu.html

You will be, in my opinion, not 100% protected, but you will stop the virus from morphing at the fever stage and that’s the biggest hurdle.

I agree with you, the media hype is sickening, because they scare people and don’t adequately prepare them. The strategy I outline is the same one used now for over 200 years. It was used more successfully than conventional medicine during the 1917 pandemic.

Regards,

For the nth time, I had to respond to this quackery, and will share it with my readers. I don’t suffer fools gladly:

Homeopathy is a vicious fraud. In all but the “weakest” potencies, the medications contain not one atom or molecule of the original substance–but are only sugar pills.

The homeopathy proponents’ argument asserts that the structure of the atoms of the “medicine” are somehow imprinted on the water or the sugar, etc. and transferred to the person who takes the medicine–paradoxically having a greater effect the less actual medicine is present. This is utter nonsense.

It completely violates the laws of physics. If you understood those laws, you wouldn’t tolerate their violation so glibly.

If you don’t agree, or physics is too technical for you, consider this thought experiment: that every drop of water on earth has been recycled billions of times over the years. It came originally from distant comets in space. Then it landed on earth billions of years ago, where it proceeded to evaporate, fall as rain, eventually pass through the bodies of numerous organisms, be excreted, evaporated, fall as rain again and again, was taken up by plants, stored underground for millions of years, and on and on, beyond our capacity to imagine.

Given this long and storied journey, if homeopathy were true, each contact the water had with any of the substances in its history would have left an “imprint” just as the “medicine” is claimed to. Given all the different contacts and re-purification (over billions of years) where the water touched everything from natural minerals to virulent bacteria to toxins and poisons ad infinitum, and was then diluted again–how are we to expect that contact with a miniscule amount of medicine for a few minutes, hours, or days, which is then fantastically diluted, would have any affect at all–or at least any effect on a scale that would even compare to the “imprint” from the water’s natural journey?

The answer is, we can’t. And that’s even assuming–for the sake of the argument–that water molecules can be “imprinted” on a non-physical level with anything, which they can’t. And it’s also assuming that the “manufacturers” of the “medicine” do anything other than bottle sugar pills. It’s not like there’s any way test it for potency or guard against mislabeling, since none of the pills contain any of the original substance.

The idea of homeopathy relies not just on misplaced trust and bogus diagnosis, but concepts of dualism or non-physical realities having some power to affect the physical world, which is also complete stupidity.

On scientific, logical, and just plain common-sense grounds, homeopathy fails utterly.

QED

p.s. You are asking people to spend their hard-earned money on sugar pills. And it is a cruel hoax to perpetrate such a fraud on ignorant and vulnerable people who may be sick or afraid of getting sick. If they listen to you, they also might not go to a real doctor, and if they really have swine flu, that might actually kill them.

Have a nice day, and take some philosophy and science courses so you don’t humiliate yourself like this again.

As if that weren’t enough, this wackaloon wrote me back again.

Thank you for writing. It was known from the beginning of homeopathy that a medicine could not retain its holograms or images but a few hours when mixed with other substances. This is especially true where medicines are mixed together. So we agree there.

(No, I don’t agree with anything you are saying whatsoever.)  

Theory can fall short of experience. Homeopathy has had stellar results in pandemics: cholera, yellow fever, scarlet fever, 1917 pandemic.

(sarcasm: That’s why the flu pandemic killed tens of millions of people, because homeopathy was so effective, right? /sarcasm)

Experience has shown a result that is different than theory. Talk is cheap

To which I replied:

Gobbledygook.

Completely undeterred by logic or facts, the bullshit just keeps on coming, and coming, and coming…

It is sort of hard to judge a medical science that is as mystical as homeopathy. Francis Bacon said that medicine lies somewhere equally between metaphysics and natural history, which if you read the ensuing text, means, natural science. So there’s a place for the metaphysics in healing which is not measurable.

But getting back to reality. I have cured cases of cancer, obesity, all types of serious diseases. If I thought this was bogus, I would have left it, but I have found just the opposite, how amazing Nature is in healing people. How does science explain “synchronicity” which is metaphysical. Some of these things they don’t have a model for.

Damn! *Hitting myself repeatedly over the head like Jeff Spicoli*

A survey out last week from the Pew Research Center shows declining perceptions of necessity for a variety of household and consumer goods. Some have moralistically jumped on this finding as evidence that people are finally realizing that “things don’t make you happy.”

Ahhh… Not exactly.

This drop in consumer perception is a practical response to declining purchasing power. As soon as the economy rebounds, it’s quite obvious people will immediately rediscover all those temporarily repressed “needs.”

But anti-consumerism is a durable meme in some political (and religious) circles, along with the companion false choice between consumer goods and the environment. Some anti-consumerists even go so far as to imply that advertising undermines free will, as in the image above (the dots composed entirely of logos and brands), a key point of ‘Dark Green’ political activism. This attitude in turn is why many people, particularly conservatives, equate environmentalism with anti-capitalism, a desire for “punishment” and often see environmentalists as killjoys, or “secular fundamentalists.”

I think it goes even further than that.

Dark Greens have very effectively poisoned the well for the uncommitted. Their austerity and neo-Victorian admonitions that we must “be happy with less” have painted environmentalism with the brush of defeat and retrenchment. They’ve told us we have a ’spiritual’ problem, that our appetites make us defective, and we should strive to overcome them in a return to simpler living. This is akin to, and even stems in part from the Buddhist aphorism “suffering is caused by desire,” (itself a response to poverty and deprivation), and also biblical support for the poor and oppressed. Dark Greens largely make up the groups whose fringes have been involved in very un-Buddhist, un-Christian, and terroristic activities such as spiking trees, torching car dealerships and sabotaging animal research labs. They approach the zeal and idealism of committed communist revolutionaries.

All of which is horrendous for the image of environmentalism. It makes the goal of mainstreaming conservation and sustainability much, much more difficult. Alex Steffen, one of my favorite writers on one of my favorite sites, WorldChanging put it this way in a September 2005 interview:

Progress is perhaps the key American virtue. It’s right up there with individualism. One of the worst things that happened to us in the last 10 or 15 years is the other side has managed to equate us — due in part to irresponsible statements by some of our allies — with the idea of regression, stalled progress, moving backwards, killing jobs, a future that is bleak, where everyone shivers in the dark. In fact, the future they’re proposing, which is basically to drown in our own filth, is not progressive in either sense of the word, and we have a much, much better solution.

Steffen has broken down the environmental movement into three main categories, Light Greens, Dark Greens, and (my personal choice) Bright Greens. From wikipedia:

Light Greens see protecting the environment first and foremost as a personal responsibility. They fall in on the reformist end of the spectrum introduced above, but light Greens do not emphasize environmentalism as a distinct political ideology, or even seek fundamental political reform. Instead they often focus on environmentalism as a lifestyle choice. The motto “Green is the new black.” sums up this way of thinking, for many.

In contrast, Dark Greens believe that environmental problems are an inherent part of industrialized civilization evident in both state socialist and capitalist societies, and seek radical political change. As discussed earlier, ‘dark greens’ tend to believe that dominant political ideologies (sometimes referred to as industrialism) are corrupt and inevitably lead to consumerism, alienation from nature and resource depletion. Dark Greens claim that this is caused by the emphasis on growth that exists within all existing ideologies, a tendency referred to as ‘growth mania’. The dark green brand of environmentalism is associated with ideas of Deep Ecology, Post-materialism, Holism, the Gaia Theory of James Lovelock and the work of Fritjof Capra. The division between light and dark greens was visible in the fighting between Fundi and Realo factions of the German Green Party.

More recently, a third group may be said to have emerged in the form of Bright Greens. This group believes that radical changes are needed in the economic and political operation of society in order to make it sustainable, but that better designs, new technologies and more widely distributed social innovations are the means to make those changes– and that we can neither shop nor protest our way to sustainability. As Ross Robertson writes, “Bright green environmentalism is less about the problems and limitations we need to overcome than the “tools, models, and ideas” that already exist for overcoming them. It forgoes the bleakness of protest and dissent for the energizing confidence of constructive solutions.”

WorldChanging and the Rocky Mountain Institute are two exemplars of Bright Green philosophy. RMI co-founders Amory and Hunter Lovins wrote a seminal and prescient book in 1999 called Natural Capitalism. In the past few years, they have been incredibly productive and influential, doubling the efficiency of Wal-Mart’s trucking fleet, spurring the development of electric and plug-in hybrid cars such as the Chevy Volt, and most recently consulting on a top-to-bottom energy refit of the Empire State Building. RMI pretty much defines Bright Green, proving that current technology is more than sufficient to create a sustainable world–if only we could muster the political will.

The Obama administration has made green energy a centerpiece of its economic recovery plan. It’s a huge step in the right direction, and a welcome break from the rapacious policies of the Bush administration. Unfortunately, the magnitude of Obama’s green initiative is far too small. In a country that imports $250 billion/year worth of oil (at $50/barrel–far more at higher prices), we could afford to spend at least a year’s worth of oil revenue (or five) to build out the domestic biofuel infrastructure, to eliminate these imports permanently. Talk about creating American jobs! But I digress.

The real point of this article is to debunk the idea of ‘consumerism’ as a ‘malaise’ of modern society. In fact, I hope you’ll agree with me that it’s not even a useful term–and has always been a politically charged, judgmental and pejorative weasel-word.

From my comments over at WorldChanging:

“Sustainability and consumer goods are opposites.”

This, in a nutshell, defines the Dark Green position. Because they’re evaluating consumer goods as they’ve always been made in the carbon-energy era. Not as if they were made sustainably. It’s a tautology: unsustainable consumer goods are unsustainable. But if they’re made sustainably, that means virtually unlimited demand could be satisfied without environmental damage. That’s what the word means! Indeed, sustainability is the only way to grow the economy on a resource-constrained planet.

No one said consumer goods make everyone, (or anyone) happier. When I hear this tripe, I somehow think of people having support group meetings at IKEA or worshiping at the church of Best Buy. Sorry, I think people just go there to buy the stuff they want/need as cheaply as possible. I think everyone understands they’re not buying “inner peace” when they pull out their credit card.

Whatever the reason, people keep desiring and purchasing goods, though. Dark Greens blame advertising. How patronizing. The truth is, advertising improves brand loyalty, and may slightly increase overall demand. But you’ll never convince anyone that advertising is the only reason people have refrigerators, for example. They are a necessity by any stretch. One of the first things a village gets when it gets electricity is a fridge for storing vaccines and medicines. No household could survive long without one, unless they were willing to eat nothing but canned and dried foods, or if they lived on a farm.

Again, striking a balance between goods vs. personal development is a choice best left to the individual. Society has failed when it allows goods to be manufactured that are cheap, disposable and destructive without paying for the externalities they create.

The above referenced Pew study is an obvious response to a lack of purchasing power. As soon as that changes, you can bet people will rediscover all the “necessities” they gave up during lean times. This is not rocket science.

So we’d better use this downturn to push sustainability in manufacturing even harder than before. And smart public transport will take more cars off the road than a million philosophical discussions about getting by and “being happy with less.”

So much misery and political grandstanding can be chalked up to this idea. At the fifth Summit of the Americas, the Bolivarian Alternative of the Americas (ALBA — Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Honduras and Dominica) recently issued a statement condemning capitalism for:

…destroying humanity and the planet. We face a global crisis of a systemic and structural character, not just one more cyclical crisis…provok[ing] an ecological crisis by subordinating the necessary conditions for life on this planet to the domination of the market and profit. Each year, the world consumes a third more than what the planet is capable of regenerating…The global economic, climate change, food and energy crises are products of the decadence of capitalism and threaten to end life on Earth. To avoid this, we must develop an alternative model to capitalism.

I feel their pain. But what they are really asking for is sustainability. And until people understand what that word truly means, we will remain mired in fruitless debates about capitalism vs. communism and consumerism vs. environmentalism. They are really the same conversation, one on a personal level, and the other writ large.

Sustainability and Bright Green environmentalism have the potential to permanently transform world politics, vastly increase prosperity, and make these stark ideological differences seem like a historical footnote.

I always have great sympathy for closeted atheists and agnostics. They are forced to dance between their true feelings, questions and knowledge, and the specter of an unpleasant denouement of their social circle should those become known. So they go along to get along, propping up ideological nonsense, getting up for church on Sunday when they could be sleeping or having guilt-free sex and late-morning brunch.

This is how one African American at Salon’s advice column described his dilemma:

I am an African-American male who, after several years of being a conservative, evangelical Christian, now considers myself to be a “Jesus-admiring, agnostic humanist” who also attends weekly church services at a predominantly African-American Missionary Baptist congregation with my conservative Christian wife.

In light of this, I have long agonized over the idea of announcing my philosophical position to my Christian spouse, family and friends.I feel that I am now at a point where I must make a declaration that will surely affect those who are close to me. My loved ones have long suspected that there was something “different” about my approach to spiritual subjects, but up until now I have successfully hidden my true thoughts, philosophical developments and feelings from them.

• With every Sunday that I sit in a church that would likely condemn my kind, I feel like I am betraying my potential and misleading my spouse.
• With every public prayer uttered “in Jesus’ name” I feel like I am living a lie.
• With every in-depth discussion about religious and social topics, I use evasive humor and agile commentary to distract my conversation partners — fearing that a sustained encounter would lead to the exposure of my controversial religious and philosophical views.

But one can only do this for so long before wondering if such attempts to suppress one’s true self for fear of offending the sensibilities of others is really worth it. 

Advice columnist Cary Tennis initially gives him excellent advice:

One of the principles of “coming out” is the presumption of innocence — that we are innocent of our own existence, that we did not make ourselves and we did not make the world, and that in revealing who we are and what we see, we simply reveal what is already there. We are not confessing to a crime. We are revealing our existence.

What we ask for in doing so is simple recognition: We desire to be seen. We put aside for the time being the question of our effect on others. We leave it up to others what they should do about who we are.

That does not mean they will do what we want. If we have been sufficiently skillful in constructing our false self, those who love us may indeed love this false self, and may greet with consternation the arrival of what we consider to be our authentic self.

So in coming out we ask, Can you still love me, knowing who I am?

Perhaps the answer is no. Perhaps our partner has fallen in love with the character of our creation.

[...]

So you risk a lot. But you risk it for the biggest prize of all: to be loved for who you really are.

Now comes the clincher. After telling the letter writer that he should be courageous and win the “prize” of being who he really is, he essentially tells him no matter what he thinks or believes, it doesn’t matter:

May I say one thing regarding my own perhaps crazy beliefs on the subject? I really believe it is possible that a grace exists in the universe that in caring for you and saving you does not care one whit whether you believe in it or not, and does not care what you think is true: a grace whose intelligence is so freely boundless and beyond us that whatever we think of it does not even occur to it, or occurs to it the way the consternation of a dog occurs to us when we bathe it. We take note of the consternation of the dog but we do not find it persuasive; we already know what we’re going to do with the dog. We’re going to bathe the dog.

I just had to say that. Good luck with your loved ones.

This parting shot is a typical dose of believer condescension, and if he’s really paying attention to the advice, it will leave the man more confused than before. Indeed, why take the step of questioning or doubting your faith if the universe is filled with grace whether we believe it or not??

I find the condescension of “spiritual” believers to be almost more suffocating than the fundamentalism of literalist churches. At least the fundies have their scriptures to fall back on–not this contemptible worship of their own personal “feelings.” So here’s my response:

Typical Believer Condescension

I’m a little late to the party, so this may already have been covered. But Cary, dammit, why did you have to throw your little personal believer condescension in at the end? Your advice was really good up to that point.

Then you had to regurgitate your version of “God exists whether we believe in him or not.” Essentially telling the LW he was full of crap and loved by the sky-daddy at the same time. Way to contradict yourself!

This is the problem we atheists and agnostics face every day. People look at us with “knowing” glances, as if we are wounded or somehow need to be let in on the cosmic joke. In fact, we have made a very conscious choice to *not* live our lives as if there was some grand intelligence or plan, and finding the courage to face the reality of feeling alone in the universe is difficult enough without being constantly told that “it’s OK, God even loves the atheists.”

The man asked you how to handle his doubts, both socially and internally, and you essentially accused him of being naive. He was crying out to you for a lifeline, and though you advised him to be his authentic self, you just compounded his dilemma!

He was trying to make it OK to not know, to question and to wonder. Instead you had to tell him you actually DO in fact know, (hiding behind the disclaimer “I might be crazy, but I think it’s possible”) the universe has a spirit that takes care of you, that’s going to bathe you in love (like a dog), and it doesn’t matter about those pesky doubts. How sickeningly smug all spiritual believers are, whether explicitly religious or not!

Let me turn this around to show you how it feels–what a true agnostic or atheist actually has to come to terms with–a journey you seem to fail to grasp, a question you seem loathe to face:

“Cary, I really think it’s possible that the universe is a totally indifferent and inhospitable place, it’s so vast and beyond our comprehension that it just doesn’t care what kind of teleology or spiritual identity we might wish to dream up. We remain bathed in the pointless randomness of our short lives on a tiny planet. And we must create whatever meaning we want for ourselves, by ourselves.”

Feel better now?

Overall, a good interview. The host comes across as somewhat hostile at first. But she’s just throwing the typical objections at him, which gives him a chance to address them, which he does. He dismisses bad arguments and straw-man accusations deftly and with characteristic British charm.

Every time I hear Dawkins speak, I’m amazed people could possibly refer to him as “militant.” First, he’s kind and gentle in the way he speaks. Second, he makes many concessions to uncertainty. It’s clear people continue the ad hominems because nothing else can even appear to provide cover for theists against his arguments.

Beheading takes work, planning, and a very sharp blade (not that I’ve ever tried it, all those pesky bones and tendons would make it a bit tough). It also has a life-changing finality when the victim is your wife. It’s not something you do when you’re a little drunk or upset. Domestic violence is throwing things at your significant other or slapping them around.

No. This is murder of the most degrading sort. Worse, it’s ritualized murder from a culture that has taught men for centuries that women were property to be disposed of as they saw fit.

Domestic violence is depressingly common across all religions and among non-believers. This is another matter entirely. A simple question will resolve it: If you heard on the radio that a man was being accused of beheading his wife, and someone offered you a $10,000 prize to guess the man’s religion, what would be your final answer?

Thought so. So let’s drop all this obfuscating ‘domestic violence’ bullshit, OK?

The sensational aspects of the murder of 37-year-old Aasiya Zubair Hassan have distracted many from the underlying issue of domestic violence. Aasiya was decapitated by her husband, 44-year old Muzzammil Hassan, founder of Bridges TV, a Buffalo-area television station created to fight the stereotyping of Muslim Americans.

The sad irony is that some have latched on to the idea that Aasiya’s death was an honor killing, blaming the Islamic faith for the bizarre and gruesome actions of one violent man who just happened to be Muslim.

According to Orchard Park, NY police chief Andrew Benz, Aasiya had filed for divorce and obtained an order of protection against her husband on February 6. She was found dead at the TV station six days later. The police had previously responded to domestic violence incidents at the couple’s home.

Over at BlogHer, Kim Pearson asks, “TV executive beheaded in Buffalo; husband charged - what’s Islam got to do with it?” She examines why so many have been distracted by the ‘honor killing’ angle and ignored the larger picture - that we need to identify domestic violence in our communities and work to end it.

via Domestic Violence, Not Religion, Behind Beheading of Muslim Woman in Buffalo.