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Moving to Skeptic Freethought Blogs!

2012-12-18T22:24:00.000-05:00

Friends, I'm moving to a new site. I'll be joining my friends at Skeptic Freethought Blogs, where I am now a contributor. You can find my new site here. You will be redirected in 5 seconds. If not, click here.

Christianity Explains Too Much

2012-12-03T12:27:00.001-05:00

This week I'm speaking in my Philosophy of Science seminar on Karl Popper's Falsificationism. Reading over the assigned reading, I've been reminded of a statement made by C.S. Lewis and I think it raises some questions about the peculiar sort of justifications given by Christians for their beliefs. Stated briefly, I think Christianity explains too much.

Karl Popper was concerned with answering the question S: “What is science and what distinguishes it from pseudoscience?” In his "Science: Conjectures and Refutations", Popper states the problem as: “Is there a criterion for the scientific character or status of a theory?” More generally, one can ask what is sui generis (or special) about science or its methodology. He was not concerned with whether or not a scientific theory was true or false; rather, he was concerned with what properties made a given theory properly scientific. False scientific theories are still scientific. Answering S is known as the Demarcation Problem. While most present philosophers would agree that Popper's answer is naive, I think it does capture some good intuitions.

Popper’s answer to S is that scientific hypotheses (or statements) need to be
falsifiable. He reaches that conclusion by comparing Adlerian and Freudian psychological theories on the one hand and General Relativity on the other.

He wrote:

I found that those of my friends who were admirers of Marx, Freud, and Adler, were impressed by a number of points common to these theories, and especially by their apparent explanatory power. These theories appeared to be able to explain practically everything that happened within the fields to which they referred. The study of any of them seemed to have the effect of an intellectual conversion or revelation, opening your eyes to a new truth hidden from those not yet initiated. Once your eyes were thus opened you saw confirming instances everywhere: the world was full of verifications of the theory. Whatever happened always confirmed it. Thus its truth appeared manifest; and unbelievers were clearly people who did not want to see the manifest truth; who refused to see it, either because it was against their class interest, or because of their repressions which were still 'un-analysed' and crying aloud for treatment.

The problem with Marx, Adler, and Freud (according to Popper) is that these theories do not provide conditions under which we would conclude that they are false. They are consistent with all possible situations. More importantly, Adlerian and Freudian psychoanalysis provide distinct (and sometimes contradictory) explanations for human behaviour. They cannot both be true, but they cannot be distinguished on the basis of experiment.

Furthermore, Popper writes:

I could not think of any human behavior which could not be interpreted in terms of either theory... It began to dawn on me that this apparent strength was in fact their weakness.

That these theories could not be shown to be wrong was actually reason to reject them, according to Popper. If the theory cannot be falsified (even in principle) this is a reason to think that whatever explanatory power it has is vacuous.

Now compare Popper's idea with a famous quote from C.S. Lewis (from his "Is Theology Poetry?" and often quoted by theologian Alister McGrath):

I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.

The quote seems to reflect exactly the same idea which Popper expresses. Except that for Lewis this kind of explanatory power is seen as justificatory. I think this gives an interesting insight into a sort of peculiarity about the justifications commonly given by Christians.

Amongst contemporary Christians, Christianity (or their "relationship with Jesus") is often understood as a transformative lens through which one views the world and by which one decides how to act (Popper: "The study of any of them seemed to have the effect of an intellectual conversion or revelation, opening your eyes to a new truth hidden from those not yet initiated"). All experience is interpreted through that lens; extraordinary and noumenus experiences are explained in terms of the Divine instead of in terms of psychology.

One can also consider the sort of theodicies that are often given in response to the Problem of Evil to see that such a view directly contradicts what Popper thought were good scientific virtues. To many theists, there is simply no such thing as a disproof of their beliefs (Popper: "Whatever happened always confirmed it").

I remember sitting in a Philosophy of Religion class and having the following sort of conversation (these quotes are fictional, but they accurately capture my memory of what was expressed):

Person 1: I think religion helps people live better lives. If you look at religious people, you see people who are better off than non-religious people.

Me: Actually, studies show that the Scandinavian countries rank the highest on all of the indices of personal prosperity -- life expectancy, health, happiness, educational attainment, etc. The Scandinavian countries are also the least religious countries in the world. By contrast, the most religious countries in the world rank the lowest on these indices.

Person 1: I think that actually supports what I'm saying. People turn to religion when they are living in horrible conditions because they have nothing else to turn to.

Interestingly, this might also help to explain the large number of theists who claim that atheists secretly believe in God or really just hate God (Popper: "unbelievers were clearly people who did not want to see the manifest truth"). Because theistic belief forms such a strong paradigm under which such believers operate, one might think that it becomes almost inconceivable for the believer that there exist those who have radically different ideas about the nature of reality. It can also explain the difficulty that some believers (who I have met) have in understanding what it's like to be a non-theist. How many times are we asked so you really don't believe in God? Or but how can you do/think about x, y, or z?

How to Respond to an Arrogant Catholic Newspaper

2012-12-01T11:45:00.000-05:00

Francis Philips recently wrote an article called "How to respond to a young friend who has come under Dawkins's spell" for the Catholic Herald. In the article, Philips presents the following sort of argument (where I'm probably being more charitable than I should be):

1. Scientism, the view that science is the only legitimate source of knowledge, is false.
2. If (1) then science cannot tell us about whether God exists.
3. Therefore, science cannot tell us about whether God exists.

In support of premise (1), Philips only offers the story of a neuroscientist who recently made a visit to Lourdes and remarked that they had not ruled out the possibility for people to have immaterial spiritual experiences of some kind (whatever that is supposed to mean).

In response, I will first discuss scientism and it's relation to theology. Then, I will discuss religious experience and whether such experiences give us good reasons to conclude that God is likely to exist. I will forego discussing whether or not Philips accurately represents the view she attributes to Dawkins*.

Scientism is likely false, but not for the reasons given by Philips. Scientism is the statement that science is the only legitimate source of knowledge, but is not itself a scientific thesis. It is therefore self defeating.

But whether or not scientism is false has nothing to do with whether or not there is a god. Whether or not there is a god is a proposition which one has to argue for independently of arguing for the falseness of scientism. Even though scientism is likely false, it could still be true that science could tell us whether or not God, under a particular conception, actually exists. That would just be to say that although there are interesting and legitimate non-scientific questions, God's existence is not one of them.

In order to support the idea that science cannot answer questions about God's existence, theists have to actually argue either that:

4. The evidence raised by science that is supposed to show that God does not exist does not actually support a thesis of that kind, or;

5. Not only is scientism true, but any statement about God whatsoever will be independent of science.

Notice that even if one could show (4) and (5), one would only justifiably end up with a weak form of agnosticism (and here I mean "agnosticism" in the sense of Huxley). All it would show is that science doesn't answer the question of whether God exists. And, despite the protestations of some theists, one can happily be an agnostic without ever wanting to jump ship; for some people, agnosticism really is the final conclusion on the matter. To support theism, one would need to show that:

6. It is likely that God exists based on such-and-such an argument.

One cannot simply state that scientism is false and then justifiably jump to (6); (6) requires it's own degree of evidence and/or argumentation. And even if one could show (6) to be the case, one should not jump to:

7. It is likely that Catholicism is true.

The burden of proof is still on the theist. The theist might want to assert that science cannot answer theological questions. But without actually arguing for any of the relevant points (4)-(7), all the theist has is empty assertion.

As for the claim that some experience of some kind tells us anything about whether there is a God, one can simply argue that the best explanation of the available facts is that such experiences have non-divine origins. Note that**:

8. The particular kind of religious experience that one has is aligned with one's culture (Amazonian tribes who are isolated from Western society do not spontaneously start having dreams about Jesus);

9. Psychological and/or anthropological explanations of religious belief are capable of explaining the global diversity of such beliefs in great detail and even capable of predicting what sort of beliefs are likely to appear in various cultural contexts (Boyer, 2001). Theistic belief systems are typically unable to explain such diversity and are incapable of predicting what sort of beliefs one would find where (or why it is that the beliefs found in different cultures are mutually logically incompatible);

10. Explaining such experiences in terms of theism introduces additional objects (namely, supernatural beings) into our ontology that we could have done without.

(8)-(10) are enough to support the thesis that the best explanation of religious experience is naturalistic (namely, that the experiences reflect something about the kinds of animals human beings are, rather than something supernatural). (8) and (9) state facts which are difficult to explain on theism, while (10) is supposed to introduce an intuition about parsimony (i.e. if we can explain all of the relevant facts without positing a god then god should not figure into our best understanding of the world).

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* Dawkins does not appear to have ever claimed that religion disproved the existence of God.
** This is similar to an argument presented by David Hume in his "Natural History of Religion".
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Pascal, B. (2001). Religion explained. New York, NY: Basic Books.

Philips, F. (2012, November 30). How to respond to a young friend who has come under dawkins’s spell. Retrieved from http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/commentandblogs/2012/11/30/how-to-respond-to-a-young-friend-who-has-come-under-dawkinss-spell/

Was a Win for Obama Victory for Secularists?

2012-11-08T10:25:00.001-05:00

Edit: My friend Emily Dietle has an excellent post about churches serving as voting locations that readers of this might article might enjoy.

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In the wake of Obama's win, CNN's Belief Blog co-editor Dan Gilgoff is wondering whether the Religious Right's influence has waned. He describes the situation as a nightmare for many conservative Christians. "Same-sex marriage adopted by voters in some states," Gilgoff pointed out, adding, "Rigorously anti-abortion candidates defeated in conservative red states." Though Gilgoff doesn't point this out in his article, it can also be pointed out that, a recent survey indicated that around 30% of young people do not self-identify as having any sort of religious affiliation. It would seem that liberal secularists are winning.

But I don't think the case is as clear as some people would have us believe. Among states in the Bible Belt, with the exceptions of Virginia and Florida, Obama suffered losses (see the election results by state here). The same is true of the Mormon corridor, with Romney leading with a percent difference of nearly 200%. A 2004 Gallup poll reported that Alabama was the most religious state in the country, with 76% of people self-reporting as Protestant. In Alabama, Romney led by a percent difference of just over 58%. And all of the data on Creationism indicate that disbelief in evolution (and belief in a literal view of the Bible) has been remarkably stable (around 50%) since people started taking data of that kind. In fact, a recent Gallup poll reported an increase in evolution denial (though this was within the historically reported variation).

How should we understand this complicated picture, where, by some accounts, the Religious Right is getting more radical, by others they are relatively stable, and by still other accounts (like Gilgoff's) the Religious Right is losing power?

I think the key to understanding all of this is through modern accounts of Secularisation. Secularisation is the process whereby religion loses its central authority in society and wherein non-religious viewpoints become ever more common. The phenomenon has long been documented by scholars of religion and even serves as the focal point of Friedrich Nietzsche's parable of the Madman (wherein Nietzsche declared that the Death of God was immanent.) Philip Larkin's poem "Churchgoing" situates itself along a similar theme, discussing what might come of churches after everyone stops attending.

One early account of Secularisation was given by Auguste Comte in his theory of the Three Stages of history (see here and for a more detailed overview see here). According to Comte, history is supposed to pass through three stages:

1. The Theological Stage
2. The Metaphysical Stage
3. The Positivity Stage

Stage (1) is intrinsically tied up with religious belief, commencing through a gradual evolution from fetishism to Christianity (Comte was writing in the 19th century and his views are biased by the ethnocentrism of his day. Although anti-religious, Comte still associated Christianity with a kind of civilised person that he would not necessarily have associated with the belief systems found in a non-Western setting.) The Metaphysical Stage involves people viewing theology in a much more abstract setting. Think of the kind of Catholic System Builders that proliferated throughout the Scholastic Period. Finally, in the Positivity Stage, there would be the wholesale rejection of any sort of theological thought; religion would be replaced by science. The Positivist movement gets its name from stage (3).

However, even as Secularisation theory was born out of the work of early Sociologists, it was quickly realised that society did not progress from religion into irreligion. As Kuhn would have stated it, theories are born falsified and Secularisation was no exception. Not only is there a process by which the sacred is made mundane, but there is also a process by which the profane is made sacred. The evolution of religion has just been more complex than moving from devout to secular and the United States is one place where this is particularly important. I will proceed with a rough overview of the history of American religion over the past hundred or so years to demonstrate way in which it has radically changed over time. This will be in an effort to convince the reader that theories of Secularisation which declare the death of God to be permanent are simply naive.

Much of the discussion of American religion since the mid-19th century onward can be seen as attempts by Modernists to incorporate the products of Modernity into Christianity and successive reactions by Traditionalists (and/or Fundamentalists.) Of course, there are also times when efforts by Traditionalists are met by Modernist responses; the feedback between the two groups and their respective struggle for religious authority was a large part of what shaped the present American religious landscape. As many scholars have noted, the Modernist-Fundamentalist split is a recurring narrative about religion in Modernity around the globe.

In post-Civil War America, there were a succession of religious revivals which helped to produce the Fundamentalist movement in the early 20th century. Although the Fundamentalist movement would largely go underground after the embarrassment of the Scopes Trial in 1925, America in the 20th century would be rocked by attempts by various groups to re-define the country as a Christian nation. Conservatives would use religious language in their fight against communists, whose ideology was viewed as godless. Subsequently, God was inserted into the pledge and put on currency during the resulting "witch hunts" of the 1950s.

Social reform movements from the 1950s into the 1970s would produce both religious revivals and entirely new religious movements. Various Hippy spiritualities would emerge in that period (think of people who call themselves "spiritual but not religious") with a variety of conservative reactions. The so-called "Jesus Freaks" would emerge in the counter cultural atmosphere of the period as the Hippy answer to Christian thought.

On into the 1980s, televangelism and megachurches would arise as major players and the Fundamentalists would re-emerge to form a new Christian Right (owing much to the rise of several conservative organisations and think tanks in the 1980s, most prominently so-called "Family Values" organisations.) A variety of panics and scares would fill that period. Not only were there rising political efforts by liberals to bring attention to the plight of the American homosexual (especially with the rise of the AIDs virus) but there was also widespread paranoia about Satanic cults. Conservative reactions to the former would generate theological discussions about sexuality and "traditional family values", while the latter would lead to a full scale investigation by the FBI (which found that Satanists were a harmless, albeit eccentric, group. Fears that such groups had massive networks of people engaging in animal sacrifice and child abuse were discovered to be mistakenly based on illegitimate psychological practices, in which the hypnotically-recovered memories of patients had simply been invented out of whole-cloth.)

With the election of Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, both Bushes, and even Bill Clinton, evangelical Christians would find their views (to a varying extent) being increasingly represented in politics. Central political issues -- science education, abortion, gay marriage -- would be found to have serious theological implications which politicians both addressed and would use (often) as the basis of policy formation. George Bush, Jr, would give voice to conservative Christian views, including Creationism, from the White House. And in the post-9/11 world, a variety of new concerns about the role of religion in society would exert themselves from both Christian and secular sources.

The history of American religious ideology is obviously not the one detailed by Comte. It is widely agreed in religion scholarship that the original accounts of secularisation were wildly naive. Some theologians have even gone so far as to claim that the sun has set on Secularism generally construed; certainly that was the position of Oxford educated theologian Alister McGrath in his "Twilight of Atheism". But I don't think that view fully captures what's going on either.

There are two things that I think explain the situation:

4. While Secularisation does involve religious belief becoming a less central authority, paradoxically it can also involve the strengthening of religious belief.

5. There has been a widespread depletion of Liberal Christianity (and a movement towards conservative denominations) over the last half of the 20th century and into the present day.

(4) is worth unpacking further. I wrote about this issue for a letter that appeared in the Roanoke Times to help explain why the secularisation of our government is actually good for American religious groups. As American religious authority is de-centralised, competition between religious groups actually strengthens the convictions of their adherents through a sort of Darwinian struggle. Correspondingly, those religions which assert stronger, bolder claims seem to attract more adherents. Several theologians have commented that this might explain (5) (see here, here, and here) as have sociologists (see, for example, Roger Finke's "Unsecular America" in Religion and Modernization, 1992). This can be contrasted directly with the situation in England, where, despite there being no separation of Church and State, the Anglican church is often viewed as an old, passe institution and where any distrust of the government builds in distrust of traditional religious authority.

This evolutionary account of the strengthening of American religion has several explanatory advantages; it explains, for example, why religious authority can increase locally in the South even while decreasing nationally. It can also help us to understand the so-called "Emerging Church" movement wherein members are both hipsters and conservative, evangelical Christians. Most importantly, it tells us that:

6. As time goes on, religious authority is demoted to being one authority among many. But that means that religion will directly compete with other sources of authority for political and social power.

(6) tells us directly why Secularists should not become complacent after what seems like a victory. Provided that the view I outlined here is correct, in the coming months, we should probably expect a severe reaction from religious conservatives. Reverend Barry Lynn (president of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State) appears to agree with me. In a press release from Americans United, it was stated:

Lynn warned that despite their losses at the polls, [Catholic] bishops and their Religious Right allies are likely to escalate their lobbying campaigns. He predicts major conflicts over issues such as contraceptive coverage, marriage equality, faith-based job bias in federally funded programs and church electioneering law.

'I think the battles over contraceptive coverage, marriage equality and other social issues are likely to heat up, not cool down,' Lynn said. 'The Catholic hierarchy and their fundamentalist friends are increasingly desperate. They see their political clout slipping away, and they are going to do everything possible to implement their agenda now.'

Lynn said Americans United will undertake a variety of initiatives to see that church-state separation and individual freedom are preserved.

What should Secularists be doing? As James Croft (of the Secular Humanist Community at Harvard) told me in the interview I did with him, we should see the unaffiliated as potential converts to Humanism or Freethought. If we do not, we could lose them to enterprising religious communities which adapt to appeal to those populations. We should be making our positive values -- critical thinking, education, rationalism, egalitarianism, marriage equality, etc -- more public than our negative values (our lack of belief in God, for example.) And we should be making efforts to communicate our views to other groups and to participate in efforts to lessen stereotypes about us.

Obama might have been elected president, but we still have a lot of work left to do.

Contradictions Imply... Truthyness?

2012-10-29T11:37:00.000-04:00

At one of the recent meeting of Free@VT, I mentioned that contradictions between Biblical accounts can actually be evidence that some of the events in the relevant Biblical account occurred. I was met with a great deal of credulity and confusion. "If there are contradictions, then, at most, one account has to be true and the other false," I remember one person stating. Another told me that he felt this criteria was deeply troubling.

The use of contradictions in making inferences of this kind might seem to raise all kinds of epistemic worries; but, properly contextualised, this actually seems reasonable.

There are a few different criteria that scholars use to critically analyse Biblical texts. At the meeting, we had been discussing miracles that were supposedly performed by Jesus. Therefore, the suggestion would be that we should analyse those events using the standard criteria used in studying the historical Jesus. The criteria that are used to study the historical Jesus include:

1. Multiple attestation: Having multiple, independent sources.

2. Embarrassment: The text saying things that would be doctrinally embarrassing, but were included anyway.
3. Coherence: consistency between the text in question and texts that have already been authenticated.

The idea is that when one or more of (1)-(3) (and similar other criteria) are inferred about a Biblical text, we should raise the probability of its content being true. This does not mean that we should believe the content, because the probability might only be raised by a small amount.

This is not to be taken as an exhaustive list and there are plenty of people from all different kinds of backgrounds who have brought (1)-(3) into question. Criticisms range from atheist critics (such as Richard Carrier) to Christian fundamentalists. However, the current academic consensus is that (1)-(3), or something like them, should be used in Jesus studies. Thus, for our purposes, I'm going to assume that these criteria are sound.

Now, about those contradictions...

When a contradiction is small enough not to make a substantive problem for the event being described, one possible explanation is that this was due to having multiple sources. Provided that other reasons for discrepancies can be ruled out -- such as mistranslations and copying errors -- this gives us good reason to think that it is a case of multiple attestation. Conceivably, criterion (2) could be fulfilled as well if we thought that the Biblical authors would have been worried by contradictions (though the bulk of contradictions in the Biblical text might indicate that they would not have been worried by contradictions at all.)

However, all this means is that the probability for the event in question having occurred is raised. That does not mean that we should infer that the events actually did occur. In fact, as David Hume pointed out in his "On Miracles", eye witness testimony is always insufficient to establish the occurrence of miracles. The probability of a miracle having occurred is so low, and the amount by which the probability is raised by almost any evidence so small, that we can almost never infer that a miracle really took place. The only way to infer that a miracle really took place is if it would have been miraculous that the miracle in question had not occurred. This is because we can only infer the miracle if the alternative is even less likely (and therefore more miraculous.)

Also notice a problem with criterion (2). Not only would accounts of Jesus performing miracles not have bothered early Christians but such claims would have directly benefited the political aspirations of that group. Therefore, early Christians would have been directly incentivised to either invent or exaggerate stories about the miracles performed by Jesus (as one can infer that they almost certainly did by examining the canonical and non-canonical gospels in chronological order.)

Science & Religion Talk Slides & Notes

2012-10-08T18:05:00.000-04:00

Last week, I spoke twice on the relationship between science and religion (one time was to the undergraduate philosophy club at Virginia Tech and the other was to a sociology class.) This is the topic that I am currently planning on writing my graduate thesis in.

Both talks were meant to be broad overviews of several different perspectives on the relationship that one finds in the literature, without actually endorsing any particular perspective (with a pro/con provided for each view.) I've been asked by multiple people to make the lecture materials (slides & notes) available. I'm uploading them here so that everyone can enjoy them.

Talk for the Undergraduate Philosophy Students
Notes
Lecture Slides

Talk for the Sociology Class
Lecture Slides

Is Atheism Growing Up?

2012-10-08T13:11:00.002-04:00

Many active participants in the atheist movement have noted how divisive the movement has become in recent history. I don't think it needs to be as divisive as it appears to be, and I rather openly dislike that some people have pejoratively called sexual harassment policies "too divisive". Often, this language of "divisiveness" is simply used to re-assert various kinds of privilege.

Nonetheless, it cannot be denied that there have been a large number of internal conflicts. For the most part, this has saddened me.

However, as Adam Lee has recently pointed out, it might not be altogether bad that these sorts of internal struggles have started. In his article "Atheism’s growing pains", which appeared in Saturday's edition of Salon, he argues that this divisive turn is necessary for the atheist movement to define itself as a cohesive political player:

In the last decade, atheism in America has risen from a tiny, demonized fringe to a serious presence in the public and political arenas... As the atheist movement gains numbers and prominence, it’s inevitably been forced to confront questions about what it ultimately seeks to accomplish. Some in the movement favor a narrowly defined set of goals: defending the separation of church and state, keeping creationism out of science classes, protecting atheists from job discrimination and prejudice. But other atheists, while not opposing these goals, see things more broadly. They note that the religious-right lawmakers who promote creationism and state-church entanglements are also rabidly opposed to equality or legal protection for LGBT people; try to ban abortion and contraception, or throw obstacles in the path of women seeking them; sermonize that global warming must be a hoax because God wouldn’t let the planet change that much; advocate a social-Darwinian worldview where the rich have unlimited power and the poor get nothing but societal neglect and harsh repression... there’s a growing recognition that we have problems within our own community — a realization that atheists, like every other group of people, include sexual predators, bigots and defenders of privilege, and that giving up religion doesn’t necessarily erase these harmful attitudes.

Columbus Day... I mean, Native American Mourning Day

2012-10-08T12:29:00.002-04:00

"In fourteen hundred ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. He had three ships and left from Spain, he sailed prepared to exact some pain. He brought lots of men who were looking for gold, the real history is different from what you've been told. These greedy men brought diseases and violence in their waves, then turned the proud natives into their slaves. The natives were murdered and tortured, far from being his fans, since he was only focused on finding riches and conquering their lands."
— David Shelby

"Fighting over God's Image" at New York Times

2012-10-08T12:21:00.001-04:00

Columnists Edward Blum and Paul Harvey have posted a fascinating (but short) look at the history of American artistic blasphemy in the New York Times. The article covers large territory in a short space, but should serve as an excellent place to start discussion on this topic. In the wake of the Islamic world's uproar over defamatory depictions of Muhammed, it serves us well to note that our own culture is not exempt from similar uproars:

More recently, there have been uproars over the Nigerian-British painter Chris Ofili’s “Holy Virgin Mary” and the New York artist and photographer Andres Serrano’s “Piss Christ.” Mr. Serrano’s image of Jesus on the crucifix, submerged in the artist’s own urine, roused a crusade against the National Endowment for the Arts in the late 1980s. Mr. Ofili’s painting of a dark-skinned Madonna with photographs of vaginas surrounding her enraged Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani. The mayor, who mistakenly claimed that elephant dung was smeared on the image when it in fact was used at the base to hold the painting up, tried to ban it from being displayed at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, in 1999. (One upset Christian smeared white paint over it.)

The Lesson of the Rapa Nui

2012-10-03T12:10:00.000-04:00

In the South Pacific, there is a small island about twice the size of Manhattan. Looking over this landscape, are a number of stern, solemn faces. The story of these faces is whispered by the ghosts of history, if only we would listen.

Death came to the Rapa Nui as a slow and eventual decline. The food was running scarce and the forests were disappearing without coming back. We can imagine a long gone population crying out over the island's rolling hills. "Why have the gods forsaken us?" they would have cried, "Have they forgotten us? Have they abandoned us? We cut down the trees; we make the stone statues; why has their presence left our people?"

Even as the stone faces, imbued with sacred significance, were placed along the coast, looking out over the distant oceans, the gods still did not return to the Rapa Nui.

For the gods did not exist and never did. Instead, the Rapa Nui brought about their own demise by pleading with their imaginations and depleting the only resources available on the island. Having ravished the forests, there was nothing left with which to construct boats. No way to leave. Instead, they were trapped with their own poor decisions, based on fantastical illusions that should have left them long before.

Easter Island should be a reminder to all of us that ill-founded beliefs can cause harm. Let us learn from the lesson of the Rapa Nui.

[Purported] Anti-Gay Hate Crime at Lancaster High School in California

2012-09-27T23:40:00.002-04:00

Edit (Sep 29):

I am shocked as to how much interest this post has generated on my blog. For a little blog like mine to have generated so much traffic on an issue that I am not particularly connected with is fascinating.

To be clear, I first found this story in a Facebook post and simply wanted to share what little I could find about it. Over night, it generated more traffic than any story I'd ever run on here.

For those too lazy to click on links, Snopes.com has now identified the rumor reported here as "probably false". The actual case seems to have involved a high school student who misidentified a female student as male and had a physical altercation with her. However, I am astonished by the number of people who have tried to excuse his behavior by saying that "he didn't know it was a girl". Even supposing that this student had beaten up a male student that would not excuse his actions. It's unclear as to how much of an asymmetry was involved with the altercation, but numerous reports indicate that the boy did a lot more damage to the girl than she did to him. Provided that this is true, there are still issues worth talking about here.

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A user has posted the following on the Facebook group Gender Queer Atheists:

Yesterday a 17 year female , who attends Lancaster High School in California, was beaten by a football player, on school grounds, for being gay. After receiving over a dozen blows to her jaw, head, eye and head, all he received was a 5 day suspension by the Lancaster School District. She suffered from a fractured jaw and multiple concussions to the head and the Deputy Sheriff advised her mother to re-think her wanting to file charges against the football player because her daughter pushed him back. The school ended up documenting "assault" charges on the victims school file, NOT the football players!!! To make things worse, the Deputy Sheriff warned the victim, by saying, "Just so you know, if you file charges against him, I'm taking his side." We're attempting to raise awareness and bring this story to light because Lancaster High School is trying to sweep this "Hate Crime" under the rug! Like if you care and please forward to everyone you know. FYI : CBS, KCAL 9 news are running the story tomorrow at 10pm.

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Edit 1: It has come to my attention that many do not think this to be a hate crime. It's possible that this wasn't an anti-gay hate crime and that, as some claim, the female student was mistaken for a male student and that he was acting in self defence. I fail to see how that resolves anything. The asymmetry in the force used between the two individuals is astonishing; the fact that the girl ended up with the amount of damage that she did, while the boy ended up with so little, means that he used excessive force. That puts this beyond the realm of self defence. The fact that he is not being prosecuted for excessive force speaks to privilege (presumably due to his elevated status as a student athlete), even if it's not heterosexual privilege.

Edit 2: The genders of the two individuals should not matter. A male student should no more beat up another male student than beat up a female student.

Edit 3: It has additionally come to my attention that this event is not very well confirmed. Please check the relevant snopes.com site often for updates on this situation.

Edit 4: The local PD has released a press report.

Election 2012

2012-09-15T13:48:00.000-04:00

Watch Romney tell a gay veteran that his spouse does not deserve basic human rights. To his face.

However you feel about economics, foreign policy, or anything else, please understand that one political candidate supports gay marriage, while another does not. That one political party has had major representatives publicly support the rape of women at abortion clinics, while another party has condemned such practices. Please understand that one party uses a particular form of conservative, fundamentalist Christian Protestantism to further their cause, while the other hardly ever mentions religion. Please understand that one party is openly racist, misogynistic, homophobic and the other is not. One candidate doesn't always come through on his election promises but the other is on the wrong side of history.

I know precisely who is getting my vote. I cannot sit by while bullshit like this happens in our country.

9/11/12: In Remembrance

2012-09-11T16:27:00.000-04:00

What a Douchey Ad

2012-09-10T11:33:00.005-04:00

Warning: The following ad is highly rage inducing...

(Thanks to my friend Jessie for bringing this to my attention.)

Feminist Resources... For Men

2012-09-09T21:10:00.002-04:00

I put together a bunch of Feminist/gender issue articles/papers for a male friend of mine. I figured that I'd share it here on my blog so that everyone could have access. I put these resources together specifically for men, like myself, who are interested in Feminist issues and in being a Feminist.

Of Dogs and Lizards: A parable of privilege, concerning a dog and a gecko.

White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Backpack: The classic article on privilege.

The Question: A moving article on the privilege blindness of men. It really brings a point home which is probably trivially obvious to female readers.

Feminism 101:The ultimate Feminist resource for those of us to whom this does not come naturally.

Derailing For Dummies: This is a parody; don't do the stuff on here, but spend some time thinking about why it's bad.

Terms related to gender identity, orientation, etc: Because definitions matter.

Are There No True Christians?

2012-09-02T16:48:00.001-04:00

Edit: Join the Reddit discussion here!

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Christian apologist Ray Comfort often claims that there are no true atheists. He seems to claim this simply because, as he would state it, no one could ever know for sure that there is no God. Therefore, he insists that all people who self identify as atheists are actually agnostics. And, further, that agnostics are "ignoramuses" who wish to avoid personal responsibility for their sins (from here):

The professing atheist is what is commonly known as an 'agnostic' - one who claims he 'doesn't know' if God exists. It is interesting to note that the Latin equivalent for the Greek word is 'ignoramus.' The Bible tells us that this ignorance is 'willful' (Psalm 10:4). It's not that a person can't find God, but that he won't. It has been rightly said that the 'atheist' can't find God for the same reason a thief can't find a policeman. He knows that if he admits that there is a God, he is admitting that he is ultimately responsible to Him. This is not a pleasant thought for some.

I'll leave it to others to discuss why Comfort is, at the very least, deeply question begging. However, I have recently worked out an argument for the proposition that there are no true Christians. I don't know if this argument really works, but I think it does raise a number of interesting questions.

Given how convenient and biased Comfort's position in the preceding appears to be, I want to note up front that the position I am presenting here may be seen as similarly too convenient. I would also like to state -- and will be explaining this again after I present my argument -- that none of what I will state disproves the claims of Christianity. Nor does this argument prove that there is no god or gods.

Having conceded these possibilities up front, let us continue on to consider what I think to be a persuasive argument that no one actually believes the central doctrines of Christianity.

Consider the proposition:

p: "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously."

p is Noam Chomsky's famous example of a sentence which is grammatically correct but totally devoid of semantic content. p cannot be parsed; it simply doesn't mean anything at all. In fact, p was purposely constructed in order to mean nothing at all. We can generate many other examples of statements, or groups of statements, which are equally devoid of semantic content. Lewis Carrol's poem Jabberwocky is another familiar example of a collection of statements that were produced simply for the sake of producing non-sense.

Now let's ask another question -- can a person believe that p?

In order to try to answer that question, try to imagine what it would mean to believe that p. Can you think of any possible defences, even bad ones, for believing that colorless green ideas sleep furiously? Can you think of any possible defences, even bad ones, for believing that colorless green ideas don't sleep furiously? Can you explain to someone what this sentence means or what implications it may or may not have? Can you take it apart and identify for me what the objects in question are (for example, what in the world is a colorless green idea?)

Of course, the intuition being built here is that p cannot be believed. If we don't know what p even means, we cannot state whether or not we believe p. But that's the point of p obviously lacking semantic content; p could not be thought to be either true or false because no one knows what they would be affirming or disaffirming.

Now let's consider another set of statements from Baptist minister John Piper:

T: "(1) The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are distinct Persons, (2) each Person is fully God, (3) there is only one God."

T is a description of the doctrine of the Trinity, a core doctrine of nearly every branch of Christianity. Most Christians would go so far as to claim that to deny T is to deny any form of Christianity whatsoever. For our purposes, I will be assuming that this is true. In passing, I will note briefly that many Unitarians deny T but still describe themselves as Christians. Similarly, many early forms of Christianity would have denied T as well. But all mainstream Christian sects claim to affirm T and most consider T to be what distinguishes Christianity from other religions.

Now, we can ask a similar question: Can someone actually believe T?

The first thing to notice is that T directly involves a kind of logical contradiction. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are all claimed to be "fully God". In fact, the Athanasian Creed would state that this as a matter of logical identity (source):

...the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God. And yet they are not Three Gods, but One God.

Certainly, if we were to parse T into First Order Logic, we'd find that T is necessarily false. But maybe that's naive; perhaps we should not expect to be able to translate core Christian doctrines into any particular kind of formal system. Or maybe Christianity requires paraconsistent logic. Very well.

We can still ask if anyone really believes that T.

What on Earth could it possibly mean to believe that T? Christian theology turns out not to be any kind of help at all on resolving this issue. There have been a tremendous number of different interpretations or explanations of the triune doctrine over the course of Christian history, but essentially all of these interpretations or explanations have been declared as "heresies".

One could believe, for example, that God is composed of three parts and that those three parts are the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. But that's a long rejected heretical doctrine known as Modalism or Sabellianism (or possibly Partialism.) Maybe you think that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are distinct beings who share the same substance (whatever that might mean); but this is the Tritheist heresy. Or maybe you think this issue can simply be solved by an analogy -- that water can be either liquid, solid, or vapor; but it's not clear how this analogy avoids any of the heretical "missteps" or, if it does, what explanatory power it actually has.

In fact, I have seen it claimed that, "Augustine once quipped that to not think about the Trinity is to risk heresy, but to think about the Trinity is to risk lunacy" (from here -- I was unfortunately unable to track down the original source for this claim.)

Theologians are only even more intimately aware of this issue. It is their profession, after all, to make sense of Christian doctrines and to explicate them in terms of technical verbiage. However, instead of even attempting to explain what T actually means, most theologians have simply chosen to declare it to be beyond the understanding of human beings. The Trinity is often called the "Central Mystery of the Christian Faith". The Catholic Catechism describes the situation thusly:

The mystery of the Most Holy Trinity is the central mystery of Christian faith and life. It is the mystery of God in himself. It is therefore the source of all the other mysteries of faith, the light that enlightens them. It is the most fundamental and essential teaching in the 'hierarchy of the truths of faith'.

This is a vital point and is explained in the Catholic Encyclopedia:

The Vatican Council has explained the meaning to be attributed to the term mystery in theology. It lays down that a mystery is a truth which we are not merely incapable of discovering apart from Divine Revelation, but which, even when revealed, remains 'hidden by the veil of faith and enveloped, so to speak, by a kind of darkness' (Constitution, 'De fide. cath.', iv). In other words, our understanding of it remains only partial, even after we have accepted it as part of the Divine message. Through analogies and types we can form a representative concept expressive of what is revealed, but we cannot attain that fuller knowledge which supposes that the various elements of the concept are clearly grasped and their reciprocal compatibility manifest. As regards the vindication of a mystery, the office of the natural reason is solely to show that it contains no intrinsic impossibility, that any objection urged against it on Reason. 'Expressions such as these are undoubtedly the score that it violates the laws of thought is invalid. More than this it cannot do.

The Vatican Council further defined that the Christian Faith contains mysteries strictly so called (can. 4). All theologians admit that the doctrine of the Trinity is of the number of these. Indeed, of all revealed truths this is the most impenetrable to reason. Hence, to declare this to be no mystery would be a virtual denial of the canon in question. Moreover, our Lord's words, Matthew 11:27, 'No one knoweth the Son, but the Father,' seem to declare expressly that the plurality of Persons in the Godhead is a truth entirely beyond the scope of any created intellect. The Fathers supply many passages in which the incomprehensibility of the Divine Nature is affirmed. St. Jerome says, in a well-known phrase: 'The true profession of the mystery of the Trinity is to own that we do not comprehend it' (De mysterio Trinitatus recta confessio est ignoratio scientiae — 'Proem ad 1. xviii in Isai.'). The controversy with the Eunomians, who declared that the Divine Essence was fully expressed in the absolutely simple notion of 'the Innascible' (agennetos), and that this was fully comprehensible by the human mind, led many of the Greek Fathers to insist on the incomprehensibility of the Divine Nature, more especially in regard to the internal processions. St. Basil, Against Eunomius I.14; St. Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures VI; St. John Damascene, Of the Orthodox Faith I.2, etc.).

Notice that by the lights of their own ontology, human beings, as "created beings", cannot comprehend the meaning of T. And, thus, even assuming that Christianity is true in some well defined way, T cannot be understood, let alone believed. The status of T should really be the same as the status of p; as far as we can tell, T is indistinguishable from non-sense. It is, therefore, neither true nor false. It's utterance is indistinct from ever so much noise.

There is an excellent objection that should be considered. One of the points which Quine argued persuasively in his Two Doctrines of Empiricism was that, given a sufficiently complex web of beliefs, one could believe both x and not-x at the same time. Moreover, if we should be realists about our best scientific theories, then, minimally, we should provisionally believe both quantum mechanics and general relativity in spite of the fact that these are mutually inconsistent.

One might be persuaded on this basis to think that one could believe a logical contradiction.

More explicitly, it seems reasonable to think something like the following about an individual (call him/her "Sam"):

1. Sam believes x.
2. Sam believes y.
3. If (1) & (2) then Sam believes "x and y".
4. Therefore, Sam believes "x and y".

Replacing y with not-x in the former tells us that Sam believes "x and not-x". Given our example of General Relativity and quantum mechanics, it seems like there are a whole host of provisionally believed logical contradictions any scientific realist would be forced to believe (since both GR and QM have implications that contradict each other.)

If the incoherence of T were claimed merely on the basis of T being logically contradictory, then the preceding objection might be able to save Christianity. But it's worse than that. Christians themselves claim that they do not know what T means. They may believe that they believe that T, but that would be distinct from believing that T. Instead, it would appear that they are merely declaring a statement to be true simply because of the importance that affirmation has in their communities and within the context of their tradition but without actually parsing its content.

In Breaking the Spell, Daniel Dennett theorised about "belief-in-belief"; that people may publicly claim to believe something merely because they think they should (or because of possible social repercussions of they do not.) However, I would go a step further than this in the discussion here. Someone could believe that they believe a proposition without ever believing that proposition; they could suffer under the illusion that they believe the proposition in question when they never really did.

I promised earlier that I would explain why none of this implied the falsehood of Christianity. Let's consider another statement:

B: "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo."

B might not appear to be a statement at all. It's difficult to parse and it consists solely of eight iterations of the word "buffalo". Yet B is the so-called Buffalo Sentence and is perfectly understandable, provided that you put in a little bit of effort into parsing its content. B simply relies on the fact that "buffalo" has sufficiently diverse meanings that it can play several distinct grammatical roles (as both a noun, a verb, and an adjective, for example.)

T might be like this. It could really be the case that T is true. However, notice that B cannot be affirmed or denied until we can parse out its content. Similarly, unless and until we can properly parse T, no one could believe T regardless of effort.

There are similar arguments that one could make about the semantic content of other religious claims. For example, Stephen Law claims in the introductory portion of Believing Bullshit that a non-temporal intelligent agency is as incoherent as a non-spatial mountain (i.e. just as mountains require space to count as mountains, intelligent agents require temporal relations to really count as intelligent agents. If true, the idea of a mind -- like God's -- existing outside of space-time is just non-sense.)

As another example, Princess Elizabeth famously wrote to Descartes that his material dualism (Descartes' explanation of the soul) was basically incoherent and inconsistent with his physics.

I think these semantic worries are serious challenges and that, if they cannot be sufficiently countered, present the same difficulties for the possibility of Christian belief as the argument I presented here. However, belief in T is so central to Christian theology that, if the worries I raise here cannot be resolved, then those who self identify as Christians are suffering from a grave misapprehension about themselves; it would mean there are no true Christians.

The Religious Conservative's Alt Universe

2012-08-26T14:45:00.000-04:00

Welcome to the bizzaro world of the religious conservative! In this magical wonderland:

1. The Earth is definitely less than 10,000 years old. In fact, God probably made it on October 22 at 10am in the year 4004 BC.
2. The Founding Fathers were deeply Christian and believed in an orthodox, Evangelical Protestant version of their faith. Also, the Founding Fathers and the Pilgrims were totally the same dudez.
3. Our country was founded as a Christian nation. In fact, everyone was Christian until those damn Hippies in the 1960's came around (or maybe it was secret Communist nasties. Or possibly the Jews.)

4. Female anatomy involves various secretions and other gadgets to make sure that a woman couldn't get pregnant from rape.
5. There are no actual atheists. People who say they don't believe in God are just liars who have rejected God because they want to do whatever they want. Like take lots of drugs, sleep with prostitutes, and build Mosques. Which leads us to...
6. President Obama is a Muslim atheist socialist fascist. He's somehow figured out how to be all four at the same time.
7. All evidence that (1)-(6) are not only demonstrably false but largely don't even make conceptual sense (I can't even parse (6) for example) is just a massive liberal conspiracy.

A Tale of Two Endorsements

2012-08-19T20:26:00.000-04:00

/ Last night, during a late night party at a friends apartment, I came to learn that one of the individuals I was speaking to is a conservative Southern Baptist. The conversation was already focused on religion and I was easily slipping into "Instructor" mode. As the Baptist began to tell me about his views, I asked him how he felt about Separation of Church and State.

Very quickly, the response came that our country was "founded as a Christian nation" and that Christians were under attack.

This was the typical sort of rhetoric that one hears from the Religious Right as of late.

Of course, I explained that our country was founded neither by Christians nor by atheists, but by Enlightenment era Deists who largely rejected the religious Orthodoxy of their day. That Jefferson did distribute a version of the Bible, but it was a version stripped of supernatural claims and made Jesus into a philosopher. I carefully noted that the Treaty of Tripoli, signed by several of the Founding Fathers and ratified by Congress, states explicitly that we are "in no sense a Christian nation". And that Benjamin Franklin stated that light houses were more useful than churches.

I also began to explain two different kinds of endorsement.

"I've been working on this situation in Roanoke," I remember beginning. "The Board of Supervisors there has been opening their meetings with a prayer. As the law is currently understood, this is illegal."

"Prayer is illegal?" he responded incredulously.

"No, that's a common misunderstanding. Anyone can pray anywhere; it's not illegal. What is illegal is government endorsement of prayer."

This misunderstanding -- that there is a distinction between government endorsement and personal endorsement -- is one of the most pervasive and dangerous equivocations to be heard from some religious conservatives. Certainly, not all religious conservatives make this mistake, and there is a long tradition in some Baptist denominations of defending the Separation of Church and State. As I related to my fellow party goer, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State is led by Baptist reverend Barry Lynn.

Nonetheless, this confusion is so common and so pervasive that I decided to write a blog article explaining it.

Government endorsement of x occurs whenever the government shows favouritism or preference for x over alternatives. There are some kinds of government endorsements which are not presently illegal; for example, a town government can endorse an electric company for the distribution of power to its residents. The government can endorse having a police force for the protection of its citizens and it can endorse its own laws.

However, at present, the United States government cannot legally endorse one religious perspective over another or over irreligion.

When the Roanoke Board of Supervisors sets aside meeting time to have a specifically Christian prayer, that's a direct endorsement of Christianity. It makes non-Christians feel unwelcome and is deeply exclusive. Additionally, it signals to the local Christians that their variety of religion is privileged by their government. The action reinforces divisions on the behalf of both Christians and non-Christians.

However, if an individual Board member quietly prays to him or her self at some point during the meeting, that's not government endorsement. That's personal or individual endorsement. It shows that he or she, as an individual, is a Christian, not that the government is affiliated with any particular religious perspective.

As far as I am aware, and contrary to the rhetoric of the Religious Right, no one has ever tried to get prayer removed from the public square. Instead, it is the unnecessary and illegal entanglement of government with religious viewpoints that people have fought against.

One often hears that disentangling the government from religion involves the creation of an atheistic government. But this is just patently false; what we want is a government that is neutral with respect to religion. We're not calling for "There is no God" to be emblazoned on our currency. We are not asking for our national motto to be changed to "In Reason, We Trust". Nor are we asking for government meetings to open with recitations from Dawkins' The God Delusion.

We're simply asking that the government not take sides in these issues.

Libere is a Proud Supporter of A+

2012-08-19T19:26:00.001-04:00

From Jenn McCreight's suggestion to create "Third Wave Atheism" -- what has been termed "A+" -- I would just like to state the full support of this blog for A+.

A Diatribe on Genesis

2012-08-18T21:54:00.002-04:00

The literal interpretation of Genesis isn't just bad on scientific grounds, but it is also bad on theological grounds. Genesis, like the rest of the Old Testament, is a rich, interwoven tapestry, each containing many, many ancient voices singing out their praises for Yahweh, Elohim, and His kingdom. We have here recounted the folkloric traditions of the Israelites, their stories of origination and a narrative of their struggles with the divine presence.

If one reads Genesis as literal truth, then one misses the point entirely. The first few chapters are a story of a movement from some naive, remembered past, a golden age of prehistory, in which some (if not all) of the ancestors of the Israelites apparently occupied an area in what was to become southern Mesopotamia (which is the location indicated for Eden in Genesis chapter 2.)

Having overcome that naive existence, and wandering forth into what would have seemed a more civilised era, is represented in the eating of the apple from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

It is this advancement of knowledge which simultaneously brings them out of a golden era of naivety and into the more modern era. When the culture diverts from that naive golden age, with the advancement of knowledge, a severe price is paid -- one can never return to the garden.

Lessons have been learned which cannot be undone. This is represented with the placement of cherubim (mythical creatures which are part eagle, lion, and human) and a flaming sword, to gaurd Eden from ever being entered again. This is not meant as a literal history, but it is meant to contain deep Truths. It disheartens me to see that some of the people who hold this book so highly are so woefully ignorant of its content, and the lessons that may be gleaned from it.

Kansas Doctor's License Revoked for.... Not Forcing a Ten Year Old Rape Victim to Give Birth

2012-08-10T22:21:00.000-04:00

I don't understand people.

I really don't.

A ten year old girl is brutally raped by her uncle. The girl is then apparently taken to a physician who performs an abortion. The physician is Dr. Ann Neuhaus, whose colleague was brutally shot to death while attending church for performing abortions.

The not-so-unbiased Kansas Medical Board is partially composed of members of Operation Rescue, a Conservative Christian organisation that has been tied to the murder of at least one medical doctor in the past and is labelled as a "domestic terror" group by many. In fact, the murder which Operation Rescue was tied to was of Dr. Neuhaus' colleague. I'm not kidding.

Not surprisingly, the Board has gone to great lengths to attack Dr. Neuhaus, including stripping her of her medical license.

Angry? Want to do something about this? I'd recommend donating to Planned Parenthood.

For more information, you can read the articles at Addicting Info, care2, and RH Reality Check.

Show that Science is a Priority -- Sign the APS's Petition

2012-08-10T20:45:00.002-04:00

This afternoon, I received an e-mail from the American Physical Society (APS) alerting me to some troubling events in Congress. The APS is concerned about a large number of budget cuts in the Federal government which are likely to negatively affect scientific research and has created a petition in protest. In the United States, scientific research is often funded, in part or full, by the Federal government. Corporations are unlikely to take the sorts of risks involved with certain kinds of R&D; nonetheless, this kind of research is beneficial to all of us.

The Federal funding of scientific research is largely motivated the same way that government maintenance of public parks and roads is motivated. As in the Tragedy of the Commons, single individuals cannot be expected to be motivated to maintain parks or roads even though it would be directly beneficial to all of us; corporations performing simple cost benefit analysis will often quickly find that it is cheaper for them to simply dump trash in the park, as opposed to cleaning it. Similarly, the kinds of pure scientific research that delivers insights into how the world works -- which historically have given us the computer, the atomic bomb, the Internet, transistors, radio technology, and so on -- are often very poor investments for corporations. Federal funding of scientific research, often performed at university laboratories, is crucial for our country's continued advancement.

But where did this budgetary problem originate?

According to a report from the University of Michigan's Office of the Vice President for Research:

In 2011, Congress passed the Budget Control Act (BCA) because of the mounting federal deficit due to many years of increased discretionary and mandatory spending, and a decrease in revenues.

Congress hoped to decrease the discretionary budget between fiscal years 2012-21 in order to reduce the national debt by $2.8 trillion. However, the BCA led to disagreements about the distribution of government funds. This has caused the government to go into sequestration.

Sequestration is apparently involves automatically triggering a spending cut. Again, according to the report from the University of Michigan:

Under the BCA, sequestration requires automatic across-the-board cuts to discretionary spending across all agencies starting on January 2, 2013, to meet the requirements of the BCA.
It is estimated that the $1.2 trillion in cuts would save approximately18% in interest payments, resulting in a net of approximately $984 billion in cuts across all discretionary budgets. These cuts are divided between defense and non-defense discretionary spending and include a 2% reduction in Medicare payments.

The same reports have some interesting graphics (from a report prepared by the American Academy for the Advancement of Science or AAAS) illustrating what these funding cuts mean. The first plot to the right illustrates the percent change in budget without sequestration.

But with sequestration, the most likely result will be the second image to the left. Note that this budget plan has yet to be approved by the Senate.

Below is illustrated the budget cuts through 2021. Note the remarkable 67% decrease in the Energy budget.

This is not good news for science, to say the least.

In addition to receiving this e-mail, I was also explaining to someone today that, as a community of atheists, Freethinkers, Humanists, rationalists, etc, we need to more publicly affirm our positive values.

Well, here's a way to do that. Communicate to the government that science is a priority by signing APS's petition, available here.

James Croft Interview, Part 2

2012-08-02T17:53:00.001-04:00

Part 1 is available here.

Chik-Fil-A & Intolerance

2012-08-02T14:12:00.000-04:00

I keep seeing people trying to defend Chik-Fil-A by saying that we have freedom of speech and of belief in this country.

News flash: Freedom of belief, speech, etc, are not freedom from ridicule or contempt. When I am accused of being intolerant to those who are intolerant, I have only to say that, "Yes, I am precisely that."

James Croft Interview, Part 1

2012-07-30T16:02:00.000-04:00

Part 2 is available here.