Nidal Malik Hasan

According to a report in the Telegraph today, he also told colleagues at America’s top military hospital that non-Muslims were infidels condemned to hell and that they should be set on fire.

The outburst came during an hour-long talk Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, gave on the Koran in front of dozens of other doctors at Walter Reed Army Medical Centre in Washington DC, where he worked for six years before arriving at Fort Hood in July.

Colleagues had expected a discussion on a medical issue but were instead given an extremist interpretation of the Koran, which Hasan appeared to believe.

It was the latest in a series of “red flags” about his state of mind that have emerged since the massacre at Fort Hood, America’s largest military installation, last Thursday.

Hasan, armed with two handguns including a semi-automatic pistol, walked into a processing centre for soldiers deploying to Iraq and Afghanistan, where he killed 13 and injured more than 30.

Fellow doctors have recounted how they were repeatedly harangued by Hasan about religion and that he openly claimed to be:

Muslim first and American second.

One Army doctor who knew him said a fear of appearing discriminatory against a Muslim soldier had stopped fellow officers from filing formal complaints.

Another, Dr Val Finnell, who took a course with him in 2007 at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Maryland, did complain about Hasan’s “anti-American rants.” He said:

The system is not doing what it’s supposed to do. He at least should have been confronted about these beliefs, told to cease and desist, and to shape up or ship out. I really questioned his loyalty.

Selena Coppa, an activist for Iraq Veterans Against the War, said:

This man was a psychiatrist and was working with other psychiatrists every day and they failed to notice how deeply disturbed someone right in their midst was.

Senator Joe Lieberman, who chairs the US Senate Committee on Homeland Security, said there had been “strong warning signs” that Hasan was an “Islamist extremist”.

The committee would ask

Whether the Army missed warning signs that should have led them to essentially discharge him.

He added:

The US Army has to have zero tolerance. He should have been gone.

But General George Casey, the Army’s Chief of Staff, said it was “speculation” that military authorities failed to pick up on warning signs.

I don’t want to say that we missed it. We have to go back and look at ourselves, and ask ourselves the hard questions. Are we doing the right things? We will learn from this.

It’s too early to draw conclusions but we will ask ourselves the hard questions about what we are doing and the changes we should make as a result of this.

Minn. Boy Who Fled Chemo Treatment Now Cancer-Free

MINNEAPOLIS —  A Minnesota teen who fled the state to avoid chemotherapy has finished his cancer treatment.

Daniel Hauser of Sleepy Eye underwent his final radiation session Friday, and his family says the 13-year-old is cancer-free.

Daniel gained national attention when he stopped treatment after one session in February and fled, citing his religious beliefs. After he returned, he underwent court-ordered chemo to treat Hodgkin’s lymphoma, then started radiation therapy.

Family spokesman Dan Zwakman tells KSTP-TV everything is going as planned. A call to the family’s home from The Associated Press rang unanswered Saturday.

A Brown County judge has asked for reports from Brown County Family Services and Daniel’s doctor. If everything looks good, the case will likely be closed.

Let’s now stop and think about what would have happened if his idiot mother had stopped him from getting treated. He would likely be dead or about to die.

I don’t understand how all of this destruction and chaos is part of a benevolent and loving creator’s master plan.

Today I had a chance to read the first chapter in CJ Werleman’s upcoming book, God Hates You, Hate Him Back. It is absolutely hilarious and I am waiting to read the rest of it. The book has the same type of witty humor you can see in his posts on Twitter (@Rationalists). If you want to read it for yourself, it is available on his site Godhatesyou.net. The first chapter starts of with Genesis and I was chuckling before finishing the first paragraph. Even if you have not experienced the Bible before you will probably enjoy this rendition. This is probably going to be one of the best Biblical dissections ever and I cannot wait until the entire book comes out. The book is set for a November 23rd release so I suggest you mark you calendars accordingly. It probably won’t change many faithful’s stances, but it will definately give any skeptic a laugh. If you are looking for something to tide you over in the meantime, follow him on Twitter!

That’s why I am going to offer my support for the donor boycott of the DNC. I have signed the petition and taken the pledge. We can no longer allow Democrats to depend on our contributions without answering to our issues.

Some might think this a poor choice. (I’d encourage them to read the lengthy explanation that John and Joe provide.) But here is how I look at it: I could give money to Democrats thinking they’ll support my rights and get nothing, or I could not give money to Democrats and get nothing. Why waste my money?

This is about psychological conditioning. If you keep rewarding politicians for poor representation, they’ll keep representing poorly. The Human Rights Campaign epitomizes this point. They collect huge amounts of money and have very little to show for it except continued pandering to Democrats who talk a good talk.

What we’ve been doing isn’t enough. It’s time to step things up. It’s time to become a force to be reckoned with. It’s time for full equality now and no more Mr. Nice Gay. Let’s continue the momentum we saw at the National Equality March!

If you want to use your money in ways to support of queer equality, do us a favor and don’t give it to the Democratic committee. Give it to one of the many organizations that work tirelessly to support the gay community, like The Trevor Project or Join The Impact. Then, inform the politicians you wish to support why you aren’t contributing to their campaigns. Democrats stand for many important values, and voting for them is still important, but it’s time that Democrats realize how important the LGBT community is to their coffers.

Hopefully the Democrats are smart enough to realize they need our support, and they step up their efforts before things go awry. If they are unable to meet the very promises they have offered our community, then they didn’t deserve our support to begin with.

I am proud to stand among those who support equality and hope you will do the same.

Or do they? From Ape Not Monkey:

Click image to enlarge

I wonder what will happen when we get a Friday the 13th while the Antichrist sits in the White House?

Brother Richard

–

I just realized that instead of giving you a Friday Funny, I put up a post with that horrid “Letter From Hell” abomination.   My apologies. To remedy the situation, I give you James Randi in 1992 explaining why it is impossible to prove a negative:

On style, Randi’s delivery is excellent – from his comedic timing to his facial expressions. On content, he provides a wonderful explanation for why we cannot empirically prove a negative – no amount of evidence and inductive reasoning will be enough to counter the infinite range of possible conditions and scenarios. Those claiming to be psychic can always claim that their psychic powers do not work when being tested by a skeptic – and we cannot prove otherwise!

You can’t just rest on your imagined laurels because I am unable to disprove the existence of a particular supernatural influence. Show me the evidence for your claim! Show me an amputee who regrows a limb, an individual who repeatedly knows the 10-digit numbers written in my desk, or a single reindeer who can fly.

And we will test the evidence. *Push*

That was hard. It makes me feel good, though, because these guys are pros…and my little incursion into their world left me impressed with how difficult it is to put together even these shorts.

If they ever put out the bloopers from my episode, though, I'm going to have to cry.

YOU would think, wouldn't you, that one of the principal attractions of atheism would be the complete absence of schisms. Where the devout always seem to be working themselves up into a frenzy over some obscure theological point, non-believers can glide through life, absolved, as they are, of the need to negotiate the terms of their disbelief. If there's no God, there is no message. And if there's no message, then there's nothing much to argue about.

Well, we do have a complete absence of schisms, because we don't any central dogma or doctrine. I wish this weren't so difficult for the believers to understand. Each of us has our own, individual goals and follows their unique paths to understanding. Nobody is looking at Paul Kurtz and Christopher Hitchens and saying that they're so different that they can't both be atheists. There is no atheist pope, no atheist catechism, no atheist holy book.

And nothing to argue about? Oh, we have and always will have a million things to argue over — it's just that they tend not to be whether Jesus was of the similar or same substance as God, but instead about real world politics and about ideas that matter. As anybody who has attended a meeting of atheists knows, we love to argue. We're ordinary human beings in that regard, despite repeated claims by apologists for religion that godless and faithful are different species. Really, when I'm on my deathbed, if my wife wants to keep me going for a little longer, all she has to do is bring in editorials like that by Dani Garavelli, and I'll cling to life as long as my middle finger and my snarling muscles are still functional.

This Garavelli person is so oblivious to reality, though, it's the kind of thing to keep me jazzed up for whole minutes.

Despite this, atheism was last week rent by disagreement, proving that the need for petty, internecine squabbling runs deeper in the psyche than the need to find meaning in existence. The question that is dividing its leading proponents is how much they should be evangelising about their lack of faith. Should they adopt a live-and-let-live approach to the religious? Or should they be shouting their atheism from the rooftops in an attempt to get all the blinkered throwbacks to see the light?

Oh, just last week. We've been unified, until just then, huh? So Madalyn Murray O'Hair, to name one example, united all atheists under one banner, and no one ever criticized her approach? We've been bickering over strategy as long as atheists have been a visible part of the culture; Garavelli is remarkably uninformed if he thinks dissent just popped up last week. One of the things that has provided fuel for discussion on this blog has been constant disagreement with other godless partisans who want the mob to go one way (usually to a more complacent silence) than I want them to go — so we engage in healthy, sometimes ferocious, open argument. So what? This is our strength. We offer competing solutions, and we'll see in the end which one is most successful.

Go read Ophelia Benson's discussion of this issue. It ain't a schism. It's not something that should provide apologists any solace at all; they should regard us atheists as diverse barbarians who gird themselves for war at birth, and train themselves with a lifetime of fierce strife among themselves and against our weak, whiny foes. It's our nature to wield a wicked pen and rouse ourselves to rhetorical battle at the flimsiest slight; it should be no comfort to the frightened faitheists and followers of cultie fallacies. They should fear us, instead.

From the web description:

Schaeffer has a new book now, Patience with God: Faith for People Who Don’t Like Religion (or Atheism), and in it he takes on both the “incipient fascism” of the religious right and what he called “proselytizing” atheism of Richard Dawkins and others. He joins Laura on GRITtv for a fascinating interview about his own journey, and how people, religious or irreligious, are all looking for answers to the same questions.

Am I the only one that sees this as an apples and oranges comparison? None of the “new atheists” claim to have the truth. In fact, they declare that no one can know the truth. The beliefs of the religious people they question, are not those who believe in an ethereal deistic spirit that makes us feel warm and spiritual. They stand up to the primates who claim to know the mind of God and how he wants all of mankind to live.

And, for the record, the freaking “A” pin is about not hiding your beliefs, and “Coming Out Atheist.” It is not about deconverting people.

Brother Richard

“How would same-sex marriage hurt your marriage?” Advocates of changing our marriage laws tell us this is an unanswerable question.

A typical couple — Mary and John, married for 15 years — may find it tough to answer. That’s because it’s the wrong question. Mary and John won’t stop loving each other or be bounced out of their house if same-sex marriage prevails. To get at what’s really at stake, we need a different question: “How will same-sex marriage harm the institution of marriage — and in the long run, all of us?”

This is what we call a straw man. It’s a logical fallacy. See how she just ignores a valid question so that she can focus on the one she thinks she knows how to answer? At this point, she has already conceded her argument by admitting she can’t answer the question at stake. Everything she says from this point on is irrelevant, but we’ll proceed anyway.

Marriage is a universal human institution. Across the world and throughout history, it’s been exclusively male-female. That’s not because of antigay bigotry, but because marriage is anchored in a primal biological and social fact: Sex between men and women creates new human beings.

Hooray! A paragraph later, and she’s already offering a new fallacy: appeal to tradition. She presumes to know why marriage exists, but at the same time demonstrates her own lack of knowledge. There are clear records of same-sex marriage throughout ancient history, including in China during the Ming Dynasty and in the early Roman Empire. Of course, in modern times, Denmark has been recognizing same-sex partnerships for 20 years, so apparently that doesn’t count either.

The primary purpose of marriage is to ensure the best environment for rearing the children born of male-female sexual acts. Marriage channels men’s and women’s sexual attraction into productive ends, and harnesses the male sex drive by binding men to the mothers of their children. The evidence is overwhelming: Boys and girls flourish best with a married mother and father, who perform different and complementary roles in preparing them to deal with the world and the opposite sex.

Well, who crowned Katherine Kersten god of the universe? It’s clear now that she’s appealing very much to patriarchal stereotypes. Men need to be “harnessed,” women need to be mothers, and they have “different and complementary roles.” If that were true, shouldn’t you be at home cleaning and baking pies instead of trying to participate in public discourse, Katherine? I kid of course, but wake up and smell the women’s liberation already.

I have to point out here that Katherine is flagrantly wrong or flagrantly lying. There is no evidence that a “married mother and father” is the only or superior environment in which a child should be raised. In fact, five years ago, the American Psychological Association concluded that “overall, results of research suggest that the development, adjustment, and well-being of children with lesbian and gay parents do not differ markedly from that of children with heterosexual parents.” So, by trying to proclaim otherwise, Katherine is spreading untruths in an attempt to manifest fear and disapproval of same-sex families.

Same-sex marriage would not — as advocates claim — merely extend the benefits of marriage to more people. It would gut marriage of its fundamental meaning and transform it from an institution centered on children and the mother/father nuclear family to one centered on adults. Marriage would become an artificial institution, bestowing state approval on any adult relationship based on affection and interdependence.

This is blatantly offensive, because it demonstrates that Katherine has never talked to a single same-sex couple. She has absolutely no comprehension of why our community advocates for marriage equality. She also seems pretty ignorant as to why many of her fellow heterosexuals marry. There are plenty of married couples who have no intent of ever having children, whereas many same-sex couples need marriage specifically for the protection of the children they are already raising.

Such a redefinition would compel us to repudiate time-honored ideas of social organization. Last year, in mandating gay marriage, the Iowa Supreme Court rejected the belief that children need a mother and father as a mere “stereotype.” Courts are also beginning to upend our ideas about parenthood — jettisoning biological ties, recognizing “psychological” parents and including three-parent arrangements, with unpredictable results.

Wow, Katherine, fear-bait much? We already know that “the belief that children need a mother and father” is a stereotype. Her next paragraph gives us more stereotypes!

Same-sex marriage may not change the lives of John and Mary. But their children and grandchildren will bear the brunt of this cultural revolution. Today, only 59 percent of children live with their married biological or adoptive mother and father — a result of divorce, cohabitation and rising out-of-wedlock births. If same-sex marriage prevails, the marriage culture is likely to erode further.

I give Katherine a little credit for recognizing adoption. As an adoptee myself, I get very frustrated every time marriage equality opponents go on and on about the importance of children being with their biological parents. I find it strange that Katherine would then be so opposed to a child adopted by a loving committed couple, though this surely is attributed to her subscription to the archaic gender roles she expects mothers and fathers must conform to in every American nuclear family. We know better.

In European countries and American states where same-sex marriage is legal, the proportion of gays choosing to marry is well below that of the heterosexual population. In America, about two-thirds of gay couples who seek legal recognition are lesbians. The larger society does not expect or pressure gay people to marry — for them, it’s just a matter of personal preference.

Why don’t you attack all the heterosexuals who don’t marry?? Let’s not forget that many in the LGBT community have adjusted to the fact they might never have the right to marry. Many have already had commitment ceremonies, and even church marriages without legal recognition. Mostly we have always been discouraged from marrying. And now you’re blaming us for not all immediately flying across the country to get a legal certificate that for most of us won’t even mean anything when we get home? Excuse me, but our personal lives do not cater to the expectations of some uppity woman in Minnesota.

Over time, this attitude could reshape the larger institution of marriage. As social norms that have encouraged men and women to take on the hard work of raising a family unravel, heterosexual couples are less likely to see marriage as important or relevant. Increasingly, marriage is likely to become just one of many options in a lifestyle smorgasbord.

I might actually agree with Katherine on this one, but I don’t see it as a bad thing. I expect that only those couples committed to the challenge of raising a family and who seek the benefits of having their relationship legally recognizes would bother to marry. But wouldn’t that strengthen the institution of marriage? It seems to me she thinks everybody who can get married the way she likes it should do so and nobody else. What a narrow vision of how people live their lives!

If marriage is primarily about children, some ask, what about infertile and older couples? If infertile male-female couples do adopt or have a child, that child will have a mother and father. The human body’s design makes clear that men and women — whatever their age — are naturally directed toward each other and complement one another.

Now she’s a biologist using her interpretation of evolution as reason to dictate social policy. (Eugenics, anyone? Kidding. Hopefully.) She gets to decide what exceptions to make. Even if infertile couples don’t have children, they still “complement,” so that’s okay! How convenient for her that she gets to just make stuff up that supports her argument. (She has to.)

Here we go with the slippery slope. Just a reminder before she unleashes it that the SLIPPERY SLOPE IS A FALLACY. It’s not a good argument. It’s not even a plausible argument. The fact it’s in the title of her column negates the whole thing. But here it comes anyway:

If same sex-marriage prevails, we are likely to see further attempts to “expand” marriage.

Once marriage is stripped of its organic purpose, why restrict it to two people? Two lesbians and the sperm donor for their child, polygamists, bisexuals: All will want society to recognize and respect their relationships.

Well, I have to step up for my bisexual friends, who are just as likely to be monogamous as anybody else. Bisexuality and polygamy are mutually exclusive, regardless of what Katherine Kersten thinks. And while there are certainly polygamists among the queer community, nobody is vying for such legal recognition of polygamy. She’s just making that up.

And why should marriage be open only to people with a sexual relationship? That discriminates against two female friends who want to share the burdens of rearing their kids, or a disabled brother and sister who live together. Some of the most influential proponents of same-sex marriage seek to “get the state out of the marriage business” altogether.

Now I have no idea what she’s talking about. First, she seems to have no comprehension that a man and a woman might want to raise a family without a sexual relationship. (I guess that’s okay because they still might fulfill gender stereotypes and complement each other?) And if two single women are each raising children separately, shouldn’t we want them to support each other if they’re willing? Wouldn’t that be better for everyone? And there are already protections in place (though perhaps not enough) for people with disabilities and family members cohabitating, so I don’t know what she’s even talking about there. Her last sentence is completely off the charts, since the very reason we continue to push for marriage equality is for equal recognition under the law. Katherine’s tirade is getting more fanciful and less relevant as she continues to write.

It’s ironic that in other realms of life, Americans are very aware of the risks of tampering excessively with nature. Many of those urging us to transform humankind’s fundamental social institution are the very people who preach about such risks in the environmental context and warn that the actions of individuals affect the well-being of all. The natural world, they say, can stretch only so far before breaking as we tinker with the realities of its systems.

We understand little about how marriage has undergirded the order and prosperity we take for granted. We tamper with marriage at our peril.

Nature? Let me just remind you that at the beginning of her column, Katherine called marriage a “human institution.” And if you really want to learn something about nature, open a Psych 101 textbook and learn something about the nature of sexual orientation, why don’t you!

And could her last point be any weaker? She makes all these points (that she seems to know) and then suggests that we don’t know? Her conclusion is support marriage equality at your own risk? Well gosh, Katherine, beg the question much?

The fact that people like Katherine are still fervently writing such vacuous crap is shame, and an indicator of how little progress our movement has made. She is clueless about what it means to be queer and she is clueless about how much harm she does to our community by nurturing such fear.

Shame on the Star-Tribune for printing this nonsense without any counterpoint and shame on Katherine Kersten for being dangerously dumb.

You can email her at kakersten@gmail.com.

Wikipedia has a full list of logical fallacies, and many of them can also be found in my Meme Collection.

Anyway, the reason I'm writing this instead of either puking into the ceramic shrine or tossing the rag into the trash is that Ken Ham has pulled his usual stunt of pulling a quote from some godless critic of his "museum" and wrapping a pious sermon around it, without attribution or linkage. In this case, the quote is from someone Ham refers to only as "a secular humanist" or "this secularist", and here it is:

For me, the most frightening part was the children's section. It was at this moment that I learned the deepest lesson of my visit to the Museum: It is in the minds and hearts of our children that the battle will be fought; and it is they who will suffer the most because of this.

Helpful fellow that I am, I will give the citation the neglectful fraud 'forgot' to make. The quote comes from Patrick of Ann Arbor, Michigan. Congratulations, Patrick! You know you're doing good when the creationists start using your words in their fundraising!

Everyone should read the rest of his article on the Creation "Museum", too — it's the criticism Ken Ham doesn't want anyone to see, after all.

Now I have to go throw this ugly mag away, and hope my symptoms disappear.

via Daniel Florien comes this fascinating account of the human brain and the energy required to run it:

According to Kwabena Boahen, a computer scientist at Stanford University, a robot with a processor as smart as the human brain would require at least 10 megawatts to operate. That’s the amount of energy produced by a small hydroelectric plant. But a small group of computer scientists may have hit on a new neural supercomputer that could someday emulate the human brain’s low energy requirements of just 20 watts–barely enough to run a dim light bulb….

[The new idea] trades the extreme precision of digital transistors for the brain’s chaos of many neurons firing, with misfires 30 percent to 90 percent of the time. Yet the brain works with this messy system by relying on crowds of neurons to shout over the noise of misfires and competing signals.

That willingness to give up precision for chaos could lead to a new era of creative computing that simulates the unpredictable patterns of brain activity. It could also represent a far more energy-efficient era — the Neurogrid fits in a briefcase and runs on what amounts to a few D batteries, or less than a watt. Rather than transistors, it uses capacitors that get the same voltage of neurons.

Much more here.

–

If you ever wanted a find situation desperately in need of more skepticism (and who hasn’t?), look no further: The Iraqi army is spending $16,500 to $60,000 per dowsing rod and trying to use them to detect explosives. This foolishness is not only a vast waste of money for what is essentially a wobbly stick of metal, but it puts people’s lives in danger.  Um… Iraq, you know the whole “security” thing?  You’re doing it wrong.  The rods are normally being used in place of physical inspections of vehicles and show no signs of working: (via PZ Myers)

The Iraqis, however, believe passionately in them. “Whether it’s magic or scientific, what I care about is it detects bombs,” said Maj. Gen. Jehad al-Jabiri, head of theMinistry of the Interior’s General Directorate for Combating Explosives.

Dale Murray, head of the National Explosive Engineering Sciences Security Center at Sandia Labs, which does testing for the Department of Defense, said the center had “tested several devices in this category, and none have ever performed better than random chance.”

The Justice Department has warned against buying a variety of products that claim to detect explosives at a distance with a portable device. Normal remote explosives detection machinery, often employed in airports, weighs tons and costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. The ADE 651’s clients are mostly in developing countries; no major country’s military or police force is a customer, according to the manufacturer.

Whew, General Jabiri just cares about whether the wands work! I’m sure that as soon as things are explained, he’ll see the light of reason, righ–

“I don’t care about Sandia or the Department of Justice or any of them,” General Jabiri said. “I know more about this issue than the Americans do. In fact, I know more about bombs than anyone in the world.”

He attributed the decrease in bombings in Baghdad since 2007 to the use of the wands at checkpoints. American military officials credit the surge in American forces, as well as the Awakening movement, in which Iraqi insurgents turned against Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, for the decrease.

Oh dear.  Why bother with a sensible, naturalistic explanation when we can use unsubstantiated supernatural mumbo-jumbo?  Oh, that’s right: because there are people counting on these devices to keep explosives off the street.  I suppose bombings would go down if people believed the wands to work… but I wouldn’t want to pin my hopes on only having gullible enemies.

How can he possibly defend the use of unscientific nonsense?

Proponents of the wand often argue that errors stem from the human operator, who they say must be rested, with a steady pulse and body temperature, before using the device.

Then the operator must walk in place a few moments to “charge” the device, since it has no battery or other power source, and walk with the wand at right angles to the body. If there are explosives or drugs to the operator’s left, the wand is supposed to swivel to the operator’s left and point at them.

If, as often happens, no explosives or weapons are found, the police may blame a false positive on other things found in the car, like perfume, air fresheners or gold fillings in the driver’s teeth.

The James Randi Educational Foundation gets a shoutout, which is nice to see because I first learned about the phenomenon by watching James Randi videos.  The rods work by the Ideomotor Effect:

I believe that the best teachers are both rigorous and kind.  In terms of rigor, my syllabi are usually demanding in terms of the quantity of philosophers and major topics they cover and the quality of readings that they assign.  I give comprehensive exams, demand their writing shows signs of philosophical talent for an A, and grade class participation in a way that demands of every student both high frequency and high quality participation.  But the pressures of challenging course material should be the only source of stress students endure—extra anxieties stemming from the students’ interpersonal dealings with their instructor are simply counterproductive.  Teachers should create as encouraging and helpful relationships with their students as possible to ease the strains of an uncompromisingly ambitious workload, rather than exacerbating them through apathy, carelessness, or discouragement.  To build rapport with my students, I make a point of learning all my students’ names the first day of class before we start covering any material, show up 15 minutes before class whenever possible to take advantage of the opportunity to chat informally with them, accept late work without penalties, and make myself as available to them as I can through office hours and online social media.

Kindness towards the students also involves being sensitive to the lack of a sense of separation many students have from their ideas.  Especially in the case of novices to philosophy, many students are inclined to feel personally criticized when their ideas are rejected.  I put a lot of care into fostering active class participation by making students’ forays into expressing their ideas as stress-free and productive as possible.  This often begins with moving closer in the room to students when I call on them and then making eye contact with them so that they focus on me and not on their peers.  Then restating their ideas approvingly often validates them by showing them that I understand them and that they make sense.  Often at this point, it means amplifying students’ ideas to show them that I see they have more good implications to their thought than they had even communicated right away.  Within this context, constructively and sympathetically challenging their thoughts is far more productive because the students already feel validated and successful as contributors.  My students almost invariably seem to take my criticisms and philosophical challenges as collaborative rather than combative.

The most pivotal next step is to subtly mediate the students’ vigorous philosophical challenges to each other’s by having each student address their ideas to me, rather than directly to each other.  I will go around the room discussing the ideas at hand one on one with each student and moderating a larger debate, with each student feeling validated by my display of confidence in them.  This approach usually leads to more and more participants who bring a wider range of fruitful perspectives and a lively debate since everyone feels comfortable to speak up and personal acrimony or tensions are defused through my mediation.  Of course sometimes a student’s suggestion indicates a clear misunderstanding.  In those cases, it is crucial not to be so kind as to affirm a confused idea and mislead both the student and the rest of the class.  But even in those cases there are ways to be encouraging rather than discouraging to the student whose idea you need to reject.  You can explain to them how you see they made the mistake they did, affirm their reasoning process, and then explain to them what they overlooked or did not quite understand yet.  This art of sensitivity on one’s feet can make all the difference between whether or not the student tries to speak again.

The final indispensable sensitivity when dealing with students is to remember to focus on their freedom to develop their own intuitions, even where these manifestly differ from your own.  The art is to help students formulate their own ideas as well as they can be formed and then to engage them with challenges that come out of their ideas.  You do no favor to a student with whom you agree when you do not challenge him or her with another perspective and you do no favor to a student with whom you disagree when you put the advancement of your personal opinions ahead of their abilities to develop their own ideas.  Students should never feel afraid to disagree with you or an incentive to curry favor with you by telling you what they know you want to hear.  In most semesters, I have coyly guarded my own fundamental views in order to keep students from lazily relying on me as an authority, shamelessly pandering to my prejudices, or fearing my hostility to their contrary intuitions.  Other semesters I have let my students know my stances on a given issue when bringing in a guest philosopher to debate me and be a representative for those students who disagree with me, or simply have demonstrated a daily concern for their development as thinkers over the creation of converts.  Regardless of whether I have hidden my views from the students or have been nonchalantly frank about them when asked, as long as I have maintained a student-centric attitude that was concerned ultimately with their cultivation and rarely with my own soap box, students have never shown any signs of feeling encumbered in expressing their opinions in their writing or speaking in my classes.

All of this effort in getting students to speak comfortably is crucial to my teaching style since I teach through conversation.  I usually spend the first fifteen to twenty minutes of a lecture explaining the motivation behind the major question we are covering that day and then the broad outline of the answer that our assigned reading proposes.  It is crucial to highlight what the question is before giving them an answer to it, so that they can understand why it is important.  By the end of those fifteen minutes or so the students are either asking questions and challenging the ideas already or I am soliciting such responses from them.  The rest of the period is usually driven by their questions.  Different from the Socratic method, in which one coaxes desired answers from students through careful (often leading) questions to them, I see my goal as cultivating their questions so that when I give them a philosopher’s answer it is something they were motivated to care about.  When the students’ questions lead us to the ideas we were going to cover anyway, they feel like I am responding to their thoughts and concerns, rather than that I am just dumping information on them.  The art of guiding a class discussion for me is one of stimulating them to ask the questions the philosophers are asking so that the material I am teaching is something they want to be learning and so that they are better equipped to challenge the ideas I am presenting.  When people have asked a question for themselves, they are more likely to be able to recognize a flaw in the answer given, since as questioners, they understand to a significant extent what is at stake in a satisfying answer.

My lectures are dynamic and free-flowing, given this style of teaching.  In each lecture, the presentation of the ideas follows the stream of the class’s thought, rather than a pre-fabricated outline, except in those cases where a given idea or system does not admit of such loosely structured presentation for clarity.  For the most part, coherent sets of ideas can be presented in a range of orders and with varying emphases and I find it endlessly exciting to see the various ways to weave the threads of the same philosophy together when presenting it to a different class.  Some ideas covered are frequently the same, but the fresh derivation of them through the interaction with unique students each time is an extremely satisfying, creative activity.  Then when test time comes, I hand out a complete set of my notes for the students to study from so that they do not have to spend their studying energy on hunting and pecking through the texts or their notes but can concentrate on the central themes, explained in detail as though they had come to see me or written me with questions.  Such study guides help supplement their notes and so free them to focus during each lecture on keeping up with the ebbs and flows of the class discussion, rather than stressing over their abilities to reduce it all to testable information for regurgitation on an exam.  Separating the process of actively deriving and developing the ideas together as a class from the later need to have a valuable, orderly set of notes to help with committing to long-term memory, helps students to both think vigorously and then memorize well through techniques distinctly tailored to each goal.

Your Thoughts?

From Flora Culture International:

Ms. Hirsi Ali, a feminist, author, activist and former member of the Dutch parliament completed the traditional naming ceremony by drizzling champagne over the bulbs and declaring, “From now on this Tulip has the name ‘Ayaan’.” Mr. Thijs Leenders, president of the North American Flower Bulb Wholesalers Association represented the Dutch bulb sector in the event.

Congratulations Ms. Hirsi Ali. Thank you for your confidence and inspiration.

Brother Richard

So I got this email:

PZ, this is the man - in his own words - whom Taylor recruited to be her cameraman.

What do you think she thought his reaction would be when told by the police to stop/leave?! She knew he would snap, fight, and would get pulverized in the process.

Are you still full of admiration for her?

I followed the link, and the answer to the question is more complicated than a yes or no.

Koger is an admitted jailbird. He committed some very serious crimes and served some very serious jail time. He probably is a little bit scary; maybe a bit frustrated, and definitely angry with the system.

Yet when you go to that link, what you also discover is that he's ambitious and is trying to improve himself through education. He thinks, he writes, he studies. He's active in the Communist Party, which, while I don't care much for the revolutionary agenda, is definitely motivated by a strong sense of social justice, and I can understand why someone who is being judged by the comfortable bourgeoisie as a thug who deserves to be beat up by the police would find it appealing.

What I can't understand is how someone who identifies themselves as an ethical humanist would decide this fellow human being was nothing but a mad dog brought to the event to provoke a violent incident. What they don't understand is that I'm not speaking out because I idolize Bob Avakian (I don't) or think Maoism is the answer (I don't) or that I think Sunsara Taylor should not be criticized (not at all) — it's because the Ethical Humanist Society of Chicago is betraying what ought to be the basic principles of such a society: tolerance, engagement, argument, discussion.

One of the things I do admire about the Communists is that they do reach out to the poor, the oppressed, the imprisoned, and they try to address the injustices our society commits. It's a shame that ethical humanists can't do the same, but instead treat a former criminal as a pariah who has to be put down.

The members of the EHSC should really stop writing me. Every time they do, I'm a little more appalled at their attitude.

I did pass this one younger guy while on my way to go find something to eat.  I would guess he was in his late 20s. What struck me was that he wasn’t asking the people passing him for money, he was asking for someone to help him get something to eat.  I walked by, smiled and then kept on walking.  I was a little haunted by how desperate and frustrated he sounded that no one would get him something to eat.  While I tried enjoying my Chinese Veggie dish, I couldn’t stop thinking about the fact I just walked by him.  I also started thinking about the labels and judgments I try to teach others not to use.  I realized I was using those labels on him.  I saw him as the label of “homeless” and my thoughts of how I would respond were stunted by that label.  My thoughts stopped at the label I put on him.  I didn’t see him in the moment as a fellow human being, I saw him as the label I placed on him.   I felt rather ashamed of myself.  While I know I was trying my best to make decisions that I have been told are in his best interest, I don’t think I was on target this time.

So, on the way back to the hotel where the conference was taking place I did my best to try and find him again.  I walked back the same way and he wasn’t where he was before when I saw him.  I eventually found him a few blocks up and he was still asking folks to help him find some food except this time he was saying it more bluntly.  He stating to the passer by’s, “I’m really hungry” and I was overjoyed to have a chance to change that.

The second time I saw this man, I didn’t see the label.  I saw a human in need of some food.  I looked for the feelings and needs in the person just like I try to teach others to do in my workshops.  When I did that I saw someone who was hungry and needing food, someone who was frustrated and needing to be acknowledged for his humanity and someone who was scared about not having the security of a steady meal.  I can’t imagine what it must be like to be that hungry and be that invisible to others.  This was a lesson for me in practicing what I preach.

I wasn’t going to write about this story because I was concerned people would take it in a way I didn’t intend. It isn’t about whether or not we should or shouldn’t give money to the homeless or buy them food.  The reason I share it is that I want you to think about how you see others.   Do you seen them as the label you have placed on them or the human underneath those labels?  Do you see your own humanity or do you see the labels others have placed on you?

Just saying….

(See: Common Sense Atheism We've Moved Beyond Christian Morality)

With the audience being polled both before and after the debate, the polls show that the team of Christopher Hitchens and Stephen Fry won the debate. They were able to cause a substantial portion of the audience to adopt their proposition.

I often pay no attention to debates. There seems to be a huge gap between one’s ability to convince people to adopt a proposition and whether the proposition is true. I can imagine Hitler winning a debate over whether the Jews have been a force for goodness in the world, or Dinseh S'Souza convincing an audience of the same claim about atheists. The question that interests me is not whether a particular agent or team successfully convinced others that something is true. I am more interested in whether it is true in fact.

Also, as I have stated before in this blog, do not like generalizations. Generalizations lead to bigotry, and it deflects attention from specific wrongs. I see little merit in debating the proposition of whether the Catholic Church is a force for good in the world. I would rather focus on the specific (and significantly more defensible claim) that the Catholic Church is doing evil in the world and the world would be a better place if it would end these projects.

Three of those projects are:

(1) Bringing grief to the lives of homosexuals and to block them from securing long-term relationships with those that they love, supporting barriers that interfere and aim to “tear asunder” these relationships.

(2) Promoting death and disease, particularly in Africa, by opposing some of the most effective methods for fighting the transmission of AIDS, such as the use of condoms.

(3) Promoting death, disease, and injury by putting barriers up against embryonic stem-cell research, which promises to be the most potent avenue of medical research for understand, preventing, and treating a wide range of illnesses and injuries.

I do not know what percentage of the resources of the Catholic Church are devoted to these projects. Therefore, I cannot weigh the evil that they do against the good in order to make an overall assessment. One would also have to consider the fact that some of the evil that they do weighs against the good. The good done from Catholic hospitals and orphanages, for example, must be weighed against the fact that the Catholic Church itself is creating more sick people to hospitalize, and more orphans to take care of.

The fact that the Catholic Church believes it is doing good is irrelevant. Even Hitler believed that he was a great man who was doing great things – promoting that which had read value and clearing away those things that did not have value.

We all do this. I write this blog in the hopes that I am promoting that which has positive value and helping to get rid of that which has negative value. I, too, may be wrong.

That is why the fundamental question that anybody who is concerned with doing more good than evil in the world must begin by asking, "How do you know?"

That was the question that got me into this situation. When I decided that I would try to make the world a better place, recognizing that I was surrounded by people fighting against each other where both sides believed the same of themselves, I asked how I could know that I was on the right side.

Ultimately, the evil that the Catholic Church does springs from the poor answer it provides to the question, "How do I know?" It insists that one can know moral truth by looking at a book that is, in fact, the transcriptions of the oral stories told by a group of bigoted, ignorant, self-aggrandizing farmers and sheep herders. Then, it struggles day in and day out to try to reconcile facts in the real world so that they somehow corroborate those ancient myths and superstitions – trying to cast as 'divine truth' what is, in fact, human error.

In fact, we could add a fourth force of evil here.

(4) It seeks to legitimize the practice of twisting and distorting evidence to try to match some ancient superstition, taking some very good minds away from the project of actually solving problems in the real word.

Is the Catholic Church a force for good in the world?

It doesn’t really matter. Regardless of the answer to that question, it would become more of a force for good and less of a force for evil if it would alter its position on the three issues that I mentioned above.

There are, of course, other issues that we should talk about. However, these three would make a good start.

There are 3 more videos in this debate on youtube.

He has a dilemma, though, and he’d like some input:

Our school, as part of a Veteran’s Day celebration, has asked its veterans to lead a recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance. While I have no problem saying the pledge in general, I do have a problem with one particular phrase. You know the one.

On normal days I simply omit the offending duo of words. This day however will not be normal and my dilemma is this: Do I simply say the Pledge and not rock the boat? Do I say the Pledge and omit “under god” and announce to the community my scorn for their superstition? Do I simply refuse to participate altogether?

One piece of information that may change your answer is that the writer will be reciting the pledge (or not) with seven other veterans. So it’s possible that if he simply omitted “Under God,” he would go unnoticed.

But it’s still an interesting question and I wonder what people would say if he were the only veteran in the school.

A recent debate in London asked the same question. Archbishop John Onaiyekan and Anne Widdecombe MP argued that the Catholic Church was a force of good, and Christopher Hitchens and Stephen Fry argued against the motion. The five part video is below. Each part should play simultaneously.

From Telegraph:

The voting gives a good idea of how it went. Before the debate, for the motion: 678. Against: 1102. Dont know: 346. This is how it changed after the debate. For: 268. Against: 1876. Dont know: 34. In other words, after hearing the speakers, the number of people in the audience who opposed the motion increased by 774.

Brother Richard
(Props: Atheist Media)

He is really a rather patriotic guy, but this video will explain everything:

Ohhhh, right in the Zwinglis! That’ll leave a mark.

Anyway, that was also the start of cannonical criticism, for those of you interested in the history of hertenman’ neuts.

They tried pinning a Purple Heart on him but he kept flinching so they said they were going to “discharge” him. He flinched again…

Carrie Prejean: just another Christian wanker

According to beauty pageant contracts, contestants must assure they have not appeared in nude videos or pictures in their past.

At a legal meeting last week, lawyers for Miss California reportedly sprung the tape on Prejean and her representatives to illustrate how she had brought the pageant into disrepute.

TMZ.com, which obtained a copy of the tape a while back, claims to have spoken to lawyers present at meeting, and it reported:

When the video started playing, Carrie’s first reaction was ‘that’s disgusting’.

Carrie denied it was her. Then, the camera angle changed … and panned up to her face. She was caught red-handed, so to speak. Carrie was rendered speechless and immediately began talking with her lawyer.

We’re told it took about 15 seconds for Carrie to drop her $1million demand.

According to the Daily Mail, platinum-blonde Prejean is said to have received just $100,000 to cover legal costs.

On Friday, after the discovery of the sex tape was made public, Prejean was ditched as a celebrity guest at a fundraiser being held by right-wing Christian group Defenders Of The Family.

The company is refusing to say whether she declined to appear or whether she was asked not to.

The self-gratifying Prejean invoked the wrath of American gays when she took a stand against same sex marriage, but her bigotry greatly delighted right wing Christian groups – but their infatuation with Prejean and her fake tits is now fast evaporating.

The LA Times recently had an article about a small provision in the Senate version of the Heath Care bill:

Healthcare provision seeks to embrace prayer treatments

Backed by some of the most powerful members of the Senate, a little-noticed provision in the healthcare overhaul bill would require insurers to consider covering Christian Science prayer treatments as medical expenses.

The provision, which was added by Sen. Orrin Hatch and backed by John Kerry and the late Ted Kennedy, prevents discrimination against “religious and spiritual health care” by health insurers providing care through the proposed Gateway system. There was a similar provision in the House version of the bill, but that has since been removed in the newest version, HR3962. This Senate version still remains.

Health Care Deform

Pullquote: This would be an absolute invitation to organize
Annie Laurie Gaylor

The bill in question is S.1679, the “Affordable Health Choices Act.” The provision in question reads as follows:

‘‘The essential benefits provided for in subparagraph (A) shall include a requirement that there be non-discrimination in health care in a manner that, with respect to an individual who is eligible for medical or surgical care under a qualified health plan offered through a Gateway, prohibits the Administrator of the Gateway, or a qualified health plan offered through the Gateway, from denying such individual benefits for religious or spiritual health care, except that such religious or spiritual health care shall be an expense eligible for deduction as a medical care expense as determined by Internal Revenue Service Rulings interpreting section 213(d) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 as of January 1, 2009.” (Sec 3103(d))

If I’m reading this right (and there’s no guarantee that I am), this would affect all insurers who take part in the Affordable Health Benefit Gateway programs that the bill seeks to create in the individual states. These programs would be administered by the states and paid for by federal grants, and would assist those people without health care, either by steering them to programs they can afford or by providing subsidized health insurance. This particular provision would prevent any of those insurers from discriminating against “spiritual health care” provided that it fit the definition of deductible medical care.

As the bill says, the IRS tax code provides a definition of medical care in Title 26, Section 213(d). The tax code itself doesn’t specifically mention anything about prayer cures, but according to IRS Publication 502 (PDF), “You can include in medical expenses fees you pay to Christian Science practitioners for medical care.” (p. 7) Also chiropractors, but that’s another argument.

So that explains the emphasis in the LA Times article about Christian Science. The IRS already considered their services as medical expense for the purposes of tax deduction, so this provision would require certain health insurers to pay for it.

Critical Condition, or only Serious?

Pullquote: I offered this amendment because I believe that everyone, regardless of religious affiliation, should have access to healthcare.
Sen. Orrin Hatch

Naturally, the Freedom From Religion Foundation is all over this. Again from the LA Times article:

Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, a group of atheists and agnostics that promotes separation of church and state, said the opportunity to receive payment for spiritual care could encourage other groups to seek similar status.

Gaylor’s point there is questionable. Certainly, many religious groups might try to get themselves injected into the tax code as providers of spiritual medical care, but there’s no reason to think that any will succeed. Further, as a spokeswoman for John Kerry pointed out, companies are prevented from discriminating, but that just means they are required to apply the same standards across the board. The insurers may declare that they will only provide reimbursement for procedures that meet their standards for efficacy. And that would leave the Christian Scientists out in the cold.

Still, it seems obvious that this provision will lead to many lawsuits and heated arguments, and add to the risk that the Government will be entangled with religion. So what’s the point? According to Orrin Hatch, “I offered this amendment because I believe that everyone, regardless of religious affiliation, should have access to health care.” But I don’t see how the provision as currently worded does that. One could easily add a provision that wouldn’t fund an insurer that discriminated on the basis of religion, so why the language of “religious and spiritual health care”?

Right now there are still more questions than answers, and more heat than light. While I think that the FFRF is banging the drum a bit too hard, I basically agree that the bill would be better off without the complications that this provision brings.

I suggest calling or e-mailing your Senators and requesting that this provision be struck from the bill. Tell them that if the provision remains, then during the next election you and all your friends will pray for their reelection — rather than donating, assisting their campaign or, you know, voting.

Because [Republicans] aren’t interested in actually governing, they feed the base’s frenzy instead of trying to curb or channel it. So all the old restraints are gone.

In the short run, this may help Democrats, as it did in that New York race. But maybe not: elections aren’t necessarily won by the candidate with the most rational argument. They’re often determined, instead, by events and economic conditions.

In fact, the party of Limbaugh and Beck could well make major gains in the midterm elections. The Obama administration’s job-creation efforts have fallen short, so that unemployment is likely to stay disastrously high through next year and beyond. The banker-friendly bailout of Wall Street has angered voters, and might even let Republicans claim the mantle of economic populism. Conservatives may not have better ideas, but voters might support them out of sheer frustration.

The Democrats will probably take the White House and Congress in 2008 no matter what they do, but they've handed the Republican party enough ammunition and control over the political narrative that the 2008 administration and Congress will be completely ineffectual. The Republicans will take Congress in 2010 and the White House in 2012.

There have been a few things I’ve wanted to comment on over the weekend, but haven’t. All have coincidentally been inter-related, which has made it all the more interesting, but all the same, I’ve had a throbber of a headache the last couple of days.

First cab of the rank is the issue of definitions surrounding the word “evolution”.

“Pelagian7″, in response to an ongoing discussion about Darwinian evolution and ethics, writes…

“I’m started to get the feeling that we are on the same thought process but semantics and terms are preventing some of our understanding.”

(Pelagian7, 2009)

It’s a fair enough statement. I defined my use of some terms in the post in question (“ad hoc“, “altruism” and “egoism”), but I didn’t define my use of the terms “evolution”, “natural selection” and so on. Also, given that when I talk about “evolution”, I can sometimes oscillate between gene-centric biological, and meme-centric cultural, interchangeably, there is room for confusion.

Anyone familiar with neo-Darwinian evolution, and Dawkins’ Selfish Gene, wouldn’t have any problem getting where I’m coming from (I’d hope). But I guess that without declaring my terms, I’m limiting my audience.

So at some point I guess I’ll have to nail my colours to the mast and write a post on my use of these terms. And given the widespread abuse of evolutionary terminology, I guess it wouldn’t be as trivial an exercise as it may seem.

And while on the topic, I’ll ask a couple of questions put to me.

“If some in a species begin birthing many times more than others because they have the cabability, does that not produce resource hardship on the others of the species? Doesn’t hardship then eliminate those who produce less offspring?”

(Pelagian7, 2009)

No, and no. People who use birth control and who have a lowered reproduction rate due to female emancipation and education, tend to do pretty well for themselves as far as quality of life is concerned, and more so in terms of resource allocation. As a species, there isn’t an extinction, even if these types of people never have children, because there are others of their species carrying much the same genes.

Memetically speaking, there may be a kind of tendency towards a cultural extinction if ideas aren’t passed along, said ideas being caught up in some kind of class-reservoir. But even then, this isn’t necessarily a function of suffering, nor even involve suffering. Not all cultural memes that exist amongst the privileged are to the benefit of their hosts, nor are they missed when they’re gone (reality TV anyone?)

At any rate, I think in discussion of evolution, as opposed to any ethical discussion it may inform, the use of extremely subjective terms such as “hardship”, is risky. At least, for those not familiar with the way biologists, ethologists and the like, may use evolutionary terminology. When Dawkins calls something “selfish” or “altruistic”, he’s talking about an empirically observable behaviour, not a psychological disposition. Put in his words…

“When biologists talk about ‘selfishness or ‘altruism’ we are emphatically not talking about emotional nature, whether of human beings, other animals, or genes. We do not even mean the words in a metaphorical sense. We define altruism and selfishness in purely behaviouristic ways: ‘An entity… is said to be altruistic if it behaves in such a way as to increase another such entity’s welfare at the expense of its own… It follows from such a behaviouristic definition of altruism and selfishness that ‘calculation’, whether long-term or not, is irrelevant, as is ‘emotional nature’. I assume that an oak tree has no emotions and cannot calculate, yet I might describe an oak tree as altruistic if it grew fewer leaves than its physiological optimum, thereby sparing neighbouring saplings harmful overshadowing.”

(Richard Dawkins, In Defense of Selfish Genes, ‘Philosophy’,1981)

Similarly, I don’t think it right to automatically equate negative selective pressures – constraints upon genes to perpetuate themselves – with hardship. Aside from introducing an unnecessary term into the evolutionary language, and from not equating perfectly (see birth control), it’s risky language open to misinterpretation. Best to call “negative selective pressures”, “negative selective pressures” and be done with it, saving reference to suffering for ethical discussion, if such suffering occurs.

And on that note, I’ll segue to the next topic.

Science and Ethics

I’ve said before, that science can only, and should, inform ethics. That it can’t dictate ethics. It’s always a bit gratifying to have someone with academic stature say the same thing.

Letting science inform morality (4:43)

Back when I was studying Ethics, Education and Critical Inquiry, I was introduced to an acronym: CURF. It stood for…

• Circumstances
• Utilitarian Principle
• Reasoning
• Facts

(Knight & Collins, 2000)

Basically, these were the principles by which a community of ethical inquiry would operate. The idea was geared towards the classroom (either Primary or High School), but was at least formulated with lifelong learning, and hence a life lived with ethical curiosity, in mind.

As I was studying under a science degree at the time, it was immediately obvious that “Facts”, or “Getting the consequences “straight”", as the course literature put it, would in many cases be best served by science. Neither, supernaturalism, ideology nor material speculation are quite up to the task of making predictions when science is able. The consequences of medical procedures upon a patient come to mind – a shaman is no match for a doctor in seeing where options leads (even paths through the shaman’s own domain where science hasn’t taken a look, entails a lot of wild speculation).

Broaden this to human nature, where science is still making early steps in spite of taboo, and you have the possibility that the idea of evolution, and evolutionary knowledge, could help us make predictions for human consequences. Even if only tentatively. (That socio-biologists and evolutionary psychologists have taken such caution, while ideology has tended to make bold assertion about human nature, is to the credit of the evolutionary perspective.)

In pursuit of this kind of thought, I’ve got Singer’s A Darwinian Left on order at Dymocks. Although I’m already expecting to have a few points of difference from the author.

Singer

Aside from the fact that I probably take a more conservative estimation of the point at which to assume a life-form is capable of suffering from their death, I suspect my logic to be the same. It the points of fact where I anticipate divergence.

Daniel Dennett’s more recent Freedom Evolves, reports that in modelling of evolutionary game theory, when accounting for variables such as location, previously excluded due to issues of computational power, altruism (the behaviour) fared better than previously thought. Personally, I suspect that the evolutionary outlook of human nature, as it progresses will continue to throw up surprises like this, more so as it makes its transition from corrigible philosophy to material science.

At a guess, I suspect human nature involves a capacity for kindness that has been previously discounted. Hence, the way evolution informs ethics, if this were true, would be different – especially as Singer dwells on the obstacles our selfish nature pose to ethical venture, not privy to more recent thought at the time of publishing.

More broadly than this, I expect that I’ll be looking into the evolution of culture as possibly informing ethical decision-making. Whereas I suspect that Singer hasn’t looked into this side of things as much as Dennett has. Imagine A Darwinian Left grafted on top of Breaking The Spell, and maybe you can see where I’m going with this (loosely speaking – at the very least I’m not restricting myself to the evolution of religion, but other cultural institutions as well).

Whatever happens, I’m sure I’ll be surprised in one way or another, which is always nice.

Church and Lies

Especially considering that this kind of stuff doesn’t surprise me anymore. Thanks again to Matt Kovach, for finding this little gem. (How do you find these articles, Matt?)

Responding to a New York atheist ad that essentially argues that atheists can and are good people as well, with the cheeky question “are you?” at the end, New York Dominican friar, Gabriel Gillen, comes out with this disingenuous pap.

“If the ad’s claim is true, that an atheist is capable of the same type of heroism as, let’s say, Wesley Autrey – the construction worker with two small children who risked his life to save a stranger who had fallen onto the subway tracks – I would not only agree with this assertion but point to a concrete example from the well-known atheist Peter Singer. When his own mother lay helpless with Alzheimer’s disease, he broke all of his own rules, thus throwing away his credibility as a utilitarian philosopher onto the tracks: He came to her rescue.”

(Gabriel Gillen, 2009)

Because there are no atheists in foxholes for Gillen to come up with an equivalent to Wesley Autrey? But to compound Gillen’s bad humour in bad faith, it gets worse. Apparently Gillen’s education to become a Dominican friar didn’t include the observation that irony doesn’t flow from imaginary contradiction.

Despite what Gillen (wrongly) tells us, Peter Singer’s approach to the disabled is that first, it depends on the disability and how it detracts from quality of life compared to the loss brought about through euthanasia. Second, Singer’s position is that this is a decision for the family. And you know what? Singer has family and they decided they didn’t want euthanasia. There isn’t anything in Singer’s logic that is contradicted by the turn of events surrounding his mother’s unfortunate situation.

I wish I could chalk this opportunism up to his past as a Wall Street stock broker, but Gillen and his religious absolutist ilk, have been pushing this sad, mendacious canard for over ten years now. That the suffering in the Singer’s personal lives could be used as a political football like this, especially considering there isn’t actually a genuine ethical argument to made from it, tells us a lot about the psychology of the Gillen’s of the world.

Don’t think that Gillen is unwilling to go further in his sadistic misanthropy. A pass by Godwin’s law comes next.

“History has shown that a radically rationalist culture becomes radically irrational if it is detached from God. The atheistic ideologies of Nazism and Communism did not produce earthly paradises, but only tragic regimes of terror that trampled human dignity and freedom.”

(Gabriel Gillen, 2009)

Considering that nobody is claiming that the Godless are automatically saints (which Gillen claims is the case for the billboard campaign), that atheists have done bad things (or that the religious have done bad things) is uncontroversial. However, there were problems in Communist Russia which had nothing to do with Godlessness, and Nazism wasn’t a godless ideology anyway. Chalk another one up for The Big Lie – why do so many old-school Catholic opinionists and “academics” repeat pap which is known to be false?

At any rate, Gillen hasn’t shown a causal link between “radically rationalist” and “radically irrational” (much less defined the terms). Moreover, there are godless societies around now that are doing quite well, breaking any notion of a logical necessity between godlessness and “tragic regimes of terror”.

“This is why Pope Benedict reverses the axiom and says: “Even those who are unable to accept God should in any case seek to live and direct their lives as if God exists. This is the same advice that Renée Pascal had given to his nonbelieving friends; it is the advice that we would like to give today as well to our friends who do not believe.”"

(Gabriel Gillen, 2009)

Amazing is Gillen’s hypocrisy. Fresh from bleating that Singer didn’t live up to his ethics, and warning that atheism leads to tyranny and terror, Gillen gives us advice on how to steer clear of this terror from an anti-Semite who once joined the Hitler youth!

And Pascal’s non-argument (nee Pascal’s Roulette, nee Pascal’s Wager), please. When you add all the gods into the wager, the Catholic God, as with all the rest, becomes a bad bet. At least earnest godlessness has the virtue of honesty, which is more than can be said for Pascal’s position – just act like you believe!

Oh well, at least with my intended future reading into ethics, I’ll get a break from this kind of silliness. So much for the Dominican intellectual tradition!

~ Bruce

In a statement to CBS 6, Bishop of Albany Howard J. Hubbard said, "On the recommendation of the Review Board's investigation, I have determined there are reasonable grounds to believe this allegation and have placed Father Rodino on Administrative leave. Father Rodino denies inappropriate contact with any youth.”

His parishioners think he is innocent. I know I will piss a few of them off by saying I’ve heard that story before. At the rate we are going, there will not be any more working priest over the age of 55.

Father Salvatore Rodino works out of St. Jude the Apostle in Wynantskill, NY.

If he and Ashton Kutcher started following one another, that would be like crossing the streams. It would be bad.

By the way, he's not a very funny guy — more like a racist homophobe with an ego. Not a nice fellow at all.

So last month fundamentalists were lying that extending hate crime protections (which already protect religious people to no complaint from anyone, including those so afraid of “thought police”) to gays would result in arrests for anti-gay remarks in sermons.  Dan Savage had an ingenious idea for showing the lie that this claim was.  The idea was to have liberal preachers stage an event where they gave hate sermons denouncing groups already protected by hate crimes legislation to demonstrate that they could do so without getting arrested, with the point being that were such legislation extended to gays, anti-gay sermons similarly wouldn’t lead to arrest.  Here’s Savage’s post:

This lie—this little bit of false witness—can be easily debunked. Federal hate crimes statutes already cover race, color, religion, national origin, ethnicity and sex. A group of liberal pastors should announce that they’re going to mount the pulpit in a particular church at particular time and preach a series of vile, hateful sermons—one right after the other—attacking people of various races and ethnicities, attacking men and women in turn, attacking people for being white, yellow, and brown, and attacking people of other faiths. The semons should rely on biblical passages that have been historically used to justify attacks on and discrimination against people of different faiths, races, ethnicities, genders, etc., though the ages. Alert the authorities and challenge them to come and arrest all these pastors for preaching hate against groups who are already covered by federal hate crime laws.

They won’t be arrested, of course, because it’s not a crime to be a vile, hateful religious bigot now and it won’t be a crime after sexual orientation is added to the federal hate crimes law.

But now that the legislation has passed, the homophobes want to stage a protest where they explicitly attack gays (unironically) and dare the authorities to arrest them with those non-existent new powers to do so:

On November 16, a pack of crazy Christian clerics will be congregating in Washington to publicly defame gay people. The object of the exercise is to challenge the new anti-hatred Matthew Shepard Act, a Congressional Act which protects citizens against hate crimes committed because of a victim’s perceived sexuality.

At the rally, outside the Department of Justice, ministers will preach from the Bible against homosexuality, and will then present a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder demanding that the religious liberty of all Americans be respected.

Specific legal challenges to the restrictions of the “hate crimes” plan also may be announced then, Cass said.

According to this Examiner report, the pastors don’t have a problem with hate crime legislation itself, but specifically with this hate crime legislation, which limits their god-given rights to incite violence against gay people.

Sigh.

Your Thoughts?

Mark Driscoll the mainstream megachurch pastor at Mars Hill Church attacks stay-at-home dads as “not real men” and, my favorite, “worse than unbelievers.”  Ouch dudes, you’re worse than us atheists if you stay home to take care of your kids!  Oh snap!  Enjoy being on the bottom of the pecking order!  We atheists who have real man jobs are moving up the degenerate’s ladder!

In all seriousness, one of the special things the blogosphere provides is the proliferation of voices informed by unusual experiences.  Laura at Redheaded Skeptic, on which I just found the above video, is the young former wife of a fundamentalist Baptist minister and her blog about her life post-husband and post-fundamentalist Christianity, with a new husband and a new skepticism is really, really interesting.  The entire front page was filled with illuminating, fearlessly personal posts all written within the week.  Go check out what she has to say.  Here’s her life story. As just a sample, here are some of her observations on body image issues for girls in fundamentalist Christian culture compared to secular culture:

I remember reading an article where Jessica Simpson’s father mentioned trying to get into Christian music first. He said the Christian music people were far more concerned with looks than the secular ones (I couldn’t find the original article I read, but I did find Simpson’s comments on it here, two paragraphs above Ashlee Simpson’s segment). Namely, she was too sexy. Despite her conservative clothes, Christian labels thought she had too many curves. And you know what, it’s true. The vast majority of Christian artists and models have small breasts and no hips. Of course, the same could be said of secular artists, too, except larger breasts (in proportion to one’s body) are idealized. And, too, these are conservative Christian organizations that place extreme emphasis on the heart and seeing in others what Jesus  sees. That was the thing: in Christian world, you’re supposed to be sexy, but not too sexy. You were supposed to be outgoing, but not too outgoing or strong, because who could trust a strong, outgoing wife to be submissive? Or of a gentle and quiet spirit? I put on a gentle and quiet spirit, but it wasn’t really me. It made me timid and afraid to express my beliefs, dulling down what had once been a vibrant personality. I am not the only one. Entire books, blogs (the blog I linked is particularly telling–I used to be a huge fan of the Lady in Waiting concepts),  and Bible studiesteach women how to turn down their opinions and ideas to learn to submit and put on a gentle and quiet spirit. I tried, and I succeeded in convincing myself that’s who I really was for awhile.  My senior year in high school, I worked very hard on making myself gentle, quiet, and submissive around guys, only letting my “true” personality show around my girl friends. Needless to say, it led to a lot of depression and loneliness, bringing up an interesting question for young Christian women: what if God gave you leadership qualities and curves?

I had all the wrong parts: flaming red hair and a very curvy figure. An outgoing, strong personality suppressed by years of Christian literature. For most of my teen years, I did nothing with my hair and hid my figure in dowdy clothes. My college years, I fixed my hair, but still dressed and acted very conservatively. The most conservative of dress, however, couldn’t hide my curves, though I tried desperately. I slumped because it made my breasts look smaller. I wore minimizing bras and baggy clothing so it wouldn’t look  like I was trying to show off. But no matter how hard I tried, I could never look the part. I was pretty much doomed.

And here’s an explanation of the excellent reasons she blogs:

When I first left the faith, I thought I was the only one. I could not have been more wrong. When I discovered a multitude of people like me, I found other blogs, books, and resources. What I didn’t find was very many women, even fewer discussions about how painful it is to leave the faith, and absolutely no ministers’ wives. Most reading material centers around news articles and reasons why people leave. Instead of becoming another one of many, I focus on the process (though lately I’ve struggled and have posted more news and comics than usual). Because that is something else I was taught that was very wrong: that people who leave the faith do so willingly, because they would rather lead a sinful life or go their own way instead of believing in God. This is also untrue.

Your Thoughts?

Your Thoughts?

Juan Antonio Martínez Camino, the spokesman for the bishops said that the crucifix stood for freedom and the court’s ruling was unjust and sad. He also added that the crucifix symbolized respect for a person’s dignity from his birth to death. He questioned that what would replace the crucifix in classrooms.

A crucifix is the last thing I think of when thinking about freedom.

The European Court of Human Rights Ruled:

"The presence of the crucifix could be ... disturbing for pupils who practiced other religions or were atheists, particularly if they belonged to religious minorities," the court said. "The compulsory display of a symbol of a given confession in premises used by the public authorities... restricted the right of parents to educate their children in conformity with their convictions,"

This seem reasonable to me. A crucifix is the symbol for the Catholic church. Non-Catholics, even non-catholic Christians, would agree. But 84% of Italians oppose the ruling.

Those in favor included many who are not practicing Catholics. Some 68 percent of those who said they never attended Mass said they still wanted the crucifixes to stay in schools.

It appears that Italians only buy into universal human rights as long as it does not infringe on their closely held beliefs. They are, in a word, hypocrites.

Martin Kugler, and expert in human rights, but only from a Christian perspective, offers 12 reasons why the cross is not a violation of freedom. I offer a few here:

"The right to religious freedom can only mean its exercise -- not the freedom from confrontation. The meaning of 'freedom of religion' has nothing to do with creating a society that is 'free from religion.'

"Forcibly removing the symbol of the cross is a violation on the same level as it would be to force atheists to mount this symbol.

"The blank white wall is also an ideological statement -- especially, if over the previous centuries, it had not been empty. A 'value-neutral' state is fiction, which is often used for propaganda purposes."

"Anti-religious fundamentalism makes itself an accomplice of religious fundamentalism when it provokes through intolerance," the expert observed.

And, "the majority of the affected population would like to retain the cross. It is also a problem of democratic politics, giving priority to individual interests so blatantly."

I’m not going to go down the list point-by-point to explain the whiney logical fallacies. Suffice it to say… what the hell? Freedom of religion simply means that we have the right to believe as we choose without the state endorsing a religion (or forcing one on us). Can they honesty say that putting a crucifix in front of an Atheist  or Muslim child while at school is neutral? No, it is state sponsored religion. How hard is that to see?

Editorials slamming “new atheism” as “strident,” “tedious,” “uninformed,” or the kicker, “fundamentalist” crop up every week like new mushrooms sprouting on cow dung after a rain. They dish out the same false claims, straw men and ad hominem attacks against high-profile atheist intellectuals, and get thrashed for it every time on the same grounds by other atheist writers. Then there’s the variant that promotes accommodation of believers, expressing concern that we are too harsh, we need to woo people with honey rather than vinegar. It’s just good “marketing,” you understand.

Most of the time I don’t comment on these stories, it’s just too repetitive. If we’re turning people off, then believers should be all-too-happy to see us fall on our faces and commit rhetorical suicide.

In this case, it’s Hitchens’ new film that’s being targeted. Instead of engaging with the debate, Ottawa Citizen editorial page editor Leonard Stern tries to act as if he’s above it all, explaining to Hitchens how childish it is to discuss the claims religions are actually making.

My favorite trope, which Stern plows like a familiar rut, is the “literal-mythological” dichotomy. It involves the comparison that while some fundamentalists take the patently absurd stories they read in the bible literally, atheists are guilty of the same thing when they mock them. “No one really believes those absurdities anyway, so mocking them proves nothing.” Or–they do in fact believe absurd stories, but it doesn’t matter because we are ignoring the true (and far more complex) purpose, function and dynamic of how religion is “actually lived.”

Wilson really believes, for example, that Noah crammed all those animals on a single boat. I wonder how many times Hitchens has patiently crunched the numbers for his pal, calculating the mass of the animals in order to show that Noah’s task was an engineering impossibility.

The problem with this pedantic brand of atheism is that it conceives of religion in very narrow terms. Religion is ridiculous for Hitchens because, in his view, it means that you necessarily believe that Eve was made from Adam’s rib. No disrespect to pastor Wilson, but this ignores the reality of how religion is actually lived.

Hitchens is pedantic, and a nerd to boot. Welllll…..Really?? It’s not important that they believe that stuff? It’s not important that otherwise sensible people go to church and take communion, in which they pretend that a cracker and some wine becomes the literal body and blood of a person who may have never existed, but even if he did he’s been dead for two millenia. This is far stronger than a belief, it’s action. And to prove how seriously they take it, try walking out of a Catholic church sometime with the “host,” and see the kind of death threats you get. Or desecrate a “host” and post the picture on the web. Two thousand comments later you might start to understand how strongly they really do believe in the very absurdities we are talking about, and how much a myth can very much affect real life. If myths are so beneficial and not harmful to society, shouldn’t host-desecration cause a lesser offense than constitutionally protected flag-burning?

A different sect of so-called moderates want to see their children full-immersion baptized even though it would be patently absurd to think going swimming in a special pool gets you anything other than wet. But they consider this some sort of conditioning that–notwithstanding hair dryers–makes it impossible for their kids to later renounce their faith. For the record, I’d call it a form of hypnotic shock induction to reinforce childhood indoctrination and prevent defections. But that’s just me.

So it’s ritual, then. Humans have performed rituals for all sorts of nonsensical reasons throughout history. Believe it or not, I’m OK with that so long as no one gets hurt. Most of what we humans do has very little concrete purpose, so if doing a rain dance makes you feel better about yourself, or gives you a sense of control over your crops, I’m fine with that. I’m even fine with people being baptized or taking communion. I’m fine with chanting, I’m fine with people sitting around thinking positive (or negative) thoughts. I’m fine with rituals involving talking to the dead (as long as you don’t pretend they talk back).

And this is the point. Rituals can’t hurt anyone unless they are claimed to be something beyond the symbolic. And that’s where the problem comes in: they nearly always *are*. No one wants to think their rituals are meaningless. People think chanting changes the world. They think their positive thoughts affect matter. There’s no end of absurd claims people make about their wishing and willing. When one group makes such concrete claims, then expects others to accept it literally, it becomes a problem. What they are really asking non-believers to do is to grant unearned respect for their sheer earnestness–even if the end result is opaque or useless.

It’s galling to me that religions claim to offer people objectively valuable purpose and meaning, yet thousands of them perform different and often conflicting rituals. If there was really a God watching up in the sky–he could only see these as billions of thoughts and sentiments blended into a haze of vague desiring and begging for “something more.” I think any God worthy of the name would find it all rather amusing: “Children, children, be of good cheer, I regret to inform you I can’t prevent you all from dying some day, so in the meantime–do your homework, love each other and your planet, and eat your vegetables.”

Stern continues:

I’ve known many devout people from a variety of faith communities. They are religious in the sense they believe there is purpose and meaning to the universe. They believe in a creator — an infinite presence that our finite minds cannot comprehend but know is there. They believe it’s important to feed the poor and help the sick not just because it alleviates human suffering but because doing so contributes in some inchoate way to the cosmic order.

Vague, vague–piles and heaps of vague. I love the use of the word inchoate. Talk about about an intellectual surrender! We see the next fallback position of the confused apologist is to say that it’s really not about belief anyway, but about action, “how you live.” This is just a bastardized version of humanism (but to them, humanism’s “not good enough.”) We humanists feel that how we treat each other and the kind of world we make has ultimate value because it’s all we have and all we will ever have. The apologist distorts this to say that treating others with kindness could only have meaning if it pleased the Almighty, “contributed in some inchoate (ill-formed and incomplete) way to the cosmic order,” and upped our chances at immortality. That’s just naive Pascal’s Wager tripe anyway.

The humanist makes the greater contribution, because she does it without the expectation of any other reward than feeling good. The only ‘cosmic order’ of any consequence to humanity comes through the promotion of human unity and the alleviation of suffering.

The point here is that moderate religion stripped of the hierarchy, belief, and ritual is at its core humanism. It came from naturally evolved morality, which is based on reciprocity and empathy. And that’s the stuff we all strive for, strive to become better at, strive to express in ever more powerful world-changing ways. Or we should. The problem is that any religion that is based on the reification of myths is bound to drain resources, talent and time from accomplishing things in the here and now. It’s bound to be less agile at responding to the changing circumstances of life, since it’s based on stories that have remained the same for hundreds of generations.

Believers are taking up a large portion of their brain power running an overlay simulation that they attempt to blend seamlessly with the natural, observable world. In this sense the myths become very important to them because without them the simulation collapses. Without the attendant grandeur and promise of eternal life, finding motivation or purpose becomes, well, what it really should be, a personal, interior journey.

And what of the myths themselves? There are good ones and bad ones. Believing in stories that are absurd and impossible cannot be good for anyone. Look at the damage the idea of original sin and the virgin birth does. It turns ordinary “good” Catholics into crazy deranged people blocking access to birth control and abortion services and ensuring the spread of the deadly plague of HIV around the world. How much suffering can be laid at the feet of this one despicable idea?

Sure there are positive metaphors and lessons in myth: renewal, sacrifice, loyalty, betrayal, superhuman strength, conflict, or intelligence. But we have to evaluate each one. Is it a good myth? Or does it promote the same old pathologies of abuse of hierarchy or authority. Does it help people see things as they are? Or will it confuse them further?

Stern seems to think it doesn’t matter–that even false histories can have value:

The Canadian theologian Rabbi Gunther Plaut talks about how American tradition mythologized the frontiersmen, presenting them as enterprising pioneers and courageous adventurers. The truth, of course, is that many pioneers, having failed in the east, had no place to go but west, and were motivated as much by a desire to get rich as anything else. “But Americans have preferred to see their past in an idealized light, (emphasis added) and their admiration of the value of personal independence and frontier virtues has itself shaped the psychology of the nation.” In the same way, says Plaut, Biblical narratives “mirror the collective memory of our ancestors, and in the course of centuries this record became a source of truth,” incorporated into “the consciousness of the people.”

“Preferred to see their past…” But what is the value of ‘truth’ that’s not true? And if we accept a historical error of our collective memory as truth, is it not corrupting? Stern tries to assert the value of biblical stories that are not literally true by bringing up false perceptions about frontiersmen. I think he’s arguing against himself. Romantic notions of history blunt the real lessons of that history. If we have a rose-colored view, it’s just as bad as a blinkered one. Let’s just take off the rose-colored glasses altogether and see things for what they are. That includes Bible stories and other myths. Let’s ask whether the story we’re reading makes a point of value measured against modern, universal, inclusive human ethics.

Stories that directly conflict with science are the most corrosive, and so should be out at square one. Tossed, kaput. That means “creation,” the talking ass, the virgin birth, water into wine, the Eucharist, the Resurrection, and all the rest. Myths are only valuable inasmuch as they provide a supportable moral lesson, cautionary tale, or inspiration. Many things about the great American explorers were laudable. But that doesn’t mean some of them weren’t also deeply flawed. Since when did their ambition to get rich become a moral failing on its own? Doesn’t it matter more *how* the explorers’ fortunes were made? And whether they treated the native peoples ethically? Those are the questions we should be asking, because they require greater nuance. The answers can be brought to bear on how we should behave as we explore our own frontiers today.

In the end, this is not a battle between religion and atheism, nor even between literalism and metaphor. It’s a battle between glossing over unpleasant truths and facing them. For humans, these truths are the inevitability of death, and the competitiveness and rapaciousness of our untempered nature. In the face of these, religion and its apologists have made a cowardly stand for pleasant but corrupting stories that hold us back. Why can’t we simply find the courage to face the truth of our history and existence? I don’t care how many times people say “that’s not nice.” It’s a stage we’re going to have to get through if we want to slog our way forward.

The stream dropped out for about half an hour, I'm told, because some idiot has blasted the studio's computers with a goddamn virus. So you Ustream viewers, please hang on, and we'll get a clean audio file up to the website ASAP. Otherwise, I thought the show went well today. We tried out a stunning new opening video sequence provided to us by a fan, and the background chroma key looked cool, except for the fact I had stupidly decided to wear a shirt today that was just green enough to turn my torso translucent. Perhaps it was an improvement. The callers all told us they could hear us fine, without any echo or odd reverb feeding back. And we got a dumb theist caller who got us both into rant mode, which I always enjoy. So, we're working through these teething pains, people, slowly but surely.

Oh yeah. One sucky note. After next Sunday's show, we're off for the next two Sundays. Sigh. Things, I'm sure, will settle in after the holidays.

A police officer may arrest someone if the officer believes he or she is being prevented from doing his or her job, Urquhart said.  “A lot of obstruction charges don’t get filed,” he said.

Obstruction is similar to disorderly conduct, the charge Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. faced after his controversial July arrest in Cambridge, Mass. That case spurred a national debate about racial profiling and drew the attention of President Barack Obama. The charges were dropped.

I would have let this pass, but Stoot presented his case to the press as if it were a civil rights violation. But not because he is African American, but because he is a pastor. Jesse Jackson and the National Action Network, which is associated with the despicable Al Sharpton are involved.

“If these allegations are true, we are very disturbed by the manner in which a member of the Clergy may have been mistreated,” the Rev. Jesse Jackson wrote in an Oct. 16 letter to Sheriff John Lovick.

Once I saw the Jackson’s assertion that a “member of the clergy” should receive special treatment, I looked deeper. Nobody deserves special treatment under the law, especially pastors.

Pastor Stoot made a public written statement about his arrest. Apparently he is completely without fault and may even be able to walk on water.

As I moved toward [my church member’s] apartment, a Snohomish County Sheriff Deputy told to me to move the truck. I informed him that it was being moved and that I was going to check on a member of my church. He then yelled again that I was going to have to move my truck. I again informed him that it was being moved as we spoke. By this time, [church member #2] was in the driver’s seat and preparing to move the truck. The officer again yelled that he had told me to move the truck and to go back and do it. I again told him that the truck was already being moved and that I needed to go and see about [my church member] because I had received a 911 call for his aid as I am his emergency contact. As we finished this exchange, [church member #2] was moving my truck.

At no time in this initial exchange did I raise my voice, lose my temper at all, or act in a confrontational or disrespectful manner toward this officer.

Pastor Stoot’s account seems reasonable. And the arresting officer confirmed that the truck was moved.  But later, Stoot confronts the officer rather than fulfilling his self stated duty to seek care for the victim of the fire.

I went out to inform the fire commander that I had found him and ask if someone could take a look at him to make sure he was okay….

…I wanted to get a card from the officer that I had had the initial encounter with, so I approached the two officers that had been behind [church member #2]. The officer was very confrontational and informed me that I had been yelling at him when I’d first arrived and he had told me to move my truck. I told the other officer, again in a very calm voice, that I hadn’t raised my voice or yelled at him at all, nor was I trying to be at all confrontational

Stoot goes on to describe his arrest and eventually makes the charge that the officers caused him to bump his head upon entering the car, and that somebody stool $200 dollars from his wallet, which seems odd.

Stoot claims the arrest was retaliation for a civil lawsuit, which was dismissed in 2007, but apparently is still under appeal. Unfortunately, the lawsuit is against a different law enforcement agency, so I don’t really see the link. The suit itself is interesting, Paul Stoot Jr., then 13, was questioned for two hours without his parents being notified. He eventually confessed to molesting a young girl. Thankfully, a judge threw out the confession.

Stoot said Everett police "coerced" his son to admit guilt, a confession the judge threw out. He said his son and many other children aren't mature enough to understand what police are asking them and can't be legally required to behave as adults.

I happen to agree with Stoot here. Children should never be question about a crime without parental consent.

I am not in a position to know what happened hin this case. I can say that reacting to an obstruction arrest  by claiming a civil rights violation seems way out of proportion to the actual event. I can also say that to me,  Stoot’s story does not ring true. Also, asserting that a pastor should receive special treatment is simply wrong.

Something tells me that no charges will be filed in this case and that a fresh lawsuits will start rolling it’s ways through our legal system, after all Stoot missed his first shot at a five million dollar payday, I’m sure a second attempt looks appealing. It’s a shame really, all Stoot has to do was park his truck legally and nobody would have even noticed he was there. I guess that feeling of a “pastor on a mission” got the better of him.

Stoot is the pastor for Greater Trinity Missionary Baptist Church.

Congressman John Shadegg puts words into a baby’s mouth and cites the baby as an expert on the house floor:

UPDATE: Sendai Anonymous (occasional Camels With Hammers contributor and full time resident queen of adding awesome links for further reading in the comments section) reminds us of this post which solves the mystery of what must have possessed Shadegg to do something this asinine.

Your Thoughts?

I finally read Richard Dawkins’The Greatest Show on Earth last week. As I read the chapter on embryology a couple of nights ago, I couldn’t help marveling at how amazing life is in all its forms. Religionists often claim that their views enhance the value of life, particularly human life, because all of it has been ordained and designed by the hand(s) of god(s). It seems to me, however, that religious views actually cheapen the value of life. I want to point out three ways in which this occurs.

First, the creation of life forms is not a particularly significant accomplishment for a deity or deities that are capable of doing all sorts of spectacular things. A galaxy here and a supernova there, a parasite here and a mammal there – just another mundane day in the deity office. Ho hum; now it’s time to rest. Big deal.

Second, religious believers frequently assert that earthly life is second-rate compared to what’s ahead in the next life (or lives). Life on earth in the here and now is a trial run, a testing ground, the primary significance of which is to prepare people (or allow people to prepare themselves, or for people to allow god(s) to prepare them – there are many variations on this theme) for the hereafter. If you think this life is great, just wait till you get to heaven; you haven’t seen anything yet. Or, if you think this life sucks, just wait till you get to heaven; god(s) will reward your patience and faithfulness with something much better.

Third, there are religious believers who teach that humankind is the pinnacle of creation. Think about this a moment. As marvelous as human life is, it takes real hubris to believe that humanity is the apex of creation. Bertrand Russell put this idea well when he said, “If I were granted omnipotence, and millions of years to experiment in, I should not think Man much to boast of as my final accomplishment.” Human life is remarkable, but to consider it the best thing going (outside of heaven) is tragically impoverished.

On the other hand, a naturalistic view of life, which asserts that we still don’t know exactly how life came about, but we do know quite a lot about how it functions now and how it developed historically – once it got started (on earth) – inspires awe. Life is precious precisely because, in many ways, it’s mysterious. Regardless of whether we ever figure out exactly how life began, it will always retain an air of wonder. After all, as abundant as organic life is on earth, it is relatively rare compared to the abundance of inorganic matter that surrounds us. It’s amazing that anything lives at all, let alone that the earth teems with countless life forms ranging from bacteria to whales. Life is also precious because the best evidence uncovered thus far indicates that living beings only get one chance at it. There are no do-overs, no second chances, no hereafters. This life is all we get, so it’s important to make the most of it. Finally, as varied as life on earth is, there may be other planets that are populated with many other life forms, forms that may (or may not) resemble the diversity of life here. There is still much more to learn about life right here on our little planet, and there may well be volumes to discover about life on other worlds. I find all of these ideas utterly inspiring and more than a little bit humbling.

One does not need to believe in divine sanction to treasure life. Rather, all one needs is an appreciation for the wonder of a cosmos that humankind is just beginning to understand. As far as we can tell so far, life forms play small roles on the stage of the cosmos. Organic beings may be relatively few in number, but we’re pretty amazing nonetheless. This shouldn’t surprise you. After all, it’s often the bit characters that steal the show.

– the chaplain

Do New Atheists like Christopher Hitchens and Stephen Fry turn off more people than they persuade?  I always emphatically argue no and the video below is solid evidence that I’m right.  Before this debate the audience was polled on whether they wanted to support the motion, “The Catholic church is a force for good in the world.”  Before the debate the results of the poll were 678 for the motion, 1102 against, and 346 undecided.  After the debate they asked the audience again and the results were 268 for the motion, 1876 against the motion, and 34 undecided.  That means he dissuaded roughly 410 people who came in favoring the view that the Catholic church was a force for good and persuaded roughly 312 of the undecideds.  (Of course, he may have persuaded more than 410 of those originally for the motion and some of the original undecideds and opposers of the proposition may have wound up for the motion).  In net sum, they gained 774 supporters for their position.

It’s a debate with 5 parts, watch them for yourself, determine what you think of the question in advance and see if you are persuaded one way or the other, and give us Your Thoughts.

(via Atheist Media Blog and special thanks to Sendai Anonymous for putting me on the lookout for this debate to surface online.)

Your Thoughts?

Image via Wikipedia

Another sign that intelligence and an education are becoming a liability in our society.

A US man has been rejected in his bid to become a police officer for scoring too high on an intelligence test.

Robert Jordan, a 49-year-old college graduate, took an exam to join the New London police, in Connecticut, in 1996 and scored 33 points, the equivalent of an IQ of 125.

But New London police interviewed only candidates who scored 20 to 27, on the theory that those who scored too high could get bored with police work and leave soon after undergoing costly training.

Mr Jordan launched a federal lawsuit against the city, but lost.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York upheld a lower court’s decision that the city did not discriminate against Mr Jordan because the same standards were applied to everyone who took the test.

He said: “This kind of puts an official face on discrimination in America against people of a certain class. I maintain you have no more control over your basic intelligence than your eye color or your gender or anything else.”

He said he does not plan to take any further legal action and has worked as a prison guard since he took the test.

The average score nationally for police officers is 21 to 22, the equivalent of an IQ of 104, or just a little above average. (Source-ananova.com)

In a job that at times requires the ability to make reasoned and informed decisions on matters of life and death, do we really want only those of average intelligence?

Your Thoughts?

JUST when I thought I had a handle on some of the world’s pottiest pastimes – running with bulls in Pamplona, dwarf-tossing in Australia and cheese-rolling in Gloucestershire are just three examples – along comes a bunch of religious halfwits with a brand new entertainment: a contest to see who can best bad-mouth homos.

Bible-thumping hate-monger Gary Cass

On November 16, a pack of crazy Christian clerics will be congregating in Washington to publicly defame gay people. The object of the exercise is to challenge the new anti-hatred Matthew Shepard Act, a Congressional Act which protects citizens against hate crimes committed because of a victim’s perceived sexuality.

At the rally, outside the Department of Justice, ministers will preach from the Bible against homosexuality, and will then present a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder demanding that the religious liberty of all Americans be respected.

Specific legal challenges to the restrictions of the “hate crimes” plan also may be announced then, Cass said.

According to this Examiner report, the pastors don’t have a problem with hate crime legislation itself, but specifically with this hate crime legislation, which limits their god-given rights to incite violence against gay people.

Gary Cass of the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission – check out the hysterical video showing the posturing tosspot in action – had this to say about what happens when hate crime laws include homosexual victims:

Christians are singled out for prosecution, with threats, imprisonment and fines simply for refusing to stop doing what Christ commands: proclaiming the truth.

The author of the Examiner piece, Carrie Poppy, writes:

How tragic it is that so many people devote their lives to spreading hatred, not because they are hateful people, but because they have been indoctrinated – brainwashed – with a bronze age story about the origin of the universe. When someone asks you, ‘Yeah, but what harm does religion do?’ point them to examples like this.

Whenever we teach our children that groundless faith is a virtue, we pave the way for groundless violence. Rest in peace, Matthew Shepard.

The first one wouldn’t be all that uncommon in parts of the Bible Belt, I would think:

The second one is a little more unique and amusing

I don’t know if they collaborated on that or if they’re passive-aggressively feuding with each other. But I fully approve of rooftop displays of faith.

2. The Bible, which, according to Christians, is the inspired word of an omniscient god, does not contain the slightest shred of internal evidence to support that contention. Indeed, every single sentence in the entire tome could have been written by any first century commoner with the rare talent of literacy. Men’s ignorance in biblical times was so comprehensive as to be rather shocking; the Bible fully captures, and credulously regurgitates, the ancient ignorance of its time.

3. On Christianity, god is interested in human salvation, and the religion quite clearly holds that salvation is achieved through saving faith. It is interesting, then, that god has not been more proactive in disseminating this rather important point, given the fact that, even now, there are remote places that the Christian message has not yet penetrated. Christianity’s slow spread by the efforts of man indicates god, if existent, does not much care whether his message is heard.

4. With its bizarre tales and miracle claims, the Bible reads like any common collection of mythology. A world in which a virgin birth occurs, men rise from the dead, miraculous healings are effected and street magic is not mere illusion bears no similarity to, and has no relationship with, the world in which we find ourselves, where the laws of nature are immutable. When one reads mythology and legendry, one finds precisely the same topsy-turvy world one recognizes from the Bible.

5. Although even some Christians discount the factual veracity of most of the Old Testament, many still dogmatically hold to the myths about Moses and the Israelites. The best available evidence indicates the flight from Egypt, wandering in the desert and conquest of the Promised Land did not ever occur. Indeed, rather than the Israelites conquering Canaan following the Exodus, most of them, in fact, had always been there. That is, the Israelites were simply Canaanites who forged a distinct culture. The Old Testament contains nothing more than self-aggrandizing folktales.

6. One of the few theological tenets that are clearly open to scientific experimentation is prayer. And, in fact, the efficacy of intercessory prayer has been tested in a rigorous and credible way. The Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer (STEP), supported by the John Templeton Foundation, which attempts to wed religious and scientific thinking, found that intercessory prayer had no effect on complication-free recovery from coronary artery bypass graft surgery. In this case, prayer was tested credibly and it comprehensively failed.

7. The fact of Darwinian evolution by natural selection contradicts biblical Christianity and shows it to be false. Although some proportion of Christians has succeeded, in their minds, in melding the Christian faith with recognition of Darwinian fact, this seems a fruitless exercise. There is not a whisper of Darwinian understanding in the Bible, which, as Christianity’s foundational text, purports to speak to questions of origins. Any “harmony” between Darwinian thought and the Bible is the product of an elaborate construct invented by scientifically aware Christians.

8. The Christian religion is fantastically solipsistic with respect to the human animal and its place in the cosmos. The Christian message specifically says that humans are god’s special creation—made in his image—and that, of all the creation, he is principally interested in us. This notion, of course, arose in a time of immense ignorance of the cosmos. We are a single species, on a single planet, part of a single solar system, in a single galaxy, in an almost unimaginably vast universe. Humanocentrism is a luxury of ignorance we can no longer sustain.

9. To cite god is to invite an infinite regress from which there is no escape. Any god character who is complex enough to design a universe—let alone to monitor every human being who has ever lived, listen to and answer prayers, and send a son to die for our sins—is statistically improbable exactly because of that complexity. Inasmuch as Christians offer no explanation for god’s existence, it is all but ruled out simply because of the statistical improbability of unexplained organized complexity. We can explain the human brain’s evolution; Christians cannot explain the organized complexity of god.

10. The faith to which one adheres seems, in the majority of cases, to be quite directly determined by (a) the faith of one’s parents and (b) the dominant faith of the society in which one is raised. Young children trust their parents—a fact that, quite clearly, has evolutionary benefits generally. However, it also means they are susceptible to parental religious inculcation, from which it can be difficult to liberate oneself. One wonders how many people adhere to Christianity, or any faith, as adults simply because they were raised that way.

11. Homo sapiens sapiens have walked the Earth, in something approaching modern forms, for the last 100,000 to 200,000 years. This is scientific fact, and no thinking person entertains Young Earth creationist piffle. This means, then, that for tens of thousands of years human beings lived, struggled, suffered and died—and Heaven watched, arms folded, in silence. After this interminable wait, which likely lasted well over 100,000 years, god decided that maybe it was time to intervene. His method of intervention? A nauseating human sacrifice in a very remote part of Palestine.

12. The world looks exactly as we would expect it to look if there was no god and no special interest in human affairs. Our planet is plagued with natural disasters in which people are killed indiscriminately—without any regard for their supposed righteousness or evilness. We do not find the slightest hint of ultimate justice in the cosmos. And god, who supposedly loves humans so dearly, demonstrates his laziness again. When there is a hijacking, he never zaps the hijackers with heart attacks. When a crazed gunman is on the loose, he never turns the bullets into popcorn. Love is in evidence; hate is in evidence. Only god is not in evidence.

13. Christianity loves to cloak itself in the raiment of meekness and humility, endlessly drawing attention to how humble it is. Christians call themselves lowly, sinful worms in god’s eyes, desperately in need of redemption through saving faith in Jesus. Although Christianity features an unquestionable tendency toward self-debasement, it is also fantastically arrogant. Fearing that the creator of the universe is upset with you is equally solipsistic—indeed, betrays equal arrogance—as enjoying peace from the belief that the creator of the universe is pleased with you.

14. The notion of an afterlife—surviving one’s bodily death—seems completely incompatible with our current scientific understanding. A blow to the head can rob one of one’s memories. Neurodegenerative disease, in some cases, can result in what might be described as the loss of the self. Phineas Gage suffered a traumatic head injury, the lasting effect of which was a dramatic change in personality. As Victor Stenger notes, neurological and medical evidence strongly indicates that our memories, emotions, thoughts and, indeed, our very personalities reside in the physical particles of the brain or, more precisely, in the ways those particles interact. What, then, would make it into the afterlife? Vague, impersonal energy?

15. To threaten small children with damnation to hell strikes me as a particularly hideous form of mental abuse. Our imaginations seem to be most vivid when we are children, and our credulity is at its peak. To small children, weeping and gnashing of teeth, not to mention lakes of fire, are not metaphorical descriptions of existence apart from god; to the undeveloped mind, they are real and haunting. One can only hope, when they grow and mature, they realize, to be a deterrent, hell’s awfulness must at least be commensurate with its ludicrousness. Because hell is infinitely silly, to deter anyone at all, it must threaten infinite punishment.

16. On Christianity, moral facts exist, because Christians stipulate that morality—what is good and what is evil—flows directly from god’s nature. They contend that god’s nature is unchangeable—cannot be otherwise—and, therefore, morality is objective. Yet, in conducting an evidence-based interrogation of the natural order, one finds no moral facts. Earth’s biodiversity is a bare fact. A conclusion flows naturally therefrom: A fact necessarily exists about the origin of, or explanation for, Earth’s biodiversity. Nowhere do we find the necessary existence of a moral fact, or any evidence that one exists.

17. If, as Christians say, morality flows directly from god’s nature, then any behavior god exhibits, and any action he commands or endorses, is necessarily righteous on the Christian view. In Genesis 19:4-8, the Bible character Lot offers his two virginal daughters up for rape to the men of Sodom, who surround his house. In 2 Peter 2:7-8, Lot is called “righteous” three times. The Bible, on Christianity, is the word of god; therefore, one must conclude Lot’s offering his two virginal daughters up for rape is consonant with god’s objective morality. Deuteronomy 7:1-5, Deuteronomy 20:16-18 and Joshua 10:28-40 demonstrate that god, whose very nature defines what is moral, sometimes commands genocide.

18. Men have been inventing deities for millennia, and Yahweh is just one in the near-infinite troop. As H.L. Mencken observed, the graveyard of dead gods, wherever it is, is well populated. I have little doubt that Yahweh’s grave is already dug, and that perhaps it is alongside the final resting places of Resheph, Baal, Anath, Astarte, Ashtoreth, Hadad, El, Addu, Nergal, Shalem, Nebo, Dagon, Ninib, Melek Taus and Yau. Then again, Yahweh’s grave might be closer to those of Amon-Re, Isis, Osiris, Ptah, Sebek, Anubis and Molech. RIP Yahweh.

19. Human beings, although clearly the most advanced species currently living on Earth, are easily deceived, deluded, confused and baffled. Our minds are well adapted for survival and for dealing with “Middle World,” where things are not microscopically small or cosmically very large, but they are still evolved organs with inherent limitations. Through a long period of trial and error, we can now conclude that marshaling evidence—relevant facts—is the best, most reliable way for humans to approximate truth as we interrogate the world of experience. If Christianity is to be accepted, it must be on the strength of its evidence.

20. On scientific thinking, hypotheses are meritorious only to the extent that they (a) make predictions, (b) enable those predictions to be tested and (c) find that, upon testing, the predictions are confirmed. The Christian hypothesis, to its detriment, is exceedingly bad at having its predictions be confirmed. Let us take Genesis, for example. The creation chronology presented in Genesis represents a testable prediction. In recent times, science has been able to test that prediction. Rather than being confirmed, the prediction failed, because Genesis’ creation chronology is wrong. This is a strike against the Christian hypothesis. Archeological disproof of the Exodus narrative is another strike against the Christian hypothesis.

21. It has been said some people are so constituted that they cannot believe in god. I am not such an individual, insofar as I invite convincing evidence of god’s existence and workings. I shall not fall prostrate to god’s feet in any case, but I would believe god existed if the evidence were sufficient. Any moral opinions I articulate, including those in which I deem god’s actions evil, are expressions of my deepest nature; I am constituted as I am, and I can neither help nor change what fundamentally strikes me as grave evil, which would prevent me from worshipping god, irrespective of evidence for his existence.

So, starting with today's show (I'm looking forward to being back on, as it's been a couple of months for me, so I hope we get some theist callers I can kick around), if problems persist, we will delay the posting of audio files to the web archive until they've been cleaned up. As always, please be patient in the knowledge that the crew is on the problem, and we'll eventually overcome whatever it is.

I saw this over at Happy Jihad’s House of Pancakes and thought I just had to repost it!

The sticker was attached to a book obtained through Interlibrary Loan. Unfortunately, Mr. Happy didn’t say which book, so let’s have a vote to see which one is most likely! This is Dr. Jim’s first poll, so c’mon and give it a try!

Oh. Unless you're a Catholic or other Christian — you won't enjoy that at all. You might want to go to church instead.

Peter Kim, 41, was arrested Monday in Arapahoe County, where he is living. Details of the alleged violation haven't been made public, but Kim is scheduled to appear in Boulder County District Court on Wednesday morning, prosecutor Tim Johnson said.

Please put this freak back in prison. Ten years sounds right.

Other Posts:

1. Peter Kim arrested
2. Peter Kim arrested again

Once you’ve finished your leisurely Sunday brunch and had some coffee, tea, cocoa or… check out some good reading opportunities.

A good place to start is the 45th edition of the Humanist Symposium, which is being hosted at Confessions of a Closet Atheist. This week’s collection of readings includes my piece, Life’s Value.

After you’ve finished with the Symposium and refreshed your snacks, meals and beverages (and used the potty), you can check out Sunday in Outer Blogness: Another Day in the Culture Wars Edition, which is available at Main Street Plaza. My piece, Atheist Statistics 2008, is included in that roundup, which was a pleasant surprise to me.

If you’ve read all of those posts and are still hungry for more reading material, check out my updated Reading Room. I re-arranged things a bit to make room for another bookshelf. Shelf #1 contains all new entries.

If you don’t feel like reading, you can always watch NFL football instead. Redskins fans would appreciate it if you’d cheer for the ‘Skins. I’d ask you to offer some prayers or sacrifices on their behalf, but, you know…

– the chaplain

1. Recovering Cultist
2. Scatterbrain
3. My Views on the World
4. dAdTHEIST
5. My Thoughts
6. Rabid Atheist
7. Young Freethought
8. Socialist International Australia
9. The Whore of All the Earth

A bit of news about the blogroll. I’ve been unhappy with Blogrolling.com for a very long time. I’ve been threatened to do something about it. I collaborated with a programmer recently. The result is a viable competing product. We are working out the bugs, but I think it has a chance at hitting the big time. Of course, the Atheist Blogroll will be the first customer.  I’m looking for a server to host the service and also trying to figure out what to call it. If anyone has a good suggestion for a name, please pass it along.

Profiling the fantastic Fiona Apple version of “Across The Universe” and the new Taken By Trees spin on Animal Collective got me thinking about another of my favorite covers by a woman singer, Leigh Nash’s exquisite performance of “You’re A Mean One, Mr. Grinch” with her band Sixpence None The Richer.  Please forgive a Christmas song in early November—it’s just that terrific and under-heard, I gotta share it:

Your Thoughts?

Yup, its that time again!

The three books reviewed in the latest edition of Review of Biblical Literature most relevant to my interests each win a coveted (oooo, unbiblical!) custom made Lolcat!

The Review of Biblical Literature is a publication of the Society of Biblical Literature (http://www.sbl-site.org).

Of course, I have no idea whether any of the winning authors are actually pleased to have won this award (or even know about it), or whether those who haven’t won one are saying to themselves “Whew… I got away with my credibility intact!”, but so what? Here are the winners this time around!

Geert Hallbäck and Annika Hvithamar, eds.
Recent Releases: The Bible in Contemporary Cinema
Reviewed by Diane Apostolos-Cappadona

The relationship between theology and film has always been a complicated one. When film was invented at the end of the nineteenth century, it quickly gained its place in popular culture, far from the orthodoxies of the scholarly world and of the Church. For the better part of the twentieth century popular cinema was considered off limits for serious studies of Bible and culture. Recently, however, there has been a growing understanding of how the Bible is being used in popular culture—not as a historical document or as an authoritative canon, but as part of the cultural intertext. Cinema is a vivid example of the role and impact of the Bible in contemporary society. In this well-theorized collection of essays the issue is treated from several angles. Using the methodology of theology, the question of the alleged escapism of popular cinema is explored. Using the methodology of media studies, the impact of the media on religious communication is analysed. And, using the methodology of religious studies, the influence of the cinema in the creation of new religions, religious behaviour and religious institutions is investigated. In addition, the book offers fruitful analyses of the cinematic use of biblical themes such as Eden, salvation, Mary Magdalene and Jesus—as well as of the cinematic application of ethical themes such as truth-telling, personal growth, suffering, the accomplishment of good and the creating of meaning for human beings.

moar funny pictures

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Øystein Lund
Way Metaphors and Way Topics in Isaiah 40-55
Reviewed by James M. Kennedy

Øystein Lund gives a new approach to texts in Isaiah 40-55 that deal with ways and desert transformation. Earlier exegesis has mainly read these texts in a literal way. In recent years, exegetes have pointed out that the so-called ‘exodus texts’ should rather be interpreted metaphorically. The author supports this, and accordingly seeks to continue this discourse by systematizing, intensifying, and deepening the argumentation for a metaphorical reading. He argues that most of the way-texts in Isaiah 40-55 are interrelated, and gradually contribute to explore questions regarding the way-situation of the people. The way-theme appears in the prologue, and in 40:27 a problem approach is established when the people is addressed: “How can you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel, ‘My way is hidden from the LORD, and my right passes by my God’”? Several subsequent way-texts are related to this text, and together these draw a coherent picture in which the problematic way-situation of the people in the past and present is transformed. JHWH establishes new ways in which he leads his people through their difficult landscape. Øystein Lund argues that such a coherent reading of the way-texts gives good meaning, which is consistent with the over all message of Isaiah 40-55.

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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jacob Neusner, Bruce D. Chilton and Baruch A. Levine
Torah Revealed, Torah Fulfilled: Scriptural Laws in Formative Judaism and Earliest Christianity
Reviewed by James D. G. Dunn

The authors seek to identify the recurrent tensions, the blatant points of emphasis, the recurring indications of conflict and polemic. Framing the issue of the disposition of the Scriptural heritage in broad terms, they describe what characterizes the Gospels and the Mishnah, the letters of Paul and the Tosefta. In other words, if they take whole and complete the writings of first and second century people claiming to form the contemporary embodiment of Scripture’s Israel and ask what they all stress as a single point of insistence, the answer is self-evident. Nearly every Christianity and nearly all known Judaisms appeal for validation to the Scriptures of ancient Israel, their laws and narratives, their prophecies and visions. To Scripture all parties appeal — but not to the same verses of Scripture. In Scripture, all participants to the common Israelite culture propose to find validation — but not to a common theological program subject to diverse interpretation. From Scripture, every community of Judaism and Christianity takes away what it will, but not with the assent of all the others.

*****

The Runners Ups!

Who win a collective consolation prize this time around, just because that is the kind of guy I am!

moar funny pictures

Jason S. DeRouchie
A Call to Covenant Love: Text Grammar and Literary Structure in Deuteronomy 5-11
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=7004 Author(s
Reviewed by Max Rogland

Larry R. Helyer
The Witness of Jesus, Paul and John: An Exploration in Biblical Theology
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=6909
Reviewed by William Wilson

Richard S. Hess, Gerald A. Klingbeil, and Paul J. Ray Jr., eds.
Critical Issues in Early Israelite History
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=6942
Reviewed by Lena-Sofia Tiemeyer

Andrew E. Hill and John H. Walton
A Survey of the Old Testament
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=7091
Reviewed by William Barrick

Neil R. Parker
The Marcan Portrayal of the “Jewish” Unbeliever: A Function of the Marcan References to Jewish Scripture: The Theological Basis of a Literary Construct
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=6639
Reviewed by Adam Winn

Daniel Patte, ed.
Global Bible Commentary
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=6489
Reviewed by Gerrie Snyman

Robert M. Price
Jesus Is Dead
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=7049
Reviewed by Tony Costa

Émile Puech, ed.
Qumran Grotte 4.XXVII: Textes Araméens, deuxième partie
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=7071
Reviewed by Aaron Rubin

Paul A. Rainbow
The Pith of the Apocalypse: Essential Message and Principles for Interpretation
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=7013
Reviewed by Tobias Nicklas

Jacqueline C. R. de Roo
Works of the Law at Qumran and in Paul
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=5997
Reviewed by Jörg Frey

Lothar Ruppert
Genesis: Ein kritischer und theologischer Kommentar 4. Teilband: Gen 37,1-50,26
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=6706
Reviewed by Mark Elliott

Susannah Ticciati
Job and the Disruption of Identity: Reading Beyond Barth
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=5202
Reviewed by Francis Dalrymple-Hamilton

This pretty much sums up contemporary moral debates in the public sphere:

Your Thoughts?

*News flash, New Orleans evacuated AGAIN!*

moar funny pictures

Yes, I have found my passport (it is still unexpired), I have plane tickets, a hat, a hotel reservation in the right city (!), a suitcase,  someone to mind the kitties, and so I’m almost all ready to go! Yippee! I’m forgetting something, though. I just know it. But what?

Anyway, I will be flying in to New Orleans on the Friday night on LETHBRIDGE AIR!

Unfortunately, I only have an economy class seat. If the Canadian Tire store has a special on duct tape, I might get upgraded to First Class! WHOOT!

Photos from BC Hunting: http://www.huntingbc.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=40783

As usual, he’s a joy to listen to:

(via Atheist Media Blog)

Ho hum.

Anyway, I think he's been stung by his repeated failures, and this time he's imbedded his prediction in a conditional. Smart move. Expect further sliding deadlines for the apocalypse, all coupled to improbable pre-conditions. For instance, if a yeti starts nesting in my armpit hair, you should buy a lottery ticket, because you're guaranteed to win.

Here's the latest prediction.

WARNING:

If an economic collapse occurs on 11/9/2009,

THEN:

The Rapture takes place on 11/11/2009!

Color styles are preserved exactly as they are on the source web page, because that's what adds the weight of credibility to his words.

According to Kwabena Boahen, a computer scientist at Stanford University, a robot with a processor as smart as the human brain would require at least 10 megawatts to operate. That’s the amount of energy produced by a small hydroelectric plant. But a small group of computer scientists may have hit on a new neural supercomputer that could someday emulate the human brain’s low energy requirements of just 20 watts–barely enough to run a dim light bulb….

[The new idea] trades the extreme precision of digital transistors for the brain’s chaos of many neurons firing, with misfires 30 percent to 90 percent of the time. Yet the brain works with this messy system by relying on crowds of neurons to shout over the noise of misfires and competing signals.

That willingness to give up precision for chaos could lead to a new era of creative computing that simulates the unpredictable patterns of brain activity. It could also represent a far more energy-efficient era — the Neurogrid fits in a briefcase and runs on what amounts to a few D batteries, or less than a watt. Rather than transistors, it uses capacitors that get the same voltage of neurons.

Let me be the first to welcome our new neurogrid overlords.

(For a fuller writeup on this, see this discovery article.)