I Don't go out for Brunch

Rick Warren reveals, in less than 140 characters, an astounding arrogance.

2011-12-17T16:03:00.000-08:00

(Clicking on the title will take you to Rick Warren's twitter account)
Rick Warren, author of the calamitous The Purpose Driven Life and friend to the many anti-human, anti-gay elements in Uganda and other developing African nations tweeted this weekend about the death of Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011). Like all tweets it was 140 characters or less, but it imparted the maximum of arrogance that such a terse package could bear. There is a special irony in this and one I think it is safe to say Christopher Hitchens himself might have appreciated. Warren's tweet manages to make an elegant point, while building in a handy deflection atheists may want to note. But do lets see the tweet.

"My friend Christopher Hitchens has died. I loved & prayed for him constantly & grieve his loss. He knows the Truth now."

-Rick Warren via Twitter

The elegant point -as if you could miss it- is the identification of the arrogant party in this debate, and Warren's tweet reveals, in its stark twittery brevity, that real, awe-inspiring, arrogance is the province, the haunt of the evangelical. Warren begins nicely enough but it all falls to pieces with the close. "He knows the truth now." The implication couldn't be more clear coming from a mind addled as it is with the standard, and odious fundamentalist theology common among so many American Christians. Hitch (I hope he would forgive the familiarity) has come to the Judgement Gates, and his life of unbelief will avail him not. How can Warren know this? How can he arrogate such authority? Of course he can't know anything like what has happened to Hitch's consciousness now that he has died. Warren in this, as in all things, makes an array of absolute truth claims, based on no evidence whatsoever that he expects us to just accept. I suppose he thinks he is granted this license by an ancient, contradictory text that is often at odds with history. Warren's sentence betrays the fact that he thinks he has all the answers. That isn't hyperbole. That is fundamentalist Christianity. It is also often liberal Christian Theology, though to a much lesser extent.

And therein lies the deflection available to all atheists whenever we are accused of being shockingly, offensively, un-apologetically arrogant by believers. Atheism is simply the acceptance of the null hypothesis. There is no positive evidence for God, not just the Abrahamic iterations, but any gods. Until such evidence is adduced for the God Hypothesis (There is a God) we have no choice, we cannot reject the null hypothesis (There is no God). Atheism is not a claim of absolute knowledge. It is the stance that the universe compels us to take. Atheism is the admission that there is no (good) reason to believe any of the world's mythologies in any literal way, or accept the authority clerics grant themselves based on these stories.

So who is more arrogant? Is it the Rick Warrens, they who not only claim to have all the answers, but also arrogate the authority to tell you how to live your life, what you can read, what you can eat, who can sleep with, and when you can sleep with them, and how you can sleep with them, and who tell you that if you do not listen to them not only will you not go to heaven, but that you will burn eternally in hell, tortured for a crime in which you had no part? Contrast that with atheism which simply says we have to accept the null hypothesis until good evidence comes in. True the existing evidence does away with literal readings of all religions, all our origin myths must, it appears, become allegory. But on the more open ended God question all we really say, all that can really be said, is there is, as yet, no evidence for any such being, and no reason to believe in or on such beings, or to accept the authority people give themselves in the names of such beings, or on the basis of ancient, and often foggy texts.
Arrogance? Atheists and agnostics just cannot compete.

The bible is just a good book of moral instruction/ Hey now you can't judge the bible outside its historical context...

2011-11-04T08:58:00.001-07:00

In the American Culture Wars, it is often said that not only is the Bible full of truth about reality, but that even if one did not believe it that one should still read it and be taught it in schools because it is rich in moral guidance.

It just gives really good rules for how people should live.

Moral truths abound as it were. Or so we are told.

In support of this, people who make such propositions will often adduce the Decalogue of Moses. These are the much contested Ten Commandments over which massive amounts of legal paper has moved. I won't over bore you with my own observations about the Ten Commandments. They have been deconstructed elsewhere, brilliantly by Carlin, and just as brilliantly revised, and analyzed by Hitchens. Penn Jillette takes an enlightened stab them too. So I will not dwell over much on them here as their importance is only tangential to the point I want to make. What I will do is note that in the Decalogue of Moses there are only four useful injunctions with which any secularist, indeed almost any human would agree. The first four are religious injunctions that have little to do with morality or ethics among humans. The fifth isn't a moral statement as written and reads like a bribe (it essentially says to honor parents not for any moral reason, but so that you can receive a reward). and after that Moses gives us the already well understood, don't commit murder, do no adulterous shagging, don't steal, and don't bear false witness. Its pretty hard to find much objectionable with those commandments. The last prohibits thought crime, and forbids even thinking about wanting a neighbor's things while also equating women with chattle). There is nothing terribly moral about telling people what not to think, and plenty immoral about comparing a woman to a cow.

I'm already veering into a tangent, so let me stop. My point is that as a book of moral instruction the bible is a really a mixed bag more heavily weighted toward lessons, stories and examples that comfortably fit in the immoral category. The people who tell you that the bible is just a great book of moral instruction always leave that fact, and it is a fact, out. They will point to the sermon on the mount, or selectively quote only half of some injunction so that it sounds more moral than it actually is (consider again the commandment about honoring one's father and mother).

When people start to bring up the just and moral character of God, I tend to deploy, as a counter example, either the story of Abraham and Isaac, or the genocides and other mindless and monstrous violence found in the Old Testament. The first provides a harder escape by way of historical context as it reveals a rather sadistic character in the person of God, and a rather self-serving asshole in the character of Abraham, both tormenting an innocent boy. There is a different kind of moral gymnastics performed when this story is adduced in the case against God as moral exemplar so we will leave it for another time perhaps.

When you bring up the utterly awful events that occur in the Old Testament there is often an attempt to excuse them as part of the bloody, and blood-thirsty time in which they "occured." The gist of the evasion goes like this:

Well those were the historical times in which God operated so we cannot judge the actions of God or his heroes in those tales by the moral reasoning of our time.

At this point I think we are entitled to say the believer cannot have it both ways. Either God's reasoning is unchanging and perfect which is the case that the fundamentalist believer always makes, or it is not. The power the believer suspects God of having means, at the very least, that he should be no prisoner to the historical context. God's power in the mind of the believer simply makes the fiction (of course much of the Old Testament is fiction) that he was bound by the time silly. You will remember it was God who orchestrated all of the blood soaked events of Exodus, and who demanded death for violation of even his most frivolous laws. He did, after all, harden Pharaoh's heart to the arguments, and conjuring tricks of Moses, after which God amused himself by visiting plagues on the people of Egypt who had very little say on what their ruler did anyway. The sanguinary event celebrated by Passover to this very day serves as an annual reminder that the deity in those stories wasn't bound by the historical context but seemed rather to endorse, and actively participate in the bloody events.

The attempt to excuse God by invoking the Bound by Historical Times hypothesis fails in at least two ways, one profoundly fundamental, and the other editorial. In the first, the Christian God appears to define the very context Christians often use to excuse his actions. God in these stories is simply the author of countless unjust and immoral miseries and cannot reasonably be divested of his culpability in these tales. So the hypothesis is, from the very start, false. God is not bound by any historical context, he is both author and participant. Given the alleged power of the character it seems obvious to anyone not sufficiently indoctrinated by Christian dogma (namely the strange idea of omni-benevolence) that God could have found, and should have found better, more moral ways in which to accomplish his goals.

A second way in which God could have been excused, at least to some degree, by way of historical context is if he (or his writers) had commented on the matters described in the biblical narrative clearly, and negatively. God never even has his writers editorialize during the atrocities. There is no, "Jesus H. Christ! Moses! I never said kill all the males, all the non-virgin females, and keep for yourselves a bevy of virgin sex slaves. That is utterly wrong, despicable, dare I say immoral...etc etc." To extend the example of God's dealings with Moses, his wrath at Moses, stems largely from the fact that Moses took a wee too much pride in his own accomplishments, when all the glory needed to go to God. That, if you missed it, is God taking credit for not just the nice bits (minimal as they are), but also for the bloody, immoral, rape and pillage bits. At the very least God doesn't seemed too bothered at the means by which his holy ends were accomplished.

Charlie Hebdo fire bombed

2011-11-02T11:01:00.001-07:00

Click on the title of this blog for a full report from the BBC on the attack. I am, I confess, a bit disappointed in NPR for not covering this story. This seems like news to me, even on a strong news day like today.

It is still unclear who the parties responsible for this fire-bombing are. There have been numerous threats toward the satirical paper (and many just before the attack via Twitter and Facebook). There is some suspicion that this fire bombing is in response to the focus of its latest satire, namely the "prophet" Mohammed, and elements of Islam. The whole issue was guest edited by Mohammed I guess. This is something special if you consider that he has been dead these many years. I don't intend to point any fingers here. We don't know who fire-bombed the offices of Charb. What I would like to do now though is provide the most eloquent defense of Free Speach, and Free Expression of which I am aware.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Commenting on the Obvious

2011-10-31T19:25:00.000-07:00

As many of you know I troll the religious radio shows because I am always looking for good blog fodder, and have a curiousity about what is riling up, enraging or captivating Christians. Such radio is almost always evangelical, Baptist, anti-science, and anti-reason. I recently found a local Catholic radio station that managed to convince me that my earlier opinion of Catholics, that they were a more progressive sect of Christianity was wholly mistaken or, failing that, more mistaken than I had originally thought. This really shouldn't have come as a surprise to me, I did attend Catholic School as a kid, and nothing that happened there ever made me think of the Roman Catholic Church was any kind of bastion of free inquiry or rationalism. Oh well, at least I didn't get raped by the priest or beaten by nuns. Though the only nun I ever knew, Sister Annette (a Catholic cyborg I think whose emotion chips were set to off), lamented, and seriously, that she could no longer hit us with rulers. She was only a fixture at Seton Catholic School for one year when I was there. Which was too bad because she was such a class act.
But I digress......

While listening to Catholic radio, some kind of call in show, a caller wonders if the Pope has ever said that the Church's behavior, specifically the burning of heretics, witches and Protestants among others was wrong. The host hemmed and hawed about, didn't really offer a clear answer and then said that Pope John Paul II had apologized for any sin the Church had committed, and hoped people who had been offended and wronged by that sin would forgive the Church. The host, and apparently the Pope, had some trouble saying that burning people with whom you disagree is the wrong way to go.
Caller: So the Pope hasn't said that burning people was wrong, and hasn't apologized for trying to supress differing opinion? [paraphrase by me]
Host: The pope has apologized for any sin the Church has committed. [paraphrase by me]
Caller: So no it hasn't said those actions were wrong and hasn't apologized for them. Then I have to ask what has the Pope specifically said about the burning of Wycliffe? [more paraphrase by me]

A little backstory is probably in order. Wycliffe, who was strong opponent of Papal authority, translated the bible (or he and his acolytes did it together) into vernacular English, and for this and other crimes he was burned. Well his exhumed bones were burned. He had died 31 years before being branded a heretic by the Council of Constance. I think you will agree, they sure showed him. back to the call already in progress....

The host of the show didn't seem to know if the Pope has said anything specific about the bizarre case of Wycliffe's pointless rapid oxidation. And the caller never mentioned why it was a big deal to him that the Council had a dead man burned 31 years after his death. Wycliffe though is important to students of Protestant history so it makes sense to me now that I have done a bit more reading. Burning long dead people matters a lot less to me than burning living heretics. So to me in the annals of religiously inspired batshit crazy this is really pretty mild.

What really blew my mind though was the way the host attempted to get the Church off the hook for its tawdry and bizarre desecration of Wycliffe's remains. First he began to suggest that Wycliffe wasn't really all that great a scholar, and his translation was absolutely horrible. "So there is a lot you maybe don't know about Wycliffe that sheds light on why the Church did what it did." I'm not making this up. The logic of the host seemed to suggest Wycliffe published a shabby translation of the bible (according to later scholars) so whatever the Church did was probably okay. I've heard Catholic scholars make similar noises when you bring up the Church's behavior toward Galileo. Of Galileo these scholars and lay defenders of Rome will say that the science of the day was on the Pope's side so they were right to oppose Galileo's hypothesis, as if Galileo's interrogators were simply journal referees sending his paper back for revision and correction, and not presenting him with a false choice (torture or recantation).

This is an old dodge by the Roman Catholic Church. It is loath to state specifically which actions in the past it has done were wrong (at least in many of the halls of leadership), and simply attempts to diffuse the legitimate accusations, charges with this soft non-admission, non-apology:

The Church apologizes for any sins it has in the past committed, and hope that anyone who has been offended by them will kindly forgive the one true Church, sincerely yours
-The Vicar of Christ on Earth, Pope Benedict

I think this maneuver is performed because ultimately the Church fathers don't really think that the Roman Catholic Church has done much wrong and that it probably views any admission of wrong doing damaging to its claims of ultimate authority. The Pope after all is infallible.

Why I support sensible tax policy and reject The Tea Party/Fox/Reaganite narrative

2011-10-14T09:16:00.000-07:00

I should get a few things out of the way first.
I am like everyone else. I hope one day that something I create, or do (some art, some character, some advance in human knowledge, my bumbling into a heretofore untapped vein of pure gold/oil/unobtainium) makes me filthy rich. How rich? How about rich enough that I could go to The Bunny Ranch every weekend and that my understanding and wonderful wife wouldn't even care rich. Not that I would go, but you have to admit, that is pretty goddamn rich. So I don't begrudge anyone getting rich in the US. I don't envy them, I kind of want to emulate the endeavor in some way (unless of course that wealth was ill-gotten, I'm looking at you predatory lendors, Enron etc). So I totally am behind acquiring wealth, and having the amenities and luxury that entails. I am down with wealth and having it.

However no one in this country acquired their wealth without the help of public support. I'm not the first person to note this. I won't be the last.

Consider my favorite NFL team The Indianapolis Colts. Or rather consider the cost of their new stadium Lucas Oil Field. The initial cost estimate of the stadium was 720 million dollars of which the Colts had committed to contribute 100 million. That left 620 million for the tax payers of Indianapolis and the counties that surround the 'Nap to come up with. The stadium of course ran over budget (cost covered by the taxpayer), and the operating cost of the stadium, around 27 million a year, also exceeds what was estimated (this creates huge yearly deficits to run the facility, much greater than the 7.7 million that the city expected to earn from revenues generated by having the facility around for the Colts). The Colts organization was required to come up with a whooping 13.1 % of the initial building costs of the stadium. This was for their own business! The tax payers covered the rest. I would certainly love to have that kind of deal from the state. One may ask why the Colts need state money at all, considering that the team isn't hurting for dough. The total players salaries for 2011 is $60,250,000 with a cap of ~96 million. That is just for the year 2011. Peyton Manning has a five year contract that will net him 90,000,000 dollars, which is 18,000,000 per year. Dwight Freeny isn't doing too badly for himself either, with 72,000,000 over 6 years, which 12,000,000 per year. Its hard to find numbers on what the organizations themselves actually earn, but if they can afford to pay these kinds of salaries to their teams they must be doing alright. One reason they are doing alright though is this. They have defrayed their operating costs with money provided by tax payers, who often didn't vote on the matter. The Indianapolis Colts are hardly unique in the industry for doing this. All professional sports teams utilize state support. Of course the NFL could do this in a real capitalist kind of way (go here see the teams worth, operating budget etc) For some reason though it won't. It prefers a socialism that supports and inflates their profits.

This may look like a tangent but it is not.
A question we have to ask is this. Given that the NFL generates, annually nearly 7 billion dollars, why is the NFL a tax exempt organization? Given that it makes billions, its teams are worth billions and tax payers help pay for the NFL costs of operation? The NFL is protected from market forces. Again why should it not be taxed, and why should its executives not pay taxes?

Some may argue that having a team like the Colts in the city of Indianapolis generates jobs, increases tax revenues so the concessions cities and states make to get them there are worth it. As we saw with the Colts the cost to the tax payers greatly overran the projected revenues Indianapolis and its surrounding counties expected to receive. Is it worth it? Well maybe there is a bump in the revenues for businesses around Lucas Oil Stadium when events are held? To which I say "fine". Maybe having the Colts in Indy is a great boost to the city and it justifies all the taxpayer cost. But I will point out, if you make that argument you are vulnerable to the same counter-argument Reaganites/Tea Party types use against helping the poor. Why should my tax dollars go to helping boost Applebee's bottom line through a convoluted and inefficient system of welfare called the NFL? I'm happy that for a few months a year the mall at Circle Center can hire a few extra people at minimum wage, and that the wait staff will have to work a little harder for a little longer and earn a little bit more money than normally do. I really am. But if I live in Indy, or the surrounding counties, why should I subsidize that? Why should I subsidize the NFL's massive profits? I must especially ask this since this corporation demands so much from tax payers. Why shouldn't it do this on its own?

The NFL is a microcosm of US business.
If you are scratching your head wondering how this can be the case. Its probably important to know that this is how a great deal of big US businesses, and little businesses operate. And you have to know right now that I don't think that is necessarily a wrong or evil thing. Good arguments can be made for governments helping businesses make a home for themselves, it can be good for communities. Just know that if you make that kind of argument, and many people seem to make that argument, it is another version of the argument for helping people on the other end of economic divide with tax payer funded programs. And it isn't an argument at all for allowing people no tax burden, or an unfairly minimal tax burden who accrue massive wealth with your help and my help. Of course I don't mean by buying or enjoying their products. When people pretend they have done it on their own, and should be allowed to keep all their hard earned, money that they earned, remember often we helped them make that. There are no bootstraps.

Just a thought. Now go come up with an idea that will make you rich with the help of fellow tax payers. Just remember your tax dollars are helping the next wave of your fellow countrymen do the same.

Its Avian Friday: Gavia immer

2011-10-14T07:59:00.000-07:00

(Picture used http://www.alaska-in-pictures.com/gavia-immer-4841-pictures.htm)

Now that I live in the great North, and near the ocean, the Common Loon (Gavia immer) is a great deal more common to me. Of course on can see them on any body of water across the US, I see them more now that I did when my excursions into the field were in the Mid-West. It is one of the more evocative and elegant birds to be found in the US. Its haunting call in the evening can make any person's day (birder or not). It seems to encapsulate everything that humans find appealing about the wilderness.

The evolution of loons (Family Gaviidae) has resulted in a group of birds that are more at home in the water than they are either in the air, or on land. Their flight always appears somewhat labored, and on land they can have a great deal of trouble walking. The aspects of their anatomy that make them ooze through the water at great speed, that make them hydrodynamic I suppose, do not make them equally aerodynamic. Increased optimal design for life in the water means trade-offs in other areas. Their feet set back at the end of their heavy tube like bodies, mean great propulsion through water, but make walking on land difficult to say the very least. The costs of these trade-offs must be minimal, which is another way of saying the benefits of life spent almost entirely on the water outweigh the costs of not being able to move well on land, or as effectively through the air.

Right now the The Common Loon is not in its breeding plummage, but they are still elegant. And one can see them with ease at numerous sites around Casco Bay. A good pair of binoculars and they can be seen regularly around Mackworth Island.

A Quibble with Jeff Sharlet: The C-Street Sex Scandals and Their Importance

2011-09-16T08:17:00.000-07:00

Jeff Sharlet is the author of the very capable C-Street: The Fundamentalist Threat to American Democracy. This is a frightening, enlightening, and wholly edifying journey into the halls of fundamentalist power in the US. My complaints, about and disagreements with, Sharlet's book are probably not insignificant, even if we generally agree. Regardless, Jeff has done more in recent years than most to expose the far reaching and secretive Christian fundamentalism at the heart of the modern culture wars and the divisiveness of modern politics than most. He has named names, exposed gross hypocrisy and incompetence, and exposed to the world, the festering, and grotesque need that is the heart of C-Street style fundamentalism. Power. That may sound simplistic, and leaves out the bit about God, but that is an old story too, and always has been the way of clerics. To paraphrase Christopher Hitchens, the clerics may talk about glory and rewards in the next world, but what they want is power in this one. Sharlet's work on C-Street, and the secretive, dangerous and it -must be added- odious Family that is housed therein. What ever side of the culture war you happen to find yourself on, conservative, liberal, religious or irreligious one hopes that you will value our secular democratic traditions. Those traditions protect us all from tyranny. So while I do have disagreements with Sharlet, they do little to stop me from recommending that every one, wanting to be an informed citizen, should read his two books on this subject(both are linked to Amazon in the text). Now on to one of the points of disagreement I have with Sharlet.

The C-Street Sex Scandals

Scandals was indeed plural. The pious fundamentalists, as per usual could not live up to the ideals and moral proscriptions they want to impose on the rest of us. Another old story to be sure but the details of these affairs by the C-Streeters (Sen. John Ensign R-NV, Gov Mark Sanford R-SC, Rep. Chip Pickering R-MS) and the ways, and lengths to which the leaders at C-Street, that is to say the leaders of The Family went to cover up these extra-marital affairs is as instructive as it is grotesque. In many ways the scandals that have recently broke concerning The Family (a cabal of fundamentalist Christians who court the powerful in an attempt influence policy) mirrors the scandals and cover-ups that have rocked the Catholic Church. The idea in both groups goes something like this. Cover-up and preservation of the powerful in such organizations is preferable to exposure, justice and living consistently with organizational principles because the organization is doing good things, in the case of either The Family, or the Roman Catholic Church, that means the work of God. I suppose it is easier to sweep any number of evils under the rug if you think you and your organization have a mandate from the author of the multi-verse. I wouldn't know. I'm not delusional. Whether I understand the mentality or not it is clearly over-represented in these circles.

It may not be necessary to go into too much detail about the particulars of these sex scandals with the exception of Mark Sandford. Chip Pickering had an affair with an ex- from college while living in the house known as C-Street. Ensign had an affair with the wife of his top aide (the wife received some kind of pay off from Ensign's parents which adds a whole other level of weird to his tale). Click on the names for more details, and google them. Its all pretty sordid but then so is The Family.

Mark Sanford's affair is a bit trickier, and certainly more spectacular than those of his fellow C-Streeters. It involved apparently real passion (he seems genuinely to have loved his mistress - there are some serious love letters that can be adduced anyway), a strange subterfuge was put on by his handlers to account for his MIA status (he had gone to Argentina to be with his mistress though they claimed he was hiking the Appalachian trail), he also kept his staff, and advisers in the dark about what he was up to(with the exception of key C-Streeters), used some public funds for his Argentina trip, his wife had long known about the affair and lived separately from her husband (had infact asked for an official separation) and...well you get the idea. Sanford (who was fond of quoting biblical verse and waxing poetic about his boyhood memories on his family farm in letters to his mistress) was like maybe the most perfectly inconsiderate, and thoroughly pious character in recent politics. He wanted what he wanted, and could apparently manufacture the rationalizations required to run roughshod over any moral pretense he might have had. What is also strange is his pseudo-apology to South Carolina, his mistress (first) then to his wife. There is also his defiance at the idea of resigning his governorship. You probably won't be surprised to learn that he was one of the people who thought Bill Clinton should have resigned when Clinton's infidelity came out. I could continue to essay these details but I think you get the idea. If you want a complete timeline of the events here is a good place to start. You could also read Sharlet's account which imbues the whole thing with more humanity and sympathy than I can muster.

Sharlet's Question to readers of C-Street:

Jeff Sharlet begins C-Street with a series of political sex scandals, but goes on to argue that we must look beyond the sensational details of a scandal to understand its real importance. Do you think that is true? What interests you about the scandal? What can we learn from a scandal when it happens?

And here comes my argument -minor, I think, but you can decide- with Sharlet. Sharlet describes his own annoyance at the press, even Rachel Maddow, for wanting to go after C-Street over the sex scandals, and Mark Sanford's in particular. Sharlet was very moved by the revelation of the South Carolina Governor's humanity in the content of those love letters to his mistress Maria. Sharlet lamented at the idea of being brought on to these talk shows to kick the Governor who had committed no other crime than being human and falling in love (well that and maybe using state money to fund that Argentinian love romp). I think Sharlet's generosity here is misplaced. If Sanford had been just a politician, or an actor or any person of normal integrity on the street I think Sharlet's tone would be exactly right. I'm not interesting in castigating a bloke for something that probably happens to at least the majority of all people like everywhere. I do, however, think the scandals and the way they are handled reveal much more about both the people involved, and the organization The Family than he does.

Sharlet thinks these sex scandals reveal only human nature, and he is surely right that human nature is jarringly revealed. But that revelation includes the negative aspects of that nature as well. In fact I would argue that the sex scandals of these men, and the behavior they and their C-Street brothers and their Family advisers tells you almost all you need to know about C-Street to write it off as a house of cranks, liars and hypocrites. While Sharlet marveled at Sanford's apparent tenderness toward his lover, he seems to miss or to at least be less concerned with, Sanford's general selfishness, and disregard for anyone else's needs or integrity. His needs are paramount and come first. This is an ugly tendency in anyone, but it becomes even worse when coupled with his breath taking hypocrisy (and it is a tendency that seems to form the foundation any tyrannical character in life or fiction). Sanford, a conservative Christian, apparently keeps two sets of books, the ones he thinks we should have live by, and the ones by which he and his fellow C-Street clan get to live. It would be hard to find an example of behavior and personal attitudes that so perfectly encapsulate the C-Street ethos than the example provided by the behavior of Sanford. The license he granted himself, and that which was granted by his Family gurus reveal both to be self-centered and greedy and obsessed with the conservation of their power and influence despite their Christian pretensions.

Sharlet thought the attention the public gave and gives to such stories is based only on the salacious content. Everyone loves a money shot. Its a valid point, though perhaps too narrow. There is more, at least for thinking people. I think what attracts the public's attention even more, in fact much more, is the revelation of the huge disconnect between the individual's public statement of beliefs, and their actual action in the real world. It fractures their integrity in way that everyone can understand on a very visceral level. The moral calculus is easy. Everyone shares a frame of reference. The public fascination isn't all about who stuck what into whom and where. That isn't what makes people assiduously devour news for a cycle or two. What captivates us is the shocking hypocrisy that is on display. Such hypocrisy also makes people shake their heads in disgust. For normal people who make these kinds of mistakes and mis-steps, many of us can look the other way, or offer human compassion, and understanding. People make mistakes, they think with their heart (or other regions) and leap before looking and generally make a big mess of things. Its different when you claim to be the moral paragon, when you claim to have the answers, and you want to impose those answers on the rest of us. That is a real and legitimate point of concern and it isn't shallow.

TEXT

dprjones takes on Sean Hannity and the misinformation machine that is FauxNews

2011-09-01T08:01:00.000-07:00

If you have not yet heard of the youtube personality that is dprjones, I would suggest you get acquainted with him. He is thoughtful, and can be dogged and unrelenting when in pursuit of his quarry. In the following five clips he manages to dismantle the odious Sean Hannity and simultaneously demonstrate the lengths a consumer of news must go through to get to the facts. A problem of advocacy journalism is that it tends not to nuance the debate, but to regurgitate, and affirm beliefs its self selected viewers already tend to hold. Dprjones demonstrates, in these clips and others besides, that to be a good citizen in a democracy is to be an informed citizen.

Beyond that introduction I needn't really say more. dprjones Letter to America speaks eloquently enough without any addendum from me. Watch all the clips.
Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

That was five clips to debunk thirty seconds of bullshit. Its a stunning exercise, but one that should be wholly unnecessary.

A note on Astrology....

2011-08-16T16:54:00.000-07:00

The Abysmal Failure of Astrology or STFU about your stars..

A new day can always be counted upon to to offer fresh outrages, as well as the constant and recurrent. The daily astrology column, and its adherents take the form of the latter. These columns can be seen, and if you like, read, in almost any newspaper across the country (though these columns differ from paper to paper...why should that be?). At my local Starbucks the behavior of astrology fans is likewise a constant and daily source of outrage and disappointment. There are many ways to dismantle the arguments of the astrologers, but here is the argument I find most satisfying when laying waste to the pretensions of this ancient and exploded stupidity. The thrust of this argument is perhaps not original to me however I haven't heard it phrased quite this way before.

Perhaps you are looking at your horoscope and see that you, an Aquarius, have not lost your tendency to carry water, but are, nevertheless, about to embark on a five star day. Among fellow Zodiac travelers you are not alone, on this day Sagittarians (archers I guess), and Geminis (twins?) have similar positive auguries and can also expect to have a five star day (I've pulled these "predictions" from a daily horoscope found in the Portland Press Herald, dated, 13 Aug 2010). To see and hear it, many recipients of such portents find them to be quite prescient, convincing and accurate. At least these people don't demand their fortunes be told in the entrails of chickens or goats. But surely you yourself have heard someone exclaim, and exclaim is certainly the right word, "This is exactly what is happening," or maybe, "This is sooo spooky, its so accurate. That is totally you." Perhaps you have uttered something very like that,and have felt compelled to bore your fellow humans with this "news." Let me say this, gullibility displayed so nakedly is embarrassing enough to cause strangers to look away.

According to those "trained" in such arcana the predictions for any given sign are quite binding, and can be expected to unfold for anyone sharing any of the 12 Zodiac signs. In the example above, all Gemini, Sagittarians, and Aquarians can be expected to have a day characterized by five stars and some accompanying vaguery (i.e. A coworker likes you, be circumspect but remember boisterousness has its place). When I listen to such people, who-it must be said- are displaying a fairly grotesque solipsism, I am moved make a few points.

According to UNICEF, 22,000 children die every day from preventable diseases. This number is down from just a few years ago where 25,000 children died a day. For the new estimate, that leads to the depressing but unavoidable conclusion that 8.03 x 10⁶ children die every year from utterly preventable diseases, and conditions. That is to say eight million thirty thousand kids die a year. A year. What does that have to do with astrology you ask? Well I am glad you did.

We have established, thanks to the tireless efforts of UNICEF, twenty two thousand children die every single day. Lets assume an even distribution of that twenty two thousand across the twelve signs of the fatuous Zodiac (this seems like a reasonable assumption). So that will distribute 1/12 of the 22,000 to each of the signs. If there is a more or less even distribution that gives us about 1,833 per sign. Returning to my example above, about 5,500 of those kids had a five star day! Many of those children will have died in some considerable pain, confused and scared. How many of those children, whose last day it was, would have remarked on the accuracy of those silly, and completely wrong predictions? Do you think the children dying of some pathogen causing explosive diarrhea and extreme, unremitting dehydration might have thought their three star predictions were pretty on point? Spookily Accurate? Would any of these expirations be considered a legitimate one star day? Hmmm? Why do the portents of the stars not apply to these children?

Now think of the appallingly large number of miserable, suffering people in the world that didn't die, but maybe share your (unimportant) birth month. Compare your day's astrological prediction (five stars you say?) with the experience of these hypothetical people that you know exist (think of Afghanistan, North Korea, Pakistan, Uganda, hell even in the developed world people can suffer horribly) but that you have not met, and then tell me again how accurate you think that silly "prediction" is. Maybe now we can hear a little bit less about how brutally accurate your vaguely phrased augury was, and maybe we can hear a little bit less of that idiotic, content-less question...What's your sign?

Author's Note If you are tempted to buy material associated with, or about astrology and to do so credulously let me suggest that you money and time might be better spent. Instead of that book about your readings for the year, and before you renew your subscription to your favorite astrological website you could click on the title of this entry and donate the money you were going to spend on that bullshit on something a bit better for everyone. The link takes you to UNICEF, and there they will explain to you why you should donate.

A Letter to the (apparently) Biblically illiterate Pastor Terry "The bible Doesn't Condone Slavery" Dutton

2011-08-16T09:52:00.000-07:00

What follows is a letter I recently wrote to a fundamentalist preacher, Pastor Terry Dutton, who should have known better. In a radio sermon he made the odd, and, as it happens, false claim that the bible doesn't condone the act of slavery. Sweeping God's cruelty, injustice and his obviously immoral (yet godly) edicts under the rug is an old problem for the clergy. It does seem as if the clerics are trying answer the following question: How do we explain away these ugly attributes, stories and behaviors that so obviously offend the senses, and annoy the average moral compass? It is likely they are trying to answer the question for themselves.

The conflict between the "morality" often found in revealed religion and that found among the non-clerical class is probably as old as religion itself and is certainly as old as organized religion that acts as a political force. When churches lose political power and the power to coerce people with the threat and actuality of violence, and when free thought and free speech are permitted very different conceptions of what is and isn't moral or ethical come to the fore. These discourses tend to spread rapidly through cultures. Such moral advancement tends to happen in the teeth, rather than with the support, of orthodox religion (anti-slavery say, or sexual equality offer two salient but by no means exhaustive examples). Since the churches cannot simply say their books were wholly written by men, without divine inspiration, these modern deflections (sometimes artful, generally artless) become necessary and unavoidable when members of the culture are free to ask questions and are not obligated to be quiet. It should be remembered that there was a time when such questions could not really be asked, because to do so probably meant death, and that by long complicated torture. It still can mean violent death in countries where clerical powers continue to hold sway.

And yet consider...no one is troubled by the behavior of Zeus, or Odin, or Ra. This isn't to say that people aren't critical of the aforementioned characters. They don't exist, so contemplating the gross infidelities of Zeus is not a source of existential angst. These mythologies, these dead religions are now largely considered human creations have an easier time of it. I am free, and so are you, to read the Iliad say and to enjoy it as literature. The work of explaining away the gods' vile tendencies is removed and they can be enjoyed and studied as mythologies and windows into the minds, and the times that created them. If Joseph Campbell is to be believed mythology may actually be useful in understanding human nature, and the things it tends to value. Extant religion tends to remove itself from such usefulness by the vigor and relentlessness with which it claims special exception.

Pastor Terry, to whom I have written, is left somewhat in a lurch. As a Christian fundamentalist he professes belief in a 3O god (Omniscient, Omnipotent, and Omnibenevolent), he must try to square this 3O character with the revealed text and the ugliness contained therein. Terry Dutton is not the first theologian to fail in this endeavor, so he finds himself in fairly mighty company. Here we might cite ancients like Augustine, Aquinas, Tertullian, Maimonides, and Kierkergard. Or we might dredge these opaque waters at shallower depths and find a C.S. Lewis, or a Billy Graham. We might note progressives like Tillich who chose to abandon literalism but stick with some version of God. In such work we can see, at least, some struggle with the text that first gave them some hint at the entity whose character they seek to clarify. So while Terry may find himself in great company, his efforts aren't even on a par with the dreadful C.S. Lewis. Because unlike his intellectual forebears, Terry Dutton doesn't seem to understand the plain meaning of words. In the broadcast that so annoyed me, he made the claim that the bible doesn't condone slavery, or any of the negative actions taken by any character in the bible. Sometimes the latter may indeed be the case, but Dutton is clearly honestly mistaken, stupid, or dishonest concerning the former. Having listened to his broadcasts on a few occasions I wouldn't be surprised if his entire theology was some combination of the three. The bible clearly gives license for slavery and was widely cited in support of it during our own country's long argument about the practice of slavery and then later about civil rights. My letter was an attempt to point this out. The good Pastor Terry has yet respond.

Terry,
Driving to the gym I occasioned to listen to your radio program. During your sermon you said something about God not condoning several actions, and behaviors on the part of characters in the bible. Much of what you said God didn't condone, is demonstrably false. The most obviously false statement you made in your attempt to excuse the character of God involved your bald assertion that the bible -which you apparently take to be the inerrant word of God- that the bible didn't condone slavery. This is nonsense. The bible clearly expects people to have slaves, has rules for the keeping of slaves, and even depicts Moses and his surly band of violently acquiring sex slaves. God seems to have specific rules for who the Hebrews could buy and who they could not. According to the bible you could sell your daughters. There is really no other way to read the bible on slavery than this: the God of Abraham clearly expects one to own slaves. To take one example, from

Exodus: ^21:20 And if a man smite his servant, or his maid, with a rod, and he die under his hand; he shall be surely punished ^21:21 Notwithstanding, if he continue a day or two, he shall not be punished: for he is his money.

This is condoning slavery. Let me say it again. This is condoning slavery. If God had not approved/condoned slavery he could have put something concrete in the books of the bible, say somewhere in the Decalogue? How about "Thou shalt not own other sentient beings, nor trade in them, nor force sexual relations on them, be they Hebrew or not." That would constitute not approving, and not condoning. Not even in the New Testament can you get Jesus to castigate the practice of owing slaves. As grotesque as that is of course it is all pale in comparison to the violence and murder heaped upon the women and children of the Midianites, where all the males and male children were slain, all the females that had sex, slain, and of course the virgins the victors could keep for themselves. That sounds an awful lot like sex slavery to me.

In short the bible does condone these things. It had rules for how the practice of slavery was to be done. To give an illuminating counter example. US legal code does not condone theft. Its rules are always prohibitive. Nowhere will you find a legal code saying , Steal in this fashion, and if you steal from a fellow citizen you must return their stolen merchandise after seven years. You don't see that kind of language because the US legal code doesn't allow for theft under any circumstances. The bible does not issue prohibitive, rule of law, proscriptions against slavery, it says this is how it is to be carried out. Such language is evidence of condoning the practice of slavery.

Something to think about eh?

Thanks for your time.
-Max

Author's Note The letter above is presented with vastly fewer typos than the one I sent to the good Pastor.

Blasphemy and The Holy Spirit (Ghost): A problem with the morality of Jesus

2011-08-02T21:12:00.001-07:00

The Facebook status update rarely seems like a good candidate for blog-fodder, but on occasion it can be generous with at least the germ of an idea. This morning however the Facebook germ rather quickly blossomed into a full grown idea. And if some may wish to push the metaphor of the germ a little further and call it a pathogenic idea I won't hold it against them. I suspect some of my religious readers-should I have any- may do exactly that.

The starting point of this discussion is the following status update:

Every sin or blasphemy can be forgiven--except blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, which can never be forgiven. Matthew 12:31

Here is the exact quote from the book of Matthew (beginning at verse 30 and ending with verse 32) from the New International Version (for the complete Matthew Chapter 12 you can go to The Scripture Project. The Scripture Project is the ambitious brain child of Steve Wells, and can be found-along with a great many other things- at Sam Harris' Project Reason.):

³⁰ He who is not with me is against me and he who does not gather with me scatters. ³¹And so I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. ³²Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven in this age or in the age to come.

A brief summary of the context is this. In the story, Jesus has just cast out some demons from a deaf/mute man, on-lookers are somewhat amazed by this, but the Pharisees suggest that Jesus' power comes from Beelzebub who is, apparently, the Prince of demons. In the story, Jesus' defends himself with stunning casuistry. After discussing the merits of an undivided house and an undivided kingdom he suggests that Satan would be defeating himself and his goals if Jesus derived his power to drive out demons from Satan. A discussion of the many flaws in this reasoning would take us too far away from the passage in question, but before we move on, I must ask a question which I am sure must have occurred to the literal minded Pharisees (and others besides). Wouldn't it be possible that Satan (a great deceiver and all that) might in his effort to lead people astray and into sin have granted a man some minor powers to get people to follow a false prophet?

One probably doesn't need to review more than Matthew 31-32. The passages are damaging enough by themselves. And one needn't do much work to see why. Every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven but one? If you were asked which sin and blasphemy would be the unforgivable, unpardonable one, and your intellect were unburdened with Christian mythology, is there any way you would suggest some thing like speaking irreverently, and impiously about the Holy Spirit? I am going to guess the answer to that would be no. In the time it takes you to read this sentence, I am sure you have come up with some better candidates for unforgivable sins. However of all the evils in the world Jesus chooses as unforgivable criticism of an element of an omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent being of which he himself is a part. One might think the rape, murder and torture of children might at least merit a mention in the ranks of the unforgivable. Or perhaps slavery (which also would have too often encompassed the aforementioned crimes against children). What about genocide? Not for Jesus. For him it is criticism, doubt and irreverence toward himself, or at least an element of himself that can earn damnation. How anyone can find this an anodyne preachment is simply beyond me.

I suppose we might expect Jesus to be somewhat protective of the Holy Spirit, it is after all the being credited with knocking Mary up. Did I just blaspheme against the Holy Spirit? What I just said was fairly impious, and certainly irreverent. So yes I think I did. In a sentence of 25 words I managed, if the Christian account be true, to damn myself to hell. Given how easy it is to blaspheme against the Holy Spirit, the believers may want to ask if they have similarly, though perhaps accidently, damned themselves.

While the passage itself is damaging enough, the whole of Jesus' response to the Pharisees reveals what Christopher Hitchens has called the totalitarian nature of religion, which condemns one by thoughts and words alone. What Jesus said after his initial proscription against speaking ill (which is the only damage one can do to an non-corporeal, all powerful entity) of the Holy Spirit, is actually worth reviewing. In the verses that follow Jesus begins the long and bloody Christian essay against free expression, free thought, and free inquiry (or at the very least adds to it). Again from the New International Version:

³⁴You brood of vipers, [Jesus is referring here to his critics the Pharisees] how can you who are evil say anything good? For out of he overflow of the heart the mouth speaks. ³⁵The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him, and the evil man things out of the evil stored up in him. ³⁶But I tell you that men will have to give an account on the day of judgement for every careless word they have spoken. ³⁷For by your words will you be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned.

From the outset it seems that Jesus is offering the reader a false dichotomy in parsing people into good or evil. It doesn't help his case that all that seems necessary to qualify as the latter is to be on the other side of a disagreement with Jesus. However, the Pharisees need not be evil to have made their suggestion, they could just be wrong. The world, as anyone who has lived on it for more than a decade will tell you, is not divided into good people and evil people.

The last two verses though (36 and 37) seem fairly wicked to me, in that they seem so antithetical to free speech, free inquiry and free thought (at least where Christianity-indeed any of the Abrahamic traditions- is strong culturally, politically or both). When Christianity is politically strong, clergy often arrogate the power to decide what texts can be read or written, they can brand as heretical any ideas they dislike. In this way do they damage inquiry and speech. The text itself indicates that even thinking certain thoughts can condemn you, because some times our thoughts come in strings of words even if we keep them in our head un-uttered. And even if they have no political protections, and/or state granted powers, clergy still limit inquiry by dictating to their flock the same kinds of limitations. This desire to limit exposure to certain ideas often doesn't stop at their flock by the way. Given the opportunity many of these fundamentalists would like to see the freedom of those who disagree with them, who don't share their faith, and who would prefer freedom to the yoke, denied such freedoms. Even in the US there are attempts to ban books from schools and public libraries, to limit or block the release of movies, and to limit the speech of those with whom they disagree.

By words will we be condemned or acquitted? Who decides what content is evil or good? Doesn't discourse become difficult if you parse the world into such stark and sactimoniously tainted demographics? Why let some withered old algorithm do your thinking for you? Why let it do your condemning for you? This monstrous logic seems to place words above actions as we, and of course God, adjudicate on the morality of other thinking creatures. I suppose that makes some sense given that many Christian fundamentalists tend to think that if you utter a magic phrase that you suddenly have a personal relationship with Jesus that allows you to elude hell even though you may have lived a life that would make even an ambitious Viking blush. But consider two different people. One person says to you after a meeting: "Man you really get on my nerves sometimes. I just feel like kicking you in the balls sometimes." Not entirely pleasant true, and maybe those words were carelessly chosen but....now think about this. There is a co-worker who randomly gets up and kicks you in the balls. With which co-worker do you want to work? I know my answer.

If you are a believer of any stripe of Christianity please tell me in the comment's section why you think my reading of this as immoral is the wrong reading.

[Author's Note: I'm hardly the first unbeliever to notice problems with this commandment or rule or is it a law revealed in this chapter of Matthew. Brian Flemming's very game documentary, The God Who Wasn't There was, at least in part, an answer to the intense fear that he had run afoul that very commandment in his fundamentalist youth. Imagine how that would torture a young child. Youtube athiests went somewhat wild with an event called the Blasphemy Challenge wherein viewers were challenged to blaspheme the Holy Spirit on video and post that video.
The point here is that I am certainly not making a novel observation, but one that is recurrent and somewhat unavoidable.
Here is Penn Jillette's BC video.
And here is Christina's (ZOMGitsChris) BC video, a bit less on the spot:

The Response: Governor Rick Perry and the ignorant and pathetic "action" of the Faith Based.

2011-07-26T18:30:00.000-07:00

It is often said that necessity is the mother of invention, that early birds tend to get the most, and the most succulent worms, and that the sun doesn't shine on a sleeping dog's ass (though this latter metaphor has never made much sense to me as an inducement to action). The meaning is quite clear. Solutions will not come to you, out of the blue. What is required, is effort, thought, reason, cooperation and more effort when the first thoughts, and the first efforts don't succeed. The ridiculous governor of Texas, Rick Perry has decided to forfeit all of his faculties (as well as yours and mine), and probably half the virtues to which he would surely pay lip service, in favor of the clear blue bolt from above in the form of a call to prayer and fasting in his too often benighted state. This marks him as either irredeemably stupid, or irredeemably cynical and dishonest. In either case we in the electorate are well with in our right to treat his proposal, his administration, and indeed he himself with contempt, scorn and dismissal. He has proposed a child's solution and in effect, excused himself from
any discourse dominated by adults. His fellow travelers on the road to the intellectual backwater from which Governor Perry beckons (either earnestly or cynically) should feel free to join him there. I am, perhaps, getting a bit ahead of myself.

Governor Rick Perry has rightly identified that we are a nation facing profound difficulties. His proposed solution to these very real difficulties though leaves a great deal to be desired. This solution is something rather inaccurately called The Response. It amounts to a day a prayer and fasting wherein the attendees will prostrate themselves before a very specific god, and in very sectarian terms pray to that God, his son, and, one supposes, a holy ghost for solutions, revival and other miraculous nonsense.
Why don't I let Perry and his people explain it:

On August 6, the nation will come together at Reliant Stadium in Houston, Texas for a solemn gathering of prayer and fasting for our country.

We believe that America is in a state of crisis. Not just politically, financially or morally, but because we are a nation that has not honored God in our successes or humbly called on Him in our struggles.

According to the Bible, the answer to a nation in such crisis is to gather in humility and repentance and ask God to intervene. The Response will be a historic gathering of people from across the nation to pray and fast for America.

This drivel is regurgitated on the same page (which can be found by clicking on the title of this blog).

Fellow Americans,

Right now, America is in crisis: we have been besieged by financial debt, terrorism, and a multitude of natural disasters. As a nation, we must come together and call upon Jesus to guide us through unprecedented struggles, and thank Him for the blessings of freedom we so richly enjoy.

Some problems are beyond our power to solve, and according to the Book of Joel, Chapter 2, this historic hour demands a historic response. Therefore, on August 6, thousands will gather to pray for a historic breakthrough for our country and a renewed sense of moral purpose.

I sincerely hope you’ll join me in Houston on August 6th and take your place in Reliant Stadium with praying people asking God’s forgiveness, wisdom and provision for our state and nation. There is hope for America. It lies in heaven, and we will find it on our knees.

And that from the feckless mouth of the governor of Texas in the year 2011. To hear this idiot tell it, one would think that our country had never before been attacked by an enemy, or been molested by nature or faced stark economic difficulties. It is a wonder our republic ever made it beyond its own revolution, led as it was by so very many deists, freethinkers, and secularists. Since history clearly demonstrates that the United States has in fact had to deal with all of these hardships, and more perhaps that history of action, and resourcefulness might be a better guide than getting on our knees and talking to an imaginary friend? Governor Perry is certainly correct when he suggests that there is hope for America. That hope however lies in the resourcefulness, foresight and genius of its people. It will not be found in the grim species of fatalism that is at the heart of Perry's fatuous Response.

For all the talk on The Response website of the dire need for the nation to come together its message is completely sectarian, and as such strictly divisive. It alienates the Nation's fastest growing demographic (unbelievers and those who claim no organized religion) as well as the nation's Buddhists, its Hindus, its Muslims, its Wiccans, not to mention its numerous sects of Christianity that do not comport with the version of Christianity favored by Perry and his fundamentalists. So much for unity.

I would urge you to read the Why section found at their website. It is too long to dissect at the moment but I will highlight two points that I think are salient.

1. Humility and humbleness are not qualities a group or a person can be said to have when those groups or people compare themselves to saints, or insinuate special importance to the author of the Universe. Consider the following as just one bit of evidence: "The call of God to His people in times of great trouble is to gather together and call on Him with one voice, one heart, and a unified desire to see great blessing and great glory come to our nation again. The power of unified prayer from a humble gathering of the saints is found in the hope that He might answer us, and turn the tide of trouble and threats that stand against us."

2. The entire enterprise is soaked with at least a mild desire for State support of a very specific religion. It quotes the book of Joel wherein the people of Israel were commanded to stop everything they were doing and pray, and fast. The authors of the website do not seem bothered by this decidedly un-American compulsion to pray, and act in a manner that violates their conscience. The Why section also offers many foolish precedents for National, that is to say, government calls to prayer. Clearly Perry wants his August 6 to be Nationally recognized, and thus he stands against the very freedoms he drones on about. This is of course me accusing him of being anti-American. This he must be because his desires clearly, and certainly conflict with the non-establishment clause of the US Constitution.

Texans you have better things to do on August 6. And to the numerous politicians that Perry has invited to join him on the sixth: You also have better things to do with your time, and mine and that of your various constituencies besides wasting it by attending a meeting of grown children. The good news, if I may be indelicate, is this...some of those better things can be done on your knees.

For more background, do click on the links. It probably won't hurt you, but it may make you mad. And for a sharp critique, vastly more succinct than my own, do check out what the physicist Lawrence Krauss, director of the Origins Project at Arizona State University had to say.

Addendum:
Here is what the Response believes:

What does The Response believe?

The Response is a non-denominational, apolitical Christian prayer meeting and has adopted the American Family Association statement of faith.
1.We believe the Bible to be the inspired, the only infallible, authoritative Word of God.
2.We believe that there is one God, eternally existent in three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
3.We believe in the deity of our Lord Jesus Christ, in His virgin birth, in His sinless life, in His miracles, in His vicarious and atoning death through His shed blood, in His bodily resurrection, in His ascension to the right hand of the Father, and in His personal return in power and glory.
4.We believe that for the salvation of lost and sinful people, regeneration by the Holy Spirit is absolutely essential.
5.We believe in the present ministry of the Holy Spirit by whose indwelling the Christian is enabled to live a godly life.
6.We believe in the resurrection of both the saved and the lost; they that are saved unto the resurrection of life and they that are lost unto the resurrection of damnation.
7.We believe in the spiritual unity of believers in our Lord Jesus Christ.

Given the pluralistic nature of our country it is difficult to see how such a credo could improve nationalunity.

Rolling isn't always rough (my old coach and his old coach)

2011-07-21T20:52:00.000-07:00

Sometimes it is advisable to work through your Brazilian Jiu-jitsu (BJJ hereafter), or indeed any performance based art in a slightly less competitive way. The clip below isn't exactly slow rolling, but it does involve a great deal of give and take. Note while you watch it (the real action doesn't kick in until about a minute into the video) that the principles are really concentrating on movement, on sweeps and on escapes they throw in a lot of submissions, but not seriously because there is no desire to upset the flow of the movement. Most of the really good BJJ people (I can not go through all the names, but I would be utterly remiss if I failed to mention Marcelo Monteiro and Jay Jack at this point) that I have trained under advocate this kind training, and rightly so. It is a great way to really feel smooth BJJ movement (or -at the very least- to begin to make your BJJ smoother), to find solutions to consistent problems in your game, and it is a great place to try building your game with new techniques -get in the reps. As such it is a wonderful way to build muscle memory so you don't have to think as much about your fundamentals when you roll for real. Rolling like will help you ingrain your fundamentals them, made them as close to an instinct as such training allows. This kind of more relaxed rolling incorporates most of the benefits of static drilling while also plopping the techniques and fundamentals in their context. If it isn't yet, the slow roll, or the give and take roll, should definitely be a component of your training.

The Rebecca Watson Shite-Storm

2011-07-04T10:36:00.000-07:00

The relevant video, watch it first, read the highlighted quote and then we can move forward:

Um, just a word to wise here, guys, uh, don't do that. You know, I don't really know how else to explain how this makes me incredibly uncomfortable, but I'll just sort of lay it out that I was a single woman, you know, in a foreign country, at 4:00 am, in a hotel elevator, with you, just you, and—don't invite me back to your hotel room right after I finish talking about how it creeps me out and makes me uncomfortable when men sexualize me in that manner.

-Rebecca Watson of Skepchick

Rebecca Watson, if you haven't heard of her, is one of the very capable atheist, skeptical, writers at the wonderful Skepchick blog (click on title to go directly to their website also linked in the text). She has sort of come into her own as a voice for reason, and must certainly be considered a prime voice for the Gnus (New Atheists). In the passage above, and the video she describes being invited back to the room of another male attending the same conference for coffee. Her description of events, and her reaction to being asked out, has created something of a shit storm among the Gnu community. Perhaps that is a bit strong, but both Jen McCreight and PZ Myers both took Richard Dawkins to task for not being overly offended by the affair. Jen McCreight did this in harsher terms than I thought was warranted but, she, who crafted the Islamic Boobs protest thingy, is nothing if not over the top. PZ who seemed a little more reasonable on the matter, still didn't make much more sense. Just so you can adjudicate a bit on whether PZ and Jen are right to be so enormously offended let me post what Dawkins said:

Dear Muslima
Stop whining, will you. Yes, yes, I know you had your genitals mutilated with a razor blade, and . . . yawn . . . don't tell me yet again, I know you aren't allowed to drive a car, and you can't leave the house without a male relative, and your husband is allowed to beat you, and you'll be stoned to death if you commit adultery. But stop whining, will you. Think of the suffering your poor American sisters have to put up with.

Only this week I heard of one, she calls herself Skep"chick", and do you know what happened to her? A man in a hotel elevator invited her back to his room for coffee. I am not exaggerating. He really did. He invited her back to his room for coffee. Of course she said no, and of course he didn't lay a finger on her, but even so . . .

And you, Muslima, think you have misogyny to complain about! For goodness sake, grow up, or a least grow a thicker skin.

Some commentors accused Dawkins of suggesting that since there were worse atrocities abroad we shouldn't work on adjusting misogynistic attitudes here. Or worse that since there was worse treatment of women elsewhere, mysogynistic attitudes here, which were considerably less terrible in scope were somehow, okay. I think that is a rather pernicious species of bullshit, but Dawkins responded as follows.

No I wasn't making that argument. Here's the argument I was making. The man in the elevator didn't physically touch her, didn't attempt to bar her way out of the elevator, didn't even use foul language at her. He spoke some words to her. Just words. She no doubt replied with words. That was that. Words. Only words, and apparently quite polite words at that.

If she felt his behaviour was creepy, that was her privilege, just as it was the Catholics' privilege to feel offended and hurt when PZ nailed the cracker. PZ didn't physically strike any Catholics. All he did was nail a wafer, and he was absolutely right to do so because the heightened value of the wafer was a fantasy in the minds of the offended Catholics. Similarly, Rebecca's feeling that the man's proposition was 'creepy' was her own interpretation of his behaviour, presumably not his. She was probably offended to about the same extent as I am offended if a man gets into an elevator with me chewing gum. But he does me no physical damage and I simply grin and bear it until either I or he gets out of the elevator. It would be different if he physically attacked me.

-Richard Dawkins

(Jen McCreight blathered on about the newish academic chestnut and watch-word of tolerance workshops everywhere: privilege. I will have to say, as disappointed as she is in Dawkins, I am equally, if not more, disappointed in her for her privilege talk. Not because there isn't a grain of truth in the concept, but because in general it is freighted with a massive amount of unexamined assumption. I am also deeply annoyed by her lecture to Dawkins about not every being called a name, not understanding the plight of women because he was a 70 year old white guy, never been a part of a minority etc. After all her talk about presumption this all feels a bit pot calling the kettle black. I mean consider the following from her Dawkins rant:

Words matter. You don't get that because you've never been called a cunt, a faggot, a nigger, a kike. You don't have people constantly explaining that you're subhuman, or have the intellect of an animal. You don't have people saying you shouldn't have rights. You don't have people constantly sexually harassing you. You don't live in fear of rape, knowing that one wrong misinterpretation of a couple words could lead down that road.

You don't, because you have fucking privilege.

Seriously Jen how often are you told you are sub-human? I'm not sure, but I am sure Dawkins hears a lot of negativity, just read his hate mail. I suppose that can be written off though because he sports XY sex chromosomes. Okay I digress.)

This has been the flavor of response to Rebecca's Elevator Advance. Some folks thinking it wasn't that big of a deal, some folks thinking it was a huge deal, representing what a horrible patriarchal country we live in. The debate has been both benign, and malignant. What is strange is that there is really a lot to agree with on both sides.

Rebecca is certainly right when she offers the advice to not ask a person out in an elevator at 4:00 in the morning. Even without her explaining that she dislikes being asked out at these things, accosting a person you have just met in an elevator or any enclosed space by themselves is probably a bad idea that will creep that someone out. So I agree that there are times and places that seem less creepy and threatening when asking someone out. People should totally be more sensitive to nuance. And if what she says is true, that she explained a lot that day that she didn't like being asked out at conventions then the guy was doubly stupid for thinking he would be the one to charm her out of her stance, or her feelings. I see no reason to doubt that she did say this so the guy should be firmly smacked on the back of the head by all his friends for being a dumb ass.

But I am not entirely certain that was all that she implied was wrong with the guy or the situation of his asking her out. She hated being "sexualized in that way." I confess I am honestly not sure what that can possibly mean. Jen McCreight's histrionics on the subject seem more likely to be in the same intellectual vein Watson is trying to tap. To which I have to ask, under what circumstances is it okay to ask a woman out? Is asking someone out "sexualizing them?" And is that really demeaning? Is it even avoidable? If one is asking someone out, there is some level of attraction (physical, mental whatever). In Watson's case the guy violated her request to not be asked out. This is hardly a crime -in fact is not a crime- even if it is extraordinarily presumptuous and done in a hamfisted stupid way. Is it really a moment to brandish the cannons of feminism? Is it a moment to claim that such things impact women negatively? As a whole? At the root of the Elevator Advance the situation is this: A guy asked a girl out who didn't want to be asked out. No one was raped. No one got tazed, not one hair on one head was harmed. That is the essence of the story. What we seem to be talking about is Rebecca's feelings about being asked back to a room for coffee.

I have been accosted in exactly the same way (in an enclosed space) on at least two occasions. I was approached by women in whom I had clearly expressed no romantic or even sexual interest. Both cornered me in isolated places and made their pitch as it were. I imagine I experienced the same level of creeped outness that Rebecca felt. Granted there wasn't any danger of my being raped by them (though I did have to physically move one of them out of my way and pry them off of me). Leaving aside the being jumped on part of my stories, I can't say that being asked out, being "sexualized" offended me that much.

If Rebecca was just putting it out there that it is really less than bright to accost a person with a potential sexual advance in an elevator while they are all by their lonesome, then I have no real issue here, and support her advice to future attendees at such conferences. But if it had something more to do with feminist conceptions of "sexualization" then I think she is probably off the mark. It seems that if you are at a conference of like minded individuals you are going to find people to whom you are immediately attracted for a host of reasons. As such, people are going to be asking other people out (sexualizing them I suppose) for the immediate gratification of a fun one night stand, in hope of some kind of long term partnerships, or just to see where things go. This seems unavoidable.

My question, should you chose to answer it, is why not make the matter about tact and not feminism? Should only women be allowed to ask men out as seems to be implied? Am I missing something?

A very calm and thoughtful response to a rather silly fundamentalist

2011-06-05T19:51:00.001-07:00

I found this at Jerry Coyne's wonderful blog, whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com. In the following clip a Muslim fundamentalist essentially accuses Dawkins of dishonesty by asserting that even if all all the evidence pointed to a supernatural designer and away from natural explanations Dawkins would still reject supernatural explanations because of his disdain for them, and the god(s)implied. The questioner in fact goes so far as to suggest that Dawkins already does not this, because the evidence already does, according to the fundamentalist, point to divine creation. Dawkins, therefore, already does believe in divine creation but will not admit it. This is a spectacularly rude thing to say of course to someone who has never demonstrated anything exemplary academic integrity, and who has clearly changed his mind (based on evidence) on many positions over the years. Fundamentalists though often give themselves permission to say the rudest things in the service of their religion. Below Dawkins responds very much more kindly than most. It might also be useful to note the creationist's use of the word chance, which is, in the hands of the creationist (any creationist it seems) is a weasel word intended to confuse listeners as to what kind of processes are. The implication is that they completely random. Which isn't the case.
Enjoy.

STORM

2011-04-09T14:30:00.001-07:00

I thought this was certainly worth watching when it wasn't all cool and animated. Now of course it is twice as cool. Well not exactly, but it is fun, and if you missed it the first time I posted it, well here you go, the nine minute beat poem STORM, by Tim Minchin, now cooler than before.

Answers Not In Genesis: Where are the uniform genetic bottlenecks predicted by Noah's Flood?

2011-04-04T13:41:00.000-07:00

One problem facing the fundamentalist, biblical creationist is the relative tractability of the predictions the Book of Genesis makes when taken literally. The timescales are relatively short, and the events depicted in Genesis, if taken literally, are dramatic enough that evidence for them would not all be washed away in deep time. These predictions form quite easily falsifiable hypotheses. That is to say they are the very kinds of claims that science is most capable of assessing. Also, the predictions are all fairly obvious. So if there really is a Creation Science where is this relatively easy, publishable research on these problems that are so amenable to the scientific method? That is sort of a trick question, because the predictions of a literal reading of the Book of Genesis have already been falsified by science. Of course you would not know this if you only listened to folks like The Institute for Creation Research, or only hung out at the ridiculously unscientific intellectual pride of Kentucky, the Creation Museum. No creationist organization is really very interested in actually doing science. That may seem like a harsh generalization but I invite you to go to their websites, and read their literature and draw your own conclusions. What is called Creation Science is simply a lot of hand waving and special pleading to exempt a cherished dogma from the rules of evidence. They exist to defend the faith even at the expense of the truth. For the creationist this may be good thing. There is simply no research left for them to do.

In the Beginning....God smote genetic diversity
Taken literally, the book of Genesis makes several very specific predictions about the genetic diversity of all life on earth. Here is one very specific prediction that we can derive from Noah's Flood concerning the genetics of all life on earth.

1. All life on earth passed through a very narrow population bottleneck around 4,500 years ago.

2. All species were dramatically reduced to very few in number.

3. All terrestrial, and some semi-aquatic animal species were reduced to either 2 individuals, or 14 individuals.

4. Therefore all terrestrial/semi-aquatic animal populations should demonstrate a very uniform genetics.

5. Variation in this uniform genetics should be able to be traced back to around
4,500 years ago (within a reasonable margin of error).

6. All animal populations should demonstrate the presence of extremely small
populations at the time of the population bottleneck (at least <50).

7. Organisms not deliberately transported on the Ark also would have experienced
a massive population crash, and would also demonstrate marked genetic uniformity
that could be traced back to 4.500 years ago (within a reasonable margin of
error).

I will explain what a population bottleneck is and what consequences it tends to have on a population in a moment, but first....

A brief aside about DNA, genes, and mutation:
I'm going to be using some shorthand in the following paragraphs, and it may help you, if you aren't steeped in biology to have a refresher of your long forgotten high school biology. Genes are stretches of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) that code for some cell product, cytochrome-b say, or some other protein. DNA itself is a long two stranded polymer of nucleic acids composed of adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymine, (A,G,C and T respectively)that forms the classical double helix (think of a ladder that has been spiraled around itself, still linear, but twisted). The nucleic acids form the rungs of the ladder, and every three letters in a gene (a segment of the DNA that codes for some product) is a specific code for a specific amino acid. So in a gene the triplet thynine adenine cytosine (TAC) codes for the amino acid methionine. Other triplets code for other amino acids. Mutations are errors of DNA replication. These errors alter the code, sometimes subtly and sometimes dramatically. The DNA triplets TAC and TCC do not, for instance, instruct a cell to utilize the same amino acid.

When populations diverge, genetic variation between the populations begins to build if there isn't a great deal of interbreeding between them, so their common genes will reveal differences in their sequences of As Ts Gs and Cs (and the triplets they make). No population will have the exact same sequences for the same gene (indeed there may be many different versions of a gene). For instance, different populations of humans may have significant differences in their genes for the manufacture of the structural protein keratin. To establish a reasonable estimate of when these varieties diverged, we need to know the mutation rate for the gene in question (the rate at which the nucleic acid codes are altered and how often those alterations are uncorrected, plus the generation time for the species in question) we need lots of sequence data from numerous populations, and we need powerful modern computers to perform the rather large analysis/comparison of the sequences and their differences.

I am intentionally leaving out the role of RNA (ribonucleic acids) in this, but I don't think we need to wade too deeply into transcription and translation, and protein synthesis. For our purposes what you need to is some knowledge of what a gene is, how it is altered and how examining those genes and their sequences actually gives scientists quite a window into the history of divergence of the genes (and thus the populations) in question.

Population Bottlenecks
A population bottleneck is simply any event that, more or less randomly, and significantly reduces the size of a population. Any such reduction in population size will also result in a reduction in that population's genetic diversity as well. It is also unlikely that the survivors of any such event will be carrying a representative sample of the genetics of the population as a whole. This is why population bottlenecks are also often referred to as genetic bottlenecks. A significant loss in population size will translate to a significant loss of genetic diversity. On one side of the event any sampling would reveal high numbers of individuals and high genetic diversity (as measured in the diversity, and frequency of alleles for given genes) and on the other side of the bottlenecking event sampling would reveal low numbers and low genetic diversity.

Perhaps the best way to illustrate this would be through a simple example (that I think I am stealing from my old Population and Community Ecology professor, Brent Smith at least in part, lets hear if for Earlham College Biology!).

Say we have a population of 10 lemmings moving up a mountain, or at least a really large hill together, perhaps they are migrating, or emigrating to new land with greener grass. Assume five of those lemmings are male and five are female. In the course of their travels up the hill a large rock comes tumbling down the hill (a mini avalanche caused by hikers pushing boulders down the mountain or hill or whatever) and our large rock crushes all five males who were clumped together for some reason peculiar to male lemmings. We can see with out much effort the kind of disaster this has just had on the population. The population went from possessing five Y chromosomes (any male will have XY sex chromosomes) to possessing no Y chromosomes. It is important to note that a Y chromosome isn't a gene. A chromosome is a specific long strand of DNA, that contains genes. In this example the loss of the Y chromosome represents a significant and dramatic loss of genetic diversity (in this case, all the genes contained on the Y chromosome).

We can see that the random sample that survived isn't representative of the original sample (all our survivors are females bearing only XX chromosomes). It will also be unlikely that each of the females that survived will all be pregnant with each of the dead males, so even if one or two females are pregnant and the population isn't doomed out right, it will still be dealing with very low variation along the Y chromosome, and not just there either. Assume one female was pregnant by one of the males that would give the population one Y chromosome and its alleles (an allele is a variant of a gene). Over time genetic variation would be rebuilt in the population through mutation, possibly horizontal gene transfer (don't worry about it) and the process of genetic recombination that occurs when sex cells (sperm and egg) are made. We probably needn't go further than that.

My hypothetical lemmings (or Brent's hypothetical lemmings)illustrates the way in which population/genetic bottlenecks can influence the size and genetic composition of a population, and we now understand that lost genetic diversity would be rebuilt largely by mutation in populations that manage to survive long past the bottlenecking event (in my freakishly simple example, this could only be done if at least one female was pregnant). One more thing to note is that the occurrence of a bottlenecking event would be identifiable to anyone studying our lemmings. Researchers would note a rather homogeneous genetics characterized by very little variation in genes on the Y chromosome certainly and for many other genes as well. It would be possible for our hypothetical researchers, if they knew the mutation rate for certain genes (the rate at which the strand of DNA in the gene is altered), to calculate an estimate of how long ago different versions of our hypothetical lemming genes (alleles) diverged by comparing target genes across the population. That is they could examine and compare the variation in target genes, typically highly conserved genes (which is a technical way of saying genes that change slowly over time due to crucial functioning of their products). A conserved gene is simply a gene that isn't free to alter too much or too rapidly because alterations in its code tend to have have negative effects on the functionality of that gene's products, which translates to negative effects on the organism bearing such mutations.

With that ground covered we are in a better position to ask whether or not science has found evidence of population/genetic bottlenecks, and if so we can ask whether or not the bottlenecks conform to the predictions of Genesis (that all, or almost all, extant organisms will demonstrate a significant bottleneck with a point of origin around 4,500 years ago).

The answer to the first question is yes. There is no shortage of genetic bottlenecks to be found in nature. However they do not indicate any kind of uniform point of origin. Cheetahs for instance passed through a bottle neck around 10,000 years ago, which is around the tail end of the last ice-age (Menotti-Raymond and O'Brian 1993). Though there is some disagreement over the exact time frame, the range of times given isn't supportive of the 4,500 year hypothesis at all.

Humans seem to have passed through a least one severe population bottleneck, perhaps more. While the matter is by no means settled it seems safe to say that the low genetic diversity among humans does little to support any fundamentalist reading of the Genesis story. The whole genesis account is of course further damaged by the fact that whatever the form of the bottleneck humans faced (Toba disater around 70,000 years ago, or long bottleneck, or some odd combination of smaller bottlenecks, we are left with the well documented human population growth at around 50,000 years ago (Ambrose, 1998). There is no sharp and precipitous population crash from which to recover after that, which is predicted by creationists.

Humans and cheetahs are hardly the only species to demonstrate such population bottlenecks, here is a short list with estimates for the time of their respective bottlenecking events:
Albatross (Amsterdam and Wandering)- >840,000 years ago
Northern Elephant Seal- ~121 years ago
Giant Panda- 43,000 years ago
Golden Hamster- 81 years ago
Orangutan- ~170,000 years ago

We needn't go further really. What we can see from these examples is that the Genesis hypothesis fails pretty miserably in its prediction of large scale genetic uniformity across all phyla, originating fairly recently, and within recorded history. I have never seen this rather obvious prediction discussed among creationist authors. I suspect that curious state of affairs stems largely from the fact that creationists tend not to be biologists but theologists, or engineers if they have any science background at all (not entirely of course). A real science minded creationist would certainly see the merit of what I am suggesting here. Where is this research? It will not be forthcoming. I predict what they will produce when confronted by this will be oodles and oodles of hand waving, and magical, supernatural thinking to sweep away the fact that they have no positive evidence for their hypothesis. I can hear it now:
Well God simply touched up the genetic diversity of many species after the flood.
God gave the organisms only the amount of genetic diversity he, in his loving, merciful wisdom, knew they would need.
Genetic diversity isn't really affected by small population sizes, or events that reduce populations to 2-7 pairs of individuals (Genesis states that Noah took either a single pair of critters, or seven pairs).
It is in evasions like that that intellectual suicide is most easily identified.

A mini-glossary

chromosome A chromosome is a particular long strand of DNA (genetic material, comprised of nucleic acids composed of various genes. Different chromosomes have different genes.

gene A unit of heredity. This is actually defined slightly differently by different groups of biologists. For our purposes we will follow the molecular biologists and say that a gene represents any segment of DNA that, as my Penguin Dictionary of Biology puts it, "codes for cell products." So at its simplest, a gene is simply a strand of DNA that creates something in cells. To say that is a gross oversimplification of the state of affairs is to understate the matter considerably.

allele An allele is a variant of a gene. Variation in a gene is built by mutation, which is to say it is built of random changes in the DNA code that are the instructions for building some product (behavior, structure, protein etc). A good way to think of the matter is as follows. The gene may be formally thought of as a specific region of DNA on a specific chromosome, that "creates" some product. Alleles are the various ways in which that product is coded in different bodies of a given species. Maybe iris color is represented by a specific region of the DNA along some chromosome (the gene) and different bodies in a population will have different forms of that gene, green, hazel, brown, blue (the alleles).

Bibliography
Ambrose, S.H. 1998. Late Pleistocene human population
bottlenecks, volcanic winter, and
differentiation of modern humans. Journal of Human Evolution (1998) 34, 623–651

Arora N, Nater A, van Schaik CP, Willems E, van Noordwijk MA, Goossens B, Morf NV, Bastian M, Knott C, Morrogh-Bernard H, Kuze N, Kanamori T, Pamungkas J, Perwitasari-Farajallah D, Warren K, Verschoor E, Krützen M. 2010. The effects of Pleistocene glaciations and rivers on the population structure of Bornean orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA 107, 21376-21381.

http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evosite/evo101/IIID3Bottlenecks.shtml

Dawkins, R. 2004. The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution. Houghton Mifflin Company, New York New York.

Menotti-Raymond, M and O'Brien, S.J. 1993. Dating the genetic bottleneck of the African cheetah. PNAS April 15, 1993 vol. 90 no. 8 3172-3176

Milot, E., Weimerskirch, H., Duchesne, P., Bernatchez, L. 2007. Surviving with low genetic diversity: the case of albatrosses.Proc Biol Sci. 2007 March 22; 274(1611): 779–787

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_bottleneck, last modified, 13 June 2011 at 20:17

A long response to Twinkledorp

2011-04-04T07:51:00.001-07:00

(I was going to post this in the comment section of the last entry of IDGOFB but blogspot claims I used too many characters. So here is my long response to one of Twinkledorp's posts)

Twinkledorp,
I thought it might be fun to address this as well.

"Just consider me a Skeptic. Whilst you may believe your scinetific methods tell you one thing, I am not going to go on 'faith' and believe evolution is all that you believe it to be."

And what are you going to "go on" to reject the Neo-Darwinian Synthesis? It appears at first that we be both believe that faith is an exceedingly bad thing. Do you really have good grounds to reject the findings of nearly 200 years of biology? If you do I think you should publish them, if you don't (and judging by the reasons you give below, we can see you don't) aren't you really just staking out another contradictory faith claim?

"What others 'know as a scientific fact' is of little importance to me. I have yet to be convinced for a few reasons:"

This could be rephrased to I really don't care what the evidence demonstrates because I have this a priori conclusion from which I will not be budged in the slightest.

"1). Though born Atheist, my free thinking process has lead me to the conclusion God exists, though not the Christian or religious God
that you might assume I may be referring to."

Interesting, but essentially content free. Your "free thinking" is meaningless if it isn't backed by some form of verifiable evidence. You could be absolutely, completely, devastatingly correct in every way, and everyone would be absolutely correct to reject your new paradigm if you cannot adduce anything to back it up but your thought, and your, ahem, logic.

"2).
During darwin's time, Science and Religion were at war. Scientists were scratching at the bit to 'give ot to' the Religious folk and there was no way in Hell they were going to have God play any part in the evolutionary process were thus 'intelligence in design' had to be excluded from their conclusions."

Actually this is precisely the opposite of true. Lyell, the great geologist and good friend of Charles Darwin was a more or less orthodox religious man. He, in fact, seemed to hope that Darwin was wrong despite being a very great admirer of Darwin's work. But Lyell also was one of the first to realize how mind-numbingly old the Earth really was. Alfred Russel Wallace, co-discover of natural selection with Darwin, maintained a belief in God (a god of some kind any way) because he simply couldn't think of a way humans could have evolved. I could go in this way for some time. Darwin was probably the only textbook atheist in the bunch (though he was't always so, and his theory of evolution by natural selection probably had less to do with his loss of faith than did the problems of theodicy).

Also while you may say that scientists were "scratching at the bit" (I think you mean tugging at the bit, or chomping at the bit) to, as you so elegantly say, "give ot to" religionists, this seems largely false. Darwin, at least, waited decades to publish because he was sensitive to the injury it would/might do to people's religious sensiblities.

Most of the scientists of Darwin's time would have been believers who didn't take the scriptures literally, they, like many a scientist before them were curious about the true nuts and bolts of God's creation, not what they considered the metaphors of holy books. What is true is that religion has always had an uneasy relationship with an honest pursuit of the truth because it so easily makes canards of holy canon. So, probably as far back as Hypatia (and I would imagine even further) to now, clerics pitch a fit when cherished dogma is challenged by the rigorous findings of any science.

Also there has, as yet, been no need, nor any evidence that would imply an "intelligence in the design" of things. It all just looks like one example after another of "survival of the stable." Which is a great, if simplistic, descriptor (not my coinage) of the natural world.

Also, this is all incredibly irrelevant. Whatever the case was in Darwin's time has no real effect on the science that took place after. The evidence is what the evidence is, and it was compiled by believers, unbelievers and agnostics, and it all seems to support evolutionary biology.

"This poses a massive credibility problem and therefore any conclusions drawn should be taken with a grain of salt. After all, the main objective at the time (which continues today) was winning the war with Religion therefore objectivity was sacrificed in the name of 'Victory'."

There was no war on religion, as I stated above. Scientists just work on their problems, and often unwittingly step on cultural landmines. Scientists are comprised, as I said above, of believers and unbelievers of every stripe. One of the most comprehensive efforts at public understanding of evolutionary biology, and explaining the evidence that supports it was written by a fairly standard god-bothering Christian. The book (excellent by the way) which you should definitely read is Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why it Matters by Donald Prothero. Its kind of pricey but it will give you one of the best overviews of the state of evo-bio, probably not offend you, and provide plenty of papers for you to track down and read from its literature cited section.

Sorry Max11.

I doubt this very much. Its Max II not, 11.

Evolutionist will need to do a bit of evolving themselves to ensure objectivity and good old common sense in their work unless of course you believe houses are built without blusprints, and people speak 1st and then think, which in your case I could almost be convinced is true.

Objectivity in the pursuit of scientific discovery arises from transparency of experimental design and the replicablity of results. Not from worrying over much about the kinds of thoughts particular researchers have about the status of the universe. Incorrect findings, errors, fraud will be discovered with time and research.

And common sense is useless in science. It leads more often than it does not to rather severe errors. Our common sense fails when it is put to the task of thinking about deep fundamental aspects of nature, human nature included, because nature is vastly weirder than our day to day lives.

Stop by and visit my site anytime.

Do leave a url and I will.

"Twinkledorp Peabody IV."

Fascinating name.

Happy Birthday Richard Dawkins!

2011-03-27T17:50:00.000-07:00

Here are some great clips to watch as you tip a glass of something to the great explainer of evolutionary ideas.

The New Narrative Structure of the Modern Comic Book Series, or How the Trade Paperback is Killing Pace.

2011-03-21T15:40:00.000-07:00

I think the comic book industry has a problem, well at least one, and the only one that currently bothers me enough to comment on. The problem is pacing. The problem with pace is a product of the trade paperback. A trade paperback of comic book, for those of you not in the know, is simply several issues, now generally six, collected in a single volume. Its really a great way to collect and read comic book stories, takes up less space, and consolidates stories into an easy to access pacakage. It posses a huge problem though for a monthly book when it seems you are required to tell a story in six issue arcs.

Most comic books in the two big houses DC and Marvel seem more or less locked into the six issue story structure. For the tradepaperback crowd this has one benefit and one benefit only. It allows them to buy a book that has an ending, and a self contained story. Trying to force stories into the structure, though, is generally a failure. It encourages filler material, that is unnecessary to the story, and that reveals nothing important. That alone should be reason enough to abhor the practice. But the insertion of filler also detracts from pace and excitement more often than it does not. Now we have industry awash in books that take forever to get where they are going. Its not that I mind a long story. I am just bothered by having my time and money wasted on bullshit. I think a good, if vague, rule of thumb is that the story should dictate the number of issues it needs. A two issue story shouldn't be forced into a six issue format. It just looks thin however good the writing and the art is in the individual issues. I think the story quality would improve dramatically if story-tellers and editors would attempt to return to more organic processes. If you have come up with a story that takes two issues to tell, tell it in two issues. If you are writing Claremont style, with long character arcs set against the backdrop of other adventures, trials, etc then accept that, and try not to be bound by artificial punctuations of six. If your story is good, then people will buy the next trade even if it is open-ended, or if they have to go get back issues to be filled in. In short, just tell the damn story.

Let me just say that both houses are doing great work, and that in many cases they are figuring out how to tell some of their shorter stories without artificially stretching them out. Both DC and Marvel have been producing wonderful extra long one-shots, and short double features in other books, or short-series. So the good work continues, but certain series seem to be laboring under this six issue structure, and I think it is completely unnecessary. The latest Superman and Wonder Woman
story arcs, sort of written by J. Michael Straczynski, and featuring the excellent pencils of Eddy Barrows and Don Kramer respectively, are regrettably textbook examples of this unnecessary stretching of story to fit an unsuitable format. Jeff Loeb and Brian Michael Bendis seems to be masters at this sort of contentless storytelling. However let me hip you to some books that don't fit that forumla.

DC Comics

Power Girl: Fun, well paced stories not bound (too often) by the arbitrary six issue story arc. I would recommend beginning with Amanda Conner's run on the book, which luckily begins way back with issue 1.

Zatanna: The latest of DC's women to get her own book. Not quite as action packed as Power Girl and her incantations are a bit hokey (isn't any incantation hokey?) but she is a unique character. She is an accomplished stage illusionist ala Penn and Teller, but can do actual magic too, though never for personal gain. She inhabits DC's magical realms and has yet to feature a bad artist on the book. Even if the stories don't knock your socks off, they are good and always fun to look at.

Supergirl This book just continues to get better and better. Every issue engages in substative character development against the back drop of fantastic Kryptonian daring-do.

Those are probably pretty good to get you started. I cannot really think of a Marvel book not hemmed up in the six issue prison. Sometimes it works fine. Often times is seems stretched and oh so slow.

ALCOHOL, a biologist examines the only interesting thing about St Pat's

2011-03-18T13:39:00.001-07:00

It is a day late, but..screw it. Enjoy.

My contribution to Women's History Month: Kathryn Bigelow + Wonder Woman

2011-03-10T19:05:00.000-08:00

Wonder Woman. Amazon Warrior. Superhero. And of course Woman. She is a DC Comics icon, something of an American icon too. In fact she forms one part of DC's nearly holy Trinity (the other two parts formed by the equally iconic Batman and Superman). Warner Bros and DC have produced some good adaptations of the D.C. material of late(Superman I, II, and of course , and Batman: The Dark Knight.. DC/Warner Brothers even tried to return to Kryptonian waters, walking in director Richard Donner's foot steps, with the game but too homagey Superman Returns. This summer DC and Warner Brothers are taking a huge chance on what is easily the most dangerous property they have, The Green Lantern.
To see precisely why the Green Lantern is such a potential goldmine of unintended laughs, and camp go here.

There is an obvious question lurking in this blog...Where is the ass-kicking Wonder Woman movie? Seriously now. A Wonder Woman movie seems like something of a no-brainer.
Consider that she easily one of the most complex characters of the DC comics Universe. She is a diplomat, and a warrior (though disdainful of violence). She is an Amazon raised in a very particular culture isolated from men (I can even see some X-Men style parables here, specifically addressing issues in the LGBT community). Physically she is as powerful as Superman, skilled in hand to hand combat as Batman, and happier, generally than both. And while her costume would probably need a revamp, I suspect that the rest of her character would need little to make it appealing across a diverse audience. Her back story is a goldmine, that can also, draw on a nearly limitless treasure trove of Greek mythology thanks to the Amazon connection. And I think there is a potential to engage in some progressive romance too, because lets face it, Wonder Woman will not have a sexuality that anyone would be able to describe as conventional (think of her genetics, and culture and you have a sure prescription for interesting storytelling directions). Clearly a Wonder Woman film could be anything, in the right hands, except boring. And I think I know what some of the right hands should be.

With any filmmaking endeavor I think the question has to be what is there that we don't like, and do those "don't likes" loom larger than the "likes." I say Wonder Woman is a no brainer for DC/Warner, because, on paper, at least, the "don't likes" are surprisingly few, whereas the cup containing all the "likes" is, quite simply, overflowing. In an effort to get this wonderful ball of Wonder Woman rolling, allow me a few suggestions movie industry excutive types.

Any great comic book film, (indeed any great film) has to start with a great vision and leadership. DC/Warner have wisely put Christopher Nolan in the producer role for the next Superman movie. They should do whatever it takes to get him to do the same thing with any Wonder Woman project. It makes good business sense from their point of view. A good comic book film will produce at least two more successful ventures almost regardless of the quality if the sequels. Think X-Men 3. It did slightly better box office than X-Men 2 and it was not a good movie. Any DC movie needs quality control, because DC, more than Marvel, risks camp and sillyness with almost every hero in their pantheon. If DC/Warner could they should also give Nolan and his script writing partner anything they want to pen a Wonder Woman script. Give them movie deals to make the next three whatever they want to films, give them prostitutes, tickets to TED conferences, seriously make the Nolan team write the script I don't know if it is crucial, but given the dramatic and conceptual weight Nolan has imparted (with the help of decades of comic book writers of course) to the Dark Knight of Gotham City, it sure couldn't hurt.

Kathryn Bigelow must direct this movie. Someone reading this may be tempted to suggest someone else. The following the following films are all the rebuttal I need. Near Dark, Point Break, Strange Days, and The Hurt Locker Bigelow. For. The. Win.

Jeff Imada should probably choregraph all the non-CGI action. I know that poor guy is over worked since the Jason Bourne Trilogy but tough luck, that is the price of success damn it. I would also need to see some quality grappling as the Amazons would be well versed in such things given their origin. So throw Yasuhiro Yamashita and Randy Couture into the fight choreography team for added zest.

Line in the sand. No invisible jet. Nope, ah-ah-ah, stop, no buts, shh. No jet. Hey, I said zip it.

What follows are some loose suggestions for the core cast.

Jessica Biel as Wonder Woman/Diana
Rosario Dawson as Artemis
Sigourny Weaver as Hippolyta, or and I like this oodles more, Angela Basset as Hippolyta.
Paul Bettany as Achilles
It isn't necessarily a given that any WW movie would incorporate this character. Gail Simone did so in her most recent run on Wonder Woman, and to great effect.
Guy Pierce as Ares (Show me someone who says that doesn't sound supercool, and I will show you a liar).

Alright that is all I have. What would you like to see in a Wonder Woman movie? The conversation is open to non-comic geeks too!

Brunch Notes: All art by Adam Hughes.
Also if you are interested in seeing more of his work, and really why wouldn't you be, here is what you need.
Cover Run: The DC Comics Art of Adam Hughes This is beautiful stuff and features more than just Wonder Woman.

Fun times can be had at Hughes official website, JustsayAH.

Also in honor of Women's History month, its good to remember that DC publishes a ton more titles featuring women as the main protagonists.

(Can you name them all?)

The Rite: A Brunch Film Review

2011-02-25T19:25:00.000-08:00

Lets begin by saying that anything useful, original, intriguing or scary that could be said in that weird genre of horror that is Christian, specifically Catholic, horror was said or done in either The Exorcist, or The Omen (the latter of which is available "instantly" on Netflix for those interested in such things). Director Mikael Håfström has offered nothing new with The Rite. In fact he has borrowed rather extensively from the two films mentioned above (even borrowing a scene in a boxing gym from The Exorcist so blatantly that one is almost tempted to call the scene a plagarism). At its best, The Rite merely provides a vehicle for the very capable Anthony Hopkins to show off his skills. It is only when Hopkins inhabits a scene that the film even comes close to being effective. At its worst the film wastes our time with creaky dialogue, shallow characters and rather sillier than usual theology.

The film, breathlessly claiming to be inspired by true events, follows the adventures of a seminary student, Michael Kovak (played more or less like a block of wood by Colin O'Doneghue) of less than stellar faith who has enrolled simply to score a free four year degree from an accredited institution. Michael's plans, not exactly saintly, are to bail on the priesthood and enjoy his ill gotten degree. A kindly priest, Father Matthew (played by Toby Jones) sees the light of Jesus in the boy, and attempts twice, to get the wayward, faithless block of wood to give the priesthood more time. Without giving too much away, the nice Father Matthew behaves in the unethical fashion we have come to expect from such men and coerces the conflicted Kovak into a course on exorcism in Italy. Apparently demonic possession is on the rise and more and more priests are being called on by their charges to perform this unique and vanishing skill set in villages, towns and big cities whereever the demonically afflicted are found.

"You will be in Florence for three months, what's the worst that can happen?" Asks Father Matthew after he has forced Michael into the cource. Its a useless bit of foreshadowing dialogue, because the viewer already knows that Michael Kovac, closet atheist, and all around priestly failure is in for a rather unpleasant tour of Florence's possessed underbelly.

I will be surprising no one by telling you that Kovack's faith is restored before the end of the film. The script fails rather spectacularly at describing a person who may once have had some faith, perhaps a very serious faith, who has after some considerable reflection found they can no longer believe. This probably isn't the point. The crisis of faith is almost a sub-genre of this kind of film, and the arguments that led to the initial crumbling of that edifice aren't nearly as important as the contrived (and often utterly heartless) coincidences that restore the faith of the hero. It is also rather obvious that Father Michael Kovac is something of a moron. There are some rather obvious, and hard to explain away indiciations that something that could be plausibly described as supernatural is occurring, but his character manages to not even reflect on these incidents, not even momentarily, after they have happened. He maybe offers a quizzical look, or a horrified one and then it is simply forgotten. This seems hardly the stance of someone profoundly concerned with the truth of propositions. And his incurious nature is somewhat at odds with a statement he makes in the film. Early in Kovac's interactions with Father Trevant (Hopkins)he makes a crucial observation, about the problem with holding a position that rules out evidence in making an assessment about the veracity of the position. The conversation becomes pointless when the lack of evidence for the devil is actually proof of the devil (or God one must suppose). Strangely enough Mother Teresa would have understood exactly what Father Kovac was saying, or rather she would have seen Father Trevant's argument coming. For at least forty years or so Mother Teresa was in exactly the same place (up until the time of her demise I think). Yet her Church handlers told her that the fact that she saw no evidence for God, and no she no longer felt his presense actually constituted evidence for God. So while you may spit your massive movie soda out when Father Trevant offers this logic chopping gem up, know that it was, and is used among Catholics at least, even Catholics of very high rank.

So on the one hand we are left with no evidence being a potent form of evidence for Gods and Devils. But also in the film we are shown signs that demons are about, and they are spectacularly banal (through out much of the film). When ordinary bugs, roaches say, or centipedes, crickets, cats (of course poor felines will be impugned)or the occasional frog are a sign that a demon is afoot then anything can be a sign. One can probably already see problems inherent in such a system. Though a quick quibble. The toad that seems to be a sign for demonic possession this movie could not be more harmless. Common in the pet trade, the innocuous, and largely docile Fire-bellied Toad is apparently a fairly sure sign that demons (or at least one particular demon) are about their business in your abode. Or your body. Or your something. Strangely this is a common enough frog in central and eastern Europe, according to the Encyclopedia of Life, so is maybe not an uncommon sight in Florence. Whether are not they are a natural occurence in fair, fair Florence, this humble anuran enjoys a more or less world wide distribution thanks to its popularity as a pet.
What would Fathers Trevant and Kovac make of that? Given their standards of evidence, they probably think they have a lot of exorcizing to do.

Answers NOT in Genesis.

2011-02-22T19:16:00.000-08:00

(Clicking on the title of this blog will direct you to E.O. Wilson's magnificent brainchild, the Encyclopedia of Life. There you can see in a clear way, the begining of Noah's problem)

The story of Noah's Ark isn't very charming. But I would be willing to bet that it has been responsible for more than a few rejections of biblical literalism, because even a cursory knowledge of the Earth's biota leads one to the following conclusion. No matter how one interprets the length of a cubit, unless that estimate describes a sphere with an equatorial circumference of 40,075.16 km there would probably not be enough space. It gets worse though when you add all the extant species with all the extinct ones. And this we must do because most biblical literalists think that humans have existed for as long as the earth has. This means that , as the comedian Lewis Black memorably said many fundamentalist Christians believe that “the Flintstones was a documentary.” According to this view all of life as revealed by human observation (and numberless species that we have missed) have all existed together and was created some six to seven thousand years ago. This is a fairly sweeping dismissal of geology and the sweep of natural history that it has revealed.

Imagine this timeline with no lines and calibrate the starting date at 7000-10,000 years ago. That is what the history of the world looks like to Young Earth Creationist (YEC). No epochs or periods, no eons, or eras at least not as a modern geologist understands them.¹ⁱ

The geology needn’t concern us at the moment as we tackle the immediate problems faced by Noah and his paltry crew of eight. What we need is perspective. How big was the Ark? According to the biblical account the Ark would have been about 450 ft in length, approximately 75 wide, and about 45 ft high. Assuming a simple rectangular box (exactly the kind of thing it couldn’t have been) that gives a volume 1.519 x 10⁶ ft cu. The ship was to be built of something called gopher wood. No one has any real idea what this might be. It could be a mis-translation, odd common name for a common tree, or timber after processing there is no consensus among the literalists. There is also no consensus among the literalists about what the boat would look like. It was to have rooms, apparently a single door and a single opening for light. No doubt translations vary on the details. It was to have rooms. Beyond that….well your guess is as good as mine.ⁱⁱ

But now that we have somewhat established the design space of the Ark we can move on to the second major hurdle he would have to face, namely the biota.

Biodiversity defeats Noah, his Ark and God.

To get an idea of the challenge that faced Noah and his tiny crew we must begin in Genesis where God gives instructions to Noah, though perhaps not very clear ones.

Genesis 6:19 You are to bring into the ark two of all living creatures, male and female, to keep them alive with you. ²⁰ Two of every kind of bird, two of every kind of animal and of every kind of creature that moves along the ground will come to you to be kept alive. ²¹You are to take every kind of food that is to be eaten and store it away as food for you and for them.”

Almost straight forward, but then God adds to the problems in the next chapter.

Genesis 7:2 Take with you seven of every kind of clean animal[ NOTE: According to the New International Version of the bible this seven means seven pairs] , a male and its mate, and two of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate, ³and also seven of every kind of bird, male and female, to keep their various kinds alive throughout the earth.

Emphasis added

Noah presumably would have had little trouble identifying clean verses unclean beasts but there appears to be a small discrepancy between Genesis 7 and 6 concerning exactly how many animals he is supposed to have brought on his trip. Is it a pair of birds, clean animals (are birds clean I wonder?) or seven pairs? The difference will not be trivial. There are for instance 9000-10,000 species of extant birds. And Noah must take every kind of food too for himself and for the creatures in his care. Noah might have thought to suggest that God enact a more species specific smiting and save both he and God a lot of odd trouble.

What is a Kind or Why don’t Creationists have a consistent taxonomy?

A problem faced whenever talking to YEC is the fact that what represents a kind consistently waffles as you pin them down. The field of endeavor that is fundamentalist field of pseudo-intellectual endeavor responsible for all this waffling is called Barminology. According Carl Drews (2010), a biblical kind is any of an informal classification of animals and plants but that the term kind most likely refers to something between the genus and species level. The Northwest Creation Network suggests, rather baselessly that kind refers to Family level classification. The fundamentalist pseudo-scientific field of endeavor that is responsible for all this waffling at the apex of bad science and bad philosophy is called Baraminology. The word is derived from two Hebrew words, bara, created, and miyn, kind (Cracraft 1984, Drews 2010).

It would be hard to find a more confused effort than baraminology, just as it would be hard to find a more confused group of researchers than baraminologists. According to the Duane Gish, one of the early, and vocal YEC leaders, a kind can equate to a species, or a it can sometimes equate to the level of the genus. How a kind lines up with modern biological systematics depends on whether a plant or animal (it is always plants or animals with the people no thought given to the microbes) is “truly derived from (presumably by special creation) from a single stock (Gish, 1979).” Joel Cracraft (1983) has stated that YEC is really inconsistent on the whole matter of what constitutes a biblical kind. At times creationists claim that it is the capacity to produce viable offspring is that which constitutes a biblical kind. That would make biblical kind equivalent to the concept of the biological species. A biological species is any phenotypically similar group of interbreeding or potentially interbreeding individuals. Sometimes biblical kind is defined as ability to produce offspring and never mind about viability or reproductive isolating mechanisms. Amusingly, a single barminologist will sometimes contradict themselves by saying both things. Or worse yet they will say something mind numbingly indefensible. Gish (1979) said this of baramins:

We cannot always be sure, however, what constitutes a created kind. The division into kinds is easier the more divergence is observed….within the vertebrates, the fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals are all different basic kinds. …Within the mammalian class duckbilled platypus, opossums, bats, hedgehogs, rats, rabbits, dogs, cats, lemurs, monkeys, apes and men are easily assignable to different basic kinds. Among apes, the gibbons, orangutan, chimpanzee, and gorillas would each be included in a different basic kind. (Quoted from Cracraft)

Here, Gish has managed to confuse the issue even more by introducing a strange new construct, the basic kind and essentially says it can be anything he wants it to be. It can be a class, mammals for instance, or it can be something as specific as a hedgehog. Struggle for a moment, if you will, to imagine a more useless theoretical construct than "basic kind."

The discipline has not really advanced since the heady days of Duane Gish and his 1970s ilk. As evidenced by the recent papers published by the Baraminology Study Group in their journal Occasional Papers of the BSG they, like all YEC, are not really interested in an honest examination of nature, but rather on imposing their world view on it. Sanders (2010) has worked very hard to ignore modern biological systematics while appealing to human intuition to create a new system for organizing kinds (he examined five groups of plants) based on pre-cladisitic, pre-molecular authorities. His method did not alter the traditional groupings by much and hinges on a fairly arbitrary metric, and the baseless assertion that it is preferrable to evolutionary analysis. From his conclusion:

It is thought that the cognitum is biologically significant because God created organisms to be perceived by humans who were created to recognize and
sort easily by “gestalt.”

Whatever that reasoning maybe it certainly isn’t scientific (it suggests any grouping is simply the way it is because God arranged it that way and has nothing to do with evolutionary processes-ignore whatever trends you see folks). But that really should not surprise us, because all vocal claims to the contrary, YEC and its pretentious sister Intelligent Design (ID) are not scientific endeavors. All of these specific YEC organizations BSG, The Discovery Institute, and Answers in Genesis all have statements of faith that employees must adhere to and that guide their research (such that it is). They all already back an a priori conclusion and their work can only support that. That they incapable of entertaining evidence contrary to their position almost goes without saying. But more about that later (though if you are interested you can click on the links and see these statements of faith).

All this fundamentalist hand waving about kinds does little to reduce the actual number of animals Noah would have had to wrangle, and it also tends to flout a general quirk that appears to be universal to human psychology. The American paleontologist Stephen J. Gould memorably wrote about the phenomena in an essay titled “A quahog is a quahog.” In it he describes the definitions, the limits of the definition of a species, and notes that almost all humans recognize species whether they are of the Western scientific tradition or organize their classification along indigenous or intuitive lines. Gould probably wasn’t the first to notice, and he certainly won’t be the last, that indigenous peoples classifications of organisms match almost exactly modern biological species level classification. Jared Diamond and Ernst Mayr, experiencing the phenomena through their ornithological expeditions, have both written about their firsthand experience of this during their work with the indigenous peoples of New Guinea. The number of species identified by modern biology and the people of New Guinea differed by only one (owing to the certain techniques of biological specialists). Humans are natural species identifiers and the vast literature on the subject of ethno-biology demonstrates this fact again and again (much to the consternation of many a post-modernist and creationist alike). Cultures from all over the world recognize the same criteria, and base their categories on things like ability to breed, and morphology. Everyone's folk biology is similar (Pinker, 2007), thus it is likely that people who told the stories of Noah certainly recognized the same "kinds" as we do today.

So at root the ambiguity in which the creationist deals is likely a subterfuge (either conscious or unconscious). The subterfuge represents an unwillingness to deal with the large number of species/kinds Noah would have certainly recognized. Even the phrasing in the relevant passage s doesn’t admit of all the vagueness creationists present, which suggests (by the emphasis on bring male and females) something very like the biological species concept. Noah then was faced with one more impossible task, wrangling at least more than a million species, perhaps as many as 50 onto a single boat. The good news for him, apparently is that many of these animals would come to him.

While reading that last paragraph many of you probably thought of animals that would have posed serious problems for Noah. Koala
(Phascolarctos cinereus) always spring to my mind. They have a very restrictive diet (the bulk of their calories come from eucalyptus leaves) are nocturnal and largely sedentary. I am unsure how hardy this species is, but their diet of course would have been impossible for Noah to imitate, the biology of the animals themselves precludes them traveling to him as well as the intervening geography? Polar Bear, Ursus maritimus is at least an equal zoo keeping problem, though they are at least used to surviving long periods without food. Polar bear diets are also hyper carnivore diets so Noah had better have had some meat. Housing an animal that can easily over heat even in cold temperatures on an overcrowded ship seems an unlikely feat without serious climate control technology. In these two examples Noah faces some pretty dramatic problems posed by two specialist species. The problem is imitating the diet and climate of ecological specialists. I bet you just thought of some more troubling species for Noah and his hapless crew. How about American Bison, Bison bison? Or Capybara Hydrochaeris hydrochaeris?

Seismosaurus, African Elephant, and the American Mammoth: A damning thought experiment.

This is going to seem ridiculous but creationists think all these animals co-existed (still co-exist in fact) so this is entirely necessary. I have no idea whether or not these creatures would be considered clean or unclean by Noah, but in single pairs or seven pairs it is all going to get a bit funny.

TheAfrican Elephant, Loxodonta Africana is an enormous animal. Weighing five to six tons (10,000-12,000 lbs) and standing three to four meters at the shoulder (males average around 3.75 m and females 3 m), an African elephant takes up a great deal of room (and two of them take up twice as much space as that). It has been estimated that an African elephant consumes about 661.38 lbs of food a day in the wild and 100-300 l of water. You have to see where this is going right? Sure you do, but I’ve done the math for you. Two elephants would require about 52,910.4 lbs (~26.5 tons) of food for their trip. A lot of this food will, of course, have to be off-loaded over the course of their time at sea as it will present itself at the other end. To give Noah a break let’s assume that he could have gotten by with 200 liters of water per elephant, that would mean he still had to bring 16,000 liters of water on board for the African Elephants alone. The amount of space required for the food and water to sustain these animals is several times that of holding the animals themselves. This is the case even if we assume some great packing efficiency of the elephant foodstuffs (think hay bales). Tangentially, but more interestingly, this is the reason Elephants, who travel in herds, migrate around Africa. Their ecological foot print is large and they quickly exhaust local resources and have to move on to greener pastures.

The Columbian Mammoth, Mammuthus columbi, another kind of elephant wandered the Ice Age wilds of North America and remains one of the most evocative of the late Cenozoic megafauna. It was quite a bit more robust than its African cousins, trending larger and heavier, and carrying much more massive tusks. While these animals trended larger than their African cousins, lets conservatively assume they could have gotten by for the trip on the same amount of food. That means we are adding another ~26.5 tons of food to the ship’s cargo hold for the forty day/forty night trip.

(Picture taken from planetdinosaur.com.)

Diplodocus hallorum, (also referred to as Seismosaurus) is a large species of long-necked sauropod dinosaur, that roamed the Earth in the Jurassic period would have posed an even bigger problem for Noah. D. hallorum, one of the largest of what are referred to as the diplocine sauropods, likely tipped the scales at around forty tons. Forty. Tons.. I’ve come up with a conservative estimate for what their dietary demands might be for such a trip. A pair of D. hallorum would require about 169 tons of food to see them through the cruise. Seven pairs of D. hallorum, if for some reason Noah held them to be clean beasts, would require 1,185.1 tons of food. And let’s keep in mind that D. hallorum wasn’t the largest of the sauropod dinosaurs with Noah would have to find room for on his boat. Looking at the image below (clicking on it will enlarge it)will help you to understand that for all of its size, D. hallorum wasn’t even the biggest sauropod Noah would have had to deal with. Hint, Diplodocus isn't the red dinosaur.
(image taken from Wikipedia)

To recap, and to be conservative, just three species, an African elephant, a new world Mammoth, and a Jurassic sauropod, will not only occupy space with their rather large bodies, but they will also take up enough space for, at the very least, 196 tons of food. Noah probably would have had all the water he needed given the alleged precipitation he was receiving. However that 196 tons only gets Noah and his intrepid explorers through the only forty days (and only for three pairs of gigantic megafauna). Multiply the problem by several million to account for all the other animals and you get a sense the ridiculous problem the Biblical literalists have created.

If the flood happened, the deluge described would have resulted in an ecological collapse worse than any extinction event that preceded it. This means that the amount of time Noah would have to care for the animals would extend well beyond the cruise, and into years of care, if not actually becoming a project of generations. So the question of course becomes this. How much food can the boat carry in addition to space it must necessarily dedicate to the animals it has to house? I don’t think I am pushing my luck when I suggest that the answer is obvious, and damning for any literal interpretation of the Flood story. There is simply no way that Noah could have carried enough food to sustain the animals for decades to centuries.

Worse still for creationists is the fact many facets of their “hypothesis” are utterly and easily tractable. A massive collapse of ecosystems four to ten thousand years ago? Easy. Massive dispersal of species from a single point four to ten thousand years ago? Easily tractable, and amenable to scientific analysis. Where is the universal genetic bottlenecking that we should see demonstrating extreme population crashes four to ten thousand years ago? This is a subject to which we will return in later installments.

Literature cited:
Cracraft, Joel. 1984. Godfrey, L.R. Ed. Scientists Confront Creationism: Systematics, Comparative Biology and Creationism. W. W. Norton, New York.

Diamond, J. 1992. The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal. Harper Perennial, New York, New York.

Diamond J. 1997. Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. Norton, New York, New York.

Drews, Carl. 23 February 2010. Biblical Kinds. http://www.theistic-evolution.com/kind.html

Lectures in Biology, 2007. Geological Timetable…Pre-cambrian Era. http://biology-g10p.blogspot.com/2007/01/geologic-timetable.html

Pinker, S. 2002. The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. Viking, New York, New York.

Sanders, Roger W. 2010. A Quick Method for Developing a Cognitum
System Exemplified Using Flowering Plants. Occasional Papers of the BSG. 16:1-63

Wikipedia. 3 December 2010. Young Earth Creationism. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Earth_creationism#cite_note-0

Endnotes
1 YEC isn’t precise where estimates of the age of the Earth, or the Cosmos are concerned. Much hinges on how begats are tallied and added, or on whether one accepts the Jewish date for Creation (set at 3670 BC), or, perhaps more absurdly, by adding the ages of some of the long lived patriarchs found in the Bible, and combining those calculations with those of the begats. It is all obscure and none of it is scientific. But the ages range from the mid-5,000 BCs to 10,000 BC. The most common figures I have heard give an average age of about 7,000 years. What is never adduced in support of these figures are facts from nature.

2Establishing a reasonable estimate of the size of the Ark isn’t too tricky. It was said to be 300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide, and 30 cubits tall. A cubit is apparently 45.7 cm (about 18 in). From there is all a matter of lwh to determine the volume. At first glance this gives an enormous amount of room. Some creationists will, doubtless marvel at the amount of volume such measurements provide. It shouldn’t because the Ark wasn’t a box, but a ship. If you are a creationist, contain your enthusiasm because I am about to dowse it. Most of this space would have been consumed by superstructure. Struts, cross support, rope, rooms, decks (my copy of the Bible suggests there were three decks), all would have very quickly used up vast amounts of this internal space. However well before that, we must consider that the largest wooden ships ever built were 350 ft long, were manned by large crews, needed massive amounts of metal work to support the wood, and leaked. These ships needed to be pumped constantly to keep them afloat. The Ark had only a crew of eight, and if we are to believe the literalists, millions of species for which they had to care in addition to all the ship maintenance to perform. Of course there is the engineering problem of eight people building such ship to contend with even before we have starting pumping out the water.

3Calculating Mammoth and Diplodocus food needs.
I used the modern elephant’s dietary needs and extrapolated from there. I am assuming that the modern picture of the dinosaurs (that they were “warm-blooded” animals) is the correct one. I conservatively assumed they would have similar, just larger daily food intake requirements. A diplodocus (Seismosaur) is about 640 % larger than an elephant, so I simply increased their requirements by that amount. To say that is a simplified extrapolation would correct. Simple or not, I think it is a fair and conservative one. I used the same technique to derive an estimate for the mammoths.

Countdown To Zero

2011-01-23T18:07:00.000-08:00

I just watched this movie and I think you probably should too. The number of times in which the world has very nearly come to see, in real time, with real consequences the horrible effects by accident and mis-communication will probably shock you as much as it did me. John F. Kennedy knew what he was talking about years ago.

Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident or miscalculation or madness.

It is maybe more than past time to get rid of the sword.

As usual, clicking on the title will take you somewhere. In this case, it takes you to the website of Countdown to Zero where you can find further information on the documentary, and the movement to zero. The film is available to stream at Netflix, and also via their usual mail in method. Seriously go check it out.

UFC 125 Predictions

2011-01-01T15:47:00.000-08:00

Alright, this will be quick, and only dealing with the fights I am interested in watching, and thus about fighters I of which I have some knowledge.

Clay Guida v Takanori Gomi
Gomi by knockout, probably early. Clay Guida has strong wrestling but not a lot else. His stand up is, at this level, pretty middling, and against strong strikers he tends to take a lot of punishment, cuts up and swells. Gomi is easily the most devastating striker Guida has faced. Gomi isn't a bad grappler either. Guida's major strength is that he can dominate positionally and while he doesn't do a whole lot with that positional dominance it takes him places on judge's score cards. He also stays busy with his amatuerish striking. That is also a major scorer in the UFC. Tonight though his tendency to eat punches and kicks will probably earn him a loss from the crisper and heavier hands of Gomi.

Nate Dias v Dong Hyun Kim
Probably the toughest fight to call. Both men come conditioned and ready to fight. Kim comes into the fight with an impressive record 13 wins, no losses, and only 1 draw. I'm going to go with Nate despite the fact he has had more losses than Kim. Nate's edge, I think, is that his level of competition has been slightly higher in caliber. Nate wins, likely by split decision though a submission early isn't out of the question. If it makes it out of round one, expect an exciting fight.

Brandon Vera v Thiago Silva
If this was to be based on which fighter looked meaner, this fight would be all Silva. Even without the mean face, this fight will probably still have to go to Silva. Silva seems to have heavier hands, a decent ground and pound, and he seems to be the more aggressive fighter. Even moving forward uneffectively seems to score points in the UFC and that could potentially hurt the counter-fighter Brandon Vera. Both men are coming off losses (Vera's were at the hands of Randy Couture and Jon Jones; Silva via Machida) that could hurt their marketablity in the eyes of Dana White, so both of them will likely come in willing to take chances. I think this favors the heavier striking of Thiago Silva. My pick is Silva early.

Chris Leben v Brian Stann
Emotionally I am behind the brawler with oodles of heart that is Chris Leben. For me this is doubly so for an unfair and utterly shallow reason that has nothing to do with the skills of the particulars. Brian Stann looks like every dumb baseball player I have ever known. That said I am sure Stann is probably a nice guy, fun to train with and all that, but I am totally and utterly rooting against him (or you Brian if you are reading this- but if you are reading this and you ever find yourself in Maine, I will totally buy you a beer for the very shallow, and dickish anti-you stance I am taking here). However Leben has a lot of technical problems that concern me, not the least of which is getting off his game plan when he gets frustrated.

A streak of wins is a streak of wins though and Leben certainly has that psychological momentum in his favor (3 major wins at the big show). He has a good corner and his head is on straight. And Leben has a lot of experience, much more so than tonight's opponent.

One worry I have with a fighter like Leben is this. A brawler like Leben necessarily takes a lot of punishment to the head. Such fighters take this punishment on the night of the fight, and they take it in training. Brain trauma like that suffered by fighters and football players is cumulative thus the ease with which a fighter gets knocked out (by such insults to the brain as kicks, punches, knees and elbows) is related to the amount of punishment (blunt force trauma to their tender brain) they have accumulated over a career. The short story? Once you get knocked out, it gets progressively easier to get knocked out. Kind of sucky for fighters like Leben but those are the untidy facts. This is the reason fighters seem to lose their chins over time. Where is Leben on this trajectory? Assuming he still has a chin (and this may be reasonable to assume) he probably has this fight by attrition. Stann doesn't have alot of knockouts, or experience and hasn't faced the caliber of opponents Leben has faced. Thus, Leben by decision.
This is the other potential fight of the night that I see on the card.

Frankie Edgar v Gray Maynard
Edgar. He beat BJ Penn twice convincingly. What more do I need to say?

A bit.

Maynard has beaten Edgar before. So that makes this fight interesting. Has Edgar's skill elevated? Or did he have a style that simply proved to be the perfect answer to BJ Penn? Styles make fights and, as Marc Denny has said, some structures (fighting stances, idioms of movement) prove to be too much of a puzzle for other structures. If that doesn't make sense to you think of it this way. George Foreman manhandled Smokin' Joe Frazier. Joe Frazier gave Muhammed Ali 43 of the most competitive and brutal rounds of Ali's career. Ali beat George Foreman in 8 rounds and it took Foreman nearly a quarter of a century to recover his fighting spirit (which he did by the way and in splendid sports movie fashion to boot).

So, to repeat, styles make fights. Its possible that Edgar is simply a benificiary of this quirk of the fight game and he isn't as good as many of us currently think he is. Maynard will come in with confidence after all he has beaten Edgar before. However Edgar will also be looking to avenge a loss, have the confidence in his skill only wins over guys like BJ Penn can provide, and be motivated to keep the championship belt. I will stick to my prediction.
Edgar for the win, probably by decision.

Sam Harris's New Year's Resolution for the Rich

2010-12-30T15:23:00.000-08:00

Because I think Sam has crafted a thoughtful addition to the discussion of national responsiblity and its intersection with personal wealth (in the form of an article at the too often attrocious Huffington Post), and duty I am reposting it in its entirety here. Click on the title to see the article at Huffpo.

While the United States has suffered the worst recession in living memory, I find that I have very few financial concerns. Many of my friends are in the same position: Most of us attended private schools and good universities, and we will be able to provide these same opportunities to our own children. No one in my immediate circle has a family member serving in Afghanistan or Iraq. In fact, in the aftermath of September 11th, 2001, the only sacrifice we were asked to make for our beloved country was to go shopping. Nearly a decade has passed, with our nation's influence and infrastructure crumbling by the hour, and yet those of us who have been so fortunate as to actually live the American dream--rather than merely dream it--have been spared every inconvenience. Now we are told that we will soon receive a large tax cut for all our troubles. What is the word for the feeling this provokes in me? Imagine being safely seated in lifeboat, while countless others drown, only to learn that another lifeboat has been secured to take your luggage to shore...

Most Americans believe that a person should enjoy the full fruits of his or her labors, however abundant. In this light, taxation tends to be seen as an intrinsic evil. It is worth noting, however, that throughout the 1950's--a decade for which American conservatives pretend to feel a harrowing sense of nostalgia--the marginal tax rate for the wealthy was over 90 percent. In fact, prior to the 1980's it never dipped below 70 percent. Since 1982, however, it has come down by half. In the meantime, the average net worth of the richest 1 percent of Americans has doubled (to $18.5 million), while that of the poorest 40 percent has fallen by 63 percent (to $2,200). Thirty years ago, top U.S. executives made about 50 times the salary of their average employees. In 2007, the average worker would have had to toil for 1,100 years to earn what his CEO brought home between Christmas in Aspen and Christmas on St. Barthes.

We now live in a country in which the bottom 40 percent (120 million people) owns just 0.3 percent of the wealth. Data of this kind make one feel that one is participating in a vast psychological experiment: Just how much inequality can free people endure? Have you seen Ralph Lauren's car collection? Yes, it is beautiful. It also cost hundreds of millions of dollars. "So what?" many people will say. "It's his money. He earned it. He should be able to do whatever he wants with it." In conservative circles, expressing any doubt on this point has long been synonymous with Marxism.

And yet over one million American children are now homeless. People on Medicare are being denied life-saving organ transplants that were routinely covered before the recession. Over one quarter of our nation's bridges are structurally deficient. When might be a convenient time to ask the richest Americans to help solve problems of this kind? How about now?

It is easy to understand why even the most generous person might be averse to paying taxes: Our legislative process has been hostage to short-term political interests and other perverse incentives for as long as anyone can remember. Consequently, our government wastes an extraordinary amount of money. It also seems uncontroversial to say that whatever can be best accomplished in the private sector should be. Our tax code must also be reformed--and it might even be true that the income tax should be lowered on everyone, provided we find a better source of revenue to pay our bills. But I can't imagine that anyone seriously believes that the current level of wealth inequality in the United States is good and worth maintaining, or that our government's first priority should be to spare a privileged person like myself the slightest hardship as this once great nation falls into ruin.

And the ruination of the United States really does seem possible. It has been widely reported, for instance, that students in Shanghai far surpass our own in science, reading, and math. In fact, when compared to other countries, American students are now disconcertingly average (slightly below in math), where the average includes utopias like Kyrgyzstan, Azerbaijan, Albania, Kazakhstan, and Indonesia. President Obama was right to recognize this as a "Sputnik moment." But it is worse than that. This story was immediately followed by a report about giddy Creationists in the state of Kentucky being offered $40 million in tax subsidies to produce a full-scale model of Noah's ark. More horrible still, this ludicrous use of public money is probably a wise investment, given that such a monument to scientific ignorance will be guaranteed to attract an ovine influx of Christian tourists from neighboring states. Seeing facts of this kind, juxtaposed without irony or remedy at this dire moment in history, it is hard not to feel that one is witnessing America's irreversible decline. Needless to say, most Americans have no choice but to send their children to terrible schools--where they will learn the lesser part of nothing and emerge already beggared by a national debt now on course to reach $20 trillion. And yet Republicans in every state can successfully campaign on a promise to spend less on luxuries like education, while delivering tax cuts to people who, if asked to guess their own net worth, could not come within $10 million of the correct figure if their lives depended on it.

American opposition to the "redistribution of wealth" has achieved the luster of a religious creed. And, as with all religions, one finds the faithful witlessly espousing doctrines that harm almost everyone, including their own children. For instance, while most Americans have no chance of earning or inheriting significant wealth, 68 percent want the estate tax eliminated (and 31 percent consider it to be the "worst" and "least fair" tax levied by the federal government). Most believe that limiting this tax, which affects only 0.2 percent of the population, should be the top priority of the current Congress.

The truth, however, is that everyone must favor the "redistribution of wealth" at some point. This relates directly to the issue of education: as the necessity of doing boring and dangerous work disappears--whether because we have built better machines and infrastructure, or shipped our least desirable jobs overseas--people need to be better educated so that they can apply themselves to more interesting work. Who will pay for this? There is only one group of people who can pay for anything at this point: the wealthy.

To make matters more difficult, Americans have made a religious fetish of something called "self-reliance." Most seem to think that while a person may not be responsible for the opportunities he gets in life, each is entirely responsible for what he makes of these opportunities. This is, without question, a false view of the human condition. Consider the biography of any "self-made" American, from Benjamin Franklin on down, and you will find that his success was entirely dependent on background conditions that he did not make, and of which he was a mere beneficiary. There is not a person on earth who chose his genome, or the country of his birth, or the political and economic conditions that prevailed at moments crucial to his progress. Consequently, no one is responsible for his intelligence, range of talents, or ability to do productive work. If you have struggled to make the most of what Nature gave you, you must still admit that Nature also gave you the ability and inclination to struggle. How much credit do I deserve for not having Down syndrome or any other disorder that would make my current work impossible? None whatsoever. And yet devotees of self-reliance rail against those who would receive entitlements of various sorts--health care, education, etc.--while feeling unselfconsciously entitled to their relative good fortune. Yes, we must encourage people to work to the best of their abilities and discourage free riders wherever we can--but it seems only decent at this moment to admit how much luck is required to succeed at anything in this life. Those who have been especially lucky--the smart, well-connected, and rich--should count their blessings, and then share some of these blessings with the rest of society.

The wealthiest Americans often live as though they and their children had nothing to gain from investments in education, infrastructure, clean-energy, and scientific research. For instance, the billionaire Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, recently helped kill a proposition that would have created an income tax for the richest 1 percent in Washington (one of seven states that has no personal income tax). All of these funds would have gone to improve his state's failing schools. What kind of society does Ballmer want to live in--one that is teeming with poor, uneducated people? Who does he expect to buy his products? Where will he find his next batch of software engineers? Perhaps Ballmer is simply worried that the government will spend his money badly--after all, we currently spend more than almost every other country on education, with abysmal results. Well, then he should say so--and rather than devote hundreds of thousands of dollars to stoking anti-tax paranoia in his state, he should direct some of his vast wealth toward improving education, like his colleague Bill Gates has begun to do.

There are, in fact, some signs that a new age of heroic philanthropy might be dawning. For instance, the two wealthiest men in America, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, recently invited their fellow billionaires to pledge the majority of their wealth to the public good. This is a wonderfully sane and long overdue initiative about which it is unforgivable to be even slightly cynical. But it is not sufficient. Most of this money will stay parked in trusts and endowments for decades, and much of it will go toward projects that are less than crucial to the future of our society. It seems to me, however, that Gates and Buffett could easily expand and target this effort: asking those who have pledged, along with the rest of the wealthiest Americans, to immediately donate a percentage of their net worth to a larger fund. This group of benefactors would include not only the super-rich, but people of far more modest means. I do not have 1/1000 the wealth of Steve Ballmer, but I certainly count myself among the people who should be asked to sacrifice for the future of this country. The combined wealth of the men and women on the Forbes 400 list is $1.37 trillion. By some estimates, there are at least another 1,500 billionaires in the United States. Something tells me that anyone with a billion dollars could safely part with 25 percent of his or her wealth--without being forced to sell any boats, planes, vacation homes, or art. As of 2009, there were 980,000 families with a net worth exceeding $5 million (not including their primary residence). Would a one-time donation of 5 percent really be too much to ask to rescue our society from the maw of history?

Some readers will point out that I am free to donate to the treasury even now. But such solitary sacrifice would be utterly ineffectual, and I am no more eager than anyone else is to fill the pork barrels of corrupt politicians. However, if Gates and Buffett created a mechanism that bypassed the current dysfunction of government, earmarking the money for unambiguously worthy projects, I suspect that there are millions of people like myself who would not hesitate to invest in the future of America.

Imagine that Gates and Buffett raised a trillion dollars this way: what should we spend it on? The first thing to acknowledge is that almost any use of this money would be better than just letting it sit. Mindlessly repairing every bridge, tunnel, runway, harbor, reservoir, and recreation area in the United States would be an improvement over what are currently doing. However, here are the two areas of investment that strike me as most promising:

Education: It is difficult to think of anything more important than providing the best education possible for our children. They will develop the next technologies, medical cures, and global industries, while mitigating their unintended effects, or they will fail to do these things and consign us all to oblivion. The future of this country will be entirely shaped by boys and girls who are just now learning to think. What are we teaching them? Are we equipping them to create a world worth living in? It doesn't seem so. Our public school system is an international disgrace. Even the most advantaged children in the United States do not learn as much as children in other countries do. Yes, the inefficiencies in our current system could be remedied, and must be, and these savings can then be put to good use--but there is no question that a true breakthrough in education will require an immense investment of further resources. Here's an expensive place to start: make college free for anyone who can't afford it.

Clean Energy: As Thomas Friedman and many others have pointed out, our dependence on nonrenewable sources of energy is not only bad for our economy and the environment, it is obliges us to subsidize both sides of the clash of civilizations. Much of the money we spend on oil is used to export the lunatic ideology of conservative Islam--building mosques and madrassas by the tens of thousands, recruiting jihadists, and funding terrorist atrocities. We should have devoted ourselves to a clean-energy Manhattan Project thirty years ago. Success on this front would still yield enormous wealth in this country, while simultaneously bankrupting the Middle Eastern states that only pretend to be our allies. Our failure to rise to this challenge already counts as one of the greatest instances of masochistic stupidity in human history. Why prolong it?

I am aware that a proposal of this kind is bound to seem quixotic. But what's to stop the wealthiest Americans from sponsoring a 21st Century Renaissance? What politician would object to our immediately spending a trillion dollars on improvements in education and energy security? Perhaps there are even better targets for this money. Let Gates and Buffett convene a team of brilliant people to lay out the priorities. But again, we should remember that they could scarcely fail to improve our situation. Simply repaving our roads, the dilapidation of which causes $54 billion in damage to our cars every year, would be better than doing nothing.

My Letter to the Phoenix Arizona Archdiocese

2010-12-27T20:54:00.000-08:00

(Clicking on the title of this blog will take you to Bishop Olmsted's rather disgusting letter to the president of Catholic Healthcare West.)

The Phoenix Archdiocese is taking punitive action against a "Catholic" hostpital for electing to save a the life of a mother and spare several children and her husband a great deal of emotional devastation. For a fairly comprehensive page full of links to commentary and news sources on the whole Catholic hospital debacle Richard Dawkins Foundation for Science and Reason is a good place to begin. Ophelia Benson reviews the Olmsted's letter to Catholic Healthcare West on her blog Butterflies and Wheels. Medical News Today, reviews details of the case in the most succint way possible I think. And NPR can introduce you to the nun who was excommunicated for saving a life.

One letter certainly has no chance to move such cloistered out of touch people to review their own stances critically. So I hope many of you reading will take the time to contact the bishop in your own way. Here is how you can connect him with your own observations, your wicked wit and your general contempt for his desire to maximize human misery in his Archdiocese. Below all that contact information you will find my letter to Bishop Olmsted.

By phone and fax:
602-257-0030 (voice)
602-354-2427 (FAX)

email:
Contact-Us@diocesephoenix.org

snail-mail:
Diocese of Phoenix
400 East Monroe Street
Phoenix, Arizona 85004-2336

To: Mr. Thomas Olmstead
I find your decision to castigate, so severely, St. Joseph’s Hospital has rather confirmed my suspicions that the leadership of the Catholic Church is callous in the face of real pain and tragedy. I am probably not alone in coming to this conclusion. On the dubious proposition of an afterlife you would condemn children to be motherless and a husband to be without a wife. The stance you take, that which you and the Roman Catholic Church would call moral, strikes no one possessing independent faculties as moral. It is at once inconsistent, and silly. A surgical process that saves the life of a mother, but by incidental action kills a fetus is okay, yet an in intentional termination of the pregnancy (and one for which there was no hope in the actual case) for the same ends is not? That this makes little sense is obvious to everyone who doesn’t wear a Roman collar. These policies can do little but lead to actual, real suffering in the here and now. Suffering and reality seem like they are pretty alien concepts in the world you inhabit, filled as it is with imaginary friends, and supernatural powers. But this insensitivity and arrogance really is par for the course for an organization with so odious a history of disregard for actual, living humans.
Your letter to the president of Catholic Healthcare West betrays this arrogance in stunning and unapologetic fashion while at the same time sidestepping your commitment to killing both mother and child, and laying emotional waste to surviving family members in such unfortunate situations as the one that prompted this controversy. It remains a bizarre fact of your organization that its leadership has no real family life of which to speak. You have no healthy contact with anything sexual, no kids, or wives of your own that they can see so negatively affected by such callous policies. So the effects of such things are really unexamined by you. They will never hurt a priest the way they would have that woman’s husband and that woman’s surviving children. The likelihood that Catholic leadership could be a credible authority on family, love, healthcare or the ethics surrounding such things is preposterously laughable, and that makes your particular (not terribly unique) arrogance on these matters even more contemptible.
Consider also that not all of the patients who find themselves under the care of St. Joseph’s are there of their own free will, and are probably not all Catholic and may not agree with the bioethical stances laid out by your medieval institution. Consider the case of some woman rushed into the ER of St. Joseph’s, dying perhaps and pregnant. Is it right for her, to be denied the best treatment available on the dubious authority of a bunch of family-less, virgins? Maybe our hypothetical patient is an atheist, or a Catholic who disagrees with you, or she is a Jew who finds herself in your hospital by an unlucky chance. Heaping suffering on people is not healthcare. Heaping suffering on people though is something at which the Roman Catholic Church seems to excel. Whether it is prevaricating on condom use in Africa, the massive deceit concerning child rape by priests, the expenditure of Church capital to oppose gay/lesbian/bi/transgender rights, or your confused, and I must repeat, callous approaches to bioethics your Church acts too often in such a way as to increase suffering in the real world. I am very glad to have left my Catholicism in my past, discarded for the petty, uninformed mythology masquerading for wisdom that it was and is.
Your removal of the imprimatur the Phoenix Archdiocese may well be a very good thing for the hospital. I can well imagine that this controversy served to discourage many promising and talented doctors from pursuing careers and residencies at St Joseph’s.

Very sincerely,
Max Driffill II

Answers Not In Genesis: Biodiversity Dooms the Cruise at the Outset.

2010-12-07T21:16:00.000-08:00

(Clicking on the title of this blog will direct you to E.O. Wilson's magnificent, brainchild, the Encyclopedia of Life. There you can see in a clear way, the begining of Noah's problem)

The story of Noah's Ark isn't very charming. But I would be willing to bet that it has been responsible for more than a few rejections of biblical literalism, because even a cursory knowledge of the Earth's biota leads one to the following conclusion. No matter how one interprets the length of a cubit, unless that estimate describes a sphere with an equatorial circumference of 40,075.16 km there would probably not be enough space. It gets worse though when you add all the extant species with all the extinct ones. And this we must do because most biblical literalists think that humans have existed for as long as the earth has. This means that , as the comedian Lewis Black memorably said many fundamentalist Christians believe that “the Flintstones was a documentary.” According to this view all of life as revealed by human observation (and numberless species that we have missed) have all existed together and was created some six to seven thousand years ago. This is a fairly sweeping dismissal of geology and the sweep of natural history that it has revealed.

Imagine this timeline with no lines and calibrate the starting date at 7000-10,000 years ago. That is what the history of the world looks like to Young Earth Creationist (YEC). No epochs or periods, no eons, or eras at least not as a modern geologist understands them.¹ⁱ

The geology needn’t concern us at the moment as we tackle the immediate problems faced by Noah and his paltry crew of eight. What we need is perspective. How big was the Ark? According to the biblical account the Ark would have been about 450 ft in length, approximately 75 wide, and about 45 ft high. Assuming a simple rectangular box (exactly the kind of thing it couldn’t have been) that gives a volume 1.519 x 10⁶ ft cu. The ship was to be built of something called gopher wood. No one has any real idea what this might be. It could be a mis-translation, odd common name for a common tree, or timber after processing there is no consensus among the literalists. There is also no consensus among the literalists about what the boat would look like. It was to have rooms, apparently a single door and a single opening for light. No doubt translations vary on the details. It was to have rooms. Beyond that….well your guess is as good as mine.ⁱⁱ

But now that we have somewhat established the design space of the Ark we can move on to the second major hurdle he would have to face, namely the biota.

Biodiversity defeats Noah, his Ark and God.

To get an idea of the challenge that faced Noah and his tiny crew we must begin in Genesis where God gives instructions to Noah, though perhaps not very clear ones.

Genesis 6:19 You are to bring into the ark two of all living creatures, male and female, to keep them alive with you. ²⁰ Two of every kind of bird, two of every kind of animal and of every kind of creature that moves along the ground will come to you to be kept alive. ²¹You are to take every kind of food that is to be eaten and store it away as food for you and for them.”

Almost straight forward, but then God adds to the problems in the next chapter.

Genesis 7:2 Take with you seven of every kind of clean animal[ NOTE: According to the New International Version of the bible this seven means seven pairs] , a male and its mate, and two of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate, ³and also seven of every kind of bird, male and female, to keep their various kinds alive throughout the earth.

We cannot always be sure, however, what constitutes a created kind. The division into kinds is easier the more divergence is observed….within the vertebrates, the fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals are all different basic kinds. …Within the mammalian class duckbilled platypus, opossums, bats, hedgehogs, rats, rabbits, dogs, cats, lemurs, monkeys, apes and men are easily assignable to different basic kinds. Among apes, the gibbons, orangutan, chimpanzee, and gorillas would each be included in a different basic kind. (Quoted from Cracraft)

It is thought that the cognitum is biologically significant because God created organisms to be perceived by humans who were created to recognize and
sort easily by “gestalt.”

Answers NOT In Genesis: The Failures of Bibilical Literalism

2010-12-01T11:18:00.001-08:00

An intoduction to a new column at IDGOFB.

What is the Problem?

Many Christians, perhaps rightly, fear the implications of not only evolutionary biology but cosmology, physics and geology on a literal interpretation of their scriptures. Indeed any scientific stance at all makes it hard to accept the miracles alleged in any religious text without actively looking away from the insights provided by a scientific education. To state it plainly, any such acceptance requires that a person actively look away from reality as it is demonstrated by the evidence while imposing wishful thinking on what they see. This kind of interaction with the world must surely be a prescription for disaster on both large and small scales. One product of this has been a pointless fight that the religiously literal minded cannot hope to win on evidentiary grounds, that wastes resources and precious time for all the parties involved.

An example of this waste is demonstrated in Kentucky by an unscientific, no, anti-scientific group called Answers in Genesis (AIG). This group developed the blight on the human mind that is the Creation Museum. Run by Ken Ham, it is not a place where one will find good science of any kind, but one will find quite a literal reading of the bible on display in fairly strange defiance of evidence. However even if there were no evidence at all of the history of life on Earth (prehistoric, and historic) the things that are on offer at Creation Museum are flatly contradicted by known science. Further the folks at AIG build there premise on a false dichotomy. Evolution could be completely wrong and the Creationists would still have all their work ahead of them. Why not Hindu Cosmology? Or Shinto, or, well, pick one among thousands. Advancing a positive claim requires evidence.

(AIG) is partnering with an organization called Ark Encounter, to build a “life size” version of a mythological boat for an estimated 150 million dollars. The mythical boat to which I am referring is of course the Ark. It will be, and be surrounded by, an amusement park. One can review the whole sad, and gaudy insult to the intelligence, and intellectual rigor of Kentucky and the greater US here. Sadly the Governer of Kentucky, Steve Beshear (who is apparently as credulous as the rest of these people, or at least wants his constituents to draw such conclusions) is on board the great ship, and on some level thinks Ark Encounters and Answers in Genesis are performing a great service promoting bible stories as if they were established historical fact and constituted good science. However, building monuments to baseless mythology isn't science, or history. But this benighted governor is so enamored of the idea, he is willing to give something like 37 million dollars in tax incentives to AIG and Ark Encounter to see the project gets done in his great state. One cannot help wondering if this somehow violates the Seperation Clause in the US Constitution. That is an argument for another time.

The entirety of the enterprise turns on the following fear, I think, and on some level it seems to be shared by fundamental biblical literalists, and people of more liberal religious constitutions. Confusion and quagmire reign for many a religious mind when the absolute bedrock upon which they have built a world view is shaken. Fundamentalists seem to understand this quite well as the most powerful of their rhetorical maneuvers (and it isn't that powerful) is an appeal to negative consequences. They worry that accepting evolution will cause massive social upheaval because the bedrock of morality, the Bible according fundamentalists, will lose any claim of being absolutely true. It will all come down to competing interpretations with no evidence to distinguish which interpretation is correct or if any can even be considered correct. Assume for a second that this is the case. That is let us assume that in the West we actually do get our morality from the Bible and that ruining its claims of absolute truth will lead to societal ruin. Does that consequence have any bearing on the truth of the matter of religious claims? Specifically, are the truth claims of the Bible dependent on such outcomes whatever they are? Clearly the answer to this is no. It is in fact the same as saying, No, no my grandma can't have cancer, because if she did, if that were true, well..that would be bad. So it can't be true. Grandma either has cancer or she does not. The goodness or badness of the situation that follows doesn't affect what is.

If the believing academic theologian is more comfortable with the metaphysical troubles brought on by scientific progress is isn't by much. Bishop Harries, a rather splendid fellow, finds himself quite convinced that biologists are fine without being forced to carry the ideological lense of Genesis around, but even he puts himself ahead of the evidence on other supernatural matters. Even in the process of evolution he seems to want to suggest that God’s hand is in there guiding the processes. Both liberal religious person and fundamental religious person see their God, to a greater (sometimes much greater)or lesser (sometimes much lesser) extent as involved in the origin of life and certainly in the origin of Homo sapiens sapiens. Neither stance is a scientific one. That will seem perhaps too tangetial, but I suspect that to teach people credulousness, and to accept things without evidence, even a little bit, is to store up trouble.

The purpose of this series of blogs, which I will call, Answers Not In Genesis will be to break down the arguments of the folks at Ark Encounters and AIG (or indeed any biblical literalist), and assess their scientific merits. We will find them wanting. But hopefully the exercise will be fun anyway. The inspiration for this endeavor comes largely from Ken Ham’s twin projects The Creation Museum and Ark Encounter. Both projects will prove disastrous for American education (and perhaps they will prove problematic for British education too). My fear is that it will bolster public support in a small way (hopefully not a large way) for the continual efforts of creationists to get their mythology taught alongside real science in public school classrooms. AIG neither publishes or performs real scientific research. All they attempt to do is poke holes in existing science. And that they don’t do well in the slightest. They could do some real research as the Flood account alone provides (as we will see in the next installment of Answers NOT in Genesis) numerous easily tractable scientific predictions.

Such efforts by Ham and company will cause teachers to avoid teaching evolutionary biology in school, to get into pointless arguments with students and parents, as well as other faculty. Nor is it just biology that will suffer the effects of such efforts, but physics, cosmology, geology, and history are all immediate and obvious casualties in this fight. But art, and literature are also potential victims.

The degree to which these efforts are popular is also the degree to we are laughed at and mocked by our neighbors abroad. There is a very real danger that our future scientists, MDs, professional people will be judged by how prevalent accepting attitudes on Judeao/Christian Creationism are in the US. Our institutions of higher education will also be judged. These are not small concerns when one considers the number of foreign students that have historically come to the US for the quality, durability and, most importantly, transferability of US degrees.

My intention with this new feature is to help in the fight against anti-science and its ugly twin pseudo-science by providing a tool people can use. These will be easily linkable essays on the ideas of Fundamentalists and why they fail. Hopefully they will be useful to those of you who find yourselves in these arguments with creationists. And, I hope, they will be fun to read. Some of you will note that I am jumping the gun a little bit by skipping straight to the Ark and not dealing with the Biblical creation account. That is in honor of Ken Ham and his infamous Ark Encounter.

Soooo....
In the next installment Answers Not in Genesis....Biodiversity defeats the Ark.

Dog lovers can gloat...

2010-11-29T11:32:00.001-08:00

A new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, (S. Shultz, R. Dunbar, 2010) appears to demonstrate something that has long been suspected. The debate about the evolution of brain size, and thus intelligence and consciousness has been over the question of whether or not encephalization was universal (that is to say most lineages exhibited it) or whether the evolution of brain size affected groups differently and was correlated with certain biological and ecological factors. What Shultz and Dunbar demonstrat in their paper is that highly social species tend to have larger brains than solitary species.

This isn't entirely earth shattering of course. Because on one level it has been rather obvious that evolutionary encephalization (increases in brain size relative to body mass) hasn't been exactly uniform across the mammals. Predators have larger brains than their prey. Social species tend to have larger brains than non-social species. Omnivores tend to have larger brains than specialists. However researchers have, up to this point, drawn their conclusions by comparing extant species. What is unique about the current research is that it examines encephalization within evolutionary lineages rather than between extant species.

Click on the link to read the Sciencenet Daily summary. Also you can, and should read the abstract.

And the winner.....

2010-11-22T19:38:00.001-08:00

.....Wasn't me.
I'm referring of course to my entry in NPR's Three Minute Fiction: Round Five. The rules were simple, and the beginning and end predetermined. Every entry, no greater than six hundred words, had to begin with, "Some people swore that the house was haunted," and had to end with, "nothing was ever the same after that."

While my story wasn't selected the whole exercise was an incredible amount of fun. My first draft of the story was way, waaaay too long, and the process of cutting, and getting out the story in 600 hundred words was a real challenge. It isn't easy to cut things that you really like, but having that hard six hundred word limit made it a bit less brutal.
Only a bit less.

Since my story wasn't selected, I suppose I am free to post it here. Enjoy.
(Anyone wanting to see this house, and to see if my memories of it match as well with reality as I felt they did when I was describing the house in the story need only drive North on Round Barn Road in Richmond Indiana. Its just a few minutes, maybe five from I-40. A friend of mine once told me, at least I think it was her (she knows who she is), that it was a popular hang out for what would later probably have been termed the freaks and geeks of RHS. Or maybe they would have been labeled the alternative crowd? I confess I'm clueless. Oh well, its hardly germane. The house stands and is abandoned, or it did and it was, the last time I called Richmond home, and you should go visit it.

I've never been inside of course. Some people swore the house was haunted.....

Conscripted
By
Max Driffill II

Some people swore that the house was haunted. An empty house, big, and abandoned, represents a hole that cries out for explanation. When facts aren’t available, people often feel free to invent them.

That was how Matt and I always thought the house on that old road came to be haunted. Maybe it had once been pretty. It was big but not obscene, faded but still yellow, and the frames around the windows had once been white. North of the house, there had stood a massive tree. Its trunk was broken at the base and the tree, its bark long departed and most of its limbs stripped by nature and time, lay disappearing into the wild grass. A lone strip of gutter hung from the back of the house. The house had no neighbors but empty fields, and a dark stretch of empty road between a nowhere city and a nowhere town.

I only heard a few of the mutually inconsistent stories about the house. Their utility for us was that they served to keep people away. Such isolation, even creepy isolation, was ideal for two young lovers. We rode our bikes to the house several nights of every month.

On that night I was sitting on the kitchen counter, Matt standing in front me. We were engaged in an old, mostly wordless, debate when the door to the basement drifted open, and a man emerged from the shadows. Matt and I both screamed. I pulled Matt close and we looked in horror at the man lit only by dim moonlight.

He looked at us, as he put an index finger to his lips. He crossed to the kitchen window and peered into the Indiana night. It was impossible not to notice that he actively avoided standing fully in front of the window. He was tall and his dark jeans, Superman T-shirt, and green flannel seemed well worn. His feet were bare. As he bent to look out the window, his green flannel drifted upward, and revealed a huge pistol-grip glinting faintly in the dim light. He shook his head and then looked back at us, scratching at cheeks covered in stubble.
“Sorry boys, but you may be in this now.” He said. “Better get your clothes back on and head downstairs.” He cocked a thumb toward the basement. “You’ll probably be safe… tonight.”

A car pulled up to the front of the house as we descended. We watched from shadows through a broken window in the basement. The driver wore a dark suit and a wild beard and he oozed out of the car.
“Did you go and make friends Agni?” The driver shouted as he moved fast for something underneath his jacket. The night erupted in light and noise and the driver pitched backwards, lifeless.

Agni walked to the driver and crouched down. When he stood up he was holding two guns. He walked calmly toward us and crouched again, but this time in front of our window.

He thrust a cold pistol toward me. He regarded us both with sad eyes. “I hope you can be hard men because hard men are now after you.” He turned and walked to the dark sedan. He looked back at us before he got in. “It’ll always happen like this, when you are alone and away from prying eyes.” Agni got in the car and drove away.
Two ravens were sitting on the dead tree. They seemed to be looking at us in our dark hole. They called their bizarre calls and flew away.
Nothing was ever the same after that.

Christopher Hitchens and the ABC1

2010-11-21T07:54:00.000-08:00

Here is the two part, oddly in four parts, ABC1 Lateline interview with Christopher Hitchens. Tony Jones is an excellent interviewer, and Hitch is in top form. I think Hitch handles the question of Pascal's wager, more concisely, and with more eloquence than I did.

The first two parts are largely concerned with how Hitch is dealing with his unhappy landing in Tumortown.

The second part of these interviews involves a discussion of his false journey from the intellectual left, to the right. I say false because his politics remains essentially unchanged, with two exceptions. Firstly he thinks the anti-war movement has become the reactionary political stance. Secondly he has rejected Marxism in broad forms, but would probably still favor some forms of democratic socialism. He appears to me, and indeed he says it of himself, a defender of the human mind's most noble achievement to date. I am referring, of course, to the Enlightenment.

"New Trends" in Islamic Anti-semitism.

2010-11-18T06:34:00.000-08:00

Below is a clip of Anti-semitism that seems to be over represented in Islam. My first response to the following clip, was to put the following question to a friend of mine, the blogger al Rawandi, who is an Islamic Studies major, and really the only authority I know on the subject of Islam. I was not sure how alarmed I should be by the clip. This was my friend's response.

I am not sure how alarmed one should be. It is an every day event in the Arab broadcast world. I remember watching an Arab show on a weekly basis, called "A Knight Without a Horse". I was shocked to see a secret cabal of Jews meeting and planning the takeover of the world and the murder of non-Jews. It was one of the most popular shows in Egypt for as long as it ran.

I think things are well stated; "Even if the Jews leave Palestine we will continue to hate them because our religion tells us to."

Now of course, there are people, mostly here in the West, who would patronize these thugs and say "No they don't really mean that" but I will take it from the horse's mouth.

Watch the clip. I would encourage anyone who has further insight, thoughts, critique, and commentary to join in the discussion in the comments section below. Also, by clicking on the title of this blog post, you can see a discussion of this video at Richard Dawkins website (to see the discussion simply scroll down past Richard Dawkins' opening statement). It appears that any discussion of Islamic anti-semitism becomes a referendum on Israeli policy. This seems to me to miss the point. The animus in the following clip rarely describes Israelis. The scholars in these clips primarily identify Jews as the object of their scorn and unapologetically state "Even if the Jews leave Palestine we will continue to hate them because our religion tells us to."

New Trends in Arabic Anti-semitism from Henrik Clausen on Vimeo.

A&E Psychic Kids: Children of the Paranormal. Credulity as entertainment.

2010-11-17T12:55:00.000-08:00

It seems harmless enough, a cable station producing a reality show about kids who are alleged to have psychic powers, being mentored by three adult psychics who have been there and done that. Joining these three adult psychics is a psychotherapyst. Perhaps the producers are being led by some dim need to achieve scientific balance, or perhaps they are simply trying to recapitulate the popular late 1960s, early 1970s formula for psychic dramas, which constantly had several psychics and at least one scientific protagonist. For an example of this very specific formula, I would direct you to the dated but fairly engaging Hell House by the influential horror writer Richard Matheson.

However, shouldn't we suspect the motives of any network, or coven of producers that begins their program with the following disclaimer:

The views of the occult and the supernatural documented in this show are not necessarily those of A&E Network. (Emphasis added)

Shouldn't we be trained by this kind of disclaimer to realize that what we are about to see, at the very least, is purely a money making endeavor that will not be even slightly edifying? It seems likely that we might also expect that any specific claims made by any such program that follows such a disavowal are very likely to be bullshit of the most unadulterated variety. This is exactly the stance that we should take, especially given the subject matter. But judging by the comments on clips of the show that exist at youtube, there isn't as much reservation about these things as one might hope given that the year is 2010.

As cheap entertainments go, it would be difficult to imagine an endeavor more casually harmful to everyone involved from viewer to participant to producer. The only people who may benefit are those members of a profession that has been tainted from its foundation by charlatans of every concievable stripe.

In the clip above Travis discusses the satisfaction he feels at giving up information to people, and is largely unconcerned if it is validated. "Maybe I help give a spirit some peace." He says. He also likes the idea of the sense of closure (almost as bogus a concept in itself as the psychic phenomena that are alleged to take place in every show)he helps people achieve. His favorite example of his talents is of a letter he recieved containing a missing person notice. He was compelled to loose his considerable psychic talents on the subject and "discovered" that the young woman had been attacked by an older man. He called the police, who it appears were nice, with this trenchant observation. After telling the viewer about this story he makes a pretty strange admission. I don't know if the information I gave helped in anyway, but he sure felt good having given it to the nice police officers. What a pathetic waste of time, and energy. Travis's vinette also doubles as a fine example of New Age solipsism. Does any one even need powers to make such a banal and obvious prediction? The statistics on missing persons makes Travis' "prediction" simply a safe bet. This prediction boils to this: young woman attacked by older man. It is possible to say less helpful or useful things about a missing person's case, but not easily. That is but one way Travis and his fellow psychics fail to help the police, and families. They also, when they can insert themselves into desperate investigations, waste investigators time. Given the horrid track record of these so-called psychics isn't that time that could be better spent following more reliable leads?

Here is one of the leading psychics proving why they should never ever be trusted.

Adding new levels of exploitation on top of old, Psychic Kids: Children of the Paranormal goes beyond the standard objections. Not only does the show often exploit victims of all sorts of traumas, it exploits the very children it purports to help in a manner that can only be described as callous. Of course the show exploits victims by dragging them through a suite of emotional pain for cheap ratings, while "demonstrating" the extreme powers of the kids and their mentors. It exploits the kids by essentially ignoring whatever kinds of real troubles they are having and affirms their dubious world views in absence of real evidence. In effect it condemns the kids to a life where, unless extremely lucky or bright, they will be largely marginalized, while teaching them how to part credulous fools from their money, and well-being.

PSYCHIC KIDS: CHILDREN OF THE PARANORMAL™, profiles children who live with an incredible secret: they have psychic abilities. Feeling scared and isolated, these kids have nowhere to turn...until now. Help is on the way in the form of psychic/mediums Chip Coffey, Chris Fleming and Kim Russo, who themselves grew up with these senses, and licensed psychotherapist Edy Nathan, who has more than 20 years experience. (Emphasis added)

Lets assume that this show has actually identified adolescents in crisis, and who suffer some kind of estrangement from family and former friends. Does this show help them? How could it? It reinforces their beliefs in the paranormal on nothing more than wishful thinking, and it insulates them from critical thinking. If the producers of the show at A&E, or Chip Coffee, Chris Fleming, Kim Russo and Edy Nathan were truly interested in the well-being of these kids, and the well-being of the lives they molest they would go out of their way to make sure that everyone involved who claims to have magical powers actually had magically powers. It would go beyond breathlessly stating on no evidence whatsoever, that "they have psychic abilities." A responsible show, operating under the umbrella of a responsible network would go out of its way not to be encouraging delusional thinking of such troubled kids. Because teaching the kids to believe any old thing on shitty evidence is no real help for them as they grow older. Maybe some of these kids are actually psychic, maybe none of them are, wouldn't it be better to know the truth than to be encouraged to live in a fantasy that could potentially harm them, or others? It seems the answer to this question has to be yes.

While A&E, and the grotesque Chip Coffee et al profit off of the troubled kids and the damaged families the show and the network also do an active disservice to the public at large by peddling such uncritical trash. The design of the show is all about reducing critical thinking in the audience. It presents the principles, Chip and his low rent, vaguery spouting X-Men, in the most favorable light possible. It is slickly edited, and scored. The kid's troubles are highlighted, along with their earnestness. It is a troubling exercise. And if it is as popular as A&E suggests, it is contributing to the overall credulity of our public. If the show's popularity rises, we may see increasingly credulous people turning to a profession that is historically not even remotely honest to solve very real problems. It isn't hard to imagine that as shows like this become more popular the resultant interest in the paranormal will hinder investigations into missing persons and hard to solve murders, waste valuable resources of law enforcement agencies who will eventually research the possiblity, find it lacking (probably) only after the expenditure of hundreds of thousands of dollars or more. But it gives some of the people involved peace of mind some might say. Is peace of mind so cheaply achieved worth even the potential cost of hindering one real investigation? Is it worth the expenditure of anyone's hard earned money? Do we want more tax payer dollars to ever fund men staring at goats (look it up)?

There is no evidence for the claims of psychics, they have no documented success at helping solve any case at all. All shows like this do is increase public credulity and Increasing the credulity of society is never a good idea. It often adds to the general misery.
Shame on you A&E.

3 Minute Fiction: Round 5

2010-10-03T16:46:00.000-07:00

I recently submitted a piece to NPR's 3 Minute Fiction. Tell a story in 600 words or less, so that it can be read on the air, in the allotted time. This is the fifth iteration of 3MF and the judge for this round, and setter of parameters was author Michael Cunningham, who has written several books, none of which I have ever read. His particular twist was that this batch of stories had to start with the sentence, Some people swore that the house was haunted. And it had to conclude, with, ..nothing was ever the same again after that.

I cannot post my story here until all the Round Five judging and selecting is finished. But if it doesn't get selected there, I will, of course I will, post my 600 words here.

Whether selected or not, I have to say, the challenge of writing a story in 600 words or less (I think I managed to whittle it down to 598) was vastly more difficult than I expected when I first took the project on. My first draft was nearly 800 words long. I went through several drafts before finally getting my paranoid tale down to 720 words. That cut, indeed all the cutting was no easy feat. From nearly 800 to 600 words meant that a whole lot of story, particularly pleasing turns of phrase, and character development was going to have to go. 3MF turned into a wonderful learning experience for me, and allowed me to focus on nuts and bolts of my story, and the open ended, unresolved mystery it tells.

At 720 words I was comfortable that I had the story details worked out, but I needed a fresh set of editorial eyes that weren't particularly attached to any of the writing. I asked Jessica to read it, and offer some editorial advice. She offered two incredibly helpful suggestions, and I managed to get the whole thing done, and submitted about an hour before the deadline.

Currently the NPR judges are reading through some five thousand submissions, so it may be a little time before I know whether or not my submission makes the cut.
Not to worry though, I will keep you posted.

Batwoman: Elegy by Greg Rucka (A Brunch Review)

2010-10-03T08:01:00.000-07:00

Greg Rucka, thriller novelist turned comic book writer, has crafted (along with talented artist J.H. Williams III) one of the finest DC stories in the past year. It stands up along side Grant Morrison's All Star Superman (which can be found in trade format Volume 1 and Volume 2, and the Batman classics, Batman: Year One, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. Batwoman: Elegy fits nicely into the Batman universe, while being a piece that stands firmly on its own merits. To put the matter of this review succinctly, Batwoman: Elegy rocks. It is an instant classic. But brief blurbs won't convince you so reason demands I write a bit more.

About a year ago I too hastily said that DC comics had never grown up. I said this in more or less blissful ignorance of DC comics history. It is possible that I was basing this opinion on the treatment that DC characters recieved in non-comic book media. Anyone watching the dreadful Tim Burton inspired and produced Batman franchise, who grew up on a steady diet of Superfriends, and who never missed a chance to watch Adam West and Burt Ward ham it up on the small screen can, I hope, be forgiven for jumping the judgemental gun. Whatever rationales, I am offering up presently though, the simple fact is this. I was dead wrong.

DC characters, in both comic books, and other media have been at the topical edge ever since Superman helped defeat the racist Ku Klux Klan in the 1940s. I don't mean just in the comic books either, the effect of the Superman radio serials, and the in-between scenes messages were hugely influential in depicting and defeating the absurd KKK. DC comics have tackled all kinds of issues over the years, and often before other main stream comic companies. And they often dealt pretty openly with the issues, and did not hide them in allegory or metaphor. Where the X-Men of Marvel comics has always been a progressive series that made the case for Civil Rights for all, it has just has clearly been somewhat obscured by being embedded in the oft larger than life exploits of it heroes and villains (that is hardly a complaint, by the way, and could be said of all comic books, from all companies and from all times). DC has, more often than it has not, chosen to deal with topical issues of the day more directly. DC was the first company that tackled drug use, has had more openly gay characters, and to have important continuity characters dealing with HIV/AIDs.

That brings me to Kate Kane, current incarnation of the Batwoman, and to Elegy proper. This is a sly bit of story telling, and the dynamic duo of Rucka and Williams have a lot twists and turns, not to mention pure story-telling craft up their sleeves. So I will try not to reveal too much, but of course Batwoman: Elegy takes the form of a mystery. For Kate Kane, the mystery seems simple enough. Who leads the The Religion of Crime? And why do they continue to pursue her? No mystery in Gotham is simple, and this particular mystery is tied very much into the reason Kate Kane put on her cape, and her cowl to begin with. The mystery behind any mask in Gotham is also far from simple. The identy of the current leader of the creepily named Religion of Crime is also a mystery that will take us through the very heart of Batwoman herself. The character of Kate Kane is so well drawn we happily follow her down the rabbit hole, and into the dark spaces that inhabit Gotham and its heroes.

What can be said about Kate Kane is that she was a West Point star, and that she is a lesbian, and that those two facts meet in opposition prior to her becoming Batwoman. More I probably shouldn't say. It isn't immaterial, and considering Lt Dan Choi gave Greg Rucka some considerable technical advice for one of the issues, it will be no surprise to you how DADT (don't ask, don't tell) worked out for Kate Kane. Okay, okay, I'm coming dangerously close to loosing dreaded spoilers. Any comic book story, that runs the risk of transcending the genre will be built on robust characters, full of plausible motive, and history, and personal depth. With the, perhaps intentional, exception of Alice, the leader of The Religion of Crime every major character has this depth, either explored or implied.

Artistically, Batwoman: Elegy is a feast, and must rank as one of the most deliberately nuanced works of comic art in recent memory. The art itself bounces deliberately back and forth in tone, as it tells the tale. Elegy is both an origin story, and a noir mystery set in the present day and the art reflects this span of time in subtle ways.

There have been (at least) two "year one" stories in the Batman portion of the DC universe. One for Batman himself, and one for Dick Grayson, the first Robin. While penciled by different artists and written by different authors, Batman: Year One and Robin: Year One both evoke an older artistic style, deeply reminscient of comics of the late 1940s, 50s, and early 60s. They are rich in detail, but the color palate, is simpler, and the designs are clearly imply an earlier era. The effect almost effortlessly creates a sense that what is occuring is as new for the characters themselves as it is for us. Elegy uses the same artistic conceit when we begin to see Kate's origin in the middle of the book. As her origin unfolds the visual style slowly begins to change as Kate Kane becomes more and more the crimefighter Batwoman. Williams bounces back and forth with these tones as the second half of the story explores Kate Kane the child and Kate Kane the crime fighter.

Batwoman: Elegy is a perfect example of what happens when a writer, and artist, indeed the whole production team that creates a comic book, is on the same page, and deeply invested in telling the best story possible.
So don't let Batwoman's pale face scare you, its easily the most inviting face on the trade paperback shelf.

Five Movies That Should Have Kicked My Ass...but Failed.

2010-08-01T20:47:00.000-07:00

1. Spider-Man 3. Sam Raimi came close a couple of times in this film, but he tried to do too much, with too little film time. He lost his through-line early, and the film just falls apart in the third act.
FAIL. I'm glad they are taking Peter Parker from you Sam.

2. X-Men 3. Brett Ratner, I'll give you Red Dragon. Nicely done. X3 though...Abysmal. Did you even look at the source material? Obviously not. Horrid.

3. Aliens vs Predator. Part of the tag line was right. "We Lose."

4. Alien 3. No mas.

5. Superman Returns-If you haven't seen Richard Donner's 1978 Superman this new film is actually okay. The problem is that is suppose to be a sequel to that film, not a nearly point by point remake. Singer is a great director, who was a little too enthralled by his hero.

Chrissy Uttering Nonsense Typically: My Open Letter to Chrissy Satterfield

2010-07-10T17:25:00.000-07:00

Dear Chrissy,
P.Z. Myers recently hipped me to your column (through his blog, I don't know the man) which you quaintly call, "A Dose of Honesty." While your latest column may indeed represent you and your feelings honestly it fails on so many levels to appreciate the US constitution, and the basic rule of law. I'm not sure what you learned in your career at CSU but consistency, logic, the ability to craft a cogent argument certainly seems to have slipped through the cracks. Like so very many theocrats though, you dislike other's rights if they use them to argue against positions you hold dear. And like so many other fascists you endorse the childish thing, which is one form of bullying or another.

The North Carolina Atheist and Agnostics took the legally protected course. They excersized their right of free speech, purchased time on a billboard (no cheap endeavor, costing often thousands of dollars) and advanced an argument for the US they ant to see. You may disagree with the ommission of "Under God" but instead of seeing the broader message, which was also an argument for great unity among the citizenry, you approve of lawless infringement of free speech. Do you think as a Christian you are above the law? Do you think sneaking around, and hiding after such an act demonstrates bravery? This wasn't civil disobediance, this was simply criminal cowardice, but since these cowards agree with you I guess you think that makes it alright. You must because you say (without a hint of apology):

Just when I start believing there is no hope for our country I get a little reminder from my God that all is not lost. It was reported June 29 that a billboard sign sponsored by a North Carolina atheist organization had been vandalized. The ad reads, "One Nation Indivisible." It seems someone didn't think the sign was an accurate depiction of our Pledge of Allegiance, so the vandals inserted "Under God" with spray paint – and I couldn't be more relieved. It's nice to know that I am not alone in my beliefs and that some people are still willing to stand on the right side of truth.

The Pledge of Allegiance until the 1950s also failed to say "Under God." But that is really neither here nor there. I'm shocked at your sense of relief though. I mean it appears that you think your only recourse to the arguments of atheists is vandalism, or some other infringement of free speech. That you can possibly think, as a believer, that you are alone is almost irrefutable proof of the break you have taken from reality. You are hardly alone as any demographic study will show. Christianity is hardly an oppressed minority in this country. It isn't even an oppressed majority. I understand your dissappointment that we don't live under a Christian Theocracy, but almost all US politicians profess membership in one Christian sect or another. At the very least they claim some faith position. I think there is only one open atheist representative at the federal level. The Obama administration is in fact defending the National Day of Prayer. It is sad that vandals and cowards seem to be the only ones able to bring you relief when so many other things should make you almost giddy with relief at the religiousity of the US. Nor are your vandal heroes standing on the right side of truth. That would require them to be honest from the start. Does standing up for the truth begin with infringing on someone else's rights? I think that is an important question you should ask yourself before you go lionizing criminals.

You have no idea how this country works it appears, though you might fit right in as enforcer for radical imams and mullahs. We can see your fundamental disdain for the US Constitution, and specifically your radical hatred of the 1st Ammendment in the following.

Never would I encourage vandalism, but in this case I think I'll let it slide. Atheists have been vandalizing my beliefs for years, so it's about time the shoe was on the other foot. When asked about the vandalism, William Warren, the spokesman for Charlotte Atheists and Agnostics, said, "It was done by one or two people off on their own who decided their only recourse was vandalism rather than having a conversation." Hmm. That's interesting, because the Charlotte Atheists and Agnostics felt its only recourse was to deliberately insult those who understand the importance of "Under God." They probably figured that because the Bible teaches Christians to turn the other cheek, we'll just take their abuse forever. We will only take so much before we stand up against our oppressors. Besides, I can't count how many times an atheist and I have had a "conversation." They're not as calm and passive as Warren suggests.

It is hard to know where to begin. Criticism, and even ridicule of ideas isn't vandalism. It does no harm to you or your property however much it may affect the state of your rather excitable mind. If I say, through a billboard, or in passing conversation, that it might be better if we returned to a more secular and inclusive version of the Pledge, if we are to have one at all, whatever I have done, I haven't limited your ability to counter that statement with a billboard or other argument. The vandals you so love have directly impeded on the free speech of others, and cost them no small amount of money to boot. So the shoe as you put isn't even close to on the other foot. My disagreement with you about the ontogeny of the universe hasn't cost you any money, or property, nor limited your ability to express a contrary opinion. If your heroes really wanted to take a stand, they could have written arguments in the editorial pages of the papers, they could have gathered funds to put up their own billboard. This type of engagement, the "conversation" to which William Warren was referring, was it just too much trouble? And the call to respect the rights of others, was that just too onerous a burden? It must have been for your vandal heroes.

It should also be noted that the phrase, One Nation, Indivisible is in no way an insult to anyone. It was infact the original phrasing prior to the crazyness of the McCarthy era, and hearkened back to the seniment of the original, and vastly better national motto, E Pluribus Unum (go look it up). In the hands of the Charlotte Atheists and Agnostics it also took the form of a short argument for unity inspite of our many sectarian and political differences. If you think that Under God is so important to the pledge, the fora available to your opponents is also available to you, a fact to which myriad Christian signage from coast to coast attests. You might also note that Christian signs vastly outnumber atheist/agnostic signs, which should give you pause when you talk about your oppression.

And that brings me to my next point. It is probably safe to say that Jesus' admonition to turn the other cheek never, never, ever factored into any atheist or agnostic's decision to put up a sign, write an editorial, offer a critique, or ridicule a religious idea. The only assumption that most of us make is that you will simply utilize the same tools of rhetoric, logic, evidence, and media that we will. What we don't expect are criminal tactics. I guess if you have your way, it may be necessary to alter said expectations.

The horrifying conclusion to your endorsement of violence (of which vandalism is a form) succeeds in actually making me sick to my stomach. You say what I would never, and could never say. I find most Christian billboard hilarious, silly, logically flawed, scientifically flawed, philosophically flawed, and sometimes gramatically flawed, but I would never support any such criminal act to limit the free expression of either the sponsoring group's speech or religion. Certainly I may oppose the ideas contained therein, but in the arena of ideas. But such discourse must make you uneasy because you clearly are having none of it.

I would like to extend my deepest thanks to the man or woman responsible for this vandalism. I appreciate the action you took. Thank you for reminding me that I'm not alone. It took a lot of guts to do what you did – and the fact that you haven't stepped forward to take credit makes you a hero. It shows everyone that you are more devoted to the message than you are to the spotlight. I encourage you to keep your cover. Don't give the secular world a reason to call your name; instead, let them call for our God.

I also need to extend a thank-you to some people in Sacramento and Detroit. In February, 10 atheist billboards were defaced in the Golden State and a slew of atheist bus ads were vandalized in Detroit. My dose of honesty this week: I am not happy that vandalism seems to be the only way to get an atheist's attention. I'm happy that I can count on other Christians to stand up for themselves and for Christians everywhere. It gives me hope.

The fact that they haven't stepped forward means they lack integrity and courage. It is sad that you fail to see that rights have been infriged upon. There is no principled opposition on display here. This is simply hoping to not get caught. There is only one message here and it is simply this. Only I, Christian Vandal, have First Ammendment rights. Do you really think this kind of cowardly act will cause people who support secularism (as the majority of our founding fathers did) to call for your god?

That you think vandalism, read violence, is the only way to deal with what is clearly a minorty view point says a great deal about the very merits you think your argument has. You fail to realize, or maybe you do realize it, that your entire "Dose of Honesty" seems to say that it is okay to utilize criminal means to silence an unwelcome argument.

I suppose it is an old story though. The behavior of those who imagine themselves backed by god is often atrocious, barbaric and deeply inhumane.

Biologos: Useless, but well funded, nonsense.

2010-07-04T05:09:00.000-07:00

Biologos, brainchild of the Christ smitten Frances Collins, seeks to demonstrate that science and faith are not only compatable but integral to each other. Their mission statement is a useful guide that illustrates the character of the organization. I will not be surprising anyone when I say that I think this mission statement reveals a deeply flawed research program to serve its odd goals. The goals being to preserve the conclusions of an ancient, parochial religion (and only a very specific religion at that, Christianity), as well as justify their very specific and minority faith based perspectives, all of which are simply untenable after nearly five hundred years of scientific advancements.

The essence of the Biologos argument is simply to parade well creditialled people who hold positions for which they have no evidence in an effort to make the whole process seem intellecutally justifiable and respectable. For instance nearly everyone at Biologos believes in a literally ressurected Jesus. They seem to think that this position is perfectly compatible with science. It is not. There isn't a shred of historical evidence for it, and we can be generally quite confident in the fact that people as a general rule do not return from the dead. So what must a conscientious science minded person think? Can a scientific mind hold the resurrection story consistent with the known facts? Or must such a mind hold that the story is simply wrong, a statistically, physiologically unlikely event, and historically unsubstantiated one to boot? It seems that the facts, as currently known must make us incredibly skeptical of the position. At Biologos they have made the wedding of credulousness with intelligence an industry.

From the Biologos mission statement:

The BioLogos Foundation is a group of Christians, many of whom are professional scientists, biblical scholars, philosophers, theologians, pastors, and educators, who are concerned about the long history of disharmony between the findings of science and large sectors of the Christian faith. We believe that the Bible is the inspired Word of God. We also believe that evolution, properly understood, best describes God’s work of creation. Founded by Dr. Francis Collins, BioLogos addresses the escalating culture war between science and faith, promoting dialog and exploring the harmony between the two. We are committed to helping the church – and students, in particular – develop worldviews that embrace both of these complex belief structures, and that allow science and faith to co-exist peacefully.

BioLogos represents the harmony of science and faith. It addresses the central themes of science and religion and emphasizes the compatibility of Christian faith with scientific discoveries about the origins of the universe and life. To communicate this message to the general public and add to the ongoing dialog, The BioLogos Foundation created The BioLogos Forum at www.biologos.org.

Funded by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation, the Forum is a reliable source of scholarly thought on contemporary issues in science and faith. It highlights the compatibility of modern science with traditional Christian beliefs. The BioLogos Forum features responses to a myriad of questions received by Collins, author of "The Language of God", Karl Giberson, author of "Saving Darwin", and Darrel Falk, author of "Coming to Peace With Science" since the publication of their books.

The bold face indicates every thing that is wrong with Biologos. The fundemental flaw is procedeing from the a priori conclusion, and then assuming the facts favor the conclusion. Oodles of ink is then spilled in the service of dubious, obscurantist, and always baseless, but very shifty, pontifications about what God means when he says X in his inspired word. They already believe the bible is the word of God, and everything they do after is an effort to bolster that position. If there is a more intellectually dishonest pursuit, I've not yet read or heard of it. The whole endeavor reminds me of Michael Shermers trenchent observation about smart people. That observation was the smart people are very good at coming up with reasons for continuing to believe things they were taught for dumb reasons.

Here is a sampling of the Biologos content.
"Are we more than just bodies?" Yes according to Biologos. No evidence for this conclusion is provided.

"The Danger of Preaching Genesis." Should it be suggested that Genesis is a metaphor, or is best viewed as a metaphor? No, at least not from the pulpit because it might be too much for the poor uneducated masses that would then ask questions about other bits of doctrine. ("one must avoid being dismissive or derisive of those who do hold to a literalist view of Genesis because for some, reconsidering the traditional creation narrative introduces questions to which they are unsure of how to respond. Many with this viewpoint feel that if Genesis can’t be understood in straightforward terms, then we cannot know how to read the story of the Resurrection—as a historical account, or simply as a metaphor? Questions like this have the potential to cause them to wonder if they must now question the whole truth of Scripture." It would be hard to beat that for condescension.)

"Miracles and Science Part 1 and Part 2."
Here Biologos blogger, Ard Louis endeavors to justify his belief in a literal interpretation of biblical miracles with science. What comes out is a very nearly miraculous demonstration of compartmentalization. Very nearly but not quite. It essentially seems to say that since science cannot know everything, it is quite okay to hold positions that have no evidence to support them, and that holding said positions is perfectly rational even though it may be unscientific.

"Adam and Eve, literal, or literary?" This article on the place of Adam and Eve and their place in the modern age, replete with links to several other essays on the same topic, is a stunning example of how those at Biologos are really unconcerned with reconciling faith and science, and more about giving each other the space to believe the preposterous. From this essay we get this gem,

Whether specially created or specially selected, humans constitute an interruption in the evolutionary process. Before people showed up, evolution’s potential pathways were invisible. But once humans appear, human volition entered with it. The human capacity to choose replaced randomness with intentionality. We have developed enough mastery over our environment (Genesis 1:28) that natural selection, in the strict Darwinian sense, no longer really applies to us.

To which one might respond (as indeed Christopher Hitchens sometimes does), "What can be advanced without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence."

If you are unfamiliar with Biologos, clicking on the title of this entry will take you, with speed, to the tedium, confusion, and hubris that reigns in every almost every article.

Roman Catholic Sex Scandal, or Why should we be shocked at the RCC?

2010-03-21T12:26:00.000-07:00

Every day of the past week (3/15 to 3/21) the New York Times has run story after story after sad story on the growing sex scandal that is rocking the Roman Catholic Church (RCC)all over the industrialized world. I could go in that vein by the way, providing links to these ugly shenanigans for some time but there is no need. Of course it would be the case that Ratzinger (now Benedict) would have been responsible for moving some of these priests around, ones he knew had an experience of molestation from one church to another to avoid unpleasantries. One response by the RCC spinsters has been to point out that other churches have had their own sex scandals. Let me translate this response. Ours is the final word on morality, and the dignity of beings. We know and respect the rules God has given us better than contemporaries. Sex scandal? Uh well our behavior isn't any worse than other churches."

This is not really the mark of an organization interested in taking responsiblity for its rather loathsome and secretive actions regarding all this sex with children they've been having. Nor is it the mark of a body that can be taken seriously on any moral issue. Nor, I hope to show, has it ever been an organization deserving of our respect.

It is almost too easy to point out, as many have, the hypocritical cheek with which this racket operates. They spend no small amount of money opposing gay marriage in Maine, say (nearly two million) and other places besides, but are not interested in beefing up a staff of ten to quickly process the almost endless multitude of charges that seem to be coming in (ten is really the amount of personel the RCC seems willing to spare). It is too easy to point out that the RCC has been terrifically hypocritical on matters of moral and ethical action. No doubt they would argue that their work is vastly more important, and godly than its earthly abuses. It is funny though, or would be in other circumstances, that this body points its finger at us and presumes to dictate on terms of sexual moralilty. A group of largely pasty old virgins, liberaly sprinkled, it appears, with a healthy portion of sexually un-,repressed pedophiles thinks it is in the best position to dictate morals and to tell the rest of us what is sexually healthy and acceptable. They think they are still the best group to make these proclamations despite the fact that the RCC sex scandal now encompasses, the US, Brazil, Ireland, Germany, Austria, Australia, New Zealand (and those are just the most numerously reported countries)and more countries are sure to follow. Odd that. This dark religious tale seems even worse when we consider the treaty between the Vatican and Italy where Vatican officials enjoy a great deal of immunity from prosecution, and the general kid gloves treatment given the RCC by authorities in nearly all the industrialized West.

While it it expeceptionally easy to kick this Church in the gut at the momemt, I think that there is an important element of this sordid affair that isn't being addressed.
Historical context. And with that element it seems that we might batter the RCC leadership with even more vigor.

Several newspapers, both electronic and not, have reported on the current scandal and what effect it is having on the RCC's numbers, and the morale of the priests still in the cloth as well as the morale of Catholics in the face of it. While intersting, a scandal on this scale is not out of the ordinary for the RCC. The history of the RCC simply isn't pretty and the ever widening sex scandal represents only the latest, though admittedly one of its/their more grotesque, moral atrocities. So I would like to essay a brief list of the bullshit, and horror this august body has inflicted on the world. After this review, I hope you will see that it deserves all the respect of Scientology, and that its leader, Joe Ratzinger (now calling himself Benedict followed by some combination of Roman numerals) should only be taken as seriously as one would take Tom Cruise when he is ranting about psychiatry.

Lets start off with the easy ones.
The Inquisition (currently called the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) The duty of this office, according to Pope John Paul II was to, "promote and safeguard the doctrine on the faith and morals throughout the Catholic world: for this reason everything which in any way touches such matter falls within its competence." It has of course served this function in spectacularly immoral ways historically.

The Catholic Inquisitional movements were largely about rooting out and supressing heresy. That is to say, they were involved most directly in supressing doctrines that might supplant their own authority. Though they also handled the banning of heretical literature, victimless crimes like witchcraft, blasphemy, and of course that most ancient of Christian crimes, being Jewish were all part of the Magesteria of authority of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith. To these ignoble ends the Catholic Church approved of the most horrible torture one can imagine. They also confiscated property and sentenced an inordinate amount of people to death.

Of historical note was the Inquisition's treatment of Galileo Galilei in 1663 for his book Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems. This work compared the hypotheses of Copernicus and his heliocentric model, with the Church supported ideas of Ptolemy (which held that the Earth was the center of the universe and did not move). For this work, Galileo was ordered to stand trial. The charges? He held opinions contrary to RCC doctrine. Thus was he "vehemently suspected of heresy." Which was crime enough to be arrested and imprisoned for the rest of his life, and to have his books banned by the moral, and reasonable RCC. He was also forced to recant-under threat of torture. Pope John Paul II kinda, sorta apologized for this behavior by the RCC (to the extent that this den of vipers will apologize for anything). But Ratzinger is having none of that.

Ratzinger, shuffler of child molesting priests, has said this of the RCC's behavior regarding Galileo, "The Church at the time of Galileo kept much more closely to reason than did Galileo himself, and she took into consideration the ethical and social consequences of Galileo's teaching too. Her verdict against Galileo was rational and just and the revision of this verdict can be justified only on the grounds of what is politically opportune.” Her verdict was just and rational? This can only be stated by people who have shoveled shit so long they can no longer smell that which they shovel. When the Inquisition is involved, torture isn't too far behind. Think for a moment about this just and rational response. The RCC saw to it that Galileo Galilei spent his final nine years of life under house arrest (originally he was to be more forcably imprisoned)all for writing a book and making a case for a reasonable hypothesis. He had the unfortunate temerity to disagree with the Ptolemeic hypothesis.

Witchhunts (more Inquisitional fun!)
Wikipedia on this is priceless.

A witch hunt is a search for witches or evidence of witchcraft, often involving moral panic, mass hysteria and lynching, but in historical instances also legally sanctioned and involving official witchcraft trials

(emphasis added)

European witch-hunting sent thousands first to torture, then fire for a generally unpleasant Christian themed end of life ride. No evidence could pardon you after being accused. Maybe you could confess and repent and you would be spared death, or failing that at least be granted the garrot before the fire. Your property would be confiscated. And you would likely, man, woman or child, loose your life were you accused in the hay day of European witch hunting movements. Ah well, as the bible says, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." There is nothing quite like condemning people to death for imaginary crimes. If you are thinking about taking up the charge, you will definately need the manual Malleus Maleficarum commissioned by the supersticious oaf, Pope Innocent VIII and written by the even more credulous oafs, Jacob Sprenger and Heinrich Kramer. Click on the link to see a great swath of ugly nonsense. We needn't spend much time on this as the particulars of this ugly chapter of RCC history are pretty well known.

Then there is the unpleasant Inquisitional tale (1858) of Edgardo Mortara. Edgardo was a young Jewish child (one among many)whose ill health worried his 14 year old caretaker, frightened for his Jewish-baby-soul, baptised him without his parents knowledge, and most certainly without their consent. However this was enough for the Church, and certainly enough for its office of the Inquisition. Baptism conferred the status Catholic to the boy and this meant that he could not, in the Papal State of Bologna, be raised by his non-Catholic parents. The police came and took the boy, and whisked him off to Rome. Clearly this is an organization that loves families. The story of Edgardo Mortara produced something of an international backlash against Pious IX. None of it resulted in the return of Edgardo, but it certainly was nice to see that people resisted RCC power.

Okay lets slip out of the Inquisition and into other RCC bullshit.
The RCC was largely opposed to the Enlightenment.

The RCC favored Franco and his fascist regime. In fact the RCC has come under fire for beatifying nearly 500 nuns and priests killed in the the Spanish Civil War. These were men and women who supported fully what could well be called a terrorist government. Well done morons.

Pious XII endorsed Hitler. Slick move asshole.
The RCC endorsement of Mussolini, while a slightly rockier relationship, was no less committed.

From Mussolini to today the RCC leadership has demonstrated that it is a horrible horrible, unethical organization with almost a complete disregard for concepts like integrity, honesty, and freedom.

Condoms

Here the Church is almost genocidally imbecilic and dishonest to boot. On the continent of Africa where the use of a condom can make the difference between life and death, the RCC actively tries to restrict their distribution, while at the same time spreading lies about the efficacy thereof.

In an interview, one of the Vatican's most senior cardinals Alfonso Lopez Trujillo suggested HIV could even pass through condoms.

"The Aids virus is roughly 450 times smaller than the spermatozoon. The spermatozoon can easily pass through the 'net' that is formed by the condom," he says.

Some priests have even gone so far as to say condoms are laced with HIV/AIDs. Regrettably they are also saying most of this nonsense in the developing world where access to information that would render their faux authority null is extremely limited. It is in the developing world where the RCC is probably the most detrimental because it can influence policy with its wealth, and its ability to mobilize a credulous and largely uneducated people. The RCC even opposes use of condoms between married couples where one is infected with HIV/Aids and the other is not.

This was just a survey of the bullshit in which the Catholic Church (it's leadership at least) seems to glory. Priests turning the confessional into a glory hole represents only the most recent strata of unpleasant corruption, exploitative sexuality and predation, and utter dishonesty. Beneath the current sex scandal lay layer after layer of grotesque history, wherein an obvious quest for temporal earthly power is laid utterly bare.

Addendum
The NY Times coverage of the RCC sex scandal continues more or less unabated, and NPR, the BBC and numerous other news outlets have joined in. This may be the first time in centuries a Pope has been forced to step down (though this is admittedly an unlikely scenario). But what isn't unlikely is that this will damage the RCC's ability to act as a credible moral authority.

Flow Drills at the Academy

2010-02-20T14:19:00.000-08:00

A couple of weeks ago we did flow drills at the Academy and Jay filmed them when we were done.
What's a flow drill? Good question. Each of us had to write a technique, demonstrate it if it wasn't known by everyone, and then logically link them together in a flow drill. The benefit of this is of course that we get to work with techniques other people like, while at the same time broadening our understanding of how BJJ techniques can be easily linked. That is to say, no technique is very far from another. The benefit of the flow drill and the random design element of the flow(student picked techniques and then those techniques were organized more or less randomly) encouraged us to build and elaborate our Brazilian Jiu-jitsu vocabulary. It also allowed us to see how we each linked the same techniques differently.
Fun stuff.
(Oh, I'm the guy in red.)

Initiative in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu

2010-02-10T19:58:00.000-08:00

Lets assume you have been lucky enough, or smart enough to find your way to an excellent academy of Brazilian Jiu-jitsu (BJJ hereafter). You have a great coach, lots of opportunity to train, lots of mat space (I don't even need to mention that the atmosphere is open, engaging and helpful). What more do you need to know?
How do you make the most of this opportunity? The advice that follows are just a few strategies that have worked for me in my nomad's journey through BJJ. BJJ is almost as ecclectic as it is systematic, and what works for me may not work for you. Hopefully something offered herein will help you in your training (and, even more hopefully, more than a single something). The important point to be taken from all this is about initiative. You can get very good at BJJ just going to class, and doing nothing more. But if you take some initiative chances are you will gain a great deal more understanding, technical depth, and real time BJJ skill and in a shorter amount of time. Okay, with caveats offered lets get to it.

1. Start a Training Journal. I'm sure you have heard of this. I'm sure someone at the BJJ, Judo, JKD, Kali training hall has said, "you should document your training, write down thoughts, observations, techniques you like and need to train, in a training journal." If you do start one, keep it in your gear bag, and have it with you every time you head to the gym. This is important, and the reason is simple. If it isn't with you, you might not remember all the details of your observations. The greater the fatigue the less apt your brain is to function at 100%. Also the further you are from the time of the training the fewer details you will be able to accurately recall. BJJ happens at speed, and in real time. Its best to write down the details of dynamic action undertaken during stressful, and physically demanding circumstances as soon as you can. Get the most out of the journal by getting it down on paper quickly. But what do you write down in it? This tool has to work for you, so the contents will really need to adapted to your tastes and preferences. However I can offer some advice.

Nightly training goals. Set a goal in your journal. It can look like, MONDAY OPEN MAT: Finish with the triangle at least three times, from triangle position affect transitions, turnovers, or other submissions. Leave space to write down your thoughts, and observations about your daily training goals(did you meet them, why or why not etc). Obvious points of interest will be how and why your techniques failed and succeeded.

Strong/Weak Areas Almost every night ends with rolling, or drilling. This is the perfect place to catalogue what you think you are doing correctly, and to systematically identify the holes in your game. In what positions are you strong, what techniques do you favor? Where are you consistently weak? Is it with a particular training partner or is position or attack that trouble starts? These are the kinds of questions you want to ask and answer in you journal.

New Techniques How necessary this is depends on your memory and how much your coach teaches in an evening. But it can't hurt to put new material in your journal. I often forget on Thursday, what we covered on Monday, so for me the Training Journal is invaluable in reminding me of things to review and practice.

That is a good place to start with the Training Journal. Tailor it to your needs and tastes and it can be a excellent learning aide.

2. New Techniques? Try 'em out!
In almost ever BJJ school I've ever trained I've noticed a tendency to stick within the comfortable realm of what works. That is to say, even though students learn new techniques at least weekly it takes them some time to try them out. I've fallen victim to this myself. But staying in one's comfort zone is a sure way to flatten one's learning curve in BJJ. If you learn a new guard pass, or a new sweep, try it that night. Not only is it a good way to get extra practice on the new technique, but in the heightened adrenal state of open rolling your understanding and retention of the technique will be greater. Doing this allows you to begin incorporating the new manuever into your BJJ game.

3. Max's Rule of 3
At least I think this is my rule. If I get someone with the same submission 3 times in a row, I try to help my training partner out with their mistake by giving an in roll tutorial. There are several reasons for this. The first and most basic is also the least altruistic. The better and more skilled my training partners, the better I will ultimately be. An important component of our improvement in BJJ is the quality and skill of our training partners. So helping your training partners not only contributes to the overall atomosphere of the academy as a team, it contributes in a large way to your own goals in BJJ. The flip side of the rule is this. If you are getting caught with the same technique over and over again, and cannot find an answer to the problem, ask for some advice from the people who catch you with it.

4. Do not avoid the person who gives you the most trouble on the mat. In fact seek them out. These people are the most important people in your BJJ training. They expose your holes and can potentially make your BJJ better. I never learn so much as when I have to tap, or fight my way out of tough position after tough position. This is the way to truly perfect the effeciency of one's technique. Having a friendly gym nemesis is the best thing for you. Embrace it. But do remember to tap.

5. Books, DVDs, online videos (competition and instructional)
I watch and read alot about BJJ, indeed about martial arts in general, and it has proved enormously helpful in my training. Having excellent instruction, and lots of access to mat time is the most important component in producing good BJJ. Books, DVDS and online videos simply increases the amount of quality instruction you get. You also get a different perspective on familiar material. Taking ownership of your training is a good way to see it improve your performance.

These are a few ideas that have worked for me. Hopefully they will work for you.
See you on the mat!

(Photographs by Ani Driffill, taken at The Academy of Mixed Martial Arts, in Portland ME)

ZOMGitsChris really nails it.

2010-01-01T20:32:00.000-08:00

ZOMGitsChris rarely fails to impress me. Her arguments are generally well thought out, and her presentation is fairly smoooth. She is funny and Romanian, so what isn't to like? Below she responds to another youtube personality VenomfangX, and his assessment of the origin of morality.

Coming up at I Don't go out for Brunch
Saturday: I conclude my final segment of Avatar analysis where in I examine the odd Christian Conservative attack on the film.
Sunday: Pictures of snow encrusted Maine, as well as a view of my new Brazilian Jiu-jitsu gym.
Beyond: Surely something cool!

Parting Shot from Hitch!

A Brunch Film Review: AVATAR Part III: The Strange Christian Conservative Case Against the Film

2009-12-28T13:30:00.000-08:00

Recently my nemesis Janet Parshall and a conservative Christian (in Janet's world there is no other kind) film reviewer guest attacked James Cameron's Avatar in no uncertain terms. Janet hadn't seen the film of course, and it was hard to say if her reviewer guest had seen it either. Their criticism focused on a trifecta of egregious sins Cameron is imagined to have committed. On this point they were unified: James Cameron has made a thoroughly evil film. The sins?

1. Avatar, at least according to synopses they had possibly, kinda, sorta, maybe read was critical of captialism (click for an example).

2. Avatar supported Gaia worship and was an environmentalist tract. It implied that humans have acted unwisely with Earth. Indeed the film, fundamentalists assert, views humans as evil and a lesser species for such behavior. (do click for one of the most hilarious and medieval approaches to film critique you are likely to see in sometime)

3. Avatar functions as a self-hating critique, allegorical, of US history and as wider critique of humanity. (click at your own risk, one of the more muddle headed and ugly reviews follows)

Even were these criticisms true in their entirety -they are not- many of these reviews fail to address the film on its own merits. Was the story structured well? How was the acting? Was it good, poor or blah? Were the special effects everything that industry insiders said it would be? None of it mattered a whit to the ideological concerns of many Christian Conservative viewers, (with the exception of Todd Hertz at Christianity Today whose who review is thoughtful and complex)seem to have attended to their opinions of the film prior to the business of seeing it. Their only concern about the craftsmanship of the film itself, was the worry that it would be up to Cameron's typical standard and thus a blockbuster. An appropriate worry it would seem as the film made a billion dollars in just twenty-one days.

Before examining the categories of critique, I wonder at the obvious overlap between the morality of the heroes of Cameron's film, the Na'vi, and the scientists and at least two of the mercenaries (Jake Sully and Trudy Chacon)
and the general morality and ethics espoused by most Christians. I'm surprised that the film hasn't sparked dialogue about this obvious overlap instead of ham-handed critique that fails at internal consistency (see the note at the end of this review). Isn't a huge part of the Christian critique of humanity, both fundamentalist and liberal about human moral failings? Isn't it a rebuke of unethical action? Isn't it cheeky in the extreme to castigate someone for something you yourself do even if for slightly different reasons? Clearly among the liberal believing reviewers this is exactly how they approach the film. Fundamentalists (and it appears the Vatican) are ever fearful of tumbling down a slippery slope. If they grant any degree of consensus they must worry that they have ceded some truth to their rivals. This consistent inability to really examine the nuance of their own position and that which they find themselves in opposition renders their critique obviously hypocritical and almost hilariously silly.
Let us look at the conservative worries as I've laid them out.

Is AVATAR critical of capitalism?
What is the general obsession among Christians with capitalism anyway? I don't think that any objective reading of the Bible could possibly support any view that held Jesus was an early free marketeer. Nevertheless, among fundamentalists the Bible inspires a theology that must be accompanied by the op-ed column of the Wallstreet Journal. In the unlikely event that Jesus was anything like his biblical image it is doubtful that he would have been a subscriber to the WSJ, or its philosophy.

However, the conservative attachment to capitalism is not threatened by AVATAR in the slightest unless it also holds that it is okay to deal unethically and immorally toward people with whom you wish to trade, or whose resources you wish to acquire.
The primary economic critique found in the film is of profit at any cost, which seems to be how the Resource Development Administration (RDA) seems to operate.

For whatever reason, the film never explains, unobtanium is incomprehensibly valuable, and the RDA wants to move as much of it off world to Earth as quickly as possible. One Catholic conservative review balked at this contextlessness. Maybe unobtainium cured cancer, or solved the ecological crisis Jake mentions, maybe that is why the RDA is doing what it is doing. As if this would justify the treatement of another people and their world? Quite clearly it doesn't matter what unobtainium does, or is good for on Earth, the problem is the way in which it is acquired. It would be hard to find the capitalist critique since the market on earth is not given any context either. Thoughtless greed is the source of AVATAR's ire.

It should also be noted that AVATAR is not inventing a historically unique situation, unheard of in real human history. Prior to the great strides of organized labor companies and corporations, unregulated, managed to royally screw all kinds of people, both among their workers and among indigenous peoples. A modest look at one's old text books could find mention of company script, of Pinkertons etc. For some reason there is no acknowledgement of this obvious bit of history.

Is AVATAR and environmentalist tract that supports Gaia worship and suggests humans are a lesser species?
To this I am tempted to answer no and move on but that is probably unfair.

Clearly AVATAR is an environmentally sensitive movie. Clearly it fits into something someone might describe as environmentalist. I'm sure Al Gore saw this movie and did not think it was the product of Ben Stein or Bjorn Lombork. It does have an environmental message. The message, to me without counterpoint, is that we really ought to try behaving with more wisdom toward the planet on which we live, and more ethically toward the organisms with which we share the planet.

Janet Parshall was outraged at the film's acceptance of anthropogenic global warming (hereafter AGW), and seemed more or less astounded that anyone could think humans capable of altering the climate at all. "The whole film seems to say that humans are evil!" She, and many other reviewers ignored the smaller scales completely. So put aside whether you accept AGW for a moment and marvel at that omission. On smaller scales, at the level of city, state and country we humans seem to do a bang-up job at polluting, and damaging the environment, endangering or catapulting into extinction other species. On a planet where we have UV alerts because of ozone depletion, red-tide warnings, and where evidence is mounting that humanity may be precipitating a mass extinction that will rival the Cretaceous/Tertiary event it seems dishonest to be completely dismissive of the environmental movement, or its concerns. Humans unarguably are a source of pollution, and precipitate obvious local and dramatic ecological change. We alter, too often negatively, the air, the water quality, and bio-diversity.

Humans have been doing this very thing almost since Lucy. Indeed we aren't even unique in the tendency to push against the environment. Beavers wreak local havoc on area when they move in that affects everything around them, be it plant or animal. The major difference between us and other animals is that through our technology we have managed to break free from many of the constraints environments place on species. The film isn't saying out with humans, it is saying in with greater forsight, wisdom, empathy and ethics among humans as we move forward.

As to whether the film promotes paganesque Gaia worship that seems somewhat preposterous. This concern emerges from the entity Ey'wa, which is some kind of immense neural network, to which every organism on Pandora is capable of communicating however primitively. When the Na'vi communicate with Ey'wa their behavior certainly seems religious. But strictly speaking they are communicating with another intelligent biological entity that has evolved on Pandora and not a god. As Ey'wa isn't a god, but some kind of massive database its powers are limited to Pandora and its goals somewhat mysterious. I certainly saw no worship Gaia message as a viewer of the film, but then I am not burdened by the notion that I must proselytize for a god. Its almost like these reviewers think that upon arrival on Pandora humans should have discovered another species of Christianity to which they could relate.

Science Fiction though has always been a tough slog for Christian Fundamentalists who tend the view the genre as subversive and irreligious at best.

Science fiction takes the reader into a strange world without God. Oh, there might be “a god,” a “force,” but it is definitely not the God of the Bible, and the prominent names in this field are atheists.

(From the Way of Life Fundamental Baptist Information Service)

Is Avatar a self-hating film, that functions as a negative critique of US history?

Pretending that US History is clean and without moral blemish is self-hate, traveling with its sibling, self-deception. To the extent that AVATAR is a commentary on US history and action that probably isn't a bad thing. But to see the film so narrowly, as many US Fundamentalists seem to do is a mistake. This story is older than the European collision with Native America, it is older than the collision of English settlers with Aboriginie. It is even older than the collision of the Maori with Moriori. Asymmetrical conflict between more powerful people and less powerful people is almost a historical constant.

US based fundamentalists would prefer, it seems, to not think about US history too closely. This is because many of them think that its success is based on divine mandate from an omnipotent, omniscient, and, perhaps most importantly, omnibenenovlent God. Early US history certainly does nothing to reveal any of these three qualities, but looking at the rough way US citizens have dealt with others damages, irrevocably any conception of omnibenevolence. I suspect this is the reason for some of extremely vocal, and vitriol laden, responses to the film among some evangelicals. Looking hard at Western history has implications that many Fundamentalists simply do not want to examine. This is particularly the case of that species of conservative that weds correctness of their religious beliefs to their nationalistic pride.

However for all the Christian conservative backlash against the film, it is satisfying to see that the public makes its own decisions about what makes good and entertaining art (another example of this has to be the succes of internet porn, yay markets!). While a certain brand of religious and political leader may be banging away at their particular pulpit the public proceeds to the cineplex anyway. The reasons for its success are simple I think. It is an old story to which everyone, on some level, can relate. We all know what it feels like to to be mistreated, and bullied. The Na'vi, and their human co-conspirators are characters to whom we are immediately sympathetic. Given the polling, it is likely that the environmental message also resonates. The worries of the conservative Christians simply don't matter.
And that is a decidedly good thing.

Note: I began this third installment almost immediately after the release of AVATAR and I simply want to note, between that time and this that there have been several Christian movie review sites that have taken the more introspective and mature approach to AVATAR and film in general. Even where they find disagreement the film is seen as a conversation starter that provokes good and hard questions. Strangely one of these sites has been from Pat Robertson's pal CBN broadcasting. There are others. Kudos to them.

A Brunch Film Review: Avatar Part II: A biologist examines Pandora

2009-12-23T12:43:00.000-08:00

If Avatar is a film that works for the viewer, a large part of that will be because of the convincing ecology found on Pandora (easily the most stunning creation in science fiction cinema to date). Unlike many sci-fi world creators, it is hard not to think of George Lucas here, Cameron, and his partners at Weta Workshops, ILM and Stan Winston studios (to name just the three large effects houses involved) have put in the time to properly attempt the creation of an entire ecosystem, as well as a convincing anthropology of its native intelligent lifeform. There is certainly a great deal of biological mystery on Pandora (I don't understand its ecosystem fully for instance) however Pandoran ecology all seems so plausible -no surfeit of ecologically inexplicable giants here thank you very much- that even a well trained biologist shouldn't be required to suspend her disbelief in the service of a rewarding two and half hours. And a film that leaves a biologist (like myself) wondering about the evolutionary history of a make believe world without needing to make allowances, and giving passes, is a film going reward in itself.

Pandora is an Earthlike world, though not so Earthlike that humans can breath without aid. (For a detailed account of why this is click here) It is a warm world, or at least the part dominated by the story is and it orbits a gas giant very much like our own Jupiter. The gas giant is probably too much like our own Jupiter, but I will leave all non-biological observations for the astronomically inclined. Pandora is not quite as large as Earth, but large enough to hold an atmosphere capable of trapping heat.

Avatar takes place in what appears to be forests of high photosynthetic productivity. Pandora may have arctic and temperate biomes, but our story takes place in something very like a rainforest. There is a vertical structure to the system, massive canopy trees, and then below a massive complexity to the understory producers. No doubt the books that discuss the planet for other fans will dwell on the film's spectacular fauna, but the structure of that forest is the first step of anchoring the film in reality. Because the makers gave the forest a convincing and diverse understory, as well as the majestic canaopy for its wide shots the world created has a believeable biological depth. It is the brief, or undetailed glimpses of the epiphytes, and ephemerals, of the small game and the creatures of the undergrowth and detritus that will be the unsung heroes of Avatar.

Another compelling detail is the day, night switch in forest ecology that appears to occur on Pandora. Pandora isn't earth, but like Earth, its ecology is not dominated by the same players at all hours of the day and night. But that is probably where the similarities between the two worlds end. The change in players and signals among the players seems more like a pelagic switch on Pandora. Bioluminescence dominates the Pandoran biota. Does this make much sense biologically? At first, I thought it might be a bit of Weta, or ILM or some effects house demonstrating their coolness (and as such it works magnificently) but upon reflection I've come to a different conclusion. Bioluminesence makes some sense considering Pandora does not orbit its solar system's star like Earth. It orbits a gas giant on an outer orbital track. This would mean somewhat reduced exposure to sunlight, and maybe selective pressures pushed toward more intense visual signalling apparatus. Stephen Jay Gould would probably say I am crafting 'just so stories' but regrettably I'm unable to go to Pandora and prove my hypothesis, so just you quiet down ghost of Stephen Jay Gould. The point is that this weird morphological trait, shared by much of the biota (notably absent in at least two of its alpha predators) makes plausible evolutionary sense. We could probably infer from the prevelance among the biota, that bioluminescence is evolutionarily ancient. I suspect that if Grace Augustine's (Sigourney Weaver) research lab had its own Genome Project it would reveal that bioluminescence was actually lost in the alpha predators but that the ghosts of those genes still exist hidden in their genomes. Here the creators have crafted a scientifically believable ecological backdrop. The time and effort that this must have taken is extreme, and it is richly rewarded on screen.

Taxonomy is important and Cameron and his team have given this some thought as well. The plants are not dwelled on enough to examine their taxonomy, but among the land based vertebrate type animals we see at least two major evolutionary families, tetrapods and hexapods, that is four and six limbed types. Hexapods enjoy greater representation in the Pandoran biota (at least in the region where the film takes place). Is this a split similar to the marsupial/placental split in mammals? It isn't discussed. From an evolutionary perspective this would be a fascinating development (oh the research we could do!). On Earth only one major body plan emerged among big land animals, it has been greatly elaborated on, but all vertebrates are basicaly tetrapods. Not so Pandora. The Na'vi, the indigenous people of Pandora, are notably tetrapods. While potentially very interesting, Pandoran morphology is not discussed in any detail in the film, but remains an interesting point of mystery for the serious science fiction fan. There are substantial differences in morphology among the tetrapods and hexapods though both share at least one organ, even if they differ in limb number. I don't want to go to deeply into detail about what is shared, and what is not, because to do so would be to violate spoiler protocols. I will say that there are no evolutionary barriers to plausiblity to this state of affairs. What is clear is that Pandora is a planet that has produced a fascinating biota, that has had a different evolutionary history than our own.

It probably goes without saying that the ethology of the organisms is also meticulously and plausibly created. I will dwell on only one example, the megafaunal predator called a thanator. This intimidating, hexapod, alpha predator, resembles in many ways the big cats of our own planet, except of course for the extra limbs, and the ten senosry quills, attached to flat chitinous plates. There is something insect-like in the quality of its body. It's teeth and claws resemble material found in the chelicerae of spiders, or the stinger of a scorpian. The color of a thanator, an inky blue-black, also hints at some insect like evolutioanry roots. When we see it for the first time it attempts to attack a young Hammerhead Titanothere. Through this vinette we see more of its behaviors (it is a surprise predator, and has an impressive threat display of rattling plates and quills, pulled back lip flaps that reveal a strange set of gums, and a toothy maw). Also terribly crucial to establishing biological reality, we don't see many of these alpha predators in the landscape (this was probably the crucial ecological "flaw" of Peter Jackson's excellent King Kong). Big predators sit atop an energetic knife edge. That is to say consumers (animals that eat stuff and do not produce their own food like plants) are not terribly efficient at aquiring nutrients from their food stuffs. From the base of the food chain, the plants and other producers, to the top of the food chain, the alpha predators, lots of energy is lost by animals as they consume food. If plant consumer X has only managed to acquire 10% of the energy available it becomes immediately apparent that any animal that eats consumer X will need to be eating a lot of X to stay alive. An ecosystem can only support a few such predators (especially if they are "warm-blooded") in a given area.

All of this behavior has the feel of things I've seen in the field. If you have ever watched a bird in your back yard, a coyote in the wild, or had to have a face to face with a big black bear, found fresh mountain lion scat on the trail you use, or nearly been run down by elk, watching the thanotar, or indeed any of the nature in Avatar will seem like authentic nature watching. From climate, to taxonomy, to evolutioanry history Avatar works as a very convincing bit of science fiction.

There are some animals in Avatar that will seem too much like analogues of Earth creatures, the Direhorse will seem too much like our own horses, the Viperwolves to obviously like wild dogs found on Earth and so on through much of Pandora's fauna and flora. I suspect that would be one of the major objections for the avid science fiction fan. It is an echo of the old complaint, "Why so many humanoids?" that science fiction fans have been offering for decades. It is an important objection but one that I think evolutionary theory allows us to dispense with, at least in the broad strokes, as we watch Avatar.

Stephen Jay Gould rather famously put the problem as follows,

"But if I could rerun the tape of life from the origin of unicellular organisms, what odds would you give me on the reevolution of this complex and contingent insect-flower system? Would we see anything like either insects or flowers in the rerun? Would terrestrial life originate at all? Would we get mobile creatures that we could call animals? Fine-scale predictability only arises when you are already 99 percent of the way toward a particular result -- and the establishment of this 99 percent lies firmly in the domain of unrepeatable contingency."

The notion of historical contingency set ideas about progress in evolution on their ears. There was a tendency among both lay people and many working biologists to think of evolutionary processes as an inexorable march toward humanity. It was a kind of recapitulation, in natural terms, of the idea of the Scala Naturae but without all the angels, or a god. Gould thought his ideas about contingency were fairly radical, but his ideas were often not quite as revolutionary as he made them out to be in his less reserved moments. That isn't to say that contingency is unimportant, clearly accidents of history play huge roles in evolutionary history. Allow me to point out an obvious accident that was a massive biotic regime changer. If, Sixty-five million years ago, a large astroid had managed to slide by Earth, you and I are not here to have this little electronic exchange of ideas. No earth shaking astroid impact in the Yucatan Peninsula, means no age of mammals, and no age of mammals means no humans. Likely it would mean 65 million more years of dinosaurs engaging in the business of being dinosaurs. Contingency is important.

But so is convergence, which Gould simply neglected in his analysis (as does Michael Shermer, Gould's most staunch defender on the point of contingency). The philosopher of evolutionary biology/psychology Dan Dennett, and the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins have been most articulate in their (mild) critique of Gould's Radical Contingency. But what is convergence in evolutionary biology? Or to put the question as it may be framed in the reader's mind, "what is convergent evolution and how, Mr. Blogger Fanboy, can it help us see the creatures of Pandora as plausible products of evolutionary processes?"

Convergent evolution is a process whereby organisms only distantly related, in evolutionary terms, exhibit similar morphology, or behaviors because their lineages have been exposed to similar selective pressures. That is to say organisms take on similar traits and come to look like one another because they evolved in either similar environments or engaged in a similar ecology. Below is perhaps my favorite example of evolutionary convergence. This looks like a wild dog. It is not.

This is a marsupial, now very likely extinct, that not only looks like a dog but acts like a dog. The similarities between old world canids and the thylacine exist only because they are the products of similar selective pressures. Evolutionary convergence is not at all uncommon. Another text book example is the form of fish, ichtyosaurs and dolphins. All are only distantly related, but all have converged on a similar form because they evolved in a similar environment. Convergent features are something Dan Dennett has referred to as a "good move" or "forced move" in animal evolution. That is to say certain strategies, forms and structures evolve again and again (not precisely copied mind you and bearing the stamp of contingency) because selective processes favor their discovery. Even the rudimentary stages, it appears, of these evolutionary "good moves" offer such advantages, that selection favors elaboration of the trait, strategy, or behavior.

Eyes have evolved independently on Earth at least forty times. They are not identical, but certainly they are identifiably "eyes." Fin like structures have also evolved dozens of times independently. Insulation, endothermy, parental care, pack hunting, complex problem solving intelligence, chemical warfare have all evolved independently several times on Earth. It is the phenomena of convergence in evolutionary processes that makes the flora and fauna of Pandora more than mildly plausible. The animals have the stamp of their evolutionary history all over them. They are not identical to their earthly analogs, but represent another iteration of a "good evolutionary move." Both contingency and convergence are satisfied.

To return to Gould's famous question, would we be here if we could rewind the tape of life to its unicellular beginnings? If by we Gould means big brained mammalian primates, with opposable thumbs, limited body hair, and a penchant for sweets, then the answer is an obvious no. But if by we he means an intelligent, technology using species then the answer is-given enough time- probably yes. Intelligence, like fins, insulation, and wings, is a good evolutionary move that has been hit upon again, and again by evolutionary processes. So if the presence of horse like things bothers you as you watch Avatar think about contingency, but also convergence and maybe that will resolve your dilema.

The AVATAR program hinges on the genetic hybrid avatar bodies, which are clones of their human "drivers," mixed with DNA of the Na'vi. There is an implication here, wholly unexplored by the film, of quite a bit of extreme genetic similarity between Earth and Pandoran life forms. This is harder to explain. Two hypotheses come to mind, and I will leave it you to essay others.

The first is that our genetic code isn't particularly difficult to make. That is to say, given the right chemical environment, early self-replicating molecules will hit upon nucleic acids regularly. DNA/RNA are simply the most stable of the alternatives. If this is so, we can expect this mechanism of heredity (DNA, RNA)commonly wherever we find life- given a certain set of evironmental conditions.

The second hypothesis belongs to Sir Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe, and is referred to as panspermia. This hypothesis predicts that the origin of life is exceedingly rare, but several forms of that life (unicellular) will be extremely hardy and able to survive interstellar travel (provided it is suitably sheltered) in astroids or comets. These bacteria like organisms find themselves blasted out into space during extreme volcanic eruptions, or impact events and then go on to seed other worlds with life. If this is the case the DNA/RNA mechanism might also be somewhat common in our galaxy as these unicellular space travelers would make planet fall and seed evolutionary processes on different worlds. If you think this is far fetched, there are chunks of Mars that have landed on Earth after being ejected by some phenomena. There is even some evidence that at least one of those Martian bits experienced ancient Martian life. So the mechanism isn't implausible. However there is little evidence for it.

As for the great biological mystery (I will not spoil) at the heart of Pandora, I have no explanation. Is it plausible? I don't know. Possible, but contingency would predict the Pandoran system to be rare I think. But I am not bothered. I will remember Orgel's Second Rule (remember to place tongue in cheek) when thinking about it...."Evolution is cleverer than you are."

Avatar: A brunch movie review Part I

2009-12-19T08:27:00.000-08:00

James Cameron's Avatar

The best of science fiction causes us to look back on ourselves even as it takes us to far off stars, future times, and alternate universes. It explores the common themes of humanity in the best traditions of mythology. Avatar is part of that long tradition. Cameron’s return to fantasy and action cinema is not light and he has pulled out all the stops in an effort to draw us into one of the most extraordinary worlds ever brought to the screen.

Avatar tells an old, and not particularly original story, but it tells it well and with passion and also because it intends to tell this old story we the viewers do not mind. I at least didn’t mind. If you’ve read Jared Diamond’s fascinating Guns, Germs and Steel you will already know the general outline of the story, as it has played out several times in our own neck of the galactic woods, on our own world altogether too often. The premise, if the previews have not entirely explained the thrust of the story, is this. An indigenous population of hunter gatherers has met a technologically superior population, and the former find themselves on land exceedingly valuable to the latter. Humans call the world Pandora and on it, there exists Unobtainium which sells for millions per kilo. What it is used for we are never really told. What we do know is that there is a corporation with resources, and mandates, and men and women with guns that want to acquire the element. The element's uses and worth are insignificant to toll the Corporation is willing to inflict to get Unobtainium. So James Cameron wisely doesn't waste any exposition on an explanation. All the story requires is the element's worth, and group able and willing to acquire this element by whatever means necessary. Above all this is the story of the Na'vi who live on the land, and it also the story of their world, Pandora.

The corporation funds a lab, run by well meaning scientists, to learn about the Na’vi. Their goals are not the same. The scientists, anthropologists, and biologists create the AVATAR program to comfortably and less obtrusively interact with the Na'vi. Here a human “driver” has his consciousness linked to a human alien hybrid body, an Avatar, that can then interact with the world of Pandora, and its native peoples. Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver) and her team are simply interested in understanding the Na’vi, and facilitating a peaceful resolution to the conflict of interests between the Na’vi, and the Corporation (and I suppose addressing broader human concerns). The Corporation is interested in using the Avatar program as a source of tactical information. If there was any sincere interest in working toward a peaceful resolution with the Na’vi by the Corporation it was minimal at best.

Enter Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), paraplegic veteran offered a chance to join the AVATAR program. It is through his character that we experience and “see” Pandora. To say that Jake is ideally suited for only one aspect of the AVATAR program would be to understate things. He is a Marine, and feels the pull of the military chain of command. He is swayed by the swagger Col. Miles Quaritch (played to muscle bound perfection by Stephan Lang) and by his promise to see that the corporation fixes his legs. The appeal to Sully, I suppose, is that the Colonel doesn’t see a cripple in a wheel chair, but a marine who can complete the mission. What the Colonel’s problem with the Na’vi and the planet are I leave to you the reader to assess.

I am not revealing or spoiling anything by telling you that Jake rejects the military objective and finds himself so immersed in the Na’vi and the planet Pandora that he feels more allegiance to them, and the researchers who love both than he is to the mission objectives of the Corporation and its team of mercenaries (they are not it appears active military but former soldiers simply fighting for a paycheck). And while the spectacle of the fight we all know is coming is indeed amazing in every respect, for my money, my favorite moments of this film will be Jake experiencing Pandora, its people, its flora and fauna. This must take up fully a third or more of the film. Cameron is a master story teller (even though he can be clunky with dialogue) who understands pace better than almost other crafter of action films. And here he must have been tempted to rush, to drive a relentless pace to keep the viewers on the edge of their seats. Whatever the case may be, his instincts were perfect. Cameron eschews the music backed montage and takes all the time he needs. Pandora seems like a real place, feels like a real place, and Jake’s reactions to Pandora, and the Na’vi are as real, and human as you can imagine. About that I will not say more, it is surprising and genuine and best discovered by the viewer.

James Cameron has said that the film is a cross between Pochahontas and Fern Gully. That is probably fair. But it also has elements of Dances With Wolves that I don’t think he would begrudge for me pointing out. That the film functions as a critique of humanity is of course obvious. And that obviousness is probably the only serious distraction of the entire film. As such there is a minor but noticable thinness to Quaritch, and the corporation villains. Given the message (and an admirable and timely one at that) I’m not sure that it was an avoidable distraction. But maybe that is as Cameron intended. Our treatment of our own environment, and the treatment that various powerful cultures have dealt to technologically inferior cultures gnaws constantly at the viewer, even as the film stuns you with the beauty (though the portrait of nature is honest) of an alien world. Maybe gnaws is too strong a word, but the germ of the idea is there, and it will likely be with the viewer as they leave the theater and the credits roll up the screen.

James Cameron‘s Avatar is certainly one of this year’s crowning cinematic achievements. It is certainly, to date, James Cameron’s finest movie.

Addendum
This is part one of an intended three part review of the film, Avatar. The second part will look at the film from the view point of an evolutionary biologist. And the third part will tackle the odd criticisms coming from the neo and theo con critics (none of which have yet seen the film though have been offering damning words of, uh...damnation).

Does it make you feel more or less stress knowing how many otherwise sane people are looking forward to the end of the World.

2009-12-16T19:56:00.000-08:00

People are insane, or at the very least mildly to majorly delusional. There is nothing really to say that isn't said more eloquently by the catastrophic level delusion on display in the following trailer. I do wish all the liberal theologians who complain about atheists mischaracterizing all the nuance, and metaphor found in these holy books would address the major source of our concern more directly.

Janet Parshall's America...I'm sure glad I don't live there (click here to see why).

2009-11-22T20:12:00.000-08:00

Dear Janet Parshell,

I sometimes force myself to listen to your show and I must confess, it never ceases to disappoint me. Whether you are falsely claiming that you hope that President Obama does well(you don't hope this), or you are engaging in histrionics over climate change, evolutionary biology or complaining about healthcare your disinterest in honest engagement seems inconsistent with the values you claim to cherish. Honesty, and integrity seem decidedly lacking at just about every level of your being. Your ill facility with logic is also counter-productive. Those who disagree with you can never possibly be doing so simply because they see issues differently. They are always part of a larger conspiracy. I suppose if I thought that anyone who disagreed with me was a dupe for Satan (either willingly or not), it would be hard to take their opposing viewpoints very seriously too. Luckily I do not share in your delusional paranoid fantasy and can approach ideas and data as they are, and not through a warped ideological filter. I am forced to wonder if the growing pile of your inconsistencies ever alarms you, or if you even notice? Do you ever think, “I am sure to be caught today?,” or “I hope this bible quote will distract the audience from the fact I have no data, logic or even a good argument for what I am about to say?” I wonder this, because if I were you it would certainly be a matter of pressing worry. It’s a matter of credibility Janet.
You have none.

Let me make an example out of just one issue close to your heart of late, climate change. Your new fodder for denial is the recently hacked emails. But let’s leave that aside for a moment. As early as two weeks ago your gripe was about consensus among scientists. Namely you thought that the consensus wasn’t high enough to make it a national policy matter. That is since it was just a majority of climatologists who think that climate change is actually occurring and not an overwhelming majority of scientists (let’s say 90% or greater) our government should be, at the very least, reticent to act in a major way on the phenomenon. If scientific consensus, and independent corroboration were really important to you, there would be no problem (though I would be curious what said majority would have to look like before you supported any regulatory action on climate change, or even said you had to accept the current expert opinion). However you are clearly not concerned with scientific consensus and the manner in which you wield the notion is a smokescreen to cover over what is an ideological opposition which is religious, political and economic at its roots. Despite your alleged Christian commitment to honesty, you seem decidedly uncomfortable with the concept. But lying for Jesus is an old story.

Clearly though you don’t care a whit about scientific consensus. If you did you would not oppose the teaching of evolutionary biology in schools. Next to quantum mechanics, and relativity you would be hard pressed to find a more accepted, or more successful theory in all the sciences. If you actually valued scientific consensus you would not clamor for the teaching of creation “science” or its euphemistic code intelligent design alongside the teaching of evolutionary biology. You would not advocate, "teaching the controversy." No you don’t care about evidence Janet, you care about furthering your religious and political ends. There really is no controversy over evolution among working biologists (a huge overwelming majority consensus) Janet, but you don’t care. You prefer the views of William Dembski, and a minority (infinitismal)of other voices to the rest of the scientific enterprise. Clearly consensus isn’t as big on your list of concerns as you make it out to be.

If scientific consensus were as important a criterion in your mind as you make it out to be, you would not oppose ABC sex education, that is to say comprehensive education. A is for abstinence, B is for be monogamous and C is for condoms. You would not in a million years support and certainly you wouldn’t prefer Abstinence-only education because research has consistently shown abstinence only education doesn’t work. In fact it doesn’t work so well that kids who go through abstinence only programs are more not less likely to engage in sexually risky behaviors without protection. If scientific research was your guide, and the consensus of scientists a benchmark, you would certainly never support only funding AIDs/HIV programs on the continent of Africa that pledged to use only the worthless Abstinence-only approach to sex education. That would only increase the numbers of AIDS/HIV cases. But I think we see again you really don’t put much stock in scientific consensus.

Whether you are engaging in willful mendacity or you are simply so blinkered by the limits of your religious faith, and your political ideology that you are incapable of seeing a bigger more complex picture is not entirely clear. Though your histrionics about the popularity of vampires in fiction (you call them, with breathless credulity, “’undead’ instruments of the Devil) make me suspect that your religious derangement is very real. But even real religious derangement doesn’t preclude shameless dishonesty so I suppose that leaves us with an untidy open question. Whatever the case Janet, it is absolutely clear that you do a huge disservice to your listener’s comprehension of complex issues. You and your guests are simply echo chambers for one another. But beyond the disservice you do for your listeners, you do a disservice to public discourse on complex issues that cannot hope but to become political footballs. It is sad that you do not use your position in the media to elevate the debate.

Good Day,
Max Driffill II

A wonderful debate: Stephen Fry/Christopher Hitchens vs Archbishop John Onaiyekan/Ann Widdecombe MP

2009-11-08T20:31:00.000-08:00

An amazing debate. And mostly just because Stephen Fry is so wonderfully eloquent and humane, and because Chistopher Hitchens, is so eloquent, serious and angry. It is the oratory equivalent of a one-two punch.

There is little by way of editorial comment that I could add to this.

Dan Dennett, provocative as usual.

2009-10-31T21:30:00.000-07:00

Pascal's Wager: An argument that should never have been convincing.

2009-10-31T15:33:00.000-07:00

As an atheist (a six on the Dawkins scale) I get to hear about Pascal's wager more often than anyone really needs to hear about it. If you find yourself in the unbelieving crowd, no doubt you hear it too often as well. This post isn't for you (well it is for you too, but I am really interested in exposing the flaws of Pascal here). This post is for those, often well meaning folks, who continue to tirelessly wheel out Pascal's rotting corpse in an effort to affect a religious conversion. I don't honestly think they've given Pascal's Wager the review it deserves. This may not be so. However, the abruptness with which the wager falls apart makes me think those who fancy it haven't thought too deeply about it. Either that or they think I'm none to bright. No doubt a few have thought the latter.

Before pressing on, let me spell out Pascal's Wager. Blaise Pascal, was a brilliant mathematician, philosopher and theologian of the 17th century. He was an innovator in mathematics and physics. He was also, perhaps not surprisingly, sick much of his life. And I don't mean mildly sick either. Much of Pascal's life seemed to involve some kind of pain. Whether this unduly influeced his theology, is not, for our purposes, germane to the argument contained in his infamous wager. It was a decidedly Christian wager, by the way, but probably has applicablity for all the Abrahamic traditions. Pascal thought all people should wager thusly: While no evidence for God exists, and proving his existance through reason was impossible (a part modern users of this argument like to leave out) one should wager as if God did exist because the costs for being wrong so outweighed the costs of being correct. That is to say, winning the wager (by believing in God) gets you heaven and whatever other poorly described rewards heave has to offer while you also avoid the eternal torments of hell (failing to believe in God if said being exists). There are no real rewards for winning the bet the other way. If the unbeliever is correct both believer and non-believer get the same reward. Nothing.

Wikipedia has a nice framing, "even though the existence of God cannot be determined through reason, a person should wager as though God exists, because so living has everything to gain, and nothing to lose." So if you believe, and are correct you win the lottery, and if you are wrong you have, so Pascal claims, lost nothing.

For some reason this seems like a very brilliant gambit for many believers, but they really ought to note its many pitfalls. Lets look at what I think are three of the most obvious.

1. Pascal's Wager assumes we can choose which beliefs we adopt
I can only speak for myself here, but it seems like there are very few of our beliefs we can control. If we believe something, it is likely because we think the reasons for holding that a position is consistent with reality are strong. Not because it makes us feel good. No doubt some beliefs are better at making people feel happy than others, but that says nothing about how true they may be. For instance children believe in Santa Clause for very rational reasons. Authorities, whom they trust tell them Santa is real. For a child of a suitably young age, this kind of trust makes complete sense and constitutes reasonable evidence. But no matter where you find yourself in the belief or unbelief question you look for evidence of the veracity of position. It isn't apparent that one can choose to believe anything. They have to be compelled by evidence to adopt a position. That doesn't mean of course they will arrive at the correct position, just that some body of evidence (experience, research, etc) will have been enough to convince them that an idea (God, Aliens, Bigfoot) is consistent with reality. Whether people notice it or not they speak in terms of evidence no matter how much they use the word faith. At most all an unbeliever could do was act as if they believed if evidence didn't compel belief. Lets leave that aside for the moment.

2. Pascals Wager assumes that adopting religious belief carries no costs.
In every framing of this argument that I've heard, and indeed the way it was phrased by Pascal himself, it is assumed that faith is a cheap investment for the believer, as cheap as unbelief (hence the extreme difference in payoffs at the end of earthly life). One wonders how that part of the argument can be made with a straight face. Religious belief has obvious costs (these can vary of course, but they exist in every sect of the Abrahamic traditions). Religious faith makes its cost felt in obvious places like one's bank account (tithing, other religious donations), but also in terms of family relationships, and mental health, and simple time. The costs of religion can be felt in all these areas. Why Pascal didn't count these things as costs I don't know. Perhaps he was simply trying to bolster his case that the investment of both unbeliever and believer was equal in an effort to underscore the difference in payoffs. But think about all the time believers spend doing things for their faiths, the money spent, the relationships avoided, or broken off, and it becomes apparent that belief has costs, and sometimes they are quite serious. From here we see that these costs amount to serious, indeed utterly substantial investment. This seems like a profoundly obvious thing to have missed. Set against eternity in heaven I suppose a life time of this isn't much of an investment, but if it is the only life you get it, the wastefulness of it becomes apparent. Think about someone you know (it might be you reading this) who spends time, and considerable amounts of money on their faith, maybe they have also shunned a child for some religious infraction, or have all their life avoided same sex encounters that they deeply desire. What if that believer is wrong? Such a scenario certainly ruins Pascal's hypothesis that cost was a non-issue for the believer, but even mild costs would work to ruin the notion.

3.Pascal's Wager assumes that God will accept a lie.
I cannot make myself believe something that I think is patently false. All I can do is act like I believe something that I already believe is patently false. Sure I can fake it. And this is essentially what Pascal asks people to do with his wager. Dishonestly act as if you believe to gain a set of rewards for little cost in a future life. Firstly does this sound like the kind of action that the god of Abraham would tolerate? Secondly, is such subterfuge commensurate with moral action? It seems to me the answer to both questions is no. Pascal, and those who continue to use this argument act as if the answer is yes.

BLOG BIT: Dennis Miller and his guests are stupid.

2009-10-08T15:53:00.000-07:00

I listen to conservative radio sometimes. Sometimes I didn't get my coffee, and need a jolt of self-righteous falsehoods being triumphantly spewed from some guy whose reasoning ablitity has been mangled by cheese bits, oxycotin and anger induced mini-strokes. That is almost like coffee, though, much more bitter. There is no amount of sugar and creamer (even irish cream creamer) that offsets the kind of vitriol generated by radio Hannity, Beck, Savage or Limbaugh. Radio brings out the worst in these characters. Though I am unsure exactly why that is. Maybe it is the tendency of the listener of these shows to be dyed-in-the-wool acolytes? Call screeners creating a fairy land of agreement, and insuring that only the most brain-dead rerpresentative of a contrary point of view ever makes it on the air (Rush, I am looking directly at you)? Maybe all the skewed positive feedback simply makes the delusion of being correct more potent? Whatever the case, radio encourages these guys to say the dumbest things, and its not that they need much encouragement.

Dennis Miller though I always thought might be a little different. Don't think I didn't notice that slide into right-wing Randian thought Dennis. I certainly did. I was sad to see it happen but I hoped that you might, in all your pop referencing glory make a reasonable, and maybe even funny case for your ideas. Dennis, I am sorry to say, disappoints. And he does this spectacularly. On top of this, his radio show seems to have the least actual content, and consists mainly of he and his co-host exchanging pseudo-witty pop-culture references and laughing (kind an unfunny Bob and Tom if you can imagine it). Oh, and then there is Miller hawking the wares of various sponsors which also eats up oodles of his air time (his shtick for some outfit called Taxmasters is the most annoying).

None of these right-wing talking point parrots sounds more ignorant than when the topic involves an element of science. And in that area climate change seems to flummox the lot of them even more profoundly than "teaching the controversy."

Today the show took a nasty turn into ignorance early, and there it remained. Of course there was the review of some terrible healthcare plan that would indeed be something about which to be alarmed if Obama was proposing anything like it. However since Obama isn't proposing the plan that have Dennis and his cohost so scared, I'm not going to bother looking at that strange analysis. Instead I will look at Miller's grasp and that of his callers on climate change. An analogy may help prepare you. Let climate represent a massive cliff face, say one of the giant cliffs found in the Valles Marineris on Mars. Let climate change science represent a hand hold at the top of the cliff saving one from a seven kilometer fall. In this scenario Dennis Miller and his audience are doing a pirouette to the tune of gravity punctuated by a very sudden stop. Terrible analogy? Probably, but my point is illustrated don't you think?

Dennis read a report that stated Chicago may have its earliest recorded snowfall sometime next week. Feeling triumphant, he laughed and said something like, "So what about global warming now? Clearly it just isn't happening." Now I don't mind an error. Everyone makes them. But to make a statement like this is reveal a level of catastrophic ignorance, and to do it proudly, that is stunning in its scope. Clearly his grasp of statistics is somewhat limited. He also seems to be missing the meaning of the global. I know, I know me and specifics. Global mean temperatures are rising, and this is completely not in dispute. A hot spell or cold spell in a specific location taken by itself is not sufficient to confirm or nullify the the climate change hypothesis. It is the broad trend that is in question. Not local variation. It is also pretty funny that Miller trusts the climate modeling that predicts snow in Chicago sometime next week.

The second major blunder came when one of his callers piped up about ozone depletion. Specifically, the caller said, "You know what I wonder, is why we never hear about the ozone layer anymore? We were all going to die, there was all the worry about UV. Now we never hear about it."
Miller responded, "Yeah its all a joke. A money making scam. Just follow the money. Look, Al Gore is worth a hundred million now. I mean good for him, I just wish he would admit it and then I could pat him on the back and say 'Way to go ya' hack!'"

If you live an area where the hole in the ozone affects you it probably seems more real I guess. Try the southern hemisphere Dennis, but take your sunscreen.

One of the reasons we do not hear as much about ozone depletion in the press is because the problem was so obviously tractable. The science was just that obvious. That didn't stop conservatives in the Reagan administration from resisting regulating the use of CFCs (chloroflourocarbons-the major culpits in the ozone depletion). Magaret Thatcher, who was no friend to regulation, but who did possess an education steeped in chemistry, did see it as an unavoidable necessity in this instance. CFCs were the problem and their broad applicablity made them quite abundant. In the lower atmosphere they were chemically inert, but stratospherically CFCs are broken down by UV light, which frees the chlorine. Chlorine is then able to amble about the stratosphere and mangle ozone molecules by the hundreds and thousands (this is a complex story but the synopsis will do for our purposes). However, CFC use has been dramatically reduced world wide and so the damage to the ozone layer has been drastically reduced. While this is all very positive problems will remain for some time. However protocols adopted by at least a 190 nations will likely allow the ozone layer to return to natural levels around 2050 according to NASA.

In the mean time, processes release excesses of chlorine into the stratosphere, especially in the Antarctic, but elsewhere too, that (combined with human released chlorine) result in depletions world wide. These depletions can result in significant and risky exposures to UV. UV warnings are not infrequent in Australia and other Southern Hemisphere hotspots (the Antarctic hole is often large enough to encompase portions of Australia). However general ozone reduction can be a threat the world over.

The reason, Dennis, that the ozone hole is not the huge problem it could've been, is because the world took note, followed the evidence and took action. Sadly adopting ridgid ideological blinders has hindered your ability to look objectively at evidence. What is even more disappointing is that you and others like you have been given such a potent microphone as a radio show.

Paul Kurtz: Stick. In. The. Mud.

2009-09-30T10:42:00.000-07:00

Of all the personalities at CFI, I've always been the least impressed with Paul Kurtz. At the CFI World Conference in Bethesda, he did little to change my opinion of him. His latest contribution to rationalism (which can be found, undissected, by clicking on the title of this blog) has actually earned him negative points.

The celebrating of "Blasphemy Day" by the Center for Inquiry by sponsoring a contest encouraging new forms of blasphemy, I believe is most unwise. It betrays the civic virtues of democracy. I support the premise that religion should be open to the critical examination of its claims, like all other institutions in society. I do have serious reservations about the forms that these criticisms take. For example, cartoons have been recently circulated ridiculing key figures in Christianity, such as a cartoon depicting a feminine Jesus painting his "nails" with red nail polish, or the drawing of the Pope with a long nose like Pinocchio.

This could be translated, faithfully as, You know I'm all for free speech when I am arguing against religious claims, or challenging religious authority, but when the speech violates my rather prudish sensiblities I'm going to have, ahem, serious reservations.

Clearly a humourless guy, Kurtz has no need of things like satire and ridicule to punch through the thin facade of power and authority the holds many hostage in religious communities, or even those living outside religious observance. Sometimes the comics, satire and ridicule that so offends Kurtz's refined sensiblities, are exactly the prescription for cutting through the anesthetic of religious influence. Holy crap that cartoon, just said what I have been thinking for years! Out loud! Think of the importance of such experiences in some people's lives. Do you not see the power of a single satirical image? Are you so dense that you fail to see the usefulness of such images?

When we defended the right of a Danish newspaper to publish cartoons deploring the violence of Muslim suicide bombers, we were supporting freedom of the press. The right to publish dissenting critiques of religion should be accepted as basic to freedom of expression.

It was also assumed by many, the contributors to CFI, and its readers, that you were also defending the freedom of expression of the artists themselves. The cartoons, while certainly conveying the messages, were doing nothing terribly different than the pope-pinnochio-nose image you deplore. You cannot have one freedom without the other. Either you really are for freedom of the press and freedom of expression or you are simply for that which you agree with, and is framed in the way least likely to cause offense taking by some person, somewhere.

But for CFI itself to sponsor the lampooning of Christianity by encouraging anti-Catholic, anti-Protestant, or any other anti-religious cartoons goes beyond the bounds of civilized discourse in pluralistic society. It is not dissimilar to the anti-semitic cartoons of the Nazi era.

Here you make your most ridiculous blunder. It is completely dissimilar my orthodox PC friend. You will note that in both of the cartoons you mention (recent submissions I presume) it is not Catholics, or Christians generally who are being lampooned, or charcteritured, but leaders or icons of a particular faith tradition. These are attacks on ideologies and leaders in said traditions. Anti-semitism is racism, not criticism. Anti-semitism is less about Jewish ideology and much more about hating a racial identity.

Yet there are some fundamentalist atheists who have resorted to such vulgar antics to gain press attention. In doing so they have dishonored the basic ethical principles of what the Center for Inquiry has resolutely stood for until now: the toleration of opposing viewpoints.

Now you are just being silly Paul. Fundamentalist atheists? Fuck you. How is that for tolerating an opposing viewpoint? Vulgarity? Grow the fuck up. No one has dishonored, and certainly never violated (until now no less) your basic tolerance principle. The CFI, indeed all skeptical endeavors, in both small and large ways are always engaged in acts of intolerance of ideas. It is why we criticise a thing.

Now skeptics and freethinkers tend to be happy letting people believe what they want, which is certainly tolerance in the most important sense of the concept. However, it doesn't follow though that we should suddenly not be heavy handed with ideas, or utilize scorn, ridicule, satire or some other form of harsh critique. And we certainly shouldn't not do it because you are going whine about it when we do. You may want to go scowl somewhere else Paul. Sometimes bold statements are vastly more useful than the long, academic critique.

It is one thing to examine the claims of religion in a responsible way by calling attention to Biblical, Koranic or scientific criticisms, it is quite another to violate the key humanistic principle of tolerance.

Again critique is a form of intolerance. Mild to be sure, but come on. Just say what you mean here Paul. You don't want people offending the liberal believers who contribute to and support CFI. That is what all this whinging is really about isn't it?

One may disagree with contending religious beliefs, but to denigrate them by rude caricatures borders on hate speech. What would humanists and skeptics say if religious believers insulted them in the same way? We would protest the lack of respect for alternative views in a democratic society. I apologize to my fellow citizens who have suffered these barbs of indignity.

Paul anyone nattering about hate speech simply does not really support free speech and expression, nor a free press, nor liberty in general. When I see some insulting image of atheists or free thinkers (and there are certainly no shortage of these), of some bit of parody or satire I simply try to address the arguments contained therein. I do not complain overmuch about the intolerance of the other side, I begin constucting arguments against their position to lay it bare. "These barbs of indignity" that so vex you, don't matter. What matters is that I can argue against them, and am permitted the freedoms necessary to do so.

ZOMGitsChriss is my new hero: She kicks Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron in the nuts.

2009-09-29T13:40:00.000-07:00

Solid as they say.

BLOG BIT: Obama's Olympic Gamble: This might be a good thing

2009-09-29T09:12:00.000-07:00

While not going out for brunch the yesterday, I heard a bit of isolationist moaning on the Mike Gallager Show decrying Obama's presidential efforts to get the 2016 Olympic Games (summer) held in Chicago. A caller worried about all the potential terrorists that might be tempted to attack during the games, Galleger slammed the Olympics as too New World Order while complaining about poor treatment he felt American competitors (or was it just Americans) recieved at the Olympics. While this was going on I simply worried that the average US IQ had precipitously declined in the span of seconds or minutes. (I would later listen to NPR, and have those worries somewhat allayed, and then I was shaken again listening to New England football coverage.)

However I think this is a great overture to the international community given the isolationist policies, and generally icey international tone of the previous 8 years. No doubt the symbolism is not lost on Obama, or his advisors in the slightest. Having the Olympics here, even just campaigning for the Olympics to be held here on US soil is a bold statement to the international community, saying that we are indeed ready to be included in the international dialogue, while at the same time saying that we want to be a focal point in world affairs again.

Obama is clearly an international man (doing a little bit for his hometown too it has to be said), who wants the US to think in broader terms. What remains to be seen is whether or not the vitriolic, less than honest right wing nutter movements will hamstring this process enough to limit broader US involvement in the wider world. But that is an aside. What is very clear is that Obama is sending a clear signal to the rest of the world, in numerous ways, that the US seeks its leadership role in the world once again.
It is about damn time.

BLOG BIT: Defending Simon Singh or...:Screw the BCA

2009-09-17T08:33:00.001-07:00

Click on the title of this blog bit for link to Olivia Judson's nice defense of Simon Singh (you should also get to visiting his site and signing his petition). Singh co-authored a book that seriously reviewed the claims of the Chiropractic practicianers, as well as other alt medicine therapies, and wrote a piece in the Guardian about chiropractic. This led to a stupid, stupid libel suit by the British Chiropractic Association (BCA). The BCA could not rebut Singh's scientific arguments (the Guardian did invite the BCA to defend, and produce science that supported their claims), so they resorted to this, potentially financially crippling, law suit. Thanks crappy English Libel laws that stifle scientific debate, and investigative journalism!