Phony-catholic outrage week!

Rawr. Ok, after watching this story brew all week, and trying (and failing) to post something relevant about it that hadn’t already been done, I put out a diary today on DKos about the Peoria bishop who compared Obama to Hitler.

Although I expect it to go nowhere, Americans United for Separation of Church and State has filed a formal complaint with the IRS about the sermon on the entirely reasonable grounds that it violated the church’s tax-exempt status to engage in such overt political advocacy. And the rule does include speaking out in opposition to a candidate, so it’s not as if they had to endorse Romney to violate the rule.

But let’s face it, in a two-party system, saying ‘don’t vote for this guy’ is equivalent to ‘vote for the other guy’.

Obama being the centrist uniter type though, I expect he’ll get the IRS to either do nothing or do it so slowly, quietly and ineffectually that it may as well be pointless. I just don’t see him taking on the conservative clergy in the RCC, even if it seems like he should. It’s not like all catholics blindly obey these jerks in funny hats and everything they say to do.

Even if it is the good fight, though, he’s probably better off letting organizations like the AU do battle with the right wing churchfolk. Someone has to do it, though.

P.S. ‘phony catholic’ is in reference to these right wing blowhards who wouldn’t know from Jesus if he showed up in front of them. It’s a shame that the bible is so easy to twist to serve conservative interests, but you know what they say…the poor you will always have with you.

Quick edit: this one might get read, someone changed it to ‘Recommended’ on DKos. The latest episode in the continuing saga of I have no idea how diaries make the Rec List.

In which the Daily Show and I slightly disagree

Today I had time to explore the topic of discrimination against atheists, in the context of a recent Daily Show segment. The resultant exploration is up on DKos now. I expect people will tell me not to take it too seriously, which is why I made a point to mention that I already don’t…I doubt it will help, though. Jon Stewart is Gawd!

It was still a funny show, though. I just wish I could treat hatred against skeptics as only a joke. It is all too real. And I laugh anyway, because it’s either laugh or cry sometimes.

The shiny, candy-like button!

Will she hold out? Can she hold out? This was the thought rattling around my brain-pan while reading this opinion piece by one Sarah Elizabeth or “S.E.” Cupp, ex-atheist in training. Well, that last part is pure speculation. But given her conservative political leanings, I have to wonder how far she can parlay her atheist street cred before the diabolical urge to go religious — like everyone who signs her paychecks — takes over.

I was originally going to write her an email about this, since the address is left on the article, but that’ll just get ignored or worse. This way is more fun. So I will copy what I had planned to write to her here instead. That way, someone might actually read it. heh.

I read with interest your recent opinion piece exhorting the ‘new atheists’ to embrace humility and stop with the insults, snark and condescension…while applying said insults, snark and condescension quite liberally. I hope it isn’t too snarky of me, but I found that rather amusing. Especially the mention of “more than 95% of the world finds some meaning in faith”, as if what is true were a popularity contest.

You mention having gone back to school to study religious beliefs you say you know little about. Have you learned anything interesting about them? Is it a ‘spiritual’ quest? Is that what it means to be on a ‘spiritual’ quest? Have you learned answers about questions like ‘is there more to life than this?’ Or have you shared my experience in that regard, and learned about the statements of faith offered in lieu of answers?

It seems odd to me that while you cite such apparently condescending statements as “Religion is my bitch.” or “Yes it is a myth. Deal with it. All delusions are myths.” …only to conclude from these that the rejections are not of faith itself but rejection of its adherents. Where is that to be found precisely? I see attacks on religion. On myths. On delusions. Are you reading something into these statements? If so, are you sure it’s even there? Or is an attack on religion equivalent to attacking a religious person? Since when were ideas given a free pass? The bible does not cry when I bash it, any more than it would cry when a fundamentalist believer thumps it.

I think this idea that ‘new atheists’ are willfully ignorant of some important truth is wrong on two counts: the data suggests that they are not willfully ignorant of religion; and no important truths from it have been demonstrated. Did you miss this Pew poll from a few months back perhaps? Why should atheists and agnostics score highly on religious knowledge tests if they are as ignorant as you claim? What don’t they know? Or is it just that they don’t treat it as important or special?

Finally, as you are a lifelong atheist, I’d like to know what you would say to the genocide survivor you cite, Immaculee Ilibagiza. Would you tell her that her faith in Jesus makes the religion true? Have you converted yet? If not, why not? Do you find it untrue? Delusional? Just don’t want to say?

Or perhaps you’d have enough tact to leave it alone, if said faith isn’t brandished as a rhetorical club. It seems a bit sad that you would use it in such a way, while she apparently hasn’t. Yet.

I always find hypocrisy amusing to point out in the process of busting an argument down to its component atoms, and S.E. Cupp’s article is rife with it. What is the point exactly of attacking snark as bad…with snark? If snark is bad, yours is too! And if yours is not bad, then what’s wrong with theirs?

I also figure I would toss in a term like ‘liberal’ just to make a conservative squirm when it applies to them. Malice aforethought, I has it.

The Pew poll dates back to September, first spotted through Pharyngula as PZ Myers gleefully bashes the ‘know-nothing atheist’ straw man with it. Reality, it is a real slap to the face sometimes for the credulous.

But the genocide survivor is an interesting case, and were it not for this conservative using it like a club on me, I really would be curious to know Cupp’s answers about that.

In the end, if she is still an atheist, she must think the poor victim is…wrong! People find ways to cope with adversity, religion beats the ‘deal with it’ of atheism if you can get past the nonsense of it…I can’t blame the woman for hoping for ultimate meaning and justice when the world certainly isn’t offering any. But there is a certain justice to the grave, to the heat death of the universe, to oblivion.

Of course, religion’s offer of deferred justice, meaning, pleasure, what have you, contains something of a trap, which is why I am wary of it. How else could you get religious nutbags to fly planes into buildings? The promise of heaven is balm for the suffering, true; but it is also a means to make people suffer, too. To ruin this life or flat-out discard it in the vain hope for a better afterlife. And since this life seems to be all we have, I count this among the most outrageous ideas perpetrated by religion. How dare they con people into throwing away the one life we do have for some pipe-dream?

Anyway, the opinion writer is of course just hawking a book anyway, so who gives a damn. I suppose I do, in a way.

So, ex-atheist in training, that’s what I figure. Religion is the history eraser button. The beautiful, shiny button. The jolly, candy-like button. She already admits to possessing ‘Judeo-Christian values’ and admiring the Ten Commandments. She already admits to the strong atheistic foundation of drunken benders in college talking about Nietzsche. Somehow, I don’t think the leap of faith is going to be that much of a jump for Ms. Cupp.

Oh, sorry. There I go again with the snark.

Cries of censorship

One of the phenomena I observe frequently in the skeptical community is the believer’s outcry over perceived censorship. Whether it’s creationist trolls being banned or suspended for rule-breaking, or creationist ‘intelligent design theorists’ pushing their religion into science classes in schools, they scream the loudest when society takes action to shut them up, shut them out.

At the same time, it’s interesting to consider just what they’re doing, what they’re trying to defend from so-called censorship. Creationism. Intelligent design — creationism in science’s clothing. Arguments based on quote mining, plagiarism, debunked claims and outright lies.

I recently had the experience of changing my mind on an issue based on new evidence; I shifted my position re: late-term abortions from the subject of fetal pain & suffering to viability, based on evidence that a developing baby doesn’t have the equipment to suffer until some time after birth. Of course, one might well argue that ‘aborting’ babies a few months old might be ok, but no one does that; society places value on a viable organism. So I changed my mind about the pain issue.

This is something we never see in the believer. You can demonstrate that their sources are wrong, and/or quotemines, and/or blatant lies. And it never seems to matter. The facts just…bounce off the person. They go right on arguing for their preferred god-concept. They show no remorse over the awful sources they’ve cited. They show no changed mind from new evidence debunking their positions. They cling to them, instead.

Funny how most of them seem to have rules against lying, and yet clearly show no particular concern when caught doing so. It’s hard to prove someone is lying. Hard to show a habitual liar. But not hard to demonstrate a lie. They could always be ignorant of it, as I was. My information was superseded by more current information. But who clings to the old, debunked position? Who doesn’t show some remorse over posting a bad source, or at least the willingness to adjust to better information? Who? The creationist.

From this, it seems reasonable to infer that creationists willingly and remorselessly post bad, deceptive, false arguments. They show, at least, that they’re not interested in truth. And so the cries of censorship can properly be seen as a defense for access. They just want to be able to continue spouting lies, to continue preaching, to continue to invade science classes and poison them with religious nonsense. It’s enough of a trope that it has a nickname — Liars for Jesus.

They’re not afraid to spew lies in support of their religion; the skeptic should not be afraid to call a spade a spade, and to remove the disingenuous believer’s access — their ability to spew those lies. Freedom of speech they do possess, at least in this country, but not freedom of access. Let them make their own way into the public square if they just want to lie and preach.

On child abuse, again

A different sort today. The past two weeks, my folks have been getting some digs in on me. I feel free enough to post this here because, honestly, neither of them is likely to read it, and if anyone does my dad is the least likely to. They are picking a fight with me, and they should know better. They are liable to lose, and to get the silent treatment for awhile.

Silence is something I am fairly good at, after living alone for this long. It’s enough that I wonder if I could stand people being around all the time.

Anyway. The news is that my nephew is going through his first communion. I hear even my pagan brother sent him a gift. I’d like to think the folks were being dishonest. The mind reels. I’m sorry, but I just cannot celebrate indoctrination. Especially of unsuspecting children.

These kids have no defense from you, none! They haven’t learned enough to be able to apply critical thinking to this religious ceremony — instead, they’re born and raised in it. To the point that it’s immunized from any critical thinking skills they may gain in the future. You can see it in the scientists that hang on to religious beliefs despite their knowledge and skills. Indoctrination teaches them to set that aside, in just this one area. This one’s special. To compartmentalize the nonsense; or perhaps the critical thinking, I can’t be sure which.

Many religions foment real, physically harmful abuse of their adherents, children and otherwise. I have some of the details from here, it’s worth a read-through for the interested skeptic. Found it by way of Richard Dawkins. It is a fine denouncement of organized religion’s child abuse. Beyond just the salacious scandals tearing into the catholic church, there’s children being sucked into armed conflicts under the guise of religion and sectarian or ethnic strife. There’s female genital mutilation.

And to even set all of that horror aside, the RCC builds up your kids with gender discrimination, reinforced by every catholic priest and his flowing robes and thrilling headgear. Reinforced by your holy book, should you on a lark choose to read it and not have it read to you. Do you remember how Eve, woman, is blamed for the fall of humankind? How in the new testament, women aren’t supposed to speak in church or lead them? Do you ever even ask why they’re all men in charge? Or does this disease get overlooked while you fight the symptoms out in society?

Now there’s a line that could piss off my mom. She probably doesn’t deserve that, but the men-folk sure do. It’s the price of accommodationism, eh? Go along to get along, and you end up giving it your tacit support.

I was sucked into that nonsense pretty bad before I broke out; I put some good effort into making contact with the xian god-concept. Wasted effort. And I remembered that, and I resented it. Enough to study until I could survive a scriptural drive-by or the arguments and apologetics of the casual believer, at least. And there were some, from my folks, even the priest of the church I had given up on. Well, again I should qualify it. Mostly my dad.

So here we go again, maybe. Old age and treachery. Well, I won’t take it out on the kids. From this distance, I can’t, really. That may be for the best.

But I have some paperwork at home, a Declaration of Defection that I have considered and repeatedly set aside, a formal break from the church rather than just being ‘lapsed’ as I am now. It may be time to rally some gumption and send it to Pittsburgh, and have done with it. Something I will think about this week, I suppose.

The worship of wonder

As I’ve come to realize that the Huffington Post is a haven of crackpot pseudoscience and spirituality — an overdose of liberal open-mindedness, perhaps — I keep an eye on it for examples of the same. I found one today from the vice-president of the BioLogos Foundation, naturally; in itself an extension of the Templeton Foundation, always interested in any scientist who will wax poetic for god’s sake.

Yeah, I’m mocking myself a bit over the liberal part.

So please, tell us how meaningful it all is! And it seems appropriate that Dr. Karl Giberson’s Huffington Post article is about just that.

We do not believe in God because we need to explain this or that feature of the world. That is what science is for. We believe in God because we see something deeper in the world, something that transcends the scientific explanations.

The experience of natural beauty is available to everyone, and only the flattest of souls cannot enjoy scenes like the one outside my window right now.

The interesting aspect to this argument, to me, is that it doesn’t take any faith in a transcendent god-concept to enjoy the wonders of nature, or the complexities of life, that Dr. Giberson spends most of his bandwidth on here. He ends it on a feeling of wanting to give thanks for the day, a sentiment I feel myself from time to time.

Today’s looking like a pretty good candidate, actually. It’s bright out, breezy, not too hot yet. The sights and smells of springtime in the desert are everywhere. I suppose I should be thankful that I don’t have an allergic reaction to it. Ah, but there’s that word again. Thankful. I don’t have anyone to thank, as a skeptic. It’s one of those ‘glad to be alive’ days I have on occasion. But the believer takes that desire to thank somebody and turns it into an organized religion.

The full experience of a new day is a complex mix of wonder and science, facts and beauty, mathematics and color. Science explains much of it, and what is left over is not so much in need of explanation as it is in need of celebration.

My belief in God provides a framework for this celebration. In some way that I cannot articulate, I praise God for each new day, dimly aware that I am sharing the experience with the artist who put it all in place and put me here to enjoy it.

It’s interesting as well how Dr. Giberson refers to this sense of beauty and wonder in regards to the skeptic: “It is what draws people into physics and often turns them into detached and marginally functional mystics, like Newton and Einstein.” Knowing what I know about Newton, I would hardly characterize him as a ‘marginally functional mystic’. He was a practicing alchemist who may have contributed to his own decline through mercury poisoning. Although modern chemistry had its start in this, chemistry does not pursue the philosopher’s stone and the elixir of life.

Einstein, well, it depends a lot on which quotes you care for, and I’ve seen him invoked on both sides of this sort of debate.

Getting back to wonder, though, I wonder why it is that believers require this object, this focus for their sense of thanks-giving. I have days like this when I’m glad to be alive; it takes no all-powerful god-concept to take in the day and be happy I was here to see it. I need no such narcissism, no elevation of the self as the penultimate creation of a loving, all-powerful superbeing. And all that just to enjoy a nice day.

You can see this narcissism in the way Dr. Giberson subtly attacks the skeptic: he sees something ‘deep,’ so the skeptic must be shallow; he takes in the wonder, only the ‘flattest of souls’ would think otherwise; he looks at scientists like Einstein and Newton as ‘detached’ and ‘marginally functional mystics’ if they haven’t gone so far as he.

Would the retort ‘piss off’ be too extreme? Shallow, perhaps? Well, you couldn’t call me detached at least. Enjoy your day, doctor. Here’s mud in your eye.

It’s a trap

…or, Concern Trolling and the Skeptic. Or, How Strident Is Too Strident?

So I get my inspiration today from one of the forums the ex-RDF forumites migrated to, Rational Skepticism. And from the general phenomenon of concern trolling. One of the posters found this article on Huffington Post, which I find harbors a number of religious apologists and generally peaceable, go-along-to-get-along skeptics. I have a tendency to disagree with them.

The upshot of the article is a new push for humanism, or ‘neo-humanism’ as it’s called, with a new manifesto and such. Naturally, they open this new appeal to moderate skeptics and believers with a bash on the ‘new atheism’ types. I do not really consider myself a ‘new’ atheist, having been one for a couple decades. But a sympathizer perhaps.

I found this neo-article interesting in that it characterizes humanism as a ‘rejection of theism,’ yet seems to target religious, believing folk who ‘share common goals.’ Yet I can look at the roster of signers-on listed on Huffington Post and recognize names I wouldn’t necessarily want to pick a fight with, like Steven Pinker or Ann Druyan or Joe Nickell. I leave it to the confused, casual reader to Google any of these.

Just seems as if you can always find someone who will take offense at almost anything. I don’t find, say, Pharyngula to be that offensive, though I know he tries. I like it. Yet these neo-humanists seem to find the likes of PZ to be a narrow-minded bully. And I know my own milder efforts have offended my folks. It’s why I set up this ‘Skepticism’ category, so they can bypass this iconoclastic waste of bandwidth entirely and bookmark my Personal tab.

Don’t think I ever spelled that out to them, but my mom is a clever sort. She probably figured it out.

It is troubling to look upon the likes of Ann Druyan as a concern troll. But I can’t help but read this dismissive, contradictory article about their goals and see the flaws. More troubling is their apparent interest in similar goals as the ‘new’ atheists — criticism of religious fanaticism, opposition to the intrusion of religious doctrine in public policy. Troubling because it is so similar.

Why should these groups bash each other at all? They have goals in common, they have different emphases perhaps. Perhaps ‘new atheism’ and its unmitigated gall will free a few minds, and ‘neo-humanism’ will give them some ideas on how to live afterward. There doesn’t seem to be much cause for conflict…

…except that bashing ‘new atheism’ is a sport in certain circles, and evidently results in free publicity.

Well, that and the excessive ‘new’ and ‘neo’ branding. New Coke failed! Just saying.

The best of the bad alternatives

This is a comment of mine on Huffington Post, which I have come back to elaborate upon a bit. Apparently they will turn your comments into blog posts for you, to advertise their website. The Net is an innovative place, isn’t it?

A couple of comments on Mr. Schrei’s article here; most of it was a laundry list of past bad behavior of scientists. It’s not that I find science and reason especially trustworthy; why else would peer review exist? It’s that it may be the best of the various bad alternatives, and demonstrably better than baseless beliefs.

“Everyone, as long as they are not infringing on the rights of others, is entitled to respect. I do not ridicule the atheist position, even though I do not agree with it.”

What is interesting here is how Mr. Schrei moves from respect for the person to respect for a position, an idea. Ideas are not inherently due respect. That is why religion earns none, and gets derision — which is deserved — instead.

“Bluntly dismissing the worldview of 4+ billion people might be expected from a sensationalist such as Hitchens, but sadly his view seems to be all too common among the atheist community.”

Yes, in fact I would bluntly dismiss this, as it is an appeal to the people, fallacious rhetoric and rightly dismissed.

It is ironic that after a fairly long list of bash-science examples from history, the writer turns around…

Unlike Hitchens, who uses religion’s atrocities to draw the conclusion that religion is bad, I am not attempting to create a logically flawed argument that says that science is bad or that atheists are racist — and of course most atheists, who tend on the liberal side as I do — would be shocked at the suggestion that class or race play any role in their worldview.

Yet after a list of flawed studies and eugenics and scientists who were racists, he wishes to claim that he is making no connection here, none at all! Relax, pal, the message you wanted to get across has been received in spite of your seeming-well-meaning protestations.

But there is a sensitivity here that the atheist community would do well to heed. It is a fact that modern day atheism grows out of the academic and scientific community. In America and Western Europe, it is no secret — and it is even an issue among the community — that the majority of atheists today are white, are middle or upper class, and are college educated. Of course in and of itself this fact means exactly nothing. However, when atheism’s mainly white, mainly upper/middle class, mainly educated adherents start to claim intellectual superiority over believers, that’s where the waters get dangerous; that’s where they start to drift into Richard Lynn territory.

The reason for this allegedly necessary sensitivity, the reason people make this association, well…it’s you, Mr. Schrei. There’s a reason why people continue to use logical fallacies like the appeal to the people or the tu quoque. They’re fallacious, but some people still buy it. People who clearly cannot claim intellectual superiority, because their logic is fallacious, their arguments therefore worthless.

That is an excellent reason for the skeptic to claim intellectual superiority. Not because science is somehow special or immune from flaw. It’s not, and we know this, or else things like peer review and demonstrable evidence and repeatable experiment would not be valued.

Sometimes you just have to beat them.

Today I am inspired by PZ Myers. I started some comments over there, but rather than just clutter up his comment section trying to keep up…I’ll blog about it.

So PZ has an issue with Ken Miller. And by extension some reporter who interviewed PZ and then used one lone comment to characterize all of ‘new atheism’. We’re just such a bunch of meanie-heads, eh?

A flush-faced Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, shook his finger at Miller during a tense panel discussion at New York University a few years ago.

He shook his finger! He shook his finger!! Fiery debate! Just a reminder, folks, that journalism is not always about the noble search for the truth; it is storytelling in pursuit of an agenda, and that agenda may be as simple and ignoble as getting more papers sold, or more eyeballs on a webpage.

No more noble than my own efforts I suppose, but I’ll own up to that. Well, I was going to add some profanity to the ‘shook his finger’ bit for emphasis, but it’s just not my style…blame my mother. Just imagine some rage and then a chuckle. Ridiculous.

I did take the time to read the newspaper article, though, curious about the other side. And it’s interesting to see the flaws in Ken Miller’s argument as revealed, unwittingly perhaps, by the reporter interested in casting Miller in such a friendly light. Again drawing from the newspaper article.

Miller leans, first, on biologist Stephen Jay Gould’s florid contention that the two realms are “non-overlapping magisteria.” Religion, Miller argues, addresses questions of purpose and meaning that science simply cannot approach.

But the cell biologist also makes explicitly scientific arguments: maintaining, for instance, that quantum indeterminacy — the ultimately unpredictable outcome of physical events — could allow God to intervene in subtle, undetectable ways.

So this immediately raises the question of course, how are they non-overlapping if Miller reserves things like ‘meaning and purpose’ for religion, but freely mixes the BS of religion into his science? This non-overlapping crap is flowing through a one-way valve! And the reporter chronicles this hardly new idea in the form of Jerry Coyne’s remarks.

“By discussing science and religion together and asserting that science more or less points you to evidence for God, he blurs the boundaries between science and faith,” says Coyne, “boundaries which I think have to be absolutely maintained if we’re going to have a rational country and we’re going to judge things based on evidence rather than superstition.”

While the reporter characterizes this a tactical critique, this fails to dismiss the objection. And this consistent failure on the part of the religious to honor their supposed boundaries between science and religion — except when it suits them — comes up again with the subject of ‘Intelligent Design,’ which I will put in quotes because it is neither.

And after all the blather about how the extremists on both sides feed on each other’s efforts, he couldn’t have ended with a better ironic joke, although I am skeptical that the reporter meant it as such.

In Finding Darwin’s God, Miller recalls running into Henry Morris, founder of the Institute for Creation Research, the morning after a debate over evolution in Tampa, Florida. Sitting down to breakfast he asked Morris, “Do you actually believe all this stuff?,” half-expecting a wink and a nod. But he got no such thing.

“Ken, you’re intelligent, you’re well-meaning, and you’re energetic,” Morris said, in Miller’s recollection. “But you are also young, and you don’t realize what’s at stake. In a question of such importance, scientific data aren’t the ultimate authority.”

Like PZ, I can respect people like Ken Miller for the good work they do, even if (on his terms) it is Old Earth Creationism vs. Young Earth Creationism. How can anything I say reinforce how incompatible science and religion are for the likes of Henry Morris? For these creationists, there is no argument. It is the bible first over everything. Need some credible evidence?

He was one of the founders of the Creation Research Society and the Institute for Creation Research.

Interesting that the ICR’s FAQ no longer exists, eh? I had a look, at least, couldn’t find it. But there is an internet archive. Following the links, we can see why it’s gone.

ICR holds to certain tenets. By Biblical Creationism, ICR believes:

1. The Creator of the universe is a triune God — Father, Son and Holy Spirit. There is only one eternal and transcendent God, the source of all being and meaning, and He exists in three persons, each of whom participated in the work of creation.
2. The Bible consisting of the thirty-nine canonical books of the Old Testament and the twenty-seven canonical books of the New Testament, is the divinely inspired revelation of the Creator to man. Its unique, plenary, verbal inspiration guarantees that these writings as originally and miraculously given, are infallible and completely authoritative on all matters with which they deal, free from error of any sort, scientific and historical as well as moral and theological.

There is no arguing with creationists like these. Not even from Ken Miller. And this is tactical, it does sound like a battle or a war, and it is. Indoctrination vs. education. And maybe Ken Miller feels like he’s doing some good, that he’s fooling some people with his supposedly-christian god of quantum indeterminacy.

Although I have been a skeptic longer than I ever was a xian now, and I don’t feel like a particularly ‘new’ atheist, at least they recognize the obvious truth here. These creationists, and ID-wolves-in-sheep’s-clothing, are rhetorical Terminators. Which gets me back to the title of this post. As far as I’m concerned, this is what they will do to science and reason if someone doesn’t step up.

Listen, and understand. That terminator is out there. It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.