Tibet

Posted on July 7, 2011 by cdwan

I had the opportunity to travel in Tibet for the last three weeks. The trip was filled with incredible experiences, stunning natural beauty, heartbreaking oppression, and a small dose of altitude sickness. Along the way, I gained a certain amount of context on a number of issues. One of them is this: America is not a “Christian nation.” In fact, the United States is not a religious society at all. Most of us are atheist in practice, by both law and culture. It’s just that most Americans are afraid to admit their godlessness.

Tibetan culture is strongly religious. In every city I visited, many (perhaps most) people started and ended the day with a walk (always in the clockwise direction) around the local monastery or temple. This circumambulation is known as a “kora.” Admittedly, this is a cultural as well as a religious practice. If your whole town turns out for an evening walk, perhaps you do as well. In addition, the temples were filled with people every day we were there. They left small money on the altars, lit the candles, said their devotions, and interacted with the monks. This daily practice absolutely dwarfs what I’ve seen anywhere in America. Prayer flags absolutely littered the hills and mountains. Most people seem to make pilgrimages to sacred sites on a regular basis. I saw dozens of people doing prostrations all the way around major religious sites.

Religion is important to the Tibetans on a daily and hourly basis in a way that I’ve never seen in America.

In fact, I’ve never seen anything even close in America, even comparing high holidays. I was in Tibet during Saga Dawa, a monthlong celebration of the birth, enlightenment, and death of the Buddha. The best comparison might with the month of December – the whole of Christmastime. The time of the year when God fever strikes most strongly. Even at Christmas, how many people do you know who will make a pilgrimage to a holy site? How many Americans go and visit their brother, the monk, in the local monastery? Do you know even one American who has performed even one public prostration (or a similar physical act of faith), much less knelt their slow and bruising way around a temple?

How many people in America actually live their supposed religion day by day instead of mouthing the words as hollow rhetoric?

Anyone seeking elective office has to mention their “faith in God,” almost as frequently as they affirm their “support for the troops.” However, in day to day life, neither is terribly prevalent. When you watch how people act, the truth comes out. Actual religious practitioners in the US are few and far between.

Atheists should keep this in mind when we argue our points. In practice, America is already an atheist nation. We are merely cleaning up the gap between hollow doublespeak and common practice.

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In Which Neal Faces a YEC

Posted on April 7, 2011 by Neal

This is a crosspost from my personal blog, Mage Chronicles.

Here’s a backstory for you. I’m a regular contributor to Yahoo! Answers under my usual cyber-pseudonym. I had answered a question citing examples of poor “design” of a supposedly omnipotent god/’designer’ as one of my answers. Not too long after, I received a message from a user who goes by the name Kissthepilot. Since replying to that first one, I have received quite a few more, as I guess he’s wanting to bait me into a debate with him. Here is the description in his bio:

I’m a young earth creation believer who has done so much research on evolution that I cannot believe anyone still follows that stuff anymore. I am a real christian, and I love debating with atheists. I just wish they would follow their own logic!

I know what you’re thinking. Headache waiting to happen. Believe me, I still think it, but in terms of my wrists, because right now I have a lot of typing to do. I hope you’ll join me on this journey and provide a little insight if you can.

Now, I’m not a scientist, I just play one on the radio. I’m not going to claim to be one, either. I don’t exactly have the debating skills or articulation of people like Matt Dillahunty or Richard Dawkins, but I’d like to consider myself at least well-learned enough in basic scientific concepts and logic that I can counter pretty much anything a YEC like Kissthepilot could throw at me.

Yes, Kissthepilot is notified about this blog post, as sending messages is only a 1500 character limit with Yahoo!. I have a little more wiggle room on my own blog, and by wiggle room I mean all the space I want to address everything that needs addressing.

…which is everything. So here we go.

Intelligent Design is a search for design in nature, and I believe it has good evidence of a designer. Since it’s science, it says nothing about who the designer is.

Here’s where the siren went off, right off the bat. Other than the fact that Intelligent Design isn’t science; heck, it doesn’t even qualify as a hypothesis. The whole thing is one gigantic argumentum ad ignorantium, but more on that later.

Design in nature is easily found; heck, if you cut down a tree and look at the rings, there’s a pretty circular design. Organs in our body are “designed” to perform certain functions. I get it. However, this is because evolution is the designer. There are plenty of instances in nature where such design is inefficient; for example, the holes in my throat that lead to my respiratory system and digestive system are aligned in such a way that choking on food is a risk for me.

I’ve heard YEC’s and other creationists cite the design of the eye as a great example of Intelligent Design (ID) or God’s handiwork. In other species, this is not the case. We have a blind spot in our eyes that is caused by where the bunching of optic nerves enter the retina. Squids do not have this.

But here’s what Kissthepilot (Ktp) has to say.

Also, all of the examples I’ve been shown of apparently poor design in nature are explainable as actually good design. For example, the mammalian eye. People say the blood vessels are on the wrong side, and the octopus has a better design. Well, how well to octopusses see? When we say someone can see well, we dont’ call them octopuss eyed. We call them eagle eyed. Eagles have the same design that humans and other mammals do.

First, I want you all to spot the first rationalization, and I’m going to tell you why it backfires. Ktp has managed to try to explain examples of ostensibly bad design as good design, by referencing the eagle. Yes, Ktp, when someone can see well, we do call them eagle-eyed. Do you know why? It’s because an eagle has such ocular acuity, it can identify a rabbit moving at a mile away. An eagle’s eyesight is four times better than a human’s. Now, you would agree that this is good design, but I’m not an eagle. I’m a human. Why wasn’t my eye designed to have the same acuity as an eagle’s? I’ll tell you why. Because I don’t need eyes like an eagle. My environment has dictated that my eyesight should have a certain range, focus, and clarity. In my case, I’m worse off than others because I actually have to wear glasses to correct my vision. That’s not design, that’s a natural flaw.

Here is the heart of the argument with ID.

We can see design in nature. If something is designed wrong, in your opinion, why a designer would do that is an interesting question but has nothing to do with if there was a designer.

I’ll agree with the fact that we can see design in nature. Ktp forgets, however, that design is a subjective term; what one certain biologist might consider a thing of beauty, like squids and other cephalopods, I consider to be ugly. (Sorry, PZ… nothing against you.) What YECs like Ktp might consider to be good design, like eagle eyes, is quite frankly a missed opportunity in other species. Imagine the strides we could have made if our vision was like that bird of prey!

Moving on, Ktp dishes out the second standard Creationist boilerplate fallback:

Evolution is not a fact. Unless you are talking about microevolution, which nobody disputes. Saying micro proves macro is a bait and switch scheme. I’m too smart to be fooled by that kind of logic.

Evolution is a fact. It’s scientifically testable and observable; modern biology and many other sciences (like the medical branch) are based heavily off of evolution.

Micro does prove macroevolution. Parsing these two terms out of evolution is an invention by creationists to rationalize away speciation, which they say cannot be observed. The only difference between microevolution and macroevolution is time. Ktp, perhaps you have outsmarted yourself.

After this point, I attempted to reason with Ktp by calling out the Discovery Institute and other “creation scientists” as liars. Ktp countered with what looks to be a plea for me to evaluate “both sides” of the argument.

But that’s the problem here. There isn’t two sides to this. Evolution/creation isn’t a controversy; hell, it’s not even a battle. Evolution is science. ID/Creationism is not. I would have thought that Kitzmiller v. Dover was the final nail in the coffin, but it seems I was wrong.

If you want to find out what ID is really about, I could suggest some reading. So far, nobody who believes like you do has agreed to take up my challenge. I’ll even read a book by Dawkins or whoever you want at the same time.

The only reading that Ktp could suggest is by representatives of the Discovery Institute; after all, they coined the term! So no, Ktp. I’m not going to take up your “challenge”, and for good reason. I want you to read whatever books you want, Ktp, but only because you are truly interested in learning the material and forming objective conclusions based on their content. I’m only going to suggest that you read books by real scientists and biologists, such as Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne, and The Greatest Show On Earth by Richard Dawkins. Both lay out an excellent case for evolutionary theory as opposed to what “creation scientists” say.

In case anyone missed it, I’ve been granting that I can very easily spot instances of design in nature. However, it came with a caveat; I also recognize that “design” is a subjective term. It should not be interspersed with “purpose”. Vestigial organs are a case in point of this. Clearly, they once were designed for some use, but no longer have any purpose.

ID is the scientific search for design in nature. It uses the same methods that many sciences use to detect design, sciences you would not object to. However, if we turn that science down to look at biological things, you cry foul and say it’s not science. Why?

Ktp, I have said no such thing. I’m not an “evolutionist”, nor am I a scientist, as I stated earlier. If you want us to have a debate, the first thing you need to learn is to not put words in my mouth and build strawmen.

The major problem with ID is what Ktp stated: the “search for design”. This implies the presupposition that nature was designed. Science says life on earth was “designed” through evolution. ID says life on earth was “designed” through… what, exactly?

According to the Discovery Institute, ID “agnostic regarding the source of design”. Right. So what is it? If anyone kept up with Kitzmiller v. Dover like I did, this has statement been exposed as an egregious lie.

This doesn’t sway Ktp, though.

Some examples of similar science are forensics, random number generation, cryptology, reverse engineering, and SETI, the search for extra terrestrial intelligence.

None of these examples are at all the same “scientific search” as ID, Ktp. As a programmer, I can tell you all about random number engineering, but I won’t get into it. Mathematics has nothing to do with subjective opinion. Forensics relies on evaluating microscopic evidence. Cryptology is mathematics- and logic-based, a far cry from what ID can hope to achieve. I need not go on.

If you have never heard any of these arguments, you don’t know what ID and the discovery institute is all about. So, are you willing to learn, or are you going to refuse like most of the people I ask?

So far, Ktp, you haven’t really taught me anything. I have heard all of these arguments, and so have many others before me who have refuted it not just online, but in a court of law. We’ll have one of those people, Joshua Rosenau, on the show next week, if you want to tune in.

The remainder of your messages, Ktp, was yet another passive-aggressive assault on my credibility, which I think I have addressed here. But one final thing you said:

One question, what if I told you I only got my information about evolution from answers in genesis? Would you believe I had a balanced view? What’s the difference between me saying that, and you only getting yours from talkorigins and Dr Dawkins?

No. I don’t think you have a balanced view at all, despite you having repeatedly claimed that you look at both sides. There’s only one side to this debate, and it’s the one based in scientific fact. I’m sticking to that side, because it’s the side that talkorigins.org and Professor Dawkins are on. However, I understand the motive behind your argument. TalkOrigins and Dawkins are not my final authorities; they are resources. I cite them because they have objective, verifiable, and empirical information that I can verify on my own.

I hate to say it, but the same cannot be said of anyone in the “creation science” camp. “Creation science” is an oxymoron, because creation isn’t science. It’s a presuppositionalist religious assertion.

A comic I once read defined the difference between Creationism and science, and it went like this:

  • Creationism: Here’s the conclusion. *holds up Bible* What evidence can we find that supports it?
  • Science: Here’s the evidence. *displays some natural phenomenon, item, etc.* What conclusions should we draw from it?

If you can’t see why the first part doesn’t work, then I think our discussion should end here.

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Christians and schools

Posted on April 6, 2011 by cdwan

Seems that we’ve got some exciting news in Rhode Island.

The ACLU has filed a lawsuit against the city of Cranston, asking them to take down a banner in the auditorium that shows the “school prayer.” The banner has hung there, across from the school motto, since the 60′s. The school (like others across the country) used to have a recitation of the school prayer or the Lord’s prayer each morning. That practice stopped, eventually, and at this point the banner is a sort of relic. Last June, people started making requests that it be taken down from its prominent place in the auditorium. The argument is straightforward – a public school has no business with “prayer,” one way or another. The matter made its way to the school board in March of 2011. After a public hearing, the school board decided to *not* remove the banner, and now we have a lawsuit to force them to do it.

So far, so good. Oddly, one of the most sensible comments on this issue came from the generally hard-line Bishop Tobin:

“Surely no one’s preventing that free exercise of religion … The rise and fall of religious faith, Christian or otherwise, in our nation, or even in Cranston, doesn’t depend on the fate of the banner. If it has to be removed, so be it. Faith will survive and the free practice of religion will go on.”

There’s a deeper issue here though and it shows in the public reaction to the lawsuit.

Reading the comments on the news article above reminded me of why I never read the comments on news articles. The unfiltered internet is a horrifying thing to behold. So filled with rage and hatred. When you combine anonymity and a large audience, the conversation tends to drop off a cliff. There are gems of sense in there, but also some glimpses into a cloistered bigotry that I like to imagine as a distant echo from a bygone age. The most horrifying comments are the ones who jump straight to an incredibly lowbrow sexism. They try to intimidate the plaintiff and anyone else who disagrees with them because (in their words) she’s just some dumb girl.

The primary plaintiff is Jessica Ahlquist, a sophomore at the school. She is a brave young woman who has become the face of the lawsuit. I cannot imagine that level of scrutiny myself, and I’m a self confident and successful person in my 30′s. To be under the halogen lights in one’s teens, already an insecure and formative time, would be an incredible amount of pressure. I respect her courage. She had to be removed from some of her classes because other students are threatening to harm her. From the tone of the comments on the Providence Journal (and on this website), those students are not alone in their violent urges. There seems to be a substantial contingent of people online who would prefer that women act in a docile skirt-wearing god-fearing sort of way.

So here’s my point in writing all of this: I was going to stay quiet about the banner. I have faith that the legal system will churn through and come to the correct answer. However, when people start to publicly intimidate, shout down, and threaten a high school sophomore for having the nerve to speak up, the game changes. When they bring their intolerant hatred out in public and pretend that it’s a virtue – at that point I feel a civic and moral duty to push back.

I’ve written and spoken before about the fact that we should deal with larger social issues of religion first. Some examples that matter are the sheltering of pedophiles in positions of authority, the misguided attacks on scientific progress and public health, the institutional sexism and homophobia, the tax evasion and fraud, and the wars. If we could get to the point where this banner was really just a historical relic – I would be willing to declare victory and go home.

To me, the banner itself is a small deal in the larger world. Yes, it should come down. It should probably have come down decades ago. This should have been an administrative thing. The real problem is that when someone finally raised the point we saw the underbelly of intolerance that still exists in the country. That intolerance is worth fighting.

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Jessica Ahlquist and ACLU sue Cranston over religious banner

Posted on April 5, 2011 by tduvally

This article in the Providence Journal today explains the lawsuit filed by the ACLU on behalf of Jessica Ahlquist, who was recently a guest on Freethought RI.

This is a big deal.  All the ACLU had originally asked was that the banner be removed, per the law.  When the school council refused, they decided to take on a potential lawsuit.  This is that lawsuit.

This should be a clear case to anyone.  It doesn’t matter that the prayer banner was a gift from s student or that it was there for 50+ years. What matters is that the moment a student or even a citizen of Cranston saw a problem with it, it was in violation.  It was in violation before, but if no one complained, nothing could be done.

This is now a government school that is endorsing a prayer, which is has no business doing.  The 1st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution makes it very clear that it would not get into the business of church.  Endorsing a prayer is a church function.  To take a legal stand in favor ofthis banner endorses it’s religion.

In addition to that, the Cranston school board has added various other objects around the banner in an attempt to shoehorn itself into legality.  It’s should be clear that this isn’t an attempt to comply with the law, but to obscure the fact that they want a religious banner to remain.  It’s immoral and it devalues any of the work that students contribute as mere window dressing.

The Rhode Island Atheist Society fully agrees with the intent of this lawsuit.  The payer banner has no place in a government building and the Cranston school board has no legal standing.

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Tiresome and irritating

Posted on March 22, 2011 by tduvally

Rhode Island Catholic Bishop, Thomas Tobin, has been making the rounds recently with talk of the Cranston Banner issue.  He has been quoted as saying the attempt to “scrub” references to God from public life is “tiresome and irritating”.  That the ACLU should find more important issues to fight.

This is a very interesting view.  While the discussion over a single banner in an old school seems like a trivial matter, the imposing of religion by a government institution on school children seems like a much more weighty issue.

Because that’s what this is.  It’s doesn’t matter that it’s been hanging for 50 years, or that it was written by a student, or that most people don’t want it to come down.  The fact remains that this is a religious statement being maintained by a public institution.

What I think the Bishop misunderstands is the use of the work “public”.  There is public as in “out in public”.  This refers to the idea that you are not alone in your private residence, or are being seen by many people.  This public sphere is open to all opinions and ideas.  You can say what you want, express your thoughts how you want, wear what you want, etc.  This is one use of the word “Public”.  I will start referring to this with capitalized ”Public”

Then there is the other use.  This “public” refers to the government.  As in “public works department” and “public property” and “public housing”.  This is anything the government handles.  This is the opposite of “private”, as in private club, or private residence.  Churches are “private institutions”, like Walmart or Band of America.  These are organization that have special rules for their members that don’t apply to the rest of us.

The ACLU has never once attacked the Public, they only fight against public.  They have routinely sided with the Public when the public tries to impose itself.  Like when schools tell kids they can’t hang the 10 Commandments on their lockers.  The ACLU threatened to sue a public school over that. That, and hundreds of other cases, is how the ACLU ensures that the Public is never scrubbed of references to God.  In Cranston, they are trying to scrub the public references to God.

What I find tiresome and irritating is that the Bishop is constantly lies about the constitutional ”Separation of Church and State”.  He has been repeating the tired old line that those words are “not in the Constitution”.  Well, he’d right.  But neither is “Freedom of Religion”.  Does that mean he’s not free to practice Catholicism?

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Same Sex Marriage

Posted on February 17, 2011 by cdwan

I was on the radio show again tonight, and we spent some time talking about same sex marriage. This is an issue on the legislative docket in Rhode Island right now, and it’s been the topic of a few shows.

First off, one might wonder why an atheist radio show would care about same sex marriage. Couldn’t we just, like, go off by ourselves and not believe in God? The answer is that, really, I would love to. I’m not all that worried about other people’s beliefs, per se. If we could get to the point where we had removed the majority of the institutionalized bigotry and intolerance that uses a thin veneer of religiosity to stay alive – I would love to hang up my combative hat and talk philosophy. However, what we’re really talking about is whether it’s okay to deny a fundamental civil liberty to a decent fraction of the population. Where the rubber meets the road, I’m worried about civil liberties, rationality in public health decisions, and so on. I no longer believe that religion is the cause of most of this … but it is certainly the excuse.

The question we asked callers was “how does allowing same sex marriages affect your heterosexual marriage?”  For all the talk about same sex marriage “devaluing” and ruining the institution of marriage – I expect some sort of detail to back it up. I’ve been married for more than a decade. In my experience, the marriages of my neighbors have almost no effect on me. I live next door to a woman who is raising two kids, solo, after her husband left her. I live across the street from a couple in their 60′s whose grandchildren come to visit from time to time. Neither of those relationships is like mine, but neither of them effects me all that much either. In Minnesota, I lived across the street from a couple of gay men in a long term relationship. They were fine neighbors. I also lived next door to a Yeshiva, a school for orthodox Jewish boys. They were fine too. In East Providence, I was frequently on the edge of calling the police over the sounds coming out of a perfectly heterosexual house. Even with that, there was no real effect on my marriage besides some good conversations about when to get involved in what was obviously some level of domestic abuse.

So the question was: “Why does it matter?” Sadly, we had only one caller who tried to answer – and he went with a combination of the “slippery slope” and the “word is and always has been defined this way” arguments. The latter works out to “nothing should ever change.” To that I say “society changes, and we can do better this year than last year.” When the US constitution was written, slavery was law and women didn’t have the vote. We’ve gotten past both of those mistakes. Let’s get past this one too.

The “slippery slope,” argument is ridiculous in a way that I failed to address on the air. I found myself yelling at the steering wheel on the way home over this one. The caller said, specifically, “if we let men marry men, what’s to stop someone from marrying their daughter, or their dog?”

Here’s the thing: We are not anywhere near the slippery slope.

When we talk about same sex marriage, we’re talking about the very most rational and stable members of the gay community. These are the folks who want to settle down, publicly commit to a long term relationship, use words like “father in law” or “brother in law” to talk about their partner’s family, and generally do all of the totally ordinary and boring stuff that heterosexuals take for granted in a lifetime-committed relationship. Nobody is talking about sexual promiscuity and serious deviancy here. If we were, then heterosexual marriage ought to be hauled on the carpet for some of the stuff I saw at college parties.

Don’t even get me started about Jersey Shore.

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