Thinking for Free

Gyapong Gets It Wrong

2008-07-13T15:25:00.004-04:00

One of Deborah Gyapong's favorite topics is the various Human Rights Commission hate-speech proceedings against people she considers her heroes. I actually have some sympathy insofar as I support free speech, and view hate-speech laws with misgiving (or else I just hang out at Ed Brayton's place too much). But that's a can of worms to open some other time.

However, on one recent free speech rant, Gyapong drags in (with tenuous relevance) a bit of Christian apologetics. I left a brief comment over there, but decided to also bring it back here for a more thorough fisking:

When I took Philosophy 101, one of the debates that, according to our professor, had never been solved was whether God existed or not.

Well, whether that question has been resolved might depend who you ask, but never mind....

Even Christian mystics and philosophers like Blaise Pascal have granted that you really cannot prove definitively one way or the other. That's why Pascal's famous wager says you have far less to lose if you choose to believe God exists and live as if He does and discover after death that He is in fact real, than to believe He doesn't exist, live as if He doesn't and discover, whoops! you are going to hell.

Even if you believe in God and discover after death He does not exist, you have at least led a good life.

I guess Deborah's Phil 101 class didn't also cover the criticisms of Pascal's Wager. First of course, note that it does not even claim to be an argument for the existence of God. Rather, it is a strategy for maximizing your welfare over the span of your mortal life, and possible after-life, in the face of objective uncertainty about the existence of God. As such, the Wager is of legitimate interest to philosophers as an abstract exercise in probability and decision theory.

However, as a strategic reason for adopting religion it fails badly. It doesn't even begin to work unless the "believe in God" choice is singular and well-defined. If (and this is actually the case in the real world) there are multiple competing and mutually-anathematizing sects, each advancing its own god(s), each with his/her/their particular criteria for admission to posthumous bliss, then the decision process fails. The Wager gives no guidance on how to choose between Christianity and Islam -- or even between Catholic and Baptist belief. It simply swallows whole the assumption that we know what the postulated God wants us to do to be considered righteous.

One more thing: I can't let pass without comment, the casual bigotry implied by: "Even if you believe in God and discover after death He does not exist, you have at least led a good life." Apparently, whether or not God exists, you can only lead a good life if you believe in him/her/them/it.

However, it seems Gyapong's invocation of Pascal is mostly meant to set up the false dichotomy at the core of her argument:

We live in a universe of unsolved mysteries. I can look at the heavens and like the psalmist say they testify to God's glory, that they and all the beauty of nature are like a book that testifies to God's design and God's laws. But others look at the same universe and see primordial slime and nothingness and random chance natural selection.

[I have to break in here to note that Gyapong's confusion of the fields of astronomy and biology suggests that, while she may have taken Philosophy 101, she never took Science 101. Here's a quick remedial lesson, Deborah: no one thinks the stars came from "primordial slime" (of course, I also don't know anyone who thinks life did either, in quite those terms, but I'll let it go) or were subject to natural selection -- a process reserved to entities that reproduce themselves with at least moderate fidelity. Either she knows roughly nothing about science, or is just tossing rhetoric around in a fact-free attempt to impress. But I digress:]

In other words, we both base our beliefs on a priori assumptions about existence that cannot be proven, even though we could both say there is evidence to support our views. My a priori assumptions are religious, Christian, and rely on revealed truth in holy Scripture and holy Tradition. The a priori assumptions of secular humanists are based on Darwinism, and materialism that are just as much faith-based as my beliefs, though God is not in the picture for them.

That paragraph is a remarkable example of managing to get just about everything wrong.

First of course, there's the obligatory abuse of the term "Darwinism", an almost sure sign you're dealing with someone who knows nothing about the subject, except that whatever it is they don't like it.

Secondly, she seems to assume that, just because she's accepted the terms of Pascal's Wager (albeit without justifying her particular choice of god and "Tradition"), it follows that we Darwinist-materialist humanists also have, only we're betting on the other side. Wrong, wrong and wrong, Deborah: I (and most other "materialists" I know) reject the Wager, partly for the reasons I outlined above, but additionally because having examined the available evidence, we conclude that the question of God's existence is resolvable in the negative to a reasonable degree of certainty -- at least enough that we can pretty much ignore the question and get on with our lives. This is not the result of some "a priori assumptions" we hold -- I and many other atheists were practising Christians (or other religion) at some time in our lives; we did hold those religious priors, but came in time to see that they did not match reality. You see, in the real world, "assumptions" are not like mathematical axioms, where all that matters is internal consistency (though religious claims frequently fail even that criterion) -- at some point, incorrect assumptions tend to collide with that real world. You start to run into situations where you find yourself saying: "My assumptions imply that the world should look like This. In fact, it looks like That. Better re-think those assumptions...." That's the way science works, and the only a priori of science is something like: the universe works consistently, and if we study it in a disciplined way, we can figure it out.

There's a lovely irony in Gyapong's argument. If you read her blog for any length of time, you find that one of the other epithets (ie. in addition to "Darwinist" and "materialist") she likes to toss out is "postmodernist" -- a school of thought which among other things denies absolute universal truth in favour relative, individually constructed truths. But her assertion that our understanding of the Universe is completely determined by arbitrarily-chosen priors essentially sets up the same kind of relativist epistemology. The only difference between this and "classic" postmodernism is that in the latter it is social factors like one's race, gender and economic class that determine one's worldview. And on the whole, scientists (including most of those dreaded "Darwinists") have little use for post-modernism.

Of course, this whole digression into bad apologetics is just a lead-up to Gyapong's favorite hobby-horse, the supposed persecution of Christians by the Human Rights Commissions:

As Ezra Levant points out today, we have a new state religion. We can't really call it a theocracy because God is missing from the creed. But it is a faith nonetheless with its own strictures, its own moral code, its own high priests and priestesses and its own inquisitors. And these new inquisitors share a similar zeal for enforcing their dogma on heretics and schismatics.

This "state religion" at least as she sets it up, is a bogey man of her own devising. Gyapong is advancing a dichotomous view in which there are only two sides: the conservative Christians, and the Darwinist-materialists who are out to get them. In fact (as anyone who isn't determined to fit the facts into the straight-jacket of their martyr complex knows), there are are all sorts of "sides" in our society. At the very least, there are: conservative Christians who rail against the modern world; the leftist po-mos whose views I find just as silly and anti-intellectual; the scientific view in which evidence decides matters of truth (and is in itself largely independent of ideological commitments); and libertarians who believe in free speech as a principle, even for fools and bigots (for an example of the last view, Deborah should go check out Ed Brayton's Dispatches From The Culture Wars: a harsh critic of religious excess, who regularly jeers at creationism, and fiercely defends gay rights -- but who has also defended Ezra Levant on strict free-speech grounds).

There are aspects of the Stephen Boissoin case that I am unhappy about (or would be, if they were to be confirmed by a source that wasn't so obviously grinding an axe over it), but Deborah's bogeyman of materialism, Darwinism and a priori philosophical assumptions have nothing to do with it.

[As an aside, I should note that Stephen Boissoin is being persecuted for being an ignorant bigot repeating the standard lies of the Christian Right. One can defend him on the principled basis that even ignorant bigots should enjoy the right to free speech, and the proper response is public refutation and ridicule -- but to defend him as a persecuted Christian says something about the kind of Christianity you endorse.]

In support of PZ's right to be impolite and insulting

2008-07-12T10:56:00.006-04:00

With regards to this news story, and this response on Pharyngula:

It may be a fine distinction, but I do not see PZ's impoliteness and insults as directed at the Catholic faithful who believe that God is present in the communion wafers, however much PZ would disagree and consider them to be naive and/or deluded and/or misguided. Rather he is (verbally, of course) attacking those who think it is appropriate, or even understandable, to respond to blasphemy and sacrilege with physical force and death threats.

Here is a letter I sent to the President of UMM:

Dear Dr. Bruininks,

I firmly believe that, in addition to transmitting knowledge on various topics, one of the important roles of a university is to encourage students to think critically and question their own and their world's basic assumptions. I think that Professor P.Z.Myers does an excellent job in all of these areas, and is a credit to UMM.

Recently, I have seen blog posts by Dr Myers in which he has encouraged desecration of Catholic religious symbols. Bill Donohue has stated that "It is hard to think of anything more vile...". While the comments and proposed actions by P.Z. Myers may be insulting and impolite, surely there are many things in this world far viler than denigrating symbols and beliefs.

I hope you will disregard the demands from the Catholic League for the removal or other discipline of Professor Myers, and support his right to voice his opinions, however controversial they might be.

Two more reasons not to read the Citizen

2008-07-07T23:12:00.007-04:00

We dumped the Ottawa Citizen years ago, as it gradually slid into banal fluff. The last few days reminded me why we continue to not take the rag.

First, on Saturday columnist David Warren celebrated changes to the Ontario Human Rights Commission by preemptively proclaiming his own martyrdom:

As a writer who does not subscribe to the "politically correct" ideology, it is reasonable to expect that, sooner or later, they will come for me.....I was born a free citizen of the Old Canada and before her God I declare, that I will go to jail rather than acknowledge the legitimacy of any "human rights" commission.

Wow. I predict that David Warren will be arrested the day they criminalize self-important windbaggery with pomposity aforethought. But not, I think, before then (unless of course, he deliberately provokes it).

Then on Monday, Reuven Bulka writes a column on the Sanctity of Life and how we need God -- apparently, to keep us from offing all the old people and cripples (something like that). Along the way he invokes Ben Stein's "well done documentary" Expelled, which tells "the story of scientists expelled from their universities for looking positively on the notion of intelligent design, rather than embracing holus bolus the Darwinian theory of the evolution of the species". Someone should tell him that the persecution stories in the movie are (to put it charitably) significantly exagerrated.

That was just the start. It goes downhill from there:

Although Darwin somewhat arrogantly called his work The Origin of Species, it is clear that he did not explain how life actually originated. He did not know, nor do scientists today know.

The choice of title would be because Darwin was writing, not about how life began, but specifically about how new species arose in nature -- a live scientific question throughout the nineteenth century (and in many ways, still today). While I've often heard creationists assert that our ignorance of life's beginning is some fatal blow against evolution, I must say I've never before encountered that objection based on such a grossly illiterate misconstrual of the title of Darwin's book. (But note the implicit invocation of the God of the Gaps argument).

Bulka blathers on:

You are left wondering why seemingly intelligent people have zero tolerance for intelligent design. It is not as if intelligent design is any less scientific than the gaping hole in how life began that Darwinists greet with an "I do not know" shrug.

As a matter of fact, it is as if ID is "less scientific". Lacking a coherent hypothesis beyond "Evolution can't do that", it's not scientific at all. And concerning how life began, scientists know a good deal more than pious ignorami like Bulka are aware of.

By the way, for the record, I have no problem with evolutionary ingredients in creation. This can co-exist quite comfortably with intelligent design, or God's design, which is stretched out on an evolutionary canvass.
Mr. Stein takes the viewer on a Columbo-like journey trying to get to the bottom of this visceral and categorical rejection by the Darwinists. He skillfully shows how Darwinism moves people to reject religion, and some of the major tenets of faith, such as the notion of afterlife and the meaning of existence, including having a code of values.

Of course, Stein "shows" this by "skillfully" interviewing only prominent atheists like Richard Dawkins and P.Z.Myers, ignoring devout pro-evolution scientists such as Ken Miller and Francis Collins. Bulka then goes on to swallow Stein's science-hatred hook, line and sinker:

In a Darwinist system, with everything happening on its own, we are bereft of values. And the scientists seemingly want it that way. If nothing is sacred, anything goes - there are no restrictions.

I have no idea what Bulka means by a "Darwinist" system, but the rudiments of morality -- compassion, cooperation, reciprocity, mutual aid, observance of social rules -- seem to be built in to our psychology, and that of our closest relatives. We don't need abstract notions of sacredness to avoid the "anything goes" apocalypse: simple enlightened self-interest gets us a long way down that road.

Of course, no anti-evolution rant would be complete without dragging in the ghost of Stalin, and the Hitler Zombie.

That brings us to ask whether we ever had such a world, a Godless world, and yes we did. Stalin killed in the tens of millions, Hitler's evil is well documented, and there are others who in the absence of any values wreaked immeasurable havoc.

That Hitler was "Godless" of course explains why he wrote copiously about his duty to God on behalf of the German people, and why the buckles on WW2 German uniforms bore the slogan "Gott Mit Uns". And Stalin (to those who have even passing familiarity with Darwin's ideas, and know what the term actually means) was anything but a "Darwinist": official Soviet dogma during his era rejected Darwin's proposed mechanism of organic change (variation and natural selection) as being incompatible with Marxist theories of history. In its place Stalin substituted the neo-Lamarckian ideas of Trofim Lysenko (with disastrous results for Soviet agriculture).

But really, the foregoing are just minor historical gaffes compared to the real fallacy of that paragraph, which is that the Stalinist and Nazi visions were far from "values-free". What they both were, were ideologies which invented and elevated certain "values" (the achievement of the Workers' Paradise through the inexorable outworking of Marxist dialectic; the perfection and triumph of the Aryan Race) over, well, pretty much every other value, including the liberty and lives of individual humans. It's not about values vs. no values: it's about which values.

Of course, Bulka is careful to throw in a token acknowledgement of the known evils of religion -- but you can tell he doesn't really mean it by his attempt to pull a No True Scotsman move (emphasis mine):

This is not to suggest that religion is free from taint. Too many have killed in the name of religion, and history past and present is discoloured by so-called religious figures who espouse, encourage, and reward killing.

And after that diversion, it's back to the real villain -- science:

As bad as religion may be, the argument can be made that absent religion, things would be worse. Mr. Stein drives this point home incessantly, as he juxtaposes scientific tyranny with Nazi imagery.

The good Rabbi doesn't explicitly mention the movie's use of Holocaust imagery -- perhaps he heard about the Anti-Defamation League's deprecation of the film as "misappropriat[ion]" of that sad episode in history, and thought it prudent not to call close attention to that aspect of it:

Using the Holocaust in order to tarnish those who promote the theory of evolution is outrageous and trivializes the complex factors that led to the mass extermination of European Jewry.

Bulka continues:

A valueless society enslaved by scientism desacrilizes life. And Mr. Stein is not oblivious to the scientism of eugenics as it impacted then, with the implicit warning that it could happen again.

I don't quite know what this "scientism" Bulka complains about is, but science is about discovering how the world works, with all its wonders; and the "Darwinism" (properly: evolutionary biology) Ben Stein derides is very much a part of that discovery. Bulka is welcome to argue all he wants for the sacredness of human life, either as a principle, or as a practical bulwark against atrocity -- but his argument is ill-served by credulously regurgitating nonsense from a film well-known to be propaganda, and which places blame on all the wrong people.

[Afterword: while surfing up references for this post, I happened across this thoughtful and nuanced essay on Expelled by an Evangelical Christian at the American Scientific Affiliation site. I don't agree with everything Schloss says, but he tries very hard to be fair to both sides, and correctly identifies the movie's many flaws. Recommended reading, especially for those who might default to Stein's camp.]

Hat tip: Dr. Dawg (though I must also credit Deborah Gyapong, who of course agrees with Bulka).

I love it when I guess right

2008-07-06T10:08:00.003-04:00

Back in May, conservative blogger Deborah Gyapong (who in RL lives fairly close to me) posted a bit of hysterical granny spam in opposition to Bill C-51 (for non-Canadians: tightens up regulations governing Natural Health Products, which currently occupy a middle position between foods and full-blown pharmaceuticals). I replied with a comment referring her to Barry Green's informative series of articles on the Ottawa Skeptics site. Along the way, I tossed in a speculation of my own:

....has it occurred to you that it might be astro-turf from the NHP industry?

I haven't been following the issue that closely, so it was only recently I discovered that, a few days after I posted that comment, it turns out that my guess was right. The anti-C51 campaign seems to originate from the website stopc51.com, which makes hysterical claims such as....well, the ones found in that granny spam. Claims which are outrageous enough that they should automatically set off any thoughtful person's bogosity alarm (giving garlic to your child as a home remedy can get you arrested?!).

StopC51 is owned by a certain Mr. Ian Stewart. And what does Mr. Stewart do in his day job? He runs a mail-order supplement company called Truehope Nutritional Support Ltd. (in fact the contact phone number for StopC51 goes to the Truehope offices). Truehope sells a rather expensive multi-vitamin supplement known as EMPower, which is claimed to treat all sorts of psychological or neurological problems from mood disorders to Tourette Syndrome -- unproven health claims which have gotten them in trouble with Health Canada in the past.

The gory details are in the eSkeptic article, so I won't repeat them here. Suffice it to say that Stewart is one who cannot even live within the NHP regulations as they currently exist -- so it's no wonder he's dead against any increased restriction in those regs. There may be legitimate criticisms to be made about C51 (there always are, for any complex piece of legislation). There may even be merit to having a larger philosophical argument about the extent to which the government should protect consumers from questionable product claims vs. taking a caveat emptor approach.

But you're not going to get any of that by listening to a manufactured panic emanating from an obvious snake-oil salesman.

AMC Ad, Updated

2008-06-30T23:17:00.005-04:00

For those who can't see the animation (and for after it has disappeared), here's a composite of three screen-caps that give the gist. The caption in the last one reads: "The intelligent way to go the movies". I really can't help wondering if they did that deliberately.

BTW, we just got back from Indiana Jones: The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull -- a fun romp and worthy successor to the earlier ones. And it's every bit as good a documentary as Expelled!

Meandering with Jesus

2008-06-29T23:04:00.008-04:00

Due to overwhelming popular demand (ie. one commenter, and email from some Christian friends), after what I realize has been a whole year, I now pick up the continuing saga where I left off.

Looking back on my whole Christian phase (a total of 28 years and a few months), I see a process of continuously discarding bits and pieces of an initially-adopted fundamentalist orthodoxy. I am constitutionally incapable of not asking questions, both about the external world and the contents of my own head -- and that is absolutely fatal to any sort of rigid dogmatism. My constant questioning is what led me from the naive agnosticism of my childhood (anything you believe in your early teens is almost by definition naive) into Christianity, and then gradually back out to a mature rationalism.

The first discard (though as already explained, it was really a non-starter) was of course strict young-earth literalism. Then I started actually reading the Bible -- every word, from Genesis to Revelation -- and ran into books like Job. Was it really likely that this guy would compose epic poetry while sitting in misery amidst the ruins of his life? And was there anything really lost from the central theme of the book by reading it as an abstract inquiry into the question "Why do bad things happen to good people?", rather than a literal history? (BTW, the answer as eventually presented by God seems to be: Because I'm God and I can do whatever I choose, and I'm way smarter than you. So just STFU.) Similar considerations apply to Jonah. So, I accepted the idea that the Bible could still bear a message from God, even if the narratives were partially fictional. Note that this is not, strictly speaking, a repudiation of Biblical inerrancy -- it's just a question of interpreting the intent of a particular book. If Jesus taught in fictional parables, why couldn't some whole books be the same sort of thing?

The second major discard was the kind of crude salvationism that goes like: "Pray this magic prayer and you get to go to heaven. Otherwise demons will torture you for all eternity". I'd like rant about that at length, but for now I'll put it succinctly: if that message doesn't stick in your craw, then you seriously lack a sense of moral proportion and human compassion. If you worship a God who really operates that way, then you worship a psychopathic monster worse than Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot combined and multiplied a hundred-fold. Indeed, many or most evangelicals I meet seem to have found some way to soften that stark anathema, and I was no exception. In this I was much influenced by the writings of C.S.Lewis (particularly The Great Divorce), who took a much more nuanced view of the whole salvation/damnation issue. Lewis' view isn't that God gets permanently pissed off at you for every slight misdeed, but rather that sin is, at base, the act of rejecting God, and thus rejecting the very Source of Life and Ground of Being. Consequently, one becomes a less "complete person". Post-mortem, that process continues, like the damned in The Great Divorce, collapsing into self-centredness and self-loathing. God does not damn us to Hell; we damn ourselves to the hell of our own mental solitude. As a theology, it's sort of a combination of Plato and modern psychology.

The main point of all this rambling is that holding such a position makes the answer to the question "Who can be saved?" somewhat less obvious. And if it's no longer strictly limited to those who have "accepted Jesus into their hearts", then the way is open (though not inevitable) to make it steadily more inclusive.

Notwithstanding the above, at the time I graduated from university (and got married) I was still a practicing Evangelical. At Queens I'd been involved with the Navigators (which if you know much about the Evangelical scene, you know as one of the most gung-ho "Are you saved yet? Let me read you this tract...." groups out there), and kept that up after moving to Ottawa. However, there were other influences at work. One was the rise of the American Christian Right, culminating in the election of Ronald Reagan. I've blogged on this before, the net effect being to drive me socially away from fundamentalism, to go along with my growing intellectual differences. A second one was entering the normal life of work and meeting a greater variety of people -- school in many ways can be a bubble where you only know other students, all of whom are about your age, and hang out with only a certain clique of that already-restricted society. And of course, I now had leisure to read and think about things other than next week's problem set.

But the Big Event that gave a real kick to the process of slow apostasy was the impending arrival of our first child. As I contemplated how we were planning to raise this child, I realized that I just couldn't, with a straight face, impart to him Christianity as I knew it. I claimed (even to myself) that I still believed most of the important conservative doctrines, but when I really stopped to examine the state of my belief, I realized it was a shell: my heart was no longer in it, and never could be again.

So I quit going to church. And stayed that way for about two years. When we resumed, rather than to the evangelical churches of my past, it was to a local United Church of Canada -- a denomination spanning the range from moderate conservative to way-out liberal (and I think I traversed that entire spectrum in the 15 years we spent there), with a strong emphasis on social action and practical Good Works. And the best part was: no one cared how orthodox you were, and no one asked how your spiritual life was going. It was a great place for a refugee from fundamentalism to have a good long think -- and it was a great relief to give up feeling the obligation to support beliefs that no longer seemed supportable.

This post is now getting plenty long, so I'll leave off there. I promise that it won't take another year to finish the story!

Images from Wikimedia Commons:
King James Bible, 1611
Paradise and Hell, Hieronymous Bosch, c. 1510

AMC Advertising Appropriately

2008-06-28T18:42:00.004-04:00

While looking up showtimes for Indiana Jones, I discovered that Expelled has arrived at our local movie-plex. Knowing what I know about the latter movie's contents (including stuff coming from the flick's producers), I am unlikely to see it. Not only do I refuse to enrich this bunch with the royalty from my ticket purchase, I've got more enjoyable and productive ways to spend 90 minutes of my life (like bathing the cats, or going to the dentist).

However, the AMC website blurb is worth seeing, just for the ironic humour value. Click here, choose the "Synopsis" tab, scroll down so you can see the Movietickets.com ad below the text -- and watch (but do it before the ad goes away -- who knows how long this turkey will last?)

Natalie MacMaster

2008-06-16T23:55:00.007-04:00

Natalie MacMaster at the 2005 Ottawa Folk Festival

About once a year, I manage to take a photograph I'm really proud of. In this case, it was beginner's luck. We had bought DSLRs (his-'n-hers Nikon D70s's) a few days before the Festival and I decided to bring one along to play with on the weekend, just to get used to the camera.

Two things I immediately appreciated about digital:

The ability to change my "film speed" on-the-fly -- from ISO 200 for high-resolution under full sun, to ISO 1600 for night-time ambient stage light (as in the above).
The freedom to click away with wild abandon, without exhausting a 24 or 36 exposure roll -- or worrying about the cost of film and processing! One thing I noticed a few years ago about the professional photographers is that they burn film. Yes, they know all about exposure and lighting and composition -- but they also take lots of pictures, because some things you just can't control for, especially on non-posed, non-studio shots. So they'll take, like, a dozen -- or a hundred -- shots to get the one that gets published.

The above picture was taken maybe 20 meters from the stage, with the zoom maxed out at 300mm, hand-held. I hadn't yet heard the rule of thumb that you shouldn't shoot slower than the reciprocal of the focal length, and at 1/30 of a sec or so, a lot of the shots came out blurry due to camera shake.

But a few didn't, and the one above is the lucky winner: just caught the magic moment with Natalie backlit by a purple spot, leaning into her fiddle, with a little motion blur on the bow hand so you can almost hear the music happening.

Full disclosure: Image shot in landscape and cropped to tighten up the composition; some reflected highlights (notably: the sheen on the drummer's bald head!) toned down using GIMP.

Damn right, we're proud, AGAIN!

2008-06-13T23:52:00.006-04:00

So, a mere six days later, and we're back in Ontario, where the handsome guy at left received a diploma in Instrumentation Technology (Computer & Automation), with distinction, from this place.

This time, the recipient of the obligatory "Thank you for coming and speaking to our graduates" appreciation certificate was Vicki Keith, who got famous by swimming across a bunch of large bodies of water, and now works with disabled kids (I expect someone already pointed her to the obvious video).

So: two kids all college edumacated. When do I get go back? I'm tired of them having all the fun, while I just get to pay for it.....

Damn right, we're proud!

2008-06-08T02:30:00.008-04:00

We're currently in a small town in Illinois, where today the young man pictured at left (name of Nicholas) was awarded a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology & Sociology (with a minor in Computer Science), Summa Cum Laude, from this college.

They also gave a degree to this elderly lady (below). I think she's some kind of American politician. No one important, anyhow.

Stay tuned for the next stop on the Great 2008 Graduation (and Furniture Moving) Tour....

Almost Caturday....

2008-05-30T23:08:00.004-04:00

The Shuttle is Carrying What?

2008-05-30T22:11:00.004-04:00

Am I the only one to notice this? Or am I the only one whose mind is....well, the kind of mind that would point it out?

The current space shuttle mission, STS-124, is carrying two important cargoes for the International Space Station.

One, about 50cm long, is a replacement pump for the ISS's zero-g toilet. If you understand even a little basic physics, you can see that excretion in free fall has certain, um, unusual hazards associated with it, and as a consequence the toilet facilities have to be rather high-tech. And it's a bit of a nuisance when a piece of that technology goes on the fritz. So the ISS crew are looking forward to getting the space-loo working properly again.

The other, and much larger item (about 11 meters and 15 tonnes) is a Japanese lab module to be affixed to the side of the ISS. The name of the module is (wait for it).....

Kibo

In Japanese, this means "hope". So let's hope the crew makes sure to install the correct item in the correct place....

OK, I'll admit it's childish.

What do these people have in common?

2008-05-29T22:33:00.014-04:00

Answer: They both believe that there is a mystical magical power that uses the forces of nature to punish wrongdoing in the here and now.

On the left is John Hagee, pastor of Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas. He is on record as claiming that Hurricane Katrina was sent by God to punish New Orleans for being too friendly to Teh Gays. On the right is actress Sharon Stone, who speculated that the recent Chinese earthquake was due to "karma" because of Chinese mistreatment of Tibet and its people. Now, I do have some sympathy with Stone's concern for Tibet, whereas I think Hagee is just a vile stupid bigot. Moreover, Stone has apologized and perhaps somewhat retracted the remark, while as far as I know, Hagee still has it in for gays and The Big Easy. However, that doesn't change the fact that they have something else in common: they're both wrong. As in: you have to be a bit stupid and superstitious to have thought that way in the first place (but then, charismatic preachers and actors are not, in general, classes of people known for their intellectual prowess).

Something else Hagee and Stone (actually, their respective Cosmic Avengers) have in common: they've got lousy aim and produce lots of collateral damage. The earthquake didn't hit Beijing, and take out just the Chinese leadership (ie, the people actually responsible for Chinese policy on Tibet). Instead, it hit a few thousand kilometers away in Sichuan, and killed about 70000 (and still counting) mostly ordinary folk. In New Orleans, the worst-hit areas were not the "gay village", but regular middle and working class neighbourhoods. Which is another reason why it's stupid to believe that natural disasters are divine/karmic retribution.

Actually, it's worse than just silly to believe that: it's potentially very dangerous. Consider the following hypothetical: Suppose that we live next door to each other. Further suppose that, according to my religion, my god disapproves of you in some way -- your sex life, your rival religious opinions, your dietary practices, whatever.

Now, if I believe that you'll have to answer to my god in the afterlife, I may try to warn you of your posthumous peril, but not do much more than that. At worst, I'm likely to become an obnoxious boor, and a pain to have as a neighbour. However, suppose that I think my god is so pissed off at your behaviour that he's likely to take direct action to abate it sooner than that AND that he's got the aforementioned tendency to overdo things -- well, now I'm afraid of becoming collateral damage. So I'm likely to take some preemptive action of my own. And if there's enough people who also think like me, things could get very ugly for you.

I'll grant that there are some significant differences between Stone and Hagee. For one thing, Sharon Stone is a lot thinner and better-looking. Another is that Stone's Western-celeb Buddhism probably renders her not much of a threat to those she disapproves of (and besides, her concept of "karma" seems rather vague). But Hagee specifically believes in a God who punishes whole cities for tolerating the activities of some individuals. He even encourages other people to believe the same. And that is beyond stupid, beyond even dangerous: it is evil.

Photo credits: John Hagee from ibabuzz.com; Sharon Stone from sharonstone.net

DIY Comics

2008-05-23T22:08:00.006-04:00

On Tuesday, the anonymous Author of Jesus and Mo left the dialog out of the strip and invited his (her?) readers to fill them in. I'll take that as permission to steal the artwork and get a blog-post out of it:
My feeble attempt:

Jesus: Our Creator hath abandoned us today, and left us with no words to speak!
Mo: And we can do nothing without him!

Barmaid: But didn't you both manage to get yourselves down to this pub, order drinks, and get through the whole first panel of dialog, all on your own?

[J & M ponder this for a moment]

Mo: Holy shit! We did!

See other contributions (some of which, I'm sure, are much better than mine) at the original site.

Friday Cat Blogging

2008-05-23T22:06:00.003-04:00

This is a photo of my buddy Bertrand Alfred Russell Wallace North Whitehead Insufficient Delta-Vee:

(LOLCat translation provided by speaklolcat)

Panda Confusion

2008-05-08T22:09:00.002-04:00

In case you're one of those people who get the World Wildlife Fund mixed up with the World Wrestling Federation, now you can really be confused:

Hat tip: Tim Warris, whom I assume is the author of this cartoon.

Lowering the bar.....

2008-04-22T23:32:00.005-04:00

Apparently, I'm only indifferently sinful:

The Dante's Inferno Test has sent you to the First Level of Hell - Limbo!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:
Level Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers) Very Low
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers) Very High
Level 2 (Lustful) Low
Level 3 (Gluttonous) Low
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious) Very Low
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy) Moderate
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics) Very High
Level 7 (Violent) Moderate
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers) Moderate
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous) Low
Take the Dante's Inferno Hell Test

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	Very Low
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	Very High
Level 2 (Lustful)	Low
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	Low
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	Very Low
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	Moderate
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)	Very High
Level 7 (Violent)	Moderate
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	Moderate
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)	Low

Unsurprisingly, I also scored high on heresy. But I'm not sure why I rated a "moderate" on circles 5, 7 and 8.

Expose Expelled!

2008-04-14T23:13:00.002-04:00

The NCSE's central links page on the Expelled movie is now officially open for business. The sidebar widget will stay up....well, until the whole thing blows over. (Thanks to Greg Laden for putting it together).

Ceremonial Prayer, Redux

2008-04-13T16:40:00.003-04:00

As promised, Premier Dalton McGuinty has struck the all-party committee to review whether the Ontario Legislature should continue opening with the Lord's Prayer, or replace it with...well, something else TBD. Reactions from some quarters are predictable. Says Conservative MPP Garfield Dunlop:

"There is a lot more behind it than just the prayer," he said.

"Our whole British parliamentary system was based on Christianity. That goes right back to the Magna Carta. The first parliamentary sessions held in Great Britain were held in churches.… Removing one thing is just like chipping away at a foundation. There is no reason to do that."

I'm no historian, but I strongly suspect the claim that the whole Westminster system is "based on Christianity" contains more than a little, um, spin. Trying to link it to the fact that Parliament started out meeting in churches is just silly -- perhaps the fact that churches, then as now, contained conveniently large auditoriums with decent acoustics and lots of places to sit had something to do with it?

And then there's the usual Chicken Little alarmism about "chipping away at the foundation". Right: stop saying the Lord's Prayer before opening the session, before you know it we'll be repealing habeas corpus, cancelling elections and instituting rule by decree. Or something. You know: it'll be just like the Bad Old Days before the Magna Carta, when kings were absolute monarchs who ruled by Divine Ri.....hmm, maybe you'd better think that through again, Mr. Dunlop.

And BTW: the Lord's Prayer has only been in use at Queen's Park since 1969. So much for grandiose claims of "tradition".

The comments on the CBC article are the usual mix of reasonable folk, and others who Really. Don't. Get. It. Whiners who, with barely concealed racism, proclaim Canada a Christian country; all these newcomers have to respect our religion; we're sick of being pushed around etc, ad nauseum. This is the crowd for whom the definition of "persecution" is: "we're no longer allowed to push other people around".

Listen whiners: I'm a home-grown atheist, Ontario born. I've lived here all my life, I pay my taxes and obey the law. You can't dismiss me as some dirty furriner who talks funny; I'm as much a citizen as you lot are. And I say that consistently opening our common legislature with a prayer from one specific religion sends a message: that I am, in fact, not a full citizen; that a religion I do not share holds hegemony in this land, and I -- and every other non-Christian in Ontario -- live here by its sufferance.

Get rid of this meaningless ritual altogether, or replace it with a rotation of invocations more in keeping with the current diversity of the province (or perhaps better: replace it with something relevant to the business of government). But don't continue with the current travesty.

Trying to Live It Down

2008-04-07T22:47:00.001-04:00

This week's tempest in the teapot that is frequently Canadian politics is the Lukiwski Affair. For non-Canadians, Tom Lukiwksi is the Conservative Member of Parliament who was caught on videotape making a slur against gays (the exchange starts around time 2:40):

On the tape, which was released by the provincial NDP on Thursday, the cameraman made a comment about Lukiwski being old.

"As we say on tour, I may be old, but I'm f---ing A," Lukiwski responded.

The cameraman retorted: "And who is this A person?"

"Well, let me put it to you this way. There's A's and there's B's. The A's are guys like me. The B's are homosexual faggots with dirt on their fingernails that transmit diseases," Lukiwski said.

The videotape was shot at a campaign office party -- in 1991. The NDP just happened to find it recently when, back on Lukiwski's home ground in Saskatchewan, they moved into offices recently vacated by the Conservatives. The opposition parties are making predictable hay out of it, including demands for the Prime Minister to fire Lukiwski from his post as parliamentary secretary to the government house leader, or even throw him out of caucus.

Before I go on, let me make a few things clear:

I am strongly pro-gay rights and anti-bigotry in any form.
I've never voted Tory in my life, and I have no plans to start any time soon (certainly not while Harper and the rest of the ex-Reform crew is in charge).
I'd never heard of Lukiwski before, and know nothing about him beyond what has been reported in connection with this incident. His political fortunes, for their own sake, interest me not at all.

Lukiwski's remark is a stupid-yahoo thing to say, reflective of a kind of casual macho bigotry that used to be more prevalent (or at least, more openly acceptable) than it is now. He has delivered what sounds to me like a fairly handsome apology for it, in the House.

And that is where I think the matter should rest. However, others are not so ready to forgive and forget. Across the board, there seem to be three main reasons given for sanctioning Lukiwski:

The Unforgivable Sin
On this view, no apology can be an adequate atonement: Lukiwski has committed an unforgivable sin, and should be made a pariah for life. I don't know what to say about this one: you either believe that, or you don't. And I don't. A single off-the-cuff remark does not merit that level of punishment.

The Closet Bigot
Others believe that Lukiwski still holds anti-gay views -- that he hasn't changed in 17 years (somehow, the fact that he was 40 at the time also figures into this). As one commenter put it: "These are core beliefs, and they don't change".

Rubbish. I've changed my mind about lots of things (including homosexuality) in the last 17 years. Some of them were important things too -- easily as much "core beliefs" as any attitude Lukiwski has expressed about gays. And I expect that 17 years hence, I will have changed my mind some more. It's called "growing and learning", and I intend to continue until the day they put me in a box and nail down the lid.

While I can't prove Lukiwski's apology is sincere, I think the onus is on those who disbelieve him to argue for that claim, not just assert it. He deserves the benefit of the doubt.

So: shame on Lukiwski for saying something bigoted in 1991 -- and good on him for growing out of it.

The Larry Spencer Affair
Five years ago while in Opposition, Harper fired another MP, Larry Spencer, as family issues critic for anti-gay remarks. The argument then goes that, to be consistent he should also fire Lukiwski. However, the two cases are not really parallel. According to news stories at the time, Spencer said:

In late November 2003, Spencer caused controversy in Canada by Vancouver Sun reporter Peter O'Neil when he said that he would support any initiative to outlaw homosexuality. He stated that in the 1960s, a "well-orchestrated" conspiracy began and led to recent successes in the gay rights movement. This conspiracy, he further said, included seducing and recruiting young boys in playgrounds and locker rooms, and deliberately infiltrating North America's schools, judiciaries, entertainment industries, and religious communities.

And:

He said this conspiracy has led to successes in the gay-rights movement. "It's so sad that we have to take an issue like this and be asked to put the Good Housekeeping seal of approval on it without being allowed to tell the truth and talk about facts," said Spencer, a U.S.-born former Baptist pastor.
He said homosexuals, due to AIDS and other health problems, have a far lower life expectancy than straight men.
"Let's just say if ... anybody that used Colgate toothpaste, their life expectancy was lowered by 10, 15 years. What do you think would happen to Colgate toothpaste? It would be outlawed. Well, we know that's what happens to men living a gay lifestyle."
He also said homosexuals can transform themselves into heterosexuals.

This, I submit, goes well beyond anything Lukiwski said. In the Spencer case, we have a sitting member openly and deliberately talking about outlawing homosexuality, and repeating several of the standard calumnies against gays -- that they want to recruit young boys, that there is a "gay agenda" (a label applied any time LGBTs ask to be treated like human beings and full citizens), and that gays are sick and have poor life expectancy due to their lifestyle. On this last point, Spencer seems to be repeating the claims of discredited anti-gay activist Paul Cameron. There is no question that this is the kind of wingnut one does not want anywhere near the legislative process. Moreover, there seems to be little doubt that Spencer continues to hold such views: having lost his seat in the 2004 election (after being ejected from caucus, he ran as an independent, and lost -- ironically to Tom Lukiwski), he joined the Christian Heritage Party, which advocates government based on "Biblical principles".

It is in no way inconsistent for Harper to let Lukiwski off with an apology -- it simply and rightly recognizes the relative magnitudes of the two offenses.

In conclusion, my take on it is that, in an unguarded (and possibly tipsy) moment 17 years ago, Tom Lukiwski stuck his foot badly in his mouth. Hopefully, his apology is sincere and he now regrets what he said, for its own sake. Going forward: keep an eye on the guy, but otherwise let the matter drop.

We apologize for the inconvenience

2008-04-05T16:16:00.004-04:00

For reasons that some of you will understand, I have turned on word verification for comments. Hopefully, this will discourage our trollish friend, and he will go bother someone else -- like a qualified mental health professional.

Free-associating Follies

2008-04-01T20:48:00.005-04:00

So at work today, I check the mailstop to see if there's anything for me. There isn't, but among the stuff in the inbox is an envelope for someone I don't know, that says on the outside, "Want to Serve God Better?".

And the first thing that pops into my head is: "You mean like: in a pesto sauce, with a glass of cabernet?"

[ba-dump!]

I think this means I'm completely cured of religion. The sense of humour, however, is beyond any possible therapy....

Just so reading this post wasn't a complete waste of your time, here's a blog carnival that looks interesting: Humanist Symposium #17.

Hat tip to Tangled Up In Blue Guy.

On the side of the angels?

2008-03-26T20:33:00.004-04:00

I have fond memories from the 15 years I spent in the United Church of Canada -- unlike the fundamentalist churches, no one really cared about doctrinal orthodoxy, they didn't dump big guilt trips on people, didn't have trivial scruples about things like alcohol or "approved" entertainment, and they actually tried to grapple honestly with the results of Biblical scholarship and modern science (that, and I loved being in the choir). It was a good place for a refugee from fundamentalism to have a community and think things through. In the end, of course, I thought myself all the way out the back door into atheism, but that's another matter.....

So, for nostalgiac reasons if nothing else, I'm pleased to hear two items about the UC of C that came to my attention this week.

Item #1: The denominational magazine The United Church Observer is helping sponsor the travelling Darwin exhibit that opened this month at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. From the official press release:

"We were dismayed to learn that the exhibit had been unable to secure corporate sponsorship in Toronto or in any of the other North American cities where it has been mounted," said Editor/Publisher David Wilson. "Our support is modest but symbolic. If a small church-based operation such as The Observer doesn't fear a backlash from those who oppose Darwin's theory of evolution, then secular corporate entities with much greater resources shouldn't fear it either."

Good on them, I say; and shame on all the chicken-$#!* big corporations that were afraid of bad PR. (BTW: the Humanist Association of Canada, of which we are members, is also a sponsor).

As to the Darwin exhibit itself: we saw it at the Field Museum in Chicago, and highly recomend it. We may even make the trip to TO to see it again, if say there were to be a get-together of like-minded folks, with beer....

Item #2: Some of the most liberal folks in the UC of C seem to be trying to do away with God:

There is no authoritative Big-Godism, as Rev. Gretta Vosper, West Hill's minister for the past 10 years, puts it. No petitionary prayers (“Dear God, step into the world and do good things about global warming and the poor”). No miracles-performing magic Jesus given birth by a virgin and coming back to life. No references to salvation, Christianity's teaching of the final victory over death through belief in Jesus's death as an atonement for sin and the omnipotent love of God. For that matter, no omnipotent God, or god.

In place of all that, Vosper wants to rework the traditional language and ritual into very human, down-to-earth values:

She wants salvation redefined to mean new life through removing the causes of suffering in the world. She wants the church to define resurrection as “starting over,” “new chances.” She wants an end to the image of God as an intervening all-powerful authority who must be appeased to avoid divine wrath; rather she would have congregations work together as communities to define God – or god – according to their own worked-out definitions of what is holy and sacred. She wants the eucharist – the symbolic eating and drinking of Jesus's body and blood to make the congregation part of Jesus's body – to be instead a symbolic experience of community love.

Of course, this does prompt me to wonder why they don't all just go off and join the Unitarians, whom it seems to me have been there for years. Or even more: it sounds a lot like secular humanism dressed up in traditional religious language.

Nonetheless, if they keep this up, I might have to rejoin the place in about 20 or so years ;-).

Expelled: The Canadian Connection

2008-03-26T00:12:00.003-04:00

Over at Monkey Trials, Scott Hatfield reports on the background of the people behind the ~~Excreted~~Expelled movie. That they all turn out to be evangelicals is no big surprise -- scratch an IDist, and you'll find a Christian creationist nine times out of 10. What's a little more interesting to me is the Canadian angle. I already knew that geek gazillionaire Walt Ruloff, who bankrolled the film, lives in BC, but this is news:

Co-founder A. Logan Craft is identified as a minister and TV producer on the American board of the Canadian Center for Cultural Renewal .

I'm a little puzzled why a Canadian center would have an American board, but the Centre's website shows it as having two boards -- a Canadian one and an American one. The whole thing looks a bit like a branch-plant operation of the Seattle-based Center for Science and Culture.

Perusing the Endorsements page I had a little shock: I found the name of someone I was in a fellowship group with, about 15 years ago (no, I won't tell you who, except to say that she was one of the more conservative members of that group).

When life imitates farce.....

2008-03-21T00:40:00.008-04:00

Someone, please tell me this isn't just an effect of the bottle of Merlot I consumed tonight while watching the second Terminator movie. It's just absurd enough to be a dream occurring while Under The Influence. Here's the situation:

It seems that the ID propaganda movie Expelled: No Itelligence Allowed was shown tonight at the Mall of America in Twin Cities, WI.

It further seems that PZ Myers, flame breathing atheist and evo-devo-ist extraordinaire, together with renowned Trophy Wife and Blogging Daughter decided to see it.

To put the icing on the cake, Richard Dawkins happens to be in the neighbourhood on his latest book (and general rabble rowsing) tour. Being acquainted, they all (ie. famille Myers+Dawkins) decide to go see the movie together. Note that:

Both PZ and Dawkins were interviewed under false pretences by the oh-so-truthful-Christian makers of this flick.
Advance screenings of Expelled have been careful to, um, screen the attendees. Like, we wouldn't want any bad reviews, would we?

So they get to the cinema. And the rent-a-cop controlling the queue pulls PZ out and tells him he is persona non grata. That's right: PZ was Expelled from the cinema.

WTF? Someone who is in the movie can't go see the movie?

However, PZ's Trophy Wife and Blogging Daughter are, apparently, not on the the no-fly list, and are allowed in. But it gets better: since the icing is already on the cake, this would be like, the sugar swirlies around the edge, the pink roses in the corners and the candles: they didn't tell the rent-a-cops to look out for Richard Dawkins. Richard "Screaming Atheist" Dawkins.

So he got in. Dawkins. Got. In.

The combined stench of hypocrisy and incompetence wafts clear across two-and-a-half states, two Great Lakes and a good chunk of southern Ontario all the way to here where I can smell it. And I toddle off to bed with a belly laugh at these people. As Larry Moran says: now you know why we call them IDiots.

Tomorrow, I will awake to discover it's all a wine-induced dream, right? I mean, things that crazy don't happen in reality....