Skeptics who don’t know how to be skeptics.

I had a disappointing experience this last week when a fellow skeptic (and person I had previously thought of as a friend) viciously attacked me, and ended that friendship over what I thought was a fairly minor disagreement. It’s experiences like this that make me want to give up on even involving myself with the skeptical movement, not because I don’t believe in the basic principles espoused in the movement, but because it seems like so few people in the movement actually embody these principles.

I’ve written before on my blog that I fear that some skeptics/atheists are little more than people who like to sit around and pat each other on the back for being smarter than everyone else. This isn’t the first time I’ve experienced this kind of behavior. When I was a fundamentalist I knew many fellow Christians who did the same thing, only rather than for being smarter it was because they were saved and everyone else was destined for hell. Even though I’m an atheist, I still have a good deal more respect for a Christian who tries to convert me than one who treats their “correct beliefs” as something to smugly hold over others.

More than a wiliness to educate others, though, is the need for self criticism. If our attempts to educate people on science, reason and other subjects are to be taken seriously then we MUST be our own worse critics. If we aren’t, then we are inconsistent at best and hypocrites at worst. When fellow skeptics tell me I must not disagree with them or their friends, this sends off warning bells in my head that this person isn’t really interested in skepticism; they are just interested in being right, or more accurately, in being told they are right, and they use the skeptical movement as nothing more than a group of “yes men” to make them feel good about themselves.

I tend to notice three separate arguments come up in the conversations with these sorts of “skeptics”:

1. Isn’t it better to have friends than be right?

This question is a bit loaded, but the short answer is that if your answer to this question is an unequivocal yes, then you have no business calling yourself a skeptic. The much longer answer is that it really varies depending on the friend. For starters, I have lots of friends who aren’t involved in skepticism, or who do not engage me in my debate spaces, for whom I tend to be much less picky. For one because these people aren’t representing organizations that promote critical thought, and for two because those people have not invited such conversations. I love talking moral philosophy but I’m not going to force a conversation about that with every person I meet.

On the other hand if another persons position is that I can be their friend only if I never openly disagree with them, then honestly, no, I don’t want to be that persons friend, regardless of whether they call themselves a skeptic or not, because that person sounds controlling and manipulative.

2. You are being divisive to the movement, and you need to stop that.

I hear this one constantly, not always directed at me, mind you, but just as often directed at other bloggers I’m fans of who occasionally criticize some of the skeptical movement’s shortcomings. Of course, it is not entirely inaccurate to claim that disagreements can be divisive, but only if the people involved let it. For instance, I missed the last American Atheist conference, but I happen to know that they invited the Reverend Barry Lynn to speak there because of his defense of the separation of church and state. Every atheist at that conference openly disagrees with Lynn on the question of god’s existence but it doesn’t stop both us and Lynn from being partners on the things we do agree on, nor does it mean that we pretend those disagreements don’t exist.

The point is that disagreement is only divisive if you are so personally invested in your beliefs that you view any questioning of them as an assault on you personally. This is a natural tendency, but it’s not one conducive to being rational and as skeptics something we must all work to avoid. The way I see it, I think people who launch personal attacks and end friendships over disagreements are doing much more to divide the movement than those who try to offer a polite critique of someone else's arguments. Also, as I pointed out earlier, refusing to engage with others’ critiques of your position without some reasonable cause (such as a critic being abusive) is simply a refusal to be a skeptic in any meaningful sense. Which brings me to the last argument I hear.

3. You pretend civility is important, but you really just use it to avoid listening to those who disagree with you/you are just as much of an asshole as me, you just use requests for civility to hide it.

Now, let me be fair here. I’m human and therefore quite imperfect, so it is entirely possible, even likely, that I don’t always enforce civility rules equitably within the online spaces I control. I may let my friends off the hook for something I would call someone else on, I may be more likely to notice the incivility of those I’m disagreeing with than those I agree with. I can do the best I can, but I’ll never be perfect.

As an example about a week ago I had a person on my Facebook page insult another poster, I asked him to knock it off if he wanted to continue to have the right to post on my page and he responded by personally attacking me with a misogynistic insult. I said “fuck you” and I blocked him. The blocking was justified, I’d already warned him this would be the result and he doubled down. However, saying “fuck you” before I did it wasn’t my most shining moment. Not because of any rule against swearing, or because I’m worried about hurting this guy’s feelings, but because for just a moment he dragged me down to his level. Still, that we sometimes fail is no reason to not try.

What I find ironic about this argument is that, by and large, those that use it are usually the quickest to anger and the most consistently antagonistic towards those they disagree with. I may not be perfect, but I know that there is a world off difference between saying, “that argument is faulty” and saying, “you are a shitty person.” Though I’m beginning to think that people who make this argument legitimately can’t see the difference between the two since they always seem confused when I try to explain it. I’ve been told my various “failures” stemmed from everything from not having been socialized properly as a child to not getting “laid” often enough, by people who seemed bewildered when I suggested that their behavior is uncalled for and obviously worse than anything they have received from me.

Of course, to be clear, I’m not saying “that argument is faulty” is always acceptable and “you are a shitty human being” is always wrong. In fact, I can think of exceptions in each case, which I won’t get into here, however, I don’t think it’s bad as a general principle to say the first is usually ok, and the second is usually wrong, and we should have a good reason for deviation from that.

I also don’t much accept the argument that I use requests for civility to avoid arguments I don’t like. Remember that discussion I mentioned earlier where I blocked someone? In that same discussion I disagreed with another person just as strongly who did not get blocked because, while I still disagree with him, he didn’t start hurling insults at people because of this disagreement.

So what should we take from all of this? All I can really say is don’t be that person. Don’t be the skeptic who refuses to take your own medicine. Your ideas need to be critiqued as much as the next guy and you are at risk for every single one of those logic problems that skeptics groups point out. You know the ones, like confirmation bias and bandwagon effect? You aren’t harder to fool than anyone else, and the moment you think you are is the moment you are most vulnerable to being fooled. Remember, skepticism is a means of improving your own thinking, not a social club that gives you leave to think everyone else is an idiot and that no one has the right to criticize you. If you treat it as such, then you are not a good skeptic, and you aren’t even a very nice person.

Book review of Illogical atheism: Chapter 4

I review chapter 4 of the book Illogical atheism, completing the first of the four books published in this series.

Book review of Illogical atheism: Chapter 3

In this video I review chapter 3.

Almost Human drifts into pseudo-science in latest episode.

Watched the last Episode of Almost human on Hulu today and was disappointed to see them include a psychic in what has, up to this point, a reasonably hard science fiction show. Set in the future, I expect the show to take a few liberties with modern science but the psychic aspect of the plot in the latest episode goes completely off the rails.

Not only do they present us with a character that has psychic powers, a thing for which there is no scientific evidence, they make a flimsy and scientifically inaccurate attempt to justify the existence of said powers. They make reference to a surgery that the woman previously underwent to allow her to use all of her brain instead of the 10% they normally use. Not only does no such surgery exist now, it could never exist because the notion that people only use a small part of their brain is absolutely untrue. Granted this show is suppose to be fiction, but this a commonly repeated myth that is offered on the show as if it were true. It’s disappointing when shows perpetuate myths like these.

Kirsten Powers conversion story makes me sad.

As someone who doesn’t watch Fox News regularly I had never heard of Kirsten Powers. However, I ran across an article on Christian Post today. Detailing this former atheist’s conversion to Christianity. I’m pretty comfortable with my atheism and haven’t heard any arguments in favor of any form of theism that rank anywhere in the vicinity of rationally convincing so I’m always interested in hearing what managed to convert a fellow atheist to theism. I have, to date, always been supremely disappointed in the strength of the arguments and evidence they felt were convincing, and usually find their conversion had a lot more to do with emotions than reason.

Powers’ story is no different, it is not a tale of someone who was convinced by clear logical argumentation, but a story of someone who appears to have been emotionally manipulated by another person and then fell prey to questionable inferences based on scant evidence. Why? Perhaps her reasons for being atheist were emotional to begin with, or perhaps she was just ignorant of both the Christian apologetics and the secular response to them. Of course I could be wrong, I’m only basing my conclusion on what was written in the article, but it was Christian Post article so I think I can assume they tried to portray her conversion in as favorable a light as possible, and she still came out poorly.

It seems her conversion started when she started dating a Christian. She said she had previously stated she would not date a religious person, but she does not explain why she made an exception for this person. She shouldn’t have, in my opinion, because the person she was dating seemed to be a bit of a jerk.

After they dated a few months, her boyfriend called to say he had something important to discuss. When he came over to her New York apartment he looked at her intently and asked, "Do you believe Jesus is your Savior?"

Her heart sank when she heard the question. She thought he might be slightly crazy. "No," she replied.

"Do you think you could ever believe it?" he asked. Then he told Powers he wanted to get married and felt that she might be the one, but he couldn't marry a non-believer.

Scalia believes in the devil and ad hoc reasoning.

Justice Scalia believes in the devil according to an interview published in New York Magazine. Some people, including the interviewer, seemed surprised by this fact. I was actually more surprised by the interviewers surprise. Didn’t the interviewer know anything about Scalia before doing the interview. The man is a 77 year old conservative catholic, it would be far more surprising to me if he didn’t believe in the devil, and why exactly is this belief so much more shocking than his belief in god? They are both beliefs in a supernatural entity for which good evidence is practically non-existent, and quite frankly Scalia is right when he tells the interviewer that most Americans believe in both of these beings.

What I found really interesting is after he admitted to believing in the bible the interviewer asked a fairly good question about this.

Have you seen evidence of the Devil lately?

Scalia gives a rather interesting answer.

You know, it is curious. In the Gospels, the Devil is doing all sorts of things. He’s making pigs run off cliffs, he’s possessing people and whatnot. And that doesn’t happen very much anymore.

So Scalia acknowledges that there is a clear difference between how we see our modern observations of reality and all of the supernatural activities described in the bible. So how does he resolve this contradiction?

What he’s doing now is getting people not to believe in him or in God. He’s much more successful that way.

So he believes that the reason the devil doesn’t engage in obviously supernatural actions is because sometime between two thousand years ago and the development of modern scientific standards during the renascence he figured out that convincing people he isn’t real would suit his purposes better.  His argument would actually make sense if you start out by assuming the bible’s description of these events is mostly accurate. However, without that unfounded assumption we are free to believe that the stories were simply made up or exaggerated, which seems like a much more reasonable explanation. 

It’s ad hoc reasoning to start with a conclusion and interpret all of the facts to suit your preconceived position, but what really irks me with is argument is that his evidence for supernatural actions in the past, the bible, is essentially hearsay. It bothers me that a judge thinks that hearsay is a valid bases for a belief. I hope that he is doesn’t use this kind of reasoning while ruling on cases, but I’m not exactly convinced he understands this distinction.

Of course he also tries to deny that his argument would suggest that atheists are doing the work of the devil even though that seems to be exactly what his argument would suggest, I’d be offended but I have long since stopped being offended by Scalia’s thoughts on religion. I will say I won’t be sad when he finally steps down from the bench.

Psychologist who writes for fox news blames feminism for Weiner’s sexting scandal.

So this article was published a couple of months ago but I just ran into it a few days ago and it was just too ridiculous to pass up commenting on.

What Weiner’s sexting scandal tells us about young women today

Dr. Keith Ablow, a psychologist who is part of the fox news medical team, writes this article. He seems to think the feminist ideal of sexual liberation is what’s really to blame for this scandal by teaching women to enjoy sex outside of marriage. Dr. Ablow seems to think this is a “man’s job.”

The sexual liberation of women has liberated them to be just like men—who, whether anyone likes it or not, often enjoy sex outside of emotionally-connected, longstanding relationships.

Unfortunately for Ablow he gets a number of facts wrong in this article. First he seems to think that feminists seem to have no issues with Weiner’s actions. To be clear we tend to have different problems with it than Ablow has, I don’t think there is anything inherently immoral with premarital sex. However, Weiner was clearly in the wrong, he was lying to his wife. Further suggesting that the women Weiner sent these photo’s too are somehow responsible for his behavior is more than a little sexist, and suggesting that men never had affairs before feminism is more than a little bizarre. Clearly such affairs have been common throughout history even in cultures without all of those “evil” feminists.

However, he clearly thinks his arguments have scientific merit and the feminists are just being political when they suggest that there is no psychological difference between men and women; so let’s look at his actual argument:

From my perch as a psychiatrist talking to thousands of people a year, I can tell you that the average young woman no longer balks at sexting, watching pornography or being the aggressor sexually in a relationship.

…

But I will tell you that, from what I hear in my office, the girls actually feel a whole lot worse about it, in their hearts, than the boys.  Because, you see, girls and boys, are not the same.

In this argument we actually get a picture of the scientific methodology he employed to come to this conclusion. My conclusion is that his methodology is dangerously sloppy. You will noticed he, at no point, mentions any studies that demonstrate that the average women feels psychologically traumatized by unmarried consensual sex. I can only assume that he quotes no studies because he is unaware of any.

So what is the evidence he brings to the table? His brings up his work with his patients and says that women feel worse in their hearts than men do. Now some people wanting to defend him might at this point say that this guy has a degree in his field and has practiced psychology for years, and don’t I believe in trusting scientists? Who am I to question his authority in this field, since I clearly have no degree in psychology. Well, it’s true I have no degree, but I actually trust the scientific method much more than I trust individual scientists. This is important because Ablow clearly fails to follow scientific principals in his analysis.

You see Ablow uses a flawed sample set. In this case he is making generalizations about a whole population based upon a small self selected sample set. In general if you want your figures to be representative of the whole population then a self selected set is a bad way to do it. This problem is further complicated by the way in which the group self selects itself. In this case all of his patients come to him with some kind of psychological issues, so to assume that facts about the sexual neuroses of his patients can be used to generalize about about all women is very sloppy science indeed.

Further, his statements are vague and metaphorical (they feel worse in their hearts) which makes it impossible to tell if his opinions about the sexual neurosis of even the small sample set he worked from are reliable. It is entirely possible that his biases about sexual behaviors have colored his perception of his clients feelings on the matter.

The sad thing is that if he actually went looking for it there is a lot of studies out there on gender psychology, like this one:

Men and Women May Not Be So Different After All

So a further problem for Ablow is that there are good studies that actually run contrary to Ablow’s claim.

…Statistically, men and women definitely fall into distinct groups, or taxons, based on anthropometric measurements such as height, shoulder breadth, arm circumference, and waist-to-hip ratio. And gender can be a reliable predictor for interest in very stereotypic activities, such as scrapbooking and cosmetics (women) and boxing and watching pornography (men). But for the vast majority of psychological traits, including the fear of success, mate selection criteria, and empathy, men and women are definitely from the same planet.

I suggest reading the whole study, as it demonstrates a much more careful and thoughtful methodology than Ablow does, which is why I find it ironic that he ends with this:

Some gender roles developed because of psychological facts, not in spite of them.  And when feminists urged and urge that we throw out all of them, they do a disservice to females and to the truth.

Ablow’s willingness to use his flawed data, in place of the good data which contradicts his desired conclusion, makes it painfully obvious that his reasoning is motivated by his political and religious ideals, not a desire for truth. It does not qualify as good science. Further, he subtly engages in victim blaming and sexism throughout his article, which makes it difficult to believe he is overly concerned about women’s rights.

The Blaze talks about evolution, also never read the comments on a Blaze article.

I ran across an article about creationism and evolution over at the Blaze today.

Evolution vs. Creationism: Did God create humans in our current form?

The article starts out by referencing an article on Yahoo news that Virginia Heffernan wrote announcing she is a creationist. Their treatment of her article is incredibly biased. They talk about her making a “slew of ideological enemies” implying that the disagreement with her was ideological and not because of legitimate factual problems in her argument, and calls her case “compelling.”

They don’t even really seem to understand her case very well because if you read her article she seems to call herself a creationist only because she has no idea what that word actually means. She is clearly not promoting the type of creationist thinking that is common to Ken Ham and other typical fundamentalist creationists. She doesn’t claim the earth was created in a few days, and she admits the bible is contradictory. The only problems with evolution she talks about come from evo-psych, a field that is regularly criticized by fellow skeptics for it’s just so stories, which is the same thing she criticizes it for.  

She also seems to drift into some relativist philosophy at the end of the article, which is also quite in incombatable with the positions of most creationists. Essentially, believe in god even if it isn’t true because it’s a better story than the one science sells. Now, not only do I think this is a bad approach to truth, I happen to disagree with the notion that the bible spins a better tale than science.

As to whether she accepts evolution in general or she is just somewhat ignorant and wrongly conflates evo-psych with all of evolution, I honestly don’t have enough information to say one way or the other. What I can say is that Heffernan is not a typical creationist, and in fact she seems to not even know what the term means when it comes to most of the blaze’s readers.

The article itself is full of plenty of bad science, most notably the assumption the notion that the results of the necessarily self selected poll they ran on their website is at all useful.

A much more specific and pointed question asked respondents if man evolved “with no involvement from a higher power.” There was a clear consensus among the 4,008 Blaze readers who responded. While six percent answered affirmatively, an overwhelming 94 percent of the readers who took the poll rejected this notion.

This is particularly interesting due to the fact that the Pew Research Center estimates that about six percent of the nation considers itself secular and unaffiliated with a faith — a prime group that would embrace the idea that mankind evolved without God’s hand guiding the process. Of course, the Blaze poll on this subject was not a scientific one, but the proportional similarities are still worth noting.

In the last line here they acknowledge that the poll was not scientific but then go on to act as if the study was actually valid anyway since the figures happen to coincide with figures for a completely different question in a population based poll done by Pew. (which is not exactly the gold standard for science anyway) They also, at certain points, imply that most of their readers disbelieving in evolution amounts to evidence that there is good reason to doubt evolution.

As bad as the article was, the comments were fare worse, of the kind that makes me question humanities ability to think rationally about anything. One commenter claims to be a young earth creationist physics teacher, which just makes me sad. or this one:

Well, since naturalism requires a scientific explanation OR an eyewitness account, and evolutionists don’t have an eyewitness account to corroborate their position, nor a scientifically defensible explanation, (speculation and wild assumption is not scientific), and Judeo/Chrsitianity actually has an EYEWITNESS account of what occurred at the beginning, I’m going with the BEST evidence which is that God created the heavens and the earth and mankind and the animals and all that was created.

Yes, this person just argued that believing the bible is the more scientific option because there were eyewitnesses to the events in the bible and evolution has no eyewitnesses. What I find so ridiculous about this argument is that, even by fundamentalist Christian standards, it isn’t true. By those standards Genesis was written by Moses around 2,000 B.C. several thousand years after creation. If people can’t even keep their arguments internally consistent with their own world view how can they hope to understand complex scientific principals?

Math….pffft why would we need that to understand global warming?

I’ve been reading different arguments about global warming lately and I ran across a claim on the sites of several people arguing against global warming.

Man-made carbon dioxide emissions throughout human history constitute less than 0.00022 percent of the total naturally emitted from the mantle of the earth during geological history.

I’ll admit when I first read this I thought, is this really true? Doesn’t this hurt man made global warming arguments? Then I took a moment and considered the statement more carefully. the 0.00022 number provided is based upon a comparison of carbon dioxide for the entire geological history of the earth, which if you remember is 4.3 billion years. However, human cased global warming is a recent issue caused by high CO2 output by humans. Almost all of this CO2 output has happened in the last two to three hundred years, which means the real question is how much extra CO2 have we added to environment recently not in all of earths history.

Let’s not stop here though. Assuming this number is correct (I couldn’t verify anywhere) then lets calculate what percentage of of the earth’s CO2 has come from humans in the past couple of hundred years. Fair warning I have never considered math to be my strongest subject so feel free to point it out to me if I make a mistake in my calculations.

First we will base the calculations on the last 300 years.  So to find out what percentage of 4.3 billion 300 is we divide them.

300

divided by 4,300,000,000

= 6.9-8  or 0.000000069

 

So 300 is only 6.9^-8 of 4.3 billion, but man made carbon dioxide, most of which was caused in the last 300 years amounts to 2.2^-4 which is a much larger number. How much larger?

 

2.2-4

divided by 6.9-8

roughly 3,188.4

That’s right, the amount of CO2 produced by humans is almost thirty-two hundred times more than the amount of CO2 naturally produced by the earth in the same time frame, even based on the number provided by those arguing against man made global warming. So, this number, is actually strong support for man made global warming instead of evidence against it. Making the argument that it is a very small percentage of the CO2 produced through all of human history is like claiming a flood doesn’t exist because the amount the amount of rain that caused it is a very small percentage of the overall rain fall in that area in the last hundred years.

Video games made me a better person.

There is a pernicious idea that has worked it’s way into American culture particularly in the in the religious right, but in many other places as well. It’s the idea that video games are harming kids. I’ve written on my blog before about my time as a fundamentalist Christian in college, but believe it or not I was a gamer even back then, and I was often told I shouldn’t be by religious friends that I had. I was told that it was a waste of time and I was told I should spend that time sharing the gospel with people and other similar arguments.

Further in culture at large video games are blamed for even worse things including several of the school shootings which have happed in the last several decades, and the recent shooting in D.C.. Teaching people to be amoral murder machines in virtual worlds where there are no consequences will turn them into such things in real life eventually so the argument goes.

Most people reading this are probably familiar with some of the arguments gamers have made about these issues. Poor reporting by the media was responsible for people associating a false causative relationship between the violence perpetuated by these youths and the video games they played. So most people reading this are probably on board with the idea that video games don’t actually make people less moral. However, I’m going to argue that my so called misspent youth playing video games actually made me a better person today than I would have been other wise.

To explain let me give an example from a game I played years ago, Suikoden III. It’s an eleven year old game, but just in case there is anyone out there who hasn’t played it and plans on doing so there will be some plot spoilers here. The game has an original way of telling it’s story, it had three main characters. The game was divided into five chapters, the first three of which had to be played through by each of the main characters. What makes this particularly interesting is that each of these characters are leaders in a country which is at war with the other two.

There is an iconic scene in this game that involves two of the main characters. Chris, a Zexen Knight, and Hugo, son of the Karaya Clan Chief. While playing through Chris’s story your government orders you to attack the Karaya clan’s village after an attack on Zexen that you later find out was wrongly attributed to the Karaya clan. While Chris is leading the attack she sees a suit of Zexen armor in the village that she recognizes as belonging to her father who disappeared without a trace years before. She assumes that the Karaya must have killed her father and taken the suit as a trophy and in a moment of anger orders her knights to exterminate the village. She is unable to carry out the order because Hugo shows up with some others and drives her knights away, though she does kill one of Hugo’s friends in the process of retreating. While playing through her story her actions, while perhaps extreme, make sense. She isn’t a bad person, but she has spent her whole life wondering what happened to her father and thinks she has found his murders. She also regrets her order and later becomes angry at those who call her a hero for attacking the village.

On the other hand while playing through the same sequence as Hugo, he returns to find his village in flames and a Zexen knight ordering the death of everyone in his village. From his perspective she looks downright evil. Further, you know from his story that the suit of armor belongs to someone who lives in the village. It turns out Chris’ father is actually alive and living in with the Karaya. It turns out he left Zexen to protect Chris from assassins that were perusing him.

 

I know, this plot probably seems super typical of high fantasy novels like Lord of the Ring and such, but this story confronted the young 20 something me with an idea that has stuck with me to this day. In this story both Chris and Hugo held a perspective about the events going on around them that made sense given their world view and the facts that they had available to them. It is undeniable that both of them, while right about some things, were incredibly wrong about others, yet from their perspective the choices they made seemed totally rational. Now some might say that you could talk about this idea in a movie or a book ,but I think this idea was actually far better communicated in game form than it could have been in those ways. See in a book or a movie you are passively watching other take action, but in a game you are taking action, you feel as if you are influencing the world the game exists in and in effect you become the character. While playing a game I often come to identify with and understand the main characters motivation in a way that I don’t with movies or books because I feel as if I take on the role of that character. With this game it meant that I could actually understand and empathize with both the feelings and motivations of two people who hated each other in the first chapter of the game. In short it this game encouraged to me to think about complicated philosophical questions like epistemology and ethics, It also forced me to conceder the notion that an idea can seem reasonable from one perspective but still ultimately be untrue.

These ideas helped me grow as a person, and probably contributed to my willingness to abandon my religious beliefs, but this is hardly the only game out there that encourages people to think about complex moral issues. For instance games like Skyrim which allow you to make opened ended choices to resolve quests make people think about ethical dilemmas. I find it absurd that video games are often billed as a special type of cultural phenomenon that only wastes time or even worse is dangerous and causes people to become killers. Yet I’ve seen people who watch 40 hours a week of TV claim that people shouldn’t play video games because it is a “waste of time.” I’ve also seen news casters immediately ask after a school shooting if the shooter played video games (and sometimes if they were an atheist) which is an absurd question because in this day an age almost everyone under forty has played a video game. They wouldn’t assume that someone’s TV watching or book reading habits caused them to go on a shooting spree so why video games?

Another blogger who thinks evolution is an atheist conspiracy…

Recently the Kentucky Board of Education updated their science standards, and surprisingly enough I don’t have much of a complaint about that. Usually when when I pickup a story about science standards being changed, particularly in highly religious states like Kentucky, it’s because some creationist group is trying to insert creationist propaganda into the science curriculum. Surprisingly, this time the Kentucky board actually backed reasonable standards. On evolution the board stated

the fundamental, unifying theory that underlies all the life sciences…“there is no significant ongoing debate within the scientific community regarding the legitimacy of evolution as a scientific idea.

They also rejected the idea of pulling information about climate change out of science text books. They point out that the standards do not advocate for a particular political response, but do present climate change scientifically supported which seems to be exactly the way a science class should handle the issue.

Unsurprisingly many creationists and unhappy with these standards. While looking up information on this story I ran across a particularly irrational screed on The Matt Walsh Blog.

Christianity has done more for science than atheism ever could

Of course he makes an error right in the title of the post by assuming that evolution and atheism are synonymous. Considering Kentucky's religious background is is quite likely that that the school board is made up mostly of Christians. They are promoting evolution in the science curriculum because it is good science not because they are secretly atheist agitators as Matt seems to think. He gives two reasons that he thinks “progressives” are celebrating this decision.

1) It will put us in line with many other states, which is great because we all know a diverse and enriching education must be in utter uniformity with the national collective and in compliance with the federal agenda.

I always find it funny that a group of people who believe that everyone who doesn’t believe in their religion will suffer eternally in hell start criticizing atheists for our lack of “diversity,” but in the end they don’t actually understand what diversity is all about. I’m all in favor of diversity in regards to individuals personalities, likes and dislikes, etc. However, facts are still facts and to promote a version of diversity that allows people to have their own facts is to promote a relativist notion of truth. The odd thing is that I know for a fact that most Christians would regard this notion as false. Even Matt here wants Christianity taught in science class, not other religious beliefs just Christianity. How positively uniform of him.

2) The criteria calls for a renewed emphasis on man-caused climate change and, of course, evolution. Evolution — atheistic, nihilistic, materialistic, mindless evolution — must be taught as fact, without other ideas presented to compete with the theory.

All good science is technically materialistic because science is involved in measuring things it can actually measure. As soon as Matt, or anyone else, can propose a way for science to empirically measure supernatural entities and events then the supernatural can qualify as science. The thing is most Christians reject the notion that one can empirically measure such things. Christians often don’t want their beliefs to be potentially falsifiable the way scientific claims are so they reject the standards of science from the start and then demand that science respect their beliefs. It is not unreasonable to suggest that people like Matt pick one or the other. Evolution, on the other hand, is falsifiable and does meet scientific standards. If Matt thinks that those standards should be changed that is another discussion, but it is a philosophical one not a scientific one.

He then goes on to say that “members of the church of atheism” are the one really hostile to science, history, and philosophy. While I will admit that there are plenty of atheists out there who are ignorant on those topics, this is really entirely irrelevant to science standards since ideally those setting such standards should be knowledgeable about science regardless of their beliefs. The real irony, however, is that one sentence after he extols the Christians ability to properly value philosophy he uses the following quote from the apologist G.K. Chesterton

a multiplicity and subtlety and imagination about the varieties of life which is far beyond the bald or breezy platitudes of most ancient or modern philosophy

So he claims Christians are better and philosophy while simultaneously saying that philosophy is nothing but breezy platitudes?

He then tries answer the question of how science and religion are compatible with a litany of completely irrational arguments and biased ethnocentrism. He claims that Christians have the scientific high ground because:

As a Christian, you aren’t just a member of a religion — you’re a member of a rich intellectual tradition unmatched by any group, anywhere in the world.

It’s like he is just completely unaware of all of the rich intellectual traditions around the world that are unrelated to Christianity. He continues in this vein later on in his post so I’ll comment further there.

He then claims that an atheist recently told him that “Christians have always hated science.” I’ll actually agree with him that this is a rather bizarre thing to say. However, he metaphorically shoots himself in the foot when he calls atheists “historically illiterate fools,” and then later on in the post he complains that atheists are mean and insulting to Christians. He also claims that Modern science wouldn’t exist without religion which to me seems like an equally bizarre statement, as well as un-provable,

He claims that Christianity is the major driving force for science and he tries to demonstrate it by listing scientists who are Christian. In this he subtlety engages in a correlation vs. causation fallacy. He assumes that because these scientists were Christian that Christianity was the cause of their scientific achievements. However the pertinent question in the evolution vs. creationism debate is not whether or not Christians can be good scientists, I will happily acknowledge that they can.

The question is whether or not modern Christian fundamentalism is philosophically compatible with science. Anyone who knows history well, as Matt claims he does, would know that Christian fundamentalism is a movement that started in the 19th century in part as a reaction to what some people viewed as an encroachment into religious questions by science. This is important because beliefs like the scientific inerrancy of scripture, which are common to modern evangelical Christians in the U.S., were popularized if not outright developed by fundamentalism.  This is why it is particularly interesting that all of the scientists that Matt lists, Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Pascal, Descartes, Newton, Kelvin, Mendel, Boyle, lived before the 19th century. It is undeniable that their version of Christianity differed from the modern fundamentalism that informs Matt’s views is some significant ways.

He devotes a great deal of his article to just repeating the claim that Christianity is responsible for science because by listing a number of Christians who influenced western scientific development while simultaneously ignoring the fact that many of the Christians were maligned by other Christians from their time for undermining religious beliefs. I suppose Matt thinks those people weren’t real Christians like the scientists were.

He then criticizes an atheist who sent him an email full of personal attacks and insults. As I have said before I actually agree that this is a bad way for atheists to present themselves in these debates, but no one can prove their own position correct by simply pointing out that some people who disagree with them are doing so in an insulting manner. Further Matt made a point of being insulting towards atheists at multiple points in this post so all I have to say is this:

He does expand on his earlier ethnocentric statements with this gem.

When western scientific knowledge came to places like China and India in the 1600′s, it came by way of Christians and their science-hating Christianity

I’m not sure what to make of this. If I take this statement at face value he sounds like an 18th century imperialist who thinks the only good ideas come from western civilization. Perhaps he only said this because wrote himself into a corner by trying to claim that science owes Christianity everything.

Just so we know this is not true, other civilizations have invented great pieces of technology and advanced science in myriads of ways. China invented gun powder. The first blood transfusions were done by the Incas. The list could go on for days. However, it’s even a mistake to think that Christianity was around for all of the scientific developments even in the western world. Galileo may have proved the heliocentric universe, but Greek Mathematicians proved the earth was round using geometry (which they also invented) hundreds of years before Christianity existed. Last I checked both of these discoveries were instrumental in the development of western science, so by Matt’s logic we should still be worshiping Greek god’s for teaching us Geometry.

At this point he makes the most bizarre statement this entire post.

But are we Christians all “idiots”? Well, I don’t mind if you say that about me, but was Da Vinci an idiot? Aquinas? Shakespeare? Mozart? Washington? Locke? Martin Luther King Jr? Edison? Tesla? Alexandar Graham Bell? Adam Smith? Marconi? Chesterton? Lewis? MacDonald? Dickens? Faulkner? Tolkein? Marco Polo? Neil Armstrong? Magellan? Columbus? Henry Ford? All of these guys are idiots, along with the scientific pioneers I mentioned earlier?

His statement here clearly implies that everyone he just listed here is Christian, but this is untrue, at least by the these people’s accounts of themselves.. Edison was a deist. Tesla’s views are debated by historians, but he seemed to be some kind of universalist or possibly deist. Neil Armstrong was, again, a Deist. Adam Smith was at most a deist, and may have been an agnostic or an atheist. He was certainly close friends with David Hume who many consider an atheist, and smith never evokes god as an explanation in his any of his philosophy. Alexander Graham Bell considered himself agnostic.

Columbus I will give him, but also point out that Columbus was kind of an awful human being. Columbus wrote in his log when he first met the Arawak Indians that, “They would make fine servants,” and “With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.” Also, he discovered America, not because he was brilliant, but because he reached a foolish conclusion and got lucky. That is he badly underestimated the size of our planet. The only reason he and his crew didn’t die in on a boat in the middle of the ocean due to his miscalculation was because there was a giant undiscovered continent half way between Europe and India.

Certainly, while most of the others were likely Christian the fact that he clearly got so many wrong makes me wonder how much he actually knows about history. He claims atheists are rewriting history to suit their narrative, but given his lack of knowledge about these well known historical figures how would he know?

Towards the end he says we should not teach atheism in school, which is one of the few things he says which I actually agree with. I don’t want public schools teachers telling students god doesn’t exist anymore than I want them telling students he does. Where he gets it wrong is assuming that teaching evolution is equal to teaching atheism. This should be obviously wrong given that fully half of the U.S. believes in evolution while less than 10% of us are atheists.

His last paragraph really wraps all of his biases about atheists up into a nice package.

Really, we must get atheism away from education before we all end up like the modern atheist’s greatest prophet, Nietchsze, who died insane and naked, eating his own feces in a mental institution. This is not the sort of fate we should wish upon our children.

Think of the children, for goodness sake.

First of all Nietzsche (he misspelled his name) went insane because he had syphilis. Matt’s blasé dismissal of a serious illness which would cause insanity in anyone regardless of their religious predilections is both offensive and scientifically duplicitous. To assert that being an atheist will cause people to eat their own feces is not only factually inaccurate, it is blatant fear mongering. This is not the scientific and rational thought he claims to be arguing for. Earlier in the article he claimed that atheists have to twist facts to justify their position but what is he doing here if not blatantly twisting facts?

So Matt Walsh I assert that I am thinking of the children. I will be a father soon my self, and it is my devotion to objective moral ideals, scientific curiosity, and intellectual honesty that leads me to my atheism, my skepticism, and notions of social justice. I feel strongly about these things precisely because I want to leave this world a better place than I found it…you know, for the kids.

David Barton’s grasp of statistics is just as bad as his grasp of history.

So Barton gives a smug little speech in which he references a passage is Proverbs 1:7 that says “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.” Of course he uses this to claim that our educational system is failing because we removed compulsive prayer. You can watch the whole video below.

If you watch this you will notice that one of his key points is that the U.S. literacy rates have fallen from 1st in the world to 68th. It turns out this is a problematic claim on multiple levels. One it seems to be a bald face lie or at least a demonstration that he is unable to do a Google search. The reason I say this is that every set of world literacy figures I can find places the United States in the 20’s, quite a bit higher than the number he offers. Figures placed in numbered order here, and here.

The second problem is that, even if he was correct, he confuses correlation with causation. There are plenty of other possible causes for the U.S. to have changes in it’s world literacy placement. For one, it isn’t like these other countries are just sitting around existing to make us look good. Many other countries have been working on improving their literacy rates; so our position could have fallen without our literacy rates dropping at all.

The main question he should be asking if he were actually concerned with whether or not his claims are true is if there is any evidence that a lack of prayer is schools actually causes literacy to decline. This isn’t a hard question to answer. We only need to go back to tables I previously linked to and see if there is any correlation between the religiosity of a country and literacy. It turns out there is, however unfortunately for Barton, it is a negative correlation. The countries with the highest literacy rates, countries like Finland and Greenland, are by and large not filled with religious people. Further the countries at the bottom of the list, countries like Somalia and Afghanistan, are typically very religious. In any case all of the first half of these lists are above 90% and it turns out that the United States, as a highly religious culture with high literacy, is actually one of the few exceptions. It turns out there is no evidence to suggest that prayer or “fear of god” has a positive effect on literacy. However, there is quite a bit of evidence that Barton does not care if the claims he makes are actually true.

Kentucky’s school prayer petition makes blatantly false claims

The American Family Association of Kentucky has put up a petition to put prayer back in Kentucky schools. They claim that the law is ok because Florida and Mississippi have passed similar laws, though I suspect it is just a matter of time before the laws a struck down for church state separation violations. The AFA doesn’t even try to disguise their intent, they say outright the goal of putting prayer in school is to convert students. In their own words:

STUDENTS PRAYING AGAIN WILL EVENTUALLY TURN OUR COUNTRY BACK TO GOD!

Now, I suspect that even if Kentucky passes such a law it will, within a few years, end up on the docket for judicial review and the law will be shot down amidst cries from the AFA that the liberal elite are destroying this country. So while I am concerned that there is a trend of states passing laws which have already been deemed unconstitutional, what I’m really concerned about is the blatantly false scientific claims they make as part of the petition. Claims that apparently no one bats an eye at, perhaps because they fit a narrative that this petitions audience already wants to believe. The narrative being that American society is failing because it doesn’t trust in god. So let’s take a look at the scientific claims which the petition makes:

Prayer was in our schools for over 200 years before the anti-God forces took it out in 1962. After prayer was removed from our schools, teen pregnancy went up 500%, STD’s went up 226%, violent crime went up 500% and SAT scores went down for 18 years in a row, opening the door for the AIDS epidemic and the drug culture.

Of course the notion that before the supreme court ruled on school prayer in 1962 and 1963 school prayer was common in all 50 states and totally uncontroversial is simply historically inaccurate.  But lets look at the four main scientific claims made here.

First, they claim that teen pregnancy has climbed 500% since 1962. This one is easy because I actually wrote a post about this claim last year which you can read here. In this article I point to a set of statistics found here which show that far from a 500% increase, since 1962 the teen pregnancy rate has fallen by almost 100%, in 2008 and more recent figures show even further decline. This claim is not only poorly supported, it seems to be an outright fabrication. Of course if they have alternate figures I can’t judge them since they fail to provide references for their claims.

The next claim is that STD’s have gone up 226% since 1962. Like the first one I seem to be unable to find any reports with this claim. Further, the claim is more difficult to judge than the one about pregnancy because while pregnancy is binary (you either are or you aren’t) STD’s come in many different kinds, some of which are very dangerous and some of which are fairly harmless, particularly if treated quickly. Though, in part, it is the very fact that STD rates are difficult to judge that make this figure so suspect. For instance, the infection rates of specific STD’s rise and fall at different rates as well, sometimes one will go up while another will go down in the same year. So if the figures for a less harmful one went up while one that was more harmful went down by a similar amount is the STD problem unchanged or is it improved? Further, if the figures go up for a particular STD, depending on how the figures are gathered, this might only indicate that more people are seeking medical treatment, not that infection rates have increased. For these, and other, reasons generalized rates like the one given in this petition are practically useless. They tell us less than nothing.

So how did this number hold up to the figures I was able to gather? I did find a paper here through the CDC which gives rates of infections for various STD’s. The rates fro Chlamydia only went back to 1990 so I can’t judge that one entirely, the rates have climbed since 1990 with women suffering from the majority of the cases but at a rate of about 375 per 100,000 it isn’t like there is an epidemic or anything.

I was, however, able to get graphs stretching back to 1941 for both Gonorrhea and Syphilis. Gonorrhea infections seem to have been on the rise in the early 1960’s all the way until the mid 1970’s. It was at about 150 out of 100,000 in 62 and climbed sharply to almost 500 by 1975. However, that trend was reversed in the 1980’s and by 1995 the rate was down to around 100, lower than it was even in the 1950’s. Syphilis, meanwhile, was at it’s highest rate of nearly 600 out of 100,000 in 1945. This was probably due to soldiers returning from WWII. The modern figures barely register on the graph with numbers under 50.

 

Of course there are other STD’s we could look at. I imagine the rate of increase for AIDS between 1962 and now is off the charts since it didn’t exist then, but in general without some rather startling figures coming from some other form of STD it is pretty clear that the claim of a 226% increase in STD’s came from the same place their claims about teen pregnancy came from.

The third claim was that crime has gone up 500% since 1962. I found numbers for this here. This one could actually have some teeth if you measure the the straight numbers of crime without regard to the increase in population we have seen since 1962. For instance the number of Robberies in 1962 was about 110,000, and in 2011 they were about 354,000. That is an increase of well over 300%. However, when you note that the population of the U.S. has increased by nearly 1.7 times that increase falls to only about 190%.

However these numbers are not consistent. The murder rate, for example was around 8500 in 1962 and are around 14,600 in 2011. That increase is actually consistent with the increase in population, leaving the per capita murder rate relatively unchanged since the 1960’s. In fact, Murder numbers actually peaked in the 90’s and have been falling for nearly 20 years now. In fact pretty much every crime rate has been falling since the mid 1990’s so the only way you could get anywhere near this 500% figure is by looking at 20 year old data.

The last claim made is that SAT scores fell 18 years in a row. Once again I was able to find actual figures for this quite easily. This one has a grain of truth in it since the average score in 1980 was 424 compared to the 473 that was the average in 1962. However a new scale was introduced in 1967 which may muck up the comparison. If you only look at the averages from the new scale from 67 onward there was a downward shift in the 60’s and 70’s, but that trend reversed in the mid 80’s and has been climbing. Interestingly, numbers in the math section have been rising more than numbers in reading. Further the downward trend could have been due to increased college attendance or the fact that test standards were changed several times which could have made the test more difficult.

Of course the biggest problem with this argument is that even if their numbers were correct, and I have shown that they are not, they have done nothing to show any causal relationships between these figures. They assume, for no reason whatsoever, that these figures changed because of a change in school prayer, when it should be obvious that things like teen pregnancy and STD’s are affected by thousands of different factors. Of course acknowledging that there might not be an easy fix for our problems is usually a hard thing to do. We want our fixes to come easy, and to the unskeptical it is comforting to think that if they can just get society to change one thing everything will fall into place and be great. Seldom is this tendency seen in more prevalence than with the religious right.

A couple of thoughts on the voting rights act decision

By now most of you have probably heard about the Supreme court’s decision to overturn section 5 of the voting rights act which required nine states with a history of racial discrimination to obtain federal permission to change voting rules.

The justices seemed to believe such a law was not necessary anymore because the problem of voting equality had been fixed. It seems odd to me that the justices did not seem to understand that one of the reasons it had been fixed was the voting rights act itself. The law had not become obsolete in my opinion. The evidence of this is that just two hours after the ruling Texas, one of the nine states that had been affected by the voting rights act, began advancing bills for voter ID restrictions and redistricting that had been blocked just last year by a justice department ruling.

Two Hours After The Supreme Court Gutted The Voting Rights Act, Texas AG Suppresses Minority Voters

In any case, rather than rehash the details, which are already on thousands of news outlets, I wanted to delve into two of the most common defenses I have been hearing for this decision, and, of course, why I disagree with them.

1. The states rights argument.

This argument is basically saying that the law never should have existed in the first place because the constitution does not give the federal government the right to regulate a states voting laws. You see, the state has that power, and if they abuse it by disenfranchising the parts of the population they don’t like then the rest of the country can do nothing but shrug its collective shoulders and accept it. It is first important to note that the justices do not offer this as a reason for overturning it, the majority decision seems to acknowledge that the law served a valuable purpose in the past.

To understand why I reject this reasoning let us first talk a bit about the idea of states rights. In theory I’m a supporter of the concept. The reason is because I think, when applied properly, it gives more rights to the individual. How, you ask? It’s simple statistics. If the whole country votes on a law then I am one voice in roughly 300 million, but if that same law is decided by the state then I am one voice out of whatever the population of that state, certainty a smaller number. It is also easier to advocate for causes in our political system when some changes are left to smaller groups than the entire federal government. Further, It is often the case that the federal government is controlled by larger business because they have the capital to lobby for their interests; so placing more power at the state and local level can also, in theory, give citizens without 7 figure incomes a larger voice in the political process.

The point is that states rights is suppose to be a concept that gives the individual more power, but in this case it is clearly not being used for that. Instead states rights is just being used as a clever guise to interrupt the political process and disempowering certain individuals. If it a question of obeying the letter of the law or the spirit of it, I know where I stand. States rights cease to be something I care about the moment when the concept is used to take our rights away instead of give them to us.

2. All the people who disagree with this are really racist since they think voter ID laws will disproportionally effect minorities.

Basically the argument states that when people point out these laws will have a disproportionate affect are certain minority groups that they are being racist because they are suggesting that these minorities are either too lazy or unintelligent to get a I.D., or are perhaps illegal.

This argument, in addition to being an ad hominem, and an example of the “I know you are but what am I” defense, has several problems. In the first place it is a bit of a red herring, because voter ID laws are only a part of the problem. Redistricting was included in the section 5 rules and was quite often just as big a problem as voter ID laws. Using demographics from the census it is possible to redraw districts in such a way as to prevent any minority group from having enough population in any one district to have a say in their local politics.

Second, it is not racist to point out something that is demonstrated to be reality. Studies have, in fact, shown that certain types of voter ID laws will disproportionally effect minorities.

Voter ID Laws Could Disenfranchise 1 Million Young Minority Voters: Study

This is science, it’s not racist to employ science in your understanding of a topic. Indeed it would be intellectually cowardly to ignore this evidence just because we fear that someone might mistake scientific inquiry with racism. Furthermore, no one involved in gathering these figures has, to my knowledge, said that the reason for these numbers has anything to do with minorities being lazy or uneducated or anything like that. In fact, as far as I can tell, no reason is given because there are no studies done to investigate that and thus there is no current evidence as to the cause. To wit, to claim the cause for these figures is laziness or a lack of education based on the current evidence would be not only racist, it would be intellectually lazy and scientifically unsupportable. Which is, of course, why no one is saying that.

The myth of Christian persecution

I have had a number of conversations with theists in the last couple of months who, at some point in the conversation, brought up the notion of Christian persecution. Now, in this case I’m not talking about historical persecution, or persecution of Christians in other countries, both of which are real, though occasionally exaggerated by some believers. No, in this case I’m talking about Christians who claim they are being persecuted right here in the U.S. for their beliefs.

Now, while I ultimately conclude that there is no real persecution of Christians in this country, I do want to treat the idea fairly. I want to acknowledge how the idea, though false, can, at least to Christians, seem quite reasonable.

Christians, especially fundamentalist ones, often have a martyr complex. It’s not really their fault; they came by it quite naturally. Christians revere martyrs from church history, and the bible is chock full of passages telling them to expect persecution and even rejoice in it, essentially because such persecution means you are on the right track and serving god’s interests. The persecution comes because the “world” is against the things of god.

A short sample of such passages:

Matthew 5:12 : Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.

John 15:18 : If the world hate you, you know that it hated me before it hated you.

John 15:20 : Remember the word that I said to you, The servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept my saying, they will keep yours also.

1 Peter 4:16 : Yet if any man suffer as a Christian, let him not be ashamed; but let him glorify God on this behalf.

So Christians are often actively told by the bible and their preachers to expect persecution, this primes the pump in a psychological sense; it makes them see persecution in the same way a person who is told that their lucky number is 3 by a horoscope will suddenly see 3 everywhere. The incidences of 3 are likely no  higher than any other number, they are just looking for that number and not others.

This is not simply a guess on my part either. In moments of openness several ministry leaders in my campus ministry expressed conflicted emotions on a number of occasions about their martyr complex, and about how they were secretly elated when they felt as if someone was persecuting them for their beliefs. Certainly Christians have been more openly criticized in this country in recent years; however, the martyr mentality often tends to make people mistake legitimate criticism of their position for persecution.

Of course, to be fair, Christians complain not just about the criticism but also about the vitriol with which it is delivered. A common complaint that is leveled is that they are routinely maligned as bigots for their positions on gay marriage and other major topics. In this they have something of a point, though it isn’t the point they think it is.

For one thing some people just like to argue and don’t seem to know how to do it civilly, especially on the internet. It is not just atheists or others who are antagonistic; there are Christians who also act this way. On the other side, I’ve spoken to Christians and Muslims online who have flown into a frothing litany of swear words at me for politely disagreeing with them.

But we don’t even have to get into religion; just take a look at articles about computer operating systems sometime. You will find fans of other operating systems posting comments explaining how everyone who uses this OS is completely stupid for not using their preferred OS. This isn’t Christian persecution, we are just witnessing a psychological phenomenon known as tribalism. People have a tendency to join groups and then, unfortunately, shun anyone who doesn’t conform to that group. Should it be this way? Of course not. Should we try to rise above our tendencies here? Absolutely. People should be more civil, and within atheism and skepticism I’ve tried to criticize such behavior when I notice it. However, if being maligned in this way actually amounted to persecution then we might conclude that Justin Bieber is the most persecuted person in the history of the world.

On the other hand, I am also of the opinion that people often have legitimate reasons to be angry, even if they present their positions poorly as a result. Yes, I will happily agree that sometimes these people allow their anger to cause them to make points poorly, or make personal attacks. Heck, I try to be civil as much as a can, but I’m human and I’ve been one of these people from time to time. If Christians spend all the time they spent complaining about persecution trying to understand WHY these people are angry perhaps they would not feel so persecuted or find themselves so bewildered by the anger from this group.

In any case, I can hardly think it is reasonable to feel your group is persecuted by people who voice, even angrily, their disagreement with your group’s beliefs. Particularly when those beliefs, when applied to law, have a direct effect on other people’s rights. Furthermore, Christianity is still, in many respects, viewed quite favorably by society at large. However, even if it lost a lot of that popularity would that mean it was being persecuted then? Christians will no doubt rail at the comparison as more proof they are being persecuted, but the KKK’s views on race are not exactly popular either, is that lack of popularity proof they are being persecuted? Members of the KKK probably think so. However, my point is that it is not rational to claim your group is being persecuted just because beliefs popular with your group have lost ground in society at large. To do so is to insinuate that ANY disagreement with you will be viewed as persecution.

I’m sure that Christians don’t like being criticized; let’s be honest, no one does. To a certain extent I actually feel badly for them, because most Christians are, of course, decent people. Outside of the issues we strongly disagree on most are quite nice, but I could say that about a lot of people I disagree with. Anti-vaccination people are mostly nice too, it doesn’t change the fact that discouraging vaccinations has a clear and negative impact on the overall health of the country. Do we keep out mouth shut because we might hurt the feelings of these people? Perhaps some people answer that question with a yes, I, however, do not. Of course, when I do not let my anger get the better of me I attempt to voice my criticism as constructively as possible, but my conscience will not allow me to keep my mouth shut on such important issues just because someone might get their feelings hurt.

So the real question here is have Christians in the United States been subjected to anything more than criticism? In truth I can think of a few examples. I know several years ago a group of people (presumably atheists) painted graffiti on a church, but I mostly remember this because Hement Mehta over at Friendly Atheist helped to raise money to fix the church up, because he (like myself) doesn’t believe vandalism is a good way to deal with the issues. On the other side it should be noticed that Christians groups regularly deface atheist billboards and posters and I have yet to ever see a church offer to pay to clean those up. Usually they just say we had it coming.  Though to be fair I haven’t looked very hard, perhaps a church has helped clean up such vandalism before.

I’m sure this is not the only legitimate case of Christians being mistreated, however many of the examples I regularly see brought up by Christians are not actually persecution in any real sense. For instance I’ve seen many cases where someone has claimed a teacher was fired from public school for being a Christian, yet when these cases are examined closely it always turns out that the teacher was doing something they should not have been doing, like trying to evangelize to their students or telling gay students that homosexuality is a sin. Of course evangelism is practically a sacrament to some versions of Christianity so they feel they are being persecuted if anyone suggests that a work place or school is not an appropriate place for this behavior, but it isn’t actually persecution because it isn’t directed at Christians, if you were a Muslim, atheist or anyone else doing such things you would be rightfully fired too. So while I do acknowledge that Christians face criticism for their beliefs, (I’m one of the criticizers after all) and sometimes such criticism is perhaps meaner than it ought to be, the number of Christians in the U.S. who have actually faced any real persecution is vanishingly small.

Just a little follow up on the debate I did back in April

 

Sorry, I’ve not been posting lately, I’ve been super busy with packing and moving for my move to Oakland with my fiancé. I have a couple of posts I would like to work on but have been too busy to write them.

Anyway, there was a bit of a conversation on my opponents web site back in May about the debate. I was too busy to continue it, and quite honestly didn’t see much point given some of the weird arguments being employed, but I thought I’d repost the comment section that came from here, read it and tell me what you guys think.

• Jim,
  Definitely an interesting exchange both during and after the debate. I could definitely see the effect opposing worldviews have on the interpretation of the issue.
  I find it interesting when atheists like Dylan or Dan Barker make a point to describe themselves as "former fundamentalist Christians for XX years" when they introduce themselves as if that should deliver some sort of impact to the minds in the audience. Maybe it does for some people. But I don't think claims like that carry any weight whatsoever with someone who desires to be faithful to the Christian worldview and listens to what God has told us about the nature of his creation. I don't have any problem Dylan making that sort of claim and see it as him freely indicting himself as a rebel similar to who Paul spoke of in Romans 1. It's bold, if anything. He knows he's in rebellion and needs to repent. I'm not the only audience member that sees that in his claim.
  I also found it curious how Dylan seemed to be using "Risk Assessment when considering homosexual acts" as a sort of trump card to any evidence that those acts might cause unwanted harm to the persons engaging in them. Further, it was curious that he dismissed your argument by claiming you were exaggerating the statistics. So, he's not concerned? At what point do the statistics or the nature of the consequences become concerning for Dylan? Regarding what we should do about our concern, we need to be doctors to understand that some of the health risks are life-threatening? We're just supposed to keep quiet or say "Gosh, I don't know if homosexual acts could lead to something like AIDS, you'll have to ask a bona-fide doctor for an expert opinion on that."? Come on, that's not very compassionate or very loving, but I can see how it aligns with an atheistic worldview. Based on the previous debate, Dylan also remains unconcerned about 50,000,000+ lives ended in the US alone since Roe v. Wade. But to be fair, I gathered that he either sees the unborn as some non-human life form which eventually becomes a human, or at least if he does see the unborn as a human life, there is some gradient upon which he judges the value of one life over another depending on one's age, developmental state, or some other arbitrary degreed property. Getting off topic...
  Last, I wish there could have more time to focus on the same-sex marriage issue. I would have been interested to hear more of Dylan's possibly scientific explanation of why there is no difference between heterosexual unions and homosexual unions, despite the fact that one as a group by rule can produce the next generation and the other cannot. Why does the government bother to grant marriage licenses to heterosexual couples? What benefit do heterosexual marriages bring to the State such that the government would promote them by granting certain privileges to those who partake? Why should the government be obligated to grant the same privileges to groups of people that do not as a group by rule return the same benefit? Those are the root questions that Dylan didn't convincingly argue for in either the debate or his post-debate blog.
  Thanks again for the great debate BPR.

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  Dylan Walker4:29 PM

  Jim you have completely misread my intent of saying that I am a former believer, I know most believers think that I was never "truly" saved, and my mom thinks I will "return to the fold" someday. I only meant to imply that I know your belief system well because I lived it. You may conclude any thing you like about me including how I "need to repent" and it doesn't really have any affect on me.
  If you want me to believe in god you need to prove he exists, I can't rebel against something that doesn't exist. I'm no more in rebellion against the Christian god than you are in rebellion against the Muslim one or the Hindu one.
  Jim, if you think that the sole reason for marriage is having children do you think that the marriages of heterosexual couples who do not have children are invalid? To me that seems like an absurd argument so arguing that gay people should not be able to get married simply because they are unable to have children is also absurd.
  Why does there have to be a benefit to the state? The state exists to benefit the public not the other way around. Only a totalitarian would argue that we exist to benefit the state.
  There is a recent story of an elderly gay couple in which one of them had developed Alzheimer's. Even though they had been together decades and the other member had power of attorney a gold digging relative of the person who had Alzheimer's had him committed, had a restraining order placed on the other person in this gay relationship and sold the house they have lived in more than a decade living him both homeless and unable to see his partner again. I don't care what you happen to think this is WRONG, and it wouldn't have happened if they had been able to marry.

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  Dylan Walker4:34 PM

  Oh, and once again I will point out that AIDS is not a gay disease. It is communicable by all kinds of sexual contact as well as contact with other bodily fluids, such as blood.
  This sort of ignorance makes me feel like I've been transferred back to 1985.

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  Vocab Malone6:03 PM

  Dylan,
  I think Jim’s point is that when atheists (or Mulsims) say, “I was once a Christian” or “I used to believe everything you believe” or things like that, this claim does not automatically result in credibility in our mind. We have heard folks say this stuff time and time again and then we soon realize, said person has no idea what they are talking about.
  What makes it worse is when someone says, “I’m a former fundamentalist so I know.” Well, most evangelicals don’t call themselves fundamentalists. Only those not in the know lump fundamentalists and evangelicals together. Or Arminians and Calvinists for that matter.
  I mean, what do you think when you hear a Christian say, “I was once an atheist.” Do you think that means they understand *you*? I’m not saying we don’t believe you (in fact, I most certainly do believe you) or that you don’t know anything about Christianity (you know more than most atheists I meet about Christian doctrine).
  Dylan, Jim never said the *sole* reason for marriage was for having children. He also never said the #1 reason two men cannot get married is only because they cannot have children. It is easy to call an argument absurd but when it’s not the person’s argument, it does not really help anyone. Look again at some of his comment:
  “I would have been interested to hear more of Dylan's possibly scientific explanation of why there is no difference between heterosexual unions and homosexual unions, despite the fact that one as a group by rule can produce the next generation and the other cannot. Why does the government bother to grant marriage licenses to heterosexual couples? What benefit do heterosexual marriages bring to the State such that the government would promote them by granting certain privileges to those who partake? Why should the government be obligated to grant the same privileges to groups of people that do not as a group by rule return the same benefit?”
  He specifically mentioned wanting a scientific explanation from you to defend your claim. He gave one example of the fact that homosexual unions are not the same as heterosexual unions.
  He also never said anything about us existing to benefit the state – he is a follower of Jesus Christ, for goodness sakes! He simply said if two women together do not provide the same benefits, then why should the state confer the same privileges to them? The answer is clear, the state should not, it is not in the public interest at all. But advocates push for this because they are really after forced acceptance and the legitimization of homosexual activity in the public square.
  And you, and the President, and the general populace may approve. But this does not mean that the Sovereign God to whom all are accountable approves – and neither should those whom are his people.
  Shalom
  Vocab

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  Dylan Walker8:02 PM

  I'm not aware of a strict demarcation between "fundamentalists" and "evangelicals," I've known many Christians who consider themselves both, just like I am an atheist, and skeptic and a humanist.
  Of course there is quite a bit of difference between Arminian thought and Calvinist, but that really wasn't the point, all I was saying is that he misapprehended my reasoning for saying I was a former fundamentalist, I was not thumbing my nose at you merely stating that I had recognized your arguments and typical of believers.
  Now, I cannot respond to arguments he did not make so if he wants to bring up other ways in which the homo and heterosexual relationships differ I can respond to those, he brought up an example and I told him why I think that example is not a good argument. If he wants to bring up other examples then he can posit them himself.
  He said, and I quote:
  "What benefit do heterosexual marriages bring to the State such that the government would promote them by granting certain privileges to those who partake?"
  This statement indicates to me that Jim feels that the state grants the privilege of marriage because it benefits the state in some way. Again just pointing out why I don't agree. Marriage is a right not a privilege, and it need not benefit the state at all to be granted. I'm part of the public and it IS in my interest to see gay marriage legalized, as well as the interest of many gay people. To claim it is not in "public interest" requires that you believe that the only people who actually count are you and yours and those who do not share your beliefs or religion do not deserve equal say, fortunately the bill of rights does not allow Christians that sort of authority.
  "And you, and the President, and the general populace may approve. But this does not mean that the Sovereign God to whom all are accountable approves – and neither should those whom are his people."
  Fine, but allowing gay marriage does not require that you personally approve, it only requires that you let all those people out there who either don't believe in god, or don't agree with you about what he says live their lives too.
  Telling me god does not approve is pointless until you (or god himself) proves he exists, as far as I'm concerned he is a concept that people thought up and not a real entity, but that is besides the point. We live in a secular democratic republic, this means your opinions about what god wants are irrelevant to how we ought to run the country and what rights we ought to give people. If you think otherwise then you might as well label yourself a dominionist and get it over with.

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  Jim9:37 PM

  Dylan said:
  “I only meant to imply that I know your belief system well because I lived it.”
  Yes, I know that. As Vocab correctly commented, my main point was that your claim to know our belief system well does not give you any credibility in our minds. You don’t know it as well as you think you do. Case in point…
  Dylan said:
  “If you want me to believe in god you need to prove he exists”
  Yes, I want you to believe in God. No, I don’t need to prove to you that he exists for that to happen. If you understood our belief system you would understand that God is not in the dock, and you are not the judge.
  Dylan said:
  “Jim, if you think that the sole reason for marriage is having children do you think that the marriages of heterosexual couples who do not have children are invalid? To me that seems like an absurd argument so arguing that gay people should not be able to get married simply because they are unable to have children is also absurd.”
  No, I do not think that heterosexual marriages that do not produce children are invalid. But again, as Vocab noted, I wasn’t making an argument that having children is the sole reason for marriage. Although, children are certainly central to why government sanctions marriage. I was pointing out a reason why heterosexual unions are different than homosexual unions – which they clearly are, biologically. Two men cannot come together to procreate and neither can two women. Only a man and a woman can do that. Even in the case of artificial insemination, a man and a woman have to be involved.
  Dylan said:
  “Why does there have to be a benefit to the state? The state exists to benefit the public not the other way around. Only a totalitarian would argue that we exist to benefit the state.”
  First, we are the State. Those of us who make up society, are the State. Second, part of government function is to prohibit, permit, or promote behaviors to help society flourish. The government promotes behaviors that bring benefit to society often by granting certain privileges to those who partake. The government obviously promotes marriage between heterosexuals by granting them privileges. So, what benefits does the State experience from traditional marriage? I know you think it’s a civil rights issue. It’s not. You are misguided as to why the government promotes the institution of marriage in the first place. It’s not because two people love each other. It’s not a right to have your relationship promoted by the State, it’s a privilege.

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  Jim9:37 PM

  Dylan said:
  “Oh, and once again I will point out that AIDS is not a gay disease. It is communicable by all kinds of sexual contact as well as contact with other bodily fluids, such as blood.”
  Correct. But, I never said it was a “gay disease.” You apparently misunderstood my comment to mean that I thought homosexual acts create AIDS. What I actually said was engaging in homosexual acts could lead to something like AIDS. As in, AIDS is a potential consequence of homosexual contact, since sexual contact is a means by which HIV is transmitted from person to person. Of course, heterosexuals can receive HIV from a sexual partner too, but MSM is a particularly high risk group for such a consequence. The CDC agrees: “MSM account for nearly half of the 1.1 million people living with HIV in the United States (52%, or an estimated 592,100 total persons. MSM account for more than half of all new HIV infections in the United States each year (61%, or an estimated 29,300 infections).” But, as you’ve already expressed, statistics are just being exaggerated by folks like Vocab and myself. You are not concerned. It’s just 592,100 poor risk managers – big deal, they probably should have just been educated better to take more precautions. I, on the other hand, am grieved by the fact that over half a million lives may be cut short because these people willingly engaged in unhealthy behavior.
  Dylan said:
  “This sort of ignorance makes me feel like I've been transferred back to 1985.”
  LOL, http://www.gargaro.com/MaRvInWaVs/angry.wav Come on down and get out of the DeLorean, you misunderstood.

A couple of points here on Jim’s posts which I think employ some very strange logic. He argues that I don’t understand his religion because I ask for proof, but I would submit that he doesn’t understand atheists very well.  I understand quite well that many varieties Christianity teach that it is wrong to ask for physical proof. I even know the proof texts that Christians would use to argue that.

Deuteronomy 6:16 for instance:

Ye shall not tempt the LORD your God, as ye tempted him in Massah. (many translations use the word “test” instead of “tempt”)

So the problem isn’t one of understanding it is one of rejection. Namely I reject the notion that one should believe any claim without evidence. If God exists but does not wish to proof himself then that is his problem not mine as I am perfectly happy not believing in him. If he wishes me to believe in him but refuses to provide evidence of his existence in a manner consistent with good standards of evidence per the nature of the universe that he created (assuming he exists) then he is foolish or just a horrible being. The fact that Jim can, with a straight face, suggest that he wishes me to believe a claim he is making but then act like it is totally reasonable to refuse to provide any evidence for said claim makes it clear that no reasonable dialog is possible with him on the subject of his religion.

In a previous conversation he claimed to be an engineer, he did not say in what field but I imagine that no one in his job would take him at his word in such a way. I’m just not willing to treat god claims as a special exception when it comes to demands for proof. A lack of belief in a claim does not mean one misunderstands it, in fact to properly accept or reject a claim one must understand it. He states that I am not the judge, I would point out that I am, in fact, the only one who can judge if a claim has been proven to my satisfaction.

He agrees that a lack of reproduction does not invalidate straight marriage but then argues the lack of reproduction is a valid reason to reject gay marriage. On the point I’m not sure if Jim is intentionally being obtuse or honestly lacks the ability to understand why these two statements are logically contradictory.

Of course the claims that they are really just concerned about people’s well being ring hollow. Consider this quote from the CDC’s website on smoking.

Tobacco use is the single most preventable cause of disease, disability, and death in the United States. Each year, an estimated 443,000 people die prematurely from smoking or exposure to secondhand smoke, and another 8.6 million live with a serious illness caused by smoking. Despite these risks, approximately 46.6 million U.S. adults smoke cigarettes. Smokeless tobacco, cigars, and pipes also have deadly consequences, including lung, larynx, esophageal, and oral cancers.

So when Christian groups start denying smokers civil rights because they “care” I could at least believe they are being logically consistent. For instance, when they start fighting to keep smokers from jobs that work with children because they might encourage kids to smoke or other comparable issues. Until then I will call this concern exactly what it is, a made up justification to push their religious ideas onto everyone else.

Then there is the ridiculous personal attack that Jim engages in by claiming I just don’t care about the half a million people that died or whatever. Allowing people to make their own choices is not the same as not caring about what happens to them, but Christians do love to characterize atheists as unfeeling automatons with no empathy. Jim, if you ever read this, understand that it is my empathy that drives me to fight for gay marriage and if you spend even a little bit of time reading my or any of 1,000 other atheist blogs out there you would find that we care about a variety of people very deeply.

The points I made about how the incorrectly quoted studies or quoted studies that were outright fraudulent stand because both Vocab and Jim failed to address any of my criticisms except to just baldly assert I was “biased.”