Hobby Lobby decision makes my brain hurt.

I’ve just been reading over the Hobby Lobby ruling by the supreme court today and the majority ruling is just baffling to me. Let’s look at two parts of the ruling.

First:

Nothing in RFRA suggests a congressional intent to depart from the Dictionary Act definition of “person,” which “include[s] corporations, . . . as well as individuals.” 1 U. S. C. §1. The Court has entertained RFRA and free-exercise claims brought by nonprofit corporations.

Basically the are saying that for the purpose of legal ruling corporations are treated as persons. Now, the notion that corporations are to be treated as persons is certain respects goes back to the 19th century, this initially only extended to rights regarding contract enforcement and obligation. However throughout the years various rulings by the supreme court have extended this concept of personhood being vested in a corporation to granting more rights normally reserved for persons in normal sense. The most recent and well known example of this trend was the Citizens United ruling published back in 2010.

One of the features of this ruling is essentially to continue this trend, by now arguing that corporations have the right of free exercise of religion. With this there are almost no rights given to persons which are not also given to corporations. This is a mistake, corporations are for profit enterprises, there is no reason to grant them any rights beyond those needed to engage in free market trade, I.E. laws relating to contract enforcement. The free exercise clause is there to guarantee individuals the right to practice their religious beliefs, but a corporation cannot HAVE religious beliefs and to make the religious beliefs of the corporations owners or managers coequal with the “beliefs” of the corporation seems at odds with the very purpose of corporations, I.E. limited liability. That is to say I find it odd that people who would fight to defend the notion that they are not individually responsible in an economic sense for the corporations choices, now want to claim they feel a personal moral responsibility for the corporation's choices.  This is particularly galling since there is evidence that Hobby Lobby, in particular, has investments in companies that make some of the contraceptives they claim to oppose.

There is an overriding interest, I believe, in keeping the courts “out of the business of evaluating the relative merits of differing religious claims,” Lee, 455 U. S., at 263, n. 2 (Stevens, J., concurring in judgment), or the sincerity with which an asserted religious belief is held. Indeed, approving some religious claims while deeming others unworthy of accommodation could be “perceived as favoring one religion over another,” the very “risk the Establishment Clause was designed to preclude.”

Notice that they don’t that Hobby Lobby’s claim merits protection under the RFRA because the claim is sincere, they claim that the court cannot even be asked to determine if religious claims are sincere. This is simply wrong in my opinion, and disastrously wrong at that. Ginsburg’s dissent to the majorities ruling puts it best.

"Reading the Act expansively, as the court does, raises a host of "Me, too" questions. Can an employer in business for profit opt out of coverage for blood transfusions, vaccinations, antidepressants, or medications derived from pigs, based on the employer's sincerely held religious beliefs opposing those medical practices.

The point is that the courts MUST, as best they can, attempt to determine which claims are sincere and which are not, at the very least. To assume that all religious claims are sincere, and therefore must be respected under the law, would lead to the court being required to allow anyone to do virtually anything by simply claiming a religious exemption. Don’t want to pay taxes? My religion says I’m not allowed to pay taxes. What you don’t think my beliefs are sincere? You think I’m more interested in a way of getting out of my moral obligations to government and society? How dare you question the sincerity of my beliefs! Now, do I think Scalia and the other conservatives on the court would actually rule this way? Absolutely not, which is why this ruling is a complete joke. Even they don’t accept the logic they used to justify this ruling.

Catholic priest blames dualism for contraception and moral decay.

This is one of the stranger articles I’ve ran across lately.

Contraception: The Gateway to Moral Decay

It starts by accurately quoting some statistics from a Gallup poll.

At the top of Gallup’s list of 19 issues was contraception, of which 90 percent of Americans approve, followed by divorce at 69 percent and premarital sex at 66 percent. Others making the top ten were embryonic stem cell research (65%), childbirth outside of marriage (58%), same-sex unions (58%), euthanasia (52%) and abortion (42%).

No disagreement here except that I don’t feel these statistics are an example of how far American society has fallen the way the author clearly does. One caveat, he points to these statistics as evidence that people are moving away from his positions, but the numbers on abortion have stated fairly static in America since Roe v. Wade.

Of course he brings up all the buzz words and ideas, blames “relativism” and the “sexual revolution” then goes on to say this has been a developing trend for hundreds of years.

Of course, it goes back more than a few decades. As is often the case, what seems like a sudden explosion was really the logical outcome of hundreds of years of growing confusion about who we are as persons.

No surprise here, what does surprise me is where he places this, more distant, historical blame, and why.

René Descartes (1596-1650) was a French scientist and philosopher who many credit with helping to launch what later became known, somewhat ironically, as “the  Enlightenment”. Among his contributions to the way people thought was to place body and soul in opposition to each other, later leading to the idea that the human body could simply be seen as an object one could manipulate according to one’s desires. Simply put, you are your mind, and you have a body; as opposed to the traditional Christian view that you are both body and soul. In this, Descartes followed Francis Bacon (1561-1626), who believed that the goal of human knowledge should be to successfully achieve not stewardship of, but domination over, nature.”

I’ve certainly seen my fair share of derision launched at the enlightenment by conservative religious apologists, but his attack on Descartes seems particularly odd since he was both a Christian and a Catholic. He is at least as well known for an ontological argument for God’s existence as he is for his work in dualism. He also ties Descartes’ philosophy to Bacon’s even though the history of philosophy tends to place each of them in the opposing camps of rationalism and empiricism respectively.

However, what strikes me as most odd is blaming of Cartesian dualism on the sexual revolution. For one thing, people who reject theism generally also reject Cartesian dualism, in fact it would seem that materialists are required to reject Cartesian dualism. Furthermore, most Christians are dualists of some kind though they may not know or agree with Descartes particular formulation. It is technically possible to reject mind/body dualism and be a Christian but most, including Catholics, do believe that the soul or mind can and does separate from the body upon death, only to reunited with it in the second coming. This is why I find statements in this article like this so odd.

Books are still being written about what became known in philosophy as mind/body dualism, a view that is rejected by the Church. This dualistic view is assumed by most today, even though most don’t realize it or see how it informs even their most basic assumptions about reality, and other people.

It should also be noted that Descartes formulated his version of dualism to deal with what he saw as a fundamental epistemic problem so trying to connect this in some way to modern sexual mores in American is tenuous at best.

The contraceptive mentality, so identified by the Church, is a perfect example of what happens when we embrace dualism. Notice how the promoters of contraception promise a consequence-free control over our lives if we could just control our fertility with their drugs and devices. All the pleasure, none of that inconvenient fertility. My body is not me, exactly, it is an object for me to control for whatever reason I want; so sex is just about my pleasure, maybe someone else’s too. It is not necessarily about giving myself to the one I love with the possibility of creating new life as a result of that gift.

And later in the article

To go against our true nature is to fracture our natural sense of responsibility towards another. Does anyone not see this happening today?

While he has been critical of our use of Cartesian dualism to justify contraception, he is quick to make use of an even older argument to justify why we shouldn’t do this. For those who don’t recognize it, this is an example of a teleological argument, which can be found in both Plato and Aristotle. The argument can also be found being made in a famous example by the great philosopher “Winnie-the-Pooh.”

“Winnie-the-Pooh sat down at the foot of the tree, put his head between his paws and began to think.
“First of all, he said to himself: ‘That buzzing-noise means something. You don’t get a buzzing-noise like that, just buzzing and buzzing, without its meaning something. If there’s a buzzing-noise, somebody’s making a buzzing-noise, and the only reason for making a buzzing-noise that I know of is that you’re a bee.’
“Then he thought another long time and said: ‘And the only reason for being a bee that I know of is making honey.’
“And then he got up and said: ‘And the only reason I know of for making honey is so I can eat it.’ So he began to climb the tree.”

Teleological arguments are usually a poor justification and represent lazy thinking. One of the reasons for this is demonstrated in the previous quote, people assume, not only that a final purpose exists, but that it matches whatever they personally happen value most, in the authors case this is clearly reproduction. I should also point out that we don’t need mind/body dualism to justify premarital or non-reproductive sex.

He closes with this.

Obviously, seriously bad ideas have seriously bad consequences. Father Paul Marx, the founder or Human Life International, affirmed the Church’s point in his autobiography based on his broad experience in traveling the world:

Having traveled and worked in 91 countries, I find no country where contraception has not led to abortion, to increasing fornication among the young, to divorce, and to all those other evils we see today that make up the international sex mess.

And it is quite a mess, isn’t it? The Gallup poll should serve as a wake up call. If we are serious about strengthening the family, promoting the well-being of children, reversing the growing number of broken marriages in our nation, ending abortion, upholding the dignity of the aged and ill, and promoting purity and chastity, then let’s be honest about where the moral breakdown begins.

I can’t speak for every country Marx has visited, but abortion rates have been falling in the U.S. steadily since the 1980’s. Promoting the well being and dignity of all people means that you have to actually listen to them, and consider the facts. Deciding for them, irrespective of their wishes, is not respect. Forcing an elderly person to suffer for months from a illness they cannot recover from, after they have requested they they be allowed to die, is not respecting them or their dignity. This article is clearly filled more with pejorative language and emotional manipulation than with factual information. With questions like this, like always, I highly recommend the use of well documented research like this paper, (conclusion quoted below)

Empirical study of the aggregate relationships between contraceptive use and induced abortion has to be limited to the few countries where reasonably reliable information exists on both. Despite this severe limitation, our review of the evidence provides ample illustration of the interaction between these factors. When fertility levels in a population are changing, the relationship between contraceptive use and abortion may take a variety of forms, frequently involving a simultaneous increase in both. When other factors—such as fertility—are held constant, however, a rise in contraceptive use or effectiveness invariably leads to a decline in induced abortion—and vice versa.

Sye Ten’s debate with Matt Dillahunty a.k.a. the dishonesty of presuppositional arguments.

I just got through watching the debate that Matt Dillahunty did with Sye Ten Bruggencate. During the debate I noticed engaging in a tactic that I’ve dealt with many times in the various conversations and debates I’ve had over they years with fundamentalists, particularly those with a presuppositional bent to their apologetics. The tactic is to respond to any criticism of, or request for an explanation of some apparent problem in, Christianity by asserting that their opponent cannot account for some facet of of reality, usually logic or objective ethical propositions, and since they cannot account for those things then the Christian simply refuses to address the point.

The adage I’ve sometimes heard Christians use to explain this is “sitting in God’s lap to slap his face.” That is, they assert that the only way to account for the very system you are using to criticize a principal in Christianity is Christianity itself. I’ve seen these approach a number of times, including a Calvinist preacher who used to post here regularly a couple of years ago.

This tactic contains two separate claims. The first claim is that Christianity, or in the softer version of the argument a belief in a particular kind of god, provides a reasonable framework to justify belief in things like logic and objective morality. It should be noted that even when the softer version is offered by theists they will then usually follow with an assertion that only in their religion (typically Christianity  or Islam)  will you find a version of god which meets the definitional requirements needed to justify this God’s ability to be the source of these things.

The second claim is that no other systems besides their religion, or again in a softer version, any system that lacks a belief in god cannot ever account for these things in a logically consistent manner. Though again, most will assert that only a very specific type of god meets this requirement. W.L. Craig likes to assert his 7 attributes here.

The biggest problem with both claims is that they are bare assertions. It is taken as obvious by presuppositionalists that god is both necessary and sufficient to explain the existence of things like objective values and logical absolutes. On the first point specifically I think it fails quite simply because of the euthyphro dilemma. If logic was sourced in god then it would not be objective, rather it would be inherently relative. That is, what makes logical absolutes like the law of identity meaningful is that they are axiomatic, they are necessarily true, not only in this universe, but in any possible universe irrespective of any mind that might observe things.

If god willed into existence logical absolutes then it would be possible that he could have willed into existence a universe where the law of identity was not true, if he could not do so then then god is not the origin of the concept. He is, at most, a messenger for a concept that exists irrespective of his existence, and thus the concept of god is no longer needed to account for those things. This is why I’ve often argued that those who argued that god is the source of both morality and reason are the ultimate relativists despite their public eschewing of that term. On top of that problem there is an inherent epistemic problem with theistic morality. How do I determine what god, a supernatural being which I have no direct access to, has happened to declare as truth. I am convinced that, if it is at all possible to determine objective values, both theists and atheists, must do so without appealing to God. It is simply impossible, by definition, to speak of objective meaning coming from a god.

As for the second claim it would be make this post unreasonably long for me to go into a full justification for objective ethics and moral obligations from a secular perspective. I recommend is that you read my blog regularly as I talk about this subject quite often. I also recommend keeping up with Dan Fincke’s series on Empowerment Ethics. I won’t ever claim to address the subject as exhaustively as he has. As far as logic being objective, I personally think logic is axiomatic in nature and requires no external justification. Sye might find this justification unsatisfactory, but I can’t possibly see how one could find “God said so” to be more satisfactory.

Now, people like Sye might say that this isn’t sufficient justification for belief in logic, but understand he is arguing that from his world view, and under his presuppositions God is the ONLY reasonable justification for these things. What they often fail to realize or address is that I am not only under no obligation to accept his presuppositions (he acknowledges they are presuppositions) but actually think those presuppositions are wrong. The interesting thing was that in the debate Sye pretty much acknowledged that he actively refuses to consider the issue from any other perspective because he thinks to even entertain other perspectives as a thought experiment to be sinful.

However, besides the rational problems, I have a secondary problem with this argument when used as a tactic to avoid responding to a question, as Sye used it in the debate. In my opinion It is fundamentally disingenuous. Even if I were to assume that they are correct in their assertions that their system is objective and mine is not, their refusal to respond to a critique makes no sense. This is because when the question is posed I’m asking them to account for the problem from THEIR world view, not mine. It doesn’t actually matter if I can account for morality or logic in my world view, even though I believe I can do those things, because I’m asking them to present a consistent account of things from their system. The obvious reason for this transparent avoidance tactic is that rarely have a logically or ethically consistent response to the critique.

As I pointed out earlier using god as a justification ethics or logic necessarily makes you a relativist. This becomes obvious when we step away from absolute presuppositionalists like Sye and look at apologists like W.L. Craig who actually DO attempt to answer criticism. In these cases we often end up with things like his blatant attempt to justify genocides in the old testament. Of course when he is called out on that, just like Sye, he falls back on presuppositional arguments by claiming no atheists can criticize because only theists have an objective source for ethics. This behavior is not only circular it is designed to prevent the person from ever actually considering the possibility they could be wrong. The only people whose criticisms they will actually consider or respond too are those who already agree with them on the very thing being questioned. We shouldn’t let people off the hook for this sort of behavior. If a person can’t be bothered to actually attempt to answer critiques of their views why should we engage them? One could ask in what sense are they even really engaging in an actual debate?

Writer for Townhall claims that atheists will take over the Democrats within 10 years.

I ran across this article by Kurt Schlichter

By 2024, The Democrats Will Be An Atheist Party

I know that townhall.com is not exactly the most reputable source of information on politics, but this article seems bad even by their standards. I mean, first we have to acknowledge that currently there are exactly zero members of congress from either party who are openly atheist. Of course some may be unbelievers secretly but the very fact that such people would feel it is necessary to keep their beliefs private should let people know how silly this idea is. In any case, the article starts its argument thusly

Democrats are delighting in their opportunity to burden, harass and humiliate the believing. They use Obamacare to try to force the faithful to breach their consciences. They demand that believers be silent or lose their livelihoods. Their liberal academic flunkies do everything possible to marginalize those of us who feel that life must mean more than dreary obedience to liberal orthodoxy.

First off I’d point out that one can disagree with their interpretations of religious freedom without being an atheist, and I personally find a lot of conservative orthodoxy to be rather dreary too, but none of this proves either position right or wrong. As far as people loosing their livelihoods I can only assume they are referring to the Christian couple who’s bakery went out of business after they refused to bake a cake for a gay couple’s wedding. How exactly was this the governments fault? Last I checked they went out of business because local customers choose to take their business elsewhere after they found out about these people’s beliefs. Was the government suppose to compel people to shop there against their will? Isn’t this just capitalism at work? What they really seem to object to here is the fact that they no longer hold a majority view on this issue and they are feeling social pressure to conform. The governments job is to make sure everyone's right to hold unpopular views is legally protected, but they cannot protect people from non legal consequences like people choosing to spend their money elsewhere.

They are getting closer to outright admitting what we all know they really think. Part of it is fashion – boutique atheism is trendy. Part of it is snobbery – the same people who think socialism is a viable system like to look down on others for believing in “fantasies.” But mostly, liberals worship Government and don’t like the competition.

First off the notion that atheism is “trendy” is just nonsense, but yes I do think religion is untrue. As far as their critique of socialism, while I don’t embrace socialist ideas in total, I think anyone who believes that lassie-faire capitalism is a viable system also believes in a type of fantasy. Liberals, by and large, don’t worship government. Most of them are well aware of government excesses and are quite critical of the government in a number of ways. They just don’t buy into the libertine argument that less government is a magic bullet to fix these problems, and thus advocate for better government instead of less of it.

It's important to distinguish between regular atheists and the militant liberal atheists. There are plenty of conservative atheists who don't feel a connection to God but share conservative values. The Democrats are militant atheists. They are atheists because they imagine they are smarter and wiser than people like Isaac Newton, Abraham Lincoln, Dr. Martin Luther King, and about 85% of the rest of America.

Ok, first off a person who doesn’t feel a “connection” to god is not the same as someone who doesn’t believe in god. I’ll happily acknowledge that there are conservative atheists out there, though I have trouble understanding how any of them vote Republican given the stark reality that said party overtly operates against our political interests by advocating for more religion in government. However, if you are a conservative atheist you must also believe your position on god’s existence is more rational than that of Newton. Though this does not imply we think Newton was stupid. He was quite smart, and he added much to the field of physics. One the other hand, he also spent years studding alchemy which we now know to be absolute rubbish. We have to examine each claim on it’s own merits regardless of the person presenting the claim. Newton was smart, but so was Nietzsche, and Hume. The fact that I think every single religious person was wrong about this important fact does not mean I think they are all stupid.

They are proud believers in “Science.” That’s different from science. Science is the one where you take evidence and draw conclusions from it. “Science” is the one where you figure out what gives liberals the most power and shriek at anyone who dissents. This explains how the “Science” is settled that cold weather proves global warming.

Also known as the, “I know you are but what am I” argument. The fact that this author sums up his understanding of global warming in this way leads me to believe I have little to fear from their scientific knowledge. I don’t deny that from time to time democrats have taken scientific claims out of context or overstated them to try to make a political point. I’m generally against the over-politicization of science but what world must you live in to not see the egregious misuse and politicization of science done by republicans. Just take global warming, in just the last few years it was discovered the anti global warming group Heartland Institute has taken donations from large oil companies including ExxonMobil. Isn’t there any conservative out there willing to admit that this could constitute a conflict of interest? During the 60’s people paid by cigarette companies published studies saying there was nothing dangerous about smoking. What are the chances that 50 years from now groups like Heartland Institute will be views as oblivious and anti-science as the groups that published those cigarette studies?

The Democrat Party’s changing composition makes it possible to be openly anti-God. It’s now made up of a very rich urban elite and the poor. The urban elite despises God. They aren’t even lapsed faithful – you had to have faith once to have it lapse and most of them grew up in the secular world of elite universities and liberal coastal enclaves where you’re more likely to encounter some feminist babbling about Gaia than someone who has attended mass non-ironically.

Well I can’t speak for every liberal out there but I’m neither rich nor am I someone who never had religion. I was an evangelical Christian for a number of years. I don’t despise god, a non existent being, but I am, at times, angry with his supposed followers for their ridiculous caricatures of me. I live in the bay area, which one of those “liberal coastal enclaves” he is talking about. I’ve never heard any feminists babbling about Gaia. However, wait a minute, I thought he was criticizing the democrats for being atheists but now he is complaining about them buying into new age ideas? I personally find both Christianity and new age beliefs to be equally wrong, but I’m not going to make fun of people for having beliefs I don’t agree with. This guy, on the other hand, has no problem making fun of religious beliefs he finds wrong yet wants us atheists to respect his beliefs.

Plus, being God-free lets liberals take advantage of the moral ambiguity of situational ethics. It provides them with the kind of wiggle room they need to do exactly what they want without any annoying principles obstructing them.

Trotting out the “atheists have no morals” argument. Though he doesn’t even do a good job of formatting the argument which leads me to believe he knows as little about ethics as he does science. Situation ethics is not the same as relative ethics, and there are many atheists, like myself, who believe ethics are objective, and thus are not using our lack of belief to get out of some moral duty.

It will be interesting to see whether they choose God or Mammon when their party rulers come out and say what they really think – that the religious are suckers and freedom of religion only applies if it doesn’t interfere with progressive prerogatives.

This argument only means anything if you truly believe that religious freedom is absolute. If you place ANY limits on religious freedom, say outlawing human sacrifice, then you have already acknowledged that the government CAN place reasonable limits on religious freedom when that exercise of religious freedom affects other people. The question instead becomes which limits are reasonable. Unfortunately the people who write for town hall would rather sell the notion that they have a fundamentally different ethos rather than just acknowledge that they merely differ on interpretation and scope.

Sure, we occasionally see a few liberal evangelicals get trotted out by the mainstream media to tut-tut believers who actually believe in something more than free money for the lazy. Their ideology is just socialism with a thin veneer of Jesus. And it’s a Jesus who appears nowhere in the Bible, a gutless hippie who runs from fights and thinks that the Gospel requires you to keep fishing while giving away your catch to the dude kicking back on the beach because he doesn’t feel like casting his own net.

No one trots anyone out, liberal Christians have just as much of a right to their views as you have to yours, and they think it’s you who have fundamentally misunderstood the person of Jesus. Personally I couldn’t care less about the internal squabbles of doctrine you guys have, at least that is what I would say if your internal squabbles weren’t having an effect on the, supposedly secular, law. I think the liberals may have much more of a point than he is willing to admit though. Jesus actually DID tell his followers to give anything that was asked of them and not to try to get it back. (Luke 6:30) Now I actually think this is bad advice. The ironic thing is that conservatives think it’s bad advice too, but rather than acknowledge Jesus wasn’t the perfect moral teacher they imagine they simply ignore the parts they don’t like.

The larger point here, however, is that liberals just believe in free money to lazy people. This is an absurd caricature of the goals of Democrats, and is insulting to every poor person who has ever needed government assistance. Not everyone is some listless drug user who wants a free ride, in fact very few of them are. Truth is, most people on some form of government assistance are actually working, sometimes more than one job.

Europeans are leading the way to progressive extinction. When your society believes in nothing beyond the next statutory six-week paid vacation and your guaranteed pension at age 42, you don't have much incentive to invest in the future of mankind. Accordingly, you don't make babies. The thing is, though, societies tend to belong to those who reproduce. So get out there and make more babies, American conservatives.

Almost the end of the article and the author finally actually makes some fact based claims. Namely that some country, in Europe, guarantees it’s citizen 6 weeks of vacation and gives them pensions at age 42. The 6 weeks of vacation might be true, but doesn’t strike me as much of a problem. I’ve had some pretty crappy jobs that gave me 3 weeks of vacation. Now, giving people pensions at 42, if this were happening I’d actually take this guys side for once. People are living longer these days and so it is likely that few countries could afford to pension people off when they could easily live another 40 years, particularly when that means they would only work for about 20 years. Unfortunately for this author I think this piece of data is totally made up. I did a web search and came up with exactly zero European countries that pension off citizens at 42. The U.K. sets retirement age at 68, Italy, age 66, France, 62, Germany, 67, Greece, 65. Sweden is the lowest I found at age 61. This seems like an outright fabrication by Schlichter, or at least an example of his ignorance of European law. It’s possible that I simply missed the country he was referring to, but if that is the case why wouldn’t he have named the country? It seems more likely that he just said whatever he felt like knowing that the typical townhall reader would simply accept his claim without examination because it fits their preferred narrative.

Next, he offers a rather simplistic explanation for why some countries have low birth rates. Our birth rates have fallen in the last hundred years along with most of Europe but most of this seems to be due to a sharp decline in infant mortality. Further, new groups of immigrants like the Muslims he mentions almost always have a higher birth rate than the general population, often because they are coming from countries that still have high infant mortality. It would be true that Muslims would over take the rest of the population in Europe in several hundred years except for two facts that Schlichter misses. First, those rates of higher reproduction rarely continue past the first generation of immigrants because their children acclimate to the new culture’s way of doing things. Second, the children and grandchildren of these immigrants usually liberalize to some extent, abandoning the more strict rules of their forefathers culture. This notion that conservatives can take back the nation by having more children is ridiculous, since children aren’t automatons that always follow their parents will. My parents want me to be a conservative evangelical Christian, and you can see for yourself how well that worked out for them.

It’s only a matter of time before the Democrat Party comes out and proudly admits to being what it inarguably is today, the party of hopelessness, the party of no future, the party of “Just give me money until this whole thing called life ends in oblivion.”

So now we are all nihilists? Look, I’ll be the first to point out that the Democrats do some bone headed things now and again. I am no where near their biggest proponent, but their actions don’t speak to a nihilistic world view, they speak to an attempt to improve the world we live in. As an atheist, who does not believe there is some better world for us after we die, this appeals to my sensibilities since I want to do what I can to improve the lot of humans in the here and now. I don’t always agree with HOW they go about trying to improve things but at least they make an effort. which is unfortunately more than I can say for Schlichter.

We'll soon find out how the allegedly religious react to a party that loves their votes but think they are fools for believing. We will soon know where their faith really lies, in government checks or the word of God.

Well, as an atheist, I obviously have no faith in the word of God. Though personally I don’t think the Democrats are terribly irreligious on the whole. They just don’t do quite as much to alienate non-religious voters as the Republicans so it isn’t surprising that many of us tend to congregate in the Democratic party.

My opinions on dominionism and the religious right when I was Christian

When I entered college back in the distant past of 1997 I was a fundamentalist Christian. I was proud of this fact, right down to my young earth creationism. There is an assumption that atheists often make that fundamentalism and some form of dominionism go hand in hand. It’s true there is a lot of overlap, but they are not necessarily the same thing.

First let’s be clear about what I mean by dominionism, because there is some debate about what this means. Dominionism is often thought of as some uniform group of people conspiring to push their religious ideas into politics. This is not entirely true. Dominionism exists more or less as a continuum of beliefs that people hold about the role of religion in politics. A few on the fringe would like to see an outright theocracy, but most have less ostentatious goals. Christians who argue that Christian teachers out to have the right to compel their students to organized prayer are an example of a relatively soft dominionism, and are much more common.

I would even argue that examples like “in God we Trust” on our currency and as the national motto are examples of a sort of soft dominionism. Many Christians of course disagree, and would argue that “in God we trust” is not an imposition of Christianity through the government. I’ve been told that I’m being over sensitive on this one.  Many people I would consider dominionists don’t like the term dominionism.

Here is the thing, when I was a believer I was a fundamentalist, as I said, but I was actually not a dominionist. I was, in fact, incredibly a-political, and I viewed many of the preachers who overtly pushed dominionist ideas, like Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson, with suspicion. This was actually occasionally a point of contention between me and other theists I knew, but I was hardly the only fundamentalist who thought this way.

Scalia gets something right…though he still doesn’t really understand why.

While hearing arguments about the constitutionality of having opening prayers for legislative bodies Scalia said something surprising astute. While Alito was asking whether or not a prayer could be constructed to be acceptable to Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus etc., Scalia Chimed in:

What about the devil worshippers?

Scalia meant it as somewhat of a joke, but his point was clear, it is impossible to design a prayer that is going to be acceptable to everyone. Of course, he doesn’t seem to understand the implication of his own argument and concludes that we should have prayers but do nothing to ensure they are acceptable to others. He is essentially arguing that each individual should have the right to make their prayer as sectarian as they wish within a government assembly and the government isn’t allowed to say squat about it. He seems to ignore the much easier solution of just not having organized prayers at all, which would allow every one to engage in their own private prayers (or not) if they so wished. Or perhaps he thinks prayer only works when done as a group?

Thing thing that always irks me about people like Scalia is that they cannot even follow the advice of the one they claim is god incarnate.

And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.   Matthew 6:5-6.

When I was a believer I always thought of prayer as a chance to communicate with God. Scalia and the many people who use government meetings as a forum for prayer seem more interested in showing off, and at times even seem to use their prayers to create political disputes. How exactly is this in line with their religious teachings?

Pastor Robert Jeffress strikes again

Pastor Robert Jeffress did an interview on CNN about prayers in government meetings.

He accuses Sandra Day O’Connor of making up with the “phony” endorsement test. The interviewer brings up the endorsement test, quoted below, as an argument that prayers in council meetings acts to endorse religion.

The Establishment Clause prohibits government from making adherence to a religion relevant in any way to a person's standing in the political community. Government can run afoul of that prohibition...[by] endorsement or disapproval of religion. Endorsement sends a message to nonadherents that they are outsiders, not full members of the political community, and an accompanying message to adherents that they are insiders, favored members of the political community.

Jeffress responds:

Well I actually I pray that way in our city council meetings when I’m asked to pray, but remember the founding fathers said congress cannot establish a religion. Sandra Day O’Conner came up with this phony endorsement test. We’ve got to go back to what the founding fathers said. They talked about establishing a state religion.

This is a typical argument by fundamentalists about church state separation. It hinges on their own peculiar definitions of the words, “establishment” and “endorsement.” They argue that establishment is wrong but endorsement is just fine. However, they define establishment in the narrowest sense possible. In their opinion the only was we could establish a religion would be to pass a law which officially created a state church. So as long as congress doesn’t pass a law naming one denomination or another the state church they think no constitutional violation has occurred.

They also like to focus on the fact that the first amendment only mentions congress instead of including state and local governments, which flatly ignores the courts interpretation of the 14th amendment as extending many of the articles in the bill of rights to the states, including the establishment clause.

It should be obvious that I don’t find their position well reasoned. There is ample reason to believe that the government can do much to establish a state religion without passing a law explicitly naming one. Jeffress wants to treat the terms “establishment” and “endorsement” as if they are entirely different things, but they can actually be quite similar. Jeffress, based on his statements, wants Christianity to be publicly endorsed by the state because he knows it will give his beliefs an advantage in the marketplace of ideas. Jeffress can say he is ok with other religious groups getting their turns to pray because he knows Christianity is in the majority; he knows that other groups will rarely, if ever, get their “turns” in most areas of the country.

He continues by pointing out that the founding fathers were ok with prayers in government assemblies. Of course this isn’t entirely true. The founding fathers weren’t some hive mind, they were individuals with, sometimes, wildly diverging opinions. As such, some of them favored prayer in government and some didn’t. However, even if every single one of them had favored prayer in the government that wouldn’t necessitate that it was a good idea.

When Jeffress says we have to “go back to what the founding fathers said,” he talks about the founding fathers as if they were infallible, but the truth is that they got stuff wrong all the time. Thomas Jefferson believed slavery would fade away over time, and we all know how well that worked out. I would argue that, on church state separation, the founding fathers had the right idea, but simply failed to apply it very consistently. The Declaration of Independence said “all men are created equal,” yet few today would argue that we should not give women equal rights, so Jeffress insistence that not deviate even slightly from the intentions of the founding fathers is just absurd.

Christian argues the only real solution to health care is to let the church handle it.

Ran across this Christian criticism of the ACA today.

7 Things the Bible Says About Obamacare

I know, I know, everyone has an opinion about the Affordable Care Act and the subsequent Republican shut down of the government. In all honesty I have no degree in economics so it’s entirely possible that you shouldn’t listen to me any more than this guy. However, I’m going to make my argument anyway, decide for yourself if it makes any sense.

His starts with these two points:

• Caring for the sick is a good thing to do
• Caring for the sick, however, is not the role of the government

I can applaud him for noting that caring for the sick is a good thing, so I have little problem with his first point. He tries to drive home his point with the bible which is irrelevant to me, but the article is clearly written to a Christian audience so it makes sense that he would do this.

It’s the second point I take issue with, he first sets up the idea that the government fills particular roles, and says that health care is not one of them. However, this he bases the idea for these roles on religion and since this is a secular democracy we are not bound to rules in the bible, we need more convincing reasons for this rule. To be fair, he tries to offer somewhat secular reasons for this later on but I disagree with them too.  I would also point out that his interpretation is self serving and many religious people do not agree that healthcare is an area government is not allowed to go.

Of course with the government out of healthcare, since he agrees we need it, who does he imagine will take over for the government? Why, the churches of course. In this thinking I see a big problem, though the author probably doesn’t see it as such. I’ll admit that when we go to the government for a solution there are usually strings attached, and sometimes those strings are annoying or work poorly. However, these governmental strings are at least predictable, mostly rational, and are, at least in theory, the same for everyone.

Allow the churches to take over healthcare and care for the poor we are left with a system that has strings attached to it which are completely arbitrary and could change at any moment. Even secular private organizations that help the poor often have government regulations placed upon them to keep them from using the system to abuse people they are trying to help, but churches regularly get a free pass on these regulations even now, and given this guys opinion it seems clear he would want to further limit the governments ability to regulate churches in this area. This could result in a situation that gives the church quite a massive amount of control over those with lower incomes.

Imagine a single parent who looses their job and needs food to feed their children, they go to a church for help because that is the only place to go. What is to stop this church from requiring this person and their children to attend church? Nothing as far as I can tell. This may be an acceptable situation for Christians because they feel it is their god given mission on earth to convert everyone by any means necessary. However, for someone like myself who finds the moral teaching of the church morally suspect they would be forcing me to choose between my religious rights and the ability to feed my family. Further, they could change these rules at the drop of a hat for no reason at all.

It may not be the authors intent but they would have created a system in which true freedom of religion will be a right only consistently granted to the rich and middle class. Further the system is ripe for abuse by bigots of all types. Of course some churches would work to eliminate these problems no doubt, but now instead of one government bureaucracy every denomination will end up with their own separate bureaucracy to govern their own separate healthcare/insurance system. How exactly would this save us anyone money?

The third point:

• The ACA forces compliance

Well, he is right about this, but there is nothing wrong with the government expecting compliance; that is called law. The government does this all the time, this is how it works if you want to live in a society with other people. We agree to give up certain rights for the good of all. If you want to argue that this particular instance goes to far that’s fine, but don’t pretend that living under the rule of law is some crazy idea that the government just started forcing on us when Obama was elected president. The government also fines us for not wearing seatbelts, and they tax cigarettes, and beer and all sorts of things.

Fourth point:

• The ACA violates religious liberty.

This is one of the more ridiculous points that the religious right has been pushing. The notion is that Christian owned companies like Hobby Lobby are justified in refusing to include medical coverage in their employment package for certain legal medical products/procedures that the owners happen to have moral issues with. This is patently ridiculous, no one has interfered with their religious beliefs, as no one is asking that they personally take any part in or be subject to said medical treatments. Refusing to offer insurance coverage to employees based upon your religious beliefs is interference with your employees religious freedom, not the other way around.

A quote from this section I found particularly informative:

What your lawmakers should know: Government is not above the Christian principles upon which it was founded, and cannot force Christians to do something that violates their consciences.

The author has bought into the completely false idea that the government was founded on Christian principals, but was is particularly troubling is that he asserts that the government cannot force Christians to violate their conscience. Why only Christians? Why are Christians so special? If some Christians happen to feel so strongly about not allowing the insurance they provide to cover things like birth control then they are free to no longer work in management positions at secular companies.

Fifth point:

• The ACA is theft.

Taking money to give to another is stealing – even if it is for a good cause.

Ahh, this idea. He doesn’t explicitly say so, but he is following the typical anarcho-capitalist idea that all taxes are theft. The fact is that this simply isn’t true. For one thing it is a huge oversimplification to say that the government takes money from the rich and gives it to the poor. The government takes in taxes which it then uses to provide services. Some of those services like roads are are accessible to everyone equally. In fact, it is arguable that rich people get more benefit from roads than anyone since it enables them to cheaply move their products from one place to another.

Of course it is true that some things, like Medicare, benefit the poor more than the rich, and it’s also true that the poor pay less taxes. (Some will argue that pay none but this is inaccurate, they often pay no income taxes but they still pay many other taxes including sales taxes) However, I still don’t’ think this qualifies as theft. Anyone remember the American revolution? It didn’t start because of taxes, it started because people were being taxed by England but had no representation in the parliament that levied those taxes. Does “No taxation without representation” sound familiar? We have representation though, and we used our election system to legally elect the people who promised health care reform, and then they did what they promised by passing the ACA.

I understand that they didn’t vote for them and they don’t agree with them, but they got their vote same as everyone. That’s how the system works, and it isn’t theft because this is how everyone generally agrees things should work. I wasn’t a fan of the Iraq war under Bush, and I’m also not a fan of many of the military engagements under Obama, yet those things cost money and inevitably some of my taxes went to pay for it. That annoys me, but I don’t claim the government stole my money because taxes aren’t theft, they are an entrance fee to live in a civilized society.

Sixth point:

• No government program, including the ACA, can reduce the cost of medical care.

What your lawmakers should know: The only way cost reduction can be accomplished is by healthy, economical competition.  The goal is to get to a point to where you shop for the best medical care like you shop for a mechanic.  You make a few calls to get some prices, and then make a decision about who will best satisfy your needs.

I’ll preface this by reminding you I’m not an economist, but then neither is this guy. This is simply wrong as far as I can tell. There are plenty of countries with government run healthcare where things are much cheaper than here.

Because I’m no expert here I’ll let someone who actually knows what they are talking about here fill you in:

So the article makes some really noticeable errors in judgment about how healthcare works, and economics in general. For those who don’t watch the video, one of the major problems is that one can only negotiate for a better price when they have a strong position. As John points out in the video, health care is not something that individuals can negotiate efficiently on because they are in a very weak position. (I.E. I need those pills or I will die)  This is why it is possible for the government, or insurance companies for that matter, to get a better price for services than an individual who needs medical treatment. The authors attempt to blame high medical costs in the U.S. on government involvement is a huge oversimplification if not just outright wrong. As John points out government involvement in this area can actually improve competition not stifle it as is suggested.

Point Seven:

• The ACA creates more debt.

This is not actually certain, some economists think that it might, but there are also economists who predict that in the long run it will actually save money. It is difficult to say for sure because economies are a complex thing and they don’t always behave as expected. The author wants to take a rather simplistic approach by saying this will cost more money therefor increase debt. However, there are a number of ways the bill could work to lower medical costs and improve the overall economic efficiency of the U.S. Again, I suggest reading an article by someone who knows more than me.

The Economics of the Affordable Care Act

He ends this section with this:

What your lawmakers should know:  We should not increase our national debt, even if it is for a “good” thing, unless it’s necessary for national survival and for a biblical purpose (i.e. war costs).

It is a very odd logic that leads a person to conclude that is totally moral for our country to go into debt to kill people, but not to save them. I find it odd that people who want us to balance our national debt never suggest cutting military spending, even though it is the third largest expenditure by our country, coming in at 716 billion dollars last year. This kind of thinking is exactly why I find the “moral” teachings of so many Christians completely immoral.

The author seems does not really seem to understand the complex economic issues surrounding healthcare and tries to offer overly simplistic answers to these problems based upon his personal interpretation of the bible.

His call that Christians should care for the poor seems laudable, and in a sense it probably is. However, the long term effect of such a policy would be to give the Christian church a massive level of political and social power within this country. Given this fact, I wonder if perhaps they understand things a lot better than they are letting on. Perhaps some, if not many, are just using small government talking points as a guise that will allow them to use health care as a wedge issue to move the country towards Christian theonomy. Of course I can’t look inside their minds so I can’t know for sure, but I certainly wonder. Even if it isn’t their goal I’m sure they wouldn’t have much of a problem with it.

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.

Another article claiming the army is persecuting Christians.

An editorial posted yesterday on The Washington Times’ website claims that Christians are being discriminated against in the military. The author quotes information recently posted by Family Research Council.

A strange claim, since I have often heard from atheists I know who have served that Christianity has undue support there and have told me stories of discrimination they and others have faced for their lack of faith, not the other way around as FRC claims.

I know I run a relatively unknown blog in my little corner of the internet. (promote me if you like my stuff) Yet, despite this I strive to be critical in my writing. I try to research claims I make, reference article I have read and generally be as accurate as I can given the amount of time I have to research. All of this is precisely why it bothers me so much when I run across articles like this. The article is poorly researched (he clearly did not read anything but the FRC piece) tripe that should never have seen the light of day on a major news outlet, even as an editorial, yet is was published on The Washington Times.

He starts out with the claim “There are no atheists in foxholes” which anyone could find out is untrue if they did a simple Google search. The first link I ran across was a link to an article from the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers the article entitled Atheists in Foxholes, in Cockpits, and on Ships talks specifically about the falsehood of this very claim. The author is not off to a good start, but lets look at the rest.

He says that the FRC’s article points out more than three dozen examples of “pressures to impose a secular, anti-religious culture on our nation’s military services;” So let’s look at a few of these claims. He brings up three in the article.

An Army master sergeant was punished for serving sandwiches from Chick-fil-A at his own promotion party. Because the owners of Chick-fil-A are outspoken in support of traditional marriage, the sergeant was “investigated, reprimanded, threatened with judicial action, and given a bad efficiency report.”

Hmm. well this seems suspicious. Did the military really reprimand a master sergeant for serving chicken sandwiches?  It turns out there is an article on The Washington Times site about this very situation that tells a slightly different story.

It seems that the Master Sargent has just been promoted and decided to throw a party for his promotion AND his support of DOMA. He was, in fact, serving Chick-fil-A specifically to let people know he supported DOMA. His invitation even stated “In honor of my promotion and in honor of the Defense of Marriage Act, I’m serving Chick-fil-A sandwiches at my promotion party.”

Now, ignoring the fact that serving crappy fast food at your promotion party makes you a crappy host there are two problems I see with this. One, people serving in the military are actually limited in there ability to speak on political issues, particularly partisan ones. A law that is in place to prevent military coups. In fact, the article I link to specifically mentions attending dinners and parties meant to support partisan political causes in their official capacity as an officer. So his decision to link the two things could not only have put him in hot water but potentially put any other service man who attended at the same risk. So it was poorly advised.

Secondly, as of September 2011 when DADT was repealed homosexuals are now able to openly serve in the military, so there is a reasonable chance that there were men and women serving under him who are gay. These people would probably then be expected to attend and party celebrating a law which is expressly designed to limit their civil rights, while also feeling that many of the other people attending supported it as well. Therefore, his actions could reasonably deemed to cause problems with unit cohesion. These are not minor problem, so it is not surprising that he was reprimanded and giving a bad efficiency report.

A painting depicting a policeman with a Scripture citation and the image of a cross was removed from the dining hall of an Air Force base in Idaho an hour after a single enlisted man complained.

When I actually looked this one up is was far worse than I had imagined. The picture, posted on the right (click photo for full size), features a military officer standing in front of another figure who looks very much like a crusader. The fact that it features a bible passage that speaks about peacemakers does little to offset the creepy undertones in this picture so it is not surprising at all that someone complained. I likely would have complained about this even when I was a Christian. The crusades are a period of history that most Christians should rightly want to distance themselves from. I’m actually not sure what they were thinking when they put it up in the first place.

An Air Force officer was told to he couldn’t keep a Bible in his desk. Fox News reported that his superiors were concerned that it would “appear that he was condoning a particular religion.” Airmen could express their beliefs only as long as it didn’t “make others uncomfortable.”

This one might be the only one I might slightly agree with, it really depends on context. If the officer did nothing but have a bible on his desk then this may have gone a bit overboard. However, in many cases once you know the whole story it turns out there was a lot more going on. This man was an officer, meaning men were under his command and it is quite possible he was subtlety or even overtly using his position of authority to evangelize to those he commanded. It is a reasonable assumption given the Christian belief in a command to convert unbelievers. Understand, I’m not actually bothered by evangelism per se. I support free exchanges of ideas, you are free to convince me god exists as I am free to convince you he probably doesn’t. However, for that to happen everyone in the exchange needs to be on equal social footing. You don’t have that when the person trying to convert you is your boss. I even found an article speaking about this where U.S. Congressmen (Louie Gohmert R-TX) took issue saying:

Under President Obama’s military you are no longer allowed to share your faith…Do you follow President Obama or do you follow God and the teachings of Jesus?

If even a congressmen can’t understand the need to be circumspect about how you promote your religious beliefs to subornments then it may well be reasonable for the DOD to take a hardline against any semblance of religious proselytizing.

Of course if you go to the source material from FRC you find even more bizarre complaints. They don’t explain why but they apparently strongly object to a DOD statement from May which they quote.

The U.S. Department of Defense has never and will never single out a particular religious group for persecution or prosecution.... Service members can share their faith (evangelize), but must not force unwanted, intrusive attempts to convert others of any faith or no faith to one’s beliefs (proselytization).

I’m left scratching my head as to how they take the notion that they are not allowed to “force unwanted, intrusive attempts to convert others” as discrimination against them. If the FRC really thinks that asking that they not be intrusive and rude in their attempts to convert people is a violation of their civil rights that says more about them than they realize and it isn’t good.

The article gets even more ridiculous from there. It talks about O’Hair removing prayers from school, even though that was not at all what happened. Teacher led prayers were removed, as they should be for the exact same reasons an army commander shouldn’t be forcing religion on people under their command. Of course the author thinks he knows that this is not what the founders of the country wanted, even though he demonstrably does not, and that really shouldn’t be our standard for governance anyway.

The author ends trying to defend an amendment to the NDAA that seems designed to restore the special privilege to force everyone else to put up with invasive evangelism that Christians apparently think they should have in the armed forces. The bill changes a few words in the NDAA which basically attempts to allow any kinds of religious actions or speech as long as it does not “actually harm” anyone. 

I think this correctly sums up the problem with the bill.

The Administration strongly objects to section 530, which would require the Armed Forces to accommodate, except in cases of military necessity, "actions and speech" reflecting the "conscience, moral principles, or religious beliefs of the member." By limiting the discretion of commanders to address potentially problematic speech and actions within their units, this provision would have a significant adverse effect on good order, discipline, morale, and mission accomplishment.

There are quite a few atheists in foxholes already, we aren’t lonely, those that serve just demand the same respect for serving in the military that everyone else gets, and articles like this being posted on a major new site are an offense to every single atheist who has served and even given their lives in defense of this country. If The Washington Times had any sense they would pull this article and issue a public apology for allowing such offensive and demonstrably inaccurate claims too grace their pages. I won’t hold my breath though.

Atheist monument is “awkward”

Columnist tom hoopes from the catholic vote website has written a rather trite top 10 list criticizing the monument that the American Atheists put up recently.

For those unfamiliar with the back story you can read more about it here and here.

Friendly atheist also wrote a response to this article. Let’s take a look at this top 10 list.

1. A quote on it says: “An atheist believes that a hospital should be built instead of a church.” Which is awkward, because we really haven’t seen all those hospitals the atheists were going to build …

When atheists groups have as much money as the catholic church we could see if this trend continues. In fact we already have evidence that this is not a very reasonable statement. Bill Gates is an atheist and gives away millions of dollars a year providing for medical treatment. Just look at his program to provide vaccines to low income areas in the world.

2. The hospital quote is also awkward because it clearly should have said: “An atheist believes that monuments to atheism should be built in all 50 states instead of a hospital.”

First off, if the atheist groups had their preference religious groups would not be putting monuments on state property. This monument was put up as a response to a 10 commandments monument put up in front of the same building that cost nearly four times as much as the atheist monument. This was put up because atheists believe that the state should not give preferential treatment to one on religious belief. In order to keep the 10 commandments display up the government had to allow displays from other groups to be put up. They probably thought this would placate everyone and get them to go away, we called their bluff.

3. A quote on the monument says atheists “Want war eliminated.” Which is awkward because warriors like Stalin and Lenin and Mao and Hoxha and Ceaușescu – were all atheists.

Please, this is no more awkward than a Christian saying they are against torture even knowing that Cardinal Ximénes de Cisneros, the man in charge of the Spanish inquisition, was a Christian. The notion that I, or anyone employed by American Atheists, are personally responsible for something Stalin did just because we hold the same opinion about God is just laughable.

4. The monument also mocks the punishments threatened in the Old Testament. Awkward: Far worse brutality was actually committed by the atheist warriors listed above – in our lifetime.

This complaint I found quite interesting, he says that the brutality of atheists like Stalin was worse than God’s brutality. Lets ignore the question of who is the more brutal, and instead notice that he seems to be acknowledging that God’s behavior is in fact brutal, just less so than Stalin. It’s not a problem for me that Stalin was a brutal dictator. I don’t worship Stalin, never have, never will. So the most pertinent question is why he worships someone who he will readily acknowledge has committed brutal acts.

5. The “We want war eliminated” quote is also awkward because all of the other quotes on the monument are from Founding Fathers known for starting a war with England.

Just because a group wants war eliminated doesn't mean they are pacifists who would refuse to fight even if there were no other options. One can be opposed to violence while still acknowledging that it may be needed now and again when presented with people who are willing to use violence to get what they want. This is not awkward at all.

6. It’s awkward that at the dedication, a preacher used the monument to preach Christ, and the free thinkers got mad at his free thinking.

What is awkward is suggesting that Eric Hovind, a man who claims the earth is 6,000 years old, qualifies as a free thinker. To claim that the term “free thinker” applies to anyone who has a thought about anything, no matter how misinformed or inane, would make the term meaningless. Besides people were less angry and more annoyed. Atheists don’t show up in peoples churches and force their way in front of the pulpit to shout at people. We don’t do that because it would make us look like assholes.

7. It’s awkward that the monument has what looks like a biohazard symbol on it.

Uh… here is what the two symbols look like.

Do these really look similar? I feel like this was just a stupid way to fill out his list, since “top 9 awkward facts” wouldn’t have the same ring to it.

8. But the symbol actually shows an atom. J.J. Thomson won the 1906 Nobel Prize in Physics for discovering the electron. He was a churchgoer who read the Bible every night. Which is awkward for atheists.

OK, given that he actually knew it was the symbol for an atom, I’m even more certain that number 7 was just a lazy attempt at filler. How exactly is this suppose to be awkward anyway? I suppose if most atheists took the position that no religious person has ever done anything of merit in the history of the world it would be awkward, but I’ve never met an atheist with that opinion.

Atheists acknowledge Isaac Newton for his contributions to science without any awkwardness. Yet it was not Thomson’s or Newton’s religion that led them to these discoveries. In fact it is worth noting that despite Newton’s major contributions most of his work was complete nonsense due to his fascination with alchemy and theology. It’s possible that Newton could have accomplished much more if he hadn’t spent the majority of his carrier writing theological treatises. There is a good reason scientists still use the laws of motion but don’t pay any attention to Newton’s work in alchemy.

9. A quote on the monument says “An atheist strives for involvement in life and not escape into death.” Awkward: atheists Jack Kevorkian (Dr. Death) and Derek Humphry (founder of the Hemlock Society) would disagree

Kevorkian supports the right of people who are dying of degenerative illnesses to choose to end their life early rather than suffer through months of agonizing pain. There is nothing awkward about wanting people to be able to live a long and happy life, while also supporting Kevorkian’s aim in this area.

10. A New Jersey-based group went to Florida to build an atheist monument. That sounds kind of … missionary and proselytizing. Which is awkward for people who are against that kind of thing …

I’m not sure that taking a trip to Florida counts as proselytizing. In any case I don’t think most atheists are against proselytizing in the sense of people on equal social footing debating ideas. We are against teachers proselytizing to their students in part because that is not a position of equal social footing, the teacher is using their authority to force people to listen and to stifle disagreement. However, I’m not opposed to the free exchange of ideas. Indeed it is that very free exchange that is causing religion to loose ground in many debates, like this one for instance.

I think most atheists have pointed out that we would prefer that no religious monuments be placed in front of courthouses or city hall or any other state owned building. If the 10 commandments display had been placed in front of a church or some other privately owned building Christians wouldn’t have heard a peep from us and we certainly wouldn’t have put up our own monument, so in a way they only have themselves to blame.

DOMA, Prop 8, and various rants about the decision

So most people probably know the news about one of the key parts of DOMA being overturned, giving married gay couples federal benefits. Also the courts refusal to rule on prop 8, making my new home state of California the thirteenth state to legalize gay marriage.

Not all of DOMA was overturned, of course, only the part that bared the federal government from recognizing the unions, so I can’t say the job is done. Yet, while I join gay rights advocates throughout this country in celebration of this victory some people were not so happy. 

Bill Donohue of the Catholic League suggests an amendment to the U.S. the constitution banning same sex relationships, undeterred, it seems, by the miniscule chance of ever getting a two-thirds majority in either the senate or the house to make such a thing a reality.

Former Governor Mike Huckabee and the Dan T. Cathy owner of Chick-fil-A expressed their displeasure. Though Mr. Cathy deleted his post shortly afterword's.

5 people in robes said they are bigger than the voters of CA and Congress combined.And bigger than God.May He forgive us all.

— Gov. Mike Huckabee (@GovMikeHuckabee) June 26, 2013

Tony Perkins had this to say:

While we are disappointed in the Supreme Court's decision to strike down part of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), the court today did not impose the sweeping nationwide redefinition of natural marriage that was sought. Time is not on the side of those seeking to create same-sex 'marriage.'  As the American people are given time to experience the actual consequences of redefining marriage, the public debate and opposition to the redefinition of natural marriage will undoubtedly intensify.

In a sense I actually agree with him. As American’s realize that the negative consequences of redefining marriage are little to nothing and everything is fine public opposition to people like Tony Perkins will intensify. His statement honestly seems like nothing more than a rationalization. Support for gay marriage has been improving, and the biggest divide is over age not politics. 73 percent of those under 30 support gay marriage compared to 53 percent of the general population so in all likelihood those as time passes fewer and fewer people will support his cause, and unless Perkins is totally ignorant he knows it.

I found justice Scalia’s criticism particularly interesting. He descents by saying this:

But the Court has cheated both sides, robbing the winners of an honest victory, and the losers of the peace that comes from a fair defeat. We owed both of them better. I dissent.

This is strange to me, does Scalia really think that gay rights advocates did not work hard for this victory just because it was won in a court case instead of in congress? Does he really think that most of the those against gay marriage would gracefully accept defeat if it came from congress instead of the supreme court? Since I was once a fundamentalist I have the odd distinction of having been on both sides of the debate, and his dissent makes no sense to me.