This Week's "Shout out to Stupid"-June 22nd, 2010

This week’s “shout” goes out to Sen Robert Adley and his part in the Louisiana “Statewide Day of Prayer for Louisiana and the population and region surrounding the Gulf of Mexico”.

Don’t bother going back to read that again, you read it right. The Louisiana legislature wasted valuable legislative and problem solving time with proposing, discussing and voting on a supernatural solution to the BP oil leak.
(Not to mention the time that was taken drafting and redrafting a 2 page document justifying and mandating it;
http://www.legis.state.la.us/billdata/streamdocument.asp?did=718485)

Before we even get to the meat of the absurdity of this state mandated day of prayer, what ever happened to the constitutional interpretation (Thomas Jefferson’s) of separation of church and state?

Have we really gotten so lax in our legislative approach that we now set aside efforts for finding real solutions and delve into supernatural invocations for help?

Have we gotten so politically correct that we can’t just accept the speaker summarily dismissing this sort of talk as something best left to the discretion of individuals and off the discussion table?

Have theists gotten so arrogant in their belief that they really feel it is representative of their people and that it has a place in the politics of a nation?

Have politicians gotten so corrupt as to use people’s religious beliefs for cheap political gain during times of crisis to the detriment of the nation?

The answer to all of these questions is a depressing “Yes!”

Disgusting.

Sen Adley, You should be ashamed of yourself. As an evangelical you may dismiss my secular deprecation of your actions, even though I would stand in defense of your right to pray.
But to waste valuable time discussing it when you have a crisis on your hands is absolutely disgusting, immoral, and a betrayal to all those who depend on you.
No one is stopping you, nor anyone who believes such things from invoking prayer to convince themselves that they are assisting the efforts for clean up.
No one needs a “a Statewide Day of Prayer” to “provide each of us with a powerful
opportunity to humble ourselves before our Almighty God” because that opportunity already exists each and every day.
There is nothing that can be accomplished by such a call, because prayer, (if it works at all (and the evidence says that it does not)) isn’t a mandate, nor a date, nor more powerful if many people are coming together in it.
Each prayer is personal, according to you, and considered equally, in your belief, by god.
So unless your belief is that God doesn’t care about individual prayer, or that he gives greater credence to prayers said in unison, or even that he gives preference to those said on days set aside for that purpose, then what you have done is a cheap political stunt to garner attention by setting aside responsibilities and focusing on grandstanding for a time.

Disgusting.

It is a disgusting appeal for popularity, a cheap political tactic, and an unethical diversion from the political ideals that you took an oath to uphold as a member of office.

You saw an opportunity and you took it. Personal gain was there, ripe for the taking and you wasted no time snatching it up and snatching your opportunity to take ownership of the morality that is implied in prayer with many people.

People desperate for a solution look to you, and you played on that desperation by manipulating perceptions of your dedication by calling to their beliefs instead of calling for a solution.
If a solution isn’t found in the coming weeks, will we be smelling burnt animal flesh from the legislature?
Or communal chanting?
Maybe voodoo?

Give us a break! No one believes that you have done any good with your suggestion of a day of prayer if they really think about it.


Sir, people will pray for solutions with or without your governmental day of prayer. So setting aside our disagreements on the efficacy of prayer, the only person who can benefit from this outlandish legislation is you. You wanted to gain favour, and now you have it from those who are desperate for ANY solution. They plead for help and you provided only words.

Selfish.

Unchristian (well, we may disagree about THAT too)

Unethical

In a word….

Disgusting.

Rational Response of the Week-15 June 2010

Here is my week’s rational response to a common Christian meme.

“God can’t be understood intellectually, only spiritually”

Or here is another permutation of that statement;

“You can’t use physical evidence to prove god, only spiritual evidence”


I have had recent encounters with theists who use this (along with many others) as a way to escape the burden of proof that is on the shoulders of every person making any claim. They use it as a way to show how they shouldn’t be expected to have evidence, and they leave it at that. With no evidence for THAT claim either.

What exactly IS spiritual evidence?

Is it anecdotal? Because you experience something, the explanation that you ascribe to that experience must be real?

It is pretty clear why that argument can’t be held as absolute truth.
Our experiences are affected in many ways, and sometimes they alter our perceptions of things in such a way as to affect the information that lends itself to our beliefs.
This creates a vulnerability to false beliefs.

“Elvis is alive”
“I was abducted by aliens”
“I saw a ghost in my room”
“I am the reincarnation of Napoleon”

These are all claims that we could all agree are based on misinformation of some sort. They are very often created by experiences that we misinterpret. Circumstance is also important when considering the level of delusion that we can enter into. So are mental state, emotional wellness and social factors as well.

These factors can be ignored if we just inject one more….

Commonality

It is easy to ascribe fantastical explanations to certain experiences when we are in the company of those who will verify your belief by not responding with incredulity but with acceptance and relief that you see “it” too.

As comforting as that might be to accept, if the explanation doesn’t stand up to even the most basic scrutiny, or if your explanation defies the laws of everything that we know about reality, you should rethink your conclusion.

There is a saying;

“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”

Doesn’t stand up to examination?
Then it’s back to the drawing board, just like any other claim or hypothesis.

Do you not even allow the possibility that your experiences could mean something else?
That is called confirmation bias.

Do you really think that you can develop theories on the nature of reality based solely on personal experiences and with absolutely no collaborating evidence in a universe so large?

Or do you believe that the commonality of your experience with others lends it enough credence to allow your claims to contradict all of known science?
That is called an argument from popularity, and it is just as false. Many people once believed the earth was flat too.


If it isn’t anecdotal, then is it perhaps there IS a spiritual plane in which things can dwell outside what we see as reality.

Can this explain things?

Not really.

If something exists in reality, then it manifests in reality, if it manifests in any way then it can be observed and studied.

If something doesn’t manifest in reality, then it is either irrelevant (because it can’t affect us until it DOES manifest) or it is non existent. I have heard the answer to that, and it is even less satisfying.

“He only manifests in the hearts of his believers”

Not only would that STILL be a manifestation, but it is a cop out. It is akin to saying “You can only see this dragon if you believe he is there BEFORE you have any reason to do so.”

He exists as a manifestation of belief?

This explanation means that he is either a CREATION of our belief (and therefore us), or that he is simply a figment of the imagination of belief.

In the end it doesn’t matter where you say he manifests. You have to have a reason for believing.

If you don’t have a reason to believe, then that belief is just baseless superstition.

That is what we are looking for when we ask for evidence.

Something that will stand up as a reason to believe.

Something that will point directly at the existence of a creator being.

Something that is grounded in reality, and not just pretence of knowledge about something that you don’t understand.

We are open to hear your reasons, and to consider them in the interest of intellectual honesty.

If you don’t give any, then you can be comforted by knowing that you deserve all the ridicule that you get for making baseless and undefended claims.
If you don’t give any, then you can be comforted by knowing that you have entered into the realm of belief where Elvis sightings are regular, unicorns run the landscape, and you (or your friend) may just be the reincarnation of Napoleon.

People may laugh, and they might be right to do so.

Get it?

So let’s try again;

Evidence……

Got some?

Beyond Belief News- 7 June 2010

Here is the headline from MSNBC

"Hospital nun rebuked for allowing abortion"

And the addition just under the headline;

"She agreed that seriously ill woman needed procedure to survive"

Curious yet?

Well in this weeks edition of Beyond Belief News, we tell the unbelievable story of a Hospital Ethics committee member being let go for being judged unethical in examining the ethics of a life saving medical procedure.

The key pieces of information that you are missing is that the Ethics committee member was....
A nun.

The hospital?
Catholic.

The life saving procedure?
Abortion.

The person who punished the nun?
A bishop.

Not a doctor, not an expert in medical ethics, not an expert of any kind.

The patient made the decision to terminate the pregnancy because of a previous condition called Pulmonary hypertension. In order to make such a serious decision, she consulted her doctors, her family and the ethics committee (of which the nun,Sr McBride, is a member). They informed her that her heart dysfunction would be made worse and possibly fatal by continuation of the pregnancy. In a statement issued 14 May 2010 "If there had been a way to save the pregnancy and still prevent the death of the mother, we would have done it," the letter says. "We are convinced there was not."

Sound medical advice.

The Bishop Thomas J Olstead, however, felt that he was qualified to comment on the validity of this decision, despite no actual qualifications or medical knowledge in his background.

Olmsted said in a statement sent to The Arizona Republic. "I am gravely concerned by the fact that an abortion was performed several months ago in a Catholic hospital in this diocese, I am further concerned by the hospital's statement that the termination of a human life was necessary to treat the mother's underlying medical condition. An unborn child is not a disease. While medical professionals should certainly try to save a pregnant mother's life, the means by which they do it can never be by directly killing her unborn child. The end does not justify the means."

Who is he to say what medical professionals should and shouldn't do? Further what did he want them to do?

Watch her die from cardiac arrest, and then watch her baby die anyway?

McBride was reassigned and excommunicated, for the crime of listening to the advice of doctors and allowing the abortion to happen.

I would defend his right to exclude her from his catholic "club" for not following their immoral rules, but to expect hospitals (even catholic ones) to respect religious dogma more than their patients health and safety is unforgivable.

It is long past time for governments to remove all catholic doctrine from hospital mandates, to remove the "catholic" from any hospital and allow them to do their jobs without iron age morality interference.
It is long past time to stop conflating religion with health and education. They are mutually exclusive and, in most cases, polar opposites.

Once you make the decision to favour death over over a procedure that will save a life that is NOT YOUR OWN because of YOUR personal morality, you no longer have a hospital.

All you have then is a building ruled by witch doctors, evangelists, and a 2000 year old morality which you force on people in need of care, not judgment.

Do we want to examine religious ethics instead of medical conditions?
Are we concerned with personal morality instead of patient mortality?
A philosophy of long ago, or the philosophy of life?

What I am trying to say is;
Catholics, if you are going to stand in the way of treatment,

leave the business of healing to the doctors.


OK?



http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37171656/ns/health-health_care

Teach the Controversy?

"Teach the controversy"

and

"Evolution VS Creationism"

We hear this phrases said in scholastic circles all over North America. Sounds reasonable doesn't it?

Isn't it?

If there are two sides of a debate on a subject, shouldn't we be teaching our children both sides and then allowing them to make up their own minds? At the very least giving them the knowledge and teaching them the logical abilities they will require to study the facts and partake in the debate? Shouldn't we avoid isolating one side merely because it is the one that we accept when there are other facts available?

The answer is yes.

A resounding yes.

I will say it one more time...

YES!

Now let me elaborate.

There was one word in that paragraph that was vitally important.

Can you see which one it is?

IF

IF there are two sides.

IF there are other facts.

IF.

When speaking about evolution and creationism, there simply is no other side.

On one side is all of the world's scientists who have studied and labored to refine or refute the theory of evolution while never having the theory fail.
Not once.

On the other side are undereducated religious naysayers who posit ridiculous claims about the falsity of the theory of evolution. Their claims range from the ridiculous (re: croco-ducks) to arguments from incredulity (re: "I aint no monkey!") to arguments from ignorance that sound very convincing to those who aren't schooled in evolution (Re: That the law of thermodynamics refutes evolution (side note- It doesn't)).

The problem is that these are all born from a lack of scientific knowledge.

And in an argument about SCIENCE, the debate, ANY debate has to be between people who have a solid understanding of what they are talking about.

In other words;

SCIENTISTS.

Sorry creationists, there is no controversy, and you don't get a "side" until you are learned in the subject in which you attempt to debate.

The problem is that, once you learn about the scientific facts, you won't think there is a debate either!

Atheist Haiku of the month

Dogma repels thought
How can we all save ourselves?
Follow evidence

Beyond Belief News- 24 May 2010

A family from Texas is racing to stop a woman from having her toes amputated, because they want to let the prayer have more time to work.

They started praying 5 heart attacks ago.

The lack of circulation has left her toes black and doctors fear that if they don't act soon, her condition may worsen.

Still after all the needless suffering that her family and their beliefs have caused her, they are convinced that their prayer is the only reason that she is still around.

"It's everything," said Dwight Wright. "It's the reason my wife's still here, I believe."

It is also the reason that she had 5 more heart attacks and the reason why she may die.

She may not have had things progress this far had they simply opted to pray AND let the doctors do their work.

They have even gone so far as to go against her wishes as she had consented to the procedure at one point. Her husband feels that it was the trauma and the medication that led to her consent to life saving surgery.

"I want her here; but I want her to have every opportunity she can have to keep the rest of her foot, because that's all she's got," Dwight Wright said.

If dogma didn't blocked their rationality they would realize that she also has her LIFE, and she could have her family if they weren't fighting so hard to take away every chance she has.

The sad fact is that dogma has replaced common sense here, and a husband may lose his beloved wife as a result.

Even sadder is it will be his fault if she dies.

He would never know it. If she dies, he most likely will think his was the right course of action and that she died because their God wanted her "home".

Not because of the families gross neglect and irrational behavior.

Sad.

Even if there is a god (against all rationality) do people really think that he gave us brains for us to develop fantastic medical technology and then wish for us to deny ourselves the fruits of our intellect?

I understand the need for hope and for the illusion of a higher power for some people in times like this, but there is a saying about prayer in secular circles;

"Prayer is the only way to do nothing and still think that you are helping"

There is another one even among the religious;

"Pray to be safe, but still put on your seat-belt"


News Site URL- http://www.wfaa.com/news/health/Family-asks-doctors-to-wait-for-prayers-to-work-94647884.html

Our Right to Religious Intolerance

Listen up theists, mocking or criticizing your religion is not "intolerance."

You have never been shy about preaching to everyone how wrong/immoral/destructive it is to not believe in your God and your religion.

I defend your right to hold those opinions, but don't cry intolerance and victimization when we voice ours too.

Disagreement is not intolerance and being offended is no excuse.

You don’t have a right to NOT be offended.

Sorry.

Outspoken atheists do not promote laws to discriminate against people based on their nature, sexual habits, or belief systems.
You however are behind proposed legislation all over the world to make it illegal to even criticize your beliefs.


Nobody is trying to prevent you from going to church every weekend, or praying quietly instead of actually DOING something to help, or from indoctrinating your children without their consent into an ideology long before they have the logical processes to differentiate between fact and fiction.
No one is trying to silence you, or take away your crazy convictions when you say that the earth is only 6000 years old.


We are just trying to keep it out of our schools, our laws and our governments.
We may mock you for believing in unsupported and hateful nonsense like talking snakes, murdering sassy children, denying science and being far too voyeuristically involved with judging our sex lives (and orientation), but we won't prevent you from believing this stupid shit. In fact most thinking secularists (like the ACLU) have repeatedly defended your right to believe in whatever crazy misogynistic, hateful, immoral, murderous magic men that you wish.

So cut the crying about being such a victim.

You don’t believe that you are a victim of intolerance and neither do we.

With your opinions all over TV, song, language, posters, on your jewelery, bumper stickers, national anthems, with your reps knocking on our doors, your charities spending half their time proselytizing instead of helping, and with your steeples of indoctrination littering our skyline you are clearly free to believe as you wish and to push it on whomever you please.
All that we ask is that you keep it out of our schools, and out of our laws. Morality is not learned from religion, and it is not up to you to decide for the rest of us or impose your unsupported beliefs on us through legislation.

Don’t force the REST of us to be the victims of YOUR religion by forcing it into our lives through government.

Just as you have the right to believe whatever foolishness you want to believe, we have the right to disagree.

And that is not intolerance.

Intolerance is preventing people from doing harmless things merely because it goes against your beliefs.

Intolerance is attempting to force others to love Jane instead of Jim, or marry Bob instead of Barbara.

Intolerance is condemning people for not believing as you do.

Intolerance is retarding your children’s intellectual growth by teaching them denial of scientific fact for fear of them deciding for themselves.

Intolerance is threatening children by telling them they will be tortured forever if they don’t believe as you do or hate the same people you do.

Intolerance is threatening our lives for pencil drawings.

So we reserve the right to publicly disagree whenever you make hateful and harmful claims like this.
We also reserve the right to criticize the "moderate" believers that give cover for the harmful ones.
You know, the ones who claim that their moderate nature allows them freedom from critique for making silly claims.
The ones who normalize belief in the impossible and unsupported.

Make sense?

Don’t like being mocked though? I can understand that.

Sadly it is like anything else, if you say something stupid, you may have to pay an immediate price......

Ill concealed laughter and mocking.

Here is a simile to assist you in avoiding being mocked for believing silly things or for trying to push your unsupported beliefs on others. If you live your life by this, you will avoid being mocked and ridiculed for silly claims and beliefs.

Ready?
Pay attention…..

Religion is like genitalia;
Keep it to yourselves and out of the faces of our children.

Definitions-Atheism

This is an important definition because the term brings forward a lot of misconceptions about the discussion between atheists and theists.

Atheism-1 a.Disbelief in the existence of a god.

Disbelief-1.
the inability or refusal to believe or to accept something as true.

So the inability to believe in a god.

Lack of ability to partake in belief.

Lack of belief.

All of these would be true.



And before we go on, here is the etymology of the word.

Atheism- from the greek A=without and theos=god and ism= "doctrine of", or philosophical system.

So the literal etymology of the word atheism would be "Without the doctrine of god" Or without belief in god.

This is important to recognize because when atheists talk about religion, they often put the burden of proof on the people making the claim (theists). IF the word atheism is misunderstood to mean a positive belief that there is no god, then the burden for that proof then shifts to us as well, for making that claim.

Claims must be put forward with evidence, or they are in danger of being dismissed as baseless, and rightly so.

So, in order to avoid this misunderstanding, and the diversion of good conversation to meaningless arguments, we need to firmly establish definitions.

The first of which is our initial position.

Atheism.

This is where we get to say who WE are, and what WE think.

Atheism is merely the rejection of the theist claim.

There is no doctrine, no belief, no dogma, and there are no preconceived notions.

There is only a lack of belief. We have yet to be convinced by the theist claim.

That is not to say that SOME of us DO have a positive belief (or at least approaching 100%) that there is no god, but that is in addition to our atheism. There are many atheists who do not make that claim to knowledge, and that is important to note. (Buddhists, and Jainists for example)
Those atheists who go further and promote positive belief in the non-existence of a god are merely extrapolating belief from lack of evidence. This too is reasonable, but again, it is not necessary as an atheist.

All that is required to be an atheist is to lack positive belief.

The importance of this definition is to establish in whose court the burden of proof lies.

Is it in the theists corner? The people making the claim?

Or in the atheists corner, the people who are responding to that claim?

Clearly the people making a claim are the ones who are beholden to provide reason and evidence for their claim otherwise we can just make up anything that sounds nice to us and expect it to be taken seriously.

So in order to avoid this problem, I send a message out to everyone who is involved in the discussion.

We atheists are not making a claim. We, by definition, are only lacking in belief and conviction for YOUR claim.

If you espouse a positive belief in a god, then you are a theist.

I can hear the comments now, "What is an agnostic then?" or "I am neither theist nor atheist, I am agnostic".

This is not true. You belong to either one group or the other.
Non stamp collectors or stamp collectors.
You can't create a third group called "not sure whether or not I am a stamp collector" as that would still mean that you are still a "non stamp collector" (for now)

Agnosticism refers to the ability to know (from gnōstikós, meaning pertaining to knowledge). You can be an agnostic theist (a theist who believes, but doesn't think that you can ever prove it), just as you can be a gnostic atheist (a person who doesn't believe, and thinks that someday we can know for sure that there is no god).

Lets not get too complex and confusing though.

Here is a simple way to put it:

If you say anything other than "I am sure that there is a god", if you self identify as part of any group which doesn't posit positive belief, and if your answer to the question "do you believe in God" is anything but "yes", then you lack positive belief.

And guess what that means?

You are an atheist.

Peace

Atheist Haiku of the Month

God's outside science,
How do we discover him?
Imagination.

Definitions-Science

This is the beginning of a new series called "Definitions". This series will look at various words and concepts that are misused and misrepresented in order to create dishonest discourse and garner support for unsupported positions.
At first glance such a series might, intuitively, seem unnecessary as most people do their research, right?
Well after a recent discussion with a BioAccoustic "medical practitioner" who was taking peoples money with empty promises based on bogus claims , misinformation, hijacking scientific terms and false impressions I realized that not only was it necessary, but it was very important. Certain terms carry too much weight to be misused.

There is a common meme in our culture today; to hijack respected terminology and twist its meaning in order to gain informational authority with those who are under-informed on the subject and then to prey on that misinformation to create support for false claims.

Case in point, the current natural health practitioners use scientific terminology, and then deride "western science" as arrogant and unable to examine some health concerns accurately because it eschews the spiritual.

Or when religious folk speak of how god exists outside science.

Or when people say "It's only a theory" to harm our school systems by making it seem like crackpot ideas have equal footing with fact.

Or when people like Deepak Chopra speak of "quantum" healing. He seeks to create and image of being knowledgeable by throwing out words like "Quantum", and "fields of information" so that he can garner a following. (The problem is that his followers ONLY consist of people who have no idea what "quantum mechanics" is.)
Then he will go on to make many unscientific claims using that terminology.

Those people are preying on the tendency to assume that the world we see is not the only world there is and that science can't really be the answer to everything.

I am not here to argue that in any sense. (this time)

I am here to change your perception of a word. Today's word?

"Science"

Science;The observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of observable phenomena.
-dictionary.com

In otherwords science is the study of ANYthing that manifests in reality.

If it can be observed, it can be studied.

It is not a confirmation biased realm of understanding that IGNORES spirituality, or other possibilities "outside" of science (see string theory) it is a method of seeking answers for the working mechanics of observable reality by examining the evidence. If there is no evidence, then science moves on or refutes the claim.

This is the heavy responsibility of scientists.

Falsification.

It is the ONLY way to arrive at the truth, but it is misunderstood.

If you only try to verify a given claim, then you will look for evidence that supports it and ignore the rest. That is called confirmation bias. The first step to truth is to attempt to falsify the hypothesis and then failing that, to further develop the hypothesis through testing and the scientific method.

It is not a cynical approach, it is the only approach.

Every attempt to test is an attempt to falsify, and when a hypothesis is falsified scientists rejoice. This is not because they are glad to have taken the wind out of someones sails, but because taking one possibility out of the equation is one step closer to the truth.

Science can examine ANY claim that has a manifestation in reality. If a homeopath claims that a 30C dilution of a substance in water (the dilution that eliminates ANY active ingredient is 12C) heals a condition, then we know that proper science can study it. This is because the condition is real, (we can observe it, see/feel the effects of it, and we can test the effects of it on the body) and the cure would also be a manifestation in reality. So any claim that the cure doesn't follow scientific principles is merely an attempt to lead hopeful people away from the facts.

So when we say "manifests in reality" is there another realm that IS outside science and therefor outside the realm of its study?

Maybe.

But considering the fact that we are part of reality and have no means to observe or discover things outside of it, we would have no way of knowing about it in the first place. If we WERE able to discover it, then that would mean that it had to manifest in order for us to be able to observe it, and therefor would fall into the purview of science.

So the next time someone says that something doesn't fall into the realm of the scientific, you will know that they are saying that it is not part of observable reality and can dismiss it as imaginary or misconceived.

Because with no other way to discover such knowledge, knowledge that lies outside reality and our every ability to reveal it, can only come from one place.......


the imagination.