Phillipine sexy-time for Catholic Church

There is a fundamental issue I have discovered (in my many many years of life :P) when it comes to resolving an argument. There are often ideological positions on both sides. Some of them are logically flawed from the start, and such flaws can be pointed out easily. Other times they boil down to differences in value judgments – for example, I place a higher value on the utility and efficiency of social programs than I do on the slight amount that my privacy is compromised by the census. Others clearly do not. These kinds of arguments are intractable, since they boil down to what a person thinks is important, and the best you can hope for is to find some common ground.

However, more often than not, disagreements boil down to conflicts that can be resolved by simply looking at data. Will raising taxes on cigarettes reduce use? Does capital punishment work as a crime deterrent? Do people become happier with more money in their pocket? Those are questions that are about observable, measurable phenomena, and we can (and have) evaluate them.

Same goes for “does sex education lead to promiscuity?” The evidence is very clear: again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again the literature is explicit that sex education programs are effective at imparting useful and valuable knowledge about sex and reproduction, without turning kids into bang-happy sluts (any more than they were when they started, at least). Comprehensive programs on safe sex actually seem to, paradoxically, reduce the rate at which kids have sex – at the very worst they are no more likely to have sex when armed with information.

(Click for full-sized image)

It seems painfully obvious in this case that a simple, cursory glance at the mountains of evidence would be enough to settle the debate. We may not like our kids having sex, but teaching them about it doesn’t make them more likely to do it, it just means they’re more likely to do it safely if and when they do.

But of course, if you want to strip reason, logic and evidence right out the argument, all you have to do is talk to the Catholic Church:

In the Philippines, a conservative, predominantly Catholic country, even older students learn little about how to make babies, or – of more urgency according to many officials and health workers – how to prevent making babies. But despite stiff opposition from the Catholic Church, this could be about to change.

In yet another example of religion’s pre-occupation with sex; ironic, since all of these bishops and priests are celibate, the Church has taken up the cause against teaching kids things. Knowing things leads, as everyone knows, to doing things. The first thing I did when I learned about particle physics, after all, was go out and build a nuclear bomb (I named it ‘Shroom’). It’s no surprise to me, having been raised Catholic, to see the Church be wrong, yet again, both in terms of public policy and science. What does surprise me, however, is the secular response. Similar to what took place in Argentina and Venezuela, the secular authority is telling the Church to go anoint itself:

Recently, the education department decided to launch a pilot scheme introducing sex education into the school curriculum from the ages of 11 onwards. The former education secretary, Mona Valisno, who has just left office because of a change of government, spearheaded the campaign, saying it would empower schoolchildren to “make informed choices and decisions”.

Sadly, the Whore of Babylon still has some power to exert over lawmakers:

According to Mrs Valisno, there will be no mention of abortion, or even contraception, during any of the new lessons. She said the scheme was not designed to emphasise the actual sex act, but to promote personal hygiene and interpersonal relationships.

This is doing no favours at all for the poor in the Phillipines, who are the most in need of real instruction. I have no doubt that when the program, with all of the useful information taken out of it, fails to reduce unwanted pregnancies and STIs, the Church will crow about how education doesn’t work.

“Children are fragile creatures. The [education] department should be very, very careful not to teach children about matters they will imitate the following day,” said Monsignor Pedro Quitorio, a spokesman for the highly influential Catholic Bishops Conference.

The shocking hypocrisy and complete lack of human decency inherent in a Catholic spokesperson arguing to protect the fragility of childhood leaves me cold. The stupidity of not wanting children to imitate the positive things they learn in school about protecting themselves from disease and unwanted pregnancy leaves me wondering why anyone with any kind of moral instinct would listen to a single word this organization has to say about values.

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CFI Vancouver presents Dr. Christopher DiCarlo: We Are All African

It was another big weekend for Vancouver skeptics. We hosted Dr. Christopher DiCarlo for a discussion of human origins in Africa, and we once again handed out flyers at a reading by self-proclaimed ‘psychic medium’ John Edward.

On Friday, August 13th 2010, Centre for Inquiry Vancouver hosted a talk by Dr. Christopher DiCarlo entitled “We Are All African”. In the presentation, Dr. DiCarlo discussed the anthropological evidence for speciation of homo sapiens in Africa, and some of the potential implications this knowledge might have.

Of course I was thrilled to attend this talk – African origin of humanity has long been a given to me, but I’d never really examined the evidence. Being both recently descended from Africa and interested in racial issues, this presentation was right up my alley. I will not do a full writeup of the talk, since this is not a science blog, but I thought I would share a small portion of the presentation that particularly resonated with me. As before with Dr. PZ Myers, I am declining to post the entire lecture, but I will put up this one slice. CFI will post the videos soon (having decentralized the process, so now we can work on them here and post to the CFI YouTube channel), and when they are up, I will link you.

Dr. DiCarlo hits my absolute favourite point at the :50 mark – the idea of in-group and out-group biases (the heckler is his wife, incidentally apparently a random drunk roaming through UBC campus – my bad :P). Regular readers will remember that I talked about this type of bias as the defining feature of racism, and that when we re-draw our tribal maps, we eliminate the “us vs. them” kind of mentality. Dr. DiCarlo suggests that perhaps the fact of common African ancestry could become a way of ultimately doing away with the arbitrary borders we draw around our groups.

We went out for beers after the talk, and I got a chance to chat briefly with our speaker. He had told us a story about how he lost was denied a tenured position at Wilfred Laurier University, seemingly due to complaints from students that his teachings were religiously insensitive. After inviting an Aboriginal student (in his critical thinking class) who had expressed her incredulity at the accuracy of the science to present her own evidence, so as to spark class discussion:

The tone was not sarcastic but, rather, a sincere attempt to perform the function for which the University employs him — to teach students about critical thinking. The woman never returned to his classroom. Instead, she complained to the University, along with two other students who were opposed to his “religiously insensitive” position on evolution. The objections apparently focused on Dr diCarlo’s comments on religion and evolution, but also indicated concern about fair grading and “talking about sex in class.”

While this is an incredibly unfortunate incident, it reveals that some people are not willing to accept those facts that conflict with their world view. A group particularly ill-suited to receive the implications of this kind of information is evangelical/fundamentalist Christian groups (though conservative Muslim or Jewish groups would be similarly resistant). I suggested to Dr. DiCarlo that it might be an interesting experiment to present these findings to black evangelical Christian churches, of which there are a number in the Toronto area. My thinking was that for a group of people who already buy in to the idea of African origin, these people would have a unique perspective, and it may be a way of introducing the idea of evolution as a positive thing, rather than a subject to be resisted at all costs.

All in all I enjoyed both the talk and the reception immensely. Once the video is up, you’ll have the chance to check it out, and I highly recommend that you do.

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CFI Vancouver Skeptics ‘welcome’ John Edward

It was another big weekend for Vancouver skeptics. We hosted Dr. Christopher DiCarlo for a discussion of human origins in Africa, and we once again handed out flyers at a reading by self-proclaimed ‘psychic medium’ John Edward.

On Sunday, August 15th, our fair city of Vancouver played host to self-proclaimed psychic medium John Edward. Mr. Edward is perhaps most famous for his television show Crossing Over with John Edward, a half-hour show in which he claims to speak to the deceased relatives of audience members. In his show, he reveals intimate and personal information about those who have “passed to the other side”. Like other mediums, Mr. Edward claims to be a vessel through which information passes from the realm of the dead to the living.

The problem, of course, is that there is no evidence whatsoever that Mr. Edward can actually do what he claims. His approach is nearly indistinguishable from a well-known technique of manipulation called ‘cold reading‘. Basically, a ‘psychic’ cold reads a mark by initially using words or phrases that are so vague as to apply to anyone. Once a mark responds, the psychic hones in and sends progressively more specific probing phrases and words until the mark is completely convinced. At this point, the psychic can make claims about the feelings and wishes of the dead person with full buy-in from both the mark and the audience, who by this time are also staunch believers. A better explanation and illustration can be found here.

Why were we there?

A handful of volunteers from the Centre for Inquiry – Vancouver were present at the event to hand out some informative flyers to audience members (a pdf of the flyer can be seen here). As we have done previously with Deepak Chopra, we stood on the sidewalk outside the venue, and handed flyers to people as they came in. I must admit a bit of deception on my own part, as I asked people if they were here to see the John Edward show, and if they affirmed, I told them that we had flyers for them. While I did not lie (more on this in a bit), I didn’t dissuade them of the impression that I was working for the show.

Once again, we were not there to tell people they were stupid, or gullible, or uneducated. We weren’t there to feel smarter, or a smug sense of satisfaction at ‘educating the rubes’, nor were we there to ‘convert’ people to skepticism. It is my personal belief that most people are skeptical about some things, but seem to be readily willing to accept other things at face value.

We had two primary goals – first, to encourage people to be skeptical of claims by showing them some of the techniques ‘psychics’ use to trick people; and second, to engender a discussion of critical thinking and skepticism in a group of people who are likely not skeptics. We wanted people to be asking themselves ‘does this really make sense?’ We hoped that by showing people what the techniques were, we would prime them to ask real questions about what they were seeing.

How did it go?

Most people took a flyer and looked over it as they walked in. Some people asked for multiple flyers for their friends who were inside in line. We didn’t have a particular target for how many flyers we wanted to distribute, but we estimate our output at just under 100. The room in which the event was held has a 300-person capacity, meaning we missed more than we hit. We weren’t exactly thrilled that we didn’t get everyone, but we had a few hitches.

When we first arrived, we learned that many people had already gone inside the venue and were waiting in line for the doors to open. We ventured inside and up the stairs, and were suddenly face to face with 60-70 people, most of whom were much older than we were. A number of attendees were in wheelchairs and walkers. Standing there, faced with a group that outnumbered us 12:1, standing patiently waiting to speak to their dead relatives, we quickly lost courage and beat a hasty retreat to the Starbucks across the street to rethink our strategy.

We decided to stick to the sidewalk and get people coming in. This was decided for a few reasons. First, we felt a bit dickish going to people waiting in line and putting flyers in their hands. It felt opportunistic and mean. Second (and probably most importantly), it was scary. I kept having visions of a growing angry murmur going through the crowd, followed by a stampede of wheelchairs thirsting for our blood. On the sidewalk at least, we rationalized over frappuccinos, people had the opportunity to ignore us, or engage us, without having to face a giant crowd. Yes we’d miss the die-hards who showed up early, but they’d probably reject us out of hand anyway.

Overall, we walked away happy that at least we had done something, even if we didn’t shake up the world.

My personal experience

One woman offered us an extra ticket, and I jumped at the chance to get some intel from inside. When I went to talk to her, she asked me if I liked John Edward. I told her I’d never met him. The rest of the conversation went thusly:

Her: But do you like his work?

Me: No, not really.

Her: Why not?

Me: The world is a complicated place, and there are serious questions we have to ask ourselves. Whenever someone offers easy answers to difficult questions, I’m immediately skeptical. In the course of my skepticism, I’ve learned there are much better explanations for why John Edward can do what he does than believing he can talk to ghosts.

Her: Well then I’m afraid you can’t have the ticket.

Me: Oh, okay.

Her: If you bring negative energy in, it will prevent the spirits from speaking to him.

Me: Surely they wouldn’t be afraid of me. I’m just a guy.

Her: They aren’t afraid, they just require you to have an open mind.

I thanked her for the offer, and she thanked me for my honesty. I wasn’t about to take this woman’s money (tickets ran over $200) based on a lie. As much as I would have loved to get the inside scoop for you, there was no way I was going to do it through deception. She really believed in the supposed powers that Edward claims to have, so much so that the presence of even one person who didn’t believe would chase away all of the ghosts. This kind of insular environment allows Edward to prey on people, where not even one dissenting voice will be tolerated (although I suppose I could have just bought a ticket – even $25 would have been too much in my opinion).

The low point, of course, was high-tailing it out of the hotel at our first pass. I was amazed at how powerful the normative pressure was. Nobody was staring or being aggressive, yet as soon as we saw the line I could feel the pressure to run away. I’m not a shy person – I have no problem talking to strangers or approaching people in social settings; however, I was petrified by this situation. I have a bit more appreciation for people who are afraid of public speaking after failing in our first attempt.

The highlight for me was meeting Debbie, an attendee who came outside to ask us why we were there. Debbie felt that we were being uncharitable, and calling people stupid for not doing the research themselves. She told me that until you’ve had a supernatural experience, you have no right to criticize someone else’s search for truth. I told Debbie that I had indeed had several experiences that I attributed to supernatural causes, but once I had been exposed to better information and given the opportunity to make up my mind, I was grateful to have learned something. I also pointed out that we were no more calling people stupid than a public health campaign for hand-washing was calling people stupid – we are merely presenting people with information that we think could help them. She was not entirely swayed by my argument, although she did laud us on our non-confrontational style and general affability.

It is easy to dismiss the positions of those who disagree with you, especially when they are paying money to see a well-known fraud, but if we want to gain allies in the skeptical movement, we have to take criticism from all sides and evaluate it on its own merit. Debbie may have had a point – who were we to take away people’s false hope? My response to that as always is that the truth is important. We need to get as close to objective truth as we can in order to deal with each other honestly, and to allow humankind to progress. Permitting nonsense and charlatanry like John Edward to pass us by uncontested is an invitation for more deception, and a betrayal of the ideals of humanism. Things like this should be discussed and criticized, and people should not be allowed to defraud each other simply because “everyone is entitled to their opinion“. We have a duty to the truth, and ought to talk about it openly.

Hopefully our exercise in “skeptivism” encouraged a few people to think critically about what they were hearing. As we continue to do these events (James van Praagh, another ghoul who preys on the grief and credulousness of an non-skeptical public, will be in Richmond at the end of September), we invite members of the skeptical and non-skeptical community to give us commentary on how we can be more effective, and/or less offensive to those who buy in.

Welcome to all those here from Pharyngula!

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Three steps towards ending black-white racism

Feeling like I had been picking on religion a bit too much, I decided to re-post a series of notes I wrote during Black History Month in February, 2010. This is the 6th and final installment of that series. Next week I will go back to frothing at the mouth about how stupid everyone who disagrees with my outlook on religion is.

This post originally appeared on Facebook on Friday, February 19th, 2010.

Racism is still alive and well, as I established in previous posts. We’re not out of the woods yet when it comes to discussions about race and the role that it plays in our society. However, I think we’ve been going about it the wrong way. As I said earlier, it used to be child’s play to identify the racists in our society. They were burning crosses (and apparently still are in Nova Scotia), they were using racist language, they were actively discriminating against black people. Those days are, thankfully, over. Aside from a few incidents that bubble up from time to time, black people don’t face the kinds of brutal treatment they did just decades ago.

But racism’s not done. Like a herpes infection, just because it’s been fought down to sub-symptomatic levels doesn’t mean it can’t come back with a vengeance. As I outlined previously, we can still see some residual effects of racism apparent in the makeup of our economic and political leaders, job discrimination – both as unregulated restrictions by individual employers and in the form of well-intentioned, necessary, but ultimately fundamentally racist programs like Affirmative Action – and our portrayal in popular media. Behaving as though racism is no longer a problem only allows the infection to persist and become more deeply entrenched.

In order to completely eradicate racism, important steps need to be taken. In my mind, these steps fall into three main categories. The first is that black people need to move into prominent positions of power and authority. The second is that we take some ownership of our society, including the negative parts, and realize that racism is everyone’s problem, not just white people’s. Finally, white people need to start talking about race, racism, and their own fears and concerns without fear of reprisal. I will elaborate on each of these in order.

First, I think it’s of primary importance that black people be highly visible in positive, influential places. Stereotypes about what “blackness” is stem not only from old-time racism, but from the perpetuation of those same roles in popular media. BET and other music stations are prime culprits, FOX News is about as guilty as an organization can get before donning a white hood, but we’re doing it to ourselves too. The next step, I believe, is to change the connotative understanding of what it is to be “black”. It’s hard to say “black people are lazy criminals” when you work next to, or for, an intelligent black person. It’s even harder when most of the black people you know are strong and successful in your own field. I’ve tried my best, and continue to try, to enact this in my own field where there aren’t very many black people (although, hilariously, my manager and one of the senior scientists on the 9-person team here are also black).

Part of this movement has to be being competent and intelligent, definitely, but a similarly important component is that we have to be visible. Not just present in photographs, or around at meetings, but we have to wear our blackness on our sleeves, forcing those around us to confront the cognitive dissonance that, ultimately, destroys stereotypes. Barack Obama, Neil Degrasse-Tyson, and Will Smith are three examples that readily come to mind of people who don’t hide their race and are anti-stereotypical and prominent in their respective fields. This step will have the unintended benefit of providing positive role modeling to black kids who otherwise wouldn’t have examples to look to in their own communities.

Second, I think it’s time to drop the adversarial “us versus them” mindset. A lot of things are legitimately the fault of racism, or oppression by a majority group. The more we circle the wagons and cry “racism wolf” every time there’s an issue, we dilute real complaints. It’s similar to comparisons to Nazi-ism. There are real honest-to-spaghetti-monster Nazis out there in the world. Every time we draw a Hitler mustache on a picture of Bush, or give a police officer who tells you to pour out your beer the Fascist salute, we move a serious problem further away from the shock and outrage it deserves, and indirectly make serious threats seem less scary.

More important than that, however, is that we need to start recognizing that we are part of the system just as much as any white person is. We perpetuate our own stereotypes by conforming to racial roles, we ostracize those who behave like an outsider. Instead, we need to embrace the idea that our distinctiveness is part of the larger culture. This goes hand-in-hand with the first point – it’s harder to hate someone who is an active part of your own in-group. I am not, by any means, saying that we stop being different, but instead that we put the difference in context of those things we have in common with other groups of people.

Finally, and this is the only one that I haven’t heard other people say a thousand times before me, we need to let white people come to the table. White people are, understandably, scared and unsure about how to approach the topic of racism. For generations, white people ran this country. Gradually, however, more and more non-white faces began popping up in the landscape. While some reacted with open hostility, the rest were left with the uneasy feeling of watching as their power and influence slowly melted away. For an illustration of this, cruise the Craigslist “Rants and Raves” section for Vancouver. There are some REALLY angry white people on that forum, and the majority of them are saying the same thing: “this is our turf, stop taking away our power.” Of course they’re factually incorrect about whose land this is and who built this country, but the fact remains that being white doesn’t carry as much currency as it used to. Couple that with accusations of racism, bigotry and malicious ignorance every time you make any statement about race, and you are suddenly made to feel guilty and responsible for the existence of a system that you were born into without any idea of how to make it better.

Someone needs to start speaking up on behalf of white people. They are victims of the same system, regardless of the fact that it was largely the responsibility of their ancestors. So what? They hurt too. They are made to feel as though they have sinned, but are given few, if any, workable options of how to ameliorate the situation. I’d imagine that most white people hate racism just as much as black people do, even though they are rarely the victims. Not only that, but white people have legitimate beefs and concerns of their own related to race. Let’s remember that even MLK always made a point of acknowledging the role that white brothers and sisters played in the civil rights movement. Conversely, white people have no MLK or Malcolm or Jesse Jackson. Right now the only people speaking on behalf of white people’s issues are demagogues like Rush Limbaugh and far-right militant movements like the KKK and other White Power groups, which puts even legitimate criticism of the treatment of whites in the same category as white supremacy (not only that, but if they’re the only ones speaking for me, then I’m perhaps inclined to agree with them on a few other things). This is not to say that the races are “equal” in political standing, economic influence, or even how we think of them colloquially. However, if we are going to move forward together it’s important that we all have a voice in the progress.

So, like Al Gore at the end of An Inconvenient Truth I’m trying to lay out a concrete map of how to take ourselves back from the brink of crisis and move into a better, brighter future for all people. First, we need to redefine “black” – pushing it out, in a positive way, into the limelight by having prominent and well-placed black people talk about race. Second, we need to take an active part in the society at large, taking ownership of our important role in shaping the culture. Third, white people need to start talking about race, and non-white people need to start listening and discussing. Done properly, these steps will ensure that we can actually have a “post-racial” world, rather than just sticking our heads in the sand and pretending.

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Bloggity blog blogs

I have many blogs linked to this one.

They’re on the side bar of your screen —–>

Maybe I should tell you about them!

BelleIQ – This is written by a former colleague of mine who is a fashion model as well as a scientist. I’m happy to say that at my urging, and the urging of others, she has started adding new content. FRSRS, visit this one. She’s a great writer.

Classically Liberal – I came across this one shortly after I started blogging. Yes, he’s a Libertarian (one of those), but he writes some very thought-provoking content and espouses many liberal principles from the perspective of the Libertarian movement. Even when I disagree, I read.

Pharyngula – PZ Myers’ blog about religion, science, and squid. I’m assuming that at least half of the people reading this have been to Pharyngula already, but if you haven’t you should go.

Racialicious – A handy resource for commentary about pop culture and racial issues. As often as not I find myself disagreeing with their take, but I read it every day.

Respectful Insolence – The one that first bit me with the blogging bug. Medical science, quackery, and a whole host of medical woo. Interesting stuff!

Scary Fundamentalist – On days when I feel particularly full of myself, I call this guy my nemesis. Another Vancouver blogger who writes and thinks as well as I do, but whose opinions make me want to punch my way through the internet and kung-fu him in the face (figuratively speaking, of course).

Stuff White People Do – Almost as soon as I found this blog, the author went on hiatus. The archives are fun to poke around in, though.

The New 20 – Appears to be on hiatus (hasn’t been updated since April). May take this one down soon.

If there are any blogs that you read about free speech, racial issues, religion, or other types of skepticism, or that you think I’d particularly enjoy, and that update content regularly, please let me know about them. I will be adding more soon (Canadian Atheist immediately springs to mind).

Movie Friday – postitive thinking

Psst… do you want to hear something amazing? There’s an unbelievably simple trick you can use to get everything you’ve ever wanted, without having to work for it, put any effort at all into bettering yourself or your life, or kill off your rich uncle.

It’s called THE SECRET

Anyone’s who’s taken any type of eastern philosophy course knows about the law of attraction. Basically, the theory is that if you put positive energy out into the world, you will reap the benefits of that energy. Hindus call it karma, Taoists call it the Tao, and skeptics call it a heaping pile of steamy bullshit.

Like prayer, or ‘remote viewing’, or psychics, mediums, Tarot and horoscopes, the law of attraction (karma) relies on some fundamental cognitive heuristics our brains use. The first and most important is called confirmation bias – our brains selectively attend to those events that fit assumptions we’ve already made. The second is a logical fallacy called ‘post hoc, ergo propter hoc‘ or, ‘after it, therefore because of it’ – we see two events and infer that the first causes the second.

For an example of this, think of what happens when you’re waiting for a bus. How many times have you waited for a bus, got fed up and decided to walk, only to have the bus show up a minute after you leave? Have you ever said “of course, as soon as I leave, the bus arrives.” Your leaving has nothing to do with the bus arriving – the two events are independent, but after it happens 2 or 3 times, your mammal brain puts them together.

So when you send out positive vibes and something good happens, the two aren’t necessarily causally related – indeed, there’s no mechanism by which they could be related. The “Secret” is just an appeal to your mammalian brain and the cognitive shortcuts we all use to get by.

“So what?” you might be saying. “It doesn’t hurt anyone to think positively.” Despite evidence that it absolutely CAN hurt people to have unrealistically positive outlooks, it also leads to victim blaming. People assume that if you can think your way to happiness and wealth, then anyone who is poor just has a bad attitude.

Let’s let Dave Chappelle have the last word here…

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Home-grown religious huxter

When I was at that “debate” between Hugh Ross and Brian Lynchehaun, Brian made what I thought was an interesting point toward the end. He asked the audience to picture a circumstance in which a loved one was dying a painful death, with no hope of a medical cure. Someone offers you a chance to visit a faith healer, who promises a miraculous result, and all it will cost you is your life savings. Left with your back against the wall and no other options, would you take that chance?

A skeptic atheist wouldn’t, and Brian’s argument was that this is a illustration of how skeptics are less likely to fall for scams than a religious person. It popped into my head when I read this article about a pastor in Montreal:

Several members of the Bethel Christian Community have gone public with troubling allegations about money they say they lent to their spiritual leader — Rev. Mwinda Lezoka, a Congolese native who has ministered to Montreal’s growing African community for two decades.

These are not rich people – these are ordinary working people, some of whom went so far as to remortgage their own homes. They gave their money to a man they trusted, and were not repaid. It turned out that pastor Lezoka was using the money he appropriated for… slightly less divine ends:

During the years Lezoka ministered to his parish at the Bethel Christian Community Church in Ahuntsic, he also studied gemology, and appeared to head a Kinshasa-based export agency specialized in diamond trading.

Lezoka was apparently an administrator of a diamond exporting firm in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) – the firm has since gone bankrupt. It does not take a great deal of imagination to envisage a scenario in which Lezoka used funds that were loaned to him for the purpose of developing the church in order to prop up his failing investment.

Jewish and Christian scripture exhort the faithful to be honest and fair-dealing. Bearing false witness is in the commandments (God is not cool with it), and that has been extrapolated to include all types of lying. Surely a pastor, one whose life is devoted to the teaching of scripture, once caught in a lie, would come clean and be honest, right?

“I did not take anyone’s money,” said Mwinda Lezoka, speaking in French, in an exclusive interview with CBC News. “So I, Mr. Lezoka, am not responsible for deceiving anyone.” … The pastor was unable to produce any financial records, when asked by CBC News. Nor could he explain why charitable tax receipts he issued have false numbers, according to Revenue Canada.

It’s sad, but unsurprising, when people with religious authority show themselves to be as callow, evasive, and corrupt as people with just regular ol’ Earthly authority. Unsurprising to me, at least, because even while I was a believer I didn’t buy the fiction that priests are somehow more righteous or upstanding than anyone else. To borrow from (and paraphrase) Napoleon, religion is an agreed-upon fiction. It is built firmly on the basis that everyone believes the story – if you do not believe, you cannot be shown evidence to engender belief (the fundamental difference between science and religion). If the morals and righteousness are based upon fiction, there is no end to the number of cognitive dissonances and goalpost shifts possible to justify any act of evil.

I am well aware of the fact that these people might have been duped by anyone. Many people fall for scams that are not religious in any way. However, credulous belief in falsehoods and the associated elevation of people into positions of power and authority (and assumed rectitude) based on those falsehoods makes a person more likely to believe in nonsense. To put it plainly: those who are willing to believe anything are willing to believe anything.

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Vancouver doesn’t have a race problem

You had to know I’d bring this all back home, right? I’ve talked before about Canada’s issues with race, and more specifically Vancouver’s, and as I’ve pointed out these aren’t isolated incidents – the issues continue:

Two men were caught on camera writing racially inflammatory graffiti aimed at people of Chinese origin, as well as derogatory comments toward police, on the wall of the Empire Centre parkade in Richmond.

Those of you not from the area may not know that Richmond, a suburb of Vancouver, has a large Chinese population that has exploded in recent years. It is perhaps more famous for housing the Olympic speed skating oval. There has been historical tension in the region between white Canadians and Canadians of Chinese descent. It comes certainly as no surprise to me that incidents like this are happening.

Police were able to identify and arrest one of the vandals, and will likely have found the other by the time this makes its way up online. It’s good that the police are able to catch the perpetrators, but that’s not a solution to the underlying problem of racial tension. By no means am I suggesting that arresting criminals is futile, but it is not a method that approaches crime prevention.

Nor is beefing up security:

Two Jewish religious institutions in Vancouver that have been targets of hate crimes have been given federal money to increase security around their buildings. On Thursday Public Safety Minister Vic Toews said the Schara Tzedeck synagogue and the Ohel Ya’akov Community Kollel would receive $20,000 from the Communities at Risk: Security Infrastructure Pilot Program.

Again, far be it from me to suggest that it’s a waste of time or money to try and secure the safety and property of people who are being actively persecuted by hate groups. It’s every person’s right to be able to protect him/herself from violence. Hate-based violence affects the entire community, both those who are the targets of hate and those who are merely empathetic and humanistic people. We should do what we can to secure our safety, and punish those who break the law…

…but we shouldn’t for a second think that approach is sufficient.

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Net Neutrality – definitely a free speech issue

The following clip was brought to my attention:

I don’t know much about Al Franken, except that people whose opinions I respect think he’s a good guy. Based on this speech here, he seems like someone I should be paying more attention to. Imagine for a moment what the world would be like if the Catholic Church had been in complete control of the printing press (although we don’t have to strain our imaginations too much – just read a history book). Science, philosophy, literacy, all of the hallmarks that took us out of the dark ages would have been completely lost. Medicines wouldn’t have been discovered (since prayer would be all you need), representative democracy would not have become the standard of government, ethicists like Hume, Kant, Rawls, and Nietzsche (especially him); authors like Dostoevsky, Twain, Hugo and Orwell would have published exactly nothing (but on the bright side, no Twilight novels either); Picasso, Dali, Hendrix, and Ginsberg would have been forbidden the political climate that spawned their works.

I’d really rather live in this world where public expression was the secular right of all people.

Senator Franken imagines a world in which large corporations, who have no responsibility aside from delivering money to their shareholders, are in control of the means of knowledge dissemination. We can look to China to see what happens when the government controls the means – they have a socialist fascist political system. Imagine then what a corporate fascist political system would look like. Or, sit back and do nothing, and we’ll find out.

Those of you in the United States should please feel free to sign this petition.

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