Secularism is the best birth control – and apparently dooming Europe

Hey, do you love it when people mistake correlation for causation? How about when people imply atheists aren’t good people? Or when they think their silly religious beliefs are more important than massive problems in society? Well, then you’ll love what Lord Sacks said:

Lord Sacks blamed Europe’s falling birth rate on a culture of “consumerism and instant gratification”.

He said the continent was “dying” and accused its citizens of not being prepared for parenthood’s “sacrifices”…

The 61-year-old, who took his seat in the Lords last week, said: “Wherever you turn today – Jewish, Christian or Muslim – the more religious the community, the larger on average are their families.

“The major assault on religion today comes from the neo-Darwinians.” …

Lord Sacks said Europe was the most secular region in the world and the only continent seeing populations fall.

He said parenthood involved “massive sacrifices” of money, attention, time and emotional energy.

Linden over at Folklore of Pitong already did a good job exposing the bad science of this idea. In short, birth rates could be down since infant mortality has severely decreased with modern medicine. No need to replace your babies.

It pains the scientist in me when people confuse correlation with causation. Yes, secularism has risen and birth rates have dropped. Frozen food consumption has also risen, but I’m not going to jump to the conclusion that they cause infertility (maybe with the exception of Hot Pockets, I don’t trust those). However, things that contribute to secularism (rational thinking, scientific knowledge, improved education, better living conditions, etc) may all lead to someone deciding to have less kids.

But so what?

Why is having less kids a horrible thing? Because we’re not giving birth to all “generations not born” as Lord Sacks says? [cue musical overlay of Every Sperm is Sacred] That’s a pretty ridiculous way of thinking, if you ask me. Should we be churning out every baby possible like the Quiverfull movement? I kind of prefer being more than a walking baby making machine, than you very much. What about all those precious egg cells wasted before a woman gets married (which I’m sure is the only appropriate time to reproduce in Lord Sacks’s mind)? Might as well start marrying off girls after their first period – can’t go wasting all of those potential children.

Does Lord Sacks even care that the world is horrendously overpopulated? If anything, reduced birth rates are a wonderful thing. This may irk some people, but I personally feel it’s somewhat socially irresponsible to purposefully have more than two children (“oops”s are understandable). To do more than replace yourself contributes to the problem of overpopulation and is a burden to not only society, but to your children who will have to live in said society. For Lord Sacks to be completely oblivious to this is unacceptable.

Of course, I’m an evil, birth-control-using atheist, so I guess I’m simply biased.

Oh, and atheists don’t make sacrifices, don’t want to invest emotional energy, yadda yadda. It’s sad when hearing such ridiculous and slanderous things said about me doesn’t even warrant a response anymore. I’m getting so used to it, that I don’t even want to waste my time pointing out that it’s utter bullshit. Secular people have children, and like all people, love them very much. Quantity isn’t better than quality when it comes to raising kids, Lord Sacks.

You know what else is an abomination, Maine? Lobster

Dear 53% of Maine,

Today you decided that homosexuals are lesser human beings who don’t deserve the same rights as heterosexuals. You have just illustrated to the nation that you, like California, believe popular vote is a valid and moral way to decide human rights. I’m really glad we didn’t use this method back when legalizing interracial marriage, but I guess the whole majority rule, minority rights thing isn’t too important too you. But if you’re going to go and base your legal decisions on the Bible, I thought I’d like to point out one little thing to you so your logic is at least consistent. In the same book that condemns homosexuality, there’s another verse that you may find important:

Leviticus 11:9-12 says:
9 These shall ye eat of all that are in the waters: whatsoever hath fins and scales in the waters, in the seas, and in the rivers, them shall ye eat.
10 And all that have not fins and scales in the seas, and in the rivers, of all that move in the waters, and of any living thing which is in the waters, they shall be an abomination unto you:
11 They shall be even an abomination unto you; ye shall not eat of their flesh, but ye shall have their carcases in abomination.
12 Whatsoever hath no fins nor scales in the waters, that shall be an abomination unto you.

Deuteronomy 14:9-10 says:
9 These ye shall eat of all that are in the waters: all that have fins and scales shall ye eat:
10 And whatsoever hath not fins and scales ye may not eat; it is unclean unto you.

I know the Bible can be a little hard to understand, so let me spell it out for you: God hates shellfish. You know what’s a shellfish? Lobster. Because of this, I fully expect a ban on Maine’s lobster industry ASAP. I know that’s a major facet of your economy and all, but you’ve illustrated that God’s word is more important than the well being of your citizens. I’m sure they’ll understand the dip in the economy, since getting into heaven later is more important than this life.

So, get cracking on that next referendum. I mean, you don’t want to be hypocrites, do you?

Purdue Professor: Gays wasting our money on AIDS research

Multiple Purdue students have alerted me to a blog post by Bert Chapman, Government Information & Political Science Librarian and Professor of Library Science at Purdue University. He’s caused quite a stir amongst progressive students at Purdue after making a blog post claiming homosexuals are hurting the economy by making us fund AIDS research and making insurance companies and businesses acknowledge their partnerships. To fully appreciate his woeful ignorance, let’s go through his post with some commentary by yours truly:

An Economic Case Against Homosexuality

As a Christian, I agree with the biblical condemnation of the homosexual lifestyle. However, we are living in a nation and world that increasingly rejects biblical norms. To defend traditional sexual morality against the encroaching threat of homosexuality and other aberrant forms of sexual expression, we need to be able to do more than cite Bible verses. Fortunately, there are plenty of economic reasons for being against sodomite degeneracy and I think as conservatives we need to be able to articulate why our nation cannot afford the extremely high financial costs of this lifestyle at a time when we are confronting dangerously high budget deficits, national debt, and personal debt.

First, I want all you gay-rights supporting Christians out there to hang your head in shame for being associated with this man. Done? Okay, good. Hurray for a world that is increasingly rejecting biblical norms – that’s a good thing when people wake up and see these ancient, bigoted ideas as immoral and unfounded. At least Professor Chapman recognizes that Bible verses aren’t going to fly when it comes to public policy – especially public policy that is trying to remove rights from minorities groups. This may just be me…but using money as a guide to what rights to give what people seems pretty fucking morally bankrupt. Oh, that’s right, I’m a hippie liberal. Sorry, forgot.

Let’s start with AIDS. U.S. Government expenditures on this disease have risen from $200,000 in Fiscal Year 1980-1981 to $23.3 billion for Fiscal Year 2008. These figures have increased steadily over nearly three decades and probably exceed $100 billion. When you factor in what countries all over the world have spent on seeking to diminish this disease, without recognizing the morally aberrant sexual behavior causing its spread, we are probably looking at expenditures of over $1 trillion dollars. Think of how much constructively such money could have been spent on public health issues such as improved sanitation, immunizations, and other more worthwhile programs instead of promoting immoral and self-destructive behavior through needle exchanges and widespread condom distribution. The money wasted on AIDS research could be returned to taxpayers or transferred to more worthwhile areas of public health research such as cancer, heart disease, and combating pandemic conditions like H1N1 flu. Our ongoing U.S. political debate over health care reform also needs to factor in the economic costs of homosexual and other sexually deviant behaviors on our health care system in terms of pharmaceutical drugs, tainted blood supplies, and requiring doctors and nurses to treat sexually transmitted diseases which would not occur if people practiced chastity outside of heterosexual marriage and monogamy within such marriage.

…I’m just take this one step at a time.

1. “Probably” exceeds a $100 billion? “Probably” over $1 trillion? I understand this was probably just some spontaneous blog post, but it doesn’t really help your argument when you’re just making up numbers.

2. AIDS IS NOT A GAY DISEASE. Sorry for the caps lock, but this is so ignorant that it makes me scream. AIDS infects all people regardless of sexual preference – heterosexual, bisexual, homosexual. Of course, he thinks anything outside of monogamy within a heterosexual marriage is deviant, so I’m not sure he would care. Just don’t go blaming the gays for AIDs and make that your major point.

3. Condom distribution decreases the spread of AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections. Study after study has shown that abstinence only education simply does not work.

4. It pretty much terrifies me that this man is fairly obviously suggesting that anyone with AIDS or any other type of STD should just suffer or die. We shouldn’t research these diseases, we shouldn’t pay doctors to treat these diseases, we shouldn’t develop drugs for these diseases. Unfortunately, this horrifying world view isn’t new, especially among the religious right (Remember when Jerry Fallwel said, “AIDS is not just God’s punishment for homosexuals, it is God’s punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals”?). I guess it doesn’t matter if a quarter or more of our population (people with STDs) suffer or die, since they’re all the heathen liberals that deserve it.

Anyone who studies prison conditions knows that AIDS is a reality in many correctional facilities due to the occurrence of rape. I’m not sure if the Justice Dept’s Bureau of Justice Statistics keeps track of prison rape statistics or other instances of same sex sexual assault, but that also has economic implications not to mention the psychological trauma experienced by all rape victims.

I’m honestly not quite sure what this has to do with gays. Shouldn’t we be worried about, oh I don’t know, stopping rape?

The sad practice of so many companies and universities adopting domestic partner benefits in a misguided effort to attract employees drives up insurance costs for these companies and prevents them from providing additional coverage to those of us adhering to traditional sexual moral standards. It also requires these companies to pass on the costs of their goods and services beyond normal inflationary trends. Additionally, it also probably makes it more difficult for them to expand their businesses and create additional jobs in an economy coping with near double digit unemployment rates.

Yes, how dare companies give all of their employees equal rights instead of giving special privileges to the group you happen to be in. I have an idea: Why don’t we just make it so only Christian employees can receive partner benefits? According to your traditional morals, only those marriages are seen as valid in the eyes of God, so we can ignore everyone else. Yes, that seems like a lovely place to derive our reasoning. Definitely shouldn’t give benefits that promote monogamy and stable relationships.

The homosexual lifestyle also affects areas such as life insurance, estate planning, real estate, and investments as firms providing these services have to factor in how to treat same sex domestic partner issues into their cost calculations. Guess who has to pay for these increased costs and potentially lower investment returns? We do, regardless of whether or not we approve of the homosexual lifestyle. The next time some one tells you how wonderful is the “progress” gays have made in recent decades ask them if they have ever thought about the multiple economic consequences of this “progress” as described in this posting. I welcome suggestions from readers as to other possible economic costs of the homosexual lifestyle which I have forgotten.

Again, heaven forbid that everyone has equal rights. I’m not up on my fiscal policy so I don’t know if what he’s saying about rising costs is true or not, but who cares? Do we really take away the rights of a minority because it’s cheaper for the majority? Well then, better go back and institute slavery. It’ll be so much cheaper if we don’t have to pay black people wages!

I’m seriously disappointed that such a ignorant and homophobic piece could be written by a professor here at Purdue. It makes me ashamed to also call myself a Boilermaker. Much of the controversy is where his rights lie as a Purdue employee to publish such a thing. I support everyone’s freedom of speech, regardless if I agree with what they’re saying or not. However, I also believe one must be accountable for what they have said – he deserves criticism and messages of outrage. Purdue stresses tolerance and diversity, but to have a Purdue professor (a fact made available in his Bio) saying such hateful things… how would a gay student feel in one of his classes? Would gay students want to come to Purdue with such bigotry being represented?

What do you think? Should Professor Chapman just face the negative opinions of the public, or should Purdue reprimand him? Should what a professor say on his private blog have any connection to what he does at work?

Other Purdue students have also voiced their opinions on the matter:
Boilercrat Junction
The Dark Matter Effect
NEW: Politics and Pucks

Demonic Discount Candy Week

The only thing I may possibly love more than Halloween is the following week – Discount Candy Week! Not only is it the one time of the year where you can buy bags and bags of chocolate (relatively) guilt-free, but it’s also when I have money to do so thanks to my birthday (22 today, wooo!). My parents sent me a check for my b-day, and in the card my mom wrote “Don’t spend it all on Reese’s Cups” – she knows me far too well.

But now I have even more reason to love Halloween candy – apparently it’s all demonic because witches have prayed over it!

Hey, that’s fine, fundamentalist Christians. I’ll take any candy you don’t want. Or maybe this is just an evil plan to make all heathens obese and have tooth decay…hmmm….

Happy 6012th Birthday, Earth

This is slightly belated since I was busy yesterday, but Happy Birthday, Earth! According to James Ussher’s 17th century calculations, God created the Earth on October 23, 4004 BC. We had a mini birthday party at Wednesday’s club meeting, and I made brownies:I promise that I omitted Asia and Australia due to a lack of planning, not some deep-seated hatred for those continents.

This is all fun until you realize people actually believe this stuff. Many dates from the Creation Museum were taken from Ussher’s chronology. Because you know, one guy interpreting the Bible is so solid that nearly 400 years of scientific developments doesn’t really matter.

Who Killed Jesus?

Purdue has been full of events dealing with religion lately. Yesterday I ran into this group:
Some of my club members mentioned they were on Memorial Mall on Wednesday, so when I saw they were still there, I dropped by. One of my friends blogged about his reaction, which was different than mine since he grew up Jewish. He initially thought the event was going to be something anti-Semetic since Jews are often persecuted with the explanation that they’re the ones who killed Jesus.

I ended up talking to some of the people there for about an hour. They were very nice and thoughtful, definitely not extremists or anything. I was kind of amused because a couple recognized me – they’ve read my blog (hello!). I assume this is because the pastor that’s leading their Q&A session tonight (which is what this was advertising) is Brent Aucoin, who you might remember as the pastor who visited my presentation on the Creation Museum.

That being said, I still fundamentally disagreed with what they believed (big surprise, right?). Most of the stuff we discussed has been gone over a ton by other people already, so I’ll just touch on what I thought were some of the more interesting points.

1. I really need to brush up on my philosophy/theology. Everyone has their area of expertise, and mine is definitely the evolution/creationism debate. I don’t think someone should be expected to be an expert on everything, but I feel kind of stupid when I can’t coherently discuss religion on the spot. I definitely feel more comfortable when I have a moment to reflect, which is why I like blogging. Not signing up for a debate any time soon.

2. One of their main points was that they don’t believe that salvation is works based. The most important thing is to accept Jesus and believe in God, and once you do that you will live your life accordingly. Even if you’re a good person, you would go to hell because everyone in a sinner and rejecting God is pretty much the worst thing you can do. Obviously I don’t believe God even exists or that Jesus had any supernatural abilities (I doubt if Biblical Jesus even existed), which kind of makes the point moot, but let’s just say they’re right.

On one point, I agreed with them. You don’t want people doing good acts just to be rewarded, or avoiding bad acts just so they won’t be punished. You want people acting good for goodness’s sake. But that’s where the agreement stopped. I just can’t imagine a God so full of himself that the most important thing in the universe – punishable by eternal suffering – is not worshiping him. In their point of view, God is awesome so that is awful if you don’t see his beauty – but if it’s so important, why does he even give you the ability not to believe in him? God gave us free will and the ability to do evil things, or to reason and come to the conclusion that he doesn’t exist. He also knows everything that will happen in the universe, so he knows people will end up doing things that will damn them. So didn’t God therefore do the damning?

tl;dr, free will and omnipotence makes absolutely no sense.

3. Another point they made was about how Jesus sacrificed himself to us. A member brought up an interesting point at our meeting on Wednesday, so I asked them. Is it really a sacrifice if there are no consequences for Jesus? Jesus is God and knows that when he dies, he’s going to come back from the dead and ascend to heaven, so dying really doesn’t matter. It’s like this: if a policeman pushes someone out of the way of a bus and dies, that’s a sacrifice. He saved someone else’s life at the expense of his own. But if Superman pushes someone out of the way of a bus, there’s no sacrifice because he knows he’ll be totally fine.

Their answer was that the sacrifice wasn’t death, but being pulled away from God. Jesus took on all of our past and future sins, and that brought him as far away from God as possible, which was agonizing to him. …This still doesn’t make any sense to me. Jesus is God, so how can he be brought away from himself? Even if that was somehow possible, he still knows it’s all going to be okay, since he’s God and all and knows the plan, so any agony is only temporary and not really a sacrifice. They then admitted the holy trinity doesn’t really make sense to them, which was yet something else we could agree on.

While I don’t agree with their beliefs or their reasoning, I was happy that they could intelligently talk about things. I’ve run into far too many people who belief something just because that’s what their parents told them, and they’ve never given it any thought. These people are definitely thinking, even though I think they haven’t reached the correct conclusions. They’re promoting discussion rather than just talking at you, which is always a good thing.

I’m interested to see what they say at tonight’s Q&A session – I’m guessing it’ll be similar to the discussion I had with them. Unfortunately for you guys, I’m not going to be masochistic and sit through it for your reading pleasure because I’m going on a date (amazing, I know). Sorry – unlike Jesus, I only make so many sacrifices.

Twitter trending backfires on Christians

Apparently many Christians on Twitter were repeating the saying “No God, No Peace; Know God, Know Peace.” They were retweeting it to try to spread the word. Well, it became the top trending topic, but kind of backfired on them…
Yes, Twitter’s algorithm made “No God” and “Know Peace” trending topics, much to Christians’ chagrin. Whoopsie! Then I had to go start instigating things…

“Let’s hijack the trending topic, shall we? There is probably No God, so get over it and enjoy your lives #atheism“

And promoting my fellow instigators…

“Know god, no peace; No god, know peace. #atheism“

But if you want a really good laugh, go take a look at the “No God” thread. It’s mostly Christians freaking out that “No God” became a trending topic, even though it was their own fault. It’s quite amusing!

Feel free to join in in the tweeting!

Being gay is a choice, but religion is in your genes!

No, I didn’t suddenly make a big discovery while working in my genetics lab – you can thank House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) for the insight:

In an email, Boehner spokesman Kevin Smith said Boehner “supports existing federal protections (based on race, religion, gender, etc) based on immutable characteristics.” …”He does not support adding sexual orientation to the list of protected classes,” Smith continued.

What the hell, really? How many scientific studies do we need to throw at you ignorant bigots before you’ll accept that homosexuality has a genetic basis?! This is not a matter of opinion – homosexuality is not a choice. That assertion is usually enough to make me want to bash my head against a wall, but coupled with the ludicrous claim that religion is immutable? Yes, because people never ever change religions, and adopted children always grow up to be the faith of their biological parents. Thanks for submitting that Christian gene sequence to GenBank, really interesting to know a single point mutation can make someone phenotypically Muslim!

Yes, I know – sexuality is fluid. There are definitely cases of people who once identified as straight as later identifying as gay and vice versa. There are bisexuals whose attractions skew back and forth over time. But immutability shouldn’t be the sole deciding factor for what becomes a protected class. Even if people change their religion, gender, and sexual orientation, they shouldn’t be discriminated for it. Regardless, it’s obvious this man isn’t talking about fluid sexuality – he’s talking about homosexuality being a “choice,” and that what annoys me so much.

It terrifies me that people like this get elected to public office.

(Via Pandagon)

Reaching the Unreachable Children: An Open Letter to Richard Dawkins

Dear Dr. Dawkins,

I had the great privilege of attending your talk at Indiana University in Bloomington, IN on Monday the 12th. I am the co-founder and current President of the Society of Non-Theists, a student organization for atheists and agnostics at Purdue University (we forgive you for speaking at our rival). The God Delusion played a major part in encouraging me to be outspoken about my atheism, and I thank you for that. I was also incredibly excited to hear you speak about evolution, since I will be graduating this spring with degrees in Genetics and Evolutionary Biology and then starting my journey towards a PhD.

I am writing you because I was lucky enough to ask you a question in front of the audience, but you never answered. Here, to the best of my knowledge, is what I said:

“I had the misfortune of visiting the Creation Museum this summer. While there were many scary things there, the scariest was how it was full of children. When you see kids like this or those who are home schooled or going to religious school, they’re effectively being brainwashed. Is there anything we can do to teach them science, or are they a lost cause?”

You replied that the topic of brainwashed children put a bee in your bonnet, and talked for quite a while about how inappropriate it is to label kids as “Christian children” or “Muslim children.” You talked extensively about this topic in the God Delusion, and I agree completely. But because this is such an important topic, you seemingly got sidetracked and went on to the next question without answering mine. Some of my friends suggested that you sidestepped the question because you didn’t have a good answer, but I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and blame forgetfulness.

Usually I wouldn’t be so adamant about getting an answer, but as a freethinker and an evolutionary biologist, this question is particularly important to me. The cynic in me feels almost doomed when looking at these sheltered children. We all know how impressionable children are. A study by Randy Moore and Sehoya Cotner found that what students learned about evolution and creationism in high school was the most important factor in their future views on the subject. What young people are taught sticks, and it is very hard to undo such thorough brainwashing.

So what do we do?

We fight to keep creationism out of science classrooms in public schools, and we win our legal battles… but creationists just pull out their children. They sent them to private religious schools or homeschool them.

We promote evolution in museums across the country… but we can’t forcibly take children there. Instead, creationists build their own “museum” full of propaganda and lies for the sole purpose of indoctrination.

We make science oriented tv shows… but we can’t make them watch them. What would a creationist parent choose: Bill Nye (a personal favorite), or Veggietales? I know some religious families who don’t even own televisions at all, for the fear that their children are exposed to the evils of the outside world.

We can make pro-science video games like Math Blasters or Number Munchers… but we can’t make them play. The fact that I had such a hard time coming up with scientific video games isn’t a good sign either – where are we in that market? Theists have Charlie Church Mouse Bible Adventure, Left Behind… what do we have? Spore? That attempted to be able evolution, but was effectively Intelligent Design – and still had angry theists calling it evil anti-creationism propaganda.

We write books upon books… but will they ever reach these children? When I heard you were writing a skeptical children’s’ book, I was excited and then sad. Creationist parents aren’t going to buy that for their kids – its target audience is those who want to raise skeptical thinkers. Who knows if it would even be stocked in school libraries, or if a child would voluntarily choose it knowing his parent’s beliefs. Who knows if that child is even allowed to voluntarily choose a book, what with their parents’ constant surveillance. Look at Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials series, which actually included God and the supernatural, but was avidly boycotted because it spoke against dogmatism.

I guess I’m wondering if there’s any hope at this point. Do we write these kids off as a lost cause? Should we focus our efforts on the fence sitters, the liberal theists, the people who sort of maybe accept evolution but with God’s guidance or other types of woo? Or are we just missing some vital strategy, an approach we haven’t tried yet? Short of kidnapping or mind control (neither of which I support*), I’m not sure what we could do. That’s why I’m curious as to what you think – maybe with your experience, you’re more creative than I am.

Thank you,

Jennifer McCreight
jmccreig(at)purdue.edu
http://blaghag.blogspot.com

—

In all honestly, I doubt I’ll get a response. Even if he wasn’t currently flying around on a book tour, Richard Dawkins is a busy man and probably receives far too many emails every day…but it was worth a shot. Feel free to comment and add your two cents. Do you think there’s a solution?

*I hate including such ridiculously obvious disclaimers, but creationists absolutely love quotemining sarcastic statements. Actually, they’ll probably do it anyway. Oh well.