Movie Friday: Religion… not just INTELLECTUALLY bankrupt

I have a headache after watching this video:

No mention of the fact that the “Christian” United States and its ultra-capitalist system is what got the recession rolling in the first place. No mention of the complete contradiction inherent in the argument that people shouldn’t wait around for the government to help… they should just wait for God (who’s about 5000 years overdue – any day now though…). The only voice of reason got sandwiched in between the moron host and the more moronic priest who somehow manages to make arguments on both sides of his own point. The host’s final statement made me chuckle: they could have put something newsworthy on, but instead we talked to a priest who knows less about economics than he does about secularism (or Christianity, it seems – Jesus was definitely a socialist; “render unto Caesar” and all that…)

Secularism doesn’t make you poor, secularism makes you make decisions that are based on what is good for others rather than what it says in a religious tome. Can that socialist instinct take you too far? Absolutely. But right now we’re all living through what happens when capitalism allows to go unchecked.

I’m not smarter than these people because I’m an atheist; I’m an atheist because I’m smarter than these people.

Sometimes… some crimes… go slippin’ through the cracks

One of the frustrating things about doing this (blogging) is that there’s only 5 blogging days in the week (4 if you consider Movie Friday) and I don’t like inundating you with blog posts. Maybe once I am able to build a larger reader base I’ll be able to get away with it, but I think one post every day is probably enough. Because a lot of my content comes from articles in the news, there are a lot of stories that I’d like to write about but don’t make the cut for whatever miscellaneous reason. To illustrate what I’m talking about, here is the stuff that didn’t make it into its own post this week.

I’ve talked recently about the unbelievable stupidity of trying to pass religious-based “morality laws” that outlaw homosexuality. First of all it’s not even “immoral”, and second you can’t legislate the way people are born. Of course, nobody has told that to Zimbabwe, who is now arresting gay rights activists on drummed-up pornography charges and “insulting President Robert Mugabe”. Hey Mugabe – you’re a moronic pig-fucker who still breast feeds and wears Rainbow Brite pyjamas to bed. Maybe we should start an “Everybody insult Robert Mugabe” day. All this while the White House and the House of Representatives are trying to abolish “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”. Ever get the feeling some places are moving in opposite directions? Well have no fear, because we’ve still got homophobic assholes here in Canada. Let’s all join hands!

I was joking when I said women shouldn’t vote. Apparently Rabbi Elyakim Levanon reads my blog and doesn’t have a sense of sarcasm. He’s told the female members of his community that voting is a man’s job. He wants to prevent a circumstance wherein women would have different votes from their husbands. Good thing there’s still someone out there promoting “traditional family values”. Sheesh.

Yeah, it still sucks to be a woman in a theocratic country. An imam in Mali suggested that maybe women shouldn’t be religiously and legally required to obey their husbands, and the cry went up. Mali, which is Muslim, ought not to be confused with Malawi, which is Christian. They’re both asshole countries ruled by religious stupidity, but it’s a different kind of religious stupidity so the differences abound. The joke of course being that it doesn’t matter what god you believe in, you’re going to keep doing the same bigoted and abusive things to your women.

Gotta admit, it’s a step in the right direction. Zimbabwe is relaxing the tight grip that the government holds on newspaper publication. This is a good thing, as I talked about earlier this week. If you allow free media, you allow a robust opposition, which in turn allows tyrannical leaders (like Mugabe) to be cast down. Let’s hope this gains some steam. Maybe they’ll start writing about how Robert Mugabe likes to sniff the underpants of old ladies and dresses up as a Japanese school girl on weekends.

Ban internet porn? Two words: Good luck.

This is what I like to see. A school is not living up to its educational standards? Shut it down. So what if it’s a religious school? They have standards to maintain, and are staunchly refusing to adhere to provincial requirements. You don’t want to play by the rules? Great. Shut your doors.

I’m sure you think you know where I’m going with this story, but actually I’m all for it. A lot of good things have come out of the Islamic world, and those things are part of our shared history as human people. We should be aware of both the good and the bad that comes out of religion. We can take the good stuff (art, music, culture, mathematics) and leave behind the stupid parts (YahwAlladdha). Put it all in museums, and let people see all sides of Islam.

So yeah, that was all stuff from this week alone (and by this week, I mean the last week of May, because I write these things way before they go live). There are a few other things (the mosque bombing in Lahore, the rise in internet banking in the developing world, rugby becoming an integrated sport in South Africa) that I am saving and hope to write about in context with some other things. The take-home message is that there’s a lot going on out there. Lots of it negative, some of it actually wonderfully positive. I don’t have the time to write about it all, and I suspect you don’t have the patience to read my take on everything even if I did.

P.S. Bonus points about for anyone who recognizes where the title of today’s post comes from.

P.P.S. Robert Mugabe lost an arm-wrestling contest to a 6 year-old, and has Hanson posters all over his bedroom. C’mon, pig fucker! Arrest me!

Racist beating of black man in Courtenay, BC

This doesn’t exactly fill me with a feeling of safety:

A swarming attack on a black man in this Vancouver Island community began when one of the accused hurled a racial slur, a court heard on Thursday.

Three men riding home in a truck (way to buck the stereotype there, guys) came across a black man walking home from the gym. One of the guys in the truck called out, audibly, “there’s a nigger” as they drove past (you know, like anyone would in that situation). Understandably, the victim of the verbal assault (Jay Phillips) was angered by the word and threw his water bottle at the truck.

So the three men turned around, got out of the truck, and tried to beat Phillips up.

So Nova Scotia, you’re temporarily off the hook. Courtenay, BC is now (apparently) the most blatantly racist place in the country. Congrats, Courtenay. I’m sure that’s a legacy you’re proud of.

Hilariously, the whole thing was caught and posted on Youtube:

The high-kick that the one asshole throws made me laugh. The rest of the video just made me sad.

Once again, while I am deeply saddened (and frankly, more than a little frightened) by this event, I am not surprised in the least. As much as we like to go on and on about how racism is a thing of the past, it’s still alive and well. Of course the most bizarre thing about this particular story is that British Columbia (and certainly Courtenay, BC) doesn’t have a history of conflict with black Africans or African Americans. Black people coming to BC were more likely to be working-class or middle-class, and that exodus came much later than settlements like Chatham, Ontario or Africville in Halifax, NS. Maybe not so bizarre, if you consider the fact that these guys had probably never seen a black person before, except on television. They probably don’t know what the word “nigger” even means, or have any particularly well-organized hatred of blacks.

While this in no way excuses their unbelievably horrendous actions, this attack is a symptom of a larger problem – we live in a racist society. The assholes in the truck are undoubtedly bigots, and the fact that they mobbed and beat a guy based on their racism suggests they’re probably not the kind of guys you’d want to have around, but they’re an extreme reflection of an underlying cultural narrative that says that race is meaningful when judging a person’s worth. While it’s completely appropriate to notice that someone is from a different cultural background, and important to think about how that impacts their day-to-day life, it’s not the most important thing about them. It’s definitely not a cause of verbally and physically assault them.

I don’t live near Courtenay (it’s on Vancouver Island), so it’s unlikely I’ll be called for jury duty in this case or any that are connected to it. It’s too bad though, because I’ve been working on my Samuel L. Jackson impression:

Update: Pakistan’s “Everybody be Stupid Day” Facebook/Youtube Ban

You might remember a couple of weeks ago when I mentioned that Pakistan, reacting to a Facebook campaign to showcase the stupidity of bans on drawings of Muhammad, decided to up the ante of stupid and ban Facebook, Youtube, Flickr… basically the whole internet. Of course, this move completely missed the point of the event, which was not about attacking Islam, but about protesting the fact that people’s individual religious beliefs are somehow sacrosanct, and that non-believers must make allowances for other people’s superstitions. Why not a governmental cull of black cats, or a ban on the number 13? Those are obviously stupid, but throw belief in a magical sky-genie into the mix and all of a sudden “there are some things you just don’t question.”

Well Pakistan is a theocracy, and like many Muslim countries is run essentially by religious leaders. So when they saw a criticism of their superstition, they reacted by throwing a tantrum, taking their ball and crying home to their mommy. But, because they’re politicians, they made sure to use the opportunity to seize more political power:

Many observers and internet users in Pakistan now feel the authorities have gone too far and used the Facebook row as an excuse to bar any content deemed too critical of the government.

Political power and opposition have a bizarre relationship, something like a rebellious teen and a parental figure. While those in power hate being opposed and will do just about anything to get out from under the opposition’s thumb, the only way to ensure long-term stability is to have an effective opposition. It forces those in power to make concessions to their policies, ensuring the maximum benefit to the greatest number. But of course, nobody who has power likes to be reminded of that. The first step in establishing an iron fist to rule over people is to silence your opposition. The trick to this, of course, is that if you’re caught doing it, then people begin to cry ‘foul’. However, if you can spin it such that you’re infringing on free speech ‘for the good of the people’, you get carte blanche to do whatever you want. This is exactly what Pakistan has done.

Even after the government started allowing content to go through again, they kept their thumb firmly planted down on Facebook. It’s funny, I was among the number of people who derided Facebook when it first came on the scene. “I’ll never get Facebook,” I said “I’m not a 12 year-old girl.” It has since completely replaced my use of MSN messenger, and largely eliminated most of my non-professional e-mail use. And I’m not the only one who’s seeing this:

The research by Spot On Public Relations, a Dubai-based agency, says there are more than 15 million subscribers (from Arabic countries) to (Facebook). The total number of newspaper copies in Arabic, English and French is just under 14 million.

I realize that Pakistan is not an Arab country, but since the Arab world is largely Muslim, and Pakistan is a Muslim country, I hope it’s not too much of a stretch to conclude that Facebook plays a major role in how many people in Pakistan communicate with each other and gather information. Shutting down Facebook is then basically the same as banning free press, a textbook tyrannical move. All done in the name of “religious protection”. YahwAlladdha forbid anyone see anything that is critical of religious superstition.

Political opposition and free press are the lifeblood of an egalitarian society. Erosion of the fundamental right to free expression is the first step in establishing a tyrant government. And if that offends you, you don’t have to read it.

CFI Vancouver Skeptics ‘welcome’ Deepak Chopra

On Friday, June 4th, Vancouver was the recipient of Dr. Deepak Chopra – quantum mystic, magic thinker, and purveyor of high-quality woo. In the interest of promoting the cause of evidence-based science and thought, skeptics from Vancouver’s chapter of the Center for Inquiry were on hand to engage the audience on their way into the event. We were armed with flyers (which can be seen here), and voices of reason. For more background on the event, you are invited to read the pre-event coverage from this blog.

Why were we there?

To answer this question, I think it’s worthwhile to mention a couple of things we weren’t there to do.

We were not there simply to tell Dr. Chopra he is wrong; while he undoubtedly is wrong, it’s not exactly productive to shout that at people who are willing to part with $100+ dollars to hear the man speak. Besides, why should anyone believe us just on our say-so?

We were not there to smugly tell people that they are stupid for going to see Chopra speak; people are often willing to listen to leaders who sound like they have answers. If nobody challenges those answers, or the leaders are convincing enough, it’s easy to get caught up. Most likely the people who attend Dr. Chopra’s shows aren’t any more stupid than your average cross-section of humankind.

We were not there to ‘convert’ anyone to skepticism, or convince them to abandon their tickets and do something else; most people are skeptics in one sphere of their life or another – it’s how we discern truth from lies. The problem is that people don’t necessarily apply the rules of skeptical inquiry to all aspects of their life, and are happy to accept some things on faith rather than looking for evidence.

What we were there to do is to try and engender a little bit of cognitive dissonance in members of the audience. What we were there to do is try and encourage people to keep their thinking caps on while listening to Dr. Chopra’s ideas, and to ask “does this really make sense?” What we were there to do is demonstrate bodily that it is not okay to invent supernatural explanations for the important questions in life and then sell those as snake-oil cures to people who honestly thirst for knowledge and answers to the mysteries of the universe, and that there will always be people who will insist that claims about the world must be substantiated by evidence, not circular reasoning and invocations of unobservable phenomena.

What did we do?

An hour before the show was scheduled to start, members of CFI Vancouver, UBC and SFU Skeptics, and a few skeptical friends met at the Vancouver Public Library to gear up for the event. We had printed about 800 flyers, and had a few choice quotes wherein Dr. Chopra made specific claims about the natural world, the human body, or other physical phenomena that were demonstrably false. Dressed in our finest skeptical attire, we hit the sidewalk outside the Queen Elizabeth Theatre, site of Dr. Chopra’s presentation.

Skeptics congregate at Schroedinger's plant at the VPL

Skeptics congregate at Schroedinger's plant at the VPL

Since there are a number of possible entrances to the theatre, and we didn’t want anyone to miss out on the chance of getting a flier, we spread ourselves out along the sidewalk in small groups.

Happy skeptics, ready for action

Our strategy was simple: ask people if they were on their way to the show. If they were, we asked if they wouldn’t mind talking to us for a couple of minutes before going in. We put a flier in their hands, and briefly explained what we were doing there – namely, asking them to think very carefully about some of the things they were about to hear.

More happy skeptics

We were careful to be as respectful and polite as possible, wanting to avoid the association of anti-choice activists protesting outside of abortion clinics. Nobody was harassed, intimidated (as if anyone was intimidated by a pack of nerds) or assaulted – merely annoyed for a moment.

How did it go?

It’s hard to say definitively what impact, if any, we made on the crowd. We didn’t hold out any great hope that we’d cause a wholesale changing of minds, or cause a surge of skeptical thought to bloom in the audience on the weight of our hastily-assembled fliers with cherry-picked quotes and facts. To be perfectly honest, we were half expecting to be instructed to leave the premises by angry security guards. What we instead saw was that most people, when handed a flier, took one and glanced over it.

People reading the CFI flyers!

Some people gave it a cursory look, folded it up and put it into a pocket or a purse. Some laughed derisively (“don’t these fools realize that there is more to the world than what can be observed and measured with evidence?”) and threw them away. One particularly offended young woman tore hers into pieces. Some handed them back to us with a disgusted look – I had a couple immediately turn and walk away the moment I said the words ‘think critically’. A very small subset of the audience members took the time to enter into a dialogue with us about the things we were saying.

An audience member engaging our team

Again, we were very careful to be deferential and respectful of people, even though we disagreed with their ideas. There is a time for polemic, and this probably wasn’t it. Most of those who spoke to us were very smugly dismissive of the idea that science could be based on observation of real-world phenomena. I foolishly took the bait with my first interlocutor when he asked me if I thought that was solid ground I was standing on. I foolishly allowed him to take me down the quantum path (and what are molecules made of? Okay, and what is energy?) until I wasn’t able to give him a satisfactory explanation of the fundamental components of the universe, at which point he smirked and said “so there you go” and walked off. My moment to be smug came a few minutes later when I directed him and his wife to the entrance – the fact that matter is mostly empty space isn’t much of a consolation when you can’t transport yourself through a locked door. What I should have said was “it doesn’t really matter what I believe I’m standing on. Let’s look at the evidence and see what it says.”

I was more prepared for my second encounter with a man who immediately accused us of raping Native people and destroying the land on behalf of the pharmaceutical companies. I pointed out to him that not only were we not there representing any large corporation or business interest, but the very fact that we were alive to have the conversation was at least in part due to the fact that disease and disability are no longer widespread concerns in this country. This is not a picture of him, but of someone else who was talking to us because he didn’t have a strong opinion for or against Dr. Chopra and wanted to know what all the fuss was about:

Talking to the audience before the show

I’d like to share a couple of my favourite moments from the event. For some reason, I was wildly unsuccessful in giving away fliers. Everyone I tried to give one to either handed it back or, once they found out what it was, refused to take one. As a result, I spent most of my time checking on morale and observing what was going on. I saw a woman tearing up her flier, at which point her husband made a dismayed sound and ran back to a CFI team member and asked for another one – we think he didn’t want to be there to begin with.

The highlight of my evening was probably meeting Chris, a young (~25 y) Deepak fan who decided to figure out what we were all about. He asked us to produce a quote where Dr. Chopra said anything even remotely close to what we were claiming he represented. Our quote sheet was immediately thrust into my hand, and I supplied him with a line from Dr. Chopra in which he claims that all cells are immediately aware of every other cell in the body, and the universe at large (a gross misrepresentation of cell-cell signaling pathways). Chris immediately demanded that I prove that it was 100% false, and that it couldn’t possibly be true. This time, however, I was prepared. I asked Chris is anything could be 100% true to his satisfaction – Chris immediately informed me that it was impossible to know anything. I asked Chris to give me all of the money in his wallet, since he didn’t know if it was there or not. When Chris balked, I suggested that maybe a more reasonable standard than 100% certainty was possible and believable. It was very refreshing to converse with someone like Chris who was, despite their extreme rarity, one of those people who may believe in woo but is willing to concede a logical point. Where we left the conversation (so Chris could get to his seat before the show started) was that in cases where it doesn’t matter if you’re wrong – is there an underlying consciousness in the universe that we can’t understand? – then it was maybe not the worst thing in the world if you make up supernatural explanations; however, in matters of life and death, we deserve evidence to back up any claims. Chris said that he’d attend our next “Skeptics in the Pub” meeting and we’d pick up the conversation there.

Of course, the highlight of everyone’s night was when Deepak Chopra himself took a flier on his way into the theatre, read it, turned around, walked back over to the group and engaged in a pseudo-friendly discussion with our chapter head, Ethan.

Deepak's people read the flier

Say what you want about the man, but Deepak Chopra is not a coward – an intellectual midget definitely, but he was happy to come and talk to us without being angry or trying to drive us away… although he did suggest that skeptics were “too chickenshit” to debate him. I suggested that he cancel his talk and we would debate him in front of the audience; he didn’t seem to think that was a particularly good idea.

Concluding thoughts

Overall, it’s hard to say how the event went. We gave out almost all of the fliers, the majority of which were read and not immediately destroyed. I’m sure a kung-woo master like Dr. Chopra was able to immediately paint us as angry malcontents stubbornly standing as obstacles on the road to scientific progress. It was for this reason that we didn’t carry protest signs and picket, and that we happily and politely answered questions. Most people don’t know skeptics, especially in a woo-friendly city like Vancouver. It was important, therefore, that they see us as we’d like to think we are – a bunch of nerds who are fundamentally happy people, but who believe that tough questions deserve real answers.

I don’t know if there was a Q&A session, or if anyone in the audience piped up with a skeptical query. I doubt it. Again, our purpose was not to immediately change minds or “debunk” Dr. Chopra. Our goal was merely to put the tools for skepticism – facts and cognitive dissonance – into the hands of the audience. I hope at least some people walked away from the show thinking “I need to check the answers against facts.” Meeting people like Chris – people who are reasonable enough to accept a logical argument even if it doesn’t completely change their minds –  gives me hope that maybe there can be progress made against even the woo-master himself.

UPDATE: Thanks to PZ Myers for posting this on his blog.

I am not my ideas

A few years ago I met a girl at a party, and we hit it off pretty well. She was an anthropology student, and I had just finished reading Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything, so we were talking about how history intersects anthropology. Basically it was a night full of nerd foreplay. For a number of reasons that aren’t germane to the story, we ended up not dating, but stayed in contact anyway. One night we were talking and the discussion somehow turned to a debate on moral relativism vs. absolutism with me taking the ‘absolute’ side. The conversation went something like this (shortened for clarity):

Her: But what right do we have to go into another culture and tell them their beliefs are wrong?

Me: We interact and trade with those cultures. We are invested both in their economies and their populations, and so what affects them affects us. We have every right to express objections to things like government-sanctioned rape and female genital mutilation.

Her: But those are by our standards of right and wrong. They don’t necessarily see it as wrong.

Me: Okay, give me a circumstance in which rape could possibly be justifiable. Where any reasonable moral code could permit something like that to happen.

Her: See, this is why things never worked out between us!

I was stunned (mostly because that had nothing to do with the reason she had told me it wouldn’t work out). What I thought was a lively debate about two opposing positions on morality was, in her mind, a bitter personal fight. I had mistaken her spirited defense of her position for a deep level of interest in the topic. However, what she saw was me saying “your beliefs are stupid, and you are stupid by extension.” This couldn’t be further from the truth; at the time I thought she was actually reasonably smart (although that impression changed as I got to know her better). It was then that I realized something that is key to being able to have actual discussion and debate about issues.

We need to stop thinking of our ideas as reflections of ourselves.

Here’s what I mean by that. Cara (the girl) failed to separate criticism of her position from criticism of her as a person. As a result, when I expressed my position that refuted her position, I wasn’t so much saying that moral relativism was wrong, I was saying that she was wrong. But not just wrong about the topic, but a generally wrong person. The more I argued, and the more counter-examples I provided, the more insulted she became. Because I was unaware of this, I just kept going on in my debate (if I was interested in sparing her feelings, I would have taken the cop-out position that we’d just have to “agree to disagree”).

Now there were a whole host of other reasons I’m sure that Cara wasn’t exactly thrilled with me. We were talking online, and tone is very difficult to convey. I also tend to be a bit of an asshole, which is great when picking up girls at the bar, but not exactly endearing when having a debate. But the thing I took away was the idea that with many people it’s not possible to separate their ideas from their sense of self-worth. The Catch-22 of this whole thing is that one is often very reluctant to be rigorously critical of their self-concept, which then retards their ability to make good decisions about their closely-held ideals.

As an illustrative example, suppose my self-worth is tied into the idea that I am a popular person. It’s important for me to be well-liked by others and to fit in with the group. When I have to make a decision, the first thing I think of is whether or not those around me will approve. This isn’t necessarily a negative self-concept – fitting in with others is important to societal cohesion (imagine a world where nobody cared at all about others… deodorant sales would plummet). However, if I am not self-critical about this trait, I’m likely to be highly susceptible to peer pressure, both positive and negative. If I don’t say “well it’s good to be well-liked, but I’ve got to watch out for myself as well”, I’m probably going to go along with the crowd – possibly to a Justin Beiber concert. Furthermore, when someone says to me “hey man, Justin Beiber sucks. Why the hell are you wasting your money?”, I’m likely not going to be too receptive to that argument. Even though the idea of Justin Beiber might be completely neutral in my life, an attack on my decision to go to the show is an attack on my entire self-concept.

If, however, I am able to separate concert attendance from my most important sense of self-worth, I will be more able to dispassionately assess the idea. “Maybe I don’t have to pay $95 to see a mini Jonas Brother clone. My friends are important, but surely they won’t disown me for this one thing.” It also allows me to be more open to the idea that maybe doing what is important to others is important, but so is not going broke. Maybe sometimes I need to balance the wishes of others against my own needs.

This is a hyperbolic example, clearly. Self-worth is a much more complex psychological phenomenon than I’m able to illustrate here, but I hope the point remains clear. Ideas are good and useful things to have. However, some ideas are bad ideas – some ideas make you vulnerable to things that can hurt you. In Cara’s case, her idea that all morality is relative made her unwilling to accept the fact that things can be wrong, forcing her to argue on behalf of rapists. Nobody likes to lose an argument, obviously. The difference is how you react to being wrong. If you’re able to shrug it off and say “you know, this might be a better way of looking at it, and I have a lot to think about”, you’re more likely to walk away from losing an argument having learned something. If your reaction to losing is “if I lose this argument, it means that I am a bad or unfit person”, you’ll twist and turn and set up any number of cognitive dissonances to block yourself from even the possibility of learning.

I’m often wrong. I try to be wrong at least 3 times before I brush my teeth in the morning. It’s important to personal development to make mistakes and to learn from them. One of the most useful things about putting my ideas out there for everyone to see is that at various times, people disagree with me. Most of the people who read these are personal friends. I am lucky to have some very smart friends. If a smart person disagrees with me, my eyes light up. If they disagree and I can prevail upon them why my ideas are correct, then aside from the ego boost of winning an argument, I’ve got some supportive evidence that I might be on to something good. If they convince me that I’m wrong (i.e. I lose an argument), then I’ve learned something useful and it gives me an opportunity to reflect, refine my good ideas, and throw out the bad ones. It’s win-win for me: no matter the outcome of an argument, I become a better person.

There’s a scene in Kevin Smith’s movie Dogma where Rufus (played by Chris Rock) says to Bethany (the main character):

“I think it’s better to have ideas. You can change an idea. Changing a belief is trickier. Life should malleable and progressive; working from idea to idea permits that. Beliefs anchor you to certain points and limit growth; new ideas can’t generate. Life becomes stagnant.”

If we’re able to separate our ideas from how we see ourselves as people, it allows us to abandon bad ideas more easily. If, however, abandoning an idea also means abandoning our sense of self, any attack on that belief is going to be extremely emotionally jarring, and we’ll resist it at all costs. The first step towards making progress in any discussion of competing ideas is to make the debate about the idea, not the person.

What you missed this week: May 31st – June 4th

What were you, asleep or something? You missed:

So make sure you wake yer ass up next week for:

  • Separating one’s ideas from one’s sense of self-worth;
  • An update on the parade of stupid in Pakistan;
  • A racist attack in British Columbia;
  • A plethora of stories I just couldn’t get to; and
  • Christians showing us their financial acumen

It’s going to be a good week, so make sure to be here!

Movie Friday: The Christian Right in Canada

We can no longer afford to believe the lie that Canada is immune from the religious fervour that is ruining the United States.

It’s happening here too.

What can we expect when the Christian Right takes over? Goodbye free speech when it comes to discussion of religion. Goodbye freedom of religion (obviously). Goodbye personal freedoms of many kinds, as well as gay rights and abortion rights. Hello religious tests for political office, creationism in schools, and probably finding a way to throw God into the national anthem a couple more times.

Anyone who says that religion is harmless and is a personal choice that nobody is trying to force on anyone else, I say that you are talking out of your arse sir, and I would like you to teach me to do that trick.

The Pope comes soooo close to getting it right

Richard Dawkins has a really funny line about how Christianity is “better” than Hinduism because it’s much closer to recognizing the actual number of gods; but they overestimate by one. It’s amazing how tantalizingly close you can get to the truth with religion, but fail to make that final leap across the chasm of rationality (to borrow unashamedly from Kierkegaard).

After watching the Catholic church blame isolated pockets of individuals, the media, and finally “the gays” (it always seems to come down to them), Pope Benedict finally came close to actually acknowledging that the systemic sexual abuses taking place in the Catholic Church were the fault of… THE CHURCH:

Critics have previously accused the Vatican of attempting to blame the media and the Church’s opponents for the escalation of the scandal. But the Pope made clear its origin came from within the Church itself, and said forgiveness “does not replace justice”.

I’m not a demagogue. I am completely willing to recognize when someone I disagree with does something noble. Recognizing that the church had a role in the abuse and saying that having God’s forgiveness (note: evidence not shown) does not replace earthly justice is a marvelous and courageous admission. It takes a great deal of humility and respect for others to stand up and say “I have made a mistake, and the fault is mine.”

Which is almost what Benedict did here. Now I am not trying to suggest that Benedict (as his Clark Kent alter-ego, Cardinal Ratzinger)  himself is solely or even primarily responsible for covering up the sexual abuse, although there is evidence to suggest that his office was complicit. I am not expecting him to go out and own up for all of the abuse that’s ever happened in the church. However, there’s one final step that the Pope needs to take if he’s interested in being honest – he needs to stop blaming “Sin”.

Sin is a ridiculous ephemeral concept. It’s a disembodied entity that sneaks into the souls of righteous people and influences their acts. It’s like blaming the devil for possessing you and making you get drunk and beat your kids. Saying that sins within the Church are responsible for its actions is creating a non-corporeal scapegoat. It’s like Jeffy from Family Circus and his ghost pal “Not Me”. You can’t confront “Sin” and take it to task for its actions. You can’t remedy “Sin”. “Sin” is just out there, and there’s nothing to be done about it.

I’m waiting for the pope to recognize that wearing a cloak of impenetrable infallibility is going to lead to corruption. Insisting that the “good of the church” should trump doing the right thing is begging the question – how do you know that what’s good for the church is good for anyone else? What we see over and over is that the more power and secrecy a group has, the bigger the potential for abuse. That isn’t because of “Sin” or because of bad people who sneak in under the radar. It’s the inevitable outcome of an establishment that refuses to play by society’s rules and insists on its own superiority without evidence. The reason the RCC is catching all the attention right now is because it’s the biggest organized religious entity – I’d be shocked to learn it isn’t happening in other places.

As I said, I applaud the Pope for coming close to getting it right. His office’s unrepentant actions immediately following this pseduo-apology are contemptible and I am still no friend of Benedict, but I am willing to recognize when steps are made in the right direction.

Deepak Chopra comes to Vancouver

UPDATE: Write-up of the event and pictures are now posted.

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On Friday, June 4th, our fair city of Vancouver will receive author and spiritual guru Dr. Deepak Chopra, speaking at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre downtown. Vancouver’s Centre for Inquiry will be present before Dr. Chopra’s show on Friday to encourage audience members to think carefully about the claims that Dr. Chopra makes. We will be handing out flyers with some specific information to help get the wheels of thought turning, and answering any questions that we can. Here’s a few answers to questions you might have:

Who is Deepak Chopra?

Dr. Chopra is a trained medical doctor who began practicing transcendental mediation in the 1980s and since then has become a prolific writer and speaker. Some of his favourite topics of discussion are supernatural claims about the human mind, the intelligence of DNA, and the philosophy of “quantum consciousnes” – an attempt to introduce mysticism and metaphysical concepts into quantum physics. As someone with a background in medicine, Dr. Chopra spends a great deal of time discussing how his ideas are applied to human health, including the power of positive belief and the harmonizing of multiple “selves”.

Why are Deepak Chopra’s ideas wrong?

It is important to make the point that not all of Dr. Chopra’s ideas are “wrong” as such. Dr. Chopra advocates expanding human awareness to include the interactions between the body and the mind. Dr. Chopra says that the world is made up of interconnected systems that cannot be fully understood by just looking at one piece of the puzzle. These are perfectly reasonable ideas – human existence and the world in general are more complicated than can be explained by looking at only one facet. However, Dr. Chopra takes these ideas and stretches them far beyond reason, creating entirely unobserved (and indeed, fundamentally unobservable) forces and phenomena. To give credibility to these ideas, he borrows phrases from various scientific and pseudo-scientific concepts and attempts to explain them that way.

  • Quantum consciousness

“If you go to the very fundamental levels of activity in nature, you find that nature is a discontinuity; and even though our perception of the universe is that it is continuous, it is in fact going on and off at the speed of light.” – D. Chopra

Dr. Chopra is a great fan of quantum physics, due to its central tenet of uncertainty. Basically, quantum physics posits that at the atomic level it is not possible to determine the absolute position of an electron (incredibly tiny packets of energy that orbit around the nucleus of an atom), only the probability that it will occupy a given space. Furthermore, subatomic particles like electrons seem to “disappear” and “reappear” at different points in their orbits. From this phenomenon (observed, incidentally, using the scientific method), Dr. Chopra concludes that human consciousness exists independently of the “off and on”, and that explanations using forces in the observed world (the “on”) neglect the influence of unobserved things (the “off”). While it sounds like a nice idea, Dr. Chopra is conducting what is known as an “argument from ignorance” – we don’t know how something works, so we bring in supernatural forces as an attempt to “explain” it. The problem with this type of thinking is that any made up idea is equally possible, since there is no way to test it. Is Dr. Chopra’s theory about consciousness correct? We have no way of knowing, since his explanation invents forces that are by definition unknowable. However, in creating a theory for thought and existence based on a flawed understanding of the subatomic world (somewhat similar to saying that we can’t trust election results because we didn’t look at all the brain cells of the individual voters), we can be reasonably sure that whatever the answer to the question of consciousness is, Deepak Chopra doesn’t have it.

  • Biological science

“But arch materialism is just as superstitious as religion. Someone like (Richard) Dawkins still believes there are solid objects randomly colliding to haphazardly form more and more complex objects, until over the course of billions of years the universe produced human DNA with its billions of genetic bits.” – D. Chopra

Dr. Chopra is deeply misinformed when it comes to biology and evolution. Evolution is not the random collision of solid objects, nor is it the random progression from lower levels of complexity to increased levels of complexity. Evolution refers to the process by which forces in the external environment (for example, food shortages or changes in weather patterns) seem to “favour” certain expression of genetic mutations in a species’ population, leading to increased reproductive success of some individuals. Evolution is a process which has been observed in daily life (for example, antibiotic-resistant bacteria), in human history (the selective breeding of certain types of plants to make hardier fruits and vegetables, the domestication of dogs from the wolf), and natural history (patterns of types of life seen in fossil records). Since we know evolution to be certainly true, it is a useful way to hypothesize the origins of life on Earth without needing to rely on other explanations for which there is less (or no) empirical proof.

  • The human mind

“It’s my personal conviction that the brain was created by consciousness. There is no other viable explanation, because our current explanation, that the human brain evolved through random mutations, simply doesn’t hold water.” – D. Chopra

Once again, Dr. Chopra is deeply misinformed about the way that the brain and mind work. While he holds personal convictions that the brain is the creation of a “mind” process, he offers no evidence to support it other than the fact that it’s more complicated than he can understand. The problem with using the argument from ignorance is that you’re not allowed to simply invent whatever explanation you want. Most of us don’t know (in fullness) how the stock market works. We are more than happy to accept our ignorance and talk about the actions of “the market”, which is a euphamism for an incredibly complicated system. Many would agree that nobody really knows why “the market” does what it does. We are happy to use this slang term, understanding that it stands for the input of millions of people operating for any number of different reasons. Dr. Chopra would have us believe that “the market” is a real entity that exists beyond the observable world and influences the price of stocks. Would you trust an investment broker who told you that concentrating your positive thoughts on “the market” will cause your stock prices to change? Probably not. Once again, Deepak Chopra doesn’t have real answers to the complicated questions that make up the universe.

Why do we care about Deepak Chopra?

If he’s just another kook with wacky ideas, why bother paying him any attention at all? Why not just let him sell his books and have his talks? The problem is, he’s not just another kook. Deepak Chopra’s books sell millions of copies. He is featured frequently on the Huffington Post and on Oprah’s website. Tickets for this Friday’s event range from $115 to $200 per person. He is taking millions of dollars from people and giving them falsehoods in return. He is taking the hard work of dedicated scientists, doctors, and legitimate philosophers and distorting them to sell merchandise. In any other field we would call such a practice fraud. However, because of his high profile and the elusive nature of his claims, we instead call it “alternative medicine” or “mysticism”.

Because of his celebrity, people trust Deepak Chopra without closely examining the things he says. Since most people don’t completely understand quantum physics, biology, neurology, or medicine, they fail to see the glaring holes in the logic of Dr. Chopra’s claims. When he tells people that their bodies are products of their consciousness, that disease is an imbalance between the consciousness and the body, and that problems like cancer can be fixed with positive thinking, people trust that he knows what he is talking about. However, Dr. Chopra has no evidence whatsoever that the things he says are true. They might be (although with his flawed understanding of science, they likely aren’t), but he has offered no reasons to support them, merely relying on the fact that “we don’t know everything”. People abandon the treatments where the risks and benefits are known and have been tested for a system of thought which makes it your fault if you are sick and don’t get better. This is wildly unethical and totally ineffective.

Deepak Chopra in Vancouver

As skeptics, we think it’s important to challenge the pseudoscience and outright falsehoods that will be foisted on the audience on Friday. While Dr. Chopra has made his dislike for skeptics and scientific inquiry quite clear, on more than one occasion in fact, it is clear that like quantum physics, biology, neurology, and human physiology, Dr. Chopra is profoundly mistaken (or indeed misinformed) about what skepticism actually is. Far from merely being nay-sayers who villify those who “peer into the unknown” (many skeptics are astronomers, the archetype for peering into the unknown), skeptics are those who encourage the deliberate and careful appraisal of things we see in the world.

Skeptics know that the universe is a complex and beautiful place, filled with profound questions and mysteries. Human beings are curious and want real answers to those questions, and have discovered a method for discovering useful and practical explanations for many of these quandaries. It is by the application of this method, for example, that we know the cause of infectious disease isn’t an imbalance of bile; or a flux of “humours”; or the will of the wrathful gods. This method allowed us to travel to the moon, rather than seeing it as a giant eye that opens and closes once a month. This method produced computers, medicine, electricity, food, and any number of the things we take for granted that make our daily lives possible. It is by this method, and by this method alone, that we can separate facts from fiction. We observe, we test, we try to disprove, and at the end of this process we make our decisions based on what we see to be true. It is the skeptical position that claims about the universe, about the mind, about human health, about anything in the natural world should be subject to the same type of scrutiny that we use for anything else.

If, like us, you believe that science and medicine get the best results when they are based on evidence, not simply ideas dressed up in “sciency” clothes; if you want to see people given real answers to the fundamental questions of the universe; if you think that people with flawed ideas shouldn’t be allowed to take money from unsuspecting people, please join us on Friday as we try to encourage people to THINK about what’s being said. We’re starting at the Vancouver Public Library, and will be passing out flyers and answering questions between 6:00 and 7:30 as people arrive for the show.