Eyes In The Voting Booth

When I walk behind the curtain with my ballot in my hand
There is no one standing looking over me
Why a ballot must be secret, I am sure you understand,
And agree that it’s the way it ought to be
If a stranger or a neighbor could be standing right beside me
Or my union or employer could take notes
Or my pastor, priest, or rabbi could decide they need to guide me
One might wonder who was really casting votes
But in all too many places, while you’re voting in seclusion
Jesus watches you, and helps your soul to search;
The first amendment builds a wall preventing such collusion
So it’s time to get our voting out of church!

Over at our new friend Blue Collar Atheist, Hank Fox writes about the all-too-common phenomenon of voting in churches. It really isn’t a stretch at all to think that the presence of religious symbols would have an effect on voting; something as simple as a photograph of eyes on a wall has effects on people’s behavior. And there is not a lifetime (for some) of experience with those eyes, like there is for the religious symbols, to move behavior in a particular direction.

As Hank Fox notes, it is not unusual for churches to have explicitly held positions on ballot issues. Given the possibility (at least!) of conflict of interest, there is every reason to eliminate the practice of voting in churches.

Re: “Ungodly Discipline”

The church that runs the boarding house where little girls are beaten
Finds the media attention rather odd
It exemplifies the problem with America today—
We put little children’s safety over God.

The republicans out courting votes, to energize their base
Call the global warming scientist a fraud
“We are taking back the country from the liberals, because
They trust scientific findings over God.”

A polygamist in prison, on a hunger strike for days
Thinks his trial was a ludicrous façade
And the problem with humanity is obvious to all
We’ve been following the law instead of God.

As I look through all the stories I see daily in the papers
I see we use our language rather oddly
To describe the sick behavior that religions may engender
We too often use the adjective “ungodly”

thoughts, after the jump:
[Read more…]

Arrest Of “Christian Warrior”

Jealously, Zealously,
Oregon Terrorist
Cody Seth Crawford, was
Talking with God;

Whether religion, or
Psychopathology,
Torched up a mosque, in his
Christian Jihad

Crawford, a self-described Christian warrior, told an officer on his Dec. 14 arrest (for unrelated charges), “You look like Obama. You are a Muslim like him. Jihad goes both ways. Christians can jihad too.”
source

He’s being held for psych evaluation, and prosecutors argue he is a flight risk.

I feel sorriest for his 5-yr-old son.

The Politics Of Religious Identity

The majority of Christians have no beef with evolution;
They are perfectly accepting of the facts.
They may say, “it’s how God did it”; it’s an elegant solution,
And it’s how the sane majority reacts.

But it puzzles me immensely that so many are aligning
With the anti-science faction on their fringe
Who use Genesis as text to show the fact of God’s designing
Though their evidence and logic make one cringe

And despite their disagreement over how to read the Bible,
Over teaching it as science in our schools,
The majority stays silent. I suspect it might be tribal,
And “protect your own” is chief among the rules.

With beliefs in disagreement, but “we’re Christians” all the same
It’s the labels now determining the roles
So they vote against their interests, and it really is a shame
When it’s “onward, Christian soldiers” to the polls.

With the one nominally pro-science Republican candidate now polling at about 1%, behind a herd of creationists, I begin to doubt the surveys that say biblical literalism is a tenet of a very small fraction of Christians. Of course, in a Venn diagram, that small fraction nicely overlaps the most likely voters in the Republican base, so if unlikely voters are also unlikely to talk to pollsters (I love talking to them. I ask them questions.), the polls are likely to be extremely biased at this point.

I hope that is the case. If the polls are representative, then an awful lot of people are currently planning to vote against the things they themselves believe. Why? Perhaps because they label themselves “christians” before they label themselves pro-education, or rational, or independent, or whatever. As vastly different as two people might be, as vastly different as their belief systems might be, if they both identify first as “christian”, a creationist has a foot in the door. Throw in years of identity politics and punditry, and well-educated people will vote against their interests, and against the interest of the country.

When God Intervenes

In the spirit of the Plantinga comments from earlier today, one from the old digs (With sincere apologies to Bob Dylan):

So I was watching a video interview of Dr. Francis Collins, and found it thoroughly depressing. Reporter Dan Harris does a good job, but Dr. Collins is utterly frustrating. We get the “God gave us two books” bit, where both the bible and the actual evidence of the universe around us are given equal footing (even though he doesn’t entirely understand the former). “How could that possibly be a conflict of truths?”, we are asked. Apparently, when the bible and the universe appear to disagree, that must be a case of Collins not quite understanding the bible.

The conflict between Genesis and science leads to “it was not a textbook of science!“–so, when the two collide, it looks like the bible is the one that gives. But…”Once you’ve accepted the idea of a God who is the creator of all the laws of nature, the idea that God might at unique moments in history, decide to invade the natural world and suspend those laws, doesn’t become really a logical problem.” So at least with regard to the story of Jesus, looks like science has to give. And sure, once you have gone all the way to believing in an interventionist god, any subset of that belief is, in comparison, small change.

But… can Collins assure us that his own work on the Genome Project (for instance) is not one of those unique moments in history? Perhaps everything that he has found is not the way things really are, but only the way things are while god suspends the laws; once we have accepted the idea of intervention, and the notion that we are as mortals inadequate to determine which are the laws and which are the exceptions, any scientific conclusion we come to must necessarily, explicitly, include some version of “if that’s ok with God, that is.” Or is Dr. Collins claiming to be able to know for certain that god is not mucking about with his data?

The scientist told me
He said it so well:
The secret to life, son,
It’s all in the cell—
The key to our essence
It’s there in our genes
Except when it isn’t… cos god intervenes.

Within every cell, son,
The scientists proved,
Sub-cellular structures
And things that they moved
Molecular transport
Like little machines
Except when it isn’t… cos god intervenes.

We know, even Darwin
Said it all looks designed
But natural selection
Is all that we find
With blind evolution
Directing the scenes
Except when it doesn’t… cos god intervenes

He’d worked on The Project
From when it began
The one that’s decoding
The genome of Man
And Collins knows science,
And he really knows genes
Except when he doesn’t… cos god intervenes

In the journals of science
The write-ups will change
There’ll be an addition
A little bit strange
Cos in the conclusions
The asterisk means
“Except when it doesn’t… cos god intervenes.”

A cure for depression
Might seem to work well
In a medical journal
The researchers tell
“It stops oxidation
Of monoamines*
*Except when it doesn’t… cos god intervenes”

The worst of disasters
We call “acts of god”
The faithful believers
Must think that it’s odd
With whole coastal regions
In smashed smithereens
Is that what it look likes … when god intervenes?

We study the genome
We study the prayer;
About intervention,
We find nothing there.
We find antibiotics
And look for vaccines
Cos no one can count on… when god intervenes

The methods of science
Have practical worth
We don’t look to heaven
But merely to earth
There’s one or the other
There’s no in betweens
It cannot be science… when god intervenes.

Heckuva Job, God

Either God is such a duffer
That He’s left us all to suffer
Through omnipotent incompetence and falsely random chance
Or He’s outsourced pain and hatin’
To His alter-ego, Satan
So He’ll dodge responsibility and let the devil dance.
Is He callous and uncaring
Or just really bad at sharing?
Either way, it seems our suffering is had at his behest
So Plantinga wants to gulp a
Bitter cup o’ Felix Culpa:
Though God punishes His children, it is all done for the best.

This morning, Jerry Coyne gets around to reacting to Dennett and Plantinga’s back-and-forth on God and evolution. Turns out, Plantinga says we are living in a “best possible world”, which of course turns out to require a great deal of suffering.

I really wish the various different arguments for God would get together and hammer out their mutual disagreements. I mean, the ontological argument starts with “if I can conceive of a great thing, it exists in my thoughts–and since an even greater thing would exist not merely in my thoughts, then this greater thing must necessarily exist in reality.” (yes, I have overly distilled it). So, Plantinga, if our world, suffering and all, is a best possible world, what does that say about being able to conceive of a world where David Attenborough would not point out that a parasitic worm can burrow into a child’s eye, eating it and blinding him.

Maybe this is the best possible world for parasitic worms.

Understanding Fail

Via the Digital International Atheists Group (@DIAGroup on twitter), a letter from Don Boys. I’m sure it’s only a matter of time until PZ posts it in comic sans, but I’m going to use it here as a reason to post an old favorite.

First, the letter:

Tell us that you do or do not believe the unsupportable, even outrageous teaching that nothing created everything. I promise not to laugh out loud–maybe only a snicker or two. And don’t try to flimflam us common people with scientific jargon, but make your points in clear English.

Tell us how all the scientific laws evolved such as gravity, inertia, the First and Second Laws, laws of planetary motion, etc. How does a scientific law evolve? If they did not evolve, where did they come from?

Did the evolution of those laws precede or follow the Big Bang?

Can you provide any example of an explosion resulting in order?

Tell us how life first formed on this planet made up entirely of rock? All atheists want to sit down beside

Darwin’s warm little pond and watch the first forms of life, but I demand to know much more than that if I’m expected to consider the idea has any possibility.

Do you, or do you not, believe in spontaneous generation? No honest scientist will agree to that fable.

Where are the ancestors of insects?

Why are meteorites not found in ancient rocks? Could it be that the rocks are not ancient?

Tell us how men and women evolved at the same time in history at the same location? What if “early man” had been all male!

Which evolved first, the mouth, the stomach, the digestive system or the elimination system? What good is a mouth if there is no stomach or a digestive system and what good are the three without an elimination system?

Tell us why we are here and where we go when death finally comes for us? Why have people all over the Earth since the beginning of time been concerned with that concept?

What happens if you are wrong and I am right? After all, any real scholar will admit that possibility.

Since the God of the Bible is real and eternity is in everyone’s future, don’t you think it might be wise and safe to consider this issue more carefully? If it is only possible that there is a sovereign, all-powerful God out there, then that is the most staggering truth ever faced by any mortal, and that truth will affect every person on the face of the Earth.

Is atheism really worth the risk? Eternity is a long time to be wrong. If I am wrong about eternity then it costs me nothing, but if atheists are wrong, they have lost everything, including their souls.

If you think there is not a word there that hasn’t been tried before and found wanting, you’d be right. Ignorance, more ignorance, and yet more ignorance, with Pascal’s Wager as the cherry on top.

My favorite, though, is the bit about men and women evolving separately. It gives me such a warm feeling inside to know that there are people out there so intent on not understanding. Oh, and it gives me the chance to tell you the story of Lonely Percy.

Percy would wander for years at a time;
He was terribly sad and incredibly lonely—
Percy was looking for love, but too bad;
The world had, so far, evolved male creatures only.

Percy was restless, and anxiously watching,
He knew what he wanted; he wanted a wife.
(Although, since the female had not yet evolved,
He had never seen women in all of his life!)

For long generations, his forefathers sought
For some womanly tenderness, softness, and mercy,
But cold evolution denied them their wish;
Now the burden was borne by poor, motherless Percy.

From Grand-dad to Father, from Father to Son,
Generations would pass, without calling for sex.
I haven’t a clue how they managed to do it;
The method, it seems, is a little complex.

Percy has walked tens of thousands of miles
In search of a hopeful mutation or two.
You see, he has parts that he thinks may be useful,
Which haven’t, as yet, had a damned thing to do.

Far away, on the shores of a vast, distant ocean,
A small population is camped by the water,
Where all by themselves, they just sit there evolving,
Granny to Mother, and Mother to Daughter.

Someday, perhaps, as he wanders and wanders,
Percy could find, with a great deal of luck,
He may stumble upon this remote population,
And finally end up with someone to love.

And On The Eighth Day, God Created Porn

God made sex and God made pleasure
God made love, and God made lust
These are God’s most precious treasures—
These fill God with pure disgust.

God made tongues, and God made fingers
God made hair, and God made skin
If by chance your touch should linger
You’ve just committed mortal sin.

God made our imagination
And may have made it all too well
God made man love masturbation
Then used it as a path to hell

It must be Sunday; CNN’s Belief Blog has a long article up. This one is on christian counseling programs to overcome pornography addiction.

Though controversial in secular circles, much of the evangelical Christian world has been cheering this relatively new kind of therapy. Many believers, including many Christian leaders, consider it a powerful tool for fighting what they say is one of the modern church’s biggest problems: porn addiction.

It is, as I said, a long article, covering new approaches, criticisms, the online “xxxchurch” mission, and more.

It’s interesting; while [some, fundamentalist] christians [like, say, most of the GOP presidential candidates] love to give god, and not evolution, credit for human nature, when that human nature includes lust, porn-viewing and masturbation, that can’t possibly be god’s work. Whether Satan or evolution, turns out omnipotence isn’t what it’s cracked up to be.

Jennifer, Jennifer

Ok, that last Headline Muse was mostly to set up this one, from the old blog. The pope seems to be responding to the social situation in Spain–maybe the sacred and the mundane selection pressures are causing the church to evolve… anyway, the real world is where the effects are felt.

Jennifer, Jennifer, got herself pregnant,
The poor, irresponsible slut.
See, boys will be boys, so it’s up to the girls
To be moral, and keep their legs shut.
But Jennifer, Jennifer, couldn’t be bothered;
She led her young Billy astray.
They met, after classes, at Jennifer’s house,
And now there’s a kid on the way.

Jennifer, Jennifer, wants an abortion—
She says she’s too young for a baby—
But the law of the land says abortion is murder;
The answer is no, and not maybe.
See, murder is murder; we cannot condone
The destruction of innocent life.
And Billy, of course, is an innocent, too,
And he’s much, much too young for a wife.

So Jennifer, Jennifer, finds herself caught
In the view of a watchful Big Brother,
And Country and Church have a task on their hands—
How to keep the babe safe from its mother.
If murder is murder, for fetus or child,
Then surely assault is assault;
A fetus is damaged by drinking or smoking,
And all of it, Jennifer’s fault.

If Jennifer, Jennifer, falls down the stairs
Then the baby inside could be harmed;
And since that poor child is a ward of the state
It is right we should all be alarmed!
So Jennifer, Jennifer, needs to be safe
For the sake of the babe in her womb;
To keep the poor innocent safe from all harm,
Let’s keep Jennifer locked in her room.

But Jennifer, Jennifer, isn’t the first
Nor the last to be pregnant, you see.
The task that’s before us—protecting our children—
Is crucial, I think you’ll agree.
With the passing to law of my modest proposal,
I honestly think we’ll prevail.
It’s simple: Each woman who finds herself pregnant
Must spend the next nine months in jail.

Jennifer, Jennifer, shielded from harm
In a cell with a toilet and cot
With a closed-circuit camera, an unblinking eye,
For the safety of Jennifer’s tot.
When at last you deliver your new baby boy
We’ll whisk you right out through the door;
We care about kids while they’re inside your womb—
Once they’re out, we don’t care any more.

…

And Jennifer, Jennifer, can’t find her Billy—
Besides, he’s too young for a wife—
She weighs her alternatives, looks down each road…
And reluctantly takes her own life.

And the church says a prayer for the baby unborn
And a heartfelt and tearful farewell.
But Jennifer, Jennifer, so says the church,
Will be heading directly to hell.