At last! The Vatican takes action!

Finally, the church is beginning to clean up its act. The Vatican has announced that it is investigating three orders of nuns in Washington state — what perverted and revolting acts have these nuns committed to draw the ire of the Catholic church? I’m sure your imagination is working hard right now.

The Vatican says it’s following up on complaints of feminism and activism.

Oh, my god … heads will roll. They’ll be ostracized, exorcized, and excommunicatized. No mere buggery of children here, but feminism? Jesus is weeping in heaven above, and the angels are grounded with grief.

Sam Harris v. Sean Carroll

The discussion is interesting. Sam Harris recently and infamously proposed that, contra Hume, you can derive an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’, and that science can therefore provide reasonable guidance towards a moral life. Sean Carroll disagrees at length.

I’m afraid that so far I’m in the Carroll camp. I think Harris is following a provocative and potentially useful track, but I’m not convinced. I think he’s right in some of the examples he gives: science can trivially tell you that psychopaths and violent criminals and the pathologies produced by failed states in political and economic collapse are not good models on which to base a successful human society (although I also think that the desire for a successful society is not a scientific premise…it’s a kind of Darwinian criterion, because unsuccessful societies don’t survive). However, I don’t think Harris’s criterion — that we can use science to justify maximizing the well-being of individuals — is valid. We can’t. We can certainly use science to say how we can maximize well-being, once we define well-being…although even that might be a bit more slippery than he portrays it. Harris is smuggling in an unscientific prior in his category of well-being.

One good example Harris uses is the oppression of women and raging misogyny of the Taliban. Can we use science to determine whether that is a good strategy for human success? I think we can, but not in the way Harris is trying to do so: we could ask empirically, after the fact, whether the Taliban was successful in expanding, maintaining its population, and responding to its environment in a productive way. We cannot, though, say a priori that it is wrong because abusing and denigrating half the population is unconscionable and vile, because that is not a scientific foundation for the conclusion. It’s an emotional one; it’s also a rational one, given the premise that we should treat all people equitably…but that premise can’t claim scientific justification. That’s what Harris has to show!

That is different from saying is is an unjustified premise, though — I agree with Harris entirely that the oppression of women is an evil, a wrong, a violation of a social contract that all members of a society should share. I just don’t see a scientific reason for that — I see reasons of biological predisposition (we are empathic, social animals), of culture (this is a conclusion of Enlightenment history), and personal values, but not science. Science is an amoral judge: science could find that a slave culture of ant-like servility was a species optimum, or that a strong behavioral sexual dimorphism, where men and women had radically different statuses in society, was an excellent working solution. We bring in emotional and personal beliefs when we say that we’d rather not live in those kinds of cultures, and want to work towards building a just society.

And that’s OK. I think that deciding that my sisters and female friends and women all around the world ought to have just as good a chance to thrive as I do is justified given a desire to improve the well-being and happiness of all people. I am not endorsing moral relativism at all — we should work towards liberating everyone, and the Taliban are contemptible scum — I’m just not going to pretend that that goal is built on an entirely objective, scientific framework.

Carroll brings up another set of problems. Harris is building his arguments around a notion that we ought to maximize well-being; Caroll points out that “well-being” is an awfully fuzzy concept that means different things to different people, and that it isn’t clear that “well-being” isn’t necessarily a goal of morality. Harris does have an answer to those arguments, sort of.

Those who assumed that any emphasis on human “wellbeing” would lead us to enslave half of humanity, or harvest the organs of the bottom ten percent, or nuke the developing world, or nurture our children a continuous drip of heroin are, it seems to me, not really thinking about these issues seriously. It seems rather obvious that fairness, justice, compassion, and a general awareness of terrestrial reality have rather a lot to do with our creating a thriving global civilization–and, therefore, with the greater wellbeing of humanity. And, as I emphasized in my talk, there may be many different ways for individuals and communities to thrive–many peaks on the moral landscape–so if there is real diversity in how people can be deeply fulfilled in life, this diversity can be accounted for and honored in the context of science. As I said in my talk, the concept of “wellbeing,” like the concept of “health,” is truly open for revision and discovery. Just how happy is it possible for us to be, personally and collectively? What are the conditions–ranging from changes in the genome to changes in economic systems–that will produce such happiness? We simply do not know.

The phrase beginning “It seems rather obvious…” is an unfortunate give-away. Don’t tell me it’s obvious, tell me how you can derive your conclusion from the simple facts of the world. He also slips in a new goal: “creating a thriving global civilization.” I like that goal; I think that is an entirely reasonable objective for a member of a species to strive for, to see that their species achieves a stable, long-term strategy for survival. However, the idea that it should be achieved by promoting fairness, justice, compassion, etc., is not a scientific requirement. As Harris notes, there could be many different peaks in the moral landscape — what are the objective reasons for picking those properties as the best elements of a strategy? He doesn’t say.

I’m fine with setting up a set of desirable social goals — fairness, justice, compassion, and equality are just a start — and declaring that these will be the hallmark of our ideal society, and then using reason and science to work towards those objectives. I just don’t see a scientific reason for the premises, wonderful as they are and as strongly as they speak to me. I also don’t feel a need to label a desire as “scientific”.

Maybe he was just doing research

George Alan Rekers is a fairly well-known anti-gay activist. He’s one of those scientific types who claims that being gay is curable, is best known for his claim that adopted children of gay couples are more prone to suicide, and is also one of the founders of the Patriarchy Research Council, with James Dobson. Oh, and of course he’s a Christian minister.

He just got back from a ten-day European tour — crusaders for heterosexuality deserve a break now and then, too — when it was discovered that he had hired a “rent boy” for the trip. He had picked the young fellow out from a web site that describes his sexual attributes and offered explicit services for pay, but Dr Rekers said he just hired him to…”lift his luggage”. I am unfamiliar with that euphemism, but I’m sure it was fun.

To even greater amusement, it is also revealed that Rekers, staunch opponent of adoption by gay couples, adopted a child — a 16 year old boy.

They hypocrisy is strong in this one.

Who to blame for the oil spill?

Everyone knows by now that there has been a catastrophic oil platform disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, the biggest oil spill in American history…and it is still spewing and people are still talking about expanding offshore drilling. The actual causes of this accident stem from deregulation and exceeding legal restrictions, but you know, that assumes that no one wanted this environmental disaster to occur; we are presuming that it actually is a horrible accident.

It takes a mind unfettered by the constraints of reason and evidence to assume otherwise. It requires the brain of Rush Limbaugh.

The cap and trade bill was strongly criticized by hardcore environmentalist wackos because it supposedly allowed more offshore drilling and nuclear plants. What better way to head off more oil drilling and nuclear plants than blowing up a rig? I’m just noting the timing here.

Limbaugh’s official transcript is different (don’t ask me why), and even crazier — he babbles about SWAT teams sent down to the Gulf and Al Gore inciting civil disobedience to further his crazy claims.

I think he’s been reading too many Michael Crichton novels.

“Hello, My name is Herb Grossman”

It’s hard to find something dumber than Kent Hovind, but here you go: the website of Herb Grossman, trashevolution. It’s what Hovind could have produced if he’d been an alcoholic gay man in denial. He has a rambling, mostly incoherent set of pages that he claims disprove evolution, but if you read just one, it should be his page on homosexuality. It doesn’t really exist, you know, although he has been feeling supernatural homosexual urges for years.

No one has to be a homosexual, because—

—Homosexuality is a Cruel Deception,

and you should not worry about possibly being a homosexual, because there is no such thing–homosexuality is an evil supernatural trick! The key is to fight it, and the sooner the better. I still sometimes get supernatural “urges” towards perversions or homosexuality, but by immediately rejecting “it” (both physically and mentally), “it” goes away.

What I write or say concerning belief in evolution being a major encouragement towards homosexuality is not meant to win some popularity contest. Some of you will laugh and think I am stupid for writing this, but the shoes I have walked in–the years of aggravation while fighting off the cause of homosexuality–have given me a certain amount of sympathy for the homosexual and a hatred for the way evolution is such a big factor in keeping many of them trapped in their unfortunate perversion. It would be a crime for me to know what I know and not do something, because I thoroughly believe that many people will benefit from knowing of the troubles I’ve been through and will be inspired to avoid or get out of the homosexual trap

He never does get around to explaining how evolutionary biology contributes to homosexuality, and after reading about his miserable life with two angry divorces, 35 years of alcoholism and gambling addiction, I’m thinking he’s about the last person I’d want advising me on how to live a good life. Instead of actually addressing anything about evolution or homosexuality, though, what Mr Grossman does next is recite a litany of “supernatural” events that occurred to him and which prove there is a god. Here’s my favorite of his examples:

I had several situations where I would be sitting and think of something good I could do, and a big foam-rubber-like hand would then pat me on a shoulder as if approving of my thoughts. Was an invisible person standing beside me? Some supernatural person was–and I was inclined to think “God,” but I now suspect it was really someone conditioning me towards accepting supernatural deceptions.

Did I mention that he was a long-term alcoholic? Yes, I did. This is what most of his supernatural events are: imaginary incidents, bleary fantasies of seeing things that weren’t there. And then, finally, he ties this all back to his ideas about homosexuality (but not evolution):

It wasn’t long before I fell into about three months of doing perverse, homosexual acts with invisible, supernatural people/beings* Strong thoughts and sensations would get things started, but I was not the cause–no pornography used. Somebody had control of me! (I did meet up with some visible demonic types, but those encounters, although weird, were not of a homosexual nature).

*I have never acted in any perverted/homosexual manner with any man or boy, nor felt any attraction/sensation towards the same. However, I am not claiming total innocence on my part, as I must admit to some perverse actions (sometimes with use of pornography) in my past that I am ashamed of (I wish I knew then what I know now). Looking back, I suspect those past actions likely made me an attractive target to the supernatural “persons’ that drive the homosexual deception system. To be fair, though, I realize there are many social forces and situations that might condition a person to accept the homosexual deception. and I do not doubt that some people have fallen into the homosexuality trap without having prior perverse activities:

What a sad, repressed, confused little man. He never felt any attraction towards other men…he just fantasized about homosexual acts with invisible people. And has so little ability to distinguish the imaginary from the actual that he thinks those dreaming encounters were real, but at the same time not real enough to count as gay impulses.

The other sad thing about his series of articles is that he’s addressing them to “Mr. or Miss Teenager of America.” He’s trying to reach out to youth and convince them that he has all the answers, but I can guess what young people will think: “Ewww. Creepy old loser.”

A pipe dream of proper priorities

This is an education plan I could get behind.

One additional requirement, besides diverting reasonable amounts of money into education: demand improvements in quality. Not this misbegotten accountability of No Child Left Behind, but shakeups in how school boards manage budgets; remove the elected officials from the business of dictating pedagogy and content, and let the qualified professionals design curricula that actually works. I listened to the video and just felt a sense of dread at the thought of the Texas Board of Education suddenly flush with new money and deciding to buy Bibles for every child, or something similarly absurd.

The Shroud of Turin is clearly fake…so why is the Pope worshipping it?

When an old thread is suddenly resurrected, it’s interesting to try to guess why. Every time Kent Hovind gets a little bit of press, his weird fans start googling his name, and presto, they stumble onto one of my old threads and start waxing indignant. The latest zombie thread is about the Shroud of Turin, and I can guess what has prompted people to start digging on the web for info: that goofy ol’ Pope Ratzi is genuflecting before the Shroud.

He said that keeping up that hope is the message of the Shroud of Turin, in which disciples see their sufferings “mirrored” in the suffering of Christ, CNA reported.

No, no, no. That’s not the message of the Shroud. It’s a much more reassuring one for the papacy: the moral is that even the cheesiest, most absurd con game can be kept going for centuries if it involves religion. That’s the message of hope the Catholic hierarchy can take from a fake relic.

Speaking of hope…look at this other entrepreneurial opportunity: for a mere 57€, there is an organization that will light a candle for you at Lourdes, that other long-running, lucrative fraud.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it…

…is to work on uprating this video:

You may recall that today the Mormons are trying to push up the rankings of a truly stupid video which argues that the fact that someone believes in something fervently means it must be true. Don’t bother watching the Mormon video — in fact, avoid giving it any more traffic — and instead follow this link to the Thunderf00t video and click on the “Like” button to vote it up, and also leave a comment. The more input, the better. We don’t quite have the numbers of the Mormon church, so spread the word and get more people to join in.