Engaging silly beliefs in multiple ways

John Wilkins discusses the utility of believing in nonsense. He knows some members of a branch of the Plymouth Brethren down there in Australia; they’re a pretty distinctive sect here where I live, too. The interesting thing about them is their intentional isolation. They don’t proselytize, they don’t even talk much to us outsiders, and as John says, these are probably survival tactics for the sect — silly beliefs can flourish if you only talk to other people who share the same silly beliefs.

So what do you do when your opponent avoids engagement?

What does this mean for practical purposes? How do we counter these false beliefs? There is no simple answer. In the short term we can insist that our functional bureaucracies and social institutions do not give credence, but that will only harden those who deny the facts in their beliefs. At best it will slough off the fence sitters, and reduce the core denialists to a rump. That is one good thing, but we want people to face reality when it really matters. A better, but longer term solution is to insist that education teaches not the facts, but the methods by which we understand those facts, in order that people can develop their cognitive stances appropriately. This denies the next generation of denialists their replacements, until they become at best an extremely small minority. Education is the solution, which the denialists well understand. This is why we have objections to even discussing these “controversial” matters in schools, and why the denialists (whether of evolution, global warming, or whatever) continuously try to insert their agenda into public education. An uneducated community is more easily controlled and manipulated.

This is a good general approach, not just for dealing with creationists, but for teaching the general population. Teaching to the test just generates competing authorities, and we can’t win that battle; parents, peers, and coercive religion hold all the trump cards. But teaching kids to think for themselves…now that’s where we totally rule.

But I think there are a couple of issues that John didn’t engage in that blog post. Yes, please, better teaching. But what about these problems?

The Brethren or the Amish or any other sect that withdraws from the larger society really isn’t a long-term problem. They’re going to fade away or evolve eventually. The reality is that, at least in America, we have to deal with evangelical religions: Answers in Genesis or the Southern Baptist Convention aren’t simply retreating into their own navels, they are actively proselytizing bad beliefs. Simply trying to erode their base away with good teaching hasn’t worked here, at least (or possibly, we just don’t have good teaching), and direct and aggressive opposition is necessary.

Even religions that have insulated themselves and just want to be left alone do harm. Consider just the problem of faith healing; we have laws in the US that shelter ideas that lead to dead children. Unless we’re willing to say that society as a whole has no interest in kids, and parents are free to abuse them intellectually and medically, intervention is often called for. Our local Brethren aren’t proselytizing directly, but apparently they have quiet clout: they’ve compelled the school board and local businesses to avoid ‘controversial’ issues by threatening to withhold their custom or withdraw their kids from school. They’re smart and are using passive techniques to prevent kids from getting good educations.

Finally, if we’re going to concede that creationists are following a rational social strategy (and I do!), then we also have to recognize the godless complement: while many scientists and naturalists certainly follow the similar tactic of cloistering themselves with their like-minded colleagues, many of us are rationally pursuing a strategy of active, public opposition to believing in silly things. While teaching children how to think and learn is part of our goal of taking over the world, another important aspect is consolidating and reinforcing a non-believing community.

The inward-looking community is one approach to sustaining and strengthening a group: look to those Brethren or most academic departments, for instance, and you’ll see that in action. But the flip side is forming outward-looking communities — Answers in Genesis has a little bit of that, poorly done because they can’t really afford to engage the evidence, but it’s a fairly natural direction for science-based communities to take … we’re supposed to be evaluating new ideas all the time.

Also, we do it for the lurkers. Exclusive sects aren’t very good at gaining new recruits.

Sticking it to this pope

It’s good to see that I’m not the only one not falling for this grinnin’ pope. Gregory Paul talks about the Dark Side of Pope Francis.

That theoconservatives are being unsettled by Francis is a good thing. What is disturbing is how so many, but by no means all, liberals – including atheist Bill Maher – are being significantly seduced by the guy. A reason this is occurring is in part because the news media is as it often does is buying into a storyline that boosts ratings, so they conveniently stick to it without checking the objective facts that is supposed to be their job. 

Here is a question that Francis needs to be asked. Directly, and with follow ups to pin him down if he issues another nice little homily that dodges the issue. 

What is he going to do concerning abortion? Really do. Regarding its legality. 

Well, we know the answer to that one. Ophelia snagged a few recent quotes from this pope on abortion.

The ever so much more nice guy pope has pitched a big fit about women having the audacity to terminate their pregnancies.

He said it was was “frightful” to think about early pregnancy terminations.

Easy for him, isn’t it. It’s not his life that will be messed up and perhaps irreparably thrown off course by an unwanted pregnancy. He can afford to drool sentimentally over a process inside someone else’s body that he chooses to think of as a “baby” or even a “child.”

“It is horrific even to think that there are children, victims of abortion, who will never see the light of day,” he said in part of the speech that addressed the rights of children around the world.

Children aren’t “victims of abortion”, any more than killing sperm represents a slaughter of innocents. Oh, but he probably thinks the latter is true, too.

I don’t even…

Every once in a while, I learn something about fundagelicals that I find simply discombobulating. Some Christian guides prescribe that a man should keep track of his wife’s menstrual cycle on the family calendar, even.

I mean, I knew that these patriarchal religions were all about controlling their women’s reproduction, but I had no idea. What’s the rationale? Here’s one reason given:

In his 1986 volume, Research in Principles of Life Advance Seminar Textbook, on page 170-171, Gothard suggests that a man keep track of his wife’s menstrual cycle and use it as a reminder of the sufferings and death of Jesus, then quotes Isaiah 53:4-5.

So Jesus menstruated? What?

The other reason is the infantilization of women’s behavior: they’re at the mercy of their cycle, so you need to be prepared to deal with them when they go all hormonal.

But this is something that goes on far beyond a man actually tracking his wife’s circle. It’s rather pervasive. Women are dismissed all the time for just being “hormonal,” and “it must be her time of the month” is a common response to a woman’s anger. In fact, there was a time men argued women shouldn’t be elected to political office, because of their periods. Do women’s hormonal cycles sometimes make them break down crying or get angry for no reasons? Perhaps, but guess what? Everyone has hormones, not just women. Everyone has bad days, not just women. And you know what? I’ve seen this “she must be on her period” line used to dismiss women’s actual needs and actual concerns.

You know, I did not track my wife’s menstruation at all. Sometimes I’d find out, obviously, and every once in a while she’d get menstrual migraines, but that’s about it for indicators — and I know some women do have debilitating physiological responses to their cycle. But I have never, ever known my wife to have a particular emotional excess or intellectual deficit in response to hormonal changes.

But maybe if I’d kept a big note on the calendar, I’d have had an excuse to belittle her once a month.

Reason opposed by unreason

Unreason being represented by its champion, religion…as always. The rational politicians in Idaho are trying to end the practice of faith healing on children; the irrationally religious politicians are trying to stop them.

A Republican lawmaker in Idaho is trying to stop a law aimed at preventing the deaths of children whose parents eschew medical treatment in favor of prayer. The Associated Press reported that state Rep. Christy Perry (R) believes that a law proposed by Democratic Rep. John Gannon violates religious freedom of families who believe God’s will supercedes modern medicine.

“This is about religious beliefs, the belief God is in charge of whether they live, and God is in charge of whether they die,” said Perry of the Followers of Christ, an extremist group who have let at least four children die of treatable illnesses in the last three years.

Perry, your beliefs do not trump the reality of dead children.

Mauritanian justice

Is this a sign of moderation by Muslim theologians? Mohamed Cheikh Ould Mohamed was a journalist in Mauritania who was accused of apostasy and of criticizing the prophet; a preacher, Abi Ould Ali, then chipped in and announced that he would pay €4000 blood money to anyone who would murder Ould Mohamed. Surprisingly, the preacher was condemned!

His call was immediately denounced by theologians and journalists in the north-western African country formally known as the Islamic Republic of Mauritania.

This would be a more promising development if Ould Mohamed hadn’t already been arrested by the state, which has a law making it a death penalty offense to criticize the prophet. I’m not hearing much condemnation for an unjust and evil law — although I do suppose it’s progress when they shut down vigilanteism.

Meanwhile, Ould Mohamed is in jail awaiting a possible death sentence.

Clear-eyed commentary on the pope

Finally! Someone sees through the façade.

That is how the Pope has come to be spun as a left-liberal idol. Whenever he proves himself loyal to Catholic teaching — denouncing abortion, for instance, or saying that same-sex marriage is an ‘anthropological regression’ — his liberal fan base turns a deaf ear. Last month America’s oldest gay magazine, the Advocate, hailed Francis as its person of the year because of the compassion he had expressed towards homosexuals. It was hardly a revolution: Article 2358 of the Catholic church’s catechism calls for gay people to be treated with ‘respect, compassion and sensitivity’. In simply restating Catholic teaching, however, Francis was hailed as a hero. When a Maltese bishop said the Pope had told him he was ‘shocked’ by the idea of gay adoption, that barely made a splash. Time magazine, too, made Francis person of the year, hailing him for his ‘rejection of Church dogma’ — as if he had declared that from now on there would be two rather than three Persons of the Holy Trinity. But for cockeyed lionisation of Francis it would be hard to beat the editors of Esquire, who somehow managed to convince themselves that a figure who wears the same outfit every day was the best dressed man of 2013.

Some pundits have noticed the gulf between what you might call the Fantasy Francis — the figure conjured up by liberal imagination — and the actual occupant of the Chair of St Peter. James Bloodworth, editor of the political blog Left Foot Forward, recently urged his journalistic allies to show some restraint. ‘Pope Francis’s position on most issues should make the hair of every liberal curl,’ he wrote. ‘Instead we get article after article of saccharine from people who really should know better.’

I’ve been astounded at how many atheists have been taken in by this geezer. He’s the goddamn POPE; by nature, intent, and training he’s fanatically against everything atheism stands for.

The cure for rape: Universal Ordination

Creationist John Mackay gave a talk at the University of Western Australia, and as these wackaloons are wont to do, also expressed lunatic opinions beyond his belief that the earth is only a few thousand years old. In particular, creationism seems to be rife with misogynistic and homophobic twits.

After the lecture many of the attendees stayed for a BBQ and to talk to John Mackay. He made various homophobic comments, including using homosexuality as his go-to example of “immorality” in modern society. In a conversation about the Bible after the lecture, a student pointed out that the Bible condones rape in the following passage from Numbers 31:

“17 Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that has known man by lying with him. 18 But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.”

Mackay argued that this is not rape, because the girls were forced to enter a “legitimate Jewish marriage” first (after having their family murdered by their soon-to-be husbands), and obviously you can’t rape your own wife. Not only is it not rape, but Mackay believes this is apparently not even immoral for God to command this and for the Israelites to carry it out.

Typical. Although it does suggest a new strategy for wanna-be rapists: get ordained first, or have an ordained wingman. Say a few words over your unconscious victim, grab her head and make it nod in agreement, then go to town. One of the results of marriage is the complete loss of volition by the bride, turning her into a meat puppet for your convenience.

Be sure to pick a religion that lets your priestly types say a few words afterwards to annul everything!

Or maybe we should just take religion out of marriages, and all relationships, altogether. It doesn’t seem to be a very good guide for moral behavior.

Vikings football is rather hard to support now

Not that I was ever much of a booster, but this behind-the-scenes look at how team management operates by Chris Kluwe is disappointing. He was fired from his position as a punter after he’d achieved some notoriety for his progressive positions and lack of religiosity — and he now explains that it’s likely that it was because of those positions. And man, it sounds like he was working in an ugly environment.

Throughout the months of September, October, and November, Minnesota Vikings special-teams coordinator Mike Priefer would use homophobic language in my presence. He had not done so during minicamps or fall camp that year, nor had he done so during the 2011 season. He would ask me if I had written any letters defending "the gays" recently and denounce as disgusting the idea that two men would kiss, and he would constantly belittle or demean any idea of acceptance or tolerance. I tried to laugh these off while also responding with the notion that perhaps they were human beings who deserved to be treated as human beings. Mike Priefer also said on multiple occasions that I would wind up burning in hell with the gays, and that the only truth was Jesus Christ and the Bible. He said all this in a semi-joking tone, and I responded in kind, as I felt a yelling match with my coach over human rights would greatly diminish my chances of remaining employed. I felt uncomfortable each time Mike Priefer said these things. After all, he was directly responsible for reviewing my job performance, but I hoped that after the vote concluded in Minnesota his behavior would taper off and eventually stop.

My limited experience with football coaches suggests that this isn’t an unusual attitude they take. Kluwe also stirred up concern because he said a few harsh things about the Catholic Church — I can relate.

On Feb. 11, I received a message saying, “Please fly under radar please,” from a phone number I would later learn belonged to Rick Spielman. The text message presumably concerned several things I had tweeted that day regarding Pope Benedict XVI’s decision to step down. Spielman later called me and asked me to stop tweeting about the pope because angry people were ringing up team headquarters in Winter Park, Minn. It should be noted that my tweets concerned the lack of transparency and endemic institutional corruption of the Catholic Church, which among other things allowed child abuse to flourish. I also pointed out how that applied equally to financial and government institutions, and reiterated that I had nothing against anyone’s religion, only against the abuses of power that institutions allow. Nonetheless, I complied with Spielman’s request and did not tweet anything else about the pope that day, or in the future.

Now I’m really looking forward to the American Atheists convention in Salt Lake this April — Kluwe is the keynote speaker. I hope I can meet him there, and shake his hand.

But then there are a lot of good people who will be speaking there: Barry Lynn, Maryam Namazie, Matt Dillahunty, Greta Christina, Sikivu Hutchinson, Vyckie Garrison…you should register now!

The Supreme Court is full up on Catholics, I think

Six of nine is too many, I think, especially when their religion is beginning to shape court decisions. Even the judge we’d hoped would be a little more progressive, Justice Sotomayor, bent over backwards to pander to weird Catholic views on contraception. It’s even worse than that: she granted an injunction to allow Catholic employers to not fill out a form stating that they were not providing coverage for contraception.

Late on New Year’s Eve, Justice Sonia Sotomayor granted a small number of religiously affiliated groups a temporary injunction from a provision in the Affordable Care Act that allows them not to cover contraception in their health care plans if they fill out a form that states that they want an exemption from the law for religious reasons. Go ahead and read that sentence again. These Catholic non-profits that wanted an exemption from covering their employees’ contraception needs—and got an exemption from covering their employees’ contraception needs—are now fighting the provision (that exempts them from covering their employees’ contraception needs) simply because they don’t want to have to fill out a form that states that they are exempt. Why? Because their employees need that form in order to get birth control directly from their insurers (which they need to do because their employers—these Catholic non-profits—are exempt, as they want to be). 

Those wicked people! Their bosses told them that they weren’t paying for their condoms, so it’s perfectly reasonable for the bosses to also dictate that they can’t go anywhere else to get support for contraception.

That church really is an evil and controlling organization, through and through.