Why not?

We’ve encountered Michael Voris before: the painfully dogmatic and fervent Catholic Dominionist kook. He has a ridiculous video in which he asserts that theology is the queen of all the sciences because everything reduces to god, ultimately — which does leave one wondering why theology never produces any ideas that are actually useful to all of those scientific disciplines. I mean, take math for example: mathematicians are constantly coming up with tools and ideas that chemists and physicists and biologists and geologists all find awesomely useful. But what has theology given us? Nothing.

Michael drones on, going through the motions — he really seems dead-eyed and robotic in this video, doesn’t he? — and you probably got bored 30 seconds into the 5 minute clip. So I want to focus on just one point that Voris made, and mentioned in the caption, and which actually isn’t unique to Catholic nutjobs at all.

The fields of science can offer all kinds of information in answer to the question how… through the observance of the human intellect. But when asking the question why, man MUST turn to the divinity of the Creator.

How many times have you heard that claim: science can answer “how” questions, but it can never answer “why” questions, therefore we have to leave those kinds of questions to a non-scientific domain, which must be religion, therefore god. And that’s wrong at every step!

There’s no reason the interpreter of “why” questions has to be religion…why not philosophy? That seems a more sensible objective source than a religion burdened with a dogma and a holy book and wedded to revelation rather than reason. Voris assumes there has to be a divine creator, but that’s one of the questions, and you don’t get to just let it go begging like that.

The more fundamental question, though, is this oft-repeated distinction that science can’t answer “why” questions. Of course it can, if there’s a “why” in the first place! We are perfectly capable of asking whether there is agency behind a phenomenon, and if there is, of exploring further and identifying purpose. Why should we think otherwise?

Imagine you came home, as I did the other day, and saw this on the edge of your yard.

You’d immediately assume it was artificial, as I did — the perfectly circular outline suggests that a machine came by, and someone lowered some auger-like device and drilled a large hole in the yard. You could also look up and down the street and see that the hole-driller had struck several other places, all in a line parallel to the road and exactly the same distance from the curb. They are almost certainly the product of intent.

Does that in any way imply that I’m now done, that asking why these holes were dug is beyond the scope of all rational inquiry? That I ought to drop to my knees and praise ineffable Jesus, who caused holes to manifest in the ground for reasons that I, as a mere mortal man, cannot possibly question? Oh, Lord, mine is not to question why, I must accept what is!

Of course not. I can speculate reasonably; it looks like a hole for planting something in. I can check into the city offices, and learn that there’s concern about emerald ash borers killing trees in our community. I can see the next day that a city crew came by and put new saplings in place all up and down the street. Even without actually talking to anyone directly, I can figure out from the evidence why there is a hole in my yard.

Similarly, if there was a god busily poofing the entirety of the cosmos into existence, that’s an awful lot of evidence that can be examined for motive…are we to instead believe it is so incoherent that we can discern no possible purpose behind all this data?

And what if instead, I’d come home and found one hole in the neighborhood, it was a rough-edged and asymmetrical crater, and in the center of it was a small rocky meteorite? Then I could ask how it came to be there (it fell out of the sky and smacked into my yard), and I could try to ask why, but the answer would be that there was no agency behind it, there was no purpose, and it was simply a chance event of a kind that happens all the time.

When people try to argue that science can’t answer “why” questions, what they’re actually saying is that they don’t like the answer they get — there is no why! There is no purpose or intent! — and are actually trying to say that the only valid answer they’ll accept is one that names an intelligence and gives it a motive. That is, they want an answer that names a god as an ultimate cause, and a description that doesn’t include agency doesn’t meet their presuppositions.

Hitch on the Mormons

Christopher Hitchens takes a moment to highlight the weird and sinister beliefs of the Mormons.

I have no clear idea whether Pastor Robert Jeffress is correct in referring to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, more colloquially known as the Mormons, as “a cult.” There do seem to be one or two points of similarity. The Mormons have a supreme leader, known as the prophet or the president, whose word is allegedly supreme. They can be ordered to turn upon and shun any members who show any signs of backsliding. They have distinctive little practices, such as the famous underwear, to mark them off from other mortals, and they are said to be highly disciplined and continent when it comes to sex, booze, nicotine, and coffee. Word is that the church can be harder to leave than it was to join. Hefty donations and tithes are apparently appreciated from the membership.

Whether this makes it a cult, or just another of the born-in-America Christian sects, I am not sure. In any case what interests me more is the weird and sinister belief system of the LDS, discussion of which it is currently hoping to inhibit by crying that criticism of Mormonism amounts to bigotry.

He makes the point that the LDS church is certifiable lunacy of undeniably fraudulent origin, and that “I don’t think I would want to vote for a Scientologist or a Moonie for high office” — and there’s a dilemma. I don’t want to vote for a Catholic or Lutheran or Baptist for any office, either. Mormonism and Scientology and the Moonies are simply one other kind of religion, the only difference being that those strange recent cults are snuggling nicely in the uncanny valley of faith — we’re accustomed to the absurdity of Christianity, it no longer makes most of us blink in astonishment that someone actually believes that, but Mormons? Alien crazy ideas, instead of Grandma’s comfortable crazy ideas.

The dilemma is that Hitch’s preference would mean that none of us could actually vote for any candidate who has a chance of winning. At least not until we achieve our majority in the future.

I have a resolution, though. We acknowledge that everyone has some weird ideas in their heads, and that we can’t practically exclude people from office for thinking crazy thoughts. What we can do, though, is refuse to vote for the ones who are proud of their insanity, who brag about believing in space ghosts, and who think their dotty dogma actually provides useful policy advice.

I know, there goes the entire Republican slate, and Obama is skating on awfully thin ice himself.

JoePa has an answer

Joe Paterno has finally, after ten years of denial and sheltering a child rapist, taken a moment to do something. He has spoken out for a change and for action to be taken, and it’s amazing…I thought my respect for the guy had hit bottom, but no, he had miles to dig further.

I shall pass this one on to a fine angry rant at the Atheist Camel:

His termination by Penn State was right and proper, and that would have been the end of it save any legal actions that might befall him as a result of his inaction. I’d have had nothing to comment upon, no further ax to grind with him. But then he said this:

“As you know, the kids that were the victims, I think we ought to say a prayer for them,”

And there, in that one sentence is the very heart of the grotesqueness of religion, the very core of what I have raged about, fought against, and endeavored to put a face on for these many years all summed up nice and tidy by a disgraced coach.

PRAYER?? Say a PRAYER for the child victims? You self righteous sanctimonious jerk… some of those kids are victims partially because you failed as a man. You relinquished your responsibility as a human being. Your hubris and self interest over shadowed those victims interest. But, now, NOW you’ll implore us to mumble words to a nonexistent thing in the sky as though that will fix things? As though those kids’ lives will be repaired by words to a deity when your own misbehavior, self-serving actions, or apathy was a causal factor for their pain?

When you’re at the very bottom of a pit, when you’ve failed egregiously at basic human decency, there’s always that one last recourse for the scoundrel and coward: turn to Jesus and hope that piety will buoy your reputation up a little bit. It’s sad, too, that it often seems to work with that credulous majority.

It’s interesting how much loathing Paterno’s remarks have inspired here. Let us make public piety a repulsive act!

If you really need to puke, look at this video, where students have a sign that says “Two of my favorite J’s in life: Jesus and JoePaterno”. It also says he plans to coach this weekend. Is it too much to hope he’s met by the police and turned away?

Oh, man, it just gets worse and worse. There was a press conference at PSU, and the media and students embarrassed themselves. They were questioning the firing of Joe Paterno by raising the spectre of what is good for the university and the football program. Allen Barra has the best and strongest answer…what the PR flacks should have said.

Angry student: Was any consideration given as to how his would affect the football program?

Me: The football program? The football program?? Are you serious? A former assistant coach was just indicted for over 40 counts related to sexual assault on a child, your football coach was fired in disgrace, your athletic director has been indicted for perjury, and a current assistant coach will, I’m sure, soon be fired. And the crimes against humanity — against children — took place in the university’s athletic facilities. Do you think you will even have a football program when the full extent of this becomes known?

Do you even think you’re going to have a university?

I made the point the other day that sports programs can develop an undue and even pathological effect on academic programs, but that a winning season does have a surprisingly powerful effect on enrollments. This is quite possibly the most catastrophic disaster I’ve ever heard of hitting an athletic program, and it’s at a university that has always made a huge deal of their football team. Barra’s article emphasizes the financial hit the university is about to take — a whole department sheltering a pedophile for more than a decade? They are about to cough up more in legal fees than my university spends on operating costs — but it will be interesting to see what happens to enrollments next year. It’s going to hurt. I hope it hurts a lot…not because I have any animus against PSU, but because I hope the students who planned to go there will discover a shred of conscience.

William Lane Craig and the problem of pain

Kitties experience pain and suffering, which turns out to be a theological problem. If a god introduced pain and death into the world because wicked ol’ Eve was disobedient, why is god punishing innocent animals? It seems like a bit of a rotten move to afflict the obedient along with the disobedient — shouldn’t god have just stricken humanity with the wages of sin (or better yet, just womankind)?

William Lane Craig has an answer. His answer involves simply waving the problem away — animals don’t really feel pain — and he drags in science to prop up his claim. Basically, Craig is playing the creationist gambit of abusing the authority of science falsely to support his peculiar theology.

[Read more…]

William Lane Craig and the problem of pain

Kitties experience pain and suffering, which turns out to be a theological problem. If a god introduced pain and death into the world because wicked ol’ Eve was disobedient, why is god punishing innocent animals? It seems like a bit of a rotten move to afflict the obedient along with the disobedient — shouldn’t god have just stricken humanity with the wages of sin (or better yet, just womankind)?

William Lane Craig has an answer. His answer involves simply waving the problem away — animals don’t really feel pain — and he drags in science to prop up his claim. Basically, Craig is playing the creationist gambit of abusing the authority of science falsely to support his peculiar theology.

So Christian theologians of all stripes have to face the challenge posed by animal pain. Here recent studies in biology have provided surprising, new insights into this old problem. In his book Nature Red in Tooth and Claw: Theism and the Problem of Animal Suffering, Michael Murray distinguishes three levels in an ascending pain hierarchy (read from the bottom up):

Level 3: a second order awareness that one is oneself experiencing (2).

Level 2: a first order, subjective experience of pain.

Level 1: information-bearing neural states produced by noxious stimuli resulting in aversive behavior.

Spiders and insects–the sort of creatures most exhibiting the kinds of behavior mentioned by Ayala–experience (1). But there’s no reason at all to attribute (2) to such creatures. It’s plausible that they aren’t sentient beings at all with some sort of subjective, interior life. That sort of experience plausibly does not arise until one gets to the level of vertebrates in the animal kingdom. But even though animals like dogs, cats, and horses experience pain, nevertheless the evidence is that they do not experience level (3), the awareness that they are in pain. For the awareness that one is oneself in pain requires self-awareness, which is centered in the pre-frontal cortex of the brain–a section of the brain which is missing in all animals except for the humanoid primates. Thus, amazingly, even though animals may experience pain, they are not aware of being in pain. God in His mercy has apparently spared animals the awareness of pain. This is a tremendous comfort to us pet owners. For even though your dog or cat may be in pain, it really isn’t aware of it and so doesn’t suffer as you would if you were in pain.

As is usual upon reading any argument by William Lane Craig, I find myself wondering if we shouldn’t, in the name of common decency, have him locked up or in some way isolated from the sane human population. He makes bad arguments, he makes dishonest arguments, and he seems opportunistically willing to sacrifice moral reasoning on the altar of his barbarian god. Or at least, maybe we should confiscate his pets and put them in a safer home.

A few objections popped instantly into my head when I read his essay.

  • An assertion built on a false premise is likely to be false itself. Craig (or possibly his source, Murray), misrepresent the science. They claim that the prefrontal cortex “is missing in all animals except for the humanoid primates.” This is simply false! I’ve personally done histological work and surgery on the prefrontal cortex of cats, many years ago, and you can find papers describing the prefrontal cortex of opossums, and just about any common mammal you can think of. Craig has made a truly bizarre claim, like declaring that only people have noses or something.

    Primates do have a unique histologic feature of their primary cortices, an internal granule layer that is developed to varying degrees. But it’s also present in prosimians as well as all primates, so you can’t argue that it is unique to ‘humanoid primates’, and you can’t claim that it’s necessary and sufficient for self-awareness. If a bushbaby is going to be declared self-aware because it has an internal granule layer, it seems ridiculous to argue that other mammals with a similar or greater degree of cortical development are excluded from the club on the basis of this one detail.

    Scientists are supposed to talk about the evidence. Theologians are apparently not only exempt, but they get to fabricate their evidence. Also, I’m used to hearing theologians babble about the nonexistent as if it were real, but this is the first time I’ve heard one argue that a real structure is nonexistent.

  • There is a real issue here: we can identify pain neurons in insects and fish and all kinds of animals — they’re ubiquitous. But you could ask about the slippery problem of consciousness, and wonder whether there is a real difference between reflexive aversion to a noxious stimulus and a more substantial awareness of pain. There are people who argue that non-human animals are not thinking and self-aware like we are, and so their perception of pain is qualitatively different.

    Unfortunately, you can’t make a binary distinction here. If we accept that humans are all aware of pain (there have been people who don’t accept that: Nazi-types and racists have argued that Jews and blacks, for instance, are subhumans who have blunted sensitivities), it’s hard to argue that chimpanzees aren’t also aware — they exhibit all the signs of stress, of learning aversion, of memory and recall of unpleasant experiences, and their behavior is identical to ours: they make it known that they don’t like needles or fear snakes or suffer pain and distress at their discomfort and the discomfort of others. And if you admit chimps, where do you draw the line? Dogs also exhibit all of those behaviors; they even show empathy when people are injured or unhappy.

    How can anyone who has known a dog deny that they are capable of perceiving pain in fairly complex ways?

    But it really is a continuum. I haven’t been able to tell if cats feel much empathy — they don’t show it, but I have no way to see what interesting (or terrifying) cognitive wheels are spinning in a cat’s brain. I know they react to their own pain in very emotional ways, and I’ve seen mother cats respond with what looks like affection and protectiveness to their kittens…and I would not assume that a cat’s aversive reaction to getting cut is all a superficial reflex, and therefore anesthesia is unnecessary in operating on them. That is the road of the psychopath.

    Again, scientists rely on the evidence: if I see an animal struggling and making frightened noises and fighting to avoid a painful experience, and if it shows recognition of the circumstances of that pain in the future, I’m going to assume that it feels pain and is in some sense aware of its situation. Theologians are apparently able to see a cat or dog in the throes of agony and declare that it isn’t really suffering, no, not like you or me. Hey, theologians and psychopaths have something in common!

  • Let us consider the implications of Craig’s worldview. If this property of awareness sets humans apart from animals, making our suffering have a greater moral significance than that of animals, and if that awareness is a product of a specific neuroanatomical structure, the prefrontal cortex (or more specifically, a well-developed internal granule cell layer in that cortex), then what is the status of a human that lacks that all-important, very specific pattern of neuronal connectivity?

    I’m thinking, of course, of the embryo. The internal granule cell layer does not pop into existence at the moment of fertilization — it arises much later, gradually, as the brain matures. Cortical wiring is an ongoing process after birth, as well — the microstructure of the human brain changes amazingly during the first couple of years of life. If we’re going to claim that an adult dog, despite appearances, isn’t really aware of pain, shouldn’t we be saying the same thing about the embryo?

    I mean, sure, babies squall and scream and flail about at the slightest discomfort, but how do you really know that they’re actually conscious? Maybe they’re just bio-reflexive hunks of meat until the final bits of their cortical cytoarchitecture snap into place, and we should be unperturbed by their struggles. They’re not really human yet, after all — god hasn’t given them that second-order awareness that they need in order to be conscious of their deontological status as the product of original sin, you know.

    I don’t know of any scientist — or sane human being — who could make that argument seriously. Again, it’s about the evidence; they exhibit the symptoms of feeling pain, they have some complex cerebral machinery that we think is likely capable of processing experiences in complex ways (but we don’t know for sure — we don’t have a parts list of neuroanatomical correlates that are sufficient to generate consciousness), so the humane assumption is that yes, babies perceive pain. Apparently, this is a much more ambiguous issue for theologians, if they had any consistency in their views. Oh, but wait — theologians. Evidence, consistency, reason are not highly valued properties of theological arguments. If they were, it would suggest that Craig ought to rethink his dogmatic anti-abortion stance.

Sorry, Mr Craig, but pain is still a big problem for your religion, and you don’t get to shoo it away or drag in the mangled, bleeding body of a butchered science in agony to act as a scarecrow and distract people from your absence of evidence.

(Also on FtB)

Oh, those wacky Catholics

It’s happening in Minnesota again. The church is peddling nonsense, and people are believing it. Catholic congregants are finding corpses hidden inside the church. Oh, wait…not corpses. Crackers.

In recent weeks, parishioners at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Church in Hastings have approached their pastor, Rev. Jim Perkl, “heartbroken and with tears in their eyes,” he says.

The cause of such sadness? The discovery of communion hosts found between the pages of about 30 hymnals in the pews. Catholics believe the communion wafer becomes the actual body of Jesus once it’s consecrated during mass.

Thank you, priestly abusers, for once again finding a way to wring pain out of your parishioners lives, all over little pieces of bread. This behavior is childish and ridiculous.

Although it’s unknown whether these wafers were consecrated, the incident has led Perkl and the Twin Cities Archdiocese to wonder: Is the church doing enough to emphasize the sacredness of the host?

The church is doing too much. It’s not sacred, it’s a CRACKER.

Speaking of bullying…

One natural place for bullies to end up is the military, where a strict hierarchy can put them in positions of safety. One such example: Major Jonathan Dowty, who has a blog called the “Christian Fighter Pilot” and belongs to the Officer’s Christian Fellowship, where privileged thugs can gather and plot to proselytize to the lower ranks. Or simply to attack the helpless.

As a devout Christian officer, Major Dowty has made it a practice to publicly attack and defame atheist and other non-Christian enlisted service members by name, knowing that they can’t respond to defend themselves because he’s an active duty officer, so it would be insubordinate for them to respond to him.

The only salvation is to leave the military, get out from under the regulations that protect creatures like Dowty, and speak out…as one sergeant has now done on This Week in Christian Nationalism.

I’m just wondering when the other officers will recognize that Dowty is using his religion as a club to hammer on enlisted men, and realize that maybe this is not helping morale or unit cohesion? Unless, of course, they want a military consisting only of religious zealots. Do we civilians want a Janissary corps, though?

Michigan’s failure

Republicans. Christians. Why do I despise them both? We have a beautifully illustrative example coming out of Michigan.

Concerned about school bullying, and motivated by the suicide of a student, Matt Epling, who was driven to the act by prolonged bullying, the Michigan legislature tried to put together “Matt’s Safe School Law”. It has passed, but there’s nothing to be cheerful about. The Republicans and Christians turned it into a bullying protection act.

First, the Republicans gutted it.

This year, Republicans only agreed to consider an anti-bullying measure that did not require school districts to report bullying incidents, did not include any provisions for enforcement or teacher training, and did not hold administrators accountable if they fail to act.

So the bill does nothing. It’s the Republican equivalent of saying, “tut, tut.”

Then the Christian element got to work and added a critical clause.

On Wednesday, the Republican-controlled state senate passed an anti-bullying bill that manages to protect school bullies instead of those they victimize. It accomplishes this impressive feat by allowing students, teachers, and other school employees to claim that “a sincerely held religious belief or moral conviction” justifies their harassment.

We all know what that’s about. It’s all about giving the church kids permission to torment the gay kids. That clause is nothing but bigotry in disguise.

Well guess what, Michigan? We atheists have a sincerely held religious belief about religion: that it’s an evil dogma that needs to be howled down at its every occurrence. When the godless kids of Michigan see someone, anyone bullying the gays out of their sincerely held religious bigotry, I hope they band together and frogmarch the offender right in to the principal’s office. They whiny little bastard will get off by pleading Jesus, but do it often enough and a message will start to sink in.