Deep Rift in Chicago

The Ethical Humanist Society of Chicago has done an incredibly stupid thing. They invited Sunsara Taylor to give a talk on “Morality Without God”…and then disinvited her. The reasons weren’t clear, other than that some people in the society disliked her politics — she’s a communist — and the group caved and cancelled her speaking engagement a short two weeks before it was to happen.

Basically, the ethical society was unethical. You just don’t do that. But then they made it worse.

They’ve been stonewalling. No explanations, no apologies, nothing — they might as well admit that they’re feeling a bit guilty. This is inexcusable: one thing humanists ought to be committed to is the resolution of disputes by dialog and discussion.

Next step: they seem to be spiraling into self-destruction here. Sunsara Taylor showed up at the venue for the meeting and gave a speech to ask that the organization stand up for their principles and give her planned talk; if they didn’t, she’d be giving it at the home of another, sympathetic member of the ethical society. It’s all very civil.

Except for this: near the end of the speech, the president of the “ethical” society dispatched police officers to handcuff and arrest the videographer. WTF?

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This is insane. Again, the society is silent. All we know is what we see, and it doesn’t look good.

Is this some kind of return to the McCarthy era? Taylor is openly communist, but there is nothing illegal about that, and it certainly isn’t a reason to discriminate against her. If the Ethical Humanist Society of Chicago is going to start throwing people out and arresting them for their ideological affiliation, I’m more concerned about a few other criminal organizations, like the Republican party and the Catholic church, and think there are better grounds for slamming the door shut on members of those groups than the American communists. But I’d rather see free discussion of ideas by all of those people, and think that a humanist organization ought to be particularly sensitive to the virtues of free speech.

Shame on the Ethical Humanist Society of Chicago.

NO PRAYERS!

One of our own, the godless Minnesotan Stephanie Zvan, is going under the knife for removal of some cancerous tissue today. If you’re a useless fool, you might think entreating an imaginary and fickle deity would be the appropriate thing to do, but no…we know that is futile and insulting. However, one thing that isn’t pointless is to leave a few messages as members of a community of caring human beings that we’re looking forward to her return. So go do something social and personal and life-affirming, ok?

What if I want a green-eyed virgin?

Apparently, if you die for Allah, the bullets ripping through your body will feel like angels’ kisses, and the first thing that happens when you pop into heaven is that a horny black-eyed virgin (or two! Or 72!) will jump your bones. Although, actually, these homely losers for Mohammed don’t actually know any of that, they’re just lying to convince people who are dumber than they are to die for their cause.

Something else to keep in mind: when the Islamic countries push anti-blasphemy laws in the UN, what they’re actually demanding is that no one have the right to state that these life-hating misogynistic clerics of death are full of shit.

(via RichardDawkins.net and Why Evolution is True)

Ray Comfort Replies to Eugenie Scott

I could only get two paragraphs into that sleazebag’s reply in the debate about his Origin giveaway before I had to close the window and throw him away.

A major concern of Genie Scott was that the copy of On the Origin of Species sent to her by my publisher was missing “four crucial chapters,” as well as Darwin’s introduction. She will be pleased to know that the second printing of 170,000 copies (the one that we will give to students) is the entire book. Not one word will be omitted.

Then perhaps Comfort should have acknowledged that it was a dishonest move on his part in the first place?

Most troubling to me, though, is the fact that an ignoramus like Comfort can raise the kind of money to publish that many copies of a book on such short notice. Who is his sugar daddy? Or can you really tap into that much free-flowing cash by appealing to the ignorant masses of America? It’s rather disturbing.

And then, of course, there’s the fact that Ray Comfort is an idiot, putting his name on science books. I do not use the word “idiot” lightly here, either — the man is demonstrably ignorant and obtuse. Here’s his first argument for his cause:

Scott quoted a famous geneticist, who said, “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.” I would like to drop one word, so that the quote is true. It should read, “Nothing in biology makes sense in the light of evolution.” For example, evolution has no explanation as to why and how around 1.4 million species of animals evolved as male and female. No one even goes near explaining how and why each species managed to reproduce (during the millions of years the female was supposedly evolving to maturity) without the right reproductive machinery.

No one?

NO ONE?

I have explained this stuff to him repeatedly. I first covered it almost a year ago, when he misrepresented Darwin and claimed that women evolved millions of years after men. Comfort is the kook who claimed that Darwin believed that humans initially reproduced by asexual fission…and now he’s putting out an edition of the Origin?

I know he has seen my explanation, because he responded to it in the august pages of Whirled Nut Daily. Of course, what he did was acknowledge this explanation:

This has been explained to him multiple times: evolution does explain this stuff trivially. Populations evolve, not individuals, and male and female elephants evolved from populations of pre-elephants that contained males and females. Species do not arise from single new mutant males that then have to find a corresponding mutant female – they arise by the diffusion of variation through a whole population, male and female.

I also wrote a lengthy explanation of elephant evolution that points out that no species of elephant ever had to re-evolve sex. I am now amused to note that the first comment on that post is a one-liner: “He won’t get it.” How true.

He’s still repeating his argument that speciation occurred by a male (it’s always a male to him, I don’t know why) evolving first and having to go on a quest to find a female of the same species. He has a remarkably discontinuous view of the nature of evolutionary change, and seems either utterly unwilling or incapable of thinking of species evolving as populations.

I’m also rather amazed that the media, in this case US News & World Report, will freely grant space to such a dishonest loon. I know they’re relying on Genie Scott to come back with a rebuttal, but there ought to be a moment where the people publishing his nonsense stop a moment and say, “Wait a minute—this guy is writing pure drivel, and we’re publishing it!” Come on, US News, a little self-awareness and responsibility would be a welcome change.

Vote today!

If you’re in Maine, vote NO on 1. This is the law that attempts to repeal civil rights from gay couples.

If you’re in Washington state, vote YES on 71. This is a vote to preserve a law that gives legal protection to gay couples.

Isn’t it amazing that we even have to argue for equality, and that there are people who oppose it?

Dinesh D’Souza promised me an afterlife, and all I got were the same old cheap lies

I am so disappointed. The little evangelical goober has a new book that promises to provide evidence of life after death — it’s right in the title, Life After Death: The Evidence — but he doesn’t seem to have, you know, actually provided any evidence. Newsweek has a summary of his arguments.

The “evidence,” of necessity, is indirect: D’Souza doesn’t claim to have communicated with anyone who has died, and he doesn’t expect to. Instead, he looks to the human heart, and finds therein a universal moral code underlying acts of self-sacrifice and charity that appear to run counter to the Darwinian imperative to outcompete thy neighbor. This is a time-honored argument for the existence of a God who created human beings in his image and imbued them with a moral sense, as well as the free will to follow, or ignore, it. Berlinski uses the argument in his book, and Collins credits it with turning him from atheism to evangelical Christianity. (D’Souza acknowledges that the prominent atheist Richard Dawkins has offered an evolutionary explanation for human goodness, but he doesn’t buy it.) In a Jesuitical display that does credit to his reputation as “an Indian William F. Buckley Jr.,” D’Souza turns to his advantage one of the atheists’ favorite arguments, God’s apparent tolerance for human suffering. Precisely because evil so often goes unpunished in this world, he asserts, the moral code must reflect another reality, in which souls are judged, punished, or rewarded after death. “The postulate of an afterlife enables us to make sense of this life,” he writes. It worked for Dante, didn’t it?

The universal moral code argument is so tired. No, we don’t need a magic man in the sky to implant puppet strings in our brains to make us do good, and as the reviewer mentions, we have perfectly reasonable natural explanations that fit the phenomenon just fine. But even beyond that, an external-sourced moral code wouldn’t say anything about an afterlife. If I built a robot and included in its circuitry some code that inclined it to avoid colliding with cats, that does not imply that it is therefore eternal and will outlast any later encounters with a sledgehammer and a scrapheap.

The remainder of his argument is built on air. “If there is a god, and if there is an afterlife, and if there is judgment of earthly acts after death, then there is an afterlife” is an abomination of circularity and unsupported presuppositions.

But wait! There’s more! And it gets worse!

And if that’s not enough to convince you, D’Souza provides a checklist of benefits from believing in life after death: it keeps us honest, gives our lives “a sense of hope and purpose”–and “surveys show” that believers have better sex. It provides “a mechanism to teach our children right from wrong”–a mechanism that those who have been subjected to it tend to describe as a neurotic lifelong fear of going to Hell. And if your smart-alecky kid, full of all that Galileo stuff they get in school nowadays, should ask just where this Judgment business takes place, D’Souza provides you with a response. It happens in the multiverse, the infinitely multiplying complex of worlds predicted by some versions of quantum theory. In the multiverse, physical laws can take on different values, and matter itself may have a different form, so “there is nothing in physics to contradict the idea that we can live beyond death in other realms with bodies that are unlike the bodies we now possess.”

The argument from consequences is a non-starter, too. For instance, I have my doubts about the results of surveys about sex in populations where sexual behavior is both obligatory and a source of much angst about its effects on chances for a happy afterlife, but even if we were to think that the claim that believers have better sex, it doesn’t imply in any way that there is a god or an afterlife. Dinish D’Souza might have more satisfying orgasms if he fantasizes about having sex with Ann Coulter while he masturbates, but that does not mean that he is therefore having sex with Ann Coulter. It wouldn’t matter how highly he rated his onanistic experiences, it doesn’t provide any evidence of actual intercourse with a real live human (or in the case of Coulter, simulacrum thereof) female. Similarly, if his fantasies are all about a muscular bearded Jesus in a loin cloth sweeping him into his arms and teaching him the true meaning of ecstasy, that might make him feel good, but it is not evidence that Jesus loves him. Not even in a manly way.

And seriously…he’s going to trot out quantum physics as evidence for an afterlife? Man, join the crowd of crazies who have turned “quantum” into the “abracadabra” of the 21st century.

I don’t think I need to read his book if that is the quality of his reasoning. But if any of you stumble across it and find a compelling scrap of evidence that the reviewer neglected to pass along, let us know. If the above examples are any indication, they’ll be hilarious.