"Discover Your Purpose in Life"

Tonight I went to a truly bizarre talk (actually, it was a series of four talks). The evening was advertised as a seminar presenting an irrefutable mathematical proof for the existence of God. Frustratingly, questions were held until the very end, so by the time the last fellow spoke one was so busy feeling blustery about what he said that one had forgotten many of the issues of the first talks. Also, unfortunately for the speakers the organizer of the event had, for some unfathomable reason, decided it would be a good idea to send a mass invitation to the math department. This then spilt over into some of the related departments (like physics), to the point where over three quarters of the audience were largely atheistic in mindset and highly versed in mathematics.

Roughly, the set of talks went like this:

Talk 1: "Discover Your Purpose in Life"
The fellow started by stating that there were two ways of reasoning, you either methodically looked at a sequence of data or you took all the information at once and made a comparison (at no point did he address how one knew whether one had all the relevant information or not). His talk was actually quite difficult to follow, for he seemed to jump from unqualified statement to unqualified statement. He made a number of tired and old arguments, including the "fine-tuning argument" and a number of other arguments from incredulity (mangling the concepts of probability and logic on his way). He then ended with one of the most bizarre theological renditions I have ever heard, including making the statement that the Earth was small in relation to the universe because the Earth was the kingdom God gave Satan to prove that Satan couldn't even run it properly... essentially, as far as I could follow, relegating the Earth to the status that I had understood hell to hold in the Abrahamic faiths. This was an inconsistent position, however, for he insinuated that God held sway over the happenings on Earth at multiple other points in his talk (as well as the other speakers), while also making the claim that no one held sway because everyone on Earth had the 'gift' of free will.

Talk 2: "The Proof"
A long, nonsensical power-point presentation of numerology finding coincidental recurrences of the number 19 in the Qur'an. Patterned coincidences in text have been well and thoroughly refuted numerous times (a good resource is here). Also, numerical coincidences in no way makes a mathematical proof.

Talk 3: "Why Bad Things Happen"
This talk was surprisingly the best of the bunch, although only because the fellow who gave it was an accomplished speaker who never really made much of a point (although at one point he did make the claim that your free will gave you control over whether you were on God's side, at which point your life would be good, or Satan's side, at which point your life would be bad. I wanted to ask about things like hurricanes and other natural disasters, which make life miserable for believer and non-believer alike and over which we have no control, but I never got that chance). He also made a couple statements which sounded very much like Yoda's philosophy (things along the line of "Don't give in to anger and hate"), so that kind of endeared him to me.

Talk 4: "Here's Craig"
For some reason, no title was given for this talk, and the speaker was only introduced as "Craig", hence the title given. This was a pretty wasted talk, as the speaker was clearly speaking to the wrong audience. He was attempting to reconcile the Bible with the Qur'an, meaning he basically quoted a lot of both of them without really saying much himself. At the end of his talk he made a very bizarre statement that completely contradicted the "free will is everything" sentiment espoused by two of the previous speakers by intimating that everything that happened was according to God's plan, including things like medical and scientific breakthroughs. He then left that hanging there as a confusing and highly arguable statement, and apparently disappeared (he failed to return to the podium for the question and answer period).

The Question and Answer Period: "Over an hour of brutal and highly charged argument"
I honestly felt a little bad for the speakers, because I don't think they were prepared for the response they got. Professor Charles Dyer got the first word in, and thoroughly blasted the numerology "proof" as such a twisted and overly round-about method of revelation that it was just as likely to be a trick of the devil as the work of any all-powerful god. As an opening salvo, while incendiary, it was not particularly devastating. There was a lot of blustering and, "Oh, but you haven't gone through the rest of the proof, this was only the rough beginning of it...", at which point Dyer and another member of the audience, a fellow named Ali in possession of a very robust knowledge of the Qur'an, tried to get across the profound contradiction imposed by the combination of omniscience and omnipotence as espoused by the speakers. This was largely lost on the speakers, at which point the organizer tried to salvage the evening by calling on another member of the audience.

This was a mistake. She called upon a mathematician in the audience named Alfonso who launched into a blistering tirade against their numerology, pointing out that very similar analyses had been done on numerous other books and were all based on the simple preponderance of coincidence available with very large data sets. I think it was a combination of his accent, rapid speech, hostility, and calling out of nonsense that would shake their worldview, but his question was not well received. The organizer herself got quite upset and snappy, and once again tried shuffling between questioners to ease the burden.

Alas, things continued to not go well as more of the audience clamped on to inconsistencies and fallacies. I got a brief moment to speak (I believe that the organizer was once again seeking reprieve), so I made the attempt of trying to engage the speakers on their level. My question was that even if one accepted what they were saying, why would God have let hundreds of generations of people live in complete and utter ignorance all over the world prior to revealing His word through the Qur'an, and even once that was revealed he continued to neglect the people of the Americas and Australia and other regions for more centuries. Even once he released the Qur'an, he did so with ultimate "proof" of his existence embedded in a manner that would require the invention of modern computers to adequately analyze, thereby preventing its discovery until 1974 (when this numerology was apparently completed). To my profound disappointment, the second speaker (who was standing at the podium at the time) said that he thought one of the other speakers should answer my question because he wasn't well versed in "that sort of thing", at which point no one else came up and the organizer simply called on another person. So much for my attempt to engage the speakers on their own level.

The final response was a calm and quiet audience member (I don't know his name) who simply pointed out the fact that numerical coincidences do not provide a proof. This was met with some uncomfortable squirming of the speakers as they professed to be "simply presenting information for others to make up their minds about". When they finally asked what a valid mathematical proof entailed, Alfonso started to give an answer when the organizer abruptly (and, I think, quite rudely) cut him off and wished everyone a good night, bringing the evening to a close.

Thus ended an odd and somewhat vexing (though still rather entertaining) evening.

The Bankruptcy of Accommodationism

As I mentioned two weeks ago, a there was a minor maelstrom within the intersection of science and atheist bloggers centered on the debate between Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum on one side and PZ Myers on the other. A great deal was written, said, and commented upon in a startlingly large number of blog posts. While I have some strong thoughts on many aspects of the debate, there is one area in particular that I think was glossed over to the detriment of the debate. Incidentally, the reason I think it was glossed over is because I believe it is a fatal flaw in the accomodationist stance being advanced by Kirshenbaum and Mooney. It was mentioned briefly by their critics, but without any engagement it seemed to be forgotten under the deluge of the rest of the argument.

Essentially, Mooney and Kirshenbaum are arguing that there is no conflict between science and religion, and therefore outspoken atheist scientists like Richard Dawkins and PZ Myers are damaging the cause of science by alienating people with moderate religious perspectives in the fight against fundamentalist religion (which they do admit conflicts with science). I am going to decline to comment on whether the actions of Dawkins and Myers actually does damage the cause of science as a whole (as I have only anecdotal evidence on the matter, but that would seem to be all Mooney and Kirshenbaum have on the matter as well), and instead focus on the philosophical underpinnings of their position. Mooney tried to defend the accommodationist approach by an appeal to the argument set forth by Eugenie Scott. She tries to empirically justify the compatibility of science and religion by pointing out the existence of a number of religious scientists. Of course, any discussion on this matter inevitably brings up Ken Miller, as he is a distinguished biologist, stalwart critic of intelligent design, and outspoken Catholic. Miller has publicly stated, however, that when religious claims are in direct conflict with science, religion must adapt. Likewise, Mooney and Kirshenbaum quote the Dalai Lama as saying, "If science proves some belief of Buddhism wrong, then Buddhism will have to change." However, in the very same article that they quote the Dalai Lama, they also point out that survey results show that 64% of Americans would hold onto a cherished religious belief that conflicted with science, thereby rejecting or ignoring scientific results. Thus, Mooney and Kirshenbaum's stance basically boils down to the idea that there is no conflict between religion and science as long as they don't make conflicting statements about the world, and, when they do make conflicting claims, you accept the claims of science over religion. Since religions (beyond, as I have mentioned before, deism) have a tendency to make empirical claims, though, you frequently run into trouble, and have to make the choice between science and religion. You redefine your religious beliefs as a metaphor or a nebulous philosophical outlook, or you shift it slightly back into the gaps of our current knowledge, or you reject the science. What Mooney and Kirshenbaum do is focus only on the first group of people and say, "See, there is no conflict between religion and science." Dismissing the 64% of people who are in the last group, though, as a lamentable state of affairs that will only get better by pretending they don't exist is disengenous at best. It is basically advocating for religious belief only of a certain kind (the kind that is mutable and open to changes in scientific knowledge), but doing so an indirect manner. As far as I am aware, they do not once address how holding up the small group of religious people who accept scientific claims over religious ones as examples of how science and religion are without conflict will help reduce the numbers of people who come down on the side of religious claims over scientific ones without still expressly telling people that their religious beliefs are wrong. Thus, Mooney and Kirshenbaum's strategy is stealthier and less confrontational than the "New Atheist" stance, but it is still telling people they are wrong if they reject science for religious reasons. The only difference that I can see is accomodationists are telling people they are wrong in a much more round-about manner that is easier to ignore.

Well, he could have said it...

"There is nothing so simultaneously dull and mentally detrimental as spending your Sunday morning in a church." - George Washington, 1st President of the United States of America.

Haven't heard that quotation before? That's because I just made it up. Chances are, George Washington never said that, but a lack of documented evidence for the attribution of a quotation is apparently no problem for some people. It would seem that a pair of theocratically minded citizens of the United States decided it was perfectly reasonable to make up a sentence that corresponded to their beliefs, and then slap that statement on a billboard and attribute it to George Washington.

Others carry the same message but with fictional attribution, as with one billboard citing George Washington for the quote, "It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible."

"I don't believe there's a document in Washington's handwriting that has those words in that specific form," Kemple said. "However, if you look at Washington's quotes, including his farewell address, about the place of religion in the political sphere, there's no question he could have said those exact words."

I really hope some sort of truth in advertising group gets a hold of this... does anyone know of a good group to contact about this sort of thing? The blatant rewriting of history really irks me.

Um... What?

My girlfriend sent me this story about a man offering loans in exchange for one's soul as collateral. I'm still trying to wrap my head around it... It's like the man is conning himself. Usually certain religious leaders and entrepreneurs make me wildly upset by ripping off people by taking advantage of their irrational beliefs (like those companies that allow you to insure your stuff for after the fall), but this man seems to be actively taking advantage of himself. I just don't get it...

Blatant Bribery

This article has so many amazing lines, it is hard to pick specific ones to comment on...
Men, beer, and the church.

Spurious, Vapid, and Disconcerting at the Same Time

I have argued before (on more than one occasion, actually) that religious rights in and of themselves are fundamentally untenable when they pertain to actual action rather than mere belief. There is absolutely no reason why one person's anathema or predilection for a particular action should carry more weight than my own simply because that opinion is religiously motivated. Likewise, if that religious opinion interferes with the worldly rights of another person, rights based in this world should take precedence. My reason for raising this subject again is this article detailing how an Orthodox Jewish couple is bringing a case to court on charges of religious discrimination because a sensor was installed to automatically turn lights on and off in the hallway.

As a person who has a tendancy to obsess over odd things, I know what it is like to feel deeply disconcerted over seemingly innocuous things. For example, as an impressionable child I was introduced to the (normally) harmless childhood rhyme

Don't step on a line, or you'll break your mother's spine.
Don't step on a crack, or you'll break your mother's back

as the premise for the game of walking along the sidewalk avoiding cracks and lines. I guess either because of my intrinsic inclination to play games and follow rules, or some internalized irrational fear for my mother's well-being, it got to the point that I thought about this game every time I walked down the street. I would make up other sets of rules on other floor patterns (not so rhythmically composed, but sometimes far more interesting depending on the tile pattern). As I got older and most people grew out of childhood rhymes (and as my feet got bigger) it got more and more awkward to avoid breaking these walking rules. It was particularly awkward when walking with a group. Eventually, fear of social awkwardness ended up winning out over internally driven discomfort and I gradually began to convince myself to step on cracks and lines. When alone, I still sometimes find myself involuntarily hesitating when I step onto a cobblestone or brick street, or subtly adjusting my stride to avoid stepping on breaks between the sidewalk blocks. I can usually snap myself out of it, but I am not being fasecious with this story. It genuinely bothered me to break my internal rules of walking. It is not something I am always comfortable talking about (after all, it sounds a little crazy. It is also why I so greatly enjoy this xkcd strip, though; it makes me realise I at least might not be singularly crazy), but I bring it up to demonstrate my point.

I am not claiming that people should be unallowed to have irrational beliefs, and even subsequently irrational behaviours. However, I am saying that those irrational beliefs and behaviours should get no special treatment when they are religiously based, and must be restrained by the rights and needs of all other members of the community. I am, after all, free to walk as oddly as I want in order to meet whatever rules I come up with or hear in a childhood rhyme. Likewise, though, other people are free to ask me why I walk that way (and are free to laugh at my response or probe my motivations). More importantly, the civil authority responsible for constructing and maintaining the sidewalks is free and bound by its responsibility to the good of the whole population to use construction methods that are the most expedient and effective, regardless of how difficult that might make my subsequent attempts to avoid cracks and lines. Why should it be any different if my discomfort stems from an ancient book rather than a childhood rhyme?

Further Discourse on Demonizing Darwin

In my most recent Scientist Appreciation post on Friedrich Wöhler, I pointed out that Darwin, in my opinion, receives a disproportionate amount of discussion and demonizing by the religious right compared to other historical scientists. Regan responded to this by saying:

The biggest reason that Darwin is such a huge target is because the work he did and inspired totally invalidates the story of genesis.

Wohler's challenge to vitalism is different in the sense that there is nothing in the bible that says "And lo god created vitalism, and it was pretty neat", so it was easier to rationalize that concept into the theological worldview. The work that Darwin did and inspired can't be crammed into the bible no matter how hard you try. The bible says X happened, and the study of the processes of natural selection and evolution says Y happened. There is no possible way to reconcile the two.

I think the stranger scientist to be demonized by religion is Galileo. The bible doesn't even explicitly say the sun travels around the earth, and they still put him under house arrest until he died.

Since Regan's statements do not satisfy the quandary I meant to be presenting but are nevertheless factual and reasonable, I thought it worth writing another post on the matter to hopefully elucidate my original intent more clearly. As with most of my posts on subjects outside the realm of computational neuroscience, I have not made exhaustive study of the topics I cover here, so it is reasonably possible I am basing my discourse on incorrect information (of course, that is still possible when I am talking about computational neuroscience, just I tend to think it less likely). If you disagree with what I write, please do not hesitate to leave a comment or send me an email.

The thing is, revealed religious truths are awfully dependent on the ephemeral whims of people. Organized religions also tend to have a couple driving forces to deal with - there is both the scripture itself as well as clerical dogma. Before widespread printing of the Bible, these two forces in the Christian world were largely one and the same - Christianity was governed by one of a few theocratic hierarchies (the Catholic church in the west, and the Eastern Orthodox Church in the east). My historical knowledge of eastern Europe is weaker than my knowledge of western Europe before the 1900s, so I will primarily concentrate on the west. This merging of clerical dogma and scripture under the closed purview of the Catholic hierarchy meant that, for the most part, there was one accepted version of Christianity and alternative interpretations of the scripture (which could possibly lead to new dogmas) were not widespread (since few had access to scriptural learning) and, when they did occur, suppressed through threats of excommunication and the charge of apostasy. This situation could help explain the reaction to Galileo, as the view of Earth as the centre of the universe, while not explicitly scriptural truth, was heavily part of the clerical dogma. Given the philosophical stance of the Christian faith that humans are the favoured creation of an all-powerful god, Earth as the centre actually fits better. Combined with scriptural references like Joshua making the sun stand still, the conclusion that Earth was not the centre of the universe and rather revolved around the sun contradicted current dogmatic law based on the currently favoured interpretation of scripture. Galileo's conclusion, therefore, was, in some interpretations, contradictory to scripture, but, more importantly, was subversive to the power of the religious hierarchy. As time progressed and Galileo's view of the solar system became more and more undeniable, the religious dogma gradually shifted to accommodate. The story of Joshua was recast either to 'metaphor' or interpreted as the miracle of the Earth halting its rotation and orbit rather than the sun halting its motion, and the clerical dogma avoided comment on the issue before finally apologizing for Galileo's treatment a couple decades ago when someone must have realised they were still remiss in that regard. Of course, one reason the Catholic church is usually so slow to apologize or admit wrongdoing for anything is because, technically, their head guy is supposed to be divinely inspired by an omnipotent and timeless all-powerful being. As their god's agent on Earth, the pope should infallible (at least once he becomes pope). Admitting mistaken persecution of a brilliant scientist because his claims were deemed wrong makes the infallibility of a divinely inspired leader a little harder to argue.

Moving past Galileo and back to the time period of Darwin and Wöhler, however, schisms within the world of Christianity had been amplified by the translation of the Bible into many languages as well as widespread availability of printed material and an increase in literacy. Although there was still a certain amount of power concentrated in clerical hierarchies, there happened to be more of them now that the Church of England existed along with other Protestant branches like Lutheranism, and that division weakened their overall power. As was pointed out by Andrew, Darwin did not operate in a vacuum. Geology and paleontology were being developed by pioneering scientists like Georges Cuvier and James Sutton. Darwin was not the scientist who first developed the idea that extinct species had once lived on Earth without any evidence of mankind in a period of time far further in the past than one could feasibly trace the Biblical story. What he did was develop a theory that elegantly explained the appearane of the biological rule based on these observations as well as zoological observations in his current day. I would argue that it was the scientists who developed the fields of paleontology and geology who more directly contradicted the Biblical story of genesis.

Thus, the manner in which Darwin's work contradicts Biblical creationism must be seen more as a philosophical contradiction rather than a direct one, in which evolution can be seen as a naturalistic mechanism to explain the distribution and form of extant species. This explanation weakens the need for a divine explanation for the form of modern life, although it says nothing about the origin of life. Before vitalism had been demonstrated incorrect and we were able to generate organic substances from inorganic subtrates, an avenue for theological retreat remained widely open. By recasting genesis as a metaphor and enfolding evolution into "god's plan", the divine origin of life was much more easily defensible when there was no known natural mechanism for going from inorganic to organic. Without the abandonment of vitalism, theistic evolution is a much more viable outlook (although I would contend that one still has to answer how a benevolent and all-powerful god would deign to rely on such a largely unforgiving and unpleasant mechanism).

Evolution, it would seem, largely attacked the dogmatic idea of immutable forms, while the disproof of vitalism greatly weakens the idea of a divine origin for life. Both are aspects of the Biblical creation story, which is why I thought Wöhler's work also undermined religious dogma in a similar manner to Darwin's.

Startling Development

My post from a few days ago on the rights of parents to choose for their children now takes a dramatic development: Daniel Hauser's mother has fled the country with him rather than follow through with medical treatment. PZ Myers discusses the story with his charactistic flair for emotive godlessness, and I think it is something worth reading.

Follow-up Discussion

In my most recent post, I discussed both religion and suicide bombings. Both are subjects on which many people have quite strong opinions, so there were some responses to my post which I thought warranted some expansion. First and foremost is my discussion with Cornucrapia (conducted behind the internet's version of closed doors - a private chat. Therefore, if I make any mistakes in representing what he said, I apologize and hope he will set me straight). He made several points, the first of which was that he did not think my conclusion was as different from the article's as it appeared that I thought it was. Thus, I believe it is worth trying to more clearly elucidate just what conclusions I understood the article to have, and what my interpretation of the data entailed given my understanding and outlook on religion.

As Cornucrapia understood the article, it was saying that devotion to a religious institution is more indicative of suicide bombings than devotion to any particular god. In essence, I agree with that statement, but I interpreted the article more as saying that attendance and integration with a religious community was more indicative of suicide bombings than fervour of religious belief. Essentially, that is the same thing, just with a different emphasis. The way I read the article it seemed to be focusing on the community aspect irrespective of the beliefs held by the religion, whereas I thought that was an erroneous conclusion. To me, the dangers inherent in devotion to a religious community rest in the genuflection shown to those in charge of the community regardless of what they say or ask. As I tried to relate through my rambling discussion, in the vast majority of circumstances suicide bombings are a matter of manipulation, and religious organizations seem to be perfectly suited for recruitment into behavioural manipulation. Though I might have intellectual quibbles with personal spiritual beliefs, it is rare for an individually spiritual person to have drastic social ramifications for those around them. It is only when that person has others willing to rally to his call in some sort of organized religious opposition that one person's spiritual beliefs begin to have massive social ramifications. What I am basically trying to say is I think the increased support for suicide attacks following place of worship attendance rests primarily not in the increased social bonds, as the article seemed to suggest, but rather in the increased subservience to a small group of religious officials.

Which leads me to the second point which Cornucrapia mentioned which I full cede to him and should have mentioned myself. A far more powerful indicator of support for suicide bombings rests not in any test for religiosity, but rather in whether or not a region is occupied by a foreign military force. This then leads me to the other comment I wanted to address, which was Regan's. He thought my use of the words 'mentally unbalanced' was an unjustified value judgement, pointing out that the people who perform suicide attacks have usually led lives of terrible suffering.

There are two aspects to my response. The first is I just wanted to point out that though the way I said 'mentally unbalanced' was perhaps dismissive and marginalizing as it was within the bounds of a parentheses like an afterthought thrown out there, in that context it was not actually directed at suicide bombers in general. Instead, it was directed at those people who compose and enact suicide attacks on their own (sometimes with a friend, but the difference here is that they receive no external training or direct impetus driving them to perform their attack), for example the Columbine shooting. Despite the intention of the comment, however, I think that it is worth pointing out that anyone who perpetrates a suicide attack is mentally unbalanced. They might have good reason for being mentally unbalanced (such as having lived a horrifyingly awful life), but they are still deranged. A person driven insane by torture is still insane, and it should not be considered marginalizing to say so. It just happens that said person's insanity has a direct and understandable cause, but that does not mean that person does not most likely belongs in a mental health hospital. Regan makes an important point that is all too often unacknowledged in that one should be careful of falling into the trap of blaming the victim, but I think he oversteps the bounds of that point by objecting to any sort of assessment of suicide attackers' mental health based on the degree to which they have suffered prior to the attack. Much like war veterans who find they have difficulty returning to a nonviolent civilian existence and, as a result of their previous experiences, often end up commiting violent crimes against their fellow citizens, it is a messy issue. The people whose lives have been tragically and irrevocably disrupted by intense horror should not be dismissed out of hand, but so too should people not fear to assess their mental states. To deny that a person who is willing to blow himself up in order to kill others is mentally unbalanced out of pity for his past is dangerous both to him and those around him. To label him as mentally unbalanced should in no way be an attempt to marginalize him (though, like with all psychological problems, it will serve to do so for some people), but rather it should serve to acknowledge the horror of his prior experience and lead to future attempts to rectify that damage as much as possible.

Wrestling, but with my own worldview or with questionable science?

I followed a link to this article on religion and suicide bombings. It is an interesting article, but I find myself waffling on my thoughts. I suppose that is a good thing, as it is clearly challenging some of my notions, but it is still a difficult thing. Basically, the study which the article is about investigated the link between religion and suicide bombings and found the following general trends:

• Prayer correlated more strongly with religious devotion than attendance of church/temple/mosque/synagogue (and any other place of worship I happened to miss).
• Approval of and predisposition to perform suicide bombings was more strongly related to attendance of religious services than religious devotion.

The study therefore drew the conclusion that it was actually the social aspect of religion that led to suicide bombings rather than religious fervour and belief in rewards of the afterlife. Now, before I continue, I think I should air some of my own thoughts on religion. I hold no religious beliefs and attend no religious services (I think most of my readers are aware of this). I also have a number of qualms with religion, perhaps most importantly being what I see as a disastrous emphasis on orthodoxy over evidence and faith over reason. The trouble with making these statements is it not only strikes some people too close to home for them to continue rationally listening to what you are saying, but it also often leads to the retort "I don't know what religion you're talking about, but that's not my religion." And, to a certain extent, that is sometimes true. The deism of men like Thomas Jefferson is a pretty benign form of religious belief which I have a hard time finding a quarrel with. Likewise, in terms of organized religion, I do not find that I have the same quarrel with an organization like the United Church of Canada as I do with the Catholic church or, to an even greater extent, fundamentalist mega-churches in the United States. While I am a supporter of the idea of freedom of religion, as I have discussed elsewhere the idea of freedom of religion becomes fundamentally untenable when no limits are placed upon what protected religious belief entails. It should not be possible to justify any action as an expression of religious belief if it infringes upon the fundamental rights of others, but that is exactly what happens with honour killings and other forms of religious subjugation. The extraordinary difficulty that results in attempting to correct such gross violations of human rights, either due to the blanket cover of the argument for religious expression used to counter an external dialogue or the resistance to internal reform stemming from the elevation of unquestioning deference to religious teachings, is central to my antipathy toward organized religion. What hostility I have toward religion, therefore, does not rest upon the social aspects of support and community (I had actually generally regarded these as somewhat positive side effects). Of course, the social aspects of religion can easily be manipulated to help produce in-group/out-group animosity, but I still concluded that its edge in this matter fundamentally rested upon its profound advantage in producing dogmatic and unquestioning zealots.

I wanted to explain my outlook, because I am not sure if it is the reason (combined with my general wariness for the conclusions of psychology studies) I seemed to be looking for holes in the study's conclusions, or if the study itself rests upon shaky ground. One of the things which perked my ears up was the following paragraph:

This effect remained even after accounting for the different demographics and economics of the six countries, but it did vary from group to group. It was only statistically significant (unlikely to be a fluke result) for Indian Hindus, Russian Orthodox Christians and Israeli Jews. However, Ginges warns against overinterpreting these differences - obviously the six samples differed in many ways. The important point was that all of them showed a similar trend.

It is quite misleading to say that the effect remained when it did not remain in a statistically significant manner in 3/6 of the groups investigated (this is one of those things which seems to happen far too often in psychology. I don't understand why it is not stressed more that psychology is a statistical science. If I had control over the psychology curriculum, I would cram it so full of statistics courses that it was second only to actuarial science and statistics specialists). To then warn against over interpreting the differences due to the many obvious ways in which the samples themselves differed is clearly a line thrown in to mollify those who would use this study to justify varying value judgements on the religions involved in the study. In making such a blanket statement, however, one also skips over the determination of what those differences might be which led to some groups expressing the expected trend and others not (well, not statistically at least, which is what really matters).

Another aspect that also strikes me as somewhat misleading is the fact that frequency of prayer is used as a surrogate for religious devotion throughout the article, though the applicability of such a conflation is unlikely to be the same across religious and cultural groups. I would think that the efficacy of prayer as a measure of devotion, rather, is highly dependent upon the belief structure of the given religion.

Using my arm-chair psychology, I am tempted to reinterpret the results. To me, the evidence which ties religious attendance to approval of suicide bombings is not independent of the belief structure or level of devotion, but rather is evidence of the vulnerability of religious belief to manipulation. Suicide bombers are rarely religious officials, instead usually being trained and pushed into action by those who have no intention of blowing themselves up (the aforementioned religious officials). Likewise, most people have both a strong empathic streak for others as well as a survival instinct in themselves, and it would be very unusual for an individual on his own to devise and enact a suicide bombing (of course, when I say it is unusual, I don't mean impossible. There are all sorts of mentally unbalanced people out there). Thus, the role of religious service would seem, to me, to serve primarily to prevent individual senses of spirituality from straying too far from the collective path. High frequency of attendance, therefore, would indicate greater influence from the religious officials and other well-regarded members of the congregation who are most likely to put someone up to the act of performing a suicide bombing, but the act itself still depends upon a measure of devotion, if not to the religion itself but to the word of the person organizing the attack. This appears most readily achievable with the aid of unquestioning credulity from a religious follower (but is not limited to that, as political suicide bombers have historically shown).

In a sense, I suppose, this is a social aspect of religion, but not in the way I interpreted the study to mean. I am not entirely sure if I have made the distinction clear, but I hope I have (essentially, I see it as not being a result of the sense of community created but rather a result of the inordinate level of power and trust given to the religious officials). However, I, of course, do not have any experimental evidence (or even an experiment design) to back up my argument, so I open the discussion up to my readers. Do my qualms with the study make sense, or is it just my antipathy for organized religion rearing its ugly head?

"All non-believers stand aside in fear"

Alternative title: Truthiness and Political Power

Reading this post over at Deus Ex Malcontent a while ago reminded me of some thoughts I had bouncing around my head since I started listening to the How to Think About Science broadcasts that I mentioned even longer ago. In his post, Chez states that society requires a common basis for facts and methods for ascertaining them. I agree with that statement in principle, but it does not preclude religion. The thing is, a state-wide accepted pool of knowledge can come in many forms, and until relatively recently it was usually in the form of a state religion. In many ways, a non-science based approach is more attractive for a ruling party as there is more control. When the belief system in question is a religious or philosophical system (I include the philosophical system to cover things like Confucianism) the ruling party is completely unconstrained in what the knowledge they impart upon their subjects entails. If they are careful enough (and, to be entirely honest, "careful enough" doesn't really have to be all that careful) they can even entirely change their stance on an issue and convert the people under their care from pacifists to bloodthirsty crusaders like magic (or some other such dramatic change). To a certain extent, this might even be a desireable situation if the ruling party itself is able to see through their own nonsense and rule in an enlightened manner (like Plato's dream of benevolent philosopher kings). However, since true enlightenment and benevolence are awfully hard to come by, I think this can be safely ruled out and non-reality based systems of knowledge can be assumed to inevitably be used to serve the interests of those making the knowledge up.

Which leads me to science. Science is designed as well as we currently know how to default knowledge to what is real. While evidence can be spun and twisted and even sometimes outright manufactured, eventually the truth should come out. It is for this reason that it is so often at odds with the powerful and the elite, who would much rather have people believe whatever they are told regardless of the actual truth. To give perhaps a simplistic example, if a powerful ruler wants a rainforest destroyed so he can put in a golf course and a resort, it is much more convenient to have people believe that the Earth is created by a benevolent deity who will provide for mankind's prosperity than have to deal with facts of the disastrous ecological fallout that is likely to result. However, I fell into the same trap that skeptics and rationalist so often fall into and defaulted to a religious example. It isn't just religion that does this. Stalin did the same thing by trying to exercise complete control over the beliefs of his subjects. Jackasses like Dinesh D'Souza perpetuate the talking point that atheism is clearly morally bankrupt due to the abhorrent "atheist regimes" of the 20th century (he then goes on to list Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot. Sometimes Mao is in there too). Leaving out the fact that I have seen pointed out to Dinesh D'Souza in multiple debates (but which seems to fail to penetrate his mind) that Hitler and the Nazis were decidedly not an "atheist regime", this historical tit for tat of "look at the crusades", "Stalin killed more people" and so on is a complete mischaracterization of the rational secularism (as I understand it) being argued for by those I find intellectually inspiring on this account (namely, Richard Dawkins).

The debate, which so often is framed as religion vs. atheism, isn't and shouldn't be about that. Rather, it should be about a rational, confirmable world view as the paradigm one accepts for truth vs. a socially constructed dogma. While it is unreasonable to expect to completely get rid of dogma (as there will always be the temptation to at least try to warp or spin evidence to fit a previously expected result or to come up with a policy in favour of those performing the spin), requiring a knowledge base to be as evidentially based as is humanly possible provides the most protection for those not in decision making power. This, in essense, is what secularists are striving for. The cultural relativism of freedom of religion is a wonderful thing as long as it is restricted to the philosophical domain of non-practical matters. If people find comfort in the deistic notion that the Big Bang was caused by a powerful entity one would like to call God, that is perfectly fine. Likewise, if people find comfort in the spiritual community of weekly church attendance, that is also fine. What is not fine is when the freedoms of other people become infringed upon under the protection of one's right to the freedom of religion or when a religion is used as a position of authority to propagate a non-evidential base for knowledge and moral judgement used to inhibit the actions of those who do not adhere to the same belief structure (such as the limits on same-sex marriages or birth control). As I believe I have mentioned before, whenever the freedom of religion and other freedoms and rights conflict, I have yet to hear a rational argument for why the freedom of religion should not be overruled by the right with which it has come into conflict.

Somehow, I am back on religion again, and I apologize. I hope what I have written here makes sense, although I am not entirely sure I have said what I wanted to say either coherently or completely. Anyone else want to chime in?

Note: Not to distract from the possibility of a good debate this post might inspire, but one should note that I have used a quotation for the title, so it is part of my new figure-out-where-the-title-came-from contest. This one is somewhat obscure, so I'll give the hint that it is the opening line to a song.

A Creative Use of LEGO

I saw this site a while ago, but recently rediscovered it. The fellow who put this together has a vast amount of time on his hands, but it is remarkably well done. Go have a look at The Brick Testament.

An Interesting Article

I thought this was an interesting article. You might ask why I am posting a link to it, though, since I do read a lot of interesting articles that don't get links... the truth is, I was excited to see that the fellow now lives in Cranbrook. While I'm not actually from Cranbrook, (I'm from Creston, which is an even smaller town in the vicinity of Cranbrook (which forces me to fly into Cranbrook whenever I want to go home to visit my parents)), that whole region is referenced in the news so rarely, I think I am allowed to get a little excited when I see it happen. It does strike me as kind of odd, though, that when the Kootenays make it into the news, it is usually about some sort of connection to weirdly fundamentalist religious offshoots...

Some Horrified Bafflement

Those that read the blog Pharyngula will already have been made aware of this, but I thought it was worth discussing here too. Apparently, the Christian Children's Fund turned down $17,000 in donations raised at GenCon this year because part of that money was raised by selling Dungeons and Dragons products. I find that such a confusing slap in the face. For a charity to say, "We don't want your money", they are basically labelling you as a vile, amoral, and corrupt element of society that has so tainted the money you are offering that it isn't worth accepting, despite the number of children that $17,000 could actually feed and clothe. The fact that somehow playing an imaginative game can make a person so morally reprehensible that their money is no longer acceptable by a charity I find just utterly baffling.

I suppose I should say one last thing before I end this. I don't understand what fuels the stigma against Dungeons and Dragons. It is a game (a rather fun one, in my opinion). Sure, it takes up a lot of time (which is why I haven't played in years), but that is partly what makes it so attractive for kids in junior high and high school who happen to not want to spend hours drinking, driving dangerously, and pursuing otherwise "high risk" behaviour that is so common in teenagers. It is a social activity for the socially awkward (and the not so socially awkward, as I have known some cool people who play D&D too). The fact that there are angels and demons and a pantheon of gods might be construed as corrupting, but one of the amazing things about D&D is, if you are a monotheistic nut who cannot handle a polytheistic religion even in a wholly and entirely ficitious universe, you can easily change those aspects. Replace the D&D pantheon with a single god (and perhaps his enemy, so for Christians Satan could be included as a force of evil). Then all clerics serve that god, and you can have them fight the forces of the devil for hours on end, making you feel spiritually superior as well as giving you something to pass the hours with.

Anyway, other than professing bafflement and I think some justified indignation, I'm not sure what else to say. There are plenty of other charities out there who do very similar things (like Plan USA), so I would suggest giving donations to them if you are looking for a charity to donate to.

A Parent's Right

I read this article this morning and it made me wonder: where did the concept that it is a parent's right to choose how his or her child is educated come from? After all, that isn't entirely true. As I understand it, children are required by law to attend a school, and if a parent cannot afford a private school, then that school must be a public one or home-school. Therefore, the right isn't a complete one anyway. The parent has no right to say, "I run a farm, and I want my kids to grow up to be farmers like me. They don't need any of that fancy schooling, they just need to stay home and learn how to work the farm equipment." While home-school is an option, there are still certain requirements that must be met. Enforcement of those requirements is an issue in and of itself, but there is still the precedent that the state dictates that a child needs to be educated in some manner, and a certain amount of that educational requirement is specifically outlined. Since that has been accepted, I am not sure what right is being violated by changing the standards of required education to become more rational and secular. Of course the argument can be made that the right to religious practise is being violated if teaching one's religious doctrine as fundamental truth is a vital tenant to one's faith. Yet that is the crux of the whole right to religious practise - depending on how one defines religious practise, virtually any law or ruling can be interpreted as violating one's religious rights. No one tries to make the argument that sanctified murder through ritual sacrifice is a valid exercise in religious freedom in our modern society, even if ritual sacrifice is a fundamental tenant to one's religious practise. It is therefore seen that there are and must be limits on the right to religious practise, which immediately draws the questions of what are those limits and who gets to decide on them? It is this amorphous nature to the right of religious practise that, to me, makes it fundamentally untenable. It would seem indoctrinating children with religiously based education is a greater violation of the children's right to a proper education aimed at giving them an equal opportunity for participating in society than it is a violation of the parents' right to choose the content of the children's education.

(In a related issue, I have always thought it a little bit unfair that a person's anathema toward a particular object or behaviour, if under the blanket of religion, is given more credence than another person's individual loathing or obsessions. This is particularly troublesome when there is no way to measure the degree to which a person is invoking his right to avoid a particular action or practise based on religious reasons actually cares about the religion in question)

I know this fairly outside of my purported subject matter of science (with an emphasis on computational neuroscience), but I thought it was worth writing about. I know I've recently told some of less-computer savvy relatives about this blog, so I'd like to point out that it is possible to leave comments if you think I've come to erroneous conclusions or made false claims (or if you agree with me and would like to shower me with adulation).

A note about crackers

I believe most people reading this blog have heard about the whole eucharist 'stealing' business that went on in Florida a while ago, followed by the desecration of one by PZ Myers. Up to this point I have avoided comment on this subject simply because it seemed rather absurd to me and I plan to continue with the no comment policy. This is just a quick post to mention that even Hobbes, one of the founders of modern political philosophy, pointed out multiple times throughout his seminal work Leviathan that the concept of transubstantiation was utterly ridiculous and made absolutely no sense. That was three and a half centuries ago. I have many issues with Hobbes' conclusions (he is scarily totalitarian. In fact, I think it is specifically in chapter 19 that all of Hobbes' careful ruminations shockingly lead him to the nonsensical declaration that a despotic monarch is the best form of government). Actually, I seem to have lost the original point behind this post, but I think I'll put it up anyway, because I found it to be interesting tidbit of information. Hobbes is an odd character - sometimes nearly atheistical, other times he is arguing straight from scripture. I think it might be safest to regard him in a similar manner to Jefferson, in that he was raised in a Christian society but was intellectually frustrated with the contradictory and evidentially baseless nature of many of the church's teachings.

Subject for this Sunday: Crazy Debunking Crazy

I just wanted to mention that the Church of Christ, Scientist is going to be presenting a sermon this Sunday with one of my favourite of their titles: Ancient and Modern Necromancy, alias Mesmerism and Hypnotism, Debunked. I believe that is the accurate and full title, but I might be mistaken since they haven't updated their website and I am having to try and remember this from glancing at the sign on my way to work this morning. I think it just begs the question, however, of whether it really counts as debunking something when you do so with ideas that are equally as ludicrous?

EDIT: The proper title is "Ancient and Modern Necromancy, alias Mesmerism and Hypnotism, Denounced".

The Crazy for this Sunday: Mortals and Immortals

The sign outside the Church of Christ, Scientist is back. It has been back for a couple weeks now, I just haven't gotten around to posting anything about it. It disappeared for a while in what appeared to most likely be an act of vandalism with someone stealing the "Subject for this Sunday" portion of the sign. Really, as acts of vandalism go, I think I can actually understand this one the most. Unlike stealing a stop sign, where you risk seriously injuring someone, this does not really run the risk of any serious ramifications, plus whoever does the stealing gets an incredibly crazy sign to put on his wall. Of course, it is still stealing, so I do frown upon it. Also, an absent sign means I miss my weekly dose of crazy.

In case you are not familiar with the Church of Christ, Scientist, it is an odd cult that manages to somehow convince its followers that modern medicine is bad, and prayer is better. I've never actually gone to one of the sermons, but I often think it might be fun. The reason for that is they often have really ridiculous titles for the week's subject. When I first moved in and started noticing them, they had a whole string of slightly normal (even science-like) sounding ones. After several weeks of seeing subjects such as "Matter", "Energy", and "The Universe" advertised, I actually briefly thought that maybe it was an educational institute masquerading as a church (you know, kind of like Intelligent Design masquerading as science, only the other way around and actually helping people by giving them a nice physics lecture every Sunday). Unfortunately, on closer inspection of their sign I noticed "Wednesdays: Testimonials of Healing". That was my first inkling that something might be a little off. Then the subjects changed, and I knew there was an institution peddling craziness located within easy walking distance. I think my favourite to date has been something about modern necromancy (I forget the full title, but it was quite long and completely full of ignorance). Of course, in order to get full enjoyment out of this sign, I need to detach myself from the knowledge that people actually go to this institution and believe what it teaches. If I can perform that little mental dance, then I can just chuckle on my way to class at what an absolutely insane subject is being advertised, and wonder just what could possibly be said about it for two hours without anyone realising the speaker was completely off. Then, the sign disappeared, and I spent several weeks wondering just what the crazy for this Sunday might be. Now, however, it is back, and I can have my weekly dose of crazy again.