Today's Must-Read: Damaged Goods

The author of this piece has managed to crystallize a number of ideas I've been batting around, and takes it farther than would have occurred to me.

Evangelicalism doesn’t have a brand problem; it has a product problem.

Ok, Evangelicals do have a brand problem—but they also have a major product problem.

Bible-believing born-again Christians, aka Evangelicals, have had a brand problem since Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority sold the Born-again movement to the Republican party in exchange for political power a generation ago, forging the Religious Right.

The Republican party has been using Christianity’s good name to cover bad deeds ever since, all the while tapping Evangelical media empires and churches as communications and organizing platforms to bring ordinary believers along with the merger. Having become true-believers themselves, Evangelical leaders have offered themselves up as trusted messengers for this New-and-Improved political gospel project.

She goes on to detail how the contemporary evangelical/Republican movement has damaged Christianity itself, but I think she misses a beat here:

Real soul searching would mean asking what it is about the Evangelical worldview that has made Evangelical leaders and ordinary Bible-believers susceptible to courtship by authoritarian, bigoted, sexist, tribal, anti-intellectual greedmongers who dangle the carrot of theocracy. But few Evangelical leaders are asking this question because that would mean revisiting the peculiar status they grant to the Bible itself. And that is off-limits.

When one treats the Bible as the literally perfect and complete word of God—which most Christian scholars don’t but most Evangelicals do—it isn’t hard to find support for every item in the ugly list that now darkens the Evangelical brand.

What she's missing here, I think, is that fact that authoritarianism is built into Christianity: the source of all truth is one authority that is beyond question. Add in human hierarchies, such as structure most forms to Christianity (and, frankly are more or less hard-wired), and it only gets worse. And it should go without saying that, given the intrinsic hierarchical nature of the Abrahamic religions, it follows that hierarchy would be built into the societies that favor them, and that those who differ from those received norms are ostracized. Thus the sexism -- or outright misogyny, if you will -- justified because Eve was the one who caused the Fall. (And it's telling that learning to think for yourself would be considered the Original Sin.) And Evangelicals are firmly anchored in the Old Testament -- the sacred texts of a tribal religion.

Read the whole thing. And then think about what happens when this mindset has the influence it has on the current regime.

Today's Must-Read: A Twofer

There. I'm being very up front about it this time.

Two posts in my morning reading started building links between themselves. (Well, OK, I did it, but it's just the way my mind works: it's right-brain thinking, in which your mind makes connections that are not obvious to rational -- i.e., left-brain -- thinking. It's the way an artist thinks.)

At any rate, the first is Tom Sullivan at Hullabaloo on the "Deep State," President Bannon's chief bugaboo:

The deep state is the latest "fifth column" narrative of betrayal from within. Conservative radio host Mark Levin alleges Obama and the Democrats have “squirreled their appointees into the bureaucracy” to engage in a "silent coup" against Trump. But for the Trump administration the narrative functions rather neatly as a preemptive explanation for his administration's own failures. Andrew Sullivan sees Trump's unsupported accusations of wiretapping against President Obama and attacks against the press as "designed to erode the very notion of an empirical reality, independent of his own ideology and power." Peter Beinart believes that deep state rumors are a diversion that will allow Trump to dismiss as partisan hackery any findings by the Justice Department that his administration has ties to the Russian government.

(Emphasis added.)

The portion I emphasized ties in very neatly to this article by David Roberts at Vox, via Digby, which, in spite of the headline is not about climate change denial:

Indeed, the climate fight has long since moved past the stage when it was about the facts.

Allow me an analogy. Imagine you’re playing a basketball game. A member of the other team travels. The referee calls the travel, but the opposing player just shrugs and says, “I don’t care.” He refuses to surrender the ball and just keeps going. Then his team starts putting extra players on the court, fouling at will, and pelting your team with refuse. The referee continues calling violations, but the other team simply disregards him. They start appealing to their own referees, friends of theirs in the stands. “Bob says there was no foul.”

At that point, the dispute is no longer about what happened in this play or that play. The facts are not at issue. The dispute is over the authority of the referee. The question is whether both teams will honor the referee’s calls, and if not, how the game can be played at all and what “winning” means under the circumstances.

If it’s not obvious, the referee in this analogy is science.

Roberts does us the favor of extending that analogy:

But in a sense, climate denial is just the tip of the (melting) iceberg. The right’s refusal to accept the authority of climate science is of a piece with its rejection of mainstream media, academia, and government, the shared institutions and norms that bind us together and contain our political disputes.

Trumpism is just the flowering of a process that has been underway for a couple of generations, and which we're seeing in all sorts of contexts -- climate change denial, "fake news," "alternative facts," "Christians" rejecting the authority of the law, the press' "both sides do it" mantra, and on and on. Ascribing it to emerging fascism is almost too trite -- it's the erosion of the very foundations of civilization.

And we can thank "conservatism" when it all comes tumbling down.

Footnote: This is a prime example of the tactics conservatives use:

Aiming to erode public trust in the Congressional Budget Office ahead of its report this week expected to show that the GOP's Obamacare repeal bill will cause millions of people to lose their health insurance, Republican lawmakers and Trump administration officials are rewriting the history of the CBO's analysis of the Affordable Care Act.

"They were way, way off last time in every aspect of how they scored and projected Obamacare," White House press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters. "If you look at the number of people they projected would be on Obamacare, they were off by millions.

"

Today's Must-Read: Define "Great"

This article by David Rothkopf in Foreign Policy, which tom Sullivan quotes extensively in this post at Hullabaloo. Rothkopf's thesis:

The shallow state is in many respects the antithesis of the deep state. The power of the deep state comes from experience, knowledge, relationships, insight, craft, special skills, traditions, and shared values. Together, these purported attributes make nameless bureaucrats into a supergovernment that is accountable to no one. That is a scary prospect. But the nature of bureaucracies, human nature, inertia, checks and balances, and respect for the chain of command makes it seem a bit far-fetched to me. (The bureaucracy will drive Trump, like many presidents, mad, and some within it will challenge him, but that’s not the same thing.)

The shallow state, on the other hand, is unsettling because not only are the signs of it ever more visible but because its influence is clearly growing. It is made scarier still because it not only actively eschews experience, knowledge, relationships, insight, craft, special skills, tradition, and shared values but because it celebrates its ignorance of and disdain for those things. Donald Trump, champion and avatar of the shallow state, has won power because his supporters are threatened by what they don’t understand, and what they don’t understand is almost everything. Indeed, from evolution to data about our economy to the science of vaccines to the threats we face in the world, they reject vast subjects rooted in fact in order to have reality conform to their worldviews. They don’t dig for truth; they skim the media for anything that makes them feel better about themselves. To many of them, knowledge is not a useful tool but a cunning barrier elites have created to keep power from the average man and woman. The same is true for experience, skills, and know-how. These things require time and work and study and often challenge our systems of belief. Truth is hard; shallowness is easy.

(Emphasis added.)

Read them both. (Yes, I know, another twofer. You can handle it.)

About Vaccinations

There's a good post over at Mahablog on the anti-vaxxers and their consequences. She has the close to the same reaction that I do, not only to the whole "vaccinations cause (fill in favorite horrible condition)" mantra, but to the self-obsessed "health" nuts in general:

Health fads aren’t new at all, but fads about diets have gotten so prevalent they’ve spawned a new term — orthorexia. Suddenly gluten is bad. Suddenly people have to de-tox. Like we didn’t have livers for that. Not that I’m exactly a role model of sensible eating, but I do run into people who are absolutely obsessed with only eating certain foods from a few trusted, and out of the way, sources. It’s like anything sold in a chain grocery store might cause sudden death.

My working theory for at least some of this craziness is that food and health fads have taken the place of religion for some people as a means for protecting themselves and their loved ones for the scary things out there. Prayer has been replaced by colon cleanses.

I've seen labels at my local Jewel crowing that the packaged ham is gluten free. Ham? Why would you find gluten in ham to begin with? Yes, gluten -- which is nothing more than the protein in wheat and similar grains -- is sometimes added to other foods as a stabilizing agent, but meat? Granted, there are people with gluten allergies, but all the manufacturers need to do is include information on gluten on the label. Jewel is jumping on the latest food-fad bandwagon. (The idea the gluten is "bad for you" is patently ridiculous, unless you're one of those with the aforementioned allergies.)

I have a friend who at one point was avoiding carbohydrates -- she called them "empty calories." I sort of lit into her, pointing out that your body needs carbohydrates, that's mostly what it burns for energy, especially at rest, and carbs are not "empty calories." It's amazing the nonsense that people pick up from the media that becomes received wisdom. (Well, that's my problem with received wisdom, now that I think of it. Who knows what these "authorities" have been smoking?)

Back to vaccinations. The real problem here is that we need our herd immunity; without it, diseases -- such as, for example, measles -- have a nice big playground. (I was talking to my sister yesterday and we were remembering all the vaccinations we had as children. She remembered the polio vaccinations, which I had forgotten, but who in the hell would want polio to come back? Or smallpox? I religiously get my pneumonia vaccinations -- having had pneumonia twice in the past five years, I can assure you it is no fun -- two or three days in the hospital and maybe three to four weeks for a full recovery -- and my shingles vaccination, and even flu shots, even though I have variable reactions to the flu vaccines: sometimes I get sick for a night, sometimes I don't, but I'd rather spend a night in bed than a week.) So now, thanks to Sarah Palin, among other luminaries, we have measles outbreaks all over the country.

O'Brien's last statement gets to the heart of it:

The measles outbreaks also reminds us that the things we do, or don’t do, really do affect other people in myriad ways. We can go around pretending that our personal choices are just our business, but it’s not always that simple.

That's it, with a small caveat: some of our personal choices are purely personal, but a lot of them simply aren't, because we're social animals, we travel in groups, and for better or worse, what's experienced by one member of the group has a big chance of eventually being experienced by most, if not all, of the others. Like measles.

Today's Must-Read

Interesting post by Digby today on something that has become a big flaw in our public discourse, starting with a quote from this interview with Reza Aslan:

... someone like Sam Harris or Bill Maher sees religion as defining people of faith, their values, their motivations, and I see people as defining their religion.

Or, to put in in my own words: You can find something in just about any sacred text to justify what you wanted to do anyway. The glaring example of that, of course, is the self-styled "Christians" who are locked into Leviticus and a genital-based morality.

Digby goes on:

We know too many religious people of different faiths for whom religion is just one part of who they are and who are completely balanced, tolerant, open and often evolving in their interpretation of their faith not to. I also know atheists who take a fundamentalist point of view and are totally intolerant of any challenge to their worldview.

I got into a "discussion," if you want to call it that, in a comment thread with a woman who quickly revealed herself to be about the most fundamental of fundamentalists. She kept throwing out bizarre "arguments," which I answered with facts. She finally resorted to calling me a child of Satan. What was instructive, aside from her lack of general knowledge about the world in general, was her complete inability to entertain the idea that a differing point of view could be valid.

Digby notes that "There is more to human behavior than religions belief." That's undeniably true, and those who rely on religious belief to explain everything are missing a lot. (And, as Digby also points out, this does not excuse atheists, who may not subscribe to religion per se, but too often share the same mindset.) There is a tendency to see the world in black and white, although I'm not ready to ascribe that tendency to a certain group: it's a matter of basic psychology that we first classify things according to stereotypes; it's only as we come to know more that we modify those classifications, add a little nuance to our perceptions. It strikes me that some people don't want to learn more, perhaps because it challenges their assumptions, which makes them uncomfortable. (Alright, it scares the bejeezus out of them.) I guess I can think my lucky stars that I grew up in a family that valued learning and managed to avoid having my innate curiosity educated out of me. (Strangely enough, my sister is one of the least curious people I know.) Hence my basic philosophy: Poke it and see what it does. The beginnings of the scientific method.

Aslan, early on, makes one very important point:

So let’s say you had Bill Maher and Sam Harris as a sort of captive audience in a lecture hall for a half hour, and only a half hour. What would you focus on? What do you want them to hear that you don’t think they’re hearing?

This is going to sound odd to say, but probably nothing, because when you are dealing with that kind of level of certainty, whether you are talking about a religious fundamentalist, or an atheist fundamentalist, which is precisely what someone like Sam Harris is, it’s really a waste of time to try to argue either data points or logical reasoning, because they have already made up their mind and it becomes kind of useless to have that kind of conversation.

See my anecdote above, about the woman who called me a child of Satan.

The interview is a must-read, as are Digby's comments.

Another Snake Oil Salesman

all dressed up for a party. Yep, none other than Archbishop Salavatore "DUI" Cordileone, via Good As You.

Instead of protecting persons, [the Employment Non Discrimination Act] uses the force of the law to coerce everyone to accept a deeply problematic understanding of human sexuality and sexual behavior and to condone such behavior. The current proposed ENDA legislation is not about protecting persons, but behavior. Churches, businesses and individuals should not be punished in any way for living by their religious and moral convictions concerning sexual activity.

Eliminating truly unjust discrimination – based on personal characteristics, not sexual behavior – and protecting religious freedom are goals that we all should share. The current political climate makes it very difficult to maintain a reasonable dialogue on these contentious issues, but we must keep trying.

This is just the quote that Jeremy Hooper published. The full letter is here. It's all of the same cloth, and a prime example of the ability of some people to turn reality on its head. Go ahead and read it, if you can stand it. I could go through and rebut every statement in it, but I'm sure you can do the same, so I won't bother.

This is the comment I left at Good As You:

I hardly know where to start -- Cordileone is as good as Tony Perkins at distorting and misrepresenting facts. (But at least we don't have to deal with middle-school word-play.)

1) "Deeply problematic understanding of human sexuality" -- in what way? Anyone who knows what they're talking about understands that homosexuality is part of the range of normal human behavior. It seems the Church's "understanding" of human sexuality, as in most areas of human behavior, is problematic.

2) "to condone such behavior" -- no one's insisting you condone anything, only that you keep your nose out of people's private lives.

3) "Churches, businesses and individuals should not be punished in any way for living by their religious and moral convictions concerning sexual activity." --No one's suggesting that. The law just says you can't force your religious convictions on anyone else. See # 2, minding your own business.

4) "Eliminating truly unjust discrimination – based on personal characteristics" -- you mean, like the decision to join the Catholic Church, or follow any religious tradition? Which I don't think anyone can characterize as a "personal characteristic" -- that's really a behavior. Or maybe you mean something more fundamental, such as being female? The Church has a real good record there. The consensus among those who actually know something about human psychology is that same-sex orientation is, in fact, an innate characteristic.

5) "and protecting religious freedom" -- trans.: I have the right to force my religious dogma on everyone else. Just ask me.

6) "The current political climate makes it very difficult to maintain a reasonable dialogue on these contentious issues," -- "dialogue" means you listen as well as speak, something for which the Catholic hierarchy is not noted. In fact, there's been a quite spirited dialogue, in the media, the courts, and the Internet. Sorry you missed it.

And all this, coming from a highly placed member of an institution that has repeatedly proven itself not only hypocritical, but morally bankrupt.

Oh, and I forgot one thing: it's also an institution that has, at best, a tenuous relationship with reality.

Addendum: I had to include this, the final paragraph of the Archbishop's statement. It's a prime example of the cynicism that seems to be a common characteristic of the so-called "religious" right. Keep in mind that this is coming from someone who believes that the authority of the Church cannot be challenged in any way and that he, as a member of the ruling hierarchy in that Church, has the right to determine the parameters of everyone's private behavior.

Lobbying for coercive laws that violate freedom will not promote justice in the workplace. Nor will it advance the common good to seek to silence debate about sexual morality. We, like all Americans, wish there was an easy way forward. There is not. But there is an honest one. And it starts with the unflinching commitment to the inherent dignity of every human person, and to the “healthy pluralism” we all wish to share.

Faith-Based Reality: The News Media At Work

Here's an article that points up a major failing of the news media in this country. The subject is the reporting on the controversy around the birth-control mandate of the ACA, but the problem extends to just about everything the media touches:

When it comes to women’s health issues like contraception and abortion, why does the press so often present opinion and fact side by side? Recent pieces in Reuters, the New York Times and SCOTUSblog, to name just a few, made an attempt at “balance” by presenting what they see as “both sides of the issue” on contraception. But do facts have two sides? When reporting on medical issues, weighing a religious belief as equal to scientific and medical evidence is disingenuous and confusing to the reader.

The Reuters piece is egregious, but what can you expect from a piece titled "U.S. top court case highlights unsettled science in contraception"? As Lin-Wang Fang points out in the main article, the science is very clear:

FACT: The ACA requires new health insurance plans to cover the full spectrum of FDA-approved forms of birth control. It does not require coverage of abortion or abortifacients.

FACT: No FDA-approved forms of birth control – including emergency contraception pills or the IUD – cause abortions. Emergency contraception pills and IUDs prevent pregnancy, not disrupt pregnancy.

FACT: Pregnancy occurs when a fertilized egg implants into the uterine lining. After implantation, that’s when a pregnancy test turns positive. Even among women not on birth control, not every fertilized egg implants. Therefore, the possibility that the copper IUD could inhibit implantation does not make it an abortifacient. This is not an opinion. This is the shared consensus of the medical and scientific community, including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

In light of the facts, it's worth taking a look at the NYT piece, which is really an op ed by the director of a "pro-life" organization -- the comments really rake her over the coals.

Another group that is constantly trying to conflate religious belief with scientific evidence is the creationist contingent:

Creationists are accusing astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson's reboot of "Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey" of being scientifically unbalanced because it doesn't represent their beliefs.

Right Wing Watch posted audio of Danny Faulkner of Answers In Genesis and the Creation Museum speaking Thursday on "The Janet Mefford Show,” in which he blasted deGrasse Tyson for ignoring the creationist point of view.

"Creationists aren’t even on the radar screen for them, they wouldn’t even consider us plausible at all," Faulkner told host Janet Mefford.

"But when you have so many scientists who simply do not accept Darwinian evolution, it seems to me that that might be something to throw in there," Mefford said. "You know, the old, ‘some scientists say this, others disagree and think this,’ but that’s not even allowed."

OK, it's Janet Mefferd's show, so we know we're dealing with the fringe, but notice the bald assertion that "there are so many scientists who simply do not accept Darwinian evolution." That's at best a misrepresentation -- I have no doubt that Mefferd is including engineers, mathematicians, what-have-you as scientists. They have no chops when it comes to evolutionary theory.

And it's the "equal time" mantra again, and of course, the real question is Why should a program devoted to science be including religious belief? RightWing Watch sums it up:

Arguing that evolution, the foundation of modern biology, and one of many theological beliefs on human creation are simply “two sides” that merit competing time on a science program is much like the equally absurd argument Creationists use when trying to undermine the teaching of evolution in public schools.

But you won't find the mainstream news media pointing that out. Blame Fox News, with its specious "fair and balanced" meme, which it seems just about everyone has bought into. News flash: "balanced" is not necessarily "fair," and these days it's seldom accurate.

Footnote: It's worth looking again at Judge Bernard Friedman's take-down of Mark Regnerus' "study" in the Michigan marriage ban trial. That's called "critical thinking" and it's another thing that the religious nuts want to do away with -- for good reason.

Saturday Science: Controversy

Ran across a new site, From Quarks to Quasars, which looks like fun. This article caught my attention, since it relates to the public's "belief" in evolution. (I really think that is totally the wrong way to phrase the question, frankly. "Belief" is for religion -- it doesn't have to have a rational basis. Fortunately, the pollsters avoided that trap.)

This is an interesting observation:

According to Yale studies, people only seriously consider evidence if it is presented/endorsed by someone who subscribes to their cultural beliefs i.e., if an individual has to believe an expert or a person who shares their cultural values (religious, political, economic, or otherwise), they will go with the person who has a similar belief structure. According to the researchers’ findings, “people tend to keep a biased score of what experts believe, counting a scientist as an ‘expert’ only when that scientist agrees with the position they find culturally congenial.”

So, an authority is only an authority if he/she believes the same things you do to begin with.

That's sort of scary.

Words Fail Me

The headline reads "One-third of Americans reject evolution, poll shows."

Sixty percent of Americans say that "humans and other living things have evolved over time," the telephone survey by the Pew Research Center's Religion and Public Life Project showed (Click here for the full survey).

But 33 percent reject the idea of evolution, saying that "humans and other living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time," Pew said in a statement.

Although this percentage remained steady since 2009, the last time Pew asked the question, there was a growing partisan gap on whether humans evolved.

"The gap is coming from the Republicans, where fewer are now saying that humans have evolved over time," said Cary Funk, a Pew senior researcher who conducted the analysis.

Somehow, the fact that more Republicans are rejecting evolution doesn't surprise me. That's only to be expected when a political party is dominated by a group that rejects science and most of the contemporary world. The kicker is that the percentage of Republicans who accept evolution has dropped by eleven points in four years. Somehow, I don't think this is a result of carefully considering the evidence.

Among religious groups, white evangelical Protestants topped the list of those rejecting evolution, with 64 percent of those polled saying they believe humans have existed in their present form since the beginning of time.

"This has been a staple of evangelical Protestantism for nearly 100 years," said Alan Lichtman, an American University history professor and author of "White Protestant Nation: The Rise of the American Conservative Movement."

The ironic part of this is that there is really no conflict between the Bible and evolutionary theory, as a number of denominations have concluded, including the Roman Catholic Church. Unless, of course, you are a biblical literalist who believes every word of the Bible is the absolute truth, even those parts that contradict each other. My own take is that if you insist that any sacred text is the literal truth, you're not playing with a full deck. It's called "metaphor," and myth makes great use of it

And of course, as made plain by the example of evangelical Protestantism, there's a strong element of ideology over reality. That seems to be a foundational principle of the Republican party these days, across the board, from economics to -- well, to science. (And where are most the climate change denialists housed? Yep.)

I sometimes -- OK, often -- wonder about the need some people display for eternal truth, unchanging and immutable. The universe isn't like that. It keeps changing, and what we know about it tends to change. You either deal with that or fall by the wayside.

And that is the real lesson: adapt or die.

Via just about everyone.

Right Wing "Moderates"

Very interesting post by Fred Clark at Slacktivist on the role "moderate" evangelicals play in the culture wars:

It would be a positive thing if these moderate mainstream white evangelicals, these Very Nice People with their emphasis on civility, were able to provide a challenge to the vitriol, dishonesty and power games of the culture warriors.

But unfortunately, that’s not the role they play most of the time. Most of the time their smiling civility doesn’t provide a challenge to the culture warriors, it provides a cover for them.

He makes a good point.

And a thought: If a bigot is someone who demeans and discriminates against a group of people without any rational reason -- say because of religious belief -- how to these "civil" evangelicals rank? Is it possible to have a Very Nice Bigot?

And that just naturally leads to Maggie Gallagher, the queen of the self-styled "civil" participants in the culture wars. She's now slamming Gov. Chris Christie for signing a bill outlawing "ex-gay" counseling for minors, and she's either very sloppy about it, or deliberately lying. Her opening paragraph is . . . illuminating:

Due to staff error, a statement on Chris Christie’s signing a bill banning all professional counseling for minors unless it is gay-affirming was issued without my consent, or knowledge. I dislike using language that portrays gay people as “homosexuals” who are “tormented” by same-sex desires. For myself, and I speak only for myself, I consider this language condescending to both gay people and to men in general. Among other things, as far as I can see for most men, of whatever orientation or state in life, being tormented by sexual desire is pretty much the human condition for long stretches of life, rather than an unbearable cause for condescending pity.

First off, the "staff error," also known as "it's someone else's fault," which is a staple defense of so-called "conservatives," a/k/a, the party of personal responsibility.

And do I have to comment on her apparent attitude toward men?

This is where she goes totally off the cliff:

Governor Chris Christie has just put his name to a bill that uses the power of government to strip both parents and teenagers of the right to seek competent, professional help to live their life in accordance with their own values. The bill does not ban a specific kind of destructive therapy; it is a blanket ban on any licensed counseling professional helping any teenager who does not wish to act on gay (or transgender) desire. Not only efforts to change orientation but efforts to change behavior are forbidden, under penalty of law.

Governor Christie just endorsed a law that thus excludes many gay teens who wish to live in accordance with Bible-based values from the circle of care; he has outright banned chastity as a goal of counseling. His bill is not only anti-religious, anti-liberty, and anti-family, it is anti-science because it does not permit scientific knowledge to evolve in the hands of competent professionals.

None of that is true. None of it. The last part is hysterically funny: orientation-change therapy has been condemned by every major medical and psychological professional organization in the Western world because it is not scientific, its practitioners are not competent, and it has been shown to be damaging to those who undergo it. Besides, it doesn't work.

Gallagher either didn't read the bill, or she doesn't care what it really says.

Via Box Turtle Bulletin.

One Million Moms vs Evolution (IUpdated)

This time, they're taking on evolution. (I guess there are no scandalous comics out right now.) Via Joe.My.God., this gem:

Dear Joe, 1MM is teaming up with evangelist Ray Comfort to distribute Evolution vs. God far and wide, especially to those who reject God, the Bible and creation. Specifically, teams of Christian student groups on some of the nation’s most liberal colleges are in place and stand ready to personally hand this eye-opening DVD to other students. Once you've seen the trailer, I know you'll want a personal copy for yourself. We are offering Evolution vs. God to you for a suggested donation of only $5.00 to 1MM. Then...help us get this DVD into the hands of young people at America's most liberal colleges and universities! When you order your personal copy, you’ll have the opportunity to make an additional donation to purchase DVDs that will reach unbelieving college students. Click on the video and watch liberal professors dumbfounded by God's truth.

One commenter suggested that the professors were actually dumbfounded by the stupidity of the interviewers.

Here's the trailer:

If you're watching -- and you don't have to watch all that carefully -- you can see where answers were truncated.

PZ Myers, one of the experts interviewed, had some comments on the whole thing:

I’ve done a number of interviews for the media, and it’s not surprising when an hour-long conversation is reduced to a few sentences. I expect that, and it’s no surprise.

What they don’t do, unless they are ideological hacks and liars, is chop up the interview to completely misrepresent the point I just explained to them at length. [Ray] Comfort came to me asking for the evidence for evolution. The way it went is that he would a) ask for evidence, b) I would give him an example (like the research on sticklebacks or bacteria), c) Comfort would raise an irrelevant objection (they’re still fish! They’re still bacteria!), and d) I would explain why his objection was invalid, and how his expectations of the nature of the evidence were wrong. Somehow, though, in the movie (d) always ended up on the cutting room floor, so that he could announce in all of his promotional materials and in the movie itself that I was unable to provide any evidence for evolution.

That last bit is a lie.

And that is no surprise.

Do you suppose there's a special edition of the Bible that's missing the Eighth Commandment -- the one about bearing false witness?

And don't forget to send money.

Update: PZ has a further comment on tactics:

Here’s a single-celled organism that evolved two tails; “it’s still a single-celled organism.” Here’s a fish that evolved armor plating; “it’s still a fish.” Here’s a fruit fly that evolved a whole new mating signal; “it’s still a fruit fly.” Notice what’s common in every case: the conscious denial of what you just told them. It’s not just ignorance, it’s willful ignorance.

There’s no way around this game. They demand something that evolution does not predict, and claim its absence falsifies evolution.

Sound familiar?

Now I Get It!

From AmericaBlog, this comment from one of their readers:

Something to think about today. It all makes sense now.

Gay marriage and marijuana being legalized on the same day.

Leviticus 20:13 – “if a man lays with another man, as with a woman, he should be stoned.”

We’ve just been interpreting it wrong all along.

Why Societies? And How Should They Work?

This article by Benjamin Hale is worth reading. It touches on my basic question: "Why do people form societies?" It's a slightly different angle of approach, but it forms a good working basis to answer the question.

Rawls charged his readers to design a society from the ground up, from an original position, and he imposed the ignorance constraint so that readers would abandon any foreknowledge of their particular social status — their wealth, their health, their natural talents, their opportunities or any other goodies that the cosmos may have thrown their way. In doing so, he hoped to identify principles of justice that would best help individuals maximize their potential, fulfill their objectives (whatever they may happen to be) and live a good life. He called this presumption the “veil of ignorance.”

The idea behind the veil of ignorance is relatively simple: to force us to think outside of our parochial personal concerns in order that we consider others. What Rawls saw clearly is that it is not easy for us to put ourselves in the position of others. We tend to think about others always from our own personal vantage; we tend to equate another person’s predicament with our own. Imagining what it must be like to be poor, for instance, we import presumptions about available resources, talents and opportunities — encouraging, say, the homeless to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and to just get a job, any job, as if getting a job is as simple as filling out an application. Meanwhile, we give little thought to how challenging this can be for those who suffer from chronic illnesses or disabling conditions. What Rawls also saw clearly was that other classic principles of justice, like the golden rule or mutual benevolence, are subject to distortion precisely because we tend to do this.

It's long and needs your attention, but if you're interested in the basis of the dichotomy in our political discourse these days, it'll give you some good grounding.

Via.

Footnote: This post from John Rogers sort of puts the whole question in a very immediate perspective.

Paul Ryan's family fortune was based on being paid by the government to build highways, he's never had a job other than "Congressman", none of his budget numbers add up -- at all -- and he's trying to push a budget that would raise taxes on the middle class, hand giant tax breaks to the rich, gut the country's infrastructure, and end Medicare -- which no matter what shit they sling at you is the plan because strangely, his plan doesn't apply to anybody over 55. Why not, if it's so awesome? Because old folk know bullshit when they smell it, that's why.

And why is he pursuing these policies? Because, well, "job creators."

You know what? I type for a living, and my stupid little typing creates a couple hundred jobs. I'm an actual job creator, which was the last damn thing anybody (including my perpetually surprised father) expected when I started telling jokes in bars. And I don't think that raising my tax rate by 3.4% (back the bad old Clinton Socialism Rate) so you, my fellow citizen, won't lose your fucking house when your kid gets cancer, or maybe we get a functioning power grid or roads that wouldn't be substandard in ZIMBABWE is "socialism". It's basic. Goddam. Decency.

When the hell did we get talked out of that?

Change of Scene

I'm in Florida for the week, visiting family. It's a little unreal -- I'm not sure I believe the palm trees. (Which means that I've gotten way too used to my routines.)

And scanning through the news, it's all depressingly the same, which is actually the main reason that I haven't been posting much lately. I do want to point out one thing, from Pam's House Blend, though, about the effectiveness of grassroots campaigns (and yes, sadly, astroturf campaigns, as we can see from the disastrous Congress that was in stalled after the 2010 election). Key point: "Why letters to the editor? It’s simple. Advertising costs a fortune, but LTEs are free."

I think letters to the editor are also more real to most people -- ads and commercials always have a sense of fantasy to them (deliberately, I'm sure) that might influence people, but aren't reality, and we all know it. Letters to the editor are reality.

Bullying: It Gets Better

I've been meaning to link to this for a couple of days, but the cold has been short-circuiting my brain.  From Dan Savage:

I’ve launched a channel on YouTube— www.youtube.com/itgetsbetterproject —to host these videos. My normally camera-shy husband and I already posted one. We both went to Christian schools and we were both bullied—he had it a lot worse than I did—and we are living proof that it gets better. We don’t dwell too much on the past. Instead, we talk mostly about all the meaningful things in our lives now—our families, our friends (gay and straight), the places we’ve gone and things we’ve experienced—that we would’ve missed out on if we’d killed ourselves then.

And here's the first video, from Dan and his husband Terry:



It does get better. I had my share of hassles in school, and haven't been back since I graduated. But I'm really happy with who I am (although I do wish I could find a way to cram an extra day into the week). And thinking back, I've had a lot of support and friendship from people who are much cooler than the people I went to high school with.

At any rate, check out the YouTube channel.

God Doesn't Believe in Professional Standards

Parallel stories in the news, about counseling students who are asked to leave their programs because their religious beliefs preclude them from adhering to professional standards. They're suing, of course. First, via Pam's House Blend, this story:

A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed against Eastern Michigan University by a student who was kicked out of its graduate program in school counseling last year for refusing, on religious grounds, to affirm homosexual behavior in serving clients.

In an order granting summary judgment to the university on Monday, Judge George Caram Steeh of the U.S. District Court in Detroit held that the university's requirement that the student be willing to serve people who are homosexual was reasonable, and did not amount to an infringement of the Christian student's constitutional rights to free speech and free expression of religion.

The university "had a right and duty to enforce compliance" with professional ethics rules barring counselors from being intolerant or engaging in discrimination, and no reasonable person could conclude that a counseling program's requirement that students comply with such rules "conveys a message endorsing or disapproving of religion," Judge Steeh wrote.

According to Joe Jervis:

Last year Ward refused to treat a suicidal gay student, telling fellow counselors that her religious views prevented her from helping him feel better about himself.

And now I can't find a link to the second story, but it's almost a repeat: a "Christian" girl suing her school because the counseling program insists that she follow professional standards.

I left a comment on the post at PHB, but it's worth expanding on here. Given that we bend over backward to accommodate religious beliefs in this country, but I think we've gone over the line with allowing pharmacists to refuse to dispense birth control against their religious beliefs, even if we require that the refer a client to another pharmacist: this is a situation ripe for abuse, and people being what they are, they will abuse it.

There comes a point, though, where you have to say to yourself, If my religious beliefs preclude me from engaging in my chosen profession with honesty and integrity, maybe I need to find another profession. I think this is especially true of something like counseling. To put, as this woman does, her (uninformed) belief that homosexuality is a "choice" or a "lifestyle" and a sin, in place of the necessity of offering support and acceptance to a client subverts the basic principles of psychotherapy.

And in spite of the position of ADF, which argued her case, it's not a matter of being forced to abandon her religious beliefs. It's simply the fact that, if she's going to place those beliefs in a primary position of her approach to counseling, she's not fit to practice. I mean, come on -- to refuse to help someone who's suicidal? WTF?

What I'm getting from both these cases is a huge sense of entitlement (which seems to be a necessary corollary of belief systems in which authority hands down absolute and immutable "truth"), and a certain degree of childishness: no one else counts, it's all about me. And that, of course, flies in the face of what counseling is all about: it's about the clients and their well-being. First rule: the client must make the decision to change his or her behavior. The counselor's beliefs are irrelevant. To impose them on vulnerable people who need real help is, in a very real sense, immoral.

Gah! The whole thing makes me crazy. Fortunately, the judge in this case wasn't hoodwinked.

The Ideology of Through the Looking Glass

Maha has an absolute must-read post on the mythology of the tea baggers.

Michael Lind writes about mythological politics and the tea partiers, saying,

This is the key to understanding the otherwise inexplicable accusations by the populist right that Barack Obama is a socialist or fascist or whatever, as well as fantasies about a global secular humanist conspiracy. We are dealing with a mythological mentality, based on simple and powerful archetypes. Contemporary figures and current events are plugged into a framework that never changes. “King Charles (or King George) is threatening the rights of Englishmen” becomes “Barack Obama is promoting socialism” — or fascism, or monarchism, or daylight saving time.

As in other cases of mythological politics, like messianic Marxism, this kind of thinking is resistant to argument. If you disagree, then that simply proves that you are part of the conspiracy. Inconvenient facts can be explained away by the true believers. It’s hard to come up with arguments that would persuade people who think that Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are totalitarians to change their mind.

This is something I’ve written about in the past. It’s important to understand that the political “thinking” of the True Believers on the Right is a thick soup of myth, allegory, and archetype. Stuff like, you know, facts, are irrelevant to them.

She goes on, and it's scary as hell but well worth reading. It's a mentality that has never been far under the surface, not only in this country but in others, and the kind of thinking that leads people to do otherwise unthinkable things. I don't know that it's necessarily tied to Christianity as such -- we've seen the same sort of thing under communist regimes in China and the former Soviet Union, and can see it now in places like Uganda and Zimbabwe. Perhaps the correct observation is that those who think like this -- reliance on received wisdom, charismatic leaders, a strong us/them mentality, and the other phenomena Maha describes, are also those drawn to authoritarian, hierarchical systems, and, at the very least, distrustful of actual reality, or at least able to deny it in favor of what they believe, no matter how far-fetched.

At any rate, it's something to lose sleep over, that's for sure.

Government-Run Anything Is Bad

I got this from John Aravosis, who hasn't been able to find out who actually wrote it, but I think it's a good illustration of just how far out there libertarians are:

This morning I was awoken by my alarm clock powered by electricity generated by the public power monopoly regulated by the U.S. Department of Energy.

I then took a shower in the clean water provided by a municipal water utility.

After that, I turned on the TV to one of the FCC-regulated channels to see what the National Weather Service of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration determined the weather was going to be like, using satellites designed, built, and launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

I watched this while eating my breakfast of U.S. Department of Agriculture-inspected food and taking the drugs which have been determined as safe by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

At the appropriate time, as regulated by the U.S. Congress and kept accurate by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the U.S. Naval Observatory, I get into my National Highway Traffic Safety Administration-approved automobile and set out to work on the roads build by the local, state, and federal Departments of Transportation, possibly stopping to purchase additional fuel of a quality level determined by the Environmental Protection Agency, using legal tender issued by the Federal Reserve Bank.

On the way out the door I deposit any mail I have to be sent out via the U.S. Postal Service and drop the kids off at the public school.

After spending another day not being maimed or killed at work thanks to the workplace regulations imposed by the Department of Labor and the Occupational Safety and Health administration, enjoying another two meals which again do not kill me because of the USDA, I drive my NHTSA car back home on the DOT roads, to my house which has not burned down in my absence because of the state and local building codes and Fire Marshal's inspection, and which has not been plundered of all its valuables thanks to the local police department.

And then I log on to the internet -- which was developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration -- and post on Freerepublic.com and Fox News forums about how SOCIALISM in medicine is BAD because the government can't do anything right.

The Root of the Problem

A very good comment from one of Andrew Sullivan's readers, who I think has a good take on what's happening now:

A political and demographic re-alignment is happening before their eyes, and they are reaching back into their old bag of tricks of intimidation, violence, and apocalyptic fearmongering. You are British, Andrew. You love this country, and we love you for it. But you didn't grow up around these folks, and you don't realize what a permanent and potent part of the American political landscape they are.

They have always been with us, the people who believed in manifest destiny, who delighted in the slaughter of this land's original inhabitants, who cheered a nation into a civil war to support an economic system of slavery that didn't even benefit them. They are the people who bashed the unions and cheered on the anti-sedition laws, who joined the Pinkertons and the No Nothing Party, who beat up Catholic immigrants and occasionally torched the black part of town. They rode through the Southern pine forests at night, they banned non-European immigration, they burned John Rockefeller Jr. in effigy for proposing the Grand Tetons National Park.

Read the whole thing. It's really very good. It goes a long way to explain the teabaggers, the health care reform "protests," the birthers, and a lot of other things that are finally crawling out from under their rocks.

Add in these observations by Bill Maher, and you can see why it's all becoming so obvious:

And before I go about demonstrating how, sadly, easy it is to prove the dumbness dragging down our country, let me just say that ignorance has life and death consequences. On the eve of the Iraq War, 69% of Americans thought Saddam Hussein was personally involved in 9/11. Four years later, 34% still did. Or take the health care debate we're presently having: members of Congress have recessed now so they can go home and "listen to their constituents." An urge they should resist because their constituents don't know anything. At a recent town-hall meeting in South Carolina, a man stood up and told his Congressman to "keep your government hands off my Medicare," which is kind of like driving cross country to protest highways.

I'm the bad guy for saying it's a stupid country, yet polls show that a majority of Americans cannot name a single branch of government, or explain what the Bill of Rights is. 24% could not name the country America fought in the Revolutionary War. More than two-thirds of Americans don't know what's in Roe v. Wade. Two-thirds don't know what the Food and Drug Administration does. Some of this stuff you should be able to pick up simply by being alive.

He's talking about people we all know -- some of them are even our relatives. (Yeah, I admit it. I don't see them much.) They are the people who get their "news" from Fox, Limbaugh, and O'Reilly, think that Ann Coulter is the philosophical genius of the conservative movement, and never go downtown. They live hermetically sealed lives because the universe -- read "reality" -- is a scary place.

They're afraid. They're afraid of everything. So they don't want to know about it, and they don't need to know aboiut it because they have opinions, you see. It doesn't matter that they're someone else's opinions, they believe them, and belief trumps truth.

I could investigate the causes of this attitude, but they're largely undocumentable, I suspect. My own prime suspect is a belief system that relies on received wisdom, condemns free enquiry, and holds dogma as superior to observable fact. And no, I'm not just targeting certain brands of Christianity or Islam -- you can find this attitude among Hindus, among animists, among atheists (well, the dogma part, any way), even among Pagans (which I consider scandalous, considering Paganism's deep connection to the natural world).

Keep in mind that most people are followers. Does that give you an insight?

Note: A further thought on that: the problem that I, and I think many people, are having with Obama right now is that he promised leadership -- and hasn't displayed any.

What's Missing From This Picture?

An interesting case from Britain, reported by Pink News: A Christian doctor was removed from her position as a member of an adoption panel because she refused to vote on same-sex couples who were being considered as prospective parents. Just to show how far out of whack political correctness has gotten in some places, the reasoning is as follows:

However, in February a same-sex couple applied to the Northamptonshire panel. Dr Matthews told the head of Northamptonshire's children's services, Martin Pratt, that she was intending to abstain from any vote the panel made, and would not discuss her concerns with other panel members so as to not influence their decision.

Despite her promises she was barred from attending the panel and asked instead to meet with Mr Pratt to explain her position. Dr Matthews then told Mr Pratt that she felt unable to recommend same-sex applicants as suitable candidates. A few days Dr Matthews received notice from Mr Pratt informing her of the council's decision to replace her due to the "significant problems" her views created for the adoption service.

In the letter, Mr Pratt stated: "There are three concerns that I have: that we have to comply with the law, that we attract the widest possible range of suitable adopters and that we comply with our own policies.

"I believe that we could not allow a panel member to continue to participate in the process who is unable to consider, on the merits of the application alone, applications to adopt."

Her rationale is the standard-issue Christianist dodge:

In a statement, Dr Matthews said: "I don't feel that placing children for adoption with same-sex couples is the best place for them."

She added: "Mothers are more nurturing and fathers are more challenging and the combination of both is best for the development of a child."

She went on to express concerns that "The children of gay adoptive parents are also more likely to be bullied at school, on top of being singled out as different because they are adopted."

"As a Christian, I don't believe it's an appropriate lifestyle and I don't believe the outcomes for children would be as good as if they were placed with heterosexual couples."

Citing professional and personal reasons, she continued: "I cannot recommend placement in a same-sex household to be in the best interest of a child, despite what politicians may have legislated for."

I fault the panel's director for one thing: she was a medical advisor and her reasons for refusing to vote on gay couples have no scientific basis -- there is no support for any of her "beliefs" in real life. The other reasons he cited are tailor-made as fuel for the Christianist "victim" strategy. Why not use a perfectly valid -- and perfectly ideology-free -- reason?

As it happens, she has been reinstated but is not allowed to vote on any applicants, which seems fair to me.