I'm done

We've had a pretty good run, here in the US. At least, since the Great Depression, things have been remarkably stable. My feeling, and that of others, is that the time for relative peace and economic growth has come to an end. You can see the signs everywhere, if you look for them. Unfortunately, too many people refuse to look, or refuse to recognize them for what they really are.

The bailout is not the problem. Sub-prime lending is not the problem. The credit crisis is not the problem. Unemployment, foreclosures, and defaults are not the problem. They are merely symptoms of the real problem. The real problem lies in our paradigm, the problem lies in our belief that things will, or must, always grow, always improve, and that tomorrow will always be better than today. This blind faith in inexorable progress is belied by the simple fact that our growth is simply unsustainable. Daily, more proof arrives that the tremendous march of "progress" since the industrial revolution has been purchased at a tremendous cost- one that the planet can scarcely bear for much longer. Or, as award-winning journalist Chris Hedges argued yesterday in a brilliant article, "It's not going to be OK".

Many will wonder why nobody tried to warn them what was coming. The reality is, there are voices out there that are telling you what is coming, but it's not a pretty picture and so you choose to ignore them. For myself, I listen to those who have been right all along. I choose track-record over happy thoughts. Since the current economic crisis really picked up steam in September of last year, the "experts" have been wrong time and time again, while those few voices in the wilderness have been saying that this downturn will be worse than anyone's expecting, will last longer than anyone's expecting, and the consequences will be far worse than anyone's expecting. Those are the voices I choose to listen to now. It certainly is not the politicians that have been saying that nobody could have predicted the current crisis, ignoring the fact that plenty of people did predict it. No longer comparing the current crisis to milder recessions of the 70's, 80's or 90's, expert economists are now calling for an unprecedented depression.

Journalists are starting to realize that they've been far too complicit. Lost in all the news about why newspapers are shuttering their doors around the country is the simple fact that they have been wrong, horribly wrong, for far too long. The rise of the internet has delivered undreamt of resources to those of us who demand truth, and that truth has come at the expense of the so-called opinion makers and spin-doctors. When the media only quotes those who say that we've reached a "bottom", and it becomes clear within days (or hours) that there is no end in sight, it becomes clear that both those sources and the media themselves are no longer worthy of attention. At the same time, they are useful as they ferret out a small portion of the corruption in our modern age. A staggering amount of wrongdoing exists in all levels of government, and if the populace were truly paying attention, the government would have already been overthrown. Taking one small glance at the news of the day reveals that two of Obama's cabinet level appointees (or 17%) have suddenly remembered that they forgot to pay taxes on perks or income they received, to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Luckily, they remembered just as Obama won the election! Geithner has been confirmed, and Daschle is expected to be. These two people should have been disqualified on that basis alone, and yet nobody seems to think it's a problem.

Politicians only have themselves to blame, both for the current crisis and the fact that nobody is yet grasping the gravity of the situation. Like the boy who cries wolf, decades of overheated rhetoric has numbed the public to pronouncements of genuine seriousness. A week ago Friday, our new president had this to say: "Look, we are all political animals here. If we don't do this, we may lose seats. I may not be re-elected. But none of that's going to matter if we don't pass this because the economy will be in a crisis and the American people will be hurting." Ignoring for a moment the fact that his solution is unlikely to work, and just listen to the raw appeal for desperate measures. "I may not be re-elected. But none of that's going to matter." When have you ever heard a politician say that getting re-elected does not matter? It's a half-step away from admitting (as a British minister did last week) "The banks are fucked, we're fucked, the country's fucked."

Iceland's government has fallen in this crisis. It will not be the last. Civil unrest is spreading rapidly throughout Eastern Europe and China, and there have been many predictions that it will strike in America before we're done. We've thrown trillions of dollars at the problem, close to 30 banks have failed (with hundreds or thousands more poised to fail at any moment), unemployment has been rising at over half a million per month, and still we are no closer to anything resembling a solution, or even a slowing in the bloodbath.

I'm not asking anyone to take this all on faith. Read both sides of these arguments. Then go back and read the counter-arguments. Read opinions that disagree with yours, read about subjects that you ordinarily would not. Rely as much as you can using direct evidence, or any statistics you can find. The reporting of statistics can be spun, but the raw numbers themselves do not lie. Obama was indisputably correct during his inaugural speech when he said "the time has come to set aside childish things." Stop watching "American Idol", or whatever mindless drivel masquerades as entertainment these days. Are you prepared to provide for yourself and your family should the grocery stores suddenly be empty of food- or closed due to bankruptcy? Or if water stops coming free from the tap, how will you conquer thirst?

Food banks around the country are reporting a 30% increase in demand, double the increase from six months ago. Last week, on Monday- in a single day- approximately 80,000 Americans lost their jobs, and the stock market rejoiced, if only briefly. That's 15% of the total loss for December, and it came in a single day. Where will you go for food when you have job, no money, and the food banks are empty? I hope you won't be part of the rising numbers of Americans taking their own lives.

For what it's worth, the government now admits that we have essentially ignored global warming for too long- it's now irreversible. The twin crises of global economic collapse and climate change are more interrelated than most people realize. In any case, it's too late to do much to solve either- the time has now come to focus on ways to mitigate the fallout. This is what collapse looks like. A slow-motion collapse is now occurring, and time is short for you to figure out how best to weather it.

As I said, rely on those whose predictions have been proven correct, not those who tell you comforting lies. Consider this from a 2006 Maclean's article:

And when the truth can no longer be obscured, the price will spike, the economy nosedive, and the underpinnings of our civilization will start tumbling like dominos. The U.S. -- Consumer No. 1 in the lingo of Leggett's book -- will be the most vulnerable, having allowed its citizens to pile up mountains of debt. "The price of houses will collapse. Stock markets will crash. Within a short period, human wealth -- little more than a pile of paper at the best of times, even with the confidence about the future high among traders -- will shrivel." There will be emergency summits, diplomatic initiatives, urgent exploration efforts, but the turmoil will not subside. Thousands of companies will go bankrupt, and millions will be unemployed. "Once affluent cities with street cafés will have queues at soup kitchens and armies of beggars. The crime rate will soar. The earth has always been a dangerous place, but now it will become a tinderbox."

By 2010, predicts Leggett, democracy will be on the run. As with the Great Depression, economic hardship will bring out the worst in people. Fascists will rise, feeding on the anger of the newly poor and whipping up support. These new rulers will find the tools of repression -- emergency laws, prison camps, a relaxed attitude toward torture -- already in place, courtesy of the war on terror. And if that scenario isn't nightmarish enough, Leggett predicts that "Big Oversight Number One" -- climate change -- will be simultaneously making its presence felt "with a vengeance." On the heels of their rapid financial ruin, people "will now watch aghast as their food and water supplies dwindle in the face of a climate seemingly going awry." Prolonged droughts will spread, decimating harvests. As oceans warm, fish catches "will fall off a cliff," and protein will become a luxury.

The first paragraph reads like recent history or current newspaper headlines (see hyperlinks for examples, or your local newspaper), the second paragraph is yet to come. If you wish, there are plenty of others out there that have made similar arguments. Contrast the words of these prophets with the statements of your politicians, you will find very little overlap, if any. One of these groups has been consistently correct, the other group repeats lame excuses that "nobody could have anticipated the reach, depth, or severity of the current crisis" and then proceeds to promise you a return to "normal" in short order, if you only vote for them or agree with their decision to throw trillions of dollars at the crisis.

How can I begin to explain to you the insanity of politicians? They advocate spending close to a trillion dollars in a stimulus package in which they argue that every $1 of stimulus results in $1.50 in economic growth. If that were true, then why not spend like this every day? Why not spend quadrillions of dollars, and make everyone in the US wealthy? Or why has nobody noticed that every four years we have this masturbatory celebration known as an election- new politicians come to power promising change, vowing to tackle corruption and to solve the really hard problems; and yet, nothing ever changes, corruption is endemic, and the really hard problems are only growing in severity? Frankly though, we're all to blame. We keep looking to them for solutions to problems that they caused in the first place. Well, those days are ending, soon they will no longer be able to pretend that they have solutions- in fact, you can hear that in their statements right now if you are paying attention. The word "unprecedented" is used all too frequently for them to really know what they are doing. Even economists seem eager to get the stimulus on, as it will solve for them the debate over whether fiscal stimulus really works or not. Although politicians worldwide seem to act as though that debate was already settled, in fact, it's not. And what are we to do if we throw trillions into this black hole, and it doesn't do anything after all? Is anyone even asking that question? The Wall Street Journal quotes Rahm Emanuel as saying, "Never let a serious crisis go to waste. What I mean by that is it's an opportunity to do things you couldn't do before." This frank admission is chilling to anyone familiar with Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine. In short, the frightened masses which would normally oppose this type of reckless endangerment of their fiscal health (not to mention that of their children and grandchildren) can be persuaded that "desperate times call for desperate measures." Left unsaid is the fact that the desperate measures will tend to benefit the upper class of society disproportionately.

Most of the masses take some comfort in the fact that doomsdayers have been wrong before, a point I freely grant. However, doomsayers only have to be correct once. Additionally, those who believed their empires would last forever have also been wrong-- 100% of the time, historically. As the great Roman society was poised on the brink of destruction, did anyone alive at the time really believe what was happening, did they recognize the signs for what they were? Or any of the great civilizations that have sprang up to dominate their world- Mayan, Incan, Egyptian, Norse- did any of them recognize the coming collapse? Clearly, not in time to prevent it. Are we any different?

Of course, the end of the world has been promised by Jews, Christians, Muslims and assorted crazies with sandwich boards for as long as there has been a human world to end. But those doomsdays were the product of faith; reason always used to say the world will continue. The point about the new apocalypse is that this situation has reversed. Now faith tells us we will be able to solve our problems; reason says we have no answers now and none are likely in the future. Perhaps we can't cure cancer because the problem is simply beyond our intellects. Perhaps we haven't flown to the stars because our biology and God's physics mean we never can. Perhaps we are close to the limit and the time of plenty is over.

The evidence is mounting that our two sunny centuries of growth and wealth may end in a new Dark Age in which ignorance will replace knowledge, war will replace peace, sickness will replace health and famine will replace obesity. You don't think so? It's always happened in the past. What makes us so different? Nothing, I'm afraid.

If we manage to escape the current crisis relatively unscathed, will we heed it for the warning sign it is? Jared Diamond's amazing book Collapse: how societies choose to fail or succeed poses an interesting question: What did the person on Easter Island who cut down the last tree think about as he was doing it? You see, deforestation was a major factor in the collapse of Easter Island society. Diamond spotlights several other once-mighty societies that collapsed because of their stupid, short-term, profligate use of natural resources. Put simply, they used their resources until they were gone, and then they died. Their societies crumbled surprisingly quickly, often within only decades from reaching their peak. There is nothing to suggest that American society is any different, or has learned the lessons of the past. Quoting Diamond:

"One of the disturbing facts of history is that so many civilizations collapse. Few people, however, least of all our politicians, realize that a primary cause of the collapse of those societies has been the destruction of the natural resources on which they depend. Fewer still appreciate that many of those civilizations share a sharp curve of decline. Indeed, a society's demise may begin only a decade or two after it reaches its peak population, wealth and power."

If we assume this is not the great collapse, then it will certainly arrive within decades if we continue on our current path, and probably even if we make radical changes. The deniers have been far too successful, and we are utterly unprepared for the implications. They have postponed action on the most pressing of problems, citing potential damage to the economy (which after all, must continue to grow, at all costs). Well, they've succeeded, and gained the ultimate pyrrhic victory. The economy is now in the process of being destroyed, and it's too late to solve the environmental problems we will be facing. Scientific consensus is now that the human race, if not all life on Earth, will go extinct within the next 100 years. It takes a bit of connecting the dots, but they are all well-regarded scientific studies. Or, if you choose not to believe that one, how about the NASA scientist and climate expert that says Obama has only 4 years to save planet earth? I, for one, am not optimistic that he can muster the will to do so, even if we grant that it's not yet too late.

In any case, I am not going to be spending much more time chronicling this collapse. I'm definitely done posting about political and economic corruption within the US, as there are far too many articles and I have too little time. I urge you to spend whatever time and resources you can muster in preparing yourself for what's to come. I am not going to point you in the direction of "recommended reading" or some similar list. If you are interested, you can find such information on your own, but I suspect that most of you are not interested enough to even try. Pity, but consider this parting thought: before the rise of the age of oil (a mere two centuries ago), the earth was able to support approximately 1 billion people. There are now approximately 6.7 billion. If there is the slightest chance that any of our most respected scientists are correct then the coming wars, pandemics, droughts, famine, and extreme weather are set to reduce that number dramatically, if not totally erase it. Mankind has proven itself to be a parasite, remorselessly feeding on the resources of our host planet. Like a parasite, we may just be killing ourselves along with our host. Or perhaps a cancer is an apt description- growing exponentially, eventually choking out and destroying the healthy parts until the whole organism dies.

Thanks to all who have taken the time to read my postings over the past year or two, and I'm very sincerely wishing you good luck.

THE SECOND COMING

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Mercury contamination widespread in US Food Supply

Rather than simply presenting this story and ranting about it, I want to use this as an opportunity to demonstrate my way of critical thinking. I think that the way the news is reported does a tremendous disservice to the American public. I further believe that a large segment of the American population is losing, or has lost, their ability to think at any depth about the implications of the stories in the press. Read this article, then meet me below for commentary.

Studies Find Mercury in Much U.S. Corn Syrup

Corn Syrup Industry Attacks Findings, but Researchers Stick by Studies

Reuters

WASHINGTON

Many common foods made using commercial high fructose corn syrup contain mercury as well, researchers reported on Tuesday, while another study suggested the corn syrup itself is contaminated.

Food processors and the corn syrup industry group attacked the findings as flawed and outdated, but the researchers said it was important for people to know about any potential sources of the toxic metal in their food.

In one study, published in the journal Environmental Health, former Food and Drug Administration scientist Renee Dufault and colleagues tested 20 samples of high fructose corn syrup and found detectable mercury in nine of the 20 samples.

Dufault said in a statement that she told the FDA about her findings but the agency did not follow up.

Dr. David Wallinga, a food safety researcher and activist at the nonprofit Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, said he followed up on the report to find mercury in actual food.

"When I learned of that work, I said that is interesting but we don't just go out and eat a spoonful of high fructose corn syrup," Wallinga said in a telephone interview.

"We went and looked at supermarket samples where high fructose corn syrup was the first or second ingredient on the label," he said. These 55 different foods included barbecue sauce, jam, yogurt and chocolate syrup.

"We found about one out of three had mercury above the detection limit," Wallinga said.

The Corn Refiners Association challenged the findings.

"This study appears to be based on outdated information of dubious significance," the group said in a statement.

Wallinga and colleagues said they believed the mercury got into the food during manufacture, at plants that use mercury-grade caustic soda produced in industrial chlorine plants, although his team was unable to show this.

"Our industry has used mercury-free versions of the two reagents mentioned in the study, hydrochloric acid and caustic soda, for several years," Audrae Erickson, president of the Corn Refiners Association, said in a statement.

Wallinga said the studies were based on samples taken in 2005, the most recent available.

Many studies have shown that fish can be high in mercury. Wallinga said consumers should know about other potential sources so they can limit how much they eat. "The best mercury exposure is no exposure at all," he said.

"Even at low levels methylmercury can harm the developing brain. The last thing we should intentionally do is add to it," Wallinga added.

He said his team did not test foods that did not contain corn syrup to see if they were also high in mercury.

OK, so pretty scary stuff, but if you read the article uncritically, you might be left with the impression that there is a dispute about whether mercury is in high fructose corn syrup (and the foods that contain HFCS) or not. But a critical reader notices what the corn industry actually said, which is "This study appears to be based on outdated information of dubious significance." That's not a denial. If there really wasn't mercury in the syrup, then they would say something along the lines of "We have the highest processing standards and a rigorous quality control process. We are confident that there is no mercury in our products. However, to be absolutely certain, and in the interests of American consumers, we are submitting samples to a third-party lab for testing as well as inviting inspectors into our plants to monitor our processes and submit ideas for improvements." Ah, but that's not what they said, is it? Instead, they admitted that at one time their products contained mercury, and argued that even if they still do contain mercury, it's probably not really that significant anyway.

The next thing to do is to thing about the motivations of the people cited in the article. Who has a motivation to mislead? The scientists are doing science, and publishing their research. They might have an incentive to publish something like this which could be sensationalized, if it draws more attention to them. It could lead to a book deal, talk-show appearances, etc...

Alternatively, the corn industry also has a motivation to mislead. HFCS is in practically everything you purchase. If news that it was contaminated with mercury became widespread, then people may not purchase as much of their product, or lawsuits seeking damages may be initiated. Millions of dollars in lost sales, punitive damages, and impaired goodwill are not unforeseeable. So, if they can mislead people into thinking the studies are no good, that might just nip the problem in the bud.

So which is more likely to be misleading you? I don't know, but I suspect that it's the corn industry, especially in light of their non-denial statement. However, it could be both of them. And if you are reading an article that quotes a politician, all bets are off.

So there you have it, you're probably injesting a significantly higher amount of mercury than you were expecting. Welcome to the dysfunctional American food supply, would you like some salmonella peanut butter with that?

Scientists Find a Missing Link

Scientists Find a Missing Link | Popular Science: "Paleontologists have excavated a plethora of feathered dinosaurs in China over the past few years, but none of those dinosaurs had feathers like this. Scientists examining a news specimen of the dinosaur Beipiaosaurus have found imprints of a proto-feather that looks like the missing link between primitive downy feathers and the modern feathers seen on birds."

Suck it, young-earth creationists! Where's your god now?? Oh, you'll probably invent some other gap for him to hide in, right?

Corporate raiders turning to seeds of life

There's a tremedously important diary over at DailyKos. Please take some time and consider if you want the Monsanto corporation to literally control every seed for any food plant that's commercially available. I, for one, do not. As I argued here, there are some things that are simply too important to be left to monopoly corporations.

RAID on seeds (Life, itself) ... by Monsanto

Thomas Friedman: Vote for ( )

Although I disagree with many of his conclusions, Thomas Friedman does get this election contest partially correct in an op-ed from 11/1/08.

Here’s what strikes me this election eve: I can’t remember a presidential campaign that was so disconnected from the actual challenges of governing that will confront the winner the morning after. When this election campaign began two years ago, the big issue was how and for how long do we continue nation-building in Iraq. As the campaign comes to a close, the big issue is how and at what sacrifice do we do nation-building in America.

Unfortunately, you’d barely know that from the presidential debates. Watching them in the context of the meltdown of the financial system was like watching a game show where the two contestants were kept off-stage in a soundproof booth and brought out to address the audience without knowing the context.

Isn't that exactly what I've been saying??

Since the last debate, John McCain and Barack Obama have unveiled broad ideas about how to restore the nation’s financial health. But they continue to suggest that this will be largely pain-free. McCain says giving everyone a tax cut will save the day; Obama tells us only the rich will have to pay to help us out of this hole. Neither is true.

We are all going to have to pay, because this meltdown comes in the context of what has been “perhaps the greatest wealth transfer since the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917,” says Michael Mandelbaum, author of “Democracy’s Good Name.” “It is not a wealth transfer from rich to poor that the Bush administration will be remembered for. It is a wealth transfer from the future to the present.”

Mr. Friedman, I don't think anyone can argue that we've seen a transfer of wealth from rich to poor. Not only have we destroyed the economic foundation for future generations, under Bush we've ALSO seen the biggest transfer of wealth from the lower and middle classes to the upper classes, leading to record income inequality and shocking lack of class mobility. The rich certainly haven't been paying their share. And you don't really believe that corporations are going to pitch in and pay taxes to help out, do you??

Never has one generation spent so much of its children’s wealth in such a short period of time with so little to show for it as in the Bush years. Under George W. Bush, America has foisted onto future generations a huge financial burden to finance our current tax cuts, wars and now bailouts. Just paying off those debts will require significant sacrifices. But when you add the destruction of wealth that has taken place in the last two months in the markets, and the need for more bailouts, you understand why this is not going to be a painless recovery.

No, indeed, this will not be a painless recovery. And "significant sacrifices" is an understatement. In an economic blood-letting like this, many are saying it could be the "end of prosperity". Period.

The Bush team leaves us with another debt — one to Mother Nature. We have added tons more CO2 into the atmosphere these last eight years, without any mitigation effort. As a result, slowing down climate change in the next eight years is going to require even bigger changes and investments in how we use energy.

Hmm, I wonder if that's due to the fact that Bush's talking points on the environment have been "deny, deny, deny". Or maybe that's because it's part of a wider Republican strategy to attempt to discredit environmental warnings? And now that peak-oil concepts are proving true, the question has become "Can we do anything fast enough to avert disaster?"

Obama Aides Diss Atheists!

NoGodBlog.com - Obama Aids Diss Atheists! [sic]

Carl Silverman describes attending a "Presidential Forum" at the Christian Life Academy. Full text of the email is below, but there are a few things that I want to highlight.

Don Miller of the Obama campaign responds to a question directed to the McCain campaign,

"Senator Obama has a policy director and an advisor for many different faiths. He has nothing on atheists or agnostics. There's not this grand effort for the Democrats to reach out to a group of pagans to try to get them to vote for Senator Obama."

I guess admitting that Obama's all set to ignore atheists didn't go far enough for D. Paul Moneiro, Obama's National Deputy Director for Religious Affairs. Side note: why is it that campaigns need "Directors for Religious Affairs", and are the Directors really so overwhelmed with Religious Affairs that they require Deputies????? Anyway, Monteiro continues (referring to Obama), "This is not some crazy wacko atheist trying to make sure that your children grow up to marry trees."

That's good to know! Nothing gets under my skin more than those damned atheists and their persistent attempts to get children to marry trees! Not just American trees either, they actually want children to marry DUTCH ELMS or JAPANESE MAPLES!! *gasp* These foreigner trees have been luring our young people away for far too long. If you elect me as president, I vow to keep American children marrying American trees!

OK then, I have a question: is Obama some kind of KrAzY KrIsTiAn that is trying to get your children to grow up to hate gays? Does he want your children to grow up to hate science? Is Obama at least willing to accept godless money? I bet he is! Once again, it proves that atheists are one of the few groups that it's still considered permissible to slander. For shame.

Friends,

First let me say that, despite what you are about to read, I still encourage everyone to vote for
Obama. As we all know, we must focus on the Supreme Court.

Nevertheless.....

My wife and I went to the "Presidential Forum" http://www.christian-life.com/calendar/forum.html
last night (Wednesday 10/29/08) at the Christian Life Academy, a megachurch here in Camp Hill, PA,
expecting to be offended by the McCain-Palin surrogates. The event was being recorded/televised,
probably for podcasting on the Christian Life website, but I'm not sure. I have listed the
participants at bottom of this page.

I submitted a question, specifically for the McCain-Palin people. Here's the question, as asked by the moderator, who only slightly rephrased it from the original:

"With at least 8% of Pennsylvanians being atheists, agnostics, and humanists, what are the McCain-Palin campaign going to say tonight to attract any undecided voters from that group of Pennsylvanians?"

McCain's National Evangelical Director, Marlys Pompa, said that McCain was going to be a president
of all the people, people "of all faiths and no faiths." She mentioned the "wonderful melting
pot" of America, and generally emphasized the inclusiveness and unity of a McCain presidency. She, of course, did not mention Palin.

The moderator then proceeded to ask another question, this time directed to the Obama campaign, but the Obama representatives insisted on responding to my question first.

Don Miller, an author and social conservative who delivered a prayer at the Democratic convention, said, "Senator Obama has a policy director and an advisor for many different faiths. He has nothing on atheists or agnostics. There's not this grand effort for the Democrats to reach out to a group of pagans to try to get them to vote for Senator Obama."

D. Paul Monteiro, Obama's National Deputy Director for Religious Affairs, then said, "Senator Obama has a twenty-year history, a twenty-year testimony" and described Obama's support for Bush's "faith-based partnership program" and how Obama said "no" to those who distributed flyers at the Democratic National Convention urging him, on the basis of church-state separation, to oppose public funding of faith-based initiatives.

Then, referring to Sen. Obama, Monteiro proclaimed, "This is not some crazy wacko atheist trying to make sure that your children grow up to marry trees."

Yes, Obama's aides not only gloated that they were not actively seeking the votes of atheists, agnostics, and pagans, but delivered a slur of such an egregious nature that, if targeted against Christians or Jews, would have likely been fatal to Obama's campaign. I can't imagine Barack himself making such a grossly insulting statement.

In addition, there was a dispute over whether Obama supported or opposed discriminatory hiring by publicly funded faith-based programs. David Barton, founder of the WallBuilders organization, claimed that Obama opposed discriminatory hiring, but Obama's National Evangelical Coordinator Shaun Casey claimed that was untrue. To my recollection, based on Obama's past statements, Barton was correct and Casey was wrong.

In the future, I think atheists and other rationalists should create their own political party, not in the hopes of winning in this "Christian nation," but at least to act as a spoiler against any candidate who does not treat us with the same respect to which believers feel they are entitled.

Again, please vote for Barack, if only because Palin must be stopped.

Feel free to forward or publish this message, but only IN ITS ENTIRETY.

Carl H. Silverman
Camp Hill, PA

[apologies if this email is poorly formatted]

Copyright 2008, Carl H. Silverman. All rights reserved, except permission is granted to forward
(or publish) this message in its entirety.

religionexplained.jpg (JPEG Image, 578x554 pixels)

I stumbled to the following image:
religionexplained.jpg (JPEG Image, 578x554 pixels)




Sometimes atheists are accused of being shrill, arrogant, blasphemous and rude when we criticize religion in terms like depicted above. That doesn't mean we're wrong, but it may turn some away from our message. However, I think it wins far more arguments and converts than it loses.

Hyperbole can be a useful tool in debates, especially when categorizing your opponent's arguments. Hyperbole has a way of simplifying the debate instantly. Once we refuse to respect conventions about blasphemy, "God" becomes a god, and then a target of ridicule.

But, it's more than that. Extreme characterization of the Christian beliefs like the one above can force Christians to examine their beliefs more closely. The reader who is shocked by the mockery implicit in the "imaginary man" reference to their god is forced to ask themselves, "in what way is that characterization wrong?" "In what ways do my beliefs differ from this idea of a capricious, malicious god?" The cumulative effect of these internal questions, even if subconsciously, can have a powerful effect, I believe. Even forcing them to ask themselves why atheists would believe this way about "God" can cause them to put themselves into our shoes and manufacture reasons for our disbelief.

This will never produce instantaneous results (other than offending the unsuspecting Christian), but I believe that it will have an effect. And always remember, "blasphemy is a victimless crime".

Thumbs up for hands-only CPR :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Health News

Thumbs up for hands-only CPR :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Health News

In a major change aimed at getting more bystanders to do CPR, the American Heart Association now says it's OK to skip the mouth-to-mouth resuscitation when performing CPR on adults having a heart attack.

New guidelines issued by the organization Monday encourage non-medical professionals to use hands-only CPR -- doing hard, fast chest compressions -- instead of a combination of chest thrusts and rescue breathing, as long recommended.

By making CPR less complicated, the aim is to get more people to try doing it in an emergency.

"Many times, people nearby don't help because they're afraid that they will hurt the victim and aren't confident in what they're doing," said Dr. Michael Sayre, lead author of the new recommendation. "We want people to know that they can help many victims just by calling 911 and doing chest compressions. Don't be afraid to try it."

The shift is supported by evidence from three large studies done last year that found survival rates weren't hurt when mouth-to-mouth wasn't used, the heart association said.

However, important to note, prayer remains a non-viable alternative. If someone around you is choking, please DO NOT pray for them, please DO SOMETHING instead.

Murder vs. faith-healing (or doing nothing)

The FFRF has a new press release with their perspective of the death of Madeline Kara Neumann from diabetic ketoacidosis while her parents did nothing while praying for her. I fully agree with their strongly-worded press release, and the authors seem to be putting up with the same sort of fractal wrongness that I talked about last week. These parents, their supporters, and frankly the Wisconsin Legislature, are wrong at such a fundamental level that they can't even understand why brights are so saddened and enraged by this.

What's even more appalling is the ambivalent reaction: "Ethicists say case unclear," reports the Wausau Daily Herald. The Herald quoted bioethicist Dr. Norman Fost of the University of Wisconsin Medical school warning that it's important not to be moralistic or pass judgment on parents who think they can heal a child through prayer: "They believe they're helping their child; they love their child, and they believe prayer has an effect."

However deluded the parents may be, the rest of us need not countenance or indulge that dangerous delusion.

Dean Zuleger, the administrator of the Village of Weston, was quoted by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel saying, "There is a general sense of grief and sadness. Because I know the family a bit, there is a great deal of concern for their well-being." The parents' well-being?

"Death draws out difficult issues" read a headline in the Journal Sentinel. While Madeline's drawn-out death, involving nausea, vomiting, excessive thirst, weight loss and weakness, is very difficult to read about, there is nothing difficult at all about deciding where the blame lies. "The prayer of faith will heal the sick," according to James 5:15. The fault lies in society's laudatory attitude toward a "holy book" which teaches superstition and faith-healing, whose passages are latched onto by bible literalists, and whose obedience to such injunctions has been given a pass in the criminal statutes of many states.

Hattip to Friendly Atheist for the update

Certifying Parents - WSJ.com

Certifying Parents - WSJ.com

Apparently Nebraska isn't the only state grappling with what sorts of regulation is needed for homeschooling. The Wall Street Journal published an opinion piece last week responding to a California judge's ruling that requires a teaching credential to teach children, even if they are your own and even if they are homeschooled.

This case is different from the Nebraska one in that Nebraska's issue was raised by the legislature, not the judiciary. Not that it makes a difference to the legions of homeschoolers who have been gnashing their teeth over this infringement of their rights. Or at least if you listen to all the hyperbole. For some reason, any attempt to regulate or quantify results of homeschooled kids is met with large-scale opposition.

As I've mentioned before, I don't believe that there's a "bright-line" between who's right and wrong on these issues. Of course parents should have the right to raise their children as they see fit, barring any sort of abuse. I'm just not sure what ought to count as abuse. Is it young-earth creationism? In any case, this issue is a useful one to tease out whatever particular biases your news source has. For example, the Wall Street Journal opines:

That so many families turn to home schooling is a market solution to a market failure -- namely the dismal performance of the local education monopoly. According to the Home School Legal Defense Association, the majority of states have low to moderate levels of regulation for home schools, an environment that has allowed the option to flourish, especially in the South and Western U.S. Between 1999 and 2003, the rate of home-schooling increased by 29%.

For some parents, the motive for home schooling is religious; others want to protect their kids from gangs and drugs. But the most-cited reason is to ensure a good education. Home-schooled students are routinely high performers on standardized academic tests, beating their public school peers on average by as much as 30 percentile points, regardless of subject. They perform well on tests like the SAT -- and colleges actively recruit them both for their high scores and the diversity they bring to campus.

In 1994, a federal attempt to require certification of parent-teachers went down in flames as hundreds of thousands of calls lit up phone banks on Capitol Hill. The movement has since only grown larger and better organized, now conservatively estimated at well over a million nationwide. But what they can't accomplish legislatively, unions are now trying to achieve by diktat from the courts.

So, to them, homeschooling is both an issue of free markets and inappropriate judicial activism. The homepage for the "Homeschool Legal Defense Association" showcases this perspective:

So clearly to them, it's both a religious and a constitutional issue. Although in the rhetoric about various homeschooling issues, the HSLDA invariable asserts that homeschooling is a "fundamental" right, apparently their website argues that it is a right that requires constitutional protection. I'm terrified what constitutional changes they are seeking, especially if Dr. Dobson is on board. Here's the text of the proposed constitutional amendment:

DRAFT PARENTAL RIGHTS AMENDMENT
FOR THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION

SECTION 1
The liberty of parents to direct the upbringing and education of their children is a fundamental right.

SECTION 2
Neither the United States nor any state shall infringe upon this right without demonstrating that its governmental interest as applied to the person is of the highest order and not otherwise served.

SECTION 3
No treaty nor any source of international law may be employed to supersede, modify, interpret, or apply to the rights guaranteed by this article.

What do you think? It appears to be ambiguous, over-reaching, and completely unneccessary to me.

Apologists Ask Churches to Step Up Response to Militant Atheism | Christianpost.com

Apologists Ask Churches to Step Up Response to Militant Atheism | Christianpost.com

The headline is not completely true. What's actually happening is that some well-known apologetics have realized that there is now a new lucrative opportunity to sell apologetic "research" in the wake of the new atheist movement.

"The arguments are not really new but the ferociousness" with which atheists are lobbing their attacks "are coming much stronger," Mark Mittelberg, primary author of Becoming a Contagious Christian, said in a teleconference on Tuesday.

The teleconference, hosted by Outreach Training, was for pastors who were interested in updating their churches' apologetics approaches amid an onslaught of pro-atheist books and movies in recent years. Books like Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion and Christopher Hitchens' God is Not Great have made best-selling lists. Meanwhile, movies like The Da Vinci Code, The Jesus Family Tomb and The Golden Compass have claimed widespread media attention.

These books and movies are not just posing challenges to the basic tenets of the Christian faith, according to Mittelberg, but they are also empowering attacks against Christianity.

Damn right we are! Did you catch that? We're "posing challenges to the basic tenets of the Christian faith".

Lee Strobel, author of the best-selling The Case for Christ, agreed with Mittelberg that many Christians are raised to believe in doctrine but are not adequately taught on why their faith is true or how to support their faith with evidence.

Could it be due to the total lack of "evidence"?

"A lot of Christians assume they are hanging on to a shred of faith – that they are clinging by their fingernails. They don't know that the truth is on our side," noted Mittelberg.

Ok, if the Christians don't even "know that the truth is on our side" then what are all the sermons about??

For churches with more limited resources, Strobel recommended subscribing to a satellite feed that would stream live broadcasts of his seminars straight to the church. His next scheduled one-day live training seminar, "Investigating Faith," will be held on March 8 at Word Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Northville, Mich. Churches will be able to view the presentation in real time through Church Communication Network.

Strobel also asked pastors to consider setting up seeker small groups. While Strobel's small group curriculum won't be available until this Fall, he recommended Garry Poole's Seeker Small Groups as a resource.

Oh, that's what it's all about- subscribing to a satellite feed or purchasing some new group curriculum to spread the apologetic brainwash...err... research. And then this from an older Christian Post article:

Churches are now finding a need to equip Christians with rebuttals and answers that go beyond an acceptance of the authority of Scripture. In response, Christian apologists are filling the void, teaching a language anchored in reason and science.

And if the Church wants to keep the younger generation, Christian leaders should start stressing evidence and proof, as one 17-year-old suggested.

"We've grown up in a place and a time where everything can be proven," Emily Koll, a member of Calvary Church, told the local newspaper. "And then, all of a sudden, with God, you have to take a leap of faith. We're not used to that. It's outside our comfort zone."

Maybe it's outside your comfort zone for a reason? There's a reason why everything else in your life can be proven, with the sole exception of religion!

"[I]f people look at science, they will find faith and they will find reason; the two cannot be incompatible and they have one author, namely God," said Midland theologian Norbert Dickman, who was scheduled to present what the Christian response should be to the rise of the atheist voice at an Illinois church on Tuesday.

Then why the relentless advance of science and retreat of religion? Why the religious opposition to scientific research and education of the youth with generally accepted scientific theories? Elsewhere, Dumbass D'Zousa points out to all the Christians who have never realized this before that

"[Christians] are going to meet arguments that cannot be settled simply by 'the Bible says this, the Bible says that' because the other person will promptly reply that they don't accept the authority of the Bible," D'Souza noted.

Huh, no shit?

Religion and surveys

Atheist Revolution recently reposted a press release from the Center for Inquiry on the findings of a new survey from the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. One must always employ caution when reading interpretations of survey results.

Interpretations of survey results can vary widely, and pundits of all stripes have been jumping all over this survey. The Wall Street Journal opines that the survey shows

Half of Americans who grew up without any religious affiliation adopted one in adulthood. Clearly Americans are still convinced there is a such a thing as religious truth -- and it's worth their time to search for it. Sorry, Mr. Hitchens.

And atheists tend to report the results in a manner similar to that of the Center for Inquiry:

The most detailed estimates to date of Americans’ religious affiliations reports that a significant portion of U.S. citizens claim “none of the above,” placing the unaffiliated second only to Roman Catholics in number. Monday’s release of the 35,000-respondent U.S. Religious Landscape Survey from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life shows that 16.1 percent of Americans have no particular religion at all, while 23.9 percent identify themselves as Catholic. The next largest “belief group” is Evangelical Baptist at 10.8 percent. All other denominational groupings show in the single digits or less.

The study also shows the number of Americans who identify as atheist or agnostic has risen from 3.2 percent to 4 percent, while a “remarkably high” 44 percent have rejected the religion placed on them in childhood.

But who is right? First- the spin from the Center for Inquiry would have us believe that 16.1% of the American public are atheist. But that's not quite what the results really say.
Only 1.6% of respondents identified themselves as atheist- the rest don't care enough to put too much thought into it. Although religion isn't terribly important in their lives, that's not the same as claiming them for our side (much as I would like to).

Similarly, the Wall Street Journal is off-base when they infer that Americans are searching for religious truth, and eventually settle into a denomination that suits them like a comfortable pair of pajamas. Perhaps the fact that so many Americans have switched denominations or entire religions is due more to a latent dissatisfaction with religion as a whole? The paucity of intelligent discourse from the pulpit could be a factor? The inevitable conflicts between science and religion are encouraging more people to consider the evidence? Priests can no longer maintain their flocks with trite assurances that blind faith is virtuous, especially when the churches have taken up untenable positions against homosexuality, stem cell research, and progress in general.

The scariest part of the Op-Ed from the WSJ is this:

The Pew survey confirms what scholars have been saying for years about the winners and losers in this religious economy: Religions that demand the most of people are growing the fastest. The mainline Protestant churches -- with their less exclusionary views of salvation, looser rules for sexual conduct and sermons about social justice -- have lost membership, especially since the early 1990s. The more traditional evangelical churches keep growing.

In other words, it's not the more moderate, progressive churches that are growing in numbers, it is the more radical, fundamentalist churches. So perhaps my interpretation above is bollocks also and people are desperately searching for someone to tell them how to live their lives. Which is the saddest interpretation of all.

A little slow, just plain dumb, stupid, stupider, and religious

The Dumbing Of America - washingtonpost.com

and

Dumb and Dumber: Are Americans Hostile to Knowledge?

Susan Jacoby's The Age of American Unreason is apparently causing quite a stir, already. The New York Times article above was reprinted in my local paper this morning, and I found it quite interesting.

I know that as atheists, we often find ourselves seemingly defending education, science, and logic in a nation that couldn't care less. Or worse, pays them lip-service, all the while insisting that schools would be better or safer if we put prayer back, put god back, and plaster the ten commandments all over. I've noticed this attitude several places lately, usually in response to a school shooting. The most recent place I remember seeing it was over at Friendly atheist, citing this letter to the editor. Narika Kendrick opines (emphasis mine):

Just because you don’t believe in Jesus, who died for your sins and mine, don’t hold it against a politician who has done a heck of a job in the school system just because of your corrupted, immoral, individualistic outlook. By the way, the last time I checked, it’s people like you that cause Columbine or other school shootings to happen because you want prayer, the Ten Commandments, Christians and every other precious good out of the school system. That’s what’s wrong with America today. Be blessed and have a nice life. But leave the morally righteous people alone.

Ignoring the blatant grammatical errors, this attitude encapsulates what Susan Jacoby argues to be a climate of anti-intellectualism and anti-rationalism that holds sway over much of the populace. Atheists reading this will no doubt have their own experiences to bolster that claim. When (not "if") we win debates with the religious, their last line of defense often ends up along the lines of "Atheism is a religion too" or, "I have as much right to my opinion as you do, there's no proof that you're right."

The unique problem facing atheists is not that we lack facts, logic, reason, evidence etc...; clearly we have all of that in spades. The "debate" between belief or atheism has not really significantly changed in hundreds of years. All the arguments have been hashed out, posted on myriad internet sites and available to anyone who's curious. It's not that atheists are unapproachable, so unimaginably evil that we would drink the blood of anyone asking to know more about humanism or free-thought. The problem is that the religious are willfully choosing to ignore evidence contradicting their belief. They are wallowing in their own ignorance. From the Washington Times:

That leads us to the third and final factor behind the new American dumbness: not lack of knowledge per se but arrogance about that lack of knowledge. The problem is not just the things we do not know (consider the one in five American adults who, according to the National Science Foundation, thinks the sun revolves around the Earth); it's the alarming number of Americans who have smugly concluded that they do not need to know such things in the first place. Call this anti-rationalism -- a syndrome that is particularly dangerous to our public institutions and discourse. Not knowing a foreign language or the location of an important country is a manifestation of ignorance; denying that such knowledge matters is pure anti-rationalism. The toxic brew of anti-rationalism and ignorance hurts discussions of U.S. public policy on topics from health care to taxation.

Which is why atheists cannot stand by and leave religion alone. It's not just a difference of opinion, it the difference between truth and lies. And those of you who CHOOSE to believe in lies are trying to hijack the government of this country and force it back into the dark ages!

In the wake of the "New Atheists" and their books, the most common criticism has probably been that they are "elitist" or somehow intellectually snobbish. I fail to see this as a criticism however, and I fully agree with the sentiment. I don't know how much plainer I can say it, but if you believe in something that you don't have good reasons to believe in, expect to get made fun of and demeaned.

All this helps explain the popularity of the New Atheists -- Americans as a whole may not be getting too much religion, but a significant constituency must be getting fed up with being routinely marginalized, ignored and insulted. After all, unbelievers are concentrated at the higher end of the educational scale -- a recent Harris American poll shows that 31 percent of those with postgraduate education do not avow belief in God (compared with only 14 percent of those with a high school education or less). The percentage rises among professors and then again among professors at research universities, reaching 93 percent among members of the National Academy of Sciences. Unbelievers are to be found concentrated among those whose professional lives emphasize science or rationality and who also have developed a relatively high level of confidence in their own intellectual faculties. (from Alternet)

Granted, there's still a stray scientist or two who profess belief, but overall that's quite a statement. Facts, evidence, study, research, a thirst for knowledge all seem to almost inexorably lead to atheism. Repression, denial, anti-rationalism and anti-intellectualism are symptomatic of religion. I rather like Sam Harris' challenge to the religious to name one area in which we used to have a scientific explanation but now we have a generally accepted religious explanation that is better suited to explain the phenomenon.

Sam Harris astounds me again!

I'm reposting this in its entirety from The Edge's annual question: "What have you changed your mind about?" I know I'm a bit late to this party, but I had a great deal of thinking to do before I knew where I stood. At first, when I read Sam's response, I was shocked, disagreeing completely. But then again, I thought that way at first about his characterization of moderate Christians. Essentially, he argues that moderate Christians

"by their lingering attachment to the unique divinity of Jesus, protect the faith of fundamentalists from public scorn. Christian liberals — who aren't sure what they believe but just love the experience of going to church occasionally — deny the moderates a proper collision with scientific rationality. And in this way centuries have come and gone without an honest word being spoken about God in our society."

EDIT: After I posted this, I read an amazing post at Apostate's Chapel that you should all read about why atheists refuse to leave religion alone.

However, the more I think and reflect on Sam's ideas, the more convincing I find them. I was automatically reacting against them because they are so radically different from conventional wisdom, or at least conventional sensibilities. The concept he expresses below, that "Mother Nature is Not Our Friend" is terribly important to understand. I had been disgusted with the attitude of arrogance and entitlement that seems to come with the differing strains of religion, without realizing that my own eye held a similar beam: the assumption that "natural" is the same thing as "the best". Now that we have developed the tools to shape our own genetic and physiological destiny (no thanks to those who attempt to quash science in the name of religion, or more vaguely, "ethics"). The question is no longer, "should we?" but "why shouldn't we?" By challenging the base assumption that nature wants humans to survive, or that we have some special place in the cosmos, Sam forces us to rethink all our assumptions about gene therapy, cloning, stem cell research, climate change, and the ethical issues surround them. Enjoy:


SAM HARRIS
Neuroscience Researcher; Author, Letter to a Christian Nation

Mother Nature is Not Our Friend

Like many people, I once trusted in the wisdom of Nature. I imagined that there were real boundaries between the natural and the artificial, between one species and another, and thought that, with the advent of genetic engineering, we would be tinkering with life at our peril. I now believe that this romantic view of Nature is a stultifying and dangerous mythology.

Every 100 million years or so, an asteroid or comet the size of a mountain smashes into the earth, killing nearly everything that lives. If ever we needed proof of Nature's indifference to the welfare of complex organisms such as ourselves, there it is. The history of life on this planet has been one of merciless destruction and blind, lurching renewal.

The fossil record suggests that individual species survive, on average, between one and ten million years. The concept of a "species" is misleading, however, and it tempts us to think that we, as homo sapiens, have arrived at some well-defined position in the natural order. The term "species" merely designates a population of organisms that can interbreed and produce fertile offspring; it cannot be aptly applied to the boundaries between species (to what are often called "intermediate" or "transitional" forms). There was, for instance, no first member of the human species, and there are no canonical members now. Life is a continuous flux. Our nonhuman ancestors bred, generation after generation, and incrementally begat what we now deem to be the species homo sapiens — ourselves. There is nothing about our ancestral line or about our current biology that dictates how we will evolve in the future. Nothing in the natural order demands that our descendants resemble us in any particular way. Very likely, they will not resemble us. We will almost certainly transform ourselves, likely beyond recognition, in the generations to come.

Will this be a good thing? The question presupposes that we have a viable alternative. But what is the alternative to our taking charge of our biological destiny? Might we be better off just leaving things to the wisdom of Nature? I once believed this. But we know that Nature has no concern for individuals or for species. Those that survive do so despite Her indifference. While the process of natural selection has sculpted our genome to its present state, it has not acted to maximize human happiness; nor has it necessarily conferred any advantage upon us beyond the capacity raise the next generation to child-bearing age. In fact, there may be nothing about human life after the age of forty (the average lifespan until the 20th century) that has been selected by evolution at all. And with a few exceptions (e.g. the gene for lactose tolerance), we probably haven't adapted to our environment much since the Pleistocene.

But our environment and our needs — to say nothing of our desires — have changed radically in the meantime. We are in many respects ill-suited to the task of building a global civilization. This is not a surprise. From the point of view of evolution, much of human culture, along with its cognitive and emotional underpinnings, must be epiphenomenal. Nature cannot "see" most of what we are doing, or hope to do, and has done nothing to prepare us for many of the challenges we now face.

These concerns cannot be waved aside with adages like, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." There are innumerable perspectives from which our current state of functioning can be aptly described as "broke." Speaking personally, it seems to me that everything I do picks out some point on a spectrum of disability: I was always decent at math, for instance, but this is simply to say that I am like a great mathematician who has been gored in the head by a bull; my musical ability resembles that of a Mozart or a Bach, it is true, though after a near fatal incident on skis; if Tiger Woods awoke from surgery to find that he now possessed (or was possessed by) my golf-swing, rest assured that a crushing lawsuit for medical malpractice would be in the offing.

Considering humanity as a whole, there is nothing about natural selection that suggests our optimal design. We are probably not even optimized for the Paleolithic, much less for life in the 21st century. And yet, we are now acquiring the tools that will enable us to attempt our own optimization. Many people think this project is fraught with risk. But is it riskier than doing nothing? There may be current threats to civilization that we cannot even perceive, much less resolve, at our current level of intelligence. Could any rational strategy be more dangerous than following the whims of Nature? This is not to say that our growing capacity to meddle with the human genome couldn't present some moments of Faustian over-reach. But our fears on this front must be tempered by a sober understanding of how we got here. Mother Nature is not now, nor has she ever been, looking out for us.

The need for atheist spirituality...

Vjack has a great post over at Atheist Revolution about the application of "spirituality" to atheist thought. As I mentioned in the comments section, Sam Harris makes no bones about the spirituality he has experienced, and the fact the he continues to seek those experiences through contemplative processes like meditation. Presumably, a portion of his motivation in the area is his work as a neuroscientist and a desire to understand the neurological or neurochemical basis for these types of transcendent experiences.

To me, I find it interesting that religious folk often tend to use these types of experiences as "proof" that their mode of belief is correct. And, it's an easy misinterpretation to make, especially when caught up in the euphoria that may come along with these experiences. But, the fact that many cultures throughout history have produced these experiences, with or without a religious component ought to serve as proof of the opposite: our brains are wired to accept these types of input and translate them as awe-inspiring, transcendent, and special.

Conversely, many atheists appear to place little value in this type of experience. We can get so caught up in promoting rationality above all else that we may forget the sense of wonder and mysticism that is inherent (at least to me) in nature. It seems to me that these peak experiences are a wonderful part of the human condition. Different people will seek out these experiences to different degrees, but I think we ought to be open to this type of wonder, so long as we don't read too much into them. That is, they are not proof for god's existence, let alone proof that your specific god cares for you personally & individually.

Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted): Top Fifty Atheist T-Shirt and Bumper Sticker Aphorisms

Thanks to Dangerous Intersection for the tip-off on this:

Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted): Top Fifty Atheist T-Shirt and Bumper Sticker Aphorisms

Top Fifty Atheist T-Shirt and Bumper Sticker Aphorisms

1. Abstinence Makes the Church Grow Fondlers


2. Honk If Your Religious Beliefs Make You An Asshole


3. Intelligent Design Makes My Monkey Cry


4. Too Stupid to Understand Science? Try Religion.


5. There's A REASON Why Atheists Don't Fly Planes Into Buildings


6. "Worship Me or I Will Torture You Forever. Have a Nice Day."­ God.


7. God Doesn't Kill People. People Who Believe in God Kill People.


8. If There is No God, Then What Makes the Next Kleenex Pop Up?


9. He's Dead.
   It's Been 2,000 years.
   He's Not Coming Back.
   Get OVER It Already!


10. All religion is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination, and poetry. Edgar Allen Poe.


11. Viva La Evolución!


12. Actually, If You Look It Up, The Winter Solstice Is The Reason For The Season


13. I Wouldn't Trust Your God Even If He Did Exist


14. Cheeses Is Lard. Argue With THAT If You Can.


15. People Who Don't Want Their Beliefs Laughed at Shouldn't Have Such Funny Beliefs


16. Jesus is Coming? Don't Swallow That.


17. Threatening Children With Hell Is FUN!


18. GOD - APPLY DIRECTLY TO FOREHEAD!


19. Jesus Told Me Republicans SUCK


20. God + Whacky Tobacky = Platypus


21. God Doesn't Exist. So, I Guess That Means No One Loves You.


22. When the Rapture Comes, We'll Get Our Country Back!


23. Q. How Do We Know the Holy Ghost Was Catholic?
    A. He Used the Rhythm Method Instead of a Condom.


24. You Say "Heretic" Like It Was a BAD Thing


25. I Love Christians. They Taste Like Chicken.


26. Science: It Works, Bitches.


27. "Intelligent Design" Helping Stupid People Feel Smart Since 1987


28. I Found God Between The Sheets


29. I Gave Up Superstitious Mumbo Jumbo For Lent


30. My Flying Monkey Can Beat Up Your Guardian Angel


31. Every Time You Play With Yourself, God Kills a Kitten


32. If God Wanted People to Believe in Him, Then Why Did He Invent Logic?


33. Praying Is Politically Correct Schizophrenia


34. ALL Americans Are African Americans


35. I Forget - Which Day Did God Make All The Fossils?


36. I Was An Atheist Until The Hindus Convinced Me That I Was God


37. The Spanish Inquisition: The Original Faith-based Initiative


38. If we were made in his image, when why aren't humans invisible too?


39. JESUS SAVES....You From Thinking For Yourself


40. How Can You Disbelieve in Evolution If You Can't Even Define It?


41. Q. How Can You Tell That Your God is Man-made?
    A. If He Hates All the Same People You Do.


42. Every Time You See a Rainbow, God is Having Gay Sex


43. I Went to Public School in Kansas and All I Got Was This Lousy T-shirt and a Poor Understanding of the Scientific Method.


44. WWJD = We Won. Jesus Died.


45. The Family That Prays Together is Brainwashing the Children


46. Oh, Look, Honey Another Pro-lifer For War


47. Another Godless Atheist for Peace and World Harmony


48. God is Unavailable Right Now. Can I Help You?


49. When Lip Service to Some Mysterious Deity Permits Bestiality on
    Wednesday and Absolution on Sundays, Cash Me Out. Frank Sinatra.


50. No Gods. No Mullets.

How do you determine which candidate to support?

In writing this post I started discussing the process of deciding which candidate to support. I posed the question: "How do you decide which candidate merits your support?" I really don't mean it as a trite question, I've put a great deal of thought into it personally.

It used to be an easy decision for me. I used to be a religious Republican, which meant that I made by decision by listening in church for cues as to who everyone else was supporting. Occasionally, this would come from the pulpit, but more often casual discussions with other church members would lead to a kind of informal consensus as to who the 'best' candidate would be.

Now that I'm neither religious nor Republican, I'm not sure how people decide to support any given candidate, especially when parts of their ideology may conflict. For example: if you love candidate A's positions on domestic policy, but hate their foreign policy, do they still get your vote? Or substitute any set of issues you want, the question remains: in the absence of a perfect candidate for you, how do you go about prioritizing the issues so you come up with an acceptable candidate (or not) to vote for?

To me, I'm really struggling with this issue. I've spent the last 10 or so years throwing out or otherwise evaluating the old heuristics I'd use. Heuristics are especially useful or especially misleading when it comes to elections. For example- Mike Huckabee is touting his Christianity. For many people, this provides a useful way to shortcut all of his position issues and just give them a "yes" or "no" for supporting him. Heuristics are mental shortcuts based on past experience. So, if you are a Christian, this label attached to Huckabee is a shortcut way of expressing that he probably shares your values on issues such as abortion, evolution, science policy, stem cells, gay rights, etc.... You don't (mentally) need to take the time to actually evaluate his positions on each of these issues. It works the same way for me when I go to evaluate Mike Huckabee, except those shortcuts all lead to a "no" answer when I question whether our values are similar. For other Christians, Mitt Romney's Mormonism might be another heuristic for "no", even though they would probably agree on all of the issues. This is why I say they can be especially misleading.

These heuristics are great once the nominating stage of the race is over with and the parties have chosen their candidates. Most people just use their "party" heuristic at this point and vote for the person that the party as selected to represent them. However, at the nominating stage, one has to look a little bit deeper to find one's cues.

So here's where I stand: I'm 29 years old, white, middle-class, atheist, and a libertarian. I don't know much about how our foreign policy ought to look, I just know it's not working now. I'm not sure if non-intervention (a la Ron Paul) would be salvation or disaster. All of this means that there's no obvious candidate that I should support. Fiscally, I probably should side with a Republican candidate. Socially, probably a Democrat. Foreign policy gets a big "?". So how do I prioritize these? I think all of these issues are important-- if not for me personally, then for the country as a whole. Should I vote strictly my interests? Should I vote for the best interest of the country? How do I weigh these if they diverge? I was leaning towards Ron Paul lately, until I read this blog post at Daylight Atheism. So I think where I'm left is looking for Giuliani. We probably agree on economic policy, he's pretty liberal on social issues (gay rights, etc...) and I don't think he's looking to push his religion down anyone's throats. I don't plan on traveling out of the country any time soon, I don't know anyone that lives out of the country, and I don't know anyone in the military, so do I completely ignore foreign policy? That doesn't seem right, but what am I to do?

If you have any input, feel free to leave it in the comments. How are you deciding? What factors are the biggest for you?

It's a "Brave New World", Mr. Bush

Think Progress » Aldous Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’ Convinced Bush To Ban Embryonic Stem Cell Research

Isn't that neat? You can read the whole story above, but it's neatly encapsulated in the hyperlink.
The dystopian novel "Brave New World" had Bush freaking out over the possibilities that humans would one day be bred in hatcheries if the government supported stem-cell research. In a stunning stroke of political mastery, Bush angered both sides of the debate by refusing government funding for new stem cell lines while not banning stem cell research entirely. Feel free to read the whole article by Jay Lefkowitz (a presidential advisor), it really is an interesting scoop on how this president came to his decision.

As a first step, Bush asked me to prepare a set of background reading materials on the scientific aspects of stem-cell research. He also asked for a summary of the relevant laws of other countries, and a description of what the world’s leading religions had to say on the issue. Once I began turning in my memos, a day rarely passed when he did not call with a follow-up request or a question about something he had read. It was clear that in addition to the material I submitted, he was also finding other things to read and was talking about stem cells with friends and intimates.

One morning at 6:30, my wife summoned me from the shower to answer a call from the White House; the President had been speaking about the issue the night before with a friend and had a barrage of questions he wanted me to answer or look into immediately. At a ceremony in the Rose Garden, Bush saw a physician he knew and invited him back to the Oval Office where they spent fifteen minutes discussing stem cells. During a birthday party for a member of the White House medical unit, the President asked each of the doctors present to set forth his own position. At a gathering with medical groups and doctors to discuss the pending Patients’ Bill of Rights, he queried each physician about the scientific potential of stem-cell research, the ethical quandaries involved, and what the best public policy would be.

Bush also discussed the issue on many occasions with individual members of Congress, and spoke about it to nearly all the members of his Cabinet. (After one Cabinet meeting, Secretary of State Colin Powell followed him into the Oval Office to make sure Bush was aware of his views.) Nor did he confine himself to the precincts of the White House or of Washington. In May, traveling to Notre Dame to give the commencement speech, he spoke with the university’s president, Father Edward Malloy, and a number of scientists on the faculty. The next day, at Yale, he sat down with Harold Varmus, who had served under Clinton as director of the NIH and was the president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York.

Hmmmm, so I guess if you were anywhere within 300 miles of George W. Bush during this time, you probably had to fill out a survey on what you thought he should do. Great. Let's just have the Gallup organization serve a term as leader of the free world.
Mr. Lefkowitz makes it clear where he stands looking back on the issue:

In the coming decades, scientific advances will compel Presidents and politicians to confront vexing choices on subjects that were once solely the province of dystopian science fiction: human cloning, fetal farming, human-animal hybrid embryos, and situations as yet unimagined and unimaginable. If we are to benefit from the great promise of the age of biotechnology while preventing grave ethical abuses, we can only hope that future Presidents will be guided by the same seriousness with which George W. Bush pursued the question of stem-cell research, as well as by his stout refusal to be seduced by the siren song of political expediency. [emphasis mine]

I will be the first to agree that because science can do something, does not mean that it should do something. However, I think the point of view advocated above is so hysterical, so over the top, that it is almost humorous. Or it would be if it weren't the point of view shared by so many stem-cell research opponents. It's going to be a while before GoatBoy becomes palatable. Hopefully never. However, if you are opposed to these sorts of things, then you have already missed the boat. Sundry animals and their parts have been used for years to prolong human life, and you can't stuff that genie back in the bottle. From new heart valves to pig insulin, the easiest way to save human life is to rig up our own solutions until science produces something better. There sure doesn't appear to have been any intelligent design from the start.
It's also worth remembering that the stem cell debate is not the same as the cloning debate and neither is the same as the xenotransplantation debate. There are well-reasoned arguments on both sides, but I don't believe 1930's fiction should serve as the deciding factor when it comes to national science policy.