"There is joy in rationality, happiness in clarity of mind. Freethought is thrilling and fulfilling--absolutely essential to mental health and happiness." -Dan Barker, Losing Faith in Faith"There is joy in rationality, happiness in clarity of mind. Freethought is thrilling and fulfilling--absolutely essential to mental health and happiness." -Dan Barker, Losing Faith in Faith
I didn’t think they would be crazy enough to do it, but they just may be. When the National Intelligence Estimate came out last December, where a dozen U.S. intelligence agencies agreed that the Iranian nuclear development program has been shut down since 2003, it put a pretty massive roadblock in Bush/Cheney’s increasingly fired-up anti-Iranian rhetoric which was surely leading to open war with the country.
After that assessment came out, I lowered my expectation of war with Iran down to about 20%. Bush seemed appropriately put down by this definitive conclusion from the intelligence community.
But it seems, once again, that intelligence is never an issue in Bush’s decisions.
According to one investigative journalist who has gotten information from Washington insiders, the White House has been escalating covert operations in Iran to spread chaos and disorder with an objective of bringing down Iran’s mythical nuclear program, or instigate war. Because apparently Bush and Cheney “don’t believe” the consensus intelligence assessment. Hey, what’s years worth of data gathering and professional intelligence analysis when you have belief to guide you when leading an empire?!
I guess this really shouldn’t surprise me. When Bush declared the Iranian Revolutionay Guard Corp (part of their regular army) a terrorist organization, he set the stage for open war: Using Patriot Act imposed powers, he can now wage war on the Iranian army without asking for permission from Congress as set down by the Constitution. Although, it appears that even if he asks he’d get permission considering this supposedly new check-and-balance Congress gave Bush $400 million to wage this covert war prep within Iran’s borders.
After having spent all that time selling the US public and the United Nations on war with Iraq over fictional WMD’s, I guess they decided to skip all that and just go to war without bothering to try to convince us they need to.
I’m pretty certain again that before they leave office, King George and Viceroy Cheney will start a war with Iran. Goodness knows Israel and the neo-cons are itching for for one. There’s just the question over what the domestic plan will be:
A) They believe this will bolster McCain’s chances as a war-hero Presidential nominee and he’ll get elected, thus ensuring a virtual 3rd Bush term; or,
B) Using National Security Presidential Directive NSPD-51 / Homeland Security Presidential Directive HSPD-20, Bush will declare a national emergency which will redirect all federal powers to the Executive Branch (him) at which time he will suspend national elections (which he “legally” can do) making him the American dictator (only until such a time as the emergency has ended, I’m sure. Which is what Julius Caesar said, as I recall).
This former is most likely, but the later is possible. If situation B happens, that’s it. You can kiss the United States of America goodbye. It’ll be the end of the empire. The dollar will crash and the euro will take over as the currency of international trade; Russia, China, and very likely a few European nations will turn on us; we’ll suffer from severe embargoes and tariffs at least and military hostility at worst. Internal strife and turmoil will tear the nation up as surely as external pressures. It’s happened before, it’ll likely happen again. The beginnings of the ends of all empires started with the rise of economic woes followed by increased military actions as empty and destructive show of strength and power, which ultimately turn against the empire.
These next several months will determine the fate of the US, I have no doubt. If we can avoid an all-out US/Middle East war and elect a non-war monger for President with a Congress with domestic rebuilding agendas, we can continue as a free nation and maybe become a respected world leader once again. If the World War Bush and Cheney want happens, we’re done for. Simple as that.
How would you react if one day came home to discover that every room in your house had two or three CCTV cameras installed in it? You don’t know who’s watching them or when or why? Would you be OK with this?
Let’s say someone came to your door, introduced themselves as being a private contractor working for Homeland Security, and demanded a copy of your house key so that they (and presumably the DHS and any one else they contract out to) could come in whenever they wanted to have a look around now and then. Would you be OK with this?
Then I have to ask, why are you OK with what actually IS happening right now with your electronic information and possibly your phone calls? The NSA has their own sealed room at an AT&T switching center with a system that intercepts all electronic data that runs through their backbone. Are they looking at your e-mails or listening to your voicemail? Who knows. Probably not. But they can if they want, and the House just gave them permission to do it with the Senate about to do likewise (years after they installed the room without congressional or judicial oversight.)
Project Carnivore was once thought to be an urban (geek) legend, possibly intentional disinformation. However, over the last few years, network administrators for various ISP’s around the country have confirmed putting packet sniffers on their servers providing the FBI and NSA the ability to intercept and read all data passed through their network. Supposedly used only on court orders and targeting specific individuals–but with the governments track record lately of monitoring first and forgetting to ask permission later (see recent FISA Court cases) can we really be sure they’re keeping themselves to high and ethical standards?
The administration also got in trouble recently (although nothing’s been done about it) for data mining through the call records of all domestic telephone calls, not just the international ones they admit to eavesdropping on.
Q: When Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was testifying a few months ago, he seemed careful to specify that he was talking only about the “Terrorist Surveillance Program.” Does that mean he knew about the phone data mining effort and refused to reveal it earlier?
It seems likely, but we don’t know. During his appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee and in a subsequent letter to senators, Gonzales’ careful wording seemed to imply that there may be additional domestic surveillance programs beyond the one revealed by The New York Times. (Testifying before senators, Gonzales referred to that program as “the program that the president has confirmed.”)
It only takes a few questions about you for someone to know exactly who you are without your providing any identity information. Anyone who visits this Web page is leaving information about what site you were at before this one and where you go to when you leave this one, what browser and operating system you’re using as well as what town you’re in. That alone is enough to create a profile on you. But you also leave your IP address which is the most vital piece of electronic data possible which allows someone to track your activities all over the ‘net. Let’s say someone knows what town you live in, that you did a search for “repairing 2005 Scion,” bought a size 10 dress online, and looked at the Web site for a particular church or health club in your town–how much more information do you think they’d need to find out who you are and what kind of person you seem to be? That’s the kind of information available to advertisers, ISP’s, corporations, and their employees and anyone an employee wants to provide that information to. We’re not even talking about what the government has collected on actual specific information on who you called and when and for how long.
These are just a few of the programs we know about. There may be other programs even more invasive that we don’t know about–but that’s conspiracy theory territory and what has been admitted to Congress and the Supreme Court is bad enough already.
Now, when I talk about this topic to people, there are those whose first response will often be, “So? If you’re not doing anything wrong, why worry about it?”
If you’re asking this, let me remind you of my earlier question of whether you’d have any problems with someone wandering through your house without your permission, looking at you and your family, rifling through your stuff, listening to your conversations, whenever they wanted. Even if you’re not doing anything “wrong,” would you not have a problem with this?
I’ll address the abstract principle of privacy and liberty in a moment, but first the practical application of the destruction of privacy and collection of data….
Do you know how big the TSA’a No Fly List is? Nearly a million names. A million. Is there that many terrorists and enemies of the US in the country?! Mmm, doubtful. Names that are on the list include Senator Kennedy,children, soldiers fighting in Iraq, war heroes, and constitutional scholars.
One of the two people to whom I talked asked a question and offered a frightening comment: “Have you been in any peace marches? We ban a lot of people from flying because of that.” I explained that I had not so marched but had, in September, 2006, given a lecture at Princeton, televised and put on the Web, highly critical of George Bush for his many violations of the Constitution. “That’ll do it,” the man said. “
Not caring about being watched and recorded and surveilled assumes that those doing the surveillance and collecting are perfect and without error in judgment and practice and have the cleanest of ethics and intent. If that were true, I probably wouldn’t mind myself! And every night I’d eat a salad of fairy wings sprinkled with unicorn horn croutons. The problem with the government collecting data, wantonly eavesdropping, making lists, is that it’s being done by humans who are quite prone to mistakes, humans that are capable of malicious and unscrupulous actions, for reasons that may be (and most likely are) political in nature and have nothing to do with security and everything to do with power and control.
Everything about the No Fly List and the security regulations are completely useless for real security: any high school chemistry student can tell you it’s neigh impossible to make an effective explosive out of carry-on liquid containers. Each of the 9/11 hijackers had valid and legal identification. As the above link describes, people can easily make fake IDs and boarding passes–and when the TSA is alerted of such real threats to security, they threaten the whistle blowers with arrest. The No Fly List and TSA security is useless at best, and a tool for the government to harass and monitor political enemies at worst.
The same government which we are shrugging our shoulders about collecting our data and watching our communications is the same government that:
Signed Homeland Security Presidential Directive #20 which states that should the President declare a “state of emergency” for any reason the office sees fit, all powers of the federal government are turned over to the Executive Branch (the President).
Swapped the original Patriot Act bill which Congress got to see, with a rewritten one literally in the middle of the night before Congress voted it in.
Rescinded habeas corpus which prevents the government from arresting anyone they want, declaring them an “enemy combatant,” and disappearing them indefinitely.
Literally kidnapped a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil and flew them in a CIA plane to be tortured for a year in Syria…before deciding the person was innocent.
Advocates using torture methods we’ve convicted other countries of war crimes for, even though overwhelming evidence shows torture is ineffective for gathering viable intelligence (as if the human rights violation isn’t enough).
Puts covert CIA agents and their assets at risk (as well as destroying years worth of trust and asset building) for political revenge.
Rescinds Posse Comitatus which prevents federally controlled military forces from acting in domestic capacity.
Uses privately contracted para-military organizations for foreign and domestic missions without Congressional permission or oversight.
Keeps CIA run prisons in countries which use torture methods even worse than what the White House admits to using–and privately contracted security forces to oversee their operations.
Infiltrates and harasses organizations that protest the administration’s politics…like Quaker churches.
…to name a few ways in which the government does not act in a responsible, perfect, error-free, ethical manner.
Take a moment to watch this film (even if you’ve seen it before; I’ve posted it on my blog a couple of times…)
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This illustrates my point perfectly. From a practical standpoint, you don’t have to be doing anything wrong to be a victim of error, incompetence, unethical use of power.
Cory Doctorow describes the dangers of being a victim of mass surveillance:
Statisticians speak of something called the Paradox of the False Positive. Here’s how that works: imagine that you’ve got a disease that strikes one in a million people, and a test for the disease that’s 99% accurate. You administer the test to a million people, and it will be positive for around 10,000 of them – because for every hundred people, it will be wrong once (that’s what 99% accurate means). Yet, statistically, we know that there’s only one infected person in the entire sample. That means that your “99% accurate†test is wrong 9,999 times out of 10,000!
Terrorism is a lot less common than one in a million and automated “tests†for terrorism – data-mined conclusions drawn from transactions, Oyster cards, bank transfers, travel schedules, etc – are a lot less accurate than 99%. That means practically every person who is branded a terrorist by our data-mining efforts is innocent.
In other words, in the effort to find the terrorist needles in our haystacks, we’re just making much bigger haystacks.
Even ignoring the possibility of unethical or political behavior, mere statistics bear out that innocent people who shrug and say “Doesn’t matter so long as you aren’t doing something wrong” may find themselves arrested by DHS, detained, interrogated, threatened and tortured, have their lives turned upside down–because of a mistake. I’ve blogged a dozen times enumerating many cases of innocent people being the victim of erroneous police drug raids resulting in property damage and even innocent deaths. Shrugging it off and saying it doesn’t matter because you’re not doing anything wrong is the worst of rose-colored, Pollyanna, primrose path thinking.
The principle of privacy is an abstract concept but entirely as vital and important as any concept of practical application. As humans in general and citizens of the United States in particular we have an unalienable right to personal privacy as part of our freedom and liberty. It’s a simple matter of principle that we don’t tolerate unknown people or agents of the government walking into our house unannounced and uninvited for no other reason than some vague pantomime of protecting us from the boogeyman. If the goal of the terrorist is to get a government, an entire people, to fundamentally change out of fear and terror–they’ve won. We are willingly handing away our essential freedoms and liberties that we associate with being American for the price of an illusion of security. Allowing them to listen to our calls, collect all our communications data, scan our e-mail and Web browsing, plant RFID chips in our passports and luggage, create federalized identification, all of these are actions that have nothing to do with protecting us from real threats, as all of these steps would have had no effect stopping 9/11, and everything to do with creating a fascist police state.
I’m about to Godwin the post by bringing it up, but bear with me. In the evolution of all fascist regimes and dictatorships, from Hitler and Mussolini to Stalin and Pinochet, there was a time when things were heading toward Bad but not yet there. Fascism and dictatorships don’t spring up fully formed from out of nowhere–they slowly, step by step, on the backs of a mixture of trusting and lazy citizens, rise from nowhere. Before there was Chancellor Hitler, the Fuhrer, there was a small man leading a rabble party preaching conservatism and fear of the outsider. Before there was an occupation of Czechoslovakia and in invasion of Poland in 1939 by the German army, there was a period from 1921 to 1933, when the Nazi Party was formed to when the burning of the Reichstag building convinced the German legislature to give Hitler full governmental and military power. The Nazi Party didn’t take Germany over by force, they inched their way into power using the law, politics, twisted to their ends and allowed by a populace and Parliament afraid of domestic terrorism and economic frustrations and a desire for a strong leader with a strong, conservative vision who will crush the enemies of the homeland.
Sound familiar?
We do a greater disservice to history by elevating Hitler and the Nazis to some fictionally epic evil that couldn’t possibly happen in real life. It did and it can again when people are too uncaring and lazy to take thrats to their freedom and civil liberties seriously, and by allowing folksy plain-speakin’ conservative war-mongers to have positions of great power thanks to jingoist appeals to false patriotism and invoking the spectral fear of the shadowy anarchistcommunist terrorist bad guy around every corner.
What can we do? Well, various things, but this post is a focus on protecting privacy which can be done by a greater public use of encryption and Internet anonymity. Here’s the irony that ends up working to protect privacy:
It’s a bad thing that the government is making huge haystacks of data and surveillance, erroneously claiming some straw as needles they’re looking for. But, the greater the haystacks, the more ineffectual the mining and surveillance, until it reaches a point where watching everyone and collecting everyone’s data is no longer even desired by those in power. This happens the more “chaff” there is in the system.
Take London: cover every square inch of the city with CCTVs and you’ll get so much information that you’ll never make any sense of it. Scotland Yard says that CCTVs help solve fewer than 3% of all crimes, while a study in San Francisco found that at best, criminals simply move out of camera range, while at worst they assume no one is watching.
Similarly, if you take fingerprints from every person who applies for a visa – or worse still, from every person in Britain who has to carry one of the proposed new biometric cards – you will fill the databases with chaff that slows down searches, generates endless false matches, and threatens everyone in the database with the worst kind of identity theft.
The more people use secure methods to chat with their friends about the weather, use encryption to share chicken pot pie recipes, use anonymizers in their search for parts for their 2005 Scion, the more frustrating it is for those watching and looking and listening to watch and listen to everyone. At least that’s one theory of circumventing the police state in a grand scale. On the small scale, you have the right to be able to share your chicken pot pie recipe without being eavesdropped on–more so if you’re sharing private personal information or sensitive business or financial information. The more ordinary, non-techie people are using security methods to communicate the easier it is for you to do the same. What good is it if you want to use encryption to discuss anything from plot points of a television show to potentially embarrassing medical information or yearly budget information if the people you’re communicating with doesn’t use encryption or take security precautions.
Here’s something you probably didn’t know but really should: every time you check your e-mail with a program like Outlook or Thunderbird, you are sending your username and password in human readable clear text across the internet. If someone has installed a trojan on your PC, they can read it. If you’re using unsecured wi-fi, anyone in the area could access your info. Anyone who may be snooping between your computer and your mail server can read it.
What if you send sensitive info to Bob, and Bob’s checking his e-mail with Outlook on an unsecured wireless connection? You may have taken precautions logging into your mail securely, but because of Bob’s innocent ignorance your information is open to easy interception.
Here’s another nice thought: man-in-the-middle attacks in this situation is pretty easy for a mid-level cracker to perform. They gain your e-mail access info, intercept a message, make changes to it before letting it continue ion its way with no one the wiser.
OK, now we learn to take some basic precautions:
E-mail. By default most email programs send traffic over unsecured connections (ports 110 for incoming and 25 for outgoing). Find out if your e-mail provider offers secured “SSL” servers (usually ports 995 and 465 respectively). If they do, they should be able to help you change your program settings (Outlook: account properties, Advanced tab).
If you use a Web mail service like Yahoo or Gmail, or even a general ISP but through a Web application like Horde, you’re in better shape. Chances are you’re already using an SSL connection (“https://”). When you log into your mail Web page, make sure the URL has that “s” (https://) and the little lock icon wherever your browser shows you secured connection info (bottom middle status bar for Firefox 3).
Web searching. You know Google stores your searching habits tied to your IP and browser info, right? Here’s a way around that: Scroogle Scraper. (Secure page: https://ssl.scroogle.org/). Read their main page for more info.
Email encryption. OK, things get a little trickier here, but it keeps getting easier than it used to be. Most people who use email encryption use what’s called GnuPG. (You don’t need to go to that site unless you want more info about the tech). You will need to generate a key-pair to do the encrypting and an email program plugin to apply the key-pair to. If you’re lucky enough to be using Linux and Thunderbird, KGpg is probably already installed to help you make your keys and you just need to add the Enigmail add-on (actually, I believe all you need is the Enigmail add-on for Thunderbird as it has a built-in key manager. Which means, if you’re using Thunderbird in Windows, that’s all you need as well! Use your Thunderbird add-on search, or this link.)
If you’re using Outlook, you’ll need to install something like WinPT or better yet, GPG4Win which has everything you need to generate the keys and make Outlook send and decrypt encrypted email. It may be a bit tricky to get used to at first, and you may question its worth-whileness… but it is. (And like Thunderbird and Enigmail, it’s free.)
Security packages. If you really want to get into security, I recommend a package like Steganos. It costs money, but it’s extremely easy to use and a whole lot of options. Email encryption, file (or even entire drive and partition) hiding, encrypted Internet connections (if you can afford that, it’s the best way to go!!) Steganos even offers a free encryption tool on their Web site: LockNote to encrypt data you want to keep on your PC, like passwords and the like, and FreeCrypt which allows you en- and decrypt text that you can cut-n-paste into messages. (The recipient just has to use the same Web page to decrypt so long as they have the password you decide on).
Another is a package endorsed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation: Anonymizer Anonymous Surfing. They have variety of packages like VPN connections, spam foiling disposable e-mail addresses, file and history “shredding.”
Internet anonymity. Steganos and Anonymizer VPN, mentioned above, provides a secure, encrypted connection which makes all of your traffic anonymous so companies can’t track your browsing habits and visits and tie it back to you. A free option that’s not near as complete and secure, but is a pretty good option…for free, is EFF’s daughter project, Tor. It doesn’t involve any encryption. What it does is send your traffic through a large and wide network of participating relays (of which you can choose to be one) so that you look like you’re one of the many random end servers with virtually no way to track the traffic back to your original IP. It can be slow using it, and it’s not foolproof–that is, if you’re doing something illegal you WILL get caught (I highly discourage doing anything illegal anyway. In fact, not sure I’ve mentioned it yet but I’ve certainly implied it: privacy and security is the right of ALL people and one does not have to be doing something illegal to have use of it.) But if you want to avoid general tracking and recording of your surfing by corporations and marketers, etc, this could work for you.
Drive encryption. Getting a bit more tricky is the concept of drive encryption (whether PC drive or USB thumb drive). If you keep passwords or credit card info or any personal info on your thumb drive which would be a major hassle or even financially ruinous of someone got their hand on it, I highly recommend encrypting it. Steganos Safe is very user friendly, but costs. A powerful, free option is TrueCrypt. But I’ll tell you, unless you know some tech, you might not want to touch it. The Fedora 9 Linux distro has a built-in drive encryption feature. Come to think of it, I think Windows XP Pro (and maybe Vista) also has drive encryption if you’ve formatted the drive in NTFS…except, Windows login security is VERY easy to circumvent. Don’t rely on it.
Well, I guess that it. Final thoughts: Security and privacy is everyone’s right, protecting it is everyone’s responsibility. Don’t be lazy, take time investigate how you are at risk and take steps to protect yourself and your civil liberties. It benefits all of us!
Update (28 Jun 1:30pm): Here’s a new example of how trustworthy and ethical those with power and control use it:
And a sign of the times: Sweden, a former protector of civil liberties and privacy, last week passed a bill which allowed the government to monitor ALL domestic electronic and telephone communications.
“the death penalty is not a proportional punishment for the rape of a child,” despite the horrendous nature of the crime
Whooboy, what a charged, emotional subject–and that’s the crux of the problem regarding why we have the death penalty: emotion.
Based on emotion alone I would advocate the inhuman Clive Barker-esque torture of a child rapist and I’d sleep well at night. But can we run a civil, democratic, progressive society on emotional appeal?
Imagine what society would be like if we all acted based on emotion. The most positive among us would like to believe we’d all get along a lot better, love and flowers for all. But what about those days when you are in your worst moods. What about your co-workers? What if they all acted upon their emotions? Imagine the most incompetent and vile politician in office right now: would you want them to be able to make and enforce policies based on emotion only? What if the police arrested and treated the accused emotionally?
Well, we do know how that goes. YouTube and those captured video shows on TV have countless examples of police who abuse and mistreat and beat people in fits of emotion. Our administration is using torture we condemn and try other countries for, because we have an emotional desire to cause pain to our enemies. Because we’re human we have an awesome capacity for a huge gamut of emotion from one extreme to another–but to create legal policy and have the state act to appeals of emotion makes for an unbalanced, non-impartial, schizoid society.
What legalized and mandated acts of emotion you think are justified on others can be turned right around and have enacted upon you, in ways you think might be irrational or unfair but is justified by someone. The law has to be unemotional to be fair and objective and impartial.
It’s an established fact that the death penalty does not dissuade crime one bit. But is can dissuade people from turning in alleged criminals! As implied by the Texas Association Against Sexual Assault, “a nonprofit victim advocacy group representing 80 rape crisis centers,” where they made the statement:
“Most child sexual abuse victims are abused by a family member or close family friend,” the group said in a statement. “The reality is that child victims and their families don’t want to be responsible for sending a grandparent, cousin or long time family friend to death row.”
Such a situation could make people related to or close to a perpetrator hesitant about turning them in, knowing they may be get the death penalty.
Take a look at these lists of nations which have abolished the death penalty, stopped performing them, and still do perform them:
With the exception of two other modern nations, Japan and South Korea, the United States is in the company of some of the most abusive, primitive, religiously fundamental nations like Syria, Afghanistan, Qatar, Pakistan, Singapore, in our continued use of the death penalty. All other modern, civilized, progressive nations have outlawed its use–some as much as a century ago. Even Russia stopped executing people. We think about how modern we are, with our cell phones and air conditioning and we automatically equate everything else that we do as an extension of that modernity, including the practice of execution. We forget that it’s a barbaric and primitive form of state vengeance that has no place in a society that is supposed to promote human rights and dignity and is supposed to be a bright shining example for the world of humanity and compassion.
Emotional is wonderful and vital for being human, making and appreciating art, relationships, exploring being alive. But emotion, including hate and vengence, has no place in a democratic republic that is supposed to serve and protect all of its citizens fairly.
When discussing and criticizing New Age, New Thought, pseudoscience beliefs (like The Secret, crystals, homeopathy, chiropractic, ESP, psychics, Tarot, astrology, chi, feng shui, ghosts, reflexology, etc. ad nauseum) people often say “Oh, what’s the big deal? It’s harmless; let people believe what they want,” it’s often because they themselves have some belief or three that they know fall into the category of superstition and credulity. Subconsciously they think, “Hmm, I better not be too harsh on people who believe in The Secret because I know some know-it-all busybody would have problems with my belief in alien visitation.”
But there is a harm to non-critical thinking and it can be as “small” as spending good money on bunk to as significant as death:
(_Another Child Dies from Faith Healing_.) A cousin of his also recently died due to lack of medical care thanks to religious beliefs. There’s a woman I work with who also believes in faith healing, and has ignored ever-increasing symptoms until she passed out at a chiropractor and was sent to the hospital. Seems she has a brain tumor. (No word yet if it’s malignant or benign.)
There’s no reason for this. I want to try hard not to disparage faith or spirituality, but let’s be realistic here: medical science over the last 200 years has literally turned the worldview of illness in the west completely upside down. What was once thought to be caused by demons and curses we know to be viruses, bacteria, and chemical disorders. No amount of praying has ever repaired anything visibly irreparable and known to be medically incurable or able to go into remission such as amputations or visible horrific burn damage. A recent massive double-blind study showed that of the three groups of heart surgery patients, (one prayed for by large amounts of cross denominational Christians and not told about it, one prayed for and told about it, and one not prayed for) the group not prayed for and the one prayed for and not told had no difference in post-surgery recovery or complications. In fact, the one prayed for and who knew about it fared statistically worse. (Hypothesis is that some of the patients felt increased stress and concern which lead to complications.)
Recently a girl with serious Autism had a teaching assistant who visited a psychic. The psychic told her a student of hers was being molested. She went to the school with her “evidence” and they turned it to the Canadian version of Family Services:
(_Psychics and gullible people do REAL harm_.) Long story short, it was proven without a doubt that the girl was not being molested–the psychic was full of crap (surprise!) The result of her “for entertainment purposes only” seering was to throw a family into upheaval and cost them a great deal of money and emotional distress.
Any reasonable assessment of the evidence, in my opinion, clearly shows that alleged psychics are frauds – yes, all of them. Some may be self-deluded, while others (by the techniques they use) must be con artists. But they are all frauds – they pretend to do something they cannot do. Spreading false beliefs about reality is harmful in and of itself. But this harm is greatly magnified by great mischief ensues when alleged psychics make serious allegations based upon their intuitions. This elevates fraud to negligence, and perhaps even depraved indifference.
My wife is often a voice of reason to me. When I go off on something, criticizing what I think is irrational thought, she usually has a point of view that pulls me back down to civility. On this issue she suggested that people should be allowed to believe whatever bogus ideas they want, but should be held accountable should negative results arise. Well, of course that makes sense–I don’t think we should outlaw gullibility or non-critical beliefs, that’s fascist and would actually be counter-productive. But there’s a problem: people AREN’T being held accountable because people are scared to death to publicly criticize religion, pseudoscience, superstitions, or other credulous beliefs. From that CNN article on the boy’s death:
After earlier deaths involving children of Followers of Christ believers, a 1999 Oregon law struck down religious shields for parents who treat their children solely with prayer. No one had been prosecuted under it until the Worthingtons’ case [last March].
We have reached a point in our culture where criticizing, examining, demanding evidence for people’s beliefs is verboten. That kind of Christian fundamentalism which eschews modern medicine and science and puts their children in harm damn well deserves to be criticized at its very foundation. All psychics are frauds, period, and should be treated as such by the legal system and society at large. Beliefs which can and often do lead to harm should not be tip-toed around and given a pass because of some misguided desire to give all beliefs respect and tolerance. Some don’t deserve it.
It floored me. Because of vaccinations we’ve eradicated polio, a disease which used to kill or paralyze or cripple literally hundreds of thousands of people a year. Measles? Silly measles, we can risk it–why vaccinate. Because measles is a highly contagious disease with a 10-30% fatality rate and killed half a million unvaccinated people in 2003. There’s a reason we vaccinate children–it saves countless lives from many easily preventable diseases. And because of completely non-critical thinking, this process is thrown into question. Because of three converging conditions, this life-saving science is questioned and debated and needlessly avoided by many:
Symptoms of Autism reveal themselves at the same age range in which we vaccinate kids–regardless of vaccination. We’ve known this for decades, we see this in places where vaccinations aren’t done. It is coincidence which confuses correlation with causation.
We’re diagnosing more cases of Autism because of changes in methodology. It used to be that only the most severe cases of Autism were recognized as such–non-functional, “Rainman” style Autism. Now an extremely expansive continuum of symptom severity is being diagnosed. People with Ausperger’s Syndrome, a form of high-functioning Autism was virtually undiagnosed a couple of decades ago…now doctors are more readily recognizing and diagnosing cases. It’s always existed–we’re just diagnosing it more and it has nothing to do with vaccines.
Parents understandably want to blame something. No one, parents, anyone, likes hearing “sometimes things just happen.” People want reasons, they want answers, they want something to blame. It’s completely understandable, perfectly human. It’s why people turn to ideas of “luck” and fortune, ESP, ghosts, aliens, what have you, for explanations to coincidence, accident, unexplained (in their mind) occurrences.
But the bottom line, is test after test, study after study, research after research, prove that there is no link between Autism and vaccines. In fact, one of the most vocal proponents of the connection was invited to help design what was one of the largest and most comprehensive studies examining the possible link. When the data was analyzed and it was becoming obvious that once again there was no link, she took her name off the study and started a propaganda campaign to distance her involvement and try to discredit the study.
Sometimes people want to believe something despite all evidence to the contrary. That’s delusion.
We should hold people accountable for the effects of their beliefs, absolutely. But what happens when those responsible for holding people accountable themselves rely on magical-thinking, superstition, and other woo? People get a pass. Children are being killed by medieval religious beliefs? Well, we have to be tolerant of religion (especially in this country if it in any way involves the words “Christian” or “…of Christ”.) “Psychics” like _Sylvia Browne_ crassly lie to grieving families, feeding on their pain and grief for their own fame and money? Well, it’s for “entertainment purposes” so they’re covered. (Or, hey, in Sylvia’s case it’s a “religious belief”! Two passes in one!) Besides, cultural leaders and gurus like Oprah advocate mysticism, New Age and New Thought, psychic beliefs, and pseudoscience–so, there must be something to it.
And so we continue to support and encourage un-critical thinking and credulous belief in woo as a culture in general, and that affects our legal system, politics, media.
The other day I heard a commercial for some “all natural” prostate health herbal supplement. “And it’s all natural, so you don’t have to worry about those annoying side effects that come with pharmaceutical products.” Got a message for you: poison ivy is “all natural.” Hemlock, toadstools, heroin, arsenic, Ebola, hepatitis, cancer, cyanide, anthrax…all natural, my friends! And here’s another clue: if something, like an herb, is capable of any kind of “positive” biochemical effect on your body, it’s capable of producing unwanted and negative side effects. The only difference, FDA regulated pharmaceuticals go through rigorous testing to find all or most of those side effects, their severity, cross medication reactions. Herbal remedies get none of that testing. St. John’s Wort? All natural, and promotes liver disease. Ginko biloba? All natural, and contributes to heart disease and strokes. (True) homeopathic “medicine” is the safest, being pretty much complete water, so what’s the harm? A lot if people trust water and sugar tablets instead of seeking needed medical advice for symptoms that may indicate something water and sugar don’t affect!
A culture that believes in woo won’t and can’t hold people who harm others or themselves, based on woo, accountable in any significant degree.
Ugh! Sometimes I just can’t stand the people I’m closest to in politics. It’s times like this that reassure me that I’m a free thinker and not a lemming: I’ve slowly gone from pro-capital punishment to against, war admiring to war hating, and am slightly becoming more non-animal-eating*… but on the issue of gun control I can’t stand how delusional progressives and (non-classical) liberals are!
Yesterday I was listening to Thom Hartman on Air America, and 90% of the time I totally agree with him. But he was discussing gun control and any time he does that I think he enters La-La Happy Magic Fairy Land.
Like most liberals (from here on that will always refer to non-classical (libertarian) variety), Thom seems to think there is no purpose and use to the 2nd Amendment any longer, and private ownership of firearms is unnecessary. Honestly, I wish to goodness he were right, but he’s not. We live in a world where guns exist, they can’t be uninvented, they won’t go away. The Pandora’s Box can’t be closed. We can see what would happen if gun were banned outright by looking at the U.K.
Since 1997 all private ownership of guns, both pistol and rifle, has been outlawed. Period. How’s crime going there? Increasing ever since, and the UN has even declared the U.K. has the worst blackmarket gun problem of any western nation:
The U.K. is the closest society to the U.S. aside from Canada in all ways (except they’re less religious than we are). Looking at the way their crime has soared despite complete gun control is a good indicator of what would happen here. I really wish a magic wand could be waved and all guns disappeared forever, but that’s not reality. Reality is the truth of the axiom: if guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns. And they will have them.
The liberals love to harp on the wording of the 2nd Amendment as proof that the framers of the constitution did not want individuals to have guns, but rather militias. State controlled armies that can be called into service to defend the nation. But there’s a problem: militias are defined and codified and allowed already in the Constitution under Article 1 Section 8. The Bill of Rights is a set of amendments to the Constitution which deals with individual rights, freedoms and liberties which by and large define ways in which the populace had rights over the government. To have the militia defined and legalized in the Constitution to make a return in the Bill of Rights implies specifically an intent for an armed citizenry. And it’s not hard to understand why!
Jefferson, among others, fought hard to prevent the US from having a standing army. (See how far we’ve drifted from that original intent!) The militias would be the citizen army called to fight if need be. But the framers also recently had to deal with breaking from a government which attempted to disarm the colonies. Tried to control citizen gun ownership as a means of controlling the citizens and preventing “trouble making” and revolt against the Crown. Citizen gun ownership was key and vital to our having been able to fight for our freedom and liberty and throw off the yoke of oppression. The framers intended the people of the US to have to ability to do so again:
That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it… (Declaration of Independence)
Obviously, the preferred means of altering government is via politics. But they realized governments can turn against the people that they are supposed to represent–it’s happened throughout history and the Founders just fought a war over it, they surely anticipated it could happen again.
Arguably more important than the detente that is approached with criminals by an armed populace is the political benefits an armed citizenry produces. A government destructive to the purposes of defending life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness will never be able to go as far as it might want knowing the populace already has the means of holding an armed resistance. Could a populace armed with pistols and rifles and shotguns withstand a full militarized war with the U.S. military? No. Apache helicopters, Abrams tanks, and grenade launchers will beat a .30-.30 any day. But the resistance that could be mounted would be long, painful, horrible, and so bad that only an empire that already controlled the rest of the world would consider fighting against such rebellion.
See, Thom would reply to such an idea on his radio show with shocked admonitions against wanting such a thing to happen, aghast that anyone would desire such a situation. No one wants that to happen!! And so long as it’s a possibility, it’s less likely to happen. But here’s the bottom line of this argument: Should the government become so powerful and corrupt that it were to instigate complete martial law and removal of civil rights, would it be better to roll over and let it happen, or to fight it? Even knowing how horrible the loss would be? I say better to fight! Chances are likely other factors would intervene…
The caller Thom was talking to brought up the French Resistance in WWII, using guerrilla tactics and even homemade guns made from bicycle parts, against a massively more powerful army. Thom’s refutation is “they failed. It took the armies of the US and UK to defeat Germany.” Indeed it did. If the US government went into lock-down and sought to disarm and depower the US citizenry, and we fought a horrible resistance, there’s a good possibility that the nature of such a conflict would encourage other nations’ armies to come to our aid. It happened in the American Revolution and even our own first Civil War. We might start out fighting and dying alone, but it wouldn’t stay that way should the US government turn completely criminal. (Assuming we hadn’t already taken over and dearmed the rest of the world.)
Secondly, the majority of the US military is comprised of the American heartland. Should New York or California revolt, they wouldn’t have a chance. But should the Midwest and South get involved in a rebellion against the federal government (especially the South), you can bet a large number of servicemen and women would remove the uniform and also rebel. And they’d bring with them their body armor and M16′s and AR-15s, and would “liberate” heavy ordinance just as rebel Generals Washington and Knox did in the Revolution. In fact, should things get increasingly bloody and untenable in an American Civil War, I would bet a few military leaders would attempt a coup. I have no doubt at all that most military leaders would rather an unarmed citizenry and a fascist state, but they also don’t want to be slaughtering their own people either.
If the American people were unable to fight a rebellion, the military would likely love an order from the President to instill martial law. But the threat of a civil war makes them think twice. It’s a horrible truth that the Cold War remained cold thanks to the looming nightmare of mutually assured nuclear destruction. Again, guns exist and they always will until humans fundamentally evolve away from aggressive capabilities and scarcity is eliminated, both. Until that time, it’s a fantasy to believe that criminals aren’t less active when it’s possible the potential victim can defend themselves with lethal force, and governments aren’t leery of fascism when the populace can revolt.
Do accidents happen with gun, sure. Sadly, innocent people get hurt, children find improperly stored guns, Bad Things Happen. The price of reality without magic wands. But the problem isn’t the item, it’s the underlying causes. It’s the same issue as the failed War on Drugs: drugs will always exist so long as people have minds to alter and stresses to escape from. It is impossible to end drug abuse by attacking the supply–the cause of addiction has to be addressed. Likewise, the social ills that create social conditions for crime need to be addressed. Gun safety needs to be encouraged as a cultural element as it was pre-1970s when young boys were taught respect and and proper use for guns (and today, girls should absolutely be a part of that unlike those days past). Like teen sex, it’s not going to magically go away if we ignore it, pretend it doesn’t exist, and encourage abstinence only. Proper education and realistic approach to the subject prevents disease and pregnancies–the same thing will prevent more firearm accidents.
The UK has certainly shown us that people aren’t harmed less by guns when they’re told by politicians to magically disappear.
* I’m not sure how far I’ll get with that. The mass commodification of living creatures for consumption kind of sickens me… but damn, meat tastes so good! A nice grilled brat with kraut and spicy mustard, bacon wrapped scallops, herb crusted crispy skinned Thanksgiving turkey, a succulent top sirloin with a touch of pink in the middle… *sigh* My ideology makes eating meat increasingly sad and gross, but my taste buds will always vibrate and my mouth water for succulent animal flesh! I’m cutting myself down to only poultry and seafood, with beef and pork as very rare occasions.
UPDATE (19 Jun 08, 10am): I had a thought to add.
It’s easy to scoff at the idea of the U.S. government ordering martial law and locking the country down and strip us of civil rights. It’s easy to sit back with a smug smile and say “it can’t happen here; we’re too modern and big yadda yadda. This whole idea of keeping arms to fight a possible rebellion against the government is too far-fetched to even contemplate.”
Yeah, I wish that were true.
Honestly think back to 10 years ago. If you were told the following would happen during the next president’s term, would you believe it? That…
The White House employees would literally swap out a bill in the middle of the night before it was to be voted on by Congress, replacing what Congresspersons reviewed with one which gave the FBI the power to monitor U.S. without judicial warrants in addition to a dozen other civil rights eliminations and violations? (Patriot Act I.)
The President would sign an Executive Order stating that he has the power to declare a State of Emergency at will, by his own discretion, and should such a state exist, the White House has sole control state and federal government? (Homeland Security Presidential Directive #20.)
The President would rescind the writ of habeas corpus which since the Magna Carta (1215 A.D.) allowed citizens to challenge their arrest and detainment in a court of law, thus giving the administration the power to label anyone they want an “enemy combatant” throw them in a hole?
The White House would instill a plan that educated pastors and priests to encourage their flocks to remain passive and cooperative should martial law be declared?
That the administration would authorize and encourage the use of torture on captives, some of the same techniques which we tried and persecuted WWII Japanese officers of performing?
Would maintain secret prisons throughout the world in places which we have previously admonished for using even worse torture methods?
The White House would actively and knowingly twist and contort intelligence information to take the country into war and support war profiteering by corporations owned (or held significant shares in) by people in the administration?
The President would use classified CIA information for political purposes to discredit political opponents to the point of even putting their and their assets’ lives in danger and destroying years worth of cover-building?
The White House would instigate secret mass wiretapping of domestic citizens without judicial or congressional review or oversight?
Would create a politically oriented organization (with a name harkening to his grandfather’s support of the Nazi Party…”Homeland Security”) which would control all domestic and foreign intelligence gathering as well as domestic security under his direct control?
Would utilize private paramilitary organizations (e.g. Blackwater) for foreign security service, covert operations, and domestic service without congressional or judicial oversight or review or legal ramifications for their actions? In essence, creating a private army without Constitutional mandate?
Would instigate a federal identification program which would prevent or limit travel within even the U.S. without “proper papers”? (And other civilian watching, monitoring, and controlling programs which would have little to no effect in preventing domestic terrorism.)
Would rescind Posse Comitatus which protected the 4th Amendment and prevented the federalization of military actions on U.S. soil?
…just to name a few.
If you honestly thought 10 years ago that one president wouldn’t be able to do all this, then imagine what might happen should one president declare war on a country like Iran? Or what he’d do should there be another domestic terrorist act? He’s set the pieces of the board perfectly so that at the littlest provocation the Office of the President would run the country like a dictatorship. It might be Bush, it could be the next President, could be the one after that.
We don’t know, and that’s the point! That’s why there are protections defined by the Constitution, not to tell us what we should do when something happens but to help prevent Bad Things from happening. Like impeachment. It’s not there just to punish a President (or Vice President) for acts they commit, but also to discourage future Presidents from committing high crimes and misdemeanors. An armed populace helps prevent a dictatorship, which very well can happen here:
Most anyone who has driven along the highways and byways of America has surely seen the “God Speaks” billboards: basic black with plain white text saying things like
“One nation under me”
“All I know is…everything”
“Life is short. Eternity isn’t”
“You think it’s hot here?”
“Big Bang Theory, you’ve got to be kidding”
“Have you read my #1 best seller? (There will be a test.)”
“Will the road you’re on get you to My place?”
and a dozen or so others.
Well, Freethought Action is sponsoring the placement of their own billboards which says: “Don’t believe in God? You are not alone.” with a URL or phone number to their site or a local freethinkers/atheists organization.
Non-believers is the fastest growing sector of America (versus religious beliefs) and as much as 16% of the country is un-believing or non-religious. We have a right to peacefully express ourselves and to suggest to other people who might not realize they’re not freaks for not believing that they’re not alone.
Here’s the unexpected twist, for me, in this: there seems to be no outcry. I tried to Google for Christian Web sites commenting on the billboards, but can’t find any aside from a few simply repeating a Philadelphia Inquirer interview with the guy who put the one up in PA. Aside from the comic linked above, I can’t find anyone saying anything negative. (Except for a ridiculous hyperbolic report by FOX News, but they don’t count.) In fact, I wrote to this paragraph in my blog wholly expecting to comment on how hypocritical and unfair religious groups are being about this, and could find no negative press. This surprises and pleases me considering how much vitriol and hatred I’ve heard with my own ears by Christians against atheists (here in the Midwest). Perhaps one day it can be like this everywhere, where people can say what they want (non-abusive and non-threatening) and co-exist with people of different beliefs.
Sadly, the religious anti-gay protests going on in California over their permitting other consenting adult humans to marry consenting adult humans of the same sex is going pretty strong. So, there’s still a ways to go.
A dress maker, in Denmark, had a couple hundred in US dollars frozen by the US government because it was going to a suspicious Pakistan dress shop. A transfer that had nothing to do with the US, except it was made in US dollars. Evidently money exchanges in USDs have to be processed through US Correspondent banks which gives the government the ability to seize funds on non-US citizens if they think something’s funny.
Not surprising many countries are wanting to move to doing business in Euros, just as foreign travel agents are advertising as a feature flights that never touch US soil. We’re so loved! The bright, shining beacon of freedom in the world!
Harmless protestors, whose “bunker” they’re building on the top of thier building is an organic food greenhouse and “gray water” recycler for gardening, was passing around a petition speaking out against the city installing closed-circuit TV cameras around the city. Commenting on the raid, warrant-less by the way, the police captain said:
“They’re a hate group. We’re trying to drum up charges against them, but unfortunately we’ll probably have to let them go.”
Get that? Protesting police power makes you a hate group, and police have no qualms about manufacturing invalid charges in order to shut you up. Just so you know how things stand in Empire.
If you don’t show federally accepted ID, you don’t fly…period. (And that’s probably the least of your punishment for not cooperating.) Computer security and cryptography guru Bruce Schneier has a great comment on the subject:
That’s right; people who refuse to show ID on principle will not be allowed to fly, but people who claim to have lost their ID will. I feel well-protected against terrorists who can’t lie.
I don’t think any further proof is needed that the ID requirement has nothing to do with security, and everything to do with control.
UPDATE to add this thought:
All isn’t horrible, though. Just last week the Supreme Court voted 5 to 4 that “enemy combatants” do in fact have the right to challenge their detainment and have access to legal advice in US civilian court. They’ve in fact restored Bush’s removal of habeas corpus (which has been a human right since the Magna Carta until Bush).
But just think about this…save for one judge, we would have had a legal approval for the Administration to be able to label anyone they want as an “enemy combatant” in this War Against a Tactic and put them in a hole indefinitely. It very easily could have gone the other way. In fact, this is the third time the Supreme Court has voted 5 to 4 reverse a Bush act of power grabbing and consolidation, including illegal domestic wiretapping.
That single judge save is the scary thought. The bad news is that each of the previous times the Bush Administration has just gone and changed the law they were violating to make what they were doing legal (and there’s all indication that Bush is going to do it again with this finding)–and it looks like with the Kucinich/Waxman bill for impeachment sent indefinitely to congressional review due to purely political reasons, no one is going to be held accountable for these actions. Likewise, all future presidents, better and worse than Bush, will see that there’s nothing to stop them from similar acts of empirical violations of civil liberties.
It’s got some nice visuals, but I let it play in the background and just listened to it while I worked. It’s a little rough (for example, there are several pronunciation gaffes and one section early on where you just see a montage of products of pseudo-science for like two full minutes. It gets the point across that we’re surrounded and innundated with pseudo-science we don’t even think twice about, but it gets a little tedious to watch. But, get past it and it gets a lot better!) …in general it’s a fine film with great advice and information!
I don’t want to spoil it too much, but a general rundown: Early on he discusses how “natural” does not equal better nor even healthy! Poison ivy, toadstools, e. coli are all natural. Also, be skeptical of anything that advertises it’s based on “ancient wisdom”! Ancient wisdom also gave us slavery, blood letting, spontaneous generation, the idea that bathing is evil….
Some of the best, vital, and misunderstood topics include the issue of large numbers and probability (about 20 minutes in). For example, even with strict conditions, it’s a statistical certainty that a significant number of people will think of a person at the same moment they die. It’s a statistical issue, not one of psychic ability.
About 24 minutes in he discusses the matter of “clinical studies have shown” is a marketing phrase with no meaning behind it, and explains what goes into a good research study.
The section on homeopathy is, as always, absolutely hilarious!
Then about 29 minutes in he gets to discussing why smart people believe weird things. Believing in pseudo-science has nothing to do with intelligence or education, and in fact doing so is just human. But at the end he does a good job explaining why it’s ultimately harmful to believe in what would appear to be harmless fallacies and pseudo-sciences. An important part!
He offers some books that he considers vital for a critical thinker’s reading list:
Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Yeah, I was surprised too. But once he explained it, it makes perfect sense. Twain has always been a clever and witty critic of superstition and naive thinking. Hidden in this adventure down the Mississippi River is an observant critique of fallacious beliefs that’s no less perceptive and valid today than it was then.
I recently listened to a recording of a debate between theologian William Lane Craig and scholar Keith Parsons* titled “Why I Am / Am Not a Christian.” It was held in 1998 and can be downloaded here:
Much of it involves the supposed proof of “the empty tomb” (see yesterday’s post on refutation of Craig’s usual arguments: Refutation of the “facts†of the Resurrection..) The topic of nihilism and purposeless/purposeful life with/without God also was discussed. And about 23 minutes into the second part Parsons expresses how vital it is to live life to the fullest, to eke meaning out of every day you have to live. But then Craig tries to refute this stance by questioning “who are you living for”? To what are you responsible to? He believes that without God to be answerable to, life is meaningless and absurd and you might as well live in hedonism and nilistic wantoness and any attempt to live for little meanings is pointless because there’s no objective meaning.
But then the real punchline comes when he says, prompted by a comment from the audience, that without God, “…it doesn’t really matter how you live because your destiny is unrelated to your behavior. The good man ends up no different than the evil man. … In the absence of God, morality becomes in a sense fictitious–it becomes pointless. There isn’t any value in life because it doesn’t change anything, how you live. We all end up the same.”
Parsons replies that indeed because we do all die and that’s the end, then each life becomes utterly significant. Just because Albert Schweitzer and Hitler are both dead doesn’t mean that their lives didn’t have incredible significance. Our finite existence means you must get your joy as you can from each moment. (Unfortunately his response ends with a sentiment that sounds like a promotion of selfish hedonism, but that wasn’t his point nor intent.)
What gets me about Craig and others who share his belief in life being meaningless without God to answer to, is it’s a very childish, immature outlook on life. Note his comment: “[from an atheistic view] it doesn’t really matter how you live because your destiny is unrelated to your behavior…. There isn’t any value in life because it doesn’t change anything, how you live.” His entire focus is on some unknowable afterlife. Some cosmic judging of his life providing reward or punishment. Carrot and stick. You do good because Daddy tells you to else you get a whoopin’. That’s the Christian (or any dogmatic religious) understanding of morality, life’s value. Sure, you’re told to be good to your neighbor, love, forgive, etc. But ultimately, why? So you get rewarded by Sky Daddy and not punished for eternity, that’s why! That’s it. That’s life’s meaning to these people. Earn reward, avoid punishment. (And they say atheists are selfish.)
Granted, an atheist CAN be nihilistic and believe in nothing and thus behave without concern about harming others. But, if history has shown us anything, it’s that a belief in a religion by no means guarantees moral behavior! If a person truly lived according to God’s Holy Word as contained in the Bible, they would commit all kinds of horrible acts we consider terribly immoral today: slavery, lying, murder, child selling, hate, racism, prejudice, all in the name of God, and advocated and condoned by God. Even when people cherry-pick what they want to follow and believe in, in the Bible, there are some who live immorally (by contemporary Western standards) due to the belief that the ends justify the means–when the ends is their interpretation of “God’s Will.” From the person who kills doctors who perform abortions, to those who lie and deceive in order to Spread the Word of Salvation, religion and belief in God doesn’t make the faithful any more moral than a lack of belief in a God makes a person a hedonistic nihilist.
Craig’s profession that value comes from believing in God falls apart when you examine the question it raises: Which god? You could probably grab a few moderate Christians, moderate Muslims, moderate Buddhists, moderate Janeists, moderate Wiccans, and moderate atheists, and find very little to no difference in the way they live their lives. You’ll probably find each one holds the same values: loyalty, honesty, promotion of happiness and avoidance of harm to self and others, supporting family and friends…. Why? Why do most people all over the world regardless of religion and culture share many of the same core beliefs and find the same value in life regardless of what God (or non-god) they believe in? Doesn’t that throw a wrench in the argument that a person must have “Jesus in their heart” to have meaning and value in their life?!
That’s the basic biological explanation. But while we are animals ruled by general evolutionary biology, that’s notall we are! We do have sentience and individual consciousness and so we are each capable of creating value and meaning in our lives beyond our drives and subconscious programming…and thank goodness! because that same evolutionary biology also has programmed us to be xenophobic and tribal–qualities that are also extolled, promoted, and rewarded by religious dogma. Fear the unknown, value your tribe and destroy those different from you or not part of your tribe, follow tradition and authority. Fortunately the modern moderate religious person tends to eschew, in some ways, these beliefs because they live in a world where tribalism is difficult and empathy with people outside your tribe is encouraged. Mass communication, the threat of destruction by war the likes of which unimaginable by evolutionary biology, have allowed people to start seeing the world as one tribe. Some people, however moderate in their dogma, still see others unlike them with suspicion and/or condescension; but fortunately many people understand the value of all humans in a way that was not seen even 50 years ago, much less 500 years ago, and almost not at all 2000 years ago.
It’s certainly not because of any religious belief, at least none based on any ancient documents! It’s because humans understand humanity. People are by and large empathic to the pain and suffering of other humans, and share the joy of others. We understand that the more we reduce harm to others and expand happiness, the better of a world we have for ourselves and our descendants. There is inherent value in reducing harm and increasing happiness that transcends any religious belief (which tend to limit happiness to only yourself or your tribe and promotes harm to all others). yeah, I may die tomorrow or in 50 years and whatever I do doesn’t change the fact that when my mind ends I “experience” the same non-existence. But while I’m alive, I find contentment and happiness in knowing that maybe I can make the world a better place for my daughter and her children and for humanity in general.
No, I doubt I’ll do anything great or grand. Won’t cure a disease, or solve hunger. But that does raise another question: Most Nobel Prize winners are atheists and agnostics. Why do they feel compelled to aid humanity and the conditions of the world if they’re godless and not guided by any Jesus In Their Heart (or Mohammed or Krishna or Fairy Spirits or whatever)? Because that’s how people define value in their life. I might not win any awards for humanitarianism, but I find value in what little improvement I can make in my own way. I find value in learning as much about reality as I can, and helping others to see the wonder and awe in the natural world. If I cause harm to another, it pains me. When I see joy in another, it elevates my own heart. I don’t need a supernatural Sky Daddy to threaten me with eternal damnation or tease me with everlasting life to know I can make a difference to people around me, and that difference can be positive or negative. Besides, Sky Daddy’s idea of value involves the suppression of reason, free will, intellect, and promotes mindless slavery to childish concepts of fear and black-and-white morality.
I prefer a more thoughtful, honest, free-will, honestly given/acquired sense of value and purpose in life.
* Oddly, I couldn’t find an online bio of Parsons. So, I’ve linked to some of his books
There’s a great refutation of the supposed four basic and indisputable “facts” regarding the resurrection of Jesus. These four facts are often used by Christian apologists, especially the preeminent William Lane Craig as proof of the Resurrection. Yet, they’re easily refuted by a critical thinker, like Jon Curry:
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