My daughters and I have started to watch some of the episodes from the Star Trek Voyager series on DVD.  We are not disappointed at all.  All of us are finding that the series contains well-written, thought-provoking, stories.

Here is a topic that might seem unrelated to Star Trek:  According to a recent poll, 29% of Americans still approve of the way that George Bush is doing his job.

Here’s the connection.  The mission and efficient operation of a Star Trek starship would not appear to be compatible with the principles of the Bush administration. 

For this reason, I would require that those 29% of Americans who continue to adore the president should no longer be allowed to own or view any more Star Trek shows. That would be hypocrisy.  Instead, I would offer them a new Star Trek series, yet to be written, that I Would Call Star Trek: Bring It On!  What follows is my concept for this new Star Trek series (told from the perspective of a hypothetical crew member):

I started noticing problems on the starship Voyager after the new captain took over.  He smirks a lot and pretends that he was a cowboy even though he wasn’t.  He spends most of his time chopping wood or playing sports hero in the holodeck while his lieutenants run the ship.

At first, there changes were subtle.  Before Officers Meetings, we were asked to acknowledge the existence of an invisible supernatural being.  A few months later, we were required to read extensively from the ancient holy book offered by the Officers, so much so that it took away time that we desperately needed to achieve our engineering goals.  And now the officers’ requirements directly conflict with our engineering protocol. For example, we were recently told that our calibrations of the celestial navigation equipment violated the official Star Trek Holy Book and that we should no longer consider the actual positions of stars to navigate, because this would be “playing God.” When we protested, we were accused of being anti-Federation.

Before the new changes, it was assumed that crew members were responsible adults and that they could make choices regarding their own bodies and lives.  After the Cowboy Captain took over, however, the medical officers refused to dispense any more birth control pills, declaring that it was “playing God” to try to determine when or whether to have children.  Accidentally pregnancies are now common on board, leading to much domestic stress and shortages of lodging quarters and some supplies.

Our new mission statement requires us to force every alien civilization we encounter to become more like us.  If they refuse, we soften them up with our weapons.  Such interventions have recently been given the title of “The New Prime Directive.”  We also have adopted a new policy justifying the attack of planets that don’t believe the teachings from our Holy Book. 

We also institute preemptive attacks on planets that have natural resources we covet.  We previously bargained for the use of natural resources that belonged to others, but we now simply take them.  Sometimes, we need to soften them up first with our shocking and awesome weapons..  When we capture aliens (we call them all “illegal aliens”), we torture them with water boarding and other ancient techniques to improve their attitude and truth telling.

We are putting most of our energy and time into developing new weapons, yet we are neglecting basic education for the children of our crew members.  As a result, the children on the starship have fallen way behind other civilizations in their math, science and critical thinking skills. We are also neglecting basic scientific research, resulting in very few new innovations for the past several years.  Several large areas of the starship have fallen into general disuse and smelly decay.  We have been told that our budget no longer supports developing each of the starships crew members to his or her fullest potential.

We have no energy conservation program here on the starship.  We blast around space using up our precious fuel without any thought to how we are going to replenish it.  In the mean time, we are finding that our life-support systems are increasingly polluted with byproducts generated by use of our engines.  After we complained about this pollution, we were told that the Cowboy Captain had invoked a new “Clear Skies” policy that (to our surprise) doubles the amount of pollution allowed in the ship’s atmosphere.  When our scientists unanimously issued a report condemning the new policy based on their research, their reports were censored and edited by Officers who had no scientific training.

I’d better stop writing at this point, because I am concerned that the officers are now monitoring my journals.

In 2004, Matthew was appointed the president’s chief campaign strategist.  According to a new article by the Washington Post, Dowd now says his faith in Mr. Bush was “misplaced.” 

In a wide-ranging interview here, Mr. Dowd called for a withdrawal from Iraq and expressed his disappointment in Mr. Bush’s leadership.

He criticized the president as failing to call the nation to a shared sense of sacrifice at a time of war, failing to reach across the political divide to build consensus and ignoring the will of the people on Iraq. He said he believed the president had not moved aggressively enough to hold anyone accountable for the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and that Mr. Bush still approached governing with a “my way or the highway” mentality reinforced by a shrinking circle of trusted aides.

“I really like him, which is probably why I’m so disappointed in things,” he said. He added, “I think he’s become more, in my view, secluded and bubbled in.”

Dowd went so far as to write a “never submitted an op-ed article titled “Kerry Was Right,” arguing that Mr. Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat and 2004 presidential candidate, was correct in calling last year for a withdrawal from Iraq.”

Now there is a reasonably-priced way to know . . .

Today, an acquaintance (I’ll call her “Laura”) asked me if I would buy some Girl Scout cookies from her daughter’s troop. I told her “No thank you.” 

It’s not that I don’t enjoy eating Girl Scout cookies (I do enjoy Thin Mints and Peanut Butter Sandwich Cookies).   It’s not that I generally oppose the activities of Girl Scouts.  I approve of much of what Girl Scouts do. 

Here’s what triggered this post. Laura told me that the average box of cookies sells for three dollars and that the average profit for each box of cookies is only fifty cents.  Hmmmm. 

Therefore, I can support their Girl Scouts to the same extent by handing $5 directly to the local troop or by buying $30 worth of cookies.  Unless you think that eating cookies is an especially good thing, it makes much more sense to simply hand the local troop $5.  Then again, eating cookies, especially a lot of cookies, is not a good thing.  Cookies consist largely of refined carbohydrates and sugars.  These are exactly the kinds of ingredients that invite obesity.  Are the Girl Scouts concerned about obesity?  Very much so (so am I), yet they continue to rely on cookie sales to fund their activities.

But let’s go back to the money for a moment.  If you click here, you can see it stated that “all of the revenue” from cookie sales “stays with the local Girl Scout council that sponsors the sale.”  The official site carefully points out that individual troops receive “from 12-17% of the purchase price of each box sold.”  There are various important numbers that the site does not provide, however. For instance, is $.50 per box (the amount indicated to me by my acquaintance) the average amount of proceeds per box sold (as Laura indicated)?  If so, the 12-17% of the purchase price of each box sold amounts to $.45 per box, which means that most of the proceeds go to the local troop.  If true, it would be commendable.  But we don’t know, because the Girl Scout organization does not specify how much profit is involved in the sale of each box of cookies.

All of this makes me wonder, because the Girl Scout organization is based in the middle of one of the highest rent districts in the world, 420 5th Ave in Manhattan.  That’s where 400 employees work for the Girl Scout organization.  But nowhere on the site will you find anything about the sales information I just mentioned, or other things I wonder, such as the salaries and perks of these 400 employees. Wouldn’t it be nice to know how much money it takes to run that fancy headquarters?  How about a pie chart showing the sources of that money? Nowhere will you find the amount of that annual cookie profit money that flows back to the Girl Scout headquarters from determined efforts of little girls. Wouldn’t that be interesting to know?  (more…)

The bill to set withdrawal timetables from Iraq has passed, on its way now to the President’s desk–where it will be vetoed.  Democrats will work on this issue from now on, presumably with an eye toward using it as a campaign issue to gain more seats and hopefully hand the White House to a Democrat.  All well and good.  Bush has made a hash of this war.

What does disturb me is the trend toward thinking that cutting funding for the war is a useful tool.  Congress can’t order Bush to pull out, but it does control the purse, and as such it can–presumably–make it impossible for the President to conduct the war.  But we all, if we’re honest, know very well that that’s not how it will play out.

I am apalled at this war, but let me be clear–had Bush contented himself with going into Afghanistan and dealing with that, I would have backed him.  Perhaps he or his cronies would have made a hash of that, too, but I saw Afghanistan as a legitimate enterprise.  The Taliban were harboring Osama bin Laden, and the Taliban itself made its political feelings toward us very clear.  Also, Afghanistan is right next to Pakistan, which is and has been a seed bed of problems for some time.  Pakistan was a source for nuclear technology to rogue states, it has a big problem with extremists, and the Taliban launched their invasion of Afghanistan from there and use it to hide.  Pakistan is potentially a lot of trouble.  So I had no real problem with going into Afghanistan. 

I always thought the Iraq move was stupid and unnecessary.

But.

There is and never has been neat ways to disentangle from messes and what I dislike about the Democrat’s threat to cut funding for the war is that it uses the troops on the ground as a political football.  Bush is already doing that.  For the Democrats to join the game is one of the reasons I tend to curse both parties.

If the expectation is that when the money dries up, the troops will come home, then we all have to realize that Republicans and Democrats are engaging in a game of political chicken.  Who will flinch first.  Because as long as Bush is in charge, they won’t come home.  They’ll simply be tasked to do the job with less.  Or he’ll find the money somewhere else.  (Anyone remember Reagan?)  But it will not be the neat, tidy quid pro quo  the Democrats expect everyone to believe it will be.  And the ones who will pay for this game of chicken will be the soldiers.

The way to get out of Iraq, the best way possible, is to wait for a new administration, preferably Democrat, and then do it by open and uncompetitive means.  It will take longer.  But if the Democrats push this money thing in order to make Bush look worse than he does, then they will be no better than him, using the troops to make political points.  Perhaps their strategy will be viable–more and bloodier casualties will wash over the Republicans and sweep some more of them out of office–but it the same kind of callous politicking we’ve been accusing the Republicans of all along.

And by the way, McCain and others are correct about setting timetables.  The insurgents will just hunker down and wait.  The big losers then will be the Iraqis who really are trying to make their country work.  That may not be an argument for us to stay, but it is a consequence that has sound historical precedent–Vietnam and Cambodia to name two.

I think we’ve hashed up Iraq.  I say we because of the nature of our electorate, so whether as individuals we support this war or not, it remains a We issue.  Staying may not help.  Leaving will only help us.  Had there been a plan before the invasion or any semblence of responsible oversite during, we might have actually succeeded in something.  So I’m for gettng out.  But I believe everyone ought to know what that means and I resent the Democrats–who I voted for in the last election–playing politics with the very troops they claim to be supporting.

Check out this new Onion video on the human cost of immigration.  And I dare you to watch this Onion news promo without laughing.  Or consider this proposed solution to the troop shortage in Iraq.

According to this article by Newsweek, 3,301 U.S. active-duty soldiers deserted the Army in 2006. 

Jeffry House is a defense lawyer representing many of these soldiers.  Newsweek asked House why so many soldiers were deserting.  According to House,

The common idea is that the war in Iraq is going nowhere, and it’s bogus, as I’ve been told [by soldiers] many times. In other words, there was no justifiable reason to attack Iraq in the first place. People are now telling me stuff like, “We clear out a section of Baghdad, hand it over to the government, and the next day 70 bodies would appear.” They feel like they’re helping the Iraqi government, which [they feel] actually is a bunch of death squads in disguise. So they begin to feel responsible. People can’t justify to their own selves what they’re doing there, it just seems wrong, wrong, wrong to them. I have a couple of guys who actually finished a six-year commitment. They were given an honorable discharge. They got nice medals and a nice party, and when they drive up in their driveway at home there’s somebody giving them a stop-loss document, which means you’re back in [the service] at the [military's] pleasure. People are very disheartened.

I spent too much time on YouTube this evening listening to Roy Zimmerman, folk singer. This video, “Creation Science 101″ brought me in.

I stayed for “Abstain With Me”, a jab at “Abstinence Only” Christian Sex Education. As an aside, he likened it to “Just Hold It” potty training. His “Let’s Go After the Buddhists” was a hoot, as is his “That is the War on Terror”. There’s “Defenders of Marriage, and “Jerry Falwell’s God” and more.

Enjoy.

1. Consider the following statement:

“some propositions are so dangerous that it may even be ethical to kill people for believing them….”
Sam Harris, The End of Faith, 2004 W.W. Norton & Co. (p. 53)

This statement is:

a. Completely true and self-evident. The sooner we can make a list of these dangerous propositions, and start killing people for believing them, the better.

b. Perhaps true, but completely irresponsible, given the reality of who is in charge of the largest stockpile of weapons in the world today.

c. Completely counter to the principles of the Enlightenment and the concept of freedom of conscience enshrined in our Constitution.

d. Ethics aside, it begs the question whether killing individuals for holding certain beliefs is a good way to rid the world of those beliefs.

d2. Not really representative of Harris’s views; there’s a lot of other stuff in the book that is very uplifting and inspiring.

e. A kind of weird zen koan, because it is a mirror image of the type of proposition Harris believes it may be ethical to kill people for believing.

f. A statement that is superficially provocative, yet reflective of conventional wisdom (when applied to Islam). Guaranteed to ensure lots of book sales, talk show appearances and speaker gigs

g. Any combination of the above.

h. None of the above.

Give a brief statement in support of your conclusion.

2. Compare and contrast Harris’ statement with this one:

“Some people are so dangerous that it is definitely unethical to sell them weapons. “

-me

What are the implications for US policy?

Note: Participation in the quiz is voluntary and will not affect your final grade.

Jonathan Chait of Common Dreams raises a good question: why do Republicans disagree with climate scientists more at a time when climate scientists are accruing new terrifying evidence that human activities are truly responsible for warming the atmosphere? 

Last year, the National Journal asked a group of Republican senators and House members: “Do you think it’s been proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the Earth is warming because of man-made problems?” Of the respondents, 23% said yes, 77% said no . . . So, the magazine asked the question again last month. The results? Only 13% of Republicans agreed that global warming has been proved.

As the evidence for global warming gets stronger, Republicans are actually getting more skeptical. . . . How did it get this way? The easy answer is that Republicans are just tools of the energy industry. It’s certainly true that many of them are. . . But the financial relationship doesn’t quite explain the entirety of GOP skepticism on global warming. For one thing, the energy industry has dramatically softened its opposition to global warming over the last year, even as Republicans have stiffened theirs.

The truth is more complicated — and more depressing: A small number of hard-core ideologues (some, but not all, industry shills) have led the thinking for the whole conservative movement . . .Conservatives defer to a tiny handful of renegade scientists who reject the overwhelming professional consensus.

In other words, the thinking process of most Republicans is worse than random.   How is it that more evidence for global warming makes Republicans less convinced?  Chait’s article suggests Republicans are merely being obstinate.  There is a deeper explanation, however, and it has to do with the multiple functions of language.  First, start with the assumption that denying global warming is bad science.  Start there, but don’t end the inquiry there.  Continue the analysis by treating the denial of global warming as dogma. 

Dogma wears two hats.  First of all, dogmatic words can convey literal meaning that often flies in the face of the evidence.  Consider religious dogma, for instance.   That Mary was a “virgin” is nonsensical; it is even self-disproving.  So why say such a thing?  The answer relates to dogma’s second function: dogma facilitates bonding. 

The assertion of group-approved-nonsense looks and sounds ridiculous to outsiders, but uttering it loudly in the presence of one’s group proves one’s loyalty to those insiders.  The more nonsensical the dogma is, the tighter the bond it is capable of generating among those willing to utter it.  Consider, for instance, the correlation of the absurdity of the dogma and the strength of bonding in Unitarians (less absurd, less bonded) and Mormons (more absurd, more bonded).

Uttering officially-approved nonsense in front of one’s group identifies one as a bona fide member of that group.  Uttering absurd things is a display that one desires to be a member of that group so incredibly much that one is willing to utter the sorts of things that will trigger social ridicule from learned outsiders.  It’s a social version of the peacock’s tail–a display much like the the types of things Darwin pointed out in his theory of sexual selection.  It’s saying “I am willing to pay the price of saying this idiotic thing in order to prove my loyalty to the group.”  It’s a group “badge.” See here , here and here. There are non-verbal versions of dogma too.  Letting one’s pants droop to expose underwear can be a strong sign of group loyalty on the streets; piercing sensitive parts of one’s body facilitates bonding among the like-minded in high schools.

Therefore, uttering nonsensical dogma is not primarily about conveying the truth of the matter asserted. Rather, it’s about sending out a sonar signal in order to identify allies and enemies.  It is a herding mechanism. (more…)

Scientists have discovered a third type of human twin, neither identical nor fraternal.  One of the twins was found to be a “true hermaphrodite” with both ovarian and testicular tissue.  Whether or not we consider this a different type or species of human, one thing is certain:  the book of Genesis doesn’t mention God creating human hermaphrodities. 

Nevertheless, I can almost hear the creationists’ reply:  “That isn’t evolution; it’s divine spontaneous creation.”

Missouri legislature is about to engage in the quixotic attempt to repeal — or at least to reduce the effect of — a silly law. Missouri House Bill HB155 of the current session aims to allow motorcycle riders over 21 to feel the breeze in their hair. I’d like it even better if were coupled to a clause requiring organ donation permission, but that would be replacing one type of meddling with another.

A motorcyclist makes a great organ donor. Most are in passable health, and an accident without a helmet is much more likely to result in a slightly battered, brain-dead corpse than if she had worn a helmet. Our skulls are insufficiently evolved (or inadequately designed, if you prefer) to reliably survive a hard-surface impact even at normal running speeds, much less highway speed. If you know that you will be sending your head out there at those speeds, it’s simple sense to protect it somehow, just in case the other guy isn’t paying attention. But I don’t think it should be the business of the government to specify and require the use of such protection.

I have a motorcycle license, although I haven’t actually driven one in a decade. I did and still would wear a helmet in traffic as certainly as I reflexively strap on a seatbelt in any car. But I object to the government wasting its time enforcing those laws, and even its mass of paper to record such laws. The more laws we have, the weaker each one becomes.

So why do I call it quixotic? Because even if all of the House approves it, and all but a couple of members of the Senate, it could still be stalled into oblivion. Anyone who wants to soapbox on safety issues might take it up as a cause; for the good of the community. The small constituency of those whom the bill actually affects are not a significant political force. And the election record in our state shows the dominant influence of the pulpit over the professors. For example, the bulk of Missouri’s legislation related to massage was written for the vice squad, not the therapy community. Our secular state constitution is burdened with a clause restricting whom or how many one may marry.

But that’s a different category of laws passed for our own good. This gripe is about still-up-to-the-state helmet laws, and the federally mandated (via highway funding blackmail) speed limit and seatbelt laws.

Here’s a good way to save yourself $23.95: Don’t buy The Secret.  It’s not that I’m against secrets in general, it’s just that I want to spare you from wasting your money on a hot new book called “The Secret,” a book that has hit a new low in shallow, self-absorbed and insipid hype.  There is almost nothing in this book worth reading, which is a pretty amazing thing to say about a a book that is featured prominently at Borders and other large bookstores.  It’s has even become the number one best selling hardcover advice book according to the NYT.  And why wait to make it into a movie?  Truly, why wait?

I don’t know much about Rhonda Byrne, the author, or her gaggle of “great writers, leaders, philosophers, doctors, and scientists.”  Byrne presents an unlikely image of a sage.  She attempts to strike a pensive blonde pose on that the inside flap, yet obliviously presents herself as strained, contorted and out of her element. Much like her book.  Or am I too contaminated by the shallow, self-absorbed and insipid hype that one finds wrapped in that beautifully designed book jacket? Truly, the book jacket is gorgeous, though you would get equally helpful advice (perhaps more) by trying to “read” a Persian rug.

You’re impatient, though.  You want the goods.  Here they are: What can you say about a book based on the following premise: “Everything that’s coming into your life you are attracting into your life.  And it’s attracted to you by virtue of the images you’re holding in your mind.”  You’ll find this gem in a chapter decorated with quote by a fellow named W. Clement Stone: “Whatever the mind can conceive it can achieve.”

What?! Then, by golly, go conceive of the end of world hunger or the end of war, or even for a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow.  Is this nonsensical or is it elitist?  Why choose, when you are told that superior minds create physical worlds.  The poor?  Well, their poorness is proof of their inferior thoughts. 

Am I giving this best seller an unfair reading?  You be the judge. Just go read this book for a few minutes (but don’t buy it) and you’ll see that I’m holding myself back.  If I had this book in my hands right now, I would be tempted to flail it somewhere!  I read several chunks of The Secret while lingering at a chain bookstore.  In the end, my positive thoughts steered me away from buying The Secret (uh-oh . . . is that proof that the book works?). 

The book is divided into chapters concerning such things as health, money and world affairs.  I will be brief in describing the ideas, because it will make you mad to hear that this sort of book can be a best seller.

Let’s start with the chapter on money.  The Secret assumes that the acquisition of money should be a major focus in one’s life. “To attract money you must focus on wealth… you must focus on the abundance of money to bring that to you.”   With that assumpion squarely on the table, the focus turns to getting lots of money. We learn that the only reason any person does not have enough money “is because they are blocking money from coming to them with their thoughts.”  Tell that to all of the people who are clamoring for justice at those newly designed less-kind and less-gentle bankruptcy courts, especially the many people who were driven to such desperate measures because of personal tragedies and major illness.  Is the remedy really to tell those poor souls that they need to “focus on prosperity”?

Speaking of major illnesses, readers of The Secret learn that “our body is really the product of our thoughts.”  In fact, “all stress begins with one negative thought.”  (Page 125).  The Secret presents the case study of a woman who was diagnosed with breast cancer.  No problem.   She cured herself by watching “very funny movies.”  (more…)

Ebonmuse (one of our authors, who also writes thoughtful posts at Daylight Atheism) recently interviewed Dale McGowan who has edited a book of essays on raising a child without religion.  McGowan’s book, Parenting Beyond Belief, will be released next month.

Ebonmuse writes:

The book features original essays by Richard Dawkins, Julia Sweeney, Penn Jillette, Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor, Michael Shermer, and more . . .

This book looks to be of superlative scope and quality, covering a wide range of important topics: religiously mixed marriages, secular education, humanist ceremonies, moral instruction, teaching children about death, and more.  [B]ooks like this may well be at the forefront of the “third wave” of atheist activism - atheists moving into society, living alongside everyone else in openness and honesty, establishing a set of social structures that can directly compete with and provide an alternative to religion.

Ebonmuse’s post intrigued me enough that I placed my order for a copy of Parenting Beyond Belief.  I look forward to reading it, then discussing it on this site.

In the meantime, I’ve been busy raising two open-minded daughters (aged 6 and 8 ) without the benefit of McGowan’s book.  Notice that I’m not really trying to raise them “without religion.”  We regularly discuss various religious traditions. On several occasions, I’ve taken my daughters to churches (not just weddings and funerals). One of my daughters received 1 1/2 years of her kindergarten and 1st grade school education at a neighborhood Catholic school.  I want my children to be exposed to many types of religion in order to enable them to make meaningful choices.  After all, it is up to them to decide whether they will ultimately follow a religion or join an organized religion. I’d be sorely disappointed if my children refused to follow religion simply because I didn’t follow one.  I want them to consider this issue carefully for themselves.

Even at their young ages, they sometimes suggest that they don’t see the point of religion. From their viewpoints, most religious beliefs are strange.  Whenever they ask how one basket of fish and loaves can feed thousands, I can’t really defend the claim.  Instead, I remind them that whether they follow a religion will be their own choice. What they do with their minds and their bodies is up to them, not their parents.  We urge them to make sure that their choices are well informed, however.

In the meantime, the claims of many religious people cause my daughters to ask questions.  They ask the same questions all children would freely ask if they weren’t pressured (or, in some cases, humiliated or berated) into keeping such questions to themselves.  Why do people drink the blood of Jesus?  How can wine really be blood?  How do we even know that there is a God?  How does one determine how to be good?  Is there really a hell?

How does a “neutral” agnostic answer questions like these? This won’t sound so “neutral” to most Believers, but here’s how I approach these questions:  (more…)

Haven’t we heard this argument before, at least in the context of television violence?  Does exposure to violence breed violence? Many people would suggest a connection, but here’s a twist: a study that considered the effect of exposure to violent scripture.

In the March 8, 2007 edition of Nature (this article is available online only to subscribers), researchers asked 500 students to read a violent Bible passage.  The story concerned a mob from an Israeli tribe that captured, raped and murdered a concubine.  Half of the participants were allowed to read the conclusion to the story (based on a real passage from the Old Testament): members of other Israeli tribes leveled several cities of the Israeli tribe (whose members killed the concubine), after they were asked to engage in this violence by God himself.

About half of the students came from a religious university in the United States, while the other half came from University of Amsterdam.  Only 27% of the latter group believed in the Bible.  After reading the passages, the students participated in a lab exercise designed to measure aggression.  The results?

For both groups-whether the students were based in the Netherlands or the United States, and believed in God or not-the trend was the same: those who were told that God had sanctioned the violence . . . were more likely to act aggressively in the subsequent exercise.

The authors of the article (to be published in Psychological Science) commented that the origin of religious violence has been a taboo subject until recently, though recent world events “has pushed negative uses of religion to the forefront.”

The study does not show that religious people are more aggressive than nonreligious people. Researchers conclude, however, that “people respond more aggressively to a depiction of violence that they feel is justified.” 

Sociologist Mark Muergensmeyer of the University of California, Santa Barbara, says his research has also pointed to the motivational power of scriptural violence, but that the context of the message is key.  “If violence is presented as the authoritative voice of God, it can increase the possibility of more violence . . . but everything depends on how it is presented.”  The same passage placed in a nonthreatening historical context might not promote aggression, he argues.  “When scriptural violence is used to promote hostility, it is extremely effective.”

In the Nature article, Sociologist John Hall comments that people often choose to ignore the violent side to religion, and dismiss those who commit religiously inspired violence as members of the fringe. “When we see religious movements that are prophetically inspired and engaged in violence, there’s a cultural tendency to say ‘oh, they’re not really religious.’”

Nearly 30 years ago, the human legacy of one of America’s other dirty little wars came stumbling out of the forests along the Thai-Cambodian border. Aid workers who set up makeshift camps for them just inside Thailand described them as “walking skeletons.” They brought with them chilling stories of brutality and murder perpetrated by the “Angkar” - the Organization - the name the Communist Khmer Rouge gave to their government.

In the camps, the refugees were met by a small figure in orange robes who, with a bow of his head, handed each one a slip of paper inscribed in the flowing Cambodian script with the teaching of the Buddha:
“Hatred is not overcome by hatred; hatred is overcome by love. This is a law eternal.”

This monk in the orange robes was Maha Ghosananda, sometimes called the Gandhi of Cambodia. His recent death (read NY Times obit) has made me reflect on peacemaking, reconciliation, and the old adage that those who do not remember their history are doomed to repeat it.

In 1969, the US government was in a situation eerily similar to the one we are in today - after years of intensive fighting, the Vietnamese insurgency was stronger than ever. Military intelligence reports suggested that the elusive COSVN HQ (Central Office for South Vietnam, Headquarters) was located just inside the Cambodian border - a country with which the US was not currently at war. Most histories of the Vietnam War that I have read conclude that the COSVN was largely a figment of the Pentagon’s imagination - the Viet Cong leadership was highly mobile and decentralized. Nevertheless, the Nixon administration was convinced that Operation Breakfast - the carpet-bombing of 48 1 square mile “target boxes” inside Cambodia would destroy COSVN HQ and break the back of the Viet Cong insurgency.

(more…)

Many of us remember a scientific paper released back in October 2006.  It claimed that more than a half-million Iraqi people had died as a result of the US invasion.  The paper, published in Lancet, has been attacked ferociously by the Bush administration.

The March 1, 2007 issue of Nature (only available to subscribers online) describes the methodology of that study, which was conducted by authors based at Johns Hopkins University and Al Mustansiriya University in Baghdad.  The data was gathered through interviews conducted by two teams of four members each.  Nature asked one of the Iraqi researchers involved in the data collection some follow-up questions regarding the methodology.  He “asked not to be named because he fears that press attention could make him the target of attacks.”

The raw data gathered by the study is now being released to both critics and supporters of the results of the study.  This analysis might enable researchers to determine whether the Iraqi interviewers exaggerated the results for political reasons.  “That could show up and unusual patterns within the data.”

Here is the intriguing final paragraph of the Nature article:

[S]upporters say that criticisms should not detract from the fact that the Iraqi team managed to produce a survey under extremely difficult circumstances.  Security threats forced the team to change travel plans and at one point to consider canceling the survey altogether.  Since its completion, one interviewer has been killed and another has left Baghdad, although it is not known whether either case is linked to their involvement in the survey.  Either way, the continuing violence in the country is enough for the remaining interviewers to say that they are not willing to repeat the exercise.

Administrator’s Note: More than 530 comments have been posted to our original post regarding Bart Ehrman–  making that page too long for some computers to download and display quickly and properly.  Therefore, we are not allowing any new comments to be added to the original post.

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[E]ven though people are spending as much time in their cars as they used to, consumers have been turning off music stations in droves. 27 per cent since 2001, I believe, about on par with the declines of CD sales.

You would think this means people are just listening to stolen music played on their Ipod Nanos, but consider this: Sales from independent labels are actually holding steady.

To oversimplify things just a little, this indicates that the labels have been putting out a steady stream of prepackaged junk in an effort to appease the radio programmers and that consumers have been rejecting it.

In his post on Huffpo, Jacob Bernstein puts much of the blame on the commercial consolidation of radio.

I learned long ago that the best way to think of a trip is to accept that it is more than just dead time between here and there. I have a friend who has recently driven to to the East coast a couple of times, and all he saw (or wanted to see) on the way was the Interstate and its Rest Areas. When I was a child, I also just wanted the trip to be over: “Are we there, yet?” Now, I find that the walk, the ride, the drive, even the flight can be a primary object of interest in a trip.

Anyone who has seen my travel page can tell that the destination is just a nominal goal during my vacations. Sure, I have accumulated plenty of air miles on business trips. But even there, I meet interesting cross sections of our country when I sit with congenial strangers. I have looked down to see the 100 yard strips of forest along the highways that conceal the vast tracts of clear-cut deadlands and strip mines (called our National Forests) from public view. I once got to see my own neighborhood from a few thousand feet at night. Could you spot your own? I got to ride in the co-pilot seat of a Cessna flying up to Minnesota during the flood of ‘93, and saw the flood over the entire upper Mississippi valley, when the nominal goal was to meet with a customer. On that trip I got to practice my radio triangulation skills that I’d only before used in Microsoft Flight Simulator. Let me tell you, taking off from a wet, grassy field is a different kind of excitement.

Anyway, I bring this up now because I’m planning a weekend trip to Cincinnati for a dance, one that I’ve been to over a dozen times. The destination is primarily the thing. However, this time the plan is to break loose from the two comparable interstate routes that we know too well, and take the bisecting route along Federal Highway 50. According to AAA, this will add over 2 hours to the 5:35 Interstate drive time to cover the same number of road miles.

The point isn’t to get from here to there as fast as possible, but rather to see what there is to see. I don’t expect to find anything spectacular, but one never knows.

Shall I attempt to justify this post as a social or political commentary? Anything can be twisted that way. I telecommute, so I save significantly more in fuel and automotive amortization there than these trips consume each year. I drive a 1998 car that still gets over 35mpg highway after 140,000 miles (yes, we record the mileage and gallons for every tank). Sure, we put on as many miles as a bedroom community commuter, but our miles produce stories and pictures worth sharing. I have heard few interesting rush-hour stories.

One could argue whether my daily vacation travel postings and pictures have artistic merit. But if one argues, the text or images have evoked a response, therefore the artistic merit is implied. The only way to truly destroy art is to ignore it.
What about energy conservation? Well, this route will involve more slowing down for towns, and so be more costly in acceleration. But the overall top speed and average speed will be lower and more efficient. The round trip including in-town running around usually takes a bit over 2 full tanks. We’ll see.

This morning I tried to visit a site called OLGA (on-line guitar archive), a place where I had often gone in past years to check out chord progressions for pop/rock tunes.  Many guitarists had worked out tunes as best they could, then posted them at this site.  Over the years, the contributions to the site had been inconsistent on OLGA.  Sometimes many of the chords were incorrect, but they served to get you started to figure the rest out.  Some of the others progressions were truly excellent. 

OLGA served as a cyber-place for thousands of guitarists to exchange chord arrangements for songs.  I’ve played guitar for many years, and this is exactly what guitarists do in person.  It is the best way to learn tunes—we exchange scribbled out chord progressions.

But we won’t do this any more on OLGA.  You see, the owners of the site received a “take down letter,” and that was the end of OLGA.  You can read the letter here.  What are the damages, if one is taken to court?  Up to $30,000.  According to this letter, these guitarists who were merely exchanging chord arrangements were a threat to the livelihood of professional musicians who created the songs.  Never mind that all of those professionals got to be professionals by trading chord progressions.

Here is the legal basis for the take down letter. 

Once again, the little person has been knocked around by big corporations.   I say this because people trying to learn how to strum tunes on their guitars don’t have the money to pay off politicians in order to have an exception carved for their own benefit.

What if you DO have millions to spend (i.e., Disney)?  There’s almost no limit to what money can buy.   If you are a corporation, you likely own lots of the intellectual property.  After all, you’ve squeezed it out of your employees over the years.  And whenever you publish a tune or a photo or movie, you now have the right to monopolize it for the shorter of 95 years from publication, or 120 years from creation.  That’s the benefit of the 1998 “Mickey Mouse Protection Act.”

You might be wondering how this period got to be so incredibly long.  You wouldn’t be the first.  After all, 50 years ago, here is what was deemed fair:  “28 years, plus the work could be renewed for 47 years, now extended by 20 years for a total renewal of 67 years. 

What is distressing to me is that there is no rational balance between the “rights” of corporate intellectual property owners and the right of society to freely (eventually) enjoy the cultural artifacts were made popular by the people, after all. 

Now we know that guitar players trading chord progressions are a menace to society!  Don’t think about it too much, though, or you’ll realize that all prominent guitarists have traded chord progressions. But now we know that this important part of educating future guitarists is highly illegal.  The horror . . .

Here’s a good article on how Disney obtained the best copyright laws money could buy.  Here’s another. 

In the meantime, I’ll be figuring out the chords to tunes more slowly, on my own.

“When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.”

Mark Twain (1835 - 1910)

[Thanks go to The Quotations Page for this one].

We can’t really act freely unless we can think freely, it seems. But none of us can really choose what we will think next.  Thoughts occur to us.  I’m not the guy who puts the records in my own jukebox; at best, I merely punch some buttons.  But can I even say this much?

It seems to me that most (all?) of our freedom of thought (to the extent we have any) boils down to a sort of veto power that we seem to be able to exercise over those thoughts of which we become conscious.  But, again, we don’t choose the specific thoughts that well up from “below” to ripen into consciousness. Instead, we deal with thoughts that happen.  To invoke the baseball metaphor, we decide whether or not to swing at a thought, but they are pitched from elsewhere.  By whom, then?  It’s me, of course, but not a conscious me.  And it’s not a me that is bound by skin and skull.  It’s a me that constitutes an extended self, given that so many of our thoughts are triggered when our attention is diverted by the “outside” world.

Many people would resist these ideas ferociously.   After all, if no one is free, no one is responsible, resulting in a moral and intellectual free fall.  Or is this correct?  After all, what’s wrong with this starting point: What is, is?  Human animals are undeniably tuned so that they truly feel moral pressures, sometimes moral certitude.  Those feelings won’t evaporate just because we raise good questions. The proof is that many of us have been raising good questions for millenia.

But let’s go back to whether we really make choices, at least in the way choices in the way that choices are traditionally conceived.

I admit that you chose to think about X, but did you choose to choose that thought? I admit that you sometimes exercise a conscious veto (“I’m not going to do that thing”) but did you consciously decide to exercise that veto?  Did you decide to decide?  This chain—this non-eternal regress of thoughts—can’t yet be followed down to that place where neurons generate tiny sparks of sentience.  Of this place where thought joins meat, where the frisson of electrochemical activity meets proto-thoughts, we know almost nothing.   And there’s no good reason to stop to declare total understanding at that juncture because, as difficult as it would be to achieve, that achievement would be scratching the surface.  That juncture is only a resting place, because those pulsing cells are each built on a scaffolding of chemistry, and then physics.  Further “down,” those infinitesimally small particles smear into effervescent mystery.

Whenever we claim that we know what we mean when we assert “I chose,” this is an assertion based upon great faith.  And it’s understandable many would resist this characterization.  Person want to be themselves.  They want to be more than chemical-electrical activity “down there,” no matter how intricately those tiny parts aggregate into people.  We crave that old-fashioned conception of ourselves, no matter how elegantly scientists characterize that symphonic buzzing of microscopic life as a complex adaptive system that can get hungry or fall in love.

The tiny-seeming vetoes we exercise, somehow firmly anchored in soft protoplasm, aggregate into extraordinary eruptions of macroscopic intention and planning, purpose and power.   Consider, for example, the many “tiny” vetoes one exercises while web surfing or while dedicating one’s self to a higher principle such as generousity.  That those tiny vetoes can sometimes aggregate into any form of coherence is miraculous.  Really, how could “I” possibly be trillions of exponentially simpler parts? I can’t think of any fictional story that is more amazing than this one. Truly, it is miraculous. 

That’s about all a devout agnostic can say . . .

As a nation, we seem to be making one boneheaded decision after another.

Iraq has to be the top of that list. We attacked Iraq because we couldn’t let “them” get away with what “they” did on September 11. I have heard numerous seemingly intelligent people utter this other nonsense. The only way this justification works, however, is if all people living in the Middle East are the same. There’s no basis for believing that everyone in the Middle East is “the same,” yet this truly seems to be the foundation of the thought process of many people. Someone from the Middle East attacked us, therefore we must attack someone in the Middle East. And by someone they mean anyone.

By this same logic, when someone in my neighborhood steals my car, I am justified asking the police to throw anyone from my neighborhood in prison. Anyone at all! The important thing is that I am mad or frustrated or embarrassed and I want to cast judgment some more quickly and see something done.

It’s truly amazing that intelligent people can fall for this kind of thinking, but many of us do.

Perhaps it’s because we have trouble categorizing. Take, for instance, the category “the poor.” I know many right-leaning people who claim that all poor people are deservedly poor. And they are lazy, as well as immoral and stupid. This allows many social conservatives to justify social Darwinism at the highest levels of government.

On the other hand, I know many left-leaning people who claim that they’ve never met a poor person who deserves to be poor. This is utter nonsense too. As though some poor people haven’t become poor because they’ve made long strings of horrible choices. As though no poor people are lazy or reckless.  These are the same people who think that all criminals are innocent.

The answer, of course, lies in the middle. There’s a wide variety of poor people and there is no easy way to cast judgment upon all poor people in one wide stroke.

In America, however, we thrive on making these types of over-generalizations. We love to talk about the way black people are. And rich people. And scientists and priests and gays and women and Italians and politicians, as well as teenagers, lawyers, executives and immigrants.  Oh, and don’t forget, people from the Middle East.  It slows us down when we have to acknowledge that every one of these categories and compasses a huge number of diverse individuals, cultures and sub-cultures.  Being people of action we don’t have time for really understanding other people.  This is understandable, given our cognitive limitations, but this excuse does not justify the lack of trying.

We make these over generalizations, all the while knowing that it does blatant injustice upon many of the individuals of any of these groups. And we overgeneralize ideas too. Many of us cause fights over simplistic notions of God and Justice. As though we don’t have serious doubts about these simplistic ideas we preach! We, the feeble-people.  

Too many of us are unable to to simultaneously contemplate conflicting or diverse ideas, facts or characteristics. We can’t stand to think of public figures, cultures, places or ideas as nuanced. We can’t imagine “good” people doing bad things or “bad” people doing good things. We can’t imagine “stupid” people doing smart things. It spoils the fun to slow down and be accurate. Indeed, we pay our comedians to make cartoons out of real-life people and things. And these simplistic façades and caricatures become the news because so many of us get our news through comedians.

Many of those who are left-leaning can’t imagine a sincere conservative.  Many of those on the right can’t bear to think that progressives are actually bringing any ideas of value to to the national discussion. (more…)

The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.

Anatole France

The point is that even theoretically just laws can lead to de facto injustice.  But how much more injustice can result from laws that are rigged to begin with?  That is the topic of a post by Bob Cesca on Huffpo.

If an American citizen is caught cheating on their taxes, they’re fined and imprisoned; if an American citizen races up to a yellow light and it turns red just as they’re passing under it, they’re photographed without their permission and fined; if an American citizen talks about farting or nipples on the radio, they can be fined $325,000 by your federal government. Holy hell, it’s a federal offense to make a copy of a DVD or CD, whether you plan to sell it or not!

But the last four years have proved that it’s perfectly legal to go to war based on lies, fabricated evidence, propaganda, media manipulation; then to lie about its progress every step of the way; then to allow massive unregulated — practically encouraged — war profiteering at the taxpayer’s expense; then to ignore the international rules of warfare by permitting torture; then to ignore rational solutions for redeployment; then to cut the budget for veterans; and the list of trespasses against morality, decency, the Constitution, and the American way of life goes on and on and on.

The solution? Cesca suggests that we establish a war crimes commission to prosecute those who commit these war crimes–they are still roaming free today. Many of them are still running our government.  Then Cesca comes full circle:

How about we start with a fine equal to the FCC fine for broadcast indecency? Every elected or politically appointed official found partly or mostly responsible for botching the war must pay $325,000 for each and every time they lied about the reasons for- or progress of the war. That might not seem like a lot to rich guys with rich guy pinkish-hued skin like Vice President Cheney, but it adds up, and, all idealism aside, it’s a start.