Fox reporter Meygn Kelly insults freed Chilean coal miner

Hot, blonde Fox newscaster Meygn Kelly, while reporting on the rescue of one of the trapped Chilean coalminers today, said this upon seeing the live feed as one of the miners emerged and was greeted by his tearful common law wife of 25 years... (I'm paraphrasing from memory)

"There's one of the miners now. Waiting for him is his common law wife. They've been together...living together I should say...for 25 years, but of course they are not married in the eyes of the law...or in the eyes of God."
Well, eff you Meygn! Since when did you get a direct line to God? If "God is love", as believers are so fond of saying, then wouldn't He approve of a love that can withstand 25 years without a government issued paper to force them to stay together? How DARE you diminish the relationship of these two people with your self- righteousness! They've stayed together for 25 YEARS. I know people who have been married by THREE BISHOPS in a CATHEDRAL who didn't last HALF that long. Next time you feel the need to tell us what God is thinking, try to remember that one of the basic rules of journalism is to not inject your personal morality into the story. Oops, I forgot! You're on FOX!

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Why PZ is not a believer

PZ Myers has offered eight fairly solid reasons for not believing in god. Here is number 8:

There are always better explanations for unexplained phenomena than god: fraud and faulty sensory perception cover most of the bases, but mostly, if I see a Madonna appear in a field to bless me, the first thing I'd suspect is brain damage. We have clumsy, sputtering, inefficient brains that are better designed for spotting rutabagas and triggering rutting behavior at the sight of a curvy buttock than they are for doing math or interpreting the abstract nature of the universe. It is a struggle to be rational and objective, and failures are not evidence for an alternative reality. Heck, we can be fooled rather easily by mere stage magicians; we don't need to invent something as elaborate as a god to explain apparent anomalies.
I would tweak this eighth response. I don't think most believers have a generally malfunctioning ability to perceive, and I wouldn't attribute their willingness to believe to fraud, at least not fraud in any traditional use of that word (where intent to deceive is key). Rather, I suspect that the elaborate hyper-sensitive cognitive machinery that allows us to detect potential allies and facilitates the formation of social bonds with them is rigged to dim the perceptual abilities of 90% of us, based on perceived threats to social relationships we value. Thus, as I see it, the perceptual machinery isn't completely broken. Rather, it dims only when competing social cravings slap the "toxic" label on evidence that seems to be inconvenient to the formation or maintenance of a social group. This cognitive function dims our abilities to see and hear based on whether the things we might see or hear could damage treasured social relationships. It seems as though some sort of rough and ready mini-brain screens the world for our bigger better brain (at least in 90% of us). That mini rough and ready brain functions as a paranoid secretary who won't let calls come through to the boss because the secretary is over-protective. I discuss the connections between social cravings and inability to appreciate evidence, as well as some of the science that guides me in my views, in a series of posts I titled "Mending Fences."

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What kind of God?

People often argue about whether or not "God" exists, but what is the kind of "God" to which they are referring? A 2006 study at Baylor, based on responses provided by more than 1,700 people, suggested that Americans envision four basic types of "God." The results were summarized by the London Times:

[The study] found that Americans hold four different images of God — Authoritarian, Benevolent, Critical or Distant — and these views are far more powerful indicators about their political, social and moral attitudes than any of the traditional categories such as Protestant, Catholic or Evangelical.

It is startling to see that there is no majority view. Each of these types of "Gods" has His/Her/Its fans:
Nearly a third of Americans, 31.4 per cent, believe in an Authoritarian God, angry at earthly sin and willing to inflict divine retribution — including tsunamis and hurricanes. People who see God this way are religiously and politically the most conservative. They are more likely to be less educated and have lower incomes, come from the South and be white evangelicals or black Protestants. At the other end of the scale is the Distant God, seen by 24.4 per cent as a faceless, cosmic force that launched the world but leaves it alone. This is seen more by liberals, moral relativists and those who don’t attend church. This God has most believers on the West Coast. The Benevolent God, popular in America’s Midwest among mainstream Protestants, Catholics and Jews, is one that sets absolute standards for man, but is also forgiving — engaged but not so angry. Caring for the sick is high on the list of priorities for these 23 per cent of believers. The Critical God, at 16 per cent, is viewed as the classic bearded old man, judgmental but not going to intervene or punish, and is popular on the East Coast.
[caption id="attachment_14701" align="alignright" width="300" caption="God and Adam - Sistine Chapel "][/caption] Perhaps a follow-up survey could delve further into the many sub-types of "Gods" out there. Is "God" a He, a She or an It? Does God care about your favorite sports team winning? Does "God" really offer a chance to go to a heaven? Is there even a heaven at all? Did "God" really visit the earth in human form? Does "God" think it's OK to be gay? To have sex before marriage? To use birth control? Does "God" insist on good works? Does God prohibit the death penalty and wars? Does "God" prohibit eating any sorts of foods? What kinds of foods? Only shellfish, or meat on Fridays, or food that wasn't kosher? Just think of the huge number of permutations! Once we chart this out properly there will be billions of types of "Gods" out there in the minds of believers. These questions, and many others, would reveal that Americans believe in many millions of types of "God." Therefore, pollsters should do away with the question "Do you believe in God?" Any question that boils down one's characterization of "God" into the simplistic phrase "God" is hopelessly vague, and the resulting answers will inevitably suggest that there is no consensus as to who or what "God" is. If we took the time to parse our personal belief systems carefully, we would better see that the religious strife in this country involves millions of advocates for millions of idiosyncratic "Gods." Once we thoroughly sliced and diced our beliefs to this extent, we would hear people everywhere start uttering the word "projection." Maybe if we took the time to define "God" before advocating for His/Her/Its existence, we could all summon up more humility about the origins of the universe and the morality we attribute to our personalized "God." Maybe that extra humility would cut down on wars we are willing to start and our willingness to take sides in religious/cultural wars. Once we thoroughly break down the many types of belief systems out there, I believe that we will find out that "Gods" are like fingerprints--every person who believes in "God" has his or her own version of God. And this would mean that virtually every American is an atheist as to the "God" of virtually every other American. We are actually a land of hundreds of millions of religions of one member each, despite the fact that many of us physically gather together on holy days. Once we put our personalized "God" back on our mantle, instead of wearing Him/Her/It on our sleeve, then maybe we could better focus on the numerous pressing social problems that we face.

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Culture as a collective fabrication facilitating our quest for immortality

I often wonder how people are capable of simply going about their business, chatting about last night’s sporting event, working on crossword puzzles or thinking about buying a new car, despite the fact that they will be dead someday, maybe even someday soon. And for those with children, their children will also be dead a few decades later. How can we possibly live with those dreaded thoughts hanging over us? In fact, every person now living will likely be dead in 150 years. How can we engage in mundane things like gossiping, consuming, traveling and amusing ourselves when every person on the planet is facing annihilation? How do we put death out of our minds so easily? Ernest Becker would suggest that I have it all backwards. According to Becker, people intensely amuse and distract themselves, and immerse themselves in culture, because they are anxious about death. They are not necessarily consciously aware of their impending deaths, but they feel it deeply, and their minds grind and sputter on this topic, under the surface, unconsciously. We do the best we can to deal with this terrifying thought that we will all be dead, and the best we can think of doing is to distract ourselves with the many bright and shiny bigger-than-us, bigger-than-life things offered by culture. We put these things on a pedestal and then we cling to them as if they were life preservers. We embellish our cultural treasures with accolades recognizing their “eternal” significance. “Strawberry Fields Forever,” Babe Ruth, stamp collections, being a trivia pursuit star, triathlons, Michelangelo’s David. And for some of us, Jesus Christ loves us and He will let us live with him forever in heaven. According to Becker, these cultural mainstays are important for keeping us steady, even while death (and the threat of death) lurks around every corner. I recently had the opportunity to watch the highly acclaimed low-budget 90-minute 2005 documentary titled "Flight from Death: the Quest for Immortality,” produced by Patrick Shen and Greg Bennick. The film is based on the works of Ernest Becker’s “terror management theory,” (TMT) on which I’ve written several times (see here and here). Even though I was well acquainted with the works of Becker prior to viewing this video, I found the film to be transformative, in that it offers a schematic of underlying “hydraulics” that help us to understand many things that otherwise seem so puzzling about culture. I’d highly recommend “Flight from Death” whether or not you sometimes find it stunning that you live on a planet where mobile intestinal tracks scurry about, drive buses and even serve you meals at your local restaurant. Here’s the trailer. Even though I was already familiar with Becker’s theory and many of the experiments substantiating Becker’s theory, I found the film illuminating. “Flight From Death” includes well-chosen imagery and music to accompany the interviews with thoughtful and eccentric people from a wide variety of backgrounds (including psychologist Sheldon Soloman and writer Sam Keen, among others). [More . . . ]

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Expelled founder Paul Kurtz explains his departure from the Center for Inquiry

On May 18, 2010 the Center for Inquiry, the Council for Secular Humanism and the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry jointly announced that they had accepted the resignation of Paul Kurtz from each of these boards. Kurtz, who had founded each of these three organizations, had been serving on each of the boards, and as well as serving as Chair Emeritus of CSH and as Editor in Chief of CSH's flagship publication, Free Inquiry. In the joint announcement, the boards recognized Dr. Kurtz for his "decades of service to the Council for Secular Humanism, the Center for Inquiry (CFI), and its other affiliates." This same announcement also contained the following statement:

At Paul Kurtz's behest, CFI and its affiliates began years ago to organize a leadership transition. Moreover, in recent years the board had concerns about Dr. Kurtz's day-to-day management of the organization.

As a long-time subscriber to Free Inquiry and Skeptical Inquirer, I was familiar with many of the writings of Paul Kurtz, but I had never before spoken with him or corresponded with him. As a result of reading his articles at Free Inquiry, I was also aware that there was internal tension at those organizations (e.g., see here , here, and here). After reading about his resignation, I emailed a short note to Mr. Kurtz to wish him well in light of the announcement of his resignation. I also asked him whether he would allow me to interview him with regard to the announcement. He agreed: [Note: CFI's CEO Ron Lindsay responded to the following interview of Paul Kurtz here.] EV: To what extent was your resignation from the Center for Inquiry voluntary? PK: It was done voluntarily, but under great duress. [caption id="attachment_14572" align="alignright" width="150" caption="Paul Kurtz (Permission by Wikimedia Commons)"][/caption] -- EV: What were your titles and job duties prior to your resignation. PK: I founded the modern skeptics movement and sustained it for over three and a half decades. I had been the Chairman of the Center for Inquiry, the Council for Secular Humanism and the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. In June, 2008, I was made "Emeritus" and stripped of any authority. Since 1980, I was Editor-in-Chief for Free Inquiry, but starting in June 2008, I no longer had any authority. I never received any compensation working for these organizations. I worked as a volunteer, living off savings I accrued while working as a philosophy professor. In fact, my wife and I donated more than $2 million dollars over the years to CFI, CSH and CSI. We were the second largest donors to these organizations. Over the years, I helped to raise over $40 million for the Center for Inquiry. -- EV: I saw the announcement of your resignation in the August/September, 2010 issue of Free Inquiry. Why didn't you publish any explanation regarding your resignation in Free Inquiry? PK: Tom Flynn and the CFI Board refused to run my letter of resignation in Free Inquiry or any of the Websites of CFI. It was censorship, clear and simple. I was censored four times, beginning in June 2008. [More . . . ]

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