The War Against Woman Has Real Consequences
When will people realize that denying a woman an abortion has real life and death consequences? PZ Myers has a very sad and scary example on his blog.
It isn’t just that abortions are harder to get, but also that many health care professionals have been scared off by the terroristic activities of the anti-abortion crowd. This means that even where abortion is legal, when a woman needs a life-saving abortion, often there isn’t anyone available to perform one.
How long will we allow the elite, white, male, christian dominated right wing to dictate what a woman can and can’t do with her body? That a woman, any woman, should risk losing her life just because some religious zealots want to make everyone else live their lives according to their interpretation of an archaic, iron age text, is unconscionable.
Stupid Male Privlones!
During a recent talk at the American Atheists Rapture RAM, about how to make the atheist movement more cohesive, David Eller brought up female video bloggers as an example. Unfortunately, his main reasoning for why they were good for the atheist movement was that they are pretty. Um..WTF?!
Jen McCreight, from Blag Hag, was at the event and was, justifiably, upset by his comments. During the Q&A she called him out on it:
“If you want to make the atheist movement more social, we have to be aware of the concerns of minorities, not insinuating they’re only helpful because they’re pretty and blonde. There are plenty of pretty blondes people can watch – these people are popular because they’re intelligent and witty.”
To his credit, David went on to offer a sincere apology in the comment’s Jen’s blog post, which I reproduce here:
“This is David Eller. I realized soon after the incident that I had violated one of my own most valued principles: just as I ask atheists to stop “speaking Christian,” so I realized that I had as a male unreflectively “spoken male.” It is exceptionally difficult, as anyone will admit, to see one’s own prejudices and failings. I recognize the male privilege on which my reference was founded, and I learned something from the occasion. Actually, I learned two things during the weekend: a Jewish man reminded me that “Judeo-Christian” is a Christian-privileged way of speaking about religion, since Judaism and Christianity are really quite different. So I am more aware now of both the Christian privilege and the male privilege in my speech and thought, and I will try to overcome and eject both.”
This is what should be done when someone puts their foot in their mouth. Admit you were wrong, own up to it, and explain what you’ve learned from it.
All of this illustrates how insidiously ingrained sexism is in our culture, where even smart, cultured, progressive people can say and do things that are sexist despite their best intentions.
I have labeled these things that cause us to unconsciously behave in a sexist manner Male Privlones. It is just my own little quasi-scientific sounding term. No, my intention isn’t to create some kind of pseudoscientific mumbo-jumbo, bullshit phrases to prop up an unfounded, nut job theory. I just got tired of writing “ingrained sense of male privilege” all the time, plus I think it is sort of a silly term as well, which highlights the silliness of “ingrained sense of male privilege”. I just wish it wasn’t so socially destructive and corrosive.
Male Privlones are things that most of us have buried deep within our psyche from a lifetime of social conditioning and we have to constantly fight against them. Sexism runs very deep in our culture. Even the most enlightened feminist among us can find ourselves at least thinking sexist thoughts from time to time. Many of us, myself included, will have a thought pop into our brains that goes against everything we believe in. A simple example might be going to an emergency room or medical clinic and being treated by a female doctor. Some might have fleeting misgivings about being treated by a woman doctor, not because we believe her to be any less effective than a man, but because we come from a generation and culture in which only men were doctors. We almost immediately have feelings of shame flush across our faces as soon that stupid thought forms in our brains, but it is there, nonetheless. This is an example of stupid Male Privlones, and we must actively guard against them constantly in thoughts, words and deeds.
This is no easy task, but we have to keep trying to intercept these privlones as they arise. The bright side to this is that, hopefully, we are raising our children to not have these preconceived sexist notions. Hopefully within a generation or two, sexist thoughts will be very firmly in the minority. Only our constant vigilance will allow this to happen.
It’s Rapture Day!
It is May 21st, 2011. According to Harold Camping, the Christian fundgelical wingnut, the rapture will occur today at 6:00pm, local time. Considering it is now 11:42pm, May 21st, in Australia and no reports of Australian Christians being raptured have surfaced, I’m guessing the rapture isn’t going off quite as planned. Either that or there are no worthy Christians in Australia (maybe it is just American Christians who are worthy?). Either way, I’m planning a fun day of lunch, shopping, and spending time with my sweetie. Since neither of us are religious, I know we will still be there come 6:01pm, so the movie is still on for tonight.
There have been so many failed prophecies over the past 2000 years that it is amazing that anyone can take this one seriously, but hundreds have, selling everything they own and traveling the country trying to get others to do the same. History shows that once tomorrow comes, and these true believers are still here, dismay will hit. Don’t think that this will snap them out of their belief in the second coming of their savior, once again, history tells us that within days they will rationalize away the failure and their faith will become even stronger. (Festinger, et al. 1956)
This is cognitive dissonance at work. I have written a lot about cognitive dissonance before, but we see this kind of thing so often that I think I need to cover it again here.
Cognitive dissonance occurs when a thought or idea conflicts with other thoughts, ideas, or beliefs in our mind. A typical example of cognitive dissonance would be someone who continues to smoke even though they know that it is bad for them. People will often make excuses for their continued smoking in the face to overwhelming evidence that it can kill you. They will either dismiss the evidence as inconclusive (these days this borders on delusional), marginalize it, or ignore it. Even when they try to do this, there is always a part of their mind that knows it is bad and with creates discomfort that they will try to resolve by basically lying to themselves.
You can read my other post about cognitive dissonance at these links:
You can also read my article on the JREF blog about it.
So, enjoy the rapture day! Go about your business as usual, or better yet, throw a party!
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Festinger, L., Riecken, H.W., Schachter, S. , Aronson, E. 1956. When prophecy fails. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Ben Stein – Douche Bag of the Month
Ben Stein; lawyer, actor, and evolution denier can now add privileged, sanctimonious douche bag to his list of titles.
In a recent American Spectator article, he defends Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of the IMF, who has been charged with rape. It isn’t the fact that Stein is defending DSK, it is how he defends him.
His basic claims are that DSK couldn’t be a violent sex criminal because:
•He is head of the IFM and how could he possibly get to be in that position if he is a violent sex offender.
•There aren’t any examples of economists or head of non-profits who are violent criminals. (wrong!)
•Criminals commit crimes and most criminals are poor. DSK is rich so he can’t be a violent criminal.
•DSK is alleged to have forced the woman to have sex, but since he didn’t use a gun or a knife, there is no way he could have forced her. (I didn’t realize it was still the 1950’s)
•The accuser (he doesn’t consider her a victim) is a “have-not” and the “have-nots” hate the “haves” so they will stoop to anything, including falsely accusing a rich man of rape.
Basically, Stein is saying that rich people can’t be violent criminals because they are rich. DSK is also very well known, and because of this he can’t possibly be a violent criminal. The real criminals are the have-nots, who are greedy and envious of the “haves”.
There is so much douche baggery here that I don’t even know where to begin. Instead, I’ll just say: Ben Stein, you are a first-class, complete and utter douche bag!
Nuf’ said.
Miracle Mineral Solution – How Bleach Can Cure the World!
I listened to the Righteous Indignation podcast today where they interviewed Jim Humble, the creator and promoter of Miracle Mineral Solution. The interview was very interesting and revealing. It was interesting in the sense that it was fascinating to hear Mr. Humble commit just about every logical fallacy that I’ve ever heard of. It was revealing in that it became obvious that Jimbo is either completely deluded or an evil genius.
From listening to his halting, folksy way of speaking, the first impression is that he is simply deluded, but later we found out that he created a church to promote the healing properties of his Miracle Mineral Solution, or MMS. When he was asked why he decided to use a church instead of a traditional non-profit organization to promote MMS, he rambled on about how Jesus told his disciples to go out and heal.
When asked about an article in which he used the Catholic Church’s tax exempt status and the separation of church and state as examples of how this gives his organization more power than a non-profit, he fumbled around for a bit before admitting that it was a bad example to use given the abuses of the Catholic Church.
What strikes me about this, though, is that he obviously gave a lot of thought to how organizing as a church would allow him to skirt many of the laws and restrictions that a non-profit would be held to in providing health care using a product that can only claim testimonials and anecdotal evidence for its efficacy. This shows him to be, in my book, a true charlatan. Evil genius it is!
The claims he makes for MMS are myriad and track perfectly with typical pseudoscientific claims. It can cure cancer, HIV, malaria. It can treat serious burns by lowering the PH of the burn area, which he claims is highly acidic, even though he has no medical research whatsoever to back up this claim. In fact, he has no medical research at all to back up any of his claims. When called on this, he spouts the usual clap-trap about modern science not wanting to believe the truth about his claims, invokes the evils of modern medicine, and goes on the seal the deal with anti-vaccination rhetoric.
To quote his website:
“The answer to AIDS, hepatitis A,B and C, malaria, herpes, TB, most cancer and many more of mankind’s worse diseases has been found. Many diseases are now easily controlled. More that 75,000 disease victims have been included in the field tests in Africa. Scientific clinical trials have been conducted in a prison in the country of Malawi, East Africa.”
Strangely, he doesn’t not include links to these “scientific clinical trials”. I wonder why?
This guy is treating people around the world with what is essentially bleach. That’s right, bleach. He advocates putting bleach on burns, open wounds, and drinking it to cure any number of maladies.
Jim Humble should be locked up for peddling a dangerous product to innocent people, as well as practicing medicine without a license, but since he operations mainly in Africa, he is probably immune from prosecution here in the U.S.
Science and Relition are NOT Compatible
Ophelia Benson at Butterflies & Wheels reviewed an interview with Chris Mooney in which he discusses the compatibility of science and religion. In talking about the Catholic Church’s support of evolution and its contention that god intervened by giving humans souls, Chris Mooney supports this stance as being perfectly compatible with science.
“Mooney says that’s all right provided it’s a supernatural claim, because science can’t say nuffink about that. If the Catholic church said humans have souls and we can prove it and here’s the data, then it would be a scientific claim and science could say No, but as it is, it’s not, so science can’t, and that means science and religion are compatible.”
Basically, what Mooney is saying is that as long as you can come up with any concept, idea, or belief that is falsifiable then it is compatible with science. This kind of argument breaks down very quickly though. The classic example of how this is nonsense is Carl Sagan’s, “Dragon in his garage”, argument. I will quite it in its entirety:
“”A fire-breathing dragon lives in my garage”
Suppose (I’m following a group therapy approach by the psychologist Richard Franklin) I seriously make such an assertion to you. Surely you’d want to check it out, see for yourself. There have been innumerable stories of dragons over the centuries, but no real evidence. What an opportunity!“Show me,” you say. I lead you to my garage. You look inside and see a ladder, empty paint cans, an old tricycle — but no dragon.
“Where’s the dragon?” you ask.
“Oh, she’s right here,” I reply, waving vaguely. “I neglected to mention that she’s an invisible dragon.”
You propose spreading flour on the floor of the garage to capture the dragon’s footprints.
“Good idea,” I say, “but this dragon floats in the air.”
Then you’ll use an infrared sensor to detect the invisible fire.
“Good idea, but the invisible fire is also heatless.”
You’ll spray-paint the dragon and make her visible.
“Good idea, but she’s an incorporeal dragon and the paint won’t stick.” And so on. I counter every physical test you propose with a special explanation of why it won’t work.
Now, what’s the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there’s no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? Your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true. Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder. What I’m asking you to do comes down to believing, in the absence of evidence, on my say-so. The only thing you’ve really learned from my insistence that there’s a dragon in my garage is that something funny is going on inside my head. You’d wonder, if no physical tests apply, what convinced me. The possibility that it was a dream or a hallucination would certainly enter your mind. But then, why am I taking it so seriously? Maybe I need help. At the least, maybe I’ve seriously underestimated human fallibility. Imagine that, despite none of the tests being successful, you wish to be scrupulously open-minded. So you don’t outright reject the notion that there’s a fire-breathing dragon in my garage. You merely put it on hold. Present evidence is strongly against it, but if a new body of data emerge you’re prepared to examine it and see if it convinces you. Surely it’s unfair of me to be offended at not being believed; or to criticize you for being stodgy and unimaginative — merely because you rendered the Scottish verdict of “not proved.”
Imagine that things had gone otherwise. The dragon is invisible, all right, but footprints are being made in the flour as you watch. Your infrared detector reads off-scale. The spray paint reveals a jagged crest bobbing in the air before you. No matter how skeptical you might have been about the existence of dragons — to say nothing about invisible ones — you must now acknowledge that there’s something here, and that in a preliminary way it’s consistent with an invisible, fire-breathing dragon.
Now another scenario: Suppose it’s not just me. Suppose that several people of your acquaintance, including people who you’re pretty sure don’t know each other, all tell you that they have dragons in their garages — but in every case the evidence is maddeningly elusive. All of us admit we’re disturbed at being gripped by so odd a conviction so ill-supported by the physical evidence. None of us is a lunatic. We speculate about what it would mean if invisible dragons were really hiding out in garages all over the world, with us humans just catching on. I’d rather it not be true, I tell you. But maybe all those ancient European and Chinese myths about dragons weren’t myths at all.
Gratifyingly, some dragon-size footprints in the flour are now reported. But they’re never made when a skeptic is looking. An alternative explanation presents itself. On close examination it seems clear that the footprints could have been faked. Another dragon enthusiast shows up with a burnt finger and attributes it to a rare physical manifestation of the dragon’s fiery breath. But again, other possibilities exist. We understand that there are other ways to burn fingers besides the breath of invisible dragons. Such “evidence” — no matter how important the dragon advocates consider it — is far from compelling. Once again, the only sensible approach is tentatively to reject the dragon hypothesis, to be open to future physical data, and to wonder what the cause might be that so many apparently sane and sober people share the same strange delusion.”
Just because someone believes something that cannot be proved doesn’t make it compatible with science, in fact, the scientific method demands that we reject such a hypothesis while keeping an open mind to future positive evidence.
Using this standard, there is no difference between the “Dragon In My Garage” hypothesis and the” I Believe In God hypothesis”. From a scientific point of view we must reject the God hypothesis due to no supporting evidence while keeping an open mind the possibility of future positive evidence.
When you look at it this way, science and religion are not at all compatible and to call yourself a scientist, as Mooney does, and insist that they are compatible requires either self-delusion or deceit. I’ll give Mooney the benefit of the doubt and hope that he is merely self-deluded.
A Brief History of Women in Science, Told by Marie Curie
To all the girls and woman out there with even a hint of an interest in science; listen to Marie Curie (or at least her zombie). You can change the world, as have many women before you (too bad men got all the credit, not to mention the Nobel prizes. Grr!)
Another WTF Moment, Brought to You by Religion!
PZ Myers shares another example of a religious, WTF moment. This time a pastor torments and kills innocent fish and is disappointed that his Sunday School kids seem to care more about living creatures than their friends’ relationship with a magic Jewish zombie. Un-fucking-believable!
A Message From The Dead – A Skeptic’s Last Words to The World
Phil Plait blogged about Derek today. Derek was a skeptic who I never knew, nor herd of, until today. He died of cancer May 3rd and he left a final message on his blog. Please, go and read it. It embodies everything I believe about living my daily life, which is; never take anything for granted, enjoy every moment, and always tell those you love that you love them, as often as you can.
This life, as far as anyone can tell, is all that we have. The people in our lives are what give it meaning, and it is to the people in our lives that we will leave our legacy. Once we die, we will live on in thier memoires, the stories they will tell about us, the influence that we had upon them.
I lost my father in 1992, my sister in 1997, and my mother in 1999. They all died suddenly and I never got to say goodbye to any of them, but I had no regrets because I always kept in touch, and I always let them know that I loved them. I learned more from these loses about living day-to-day than anything else in my life.
You never know when you, or someone you love, might be taken from this life. Cherish every moment you have with those that you love, and tell them and show them, as often as you can, that you love them and value them. It will be your legacy to them and it will enrich thier lives more than you can imagine.
I will leave you by quoting Phil Plait, who quoted Slau, who quoted Warren Zevon: “Enjoy every sandwich.”
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