Science Versus Faith
Most of us want to understand the world we live it. We seek to make sense out of our lives; why we are here; what the purpose of our existence is. Not knowing is unsettling, even scary.
For thousands of years, likely since humans could actually think as we understand that wold, we have tried to find ways to understand how things work. We tried to explain the forces of nature that we can’t control. Weather, seasons, earthquakes, volcanos. These things frightened us. To try to reduce the fear and uncertainty, we tried to explain these things as best we could. We created spirits, demons, monsters, and gods.
These creations varied from culture to culture. The Greeks had their Zeus, the Romans Jupiter, Bushmen had Cagn, Babylonians worshiped Marduk , Jews had Yahweh, Christians, Jesus. All of these deities had mostly similar traits, but also differences that varied according to the particular culture.
Some people, however, tried to find a different way to explain the world around them. Ancient Greeks had Plato, Aristotle, and others who tried to use reason and observation to explain things. The were often wrong, but it was a departure from just explaining things away as acts by a deity or deities.
In the 15th century, Galileo used his telescope to discover truths about the universe: that the planets were worlds like our own and not just points of light on the backdrop of the celestial sphere. Kepler, Copernicus, and later Newton, added to our understanding of the cosmos. The defining idea of these endeavors was that they used careful observations and reason to explain how things worked and, for the first time in history, accurately made predictions about the world that we could rely on. By the 18th century, the discipline of science was born. Engineering, medicine, communication, and other practical areas of study emerged that were different from the old ways of explaining the world. This way of learning about and explaining the world had two major differences from the mythologies that tried to explain things before: it was able to accurately make predictions, and it worked.
This leads to the most important difference between the mindset of religious and magical thinking, and reason and scientific thinking: People who rely on faith, hunches, and the like are afraid not to know. They seek solace in their faith in their god or gods. Their gods love them, watch over them, and will even save them from death by allowing an afterlife of rewards for being faithful.
Those who believe in the scientific way of thinking are not afraid of the unknown, in fact, they embrace it. The unknown is where we lean, where we can grow in understanding. It allows us to beat back the fear and uncertainly. It lets us make predictions about how the world works that can be tested and proved or disproved. This is how we can understand how our bodies work, which has lead to a doubling of our life spans in just over a hundred years. It is how we have provided ways to communicate across the globe, to share our thoughts and ideas, our emotions, our hopes and dreams.
It has been said by some that science is just another religion. This is false. The reason it is false is that science, unlike faith, can cause us to modify our ideas about the world as new information is discovered, giving us ever more accurate explanations for how the universe works. This allows the technological advances that save millions of lives and make our lives more comfortable. Unlike faith, it allows us to make predictions about the world that are accurate and reproducible, bringing certainty to the previously unknown, and pushing back the fear that the unknown brings. And unlike faith, science just works.
Your Religion Is Your Religion, Not Everyone Elses
I’ve been pretty harsh in my views toward superstitious beliefs in general and religion in particular. You find what I have to say offensive. Thats fine, because I find things you have to say offensive as well. There is nothing wrong with being offended. It happens to everyone about something or other at some point.
What I find annoying and sad is when you feel that I am somehow persecuting you by my stance on these issues. This is just plain wrong. That you feel persecuted reflects your sense of privilege and superiority because you feel that you are right because your god tells you so. It is exactly this self righteous attitude that I despise and rail against. It isn’t your beliefs I find offensive, but the effects of those beliefs upon everyone else.
I believe that everyone has a right to believe whatever they want to believe; to worship (or not) as they wish. The one caveat is that your beliefs and your worshiping are yours, not everyone else’s. Talk about them to others if you (and they) wish, but don’t preach. Express your views on morality, but don’t seek to impose your morality upon others.
This also goes for your actions. If you believe that prayer alone can cure you, great. Just don’t insist on only using prayer when your child or someone else you love is ill. If they are receiving medical treatment and you think prayer will help, fine. But don’t insist that god will save your loved one by prayer alone because plenty of people have died needlessly because prayer was substituted for sound medical treatment.
Also, don’t try to legislate your morality so that it is imposed upon all of us. The current GOP/Religious Right’s war against women and LGTB’s is a perfect example. It is religion that causes the party of small government that does not intrude into our private lives to perpatrate the hypocrisy of passing laws that intrude into the most private parts of our lives: reproductive rights and the right to chose who to love and who to commit your life to.
It has often been said that religion cause good people to do terrible things. History certainly seems to bear this out. The imposition of Islam upon those that they conquered; the crusades where the Christian did the same to the Muslims and Jews; the hundreds of years of wars and the burning of thousands at the stake over differing versions of Christianity; the thousands of Muslim and Hindus killed in the partitioning of India.
So, feel free to hold your beliefs dear to you. Worship as you wish. But, keep these things out of the public sphere where they can do no harm, or infringe upon the rights of the rest of us.
Jesus Loves Me, This I Know Because My Wallet Tells Me So
James Inahoff is a U.S. Senator. He is also a climate change denier. He has claimed in the past that he is against the theory of anthropogenic global warming because the Bible says that it can’t happen. He explained this by quoting Genesis 8:22:
“…as long as the earth remains there will be springtime and harvest, cold and heat, winter and summer, day and night.”
His reasoning was that God has promised to keep the climate stable. There would be spring, winter and summer. If you read this verse carefully and accept his argument, you will quickly find that this “promise” was void as soon as it was given. Why? The area around the earth’s equator essentially has no seasons. The temperatures there are stable year round. Springtime, winter and summer are all the same. So much for seasons. This isn’t a small area either. The Torrid Zone, which is the area of earth around the equator and which has the same basic climate is over 126,000,000 sq. km. It also contains a large percentage of the world’s population.
As stupid as Senator Inahoff’s biblical based beliefs about why there can’t be anthropogenic global warming is, it is also a lie meant to justify the real reason the senator and others like him are against the theory of climate change. The climate deniers use the Bible to support their case in a cynical attempt to sway the majority of American’s who believe in the Bible.
The reason this explanation is a lie can be found in a statement by James Inahoff to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow last month. When discussing global warming, the senator said,
“I was actually on your side of this issue when I was chairing that committee and I first heard about this. I thought it must be true until I found out what it cost.”
This is par for the course for the GOP and the religious right. They use the Bible to support the real reason they are against global warming; Money. Specifically, profits for corporations in which they have an a professional or financial interest. They apply the same tactic to other issued like , clean air initiatives, environmental conversation, or oil drilling, as well as social issues such as universal health care, welfare, school lunches, and student loans.
They use religion to support and pass legislation that is anti-science, anti-poor, anti-woman, and racist when the real reason they support these views is greed.
Jesus is quoted in their Bible as saying that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle that for a rich man to enter into heaven. I don’t hear them throwing that particular quote, or other’s like it, around very much. Their cynical use of the Bible to support their greed is nothing new, but it is having a dangerous and frightening effect upon society, and the very earth we live on.
The American Taliban: For Real
Many writers and bloggers have used the term, “American Taliban”, over the past decade or so as a metaphor for the growing influence of the religious right in politics and the public sphere. It is meant to highlight those on the right who would like to see everyone live by their religious standards. It has often been used as hyperbole in order to show the potential dangers of letting religion hijack the political process in this country. Until now. It is hyperbole no longer, but a frightening fact.
In Arizona, the state legislature is considering a bill that could require that employees provide proof to their employers that any contraceptives they use are proscribed for medical reasons.
Arizona House Bill 2625, authored by Majority Whip Debbie Lesko, R-Glendale, would permit employers to ask their employees for proof of medical prescription if they seek contraceptives for non-reproductive purposes, such as hormone control or acne treatment.
“I believe we live in America. We don’t live in the Soviet Union,” Lesko said. “So, government should not be telling the organizations or mom and pop employers to do something against their moral beliefs.” *
This is a blatant attempt by the religious right to force their views on everyone else. Given that this law and other similar ones being passed by state legislatures across the country, this is no longer the propagation of fanatic religious ideology in principle, but in practice. This is the real American Taliban.
The Taliban in Afganistan forced their version of Islamic Shari’a law, based upon their reading go the Quran, upon the people of that country. Not only could women not control what happened to their own bodies, they were forbidden to vote, to receive an education, and to even go outside without covering themselves from head to toe in burkas. Women who were suspected of committing adultery were stoned to death or beheaded.
This is, of course, extreme, but at its core it is no different than the American Taliban who wish to enforce their Christian shari’a law, based on the Bible, upon the rest of us. Many of the leaders and prominent members of the religious right have stated unequivocally that their goal is nothing less than to turn this country into a Christian nation and replace the U.S. Constitution with the Bible as the guiding document of our laws and government.
Some of these same people have called for the imprisonment, or even death, of homosexuals, and the complete and total submission of women to men. They call for the abandonment of science and reason, the guiding principles of which have made this country the world power it is today. They would joyfully lead us to become a population of ignorant servants to their god who will quickly fall behind the rest of the world in technology, just as other great civilizations such as Rome, Egypt, and Persia have done after religious dogma replaced education and reason.
If you think I am being alarmist, think again. Laws have already been passed to force women to submit to humiliating medical examinations in order to get an abortion, to force the teaching of religious dogma in place of science in classrooms, and to force doctors to lie to women about the health of their unborn child. These laws are real and they are just the beginning, unless we, as voters, put a stop to it.
For you Christian women out there, if you ever felt sorry for the poor women of Afghanistan under the Taliban, or the Ayatollahs in Iran, just look no further than these examples to see what your life could eventually be like if the American Taliban continue to push their fanatical agenda upon the American people.
Wether you believe that this country was found upon Christianity or not, you can’t deny that it was built upon the idea of religious freedom. Religious freedom means not just being able to practice your own religion and to live your life as your personal set of morals tell you, it also means freedom from having to bend to others’ particular religious beliefs. You would never want someone to tell you how you can worship or live your life, but that is exactly what the American Taliban is trying to accomplish. Unfortunately, alarmingly, they are starting to succeed.
Paying For Sex With Your Taxes
Rush Limbaugh has sparked an intense controversy with his sexist, misogynistic, and immoral statements about Sandra Fluke’s testimony supporting mandated provision of contraceptives by health insurers. Besides his horrendous comments and personal attacks against Sandra Fluke, his comments also begat a strange, terribly misinformed notion that American taxpayers are paying for women to get free contraception, in essence, we are all paying for women to have sex.
First of all, the foundation of this argument is totally bogus. Taxpayers are not paying for anything here. Insurers are paying for it. These insurers pass the cost of free contraception (just as they do free pre-natal care, yearly physicals, etc) onto employers in the form of insurance premiums. The employers then pay their portion of the premiums and the employee pays their’s. Nowhere does the taxpayer pay one penny for contraceptives, except for government programs like Medicaid.
So Limbaugh’s argument, which is being taken up by the religious right, is false. I might give him and others the benefit of doubt that they are just clueless, but I find it hard to believe that anyone in the public sphere, especially legislators, are ignorant of the reality. They are simple liars, lying to promote their particular political agendas.
But, for sake of argument, let’s assume that Limbaugh’s argument it valid and that taxpayer money is being spent to provide contraceptives. If that is the case, then it is no different than paying for Viagra for old, impotent men. Why should we pay for these men to have sex? There isn’t even any corollary argument for it, as with contraceptive. Contraceptives prevent pregnancy, STDs (in the case of condoms), help some women regulate periods and treat ovarian cysts. Viagra has no other benefit except to give a man a hard-on. So all these aging white men can stop getting viagra at taxpayer expense. I don’t know about you, but I sure don’t want to pay for Rush Limbaugh to have sex, never mind actually watching him do it on video (as he suggested Sandra Fluke do).
Of course, the above argument is just a spurious as Limbaugh’s. The real lesson here is that this is one more attempt by privileged men to control women. The latest outrage is taking place in Arizona (that hotbed of radical religious inspired insanity). Read Rebecca Watson’s take on the new law that would force doctors to lie to their female patients about the health of their unborn child.
If you don’t think that there is a war on women being waged by the religious right and the GOP (which have become one and the same), there have been dozens of similar attempts to allow the state to control a woman’s body. For a party that claims that they are for less government and putting a stop to government’s intrusion into our personal lives, they sure don’t seem to think that applies to women. I supposed that as long as the government isn’t trying to regulate your guns or property, everything else is fair game.
Religious Freedom: Your Rights Are Special; Your Religion Is Not
No one’s beliefs are beyond question or criticism. Insisting on special special status for your religious beliefs has nothing to do with your freedom of religion and everything to do with your belief that your religion is somehow better than everyone else’s. You have the freedom to believe what you choose and to live your life accordingly, unless you try to infringe upon the rights of others. You do not have the freedom to insist that everyone else live by your beliefs.
I respect your right to believe as you wish but that respect only goes as far as me not trying to stop you from believing as you do, or insist that you believe as I do. That respect does not include respect for your religion’s ideas, concepts, or particular moral code.
I expect you to question my beliefs and to challenge them. I have no problems or qualms accepting your challenges to my beliefs. I believe that if we don’t constantly question, we stagnate, then we stop learning and stop growing. I question everything, even my own beliefs, constantly. This brings a deeper understanding of myself and the world around me.
You, on the other hand, recoil in dismay when your beliefs are questioned and claim that you are being persecuted and that your right to freedom of religion is being infringed upon. You are wrong. Your beliefs are being questions, challenged, and even ridiculed. Your right to believe them are not being questioned. Your right to practice your beliefs and to worship are not being questioned.
Freedom of religion does not give your the right to insist that every public meeting or event be preceded with a prayer to your god. It does not give you the right to insist that laws be passed to restrict the actions and speech of others not of your faith just because they don’t hold to the same moral beliefs as you. Freedom of religion, as stated in the U.S. Constitution, also implies the freedom to have different religions, or even freedom from religion. It implies freedom of conscience.
The Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution was enacted in order to prevent this country becoming a theocracy, as were most countries of Europe at the time, where Kings reigned by the grace of God. The Founding Fathers, in whose memories of the vicious religious wars of scant generations past were still a powerful and terrible memory, created the Establishment Clause to forestall just such terrible religious inspired strife in this country.
Today we see our society polarized by religiously motivated groups on the right who would push their vision of a Christian nation under their particular god upon all of us. Their titular political arm, the Republican party, which once fought against religiously supported slavery, has now become a tool for those who breed hatred against, homosexuals, the poor, women, and the non-christian or non-religious. Their justification? Their religion. Their Bible.
Their belief that their Bible tells them that homosexuality is a sin worthy of death(1) that the poor will always be with us(2) and will be rewarded in heaven(3) and therefore somehow can be ignored here on earth); that women must be silent(4) and submit to their husbands(5). They claim that their god is a god of love and mercy. Their Bible, their words, and their actions show otherwise; that their God is an angry, merciless, and vengeful god and that they are a bigoted, racist, misogynistic people who use their holy book to foist their twisted view of morality on the rest of us.
We all have the right to our own religion, our own beliefs. We all have the right to worship as we wish. We do not have the right, none of us, is to have our beliefs put up on a pedestal that is above question, challenge or even ridicule. What none of us has is the privilege of having our special religious beliefs, modes of worship, and morals elevated above those of anyone else. The freedom of religion granted by the U.S. Constitution implies, above all, equality of all beliefs, where no one belief or religion, especially that of majority, is above any other.
1 Leviticus 18 and 20
2 Matthew 26:11, Mark 14:7, John 12:8
3 Matthew 5:3, Luke 6:20
4 1 Corinthians 14:34
5 1 Peter 3:5
A Follow Up
This is a follow up to my post yesterday about the current contraceptive controversy. Jen McCreight has an interesting post on her blog about the whole contraceptive kurfulfle, It is opinion from Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia on a religious freedom case in a situation similar to that of the Catholic Church and others with the current contraceptive mandate of the Obama administrator. Just in case you don’t feel like reading it (although you really should), he definitely did not find this kind of issue to be a religious freedom issue.
Religion Gets A Pass. Again
Once again, religion in the U.S. gets a free pass. As you probably know, the Obama administration recently required all employers to offer free contraceptives as part of their employee health plans. This included religious employers who employe people who are not of that particular faith or are non-religious. This created a firestorm of protest from churches across the country, Catholic and Protestant. After weeks of outrage and complaints, the President announced that he will seek to allow religious employers to pass on the responsibility, and the cost, of providing contraceptives onto the insurance companies.
Now, I’m no economist, but it seems pretty obvious that the insurance companies aren’t going to like this very much. The result will probably be higher premiums, which religious employers will likely pass onto their employees. This means that people who are employed by religious organizations will be forced to pay more for “free” contraceptives. This despite the fact that religious organizations and churches are already allowed to operate tax free, even if they don’t use their money for charitable purposes, unlike other non-profits. Now they get to avoid the responsibility for the cost of contraceptives, unlike every other employer in the country.
The religious organizations claim that the rule to provide free contraceptives are an infringement of their constitutional right to religious freedom. This is blatantly bullshit. What it is in reality is an infringement upon their centuries old privileges. What if a white supremacist church, who believe that the Bible condones discrimination agains blacks and Jews, claimed that they didn’t have to provide health insurance for black and Jewish employees (assuming that they would employ them in the first place)? This would never be allowed, as it is blatantly discriminatory and against the law. Yet we allow churches to subtly discriminate against women who want, or sometimes even need, contraceptives. Not only do we them to discriminate against their employees (mostly women), but we allow them to pass on the cost of providing them as well.
The whole compromise it just a thin sheen of slime that allows religious groups to pretend that they aren’t providing contraceptives. Everyone is praising this sham as a great compromise that protects religious freedom, when what it really does is violate the rights of employees of theses organizations to equal access under the law.
I sincerely hope that someone brings a legal challenge to this and see how it plays out in the courts. Even if unsuccessful it will at least, hopefully, publicly shame these religious groups who continue to bend the law to allow them to perpetuate their immoral patriarchal privileges.
Christianity, The Religion of Hate
One Man’s Blog posted about a Fox News story describing a lawsuit to prevent a cross from being erected within the World Trade Center memorial without equal opportunity for memorials of other faiths. The comments on the Fox News site afterwards were filled with hate against atheists with the wish to kill all atheists, along with rape and other violence.
My favorite (if you can call it that) comment came from Sindy Clock who wrote,
“I love Jesus, and the cross and if you don’t, I hope someone rapes you.”
I’ve read the Bible through, several times. I studied the Bible on my own for years before finally dispensing with religion. I am pretty sure I never read about Jesus ever telling anyone that if they didn’t believe in him that they should be raped.
Michael Perii had this to say,
“these people are f’ing scum of the earth. can we start killing them now? few groups fill me with more hatred than atheists.”
Apparently, Michael seems to have forgotten that passage where Jesus tells his followers that they should love their enemies (granted, we aren’t his enemy, he seems to have made us his).
Hanns Anderson has a, well, interesting take on this:
“atheist has no rights a snail has more rights than a atheist has I say throw them out to the sharks let them eat them like the ate bin laden”
Apparently, being a Christian doesn’t require learning how to spell, punctuate, or even write at a grade school level.
Finally, Eileen Rourke thinks that atheists,
“…should go live in another country. You have taken enough of my rights away.”
This last comment is so common among Christians. Many Christians feel that their rights are being infringed upon because some of us dare to insist on equality, not just for ourselves, but for everyone.
Christians make up more than 70% of the citizens of this country. It isn’t their rights that are being eroded, it is their privileges. Being able to put crosses up where ever you want, to expect everyone else to pray to your god, is not a right. It is a privilege, and one that no one in a free and democratic society should be allowed to have.
These comments are not an aberration. We see these kind of comments constantly whenever their Christian privileges are questioned. For a group of people who like to preach about how their Jesus a god of love, they sure love to hate.
Pro Life – A Satanic Plot
Edwin Kagin beautifully defends a woman’s right to choose in this tongue-in-cheek piece. It is funny, but powerful. Read it.
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