Skepticism, Religion Archive

Wednesday, September 28, 2016

2016 Texas Republican Platform - Part 5, Environment / Climate Change

Republican ElephantThis entry is part of a series taking a look at the latest Texas Republican Party Platform. For a list of all entries in this series, go to the Introduction. Today, I'm going to look at their planks on climate change and environmentalism.

Climate change is arguably the most important issue facing the nation and the world. That's not to say other threats like terrorism aren't also big and deserving of attention, but they don't have the same catastrophic global effects.

Climate change is a threat globally, and a national security threat domestically, with the potential to cause huge amounts of upheaval, disruption, and suffering. And it's not some far off threat. Effects are already being noticed, with more severe weather patterns and natural disasters. Refusing to take action on climate change is both a moral failing and political dereliction of duty.

So, with such a huge issue, you'd expect it to play prominently in any serious political party. You'd expect it to be a major portion of their platform, explaining just how they expect to deal with such a monumental challenge. How do Texas Republicans deal with it? One freakin' paragraph, that doesn't even say how they would address the issue, but calls into question whether it's a real issue at all! Here's the plank, the one and only plank in the whole platform that mentioned climate change:

Protection from Extreme Environmentalists- We oppose environmentalism that obstructs legitimate business interests and private property use, including the regulatory taking of property by governmental agencies. We oppose the abuse of the Endangered Species Act to confiscate and limit the use of personal property and infringement on property owner's livelihood. "Climate Change" is a political agenda promoted to control every aspect of our lives. We support the defunding of "climate justice" initiatives and the abolition of the Environmental Protection Agency and repeal of the Endangered Species Act. [emphasis mine]

That whole thing is bad, but take a look at that part in bold. This is deep into paranoid conspiracy theory territory. Climate change is real, and is a grave threat to society. To dismiss all the evidence in support of climate change and to call it a 'political agenda' is absurd.

The other parts are bad, but hardly surprising. The Republican Party in general just seem to have a problem with environmentalism, or any of the federal agencies that work to help preserve the environment (though of course, they couch it in language of private property and over-regulation).


I guess you could argue that even though the above plank was the only one that mentioned 'climate change', these next two do deal with the topic. But again, they're not encouraging. They're calls to inaction, without any proposal on how to address the issue:

Carbon Dioxide- We oppose all efforts to classify carbon dioxide as a pollutant.
Cap and Trade- We oppose the implementation of any cap and trade (aka "Cap and Tax") system through legislation or regulation.

And as I've written before, the Republican opposition to Cap and Trade is especially irritating because it was a Republican proposal to begin with - a free market method of addressing carbon emissions rather than overly restrictive government regulation.

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Honestly, there are lots of very, very bad sections of this whole platform, but this is the worst. Climate change is the type of existential threat that merits people becoming single issue voters. It's making nations uninhabitable, and could literally change the map. For a political party to actually call the reality of it into question and imply that it's nothing more than 'a political agenda' goes beyond mere irresponsibility. It's reprehensible, and should disqualify the Republican party in the minds of all thinking people.


More info: I've written several times about climate change before. Phil Plait of the Bad Astronomy blog also has quite a bit. Here are links to several entries from Plait, followed by some of the ones I've written.

Climate Change Links on Bad Astronomy:

Climate Change Links on This Site:


Continue to Part 6, Civil Rights

 

Tuesday, September 20, 2016

Is Evolution Falsifiable?

Is the March of Progress InevitableI came across the following Quora question, Is the theory of evolution unfalsifiable?. Although I'm not sure the question was asked in good faith, it's still an interesting question to think about. Here was my response.

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All good science should in principle be falsifiable. The problem is that some fields become so well backed up by evidence, it's hard to conceive how they could be falsified short of ludicrous conspiracy theories or Matrix like scenarios.

For example, take the roughly spherical shape of the Earth. For all intents and purposes, this is a concept that has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt. You can find multiple Quora threads dealing with flat earth 'theories', such as this one, Let's say I don't believe the world is round. How can one prove the world is round to me?, which lists some of this overwhelming evidence in support of the Earth's true shape. It's really hard to conceive how this concept could be falsified given all that we know. It would take a conspiracy on par with The Truman Show, where everyone we thought we knew was an actor, and we had been misled our entire lives, or an equally ludicrous scenario like the Matrix, where we were living in a simulated reality not at all like the reality outside the simulation. In short, falsifying the roughly spherical shape of the Earth would entail a shake up so huge that we couldn't trust anything we thought we knew about the world.

Evolution in broad stroke approaches that level of certainty. Between biochemistry, biogeography, comparative anatomy, comparative embryology, molecular biology, paleontology, genetics, observed instances, and other lines of evidence, it's really hard to conceive of how the concept could be falsified.

One of the flip answers you'll often hear is rabbits in the Precambrian, supposedly a response from J.B.S. Haldane when asked what evidence he thought would falsify evolutionary theory. But to return temporarily to the flat Earth example, that's like saying that a photograph of a disc world from space would be evidence to falsify round world theory. But honestly, would the image below be enough to convince you that the world was flat? Or would you suspect Photoshop or some other type of hoax?

Flat Earth Illustration

So even if fossil rabbits were claimed to be found in Precambrian deposits, they would be investigated and considered very extensively before being taken as evidence overturning evolution. Could they be hoaxes? Some type of disturbance to the geological column in that locale? A section of Precambrian deposits that were temporarily exposed long enough for some poor ancient rabbit to die and become fossilized there? To be honest, given the vast other data in support of evolution, a single Precambrian fossil rabbit would probably be chalked up to an unexplainable anomaly.

But, supposing more out of place fossils were found than just a single anomaly, or you could find evidence of huge conspiracies among all the world's biologists past and present lying about the evidence for evolution, or you could find evidence for the Matrix and that the real world is far different from this simulation that we're living in, then you might have something in the way of falsifying evolution.

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More Info - I included a link to a Quora thread in the original answer, and I've written about the topic numerous times, myself. So, here are links to that Quora thread and a few of entries I've written.

Image Source 1: Wikipedia, with further editing by me.

Image Source 2: Pinterest - It's actually all over the place without attribution, so I doubt that I've actually found the original. If anyone knows the actual original source, please let me know.

Friday, September 16, 2016

2016 Texas Republican Platform - Part 2, Religion

Republican ElephantThis entry is part of a series taking a look at the latest Texas Republican Party Platform. For a list of all entries in this series, go to the Introduction. Today's entry will focus on planks having to do with religion. Actually, because of how infused the entire platform is with religion, this entry will only focus on some of the planks having to do with religion. Others made more sense to discuss in other sections of this series.

The very first statement of this platform got off to a bad start right from the get go:

Affirming our belief in God...

Government and politics should have nothing to do with religion, other than affirming the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of religion. Government is a secular institution, and there's no need at all to bring religion into it. In fact, when government represents a multicultural society with a mix of religious beliefs, it's positively better to leave religion out of politics. But here, in the very opening phrase, Texas Republicans are mixing religion and politics. In fact, just doing a quick word search, they mention 'God' 14 times, 'Judeo-Christian' 4 times, and 'Bible' twice. That's an awful lot of religious language for an institution that shouldn't be based on religion.


Judeo-Christian Nation- As America is a nation under God, founded on Judeo-Christian principles, we affirm the constitutional right of all individuals to worship as they choose.

America was NOT founded on Judeo-Christian principles, or at least nothing specifically Judeo-Christian that's unique from other cultures. If anything, the unique principles of the USA were Enlightenment values. You only need look as far as our nation's founding document, the Constitution, which makes no religious references, other than the convention of using 'Year of our Lord' for the date, and explicitly prohibiting religious tests for public office, plus the separation of church and state once you get to the amendments. (And if using 'Year of our Lord' or 'A.D.' somehow indicates support of Christianity, then I suppose the names of the days of the week indicate support of Norse gods.)

I know some people are fond of pointing to the Declaration of Independence (even though it's not the founding document of our nation) and the passage about men being "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights", but are they really that ignorant of history? I mean, the Declaration was written by Thomas Jefferson for crying out loud - the same man who made his own Bible by eliminating all the miracles of Jesus and other supernatural elements because he didn't believe them. He was a deist, not a Christian. And 'their Creator' is a typical deistic phrase, not a Christian one.

More generally, basic prohibitions against theft and murder and other types of crime are present in just about all societies. And codifying them into law goes back at least to the Code of Hammurabi (who wasn't Jewish, and certainly wasn't Christian given that he was alive roughly 1700 years BC). There's nothing in the Bible about structuring a government with bicameral legislatures. In fact, a democratic republic is more Greco-Roman in heritage. That First Amendment that we hold in such high regard (and rightly so) is actually counter to the First Commandment - we've actually guaranteed in the founding document of our nation that people can, in fact, have other gods before Yahweh.

And you don't just have to take my word for it. Go read the Treaty of Tripoli. This was a treaty written and ratified in 1796-1797, less than a decade after the founding of the USA (as determined by the ratification of the Constitution), under the presidency of John Adams. Everyone involved could rightly be called a member of the Founding Fathers. And the treaty was passed unanimously by the Senate. Not only that, they made it a point to take a roll to record the votes of everyone present. They wanted history to remember them approving this treaty. Article 11 states, and I'll emphasize it to make sure it doesn't get missed, "As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion...". That's a pretty clear statement from the Founders themselves that the U.S. is not a Christian nation.

(I've covered this idea of America as a Christian nation several times before if you're interested in more detail. Probably the three most relevant previous entries are Response to an Editorial by Pat Boone, Ben Carson - On the Issues, Part IV - Faith in Society, and A Response to Ben Carson's Comments on Navy Bible Kerfuffle.)

Safeguarding Religious Liberties- We affirm that the public acknowledgement of God is undeniable in our history and is vital to our freedom, prosperity, and strength. We pledge our influence toward a return to the original intent of the 1st Amendment and toward dispelling the myth of separation of church and state. Tax deductions for charitable contributions are not government subsidies and give no authority for government oversight. Americans should be free to express their religious beliefs, including prayer in public places. We urge the legislature to increase the ability of faith based institutions and other organizations to assist the needy and to reduce regulation of such organizations. We also support vigorously protecting the rights of commercial establishments to refuse to provide any service or product that would infringe upon freedom of conscience of religious expression of the commercial establishments as stated in the 1st Amendment.

Just because the First Amendment doesn't literally contain the words 'separation of church and state' doesn't mean that the concept is a myth. I mean, just read the dang thing, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..." So, government can neither support nor interfere with religion. That sounds an awful lot like separation to me. And it's not like the term, 'separation of church and state', is some revisionist invention of liberals. It was coined by Thomas Jefferson himself, back in 1802 in a letter to the Danbury Baptists. Here's the relevant portion of the letter.

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof", thus building a wall of separation between Church & State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties. [emphasis mine]

Regarding the latter portions of the plank, I have to admit that I get tired of people trying to use religion as an excuse to break the law. Yes, you should have freedom to practice your religion how you see fit, unless doing so causes harm to other people. As an extreme example, you can't claim to belong to a religion that promotes theft, and that therefore you can't go to jail for stealing things. You still have to follow the law. Less extreme, you can't claim that insurance is 'gambling', so you're not going to provide it to your employees, or that taxes are immoral, so you're not going to pay them. Nor can you deny other obligations to employees or customers just because you personally don't like something about those obligations. If it's a law, you still have to follow it.


Protection for Religious Institutions- We believe religious institutions have the freedom to recognize and perform only those marriages that are consistent with their doctrine.

Okay.... And I believe I should have the freedom to recognize and say that the sky is blue. It seems odd to make a plank that's obvious to everybody and not an actual political issue.

Okay, maybe there is some concern that individuals will sue churches over this issue, but I haven't heard of any mainstream politicians pushing for legislation that would violate churches' First Amendment rights.

(more info - and I feel a little dirty just linking to them - Family Research Council - Can Pastors and Churches Be Forced to Perform Same-Sex Marriages?)


Family Values- We support the affirmation of traditional Judeo-Christian family values and oppose the continued assault on those values.

Most everybody supports 'family values', whether they're Christian or not. So if the Republicans are referring to an assault, I can only assume they mean against the more bigoted quarters of Christianity who oppose marriage equality and other gay rights, want to see women be second class citizens, want to take away women's right to bodily autonomy, and other similar positions. And if those are the 'Judeo-Christian' values they're referring to (which aren't shared by all religious people), then no, they don't deserve respect. Those values absolutely deserve to be assaulted by everyone with respect for their fellow human beings.


Empowering Local Entities Concerning Religious Meetings- We support the right of local entities to determine their own policies regarding religious clubs and meetings on all properties owned by the same, without interference.

If by 'local entities', they mean private companies or organizations, then sure, that's their right. I don't know of anyone, certainly not mainstream politicians, who would argue against that. But if they mean local governments, then no, local governments have to follow the First Amendment just like the federal government, and can't endorse particular religions (though they can allow religious uses of facilities as long as they open it up to all religions, and don't favor any particular religion).

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This whole issue of entangling politics with religion is one of the big problems with the current Republican party. Not only is it counter to the First Amendment, but it wouldn't be a good idea even if there was no First Amendment. Laws should have reasonable secular reasons, especially in a society where not everybody shares the same religious beliefs. And it's frustrating on top of that to see their mangling of history to try to support their views.

Continue to Part 3, Politics & Government

 

Tuesday, September 6, 2016

Putting the Bible and Other Ancient Books in Perspective

Old Book Bindings, from Wikimedia CommonsI came across a question on Quora this week, Why do atheists not believe a book that was written 2000 years ago but believe in what scientists say happened 2.5 million years ago?. Now, I think it's safe to say that the questioner had one particular book in mind, but I decided to interpret and answer the question in good faith.

I have two related entries that might be of interest, Confidence in Scientific Knowledge and Confidence in Historical Knowledge. As their titles suggest, they focus on where my confidence in science in particular comes from. But for this Quora answer, I focused on the reliability of ancient books and putting them into perspective. Below is my answer in full, slightly edited, with a few footnotes not included on Quora.

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I've read several books or excerpts of books that are on the order of hundreds to thousands of years old - the entire Bible, the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the Tao Te Ching, portions of the Popol Vuh, The Conquest of Gaul, The Travels of Marco Polo, and probably a few more I'm forgetting (I also just started on the Buddhavacana). They can be very interesting and offer fascinating links to the actual words and communications from ancient peoples*. But you have to take them for what they are. The standards of scholarship were different, more limited travel and communication made it harder to substantiate stories, and the aims of many of these books were different from the modern day goal (not always achieved) of an unbiased presentation of facts. Moreover, many of these books incorporate their culture's mythologies to greater or lesser degrees, sometimes mingling mythology with history with little distinction.

So, for example, when I read Marco Polo's Travels, I take it as a reasonably accurate description of what portions of Asia were like 700 years ago, but when he describes a bird "so strong that it will seize an elephant in its talons and carry him high into the air and drop him so that he is smashed to pieces", I think he's given in to exaggeration or believing travelers tales. Or when I read the Conquest of Gaul, I have to keep in mind that it wasn't an unbiased historian documenting the war, but a piece of propaganda written by Caesar himself to try to increase his popularity back in Rome. And when it comes to things like human origins, whether it's the Mayans writing that the gods tried making humans out of clay then wood before getting it right on the third try with corn, the Greeks writing that Prometheus and Athena teamed up to make man out of mud before Zeus created the first woman, Pandora, as a punishment for man, or the Hebrews writing about the first man being molded from clay in the Garden of Eden and a woman being made from his rib, I chalk them all up to those cultures' mythologies because they just didn't know any better**.

I like Jerry Coyne's definition of science broadly construed, "the use of reason, empirical observation, doubt, and testing as a way of acquiring knowledge." (source) It's not just running experiments in labs, but any field of inquiry where you use evidence and reason to try to figure out what's most likely to be true, including history. All lines of evidence are open to scientific inquiry, but those lines of evidence have to be weighed against other forms of evidence and evaluated as to how reliable they are. So, 2000 year old books do count as a form of evidence to be incorporated into scientific study. But, they have all those issues I identified above, meaning that they can't just be accepted unquestioningly as ultimate authorities. Each book or manuscript is one piece of evidence to be included among all the other ancient writings, archaeological digs, artifacts, and other forms of evidence about the past.

When it comes to understanding what was happening 2.5 million years ago, it's really not even a question of which is more reliable between ancient books and modern scientific knowledge, and it seems silly to even pose the question. All those thousands of year old books were written in a pre-scientific age when people just didn't have the same understanding as we do now. It's not that we're any smarter in the modern age. We've just built on the knowledge of all those generations before us, getting more and more knowledge and learning the best ways to do things. I mean, as a species, we had to start from scratch, not knowing anything about the geologically ancient history of the planet (or universe), and build to where we are now. We wouldn't have the knowledge or framework we do now if it wasn't for all those ancient philosophers laying the groundwork and building a philosophical tradition. And we certainly don't know everything now - future generations will build on our current knowledge (hopefully) for even greater insights in the future.

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*It's this connection to the past that's one of my main motivations for wanting to read ancient writings. I've been to ancient ruins in various locations - Chichén Itzá, Stonehenge, various castles, the Colosseum, and more. And while ruins like that are always fascinating, and sometimes even give me goosebumps, they're silent. The ancient people who lived there no longer have a voice... EXCEPT for the few writings from their eras that have survived to the present. So writings like the Bible, Book of the Dead, Tao Te Ching, Popol Vuh, and Buddhavacana may be biased or full of mythology, but they're direct connections to those ancient peoples. We can reach out across the millennia and still hear some of their words. (Not that it will stop me from snickering at the sillier portions of those books.)

**Granted, you could argue for a figurative or allegorical interpretation of these creation myths, and that's fine if that's what you want to do. Just don't pretend that they're literal accounts of the history of the planet, or that pre-scientific writing from hundreds or thousands of years ago can somehow overturn the vast mountains of evidence in support of things like the Big Bang or universal common descent.

Thursday, August 25, 2016

Religious People Aren't Stupid, So Why Do They Believe?

The Out Campaign: Scarlet Letter of AtheismI came across the following question on Quora, Is it bad to think people who believe in god are stupid?. I wrote what I thought was a good answer, though it hasn't gained as much traction as some of my other answers on the site. At any rate, below is my answer (slightly edited), which addresses not just why religious people have mistaken beliefs, but why all of us have mistaken beliefs.

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Yes. It is bad to think that people who believe in gods are stupid.

People have all kinds of beliefs that they accepted at some time in their lives on the basis of authority and haven't gone back to re-examine. If they're in a culture that reinforces those beliefs or holds them up as virtues, it may be even harder for the person to examine them critically. And while having these kinds of un-examined beliefs may be bad, we all do it to some extent, so there's no reason to single out one particular kind of belief as marking that person as stupid.

Let's take a non-controversial bit of knowledge. Atoms are composed of subatomic particles, such as protons, neutrons, and electrons, some which are composed of even smaller particles. Most educated people know that, but most educated people accept it on the authority of science without understanding the evidence for how we know that. Maybe you happen to like physics so you actually do know that one, but how many people actually know and understand the evidence for how we know the earth revolves around the Sun, or understanding the structure of the Milky Way, or how to do isochron dating to know the ages of geologic layers, or understand aerodynamics well enough to explain how insects fly, or the evidence for why we believe Hannibal was a real historic figure, or actually understand evolution and the mechanisms behind it? Sure, if you're so inclined, you can delve into any particular subject to examine the evidence and theories and truly understand it. But the fact of the matter is that the totality of human knowledge is way too vast for any single person to apply that type of effort to everything. So, we learn what sources we can more or less trust, and tend to accept what we learn from those sources. Hopefully, it's not completely unquestioning acceptance. But I know that when I read articles in Encyclopedias, the claims go into my 'probably true until demonstrated false' mental bin instead of my 'probably false until demonstrated true' or 'grain of salt' mental bins.

Most people who believe in gods were raised that way. Almost from the time they could talk, they've heard claims from people they trust about the nature of gods and their religion - parents, relatives, friends, peers, etc. If their parents are even moderately devout, they'll probably get this reinforced every week when they go to church and hear these claims over and over from trusted priests, see an entire community of like minded believers, and quite possibly go to Sunday school to get detailed lessons from teachers. This is similar to the way children learn most everything, from formal education, to rules for sports and games, to unspoken rules of society. Why would we expect them to differentiate when it comes to this one particular topic?

Hopefully as people mature, they do develop critical thinking skills, and do re-examine many of their beliefs. But even that is a learned skill, not just 'intelligence'. Just like you wouldn't call someone stupid who couldn't do an indefinite integral if they'd never had a chance to study calculus, you shouldn't call someone stupid who doesn't practice critical thinking and skepticism if they've never been taught to think that way, or taught about all the cognitive biases that can affect what we think we know.

Plus, even for people who do learn those skills, it's awfully optimistic to expect them to apply that type of critical examination to everything they've been taught, for the simple fact I mentioned above, that there's just too much to know and not enough time to study it all in detail. And if they're still immersed in a community where everyone around them just 'knows' certain beliefs, it's going to be that much harder for them to question those beliefs, whether it's gods, urban legends, or popular misconceptions (like the common misapplication of Bernoulli's principle to describe airplane wings).

So, I guess the short answer is that people who believe in gods may be mistaken, but that's just one thing they're mistaken about, and we're all mistaken about plenty of things. And the way most religious people came to be mistaken about gods is the same way most of us have come to be mistaken about those other things. So, unless everybody who has mistaken beliefs is stupid (which would be pretty much everybody), there's no reason to single out the mistaken belief about gods as marking a person as stupid.

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Note 1: Perhaps an easier way to answer this would have just been by example, as there are plenty of respected intelligent people who believe in gods - way too many to list. Since I personally have a keen amateur interest in evolutionary biology, I'll mention Ken Miller as an example of an intelligent evolutionary biologist who believes in a god. Note also (and perhaps obviously), that you can find plenty of respected intelligent people who don't believe in gods - also way too many to list. So, the examples show that intelligent people can have varying beliefs. I thought it would be more interesting to look at how people can come to have mistaken beliefs.

Note 2: Obviously from my answer, I'm an atheist and answering from the assumption that there are no gods. Of course, it's possible that's one of my mistaken beliefs about the world. But, given the number of mutually contradictory religions, the majority of people are necessarily wrong at least about the nature of gods. i.e. Even if the Hindus were right, it wouldn't be just us atheists who were wrong, but also the Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, and all the other non-Hindus.

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