Paxton's Journey

SAB: An Introduction

Those who know I'm an atheist may find it somewhat unlikely that one of my favorite websites is about the Bible.  As someone who engages in occasional, ill-advised debates with fundamentalists, however, there is no more useful site than the Skeptics Annotated Bible.

The SAB is an essential resource for everything that's wrong about the Bible, and if you don't think there's much wrong with the Bible, you should peruse the SAB a bit.  The site is, as the name implies, the entire Bible (King James version) with notes pointing out certain little gems within the scripture.

The notes are organized into categories: absurdity, injustice, cruelty and violence, intolerance, contradictions, family values, women, interpretation, science and history, good stuff, sex, prophesy, language, and homosexuality.  It should also be pointed out that the site also has similar treatments for the Quran and the Book of Mormon.  Hopefully, they'll also cover the Bhagavad gita and the Tibetan Book of the Dead before they're done.

As part of a new series, I will post every Sunday with a scripture upon which to meditate.  Included with this scripture, I will include some note from the SAB.  I would like to encourage believers to comment and tell me why the scripture in question is not as freaking insane as it sounds.

One wrinkle in these discussions comes from the fact that Christians have varying degrees of faith in the validity of the Bible.  The Old Testament is filled with many more atrocities than the New Testament (though a much smaller body count, if you count Revelations), and many Christians dismiss the horrors of the Old Testament by saying that the New Testament replaces the Old.  Still, if we are to believe that the God of the Old Testament is the same God as the one mentioned in the New Testament, then the old man has a lot of explaining to do.

Mal 3:6, "For I am the LORD, I change not."  We can also remember that Jesus instructed his followers to "Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill." (Mat 5:17)

So, let's start with a story everyone knows.  Chuck Heston made it famous.

"At midnight the LORD smote all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh that sat on his throne unto the firstborn of the captive that was in the dungeon; and all the firstborn of cattle." --Ex.12:29

God punishes Egypt for not allowing the Hebrew slaves go by killing its children.  Tell me again how God is good?

Torturing People Doesn't Make You Bad

I was watching the Jon Stewart interview on Rachel Maddow tonight, and she asked him about the recent book that George W. Bush "wrote".  In it, he wrote that he not only approved waterboarding of Prisoners of War, but he enthusiastically did so.  Stewart said that the he didn't think it make W. a "bad person."

I'm sorry, Jon, but if you don't think torturing people makes you a bad person, you have extended well beyond moderation into a realm of moral relativism I can't sign on to.  Ever since the rally, I have been conflicted about your pro-moderation to the exclusion of all else, but I am conflicted no more.

No matter how much you want to champion moderation, no matter how much you want to dial down the rhetoric of American politics, no matter how much you want to be the voice of reasonable discourse, some things are worth getting angry about.  

You just lost a fan.

False Equivalences

As most everyone knows, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are conducting "dueling" rallies in Washington, D.C., on October 30.

Stewart's rally is being called a "Rally to Restore Sanity," in which he is positioning himself as a voice of reason with a call to reign in the political extremes.  In his announcement of the rally, he showed clips of both conservatives and liberals saying things that, in Stewart's opinion, were extreme.  At least one of the mottoes he has used to promote the rally is "Let's take it down a notch for America."  He's also referred to it as a "million moderate march."

Colbert's rally is to "Keep Fear Alive," but since he is being ironic in his satirical approach to humor, he's actually rallying against fear, making the rally fall into the same message as Stewart's.

It's a laudable goal - to return reason and rational discussion to the American political discourse.  I wouldn't deny for a second that our political stage has become ridiculously overheated in the last couple of years.

The problem I have is one of false equivalences.  Maybe Stewart is just conceding the idea that the left is just as ridiculously over-the-top as the right so that he can move beyond that argument.  I understand that.  On the other hand, false equivalences between crazy people on the left and crazy people on the right is one of the reasons why the extremes have been taking the stage more.  Let me illustrate:

Person 1: One plus one equals two.

Person 2: No! The liberal lie that one plus one equals two is a conspiracy designed to process our euthanized grandparents into meals-ready-to-eat for Mexican illegal immigrant Muslim atheist terrorists bent on imposing gay marriages.  The TRUTH, as revealed by God through our Founding Fathers, is that one plus one equals FOUR!

Person 1: I think you're mistaken.  There is a great deal of evidence to back up my claim that one plus one equals two.  Mathematicians have confirmed this, as well as pre-school children everywhere.

Person 2: You're a socialist fascist communist, aren't you?! Anyone who says that one plus one doesn't equal four doesn't appreciate the sanctity of life.  And they're against the death penalty.

Person 1: What? Um, no. Look, I'll show you. If you have one horse, and then you get another horse-

Person 2: What kind of horse?

Person 1: What?

Person 2: Is it an Arabian horse?

Person 1: It doesn't matter.

Person 2: Well, it damn well matters to me!  I don't want no damn Islamist horse, let alone two of them!

Person 1: Fine, it's a Kentucky quarter horse.  Now if you have one of them, and you get one more, how many Kentucky quarter horses do you have?

Person 2: One half.

Person 1: What?

Person 2: One-quarter plus one-quarter equals one half.

Person 1: Oh, well, that's not what I meant.

Person 2: Well, that's what you said.

Person 1: Listen, forget horses. Let's say you have a stone.  If you get another stone, how many stones do you have?

Person 2: Why am I collecting stones?  Are you going to force me under sharia law to stone my grandmother to death for being an adulterer?!

Person 1: What? No! I just-

Person 2: Listen, I've had enough of this.  Do you admit the revealed holy truth that one plus one is four, or are you going to require me to take over the government and impose Christian math on the entire populous?

Person 1: What?!  No!  You can't do that!

Person 2: Admit that one plus one is four or I'm going to do it!

Person 1: What if I compromise?!

Person 2: Like what?

Person 1: How about... one plus one equals three?

Person 2: Well, okay, I guess I can allow that... for now.  Congratulations, liberal, you win again.

Person 1: Yeah... I win.  ::sob::

See what happened there?  We live in a culture that thrives on compromise.  Agreement and consensus isn't possible, so instead we split the difference.  In such a system, the more outrageous, the more extreme, the more ridiculous one side is, the more likely they are to get a compromise closer to what they actually want.

This is what's happening in America.  The TEA Party rallies call for a reduction in spending without saying what exactly they want cut.  They want taxes to be cut without saying what taxes on whom.  Their math doesn't add up - one plus one does not equal four.  Splitting the difference won't get us the right answer.

If the left were just as outrageous - saying that one plus one equals one, then we could come to a compromise that's actually correct.  The problem comes when one side is crazier than the other, and that is clearly the case here.  This isn't to say that there aren't crazy extremists on the left; of course there are.  However, to say that the right, in general, is no more crazy than the left, in general, is a false equivalence.

Here's another difference.  Other than Alan Grayson, no one in a position of authority on the left says that Republicans want Americans to die.  On the right, many, many conservatives have said that Democrats want to kill people.  It started with Sarah Palin's ridiculous and false claim that the original health care bill included provisions for Death Panels that would make cold, calculated decisions on who would live and who would be euthanized, and it was repeated ad nauseum at town hall meetings all across the country.  They have said that our two newest Supreme Court Justices want to impose Sharia law on America.  They tell us that the rich will create more jobs if we keep their taxes low (because it's worked so well up till now!) and that global warming is a myth even as we watch the ice caps melt.  They tell us that the real victim of the Deep Water Horizon disaster is British Petroleum.  

They tell us it's raining. That's not rain.

Both sides have made extreme statements.  The problem is that the left's extreme statements happen to be true while the right's are made up.

I understand what you're trying to do, Jon and Stephen, and I appreciate it.  Unfortunately, one plus one equals three is just as wrong as one plus one equals four.

If you want to read a blog from someone who said this better than me, try this one.

Critique: Prothero on Atheism

God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World--and Why Their Differences Matter

Stephen Prothero

In my last post, I provided a general review of Stephen Prothero's book, God Is Not One.  In this post, I provide some specific criticism, particularly of Prothero's discussion of atheism.

First, let me say that I believe this is generally a good book.  I have a much better, clearer understanding of some of the eastern religions, specifically, than I had ever  had before.  This is especially true of the Yoruba Religion, which I had known as Santeria and thought was just a variation of Catholicism.  Prothero's writing is concise, intelligent, and thoughtful.  As he is a professor of religious studies, it's not surprising, I suppose, that he seems to approach (most) of the religions he writes about with a respect and an appreciation even as he writes that they are distinctly different and shouldn't be thought of as equivalent.

However, as clear and concise as his writing is, it's confused.  In the introduction, Prothero describes his own religious beliefs as "religiously confused."  I suppose this is to be expected of one who spends his life studying the religious beliefs of other people, but this confusion comes through in some of his writing about those religions.

Also in the introduction he writes, "In choosing the religions for this book and in ordering these rivals in terms of contemporary impact, I have obviously been influenced by my own biases.  I have tried, however, to be fair."  Apparently, this fairness extends only to belief systems that center around religion and not those that center around science and rationalism.

After the eight chapters in which Prothero discusses the eight most influential religions in the modern world, he offers a ninth chapter, entitled "A Brief Coda on Atheism."  I suppose Prothero felt he was making a great concession to begin with by even including a chapter on atheism, but in fact his bias against atheism shows through in his positioning the chapter at the end of the book and by titling it as he did.  If you extend the definition of atheism to include anyone who does not believe in a specific religion or hold particular spiritual beliefs, these secularists make up 16% of the world population.  If considered on an equal playing field with religions, this makes secularism the third largest group in the world, right behind Christianity and Islam.  There are more secularists in the world than Buddhists, Jews, believers in indigenous religions (like Native American or Australian aboriginal religions), neo-Pagans, Sikhes, and Yoruba combined.  To mention atheism as a minor footnote at the end of the book is, frankly, insulting.

Prothero writes, "A few years ago I wrote that, in staunchly unsecular America, atheists had 'gone the way of the freak show.'  I was wrong."  That's big of you to admit you were wrong, Dr. Prothero, but perhaps an apology for comparing us to circus freaks may also be in order.

And yet, his disdain for those who don't practice a religion, at least nominally, is clear.  The first section header in this "brief coda" is entitled, "Angry Atheists," in which he takes on the so-called "New Atheists," which he sees as militant and provocative.  Why the angry variation of atheists should be separated out for separate discussion when the angry variants of Christianity and Islam should not is more telling than the fact that he discusses the New Atheists.  Apparently, (some) Christians are allowed to tell people that God hates them and that they are going to burn in hell for all eternity,  and there is no reason to discuss those sects of Christianity specifically in the book, but when discussing atheism it's important to point out that some atheists are evangelical in their approach to their non-belief.

What he doesn't thoroughly describe is why some of the New Atheists are sometimes seen as angry.  Non-believers are a minority, and they are one that has been traditionally discriminated against.  It's not an excuse for someone in an oppressed minority to be angry and mean-spirited toward others, but it is an explanation.  The number of non-believers in the U.S. has now reached a critical mass where we are no longer embarrassed by our lack of faith and our insistence that science and rationalism are the best methods for obtaining knowledge.  It's not uncommon for people who have previously been fearful of admitting their difference from the mainstream to be a little bold and obnoxious when they no longer have to stay in the closet, particularly if they perceive their right to those differences to be under threat.

In the U.S., we live in a country where the religious greatly outnumber the non-religious, and where Christian elements of the political right have made no secret of their desire to make over the U.S. into a theocracy.  53% of the population here says that even if a candidate for the Presidency were well-qualified in every other way, they wouldn't vote for that candidate if they were an atheist.  49% say they would like to see religion play a larger role in public schools.  In a different poll (same page), 83% of Protestants surveyed believe the Bible is literally accurate (i.e., the universe was created in seven days, the first man was molded from clay and the first woman was made from his rib, God once made the Earth stop spinning and a donkey talk, etc., etc., etc.)  70% (same page) believe that it's important for a President to have strong religious beliefs.  58% believe creationism should be taught in schools.  The list goes on and on.

I assume Prothero would prefer atheists take this with a Zen-like peace, but I think that's unrealistic.  It's no more realistic to believe that U.S. Christians would take it calmly if their government were turned into an Islamic theocracy, or that Muslims would be happy if their children were forced in school to write an essay saying that Mohammed was a heretic and that Jesus is the only path to salvation.  Frankly, for someone who studies people's religious beliefs, his inability to understand why atheists are defensive really leaves me nonplussed.

But, of course, it goes beyond defensiveness and fear of living in a theocratic world.  Many atheists, such as myself, believe that faith is, in itself, dangerous.  We live in a complex world, one in which rational decisions need to be made based on scientific evidence and a solid determination to do what is best for the future of our species.  All of the religions, even the philosophical religions, discard rationalism for belief in something that they have no evidence for or evidence, even, to the contrary.  Religion isn't the problem.  Irrational thinking is the problem, and religion is a symptom.  This belief makes some atheists evangelistic - in other words, we wish others would reject faith for reason. Evangelism alone, however, does not seem to be enough to draw Prothero's ire, since Christianity and Islam are, certainly evangelistic in nature.

There is no universally accepted definition of what a religion is.  In fact, Prothero himself says that atheism "is a religion of sorts, or can be."  Why that does not afford atheism the same degree of respect Prothero shows for every other religion in his book is a mystery as great as the mysteries explored by all of the religions he profiles.

Book: God Is Not One

God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World--and Why Their Differences Matter

Stephen Prothero

I got this book after seeing John Stewart interview him.  It seemed interesting and a way to learn more about the world religions with which I am less familiarized.  In that regard, the book was not a disappointment.  Prothero, a professor of religion at Boston University, provides a dossier on each of the eight "great" religions of the world.  "Great," in this context, means that these are the eight religions that have had the largest impact on the world, and these are the ones he covers:

1. Islam
2. Christianity
3. Confucianism
4. Hinduism
5. Buddhism
6. Yoruba Religion
7. Judaism
8. Daoism

I was also interested in the primary theme of the book, which is that the pan-religious sentiment that all of the world religions are actually the same, or are equal, is wrong.  This mirrors something I read from Marilyn Vos Savant, who called the concept that all religions are true as one of the most common lies told in the modern world.  In fact, they can't all be true, because they are mutually exclusive in many of their teachings.

Prothero doesn't focus so much on the mutual exclusion of the major religions, but rather encapsulates them in a unique way.  For each of the religions, he provides the problem, the solution, and the technique identified by each religion.  For instance, in Christianity, the problem is "sin," the solution is "salvation," and the technique is a combination of faith and good works.

It's an interesting way to boil a religion down to its essence, though with any sort of encapsulation of a truly complex subject, it may be an extreme oversimplification.  For instance, while traditional Catholic and Protestant Christianity may say that the way to salvation is a combination of faith in Christ and good works, this varies.  The brand of Christianity followed by many modern evangelicals seems to focus exclusively on faith, for instance, and the idea of good works is considered hubris - how do you know what God considers good?  It's this type of faith that allows members of The Family to support brutal dictators in third-world countries.  Whether what we do is good or not is not important so long as we have faith that God is guiding us.  

Prosperity sects in Christianity have also been around for at least a hundred years in which the problem is not sin, but rather poverty.  The solution is faith that God wants you to be prosperous, and the technique is usually to give what little money you do have to the preachers because God will reward you for your generosity by giving you more money.  Hey, I didn't say it made sense.

But those caveats aside, I think what Prothero has done here is really unique.  He has boiled the essence of each of the religions down in a way that makes sense to me more than I had understood in the past.

Next: Prothero on atheism

Correction: The interview on The Daily Show was about Prothero's previous book.  The interview on this book was actually on Colbert.

The Rise of the New Irrationals

I haven't written much on Vox in the last few months.  Part of this is just being too busy.  Part of it is that every time I think about writing about something, I begin to feel a little depressed.  What am I going to write?  "Oil slicks are bad"? I've been spending a lot more time on Facebook, too, where I can express thoughts in one or two sentences without feeling I have to write a whole post.

However, a trend I feel strongly about is growing.  For some time, I've considered writing a series of blog posts promoting rationality and the scientific method as ways of approaching life.  This consideration has been given impetus by the growing acceptability of irrationality, anti-intellectualism, and a disdain for science.  For short, I'm calling the people who are powering this trend "Irrationals".  It's a non-standard use of the word, but it's one I'm using to encompass all of these particular viewpoints.

Of course, irrational thinking is nothing new.  Humans are, by nature, prone to irrational thinking, but we also have the capacity for rationality.  What I've been seeing lately is a backlash against rationality, science, and thought.  Case in point: the President being criticized repeatedly for not being "angry enough" about the Gulf oil spill, as if his emotions alone would be enough to stop the oil from gushing into the source of 40% of America's sea food.  He was receiving so much of this criticism, in fact, that he decided to use a profanity in an interview to show how angry he was.  

We cannot emote our way out of problems that were created by technological means.  In fact, you can't emote your way out of any problem.  Emotions motivate people to do things, they don't do things in and of themselves.  This idea that emotions are an end rather than a means to an end seems to be part of the growing trend I mentioned.

Another case in point: Alabama's gubernatorial election.  In the Republican primary, candidate Bradley Byrne was accused by one of his opponents of (gasp!) believing in evolution.  In response, and knowing his constituency, Byrne responded by declaring that he is a creationist and a Biblical literalist.   In other words, he believes, Adam was formed by God out of clay in a garden and that Eve was formed out of Adam's rib and that the entire universe was created, as it exists today, in six days.

How, in 2010, can we even be having this discussion?  These are individuals vying for a job running a government for a state of nearly 5 million people, with a budget of $1.6 billion.  The governor is the person ultimately responsible for running the state's public schools (I can only imagine what the biology classes are like), running the state's prisons (forget scientifically derived rehabilitation programs), and Medicaid program (just lay hands and ask God to heal them).  And to even remain in the running for the job, the candidate has to promise that he doesn't believe what the vast majority of scientists do - that humans descended from other species of animals through a process of mutation and natural selection.

What's happening here?  Is this a natural cycle, a swing of the pendulum back away from rationalism to irrationality?  Or is it a trend toward a more permanent position?

Thanks for reading.  I'm going to continue writing on this issue.  See you next time.

A Weekend in Chaffee County

Here's some pictures from a recent weekend we spent in Chaffee County, Colorado, rafting the Arkansas River and exploring a "ghost town" called St. Elmo.  The ghost town was surprisingly lively with tourists and even a gift shop, but it was still neat.

Pictures from or of the river.

Christina on Bus

A terrible picture of Christina on the bus on the way back.

Phone Booth

A tribute to outmoded technology.

Pictures of St. Elmo, Colorado

Census Packet

A census packet hung on a fence post outside a building in a ghost town.  I love their thoroughness.

More buildings in St. Elmo.

The St. Elmo Fire Department

The entire St. Elmo Fire Department.  Don't be overwhelmed.

American Hummingbirds

Sing along with me: "Humming in a America..."

More pictures of the river or from the river.

Lawn and Order

In the lawn services industry, yards are maintained by two groups.  The landscaping companies who develop lawns, and the yard service companies that maintain them.  This is their story.

 

Doink-doink

Blocked Member: http://www.ansarsunna.com

That's not a typo.  The person's username is a URL.

This user posted a comment promoting their pro-Islam blog on a post on my page that had nothing to do with Islam or religion in general.  I have nothing against Islam, but like good Muslims I don't eat SPAM.

To Boldly Go

A few days ago, after hearing that Obama had cut the new moon mission and had directed NASA to focus on robotic exploration, I changed my Facebook status to "To boldly never go where no man has gone before."  Unfortunately, I had fallen victim to the initial, incomplete reporting about the new plan for NASA.

The truth is, Obama's new plan for NASA is an improvement.  The way it was first reported, it sounded like we were stepping down from the future of manned space missions.  It's important to me, as I believe it is for a lot of Americans, that the manned space program continue.  There are several reasons for this: national pride, the promotional power the manned space program has for science, and the wonder factor.  

As a future-oriented individual, I also believe that the long-term survival of our species depends on the eventual colonization of other planets.  I know that sounds ridiculous to most people, but the facts are clear.  We can only live on one planet for so long.  Even if we eventually find some environmental balance on the Earth and stabilize our population, it's only a matter of time before some global disaster threatens us.

The fact that several former astronauts opposed Obama's NASA plan also influenced me.  Astronauts Neil Armstrong, James Lovell, and Eugene Cernan wrote a letter calling the President's plan "devastating," and would put America's space program on the path to mediocrity.

Guys, I'm sorry to tell you this, but America's space program is already mediocre compared to where we could and should be.  After taking off like Buck Rogers during the Cold War, our Space program is now more like Mr. Wizard in Zero G.  We've done some impressive things - the International Space Station, reusable space shuttles... the... did I mention the International Space Station?  Of course, we didn't really do the International Space Station ourselves.  That's that whole International part.  

And the space shuttles are being scrapped.  I think the space shuttles are being converted into FEMA housing for the next hurricane.

Recently, Iran took the steps that countries take in the early stages of their space program by sending into space small animals.  Most of our pundits laughed - turtles in space make for a humorous image.  We really shouldn't laugh. We can barely do that ourselves right now because we've allowed our space capability to fall so far behind.  We can't send humans in space without space shuttles; we're going to have to hitch rides to the ISS with the Russians, something that would have pleased JFK, I'm sure, to know that we had come so far in our diplomatic relations with Moscow, but would have confused the hell out of everyone else in the early days of the space program.

The fact is, after learning more about the new NASA plan, I have determined that it is not a plan to doom the space program to mediocrity, but to rescue it from mediocrity.

While scrapping the plan to go back to the moon (for now), the new plan sets Mars as the goal for the next manned mission.  He also wants to send humans to an asteroid for the first time, a task that is potentially more challenging than anything that has been considered until now.  Rather than scrapping manned spaceflight, it sets higher goals.  It sets the goal to boldly go where no man has gone before, not to boldly go where we've already been a few times.  

Buzz Aldrin agrees, saying, "This is the right program for the right time.  I applaud the President's boldness."

Don't get me wrong.  There are reasons to go back to the moon.  As a place to create the first permanent off-Earth human settlement, it's the easiest, for instance.  However, the space program, from a human exploration perspective, has been stagnant for so long that new challenges are worthwhile.

Importantly, the plan does not sacrifice robotic exploration for manned spaceflight.  These are two parts of an important total space program, and we need both.  We can explore faster, learn more, and gain stronger scientific insight into other planets with robots.  We take steps toward mankind's eventual expansion to other planets with manned spaceflight.  We need both - they are not in opposition.

Mars