Student Punished for Beliefs

METRO U.K. - A student has been suspended from school in America for coming to class dressed as a pirate.

But the disciplinary action has provoked controversy – because the student says that the ban violates his rights, as the pirate costume is part of his religion.

Bryan Killian says that he follows the Pastafarian religion, and that as a crucial part of his faith, he must wear 'full pirate regalia' as prescribed in the holy texts of Pastafarianism.

The school, however, say that his pirate garb was disruptive.

Pastafarians follow the Flying Spaghetti Monster (pictured), and believe that the world was created by the touch of his noodly appendage. Furthermore, they acknowledge pirates as being 'absolute divine beings', and stress that the worldwide decline in the number of pirates has directly led to global warming.

Pastafarianism gained wide attention when its key prophet, Bobby Henderson, wrote to the Kansas School Board during the height of the controversy over 'Intelligent Design' being taught in science classes. His letter, also published on his website, demanded equal time be given to the teachings of the Flying Spaghetti Monster as was given to ID and evolutionary theory.

Since then, the Flying Spaghetti Monster has gained countless followers worldwide, although there are those who remain spagnostic.

The school, in North Buncombe, North Carolina, remains adamant that their decision to suspend Killian for a day has nothing to do with his religion, and quite a lot to do with his repeated refusal to heed warnings against wearing pirate outfits.

End of One, Beginning of Another

Yesterday I finished The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. I'm very sad! So thoroughly have I enjoyed the book that I was purposefully reading slower as I began to realize I was nearing the final chapters. It's a truly fabulous book, up there with Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs & Steel on the top of the list of books that have changed the way I look at the world. I now understand more fully just how natural selection functions, for I must admit that until reading Dawkins's book I was a (now embarrassed) follower of the individualist school of thought: mainly that natural selection acts at the level of the individual organism and selects those individuals best suited to their environment.

I now know that while that is partially true, it isn't the whole story. One of the questions that drove me to Dawkins regarded meiosis. Why, if (as I had been taught) natural selection is choosing individuals best suited for survival, do those individuals turn around and essentially destroy themselves, scattering their genes by way of a random dispersal of haploid gametes? Enter the selfish gene theory. Not only does it explain that it is the gene that is the fundamental unit of natural selection, but that genes are the ones actually doing the competing, and they just happen to have organized themselves into "communities", which we call the genomes of individual organisms.

Everything makes so much more sense now! So, what did I do when I finished the book? Well, I ran to the library for more Dawkins, of course! Imagine my disappointment, though, at finding that my school library does not have a copy of The Extended Phenotype. For shame! I really want to own that book, but since it's crunch time for my meagre student budget I decided to resort to the library. But alas, they had it not. Instead, I checked out a copy of a later book by Dawkins, Unweaving the Rainbow. I've read through the first two chapters or so, and I must say it's quite enthralling.

In this book Dawkins aims to takes on those who believe science to be a dry and loveless way of explaining the world and gathering information, that somehow we lose something if we don't embrace some sort of mystical reverence for the universe. This is not, of course, to say that Dawkins is a cold, calculating Grinch with no love for life. On the contrary, he argues in this book that science can offer all the wonder, mystery, and beauty of the greatest works of art. As he argues in one memorable passage, if one can enjoy a Mozart clarinet concerto without actually being able to play it, why not enjoy science in a similar fashion? It is clearly not within every person's ability to learn Mozart, but there are many who enjoy it nonetheless. It is possible to become very knowledgeable about music without knowing how to play a single note. Why not the same for science? There is a definite misconception amongst the general public that science is for some small elite class of people, shut away in laboratories in their white coats, plugging away at long equations, making charts and graphs, and mixing all sorts of strange chemicals together. Surely, we need these type of people to advance science, just as we need clarinet players to play Mozart, but why not have a large section of the public who simply enjoy science, as so many enjoy Mozart?

This is, in a nutshell, what I expect the rest of the book to cover. I can't wait! It's already fascinating to read Dawkins's always eloquent expressions of the beauties of science and rationalism, and I haven't even scratched the surface of the book yet. I guess The Extended Phenotype is going to have to wait for a little while yet!

New Study Examines Link Between Belief in God and Violent Behaviour

ABC NEWS - Does believing that "God is on our side" make it easier for us to inflict pain and suffering on those perceived to be our enemies? If we think God sanctions violence, are we more likely to engage in violent acts?

The answer to both those questions, according to new research, is a resounding "yes," even among those who do not consider themselves believers.

Social psychologist Brad Bushman of the University of Michigan led an international research effort to find answers to these questions, and said he is very "disturbed" by the results, though he found what he had expected. Bushman has spent 20 years studying aggression and violence, especially the impact on human behavior of violence in the media, but most previous research has focused on television and movie violence, not such things as scriptures and texts held sacred by many.

He wanted to take it a step further and see if simply exposing someone to a text that implies God sanctions violence would increase their level of aggression.

Fought in the Name of God

"I think many people use God as their justification for violent and aggressive actions," Bushman said. "Take the current conflict in Iraq as an example. Bush claims that God is on his side. Osama bin Laden claims that God, or Allah, is on his side."

History is replete with other examples of wars fought in the name of God, involving nearly every religion on the planet.

To find his answers, Bushman assembled teams of researchers at two very different universities, Vrije University in Amsterdam, Holland, where he also holds a professorship, and Brigham Young University in Utah.

Only half of the students who participated in the study at Vrije reported that they believe in God, and only 27 percent believe in the Bible. At Brigham Young, 99 percent said they believe in God and the Bible.

Biblical Descriptions

Here's the fundamental issue the researchers addressed, as stated in their study published in the current issue of Psychological Science:

"We hypothesized that exposure to a biblical description of violence would increase aggression more than a secular description of the same violence. We also predicted that aggression would be greater when the violence was sanctioned by God than when it was not sanctioned by God."

Because violence in a classroom is a bit hard to justify, the researchers relied on a widely used tool to measure aggression. Students in the study were not initially told its true purpose. Instead, they were told they were participating in two separate studies, one on Middle Eastern literature, and one on stimulation of reaction time.

Each student competed against another student in the reaction time phase. Those who pushed a button first won the competition and could punish the loser by blasting him or her through a set of earphones with a loud noise.

The Blast of War

The volume of the noise was controlled by the winning student. Those who hit the loser with a mild blast were considered less aggressive than those who gave the loser the loudest blast — approximately the volume of a siren.

"The noise is very, very unpleasant," Bushman said. "It's a combination of somebody scratching their fingernails on a chalkboard and screaming and sirens."
The idea behind the test, used widely in laboratories, is that only someone who feels very aggressive would blast someone else with the loudest screech, about 105 decibels.

Biblical? Or Not?

Before the blasting phase, the students read a description of the beating and raping and murder of a woman in ancient Israel. Half of the students read a version of the story that included an assertion that God commanded the friends of the woman to take revenge. The other half read a version that did not mention God sanctioning violence. Half of the students were told the account came from the Bible, and half were told it came from an ancient scroll.

"What we found is that people who believed the passage was from the Bible were more aggressive [than those who did not know it came from the Bible], and when God said it is OK to retaliate they were even more aggressive," Bushman said. "We found that both at Brigham Young, which is a religious school, and at Amsterdam, where only half believe in God.

"Even among nonbelievers, if God says it's OK to retaliate, they are more aggressive. And that's the worry here. When God sanctions aggression, when God says it's OK to retaliate, people use that as justification for their own violent and aggressive behavior."

When asked why nonbelievers would become more aggressive, Bushman suggested that perhaps some nonbelievers are not all that sure that there is no God. However, nonbelievers did not show as much of an increase in aggression as believers when told violence was sanctioned by God.

At the end of the interview, I intruded into Bushman's own religious feelings and asked if he is a believer.

"Yes, I do believe in God, and I do believe in the Bible," he said. "In fact, I read it every day."
So it's a personal, as well as a professional, search for Bushman.

"What worries me is when people use God as a justification for their violence. There are scriptures that say you should not take God's name in vain. This is the most extreme version of taking God's name in vain," he said.

Yet his own research shows that whether people consider themselves believers or not, they are more likely to be aggressive, perhaps even willing to start a war, if they think God is on their side.

Discovery Institute Takes Aim at Darwinist Internet Postings

In a recent article titled Asking the Right Questions Brings Out Darwinists' True Colors, the Discovery Institute continues to applaud the arguments of anti-Darwinist neurosurgeon Dr. Michael Egnor.

Will these guys never give up? No, no they won't. For those of you who aren't familiar with the Discovery Institute, it's a conservative Christian think tank that campaigns against evolution being taught in public schools in the United States. They'd rather have their own theory, "Intelligent Design," taught in classrooms. Intelligent Design (ID) argues that life is too complex to have possibly evolved on its own, and must have some type of intelligent designer at its ultimate beginning.

Since ID is not really a scientific theory at all, I'm not going to spend time arguing against it here. Just type it into Google and you'll find lots of scientists and lawyers who will tell you why it shouldn't be allowed in science classrooms. What I AM going to talk about is how silly the Discovery Institute is for posting an article like the one above.

What the Discovery Institute is resorting to are the same type of ad hominem attacks they claim to be victimized by. Get a clue, Discovery Institute. The only thing that such inflammatory blog comments and post titles reflects is that there is a great deal of opposition for Egnor and his ideas. To say that he's making Darwinians show their "true colors" by forcing remarks such as "Michael Egnor is a Crappy Neurosurgeon Who Will Cut out Your Brain and Eat It," is, quite frankly, embarrassing. I doubt for that anyone at the Discovery Institute thinks for a second that all Darwinists would make such statements. And, if they do, they are obviously stupid; if blog titles could be used as ammunition against a cause, I bet I could find a lot of pretty stupid ones relating to Christianity and ID. In fact, here are a bunch I found in less than five minutes:

• "The critical thinking and precision of science began to really affect my ability to just believe something without any tangible evidence." - Salvador Cordova
  
• "We've been attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of the culture." - Pastor Ray Mummert
• "It is a just retribution for improper sexual misconduct" - Mother Teresa, on AIDS
  
• "The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become lesbians."
  
• "We don't have to protect the environment, the Second Coming is at hand." - James Watt, Secretary of the Interior under Ronald Regan

So, there you go. If the Discovery Institute doesn't want to admit that it's spewing out worthless ad hominem propaganda, then they'd better have a pretty good defence against these comments. If we are going to admit anything said by any supporter of an ideology as representative of an entire group, I think proponents of Christianity and ID are going to have their hands full explaining a way a lot of nonsense that's flying around out there.

Incidentally, if Egnor would like an answer from the blogosphere to his question "how does [sic] Darwinian mechanisms produce new biological information?", I'm only too happy to obliged. There really is no doubt at all that genetic variation and recombination accounts for the physical differences we can observe in organisms around us. Take dog breeders, for example. Nobody's going to argue that two German Shepherds will have German Shepherd puppies, or that Chihuahuas have Chihuahua puppies. But a neither of these dogs are wolves. Humans have selected for traits they desire in dogs for thousands of years, and through selective breeding have developed the hundreds of dog breeds around the world today.

Now, it doesn't take too much of a stretch of the imagination to understand that similar selection can happen in nature. The only difference is, this selection is unconscious. Maybe one year is extra-dry, or extra-wet, for example. These conditions favour, or "select for", various different qualities in animals, much like a dog breeder would. Those animals whith characteristics that are selected for are more successful, and therefore go on to have more babies, many of which would probably share the trait which made their parents successful. Thus, that particular trait increases in the gene pool of the species, and that animal can be said to have undergone evolutionary change under Darwinian selection. After millions of years of such small changes adding up, we've ended up with all the biological variety we see around us today.

Of course, one would hope that a neurosurgeon would have some training and experience in basic biological theory, but I guess Egnor didn't pay attention during that part of university.

Time Magazine Prints Different US Version

In its latest edition, Time Magazine has printed two different issues-- one for the US, and one for the rest of the world. The rest of the world gets an issue titled "Talibanistan", which discusses the Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The US edition's headline reads "Why We Should Teach the Bible in Public School."

Apparently they are more concerned with the indoctrination of children than with the mess Bush has created in the Middle East.

First Nontheistic Member of Congress Announced

RELIGION NEWS SERVICE - Rep. Fortney "Pete" Stark, D-Calif., is the first openly "nontheistic" member of Congress, the Secular Coalition for America announced Monday, March 12.

The coalition said Stark, who has represented San Francisco's East Bay since 1973, acknowledged his atheism in response to a questionnaire sent to public officials in January.

In a statement, Stark said he is a "Unitarian who does not believe in a supreme being."

"I look forward to working with the Secular Coalition to stop the promotion of narrow religious beliefs in science, marriage contracts, the military and the provision of social service," he said.

Herb Silverman, president of the Secular Coalition for America, said "the only way to counter prejudice against nontheists is for more people to publicly identify as nontheists. Rep. Stark shows remarkable courage in being the first member of Congress to do so."

Only 45 percent of Americans said they would vote for a "generally well-qualified" atheist, according to a February Gallup Poll, ranking them lowest on a list that included Mormons (72 percent), candidates on their third marriage (67 percent) and homosexuals (55 percent).

The Washington-based coalition, which lobbies on behalf of atheists, humanists and other nontheists, said that "few if any elected officials, even at the lowest level, would self-identify as a nontheist" in response to its survey. The coalition eventually offered $1,000 to the person who could identify the highest-level atheist, agnostic, humanist "or any other kind of nontheist" in public office.

Only three other elected officials agreed to be identified: a school board president in Berkeley, Calif.; a member of a school committee in Maine; and a town meeting member from Massachusetts.

Lori Lipman Brown, a spokesperson for the secular coalition, said her group tallies 30 million nontheists in the U.S. "We seem to be extremely under-represented in elected office," she said.

"Atheists are the last group that a majority of Americans still think is OK to discriminate against," said Fred Edwords, director of communications for the American Humanist Association.

I'm shocked by the statistic that only 45% of Americans would vote for a nontheist. That's an alarmingly high amount of religious discrimination. Oh well... all the more reason to get out and make a more positive image for us atheists!

Introduction

I've decided to start this blog to chronicle my exploits as an evangelical atheist. For a long time, I've held my views privately and thought that the world would be a better place if we all respected each other's beliefs. You know, a sort of "live and let live" attitude based on mutual respect. Recently though, I've changed my mind. Yes, everyone has a right to his or her own beliefs. I don't think many people would argue with that. Unfortunately, as I've recently become aware, not all beliefs are created equal.

Beliefs are all well and good-- everyone has to have them-- but we start to run into a problem when we ask ourselves why people have them. Religion and other "belief systems" fulfill a fundamental human desire to explain the world we find ourselves in. It can't be denied that we have an innate need to explain, classify, and understand the things that we see. Traditional religion is, at its heart, an attempt at such an explaning how humankind fits into the cosmos. The trouble is, most mainstream religions are thousands of years old, and their explanations stand up as somewhat lacking by modern standards.

Take the biblical account of creation given in Genesis, for example. Thousands of years ago, it made a lot of sense to posit that God created the world in six days. After all, everything else people saw around them (pots, huts, roads, cities, etc.) were all man-made, so why not have one great Creator ultimately responsible for all of it? Surely, at least from their point of view, something could not spring out of nothing. There must have been a creator.

Of course, we now have a lot more information about the development and formation of the world. Radioactive isotope dating techniques show us that the world is much older than is suggested by most religions. The theory of plate tectonics explains why we find fossilized seashells on the tops of mountains, and these processes take millions of years to occur. And, Darwin's theory of evolution shows us how life could have evolved over billions of years, starting with the simplest organic units and ending up with humans, elephants, and douglas fir trees. These advances, and others, all weave elegantly together to make up the fabric of modern understanding.

This would all be well and good, except that those older religions are still tenaciously sticking around, advocating their old, outdated, and, quite often, just plain wrong ideas and explanations of the world. But so what? Why should we care? Well, one of the reasons religion has managed to stay around for so many thousands of years is that the successful ones are able to ingrain themselves in people's minds, and gain strong footholds with which to suppress competing belief systems. Ironically, in a process completely explained by Darwinian evolutionary theory, the successful religion is one that is adapted to its environment (in this case, human consciousness), and which is able to out-compete its rivals for resources (in this case, the time people spend devoted to it). The modern religions are, in a sense, creatures that have survived the test of time, perfectly suited to their environments and adept at fighting off rivals.

So here we are, in 2007. For the past 200 years or so, religion has been taking some serious hits. New scientific advances have brought new ideas to light, many of which directly conflict with those put forward by traditional religions. In response, we're seeing a backlash of religious fundamentalism against the progress we've made, and it is with this issue that we must take exception.

As I said in my opening paragraph, I used to think that holding my beliefs quietly was the best thing I could do for the world. I was wrong. And the reason is this. Christian fundamentalists are fighting to remove evolution from the science classrooms of America. Islamic fundamentalists kill countless people almost daily in suicide bombings in the Middle East. Religion is at the heart of many problems in the world. This is not to say that the world would become an instant utopia if we abolished religion. Religion may not even be the ultimate cause of much of the violence in the world, but it is a large factor used to justify acts that would otherwise be seen as immoral or irrational.

What causes me the most sadness though, is that billions of people around the world are living with misinformed views. A life lived in devotion to a god that does not exist is a life wasted. As I mentioned before in our Darwinian model, religion has survived the test of time not because it is true, but because it has adapted tools and strategies that have allowed it to be a good competitor for the hearts and minds of people for thousands of years. Perhaps the greatest of these tools is faith. The American Heritage Dictionary defines faith as "belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence." Already, this sounds like it's going to be a problem, and it's one of the ways religion defends itself against criticism. "I have faith in God," says the believer when confronted with a challenge to his or her belief system. "Have faith, child," is a cliché often ascribed to religious leaders. If we stop and think about it though, faith really isn't a very good reason to believe in anything. If we are going to believe based on faith alone, by what criteria are we to distinguish between what is real and what isn't? We've already discounted reason and logic as prerequisites for believing in something. What else is there? Personal experience? Surely that is not reliable; individuals can be wrong. Second-hand experience? Even less reliable than personal experience.

I would argue that people don't so much believe based on faith, but rather on indoctrination. If faith was truly the basis of a person's belief, how would that person know what to have faith in? To ask the question a different way, why believe in God as opposed to any other cosmic being. Why not unicorns or flying spaghetti monsters? Because, that is not what people are told to believe in. People believe what they are taught to believe, and when they are challenged, they are told to have faith. A Christian would call you crazy if you said you had faith in the existence of unicorns, but wouldn't hesitate to expound upon the benefits of faith in God.

And that brings me to the most despicable aspect of religion: the indoctrination of children. Pouncing upon children when they are young and impressionable, raising them to follow unquestioningly the doctrine of their religion, is a crime. Children should be raised with no beliefs forced upon them, and once they are old enough to make an informed decision they should be allowed to choose for themselves. After all, if religion is so good and so true, the informed person would decide to be religious. There would be nothing for religion to fear.

This is why I choose to be an evangelical atheist, and why I have started this blog. Stay tuned to hear about all the crazy trouble I'm certain to get myself into!