Welp, that's it

I've decided to discontinue blogging. It didn't turn out to be as interesting as I thought it might be, and opinionated as I am, I'm having trouble thinking of things to blog about. Besides... I have video games to play :3

Anyway, thanks to everyone who read. See you later!

"Beyond Disbelief" Study Completed

"Beyond Disbelief" is a preliminary study meant to survey the attitudes of the nonreligious. You can get the full report here.

A lot of it is stuff that anyone in the skeptical community would already know, but there are a few quotes I have to pull out of it:

The nontheists [we studied] were remarkably liberal, with 91% rating themselves as left of centre.

[...]

There was no relation between atheism [...] and family religiosity. Rated hostility to religion was not correlated with family background or negative family or other influences.

[...]

Over 90% of atheists surveyed agree that religions are opposed to progress and social change, and over 80% believe that religions do more harm than good and that the world would be better off without religion. Across items, a clear plurality and often a majority of atheists selected the highest level of agreement for these anti-religious statements. Atheists not only believe in the separation of church and state, oppose tax exemptions for religious institutions but are also almost unanimous, at 99% agreement, that there is no place for religious symbols or rituals in the public sphere in a secular society. Similar percentages agree that religions are based on ignorance and uncritical thinking and lead to hypocrisy. Perhaps particularly revealing is that over 85% of our respondents agreed with the rather strong statement that the “It is a violation of the rights of children to indoctrinate them into religion without a choice among points of view;” a sentiment perhaps especially associated with the new atheism.

[...]

As noted in our introductory remarks we did not treat categories as mutually exclusive and many respondents checked more than one label to describe themselves. For example, 2054 respondents checked atheist, and 1103 checked agnostic; but both boxes were checked by 674 respondents. Had we not allowed this it is possible that many or most of the 674 might have checked agnosticism only. Forced-choice surveys may therefore underestimate the number of atheists. This applies a fortiori to questions that add adjectives that convey a sense of absolute or dogmatic certainty such as the description “convinced atheist”. Our hypothesis is that, even beyond our sample, the majority of agnostics are, in fact, atheists and that many would so self-identify if given the opportunity to qualify their commitment.

Weekly Link Dump

(I haven't forgotten! It's just that FFXIV just came out...)

Religion and skepticism:

Experts schedule conference to say: Galileo Was Wrong

"Draw Mohamed Day" organizer goes into hiding after Muslim threats

Guardian Online: Pedophile priests remain part of church

American Humanist Association Speaks out About "Burn a Koran Day" Controversy

Pew study: Religion plays key role in deciphering public opinion

Muslims call for federal probe in Quran burning

Where are the Christians With Real Courage?

Scholars hotly debate treatment of apostates


Politics:

Republicans Block Defense Funding Bill to Sabotage “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” Repeal

Don't Be Mean to the Girl: Gender, Power and the Politics of Pretty

The Foxification of the Republican Party


Science:

How the Mind Counteracts Offensive Ideas

Breaking: Web Not Corrupting Our Youth After All

The "other" atheism

I've been thinking a little more about the Pope's recent comments during his visit to Britain, as well as some comments by other Christians I've seen. The Pope said that Nazism was the result of atheism - not the result of over a thousand years of Christian-fueled antisemitism, or political issues surrounding the end of the first World War, but "atheism". Other people I've seen blame the problems in American government not on the Christianity* that our politicians hold, but on their "atheism", of all things. Or, they'll look at skyrocketing teen pregnancy, and blame it not on the miseducation they receive, but on teens' supposed "atheism". Or, some good Christian will suddenly go on a gambling spree, or will be caught having an affair, or abusing their children, and the explanation for their behavior will be "atheism".

It's very difficult for an atheist to see the connection there - how is critical thinking or skepticism involved in any of these? Considering that the perpetrators in all these examples believe in one or another god, how can this possibly be pegged on atheism?

The answer I think is that there's another atheism out there, one that isn't a definition of what atheists believe, or even of what atheists do, but is instead controlled and defined by believers. It's the product that occurs when things don't go the way that believers planned, when their supposedly god-given ethical systems or lifestyles fail. It can't be granted - if their ethics really came from an infallible source - that there's an issue with their belief system or practices, so the only alternative explanation is that, therefore, it must be from a lack of godliness - the "other" atheism.

This is what allows Christians to blame Nazism (which was anti-atheism) on atheism, this is what allowed John Milton to label Satan - who obviously believed in the Christian god - an atheist, and it's one of the scapegoats that allows believers of all stripes to preserve their belief in their own infallibility even when it obviously fails.

Unfortunately for atheists, the blame doesn't dissolve. It gets redirected toward skepticism and secularism, and in turn promotes even deeper fundamentalism, since the obvious response to an apparent lack of religiosity is to promote even more of it, and more publicly, and more extreme versions of it - and perversely, the more often it fails, the more often it's promoted.

Pope says atheists are Nazis

I just had to post this since it's so funny. The Pope! thinks atheists! are the Nazis!

This is the same pope who was in the Hitler Youth as a child, who has refused to defrock (or even demote) actual Nazis and Holocaust-deniers in his own organization - this, from the head of the same church that courted Nazi Germany, attempting to become its official church - and when Hitler was himself a member of said church, and has never been removed - this same pope is accusing atheists of being Nazis! I just had to lol.

Link: BBC News - Pope speech compares atheist 'extremism' with Nazism

Weekly Link Dump

Just because it's interesting to me to see how different news sources write about the same issue...

CNN.com: French senate approves burqa ban

Deseret News: French Senate passes ban of full Muslim veils


Two from Belgium this time:

Global Post: Belgium: Amid sex scandals, de-baptism gains favor

USA Today: Belgian report: Church abuse led to at least 13 suicides


And finally, two local links.

Salt Lake City Political Buzz Examiner: Utah governor's race: Herbert gets defense, Does Utah need campaign reform?

The Ground-Zero Mosque is turning into a reality show

Now Fred Phelps of "God Hates Fags" fame has gotten into the act, claiming that if no one else is going to burn a Koran, he will.

LINK: Times of India - Now, another US church says will burn holy book

Ground-Zero Mosque Update

It seems as though Koran-Burning Day is going to be canceled, and the "Ground-Zero Mosque" may be moved.

Pastor Terry Jones said he will cancel the Koran-burning in response to the moving of the "Ground-Zero Mosque", which was promised to him by an intermediary of Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf. The Imam himself, however, says he has received no word of the agreement.

LINK: Sunshine State News - Terry Jones Pulls Plug on Quran-Burning, Claims Ground Zero Mosque Will Move

LINK: Sunshine State News - Burning Qurans-Ground Zero Mosque Move Deal? Terry Jones Says Yes, Abdul Rauf Says No

The Ground-Zero Mosque

I have to admit, I've had some conflicting feelings about this mosque. Obviously, from a legal perspective, they have every right to build one, and I'll fight for their right to do so (as an aside - you can sign a pledge here in support of their right to constitutional freedoms). On the other hand, it has felt to me to be in slightly bad taste - imagine if there were an atheist terrorist group that blew up St. Paul's Cathedral, or Big Ben or something, and a totally unrelated atheist group wanted to make a freethought center on the ashes. That'd be exceptionally crass, in my opinion.

However, there are some meaningful counterarguments - first of all, the "Ground Zero Mosque" isn't actually on Ground Zero, but a few blocks away. So, one might ask, how many blocks away is enough? At what point does it become permissible? Secondly, these are two unrelated sects of Islam at work. Would you blame a Protestant for the Inquisition? And third, the center already supported Muslim religious activities before.

But still... the center wasn't exclusively Muslim, either. And, while this is a very soft, aesthetic argument - sort of like when that judge stated that he couldn't define pornography, but he knew it when he saw it - while I couldn't put my finger on how far away to build this mosque... three blocks is too close. Give it twenty years, or fifty, or whatever, and maybe it wouldn't be too close - but today it is too close.

Of course, these are only aesthetic arguments. They have every legal right to build it, and I'll support that right. But... it still feels a bit in bad taste.

Weekly Link Dump

I'm still experimenting with how I'm going to run this blog, so instead of posting a link here and there, I'm going to try putting up all the notable links for the week in one post, and dedicating the normal posts to more original content. I think this is way too much news to post at once, but we'll see how it goes... the alternative would be to have 3/4 of my posts be just links to other sites.

Anyway, for the first link dump, we have:

The Guardian: I was wrong about veganism. Let them eat meat – but farm it properly

Veganism is still, all things being equal, better for the environment than omnivorism, but the case for green veganism has been overplayed. In fact, most of the pollution is from transportation, which affects plant foods roughly as much as animal foods.

They didn't write about this here - the other link about this I wanted to post I lost due to computer problems - but while plants are generally better than animal products, if you compared local, grass-fed beef to supermarket spinach, the beef would probably come out ahead, since spinach needs to be refrigerated the entire way. Highly-processed vegan foods, like Tofurky, for example, are also going to scale worse than local, grass-fed beef - although if you compared factory-farmed beef to spinach or Tofurkey, the vegan item would be better. So, the rule for greenies is first - buy local! and only then buy vegan - if we're strictly talking about the environment, that is.

And on that note:

Deseret News: Going against the grain: Grass-fed beef a niche for Utah farmers

Just to brag, a little.



A few on the economy:

Deseret News: State struggles with unpaid wage claims

Deseret News: Growing numbers of long-term unemployed face tough obstacles

Deseret News: Stimulus brought 18K Utah jobs, $1.9B for projects

And again Deseret News: Future hiring will mainly benefit the high-skilled



Immigration:

Deseret News: 'Birth tourism' a tiny portion of immigrant babies

Not exactly news, but I want to point this out...
Wikipedia: Illegal immigration to the United States

Under "Crimes committed by illegal immigrants", it states:

According to Edmonton and Smith in The New Americans: Economic, Demographic, and Fiscal Effects of Immigration, "it is difficult to draw any strong conclusions on the association between immigration and crime".

Skepticism:

LA Atheism Examiner: Crocodile sanctuary destroyed by mob inflamed by psychic

LA Atheism Examiner: An atheist finds ties between a Christian comic book & the Jefferson Memorial



Science:

Physorg.com: Why Americans believe Obama is a Muslim <-- Shamelessly stolen from Aranamuss!

Book Review of "Dangerous Children": Chapter 5

Chapter 5 is predominately about gender's role in developmental psychology. Charis notes that as soon as children start to go to school, or to socialize with their peers, they immediately begin to form gendered identities.

In boys' case, this typically takes the form of, first of all, repudiation of any behavior considered feminine. To give a personal example, I can remember that my favorite color as a small child was pink. I discovered pretty quickly that this was not an acceptable choice, and was pressured to change it. So, I picked blue, since even though it wasn't my favorite, it wouldn't cause me any trouble. I also learned not to socialize with girls too much, and most importantly to never express myself emotionally, especially by crying or other expressions of pain or weakness.

Not all of this development is so relatively harmless, however; as Charis says:

During these years they are, to a certain extent, protected from the worst extremes of masculine peer pressure by their ‘child’ status in that teachers or parents will step in if the going gets too tough. This situation changes radically when boys move on to secondary education.

Once boys are out of elementary school, their masculinity is observed even more hawkishly than before; they're expected more often to protect themselves against bullies; the insults become more abusive and graphic; boys are required to put down other boys, physically if necessary, in order to prove their own "hardness"; and must at all times attack femininity in other boys whenever they see it.

To add some personal commentary on this, I think it's important to stress just how prison-like the social system boys are raised in is. Routinely, the bullies in the neighborhood would bully the other children into miniature gang wars, where they'd find a social outcast and degrade and/or beat them up (I was lucky to be fairly strong as a child, so even when all the other kids in the neighborhood ganged up on me, I could give as good as I got). The older boys (and occasionally girls) would beat, insult, or otherwise harass the younger children, either to scare off potential bullies, or just to give themselves a power trip. I knew boys who had their older brothers pin them down during recess and kick them in the balls for the whole thirty minutes - I heard of a few that supposedly wouldn't be able to have children as adults because of the abuse. Recently, sack tapping has become more popular. If you were physically weak, you could expect such beatings to be fairly routine: I remember one of my best friends at the time sobbing to me that he couldn't stand to go back to school again, because he didn't want to be beaten up any more. My other best friend turned to drugs. (The main bully I knew, on the other hand, went on his mission for the LDS Church, got married to an attractive young woman when he came back, and is now a respected member of his community. As they say, life is unfair.)

And I grew up in a middle-class, suburban environment. From what I've read, the "bad schools" have the same thing, but with guns, hack-saws, and cocaine.

As the author says, the mutual predation, aggression, and gender-enforcement is not a good recipe for the creation of mature, pro-social, interdependent human beings. While, on the one hand, males still do have a social drive to connect, for intimacy, the only socially prescribed ways to foment such connections are through activities and sports - in short, through external, indirect connections. This effect is so pervasive that when boys are asked to describe themselves, most are unable to articulate a response except through describing things they like, or activities they perform, whereas girls the same age have no such difficulty.

As Charis says:

This is a desperately fragile way to construct a self-concept. By the time boys are in their mid-teens they have learnt that credible masculinity is a constantly constructed veneer with very little on the inside. They have come to exist in a situation where they are under acute pressure to accede to the defining of themselves by others whilst being simultaneously denied the inner resources they need to adequately define themselves.

The result is an acquired over-dependence on external affirmation to construct and maintain a satisfactory sense of self.This is hardly a good prognosis for either personal security or personal development. It is not difficult to see that the ongoing stereotype of the fragility of the male ego is not, perhaps, without foundation.

[...]

It is no exaggeration to say that, for young males, the self is the price paid for entry into the fraternity of men. Payment starts immediately and the cost, as we will see, will continue to be enacted at virtually every stage of the individual male’s life. Unfortunately it is not only he who will be paying.

Charis spends a decent amount of the chapter specifically on boys' anti-femininity. While that's understandable coming from a feminist, I think she's heading the wrong direction to equate anti-femininity in males with misogyny in general. Most boys, at least after they hit puberty, probably don't have much of a problem with women acting in feminine ways, just with men doing so. In fact, in the most conservative societies it's considered men's proper role to defend, protect, and provide for women (to be honest, it always annoyed me while growing up that women get to do men's stuff, but men can't do women's stuff, and men still had to be all chivalrous, but that's just me). Moreover, it comes off as contradictory with one of the most common feminist claims - that men somehow created or control gender roles - that so much effort has to be spent to keep men masculine.

All in all, though, I think that this is one of the stronger chapters in the book, probably because it tends to provide more actual reports, more data than most of the other chapters.

Book Review of "Dangerous Children": Chapter 4

In chapter 4 Charis states that she has spent long years interviewing people about their experiences of gender, and her research has uncovered (contrary to the findings of Men's Studies scholars) some consistent patterns beneath them all.

Of course, one may counter that no amount of anecdotes constitutes scientific research - but maybe she'll still have some good points to make, so why not listen?

Eight things, she says, consistently constitute the masculine:

1. Maleness (a masculine person must be male)
2. Biological reductionism (that is, that not only is the masculine male, but males are by definition masculine)
3. Not-feminine (a masculine person can't be also be feminine)
4. Better-than-feminine
5. "Hard" (socially and emotionally withdrawn or inexpressive)
6. Hierarchy (a masculine person places themselves in positions of better- or lesser-then others)
7. Other Males (masculinity is promoted and maintained by social groups of men)
8. Unchangeable (masculinity is considered to be fixed and not influenced by social factors)


First, a few nits to pick: #1 seems like a tautology to me, since masculinity is the stereotyped role that men are supposed to play; #2 and #8 seem to mean the same thing; #6 and #7 would, I think, be true of any social group; and #3 would seem to be a natural product of the binary nature of gender, not necessarily something exclusive to masculinity - I don't think women today are still derided as "tomboys" for wanting to engage in traditionally masculine behaviors - but not long ago, it was considered to be very unseemly for women, same as feminine behavior in men is usually still seen today. (I assume that the difference here is thanks to the feminist movement, which greatly expanded women's role in society.)

#4 and #5 seem to be the most helpful in the list, but unfortunately she never suggests that her research has been put to peer review, and never states where she got her interviews from; being from England, we might suppose that most of her interviewees are English, but we'll never know. So, we're left to ask - would an Italian feel the same way? A Chinese? Someone from an isolated culture? In short, the evidence she provides, while interesting, doesn't seem to promote her central claim that there's a consistent rule behind masculine roles - maybe there is, but we'll never know based off the information she provides.

Atheism, Ethics, and Pornography: An Interview with Nina Hartley

Here's an interesting article in The Humanist with veteran porn star Marie Hartman, AKA Nina Hartley (her stage name).

Porn has, and continues to be, incredibly controversial, despite no clear link being made between porn and aggression, rape levels, etc. One meta-analysis found that violent pornography raises aggression, though this also occurs for non-pornographic violent media.

Personally, I don't see the big deal; we watch action movies to get excited, horror to feel scared, and porn to get turned on. What's wrong with that? Unless, of course, you're against people getting turned on... and for those that are, why isn't there a crusade against romance novels, too? Harumph.

LINK: The Humanist: Atheism, Ethics, and Pornography: An Interview with Nina Hartley

Saudi Arabia tells clerics to stop issuing absurd fatwas

Sounds like the news may be a little less colorful in the future :(

The LA Atheism Examiner:

Are Saudi Arabian clerics running wild?

Sheikh Abdel Mohsen Obeikan, a former royal court advisor with his own radio program, "Fatwas On the Air", caused an international stir a few weeks ago when he issued a fatwa (IE: religious edict) allowing unrelated men and women to mingle in public so long as a woman allows the guy to drink her breast milk in order establish a maternal bond.

[...]

Now, however, the Kingdom is striking back. A royal decree from King Abdullah, Custodian of the Two Mosques, has restricted the issuing of fatwas to only those clerics approved of by His Majesty and his authorities.

LINK: The LA Atheism Examiner: Saudi Arabia tells clerics to stop issuing absurd fatwas

Fair and Balanced: Atheist doctors 'more likely to hasten death'

More anti-Christian hate from the liberal news media! /sarc

But really, it's when you read articles like this - and from the Guardian, which really is left-leaning - that it puts the lie to the media's supposed anti-Christian bias.

In case it wasn't clear already: what the article is referring to is the tendency for nonreligious doctors to discuss assisted suicide with their terminally ill patients, as opposed to religious ones who, in general, won't even offer the option due to their religious beliefs. Translated into Christian, it comes out "atheists murder their patients because they have no morals!!!!!1!11!!one"

LINK: The Guardian Online: Atheist doctors 'more likely to hasten death'

Dry water!

Another cool-but-irrelevant thing to know about: dry water. Yes, it's real.

Nothing Grows Forever: The case for a no-growth economy

An article from Mother Jones:

PETER VICTOR is an economist who has been asking a heretical question: Can the Earth support endless growth?

Traditionally, economists have argued that the answer is "yes." In the 1960s when Victor was earning his various degrees, a steady rise in gross domestic product (GDP)—the combined value of our paid work and the things we produce—was seen as crucial for raising living standards and keeping the masses out of poverty. We grow or we languish: This assumption has become so central to our economic identity that it underpins almost every financial move our leaders make. It is to economics what the Second Law of Thermodynamics is to physics.

But Victor—now a professor at York University in Toronto—felt something tugging him in the opposite direction. Ecologists were beginning to learn that Earth does have limits. Pump enough pollution into a lake and you can ruin it forever; chop down enough forest and it might never grow back. By the early '00s, the frailties of the planet were becoming even more evident—and unsettling—as greenhouse gases accumulated and chunks of Greenland's glaciers began breaking off into the sea. "We've had 125,000 generations of humans, but it's only been the last eight that have had growth," Victor told me. "So what's considered normal? I think we live in very abnormal times. And the signs are showing up everywhere that the burden we're placing on the natural environment can't be borne."

In essence, endless growth puts us on the horns of a seemingly intractable dilemma. Without it, we spiral into poverty. With it, we deplete the planet. Either way, we lose.

LINK: Mother Jones: Nothing Grows Forever

Religious discrimination at work

A recent article I'd like to comment on, or rather to provoke a broader discussion: Hijab-wearing Muslim woman sues Disney over dress code.

This is only one example, and I'm certain you can find atheists who do that same sort of thing, but this is a kind of discrimination that just doesn't really seem like discrimination. In my last job, for instance, I was told I needed to not wear my skull bandannas, because they were against the dress code; I had similar issues at my job before that; and as a vegan, I'm certainly never going to get a job at a place like McDonald's. Why are the issues any different when religion is the excuse, instead of one's ethics or culture?

The courts in the U.S. have tended toward "accommodationism", which essentially means that the onus in on the employer to show that an individual's religious practices prevent them from doing their job effectively; if you can do your job effectively (whatever that means, given the circumstances), you get an exemption from the rules.

This seems to me to be a big, big can of worms - who decides what "effectiveness" means? Who decides what "a sincere religious belief" is?

And this is only the start of the issue - what about more gray areas like Harvard's decision to set aside women-only hours at the gym after a request by Muslim women, for example. If you can give people permission to leave places they don't want to be because it's there religion, can you give them special access to places they do want to be because it's their religion? What if these were evangelical Christians who wanted all the gay men to leave the gym, instead? Would that be acceptable? And granted, the request the women made at Harvard was incredibly modest: just 6 hours out of the 70 hours the gym would be open, and it was only one of apparently several gyms Harvard has - but if it's only a liiittle bit of discrimination, does that make it okay?

Maybe I'm just being a simpleton here, but it seems like so many of these issues are so easy to rectify by giving religious people the same rights everybody else has, instead of their current special privileges.

Half the Sky: 800,000 women trafficked across borders every year

Pardon my putting on my cultural imperialist hat, but this is serious issue. The authors of the book Half the Sky, from which the article title is taken, point out that:

If the supreme moral challenge of the 19th century was slavery, and of the 20th century the fight against totalitarianism, then, they write, "in this century the paramount moral challenge will be the struggle for gender equality in the developing world".

The contention is as startling as the idea of a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist buying up prostitutes. I put it to them that, to some people, the claim will seem overblown. After all, you don't go lightly comparing the plight of women in developing countries today with slavery or, by implication, the Holocaust.

"This idea is a couple of decades in gestation," Kristof says. "Over those years, we reluctantly came to the conclusion that this really is the greatest moral challenge of this century."

Then WuDunn chimes in: "When you hear that 60 to 100 million females are missing in the current population, we thought that number compares in the scope and size. And then you compare the slave trade at its peak in the 1780s, when there were 80,000 slaves transported from Africa to the New World, and you see there are now 10 times that amount of women trafficked across international borders, so you start to think you are talking about comparable weight."

There are a lot of NGOs that are currently working to stop human sex trafficking; a couple of the bigger ones are humantrafficking.change.org and ecpat.net, but if you do a web search you can find plenty more if you're looking for something to do about it.

That all said, though, there's only so much that NGOs can do - eventually, if things are really going to change, we'll need to see government action. Western countries, and especially the USA, have a lot of leverage they could put on countries that engage in this behavior (and a lot they could do to alleviate the underlying problems surrounding it). The U.S. allegedly invaded Iraq and Afghanistan in part to save its women; why not exercise some authority here?

LINK: Half the Sky: how the trafficking of women today is on a par with genocide

ZOMBIE ANTS AND UNICORNS!!!

This is another irrelevant post, but I just had to share it - not only do unicorns exist, but so do zombies!

It just goes to show that as soon as you start to think reality couldn't possibly get any more boring, something pops up to make things more interesting.

But Will It Make You Happy?

This is a good article from the New York Times - it's so important to remind people (read: Americans) that money can't buy happiness. Like, seriously.

She had so much.

A two-bedroom apartment. Two cars. Enough wedding china to serve two dozen people.

Yet Tammy Strobel wasn’t happy. Working as a project manager with an investment management firm in Davis, Calif., and making about $40,000 a year, she was, as she put it, caught in the “work-spend treadmill.”

So one day she stepped off.

LINK: But Will It Make You Happy?

Fannie and Freddie's Foreclosure Barons

This is an article by Mother Jones - it's a little long, but I feel like it's worth it. The major point it makes is to show just how many foreclosures are being pushed through the woodwork, so many that neither judges nor banks can review them all. In fact, most of the foreclosures are made by foreclosure mills that get paid a straight fee for every foreclosure they push through - not surprisingly, this makes for a perverse profit motive where homeowners, even ones that have never missed a payment, are being given the runaround, having their homes put on auction without even being notified, having paperwork "accidentally" lost over and over again, and being given the runaround until their homes are confiscated.

Of course, this isn't the whole story: some people bought homes they couldn't afford, while others bought homes they could afford, but then lost their jobs in the recession and couldn't make payments - and now that the inundation of foreclosures has started, banks have had to hand the work to the mills, where there's just not much profit in dealing with customers in a decent (or even legal) way.

LINK: EXCLUSIVE: Fannie and Freddie's Foreclosure Barons

Book Review of "Dangerous Children": Chapter 3

In chapter 3, the author fairly briefly goes through the following points:

1) Femininity is a product of men
2) Women's Studies found that there are lots of "femininities", depending on social class, ethnicity, etc., but they're all united by the fact that men defined them
3) Masculinity is also defined by men
4) Men's Studies also found that there are lots of "masculinities", but unlike Women's Studies (and as the author states, incorrectly) came to the conclusion that there isn't really anything that unites the various forms of masculinity

Now, not (yet) being an expert on men's studies, I can't comment as to what the reigning paradigm is. I also want to point out that while no one asked women what their role in society ought to be, no one asked me what I thought masculinity ought to be, either - and this goes for all the other men I know, too. Maybe one or another man could have broken from the pack and shared his views with other men on what a proper gender role is for men, and maybe his views would have gained some currency, but how much of men's roles have been defined by men, and how much is simple inertia? And, since men, like women, are a diverse group, how many men actually wanted those roles that were foisted on them? Men may still have had more control over their gender roles than women have had, but even then, it doesn't seem like much...

So, I've noted before, (and this may just be a bias on my part) I don't completely accept that either gender necessarily designed gender roles, at least not in a way that was without considerable constraints. Since humans are apparently uniquely able to speculate about non-present minds, most of us have a tendency to see design and intent where there really wasn't any, and it seems to me like this is another case of that; and even when people have consciously set about thinking about gender roles, historically it's been done unscientifically, and usually winds up (in my opinion) being more the product of economic, political, or religious factors more than the thinker's own intentions.

I don't mean to say, though, that gender roles weren't affected by men's general monopoly on political and religious discourse (though there were certainly exceptions to this rule), but that I think it's very important to keep in mind that whatever these men thought about gender, it wasn't in a vacuum, and seems to me to be mostly the product of other social forces. And, also, while men tended to own the religious and political discourse, women usually had control of children's upbringing, and it seems undoubtable that this would have had its own effect on gender roles.

Attack of the Lower Upper Class

This is an interesting article I stumbled on - to quote:

Everybody talks about the gap between the “haves” and “have-nots.” But what about the growing gap between the “haves” and the “have-not enough time to spend all my money in multiple lifetimes”?

Essentially the idea is that while most commentary on class has been about the very poor and the very rich, or the lifestyles of the middle class, but that there's a very interesting discussion to be had about those who are already in the top 10%, but not the top 1%...

Link: Attack of the Lower Upper Class

Confessions of a Tea Party Casualty

I really want to share this story by Mother Jones. Basically, the thing we're seeing here is how, after the Republicans lost horribly in 2008, most conservatives seem to have concluded that it's because they're TOO moderate, and not vice-versa. So, Republicans like Bob Inglis (who, while I disagree with him, is definitely the kind of politician I'd like to see in office) are getting pushed out of the party.

Mother Jones: Confessions of a Tea Party Casualty

Unemployment in the USA is still REALLY BAD, in caps

Here's a short article from Mother Jones I want to draw some attention to. Not a whole lot to comment on here, but Kevin Drum points out that

And now, for the actual substance of Winship's post, it's this: unemployment is really bad right now. Really, really bad. His chart is on the left: it shows that there are about five people unemployed for every job opening. A different chart is on the right. It shows there are about five people unemployed for every job opening. In words that even Mitch McConnell can understand, the unemployed aren't slacking off because they enjoy the vacation. They're out of work because there aren't any jobs.

Businesses aren't hiring more employees because people aren't buying as much, because they don't have as much money, because they're employed, because businesses aren't hiring, because...

It's a vicious feedback loop. TARP and ARRA helped the recession from turning into a depression, but things are still really bad.

The good news, of course, is that the already-rich are doing better than ever.

Book Review of "Dangerous Children": Chapter 2

Most of this chapter consists of a history of modern feminism as well as an overview of political dominance, most specifically the way that dominant political regimes control or influence thought systems.

She brings up first the matter of how establishments maintain their dominance:

Enforcement alone, whether by physical or legal means, is rarely successful in the long term because of the conflict and resistance that it inevitably fosters.

Justification is far more effective. It works by persuading subordinate individuals and groups that there are valid reasons for their own inferiority and equally valid reasons for the enhanced status of those who are designated superior.

My first note here is that, throughout this chapter, she seems to work from the perspective that thought systems work only from the top-down, with the least dominant basically acting as passive sponges for the viewpoints of the dominant. I'm not sold on this point: human brains are pretty obsessive about interpreting things in a non-dissonant way, and I don't see why many establishment-promoting beliefs couldn't, or wouldn't, be provided by the oppressed classes themselves. The possibility I'm suggesting works like this: underprivileged classes are trying to find a way to explain their lack of privilege, and would be unlikely to accept that they're lazy, since that would conflict with their views of themselves as basically good, hard-working people; unless they're fairly cynical, they're unlikely to believe that the upper classes are evil, since that could conflict with their view of the world as basically just; so that leaves the conclusion that the upper classes just deserve it, somehow. I think this is especially likely, in many cases, because throughout Western history, at least, it's been common practice for the rich (and especially rich women) to dispense of their largess through charity and philanthropic works. Religion could also play a part here; if God's in control of everything, why would He put these evil people in control? It's very difficult for most people to accept that someone could, on the one hand, donate heavily to charity, and on the other hand promote slavery, abuse, and imperialism, or other abominations, so I don't think it's absurd to suppose that at least a few of them would conclude on their own that the privileged were so simply because they deserved to be so. In practice, this does tend to benefit the continuation of whatever regime happens to be in power at the time, but I don't think it's necessary to assume that this is directly or entirely the doing of the regime itself.

Also, I think these kinds of things can become self-fulfilling prophecies: when people make these sorts of rationalizations, they frequently begin to act in accord with them, or, when someone identifies a negative trait in themselves, saying "Well, it's not my fault, that's just how my gender is" can be a powerful excuse to not rectify that kind of behavior, even when it happens again in the future.

A final note: something strikes me as a little odd. If the people in charge of education usually made use of that power to benefit themselves, even at the expense of others, and women had virtually sole charge of children, frequently in schools as well as the home... wouldn't women therefore have used that power to benefit themselves? This is sort of where I see that logic headed, like the way that radical masculists will invert feminist thought and argue that clearly we live in a matriarchy and that women are making use of their power to indoctrinate children while they're still young and "feminize" them. It's a bit ridiculous, but the mainstream feminist interpretation seems to have some of the same issues - clearly, there's more going on here than that.

She goes on:

Studies have shown that people react differently to tiny babies according to their perception of the child’s sex. Babies perceived as female are treated with greater care and gentleness whilst being spoken to quietly and soothingly.

Infants perceived as male elicit an opposite response, being handled with greater physicality and being spoken to in louder and more jocular terms, all based on the ‘common sense’ understanding that girls are ‘feminine’ and boys are ‘masculine.’

Everyone has a working knowledge of what these terms mean and this is invariably couched in bipolar terms. Blue-pink, hard-soft, active-passive, the bigendered nature of humanity seems to fill it with a desire to divide its world in half – and then to use this demarcation as a basis for the allocation of power, opportunity and advantage. The problem for women, however, is that the masculine half of the equation has always appropriated far more than its fair share of half of all available resources, rewards and authority.

I want to emphasize the point about males being handled more roughly than females, even when they're newborn and there's no physical difference between the sexes that would justify such treatment, because as we go deeper into the book, that general point is going to become more important.

I also, as you should probably be able to guess by now, take a little exception to the last sentence I quoted; I'll grant that men had more authority than they deserved, but I'm less sold on the rewards and resources, and even less sold on the unmentioned sacrifices. When a woman marries a rich man, she probably enjoys the servants, cakes and fancy clothes just as much as he does; and I know that corsets are uncomfortable, but then so is military training, sleeping in campgrounds, and getting shot, and I don't think you can argue that wearing a corset is any less a choice than being drafted.

Again, I want to stress that women's issues are important, and whatever discrimination men face would never lessen the issues faced by women, or make them any more acceptable - but still, when people say that women are the primary victims of traditional gender roles, I just have to ask, "But what about this? what about that?"

Historically this inequity has been justified via the ideology of the ‘natural’ gendered dominance of men, based on time-honoured definitions of the masculine that reach back as far as written history allows us to trace their origins. History tells us that men have been dominant for two reasons. Firstly, because it is allegedly part of their inherited biological nature to be so. Secondly, because the perpetual defining of the masculine as superior to the feminine means that they have been continuously presented as deserving to be so.

I think this goes back to what I was saying about cognitive dissonance, and the ways that people try to prevent themselves looking like the bad one by somewhat creatively interpreting events. I also want to add that I think it's important to note what men were deemed superior at: namely, activities related to politics, athletics, war, and academics. Women, on the other hand, were considered to be generally more morally pure, better with children and other things related to the feminine sphere. One of the main problems, I think, with this gender division is that over the past few thousand years, men's domain has expanded exponentially due to the rise of science, globalism, and economic growth, whereas the things considered feminine have pretty much stayed the same they were when gender roles were first getting written. I don't think there's as reason to assume that people knew back then just how much people would have to learn, or how many kinds of jobs there would be, or how many different peoples your average politician would have to engage with on a regular basis, just in order to survive in society. The ancient Greeks did typically deny women an education, at least of the masculine kind, but what this education consisted of is a rudimentary understanding of political rhetoric, athletics, basic arithmetic and learning to play a flute - and that was for those rich know-it-alls who had the money to send their kids to school for some larnin'. It seems to me that the main problem of gender is that it failed to evolve with the times - at least until things became so untenable that you simply had to start expanding on women's rights just to keep the economy going.

Finally, she turns to masculine bias in academia. She doesn't name names, but the two most obvious examples I know are from psychology: Freudianism and various theories related to women's cognitive development. These are excellent cases of why it's important to have gender equity in the sciences: when men looked at the way that women developed, they basically didn't understand what they found, and were forced to conclude that women were just underdeveloped - for instance, women very frequently didn't develop of sense of inherent rights, or developed it very late compared to men, which was (still is, I think) considered the epitome of moral-rights development. What they didn't realize is that there are other ways of conceptualizing morality, such as by relationships, that the women they studied were adept at and the men weren't. They couldn't see that because, of course, they lacked that moral perspective themselves, and it wasn't until the influx of women into psychology that they were able to get at the real story.

For the most part, she says, Women's Studies was the main avenue of studying the ways that gender had influenced, and continued to influence, the academic world. Almost as soon as Women's Studies had gotten established, however, in came Men's Studies, whose proponents argued that you needed to study both sides of the equation to get at the true answer. Not only that, many of them argued that only men could study masculinity, in much the same way that only women could properly study femininity. (I don't personally quite agree with either; while obviously it's important to get feedback from people that experience what you're studying, the entire point of science is to learn things that you didn't already know - if only men could ever really understand or learn anything about masculinity, for instance, it seems like that would kind of defeat the purpose of doing science.)

She says:

Women mostly acceded to the concept of the male exploration of masculinity, it was after all a step forward that they were looking at it at all and it would have seemed churlish not to encourage this development.

However, leaving the dominant to investigate themselves in never a good idea..........[sic]

That's the end of the chapter. My oversensitivity seems to be at work here again - her overall perspective seems to be that men are like little children that need permission to study their own masculinity, and that while it's not that important an issue, well, at least he's studying something. I wouldn't necessarily mention it, but her book (and many other feminist writings I've seen) come off as having kind of a paternalistic attitude toward men's interest in gender studies, and whenever men disagree, it regularly seems to be assumed that men are just acting out and their complaints don't need to be taken seriously. This also, interestingly, is a complaint I've heard from many feminists regarding other people's (and especially men's) responses to feminism. I wonder if this isn't more of your typical gendered tunnel-vision, but I can't really do more than speculate at the moment.

Link: Dangerous Children: Chapter 2

Scott Lively and the Pink Swastika

I just have to link to this video done by The Daily Show With Jon Stewart. Scott Lively is a conservative Evangelical, best known for his book The Pink Swastika, in which he claims that Nazism is a gay plot. Jon Stewart got him on his show - it's so hard to believe that he's actually serious about all this, but apparently, he is. It's hilarious and sad at the same time.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Gay Reichs
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

Possible Few-day Vacation

Starcraft II just came out! I'm installing it even as I type. So, a warning that you may not see a post for the next few days... not that I ever posted regularly, anyway.

Instead, I'm gonna post a few links, one an ironic link to an article in the Guardian on internet/gaming addiction, which I most certainly am not afflicted by.

Another is on why the United States Postal Service is actually a lot more efficient than people believe - first because it receives nearly no federal funding (its funds come almost entirely from the fees it charges), and also because the post office, being a federal agency, can't leap through legal loopholes as easily as private companies can that allow businesses to not set money aside for employee retirement funds.

I also want to highlight another link, this time on Islam in Europe, specifically on how Islamic radicalization is partly overplayed by various media outlets, and partially made worse by defining radical Muslims as the only "real" ones, which leaves (particularly young) Muslims who identify with Islam to adopt more extreme religious positions since they don't want to be seen as less earnest about their religion.

Book Review of "Dangerous Children": Chapter 1

"Dangerous Children" is an e-book still being written (when she has the time) by feminist scholar Gaia Charis. I feel that the book, as much has been written so far, has a lot to add to the gender debate, though I also have plenty of reservations.

The first chapter, of course, sets the stage for the rest of the book. In it, she writes

As humanity edges its way into the 21st century the world it holds custody of is clearly in a mess. Our environment is in meltdown, the global economy is a fiscal black hole and social structures everywhere and at every level are riven with inequalities so great that conflict is constant. The time is right for accountability.

When companies founder we look to the top to see what has gone wrong. So who's been running Earth plc? The answer is not very pc. The answer is men.

Little nit to pick here - yes, technically she's correct that most of the people in charge are men, but I think it deserves to be added that 1) women get to vote, too, and they vote for conservatives about as often as men do, and 2) when women are in charge, they don't seem to act significantly differently than men do - i.e., they perform about the same on public welfare issues, vote in favor of war about as often, and so on. Admittedly, women do have a slight tendency to lean toward the left, but it deserves to be stated that this effect isn't especially pronounced. So, while gender equity is undoubtedly a worthy goal to aim for, it's not really clear that it would change very much.

In theory, she says, gender and sex are not necessarily identical; but in practice, there's an incredibly strong association between the two. Women, being generally feminine, receive "the allocation of pro-emotional and pro-social capacities", whereas masculinity requires the "valorisation of their anti-social counterparts, evidenced at every level from the virtual violence of video to the actuality of global warfare."

But that's not all, for she adds that

There is an adage attributed to women which says that men never grow up. There is more than a grain of truth in this. The masculine paradigm is not programmed for maturity and this is the template for living that males inherit. [...] The feminine paradigm is not principally defined by the same bipolar taboo. In a world where dominance has always conferred the power to define, the feminine has been the repository of what men have decided they are not, or do not wish to be. The feminine has thus always been defined by what has been allotted to it rather than by the prohibition of what it must never be.

Obviously, I'm going to have a couple problems with this. First, she seems to be making the same kind of error that male psychologists made before women were allowed to enter the field: they all took a look at women's development and concluded that they were all stunted. They weren't, but men and women tend to use different strategies for forming relationships and building their ethical systems, and so the masculine researchers looked at women and just didn't find something they recognized. It wasn't until women entered the field that they were able to explain to the men all that was really going on (which is one really good reason to have at least some gender equity in a profession).

Secondly, as researchers of femininity have found, there are actually quite a few problems that women can run into by having to be too feminine, and researchers of masculinity have also found that there are some profoundly pro-social aspects to masculinity. To give some examples, the focus that most (I should probably add "white, middle-class") women have on "niceness" can prevent them from allocating enough time for themselves, which can lead to burnout, lack of personal development, and other issues. Masculinity, on the other hand, has a lot of focus on teamwork, healthful competitiveness, playing according to agreed-upon rules, and so forth. That's not to suggest, of course, that femininity has nothing helpful in its own right, but the most generally healthy individuals tend to be the ones that can successfully make use of both their masculine and their feminine sides as the situation calls. Both are valuable.

Next, my own perspective on gender roles is that there is probably a lot less of men deciding what women's role ought to be than most feminists seem to believe. Originally, most gender roles seem to me to be a result of the importance of property, whether that's land, resources, or various items that take a lot of work to produce: the more important property is, the more profitable it is to steal it from someone, which just wouldn't be an issue if property itself had virtually no meaning. So, you get a rise in militarism, as more people try harder to protect their things, and to take the things of others. In an ancient society, this generally requires gender roles to be established, since it doesn't make much sense for the women to be fighting in hand-to-hand combat while the men stay home and try to breastfeed. Very quickly, practical rules like these tend to become established within a culture, and passed down generation to generation until there's some very strong outside force that requires things to change. This explains fairly cleanly, I think, why "primitive" societies, most specifically ones without a strong sense of personal property, tend to have fairly egalitarian attitudes; why women's role is considered to be the domestic, and men's the political and military; why gender roles can be seen in pretty much the same configurations across nearly every human society; why athleticism and emotional restraint is considered masculine, whereas women are perceived to be more emotional and physically weak; and so on.

Or, on the other hand, gender roles are frequently the product of complex social interactions, like with the idea that women are inherently more pure and/or innocent than men: Christian belief strongly promotes an ideal of purity, one which the male rulers of feudal, Western societies just couldn't put into practice. So, as men did the dirty work of suppressing rebellions and slaying invaders and other such un-Christian behavior, women began to be idealized according to this Christian belief system due to their non-participation in the ugliness of feudal politics ("and so much the better that they're the ones who take care of the children!" they may have thought).

Undoubtedly there have been men in power who have abused that power, but in most situations it just doesn't seem very clear to me that this was the case, or why this or that particular virtue or behavior was considered "bad" and therefore feminine.

I'm going a bit too in-depth here, I think, but I'd still like to add that historically, there have tended to be a couple main camps in feminism that many people (including many feminists) haven't noticed, and that's that on the one hand, you have more gender-egalitarian-minded types who are primarily interested in establishing a balance between the genders, and loosening gender codes so that everyone can find their own niche, but on the other hand you've had a camp of thought that essentially worked within the traditional gender perspective, but that argued that femininity was a greater virtue than masculinity, that men had basically done everything wrong, and that now it was time to give women a turn. The author of this book seems to me to be more a member of the second camp.

Moving along, the author states that while masculinity is defined to a large degree by not being feminine, femininity has no such restriction, and as such can get the best of both worlds. I should like to point out here that this was not always the case; read enough old books, and you'll see that masculine behavior was considered very improper for women (still is, to some degree), and that being accused of being too masculine could definitely count as an insult to a woman. Both genders, originally, were defined by their not-being the opposite; it's only the past few decades that women have been permitted to participate in most masculine behaviors.

She argues, then, that more women in charge of business and politics would be better for societal health, in large part because of "their non-hierarchical, but very productive, management styles." Now, most women don't actually establish non-hierarchical relationships; rather, women are more likely to establish relationships "horizontally", on a closeness model, with the ones with the greatest intimacy held the closest; men tend to build relationships "vertically", in a sort of alpha-male model, with the most skilled or successful at the top. Both are hierarchies, however, with the lowest-ranked being at the outer rims, or the bottom rung, respectively. It also seems that an additional, I think complementary solution (along with bringing more women to management positions), is to loosen the bounds of masculinity so that men are more able to make use of their feminine sides.

Are men listening? In theory anyone can adopt a masculine mindset. In reality, it is the domain of maleness. If men cannot find the courage to adapt and redefine, to see the dreadful folly of their time-honoured rejection of all those qualities that they have deemed feminine and taboo and which make us fully human then the future is bleak for us all. If destruction proves preferable to the facing of fear then humanity’s dangerous children may take us all into the void with them.

Now, I'll agree that personal responsibility is important, but (maybe I'm being oversensitive here) I feel like her tone is a little... unsympathetic. Would it be fair to state that women just needed to take more responsibility for acting more masculine? - or would it be at least polite to make some reference to the sometimes extreme discrimination women faced in asserting their right to not be pigeonholed? Again, perhaps I'm being oversensitive, but I hear regularly (from feminists, who are almost always women) that men just need to take more responsibility, with very little mention of the real obstacles men face, whereas women's issues are all about discrimination, with very little mention being made of personal responsibility. Certainly, there's a little of both, for both sides?


All-in-all, the first chapter wasn't the strongest. There's a cognitive bias where people will find a solution to a problem, and immediately conclude that this solution will solve every problem. To give a colorful anecdote, in a study I read about on this phenomena, people would be handed a hammer and a screwdriver, and after successfully doing a few screws with the screwdriver, they'd try to hammer a couple nails with it before giving up and using the hammer, despite it being right there in front of them the whole time. I think this is a bias academics are especially prone to: Nietzsche knew that the will to power explained everything, Marx knew that all of human society could be explained by class struggle, the New Atheists frequently seem to think that religion is always the answer (or rather, the problem), and many feminists seem to believe that gender is at the root of everything. Gaia Charis also, I think, stumbles with this issue a little bit, but the book gets stronger later on, as she starts to focus more on the experiences of actual people, rather than the grand narration of her findings.

Link: Dangerous Children: Chapter 1

Arab man convicted of "rape by deception"

A criminal court in Israel just convicted a man of "rape by deception" because he lied to his girlfriend, telling her he was Jewish, not Arab. When she found out, she brought him to court.

Now, (ignoring the obvious racism - she obviously liked him enough when she thought he was a Jew) obviously he shouldn't have lied, but it seems to me this kind of principle just opens up a huge can of worms. If I had a girlfriend, and she cheats on me, is it rape if we have sex when she hasn't yet told me about her affair? I mean, lying in a relationship is wrong, but I have trouble calling it "jail-time" wrong.

Israel jails Arab for 'deceit rape'

Random Post: Kate Beaton

I just HAVE to share Kate Beaton. She's been doing a webcomic for a few years, and most people have probably already heard of her, but she's just sooo funny (to me, at least; when I've shown her to other people, I've so far tended to hear "that's not very funny" or "I don't get it". But I'm laughing out loud.) Most of her comics are history-based, and you just have to see the drawings themselves, because she's so good at facial expressions.

Sort-of on-topic, and to make it somehow relevant to the rest of the blog, it turns out that most men don't think women are funny. The most likely explanation seems to be to be because in romantic relationships, men statistically tend to be the ones telling jokes, while women laugh at them - and as a result (so goes my thinking), men get the idea that women don't tell jokes because they're not as funny, though the real reasons are much more complex.

I also have to throw in this quote I read, which is just so funny, it's as good as Kate Beaton:

"It's hard to write about modern politics and not sound like HP Lovecraft.

Considering the fact that the GOP policy "positions" are horribly indescribable and indescribably horrible." - Snarki, child of Loki from the comments section in this Mother Jones blog post.

Miracles

Frequently you hear in discussions with believers of claims of miracles. Someone's cancer was cured, another had back problems that went away, someone's car was sliding on the ice, and they prayed and simultaneously regained control, and so on. There are a good number of fallacies at work when people put these forward as evidence for their religion.

The most common type of miracle in my experience is the Unexplainable Miracle. That is, something unusual happened, and the person can't explain it, so they assume it was a miracle. This is known in philosophy as an "argument from ignorance" - essentially what the person is claiming is "I don't know how x happened, therefore I do." Do you see the fallacy there? If you don't know something, then you don't - full-stop. If you come upon a really weird situation, and you can't explain it, the only reasonable thing you can do is accept your ignorance. Pretending you know when you don't isn't an acceptable response.

The next most common (again, in my personal experience) is the Coincidental Miracle: someone prays for something, and they get it.

One good example is a plane crash. The plane goes down, nearly everybody's praying for their life to be saved, and only one of them survives. Not surprisingly, this was one of the ones who was praying for their life. Therefore, they conclude, God must have saved my life. It's a miracle! A real one! Or so they think - it shouldn't be surprising that if most of the people are praying as the plane goes down, the one left over will be likely to have been among the praying ones.

What's more, when it's not one that was praying, they tend to assume it's just a lucky break - or even less reasonably, they give credit to God for saving their life, anyway. But what about all the ones that died? Did God just not listen to them?

The last one I think deserves its own category are Self-Fulfilling Miracles. For instance, someone is told that if a special blessing is given, their pain will go away. This is known scientifically as the placebo effect - in fact, scientists have discovered just what causes the placebo effect. Or, someone has difficulty walking, has a prayer said for them, and is able (temporarily) to walk; another has the flu, and their symptoms lessen after a blessing. What you don't see is someone's broken leg suddenly mending over ten seconds - that would be a miracle.

All of these can be explained the normal way: the placebo effect. Studies have repeatedly shown either a very small positive effect, within the realm of chance, no effect at all, or a negative effect. On average, prayer shows no effect beyond a placebo. This is a very important point for people to understand, that once something is explained, you don't need to explain it again. This is the essence of Occam's Razor, which states that "entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity" - we already know that the placebo effect exists, we already know that it's sufficient to explain these phenomena, and as a result, we don't gain any information or better our understanding of the world by saying it's a miracle. All it does is clutter our worldview.

The main point of all of this is: if there's no difference between a miracle and the way things happen normally, then miracles cease to have meaning - and if something would have happened, "miracle" or not, then it's not good evidence that your religious beliefs are accurate. You'll have to find some other argument.

Religious extremism caused by anxiety

This might be stating the obvious for some, but a recent study found that anxiety was highly correlated with extreme religious beliefs. What this study would seem to suggest is that if you want to lessen religious extremism, one way to do that is to lessen people's anxiety levels, perhaps through social security programs, raising employment levels, promoting safer communities, or that sort of thing.

Link: Religious extremism driven by anxiety, says research

Mark Twain on Christianity

Just a quick link:

Long after his death, Samuel Langhorn Clemens, who wrote under the pen name "Mark Twain," is about to reveal all in his never-before published autobiography. The author and inventor of such classic American characters as Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, felt that some of the things he wanted to say were too controversial to be revealed in his lifetime and stipulated that they not be published until one hundred years after his death. That was in 1910 and now that 2010 has arrived, the guardian of the autobiography, the University of California Berkeley's Bancroft Library is set to publish it in its entirety.

Read more: Revealed: Mark Twain's view of Christianity

"Male Abortion"

Or rather, male adoption? There don't seem to be any really good names for it.

Anyway, what "it" is, is men's right to essentially put their children up for adoption, ceding both their parental rights and responsibilities as parents. Women already have this right, and in addition, they have the right to get an abortion.

This is a very touchy issue in the gender debate, although personally, the issue seems fairly clear-cut. The whole issue gets very complicated because of the different ways in which men and women reproduce. Both partners have to have sex, but most contraceptive methods are only available to women, and women are the ones who have to shoulder the responsibility of carrying a fetus inside them for nine months.

Because it's women who suffer the physical consequences of pregnancy, the case for unilateral power being given to women over abortion seems the most strong to me. Of course, in any healthy relationship, serious life-altering issues like these would be discussed with the other partner, but ultimately (and most importantly, legally) abortion would be the woman's choice.

This does, however, put men in a tough spot, especially since at the moment most contraceptive methods are also up to women, and women alone - the only three reliable option for men being condoms, vasectomies, and abstinence, none of which are particularly wonderful options for many men.

Luckily, there's a third option, and one that women already enjoy: carry the child to term, and then put it up for adoption. Especially since men can't force a woman to carry a child to term, it would seem obvious that men ought to have the right to put our children up for adoption, too. That's not the case in most Western countries. On the contrary, men are required by law to provide child support and usually have a lot of social pressure to participate in their child's life, even though they may never have been ready to be fathers, don't want the children - or even aren't actually the biological father, but simply were in a romantic relationship when the pregnancy first occurred and weren't able to prove conclusively that it wasn't theirs.

Usually, the argument for this is that it's not the child's fault and so should still have the opportunities that come with the extra income. This, first of all, seems to fly right in the face of the position that women are capable of making their reproductive choices by themselves - if they're not capable of telling when they're able to financially provide for a child, should women still have the right to decide whether or not to make one? Or, if women are capable of telling when they're able to take care of a child, why do they then need financial support from the father? Secondly, there are already lots of programs available for children from low-income families in the USA, like the SCHIP program for health insurance, FAFSA for college aid, and so on. Now, if these programs aren't getting the job done, then maybe they need to be strengthened, or new programs need to be created.

In any case, however, it seems unfair to hold a single man responsible for something that was basically beyond his control - we don't expect women choose between celibacy and motherhood, so how can we fairly expect men to do the same? And if it wasn't that particular man's fault (and let's say it's not the woman's, either), then that's something that society in general should deal with. Putting all of that responsibility on a single man's shoulders, and one who doesn't want it, and couldn't do anything to stop it, seems pretty unfair, especially when we aren't holding women to the same kinds of standards.

Maybe a male version of the Pill, for real this time?

Scientists invent first male contraceptive pill

There's a running joke that the male contraceptive pill has been five years away for about forty years, but this seems like a real breakthrough. If it actually works, too, it'd actually be better than the female pill, since it seems to be side-effect-free.

I do have to comment on one thing though: the article cites research showing that women don't trust men to take the pill. Really? How do they think we feel? Yes, women get stuck with the pregnancy, but men get stuck with the bill, and we don't have the option of getting an abortion. Which brings me to my next topic...

How Faith Undermines Democracy

Most Americans are well-aware of how dysfunctional our national politics are. In most places, even to identify yourself as a Republican or a Democrat (for the few that still identify with either party) means to publicly beg for a shouting match.

What I strongly suspect, however, is that the religiosity of most Americans plays a large part in this: this is purely anecdotal, but I've noticed that I almost never have the same types of arguments with other atheists that I have and see other people have in political discussions with the religious. Granted, most atheists tend toward the liberal side in the USA, but there's a sizable minority of conservatives, and no matter how strongly we disagree, or how much difference there is in class or education levels, we're generally still able to discuss political issues rationally. That isn't what I see in discussions between people of faith - while obviously there are plenty of rational theists and plenty of irrational atheists, religious people typically seem to spend most of their time talking past each other, never directly addressing each other's points, making assertions without backing them up with anything, and making emotional pleas that don't convince anyone but the already-converted.

I think it's possible, or even probable, that religious faith is one source of this problem, or at least doesn't do much to create an environment where rational discussion is likely to take place. The problem with faith is that it rests in the personal: religious faith means essentially to identify the subjective with the absolute - that is, to turn a personal belief into a commandment of God. There is scientific evidence that people use their own opinions to infer what God thinks. On the more philosophical end, many people's faith is strongly influenced by a personal experience, whether that's a miracle, or a strong feeling of oneness with the universe, or what have you.

The problem here is that you can't base your life off of another person's personal experiences, and because of that, you can't use your personal experiences to convince others. The only way to resolve a debate is to communicate through the universal, and so far as I know, the only universal modes of proof are in sound logic and hard evidence.

So, people of faith will build a belief system or a set of morals based on personal experience, but when it comes time to convince others of the rightness of their position - which is generally necessary to resolve a political dispute - they have no way to actually change the other person's mind in a reliable way. What's worse, if the other person is also religious, they're not likely to change their mind even if strong evidence is provided against their position, since their belief system isn't based on evidence in the first place. And, just to really make matters really impossible, people who believe they have the absolute truth on their side have a very difficult time compromising, which is basically the last resort there is in a political dispute. All that's left, most of the time, is some sort of emotional plea or manipulation, or the use of force - whether that's jail time, fines, or actual violence.

Now, again, there are plenty of irrational atheists, and plenty of rational theists, but I think that atheists in the USA have a strong advantage in resolving political disputes, since there's a high correlation between rationalism and atheism, and a high correlation between faith and religiosity (obviously). So, where the environment most religious people live in is not conducive to settling political disputes, most atheists have an environment that requires them to be well-versed in rational or philosophical discussion, which makes it much easier to solve these kinds of problems, and compromise when there's no real resolution available.

How To Flirt

This has basically nothing to do with anything, but I thought it was such a great link I just had to share it.

Basically, this is a paper written by a sociologist who put down everything we knew about flirting (and how to do it well). It turns out that successful flirting really, literally is a science.

The SIRC Guide to Flirting

Feminists I Like, and MRAs I Don't

I've run a couple posts so far critical of certain feminist positions or talking points. I want to be clear, however, that I'm not inherently anti-women's rights, or even anti-feminism. I probably give feminism more of a hard time than MRAs (that's short for "Men's Rights Activists" for those not in the know) since feminism is so much more popular and the not-totally-true things they say tend to carry much further, but there plenty of good feminists out there, like those at feministing.com, to give one example. And, it's not hard for me to find MRAs that I completely disagree with, and most men's rights sites are bound to have at least the occasional post that I disagree with, though I'll admit I can't think of any site that's popular enough to be worth linking (and in any case, if I linked to sites that I disapprove of, all I'd be doing is giving their organizers extra advertising money).

I like to think of myself as a "gender egalitarian": that is, I'm against sexism, period, regardless of which gender or sex it's against, and if one gender is discriminated against in some way, you try to fight against it. If that means that one gender gets more help, because they're more discriminated against, then that's how it goes. I don't see any reason to budget my non-discrimination, since it's basically a free resource.

I'd like to do more posts on specific topics, but just for the time being I wanted to apply a temporary corrective to how some of my earlier posts may have been perceived until, over time, I'm able to get into particular issues in a more in-depth manner.

How I Became a Socialist, Part Two: Government Efficiency

If you talk to people about government waste, you'll inevitably hear about the $500 dollar toilet seats that are paid for by public money. The problem is that these are not examples of government waste, they're examples of private companies ripping off the government. Those $500 dollar toilet seats were sold by private companies in "public" bids (the scare quotes are used because frequently the only people to know about these bids happen to be friends or financiers of some public official involved in the deal) and because the various regulatory arms of the government have been weakened and eroded by decades of corporate lobbying, no one's able to check to see who's paying for what before the checks are signed.

The government can, and does, run efficient programs, but only when they're actually run by the government, not by handouts to private industries. To give a local example, I'll use the Salt Lake County Library System. In 2008 (the most recent year data is currently available), they had a budget of about $30 million. For a population of one million, that's an average of roughly thirty dollars a year (which would be graduated by income in practice). To pick a point of interest (I'll admit it's not at all perfect, but it's the closest I can think of), the standard Blockbuster membership is $204 a year. Again, it's not the best comparison for a variety of reasons, but in the interest of focusing on issues of local interest, I'm going to use it. The most pertinent issue with this example is that, of course, everyone who pays taxes in Salt Lake County pays for the library, but only people who go to Blockbuster pay for that - but our library system has especially deep penetration, with roughly 50% of the population registered, I believe, and even if you assumed that only a small part of those used the library on a regular basis, the Blockbuster membership would still be more expensive or, perhaps, about the same price. And, in the library, you get a whole lot more than just DVDs, you get books, audiobooks, music, computer access with high-speed internet and word processing, regular events like story-times for children and such, as well as at least one professional on staff at all times that's trained specifically to help you find the information you want to find - and you get as many of these items as you can use, whereas the Blockbuster membership has a limited number of rentals (except for their DVD-by-mail program, but even then you only get 2 DVDs at a time, compared to 10 with the library). Still not a perfect example, but I think it illustrates pretty clearly that the government can run an efficient and effective operation. And, when I worked there during the last recession, they made a commitment not to lay off a single person when every private business was shedding employees like a cat in summer. They instituted a temporary hiring freeze, yes, and they didn't immediately replace a few employees who retired or left for other reasons, but not a single person was laid off - and, mind you, even their 20-hour employees are eligible for health insurance and receive paid sick leave and vacation time.

To give a couple national examples, there's government-run healthcare (pertinent quote: "In 2000 the United States spent considerably more on health care than any other country, whether measured per capita or as a percentage of GDP. At the same time, most measures of aggregate utilization such as physician visits per capita and hospital days per capita were below the OECD median. Since spending is a product of both the goods and services used and their prices, this implies that much higher prices are paid in the United States than in other countries."), and private contracting in Iraq (pertinent quotes: "Over the course of several years, the Defense Contract Audit Agency found that $553 million in payments should be disallowed to KBR, according to 2009 testimony by agency director April Stephenson before the bipartisan Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan. ... Some of the overbilling in Iraq appears to have been done from haste or inefficiency, or even in a desire to please military officials in the field without regard for cost.")

So, in short, while there are undoubtedly some things that private industry is better at, and government is worse at, there's no reason to assume that just because the government is running it that it will be less efficient. To the contrary, the opposite is frequently true.

How I Became a Socialist, Part One: I Just Read: "A People's History of the United States"

Sorry for no updates - I spent a long time trying to think of how to summarize the data in the book, but there's just no way to do it, in large part because it's not this or that particular incident that was striking, but the sheer number of incidents. It's not that the governor of a particular state once sent in the National Guard to "pacify" a "riot" of peaceful protesters organizing against 16-hour workdays, or the fact that the mayors were themselves personally related to the business owners making millions of dollars off of virtual slave labor, or one incident of the federal U.S. government breaking a treaty with the Native Americans, or American soldiers committing mass rape against civilian populations during the Spanish-American War, or the fact that the soldiers themselves were dressed in rags because the government outsourced uniform-making to private companies that reaped millions by providing shoddy work, and on and on and on, it's the fact that it all happened so regularly, even consistently, and continues to happen.

All too often, the same people making the political decisions are the same people who profit from deregulation and war. How many U.S. senators are former CEOs compared with the general population? How many congresspeople leave public service for the lobbying industry? How many times have we heard of our soldiers in Iraq having to have their body armor bought for them by their families because the private companies that had won government bids gave them body armor that couldn't stop actual bullets?

Reading all the history that you don't hear in standard U.S. history books really spells out just how predatory Western society has been (and I'd argue continues to be even today). It's not just that the rich preyed on the poor, it's that the rich preyed on the poor, while the whites preyed on the blacks, while men preyed on women, while native populations preyed on immigrants, while the average preyed on the unusual, and so on. The Native Americans did not live in a perfect, idyllic society, but it's astonishing just how generous they were, and how brutal Westerners were. As a few individuals noticed way back when, quite a few Westerners defected to become Native Americans, but there were virtually no Native Americans that defected to become citizens in a Western government.

One last note of something that was surprising to me was how much of the population couldn't vote - not of just the black or female population, but how many adult, white males there were that couldn't vote. It wasn't until the early 20th century that even most white males could vote - before then, as much as 2/3 were disenfranchised due to being too poor to pay poll taxes, or not being legal landowners, or owning land but not enough to be eligible for the vote. So, basically, you're looking at something like 1/8 or less of the population that actually has a right to vote. We all know about black slavery and the women's suffrage movement, but I don't recall hearing anything about the class struggle to extend voting rights to the poor (who happened to constitute most of even the white male population), so learning about that came as a surprise to me.

Ugandan Anti-Homesexual Hate the Product of American Evangelicals

You've probably already heard about some proposed legislation in Uganda that would make homosexuality illegal, punishable by a life sentence or death (for "serial" acts). Well, a new investigation found that at least a good part of that is the result of Evangelicals, including Christian charity work.

Atheists have been a bit annoyed at many Christian "charities" - while many of them do good, honest work, there are a large number that keep a lot of strings attached, like requiring beneficiaries to sit through a sermon, or espouse a "Christian lifestyle", and such (Mother Theresa notoriously refused to let someone see their ill father before he died, because they were "living in sin" - but Mother Theresa's a whole other story).

Anyway, it turns out that many of these charities run by evangelical Christians spread a lot of bigotry and misinformation to the Ugandan populace, with results that the entire world has noticed.

Link: Anti-gay laws in Africa are product of American religious exports, say activists

Mojave Cross Monument Update: The Cross Mysteriously Reappears

I an update to the earlier post I made about the Mojave Cross Memorial, it seems the cross has reappeared out of nowhere.

Link: The Cross Appears

Draw Muhammed Day

I almost forgot what day it was. Well, I still made it, with 10 minutes to go!

Link: http://www.drawmuhammadday.com/

EDIT: Forgot to post this other link. Why I Support Drawing Muhammed