The new skepticism

I was reminded this morning in thinking about things like climate change and evolution how starkly different the certitude level on issues in "pure" politics (like war, foreign policy and economic policy) is from scientific issues. I was thinking about how King W will come out and feign cautious, wise skepticism to reserve judgment on things like whether humans are causing global warming and on ID-creationism. The way these issues are framed appeals to American's sense of fairness and objectivity - "let's sit down and discuss all the rational possibilities, and at the end of it, since these issues are so complicated, we'll still have uncertainty, and thus cause for further debate," this frame says. And conservatives love to toe the party line on this in all discussions about climate change and evolutionary biology.

But look how starkly different these conservatives are when asked to discuss the realities of the Iraq war and our general muscular, hawkish foreign policies, or economic policies. Then, "debate" is not so welcome, and instead you become a terrorist sympathizer or a limp-wristed sissy whose idealitistic notions deserve the label of "flower child"...

Scientists have always been promoters of skepticism. The scientific method is conducive to doubt, as its goal is to provide explanations for natural phenomena which have been thoroughly tested in an effort to debunk their validity. Most of the progress we make in science, contrary to public misconception, is based on what we prove wrong. For example, if I have a hypothesis about how a cell regulates its own MAPK proteins, and I test it and falsify it, then we have progress in the form of eliminating possible rational answers. Cumulatively, these falsifications build up until there are only so many rational alternatives left, and these become, if you will, scientific orthodoxy. But even the most hardened orthodoxy, it is understood, is still subject to modification: that's the beauty of scientific knowledge -- it can always be improved and progress is the goal, not just a possibility.

All that said, I want to point out that it is this very tentative nature of science which those who want to exploit the lack of dogma seize on. Any "controversy" in science, real or imagined, can be created because people understand that a white lab coat is not the same thing as a Roman collar -- our lack of dogma makes it easy to challenge the status quo and current thinking. We eschew rigidity and faith in favor of evidence and questioning.

Those with agendas have exploited this feature of science to no end, emphasizing the fact that "all the facts are never in" -- that it is always possible to find new data that would modify our current interpretations of existing data. Sharon Begley explores this theme in climate change at length in an August Newsweek article, "The Truth About Denial". She carefully chronicles the years-long efforts on the part of energy and oil companies to inject doubt into the mainstream American consciousness about the science behind climate change. It is a powerful strategy, and difficult to overcome.

Just yesterday, I had a surprising conversation with a science teacher who told me that both she and her husband are "climate skeptics". I started a conversation with her, and she told me that the sorts of scientific issues she feels are unresolved involve such things as Mars warming and the decay of the magnetic field of the earth. What was amazing to me was that, although her degree and background are in mathematics and not physics, she certainly had the available faculties to look up and investigate the veracity of these objections for herself, but hadn't. I found out that she had heard this somewhere (Faux News, probably), and had simply believed her source enough not to even go check it out. Little did she know that scientists have addressed all these possible alternative explanations for years, and that they have all been found lacking in merit for various technical reasons.

I really recommend the following index and "guides" for point-by-point refutations of the common objections to man-made climate change:

• The IPCC AR4 report FAQ section (pdf)
  
• Coby Beck's How to talk to Global Warming Skeptic
• New Scientist: Climate Change: A guide for the perplexed
• RealClimate: Response to common contrarian arguments
• NERC (UK): Climate change debate summary
• UK Met Office: Climate Change Myths
• Brian Angliss A Thorough Debunking
• John Cross Skeptical Science

These are all excellent resources with scientific references that should be shared amongst all your friends and colleagues, especially those with whom you think contentious discussions on climate change could take place.

What is so amazing to me is how easily duped people are who feign prudent skepticism towards scientific consensus, but display credulity by swallowing and mindlessly repeating talking points in politics (such as "if we fight them there, we won't have to fight them here" &c.). Is it just that people self-select their news sources in accordance with their pre-determined policy positions, and refuse to budge? Am I the same way? Is it possible to be that way (ignore one side's perspective) if there are actual facts which we can analyze to determine who is right and who is wrong?

Upon further analysis, the president's rationale for invading has been shown a farce and a lie, and every single rationale for the surge and every claim and metric used to support that "the surge is working" falls apart. The central issue of, "Even if we make Iraq 100% safe militarily, that doesn't solve the ethno-sectarian conflict and magically create a unified central government," is continually ignored now, even though Cheney admitted this kept them out of Iraq in 1994.

The numbers get spun in order to keep current policies in place, and people get shuffled when they are no longer willing to spin the right way. As Greenwald recently noted, when Bush is unable to find generals who tell him what he wants to hear, he simply replaces them with those who will. And now, as war with Iran is planned by the right, precipitated by lack of diplomatic progress, and with Faux News dutifully banging the war drums, we need skepticism and cynicism more than ever before. Will it manifest itself? God I hope so.

Why is it that the new skepticism is strongly directed towards scientists, but not towards politics with the same intensity and fervor?

On promiscuous Facebook "friending"

After my own great Facebook purge on July 16, in which I cut my list into ~1/4 its original size, I found this article in Slate to elicit a smile.

I know it may be judgmental and shallow of me, but I can't help but agree with the author's analysis that the most promiscuous "frienders" are overcompensating for insecurity, much like the most sexually promiscuous men usually are:

...if we're dealing with a promiscuous friender. (You know, the kind of person who thinks, "I need to break 700 friends so I can rid myself of my crippling sense of shame." Trust me, it won't work.)

I almost feel embarrassed that I felt the need to allow 345 people into my list at one time, 95% of whom I hadn't had a meaningful conversation with in years, if ever. I guess it goes to show that even the cockiest and most self-assured of us are vulnerable to social pressures, despite how we perceive ourselves as perched loftily above such inanities.

Just say no, people.

There must be a misunderstanding, here

Dishonest creationists? No way! I don't believe a word of it.

September 27, 2007
Scientists Feel Miscast in Film on Life’s Origin
By CORNELIA DEAN

A few months ago, the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins received an e-mail message from a producer at Rampant Films inviting him to be interviewed for a documentary called “Crossroads.”

The film, with Ben Stein, the actor, economist and freelance columnist, as its host, is described on Rampant’s Web site as an examination of the intersection of science and religion. Dr. Dawkins was an obvious choice. An eminent scientist who teaches at Oxford University in England, he is also an outspoken atheist who has repeatedly likened religious faith to a mental defect.

But now, Dr. Dawkins and other scientists who agreed to be interviewed say they are surprised — and in some cases, angered — to find themselves not in “Crossroads” but in a film with a new name and one that makes the case for intelligent design, an ideological cousin of creationism. The film, “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed,” also has a different producer, Premise Media.

The film is described in its online trailer as “a startling revelation that freedom of thought and freedom of inquiry have been expelled from publicly-funded high schools, universities and research institutions.” According to its Web site, the film asserts that people in academia who see evidence of a supernatural intelligence in biological processes have unfairly lost their jobs, been denied tenure or suffered other penalties as part of a scientific conspiracy to keep God out of the nation’s laboratories and classrooms.

Mr. Stein appears in the film’s trailer, backed by the rock anthem “Bad to the Bone,” declaring that he wants to unmask “people out there who want to keep science in a little box where it can’t possibly touch God.”

If he had known the film’s premise, Dr. Dawkins said in an e-mail message, he would never have appeared in it. “At no time was I given the slightest clue that these people were a creationist front,” he said.

Eugenie C. Scott, a physical anthropologist who heads the National Center for Science Education, said she agreed to be filmed after receiving what she described as a deceptive invitation.

“I have certainly been taped by people and appeared in productions where people’s views are different than mine, and that’s fine,” Dr. Scott said, adding that she would have appeared in the film anyway. “I just expect people to be honest with me, and they weren’t.”

The growing furor over the movie, visible in blogs, on Web sites and in conversations among scientists, is the latest episode in the long-running conflict between science and advocates of intelligent design, who assert that the theory of evolution has obvious scientific flaws and that students should learn that intelligent design, a creationist idea, is an alternative approach.

There is no credible scientific challenge to the theory of evolution as an explanation for the complexity and diversity of life on earth. And while individual scientists may embrace religious faith, the scientific enterprise looks to nature to answer questions about nature. As scientists at Iowa State University put it last year, supernatural explanations are “not within the scope or abilities of science.”

Mr. Stein, a freelance columnist who writes Everybody’s Business for The New York Times, conducts the film’s on-camera interviews. The interviews were lined up for him by others, and he denied misleading anyone. “I don’t remember a single person asking me what the movie was about,” he said in a telephone interview.

Walt Ruloff, a producer and partner in Premise Media, also denied that there was any deception. Mr. Ruloff said in a telephone interview that Rampant Films was a Premise subsidiary, and that the movie’s title was changed on the advice of marketing experts, something he said was routine in filmmaking. He said the film would open in February and would not be available for previews until January.

Judging from material posted online and interviews with people who appear in the film, it cites several people as victims of persecution, including Richard Sternberg, a biologist and an unpaid research associate at the National Museum of Natural History, and Guillermo Gonzalez, an astrophysicist denied tenure at Iowa State University this year.

Dr. Sternberg was at the center of a controversy over a paper published in 2004 in Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, a peer-reviewed publication he edited at the time. The paper contended that an intelligent agent was a better explanation than evolution for the so-called Cambrian explosion, a great diversification of life forms that occurred hundreds of millions of years ago.

The paper’s appearance in a peer-reviewed journal was a coup for intelligent design advocates, but the Council of the Biological Society of Washington, which publishes the journal, almost immediately repudiated it, saying it had appeared without adequate review.

Dr. Gonzalez is an astrophysicist and co-author of “The Privileged Planet: How Our Place in the Cosmos Is Designed for Discovery” (Regnery, 2004). The book asserts that earth’s ability to support complex life is a result of supernatural intervention.

Dr. Gonzalez’s supporters say his views cost him tenure at Iowa State. University officials said their decision was based, among other things, on his record of scientific publications while he was at the university.

Mr. Stein, a prolific author who has acted in movies like “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” and appeared on television programs including “Win Ben Stein’s Money” on Comedy Central, said in a telephone interview that he accepted the producers’ invitation to participate in the film not because he disavows the theory of evolution — he said there was a “very high likelihood” that Darwin was on to something — but because he does not accept that evolution alone can explain life on earth.

He said he also believed the theory of evolution leads to racism and ultimately genocide, an idea common among creationist thinkers. If it were up to him, he said, the film would be called “From Darwin to Hitler.”

On a blog on the “Expelled” Web site, one writer praised Mr. Stein as “a public-intellectual-freedom-fighter” who was taking on “a tough topic with a bit of humor.” Others rejected the film’s arguments as “stupid,” “fallacious” or “moronic,” or described intelligent design as the equivalent of suggesting that the markets moved “at the whim of a monetary fairy.”

Mr. Ruloff, a Canadian who lives in British Columbia, said he turned to filmmaking after selling his software company in the 1990s. He said he decided to make “Expelled,” his first project, after he became interested in genomics and biotechnology but discovered “there are certain questions you are just not allowed to ask and certain approaches you are just not allowed to take.”

He said he knew researchers, whom he would not name, who had studied cellular mechanisms and made findings “riddled with metaphysical implications” and suggestive of an intelligent designer. But they are afraid to report them, he said.

Mr. Ruloff also cited Dr. Francis S. Collins, a geneticist who directs the National Human Genome Research Institute and whose book, “The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief” (Simon & Schuster, 2006), explains how he came to embrace his Christian faith. Dr. Collins separates his religious beliefs from his scientific work only because “he is toeing the party line,” Mr. Ruloff said.

That’s “just ludicrous,” Dr. Collins said in a telephone interview. While many of his scientific colleagues are not religious and some are “a bit puzzled” by his faith, he said, “they are generally very respectful.” He said that if the problem Mr. Ruloff describes existed, he is certain he would know about it.

Dr. Collins was not asked to participate in the film.

Another scientist who was, P. Z. Myers, a biologist at the University of Minnesota, Morris, said the film’s producers had misrepresented its purpose, but said he would have agreed to an interview anyway. But, he said in a posting on The Panda’s Thumb Web site, he would have made a “more aggressive” attack on the claims of the movie.

Dr. Scott, whose organization advocates for the teaching of evolution and against what it calls the intrusion of creationism and other religious doctrines in science classes, said the filmmakers were exploiting Americans’ sense of fairness as a way to sell their religious views. She said she feared the film would depict “the scientific community as intolerant, as close-minded, and as persecuting those who disagree with them. And this is simply wrong.”

bwahahahaha

God I love seeing the Religious Right get their magic underwear in a tizzy:

Paper: "From Dayton to Dover"

A thorough summary of the history of education-related court cases involving the teaching of evolution and creationism in public schools:

• Radan, Peter, "From Dayton to Dover: The Legacy of the Scopes Trial" (September 2007). Macquarie Law Working Paper No. 2007-6 Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1012221

HERE is the download link. The paper explores the cultural backdrop against which the Scopes trial played out, including important immigrational considerations that are often neglected in such analyses. It is both a legal commentary and a philosophical one.

How did he find time for this?

How in the world did Sen. David Vitter find time to earmark $100K of taxpayers' money to a nonsense creationist group called "Louisiana Family Forum" to promote bullshit pseudeoscience, given the amount of time he spent showing his "little something" to Wendy Cortez?

Rationalists: "we're not the crazy ones"

Take your pick:

1. Religious nuttery.


2. Rationalist sanity.

Pissing on kidnapped kids: so funny I forgot to laugh

From the same morons who brought you "Rape Only Hurts if You Fight It" comes the following cartoon:

Boy, I bet their subscriptions are just through the roof.

Check out Jesus' General.

God Finally Talks

Everyone has heard by now of Ernie Chambers' attempt to sue God. This morning I read that God was granted immunity from the suit by the Douglas County District Court and that the Almighty had a message:

It adds that blaming God for human oppression and suffering misses an important point.

"I created man and woman with free will and next to the promise of immortal life, free will is my greatest gift to you," according to the response, as read by Friend.

Oh come on, God, that canard doesn't hold up to logical analysis.

1) The free will theodicy fails under the analysis of making "freedom" an unqualified, universal highest good and goal, unconditioned by its consequences:

If you really believe that it is better to honor someone's freedom to do as they wish than to restrict that freedom when it causes harm, then you would committed to having to introduce, at every opportunity, the option to do wrong, since this represents free will, no matter the consequences. Thus, the next time your toddler asks for scissors or a knife or a gun, if you deny her, you are not being God-like and giving her unconditional freedom. That's a retarded claim, isn't it?

Also, the capacity for humans to act out their will/intentions must be separated out from the will/intent itself. The rapist who waits for a jogger in the park will only succeed if the contingencies, such as when a jogger decides to go jogging, whether she is carrying pepper spray, whether she has taken self-defense classes, whether a cop goes by at the same time...etc., etc., etc., are all correctly in place. God is supposed to be in control of these contingencies that allow evil to actually occur.

Also, why would one person's will be granted, while both another person's and God's own wills are overturned?

2) The free will theodicy fails under the burden of natural, impersonal evils:

No one wills for a tsunami to wipe out 200,000 people in Indonesia. No one wills for AIDS to eradicate millions of human beings and orphan millions more. No one wills for natural disasters and natural evils at all...except the one in control of Nature, apparently...

Quit fooling around and just admit you don't exist, God! :)

In related news, please explain to me, someone, anyone, how your 10 Commandments form the basis of our Constitutional Repupublic and its laws? Go down the list of the Bill of Rights and you find direct conflicts between the 10C and the 10A (amendments). It takes a mental contortionist to hold to the otherwise. Our laws are in no wise based on the ancient Jewish laws, and societies had laws against murder and theft and perjury long before (and long after) the Jews did.

The Selfless Gene

Today's Science Times has an article on the evolution of morality. So does the current issue of Atlantic Monthly. Check 'em out.

Hitchens in Vanity Fair & Brigstocke

Did you see the hilarious article on Hitchens' self-improvement in VF?

And check out the two articles about atheism in Europe and the US in the WaPo.

And check out this 7-minute (funny) rant on religion from Marcus Brigstocke:

Frank Rich on Iraq

A must-read powerful wake-up call by Frank Rich in the op-eds of the NYT.

You'll need a subscription to Times Select to view it, but that isn't an issue if you have your .edu email -- it's free; sign up here.

This is my 603rd post. Hard to believe I've ranted and rambled on that many times. The last time I checked my feedburner stats, I was fairly astounded to note that there were 57 subscriptions:


Even more so, given that the feed points to my Facebook notes in an effort to keep high privacy.

Thanks for reading.

Evil and Atheism

Always my favorite approach to the case for atheism (and see two older notes I wrote on it: 1, 2) -- the argument from evil.

Listen to Prof. Eric Dayton present this argument in a debate against William Lane Craig at the University of Saskatchewan:

“Do Evil and Suffering Disprove God?”

CO2 for me and you

The White House's chief science advisor has now come around to publicly stating the same thing that scientists have been saying for some time: that we are causing global warming and must change our emissions of carbon dioxide.

Maybe presidential politics will bring the issues of global warming more clarity. I fear, though, that instead it will further polarize something that by its very nature is nonpolar: scientific research and fact.

Purity Ball

More on the "purity balls" of the RR.

Scary, and our tax dollars pay for this shit.

Whether it's the creepy pseudo-incestuous dad, the mom remarking that women were "created to feel accepted by men," the girls offering themselves "as a priceless gift" in the purity pledge, or the headless bride and suit of armor behind Leslee Unruh--the message is clear. Girls' worth and value as people is determined by their sexuality.

6 years later...

Osama bin Laden is still at large and we're mired down in Iraq. Say whatever you want to about the GOP's "national security strength," but it seems to me that Al Qaeda is a hell of a lot tougher than our Idiot-in-Chief and his strategies.

Today is a stark reminder of the utter failure of the GOP to bring to justice the actual people responsible for the murder of thousands of Americans six years ago, all the while claiming that we're "winning" the GWOT. It's hard to simultaneously keep Americans scared, such that they're willing to sacrifice their liberties, and convince them that you can protect them and keep them from the evil terrorists. And the GOP right now isn't doing well at either. November '08 will be a shit storm for them. Mark my words.

These things are almost getting trite

I have access through work to a number of great magazines. I have a mid-day break from about 11:15 - 1:30, and I spend most of it in the library, sifting through Discover, New Scientist, Popular Mechanics, Scientific American, The Economist, Atlantic Monthly, etc...

Thus, a few days ago, I read this article in New Scientist, "What Good is God?"; I must say I was a bit disappointed to be reading the same ideas rehashed. In every article of this sort I've read lately, the standard tripe is to interview a bunch of scientists and (for balance?) a few theologians. The verdict is always the same:

1. Religion enhances socialization, thus it was selected for during the nascence of civilization
2. Religion fulfills the role of general guilt-inspirer; when laws and order are necessary within group dynamics, religion is a useful tool to keep the group on the same page, afraid of the same things and inspired to act beneficially towards the group
3. Abstraction of the mind, with the concomitant ability to "see" intelligent agency behind certain things (recognize design), led to an overly sensitive detection system in which we attribute intelligence to patterns in nature that are...just natural.
4. We may have a language module, this irreducible center in our minds for grammar and syntax, and in the same way, a religion module, which enhances our sense of self and our role in the "grand scheme of things" and our feelings of awe and perception of transcendence
5. blah blah blah

These articles are good, I guess. But in a way they're getting overdone. The media loves to refer to "the new atheists" -- whatever in the hell that means. The essence they attempt to capture here is, in the words of The Nation article,

But over the past generation they have come to feel beleaguered and, except for rare individuals like comedian and talk-show host Bill Maher, voiceless in the public arena. The great success of the New Atheists is to have reached them, both speaking to and for them. These writers are devoted, with sledgehammer force and angry urgency, to "breaking the spell" cast by the religious ascendancy, to overcoming a situation in which every other area of life can be critically analyzed while admittedly irrational religious faith is made central to American life but exempted from serious discussion.

So the backdrop of "new" really only refers to the unique political situation in which we find ourselves today -- the crescendo of the culture wars where stinging critiques of religion are best-sellers but our own government can't pass a bill to support science research that may alleviate some of the worst diseases known to man for the clamor of religious zealots. And this is still newsworthy...why, again? You'd have to be blind and stupid not to know or notice the culture wars screaming around you.

I do appreciate the attempt to find some basic scientific grounds upon which to explain the origins of religion as a human construct. But I am reminded of Dennett's words (which have always meant more to me than those of Harris or Dawkins):

We sit in his study, in some creaky chairs, with the deep silence of an August morning around us, and Dennett tells me that he takes very seriously the risk of overreliance on thought. He doesn't want people to lose confidence in what he calls their "default settings," by which he means the conviction that their ethical intuitions are trustworthy. These default settings give us a feeling of security, a belief that our own sacrifices will be reciprocated. "If you shatter this confidence," he says, "then you get into a deep hole. Without trust, everything goes wrong."

It interests me that, though Dennett is an atheist, he does not see faith merely as a useless vestige of our primitive nature, something we can, with effort, intellectualize away. No rational creature, he says, would be able to do without unexamined, sacred things.

"Would intelligent robots be religious?" it occurs to me to ask.

"Perhaps they would," he answers thoughtfully. "Although, if they were intelligent enough to evaluate their own programming, they would eventually question their belief in God."

Dennett is an advocate of admitting that we simply don't have good reasons for some of the things we believe. Although we must guard our defaults, we still have to admit that they may be somewhat arbitrary. "How else do we protect ourselves?" he asks. "With absolutisms? This means telling lies, and when the lies are exposed, the crash is worse. It's not that science can discover when the body is ensouled. That's nonsense. We are not going to tolerate infanticide. But we're not going to put people in jail for onanism. Instead of protecting stability with a brittle set of myths, we can defend a deep resistance to mucking with the boundaries."

Perhaps we should dig just deep enough to find out what helps us and makes us happier. When we start to descend into Dennett's abyss, maybe we ought to pull back a little on the self-analysis. I bet the robot, once he knew his own programming language, and understood that his code could've been written in any of several languages, could even get a little depressed.

Fish on the liberal-religious divide

A friend of mine just pointed me to Prof. Fish's most recent NYT editorial: Liberalism and Secularism: One and the Same. In it, he argues that liberalism demands plurality and the protection of the free marketplace of ideas. In so doing, he adds, it is diametrically opposed to all forms of religion that claim pre-emption to control civic life due to direct revelation and knowledge of "absolute truth"...

If the goal is to facilitate the free flow of ideas in a marketplace of ideas, the one thing that cannot be tolerated is the idea of shutting down the marketplace. Liberalism, if it is to be true to itself, must refuse to entertain seriously an argument or a project the goal and effect of which would be to curtail individual exploration, self-realization (except in one direction), free expression and innovation. Closed-mindedness with respect to religions that do not honor the line between the secular and the sacred is not a defect of liberalism; it is its very definition...

I am not criticizing liberalism, just explaining what it is. It is a form of political organization that is militantly secular and incapable, by definition, of seeing the strong claim of religion – the claim to be in possession of a truth all should acknowledge – as anything but an expression of unreasonableness and irrationality...

What Lilla calls “political theology” – a politics fueled by faith and visions of eternal life – is not going away, and the two standard liberal responses to its growing strength are inadequate. One is comical, although it has had disastrous consequences. It says, let’s tell them about the separation of theology and politics (or lend them copies of Mill and Rawls and James Madison’s “Remonstrance”) and they’ll soon come to want it, too. The second response is to demonize secularism’s opponents as fanatics, fascists and know-nothings, and resolve to stamp them out, a resolve that looks increasingly like a bad bet given the numbers. “It is we,” Lilla reminds us, “who are the fragile exception.”

So secularism isn’t going to win by waiting for what it thinks to be its better arguments to carry the day (politics is neither rational nor Darwinian); and the military option holds out the prospect of more horror than hope. What to do?

One thing we can’t do is appeal to some common ground that might form the basis of dialogue and possible rapprochement. There is no common ground, and therefore Lilla is right to say that “agreement on basic principles won’t be possible.” After all, it is a disagreement over basic principles that divides us from those who have been called “God’s warriors.” The principles that will naturally occur to us – tolerance, mutual respect, diversity – are ones they have already rejected ; invoking them will do no real work except the dubious work of confirming us in our feelings of superiority. (We’re tolerant, they’re not.)

So again, what to do? Lilla’s answer is pragmatic rather than philosophical (and all the better for that). All we can do, he says, is “cope”; that is, employ a succession of ad hoc, provisional strategies that take advantage of, and try to extend, moments of perceived mutual self-interest and practical accommodation. “We need to recognize that coping is the order of the day, not defending high principles.” Now there’s a principle we can live with, maybe.

It's an interesting article on a timely topic. I don't know whether or not I agree with him that there are only two strategies (rational argument & fascist cleansing), but I do agree that the first strategy does not always work -- religious extremists are not amendable to reason. I think a third strategy may be to combine the first with a non-violent version of the second. That is, combine the force of argument and politics with a vitriolic PR campaign that does, indeed, paint these sorts (e.g., religious right loons pushing us towards war with Iran) as exactly what they fear: Islamic radicals. That is, show them a mirror, and that the very object of their loathing is self-similar. Constantly paint them in a negative light, and use rational argument and open discourse to encourage moderates to jump ship.

That's my only hope, I guess...I can't really think of it any other way.

[If you want to go straight to Fish, you can sign up for Times Select for free with your .edu email: here]

So proud to be an American

A new Red Cross report details the extent of torture at our CIA's secret prisons in Europe.

For those who think that it is necessary to have secret prisons and torture to win the "war on terror", I have abandoned the hope of prospect of using rational argument or moral appeals to win them over.

How will history judge this period in America? Its darkest ever?

Is Iraq getting better, and does it really matter anymore?

From TCR:

A couple of days ago, the NYT reported that the White House “is growing more confident that it can beat back efforts by Congressional Democrats to shift course in Iraq.” It’s not because conditions in Iraq have improved, and it’s not because the president’s policy is producing results, but because the administration has “a sense the dynamic has changed.”

It’s all about some amorphous “sense” that’s entirely independent of reality. Consider what we’ve learned this week. The GAO prepared a “strikingly negative” assessment of conditions on the ground, with no political progress (the intended point of the “surge”) and little evidence of reduced violence. Of the 18 Iraqi benchmarks, Bush’s policy has come up short on 15. An independent federal commission believes Iraq’s 26,000-member national police force is beyond repair and might need to be disbanded altogether. A working draft of a secret document prepared by the U.S. embassy in Baghdad shows that the Maliki government is rotten to the core. Iraqi civilian deaths are getting worse, not better. The latest data shows U.S. troop fatalities worse every month this year compared to the same months last year. A smidgeon of evidence pointing to at least marginal political progress late last week turned out to be smoke and mirrors.

It’s against this backdrop that the White House and its conservative allies boast, “See? This is the progress we’ve been waiting for.” More importantly, the conventional wisdom in DC is suddenly in agreement that they’re right.

I am constantly amazed at the ability of human beings to be manipulated by complex orchestrations of power that are independent of objective evidential support.

Religion Today

Faith-based programs are nothing but a sham to buy the votes of religious-right knuckle-draggers. These programs have no evidence to demonstrate their veracity, and in some cases, evidence to the contrary (i.e., "abstinence-only education" -- "According to a study released in March at the National STD Prevention Conference, 88 percent of 12,000 teenagers who took an abstinence pledge reported having sexual intercourse before they married. Although they delayed intercourse for up to 18 months, when they became sexually active, those who signed pledges were less likely to use condoms and less likely to seek medical help for STD infections than their peers.").

Now, we find that Jebus doesn't make criminals less likely to end back up in prison. Surprise, surprise:

A study prepared for the Oklahoma Sentencing Commission by the Criminal Justice Resource Center “shows little difference between recidivism among participants in Genesis One and other inmates leaving the prison system,” the AP reported.

One of my favorite most roundly-criticized theocrats is now signing off -- D. James Kennedy.

I guess some hope remains for these RR troglodytes: they could pray their opponents into an early grave.