Bias in the media

A new comprehensive 12-year study and upcoming book by two Indiana University professors documents the reality of media bias.

It just isn't of the sort Republicans always say it is...(H/T)

Baby dedication

I went through a phase where I specifically wanted to debunk certain aspects of the Christian faith, in particular, as I felt such noble work (leading others away from falsehood) would surely bring about good things. I thought people would listen to my well-reasoned arguments and admit they were wrong, and like me, turn from the err of their ways and embrace a new freedom of mind and being.

Then I woke up.

Anyway, I don't often hone in on Christianity in particular much anymore, but there's one practice that seems peculiar to it that I wanted to comment on: baby dedication.

The logic I would use to argue that the practice is ridiculous reminds me of the issue of prayer. I suppose it could be argued that prayer is for our benefit, not based on the illogical desire to change God's mind or cause something to happen that wouldn't anyway. In the same way, I guess baby dedication can be "justified" as being a ceremony that makes parents feel better about themselves.

But the hard questions, for those who embrace the idea that a baby dedication actually does do something other than rub the parents' glands the right way, still exist:

1. If you accept the idea of free will, doesn't "dedication" violate this idea?
2. If you don't dedicate your baby to Jesus/God, is this your sin or the child's? Therefore, would the child suffer or would you?
3. If God is a "Father to the fatherless" as the Bible describes, isn't he already looking out for your kids?
4. Do you think that this dedication sways God over to your side in protecting/providing for your child in some way that God otherwise wouldn't? If so:
5. Do you realize what an asshole this sort of God would be?
6. Is this sort of God only responsive to such ceremony because God just doesn't pay much attention otherwise?
7. Or is this sort of God democratic, and needs you to vote/lobby/show your interest in an issue before acting?

So many things people do are just dumb. Baby dedication is one of them.

Fixing our economy via the mortgage meltdown

Despite the Obama Administration's best efforts, I'll admit that like everyone else, it angers me to think that I could be paying for someone else's mortgage when they bought a bigger house than they could afford. It makes me want to go out and buy a house I can't afford in order to get it subsidized by the government. But as conservative David Brooks noted in his column the other day, the role of government is to stabilize the wild oscillations of our floundering economy, not render perfect justice for all:

...government isn’t fundamentally in the Last Judgment business, making sure everybody serves penance for their sins. In times like these, government is fundamentally in the business of stabilizing the economic system as a whole.

Let me put it this way: Psychologists have a saying that when a couple comes in for marriage therapy, there are three patients in the room — the husband, the wife and the marriage itself. The marriage is the living history of all the things that have happened between husband and wife. Once the patterns are set, the marriage itself begins to shape their individual behavior. Though it exists in the space between them, it has an influence all its own.

In the same way, an economy has an economic culture. Out of billions of individual decisions, a common economic landscape emerges, which frames and influences the decisions everybody makes.

Right now, the economic landscape looks like that movie of the swaying Tacoma Narrows Bridge you might have seen in a high school science class. It started swinging in small ways and then the oscillations built on one another until the whole thing was freakishly alive and the pavement looked like liquid.

A few years ago, the global economic culture began swaying. The government enabled people to buy homes they couldn’t afford. The Fed provided easy money. The Chinese sloshed in oceans of capital. The giddy upward sway produced a crushing ride down.

These oscillations are the real moral hazard. Individual responsibility doesn’t mean much in an economy like this one. We all know people who have been laid off through no fault of their own. The responsible have been punished along with the profligate.

It makes sense for the government to intervene to try to reduce the oscillation. It makes sense for government to try to restore some communal order. And the sad reality is that in these circumstances government has to spend money on precisely those sectors that have been swinging most wildly — housing, finance, etc. It has to help stabilize people who have been idiots.

Basically I've heard numerous conservatives say on the teevee, especially during the "debate" on the stimulus plan, that until housing in America stabilizes, we can't fix the fundamentals of our economy, as the financial markets will still have too much uncertainty in pricing these mortgage-backed securities. However, I'm now hearing so much ire from conservatives about Obama's plan to fix housing that I'd love to hear what they actually want him to do. Basically, they seem to be fixated only on opposing anything he does, rather than proposing serious solutions for the ills to our economy.

When the shit hit the fan a few months ago in the economy, I put up a couple of posts commenting on the causes of the mortgage meltdown and the role that lawmakers played in fostering it. I largely relied on excellent journalistic work by Mother Jones and Steve Benen in pointing to the facts about how many high-risk loans involved non-bank mortgage companies, none of which are regulated by CRA, and singled out Phil Gramm for his efforts to deregulate mortgage-backed securities exchanges and credit-default swaps. I also quoted two noted economists in their analysis of what led up to the financial crisis in our country.

Now Gramm's on the offense, which pisses me off mightily.

I just read a piece by Benen pointing out that conservatives still want to blame the poor for the financial crisis, rather than those who changed the laws around lending and securities exchanges, just as they did a few months ago. Apparently conservatives haven't gotten the message about Gramm. Maybe this article at Time ranking Phil Gramm at #2 (after Countrywide founder Mozile) in the 25 people to blame, or this technical article at the Wonk Room will help them come to their senses...

...ok that was a joke.

Atheist discrimination

I wrote a few months ago explaining why I feel it necessary to maintain anonymity online in relating my job security to my lack of religious belief. Given our high unpopularity, examples of discrimination based on one's non-religion abound. In the news is a bill now being put forward in Arkansas to clear the state's constitution of clear discrimination against nonbelievers. Their state constitution (along with other states, including with South Carolina's) explicitly forbids people who don't believe in God from being a civil servant.

South Carolina's state constitution, article six, section two reads:

SECTION 2. Person denying existence of Supreme Being not to hold office.

No person who denies the existence of the Supreme Being shall hold any office under this Constitution.

Of course this is blatantly unconstitutional, and Herb Silverman fought to make it officially so, but still it exists in the constitution as written because of the cowardice of state representatives who won't fight to end such discrimination for fear of being labeled an "atheist sympathizer" or something. If only SC state representatives had the courage of AK Rep. Richard Carroll of North Little Rock (Green Party).

One of the most amazing things about this to me is the complete lack of sympathy that atheists get from believers about such discrimination, because believers don't have a true concept of "freedom of religion" -- they think it just means, "You get to pick a religion to believe in," but not, "You can pick any religion or none at all..." But if we all fight for true freedom of religion, then we're all better off in the end.

Some are trying to put an end to atheophobia. My aims are less lofty: just get people to recognize that it exists and that it is wrong.

A few thoughts on healthcare

Some professors at Harvard Medical basically said that single-payer is the only viable option in the face of the failure of the Massachusetts model for healthcare. (I've said this before.) This is similar to what I wrote to a friend who is a recent med school grad in an email last Christmas Eve:

It may be a long conversation to get into the pros and cons of different policy approaches, and I certainly am no expert. I do however consider myself a quasi-informed citizen, and as such am willing to stake out a few opinions:

1) I think that going to a single-payer system (government) for routine health care is the optimal long-term strategy. It may be that the industry gets fractured between primary care and specialized medicine, the latter still requiring insurance and therefore remaining problematic in the sense that it isn't "universal" and its costs may remain too prohibitive for direct payment from patient to physician. I think insurance is more a problem than a solution when it comes to health care, and I say that as someone who has had a fair share of bullshit to deal with for fairly minor matters.

2) Apropos (1), since the vast majority of health care concerns, if addressed early and well, don't require a specialist I would think that nurse practitioners would be fine in working in such a system alongside generalists). With the reduced burden in terms of insurance/paperwork/bullshit that a single-payer system brings, the cost of this policy would be far less than a lot of people realize and a lot higher in quality through preventative and diagnostic expansion.

3) The costs for insurance for specialized medicine should plummet if primary care was provided for with tax dollars. Specialists like you and your wife may end up becoming should still thrive if the single-payer system applied only to primary care as a more pervasive and effective primary care system would make it easier on you as well.

4) In addition, one would think that insurance could get "lean and mean" and your side of things (providing specialized care) would probably grow in efficiency as well because a lot of the hassle and bullshit could get dealt with at the primary level.

I wrote him in response to this article by Ezra Klein about the crisis of primary care in America.

Faith and health

Steve Benen points to a new Time article claiming positive benefits for ones health through faith.

The problem with this sort of claim, of course, is the complete absence of real evidence. See here for stuff I've written on this topic before, and here.

On the use of cosmology as a theistic argument

I've written a few things about cosmology before. Read them here.

This week, a theist friend of mine at work sent me a link to this article about the Big Bang. It's pretty standard Christian apologetics work, and William Lane Craig uses this sort of thing in his Kalam Cosmological Argument. My friend just wanted my response.

Here's what I wrote back:

If people seek an answer to why the universe exists, rather than nothing at all, I don't see how saying, "God made it," makes more sense of it or "explains" that better. For after all, it is entirely possible that nothing could've existed, even no God. In addition, as the article pointed out, but didn't further explain, there are logical issues when one wonders, "What could cause a timeless being to 'create' out of nothing? What could prompt the creation itself? What would disrupt the timeless stasis of a god's existence? If god is 'outside of' time, does that mean concepts like 'before' and 'after' don't work? How could that be?..." and on and on and on...

So I don't think a god makes more sense of existence. A god just sort of transposes all our mystery and lack of understanding into one package.

Basically there is a "gap" that a god can fit in with respect to making the universe, but that doesn't really explain why we ought to believe that a god DOES exist and DID create the universe. So I'm granting that it's possible that some form of Deism is true. But I just don't think there's a good reason to think it is true.

To me, the experience of daily life, the suffering and arbitrary evils of the world, are strong evidence (and maybe even logical proof) that no good and powerful being exists. It's possible a powerful one does, I suppose, but I don't see a good reason to believe it. Therefore, even if god does explain the universe (which I disputed above as it is hardly an 'explanation'), while my version of the universe remains unexplained, then I guess that's just how it is.

Your thoughts on my thoughts?

PS: Check out Victor Stenger

http://www.amazon.com/God-Failed-Hypothesis-Science-Shows/dp/1591024811

He's an expert on cosmology and has a lot to say about different arguments for theism based on science.

It's kind of funny that I mentioned Wiesel a few weeks ago, because my workplace had a Holocaust survivor come and give a speech and this person and I spoke briefly afterwards and I got to ask her thoughts on him. She said, "He was a lot older than I was during it [she was 10 during the worst of it, he was about 16], and he saw a lot of worse things than I did [he was in Auschwitz], so I understand his different perspective."

Disunity and religion

I'm not sure how strong an argument it is to point out, "If religion X is true, and God has been 'clearly revealed' by Y, a central belief within X, then why are there Z number of denominations?"

That is, in particular, if there is such a thing as "The God of the Bible," then why are there so many differing interpretations of the Bible among varying religions, and so many differing interpretations of the Bible within the same religions (denominations)? So you have different religions all using the same Book in very different ways, and then members of the same religion believing very different things about the same Book.

Although the number of Christian denominations is not nearly as high as sometimes gets cited, (probably around 9,000 Protestant, 200 Catholic, 800 Orthodox) and although some differences between the denominations are fairly trivial, there are certainly some large differences between some denominations. One may believe, I suppose, that their god wants a degree of liberty and individual pursuit of truth (which will lead to differences) on non-essential parts of religion X. In that case, though, it is difficult for me to believe X could be an "organized" or institutional religion.

On the other hand, if humans wrote the Bible with nothing divine at all to do with it, then we'd expect some vagueness and ability to interpret "the truth" in a number of different ways, which is what seems to be the case.

Getting rid of "Darwinism"

Is the title of a new article by the esteemed science journalist Olivia Judson in the NYT.

What she didn't mention is that this esteemed science journalist wrote about that very issue on 11/24/05, as one of the very first posts on this blog. (Lucky #7, in fact)

Why she didn't defer to me is puzzling...

Last resort

I've mentioned before that I had a lot of friends involved in drugs when I grew up. One of the places they often went/were sent was to a Christian-based treatment program called Teen Challenge, as there was a center located only about an hour from my hometown. There are lots of resources out there debunking the statistics they claim about their "cure rate" but all in all the center near my hometown had a good reputation.

On the other hand, there are stories like this one from 2003, places where parents send "troubled teens" who end up getting abused or worse. I suppose when you're at the end of your rope, sending your teen off in handcuffs with strangers somehow doesn't seem all that scary...

...okay, I think these parents are dumbasses with too much money, but still.

The Place of Science in Federal Government

I am subscribed to Seed Magazine, and I read the interview with Bush's point man on science, National Science Advisor John Marburger, the other day with little surprise as he tried to boast of his president's accomplishments:

Seed: What do you regard as your greatest accomplishment?

JM: In a job like this, the most important accomplishment is to make sure that this vast machinery of science continues to move forward and produce the kind of results that have made America strong and great and an exciting place to be a scientist. And I believe that history will show that under this administration, science and technology have thrived as well as they could, given the constraints that we work under. Those constraints are very great. Not least of which is having a very unpopular president, very difficult foreign policy, wars, and unpopular policies of various kinds. Those notwithstanding, I'm satisfied that I've done everything that I could to make science work for the nation. I think that future presidents will find it difficult to compile a record as long as this one. In retrospect, it will be seen that this was a tough act to follow.

He went on in this vein, talking about how much of US GDP Bush invested and how that would be a "tough act to follow." The problem is this little thing called fact. From the NRC report in 2007*, quote, "In 2001 (the most recent year for which data are available), U.S. industry spent more on tort litigation than on research and development. Federal funding of research in the physical sciences, as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product, was 45 percent less in FY 2004 than in FY 1976." Tough act to follow?

In part because of Republicans' views on trade and laissez-faire capitalism, science jobs and technology jobs are being exported like never before. From the same report, "The United States is today a net importer of high-technology products. Its trade balance in high-technology manufactured goods shifted from plus $54 billion in 1990 to negative $50 billion in 2001."

Also, the tendency for US students to go into science and technology fields is getting worse and worse, "In South Korea, 38 percent of all undergraduates receive their degrees in natural science or engineering. In France, the figure is 47 percent, in China, 50 percent, and in Singapore, 67 percent. In the United States, the corresponding figure is 15 percent."

I think that the Obama administration faces budget challenges (Bush squandered a surplus and left Obama a $1 TRILLION deficit his first year), but sees things exactly the way the NAS report does:

"Without a renewed effort to bolster the foundations of our competitiveness, we can expect to lose our privileged position. For the first time in generations, the nation’s children could face poorer prospects than their parents and grandparents did. We owe our current prosperity, security, and good health to the investments of past generations, and we are obliged to renew those commitments in education, research, and innovation policies to ensure that the American people continue to benefit from the remarkable opportunities provided by the rapid development of the global economy and its not inconsiderable underpinning in science and technology."

We'll wait and see. In the meanwhile, picking Holdren to replace Marburger was a very, very good decision.

One of the tough decisions that our president will have to make is shifting the billions and billions of dollars spent on weapons-technology programs and weapons R&D to creating jobs dealing with improving green technology and combatting climate change. People will say he's "soft" until they realize that our greatest threat is not China challenging us on a battlefield but the gaping hole in our economy that has partly resulted from our energy and technology policies, as well as fair versus free trade agreements.

* National Research Council, 2007, Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future, The National Academies Press, Washington, D.C.