[I realize that I have been remiss in putting what is essentially an audio blog of a podcast on this website. I don't blog anymore, preferring to voice my opposition to magical thinking and the harm it does to individuals and society as a whole. I will hereafter update this page as we continue our journey at The Legion of Reason.]

In this installment we present another one of Kris’ fantastic interviews from the American Humanist Association conference in New Orleans earlier this year. Kris discussed humanism with the Harvard Humanists. Participating in the discussion were Sarah Chandonnet, James Croft, Chris Stedman and Greg Epstein.

The Centre for Inquiry here in Calgary is organizing SkeptiFest, a one-day music & comedy festival happening on September 8 at Ten Nightclub. It will be featuring Australian singing sensation Shelley Segal who performed at the historic Reason Rally earlier this year in Washington, DC. Check out her opus entitled “Saved” on website. Also appearing is Albertan comic Derek Sweet and Calgarian songster Dean Morisson, whose song “Non Believer” we featured here on the Legion of Reason a while back. It’ll be a rocking good time! Tickets are available through Eventbrite, and prices are $20 the general public, $15 for students with valid student ID, and members of the Centre for Inquiry and Freethinkers Society get ‘em for $10.

To listen to more from the Legion, please visit our website at www.legionofreason.com!

It was at this time that I put out a cattle all to my Center for Inquiry friends and was pleasantly surprised to receive numerous requests to be involved. We made our first recording a little after Xmas and we’re getting set to record our eighth episode tomorrow evening.

So what’s the podcast about? Well, the vision I have is quite broad. Essentially, it involves discussing topics anywhere that evidence-based thinking can be applied. This can involve public policy, woo woo, religion, science, education, etc. There are many great podcasts out there about atheism (The Non-Prophets, for example) or applied skepticism which exclude religious claims (e.g., The Skeptics Guide to the Universe), but almost none that make no distinction where critical thinking gets applied. (The only one I can think of off the top of my head is Skeptics with a K.)

As I like to say, I am an atheist for the same reason that I am a-reiki, a-homeopathic, a-yeti, or a-quantum healing. I see no difference in any of these claims or the requirements they need to meet before acceptance is justified. However, religion is a big component of the podcast for the simple reason that it pervades so much of society. I wouldn’t give a tinker’s damn about it except for one thing: Beliefs inform actions and believing in things without the requisite evidence often lead to harm, not to mention that it is an impoverished way of living. The universe is amazing enough without diminishing it by making up far less interesting stuff about it.

A case in point (which I would like to make into a podcast topic): a recent crime bill passed here in Canada increases prison time and takes funding away from programs which may help make inmates productive members of society when released. There is not one shred of evidence that increasing prison time makes society any safer or better off. Quite the opposite, in fact. But such thinking arises from and panders to an electorate with a religious conservative point of view that is demonstrably false. This is not how public policy should be created and does real harm to society.

The topics we discuss are as relevant to the Canadian prairies as possible (or at least nationally). There are already podcasts out there which ably cover the tribulations south of the 49th parallel. But topics which are of interst to everyone are covered as well, though we give them a decidedly local flavor.

In the first seven episodes we have talked about Xerion Homoeopathie (a Calgary purveyor of magic sugar pills) and their dissemination of anti-vaccination nonsense, the effectiveness so-called ‘liberation’ therapy as a proposed treatment of multiple sclerosis (which has a very high incidence in the prairie provinces), the absence of secular education in the town of Morinville (just north of Edmonton), and in the episode we are recording tomorrow we have an interview with rock star cosmologist Lawrence Krauss about science education and why the non-religious are labeled “strident” (or worse) just for daring to question religious claims. His new book A Universe From Nothing (which I guiltlessly plug here) is a great companion to the viral YouTube video of the same name.

Come visit us at the Legion of Reason and give us a listen, or you can find us on iTunes.

An interesting topic, but I think the question is ill-formed. I have no problem with the formation of any political party regardless of platform (within the limits set out on free speech). I think placing any unreasonable limitations on what a political party can stand for (again, with the same caveats) is fundamentally and fatally antidemocratic. Dan was the only dissenter on this, and I think he’s plain wrong. What he’s afraid of is theocracy. No argument there, particularly if one uses the Bible as the basis of political platforms. The two Christian members of the panel disagreed, of course, but offered absolutely no substance in rebuttal. Let’s face it – the Old Testament is strong evidence of a patently evil god and if that god were to exist there is no way I would possibly even consider worshiping it.

My position about the formation of parties being unfettered aside (which probably shocks a lot of those who know me), my problem is with policy. This applies to secular as much as it would to a sectarian party. But there’s a special problem with the latter. The party Artur and Jim represent takes their policy directly from the Bible (which to avoid hate crime laws necessarily involves cherry picking scripture – even these two street preachers have eschewed the nastier bits in the Bible). Let’s look at the example I gave right at the start of the podcast, the most important point I wanted to get across.

Let’s imagine a party based in orthodox Judaism wants to table legislating the abolishment of clothing made from mixed fibers (it’s in the OT, folks – look it up). No one, not even a rabbi can tell you why this prohibition exists. No one can tell me that there is at all a secular reason for this prohibition. I’m wearing cotton blends right now, folks, and I am not exactly in a moral quandary here. In other words, no one not an orthodox Jew could possibly understand such legislation. Since any party forming a government has to make at least a pretense at representing the whole of its citizenry, this is bad policy. It is imposing a prohibition on people that do not hold the value upheld by the legislation to be a valid one.

An absurd example? I suppose, but let’s take a look at where I went with this. There are no secular reasons to disallow same-sex marriage. None. It is discrimination based on sexual orientation and I believe that discrimination can not be justified. Not ever. Clear? Since there are no secular reasons for banning gay marriage and only sectarian edicts against it, I find this policy (part of Artur’s and Jim’s party platform) to be just as patently absurd as a prohibition against mixed-fiber clothing.

Thus, sectarian policy will only make sense to members of the sect. In discussing this after the podcast, Jim articulated to me that he would not try to explain it to me in those terms, but in terms secularists such as myself would understand.

Lovely. Is it just me, or is it intellectually dishonest in the extreme to give reasons to convince someone of your position that weren’t the ones that convinced you? I find it worthy of derision. And that’s exactly what Jim did when he tried to justify a policy of discrimination not because “It’s in the Bible”, but with ad hoc rationalizations that he thinks might convince me.

Let me make this perfectly clear. There is NO justification for discrimination on the basis of race, sex, religious belief or sexual orientation. NONE. The rationalizations included one that tries to elicit a “Oh, but who will think of the children?” response. Please. A quick perusal of the relevant literature shows that children in same-sex marriages do quite well. But let’s just accept for the moment that such children are statistically more likely to be depressed. Why would that be? Could it be that they experience bullying at school like overtly homosexual children do? “Look, homosexual children kill themselves! We need to make them straight!” This is called “blaming the victim”, and the solution is not in “correcting” something that is in no need of correction (either the sexual orientation of a child or restricting marriages to straight couples), but in correcting the poisonous atmosphere which prejudice and bigotry generate. As G. Pennigs writes in the journal Human Reproduction, “Children in same-sex families are generally doing well but their situation could be improved if their parents’ relationship were to be socially and legally recognized.” I’d be depressed too if someone constantly berated and bullied me in school wearing cotton blend clothing in an environment where it was not acceptable for no good reason. Jim would point to me and say, “See? Children that wear mixed-fiber clothing are unhappy! We need to ban wearing cotton blends!” That’s just nuts.

In fact, the only study on children raised in nontraditional versus nuclear families that supported Jim’s position was done by members of the Family Research Institute. Their stated purpose is “…one overriding mission: to generate empirical research on issues that threaten the traditional family, particularly homosexuality, AIDS, sexual social policy, and drug abuse”. [sarcasm]No, no conflict of interest there[\sarcasm]. It is neither scientific nor intellectually honest to start with one’s conclusions as the premises (which is the logical fallacy known as “begging the question”). The founder of the FRI, Paul Cameron, was struck from the rolls of the American Psychological Association for ethics violations. The Canadian Psychological Association disassociated itself from having anything to do with Cameron’s work on sexuality by stating he “consistently misinterpreted and misrepresented research on sexuality, homosexuality, and lesbianism”. Yeah, a really credible source this is. While I am someone who is likely to be swayed by empirical evidence (not in this case, since I don’t care what the stats are on the subject when it comes to using it as an excuse to oppress minorities), I will never be convinced by evidence form a body that has likely contrived it. Tainted doesn’t even begin to describe it, and why do I get the feeling that these and other ‘researchers’ with massive conflicts of interest and biases are Jim’s sources?

All of Jim’s arguments from a Trojan horse, very seductive on their face until you realize that they are specifically designed get you to agree to justifying discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation (as if the basis matters) I categorically reject them and don’t even have to get to the issue of the veracity of the claims he makes. And the arguments in and of themselves are simply false or blaming the victim. Another of his arguments was similar. According to Jim, children growing up with same-sex parents generally do not do as well as children in a nuclear family, and he falls into a great big trap of his own making. All one has to is to look for other situations where this might be so and ask the question “Do we ban that too?” Divorce immediately comes to mind. I didn’t get a straight answer from him on this apart from “I would ban the frivolous forms of divorce.”

Artur (and this is on the podcast) claims that he has asked people on the street (he’s been arrested for harassment by Calgary City Police for his street preaching, and I am very suspicious that we are not getting the whole story from him concerning these incidents and his claims that his right to free speech is being violated (yet strangely no judge has agreed that this is the case), but I let that go) and that most people he encounters think same-sex marriage is a bad idea (an Ipsus-Reid poll this is not…). He wants a referendum on the issue. (Artur also claimed that separation of church and state is only there to protect religion. I set that fucking nonsense straight right quick. At least Jim gets it.)

What Artur is suggesting is to use a majority as a blunt instrument to violate the rights of a minority. Honestly, I don’t give a rat’s ass at how big a majority one has. No majority has the right to violate the rights of a minority. This is ABSOLUTE, and why democracies must have a good constitution with a bill of rights (in the case of this country, a Charter of Rights and Freedoms) embedded within it. Majorities can not always be trusted to do the right thing, let alone always protect the rights of those that don’t share their views, and so must act within a framework set out in a constitution. As an atheist I am acutely aware of this.

Both Jim and Artur I’m sure think their reasons are sound. It’s just that no one else does. Jim thinks there are secular reasons for banning same-sex marriage when there can be no reason to discriminate against gay couples. Artur thinks that if enough voters agree that that is sufficient to use as a blunt instrument to violate the rights of a minority. Fuck that. Does anyone really think that if Stephen Harper, the current Prime Minister of this country, thought he could repeal the legislation permitting same-sex unions that he would not already have done so? That is beyond reasonable thought. He’d have done it in a heartbeat. The reason he hasn’t done so is very simple – because he knows that because of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in the Constitution Act of 1981 any constitutional challenge will result in striking down such legislation.

As for me, the idea of prohibiting two people who are in a committed relationship from enjoying the benefits society bestows on those who are allowed to marry a despicable platform is worth actively opposing. As an atheist, I am sometimes accused of not having anything to be thankful for (especially around Thanksgiving…). Well, I’m thankful for living in a country that respects individual rights (which, by the way, can not be arrived at through sectarian principles…).

Another statement that I found rather dishonest (by ‘dishonest’, I do not mean out-and-out lying) that you will hear in the podcast and afterwards gained a pretty good understanding of the mechanism of this form of dishonesty, is when Jim claimed that Christianity hasn’t changed since its beginning. Well anyone familiar with the history of Christianity knows that is a pile of bullshit. The gospels themselves demonstrate a clear evolution of theology and its heterogeneity in the first two centuries. The situation gets worse when one considers that there were Christians who believed in one, two or many gods, that Jesus was a god, a man adopted by god, etc. Some of these theological differences are clear in the NT canon, others are in various other written works deemed not orthodox. Jim claimed Paul wrote more than half the NT, but he was clearly not aware that scholars have deemed six of the thirteen epistles as forgeries (and I informed him of this). But when I informed him post-podcast about the huge variations is Christianity he just said “those aren’t Christianity”. What he means is those aren’t his Christianity, committing the “No True Scottsman” fallacy. And that’s where I understood everything. He’s deluded himself into thinking there is only one Christianity and all else isn’t. That’s nonsense. I guess “denial” isn’t just a river in Egypt. But that mode of thinking pervades his whole thought process, including his views on same-sex marriage. At some level I’m sure Jim knows that he’s being discriminatory and that discrimination is wrong, but because his holy books tell him otherwise, he has to remain in denial to prevent his whole world from crashing down. He’s not dumb. Quite the contrary. He’s just very, very deluded about his views being inherently self-contradictory. The cognitive dissonance has GOT to hurt…

I’ve said that I have no problems with sectarian parties forming. My problem is always policy. Policies based on sectarian grounds are by their nature exclude anyone outside the sect. Not only that, sectarian policies are all about limiting choice (the abortion issue comes to mind, and was discussed in the podcast), and I can not in any way see how this is a good thing. Worse, no matter how much sectarian parties try to frame their policies in a secular manner, it is still the thin edge of the wedge in creating a theocratic form of governance, and I say “Fuck that.”

I’ve been invited back for part deux in several weeks (December 6), when the panel will (hopefully) include an Islamic scholar and imam. I will have to ask Richard Dawkins’ question: “What is the penalty for apostasy in Islam?” Talk about the ultimate violation of the right to free speech. People are killed for expressing disbelief in some places, folks. And Christians, don’t get too smug about that. It wasn’t all that long ago when you were doing the same. (The Enlightenment was a reaction to that, so I guess in one way Christianity WAS responsible for Enlightenment values, but there is no way to them through a chain of logic from scripture…). I also want to bring up the blasphemy laws and the attempt by Islamic nations to make blasphemy illegal globally by hijacking the United Nations. How democratic is that? For those who listen to the podcast I ask, “Will Dan blow up?” Stay tuned….

When I read on the methods of biblical criticism, I am astounded at the tenuousness of conclusions. Rare it is for there to be anything factual to be found in the discipline it seems. Scholars have a number of goodies in their toolbox to help them sort things out:

• Multiple attestation. Events or sayings attested to by multiple independent sources increase confidence in their Ihistoricity over singular citations.
• Dissimilarity. If Jesus says or does something at odds with what was believed of him or would be offensive to them but was written down anyway, this increases the likelihood of historicity.
• Verissimilitude. I love this word, and rank it right up there with “Brobdignagian” (don’t ask – look it up yourself). Anything attributed to Jesus that is very different from the history, culture or language of the region in which he lived is likely unauthentic.
• Oral form. Contrary to the snake oil fundagelicals will attempt to sell you, the gospels were written later than 70 CE. So what was going on between the death of Jesus and this time? The earlies traditions about Jesus were passed around by word-of-mouth. We know from examples from other cultures that rely on this means of passing along information that the shorter and more provocative the saying, the more memorable it is. Thus, the short parables contained in the first three gospels are far more likely to be authentic than the long drawn out ones in John.
• Coherence. This is rather an amorphous term meaning that if something reported of Jesus is consistent with other reports the greater the likelihood of authenticity.

In other words, this ain’t rocket science, and with these rather seat-of-the-pants methods there is a lot of arguing which goes on amongst NT scholars.

While I was reading the assessment of the historicity of the account of Jesus’ baptisim in Tobin’s book, the application of the criterion of dissimilitude (embarrassment) did not sit well with me. In fact, I have a serious problem with it.

Tobin writes,

“… Jesus’ baptism by John the Baptist (Mark 1:9-11) was something that caused difficulties and embarrassment for the early Christians. Since by the time the gospels were written, the early Christians believed Jesus to be more than a mere man. His submitting to baptism by John would mean that he required cleansing for his sins – something that they would not have accepted.”

Let’s look at the account as given by Mark:

“It happened in those days, that Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee, and was baptized by John in the Jordan. Immediately coming up from the water, he saw the heavens parting, and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. A voice came out of the sky, “You are my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased.”

Of note is that there isno indication that John recognized Jesus as the messiah or that Jesus is greater than John. There is also no indication that anyone there saw the heavens open up or any descending avian, indicating that these are just so much poetic license. As Tobin notes, this is a plausible story (sans the bird and the sky opening up).

But with the gospels that come after Mark, we see an evolution of the story. Remember, Mark was one of the sources for both the gospels of Matthew and Luke. As recounted in Matthew 3:13-17,

“Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to John, to be baptized by him. But John would have hindered him, saying “I need to be baptized by you, anpd you come to me?” but Jesus, answering, said to him, “Allow it now, for this is the fitting way for us to fulfill all righteousness.” then he allowed him. Jesus, when he was baptized, went up directly from the water: and behold, the heavens were opened to him. He saw the Spirit of God descending as a dove, anpd coming on him. Behold, a voice out of the heavens said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”

Note the significant alterations from Mark’s account here. First, John is fully cognizant of who Jesus is, and that Jesus is the superior of the two. Second, the Spirit of God is now addressing the people in attendance of the baptism directly. Luke similarly makes John’s inferior status explicit.

With the gospel of John, historically the last of the gospels to be written, the whole of the baptism disappears!

“The next day, he saw Jesus coming to him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! This is he of whom I said, ‘After me comes a man who is preferred before me, for he was before me.’ I didn’t know him, but for this reason I came baptizing in water: that he would be revealed to Israel.” John testified, saying, “I have seen the Spirit descending on him like a dove out of heaven, and it remained on him. I didn’t recognize him, but he who sent me to baptize in water, he said to me, ‘On whomever you will see the Spirit descending, and remaining on him, the same is he who baptized in the Holy Spirit.’ I have seen, and have testified that this is the Son of God.” Again, the next day, John was standing with two of his disciples, and he looked at Jesus as he walked, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God!”

And people wonder why I describe the Bible as the most boring read ever written. John is as bad as the Book of Mormon with its “And it came to pass…” repeated ad nauseum, or even L. Ron Hubbard’s Battlefield Earth.

Anyway, where’d the bath go in John? And suddenly John the Baptist is gushing over Jesus! This is only one of the thousand reasons why I consider Bible inerrantists demonstrably-deluded nut jobs. (I don’t sugar coat that for which I have no respect.)

So, what we have is an evolution of the baptism over time from a simple baptism all the way to no baptism. There is no doubt that there is embarrassment here. I am not arguing that there is not. What I dispute is what exactly it is is the source of that embarrassment: is it because it is historical, or is it something else?

Remember, both the authors of Luke and Matthew used Mark as a primary source. Any parallel reading demonstrates this beyond doubt. The changes these two gospel authors make to Mark’s account occur when their theologis diverge. Christianity in its first few centuries was incredibly diverse, far and away more so than now. Today’s Christian sects argue over minutiae in comparison. Even the disagreements between consubstantiation and transubstantiation are minor in comparison. We’re talking about differences like whether Jesus was a god, adopted by God, or a spirit justing using the physical body of Jesus; one god, two gods or 365 gods! Far more distance between theological positions than today I think. For an iexcellent overview on the diversity of early Christianities, get a copy of Bart Ehrman’s Lost Christianities.

Now, where was I? Oh, yes. There is no doubt that both Matthew and Luke are displaying embarrassment over the account of Jesus’ meeting with John the Baptist. In their eyes, it was anathema to have John placed in a position over Jesus. Thus, they altered Mark’s account to lessen the damage to their own theologies. They couldn’t just delete the story. They firmly believed (incorrectly) that the author of Mark was an eyewitness to this event. Luke is very explicit in this belief, and fully admits to altering the testimony (see the first four verses of Luke). So for these two authors, they were dealing with what they thought was a historical event.

Now if we did not have the Markan account, the application of the criterion of embarrassment might be convincing. It is clear that Matthew and Luke don’t like the idea of Jesus having sins that need cleansing. And John- well, he’s so embarrassed that he’s in full-out denial.

The fly in the ointment is this- Mark is not embarrassed at all. For the criterion of embarrassment to be applicable in assessing the historicity of the event, I would fully expect that Mark would also make an attempt at an apology for why Jesus seems to think he needs a baptism. This goes doubly so if indeed Jesus was already by the time Mark was written that Jesus was “more than a mere man.” Yet Mark makes no such attempt.

So what exactly are Matthew and Luke embarrassed about? They are embarrassed about Mark’s theology! The criterion of embarrassment, far from indicating the historicity of Jesus’ baptism, simply indicates that the Markan account exists. That’s it. Quite banal, really.

This analysis can only go so far as to reduce the likelihood of the historicity of this event, not conclude that it was unhistorical. But that’s not my point. Whether or not the baptism of Jesus occurred is of no importance to me. My point is that the sole evidence for the historicity of the event does not actually support the conclusion. I’ve run this by a couple of people to check my logic. I’m no biblical critic, after all. So I contacted Richard Carrier about this and he agrees. Indeed, he feels that there are reasons that Mark may well have invented the story altogether. As to why, he didn’t elaborate, but I suspect that what Dr. Jim had to say on the matter may well have been one of the possible reasons. Jim informs me that baptism was a common practice in Judaism and that Mark may have invented the story in order to justify the practice within Christianity.

This is an attractive possibility since it explains how Mark may have overlooked the embarrassing aspects of a Jesus that need his sins washed away in order in favor of creating a basis for baptism within the fledgeling religion. But later authors that may have taken baptism for granted began to focus on the implications of the story and deemohasize the role of John the Baptist.

One of the problems with John’s version of the story is that if his was true, we would expect that Jesus would be a prominent figure within the sect he founded. But there is not one hint of Jesus within the Mandaean tradition. This could not be the case if John the Baptist’s raison d’être was to prepare the way for Jesus.

I’ve recently been arguing with bible inerrantists. Why I don’t know. It’s like banging my head against a wall of spikes. That there is some agreement between the the synoptic gospels comes as no surprise since they are not independent. Even here there are significant and irreconcilable differences. Inerrancy becomes completely untennable (as if it wasn’t already) when comparing John with the synoptic gospel accounts. All three of the synoptic gospels have Jesus getting dunked in the Jordan. In John, the baptist leaves Jesus high-and-dry. In the Mark, John has no idea who Jesus is. By the time John is written, Jesus is immediately recognized and labelled as the Son of God. This is one of only many examples where the gospels trip over each other and make Bible inerrancy a ridiculous proposition.

I mean, seriously. I had one person making the bald assertion that the Holy Spirit was at work to preserve the accuracy of scripture! First, we have absolutely no extant sources, so how do we know how accurate it is? The commenter was claiming somewhat less than 100% accuracy, but better than say the Illiad. Wouldn’t it be reasonable to expect that an omnipotent god preserve the text at a rate of 100%? Then there is the small problem that slightly less than half of the epistles attributed to Paul are known or suspected to be forgeries. Is the Holy Spirit at work there too? And just how does one establish such an untestable claim in the first place? Give me a break…

Anyway, that’s enough for now.

The first talk we attended was given Darek Isaacs. He’s a very clean cut guy and very nice to talk to. If all fundamentalists were like him it’d be very easy to co-exist with them socially. My problem is their propensity to inject their beliefs into politics which then become de facto forced on everyone. I’ve never understood why the fervent believers have a problem with secularism. Secularism is the only way in which everyone is on a level playing field with regard to the law and society. It is not atheism. It just means that government is blind to the religious beliefs of each and every one of us. Yet fundamentalist Christians fear this. My only thought is that it is because secularism takes away the rights of Christians to run roughshod over everyone else’s beliefs. This is a right they’ve never had, and is a perception gained from Christian privalege that they have wrongfully enjoyed over the decades. But I digress….

Darek, Patrick (my colleague) and I had a really interesting discussion on the second day privately. He was kind enough to refuse his lunch to continue (I would gladly have let the poor guy eat), and I have to admit that this is the first deep interaction I have ever had with a born-again Christian. But there was much in his talk that left me with a bad taste. In trying to debunk evolution, young-Earth creationists (YECs) simply can’t seem to help themselves from using ad hominem attacks on Darwin’s character. For instance, the full title of his masterpiece, usually shortened to The Origin or The Origin of Species, is On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. An unwieldy title at best, so we shorten it up for convenience. Trust a creationist to take this innocent reason for shortening the title to be something nefarious, that we who accept evolution as the explanation for speciation ignore the words “favored races”. In Darek’s eyes, Darwin was a racist.

Was Darwin a racist? Actually, he was no worse than his Christian fellows in his time, and much more progressive than most (see here for a good Pharyngula post on this). So what was Darwin saying with the title of his essay? (Yes, it was considered an essay, not a book. This was typical of scientific discourse of the time, a custom which has transformed to disseminating science to a lay audience rather than between colleagues. Sadly, scientific papers, which once read like stories and were far more entertaining, are now so dry as to require eyedrops and are even worse to write.) When Darwin used the term “favored races” he was talking about populations within a species which were better suited to survive. If we are speaking of allopatric speciation, these would be isolated populations which would then have a different evolutionary path. Today we would speak of genetically distinct populations within a species, and yes, there are such within H. sapiens. For instance, sickle-cell anemia is caused by a point mutation in the gene endoced for the protein hemoglobin. Having one copy actually gives the individual significant resistance against malaria, but individuals with two copies develop the disease and have their life expectancy shortened. The protection afforded by having this gene is of greater benefit to the population than the deaths of the individuals with two copies (who often survive long enough to pass on the mutated gene). There is no argument that this gene occurs within a geographically distinct region (Africa, India and the Middle East), and that this mutation favors the survival of this genetically distinct group with respect to malarial infection. Another interesting example is the variation of blood types geographically. There are very few people of European origin with blood type B. The plague essentially annhilated them. The distribution of blood types in geographically-isolated populations can vary quite widely to the exclusion of some.

This is the kind of thing Darwin was talking about when he used the term “favored races”, not bigotry. But what does this have to do with the veracity of evolutionary theory? Not one blessed thing. And this pisses me off. It is character assassination. Anyone that falls for it doesn’t get my respect, and those that commit this fallacy earn my contempt. Putting forward the idea the “Darwin was a great guy” as evidence in favor of evolution is no more valid than what Darek’s denegration of Dawin’s character as evidence that evolution is not true. It’s a cheap, dirty and contemptable evasion of having to actually face Darwin’s arguments for evolution, not to mention the mountains of evidence in its favor we have collected since. I wanted to get that across to Darek when I talked to him.

He also presented what he thought were good alternative explanations for the formation of the massive layering of sedimentary rock in e.g. the Grand Canyon by which it could have occurred over a very short period of time. How does he do this? Well, it was through a false analogy. He showed a picture of layering which occurred very rapidly (tens of feet) by a known process and is well documented – deposition of volcanic ash during the eruption of Mt. St. Helen’s. What does the deposition of sediment by water have to do with the build up of ash? It doesn’t. He’s comparing apples and oranges. Step back for a moment and consider how stupid geologists would have to be to not see this if the analogy actually held. No, there is a lot of evidence that the layers of sediment were laid down over quite a long period of geological history and because of the complexity of its geology occurred over numerous events and a great expanse of time.

Worse was Darek’s understanding of radiometric dating. He claimed that samples taken from a very recently formed volcanic rock produced a very old age when it was radiometrically dated. Indeed it should. The age of the rock (cooled magma) was very recent. No question. So where’s the fallacy? Radiometric dating isn’t measuring the age from the time the magma cooled. It is measuring the age of the magma itself. This is what happens when someone with no training in geology tries to represent a knowledge of geology and its methods. What he says may be entirely true, but often enough it isn’t. No one in the congregation (and congregation it was) questioned this.

In essence, Darek’s strategy is similar to that of William Dembski – if they can show evolution is not true, then creationism is then true. There are two problems with this strategy: 1) this is a false dichotomy, as there may be other explanations for the diversity of life on this planet (There isn’t, and evolution is a fact. I make no apologies for this statement.), and 2) I am not an atheist because I accept evolution as having occurred and that natural selection, sexual selection and genetic drift are the factual explanations (which is what the word “theory” implies, not a wild ass guess as many seem to think) for speciation. Prove to me today that evolution was not true and my atheism would stand firm regardless.

Since this is getting a bit long, I want to stop here before I get onto some of the other of the cast of characters and my impressions of their evidence. Spoiler: they don’t come out of this well…. I may very well update this as I intend to listen to the audio to jog my memory a bit.

I wish I had kept up with the class in my blog. Throughout the coarse my view of Harris’ book changed significantly. For instance, I agree with Massimo Pigliucci’s view that Science can not determine the values we should hold, but I think Massimo undervalues Science in evaluating the effects of values we do hold. Harris bizarrely never mentions the application of the social sciences to this evaluation, and I have a hard time seeing how a reduction of morality to the neurosciences can have anywhere near as much value as some of the work that Gregory Paul has done. But while I have mixed feelings about the contents of The Moral Landscape, Harris opened up a dialog that needed opening.

But that’s not what I wanted to talk about in this entry. On the last day of class we rounded up our personal positions on morality. I expressed my disdain (the only word I can think of to use in polite company) for moral relativism, after which two other people (in addition to the one in the first class) piped up to say that they were moral relativists. And, no, one of them does label himself as a Christian.

I am going to tell you why I hold moral relativists in such low esteem. I think there are objective morals based on some pretty fundamental principles:

• The Theory of Mind, which is (as the Wikipedia states) the ability to attribute mental states—beliefs, intents, desires, pretending, knowledge, etc.—to oneself and others and to understand that others have beliefs, desires and intentions that are different from one’s own.
• Another principle is the one of ‘fairness’, something which is inately built into pretty much every social mammalian species and well-studied in behavioral economics.
• A third is what many would recognize as the Golden Rule, which codified the observation that people get along best when they treat others as they would have themselves treated. The Silver Rule, the negative of the Golden Rule, is actually a better formulation. This equitable treatment is predicted from Game Theory to be the most successful behavior, and it is no surprise that evolution found this strategum. Again, all social mammalian species follow this behavior to varying degrees of complexity.

These three principles will take one a long way in building an ethical system, but that is not to say that there is only one possible ethical system which will (in the vernacular used by Harris, and one I like) maximize wellbeing. I’m not going to get into a discussion of what exactly ‘wellbeing’ is, any more than (as Harris points out) I want to get into a discussion of what ‘health’ is. The point is that in none of the above principles does belief or culture come into the discussion and transcends humanity. Every culture has codified the Golden Rule as long as there has been written history. ‘Theory of Mind’ and ‘fairness’ are built into humans regardless of where they were born.

I want to point out first how ridiculous moral relativism is, and provide a possible explanation for why people delude themselves into thinking that they are moral relativists.

Why is moral relativism ridiculous? I don’t know anyone that wants to be struck in the face for no reason. Why? Because it hurts. Applying principles 1 and 3 above, we get to the conclusion that if I don’t want to have my nose flattened, it is likely that no one else will either. Let’s say I punch someone here that grew up in a Canadian household (I hesitate to say ‘culture’, since I’m not sure we really have one to speak of). I think we can predict that the recipient will be upset and find such an action to be morally lacking.

Now let’s hop a flight to the Sudan and perform the thought experiment. I think we can predict a similar level of umbrage.

What we find is the indignation at this action transcends culture. This is the same thing as saying it is ‘objective’. Now, I don’t mean that morals can be ‘objective’ in the sense that ‘good’ and ‘bad’ are absolutes or properties of action. But, at least from a consequentialist point of view, I do claim that there are objective ways in which to measure the effects of actions on wellbeing and social health.

This brings me to where one of the two who claim to be moral relativists said – after I pointed out that metrics like ‘violent crime’ can be used to assess the health of a society – that we are viewing other cultures using what we in the west would value in out culture, and the other said we have no basis for saying honor killing (the example Harris gives in his book) is wrong.

I was floored. I really didn’t know what to say at the time to something so idiotic. Sorry, but I call ‘em and I see ‘em. This was like saying that we can’t assess the efficacy of acupuncture using western evidence-based medicine! (And, yes. There are idiots out there that make this exact claim, to which I respond “Then how can you even make the claim it does work?”) There are indeed objective methods by which we can indeed assess the positive and negative effects of values. Or are words like ‘happiness’ worthless?

This is an example of the logical fallacy known as special pleading. If these other cultures do not value lowering of murder rates, then why do these cultures have prohibitions on murder in the first place? Values have consequences not just on personal wellbeing, but on societal health as well. And these effects are measurable. Just because we are using metrics developed here does not make them invalid in assessing the effects of societal values in other cultures.

And we in the West have developed some values we hold dear and we are seeing the effects of why they are important. We value free speech and democratic government and we have watched those in places like Syria and Yemen where it is not allowed. I think we can say that such things increase wellbeing and societal health. After all, the state isn’t going to try to kill us if we raise our voices in protest. Neither freedom of speech nor democracy are easy. They’re hard. Suppression of speech by those you don’t agree with is easy. Yet western societies have clearly benefited from Enlightenment values. It is no coincidence that Hyaan Hirsi Ali makes the statement that “Islam has not had its Voltaire.” We value Enlightenment ideals because they have had a significant positive impact on society and by extension to the individual.

I won’t pretend it’s perfect. Nothing where competing goals exist can be. But the wellbeing of individuals is clearly increased over values which devalue human rights.

The good news is that I think many who call themselves ‘moral relativists’ are deluding themselves. In one breath they will tell us that we have no basis or right to judge actions in other cultures by our own value sets and in the other they will tell you that female genital mutilation is wrong. This is the case for the moral relativist I wrote of in the blog entry about our first day of this class, and if this doesn’t create cognitive dissonance, I don’t know what can.

The problem with the claim that we can not judge things like ‘honor killing’ by our own values fails when we prohibit a person who grew up in a culture that has this as a value from performing what he sees as his moral duty when he emigrates to ours. Does this mean that whether honor killing is morally obligatory, allowed or prohibited is based on geography? Honor killing clearly diminishes wellbeing whether it is committed in our culture or any other. Moral relativism of this type is simple self-contradictory and leads to nonsensical situations.

My greatest ire, though, is saved for those who claim atheists have no basis for an objective morality without realizing that not only is that false, it is they that are moral relativist. I’ve written about the absolutely idiotic nonsense spouted by the likes of William Lane Craig. For such people, obeying God’s commands is the moral imperative. I put it to you that there is nothing moral about this at all. In fact, obeying a set of rules without thinking about their consequences or even why the rule can be justified as moral is amoral, or even immoral.

In a previous blog entry I described how Craig gets to the ridiculous position that the Canaanite genocide was moral because God ordered it. Even the slaughter of their children was justified since then they would not grow up learning their parents’ wicked ways, as if adopting them into their own society wasn’t a far better option. How is God’s command to slaughter wholesale a people morally obligatory when that perpetrated by Ratko Mladić is reviled?

Asked if genocide is ‘good’ or ‘bad’, most people – believers included – would say ‘no’, and rightfully so. Change that to the specific example of the Canaanite genocide and believers will then make excuses for this heinous act (and it is heinous) to preserve the illusion of an omnibenevolent god. It is the act that is heinough. Who ordered it is irrelevant except in explaining it away post hoc.

It’s moral relativism for sure. But instead of based in culture and geography, it is based on who is giving the command to commit mass murder. I for one am very glad that the majority of believers that engage in such apologetics as a response are just deluding themselves as well. The only justifiable response to anyone commanding genocide – man or god – is “Hell, NO!”, and the vast majority would give that response.

I’ve given an explanation for the latter type of moral relativist, but I need to give one for the former. Several hundred years of colonial rule and exportation/forced acceptance of European value systems has made us in the west self-conscious about further interference in foreign cultures. I have to admit, there is something to this. But the individuals who self-identified as ‘moral relativist’ go to the opposite extreme, allowing behaviors and actions in other cultures that they would consider prohibited in their own and measurably harmful ones at that. It is this fear of being accused of bigotry that allows female genital mutilation, honor killing, stoning of adulterers, mysogyny, etc. to continue, and even legitimizes the behavior. It gives the proponents of harmful values an excuse with which to bludgeon people who hold this weak position into acquiescence. It is wrong, and measurably so.

Canada does not have an explicit church-state separation. I wish it did. Had the Canadian Constitution been drawn up now rather than 30 years ago, I think it would. Religiopolitics in the US scares the bejesus out of us. Well, most of us. The current constitution relies very heavily on a previous act of British Parliament passed in 1867, the so-called British North America (BNA) Act. In it, it allows for religion-based school systems to remain publicly funded. This was a historical reality at the time, but has long since become an anachronism. Regions were settled by people of a single predominant faith and built public institutions before they entered Confederation and became provinces. These were predominantly Catholic, with a bit of Anglican thrown into the mix. The BNA Act provided for publicly-funded separate school systems for schools of religious faiths that existed prior to their entering into Confederation. (This led to an interesting situation when about 30 years after Manitoba entered into Confederation the provincial government decided to cease funding the Catholic school system, causing Pope Leo XIII to write a papal encyclical condemning the whole action. Fortunately, no one listened….)

Separate school systems exist in only a few provinces now – Alberta, Saskatchewan and Ontario. What prompted the ending of Catholic school system funding was simply a reality of a changing composition of the population. Canada is made up of many cultures. I saw one comment on one of the news stories I will cite that claimed Catholic schools are very multicultural. Sure, there are Catholics of Irish descent, Catholics of German descent,…. Somehow, I don’t think one would see too many Muslims, Jains, Jews or atheists on the playground.

Because only two faiths are represented (in Alberta there are two Anglican and sixteen Catholic school boards), in 1999 and again in 2005 the United Nations Human Rights Committee cited Ontario (and one would presumably think, by extension, Alberta and Saskatchewan, but as usual, everything in Canada outside of Toronto gets ignored….) for violating the equality provisions (Article 26) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

And let’s face it- only a secular education meets the needs of society. The whole thing could have been corrected when the Constitution was drawn up 30 years ago by recognizing this and tossing it out. Only 25% of people in Alberta are Catholic yet they rate a whole separate school system with all of its duplication of beaurocracy. There is a myth that Catholics who send their children pay for the separate school system through their taxes, but their tax dollars are woefully insufficient. The rest is made up by taxes collected from those that do not support a separate school system. But, no. The federal government chose the status quo rather than remove an historical anachronism that does not serve the public interest.

Okay. So what the hell does this have to do with the aforementioned scenario? What happened in Morinville is a direct result of the continued practice of having a separate school system and abandoning what (at least in my mind) should be obvious to anyone with a brain- the right to not have one’s children to be indoctrinated into a faith through education without their permission. Morinville, a town of 8,000 people and four schools, has no option for parents to secure a secular education for their children.

You read that correctly: there are four publicly-funded schools in the town of Morinville, every last one faith-based! The whole thing became public last December:

“My daughter came home the very first day from school and said, ‘Mom, God made the sky and God made the grass and God made the flowers – isn’t it nice that God made the flowers,’” Mrs. Hunter recalled of that first experience with Morinville schools. “I said, ‘Well, it’s very nice that your teacher believes in something and when you grow up, you can decide what you want to believe in.’ She said, ‘No, mommy. My teacher told me so. Why don’t you believe me?’

Some of the comments on the news story are amazing. I urge you to read them. To those commenters, I will say this: “Put the shoe on the other foot. Suppose you, as a believing Christian, heard your child tell you that her teacher told her that God does not exist. When you understand why you would find this unacceptable (oh, the wailing and gnashing of teeth!), you will understand why Donna Hunter is upset. Till then, sod off.”

The superintendent of the school sees no problem – what else is new with believers? “Superintendent Keohane said he believes Morinville students and parents find value in the education and religious studies being offered in Morinville schools.” I find it amazing that it is us secular people that understand how things like this will affect others, but believers are completely blind to understanding how these kinds of things affect other people. Is there a developmental problem which screws up the wiring enabling empathy? I just don’t get it. Even if Keohane’s statement that the Catholic fraction of the local population (46%) is higher than the mean for the province (26%), does this warrant ALL of the schools in Morinville be Catholic? Catholic math is very different from the kind I learned in school.

Later, in mid-January, the school board refused outright to provide a secular education alternative. Instead, the onus was placed on those seeking a non-faith-based education for their children. Options given to such parents are to form a separate school (which would require action by the province), to bus their kids to another school district (the nearest of which is a 40 min trip!), or to use the Alberta Human Rights Act in order to remove their children from religious classes but remain in the Catholic system.

The problem with the last one is that the parents would have to opt-out their children from pretty much every class. One look at the Greater St. Albert Catholic Schools’ website would tell anyone that:

Through faith-based encounters with learning [emphasis mine], our students come to understand a journey of life which extends from knowing the Christ within, to acting as Christ for others. The Sacred Congregation on Catholic education reminds us that the vocation of our schools “includes the work of ongoing social development: to form men and women who will be ready to take their place in society, preparing them in such a way that they make the kind of social commitment which will enable them to work for improvement of social structures, making these structures more conformed to the principles of the Gospel. The Catholic educator, in other words, must be committed to the task of forming men and women who will make the “civilization of love” a reality.

It’s even worse when one considers the information package sent to parents of prospective students which contains the following warning:

“Every course of study and educational program, all instructional materials, instruction and exercises will at all times include subject matter that deals primarily and explicitly with religion.”

So, where is the Alberta government in all this, whose responsibility it is to ensure a secular education free of religious indoctrination, or so I would think? This headline says it all:

Alta. won’t intervene in Morinville school dispute. “I [Dave Hancock, Minister of Education] think that needs to be a real discussion with the people involved,” he said. “It’s not really in my hand to mandate that.”

What. The. Hell! If not his, then who’s mandate is it to set things right? What a gutless wonder.

But the pressure is on. According to CBC News on March 25, there will be a survey to measure support for a secular alternative in Morinville. Hancock wrote,

“What is at issue here is not whether you and your children, and the other parents in Morinville whom you represent, have a right to secular education. What is at issue is how this education should be provided.”

I fail to see any solution other than creating a secular public school that would satisfy the right to parents in Morinville to have their children educated in a secular shool (his support of which is only implied, not clearly stated).

Some events have happened since that I will write on soon.

The parents of children demanding (as they should) a secular education for their children have a website and a Facebook page (link)

While I don’t know yet who will be getting my vote, I most certainly know which party I will not be voting for, putting me squarely in the ABC (Anybody But Conservative) camp. The current regime is the most undemocratic group I have ever seen in Canada. The sheer contempt this Prime Minister has shown parliament and the citizens of Canada is appalling in the extreme:

• The ill-fated attempt to end party funding (the obvious result of which would have been that party policy would be dictated by those “donating” the most money to a party and not about doing what is best for the electorate);
• Not once, but twice prorogued parliament not for what proroguing is supposed to be used for (end the session when the business of the house is finished early), but to cynically avoid a non-confidence vote in the House in 2008 and again in 2009 to avoid answering tough questions about the Afghan detainee affair. In both cases legislation was still waiting to be dealt with by Parliament, thus shutting down the House violated the spirit of prorogation entirely and abrogated the rights of Canadians to ask questions and demand answers of the government.;
• Witholding information asked for by the House on costs associated with crime bills and thus were found in contempt of Parliament;
• Ending of mandatory submission of the long census for those that receive it. (Any statistician will tell you just how skewed data critical for developing public policy will now be….);
• illegally financed campaigns in the last election through money shuffles, a scandal called the “in and out” scheme;
• Maintaining a cabinet minister who, while leader of the Conservative Party, as condition to garnering support for his leadership promised never to merge with the Alliance Party (headed by Stephen Harper). He got what I think is his own just desserts when his girlfirend and fellow caucus member crossed the floor to the Liberal camp without telling him of this action beforehand. Delicious!
• Was admonished by Hillary Clinton for not including funding abortion in foreign aid packages…. The United States lecturing another country on family planning! Abortion is considered a necessary medical service legal in Canada, but apparently not for other countries where access is also needed. This action by Harper clearly shows his religious beliefs affect his policies, and relgion has no place in politics. Not now, not ever!
• The pièce de résistance, Harper shows his respect for science by appointing to the office of the Ministry of Industry, Science and Technology a chiroptractor. You read that right- a fucking chiropractor! Anyone with an ounce of scientific knowledge wouldn’t be a chiropractor.

While those are the actions the current administration have taken to earn my ire, it’s what they do during an election campaign that really galls me. It’s been no secret that an election has been expected. The only unknown till now has been “when”. In the interim, all the major parties have been running campaign ads, and it is the Conservative Party ads that are the most vile, and they’ve had a long history of using pure attack ads (the most infamous example of which did backfire under Kim Campbell…).

This is what I think of attack ads: vote for anyone not using them. My message to Stephen Harper (and I vote in your riding, dude!) is “Don’t patronize me by telling my why I shouldn’t vote for the other guy; have enough respect for me to let me worry about that for myself. Tell me why I should vote for you.”

Such ads I find tawdry and gauche in the extreme. It also says a lot about the electorate when the use of such ads is effective. I think this demonstrates that the public itself has become more right-wing (in the American style) and has adopted the cynicism that goes along with it. Canadians have prided themselves on how different we are from Americans, but this gap is closing in some key ways, but as University of Calgary professor of linguistics and psychology Julie Sedivy says Canadians have become desensititized to negative campaign ads. At first, Canadians were viscerally angered by them. Now, they have been lulled into greater acceptance of them and their messages. Sedivy compares negative political attack ads to violence on TV. People have just gotten used to it. I think we have to return to that anger stage before our politics becomes indistinguishable from American-style electioneering. We have to do more than just admire our differences with the US and work actively to maintain them. There are merits in those differences that definitely make them worth keeping.

But saying what’s wrong with voting for the other parties says nothing about the merits of the party releasing such ads, which simply underscores the fact that they have nothing good to say about themselves. The leader of Green Party, Elizabeth May, has taken on the issue of attack ads. While I think environmental issues are important, I would not put them front and center above other issues that need immediate attention, and so they will probably not get my vote. But I wholeheartedly agree with her stance on the issue of attack ads, and so I leave the door open to changing my mind.

It’s time that the public realizes that attack ads are poisonous and damaging to this country and punish any party that engages in that style of campaign. Certainly, they are not deserving of reward.

I’m fully aware of the irony that while promoting positive ad campaigns that I haven’t been positive in this blog entry, but then I’m the voter, not the person campaigning. I’m allowed to examine the record of the Conservatives in power, and I haven’t seen anything really positive in anything they’ve done. I’m left with a lot of negatives.

In addition, I’m undecided and am actively looking for the positives in the other parties and plan to list them here during the lead-up to election day. While I’m decided on who I’m not voting for (the Conservative attack ads make that easy), who will get my vote will very much depend on the merits of their platform. And that’s what a campaign should be about. If it’s all about what’s wrong with the other guy’s platform, then that party has nothing to offer Canada that’s worth listening to.

The sooner the portion of the electorate that responds positively to negative campaign strategies, the better. We don’t need any giant douches that feed us crap sandwhiches anymore. That means saying goodbye to Mr. Harper.

There are nine of us, from a wide range of backgrounds and beliefs. There’s a non-believing Teacher who wants to return to university, perhaps to get a PhD in the philosophy of science; a Lawyer who deals with immigrants and who made an excellent point on refugee claimants that I have suspected for some time that I will get to later on; another who grew up in a Secular household and does not understand faith (I do – I just don’t understand why anyone in their right mind discards reason and evidence in favor of wishful thinking); the Spiritual woman that made the claim that most atheists are really agnostics (which underscores a problem of definitions that might produce some trouble); another that wants to see if there are reasons to discard her Faith (burden of proof shift, anyone?) and “dragged” her husband along (well, according to him, anyway…); a retiree with a Physics background who didn’t really say much about himself; a believing Moral Relativist (!) who knows too much about philosophy, an intellectual pursuit that I have little patience for (and who actually told me that string theory is not testable, that I should Google it! Ah, the University of Google, where you can get a degree in 9/11 truthing! Michio Kaku, where are you when I need you?); and yours truly, who described himself as “the most unspiritual person that you will ever meet”. Quite a wide spectrum of beliefs which is a good start.

Spiritual woman claimed that “most people who call themselves atheists are really agnostics”; she is both right and wrong. It hinges on the meaning of the word “atheist”. Using a dictionary doesn’t help matters here at all, since they typically give two meanings: a lack of belief in a god and a belief that there is no god. I can’t fault dictionaries since all the authors are doing is reporting the varied meaning of the words. Obviously, she was using the latter definition. I think, however, that the first definition is far more coherent. Whether or not one is an atheist should be predicated on the answer to the following question: “Do you believe in a god?” If the answer is in the affirmative, then one is a theist. Any other answer means that the responder is an atheist. This definition is truer to the dichotomy implied by the words “theist” and “atheist” and frees up the word “agnostic” to describe the state of knowledge. This means, though, that there are different types of atheists. There are those who believe that there are no gods (“strong atheists”, or – as I prefer – “antitheists”); there are “agnostic atheists”, those that don’t believe in a god because there is no evidence upon which to base such a belief; there are even “agnostic theists” who, while understanding the state of knowledge is such that there is no justifcation but believe anyway.

I’m going to be up front here. I largely agree with Harris. If there is a flaw in his arguments, it’s that they are too reductionist for my tastes. But he’s not wrong. There are objective ways in which to gauge whether an action is moral. Harris calls the gauge “well-being”, though he leaves the definition open. I think this is a mistake. In a video in which Harris discusses this, he compares “well-being” to the concept of “health”. While the definition of “health” is hard to pin down, that does not mean we can’t talk about those things that are healthy or unhealthy. The problem with this is that it leaves Harris open to the attack that he’s being fast and loose with his terminology. The discussion leader (teacher or prof isn’t really the right word) defined it as “do no harm”. I think this is woefully incomplete, and I doubt that he limits the definition to this concept but was simply giving an idea of what it might mean in a one-liner.

Moral Relativist is quite down on Harris. He considers him a “religion basher”. So what? So am I. But I don’t limit my criticism to religion; I bash any harmful ideology whether it include a god or not. Yet he gave no salient reason why Harris’ criticisms of Islam and Catholicism (the two “low-hanging fruits” he zeros in on in the book) are invalid. If valid, not only is Harris justified in his criticisms of the fruits of these religions, we are all obligated to raise our voices in protest. But moral relativists don’t see it that way. Teacher, in response to this accusation against Harris of “religion bashing” by the Moral Relativist, told him that she didn’t disagree with Harris. For his own part, he responded that this statement was depressing, whereupon I also voiced my agreement with Harris’ criticisms of religions. Does he think Harris’ criticisms of Islam and Catholicism are inaccurate? If they aren’t, then not only is Harris’ criticisms justified, they are obligatory. Moral Relativist gave no response to whether there is merit in Harris’ criticisms of religion, only that he didn’t like such criticism. The idea that anything is above reproach and is given special status is anathema to me. What’s depressing is the need for Harris, Dawkins, Teacher, me, et al to raise the criticisms. If religoin is so wonderful and moral, why is it an incredible source of bad behavior? All absolutist ideologies – religious or not – are a pox on humanity. I sense a rant coming on….

Moral relativism. Let’s get this straight. Not only do I reject it prima facie, I consider it an immoral position. To use Harris’ example, when one considers the societal or religious affects (impossible to differentiate between the two in Islamic nations) of “demonizing homosexuals, stoning adulterers, veiling women, soliciting the murder of artists and intellectuals, and celebrating the expoits of suicide bombers” on well-being, to then say that what is clearly wrong in the context of a modern western society is okay in another culture I find to be sick and deranged. I am angered by the calousness and indifference of moral relativism, and it may be difficult to keep my anger in check in the classroom.

Critics of atheists complain that if there is no god then there is no objective morality and one must be a moral relativist are presenting a false dichotomy. Morality sans deity is extremely easy to explain. As a consequence of evolving using a social survival strategy, the ability to map our own feelings and emotions onto someone else in a given set of circumstances developed. We call this ability “empathy”. Mice have been shown to do this; in laboratory experiments they concern about the well-being of cage mates. Mapping our feelings onto others and predicting how we would feel in their place takes us a long way in determining good and bad. While I haven’t invoked Theory of Mind or reciprocal altruism here (are also important factors in how we form our morality), this gives us the gist of it.

Does this mean that assessing the effect of our actions on others in this manner is going to have grey areas? Of course. As Harris points out, losing a queen in a chess match is usually a bad idea, but we also admit there are exceptions. Sometimes, losing your queen is a brilliant move. It can even be obligatory. Lying is usually a bad idea, but there are times when telling the truth does far more harm. Quite the opposite of being a problem for using well being as a guide to determining values, gauging the effects of our actions on others deals with these exceptions quite handily.

In fact, it is those who put forward the idea that a deity is required who have the problem. There is the precept “thou shalt not kill”, yet there are situations where killing is admissable. If we are simply obeying a set of rules handed to us, is that even morality? I don’t think so. Nor is being forced to adhere to a moral code that we can’t understand on pain of punishment.

Can I say that an action taken in our society and values which would be considered bad should be considered the same in another? Darn right I can. Imprisoning atheists in Islamic countries violates free speech. Western societies value free speech because we found it is a path to a peak on the moral landscape, and violating it has the opposite effect on people. Well being transcends culture.

Can I say that actions that societies were indifferent to in antiquity were okay then but not now? Darn right I can. Slavery was ubiquitous in biblical times, so much so that it not only doesn’t have a problem with the ethics of it at all, it tells people how to mark a slave, punish them and even how to trick an indentured servant into becoming a life-long slave. Well being also transcends time.

What if it were determined that free speech blocked a path to increased well being of the members of society? Not a likely prospect, but so be it. The is why Harris leaves the definition of “well being” alone. The definition of “health” may change drastically in the future, but should this preclude talking intelligeably about health? I hardly think so.

So well being transcends time and culture. I can’t do anything about the morality of antiquity, but I can say things about the morality of this time in any culture in order to try and change them. This is why I want to have a conversation with the immigration lawyer in the class. What she said in her self-description about refugees fleeing religious persecution yet force strange practices on members of their own culture resonated with me. I’ve long thought that accepting refugees is a good thing. But it is not one-way. These people have an obligation to ensure that the values they bring with them are at least compatible with those of our own society. While mixing their culture with ours can enhance our society, some attempt must be made to integrate. Is culturally-enforced wearing of the burqa excusable on the basis of culture? It is difficult to imagine how one half of a culture tries to make the other half disappear enhances the well being of women. When pressed for an assessment of the right or wrong of the burqa, a moral relativist would say it depends on the context. In our culture, no, but in theirs, yes. I say “Can that crap.” If it is wrong in our culture, it is wrong in all. To say otherwise is to be indifferent to suffering within our own society. Examples abound of harmful precepts excused because of religion or culture. I firmly believe that there is an objective way to show that there are values that are better than others, and Harris gives us the language (if not the specifics) to use for just this purpose.

So, is the culture-enforced wearing of the burqa wrong? It goes back to well being transcending culture. Even if women in these countries say that they are happy with their lot in life, and that wearing the burqa is the greatest thing since sliced bread, it is still wrong. Why? A woman battered by her husband can say he’s a wonderful guy, but is staying married to him the right thing to do? I don’t think so. From our perspective it is clear that such women would be better off ditching their husbands. Does that mean it isn’t from the wife’s perspective? Nope. Just because she doesn’t think there is a better alternative to staying in the marriage that there isn’t. Same for women who have lived their whole lives behind the veil. Just because they do not know of a way which will enhance their own well being and profess that they are happy with life does not mean that there isn’t one and that they are. I’m not saying that it is easy to get to peaks on the moral landscape (battered wives don’t find it easy to end their marriages), only that it is possible to work towards getting to them and thereby increase the well being of all.

Harris is right that it does all come down to brain state, but it is unnecessary to reduce things to brain states. Phil Zuckerman (Society Without God) and others have ably shown using the metrics of the social sciences that the happiest and healthiest societies are the least religious ones, works Harris inexplicably ignores in the book. Indeed, science can certainly inform us information societal values leading to peaks on the moral landscape, though I’m not less sure it can give us the values themselves. We need not go to the level of the brain in order to determine this. (Our discussion leader informed us of something that makes perfect sense of this tendency to reductionism. The book is essentially Harris’ PhD thesis reformatted for a lay readership, and it certainly has this feel. So I understand where this is coming from – Harris was using the tools of neuroscience to study well being. I’ll cut Harris some slack upon learning this, but he should have acknowledged in the book – if not his thesis – that there are other ways to skin this cat, some of which are far more useful than fMRI and require far less expensive instruments.)

After the class, Moral Reletavist was telling me afterwards that he gets his morality from exploring his faith with god. The words were individually intelligeable and put together in a syntactically coherent manner, but made no sense to me whatsoever. Such people have a serious problem with the very existence of atheists. How, apart from whether a god exists or not, do we atheists come to be moral without faith? I’ll have to ask him. I know how some deal with this problem. They can ignore the problem altogether, fancifully claim that yes, atheists can obey the law but without god can not determine what is moral (hogwash) or go the route of denying that atheists can be moral at all. The latter claim that it is because we really know that there is a god but want to reject it in order to maintain our immoral ways. They read the idiotic drivel vomited by Ravi Zacharias, James Spiegel and their ilk onto paper, then congratulate themselves in confirmating their bias. There is a technical term for such people who display this level of unbridled ignorant bigotry: they are “fucking pricks”. I wonder if such people have ever knowingly met an atheist, and if they have, have they ever honestly tried to understand how they live moral lives without god? Probably not. In my view, such people are no better than KKK sans ghost costume, or Mel Gibson on a bender.

I doubt Moral Relativist is of this type. He’s far too insightful for that crap. But I still intend to ask him.

Till after next weeks’ class,

Yours in Reason,

SA

I was at our local pub with my wife last night playing NTN when I happened to notice a splash screen on TSN that showed Darryl Sutter’s resume as GM (the first point on it, the only positive one, had more to do with his coaching than GM duties – the amazing run to the Stanley Cup finals in 2004). But there was no sound, so could not confirm my hopes and dreams had indeed come true till later.

Darryl’s head had been removed. The boom has fallen. The king is dead. Well, his position as GM is over, anyway. But for a die-hard Flames fan, this is big.

I’ve been calling for his head for years. I consider him to be one of the worst GMs in hockey history, and in recent years has made some of the most ridiculous trade decisions I have ever seen. To be fair, he’s made some good ones. He was responsible for acquiring Mikka Kiprusoff from San Jose, who is now as much a Flames icon as team captain Jerome Iginla (who has a street named after him in Las Vegas, but that’s another story). Indeed, I have always thought that the Kipper is the only player on the Flames who’s game is on night after night.

His early career as GM was very successful, but that didn’t last long. Recent years have been disastrous and pretty much all of it can be lain at the feet of Darryl Sutter. But – especially in recent years – senility (or perhaps too many knocks to the head) seems to have seriously set in with Darryl. I remember one night on the news when Daryl said in a sound bite “Don’t question my passion for the game” in such a deadpan and slurred voice that I thought we should be questioning whether he had a pulse, let alone any passion. His brother Brent, the current head coach of the Flames and another who’s head I call for, doesn’t sound any less undead.

Mike Cammalleri, the Flames top scorer in the ’08-’09 season, was rewarded with being let go as a free agent (picked up by Montreal) because of the salary cap issues. Unbelievable. This decision still raises my hackles. They had a “defenseman” who couldn’t play defense in Dion Phaneuf who was incredibly over-priced who could have been traded and improved the defense just for getting rid of him. Yes, he’s got a rifle shot from the blue line. Yes, he can demolish opponents with either open-ice hits or hip checks on the boards. But Dion’s idea of playing defence is imitating a pylon swinging a stick at the puck. As CBC commentator Kelly Hrudy astutely noted, because he saw so much ice time Dion learned to rest on the ice. I can’t count the number of times I have seen so many opposing forwards simply skate around him and score.

Sutter acquired Olli Jokinen from the Phoenix Coyotes in 2009 in what was generally regarded as a great acquisition (I among them). We were wrong, but I won’t fault Darryl for that. He never seemed to fit in here, and there was never thel chemistry there was between Iginla and Cammalleri. How many one-timers did Iginla set Cammalleri up for? Jokinen was dealt to the New York Rangers late in the ’09-’10 season. Up to this point, everything is fine. Just normal operations. But a mere few months later, Calgary reacquired Jokinen in one of the most talked about trades in the recent history of the Flames. And not in a way which flattered Sutter. It was simply bizarre and CTV’s Keith Brown (Keith ‘The Teeth’, as we call him at home) was openly incredulous at the press conference where Darryl announced Jokinen’s return. Jokinen has had some very recent scoring, but hasn’t done all that much this season, but he never remotely lived up to expectations. If Jokinen obviously didn’t work out the first time (Darryl claimed it did, but if so why are his numbers so poor? Why did he trade him away? It makes absolutely no sense at all…), what made Darryl think he would on the second go-round?

Alex Tanguay was acquired in 2006, a solid player that was dealt away to Montreal in 2008. I was sad to see him go. Good thing Darryl pulled an Olli and reacquired him from Tampa Bay. Two boomerang trades in a single year? I’m not sad to see Tanguay back in the line-up, but why trade away a solid player who fit in well (unlike Olli) like that in the first place?

But, wait! There’s more! I had been clammering for Phaneuf to be traded for several years, even before the Cammalleri debacle. Darryl finally saw that Phaneuf was not the player he seemed to think he was. Finally, in January, 2010, he was traded to Toronto along with two others in exchange for Stajan (still with Calgary, amazingly), Hagman (also still here), White (who should still be here – a damn fine defenseman) and Mayers (who?). This trade is widely regarded as heavily favoring Toronto, as the consensus of the sports community was that Sutter should have held out for a good deal more for the pylon. But that’s what happens with panic moves.

But what I think is the biggest question mark of Darryl Sutter’s decisions has been with his coaching staff. Jim Playfair was replaced as coach in 2007 by ‘Iron’ Mike Keenan, a good decision in my estimation. It just wasn’t working out with Playfair, a protege of Sutter (surprise!). Keenan led the team to the playoffs, but failed to get past the first round and as a result was fired, a questionable decision. Enter Darryl’s brother Brent, who took the reigns for the ’08-’09 season.

This was a disaster. It is STILL a disaster and it seems that it will continue to be a disaster, at least for the time being. Did Darryl’s brother do better and get past the first round of the playoffs? No. Why? Because under his direction the Flames didn’t even make the playoffs! Was Brent Sutter unceremoniously tossed for produicing even worse results than Keenan? Not at all. As weird as a number of the trade decisions have been, this is the most inexplicable move (or non-move) of all. I think Keenan should have sued for wrongful dismissal, since ther reason given for his dismissal was obviously bullshit.

In hindsight, I suspect the process culminating in King’s request for Sutter’s resignation has been in the works for a while. We should have suspected someting when Jim Feaster, his replacement as GM, was added as assistant GM in July, or at least thought this was a contingency plan should things go south as indeed they did. It was certainly noted by a number of hockey commentators that it was odd that Ken King thought that Darryl might need some help with his GM duties. But it’s too little and WAY too late. The damage is done.

Sorry, Darryl. I won’t miss you one bit. I’d have been more sympathetic had King acted several years ago when he clearly should have. Indeed, Ken King has not yet gone far enough. I call for Calgary to be made a “Sutter-free Zone”. So, for crying out loud take your useless brother with you, Darryl. This team could not have been damaged any more had Darryl Sutter had been intentionally sabotaging it.

Good-bye and good riddance.