My life as a skeptic, a secular humanist and an atheist has been short. As a young child, I was raised a moderate Catholic, but I’ve never found that it had much of a direct impact of my life. I was swayed from it by one of my best friends a few years ago. But it’s only been over the course of the past year that I can really say that my beliefs have been defined. I was introduced to Richard Dawkins’s The Selfish Gene by said friend in early 2008, and it is that which I have to thank for a great deal of where I’m at right now.

I fell in love with biology from that book, but more importantly, I learned about logic.

This year I realized that logic is a skill that takes practice just like any other. At least, I certainly wasn’t born with it. This has been an important thing for me to understand. Between the time when I stopped going to church for the better (I was eleven or so) and the point where I finally began to grasp what it meant to be an atheist (beginning of 2008), there was a void. Although I was glad to be free of the church, I didn’t understand anything any better. I was confused, and I tried searching for answers in alternative religions (Wicca, Buddhism, Scientology) but I couldn’t ever make up my mind. I wanted to make my own decisions about what I thought, but at eleven I was terribly helpless about how to do it.

Fast forward a bit to the time right before I first opened The Selfish Gene. I was still just as lost, but I had long given up attempting to fix it. Really, I think that looking back on my eleven-year old state, all I needed was more education. By the time I started reading the book, I already had a small interest in science and far more knowledge on the subject (and in general). So I was just able to get through it, and what I read amazed me. For those who haven’t read the book, it really has little to do with logic (directly). It’s about biology and natural selection. But the thing was, I’d never really understood evolution. My memories of science class lessons about the subject include picking up camouflaged colorful confetti on a multicolor piece of paper, which is an accurate demonstration but astonishingly uninformative.

And then there was Richard Dawkins, in a book obviously written for adults, explaining to me in perfect, clear language what I had always struggled to grasp in middle school. I understood him so astoundingly well… and in an unexplainable way, I saw what it was to be logical.  If there’s any time in my life where I’ve ever experienced a eureka moment, that would be it.

Basically, this experience ultimately threw me into atheism and skepticism. Attending the Center for Inquiry student leadership conference this past summer was the second event that changed me. I had just turned fifteen when I went. I met all kinds of people. Fascinating, incredibly marvelous people. It was worlds apart from my high school biology class, and the discussions that we had during that conference were far beyond anything that happened in the little debates in my freshman English class with twenty other kids. Everyone I talked to was someone new, and it was so refreshing. I don’t think I can ever forget that weekend with those people. I learned and grew so much. That was the weekend I really fell in love with inquiry, and skepticism and the universe. Biology had only been the beginning. I’m even more passionate about those things now, and it sincerely overwhelms me beyond anything else I can imagine.

The reactions I get from people about it are pretty predictable and they usually have to do with my age. But surprisingly, most of them are from the people I go to school with, who are about the same age I am. When I mention things like Edger and what it means to me, I’m met with confusion a lot of the time. It really forces me to consider how lucky I am. I’m incredibly grateful to have people I can go to who think like I do. They’re not only my friends, but something else, even though I’m not really sure what to call them. I owe so much to them either way.

Speaking of Edger, it’s really been a gift to me. Everyone who works on it is seriously talented and fantastic, and even though I have no idea how I ended up in the middle of it all, I’m so glad I did. And as the new year comes in, I think about where I’d be without it. Because despite the differences in age I have with everyone else, at the end of the day we are all thinking about the same thing in like-minded ways.

So after all, I guess this turned out to be a thank you letter to everything and everyone who helped me get where I am this year, especially the folks at the Center for Inquiry and especially especially everyone at Edger.

I feel like I belong here, with secularism and skepticism and science. I really wouldn’t trade it for anything else in the world, and it’s the most comfortable feeling.

Thanks for 2008,

Cheers

Here’s an interesting bit from a recent interview with president-elect Barack Obama:

JIM ANGLE: He was asked what he’s been doing to get ready for office and whether he talked to any previous Presidents.

PRESIDENT-ELECT BARACK OBAMA: I have spoken to all of them, that are living, obviously, President Clinton — I didn’t want to get into a Nancy Reagan thing about, you know, doing any séances. [emphasis added]

Obama later apologized for apparently mocking the supernatural belief system, but that doesn’t remove two facts:

1. It was Hilary Clinton who did séances, Reagan used astrology, either way, superstition. (I imagine Laura and George just used good ol’ fashioned prayers).
2. Obama is willing to make fun of superstitions. People who generally buy this stuff don’t do that. This means there is potentially a sceptic in the White House. Imagine the ratifications of that – a president who consults knowledgeable advisers before acting. It’s the most promising thing I’ve heard about him so far.

Exciting times.

Ever wondered why people supposedly get out of their wheelchairs and run about on stage during a healing crusade; but no one has ever regrown an amputated limb?

There are a few possibilities:

1. God is not omnipotent. Regrowing an amputated limb is beyond what he can do. (Remember, this is the same ‘god’ who flooded the whole earth, parted the Red Sea, created humans from dust, etc). This obviously does not make sense even if you look at it from the theological side.

2. God refuses to regrow limbs due to reasons that we, being humans, are not supposed to comprehend. As the popular apologetic argument goes: We cannot understand god’s ways. Most Christians that I have spoken to love using this cop-out.

However, this runs contrary to the Bible:

(Matthew 7:7) Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For every one who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. Or what man of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!

(Matthew 21:21) I tell you the truth, if you have faith and do not doubt, not only can you do what was done to the fig tree, but also you can say to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and it will be done. If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.

Uh-oh. That argument doesn’t seem to work either.

3. God does not want to be too obvious. He prefers to remain silent and unseen so that people would have no reason to believe in him. In the end, he deliberately sends all the nonbelievers to hell.

4. God is imaginary, and the faith healers are simply deluded or are deliberate charlatans.

You may still wonder why so many people are supposedly ‘cured’? There must still be miracles to account for, right?

Wrong.

1. Some faith healers are plain frauds. Peter Popoff pretended to get messages from god while his wife was whispering through an earpiece backstage. She got her information from cards that the audience filled out when they attended  In the incredibly credulous atmosphere of his crusades, the audience fell for it hook, line, and sinker. This fraud was exposed in the 1980’s by James Randi.

2. Some alleged cures have involved mistaken diagnoses that required no cure at all in the first place.

3. Psychosomatic illnesses respond positively to psychological manipulation. This never works in the case of amputated limbs. This is the most logical explanation when we consider psychosomatic illnesses as opposed to amputated limbs.

4. In the excitement of an evangelical revival, the reduction of pain due to the release of endorphins often causes people to believe and act as if they have been miraculously healed (Nickell 1993).

5. The desire to be cured can relieve stress and bring about the effects of the power of suggestion; and testimonies are often exaggerated to please god, the healer, or simply to demonstrate that they are full of faith. Nevertheless, the desire to be cured can sometimes bring adverse effects. One cancer patient at a Kathryn Kuhlman faith-healing performance was asked by Kuhlman to remove her back brace and run across the stage. She claimed her cancer was cured, but then died two months later after X-rays showed that a “cancer-weakened vertebra had collapsed due to the strain placed on it during the demonstration” (Nickell 1998).

6. Some serious ailments (etc. cancer), are unpredictable and may undergo spontaneous remission.

7. Failures are sometimes blamed on the patient for not having enough faith, or too much doubt.

8. Many patients refuse to admit that they have not been cured as they are ashamed that they “lacked faith”.

9. Many cures have been attributed to the placebo effect, not divine intervention.

To fully comprehend the lunacy of faith healers, the following is an excerpt from the transcript of what Benny Hinn said on Paul and Jan Crouch’s TBN television program (Praise The Lord, Trinity Broadcasting Network, October 19, 1999).

[start of excerpt]

Benny Hinn: But here’s first what I see for TBN. You’re going to have people raised from the dead watching this network. You’re going to have people raised from the dead watching TBN. It’s not going to be a Benny Hinn saying “Stretch your hands.” It’s going to be your average teaching program, your normal Christian program that’s blessing the church. There’s going to be such power on these programs people will be raised from the dead worldwide. I’m telling you, I see this in the Spirit. It’s going to be so awesome. Jesus I give you praise for this — that people around the world — maybe not so much in America — people around the world who will lose loved ones, will say to undertakers, “Not yet. I want to take my dead loved one and place him in front of that TV set for 24 hours.”

[end of excerpt]

So far, nobody has been raised from the dead by Benny Hinn or any of the other faith healers. Wouldn’t raising someone from the dead show non-believers that there must be something to this god business after all?

The sad thing about this is that people who are desperate for a cure often put all their trust in the faith healers, and blame themselves for ‘not having enough faith’ when they are not cured. This is the main reason that faith healers are not being called out on their outrageous claims, and in the case of Popoff, for example, people are still falling for his scam even after he was exposed by James Randi. As skeptics, we need to speak out and make our voices heard, at least for the sake of the desperate people conveniently exploited by the faith healers. Humanism calls for it.

The Problem of IDGAFS

As I have stated before, IDGAFS is an acronym for “I Don’t Give a Frack”. These are fellow nonbelievers who nevertheless treat “faith” as:

- something to be respected

- something to be treated with kid-gloves

- something that we, as critics of religion, don’t understand (in a psychological or “spiritual” way)

- something that, as non-theologians, we have no right/ no argument/ no knowledge to speak against because of the “deep” theological miasma we ought to traverse first.

We have seen that faith is not a virtue. However you define “faith”, however much you go into these notions, we can all agree that belief without evidence is not a good thing. When you can present clear, logical arguments and proof that the Bible is not true historically and is contradictory; that the Quran is as far from being a science textbook, as a can of baked beans; when presented with overwhelming evidence that events did not occur as the Bible said, there is only one thing to bridge that gap, to render that false-claim into a shining example of virtue. That takes the Kierkegaardian “leap of faith”.

Critics often claim that we do not understand faith – but we are only pointing out exactly what the faithful do, how they conduct themselves when faced with our claims, and what they actually write about. I’m trying not to reference, but forgive me this one point. Rick Warren writes in A Purpose Driven Life: “Surrendered people obey God’s will, whether it makes sense or not.” Several million copies fly off the shelves, yet we critics are called upon for not knowing anything about faith.

I have raised this point before: Why criticise the critics of religion? We do not need to be backhanded from those who are fighting for the freedom of humanity, to liberate ourselves from the chains in the shadow of  a falling “divine” icon. I have said that I do not accept a middle-ground in this debate. And I reiterate: One side in this debate is going to be right.

We have seen that all the criticisms by IDGAFs are laughable and I will now present them in short bursts of debunking.

Claims Against the Critics

1. Active atheism/religious criticism caricatures all religious belief and thinks everyone is a fundamentalist – The Strawman Fallacy.

This is usually aimed at us when we ascribe religion as a motivator for a horrible act: Reverend Paul Hill’s murder of the abortion doctor Dr. Britton; the murder of Hitoshi Igarashi, the Japanese translator of The Satanic Verses, probably by fundamentalist Muslims; the proud martyrdom of many Muslim men and women, fighting for their “god-given” land; mothers sending their children out to test for minefields because, if their child dies as a martyr, Allah will put all the family members straight into j’ana (Heaven).

Notice I said “a” motivator, not “the” motivator. I’ve selected some horrible but nonetheless true examples. The criticism then is this: These are “fringe” groups and you can not attack religion because of that.

We do not have to: Look at the ‘holy’ books and look at the religious leaders. The Quran states you should kill, not listen, disassociate, and scorn unbelievers (4:89, 4:101, 4:76, etc. etc.). And the Quran is the literal word of Allah, according to Islam.

The Ayatollah Khomeini, a religious and nation-leader, issued a fatwa for the death of Salman Rushdie (and all associated with the book) for The Satanic Verses: because it caricatured Muhammad and disrespected Muhammad’s wives (and other reasons) – though it was a work of fiction and the only caricaturing was rendering Muhammad into a fallible human being. Khomeini did this without reading or even seeing the book.

Jerry Falwell was known for constantly saying floods and earthquakes were his god’s punishment on the world, because of human depravity (caused by homosexuality and other things Falwell deemed “evil”). His pestilential minions followed suit, by issuing similar decrees from their pulpits. Remember this goes to millions of viewers, not just those gaping from the pews.

And people lap it up, because Falwell and Khomeini are men the faithful consider their “spiritual” leaders. And let us not forget the “meek” Church of England, with Rt Rev Graham Dow, the Bishop of Carlisle, saying in 2007 that the “floods that [...] caused chaos and death across the UK were caused by God after he was provoked by the introduction of gay equality.”

Somehow these men know the “mind of God” – and not even the poetic beauty ascribed by Hawking, but in a way to initiate their own perverse goals. If you are going to deny the link between religion and all these atrocities, please present your case. No one is saying religion is the sole cause, but you can’t deny its power in making “good people do evil things”.

We do not caricature the faithful, the faithful have caricatured human sensibility. It is this we attack, criticise and deem disgusting for our species. There is no Strawmen here, only failed human intellect and reason which we bring to your attention.

2. You are just as fundamentalist as those you attack – tu quoque (pronounced: to kwoh kway)

Can you be a fundamentalist atheist? First, IDGAFS and other critics must point out which books atheists uphold as absolute, perfect and infallible. And we must not forget the stupidity of considering atheism as some sort of group or movement: It is not. Everyone is an atheist – but presumably, being an atheist of the monotheist god is somehow different to other gods.

Though it seems unnecessary for this discussion, we must not forget where this term comes from. According to Karen Armstrong, fundamentalism is a recent phenomena. It was done to defend against the rational inquiry, promulgated by science and logic. But, as CP Farley writes, “Religious truths had always been considered beyond logic, but the fundamentalists transformed them into literal truths.”

In what way, do nonbelievers or atheist writers do this? I do not even know what is absolutely true, nor do I think I will ever know. Can the same be said for those who hold the Quran as the perfect word of Allah? Perhaps, but that would go against the teaching of Islam.

As nonbelievers, we do not work with certainty but remain impassive to absolutes. We have no books, gods or holy men who command us. You can not be absolute and dogmatic in your lack of belief in fairies, gods or goblins. It is also for this reason that atheism for the monotheist god can never be a religious movement, group or cause. (It is not even a thing in and of itself)

3. You can’t criticise that which you do not understand. You must first get to grips with the deep theological notions, which have hundreds of years of scholarship before you can dismiss it as nonsense – The Courtier’s Reply

We do not think religion is stupid, any more than we think a fiction-writer is a professional liar. I have a deep interest in religion because it is part of makes us human. We look at it anthropologically, study it objectively. (This is actually the reasonable proposal for every religious parent set out by one of the so-called Four Horsemen, Daniel Dennett.) But its truth-claims and claims to “divine” knowledge are what we question.

We do not ignore or deny the years of scholarship, but we fail to see how or why it’s necessary. Your average believer would not be interested in spending hours wading through tome after tome, on how their god is one but three. The majority of believers would not be interested in reading the annals of cognitive gymnastics, the gymnasium of which was set out by Aquinas, et al. Most of it is terribly unhelpful, uninteresting and – of course – untrue. The bottom line is simple: There is not a single good reason for believing that the monotheist god exists. And no amount of ancient gymnastics is going to change that.

And finally…

4. Atheism is a positive position – it is “There is no god”. I don’t think I can say that. I am uncertain and would rather remain agnostic – The Great Agnostic Mistake

As we’ve seen, we do not deal in certainty. We are inherently sceptical and critical of those who claim certainty. To say, then, that atheism is about certainty is to forget that atheism is simply a “lack of belief in a god/gods”. You can then slip in Allah, Yahweh, Loki, Tyr. To say that we are certain or positive of the non-existence of Allah or Loki is tantamount to saying we are endorsing that which we are against: Certainty and absolutism. That is bad logic. (This is similar to the claim that atheism is a religion, though critics are not silly enough to raise that point – see Claim #2)

Nevertheless, though an “agnostic” might acknowledge every point we make, they won’t declare themselves atheists. Yet, agnosticism says nothing about belief: It works on knowledge. I myself am agnostic about the existence of all gods, but I do not believe the god of the Bible or Quran – That makes me an atheist.

“Agnostics” are simply atheists who think:

1. If you are an atheist, you have to be an outspoken critic, hater, or debunker of religion.

2. That atheism is a movement or a positive position “There is NO god”, which is as bad as religious faith in god.

But this is not true. You are an atheist, but just hate that the label entails people treating you with the mindset of the previous two points. We should be working toward the notion that it’s okay not to be a monotheist. You can be an atheist (in a passive form), which means you never have to deal with any of the things we, as outspoken critics, have to.

It is just erroneous to think there is such a position as “I don’t know” with the monotheist god. There isn’t. Either you believe the monotheist god is watching you, loves you, hates your enemies, or you do not. Either the Bible is the word of god or it is not. Either Muhammad spoke to Gabriel, or he did not. You might take the latter as what you believe and that would be the reasonable position – but it does not mean you hate religion, or that you have to be outspoken. In these times however, every voice helps.

In these ways, the term ‘militant’ falls away. In these ways, with these thoughts, we can understand that saying ‘militant’ or ‘fundamentalist’ is a mistake when attributing it to atheism. You might not like what some atheistic-writers say, but criticise them for that. Do not criticise the notion of atheism as a faith-position, as a positive position, as a religious movement. There are better criticisms. IDGAFs must join our mission for the freedom and liberation of our species, where every man and woman can be respected, treated equally and find depth and beauty in reason. It is possible. But being backhanded by would-be allies only stifles our steps toward that goal.

And yes you read it right, I have seen Religulous, and now I’m going to tell you what I think about it (I may have some spoilers, but it is a mockumentary).

Want the short version with no spoilers? It’s the comedy version of Richard Dawkins’ “Root of All Evil” (or The God Delusion’s video companion). It has roughly the same arguments against religion, uses many of the same locations, and ends with the same conclusion. In short: if you can laugh about religion, you will love this movie.

We already know the premise behind Bill Maher’s new documentary. Basically, he sets out to expose extremist religion in humorous fashion. But what I hadn’t realized is that he pushes a message to all extremist religious people:

Grow up, or die

Now, Bill isn’t threatening that atheists (he never calls himself an atheist in the movie) will kill religious people – his argument is that unless people start injecting doubt and thought into their ideologies, that these people are going to end up killing each other, and potentially the entire world.

But the entire movie isn’t all doom-and-gloom.

We see Bill meet the founder of the Church of Kantheism in Amsterdam. This church doesn’t have much dogma, but knows it can reach the divine through marijuana. After a few tokes, Bill tells the pothead priest that his hair’s on fire (it’s not) and the priest freaks out for a bit.

Bill interviews Dr. Francis Collins (director of the Human Genome Project) and exposes a double standard in Dr. Collins beliefs about evidence in that the same level of evidence isn’t necessary for Jesus and the resurrection. Dr. Collins even goes as far to defend his faith through the New Testament as “first hand accountants” to which Bill decries that they are at least several decades detached.

Bill gets kicked out of the Vatican (he wanted to interview the Pope), off of a Mormon churchyard in Utah, out of the biblical theme park in Florida, and a number of people end the interview abruptly when they figure out what’s going on. Where Mathis and Expelled held interviews that didn’t seem out of line (and were under false pretences), it became quickly obvious what Maher’s intentions were as soon as he opened his mouth.

The cutting of many interviews was quite obvious, and you could tell Maher wanted to push comedy over allowing his interview subjects the chance to fully speak their mind.

Finally, I have to say, I really liked Bill’s approach. He never claimed to have the answers. He often said “I don’t know”, and even shows an interview between him and his mother – who also doesn’t know what they believe anymore. Bill preaches the word of doubt and rational thought.

Overall, the movie was awesome. I can tell a lot of people won’t like Religulous, but if you’re reading articles on Edger, this movie is probably perfectly suited for you.

As frustrated as I was, I cooked some breakfast and sat down to watch one of my  favourite shows here in Canada, Daily Planet on The Discovery Channel.  To my hasty amazement, they were doing a week-long feature on the science behind the Burning Man festival in Nevada.  What was Daily Planet, a show that focuses on science, doing at the world’s biggest hippy festival?  They were doing exactly what is often overlooked in science…art.

Art, Science, Art, Science…. The word’s from an article I read about Spore came to mind “Spore is a work of art.”  A quote from Will Wright crawled up from the deep reaches of my mind.

““There were deep motivations in the early phase from the work of a lot of evolutionary biologists, like Richard Dawkins and Edward Wilson.” And “We wanted to convey the sense that evolution can bring up a surprising diversity of weird, interesting, strange things.”

Spore, a game based on science, is art.  The artistic installations at Burning Man can only be built with a deep knowledge of science.

In a way, science is an art in itself, but I want to look at the more common definition of art.

the quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance.   It often elicits a specific human emotion or response desired by the artist.  In this respect, an artist is  always trying to convey something through their art.

I want to take this idea of Art is Science, Science is Art, and apply it to atheism.  People often complain about the lack of atheist inspired art, but when you ask them what they would consider atheist art, a few muddled words are the only sounds that follow a long mournful pause.  Since atheism is simply the non-belief in God, I want to focus on art that represents the new-atheism.  That is, atheism as an end result of the methods of scientific naturalism, inquiry, and skepticism.  Here – with examples – are what I consider to be the different ways that art can be classified as new-atheist art:

This section rejects art based on appeals to faith or tradition.  Rather, it focuses on the future.  Often, the art is the end-result of a specific tool, developed by science.

• Spore
• Van Gogh in Second Life
• Conway’s game of life
• Evarium
• Mobius Strip

Most often, the science is biology.

• Science Tattoos
• Flying Trilobite
• Teach the Controversy T-shirts

A subsection of the first two sections can be the art on the covers of science-fiction novels. Why?  Because they often represent scientific ideas, and they are meloreolistic.

Often, religious art doesn’t even need to be changed – Poe’s law personified in art.

(could be classified as a subsection of the 2nd category, but I figured it was so widespread that it merited its own number).

This post has only shown visual examples.  I understand that I left out music, sculpting, architecture, literature, comics, and anything else you would consider art.

I have seen atheist poems and poetic atheist quotes that could be classified as art, but what about books promoting atheism and science?  There is much merit in disseminating the ideas of atheism and science in a way that influences people.  Carl Sagan’s work often borders on poetic.  He uses writing skills and a creative imagination to create metaphors of science that are appealing to a wide audience.  I think this constitutes art.  And Christopher Hitchens is an exemplar of fine literary talent, while Richard Dawkins holds his own with his metaphors and literary talent. What do you think?

But then, what about more rigorous scientific works like peer reviewed journals?  Surely they are not art.  They have no appeal to human emotion, no poetic literature, and no aesthetically  appealing visual representations that convey anything more than the intent of the paper.  Peer reviewed journals are cold, rigorous, and precise.  Within the scientific community this is ideal, but a general populace wants an appeal to emotion.  It is the job of the science journalist to promote science with a human edge.  It is the job of the science journalist to be an artist.

…I look forward to hearing your ideas on this.

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Did it convince me that something supernatural was going on? No.

Granted, nobody was literally smacked on the forehead like what happens during Benny Hinn’s crusades, but it was a painful experience to sit through. The room was packed with true believers, and I felt exasperation overwhelming me. It took every ounce of effort not to start screaming and yelling at everyone to simply open their eyes to the deception that they have willingly entered into.

On the other hand, I felt pity and rage at the same time. I felt pity for the sick who attended desperately seeking a miracle. I felt pity for the children whose parents chose to drag to the healing crusade instead of receiving medical care. It was indeed a heart-wrenching sight to see the disabled, the deaf and the blind with looks of longing and hope on their faces as they ‘surrendered their fates’ to their particular version of a deity. I was filled with rage at the people who could even consider feeding tantalizing, false hopes to people who are desperately seeking a miracle just to propagate their own convictions. I felt rage looking at the entire system of self-deception and suspension of disbelief. With pity and rage alternating inside me, I took my seat among the true believers.

It started off with a few worship songs to supposedly ‘bring the presence of god into this place’. The songs were repeated over and over again, bringing about an almost hypnotic effect which some in the audience took as a sign that the ‘holy spirit’ was present. If the Christian god is the omnipotent, omnipresent, all-knowing deity he is portrayed as being, why would he need to be alerted to the fact that his followers needed healing? Couldn’t he have just healed them without having to be told to do so in a special ceremony? The ‘invocation’ also sounded a lot like pagan practices of invoking ‘spirits’. Another interesting question is that if god/his spirit/the holy ghost is omnipresent, why did he need to be specifically channeled into the hall? Why did they have to start the crusade with the act of ‘bringing god into this place’? Is it just me, or does something not quite add up?

The epitome of the phrase ‘fleecing the flock’ was displayed when the collection basket was handed out with calls to ‘give back to god what he has done’. In the first place, nobody had been healed yet, so what would be the rationale for that statement? However, the true believers gave, and they indeed gave! By the time the collection basket arrived at my row, it was full enough to line an evangelist’s pocket or two.

Next came the preaching. The preacher claimed that everyone wants to believe in a god. Many people do want to believe in a god, but saying that everyone wants to believe in a god was an overgeneralization. I guess he also missed the memo that wanting to believe in something doesn’t make it so.

He then claimed that he has ‘evidence’ to conclusively ‘prove’ the existence of one true god. First, he asked the crowd how many people have only one biological father. When the audience raised their hands, he continued with ‘Since nobody could have more than one biological father, it is only possible to have one god as well. It is impossible to have more than one god, as it is impossible to have more than one biological father.’

Yes, that was his great theological proof of monotheism. Voila!

I have to admit that I was more than a little disappointed.

After the great theological ‘proof’ of god, it was time for the ‘worship Jesus or burn’ threats. The usual evangelical stock-phrases were spouted: Now that you have proof that there is only one true god, it is your obligation not to worship false gods. You must choose Jesus, because if you don’t, you will end up in hell, and hell is not a place you want to go to. You want eternal life! You don’t want to end up in hell! You don’t! You don’t! You don’t! You don’t! You don’t! Hell is an absolutely terrifying place! You DON’T want to go there! ACCEPT JESUS!!

The same thing was repeated over and over again until I nearly fell asleep, but I was jolted awake in horror when I saw the true believers around me simply lapping it up. After attending evangelical crusades, trust me, horror movies pale in comparison. The horror of again realizing that around the world, millions of people are buying into this dogma would be more than enough to cause sleepless nights.

Next, we were promised that Jesus would work miracles and that through the miracles; we would see that he is the way to God. We were also told that God/Jesus/Holy Spirit would work the miracles not only to heal the sick, but to also ‘show the truth’ to the non-Christians.

You must be wondering what ‘miracles’ Jesus worked that night. And I have to say, Jesus was really disappointing, or more likely, a no-show. There were a few headaches, stress and depression cases ‘cured’, in addition to a kid’s cough, a slight pain in the foot, a mild ankle injury, ringing in the ears, and pain ‘disappearing’ from various parts of the body. Nobody got out of their wheelchairs and walked despite the repeated calls to ‘Get up and walk.’ No blind people suddenly saw, the deaf didn’t suddenly hear, the mute didn’t suddenly talk, and the disabled didn’t suddenly recover. Most importantly, no amputated limbs were re-grown by God.  Although that would be the most convincing ‘evidence’ that faith healing actually could have something to it after all.

One case was especially heartbreaking, as it was self-deception in the highest degree. A cancer patient who had undergone several rounds of chemotherapy claimed that she felt a decrease in the numbness in her right side. She also felt that the cancer had been ‘reduced by 90%’. How would this be possible to determine without a medical check-up? Despite the patient’s obvious credulity and willing acts of self-deception, I felt really sorry for her. Would she stop her chemotherapy treatments because she feels that her cancer is all but gone? I would never know, but somehow I hope that somewhere along the line, her skepticism kicks in. The anger and pity coursing through me when she gave her testimony at the front was indescribable.

Another sad part is how the crowd clapped and cheered at the end of each testimony, seeing the testimonies as a confirmation of what they so desperately want to be true. When it was time for the altar call, around forty people went up to the front to ‘accept Jesus’. Is skepticism dead among most members of the human species? Superstition claimed more members that night, and I am afraid that we may never be able to compete with the numbers superstition claims all over the world everyday if we are not willing to stand up, speak up, and be counted. Being an appeaser simply would not do.

I know this sounds pessimistic, but perhaps you had to be there on that fateful night.

Nevertheless, I personally know of skeptics who still believe that some element of homeopathy still works beyond the placebo effect. The cause of this would probably be the advent of homeopathy into mainstream pharmacies and the offices of qualified medical practitioners. Although nobody denies that there are qualified medical doctors who are also qualified as homeopaths, the very basis of homeopathy doesn’t render it suitable as a replacement or even as an ‘alternative’ to evidence-based conventional medicine.

The three main principles of homeopathy are:

• Like Cures Like
  For example, if the symptoms of your cold are similar to poisoning by mercury, then mercury would be your homeopathic remedy.
• Minimal Dose
  The remedy is taken in an extremely dilute form; normally one part of the remedy to around 1,000,000,000,000 parts of water.
• The Single Remedy
  No matter how many symptoms are experienced, only one remedy is taken, and that remedy will be aimed at all those symptoms.

Let’s take a look at the first principle, the so-called like cures like theory. Hahnemann, the founder of homeopathy, believed that restoring the ‘vital forces’ of the body is the way to cure diseases that were incurable in his time. He also claimed that the very small doses of a medication would be enough to heal as the potency of a particular substance could be manipulated by succussion (vigorous shaking). He founded the like cures like theory after observing that quinine, which causes fever, cured malaria (in which one of the symptoms is fever).

He expounded further on the like cures like theory, by claiming (without any evidence whatsoever) that diluting the so-called cure minimizes its bad effects but maintains its full ‘curative’ power. Scientifically, this is utter nonsense. Is he speculating that some sort of metaphysical force in the water exists and diverts the harmful effects of the substance while maximizing its healing capabilities? The development of homeopathy has taken place outside science; therefore its claims still lack justification or scientific evidence despite homeopathy being around for more than 200 years.

Some modern homeopaths even go so far as to claim that similar principals form the basis of conventional allergy treatment, where the allergic substance is given in a small dose and in vaccines where an impotent form of the virus is given to bolster the immune system against that particular virus. Again, this is merely a faulty analogy and an overdose of wishful thinking. The dilution process involved in homeopathy causes no active ingredient to be left in the medication itself, making it indistinguishable from plain water or alcohol. You might as well be taking an empty pill instead of a homeopathic tablet. This immediately renders their above claim as false. Firstly, there is no active ingredient entered into the body, or rephrased: NOTHING at all enters the body that triggers an immune response. Secondly, as opposed to the case of immunization, homeopathic medications do not stimulate the body to produce substances that may protect the body from a certain disease. Immunology is a tested, proven, verified branch of medicine, whereas the evidence for homeopathy is still non-existent.

Now, we move on to the second principle of homeopathy, the ‘minimal dose’. According to the calculations done by Dr. Simon Singh, for a homeopathic dilution to have even one molecule remaining of the active ingredient, the pill has to be the size of the planet Earth. Alas, these ever-so-wise homeopaths rush to proclaim that one of the many undiscovered, unproven magical properties is that it has the ability to retain a ‘memory’ of the active ingredient.Jacques Benveniste even claims that a homeopathic solution’s biological activity can be digitally recorded, stored on a hard drive, sent over the Internet, and transferred to water at the receiving end. Some homeopaths also claim that homeopathic remedies have powers to ‘magically’ alter the molecular structure of water. (These were the same homeopaths that claim that homeopathic remedies are merely derived from natural elements around us, right?). Worse, there isn’t any evidence for the very basis of the ‘minimal dose’ theory, where it is claimed that one could minimize the negative effect of a ‘cure’ by significantly reducing the size of the dose. The least they could do is to prove that their fantastic ideas work, and be in the running for a Nobel Prize in Medicine.

The third and perhaps the most outrageous claim is the ludicrous ‘single remedy’ principle. It is a widely known fact that a disease is usually associated with a variety of symptoms. These symptoms help doctors identify the disease and subsequently prescribe a cure. The opposite seems to be the case for homeopathy. A single cure is prescribed (diluted into oblivion first, that is) that supposedly cures one of the symptoms of the disease, thus curing all the other symptoms at the same time. In the homeopaths’ on words, “Homeopathy is system of medicine that targets the symptoms of a disease (as opposed to conventional medicine where the disease itself is targeted”.

Now let’s look at a little gem of contradiction here (from a homeopathy website): Homeopathy is holistic. It treats all the symptoms as one, which in practical terms means that it addresses the cause, not the symptoms. This often means that symptoms tackled with homeopathy do not recur.

Treating all the symptoms with a ‘cure’ directed at merely one of the symptoms addresses the cause of the illness? They contradict themselves in the last line by admitting that they merely target the symptoms, not the disease. Yet this is the exact opposite of what they said in the previous line ‘addresses the cause.’ Are you willing to place your health in the hands of a bunch of people who can’t get their symptoms and causes straight?

If homeopathic remedies seem to work, it is not because of the metaphysical properties of the ‘miracle water’, but the body’s own natural curative mechanisms or the placebo effect. Although most homeopathic remedies are safe and merely ineffective, the real danger is when a patient chooses not to seek proper treatment by a conventional medical doctor in cases where the patient could be helped by such treatment.

The first issue comes in the bringing up of the name John Christy, a dissenter from the IPCC.  The first thing you notice when you start investigating Christy is he makes a lot of claims, a lot more than most scientists typically do.  Christy’s famous for misrepresenting satellite data to claim that there has been no global increase in temperature since 1979. It was a basic algebraic mistake that turned out to be the reason Christy had mistaken his data (a good reason not to believe someone just because they’re a Nobel Laureaute). Correcting for the mistake all the data falls into place – global warming is happening, and its very likely our fault.

Jenkins continues by claiming that despite incredible growth in China and India in the past decade, “there has been no global warming since 1998.” However, when we take a longer average and actually look at data the way scientists do we do see an overall trend of increased global temperatures.

Jenkins finishes his arguments with some more claims about natural cycles due to solar activity, however, again he’s one step behind the real science.

The difficult thing in dealing with pseudo-science, especially with people who are good peddlers, is that it sounds really scientific at times.  I mean Jenkins has a Nobel laureaute and an obscure geophysicist with an unheard of but plausible idea.  Unfortunately, this is a geophysicist who believes the world will be in an ice age within 10 years, and a Nobel laureaute who has lost the ability to do basic algebra.

Jenkins finishes off saying:

Ms. Phillips can call me ignorant when it comes to the environment. It’s a fairly common tactic to call names when your argument can’t be won. Nor do I accept her comments that I have no interest in making our planet a better place for my children or future generations.

Such moralistic supremacy is all too common from zealots, regardless of their cause.

As for my behavior as an elected official, if you’re looking for a lemming you won’t find one here.

I would have to agree with Ms. Philips here Jenkins, you are ignorant, you prevent good science from moving forward, and you are likely a blight on your office and constituency.

I have noticed that despite the usual Hitler/Nazi absurd hysteria, none of the objections I have encountered so far contained any good reason to oppose the modern idea of eugenics. Every anti-eugenics argument was solely based on the idea that since Hitler supposedly supported eugenics (again, his ideas were based on bad science), all of eugenics must be bad by default, and we should never be allowed to even consider the possibility. As one theist said: You should be arrested for this depravity!

What depravity? The theist that I spoke to again does not offer any reasons for why eugenics is a depravity apart from foaming about Hitler, Nazis and the Holocaust. I am not saying that there are totally zero good arguments against eugenics, but the time has indeed come for us to stop denying the possibility of eugenics simply because of some madman who died more than half a century ago. As in the case of the creationists and their Hitler zombie, it is time to put the Hitler zombie of eugenics to rest.

Some people might argue that allowing eugenics is akin to starting on a slippery slope. Nevertheless, what most eugenics opponents don’t seem to realize is that the eugenics revolution is already well under way. The fact that screening of embryos for genetic defects takes place legally is a testament to the current eugenics revolution. For example, genetic screening in the case of Tay-Sachs disease for pregnant mothers eligible for an abortion has reduced the incidences of the disease by an estimated 95 percent. This is in line with the eugenics idea that inferior genes should not be allowed to perpetuate in society. For those who are just waiting to invoke all kinds of zombies in vain, I will again make it clear that what I mean by ‘inferior genes’ does not have any bearing on gender or race. Inferior genes (in the above case) are simply genes that are more prone to diseases or harmful mutations.

Could the reason that there is no immediate condemnation of the very word ‘genetic testing’ and its’ implications be due to the fact that the word ‘eugenics’ is not mentioned in discussions of genetic testing? Would the whole situation change if eugenics and its’ possibilities were brought into the question? Isn’t the only reason eugenics has become a dangerous idea is simply because of the Hitler zombie? Isn’t it silly to halt the progress of science because of some dead madman?

I again stress that they may be good arguments against eugenics, but let’s hear them, then. Let’s have some good arguments and have a rational discussion about eugenics without the silly invocations of Hitler and the Nazis. Are we really that afraid of merely posing a simple ‘if’ question because the Nazis did some unethical things due to their acute misunderstanding of the matter at hand?

If there is indeed a way to breed humans for certain abilities, what’s stopping the next eugenics revolution (this time based on modern science) from happening? Should we or should we not attempt to stop it? What are the arguments that might lead us to conclude that it is or is not a good idea? Why are we so opposed to eugenics being applied to humans (if the means and the know-how are in place), when we have bred animals for preferred traits as long as anyone can remember?

After more than half a century, and in light of modern science and genetic advancements, we should be able discuss this matter in a rational light without the cloud of the Hitler zombie. In the spirit of skepticism and freedom of inquiry, perhaps the time has come to rethink the very idea of eugenics.