I’m trying to limit the religion posts to Sunday, but this one’s at least partly political. Here’s an article I found today (thanks to Billmon):

President Bush… has a positive job approval in just three of the 50 United States.

This according to 50 separate but concurrent statewide public opinion polls conducted by SurveyUSA for its media clients across the country.

Only residents of Utah, Wyoming and Idaho view the president favorably.

Utah, Wyoming, and Idaho… hmm. There must be a connection somewhere… what could it be…?

Ah. There it is.

Top 10 U.S. States with Highest Proportion of Latter-day Saints in the Population, 1990

State	Number of congregations	Number of members	Percent of state population
Utah	2,924	1,236,242	71.76%
Idaho	662	268,060	26.63
Wyoming	128	45,793	10.10

The data’s a little old, but the patterns are stable — it’s a Mormon thing. Seriously, what could the possible reason be for this unquestioning sheeptitude among Latter-day Saints?

You could say a lot of things:

• authoritarian religions make people unlikely to question authority figures
• religions are by nature conservative, and there’s bound to be some political crossover
• the intermountain West is naturally conservative, Mormon or not

But I think it’s really this: very religious people are not well-trained to base opinions on evidence, and so when more evidence comes, they aren’t able to update. Mormons, especially, go by ‘personal revelation’ — feelings — not facts. And so they continue to live in slumber.

Bush not only won Utah’s electoral votes in 2004, but did so county for county — one of only three states to do so (other two: Nebraska and Oklahoma). I have to admit that for me this fact was a latter step toward realising that the members of the Church, far from being the most spiritually enlightened people in this wicked world, were in fact the most benighted by any standard of Christianity. As a liberal, I had always been a minority in a conservative church, but I’d always brushed it off. It’s just politics, I told myself. But the 2004 election showed me that it wasn’t; this went to the heart of who the Latter-day Saints are. I could see it, they never would, and I realised that the chasm was too wide.

Just when you think that Republicans couldn’t get any more craven and shabby. The US Senate has passed a bill making English the ‘national’ language of the USA. And in a related bill, oxygen is now the national gas.

[N]o one has “a right, entitlement or claim to have the government of the United States or any of its officials or representatives act, communicate, perform or provide services or provide materials in any language other than English.”

Hear that, Spanish speakers? You have no right to expect anything other than English. If the U.S. Government provides tax instructions, government documents, help with interpretation, or anything else, it’s because we’re being nice. More than you deserve. You’re welcome.

Why is this cowardly? Let’s consider the context. Republicans are currently battered by scandal and are historically unpopular. They need some victories. But not against anyone powerful. So instead, they take it up against the powerless, those who won’t be able to respond. And since they’ve chosen to align themselves with bigots, it’s a bonus if the target also has dark skin. Voila! A bill aimed against racial minorities that don’t speak English. This bill won’t actually change anything policy-wise. It doesn’t have to. It’s symbolic, see. Republicans get to look tough on immigration, and stand up for the language of the homeland.

Where’s the president in all of this? Where’s his keen acumen, his uncanny ability to judge the right side of an issue?

President Bush, speaking about immigration on Thursday on a trip to Arizona, reiterated that under his proposal illegal immigrants would have to learn English. “If you learn English, and you’re a hard worker, and you have a dream, you have the capacity from going from picking crops to owning the store, or from sweeping office floors to being an office manager,” Mr. Bush said.

Oh. And if you don’t learn English, well…

This has happened over and over again in history, and it’s always regrettable. Speakers of dominant language A forbid the use of minority language B in schools, government, and public life. If it goes on long enough, language B is lost, and with it a culture and a way of thinking. Spanish is not in danger of extinction anytime soon, but English is even less in danger. What’s the worry? Why pick this issue now? It’s just more target practice from the Republicans. It’s what makes them feel safe.

The library was selling discard books, and Oldest Boy picked out one called The Encyclopedia of Monsters. At first I thought it was just for kids, but then I was pleased to discover that it’s a well-researched, easy-to-read, and skeptical look at crypto-zoology. Entries include the Loch Ness Monster, Bigfoot, Spring-Heeled Jack, and even Gef the Talking Mongoose.

The article I found most interesting was that of the Nottingham Lion. In 1976, two workers in Nottingham thought they saw a lion, complete with tufty tail. They called the police, and the media got involved. Soon, everyone was phoning the police to report that they’d seen the lion. Police dutifully tracked the beast on a map until they realised that a) no zoos or private collections were missing a lion, and b) no lion could appear in so many places simultaneously. Police called off the search, and the mythical lion joined the list of ‘phantom cats‘ that people in the USA and England sometimes claim to have seen.

The Nottingham lion contains a useful lesson about perception and bias: we tend to see what we’re looking for. Exorcists see the devil everywhere, psychologists who work with (and generate) ‘repressed abuse’ cases are amazed at the extent of the problem, religious believers see the face of Jesus or Mary in everyday objects, and people with theories to protect see multitudes of evidence for their theory. Though science and statistics have tools to combat this kind of bias, it is well to remember that even people trained in these areas are not immune to suggestion.

Science is self correcting; that is, people with conflicting views will hammer out theories about some phenomenon or other, and thereby improve their theories. One implication of this is that over the long haul, whatever views are held by the ‘scientific community’ tend to be correct. (I’ve put two qualifiers in there; that should be enough.)

So I’m reading ‘Talking Heads‘ by Benjamin Lee, which is not about the band Talking Heads. It’s actually a demanding discussion of speech act theory, philosophy, and subjectivity. It contains the following paragraph about the 18th century intellectual luminary Charles Saunders Peirce:

Peirce defines reality as that which an ideal scientific community would come to agree upon as true, at least in part because of his belief that the self-correcting nature of scientific inquiry would weed out competing theories and eventually hit upon what reality was.

This, of course, is exactly the kind of thing that turns amateur New Age metaphysicists turn into puddles of gibberish. “But… but… reality is what I perceive! My reality! How can we turn that over to an idealised band of scientists? After all, science is just another point of view! With its own biases! Just as subjective as any opinion! We create our own reality! I can be in two places at once, like a quantum!” And so on.

There’s actually some validity to this view for speaker-internal truths (e.g. ‘I hate lasagna.’). If a team of scientists wants to find out this kind of information, they’re going to have to ask you because you’re the authority on how you feel. Here we can have ‘true for me, but not for you’.

This view runs aground on speaker-external truths, however, like the age of the universe or questions about existence of this or that. In this domain, our personal experiences are inadequate and subject to bias and cognitive distortion. Here, the scientific method helps us, and here it is perfectly appropriate to rely provisionally on the consensus of scientists.

I haven’t gone back to see what Peirce actually said, but wow! what a brilliant view. Unapologetically scientific, with all the optimism of Peirce’s time. We need more of that.

The Priest: I don’t think there’s any such thing as an atheist. Everyone believes in God. I knew someone who claimed to be an atheist once. He claimed not to believe in God despite all our conversations. But we went to the beach one day, and he got caught in a rip and found himself being dragged out to sea. And guess what — he called on God to save him. So much for atheism.

Me: For my part, I don’t think there’s any such thing as a believer in God. For example, you think it’s terrible to kill someone. Why would that be, when their spirit just goes somewhere else? Secretly, I think you suspect there’s no life after this, and you muster your faith every day just to keep that suspicion at bay. And you’re right that people do turn to religion in times of crisis. That’s because that’s when people reason most poorly.

Priest: You think reason is good, and it is, as long as you listen to God. You need to remember that the foolishness of God is wiser than men.

Me: Unless God doesn’t exist, in which case all the foolishness belongs to yourself.

Holy crap! Bush’s approval ratings sink to 29% in the new Harris poll, the first to break the psychologically important 30% barrier. Even if this poll is an outlier, this is a very big deal.

I think we’re now seeing the second part of a two-parter. In part one, more and more voters became convinced that Bush was an ineffective president due to the mounting evidence of incompetence, and despite the cheerleading from the press, other Americans, and the Bush Administration itself. The floor can only go so low in this phase because there exists a perception that the president is basically trustworthy and competent, and political non-participants will still ‘approve’ because they just think what (they think) everyone else thinks.

But in part two, which probably started with Katrina, the public perception shifts. As more people distrust and despise the president, the bandwagon effect pulls the inattentive ‘approvers’ into the ‘disapprove’ camp. The floor, long sinking, now drops out entirely.

I’ve predicted 25% by August, but Junior might just beat that. I’ll leave the prediction where it is for now; I’m aware that it gets asymptotically more difficult to lose each new point. Still, Chimpy may surprise us all.

I don’t know why I’m fascinated by this topic. Maybe because it’s like watching sleepers wake.

Update: I have just noticed that the maker of this wonderful chart is going to have to redo the graphic to accommodate the lower scores. Amazing.

Someone’s done pictures of Jesus standing near people in various professions.

Which leads me to the inevitable question first posed by Dostoyevski: If a loving God exists, how could he allow someone to do such trite and glurgy representations of his son?

Still, I’m somewhat impressed by the quality of the artwork, if not the composition. The artist claims he started from no art background at age 50 (sort of like Howard Finster), and I gotta say, the likenesses are pretty good. I think I might recognise the guy modelling for Jesus in a crowd.

I don’t think he’s covered all the bases yet though. He’s done ‘Clown’ and ‘Forest Ranger’, but while he’s at it, maybe he could cover:
– Rodeo Clown: Jesus with the hat; priceless.
– Stripper: Jesus stuffing a twenty into a G-string.
– PhD student: Jesus puts a comforting hand on sobbing student’s shoulder when positive results are not forthcoming. Or watches helplessly as student slits wrists.

Everyone talks about Occam’s Razor (especially me), but nobody ever does anything about it, except for sometimes spell it differently (Ockham’s), or invoke it menacingly in discussions on religion (especially me).

So for a change, I thought I’d let the dinosaurs discuss it. They’re doing the best they can, given their brain capacity.