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How to persuade? And who?

16 August 2009 / / 1 Comment

I ran across two similar articles the other day. One’s about religion, one’s about politics, and both are taking me to task.

Must science declare a holy war on religion?

The so-called New Atheists are attacking the mantra of science and faith being compatible. Others in the science community question the value of confrontation.

Ooo, confrontation. Sounds confronting. It seems that atheist scientists are being mean, publishing books, and loudly declaring that God probably doesn’t exist. Doing science, in other words.

And then there’s this article:

Are liberals seceding from sanity?

The left is crazy to insult white Southerners as a group

which takes liberals to task for South-bashing, and the only example offered is Kevin Drum. But never mind. The article warns us:

They are erring neighbors to be won over, not cretins to be mocked.

At which point I ask: Is it too much to ask for both?

Let’s examine the question that ties these two articles together: how do we act toward people who disagree with us? And there are at least two possible answers:

  1. Be nice, keep quiet, persuade them with reason, and sooner or later they’ll come around if we don’t hurt their feelings and (all together now) alienate them.
  2. Be loud and proud, combat the ridiculous with ridicule, the error with truth, and don’t worry overmuch about stepping on toes.

Now let’s see: where have I heard this conflict before? Ah, yes. It was Amy Sullivan, who warned us that Democrats needed people of faith to win elections. She couldn’t have known how badly that would work for Republicans, who herded the faithful into their tent, only to find that they couldn’t get rid of them. Now the delusional folk are wanting to run the whole show, with predictably disastrous consequences.

So let’s address the religion article first. And just for perspective: these articles ran on the same day as these news stories:

Dozens of rabbis fly over Israel praying to defeat swine flu

The aim of the flight was to stop the pandemic so people will stop dying from it,” Rabbi Yitzhak Batzri was quoted as saying in the mass-circulation daily Yedioth Ahronoth.

“We are certain that, thanks to the prayer, the danger is already behind us,” added Batzri.

Mayoral Candidate Mary Falling Wants Creationism Exhibit

TULSA, OK — A mayoral candidate has resurrected a controversy over Creationism at the Tulsa Zoo.

A push to exhibit the Christian story of creation at the Tulsa Zoo failed four years ago. Republican candidate for Tulsa mayor, Anna Falling, is bringing the issue front and center.

It’s the same exhibit and the same arguments, but now it is given from the bully pulpit of a candidate running for mayor.

“Some may ask why this issue during a Mayoral campaign? And I say why not?” said candidate Anna Falling.

For Anna Falling, the road to city hall runs through the Tulsa Zoo. She’s made her Christianity central to her platform and now the exhibit depicting the Christian story of Creationism is her first campaign promise.

“Today we are announcing that God will be glorified in this city. He shall not be shunned. Upon our election, we hereby commit to honoring Him in all ways that He has been dishonored,” said Anna Falling.

These people live in the same century as we do. They have access to all the same knowledge that we do. The Enlightenment was 400 years ago. Sweet reason has had all that time to do its work. The non-confrontational approach has failed. They’re still here, dumber than ever, and trying to take over the world that science has created. By not confronting them, by not speaking out, we will let them win.

On the other hand, by speaking out, by coming out and being heard, by being loud and obnoxious and, yes, confrontational, we have seen our numbers grow. More people now identify as non-religious than at any time in recent history.

If my reading is representative, most of these gains are coming from people who haven’t been religious for a long time, but were reluctant to call themselves atheists or agnostics. For these people, all the noise about religion has forced the issue, and pushed them to re-examine their beliefs. It may have pushed some other people the other way, this is true, but those people probably weren’t convincible anyway. The only people I see complaining about noisy atheists are Fundamentalist Christians — and why wouldn’t they.

See, when you’re in a religion, it’s like you’re in a bubble. A big cushy bubble where it’s nice and soft, and everyone reaffirms your beliefs. And it feels goood. Now someone comes and gives your bubble a push. You have two choices. If you’re a confirmed believer, you retreat further into the bubble. That makes the noise stop. Drat those noisy people! Why must they challenge you? It certainly didn’t make you change, but then what were the odds of that happening? On the other hand, if you’re someone who makes reality your guide, that noise (plus the cognitive dissonance you already have floating around in there) may be just the thing that forces you to see how the facts conflict with what’s going on in your bubble. And when that gets loud enough, you might decide to burst your bubble and change your thinking.

But that only works when it’s obvious that there’s a disconnect between your bubble and the real world. So I’d say that when you have the facts on your side, your cause can only benefit from pushing the facts.

Now what about the South-bashing? This is trickier because while the US South has a definite inclination toward the most dangerous kind of lunacy, I’ve read comments from loads of people in the South who are progressive, and who feel annoyed and embarrassed by the attitudes of their neighbours. So I don’t engage in South-bashing. I’m not a big fan of stereotyping. Not very accurate. But I’ll gladly take on the lunacy. People who are convincible aren’t too crazy about the crazy anyway.

And this is what I think both authors miss: people are different. That is, some people are crazy, and some people are convincible, and they are not the same people.

You can take on the crazy with mockery and ridicule. They won’t like it. But the convincible will notice that you’re making sense. They’ll thank you for it. And all you have to do is tell the truth and tell it loud.

Astroweed lobbying

15 August 2009 / / 2 Comments

When political action committees pay to create the semblance of a public groundswell, it’s called ‘astroturfing‘. It looks like a grassroots movement, but it’s fake.

To extend the metaphor, here’s a neologism that surely deserves a place in the political lexicon: astroweeds. It comes to us courtesy of Salon’s Alex Koppelman.

[W]hat we are seeing falls somewhere between, and essentially combines the worst part of both grass-roots activism and astroturfing — that is, it pairs the slick coordination of elites coupled with the raw, unfiltered advocacy of the masses. What happens when a set of elites coordinate, fund and foment public expression, but encourage just about anyone — whether informed or not, whether skilled communicators or not, whether dedicated to the particular issue under discussion or merely dedicated to resistance for “Waterloo”-style resistance’s sake — and send them into the public arena to express their opinions? We get ugly signs, incoherent questions and blood-curdling screams about the coming end of America as we know it.

Astroweed lobbying has been a terrible distraction in the American discussion on health care. Insane people are getting townhall airtime — and in some cases, subsequent TV appearances — despite being poorly informed, unfocused, and incoherent.

It’s almost enough to drive you to Whorfianism; maybe we do need more words to describe right-wing reality distortion, just by virtue of its prevalence.

Mormons v JW’s: Thinking of the children

11 August 2009 / / 5 Comments

Now that I have a bit of time to relax, I’m going through that Pew Report again. One thing that really stood out for me is how closely Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses show the same kinds of attitudes. They both take the Bible literally, they’re just as likely to attend weekly services, they don’t like evolution or gay people, and they both feel irrationally threatened by ‘Hollywood’.

But one difference is striking: Mormons are retaining their young people, while Jehovah’s Witnesses aren’t.

Mormons have a relatively high retention rate of childhood members compared with other major religious traditions. Seven-in-ten of those raised Mormon (70%) still identify as Mormon, a figure roughly comparable to that seen among those raised Catholic (68% are still Catholic) but somewhat lower than among those raised Protestant (80% are still Protestant and 52% are still in the same Protestant family). Jehovah’s Witnesses, by contrast, have a relatively low retention rate (only 37% are still Jehovah’s Witnesses).

That’s really low for the Witnesses, especially when you consider how important kids are for the growth of the movement. (Just look at the Shakers. If you can find them, that is.)

So why is there such a difference between Mormons and JW’s on this score? It can’t be because LDS youth just love church so much. Religion’s kind of a boring and depressing pain in the ass either way.

Is it the door-to-door stuff? Tracting was bad enough as a 20-year-old; it would have been infinitely worse as a teenager in my own town. With my parents.

But I don’t know if that’s it. Someone help me out here.

Humanists, Skeptics, and Atheists: Oh my.

9 August 2009 / / 2 Comments

Richard Saunders and Rachel Dunlop gave a talk as part of Secular Week at UWA. It was great to see so many people turning up, and from so many different groups. There were lots of Humanists, some Skeptics, and plenty of Atheists.

It got me thinking: the distinction between Humanists, Skeptics, and Atheists seems to be an age thing. The humanists (identified by a show of hands) were overwhelmingly older; about 60-something. How cool that must have been, being in the old guard and seeing the growth of rationalism now. The atheists were quite a bit younger, probably 20-somethings. (I’m an outlier.) The skeptics I’m not sure about, but they seemed half-way between.

It seems to me that all these groups are saying mostly the same things, but which one you are depends a lot on what was going on when you became a rationalist. Humanism seems to have a philosophical bent to it that matches with what was going on in the 50’s and 60’s. Skeptics seem to focus specifically on the debunking of dowsing, UFOs, and crystals, things people were talking about in the 70’s and 80’s. And the youth of the atheists seems to match the youth of this New Atheist movement in the 90’s and 00’s.

Does that seem about right to anyone else?

Oh, and if you’re a Freethinker, you’re just really friggin’ old. The only way you could be older is if you’re a Deist, but we don’t see too many of them anymore.

What will happen to signed languages?

6 August 2009 / / 1 Comment

Great news: Deaf children are getting cochlear implants that can help them hear. But this has an unintended consequence: signed languages, already endangered, are getting pushed closer to extinction.

Until the past five years or so, cochlear implants were considered risky for young children. Some teachers of the deaf recommended that parents wait and let the child decide whether to get implants or use sign language. But such advice comes with a cost: A child who waits too long to hear might never become proficient in oral language. As scientific evidence accrues that children learn spoken language better if implanted before age 3, the recommendation to wait has faded.

Still, some experts advocate learning sign language even if children receive implants. Learning sign language is a safeguard that allows a young child to develop communication skills prior to receiving the implant. And sign language is there if, for any reason, the implants do not help a child sufficiently.

The pragmatist in me thinks that maybe this isn’t that serious. Signed languages, while languages in their own right, are still sort of a solution to a problem. If everyone could suddenly hear, that would be such a great thing that it might be worth the loss of ASL, Auslan, BSL, and other signed languages.

But Linguist Me laments the possible demise of yet another natural language, with all the variety and human ingenuity encoded in it. Keep in mind that Auslan, the main signed language used in Australia, has only about 7,000 speakers, far fewer than has been thought. That means it may already be endangered. And if fewer and fewer people are learning and using it, this has some serious implications for the Deaf community.

I don’t know much about the technology of cochlear implants, but I can’t imagine that they have a 100 percent success rate. If they don’t work for someone, and signed languages die out, will that person just be SOL?

Mom and Dad pray while sick daughter dies

3 August 2009 / / 3 Comments

Here’s another guy who really believes in his religion. In this case, that means someone ended up dead.

A US jury has found a man guilty of killing his sick 11-year-old daughter by praying for her recovery rather than seeking medical care.

The man, Dale Neumann, told a court in the state of Wisconsin he believed God could heal his daughter.

She died of a treatable disease – undiagnosed diabetes – at home in rural Wisconsin in March last year, as people surrounded her and prayed.

Neumann’s wife, Leilani Neumann, was convicted earlier this year.

The couple, who were both convicted of second-degree reckless homicide, face up to 25 years in prison when they are sentenced in October.

Reckless homicide is a good way of putting it. Having a child means you have to take care of them. They can’t do it themselves; they count on you. When you instead subject that child to a horrible and unnecessary death, there ought to be legal consequences.

And that goes for people who use alternative medicine instead of giving their child real medicine. If that child is harmed through a parent’s inaction, there should be consequences.

Post 700

1 August 2009 / / 3 Comments

On the eve of my 700th post on Good Reason, I find myself in Singapore. (I’m presenting at a conference.)

The conference hasn’t started yet, though, so I’m taking a day to look around Singapore. My strategy is to fling myself into the hurtling stream of people and see where I wash up. It’s going well. By dinner time, I was in Vegetarian Central with a steaming plate of rice and fake meat. And root beer. For some reason, A&W Root Beer is unaccountably popular in Singapore. You can’t get the stuff in Australia because they think it tastes like medicine. Figure that: the people who happily gulp down lemon lime and bitters won’t touch root beer because they think it tastes ‘weird’.

This is an open thread. Where does today find you?

Phineas gage photo found

30 July 2009 / / 2 Comments

It seems that a daguerreotype of Phineas Gage has been found. You’ll remember Gage from your first-year psych class, as the railroad worker who had an unfortunate encounter with an iron bar.

Gage was working on blasting that day in 1848. When you blast holes in rock, you first drill a hole in the rock, insert some gunpowder plus some sand, then insert your tamping rod and tamp it all down. But on this particular day, Gage forgot the sand. When he tamped directly on the dynamite, the resulting explosion blasted the iron bar right through his cranium. The bar landed with a clang about 30 meters behind him.

Incredibly, Gage survived, but some reports note that Gage’s personality changed from amiable to quarrelsome. This fact caused researchers to focus on the brain as the source of behaviour, and not some metaphysical spirit entity. If the brain gets damaged, the personality gets damaged.

I like the photo of Gage. He looks confident, and every bit the gentleman. The closed left eye shows he’s taken some knocks, but still he holds the token of his fame and near-destruction in his hands.

Rudd won’t budge on gay marriage

29 July 2009 / / 19 Comments

Australia has a reputation for being irreverant, secular, and liberal. At times like these I’m not sure it’s deserved.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd will move against a push at this week’s Labor Party conference to allow same-sex marriages.

The Labor Party’s Tasmanian state conference has called for the Federal Government to amend the Marriage Act to allow same-sex couples to marry.

It will be an issue at this week’s National Labor Conference.

Mr Rudd says he will not change the policy he took to the last election.

“We went to the last election being very clear-cut about our position on marriage under the Marriage Act being between a man and a woman,” he said.

Now I’ve voted for two people who are against gay marriage, but I have to say, it’s getting tiresome. I think Mr Obama and Mr Rudd are smart leaders who are good at most things, but I find their view on this issue really disappointing.

I suspect that this is due in part to the openly religious leanings of these men. Being religious has a way of making cool people occasionally act in jerky ways (e.g. Rich Raddon). Otherwise, I just can’t see why Rudd would have to take this stand in a country where polls show the issue at 60 percent acceptance.

I’d like to see this change, and soon.

Mormons the most Republican religious group

27 July 2009 / / 1 Comment

In a piece of news that surprised precisely no one, the Pew Report has revealed that Mormons are the most conservative religious group in America.

More Mormons (60 percent) identify themselves as conservatives than any other religious group; they also lead every other group in GOP party identification (at 65 percent)–much higher than the general population in both categories.

Actually, I was a bit surprised. Only 65 percent Republican? Back in my Utah days, it felt like 95 percent. I’ll bet the Republican numbers are low because there’s a further 25 percent comprised of John-Birch-birther-Ron-Paul Independents who think the Republican party isn’t Constitutional enough.

Out of the remaining 10 percent, subtract the usual 8 percent Unaffiliated/Don’t Know, and you’ll have 2 percent left. That’s the elusive Liberal Mormon.

You’ll find more than a few liberal Mormons behind this effort to reconcile LDS Church leadership with gay people. As of today, it has — wow — all of 1,360 signatories. (For comparison, this is an order of magnitude less than this petition to consider Michael Jackson for a Nobel Peace Prize.)

We the undersigned, in the spirit of love and peace, earnestly seek to create a climate for reconciliation between the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and gays and lesbians who have been affected by the policies, practices and politics of the Church. We recognize that issues surrounding sexuality and gender orientation are complex; that understanding of these matters has evolved, especially over the past several decades, and are continuing to evolve as scientists, therapists, theologians and others continue to explore and ponder their meaning and significance; We believe that people of good will may have differing views about homosexuality, while maintaining amicable relationships.

Lovely sentiments, a noble goal, and a complete waste of time. Why would church leadership want to reconcile with gay people? Their fiercely conservative membership is convinced they speak for god, and when god’s on your side, negotiation is impossible. Enter a dialogue with gay people, seriously? Those people want to destroy society. Oh, sure, the church will have to walk back all that homophobia someday, but that’ll be a long time from now, and Mormons will claim it was never official church policy anyway.

You have to love Mormon liberals, but you have to feel sad for them. True, they haven’t completely off-loaded their conscience onto church leadership. But that only means that their post-Dark-Ages political leanings puts them at odds with other Mormons, including church leaders, who wonder why they’re not ‘following the prophet’. So they have an uneasy relationship with a church that distrusts them for their intellectual independence.

I want to see a better relationship between the LDS Church and gay people too, but it’s not going to happen by church members politely petitioning for it. It will happen when Mormons with a conscience refuse to support the church financially or numerically with their membership.

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