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Where’s Daniel? And what’s that hammering noise?

4 July 2008 / / 2 Comments

Been working on a conference paper.

You know what the worst thing is about doing a paper? No, not getting it rejected. Okay, the second worst thing. Not being able to find any research similar to yours.

Actually, it could be a great thing. You could be the genius who has figured out something new that no one’s ever thought of. On the other hand, you could be doing something worthless that no one else wants to do. Or — more terrifyingly — you’re just a sucky researcher who can’t do a literature review, and it’s already been done, and everyone knows it. Except you, you lazy person. Frightening, isn’t it?

So when I get a good result, I always feel elated, but I brace myself. Writing this paper has been a bit like that.

But it’s in the can now. I’ve sent it off to EMNLP, a Very Big and Important Conference. And if you want to see the results of the study, I’ve made a presentation that you can view. You can read a PDF, or you can have a cute Flash animation, if you’d rather.

Religious calumny ahoy

28 June 2008 / / Comments Off on Religious calumny ahoy

Item: Saudi Marriage Officiant : ‘It Is Allowed To Marry A Girl At The Age Of One’.

As long as you wait to have sex with her until she’s, oh, you know, nine. That’s when Muhammed did the deed with his wife Aisha.

Dr. Ahmad Al-Mu’bi: He married her at the age of six, and he consummated the marriage, by having sex with her for the first time, when she was nine. We consider the Prophet Muhammad to be our model.

When your system of ultimate truth is whatever some guy thought up, your spiritual role models become pedophiles and the mentally ill.

Question: Will gay rights trample religious freedom?

The government has acted in some way[s] to forbid gays and lesbians from being demeaned. But allowing same-sex couples to force religious individuals or organizations to act out of accord with their faith is not cost-free either. Their dignity is no less affected. Unless claims rooted in equal protection under the law are to sweep away claims rooted in freedom of religion, a more sensitive balancing approach is essential.

Shorter Marc Stern: Gay people’s right to equal treatment must be balanced by religious people’s right to discriminate against them.

WTF: Hindus in India are sending Barack Obama a rather hefty idol of Lord Hanuman the Monkey God. They think it will help him to win the election.

The idea of sending an idol of Hanuman dawned on him after friends in the United States mentioned a “prominent American politician who carried a miniature Hanuman idol in his pocket for luck,” Mr. Bhama said speaking on the first day of the ceremony on Tuesday.

“After hearing that, I decided to gift Mr. Obama a larger, gold-plated version along with the wishes of thousands of his supporters in this country,” said the leader struggling to lift the 15 kg, 21-inch brass idol.

The first-day ceremony, pranapratishta, or infusion of divine life into an idol, was performed by a dozen priests reciting mantras in tandem. It was attended by Democrats Abroad India chairperson Carolyn Sauvage, who spent over an hour at the venue.

I grew up in a very literal religious tradition, so I tend to think everyone’s a literalist, even when they’re not. Maybe they just think it would be cool to send Obama a brass monkey idol. On the other hand, maybe these are adults who think it’s all real, and they think it would really help Obama. To have a monkey idol. Which has been infused with divine life.

Damn. Hinduism has to be one of the more bizarre outgrowths of the human religious urge.

The Church of Non-Fundamentalist Latter-day Saints

28 June 2008 / / 2 Comments

Res spotted this one:

LDS Church stressing its differences from FLDS polygamous sect

Mormon leaders today said they are stepping up efforts to make the public aware of the differences between the Salt Lake City-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the polygamist Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS), which has recently garnered widespread national attention.

The Mormon effort is in response to a church-commissioned survey of 1,000 Americans that found a degree of confusion about the two churches. More than a third of those surveyed thought the Texas FLDS compound, which recently was raided by Texas’ Child Protection Services after allegations of child sexual abuse, was part of the LDS Church. Another 6 percent said the two groups were partly related.

Well, you can’t imagine they’d be happy about that. But I find it rankling that Mormons try to disown their polygamous past and try and claim the ‘Mormon’ label for themselves only.

Check out this article from the Deseret News.

The LDS Church has said there is no such thing as a “fundamentalist Mormon,” although an estimated 37,000 people who practice it consider themselves as such. Fundamentalists argue that the LDS Church has strayed from its original doctrine by abandoning the practice of polygamy in 1890.
…
Clinton Hudson, a student at Sonora High School, is a member of a Christian student fellowship. During a lunchtime meeting, he said one student said they should pray for the children taken in the raid. Another student said they should “pray for the Mormons.”

“I approached her and said, ‘They’re not Mormons. They’re fundamentalists. They broke off from the church’ and described our history and how they broke off. It really helped a lot,” Hudson said Sunday. “It was a great opportunity to get them to understand there’s a difference between them and us.”

Fundamentalists aren’t Mormons? Of course they’re Mormons.

Mormons claim they’re Christians, even though other Christians disagree. Latter-day Saints typically respond: Well, what does that matter? We’re Christians because we believe in Jesus. Why should people in other churches be able to tell us who we are? And then they turn around and pull this.

Mormons are Christians because they think they are. Fundamentalist Mormons are Mormons because they think they are. Simple as that.

Or try this clumsy analogy.

An illustration from the business world might give us some insight. Suppose several engineers at General Electric invented an electric motor and decided that their product was superior to other similar products produced by the company. This group of engineers decides then to break away from General Electric and form a new company called Fundamental General Electric or FGE for short. How would General Electric react to this? Would it feel that its brand equity was being diminished or stolen? Of course they would. And they would be right.

But you’d be wrong. While it’s easy to classify the LDS Church as a corporation, the analogy only works if the Utah church were the original. Mormons like to think this, but it ain’t so. In fact it’s just one offshoot among many that emerged during the turbulent time after Joseph Smith. It’s the most populous and successful variant, but that doesn’t confer the naming rights.

The Utah church has made a few videos to show that Mormons are normal and not weird. I think it’s going to backfire.

This one’s 18-year-old beauty queen Kayla. Her interests include beauty contests, sitting around playing Uno with her family, hygiene, and sitting on the porch talking about modesty. Right now she’s doing a Morse Code in reverse with her eyes. She’s trying to spell ‘Help me’ by opening them.


You know, I don’t think these clips are going to help people tell LDS from FLDS. In fact, I think I can actually see more parallels than before. Aren’t the fundies always going on about ‘modesty’? Why doesn’t this young lady try one of those shapeless dresses you see on the compound? This clip makes both cultures seem frighteningly parochial. It’s as though the LDS Church is trying so hard not to attack the FLDS that they’re failing to make any point whatever.

Elderly men show an interest in gay marriage

26 June 2008 / / 5 Comments

Absolutely outrageous.

Even though the LDS Church’s own scripture forbids it to meddle in political affairs, the First Presidency is directly asking Latter-day Saints to vote against gay marriage in California.

A statement called “Preserving Traditional Marriage and Strengthening Families” (PDF) will be read in LDS sacrament meetings. It says, in part:

We ask that you do all you can to support the proposed constitutional amendment [to overturn marriage for everyone] by donating of your means and time to assure that marriage in California is legally defined as being between a man and a woman.

This is abominable. For a church to promote any kind of inequality is wrong. For a church to promote discrimination is wrong. The LDS Church has already given over a million dollars of its funds to defeat gay-marriage laws in Hawai’i and Alaska, which may have come from the tithing donated by its membership.

And all this energy and rhetoric expended in the mistaken (in my view) belief that this will somehow harm straight marriages and children.

You know what this reminds me of? Galileo.

Galileo?

Galileo.

For the Catholic Church, it was such a big deal that the sun went around the earth. They burned Bruno at the stake, and put Galileo under house arrest for espousing the Copernican model. And yet, the earth moved.

And now it doesn’t seem such a big deal. Today we wonder what the fuss was about. Religious dogma, wrong once again, had to give way. The church decided that maybe the whole earth-thing was a non-core belief, and life went on.

I feel embarrassed for Monson et al because they’re just going to have to backtrack that much farther when gay marriage turns out not to be the nation-destroying plague they’re envisioning.

I also feel bad for liberal Mormons who rightly deplore this hateful edict from their leadership. This is exactly the conflict I would have had in my believing days: wanting to support equality, but believing that church leaders were inspired and good. Rationalism has certainly saved me from that conflict.

I got your community standards right here!

25 June 2008 / / 2 Comments

I tell ya, that Google’s useful for all kinds of things.

The operator of a porn web site has been brought to trial for violating ‘community standards’. But who knows what ‘community standards’ are? Well, his lawyer has an interesting answer: check out Google Trends and see what the community’s really up to!

In Florida, it turns out that the search term ‘orgy’ is as American as ‘apple pie’.

Except that ‘apple pie’ hits a spike around Thanksgiving, but ‘orgy’ is popular year-round.

But Perth? Looks like we’re just into surfing. New South Wales is a different story. It’s just about Orgy Season over there. Meanwhile, in Victoria, the worrying fisting trend continues unabated.

The death of religion meets the rise of superstition

24 June 2008 / / 5 Comments

Could Christianity die out within a century? This article says:

Christianity ‘could die out within a century’

Research by the Orthodox Jewish organisation Aish found that just over a third of people thought religions like Christianity and Judaism would still be practiced in Britain in 100 years’ time.

Although four in 10 people said they would choose to be a member of the Christian religion, almost the same number said they would rather practice no religion at all.

Hmm. The Extinction of the Monotheisms sounds good until you start thinking about what’s going to replace them. The poor thinking that causes religion isn’t going to go away until humans get better brains, and how long is that going to take?

The new religions are probably going to take the form of Teh Secret or something. Some kind of feel-good new-agey proto faith that doesn’t require a lot of time or commitment, but that seems to give results to those who are magically minded.

And that includes a lot of smart people. I just got an email from a smart friend who I love dearly, but he attached a PDF that he thought was wonderful. It’s called “The Master Key” by Charles F. Haanel. Here’s a link to a PDF of the first two parts only. (Even so, it’s 1.2 meg of woo.) Maybe you’d rather read about the Master Key from this site.

It has been said that The Master Key System is the book that Bill Gates read just before leaving Harvard to start his own computer software business, which made him the wealthiest man in the world.

Any evidence for the Gates tie-in?

This book holds the secret of a powerful system of success, which was used by the author, Charles F. Haanel to amass his own mega-fortune through the starting of his own company, which he built into one of the largest conglomerates of his time.

And its name is…?

The Master Key System, which was originally published in 1912, sold over 200,000 copies before it was banned by the church in 1933 and was then lost to the public for some seventy years.

Anyone’s da Vinci Code alarm going off?

The Master Key System lays down the foundation of the principles of creative manifestation through the Law of Attraction, as Haanel understood them. You will learn how to develop and use the creative instrument of your mind—creating true abundance in your life and opening up to the limitless possibilities of the truly creative life.

Wait a minute. The Law of…

It’s Teh Proto-Secret! Well, damn. I am impressed. Haanel must have been a hundred years before his time. Of course, a hundred years early on bullshit’s still bullshit.

Now, that’s not fair. I haven’t even read the thing yet, and here I am being all closed-minded. Bad critical thinker! Bad!

That’s better. Let’s take a look. Here we are, page 7.

22. We are related to the world within by the subconscious mind. The solar plexus is the organ of this mind; the sympathetic system of nerves presides over all subjective sensations, such as joy, fear, love, emotion, respiration, imagination and all other subconscious phenomena. It is through the subconscious that we are connected with the Universal Mind and brought into relation with the Infinite constructive forces of the Universe.

Well, that all seems perfaaaaauuuuggggghhhhhhhhhh…….

Sorry, part of my pre-frontal lobe just turned to goo. I think I just lost algebra.

In one paragraph, we have specious claims about the mind/body connection, conflation of emotions with autonomic nervous processes (hey, kids, did you know that your solar plexus could do all that?), a construct called the Universal Mind but no evidence for it, and enough fluffy talk to put a horse to sleep. That’s some concentrated woo there. I think the jargon to evidence ratio just approached infinity, and when that happens, we run the risk of Universe Collapse.

I’ve written about Teh Secret before. People think the Master Key or The Secret works because of confirmation bias. Sometimes you get what you want, sometimes you don’t, but if you’re focusing on it, you’ll notice when you do, and forget when you don’t. And of course, you’re much more likely to get what you want if you’re working at it than if you’re not. Nothing mystical about it, and certainly nothing to do with your solar plexus.

So I’m in the car with the ropes and the duct tape, ready to tie up my friend and subject him to the Daniel Course for Critical Thinking (which I haven’t even written yet) when I think, “Hey, what does it matter? Is it going to hurt him if he believes some woo here and there? What harm is there in a false belief?”

Here are my answers. See what you think.

1. Magical thinking leaves you susceptible to scams. Buying into a really bad premise makes it possible to buy into more. Examples?

  • If you accept that supernatural beings exist, then it follows that you’d better try to find out what they want you to do. Next it’s joining and supporting a church or some other non-empirical system with your money and time. Bad idea.
  • If you accept that the universe has a Consciousness, then it’s not that preposterous to think that you can influence it to get what you want. Soon, you’re trying superstitious methods to get it (which don’t work). Superstition is a waste of time, and it leaves you helpless before its purveyors.
  • If gurus know the Secret of Life better than you do, then it follows that you should fork out cash to get their wisdom.

On and on. Critical thinking can save us from scammers.

2. Lack of critical thinking harms societies, not just people. A society full of delusional people is not healthy, and will have a harder time solving its problems. The more empirically-minded people we have, the more our collective knowledge grows, and the more likely we are to find working solutions to the problems that face us. I noticed this story about people who are trying to have lower petrol prices… through prayer. So far, somehow, not effective. What if everyone just prayed, instead of a) working to develop technologies for alternative energy, b) changing the way they live to conserve a bit more?

What I’m advocating is acceptance of critical thinking and rejection of superstition. Not replacement of one superstition with another. This is only going to get more important in the post-religion vacuum.

RIP, George.

23 June 2008 / / 3 Comments

Deconversion stories: The Dude with the Horns

23 June 2008 / / 9 Comments

As a religious youth, I was told about Satan. The Adversary. The Tempter. The one who puts all the backwards messages in records. Mormons don’t dwell on the Devil — I heard people say it gave him more ‘power’ — but he was always there hovering around the periphery of my morality.

The Satan meme is a real mindfuck. There’s a totally evil supernatural person who wants you to do bad things. Don’t do what Satan wants. How do you know what Satan wants? It’s bad. What makes something ‘bad’? Satan wants you to do it. And round it goes. Figuring out what Satan wants you to do is like asking who the Terrists want you to vote for. Could they do the ol’ Double Reverse Psychological Fake-out? And of course, if someone starts to question the teaching of the religion, who’s been putting those thoughts into your head? Yep. Better get back in line.

Satan isn’t just a great control tool. He’s a dodge to the problem of Evil. If God’s good and in charge, why do evil things happen? For some reason, saying ‘You are evil’ wasn’t the answer people liked, so Satan did the trick. Why is there evil? Satan. There you go. God is still good, but he wants to see if you’ll follow him or the Devil.

P.S. You are evil.

And it answered a whole lot. Why do ouija boards seem to work? Satan (or one of his many helpers) is moving the table thing. Why do I want to do bad things? You’re being tempted by Satan, he’s putting thoughts into your head. (Another mindfuck. An invisible person is putting thoughts in my head? Scary!) Why are there so many religions? Satan is deceiving people and leading them astray. Satan Satan Satan. Very useful. If he didn’t exist, we’d have to invent him.

As it seems we did. This page tells how Satan doesn’t appear to be much of a character in early Hebrew lore (talking snakes notwithstanding). The Hebrew word s’tn simply means ‘adversary’ or ‘opposer’. In 1 Samuel 29:4, it tells how the Philistines mistrusted David, fearing that he would be a ‘satan’, or someone who would oppose them. Only later after the Hebrews ran into the Persians with their Zoroastrian dualism did Satan become an actual character, and for a while there he and the Lord were pretty chummy (see Job).

For me, Satan’s undoing was when I ran into this page about the Ouija Board that church leaders so straitly charged me not to play with.

Some users believe that paranormal or supernatural forces are at work in spelling out Ouija board answers. Skeptics believe that those using the board either consciously or unconsciously move the pointer to what is selected. To prove this, simply try it blindfolded for some time, having an innocent bystander take notes on what words or letters are selected. Usually, the results will be unintelligible.

So the church leaders were right, but they had the wrong reason. You shouldn’t play with the thing, but because it’s stupid, not satanic. A scary spiritual phenomenon had a perfectly sane material explanation. I wonder what else does, thought I.

I reviewed my knowledge of the Horned One, and found that he’s usually held responsible for three things:

  1. Temptation
  2. Deception
  3. Possession

But, you say, what about reality TV?

That falls under ‘Possession’.

Let’s take them one by one.

Temptation. Do people really think that a spirit being is somehow… what, whispering to you? And then you want to do bad things? How would that happen? This has the whiff of dissociation. Why not take responsibility for your own desires?

Deception. Well, the world is a confusing place. It’s easy to be mistaken. But I’ve found that the one who deceives me the most is good old me. No need to blame an invisible being.

Possession can be explained these days by mental illness, though it must have seemed devilishly scary to people in New Testament times.

In short, everything that people blame Satan for can be explained simply, materially, and non-mysteriously, leaving Satan as rather extraneous. Our theory works just as well without him. Occam’s Razor claims another victim.

Once I’d got that settled, it was the beginning of the end for supernaturalism. Turn it around, and suddenly everything we thought god did turns out to be the product of natural forces. No gods. No devils. No angels or demons. Just gravitation, evolution and us, working for good or ill. But then I suppose that’s just what Satan would want me to think.

A true believer in the audience isn’t satisfied. But if there’s no Satan, he wails, then why is the world getting worse and worse?

It’s not, but with that attitude I suppose you can make it as bad as you want.

English First = xenophobia

17 June 2008 / / 4 Comments

Americans think that it’s important to learn languages. As long as the language is ‘English’, and the learner is ‘someone else‘.

Americans believe by large majorities that it is more important for newcomers to learn English than it is for their fellow citizens to become bilingual.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey reveals that 83% of likely voters place a higher priority on encouraging immigrants to speak English as their primary language.

Just 13% take the opposite view and say it is more important for Americans to learn other languages.
…
Broken down along party lines, 79% of Republicans and 59% of Democrats reject the idea that all Americans should know multiple languages. Among unaffiliated voters, 68% say their fellow citizens do not need to know a language other than English.

Last fall, a Rasmussen Reports survey found that 77% of Americans believed that employers should be allowed to require employees to speak English while on the job.

We tend to feel very attached to our language. It’s our tool for expressing who we are. We might not even be able to think without it. As a linguist, I’ve noticed that even smart, aware people aren’t very good at examining their language attitudes. That means it’s an area where our darkest urges can pool and simmer. And that means that we can frequently find xenophobia lurking here.

An antidote is to learn to talk the way someone else does. Not only do I want to see official documents available in other languages, I want to see second language instruction promoted more aggressively in schools. It’s not just a way to expand the mind, it’s a way to combat the more pernicious kinds of intolerance.

He’ll bollix up everything, given the chance.

14 June 2008 / / 2 Comments

Did John McCain make a reference to testicles in a recent speech?

As a matter of fact, he did.

The United States Supreme Court yesterday rendered a decision which I think is one of the worst decisions in the history of this country.
…
So now what are we going to do. We are now going to have the courts flooded with so-called, quote, Habeas Corpus suits against the government, whether it be about the diet, whether it be about the reading material. And we are going to be bollixed up in a way that is terribly unfortunate, because we need to go ahead and adjudicate these cases.

Astute readers might have noticed that ‘bollix’ appears to be a variant of ‘bollocks’, which indeed it is.

The Online Etymological Dictionary (that’s the other OED) says it’s a

respelling (euphemistic?) of bollocks, pl. of bollock “testicle,” from O.E. beallucas “testicles,”

As to the content, McCain is arguing that the rule of law shouldn’t be followed because it’s too time-consuming. Much better to just throw people in jail forever because you just know in your heart that they’re guilty.

To which I say, bollocks.

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