Good Reason

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When Parowan Prophecy fails

16 December 2008 / / 2 Comments

Sure, it’s fun to see failed predictions, but you know what’s even better? Watching a very specific prediction that you know is going to fail in advance. It’s almost godlike: you get to see the certainty of the prognosticator, and you know the prediction is going to fail, but he doesn’t. Plus you get all the stages of prophecy grief — shock and anger at the lack of fulfillment, scriptural contortions and rationalisations afterward, and finally acceptance as the whole incident is (shall we say) ‘clarified’ for those who still believe.

Well, here comes just such an example now. There’s a fellow in Utah that calls himself the “Parowan Prophet”. He’s been crackpotting around for years — I remember reading about him in the 90’s — and now he’s made a splash in the news. Unfortunately, the prophet failed to predict his bandwidth needs, so yesterday his site was throwing a 509 error. Bit of a worry. Make sure to vet your prophets before trusting them with anything important, like interstate marriage legislation.

Anyway, he’s predicting that nuclear bombs will prevent Obama from taking office in January.

“I think that you should hear what my opinion about the Obama election is: that he will not be the next president. I said on my home page in August that if he lost to expect to see the ‘riots’ that 2 Peter 2:13 tells us about. He didn’t lose. But the story is not finished yet. I still think they may begin the riots before Christmas 2008, as I said.”

These riots, according to his prophecy, will encourage the “old, hard-line Soviet guard” to seize the moment and rain down nukes on the United States, killing at least 100 million of us.

You heard the man. Obama will not take office. Now what hermeneutical gymnastics will we see from P. P. and any true believers on January 20th? And how long will it take them to forget the prophecy was ever made? My prediction: three femtoseconds.

Religion and humanism in Australian schools

14 December 2008 / / 4 Comments

Compared to the USA, Australia might seem like a secular paradise. But unfortunately there are weird little pockets of godbaggery, too. In Victoria, for example, religions get access to schoolkids to promote their fictional beliefs. But now humanists will get equal time.

VICTORIAN state primary school students will soon have an alternative — religious education lessons taught by people who do not believe in God and say there is “no evidence of any supernatural power”.

The Humanist Society of Victoria has developed a curriculum, which the State Government accreditation body says it intends to approve, to deliver 30-minute lessons each week of “humanist applied ethics” to primary pupils.

Sounds interesting. I’d go.

But the Christianists are none too happy about more groups horning in on their racket.

[T]he body that accredits Victoria’s 3500 Christian religious instruction volunteers, Access Ministries, says humanism is not a religion and so should not be taught in religious education time.

This is a funny little issue. Is hum-atheism a religion or not? Here the Christians are claiming it’s not, so it shouldn’t be taught. But elsewhere when Christians are denied access to a captive school audience, they turn around and claim that atheism is a religion, and since kids are exposed to the ‘religion’ of atheism, they should also be exposed to the religion of religion.

Atheism should not be considered a religion, any more than not collecting stamps is a hobby. I can see why people would disagree though. When someone asks, “What’s your religion?” I say “I’m an atheist,” which I think of as an indirect response, but someone else might not. I suppose the most generous admission I could make is that atheism is something like a setting on the religion parameter. But that simply suggests that atheism is a certain view on religion rather than a religion itself. I think we atheists should resist the temptation to take advantage of the benefits that religions accrue. As these humanists seem to have done.

The Humanist Society does not consider itself to be a religious organisation and believes ethics have “no necessary connection with religion”. Humanists believe people are responsible for their own destiny and reject the notion of a supernatural force or God.

The hilarious part for me:

Fundamentalist Christian group the Salt Shakers panned the idea of humanists being given religious education class time.

Research director Jenny Stokes said: “If you go there, where do you stop? What about witchcraft or Satanism?

“If you accredit humanism, then those things would have an equal claim to be taught in schools.”

At last she gets it. Except she needs to start with ‘If you accredit Christianity…’. Because she’s right — if you allow one mythology to be promoted in schools, you need to promote them all. And is that what schools want to spend their time doing? If you want to promote ethics (which sounds good to me), why not have a secular curriculum that privileges no particular religion over any other? In essence, a humanist one, not a religious one.

Rejected Obama logos

13 December 2008 / / Comments Off on Rejected Obama logos

I’m a terrible logo designer, but I still like a good one. So I was pleased to find this entry on Logo Design Love about logos that the Obama campaign decided not to use. Pretty interesting to see how things could have been.

Awful quiet out there.

12 December 2008 / / 3 Comments

Forced into deception, poor things

11 December 2008 / / Comments Off on Forced into deception, poor things

This article is rather odd.

A call to give religion full voice in the public square

Because, as we all know, theocrats have had such a hard time getting any representation at all these days.


Major presidential candidates shunning evangelical Christian leader


Christians in Washington state protesting atheists putting up one sign in a public place

The article centers on the remarks of one Eddie S. Glaude Jr., a professor of religion at Princeton, which apparently is a real job.

The professor says Obama’s ode to the power of faith “as an active, palpable agent in the world and in my own life” reached a conclusion that actually cuts people out of public political expression or forces them to disguise their true religious motivation. Obama said,

I believe that democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal values.

Right. If you’re (say) against abortion, your religious reasons aren’t going to cut it with people who aren’t members of your church. You need to put it in (as Obama says) ‘universal values’. So what’s the problem?

Glaude said this would mean only those who argue from reason, i.e. facts or science, not from revelation, can make their case in the public square.

Oh, that we lived in such a world. People should be embarrassed to claim that the voices in your head should trump facts and science, but here is Mr Glaude unabashedly claiming exactly this.

He rejects this attempt to “tidy up” the mess of democratic conversation, saying it leads to an “unchristian result – people won’t speak the truth and will be forced to mislead to make their voices heard.”

Shorter Glaude: accept what we say without criticism or analysis — or we’ll be forced to lie to you.

Except this isn’t an un-Christian result at all. Christians routinely and habitually lie in order to get their agenda passed. Look at Proposition 8, fronted by the LDS Church, who staked the election on false and misleading claims.

[A]dvertisements for the “Yes” campaign also used hypothetical consequences of same-sex marriage, painting the specter of churches’ losing tax exempt status or people “sued for personal beliefs” or objections to same-sex marriage, claims that were made with little explanation.

Another of the advertisements used video of an elementary school field trip to a teacher’s same-sex wedding in San Francisco to reinforce the idea that same-sex marriage would be taught to young children.

“We bet the campaign on education,” Mr. Schubert said.

Or the deception of creationists, notably those involved in the famous Kitzmiller v. Dover trial. Judge Jones said in his decision:

The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the Board who voted for the ID Policy. It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy.

And, of course, the way Christians seem to routinely portray atheists as a pack of amoral hedonists in need of salvation instead of, well, regular people.

These examples of dishonesty aren’t anomalous. Shading the facts is necessary when the facts don’t support your deeply-held worldview. But as someone who strives for reality-based living, I resent this view that we need to treat superstitious ignorance with the same regard as science and reason. It’s insulting for Glaude to say that he shouldn’t even have to try and convince non-believers. Forced to lie? No. Forced to reason.

Hungarian language police

10 December 2008 / / Comments Off on Hungarian language police

Another government tries in vain to stop language change.

Slovakia’s Ministry of Culture has proposed an amendment that would give it the right to impose fines of up to EUR 100 for poor use of the national language. The move has been prompted by a rise in bad grammar and the increasing number of English words in common use even when native alternatives exist.

‘Bad grammar’? What does that mean? Native speakers, being native speakers, have a perfect command of the grammar of their language. All right, so some dialects may deviate from the perceived standard. But why punish them? It’s going on all the time. Much of the syntax of a language goes on below the level of conscious awareness anyway.

How are they going to enforce this? Are they going to fine individuals? No, just like Iran’s recent attempt, it’s all going to fall onto the media and sign-makers.

Jozef Bednar, a spokesman for the ministry, confirmed that the proposed punishment would not apply to individuals who stumble over their language but would punish advertising copy, billboards and public signs. Representatives of the country’s large Hungarian minority have already condemned the proposal.

There’s the rub. This is an attempt to punish speakers of minority dialects, but dressed up in the guise of pedantry. Not a very attractive guise, but there you are.

Hungarian media: they’re coming down on you. You have the tools to fight back, if you want. It should be simple to find linguistic skeletons in the closets of the leaders responsible for this action. Surely some of them have used loanwords or less-desirable syntax in speeches before. To the archives! Find those quotes and demand that those leaders be fined.

Evolutionary car

10 December 2008 / / 7 Comments

Here’s something fun to leave on your screen for a while. It’s an evolutionary car.


Ouches in 3..2..

The problem here is: what’s the the best wheel (and load) size and position to get a little car across a rugged landscape? Genetic algorithms are good at these kinds of problems. Just release a population of slightly differing individuals into the wild, and let the best performers produce offspring that are sort of like they are. Nifty.

GM’s new ad campaign a little heavy-handed

9 December 2008 / / Comments Off on GM’s new ad campaign a little heavy-handed

funny pictures

Story

Zombie meme alert: the Great Microsoft Email Hoax (yes, again)

5 December 2008 / / 1 Comment

Some memes just won’t die.

I’ve just been emailed my 1,000th iteration of the Microsoft email hoax. You know the one.

Microsoft and AOL are now the largest Internet companies
and in an effort to make sure that Internet Explorer remains the
most widely used program, Microsoft and AOL are running an e-mail beta test.
>
When you forward this e-mail to friends, Microsoft can and will track it (If you
are a Microsoft Windows user) For a two weeks time period.
>
For every person that you forward this e-mail to, Microsoft will pay you $245.00
for every person that you sent it to that forwards it on,
>
Microsoft will pay you $243.00 and for every third person that receives
it, You will be paid $241.00.

I used to be nice about this kind of thing, emailing just the sender privately, not wanting to embarrass them, explaining how to Google for scams, hoping — just hoping — that people would learn how to exercise a bit of caution and critical thinking so as not to waste everyone’s time. And do they learn? They do not. I think this might be the third time with this very same email from the very same person.

So now I’m a jerk about it. I replied to all, and sent this link, which you might want to try on your addled n00b loved ones.

Anyway, this meme has been around a while, and so more people are aware of it. That means that it has to evolve some pretty tricky defenses if people are going to propagate it. Here they are, all from the same email.

1. The veneer of authority.

I’m an attorney, And I know the law. This thing is for real.

2. A bit of phony skepticism.

Thought this was a scam myself, But two weeks after receiving this e-mail and
for warding it on. Microsoft contacted me for my address and within days, I
received a check for $24, 800.00 .

3. Testimonials! They get us every time.

My brother’s girlfriend got in on this a few months ago.
When I went to visit him for the Baylor/UTgame, she showed me her check.
It was for the sum of $4, 324.44 and was stamped “Paid In Full’.

But for me, the most interesting thing was the addenda from the most recent senders of the message. They show the thought processes of what finally tipped the balance to convince them to hit ‘send’. Here they are.

Hey, we all need a little extra money, might as well try it out and see if we all gain a bit$$$$… he he.. It would be a nice Christmas present…. hugs…
– – – – – – – – – – – – – –
Hummmm, not to sure about this one but I thought I’d just see what happens within the next two weeks….
– – – – – – – – – – – – – –
What do we have to lose by trying – Right?
– – – – – – – – – – – – – –
What have you got to lose other than time by sending the email on.

The way I see it, these memes thrive under three circumstances:

1. The potential benefit of perpetuating the meme is high
2. The potential risk from the consequences of perpetuating the meme is low
3. The cost or effort of actually sending on the meme is low

All three of these conditions are present in the Microsoft email hoax. Notice that the amounts of money offered are moderate, but the low payoff is offset by the ease of forwarding the message. If you had to send $1,000 cash to participate, the meme would have a harder time propagating. It would have to offer higher returns to compensate (as is the case with MLM scams). Similarly, if there was some risk attached (perhaps arrest for sending chain emails), people might think twice.

As it is, people shrug and send it on. Critical thinking faculties are put safely back to sleep and the meme continues once again across the world.

Action item: Call and support free speech

3 December 2008 / / 1 Comment

Seems that Washington DC Metro is copping some heat over the atheist bus ads.

More than 200 people have complained to Metro about an ad campaign that questions believing in God. One person praised the campaign.

That should be a little higher, don’t you think?

The ads by the American Humanist Association first appeared on buses two weeks ago and inside buses Monday. They say, “Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness’ sake.”

Metro spokeswoman Candace Smith said the ads have sparked more complaints than usual.

“As a public agency, Metro must observe the First Amendment with respect to the acceptance of commercial advertising,” Smith said. “Although we understand that feelings and perceptions will vary among individuals within the community, we cannot reject advertising because an individual, or group, finds it inappropriate or offensive.”

So even though their policy requires them to accept ads, I think Metro deserves some props for their commitment to the 1st Amendment guarantee of freedom of speech.

Here’s your assignment. Call the DC Metro on (202) 637 1328 during business hours (9am – 5pm EST), and commend them for running the ‘Why Believe in a God’ ads on buses. Or, if you don’t want to phone, you can leave a customer comment on their website, found here. Now get busy.

UPDATE: While you’re at it, would you mind calling the office of Washington Governor Christine Gregoire? The number is 360-902-4111.

She’s been getting some flack about an atheist message in the capitol building. It says:

At this season of the Winter Solstice may reason prevail. There are no gods, no devils, no angels, no heaven or hell. There is only our natural world. Religion is but myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds.

Opposition has been trumped up by Fox TV’s Bill O’Reilly, who has encouraged viewers to call and complain.

Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly had an eight-minute segment on his show Tuesday night decrying the inclusion of the atheistic billboard along with a holiday tree and a Christian nativity scene.

Conservative TV personality O’Reilly called the display “political correctness gone mad” and urged viewers to call Gov. Christine Gregoire’s office to complain.

Gregoire spokesman Pearse Edwards says the office has been getting about 200 calls an hour, as well as e-mails.

I’m actually glad that O’Reilly’s come out against the sign. First, it means that the oogedy-boogedy religious wing of the GOP is not lying down and dying. They’ll be alienating voters and causing a headache for the Republican Party for years to come. Second, O’Reilly and his ilk are showing what they stand for. They’re not for freedom of speech. They’re for one view only — theirs. But if you allow one point of view in a public place, it’s only fair to include them all. Or none.

Hey, that’s a solution. Take everything down. The Christmas tree, the atheist sign, the menorah, all of it. Now that’s a war on Christmas! Why do you suppose Bill hates Christmas so much?

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