Good Reason

It's okay to be wrong. It's not okay to stay wrong.

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Crackergate continues

11 July 2008 / / 1 Comment

PZ Myers has been getting death threats from (apparently) Catholic believers because of his stated intention of cracker cruelty. Seems it’s okay to abuse a person, but not a snack.

Let’s just remember this, shall we? when people tell us that Islam is dangerous but Christianity is comparatively moderate. In fact, religious believers of any stripe will do whatever their culture will allow them to get away with. You just have to hit that sensitive spot to get them into an instant frenzy.

Then there’s Catholic League president Bill Donohue, whose frenzy meter is stuck on ‘maximum’. He’s trying to get Myers fired by falsely implying that Myers’ blog is hosted on the University website.

He adds:

“It is hard to think of anything more vile than to intentionally desecrate the Body of Christ. We look to those who have oversight responsibility to act quickly and decisively.”

I can think of five more vile things off the top of my head:

  1. A priest molesting a child
  2. A church organisation covering up the actions of that priest
  3. Eating and excreting part of a human body
  4. Teaching that babies are born sinful
  5. Teaching children they will go to hell for all eternity for disobedience

Seriously. Twenty-first fucking century and here we are. A cracker. You bet I’m angry.

Hero of the Week: L.F. Eason III

10 July 2008 / / 11 Comments

Jesse Helms was a bad man who hurt a lot of people with his unrepentant racism and homophobia. He died decades too late. Though he should not have been honoured in any way, the state of North Carolina ordered the flags flown at half-mast.

But L.F. Eason III, a technician at the Agriculture Department, said no.

“Regardless of any executive proclamation, I do not want the flags at the North Carolina Standards Laboratory flown at half staff to honor Jesse Helms any time this week.

“This is in no way a political decision. I simply do not feel it is appropriate to honor a person whose epitaph of government service was to have voted against or blocked every civil rights issue that came before the US Congress. His doctrine of negativity, hate, and prejudice cost North Carolina and our Nation much that we may never regain.”
…
“I made a decision to refuse to lower our flags at the NC Standards Laboratory to half mast in honor of Jesse Helms as soon as I heard of his death. I cannot in good conscience honor such a man who fought so hard against Civil and Human Rights throughout his life. Even to his death bed, he refused to apologize for the damage he caused. Now, I stand by this decision.

He got fired, and the flags went up anyway. It may seem pointless, like he should have given in. But he didn’t, and for that, Mr Eason is my hero of the week.

Jesus kidnapped! Well, part of him anyway.

9 July 2008 / / 2 Comments

I take back what I said about Hinduism. Catholicism takes the cake, though I didn’t realise it until the wafer-napping incident. You must read this article.

A University of Central Florida student, upset religious groups hold church services on public campuses, is holding hostage the Eucharist, an object so sacred to Catholics they call it the Body of Christ.

For me, this was the most surreal paragraph.

Regardless of the reason, the Diocese says its main concern is to get the Eucharist back so it can be taken care of properly and with respect. Cook has been keeping the Eucharist stored in a plastic bag since last Sunday.

I don’t see the fuss. Three days later, it comes back by itself.

No swearing? They’d rather stay home.

9 July 2008 / / Comments Off on No swearing? They’d rather stay home.

What happens when a Christian couple tries to ban swearing in the pub they were running? You’d expect some resistance. After all, language behaviour is social behaviour, and social change doesn’t happen just like that.

The couple have since been fired because of the business fall-off. Now everyone can employ their dialect without fear of reprisal.

The couple, who took over the pub in March this year, imposed a ban on swearing.

It was supposed to make for a nicer atmosphere but regulars disagreed and the pub emptied.
…
Regulars said that Mrs Fleming would walk round the pub with a Bible, and lecture people for bad language.

John Rudkn, 61, a regular for years, said: “Any swearing and you were barred. It was well over the top.”

John’s wife, who did not wish to give her name, said she had been told off by Mrs Fleming for bad language.

“You can’t run a pub and not swear,” she said. “If they are Christians they should run a church, not a bloody pub.”

George Whipps, 68, another regular, said people should expect foul language in a pub.

“She put a sign up outside saying no swearing,” he said. “This pub in the last eight days has perked up 100 per cent. All of the old regulars are back.

Hey, we’re English speakers. We impose language norms on other people.

Jesus rulz u r teh suxxor LOL

8 July 2008 / / 4 Comments

Here are the worst comment threads on the Internets:

3. Facebook Discussion groups. They may no longer be extant, and I don’t dare check. Some intelligent people and some of the most ignorant babbling fools on earth.
2. I Can Has Cheezburger comment threads. I love lolcats, but the comments are unreadable. So cute, you’ll think you’re diabetic.
1. YouTube comments. So many morons, it fills me with despair and makes me want to kill myself.

I don’t know why I bothered, but I made a comment on this YouTube thread, a video about someone whose car was crushed by a truck, but walked away. Believers are hailing it as a miracle. It’s pretty surprising, but in this wide world full of accidents, it would be more surprising if we didn’t see this kind of thing once in a while.

So, me commenting as ‘fontor’:

A miracle? So that would mean…

Thousands of people die in accidents every year. God could rescue any of them, anytime he wants… and for some reason he refuses?

What a jerk!

Response 1, from ‘gorgouesprincess15’:

ur the jerk but dont worrie ur surly going to hell have fun there loser

Response 2 from ‘adriennexxxx’:

yeah ur right
the reason god does this is because its time for us to go to heaven and live happier!!
instead of living in this shitty world!!
ur right gorgousprincess15!!
fuck u fontor!!
watch ur going to hell!!

Hateful of life and gleeful of torment. Behold: extreme Christianity.

Charades are SOV

8 July 2008 / / 4 Comments

When you make a sentence like “Englebert licked the donuts”, there are lots of ways to arrange Englebert and the donuts. And the licking. You could put Englebert first and the donuts somewhere later, which seems logical. Or the licking could come first, with Englebert at the end of it all and the donuts in the middle.

How you order them has a lot to do with which language you’re speaking. English speakers like to put Englebert (which your grade school teacher used to call the ‘subject’) at the front, the verb ‘licking’ next, and the donuts (the ‘object’) last. So English is a Subject-Verb-Object language, or SVO. Japanese, on the other hand, tends to go SOV.

A curious thing, though, is that about 90% of the world’s languages put the subject first, with 75% being either SVO or SOV. Only about 10 percent of the world’s languages put the object before the subject. Perhaps that’s not so strange. Subjects are the doers (usually), so it makes sense to most of us that the most active agent comes first.

That’s with words. But what kind of word order do we see when people are asked not to use words? That’s the subject (or object?) of this study.

For the study, the team tested 40 speakers of four different languages: 10 English, 10 Mandarin Chinese, 10 Spanish and 10 Turkish speakers. They showed them simple video sequences of activities and asked them to describe the action first in speech and a second time using only gestures.
…
When asked to describe the scenes in speech, the speakers used the word orders typical of their respective languages. English, Spanish, and Chinese speakers first produced the subject, followed by the verb, and then the object (woman twists knob). Turkish speakers first produced the subject, followed by the object, and then the verb (woman knob twists).

But when asked to describe the same scenes using only their hands, all of the adults, no matter what language they spoke, produced the same order –– subject, object, verb (woman knob twists). When asked to assemble the transparencies after watching the video sequences (another nonverbal task, but one that is not communicative), people also tended to follow the subject, object, verb ordering found in the gestures produced without speech.

Is there something about the SOV order that most closely mirrors the structure of thought? Or is it just the easiest way to get the message across?

I’m filing this under ‘complicated, but interesting’.

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.

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