Humanism, atheism and other freedoms

A poll suggests that an increasing number of religious people in the US think politics shouldn’t be preached from the pulpit. Well, it’s about time…

According to the poll by the Pew Forum, some 50 per cent of conservative church-goers believe that “houses of worship should not express views on day-to-day political matters”. That’s up from around 30 per cent in 2004. Democrat believers have always been less keen on campaigning from the pulpit.

That’s a small step to getting politics out of religion. Now if we could just get religion out of politics…

The ACLU in the US is celebrating a decision in Fredericksburg that it says is a victory for freedom of religion. Well maybe. But it’s a defeat for freedom from religion.

The issue, as reported on the ACLU website, revolved around the saying of prayers to open Fredericksburg City Council meetings. The decision of a three-judge panel of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals was that an existing policy – that the prayers be non-sectarian – should be upheld.

The ACLU statement says:

“This is a victory for religious freedom,” said ACLU of Virginia Executive Director Kent Willis. “The Supreme Court has long held that government officials are allowed to open legislative gatherings with a prayer, but that such prayers must in no way indicate a preference for one religion over others.”

“Individuals are free to express their own religious preferences, but religious equality cannot exist when the government is allowed to use its considerable power to promote one particular faith,” added Willis. “Today’s ruling reaffirms that fundamental principle.”

But Willis makes no mention of any right to be free of such religious mumbo-jumbo altogether. While the prayers may not be offered to the peculiar gods of Christianity or Islam or Judaism (or any one of thousands of other gods available to the credulous), presumably they will assume the existence of some kind of supernatural deity. Quite how this obeisance to some non-specific spirit is connected with council business is not clear.

It seems that the ‘fundamental principle’ referred to by Willis does not extend to atheism. Nor does it embrace the separation of church and state, about which Americans make so much noise and so little effort.

A new academic study suggests that religion is declining as people become more intelligent. But is that too simplistic a view?

The study, by Professor Richard Lynn, emeritus professor of psychology at Ulster University, points to the low incidence of believers among academics and scientists. To those of us who value reason and science, the idea that religion and intelligence are incompatible has an attractive logic.

But we need to treat this with a degree of caution.

We all know, or know of, intelligent people who are also believers. So there is no simple causal link.

And why is religion declining only now when intelligent people have always existed (most of whom were believers)?

I think a fundamental problem with the equation ‘more intelligence = less religion’ is that it conflates intelligence with education. And it ignores a plethora of other factors.

Dr David Hardman, principal lecturer in learning development at London Metropolitan University, is quoted by The Telegraph saying: “there is evidence from other domains that higher levels of intelligence are associated with a greater ability – or perhaps willingness – to question and overturn strongly felt institutions.”

Quite. If you are intelligent and well-educated, you enjoy a freedom of intellect that will allow you to overcome other powerful factors such as your cultural environment. Whether you can shrug off religious traditions may depend on how strong that environment is. I have no figures, but I’m prepared to bet that there is a higher proportion of believers among academics and scientists in strongly Muslim countries, or in Bible Belt-type communities in the US.

It’s easy – sometimes too easy – to use terms like ‘indoctrination’ when discussing these aspects of cultural environment. Indoctrination suggests the deliberate brainwashing, when the inculcation of religious ideas is often simply a matter of habit and tradition. The outcome, of course, is the same, except that the development of an enquiring and questioning mind is an invaluable aid in overcoming the religous habit.

Religious belief does not stand up well to intellectual scrutiny. Indeed, the majority of religious concepts, traditions and practices are clearly absurd. So one can see how natural intelligence will help in seeing these primitive and outdated ideas for what they are. But I think education plays an even more crucial role in developing greater intellectual rigour and to reject the intellectual brutality of religion’s  ‘don’t question, just accept’ attitude.

But this still doesn’t explain the current decline of religion. Dr Lynn’s suggestion that people are becoming more intelligent is unconvincing. I think there is another element at play here – that as a society there is less of a requirement for religion.

Dr Lynn’s ideas have been criticised for too crudely portraying religion as a certain primitiveness of thought (one could turn his suggestion around and say that you have to be stupid to be religious – again, a seductive thought, but not entirely sustainable). But in some senses, I think he’s right to at least allude to the crudity of religious concepts.

There are many ideas about why religion arises in the first place – why people invest so much in supernatural concepts. Among these ideas is the line of thought that says supernatural belief is a way of explaining a mysterious world. As science has progressed, we require fewer and fewer supernatural explanations.

Organised religion provides social cohesion. But now we have many social bonds from which we can choose – bingo, hobby clubs, football teams and the Internet.

Belief in supernatural powers and the community of the church also provides us with help in dealing with the terrors of sickness. Now we have modern medicine.

Religion simply doesn’t have the same role in our lives that it used to. Its ignorant, stone-age concepts can’t compete with modern knowledge and technology. Supernatural belief, as a mindset, is archaic and anachronistic. But because many societies still have the habit of religion built into the cultural fabric, it persists. That’s why separation of religion and state is so important. That’s why religion should have no place in schools, courtrooms or parliaments. Only when we excise the dirty habit of religion will we all be free – smart and stupid alike.

The UK Government has passed a law which means that fortune-tellers, mediums, spiritualists and other peddlers of the supernatural must label their services as ‘entertainment only’. I can think of a few other organisations that should do that.

In ‘Fighting fraud in the spiritual realm‘, I said how I felt this law should be extended to all religion. In essence, the new law – which has now come into force – puts a legal obligation on businesses to ‘trade fairly’ (as explained in this BBC report). This is a catch-all law designed to be used against scams of all kinds.

It will be illegal to make claims you can’t support or use dubious or fictional endorsements and testimonials.

No religion can support its claims, many of which are bizarre and outlandish (like heaven and hell, for starters. Faith healing comes to mind, too).

And religions are awash with fake and unsupportable testimony. That’s what miracles are.

And yet many religions get rich and powerful by feeding off the gullibility of their adherents. Religion is the greatest scam ever perpetrated against mankind.

This law really does need expanding.

The four votes on aspects of the Embryology Bill in the UK presented an opportunity for the religiously blinkered to put narrow-minded dogma before compassion and scientific progress. They were soundly and properly trounced.

It’s always good to see reason prevail. The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill represents the most important development in fertility law in the past 20 years.

The UK, being largely free of the religiously inspired shackles that hamper scientific progress in other countries (including the US) is already a world leader in areas like stem cell research. This is important science: advances in embryology offer the possibility of cures for crippling and fatal diseases.

But not everyone is happy about this. The Roman Catholic church, for example, did its best to cripple this bill. It lobbied hard, placing enough pressure on the Government to force a free vote, so that Catholic members of Parliament could do their best to impose that church’s prejudices on the whole population of the UK.

There were four key issues:

• The use of hybrid or ‘admix’ embryos. This is where the nuclei of human cells are inserted into the egg of an animal, treated so that no characteristics of the animal remain. The resulting embryos are kept for only 14 days, in order to harvest stem cells.
• Tissue typing of embryos so that parents can choose to give birth to a ‘saviour sibling’. This would happen where a current child has a disease that could be alleviated or cured by having a sibling with the right tissue type.
• The removal of the need for a father when considering the eligibility of applicants for IVF treatment. This paves the way for lesbian couples and single women to receive the treatment.
• The reduction of the limit for abortions from the current 24 weeks to 20 weeks.

Each of these issues attracted an amendment attempting to ban the process or (in the case of abortions) lower the limit. All four amendments were defeated by very healthy margins.

In most cases, those opposed to the processes or treatments presented their case based on junk science or dubious statistics. It was painfully clear, however, that the motivation for the amendments was not built on evidence or reason but on religious prejudice.

In the case of hybrid embryos there was much gibberish talked about ‘Frankenstein’ babies and the creation of freaks. Yet these embryos would never be viable and are, in any case, destroyed after two weeks.

People argued that the creation of ‘saviour siblings’ is wrong. They talked about bringing a child into the world purely to provide ‘spare parts’ for an existing child. This argument is just as cretinous. It suggests that arms or livers might be harvested, which is pure nonsense. The saviour sibling provides bone marrow and other cells. And any idea that the saviour sibling might not be loved equally by his or her parents is clearly wrong: if anything, they are likely to love it even more for its role in saving the life of the older child.

The opposition to the changes in the IVF law centred around the idea that it would somehow marginalise men. I noticed that this argument was mostly put forward by men. It ties in with that tired old idea that a family is not complete without a father. That would be more convincing if all fathers were perfect. The truth is that, regardless of whether IVF is involved, many children are raised very successfully without one parent or the other. So this amendment was inspired by notions of the family that belong in the Victorian age, not in the 21st Century. And I think there was an unhealthy dose of faith-based homophobia in there too.

Abortion is a more emotive subject and one where the desire of a religious minority to impose its views on the whole of society was most clearly evident. The 24 week limit was set in 1990, based on the best scientific evidence about the viability of the fetus up to that point. Nothing has changed. No new evidence has come to light. Yet there were two attempts to push the limit back – first to 20 weeks and, when that failed, to 22 weeks. That failed too.

Some MPs wanted the limit reduced to 12 weeks, which is where it stands in some (mostly Catholic) countries, such as Spain. Many women don’t even know they’re pregnant at 12 weeks.

The statistics make for interesting reading, though. In the UK, some 55% of abortions are carried out at under 9 weeks. This type of abortion usually involves nothing more than an injection. The fetus is reabsorbed by the body. (So much for its being a fully fledged human life. Could you have a clearer illustration of the fact that it is nothing more than a bunch of cells?) A very high percentage of pregnancies also spontaneously abort within this period, too – often without the woman ever knowing she was pregnant. That, too, doesn’t sit very well with the religious viewpoint and is a fact largely avoided by the anti-choice faithful.

A further third of abortions are carried out in the 9-12 week range. That means that 89% of abortions happen at 12 weeks or less anyway. In fact, only 1.5% of abortions happen in the 20-24 week band. And the vast majority of these are carried out for reasons of health complications or problems with the fetus.

So the ‘moral’ objection that so many proclaim is nothing of the sort. It is simply an attempt by a self-righteous few to impose their irrational, superstitious and medieval ideas on the whole of society. That’s arrogant and, given that they wrapped their arguments in pseudo-science and bad statistics, deeply dishonest.

Fortunately, rationality prevailed. So did compassion for those whose suffering may be relieved and whose lives may be saved by the science that will result from this bill.

The religious have long claimed Albert Einstein as one of their own. It’s always been a lie, and now there is further proof.

Einstein did have an unfortunate habit of using the word ‘god’. It has always been clear – not least from Einstein’s own writings – that his definition of ‘god’ was more in line with what the rest of us might call ‘nature’ or ‘the mysterious forces of the universe’ than the all-powerful imaginary friend of religion. Nevertheless, the religious have continued to claim that the famous physicist – a man who practically defines the concept of the rational thinker – was actually one of the mindless faithful.

One of the comments they cling to is:

“Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”

That blinkered (and dishonest) view has taken a major blow. A previously unknown letter written by Einstein in 1954 to philosopher Eric Gutkind, and which is now up for auction, includes the passages:

“The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this.”

And while Einstein was culturally Jewish (and had both Catholic and Jewish education), he clearly had little time for the idea of the Jews as god’s chosen people:

“For me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything ‘chosen’ about them.”

As a boy, Einstein was given a religious upbringing by his largely non-religious parents. Throughout his life, he retained a respect for the cultural traditions provided by religion. But that is not the same as being religious. By the age of 12, he was questioning Biblical stories, and would later write about this awakening:

“The consequence was a positively fanatic [orgy of] freethinking coupled with the impression that youth is being deceived by the state through lies; it was a crushing impression.”

Einstein was clearly a spiritual person, in a generalised sense. He was moved and inspired by a sense of mystery. But to suggest that he believed in god, as most people understand that term, is now (and actually always has been) completely insupportable.

There are many assertions that the religious make – either in defence of their faith or as an attack against atheism – that have been so thoroughly discredited that they amount to bald-faced lies. This random and sporadic series of posts will look at some of the most popular.

One of the problems with those infected by religion is that their faith often takes the place of research, a willingness to learn and – yes, it has to be said – intellect. That’s why many of these untruths remain in circulation. The faithful never question them, never learn the truth, because religion deals in unquestioning belief, not logical debate or rational enquiry. And so the same old platitudes and myths get trotted out time after time.

I thought I would collect together responses to these lies as a resource for atheists and rationalists. Some of those I intend to deal with over the next few months include:

• Darwin embraced Jesus and recanted evolution on his deathbed.
• Atheism is a religion.
• Only religion can provide a basis for morality.
• Evolution is just a theory.
• Atheists are believers in denial.
• The worst wars and acts of genocide were caused by atheism.
• Atheism is the cause of social decline.

I would greatly welcome suggestions for other subjects, other myths. I will also update each post in the light of any suggestions or comments. Stay tuned…

Speaking on his US tour, the Pope has recalled some of the horrors of his own past. But only some.

While in New York, the Pope addressed a Seminary in Yonkers and said:[photopress:ratzinger_nazi_youth.jpg,full,alignright]

“My own years as a teenager were marred by a sinister regime that thought it had all the answers.”

It turns out he was talking about Nazism, a cause he briefly served, and not about Roman Catholicism, his current brand of totalitarianism. He went on to praise respect for human rights. Really? What, like the right to control one’s own fertility? Like the right to use condoms to reduce the risk of AIDS? No, thought not. So I guess he favours only some human rights.

Spiritualists, psychics and other frauds are up in arms about a proposed change to UK law that will make them prove their claims (how did they not see that coming?). But the law doesn’t go far enough: it’s time to extend it to all religion.

According to the report on the BBC website, ‘There may be trouble ahead’, the change to consumer laws will generally tighten up the need for suppliers of services to show that they do what they say they can do. The rules will apply to all areas of commerce that fall under the Consumer Protection Regulations. By including spiritualists, mediums and the like, the rules will also replace the rarely used Fraudulent Mediums Act 1951.

Most sane and intelligent people will applaud this. Psychics, mediums and spiritualists prey on the weak and vulnerable. They exploit grief, fear and uncertainty to fill their pockets or exert their influence.

The Office of Fair Trading has said it won’t target seances or services at spiritualist churches – it is more concerned about out-and-out scams (although telling the difference could be tricky). Nevertheless, it’s a useful precedent.

A real paranoid might see darker forces at work here. Psychics and other fringe practitioners are often sought out by people who feel they have been failed by the more conventional religions, but who still have a weakness for spiritual solutions. Criminalising such practices would be a first step to forcing people back into the main faiths where they are more easily controlled. That would be the preferred totalitarian solution.

I don’t see that happening here, though. This seems more like a rational and socially beneficial acknowledgment that these practices are fraudulent and should be treated accordingly.

Apparently, some spiritualists have complained that they are being victimised, that they are not being treated on an equal footing with other religions. And I agree. They have a very good point. Let’s face it, all religions are fraudulent: not one of them can substantiate its claims. So why not push this law to its logical conclusion? Let’s have all religions either put up or shut up.

Enforced conformity is the lynch pin of totalitarian regimes. We have just had yet another example of how religions try to enforce their narrow world views on others when a Christian radio station got its panties in a bunch over some schoolkids dressing up.

The Associated Press report, ‘Kids’ Dress-Up Day Draws Christian Ire’, explains how children at Pineview Elementary in Reedsburg, Wisconsin were enjoying ‘Wacky Week’, where they could choose to dress as either senior citizens or as members of the opposite sex. Note the word ‘choose’. The kids themselves chose this event and were, by all accounts, having fun.

Until, that is, word got to the right-wing Christian radio station Voice of Christian Youth America (VCY America). It seems that Jim Schneider, one of the hosts of the station’s Crosstalk programme, was so incensed by children enjoying themselves that he felt compelled to interrupt regular programming to condemn it. This resulted in the inevitable deluge of complaints to the school from his flock.

What was it that upset Schneider?

“We believe it’s the wrong message to send to elementary students,” said Jim Schneider, the network’s program director. “Our station is one that promotes traditional family values. It concerns us when a school district strikes at the heart and core of the Biblical values. To promote this to elementary-school students is a great error.”

Those are very revealing comments. First, he has assumed that there is any kind of ‘message’ being sent. Schneider seems incapable of understanding that people, even kids, sometimes just have fun. But then religious extremists are often of a profoundly paranoid bent, seeing secret agenda everywhere.

We move on to ‘traditional family values’. Would this be where Jesus told would-be disciples to ditch their families to follow him? No, must be some other kind of values. It’s interesting that when traditional values are invoked, they are so rarely explained. Who gets to decide what constitutes ‘traditional’. We used to send children up chimneys as sweeps – is that traditional? We used to keep slaves (the Bible even tells us how to go about it). Is that traditional?

This is another facet of the argument about who decides what is ‘Christian’ (see: The wrong religion). Each group, each sect, gets to decide what it considers ‘traditional’. Rationality, intellect, common sense and logic need play no part in this. A tradition is whatever each group decides matches its core values or ideas. Thus, one wacko offshoot of Mormonism might decide that polygamy – and possibly child abuse – is still a traditional value, while the rest of the church has somehow decided that there are some traditions that are no longer traditional.

The point of this is that these values are not in any way inherent – they are chosen. Schneider is invoking vague ‘traditional family values’ as if these are fixed, beyond debate and shared by all. And then he is condemning others for not complying with these values.

This is profoundly dishonest language and arrogant behaviour. Schneider is attempting to impose his ideas on the rest of us – effectively condemning anyone who does not share his narrow world view.

This is how totalitarianism operates. You must conform to its way of thinking. It is not about external rules – though there are always plenty of those in any repressive regime (religion included). It is about how you think, that matters. Why? Because totalitarian regimes – and especially religions – are intrinsically absurd. You must swallow the entire mindset otherwise there is a danger that, by rejecting one aspect, you come to perceive the stupidity of the whole system. It’s important, then, that everyone is brought around to the same way of thinking, that no dissent is permitted at any level.

And that’s the nub of what’s going on here. For what this kind of religion cannot abide is difference. The right-wing end of the religious spectrum, which is what we see at work here, constantly attacks ‘alternative’ lifestyles. They are dangerous. Thinking or behaving differently puts people outside the constrictive mindset on which this fascist form of religion depends.

This particular controversy illustrates just how intolerant these religious fanatics are when it comes to non-conformance. For heaven’s sake, this was a bunch of kids playing dress-up. That’s it. No agenda, no attempt to coerce children into depraved lifestyles. It’s the sort of thing kids do naturally, with a wonderful and admirable lack of self-consciousness. But the religious extremists cannot allow this to happen. These children must be controlled.

And then there’s that striking ‘at the heart of Biblical values’. Oh come on. Get a grip, Schneider. I would have thought the heart of biblical values would be more along the lines of ‘thou shalt not kill’ rather than ‘thou shalt not cross-dress’.

There is also the not so small point that schools are under no obligation to uphold what Schneider might decide are biblical values. And there’s the matter of the separation of church and state. Schneider probably thinks this separation is invalid. But that’s tough, because that separation is something that does happen to be a shared value – the Constitution and the law make it so.

The sad thing is that the bullying by Schneider and the sheep who obeyed him – his radio-listening flock – has succeeded in forcing the submission of the school into not having this event in future. These children have certainly learned a lesson: Thou shalt not be different.