Yesterday the Washington Post reported a very sad and very odd case in Baltimore. A 22 year-old mother was told by her cult, the One Mind Ministries, to deprive her son of food and water until he was willing to say “amen” before breakfast. The child died. Both the mother, Ria Ramkissoon, and the higher members of the cult are being charged.

That part is sad. The more recent development is the odd part. Ramkissoon has agreed to plead guilty to a lesser offense and testify against the cult’s leaders. But the cult believes that “if the child’s body could travel with them, it could be resurrected at a later date.” In what must have been an utterly bewildering experience for the DA, Ramkissoon insisted that all charges be dropped if the child did, in fact, come back to life:

“It also is specifically noted,” Baltimore Circuit Court Judge Timothy Doory said in court as he described the plea bargain to the boy’s mother, “that if the victim in this case, Javon Thompson, is resurrected, as you still hold some hope he will be, you may withdraw the plea, and the charges will be nolle prossed [withdrawn] against you.”

A friend of mine remarked, “I can see the DA saying ‘you drive a tough deal, but ok: I’ll drop charges if your son rises from the dead.’”

They had to clarify a bit though.

A spokeswoman for the Baltimore state’s attorney’s office said that in recent weeks, as prosecutors and Ramkissoon’s attorney discussed the plea bargain, prosecutors made it clear that Ramkissoon could not get out of her obligations if she asserted that Javon [her son] came back as anything other than himself.

“This would need to be a Jesus-like resurrection,” Margaret Burns, the spokeswoman, said after the hearing. “It cannot be a reincarnation in another object or animal.”

Clever. Otherwise the government would be committed to evaluating supernatural claims like whether a new puppy had Javon’s soul.

I suppose it makes sense that if the victim of a murder isn’t actually dead, then murder charges would be moot. Perhaps we can make it a standard agreement, instead of a one-time thing.

Over the weekend I read that during a congressional hearing, Rep. John Shimkus (R-IL) tried to argue against a cap & trade policy because… here, you have to read it for yourself:

SHIMKUS: It’s plant food … So if we decrease the use of carbon dioxide, are we not taking away plant food from the atmosphere? … So all our good intentions could be for naught. In fact, we could be doing just the opposite of what the people who want to save the world are saying.

I did the usual laugh-through-my-tears routine and moved on. But I found out that there was more. Moments later, he concluded his questioning by saying:

The basic finish for this comment is “the Earth will not be destroyed by a flood.”

Yes, he’s using passages from Genesis to inform his policy decisions. As it turns out, he had given a speech at the beginning of the hearing about his religious beliefs:

For those of you who can’t watch the video, he reads passages from the New Testament, professing to believe it the infallible word of God. After closing the book he says: “The Earth will end only when God declares it is time to be over. Man will not destroy this Earth, this Earth will not be destroyed by a flood.”

Many people have asked me how religion is harmful. This is the harm. Any time we encourage (or allow) people to trust faith as a legitimate knowledge source, we run the risk that their faith will be contrary to reality. Our observations of this world have indicated that global warming is a threat. Representative Shimkus’ faith instructs him that there is no danger. We have a problem.

Eventually the real-world evidence might build up to the point that he is forced to ‘reinterpret’ those passages, but I don’t want to wait and see.

What I DO want is for members of our secular government to make decisions based on secular reasoning–without being influenced by their beliefs about the supernatural. If Representative Shimkus is unable do that, then he is unfit to perform his job.

Perhaps you’ve heard of Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church (WBC). They’re the ones who run GodHatesFags.com, but are most known for holding anti-homosexuality protests at soldiers’ funerals. And some of my friends read in the Washington Post that they’re coming to my area:

A church based in Topeka, Kansas, is scheduled to demonstrate next month outside Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda [Maryland] because the school, which opened in 1962, is named for a man who may have been homosexual…

The church Internet site says a picket is scheduled for the afternoon of April 24. A narrative on the event states that the school’s name “certainly explains A LOT about Maryland.”

The Washington Post is far too kind. Their portrayal makes the group seem silly, while the full quote on the group’s schedule makes them seem… what’s the phrase… rabidly insane and delusional:

Walt Whitman High School – Dead Fag ALERT! 7100 Whittier Boulevard We are going to picket this High School. Did you know they named a High School after this filthy fag? He was a HUGE supporter of the wounded soldiers. That is he would “visit” them and then take sexual advantage of them. Yes, that’s the fags’ idea of support and “love”. He bragged about it in his writings. And everyone turned a blind eye because he was spending hours and hours “grooming” his victims while he changed bed pans and such. Being the lazy, self-righteous slugs that they were/are, they could care less what he did to the victims so long as THEY did not have to put in the hours. You see that is what Maryland believes is a righteous person. That certainly explains A LOT about Maryland, and specifically explains why God hates them so much. Romans 10:3 For they being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God. AMEN!

I grew up in Montgomery County near Whitman and have friends who graduated from the school. The area is more gay-friendly than most, but there’s still progress to be made. So what should we do when the WBC stages these vile protests?

First: The group has the absolute right to voice their opinion and even to offend others. The Post notes that they often don’t show up for many of the events they announce, but if they do, they must be allowed to protest. Secondly, I doubt we can do anything to change the WBC members’ minds. We must resign ourselves to their presence and their opinion. Instead, we should focus on the feelings of the rest of the community.

We need to let everyone in the community–gay and straight–know that the WBC doesn’t represent anyone but themselves. Instead of addressing them, a counter-demonstration should have the same intended audience as the original protest: the community as a whole. I’m a big fan of the power of humor to defuse tension. To anyone who might care what the WBC thinks, a good-spirited and fun demonstration would send the message that the local residents find religious homophobia and hatred laughable. Here are a couple fun examples I came across:

An article in today’s USA Today explores the connection between legislative proposals for marriage equality and the relative proportion of people answering “None” for their religion on the recent American Religious Identification Survey. The results, of course, are no surprise:

Same-sex marriage proposals are sweeping into New England state legislatures this spring, particularly in places where organized religious opposition may be the weakest…states where the percentage of “nones”—people who say they have no religion—is at or above the national average of 15% are more likely to push expanding the scope of marriage, civil unions or same-sex partner rights.

For example, Vermont’s Senate just passed a same-sex marriage bill, which is expected to be passed by the House this week. And Vermont also has the highest percentage of the religiously unaffiliated in the nation at 34%. A similar situation is found in neighboring New Hampshire, where a marriage equality bill is expected to pass soon, and the unaffiliated are 29% of the population.

The analysis also found the reverse to be true: the states with the highest percentage of adherents to conservative religious sects were most likely to have taken legislative action against same-sex marriage. That, of course, is not news.

But what is particularly interesting in all of this is the generational aspect:

Barry Kosmin, Trinity College sociologist and co-director of the survey, says the correlation (between support for same-sex marriage and lack of religious affiliation) is no coincidence. “Given that 25% of GenX (those ages 29 to 42) and GenY (ages 18 to 28) are nones, this is where we are headed,” he says. “It’s a standoff between young people with a tremendous sympathy for civil rights and what appears to be biblical injunctions from religion.”

I think it’s very significant that the opponents of marriage equality have been generally unable to articulate a secular case for their position. For example, an essay on same-sex marriage by religious right leader James Dobson concludes like this:

Marriage is a sacrament designed by God that serves as a metaphor for the relationship between Christ and His church. Tampering with His plan for the family is immoral and wrong. To violate the Lord’s expressed will for humankind, especially in regard to behavior that He has prohibited, is to court disaster.

That message simply doesn’t resonate with the unaffiliated, for obvious reasons. Frankly, to a large portion of society it reads like gibberish.

Opponents of marriage equality have had more success when they can obfuscate the religious basis of their opposition with judicial or legal issues, such as with the recent successful passage of Proposition 8 in California. The proponents of the measure seemed to be successful in convincing enough people that the real issue was that the California State Supreme Court ruling in favor of marriage rights was trampling on democratic rule. Nevertheless, the margin of victory for Prop 8 was narrow.

California missed the chance to lead the nation into a new era of greater marriage equality, but other states, all with relatively high percentages of unaffiliated, or “nones,” are moving forward:

Coming up: Legislatures in Rhode Island (nones 19%) and Maine (nones 25%) will hold hearings this spring on marriage “equality” bills. Nearby in New York (nones 14%), the Legislature could approve a bill “by the Fourth of July,” Rouse says.

This new push in the post Prop 8 era is very encouraging. With the diminished influence of conservative sects of Christianity all over the United States, I hope we’ll see this push for marriage equality continue and spread out of its current Northeast stronghold.

Due to a mysterious, unexplained impulse (read: stupidity) I decided to read some comments on Michelle Malkin’s blog. The post itself is besides the point, and has been rebutted by Steve Benen. But one of the comments voiced a common sentiment:

ACLU Lawyers are bad enough but an ACLU Judge is totally unacceptable.

I’ve never understood the level of antipathy towards the American Civil Liberties Union.

Just inside the Capitol Beltway on Georgia Avenue, there’s a gas station I used to pass every day. What distinguishes it from the gas station 15 feet down the road (apart from higher prices) is their large sign with preachy, often religious messages. The slogans usually just make me roll my eyes, but I remember one that was unintentionally thought-provoking. It said: “Land of the Free Because of the Brave.” A quick Google search shows that the phrase is a common expression usually used in reference to our military. In fact, the first site that comes up is the RightNation store, which sells products bearing the slogan (see picture) along with products bashing the ACLU.

The irony–apparently missed by RightNation–is that the slogan could apply to the ACLU lawyers they condemn as much as the soldiers they praise.

Yes, our military does much to keep our nation free, deterring foreign powers from invading. But it is our citizen’s freedom from an overbearing and all-powerful government and not our national sovereignty that have made us uniquely “the Land of the Free.”

At our nation’s beginning, we threw off the rule of absolute kings and declared that we could govern ourselves. Through our constitutional democracy, we limit the power of our rulers and establish certain rights not to be violated. It is organizations like the ACLU that defend those rights. Here, everyone is allowed to speak their opinion, even KKK members. Everyone is allowed due process of law, even suspected drug dealers. Everyone is allowed to live free from governmental religious influence, even atheists.

Our soldiers absolutely deserve gratitude for so much. But when it comes to oppression, the most prevalent threat is that of our own government violating our constitutional rights.

Our soldiers keep our nation free. Our commitment to individual liberties keeps our people free.

The Pope’s visit to Africa has already produced some interesting quotes for discussion, but in reading the Boston Globe today, I found other disturbing passages:

In his homily, Benedict expressed compassion for African children being kidnapped and forced to fight by rebel groups trying to carve up parts of Africa.

“God loves you, he has not forgotten you,” he said in a message to these children.

Child soldiers have been used by rebels in eastern Congo and by Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army. An estimated 3,500 children are still with armed groups in Congo alone.

Of course he hasn’t ‘forgotten’ them; the Catholic god isn’t anthropomorphized with human flaws like Zeus.  So what can we take away from the Pope’s message?  God is aware of the suffering children, loves them, and yet they are still suffering.  The more I think about it, the more I understand why the Problem of Suffering has caused theologians so much trouble over the years.

Many people act as if they believe that God intervenes in the natural world.  They credit God with countless wonderful occurrences like a medical recovery, an overwhelming emotional experience, or a hurricane sent to punish the sinful.  But anyone who believes God has ever taken action in the world must therefore believe that God chose to act in those situations.  He must choose not to act in the situations of suffering children.

The Pope seems to be telling the children: “You’re suffering intensely here in this world, but cheer up!  An entity in another world loves you!”  I suppose it’s better than when the Catholic Church did the reverse earlier this month.  A nine year-old girl was raped by her step-father and became pregnant with twins.  Carrying the pregnancy to term would have put her life in danger, so she had an abortion.  The church’s reaction to the whole thing?  Excommunicate the girl’s mother and the doctor.  It’s as if they were saying: “Your family is suffering intensely here in this world, but God is displeased with your decision.”

The church is ignoring suffering in this world – sometimes even exacerbating it, as with AIDS in Africa – because they have beliefs about another world.  I would love it if we all spent our energy focusing on this world, our opinions, and our suffering.  Thoughts about God’s opinion are distracting us.  He isn’t saving the poor and the hungry.  In his new book Losing my Religion, William Lobdell describes the reaction of a friend who came to the realization:

“It nearly drove him insane that no loving God was protecting his children.  I had the advantage of seeing too much on the religion beat.  I knew of many times when faithful Christian parents lost their children.  I hadn’t seen any evidence, anecdotal or otherwise, that children were safer with God watching over them.  It reminds me of a bumper sticker peddled by atheists that makes the point rather bluntly: ’20,000 children died of hunger today.  Why should God answer YOUR prayers?’”

He doesn’t.  If we stop holding mistaken beliefs about the supernatural, we can do a better job caring for this world.

Since when do more than 270 plaintiffs enjoy losing?

Mike Newdow’s email went on to say that the dismissal order in Newdow v. Roberts “now sets us up to file an Appeal as the appellants, thus providing us with the opportunity to submit a 14,000 word Opening Brief and a 7,000 word Reply Brief in the Court of Appeals.”

On March 12, U.S. District Court Judge Reggie B. Walton dismissed our case challenging the infusion of religion into Barack Obama’s inaugural ceremony.

Judge Walton was disingenuous in his ruling that “the plaintiffs have failed to demonstrate that an injunction against any or all of the defendants could redress the harm alleged suffered by plaintiffs” while at the same time noting in a footnote that the plaintiffs had filed an amended complaint that would (in my opinion) have likely cured any defects. For example, Judge Walton could have: (1) declared the acts of Chief Justice Roberts appending “so help me God” to the constitutionally prescribed presidential oath and the Presidential Inaugural Committee for allowing sectarian prayers in the invocation and benediction to be violations of the First Amendment, (2) enjoined the federal defendants and others unnamed in future inaugurals from doing the same and (3) awarded the plaintiffs nominal damages.

Judge Walton also held that our plaintiffs lacked standing because “none of the plaintiffs in this case have standing to challenge the defendants’ actions as pled in the complaint because they have identified no concrete and particularized injury.” This, too, is disingenuous, because the District Court had in its possession over 250 sworn statements alleging injury. Again, the Judge Walton erred.

I have spent many hours researching federal cases in which the court said that a plaintiff who personally witnessed government sponsored prayer lacked standing. To no surprise, the only cases that I have found are Newdow I (Newdow v. Bush, 2001 presidential inaugural), Newdow II (Newdow v. Bush, 2005 presidential inaugural) and now Newdow III (Newdow v. Roberts, 2009 Obama inaugural). Coincidence? Conspiracy?

I have a simple answer. Newdow I, II and III were just too hot to handle.

Newdow (i.e., Newdow III), like its predecessor cases, was too hot for the District Court because, like Abington Township School District v. Schempp, Newdow it would uphold minority rights over majority rule. (Schempp, consolidated with Murray v. Curlett, is the landmark 1963 Supreme Court decision that held school sponsored Bible reading and prayer to be unconstitutional.) And you know about the uproar over little kiddies not being denied their God given right to say their prayers in school. Imagine the excruciating squawking of the megachurches if Mike Newdow and the other plaintiffs win.

As I have said elsewhere, Newdow is foundational – it would take monotheistic (Christian preferred) religion out of the executive branch (where it doesn’t belong anyway). What would be next? Congressional chaplains? “Under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance? The national motto of “In God We Trust”? Or military bands playing “God Bless America”?

The Christian Right can’t afford to lose this one and the courts know it! Or the dominoes will fall.

File this under “not surprising, but still infuriating”:

Pope Benedict XVI said on his way to Africa Tuesday that condoms were not the answer in the continent’s fight against HIV, his first explicit statement on an issue that has divided even clergy working with AIDS patients.

The Pope went on to say, “You can’t resolve it (HIV/AIDS) with the distribution of condoms…On the contrary, it increases the problem.”

The full scale of that alarming statement is better understood in this context:

Africa is the one region in the world where Catholicism enjoys healthy growth.

According to Vatican statistics, the number of African Catholics grew by three percent in 2007 — despite competition from evangelical Protestant denominations and Islam — while populations remained stable elsewhere in the world.

In 2006, baptised Catholics made up 17 percent of the African population, compared with 12 percent in 1978.

In other words, don’t count the Pope’s influence out.

This is not the worst statement from a Catholic leader regarding condoms in Africa. One example from 2007:

The head of the Catholic Church in Mozambique has told the BBC he believes some European-made condoms are infected with HIV deliberately.

Maputo Archbishop Francisco Chimoio claimed some anti-retroviral drugs were also infected “in order to finish quickly the African people”.

In other words, Pope Benedict’s statement is just one part of a long misinformation campaign by the Catholic Church regarding condoms and their ability to prevent the spread of HIV.

Overall this isn’t really new news, of course, except that this latest statement by the Pope is his first on the subject of condoms since assuming the papacy. I doubt anyone was holding out hope that he would break with previous Catholic doctrine on this subject. Nevertheless, this is frightening. Combating HIV/AIDS is an uphill battle, although there have been some successes. But HIV/AIDS organizations already have so many challenges, from worn and underfunded public health infrastructure to the inherent difficulties in changing people’s sexual behavior. When one of the most influential religious leaders in the world comes through with what could only be described as lies (condoms make HIV/AIDS worse?) on the subject, he is perpetuating dangerous ideas that, in the long term, could cost people their lives.

For more information on international HIV prevention strategies that incorporate accurate information about condoms, visit the UK organization Avert.

As humans, we fancy ourselves to be unique creatures. That is why Jane Goodall’s landmark study of the chimpanzees of Gombe, Tanzania, in the early 1960′s caused such initial disbelief in the wider scientific community. Jane Goodall was the first scientist to observe the behavior of tool making and tool use by chimpanzees, which, by extension, made her to the first person to document the use of tools by any animal other than humans. Anthropologists had long defined human beings as “man the tool maker”, and, as the famed anthropologist Louis Leakey exclaimed in response to Jane Goodall’s initial report, “Now we must redefine tool, redefine Man, or accept chimpanzees as humans.”

We now know that several species of animals are capable of using tools. But a chimpanzee named Santino, living in captivity at the Furuvik Zoo in Sweden, has pushed our understanding of chimp behavior (and human uniqueness) forward once again. In a new study published in Current Biology, researchers documented Santino’s recurrent behavior of calmly collecting rocks and breaking apart chunks of the concrete in his zoo enclosure in the morning and then subsequently using the stockpile of projectiles to throw at zoo visitors later in the day. Santino is a 31-year old alpha male, and he never attacked the other chimps in his enclosure. He reserved his ire (and projectiles) only for humans.

This is amazing. Even recently, I read that one of the defining characteristics of humans is that we are capable of thinking about the future in an abstract way and making plans. And yet Santino directly challenges that idea. As one of the researchers quote in the Associated Press article stated:

“These observations convincingly show that our fellow apes do consider the future in a very complex way,” said the author of the report, Lund University Ph.D. student Mathias Osvath. “It implies that they have a highly developed consciousness, including lifelike mental simulations of potential events.”

In other words, Santino had thought about what he wanted to do and how he could do it. And he wasn’t acting in a blind rage but rather with premeditation, because several hours (and sometimes days) separated his stockpiling of weapons and his assaults on zoo visitors.

While much time and talk has been spent on the subject of intelligent life in other corners of the universe, we have so much more to learn about intelligent life on our own planet. As we start to understand more and more how intelligence is a continuum and that chimpanzees and humans have more in common than we previously imagined, I hope that we also rededicate ourselves to protecting this endangered species.

I’ve had doubts on other issues, but Obama has consistently taken the right tone when it comes to science. Announcing the appointment of Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Chu as the next Energy Secretary in December, Obama said “His appointment should send a signal to all that my administration will value science, we will make decisions based on the facts, and we understand that the facts demand bold action.” It’s nice to hear, especially considering how the previous administration viewed science.

Today, Obama reversed the standing ban on federal funding of embryonic stem-cell research and released a memo promising to restore scientific integrity. As I’m sure you’re not surprised, we here at the AHA were thrilled:

“This is a victory for scientific integrity and rational public policy, two values threatened when government is unduly influenced by conservative religion,” said AHA President David Niose. “When our laws are shaped by scriptural interpretations and religious opinions that have no basis in science or fact, we all suffer.”

Pointing out that the ban was originally advocated and supported by the religious right, Niose added: “This issue is excellent evidence of why religion isn’t always a reliable source of morality. Embryonic stem cell research harms nobody and has the potential to lead to revolutionary scientific advances that will benefit all of humanity. What kind of morality would deny hope to millions of real people who are suffering from debilitating diseases and conditions?”

The memo itself is a veritable font of interesting quotes:

Medical miracles do not happen simply by accident. They result from painstaking and costly research—from years of lonely trial and error, much of which never bears fruit—and from a government willing to support that work…

“Rather than furthering discovery, our government has forced what I believe is a false choice between sound science and moral values,” Obama said. “In this case, I believe the two are not inconsistent. As a person of faith, I believe we are called to care for each other and work to ease human suffering”…

[L]et’s be clear: promoting science isn’t just about providing resources—it is also about protecting free and open inquiry. It is about letting scientists like those here today do their jobs, free from manipulation or coercion, and listening to what they tell us, even when it’s inconvenient—especially when it’s inconvenient. It is about ensuring that scientific data is never distorted or concealed to serve a political agenda—and that we make scientific decisions based on facts, not ideology.

By doing this, we will ensure America’s continued global leadership in scientific discoveries and technological breakthroughs. That is essential not only for our economic prosperity, but for the progress of all humanity.

He raises a lot of interesting points, but I most appreciated the statements about making decisions based on fact instead of ideology. One could make a secular argument against stem cell research, claiming that the 100 cells in the blastocysts are more important than the potential to help suffering fully-conscious human beings. It’s a weak case, but a person could try. Instead, we usually hear that human life has a soul imparted to it at conception—a supernatural claim without a shred of evidence.

Our government cannot give credence to supernatural claims, so it’s about time for the government to fund this medical research. If dissenters want to change government policy, they need to argue based on secular (non supernatural) values.

Or, if you’re the Family Research Council, you could make something up about the dangers of cloning.