On the heels of recent victories for marriage equality in Iowa and Vermont, more good news comes today from the state of New York. From the New York Times:

Gov. David A. Paterson plans to introduce legislation on Thursday to make marriage between same-sex couples legal in New York, advancing his push for greater rights for gay men and lesbians, at a time when other states have done so.

Mr. Paterson’s plans represent the most public effort yet by the governor, who has been a consistent supporter of gay rights, to position himself and New York at the crest of a broadening national movement.

The bill may have some difficulty passing the Senate (although it is expected to clear the Assembly easily), but Governor Paterson is hoping that the recent momentum in favor of marriage equality will sway a few more votes in Albany. If the bill passes, New York will become the fifth state to legalize same-sex marriage.

There are several reasons why marriage equality is so important to humanists. First, it is an issue of separation of church and state. To this day, I have never heard an argument against marriage equality that wasn’t ultimately rooted in religion. Usually the case rests on certain selectively read passages from the Bible. But we know that public policy decisions have to rest on secular grounds. We can’t prohibit something simply because the Bible prohibits it. Religious tradition isn’t adequate when we’re discussing today why same-sex marriage should continue to be banned.

More importantly, at the core of humanism lies the tenet that ethical values must be based in the real world and can change over time. Humanism and Its Aspirations states it this way:

Ethical values are derived from human need and interest as tested by experience. Humanists ground values in human welfare shaped by human circumstances, interests, and concerns and extended to the global ecosystem and beyond. We are committed to treating each person as having inherent worth and dignity, and to making informed choices in a context of freedom consonant with responsibility.

There simply isn’t any room in this worldview for arbitrarily denying equal rights to one population based on a 2,000-year-old text that is only relevant to one portion of society. To tell one couple that their love and relationship simply doesn’t count as much as another couple’s does not respect their inherent worth and dignity. Humanists want to see concrete reasons for laws, reasons that go well beyond “it’s tradition” or “the Bible says so.”

If New York passes this bill, the pressure will increase in other states to legalize marriage equality. When you see lawmakers debate this issue and decide to favor human needs today, rather than prescribed behavior from thousands of years ago, you are seeing humanist values in action.

(Crossposted at Friendly Atheist)

When Andrew Sullivan posted this disturbing video on his blog last Tuesday with no real description, I thought it was a recent campaign. After some digging, it turns out to be a 2006 video from Answers in Genesis which is now resurfacing, perhaps in light of the 10-year anniversary of the Columbine Shooting coming up on April 20th.

Now that it’s getting attention again, it’s causing quite a stir among the nonreligious blogging community, quickly racking up over 50 comments when Hemant at Friendly Atheist posted it and 80 on Daniel Florien’s post on Unreasonable Faith. Daniel titled his post “AIG Points a Gun at Atheists”. I wasn’t sure how to take it; see what you think:

It turns out that AiG still has a page explaining it:

Every day we are inundated with evolution-based messages intended to remove the Creator from the fabric of our society, our lives, our thoughts. But if we evolved from lower life forms, then the Bible can’t be trusted and life’s supposed billion-year history is one of continual death and struggle. If the Bible isn’t true, then why should we be fair and kind and love our fellow human beings, as the Bible teaches? After all, evolution relies on survival of the fittest—no matter who gets in the way.

It bears pointing out that while the history of life involves death and struggle, there’s so much more to it than that. There’s love and happiness and waffles!

So here’s where I get confused: Even if God told us how he wanted us to act, we still get to decide whether to obey. It’s often noted that if a person is choosing to act morally in an effort to stay out of hell, that’s not exactly altruistic. What I’ve heard more often is that people decide to obey because they feel gratitude and respect for God. Because of that gratitude and respect, they consider His will when deciding how to act.

Well, I feel gratitude to my friends, neighbors, and family. I respect the inherent worth of conscious, sentient life. Because of that gratitude and respect, I act in ways that take their feelings and their wellbeing into account. I don’t need an ancient book to “teach me” to be fair and kind.

The AiG page also says: “Those who feel that neither they nor their actions matter to God lose their motivation to care for the lives of others or for their own life.”

I can vouch from personal experience that they’re wrong. I suspect that most of you can, too.

Why do we care about the lives of others? There are different answers we can give: we have an evolved drive to care, we were raised to care in a social context, we get something out it. But the bottom line is that we do care. We don’t believe that our actions matter to God but we believe our actions matter to each other.

As I sat down on the metro last Saturday, I noticed three magazines on the seat. The first two were Awake! magazine and The Watchtower: “Announcing Jehovah’s Kingdom”. The third magazine — I’m not making this up — was the April 2009 edition of Metro Weekly: Washington’s Gay & Lesbian News Magazine. I would love to know who was sitting there before I was.

I hope that the issue of Awake! is targeted at children, considering the lack of complexity in their articles. I also hope that no child reads it, considering its misrepresentation of evolution. In a short section “Was it Designed?” the magazine marvels at the toucan’s beak:

The consistency of the toucan’s beak has been compared to that of a hard sponge. Some parts of it are hollow, while other parts are made up of beams and membranes. The result is a lightweight beak that has astounding strength. “It’s almost as if the toucan has a deep knowledge of mechanical engineering,” says [materials scientist Mark Andre] Myers…

As a friend of mine noted, my circulatory system works remarkably well and yet I do not possess a deep knowledge of hydraulics. But I digress. The ending was the most frustrating:

What do you think? Did the toucan’s strong but lightweight beak come about by chance? Or was it designed?

How about C) neither of the above? I think the beak is a result of cumulative natural selection. Awake! seems to be implying that something so successful couldn’t have “come about by chance” and so it must be designed. This great mini-lesson from the University of Indiana’s Evolution & the Nature of Science Institutes would have been helpful:

This lesson provides an elegant, easy way for students to actually compare Darwin’s cumulative non-random selection with the non-cumulative version so often erroneously implied. Students working in pairs attempt to produce a full sequence of 13 cards of one suit (ace – to king). This must be done by shuffling the suit of cards for each round, then checking the cards. Half the teams must look for the full sequence each time, and repeat the process until this is accomplished. The other teams start to “build” their sequence by pulling the ace when it first appears as the top card, then adding to the stack whenever the “next” card for the sequence is shuffled to the top. Discussion clearly reveals how the second method mimics Darwinian natural selection, while the first does not.

Of course, there are some significant differences between this activity and evolution. The students have a desired outcome and are only accepting shuffles that get closer to that ace-king “strong/lightweight beak.” But there’s no reason to assume that nature had to result in that particular beak. Over time the successful random changes propagate while the unsuccessful changes don’t. In that sense, we don’t necessarily know which random mutations and variations will occur, but we know any that stick around will be successful for their environment. The toucan’s variation could have exploited a different niche in its environment, and Awake! would be marveling: “Did the toucan’s incredible, narrow, and flexible beak come about by chance? Or was it designed?”

It’s not chance that the toucan’s beak is successful. It is chance that this particular model is what happened, but I’m not going to give Awake! magazine credit for having that degree of nuance in their question.

I began to research this post intent on writing about reports from last week that James Dobson, the longtime Christian right wing leader and recently retired head of Focus on the Family, had conceded in a farewell address to FF staff that the Religious Right had lost the culture wars. But I soon found that this really wasn’t the case.

The story seemed to emanate from a report by a UK newspaper, the Telegraph, that bore the provocative headline “US religious Right concedes defeat.” The article quoted Dobson as saying:

We are awash in evil and the battle is still to be waged. We are right now in the most discouraging period of that long conflict. Humanly speaking, we can say we have lost all those battles.

That seemed like pretty compelling evidence that Dobson, if he hadn’t seen the errors of his ways, at least admitted the inefficacy of his approach.

But Right Wing Watch provides a more complete view on it. With a little more context, it’s obvious Dobson didn’t say anything new:

The battles that we fought in the Eighties now, we were victorious in many of those conflicts with the culture, trying to defend righteousness, trying to defend the unborn child, trying to preserve the dignity of the family and the definition of marriage. We fought all those battles and really it was a holding action.

Dr. Mohler mentioned the pornography struggle; we made a lot of progress through the Eighties but then we turned into the Nineties and the internet came along and a new president came along and all of that went away and now we are absolutely awash in evil. And the battle is still to be waged. And we are right now in the most discouraging period of that long conflict. Humanly speaking, we can say that we have lost all those battles, but God is in control and we are not going to give up now, right?

The world has turned colder for the family in recent years and there is such hostility to anyone who holds to a faith and we’re going to take the heat. But I have been assured by the board and by many of you that we’re not going to cow, we’re not going to be discouraged. We’re going to continue to express the love for the Scripture and the principles that we find there and if we are made fools for Christ, that’s okay too because our purpose is to serve him and that he be pleased.

Really, this is just a typical Religious Right statement. To paraphrase: sure, we’ve had some victories, but they didn’t go far enough. Our enemies are strong, and we have lost some battles. So we need to redouble our efforts.

This is hardly an admission of defeat! It’s more of a request for donations.

There seems to be an eagerness to declare the demise of the Religious Right. But even as Americans overall are becoming more secular, the Religious Right persists and even thrives off the news that Christianity is slowly (and I do mean slowly!) waning in influence in the United States. It seems to me that reactionaries need enemies and threats everywhere in order to form a cohesive movement.

But there have been many encouraging signs lately that the Religious Right has been losing steam in recent years. Just one of many pieces of evidence I would submit to you is the fact that, following the ruling of the Iowa State Supreme Court in favor of marriage equality, legislators in Des Moines have so far been unable to gain any traction for their efforts to introduce a constitutional amendment reintroducing the ban on same-sex marriage. Even the formerly anti-marriage equality governor of Iowa, Chet Culver, so far refuses to support amending the state constitution.

We can be certain that, for the years to come, every advance in favor of marriage equality, the separation of church and state, religious freedom for all, and reproductive choice will be met with the hateful and apocalyptic language of the Religious Right. But I think that the overall trend is encouraging. And perhaps in a few years James Dobson will actually declare the Religious Right’s loss in the so-called culture wars. Or at least he’ll be a lot quieter.

(Crossposted at Friendly Atheist)

You almost feel sorry for Rick Warren. As Hemant at the Friendly Atheist and others have pointed out, he was recently caught making statements that could charitably be called misleading and uncharitably called baldfaced lies. He claimed to have never endorsed Proposition 8 but everyone found a video that showed him doing just that. As far as I can understand, his excuse is that his video telling people to vote for Proposition 8 wasn’t an endorsement. No, it doesn’t make sense to me either. Now he’s making excuses not to go on ABC’s This Week, citing exhaustion.

But things must be particularly bad when one of Rick Warren’s supporters starts calling him out on his bad excuses. Warren blamed Beliefnet founder Steven Waldman for phrasing a question poorly, saying “I was asked a question that made it sound like I equated gay marriage with pedophilia or incest, which I absolutely do not believe.” Waldman responded in a post sarcastically entitled “Why Rick Warren’s Controversial Words on Gay Marriage Are Entirely My Fault”:

Judge for yourself. Here’s the full exchange:

“WARREN: The issue to me, I’m not opposed to that [some partnership rights] as much as I’m opposed to redefinition of a 5,000 year definition of marriage. I’m opposed to having a brother and sister being together and calling that marriage. I’m opposed to an older guy marrying a child and calling that marriage. I’m opposed to one guy having multiple wives and calling that marriage.

BELIEFNET: Do you think those are equivalent to gays getting married?

[WARREN:] Oh , I do. For 5,000 years, marriage has been defined by every single culture and every single religion – this is not a Christian issue. Buddhist, Muslims, Jews – historically, marriage is a man and a woman.”

Had he wanted to clarify that he didn’t equate gay marriage with those other relationships he might have slightly altered the wording from “oh, I do” to something like, I dunno, “oh, I don’t.” That might have been clearer.

…This whole controversy could have been easily avoided if he’d taken a modicum of responsibility and said, “I’m sorry. I did accidentally imply that homosexuality and these other relationships were morally equivalent. That’s not what I believe, and I apologize for implying that.” Instead, he’s blamed other people for distorting his words.

Now, Steven Waldman is not my favorite person in the world (he doesn’t even crack the top 10), but I admire how he handled the situation. After criticizing Warren for failing to take responsibility, he ends his post saying “Having not learned my lesson, I want to close with another defense of Rick Warren. Despite his lack of self awareness on gay marraige [sic] (and the pain he’s caused gays), I still think that he deserves to [sic] great credit for his extraordinary work in fighting poverty and disease in Africa. This man is saving thousands of lives and we should keep looking at the full Rick Warren.”

Indeed. Let’s give credit where credit is due and blame where blame is due. Rick Warren has flaws, and those deserve condemnation. His excuses are wearing thin and his views on homosexuality are harmful. But he is also doing good works, and let’s not forget those.

Nobody I’ve encountered who claims to believe in souls has actually been able to explain what a soul is to my satisfaction. From what I can tell, it is the very epitome of an ad hoc hypothesis. Our physical brain and nervous system is responsible for our memories, our emotions, and our personality. When we alter the workings of a brain, it can affect that person’s emotions, alter personality traits, and interfere with memory. But the soul is somehow involved. Don’t ask how or why, but there just must be an immaterial component that can’t be explained, interacted with, or in any way observed.

On his blog today, PZ Myers poked fun at the common conception of souls’, well, conception.

One of my friends on facebook started a discussion on the topic, and this was my favorite comment:

“But what I really need to say is that scientists may not make an argument about when the soul starts to exist. They may say, “we don’t know.” But they may never emphatically state that the soul does or does not exist. The reason is because scientists deal in the physical realm. They have no basis for dealing in the metaphysical realm.

So, in essence, scientists should stick to their own territory and leave the questions about the soul to the theologians and philosophers.

I agree that scientists can only tell us about the physical world. I’m with him so far. But we seem to disagree on whether theologians or philosophers can answer questions about the “metaphysical realm.” Just because science can’t answer something doesn’t mean theologians can. It simply means that science can’t answer.

So: can theologians answer questions about the immaterial soul? If they do make a claim, how would we even know whether they’re correct? Until they have a way of verifying their claims to us, we shouldn’t listen to the theologians at all.

I couldn’t put it any better than this Jesus and Mo comic:

If we’re talking about something that affects our physical world, we can study it and it’s in the realm of science. If we’re talking about something that in no way affects our physical world–in what sense does it really exist?

Despite my perennially aching knees and left wrist, I am still fairly young. My politically formative years were spent during the administration of George W. Bush. I slowly began paying more and more attention as I went through college, and I followed Alberto Gonzales’ absurdities more closely than I did John Ashcroft’s. So while I knew about most of the crazy things Gonzales said in his tenure, I’m just now learning about his predecessor. And he scares me. An April 6 Beliefnet article by Steve Waldman titled “Why Didn’t Ashcroft-the-Christian Stop The Torture?” links to a 2002 San Francisco Chronicle article addressing Ashcroft’s religiosity:

History is written by the winners, and they may or may not get it right, Ashcroft is fond of saying. “I don’t particularly care if I do what’s right in the sight of men. The important thing is for me to do right in God’s sight… The verdict of history is inconsequential; the verdict of eternity is what counts.”

This man was our attorney general. He was the chief officer tasked with enforcing our country’s laws as written by our elected representatives in Congress and interpreted by the Supreme Court. And he didn’t care whether what he did was right in the sight of men?

Imagine a company choosing a CEO who announced, “I don’t particularly care if I do what’s right in the eyes of our board and shareholders. The important thing is for me to do right in my spouse’s opinion. I’ll only work for you from 9-5 for a few years, but I’ll be married until the day I die.” The company would find a new CEO, wouldn’t you think?

Also from the aforementioned Chronicle article: “it is impossible to overestimate how deeply Pentecostal biblical training permeates his view of right and wrong — and stiffens his spine against criticism… [His rectitude] has kept the attorney general from flinching in the face of concerns that he too blithely puts the Constitution ‘on hold’ under the guise of pursuing potential terrorists…”

And so we ended up with warrantless domestic wiretapping, indefinite imprisonment of U.S. citizens without due process, and torture of detainees–blatant violations of national laws, constitutional protections, and international agreements.

Apparently Steve Waldman can retroactively read Ashcroft’s mind, because he asserts:

I’m not saying this was an easy position for Ashcroft. As the chief law enforcement official, he felt an urgent personal responsibility to stop terrorist attacks. He likely made a morally utilitarian calculation that the ends in this case justified the means. Many people did.

But what Ashcroft never did, apparently, was ask: What Would Jesus Do?

I’m left wondering: what is the value of having a religious person in office? I don’t mean that as a snarky rhetorical question. I’m honestly perplexed: if ever there was a situation when we actually could have benefited from having a self-righteous, moral, Bible-reading, God-fearing Christian in the room to morally challenge utilitarian thinking, the discussions about torture would have been it.

To prevent the United States from employing torture, we didn’t need a stronger Christian to stand up for Biblical teachings. Our secular laws already prohibited torture, we just needed someone to stand up for the institution of the law.

Contrary to what Waldman says, the issue here isn’t whether Ashcroft was Christian or not. A devout Christian or an atheist could have ordered torture. Anyone can make bad decisions, especially in the face of enormous pressure. But we have institutions to prevent our human shortcomings from causing disastrous consequences. No matter what his beliefs about the supernatural, John Ashcroft’s job was to support that institution. He failed.

A couple days ago I talked about the Westboro Baptist Church and their wacky and fun-filled protest announced at a local high-school. As it turns out, they were in DC that very day, marching in front of the White House. Campus Progress wrote a piece on it and got a lot of great video footage, including interviews with the WBC members and organizers of the counter-protest.

I still haven’t learned my lesson, and I browsed through the comments. Here’s one that deserved a response:

these people, as JimmyOK said, are nothing more than attention whores who have been brainwashed by their crazy dad/uncle/granddad/whatever. Holding gay love-ins is not going to stop them. What would stop them is if everyone completely ignored them, including the media.

Unfortunately, that’s never gonna happen (CNN needs to fill their 24 hours!). Therefore, we should stop protesting clearly-idiotic fringe groups and go after the larger, less obviously insane groups that antagonize LGBT people. Or better yet, join a pro-gay advocacy organization!

— Julie H. – Apr 1, 12:11 PM

Can anyone imagine these fanatics going away if we ignore them? I certainly can’t. I admire their dedication and strength of conviction, even though I consider it misdirected. I don’t think there’s anything we can do to stop them from spewing their hate, so we should focus on minimizing the damage they do to a community. The damage could come in two forms: First, it could make gay or lesbian individuals feel as though they were not welcome or not valued as members of society. Second, it could make straight individuals feel that homophobia is acceptable. A counter-demonstration should focus on preventing those effects from happening.

In this case, I doubt the WBC protests would have done much damage — the White House was their target and I doubt anyone inside cared. Ignoring them might have made sense in this case — not because it would make the WBC go away as Julie H hopes, but because a counter-demonstration wouldn’t actually demonstrate much to anyone who was in danger of being hurt.

That said, the counter-protest did accomplish something: through the Phelps-a-thon. They collect pledges to donate money for every minute the Westboro Baptist Church protests. On their website there are more pictures of them updating the tally mid-protest. Well done, whoever thought of that one.

The Department of Justice failed President Obama’s quest for change when Attorney General Eric Holder overruled the opinion of the lawyers in the department’s Office of Legal Counsel that granting the residents of the District of Columbia voting rights to elect a member of the House of Representatives would be unconstitutional.

Instead, the Attorney General sniffed around until he found the Solicitor General willing to say “no problem.”

Well, actually there is a big problem. It’s called the rule of law. And it just so happens that the Constitution is the supreme law of the land. (Const., art. VI, cl. 2.)

The Constitution is explicit in regards to who may vote for members to the House of Representatives: “The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States …” (Const., art I, sec. 2, cl. 1.) (Emphasis added.)

While it is also true that Congress is granted authority “[t]o exercise exclusive Legislation … whatsoever, over such District … as may, by Cession of particular States … become the Seat of the Government of the United States”, (Const., art. I, sec. 8, cl. 17.) under the basic rule of statutory construction that a specific provision (e.g., who may vote for a member of the House of Representatives) trumps a general provision (e.g., authority over the District of Columbia).

It’s short sighted to argue that voting rights for residents of the District would not be a constitutional violation because either voting is a fundamental right or the District is often treated as if it were a state in numerous pieces of legislation. While it is true that voting is considered a fundamental right in the United States (see Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186 (1962) – establishing the principle of one person, one vote), the precise contours of that right is determined by our Constitution. Thus, for example, senators are apportioned two per state rather than allotted on the basis of population (as is the House of Representatives).

More particularly, current laws treating the District of Columbia as if it were a state involve other provisions of the congressional authority which do not limit Congress’s authority to the “states.” For example, the Constitution grants Congress the authority ‘[t]o establish Post Offices and post Roads.” (Art. I, sec. 8, cl. 7.) Under this clause, Congress can grant the District of Columbia monies to build post offices and postal roads because this clause does not limit federal funds for these purposes specifically to the states.

Don’t get me wrong. I personally believe that D.C. residents should be able to vote for members of the House and the Senate. However, I believe in the Constitution as well. Therefore, the proper way to achieve the desired goal is not through an unconstitutional act of Congress, but by (1) ceding the residential area of the District back to Maryland or (2) amending the Constitution to grant D.C. residents the right to vote for members of the House of Representatives, the Senate or both.

So that my vote is diluted, I prefer the former option over the latter. Granting the residents of D.C. two Senators would be particularly unfair (as is the current allocation of two Senators per state).

[NOTE: The views expressed in this blog represent my professional opinion, except for the last two paragraphs which also represent my personal opinion. The AHA supports current legislation granting D.C. residents one representative in the House.]

Here at the American Humanist Association, we get all sorts of calls, letters, and emails.  A few months ago, a woman named Janina Balabat sent us a copy of her book entitled Conversations with an Atheist along with a handwritten note.  The title intrigued me a bit, and I opened it to see which famous atheist she had spoken with.

Nobody.  She imagines that she poses her questions to an atheist then imagines that he’s stumped.  Her chapter “Answers from an Atheist” begins:

I can picture that my dear atheist friend stopped for a moment and listened attentively as I asked all of my questions.  He grew slightly uncomfortable and his face turned red.  He found himself in deep silence.  He then began talking to himself, “I’m such a powerful person.  I know so much of life, of nature, and not only of things on Earth, but of the nature of the other planets.  I’ve read many educational books.  Yet, I do not have answers to these life questions.  Why can’t I answer?  Why don’t I have any answers?  Why don’t I know?  Why don’t I know who set everything up so wonderfully?  Why don’t I know my Creator?”

This tactic is the very epitome of a straw man argument.  She must not have met (m)any atheists, since her caricature of us is beyond cliche and I doubt very much that an atheist would ask why he doesn’t know his ‘Creator’.

I thank Janina Balabat for her book and her good intentions.  I can picture that she stops for a moment as she realizes that her argument is attacking a straw man.  She finds herself in deep silence.  She then asks herself, “How could I paint such an uninformed caricature of atheists?  Why didn’t I just make some nonreligious friends and talk to them?  Would that have helped me understand them?”

Most of Conversations with an Atheist is Balbat quoting Bible passages at the reader, without ever convincing us that the Bible speaks the truth.  If she had actually discussed this issue with the atheists she considers her audience–and she says she wants every atheist in the world to read it–then perhaps she wouldn’t have spent 400 pages citing a source we don’t consider credible.

To help her meet more atheists, I thought I would try to connect her with Daniel Dennett.  I instantly thought of him as I read this passage of her book:

Not only has nature created beauty for the eyes, but she has also remembered to fill our stomach.  She has prepared tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, garlic, pumpkins, cantaloupes, apples, pears, potatoes, beets, white cabbage, and cauliflower.  Nature knows that man likes sweetness, and she has therefore created the little bee, which works so hard all of its life to prepare sweet honey to satisfy a person’s life, to enhance it and make it sweeter and happier.

Dennett even used honey as an example in a fascinating lecture “Darwin’s Other Strange Inversion” at TED Talks:

For those of you who can’t watch the video, here’s the part I found particularly apt:

It stands to reason that we love chocolate cake because it is sweet, guys go for girls like this because they are sexy, we adore babies because they are so cute, and of course we are amused by jokes because they are funny.  This is all backwards…

Our sweet tooth is basically an evolved sugar-detector because sugar is high energy, and has been wired up to the “preferer” to put it very crudely.  And that’s why we ‘like’ sugar.  Honey is sweet because we like it, not: we like it because honey is sweet.  There is nothing intrinsically sweet about honey.  If you looked at glucose molecules until you were blind you won’t see why they tasted sweet.  You have to look in our brains to understand why they are sweet.

We humans are a result of our environment; we evolved to experience honey as sweet and pleasurable because it provides us with energy.  We change to fit our environment, the environment is not specially designed with us in mind.  It would be like marveling at how well the bottle was designed to fit the water inside it.