Category: religionists behaving badly

A superb article against the religious indoctrination of children

October 14, 2020 • 1:00 pm

Many of you must have had this experience: walking through the airport, say, and seeing a family of ultra-Orthodox Jews, with the little girls dressed like their mothers, and the little boys sporting sidelocks and yarmukes—all destined to grow up into lives exactly like those of their parents. Or you see a Muslim family, with the little girls wearing hijabs and “modest” clothing.  Or Amish and Mennonites, with the children exact miniatures of the adults. And as with the clothing and hair, so the beliefs.  Those children are doomed—doomed to adopt via indoctrination the religious beliefs of their parents. They will never be exposed to alternative points of view, will never have the chance for lives different from those of their religiously regulated and constricted community.

I find this ineffably sad, for this kind of religious (and cultural) indoctrination is nothing less than brainwashing. Famously, Richard Dawkins called it “child abuse”. And although that term angered many, including parents who assert the right to control their children’s religious beliefs, Dawkins was not wrong. It is abuse to limit the lives of children by filling their minds with religious nonsense as soon as they can understand language.

Reader Andy called my attention to this 23-year-old transcript of a lecture by Cambridge neuropsychologist Nicholas Humphrey: his plenary lecture to Amnesty International. That was nine years before Dawkins’s The God Delusion publicized the “child abuse” argument to the world. Surely Richard derived some of his views from Humphrey, for Humphrey’s are plain, courageous, and eloquent. Further, all of us who have John Brockman as an agent, including Dawkins, read stuff on Brockman’s website Edge, where this essay was published.

Humphrey’s lecture is the best thing I’ve seen written about why parents should not indoctrinate their children with religion, and I recommend it very highly. Click on the screenshot to read the transcript.

Humphrey is far from “strident” here. Though he’s passionate in his arguments, he also considers possible objections—before disposing of them.  And the gist of his argument is in this excerpt:

I shall probably shock you when I say it is the purpose of my lecture today  [is] . . . to argue, in short, in favour of censorship, against freedom of expression, and to do so moreover in an area of life that has traditionally been regarded as sacrosanct.

I am talking about moral and religious education. And especially the education a child receives at home, where parents are allowed—even expected—to determine for their children what counts as truth and falsehood, right and wrong.

Children, I’ll argue, have a human right not to have their minds crippled by exposure to other people’s bad ideas—no matter who these other people are. Parents, correspondingly, have no god-given licence to enculturate their children in whatever ways they personally choose: no right to limit the horizons of their children’s knowledge, to bring them up in an atmosphere of dogma and superstition, or to insist they follow the straight and narrow paths of their own faith.

In short, children have a right not to have their minds addled by nonsense. And we as a society have a duty to protect them from it. So we should no more allow parents to teach their children to believe, for example, in the literal truth of the Bible, or that the planets rule their lives, than we should allow parents to knock their children’s teeth out or lock them in a dungeon.

That’s the negative side of what I want to say. But there will be a positive side as well. If children have a right to be protected from false ideas, they have too a right to be succoured [sic] by the truth. And we as a society have a duty to provide it. Therefore we should feel as much obliged to pass on to our children the best scientific and philosophical understanding of the natural world—to teach, for example, the truths of evolution and cosmology, or the methods of rational analysis—as we already feel obliged to feed and shelter them.

Now when Humphrey rules out “moral and religious” education, he doesn’t mean “moral” in the sense of “you can’t tell your children that hitting others or bullying them is wrong”. He means “morality as derived from the tenets of religion.” The lecture is in fact solely about religious beliefs, and doesn’t rule out teaching your children the kind of “moral” behavior that’s universally agreed upon by all, including secularists.

I won’t spoil the read for you with more excerpts, except to give one more below. Suffice it to say that Humphrey’s lecture is especially good because (like Dawkins’s books) it anticipates and answers counterarguments. Don’t parents have a right to teach their children their own faith? Even if religion is based on false tenets, isn’t it good to teach children those tenets if it makes them happier? And so on.  Humphrey then explains that religious indoctrination deprives the child of the right to hear about alternative beliefs and lifestyles, a form of learning that, if imparted, could give them richer and fuller lives.  In other words, religious indoctrination is like a mental jail in which children don’t ever get out, never breathing the fresh air of Freedom to Explore.

Lest you think I’m violating my determinism here by talking about “choice”, I’m not: I’m saying that you can make an good argument that not propagandizing children is better for them than forcing them to adopt your own beliefs. And perhaps those arguments will influence the brains of religious parents to lay off their kids, or at least prompt third parties to criticize this invidious indoctrination. Children released from religious “jail” then experience environmental inputs into their brains that can lead them to leave their religious lives behind. As an example, Humphrey mentions the Amish who, when drafted as conscientious objectors, were allowed to work in public hospitals—just as I did. Exposed to other ways of living and thinking, many of these did not return to the Amish way of life. (This stopped when Amish elders, seeing they were losing hold of their kids, got the government to agree to send Amish C.O.’s only to Amish-run farms.)

At any rate, here is the criterion that Humphrey uses to judge religious indoctrination as immoral:

So I’ll come to the main point—and lesson—of this lecture. I want to propose a general test for deciding when and whether the teaching of a belief system to children is morally defensible. As follows. If it is ever the case that teaching this system to children will mean that later in life they come to hold beliefs that, were they in fact to have had access to alternatives, they would most likely not have chosen for themselves, then it is morally wrong of whoever presumes to impose this system and to chose for them to do so. No one has the right to choose badly for anyone else.

This test, I admit, will not be simple to apply. It is rare enough for there to be the kind of social experiment that occurred with the Amish and the military draft. And even such an experiment does not actually provide so strong a test as I’m suggesting we require. After all the Amish young men were not offered the alternative until they were already almost grown up, whereas what we need to know is what the children of the Amish or any other sect would choose for themselves if they were to have had access to the full range of alternatives all along. But in practice of course such a totally free-choice is never going to be available.

And the second paragraph is the rub: there is no way that Orthodox Jews, observant Muslims, or the Amish, much less adherents to many other faiths, could ever refrain from imposing their beliefs on their children, for their religious beliefs and their lifestyle are almost one and the same. How could a hyper-Orthodox Jew bring up a child in a religion-free atmosphere?

But that’s a different question from “Is it wrong to indoctrinate children?”  It is wrong to brainwash your kids. What one should do to remedy the situation is much harder.

At the end of his piece, Humphreys offers one solution: make sure that all children are given a thorough grounding in science in school. Learning to think scientifically, he avers, and learning how to give reasons for what one believes, and think critically, will inevitably make children question all beliefs and, if they decide to be religious, will at least expose them to a variety of religions rather than the one they would have been forced to adopt. (I suspect the most likely outcome of this process, though, is atheism.)

The problem with this, of course, is that children aren’t given much of a scientific education when they’re young and vulnerable, and many—such as young Orthodox Jews or those who go to madrassas—are given no scientific education at all. Critical thinking courses, which naturally align with science, would help, but those aren’t on the menu for many believers, either. Can you imagine the Amish bringing up their children completely free from all religious doctrine, and making them go to secular schools where they learn science?

Humphrey’s arguments for why religious indoctrination is indeed a form of child abuse are eloquent and sound. His answers to those who criticize his views are also sound: parents do not have a “right” to fill their children’s heads with religious nonsense. What is lacking is a way to remedy this universal indoctrination. Humphrey’s own solution won’t work because it cannot be applied to those who need it most. Still, it’s useful for us to remember that this brainwashing goes on for millions and millions of children every day, and many of those children are forced into a narrow, blinkered life they wouldn’t have if they’d been given a better education.

Here’s a 2011 re-do of Humphreys Amnesty lecture:

h/t: Andy

What do “sophisticated” believers really believe?

October 12, 2020 • 12:45 pm

I was thinking last night about someone who asked a fairly prominent religious scientist—not Francis Collins—if he believed in the literal resurrection of Jesus.  The scientist refused to answer—and it wasn’t on the grounds that he kept his religion private. Rather, it was the equivalent of this person, who publicly and openly professed his Catholicism, saying, “I don’t want to answer.” When you get down to the actual claims of Catholicism, or of religion in general, scientists often take the Theological Fifth, in effect saying, “This far and no farther.”

Now why did the guy refuse to answer the question? After all, if you go around saying you’re a Catholic, and arguing about how your Catholicism comports with science, why would you refuse to answer a question about what bits of Catholicism you believe?

Now I have my theory about this, which is mine. It’s that this person really truly believed in the Resurrection, but wouldn’t admit it in public because it would make him look credulous and superstitious. It didn’t comport with his evidence-based attitude towards his scientific beliefs. And in that sense I take religious scientists’ frequent refusal to specify their beliefs as prima facie evidence of the incompatibility between science and religion. In other words, their taking the Theological Fifth is a sign of cognitive dissonance.  And this wasn’t the first religious scientist I’ve seen refuse to be specific about their beliefs.

If a scientist professes to be Christian, for instance ask them what they believe about the following:

The Resurrection
The soul, and then ask where it is and what happens to it. Also, do animals have souls?
The Virgin Birth
An afterlife; e.g., Heaven and Hell. If they accept these, press for specifics on, say, what form one would assume in Heaven.
If they’re Catholic, ask them if they believe in the transubstantiation, and, if so, in what sense

Now most scientists, when asked if the creation stories in Genesis 1 and 2 are true, will say no, it’s all a metaphor. But that’s because science has disproved those bits of scripture, and scripture that’s disproven isn’t discarded but simply changes into metaphor. Since the claims listed above are largely (but not completely) unprovable, they can remain (barely) in the realm of literality.

And, as a kicker, you can always ask them how they came to think these things were true.

I’m curious if anybody else has come across this kind of petulance when you ask science-friendly people—those willing to discuss their faith—what they really believe. I’m sure readers have some interesting stories to tell about this stuff.

I’ll add here that if they’re not willing to discuss their faith at all, even if you’re non-judgmental, it’s often a sign that they regard it as something shameful, like carrying a lucky rabbit’s foot.  After all, two centuries ago no religionist was reticent to aver what they believed. Now, in the age of science, religions ask you to believe so much nonsense that, when you take it aboard, you have to keep it a secret.

Pinker gets flak for tweeting about the “malignant delusion of the afterlife”, deletes tweet but defends himself here

June 4, 2020 • 1:30 pm

I don’t really follow Twitter, but sometimes it makes news when a prominent person deletes a tweet, as when Nikole Hannah-Jones of the New York Times’s 1619 project deleted several tweets, including one drawing a distinction between being “politically black” and “racially black.” That made news, as did the tweet below issued about two weeks ago by Steve Pinker and then deleted. This puzzled me as I didn’t really see anything wrong with the tweet itself, though I didn’t read the linked Washington Post article.

I found out about the deleted tweet from reader Ginger K., who sent me this article from the respectable-sounding American Council on Science and Health (click on screenshot to read), which says it’s a nonprofit advocacy group but, according to sources cited in its Wikipedia article, is heavily funded by corporations, and takes some bizarre stands that align with corporate sponsorship.

At any rate, the author, a microbiologist, took issue with Steve’s statement that religion is a malignant delusion. Apparently Berezow’s main beef is not that it’s a delusion, but Pinker’s claim that it’s a malignant delusion. But he clearly implies in the last sentence that the idea of an afterlife is also wrong (I’m betting Berezow is a believer, but at least, judging by his critical review of Faith Versus Fact in Forbes, he’s a “believer in belief”). Here’s the heart of Berezow’s beef, his rhetorical filet mignon:

The other day, Dr. Pinker made a rare and unfortunate misstep. In a tweet that has been since deleted (but is still available on Facebook!), he claimed that belief in an afterlife is a “malignant delusion” because it “devalues actual lives and discourages action that would make them longer, safer, and happier.” This is total nonsense.

Let’s set aside the debate on whether there is an afterlife or whether any religious beliefs are true. Religious people (who, in general, tend to believe in an afterlife) are happier and more civic-minded than non-religious people. They are also likelier to have better mental health. We appear to be evolutionarily wired for belief in a higher power, so even if religion is a bunch of hogwash and fairy tales, it’s still good for you and for society.

There’s so much more. Research published in the Journal of Medical Ethics shows that “doctors who described themselves as non-religious were more likely than others to report having given continuous deep sedation until death” and “having taken decisions they expected or partly intended to end life.” Yikes. One could easily expect the exact opposite. If a doctor believes in the afterlife, perhaps he wouldn’t be so worried if a patient made the transition sooner rather than later. But, counterintuitively, that’s not what the researchers discovered. It was the non-religious doctors who took actions to end lives.

On second thought, maybe it isn’t quite so counterintuitive. Have you ever noticed how many hospitals are named for Catholic saints? That’s because religious people in general, and Catholics in particular, have an obligation to tend to the sick and dying. During the plagues of antiquity, Christians famously put their own lives on the line in order to care for the stricken.

Simply put, Dr. Pinker’s claims are demonstrably wrong. Let’s hope he comes around to accepting this evidence-based worldview.

Note that Berezow says claims in the plural. That presumably means that religion is not just salubrious, but that there is an afterlife. And if you take an “evidenced based world view on that”, then no, you don’t have to buy heaven or hell.

There is no evidence here save the claim, which can be argued, that religion makes people happier, and makes doctors less likely to sedate people about to die (morphine overdoses and so on).  Whether it’s better to prolong terminal illness or give morphine with the patient’s consent can also be argued, but I’d opt for the latter.  Berezow’s whole argument hinges on religion being salubrious, even if it is wrong.  I’d add, but I must be brief, that you have to take into account not just individual happiness but societal well being, and, as Steve argues convincingly in Better Angels, one of the main impediments to moral progress in the last several centuries has been religion, which is an obstacle not just to scientific advances but to rational thinking about morality. He reprises some of those arguments in his email below, and I’ve argued at length (in Faith Versus Fact, among other places), that true morality as we conceive of it today is not religious morality, but some kind of innate or secular societally-based morality. Plato demolished God as a source of morality (well, piety, really, but it’s the same logic) in his Euthyphro Argument.

And to claim that you should believe in something because it makes you happy and “civic minded” (like American evangelicals?) reminds me of George Bernard Shaw’s quote about the “happiness of credulity”:

“The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality of happiness, and by no means a necessity of life.”

I wrote to Steve asking why he deleted the tweet, that I had no issue with it, and added that I was just inquiring and had no intention of repeating what he said. But after he answered me, he said I was welcome to quote him on this site. So I am. Steve’s words are indented, and the quotes he gives indented further. To his credit, one of the reasons he deleted his tweet was because the article he quoted wasn’t as strong an argument as he liked. But read on for Steve’s whole email response (yes, this is the kind of emails he sends):

From Pinker:

As you can imagine, the tweet triggered a flood of obscene and abusive emails. This would not by itself have led me to take down the tweet, but on re-reading the Washington Post op-ed that I linked to (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/05/20/whats-really-behind-republicans-wanting-swift-reopening-evangelicals/), I realized that the empirical case for attributing resistance to Covid shutdowns to belief in an afterlife was thin — the author cited just one quote from one Evangelical politician. Together with the fact that my tweet-length comment was more provocative than necessary given the space available to explain my views, the lack of data to establish the connection made me reluctant to keep the tweet posted. (With today’s polarization, I don’t think it’s a good idea to piss people off without a strong argument.)

I do strongly suspect that belief in an afterlife encourages a lack of rational concern for societal problems. A similar argument was made in a more recent article in The Spectator https://spectator.us/eschatology-stupid-christianity-coronavirus/ , with a telling quote from Hulk Hogan, though still without data. And we have good reason to think that belief in God’s goodness abets climate change denial — the 2000 Cornwall Declaration on Environmental Stewardship addressed the “so-called climate crisis” and other environmental problems by affirming that “God in His mercy has not abandoned sinful people or the created order but has acted throughout history to restore men and women to fellowship with Him and through their stewardship to enhance the beauty and fertility of the earth.”

We also know from Philip Zuckerman and Gregory Paul’s correlations (and additional ones I conducted for Enlightenment Now) that more religious countries and states do more poorly on just about every indicator of societal well-being, even (in the case of my analysis) holding GDP statistically constant. But in comparisons across political units, many variables are intercorrelated, we could use a good data scientist, statistician, or econometrician to squeeze causation out of the correlation matrix and show that religious belief per se leads to policy complacency. I would bet it does.

In addition to societal inaction, there are, of course, even more malignant implications of belief in an afterlife. As I noted in explaining the death toll of the Crusades and Inquisition in Better Angels:

Institutionalized torture in Christendom was not just an unthinking habit; it had a moral rationale. If you really believe  that failing to accept Jesus as one’s savior  is a ticket to fiery damnation, then torturing  a person until he acknowledges  this truth  is doing him the biggest favor of his life: better a few hours now than an eternity later. And silencing a person before he can corrupt others, or making an example of him to deter the rest,  is a responsible public health measure. Saint Augustine brought the point home with a pair of analogies: a good father prevents his son from picking up a venomous snake, and a good gardener cuts off a rotten branch to save the rest of the tree.[i] The method of choice had been specified by Jesus himself: “If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned” (John 15:6).

Once again, the point of this discussion is not to accuse Christians of endorsing torture and persecution. Of course most devout Christians today are thoroughly tolerant and humane people. Even those who thunder from televised pulpits do not call for burning heretics alive or hoisting Jews on the strappado. The question is why they don’t, given that their beliefs imply that it would serve the greater good. The answer is that people in the West today compartmentalize their religious ideology. When they affirm their faith in houses of worship, they profess beliefs that have barely changed in two thousand years. But when it comes to their actions,  they respect modern norms of nonviolence and toleration, a benevolent hypocrisy for which we should all be grateful.

And then there are the suicide terrorists…

There have been a couple of other replies to my tweet, including one from the conservative blogger and radio host Dennis Prager:

https://www.arcamax.com/politics/fromtheright/dennisprager/s-2366593?fs and the online edition of Newsweek: https://www.newsweek.com/authors/lee-habeeb-0

(I wrote to Prager offering to debate this with him, but have not heard back.)

These articles recycle the usual secular arguments for religious belief: the religious give more to charity, and so on.

I’d add an additional point in response to the secular argument for religiosity, which I noted in Enlightenment Now:

It’s long been known that churchgoers are happier and more charitable than stay-at-homes, but Robert Putnam and his fellow political scientist David Campbell have found that these blessings have nothing to do with beliefs in God, creation, heaven, or hell.[i] An atheist who has been pulled into a congregation by an observant spouse is as charitable as the faithful among the flock, whereas a fervent believer who prays alone is not particularly charitable. At the same time, communality and civic virtue can be fostered by membership in secular service communities such as the Shriners (with their children’s hospitals and burn units), Rotary International (which is helping to end polio), and Lions Club (which combats blindness)—even, according to Putnam and Campbell’s research, a bowling league.

Just as religious institutions deserve praise when they pursue humanistic ends, they should not be shielded from criticism when they obstruct those ends. Examples include the withholding of medical care from sick children in faith-healing sects, the opposition to humane assisted dying, the corruption of science education in schools, the suppression of touchy biomedical research such as on stem cells, and obstruction of lifesaving public health policies such as contraception, condoms, and vaccination against HPV.[ii] Nor should religions be granted a presumption of a higher moral purpose. Faitheists who have hoped that the moralistic fervor of Evangelical Christianity might be channeled into movements for social improvement have repeatedly gotten burned. In the early 2000s, a bipartisan coalition of environmentalists hoped to make common cause with Evangelicals on climate change under rubrics like Creation Care and Faith-Based Environmentalism. But Evangelical churches are an anchor faction of the Republican Party, which adopted a strategy of absolute noncooperation with the Obama administration. Political tribalism carried the day, and the Evangelicals fell into line, opting for radical libertarianism over stewardship of the Creation.[iii]

Similarly, in 2016 there was a brief hope that the Christian virtues of humility, temperance, forgiveness, propriety, chivalry, thrift, and compassion toward the weak would turn Evangelicals against a casino developer who was vainglorious, sybaritic, vindictive, lewd, misogynistic, ostentatiously wealthy, and contemptuous of the people he called “losers.” But no: Donald Trump won the votes of 81 percent of white Evangelical and born-again Christians, a higher proportion than of any other demographic.[iv] In large part he earned their votes by promising to repeal a law which prohibits tax-exempt charities (including churches) from engaging in political activism.[v] Christian virtue was trumped by political muscle.

And from Professor Ceiling Cat: I’d add that a lot has happened since 2016 to support Steve’s argument that evangelical Christians haven’t improved America, and it can be encapsulated in a five-letter name that starts with “T” and ends with “p”. The malignancy of at least extreme Abrahamic faith as a termite in the foundations of American society is obvious.

 

Sad news about Americans: 30% of us see coronavirus as a message from God

May 16, 2020 • 1:00 pm

The survey on which the statistic above was based, as indicated in the Guardian article below, is a pretty reputable source: a collaboration between the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and the University of Chicago Divinity School (the latter was probably appalled by the figure!). Click on the screenshot to read and weep:

 

. . . the findings of the poll. . . . indicate that people may also be searching for deeper meaning in the devastating outbreak.

Even some who don’t affiliate with organized religion, such as Lance Dejesus of Dallastown, Pennsylvania, saw a possible bigger message in the virus.

“It could be a sign, like ‘hey, get your act together’ – I don’t know,” said Dejesus, 52, who said he believes in God but doesn’t consider himself religious. “It just seems like everything was going in an OK direction and all of a sudden you get this coronavirus thing that happens, pops out of nowhere.” [JAC: Isn’t that the way all plagues start? What does that have to do with God?]

The poll found that 31% of Americans who believe in God feel strongly that the virus is a sign telling humanity to change, with the same number feeling that somewhat. Evangelical Protestants are more likely than others to believe that strongly, at 43%, compared with 28% of Catholics and mainline Protestants.

In addition, black Americans were more likely than those of other racial backgrounds to say they feel the virus is a sign God wants humanity to change, regardless of education, income or gender. Forty-seven per cent say they feel that strongly, compared with 37% of Latino and 27% of white Americans.

Yes, we are meaning makers, but this is beyond belief. It’s actually the claim that God has killed over three hundred thousand people to impart a message to us. (Is the message: “be prepared for a pandemic?”) And did God have to kill off so many people to get that message across? Do poor people and blacks need it more than the privileged?  I thought the poor were especially blessed! Were the Italians and Spanish especially in need of correction, while New Zealanders were exemplary? And why wouldn’t God spell out his message more clearly? For example, he could write it in the stars first without killing anyone: “Stop gay marriage NOW or I’ll afflict you with a plague the likes of which you’ve never seen.”

Even 28% of Catholics having that belief is appalling. And these data even more so:

Overall, 82% of Americans say they believe in God, and 26% of Americans say their sense of faith or spirituality has grown stronger as a result of the outbreak. Just 1% say it has weakened.

. . . Fifty-five per cent of American believers say they feel at least somewhat that God will protect them from being infected.

Both of these beliefs are palpable nonsense. Why would your belief in God increase when we have a pandemic whose cause is known? It’s not mysterious like the Black Death was in the fourteenth century . No, we know that it has a natural and predictable cause and spreads through naturalistic mechanisms. If your belief in God increases because he killed hundreds of thousands of people to impart a message whose content isn’t know, you’re hankering after an odious god!

h/t: Barry

Religious exemptions for congregating during the pandemic

April 29, 2020 • 10:30 am

Pew Research has published a map of the U.S., and some other data, showing which states allow religious exemptions from laws prohibiting congregating during the pandemic. Click on the screenshot to go to the article:

 

The map of the exemptions is below, showing that only ten states ban all in-person religious gatherings: Washington, California, Montana, Idaho, Alaska, Minnesota, Illinois, New York, Vermont, and New Jersey. In contrast, 15 states have NO restrictions on size of religious gatherings: Utah, Arizona, Colorado, North Dakota, South Dakota, Texas, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. The other states, shown on the map, have limits of fewer than ten congregants or are limited in other ways:

As the article notes, California, one of the “no religious gathering” states, is being sued by a group of churches—predictably, on the grounds that their First Amendment Rights are being abrogated. Here are some of the “limited gathering” states:

Twenty-two states and the District of Columbia have specified in their orders that religious gatherings can take place, but only if they are limited to 10 people or fewer. This includes Rhode Island, where gatherings are limited to no more than five people. Two additional states, Connecticut and Oregon, limit religious gatherings to 50 and 25 people, respectively. Kentucky, meanwhile, is prohibiting “mass gatherings” – including faith-based ones – but does not specify how many people constitute a mass gathering. (This analysis only examines state-level regulations as of April 24 and does not reflect changes in regulations after this date.)

When you consider the “First Amendment” defense, though, you have to realize that prohibiting gatherings in this situation is different from prohibiting gatherings at other times, for the religious people who congregate then go out into wider society and can infect other people (not to mention their kids, who have no choice). And when religious worship endangers the greater society, then there’s no “right” to have it, especially when you can worship “virtually”.

Nevertheless, some religionists are defying the sanctions, as you’d expect. As The Hill reports, a pastor in Louisiana, who was already under house arrest for holding prohibited gatherings, was rearrested after leaving his home and preaching to his church. I expect this will become more and more common, especially in the hyperreligious South.

Frankly, I’m surprised that 15 states allow unlimited church gatherings given the possible consequences for nonbelievers, or adherents to other faiths, of a further spread of the virus. Most states already prohibit parents from using “faith healing” on seriously ill children, and those are just family members. Allowing people to contract a virus in church and then spread it to their community as a whole could be construed as even less justifiable than using faith-healing on your kids—though I think it should always be a crime to withhold scientific medicine from sick children on religious grounds.

Oh, and it’s not just Christians who violate the orders, either. This happened yesterday in New York:

h/t: Tom

More deaths caused by religion: 12 states exempt religious services from “stay at home” strictures

April 5, 2020 • 11:15 am

The Ohio woman interviewed in the tweet below is insane: she think sthat being “covered in Jesus’s blood” protects her from infection by coronavirus. And she’s not alone: as the CNN report says, 14 (now 12) states are exempting religious gatherings from “stay in place” orders. Then she brags about going to the grocery store, WalMart, and the Home Depot. That means she could easily infect people who aren’t religious, or aren’t of her faith. That’s irresponsible if not immoral. And it should be illegal.

Here’s the CNN article about which states are being idiotic about this, giving religion a pass and putting unevidenced faith above public health. The article, though, names 12 rather than 14 states. (Click on screenshot.)

The list of the Stupid States who do this (the article gives details):

  • Arizona
  • Colorado
  • Delaware
  • Florida
  • Kentucky
  • Michigan
  • New Mexico
  • North Carolina
  • Pennsylvania
  • Texas
  • West Virginia
  • Wisconsin

Now some of these are worse than others: Wisconsin, for instance, allows no more than ten people in the worship space, and they have to adhere to social-distancing requirements. However, most of the rest of the states consider religious services to be “essential activities” and exempt them from any strictures, even saying that they’re protected by the First Amendment.

But they aren’t—not in my view. For these people aren’t just risking their own health and lives by going to services—they’re endangering the entire community, religious or not. These people, after they leave church, will go to grocery stores, pharmacies, and, like the woman above, WaMart and Home Depot. I can’t see any sensible view, or interpretation of the First Amendment, that allows religious services that pose a serious risk to the health of the nation, and, indeed, could lead to the death of those who don’t go to those services.

These crazy exemptions resemble those of the many states (discussed in Faith Versus Fact) that allow exemptions from vaccines if you have religious objections, or those states who go easy on parents who kill their children by using faith healing rather than scientific medicine. In fact, all but five of the 50 U.S. states allow parents to get religious exemptions from vaccinating their children (the enlightened states are Mississippi, California, West Virginia, Maine, and New York).

We know that religious congregating is dangerous; there are plenty of reports of illnesses and deaths of those who congregate to worship their benevolent and powerful god. They could, for the time being, worship remotely. Wouldn’t a benevolent God want them to do that? Nope, he seemingly wants his sheep to go out into the pastures and kill other sheep.

At any rate, if Hitchens were alive he’d have something to say about this. Without his eloquence, I can merely point this out and ask you to pass it on. Or, if you live in one of these states, complain to your representatives.

Ohio House passes bill apparently allowing students to give wrong answers if those answers are based on religious conviction

November 15, 2019 • 10:45 am

Here we go again. It’s fairly normal procedure for evolutionary biologists to tell their creationist students that they don’t have to accept the evolution they’re taught in class, but they must at least regurgitate the correct answers on exams. But the House part of the Ohio state legislature has apparently gone further—they’ve passed a bill mandating that students cannot be penalized (or rewarded) for giving answers on tests or assignments that comport with their religion.

Read this report at Cleveland.com (click on screenshot):

From the site:

The Ohio House sent to the Senate on Wednesday a measure that would prohibit public schools from penalizing students for some work that contains religious beliefs.

Critics have called the bill unnecessary or valuing religion over secularism. One critic said under the bill, if a student turned in homework saying the earth is 10,000 years old – a belief held by some creationists — they couldn’t get docked in their grade. However, the bill’s sponsor said it was more nuanced than that.

House Bill 164 passed the House 61 to 31.

Now I can’t access the bill since the ship won’t let me, but I’m trying to get a copy from someone. In the meantime, you can read it for yourself, and I’ll rely on a summary given by the site. (UPDATE: I’ve now been able to see the bill and have added a few more of its stipulations.)

HB 164, known as the Ohio Student Religious Liberties Act of 2019:

  • Requires public schools to give students the same access to facilities if they want to meet for religious expression as they’d give secular groups.
  • Removes a provision that allows school districts to limit religious expression to lunch periods or other non-instructional times.
  • Allows students to engage in religious expression before, during and after school hours to the same extent as a student in secular activities or expression.
  • Prohibits schools from restricting a student from engaging in religious expression in completion of homework, artwork and other assignments.

It also specifies a daily “moment of silence for all students”: “for prayer, reflection, or meditation upon a moral, philosophical, or patriotic theme”, but adds that no student will be required to participate. But a student who doesn’t remain silent will surely be demonized, so this is bizarre. Its purpose, though, is clear: it’s a Christian ploy to get students to start the school day with a prayer. 

The bill is worrisome because of course the second and fourth parts are clear violations of the First Amendment. None of us have problems with schools giving religious groups the same rights as secular groups, which in fact is required by the First Amendment. Religious expression during instructional times impedes student education, and where there’s a conflict like this between religious wishes and governmental requirements, it’s almost always resolved in favor of the government (religious exemptions for vaccinations, allowed in many states, is an exception). Rendering unto Caesar is standard practice.

The fourth bit—the subject of this post and the Ohio bill—is especially worrisome, because it allows students to give wrong answers if those wrong answers comport with their faith. That, too, is inimical to the public welfare, and to the duty of public education, in the service of religion. While the bill is said to be more “nuanced” than that, I don’t know how, and even the bill’s supporters aren’t sure.

Here’s what that bit says in the bill:

Sec. 3320.03. No school district board of education, governing authority of a community school established under Chapter 3314. of the Revised Code, governing body of a STEM school established under Chapter 3326. of the Revised Code, or board of trustees of a college-preparatory boarding school established under Chapter 3328. of the Revised Code shall prohibit a student from engaging in religious expression in the completion of homework, artwork, or other written or oral assignments. Assignment grades and scores shall be calculated using ordinary academic standards of substance and relevance, including any legitimate pedagogical concerns, and shall not penalize or reward a student based on the religious content of a student’s work.

You can see the ambiguity here. On the one hand the code permits students to use religious expression to do homework or answer test questions, and to do so without penalty (or reward); on the other hand it says that assignments will be graded “using ordinary academic standards of substance and relevance.” That gives no guidelines about what to do when a student says that the Bible says that the Earth is 10,000 years old, or that all animals and plants were created within a day or two because that’s what Genesis says. This is a bill that’s simply begging for a lawsuit.

How do the sponsors justify such a ridiculous incursion in public education—an incursion that, if legal, would presumably apply not just in secondary schools, but in state colleges and universities? Here’s the justification:

Children these days face pressures over drug use, student violence and increasing rates of depression and suicide, said bill sposnor Rep. Timothy Ginter, Youngstown-area Republican.

“We live in a day when our young people are experiencing stress and danger and challenges we never experienced growing up,” he said.

Ginter said he’s convinced that allowing religious self-expression would be positive.

Well, there’s plenty of chance for religious self-expression after school or in church. And there’s no excuse for impeding students’ education by giving them credit for religious answers that are wrong—or failing to tell them that they’re wrong, even if you don’t penalize them. If you want religious answers to be acceptable, have your kids home-schooled—or send them to religious schools.

But would the bill allow students to get credit for wrong answers that buttress their faith? It’s not clear; that might depend on the results of later First-Amendment lawsuits. The Cleveland.com website says this:

ACLU [American Civil Liberties Union] of Ohio Chief Lobbyist Gary Daniels called HB 164 a mixed bag. On the one hand it removes some restrictions on students’ religious rights.

I think Daniels is a bit off the mark here. Those “restrictions on students’ religious rights” are already prohibited by the First Amendment (first and third points above). So what’s new?

Here’s the ambiguous bit:

On the other hand, Daniels said that if a student submitted biology homework saying the earth is 10,000 years old, as some creationists believe, the teacher cannot dock points.

“Under HB 164, the answer is ‘no,’ as this legislation clearly states the instructor ‘shall not penalize or reward a student based on the religious content of a student’s work,” he said.

Well, that’s confusing! If you can neither penalize nor reward students for arguing that, for example, the Earth is 10,000 years old, what can you do? If you give them credit, you’re rewarding them. If you give them no credit, you’re penalizing them.

Amber Epling, a spokeswoman for Ohio House Democrats, said that in an analysis of the bill by the legislature’s nonpartisan staff, “they cannot be rewarded or penalized for the religious content in their assignments.”

She believes the bill could result in teachers accepting assignments that fly in the face of science.

But I think it’s more likely that teachers would avoid this whole issue by not asking questions that could lead to religiously-inspired answers. But that means no evolutionary biology at all, and not many biology teachers want to avoid teaching evolution, even in the American South. To deprive students of this wondrous (and true!) theory by catering to students’ faiths would be to do them a profound disservice. After all, is religion so different from other unsubstantiated faiths like Holocaust denialism? Does Scientology and its crazy claims about Xenu and thetans get “respected” too? That way lies madness.

And here’s some more madness. Sponsor Gintis says that the bill’s “nuances” prohibit students from getting credit for wrong but religiously-inspired answers, but then undermines what he said by asserting that Moses was a historical figure and you could get credit for writing about Moses as if he existed.

But Ginter, the bill’s sponsor, said that the student would get a lesser grade in a biology class for an evolution assignment. Even if the student doesn’t believe in evolutionary theory, the student must turn in work that accurately reflects what is taught.

“It will be graded using ordinary academic standards of using substance and relevance,” he said.

However, if students were assigned a report based on historic figures, they could turn in a paper on a historical figure, such as Moses or Mohammed, Ginter said.

What, exactly, is the extra-Biblical evidence for the historical existence of Moses? It’s exactly as thin as extra-Biblical evidence for the historical evidence for a Jesus figure—i.e., NO evidence.

If you’re an Ohio resident, please read the bill and then, if you object (and I’m guessing you will), write to your state senator and your governor. Though the bill has already passed the state House by a 2/3 majority, it must still pass the state Senate and then be signed into law by Governor Mike DeWine.

h/t: Woody, Fred, Kit