Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
You’d think, wouldn’t you, that the inventor of the roll would know which way it should be oriented. But to me, the decisive argument is that cats prefer unrolling toilet paper oriented in this way.
As if the “Angry Cat Man” tees shirt wasn’t enough, reader Pliny the in Between has designed another shirt—this time an anti-accommodationist one. He/she should really sell these!
On my recent post, “Is there a ‘meaning to life’ for nonbelievers“?, there was some good discussion, but a goddie tried to interpolate him/herself into the discussion in response to the comments.
The things I enjoy make my life meaningful to me. There is nothing else as far as I can see.
I fail to see how abasing one’s self before some overlord provides a “better” “meaning” to one’s life than the things you mentioned.
Maybe their meaning is: If I do these various rituals and abstain from X, Y, and Z, then I get to live forever after I die — and that’s the purpose in my life.
The odious Rick Warren gives the game away in the Title of his most famous book. They find a purpose in their life by boot licking their god. (“I found my Special Purpose!!!!” and “The new phone books are here!”)
And then the goddie, reader “ajmgw,” attempted to post this response, which I’m putting above the fold:
The question of meaning is valid, but must be understood in a different way. How can meaning come from a mindless process, no guidance just time and chance? In that kind of a world an atheist cannot give a justification for a difference between good and evil. If we are simply pond scum, the result of mindless processes over millions and billions of years, who decides what is right and wrong? The atheist cannot explain the existence of mind and morality. In order to do so they unwittingly must borrow from the Christian Worldview. As Greg Bahnsen said, “Like a petulant child they sit on their father’s lap and they reach up and slap his face.” According to the atheistic worldview, right and wrong are the results of chemical processes in our brains, a by product of survival of the fittest inherited from our common ape-like ancestors. In that case one doesn’t even have free will, but the chemical processes are in control.
The response encapsulates basically every misconception about atheists and morality that exists. If you want to discuss what this reader said, go ahead; I’ve informed him/her that the responses will be on this page and in the comments, and I’ll allow him/her to address the comments if the person has something substantive to say.
But note that the commenter makes a sharp a distinction between “free will” and “chemical processes.” Ajmgw is clearly one of those who has a dualistic notion of free will. Maybe the compatibilist readers can educate the commenter on how that form of free will is simply wrong, and the REAL kind of free will—the one we want, the one worth having—is perfectly compatible with a morality reflecting chemical (and evolutionary) processes.
We’re pond scum! I prefer to think of us as Joni Mitchell described it in Woodstock:
We are stardust, we are golden
We are billion year old carbon
And we got to get ourselves back to the garden.
Of course stardust doesn’t give us morality, either. . .
At the end of August, 2015, I wrote a longish post (see also here) about the Freedom from Religion Foundation’s (FFRF’s) “Pray to Play” report, detailing the incursion of religion into 18 public universities via the establishment of “football chaplains.” These chaplains, 100% of whom are Christian, are hired to pray with the players and get them to play hard for Jesus. They’re also either paid by universities or get perks like game tickets or free travel. This is, of course, a violation of the First Amendment prohibiting excessive entanglement of government—of which public universities are representatives—and religion.
The pdf of the FFRF report is here, the two-page executive summary is here, and the press release is here.
In my earlier post, I showed two videos of the University of South Carolina’s football chaplain, Adrian Dupres, proselytizing—complete with uniformed football players—at a local church. Among the stuff he said was a vigorous defense of Biblical creationism. It’s pretty scary if you’re a secularist. Also, at the time, I wrote this:
Now I wonder if the Department of Biological Sciences at USC knows that their official football chaplain is preaching creationism at church, and probably also to his players as well. Perhaps I’ll let them know.
And I did let them know. I wrote to the chairman of Biology at USC and several faculty. I got the expected response: the department would probably discuss the issue at a faculty meeting. I never heard back beyond that, and I doubt that Biology could strongly affect what happens with the USC “Gamecocks” football team. After all, football is a big deal in universities like USC; biology, not so much.
Now, however, I’m gratified to report that the FFRF, at least, had an effect. According to The State, the local Columbia, South Carolina Newspaper, chaplain Despres has been fired:
South Carolina’s football team has parted ways with longtime team chaplain Adrian Despres.
“Adrian was not retained because Coach Muschamp’s philosophy is to have not just one voice, but multiple voices available to assist with the spiritual development of the student-athletes,” USC athletics spokesman Steve Fink said.
Coach Will Muschamp had spoken publicly about the move at a Rotary Club meeting in March. While discussing his faith, Muschamp said he prefers a multi-person approach.
“There’s no question being a Christian is very important to me,” Muschamp told the group. “That’s not something I push on our players. It’s something I make readily available for our players. We don’t have a team pastor. We have a group of people who will come talk to our players at different times. When you narrow things down with one person and they get sideways with a player or two or three or there’s a portion of the team, I think it creates a little bit of an issue.”
Well, the claims that there’s no “team pastor”, and no compulsory praying, look a bit disingenuous in light of the FFRF’s report, which shows these facts about the Gamecocks:
Despres bragged that “100%” of players attend “voluntary” chapel.
At South Carolina, Chaplain Adrian Despres is paid $4,500 for his “services”. Since 2010, he has been paid a total of $18,000.
Despres’s official duties included: “Speak to Football Recruits and Families on Official and Unofficial Visits about Character Coach Program at South Carolina.”
During the team meetings, Despres preached “a series called ‘Christian Man Laws’ this year [about] how Christian men should man up and stop being sissies for Christ.”
Despres preached religious doctrines that conflict with scientific facts the university teaches to biology students, such as evolution. During that same sermon, Despres claimed to have debated—and despite an in-depth search, no such debates seem available—“some of the top evolutionists in the country on creation versus evolution and I’ve never, by God’s grace, I’ve never lost.”
Well, that’s two down (Virginia Tech stopped using team chaplains in light of the FFRF’s report) and 16 to go. It’s a never-ending battle to keep church and state apart in this land: a whack-a-mole type of endeavor.
Thanks to the FFRF, and to staff attorney Andrew Seidel, for their efforts in this area, and for letting me know the results.
Ex football chaplain Despres: no sissy for Christ!
A reader sent me this recently-published YouTube video titled, “Frog saves fishes life.” (It’s in Spanish, but you can see what’s going on.) The reader asked a reasonable question: why would a frog do this for fish, since they’re unrelated, unless it wanted to eat the fish later?
Well, as you can see, they’re not fish. What is going on here is that these are likely the frog’s own offspring, so we have not a demonstration of enigmatic inter-species altruism, but simply kin selection. And even if only a few of the many tadpoles (not fish!) are the frog’s progeny, it still benefits its own genes to dig that trench:
According to The Daily Beast, some American Protestant Churches are refusing to hire individuals who were sexually abused as children. The rationale is that such individuals are likely to become abusers themselves. But the real rationale is that insurance companies are reducing the amount they’ll indemnify churches for sexual abuse, so churches have to protect their own interests—and pocketbooks.
“Have you ever been physically or sexually abused as a child?” is one of the questions on the Urbana, Illinois, church’s job application. “If yes, when, where, and what were the circumstances?”
The questions are shocking, but not rare for Protestant churches and religious organizations across the United States. These groups want to know the personal histories of prospective employees in an attempt to protect themselves against liability for potential sex-abuse scandals based on the false belief that victims of sex abuse as children are destined to become abusers as adults.
Hundreds of churches, including The National Community Church (PDF) in Washington, D.C., the Shalom Mennonite Fellowship in Arizona, Nazarene Churches (PDF) in Ohio, and Church on the Rock (PDF) in Missouri all ask applicants some variation on: “Were you a victim of abuse or molestation while a minor?”
Even potential janitors at Trinity Preschool in Texas are asked this question (PDF).
The Faith Assembly of God in New York mentions that, “answering yes, or leaving the question unanswered, may not automatically disqualify an applicant for youth or children’s work.”
The first question you should ask is, “Is this legal?” Well, in America the answer is “yes,” thanks to the exemption churches get from nondiscrimination laws:
“Under the ministerial exemption, religious institutions are allowed to violate employment-discrimination law when hiring and firing their ministers,” said Greg Lipper, a lawyer for Americans United for Separation of Church and State. “Not everyone who works for a church is a minister, but the exception applies to employees with significant religious responsibilities, including clergy and religious-school teachers.” So asking the janitor about their past abuse might be prohibited, but asking the Sunday School teacher is fair game.
The second question is this: “What’s the evidence that those who are sexually abused as children become abusers themselves?” And here the data are scanty. The first paragraph below refers to a sample church employment application, including a question about childhood sexual abuse, produced by Richard Hammar, editor of Christianity Today’s Church Law and Tax Review. The Alaska case involved a court finding a church culpable for a case of child molestation because it didn’t ask the employee whether she had experienced sexual abuse as a child:
By 1998, Hammar’s questionnaire was included in sample volunteer application forms (PDF) made by Lifeway Christian Stores, a major Baptist bookstore chain. That year, Lifeway’s representative for its Bible studies division told the Baptist Press: “All people who have been abused do not become child abusers, but almost all child abusers have been abused themselves.”
This is not true, though. As a 2001 study in the British Journal of Psychiatry found, “The data supports the notion of a victim-to-victimiser cycle in a minority of male perpetrators, but not among the female victims studied.”
And according to the author of the 1989 study cited by the Alaska Supreme Court, justices and churches are misusing her work.
“That is a very old paper and based upon a clinical sample that came to our program at the University of Michigan and all were intrafamilial sexual-abuse cases,” Professor Kathleen Faller told The Daily Beast. “Therefore, the sample is not relevant to clergy cases. [JAC: Well, it might be; only further study could show that.]
“Moreover, since most offenders are men and most victims are women, the hypothesis that a major contributing factor to sex offending is a history of sexual abuse does not make sense.”
I’m not quite sure what Faller is getting at in the last sentence, since the 2001 study showed that there is a relationship between males being sexually abused as children and their own propensity to abuse. Perhaps the study dealt only with males abusing male victims, but that’s not clear. Dismissing the data as irrelevant seems premature.
What’s driving all this, of course, is largely money: if you’re going to be sued because you didn’t ask the questions, you’re going to ask them in the future. And if there were a strong correlation between having been abused and the likelihood of becoming an abuser, perhaps that’s a relevant factor.
But against this weigh four factors. First, it’s a severe invasion of privacy to ask somebody a question about whether they were sexually abused, and surely most people who were would want to disclose that only to confidantes or law enforcement.
Second, if you’re a pedophile, you’re not going to answer the question honestly, especially if you know why it’s being asked.
Third, the notion that this is all driven by insurance liability rather than protecting children sticks in my craw. It’s the wrong motivation.
Finally, only churches are allowed to ask this question—for people with “religious tasks”. Why does the need to ask the question outweigh the right to privacy—but only for those with religious jobs? Why can churches re-traumatize victims but schools can’t? After all, there’s plenty of sexual abuse of minors in schools as well. Here we once again see the unwarranted privilege given to religion in America.
In the end, the religious-privilege argument tips the balance for me against asking about abuse. If childhood sexual abuse does say something important about your likelihood of becoming an abuser—and we’d need better data on that—there’s no reason why such considerations should apply only to churches. If such questions are considered “employment discrimination” in secular positions, no matter what the data show, then that should apply to churches as well. Despite the child-abuse scandals of both Catholic and Protestant churches, if the courts have already decided that invasion of privacy outweighs the risks of abuse, then that should hold regardless of whether an organization is religious.
Today we have some lovely bird photos by reader Colin Franks (photography site here, Facebook page here, Instagram page here). Be sure to send in your good wildlife photos; we’re running a bit low.
It’s April 19, and on this day in 1770, Captain Cook espied the eastern coast of Australia. In the U.S. the Revolutionary War began on this day with the battles of Lexington and Conrcord in Massachusetts (1775). In 1943, the revolt of the Warsaw Ghetto began, and in 1971, Charles Manson was sentenced to death for his two murder sprees. Later commuted to life in prison, Manson’s now 81 and will die in his cell in California. On this day in 2013, one of the Tsarnaev brothers was killed and the other captured; both had participated in the bombing at the Boston Marathon.
Notables born on this day include Jayne Mansfield (1933), the execrable Stanley Fish (1938), and Ashley Judd (1968). Those who died include Lord Byron (1824), CHARLES DARWIN (1882), Pierre Curie (1906), John Maynard Smith (2004), and Levon Helm (2012).
Meanwhile in Dobrazyn, Hili is NOT minding her manners:
Malgorzata: A well brought up cat doesn’t eat straight from the can!
Hili: But nobody is looking.
In Polish:
Małgorzata: Hili, dobrze wychowany kot nie je prosto z puszki!
Hili: Przecież nikt nie widzi.
And in nearby Wroclawek, Leon seems to be off his leash:
Leon: I’m checking if it will rain tomorrow.
Finally, Matthew Cobb called my attention to an article in yesterday’s Evening Standardreporting that a fox boarded a double-decker bus in London, climbed to the top deck, and then dismounted at the Imperial War Museum. Of course it appeared on Twi**er:
That stuff about urban foxes adapting to city life is clearly nonsense. This one didn't even have his Oyster card. pic.twitter.com/Vb41rMvkal
“When we pulled up at the back of the Imperial War Museum, the driver came on the tannoy and said ‘OK guys, it looks like we’ve got a fox on the bus. We’re just going to wait here a while and try to coax him off’.
“As soon as the doors opened, the fox trotted down the stairs and hopped out onto the pavement.
“It may not have had an Oyster card, but it left a liquid offering on the top step, so I guess it can’t have been quite as cool as it seemed.”
