How not to tell your parents you are about to skydive

December 18, 2015 • 3:00 pm

by Matthew Cobb

A young Irishman called Roger Ryan is travelling the world, and is currently in Australia. He has been keeping his parents up to date with his progress via Skype, and in this recording he’s chatting to them from what they think is a bus. It was in fact a plane and he was about to jump out. Cue horror, hilarity and NSFW obscenities:

h/t The Guardian.

Twelve days of evolution. #2: Is evolution random?

December 18, 2015 • 2:15 pm

We continue with the PBS/”It’s ok to be smart” collaboration that’s produced twelve videos on evolution for the holiday season. Here’s #2: “Is evolution random?”

It’s better than yesterday’s video on what evolution is, but of course the petulant PCC(E) has two beefs—though they’re trivial. First, the DNA sequence of an organism isn’t really like a blueprint. For with a blueprint you can take the finished house and reverse-engineer the instructions (the blueprint); but you can’t reverse-engineer (reconstruct) the DNA sequence of an organism from its phenotype. Rather, as Richard Dawkins has pointed out, the DNA is more like a “recipe”: you can’t reconstruct a recipe from tasting or looking at a cake but the recipe does give the instructions for making a cake.

Further, I would have liked a brief definition of “random.” My colleague Paul Sniegowski prefers to use the word “indifferent mutations” rather than “random mutations”, as it’s more precise. That is, mutations occur as if they were indifferent to their effect on the phenotype: they’re not more likely to occur when they’d increase fitness. “Random” is a bit less precise because in some senses mutations aren’t “random”: some genes are more likely to mutate than others, and some sites in the DNA are more likely to change than others.

All told, though, this clip is pretty good.

I have to say, though, that I find it annoying that nearly a quarter of the video is occupied by a blurb for the sponsor, Dropbox.

Yale students sign petition to repeal First Amendment

December 18, 2015 • 1:30 pm

Yes, this is from Fox News, but are you going to reject it because of that? Comedian Ami Horowitz went onto the Yale Campus with a petition asking for the repeal of the First Amendment (you can see how he sells that: it allows people to be insulted, to experience microagressions, and so on), and he collected 50 signatures in less than an hour. I find that scary. Click on the screenshot to see the short video (the faces of signatories have been blurred to protect the ignorant):

Screen Shot 2015-12-18 at 12.21.43 PM

If you’ve forgotten precisely what it says, here it is:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

h/t: Ken Phelps

 

Religion schools get government waiver from discriminating against LGBT students, and still get government money

December 18, 2015 • 12:30 pm

It’s one thing for private clubs and schools to be allowed to discriminate if they are purely private, getting no funds from the taxpayer nor catering to interstate commerce. It’s another thing entirely for government-funded organizations to be allowed to legally discriminate against people on the basis of religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or gender. Such behavior may be legal (see below), but it’s immoral, and should be stopped.  And now the Obama administration is handing out permissions to discriminate to colleges funded by the government. (Earlier administrations gave government money to religious schools, but that was illegal, too, though not deemed so by the courts; and we’re talking Democrats here.)

Title IX, part of an education bill passed in 1972, prohibits gender discrimination in any institution receiving funds from the US government. It’s been successfully used to promote women’s sports, but also women’s participation in educational activities, clubs, organizations, and the like. It would seem to prohibit discrimination against LGBT students as well, given that it states this:

No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.

However, the law also has an built-in exemption: if the organization is a religious one, it need not obey Title IX when gender equality “conflicts with the religious tenets” of that organization.

And, according to the Washington Post, schools are lining up for exemptions—exemptions allowed while the colleges are still getting taxpayer dosh:

Dozens of religious colleges have sought exemptions in recent years from federal prohibitions against discrimination on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation, saying the waivers are needed to protect school policies consistent with their faith, according to a new report.

The government has granted more than 30 of these requests since 2013 [out of 56 requested], the Human Rights Campaign said in a report released Friday. The schools that obtained religious waivers from the anti-discrimination law known as Title IX ranged from Baptist-affiliated Anderson University in South Carolina to Quaker-affiliated George Fox University in Oregon.

Here are the schools that have gotten exemptions on the basis of sexual orientation (I presume this means whether or not you’re gay):

  • Anderson University of South Carolina
  • Baptist College of Florida
  • Bethel College of Indiana
  • Blue Mountain College of Mississippi
  • Charleston Southern University of South Carolina
  • Covenant College of Georgia
  • East Texas Baptist University of Texas
  • Hannibal-LaGrange University of Missouri
  • Howard Payne University of Texas
  • Judson College of Alabama
  • Louisiana College
  • Mississippi College
  • North Greenville University of South Carolina
  • Oklahoma Baptist University
  • Oklahoma Christian University
  • Southwest Baptist University of Missouri
  • Spring Arbor University of Michigan
  • Toccoa Falls College of Georgia
  • Union University of Tennessee
  • University of Mary Hardin-Baylor of Texas
  • University of Mobile in Alabama
  • University of the Cumberlands in Kentucky
  • Williams Baptist College in Arkansas

And here are the schools granted exemptions on the basis of gender identity (I presume this means whether you identify as a gender different from your “biological” sex. The schools listed above are included along with these:

  • Belmont Abbey College of North Carolina
  • Franciscan University of Steubenville in Ohio
  • Fresno Pacific University of California
  • George Fox University of Oregon
  • Northwest Nazarene University of Idaho
  • Oklahoma Wesleyan University
  • Simpson University of California
  • Southern Wesleyan University of South Carolina
  • St. Gregory University of Oklahoma
  • Tabor College of Kansas

What kind of exemptions are granted? Pretty much the ability to not respect someone’s sexual orientation or self-assigned gender identity. Here’s one statement by a religious school:

“We do not … support or affirm the resolution of tension between one’s biological sex and the experience of gender by the adoption of a psychological identity discordant with one’s birth sex, nor attempts to change one’s birth sex by surgical intervention, nor conduct or dress consistent with an identity other than one’s biological birth sex,” Belmont Abbey President William K. Thierfelder wrote on Jan. 16. “We will make institutional decisions in light of this policy regarding housing, student admission and retention, appropriate conduct, employment, hiring and retention, and other matters.”

A transgender male at George Fox University (a Quaker school!) was denied a request to live with his friends (the person was considered female by the school), with the president noting, ““We also separate the value of each person from the behavioral choices one makes.” As if such things were a choice! But of course that’s what the faithful believe. I would have thought the Quakers were more empathic than that.

This is insupportable, especially because many schools that have these exemptions don’t publicize them. Yes, a private religious school can discriminate all it wants, but once it receives government funding, that discrimination is off the table—whether by sex, sexual orientation, or gender identity.  The government should not be funding any such discrimination, which is clearly a violation of the First Amendment. And remember, it’s the Obama Administration that’s granting these exemptions!

By all means let a school protect its silly faith-based discrimination, but it has no right to take my money to do so. These exemptions should be ended now.

 

Mother Teresa gets her second miracle, now on the fast track to sainthood

December 18, 2015 • 11:30 am

The Big News this morning is that Pope Francis has, miraculously, come across another miracle performed by Mother Teresa—or rather by her spirit. This gives her the second miracle she needs to go beyond beatification to full canonization, becoming Saint Teresa. The Vatican clearly put the old fraud on the fast-track to sainthood ever since she died, and now they get their chance. In the old days, it took decades or centuries from candidacy to canonization, but now, trying to court popular sentiment, the Vatican has accelerated the process.

But remember that even Mother Teresa’s first miracle was totally bogus. As I wrote in Faith Versus Fact:

The Vatican itself, which requires a miracle to beatify someone, and two miracles to make them a saint, is none too scrupulous about the medical evidence needed to elevate someone to the pantheon. The beatification of Mother Teresa, for instance, was the supposed disappearance of ovarian cancer in Monica Besra, an Indian woman who reported she was cured after looking at a picture of the nun. It turns out, though, that her tumor wasn’t cancerous but tubercular, and, more important, she’d received conventional medical treatment in a hospital, with her doctor (who wasn’t interviewed by the Vatican) taking credit for the cure.

(See also the objections of Indian rationalists to this “evidence.”)

Now, just in time for Christmas, the Pope has recognized a second miracle. The BBC reports:

Pope Francis has recognised a second miracle attributed to Mother Teresa, clearing the way for the Roman Catholic nun to be made a saint next year.

The miracle involved the healing of a Brazilian man with several brain tumours in 2008, the Vatican said.

Mother Teresa died in 1997 and was beatified – the first step towards sainthood – in 2003.

. . . “The Holy Father has authorised the Congregation for the Causes of Saints to proclaim the decree concerning the miracle attributed to the intercession of blessed Mother Teresa,” the Vatican said on Friday.

She is expected to be canonised in Rome in September.

. . . There are few details about the recovery of the Brazilian man, whose life the Vatican says was saved in the second miracle.

His identity has not been disclosed to maintain the discretion needed for the investigation, the Catholic New Agency has said.

It says he was unexpectedly cured from brain tumours in 2008 after his priest prayed for Mother Teresa’s intervention with God.

Well, before Agnes Bojaxhiu can be elevated to the Heavenly Pantheon, she has to be vetted, including examination by the genuine “Devil’s Advocate,” who militates against making her a saint. It was Christopher Hitchens who did that when Bojaxhiu was up for beatification, as described in this article.

But the procedure is not an objective examination of the miracles and saint-worthiness of Mother Teresa; it’s a pure put-up job. We can see that because the Vatican already says she’ll be a saint within a year. I wouldn’t bet against that!

The Church is none too scrupulous about these “miracles,” of course. They decide in advance that someone will become a saint, like the popular John Paul II, and then, if you look hard enough, you’ll find people willing to come forward to provide the requisite two “miracles.” It’s not even close to an objective, scientific procedure.

Even if there were no natural explanation for these “miracles,” usually involving the disappearance of a disease, isn’t it odd that those diseases happen to be the ones that can show spontaneous remission anyway? Nobody gets canonized for helping legs or eyes grow back. And in the case of Mother Teresa’s first miracle, the “remission” occurred after medical treatment, and the disease was misdiagnosed anyway.

Catholics should be ashamed of themselves for buying into this bogus vetting of saints. For, after all, this is not just an earthly honor, for sainthood is not supposed to be bestowed on an individual by the Church, but recognized as a special sign of holiness and God’s favor. And once you’re a saint, you have special access to God, and therefore praying to saints gives one a hotline to the divine.

What a foolish idea, and one made more foolish by the purely subjective decision that it takes at least two miracles to confer—excuse me, recognize—sainthood, and by the arbitrary and tendentious way these miracles are recognized.

mother-teresa-cat

h/t: Matthew Cobb

Props from FEMEN

December 18, 2015 • 10:30 am

Inna Shevchenko, head of the feminist and anti-theocratic organization FEMEN, was profiled in Paris Match in the article below. She adds on her Facebook page, “In french Paris Match magazine (hidden propaganda of Jerry Coyne book :)”

Translation of the headline by Francophone Matthew Cobb: “Yes, I am the leader – I don’t believe in anarchy!”

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Fire! Fire!: A new attack on free speech

December 18, 2015 • 9:15 am

by Grania Spingies

Jerry called my attention to an article written in Slate by Eric Posner, professor at the University of Chicago Law School: “ISIS Gives Us No Choice but to Consider Limits on Speech“. Posner argues that in light of the recent trend of disaffected and naive youths enticed into joining ISIS, criminal sanctions should be applied to those trying to access websites with pro-ISIS content.

As disturbing and tragic as these stories are, it isn’t quite the tsunami of defection that some media outlets and Donald Trump would have you believe.  The biggest estimates put it at around 250 Americans (out of 318.9 million, which comes to 0.0000783% ) and 430-440 British (out of 64.1 million). Even at double those figures, the number of people leaving to become jihadis in Syria is infinitesimally small.

Nevertheless, Professor Posner suggests that there should be this:

a law that makes it a crime to access websites that glorify, express support for, or provide encouragement for ISIS or support recruitment by ISIS; to distribute links to those websites or videos, images, or text taken from those websites. [My emphasis.]

I’m neither an American citizen nor a lawyer (and I don’t even watch pretend-lawyers on TV), but it seems to me that Posner’s is a deeply unconstitutional and illiberal suggestion.

One of the paragraphs  that leapt out at me was one in which he argues that protections could be allowed for “legitimate” interest:

One worry about such a law is that it would discourage legitimate ISIS-related research by journalists, academics, private security agencies, and the like. But the law could contain broad exemptions for people who can show that they have a legitimate interest in viewing ISIS websites. Press credentials, a track record of legitimate public commentary on blogs and elsewhere, academic affiliations, employment in a security agency, and the like would serve as adequate proof.

But that doesn’t really reassure me much: it doesn’t give much protection to the average human being whether they be Joe Citizen, let alone Jamilla Immigrant who may just be rubber-necking, taking a look out of curiosity and horrified fascination. The average person does not have press credentials or employment in a security agency; and I’m not even sure what a track record of legitimate public commentary would look like. But that lack doesn’t make a convincing case for making criminals of ordinary people looking up websites out of curiosity—even websites run by appalling human beings. ISIS is almost universally loathed and condemned. Why would it be necessary for a liberal society, in which support for such a group is statistically non-existent, to threaten and criminalise its own people for looking at the “wrong” things, or reading the “wrong” kind of website?

I’m not trying to argue that one could find anything useful or even educational on such websites. But there doesn’t have to be. That absence does not provide much support for the Ban It! team’s claim that it should be considered criminal  for someone with an internet connection to look at such material, let alone how banning it would be of benefit society. I can, however, think of how it could be harmful to society to allow government agencies to start threatening private individuals for reading the wrong sort of stuff.

Interestingly, Donald Trump agrees with Posner. That alone should give us pause.

A few years ago, Christopher Hitchens participated in a rousing debate in Canada on the subject of state censorship. It’s a short speech I find myself returning to again and again over the years whenever someone suggests that it would be better for everyone if the publication of certain things were banned and if people were not permitted to access to certain images, texts or ideas:

“Every time you silence somebody you make yourself a prisoner of your own action because you deny yourself the right to hear something.”

“Who’s going to decide…. or to determine in advance what the harmful consequences are going to be that we know enough about in advance to prevent? To whom would you give this job? To whom are you going to award the task of being the censor?”

The point here is not that there might be anything salubrious on pro-ISIS websites. It is surely quite the reverse. But what better way of proving it than letting people see the horror for themselves if they so choose?

Hitchens’s full speech here: (do yourself a favor and watch it; it’s a classic of rhetoric and eloquence):

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Recommended reading: Ken White (criminal defense lawyer and blogger at Popehat): “Three Generations of a Hackneyed Apologia for Censorship Are Enough“, a very worthwhile examination on the limits of free speech, the relevant U.S case law on the subject and why quoting Judge Oliver Wendell Holmes on the “shouting fire in a theater” analogy is not a smart choice. [JAC: I’ve just read this and it’s an excellent piece, well worth the time invested.]

Postscript: I see that Ken White has also read Posner’s article and has written about it, rather more colorfully and comprehensively than I. Do give it a read as well.