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.
It’s Hump Day, and one day till the World Cup starts. But things are still tense in Dobrzyn, for the Feline Princess is being harassed:
Hili: What does he mean by wagging his tail?
A: He is maintaining that his intentions are friendly.
Hili: Tell him to keep his paws to himself.
Hili: Co on ma na myśli merdając tym ogonem?
Ja: Twierdzi, że ma przyjazne zamiary.
Hili: Powiedz mu, żeby trzymał łapy przy sobie.
The World Cup starts in two days! If you’ve either been in Mongolia or are an American, you might not know that it’s being played in Brazil, and that the first match is between Brazil and Croatia on Thursday. I don’t know how I’ll be able to watch it (though I fully intend to) and revise my book at the same time, but perhaps Ceiling Cat will give me both the leisure and the fortitude.
It seems like only yesterday that I was watching the last Cup. Now, as then, some foreign and football-crazed graduate students will install a full-screen display in the seminar room downstairs, and we’ll be able to relax in comfort, watching two matches per day.
I’m rooting for Brazil. How can you not? They’re the home team, they failed to win the World Cup in the last tournament played in their country (1950, when they lost 2-1 to Uruguay), and the country is in a state of malaise (see yesterday’s New York Times article on the team and the nation). Their lackluster performance against Serbia in a warm-up match last Friday (Brazil won 1-0) has also dampened expectations.
Here’s the official FIFA video previewing Brazil’s team and football history before the tournament begins:
And here are 32 trick shots by comic Rémi Gaillard, each one conducted wearing a different jersey from the participating teams. Given that Gaillard is a comedian, I wonder if he really is this talented, or that somehow these are faked (I don’t know how). The YouTube caption:
To celebrate the 2014 FIFA World Cup, Rémi wears all the finalists official football jerseys whilst executing 32 incredible trick shots.
Finally, reader Marella reports some football madness in Australia, as reported in the Herald Sun’s piece, “Outrage over giant Jesus air-balloon floating over Melbourne.” Marella notes:
This made me laugh! The Sportsbet people have floated a giant inflatable Jesus over Melbourne to advertise the World Cup. The gist being that it would take Divine intervention for Australia to get anywhere since we got the worst possible draw in the current competition. The religious of course are not too happy about it, but I think it’s more offensive to our poor soccer players,for it’s hardly a vote of confidence is it?
I wonder if Russell Blackford can see this from his house:
Go Verde-Amarela!
by Grania Spingies
Some days ago, Jerry published a piece on the Pope’s importuning of married couples to reproduce rather than acquiring pets. The word that I noticed more than anything else was “married,” although I suspect that many didn’t even see it, so irrelevant and archaic now is the concept of legitimate births. As an ex-Catholic, I do notice these things. The Catholic Church has very clear definitions of what constitutes an illegitimate child, and there were very serious consequences for those who found themselves in this category.
One harrowing example has made headlines since The Irish Mail on Sunday featured the findings of historian Catherine Corless. While researching the former Mother and Baby Home, Corless discovered the death certificates of almost 800 babies. But the story goes back much further—to 1975, when boys playing in a field found a lot of skeletons in what has been described as an abandoned septic tank. Virtually nothing was done at the time other than a local priest saying Mass at the site. The story has only now gained attention because of a fund-raising effort by locals wanting to build a memorial to the dead children.
The death certificates show that the children died of malnutrition and disease. Government records going back to the 1930s show that it was an acknowledged fact that “illegitimate” children had an abnormally high death rate: up to five times higher than their “legitimate” counterparts. However, this was not unique to the Tuam Home in Galway. Historian Dr Lindsey Earner-Byrne notes that even in the 1930s the death rates in these sorts of Homes was “undesirably high”.
Women and children who found themselves in these homes were literally at the mercy of their guardians, utterly powerless to free themselves even though most of them were guilty of no crime at all. Not even the pleas of their families could procure their freedom:
Unless a woman who had been handed over to such an institution had access to substantial money, she could expect to be made to work for two to three years as a wet-nurse and laborer, partly to repay the supposed debt of their “keep”, and partly as a punishment for the offense of being pregnant outside of marriage. In a great many cases, mothers were forced to sign their babies over for adoption.
The Limerick City Library Local Studies Team have put together an archive of newspaper clippings which documents that the government of the day was very much in league with the religious orders in setting up, funding and running of these places. The clippings need to read to be believed. The chief concern appears always to be money, followed by concerns about morality. Is £26 too much to pay for the upkeep of a baby per year? How could decent married women share a hospital ward with shameless fallen women who gave birth out of wedlock? How cheaply can we buy those coffins?
And of course, there were worries about what to do with these women afterwards.
The point is that society knew, and to an extent condoned and supported, these Homes. They did this because they believed that sex outside of marriage was a sin and that children born outside of marriage were the product of sin, tarnished by the transgressions of their parents. In spite of the constant wrangling about adequately financing the Homes, children died from malnutrition and disease in numbers far exceeding statistics for those outside these institutions. And apparently, nobody cared very much.
But, as writer Donal O’Keeffe points out, even by the standard of the times the ill-treatment of children in Irish institutions was shocking to some people. Father Flanagan, the founder of Boys Town, publicly spoke of the homes as disgraceful. The then Irish Minister for Justice utterly dismissed Flanagan’s comments as exaggerated and unimportant. With such prominent public authorities showing complete indifference to the plight of those suffering under this regime, it is no surprise that nothing was done about the abuses and neglect that ran rampant in Homes and Workhouses run by various religious orders.
If possible, listen to this interview with a survivor of one of these homes. It’s heart-breaking to hear, but nothing we feel can come close to the mental torture this brave woman endured.
If there is any good news that can be derived from this story, it’s that the Irish government has now asked for a full investigation of Tuam’s Mother and Baby Home and others institutions like it. This is essential, if for no other reason than to affirm the dignity of those who survived those places, and to keep alive their memory as a way of ensuring that Catholic morality never again can sanction such behavior, or the forced and illegal adoptions, alleged non-voluntary medical experimentation, and trauma associated with such places.
One question must be asked. How could a supposedly civilize society condone such vilification and abuse of children and unmarried mothers, allowing it to go unquestioned? I am not sure I have the answer, but I am pretty sure it begins with a religion teaching that only children born within a marriage are legitimate, and that sex outside of marriage is a sin.
This came from reddit via reader Amy, who noted the Reddit caption:
“Attention: When taking pictures in a cave, use the flash at your own risk”
Risk? It’s beautiful, like a galaxy of ocular stars.
I must have demons on the brain today. Reader Miss May sent me this picture, and I’ve verified the quotes from Goodreads and Joyce Meyer’s document, “Helping your kids win the battle in their mind.”
Meyer is one of America’s most famous religious speakers, a Charismatic Christian who, of course, lives lavishly with several homes and a private jet. Her book on the Battlefield of the Mind for Teens has 4.5 stars on Amazon.
Here’s a similar statement from a man known for his humility, who refuses to live lavishly. I made this slide for my talk in Kamloops, and the quote comes from a radio broadcast last November by the Pope:
The denigration of reason in favor of obedience and faith is, of course, a constant strain in Christianity, both Catholic and otherwise. Nobody made more statements about the dangers of reason than Martin Luther. (Remember, too, that Francis appears to believe in Satan.)
h/t: Miss May
Well, this beats all! A new paper in the Journal of Religion and Health (reference and download below), written by M. Kimal Irmak, listed as on “The High Council of Science, Gulhane Military Academy, Ankara, Turkey,” suggests that some schizophrenics might actually be possessed by demons, and therefore might be better helped by faith healers than by mental-health professionals. The abstract tells most of the story:
Schizophrenia is typically a life-long condition characterized by acute symptom exacerbations and widely varying degrees of functional disability. Some of its symptoms, such as delusions and hallucinations, produce great subjective psychological pain. The most common delusion types are as follows: ‘‘My feelings and movements are controlled by others in a certain way’’ and ‘‘They put thoughts in my head that are not mine.’’ Hallucinatory experiences are generally voices talking to the patient or among themselves. Hallucinations are a cardinal positive symptom of schizophrenia which deserves careful study in the hope it will give information about the pathophysiology of the disorder. We thought that many so-called hallucinations in schizophrenia are really illusions related to a real environmental stimulus. One approach to this hallucination problem is to consider the possibility of a demonic world. Demons are unseen creatures that are believed to exist in all major religions and have the power to possess humans and control their body. Demonic possession can manifest with a range of bizarre behaviors which could be interpreted as a number of different psychotic disorders with delusions and hallucinations. The hallucination in schizophrenia may therefore be an illusion—a false interpretation of a real sensory image formed by demons. A local faith healer in our region helps the patients with schizophrenia. His method of treatment seems to be successful because his patients become symptom free after 3 months. Therefore, it would be useful for medical professions to work together with faith healers to define better treatment pathways for schizophrenia.
Irmak’s evidence for possession is the similarity between behaviors of patients with schizophrenia and those supposedly possessed by demons (hallucinations, disorganized speech, etc.). He then floats his idea of demonic possession, saying that many scholars accept demons as a reality. Irmak even gives the characteristics of demons (my emphasis)!:
Illusions are transformations of perceptions, with a mixing of the reproduced perceptions of the subject’s fantasy with the real perceptions. One approach to this hallucination problem is to consider the possibility of a demonic world.
In our region, demons are believed to be intelligent and unseen creatures that occupy a parallel world to that of mankind. In many aspects of their world, they are very similar to us. They marry, have children, and die. The life span, however, is far greater than ours (Ashour 1989). Through their powers of flying and invisibility, they are the chief component in occult activities. The ability to possess and take over the minds and bodies ofchumans is also a power which the demons have utilized greatly over the centuries (Littlewood 2004; Gadit and Callanan 2006; Ally and Laher 2008). Most scholars accept that demons can possess people and can take up physical space within a human’s body (Asch 1985). They possess people for many reasons. Sometimes it is because they have been hurt accidentally, but possession may also occur because of love (Ashour 1989; Philips 1997). When the demon enters the human body, they settle in the control center of the body–brain. Then, they manifest themselves and take control of the body through the brain (Whitwell and Barker 1980; Littlewood 2004; Gadit and Callanan 2006; Ally and Laher 2008). Demonic possession can manifest with a range of bizarre behaviors which could be interpreted as a number of different psychotic disorders (Al-Habeeb 2003; Boddy 1989).
I wonder who constitutes “most scholars”?
At the end, Irmak gives the evidence that “faith healing” can cure the apparent cases of schizophrenia that are really caused by demonis possession. Needless to say, that evidence is pretty thin:
It has been shown by World Health Organization (WHO) studies that faith healers may help patients with psychiatric disorders (Gater et al. 1991). Currently, the churches in the United Kingdom retain the services of faith healers (Friedli 2000), the task of whom is to expel the demons in cases of real possession. Rollins is an Anglican priest in London. Prior to the priesthood, he was a trained and qualified psychiatrist. He turned to the priesthood and exorcist feeling that medicine failed to address certain human sufferings (Leavey 2010). Similarly, B. Erdem is a local faith healer in Ankara who expels the evil demons from many psychiatric patients with the help of good ones. B. Erdem contends that on occasions, the manifestation of psychiatric symptoms may be due to demonic possession. An important indicator of his primary suspicions about the possession is that, if someone has auditory hallucinations, he would remain alert to the possibility that he might be demonically possessed. His method of treatment seems to be successful because his patients become symptom free after 3 months.
I haven’t had time to read the WHO study, but there are two problems: do the “psychiatric disorders” helped by faith healers include schizophrenia? And is there a possibility of placebo effects? The testimony of “Rollins” the exorcist, of course, carries no weight, since it’s accompanied by no data at all. Likewise for “local faith healer” B. Erdem. I’d be truly suprised if his ministrations cured schizophrenics within 3 months, since the disease is notably refractory to treatment, and even drugs have limited success.
All in all, this paper, which appeared in a reputable journal put out by Springer, a reputable (though greedy) publisher, is a travesty. It misrepresents the view of “scholars,” who surely don’t accept demonic possession, it presents unscientific data which appear to be based on wish-thinking, and, most important, it reaches the unwarranted conclusion that “it would be useful for medical professionals to work together with faith healers to define better treatment pathways for schizophrenia.”
In the absence of some controlled studies of the effect of faith-healing on schizophrenia, this suggestion is not only useless but dangerous. Really, we should get exorcists working together with psychiatrists? Not until faith-healing is shown to be effective. And how do you know which patients really have schizophrenia, and thus need psychiatrists, and which are possessed by demons, and require the additional help of exorcists?
By and large, the articles in the Journal of Religion and Health appear far more reasoned than this, few espousing a religious form of faith-healing. And I doubt whether psychiatrists are going to take Irmak’s suggestions seriously.
But really, how did the referees manage to approve a paper with such a weak foundation? And didn’t editor Curtis W. Hart, a Lecturer in Public Health at Weill Cornell Medical College, whose credentials are “M. Div.” (is that a master’s degree in divinity?) exercise any editorial discretion? Weill Cornell is a highly reputable institution, and I’m surprised that someone in its “medical ethics” division would allow a paper like this to be published. To my mind, recommending unsubstantiated faith-healing for schizophrenia is unethical, because it’s untested and potentially dangerous. Anyway, I’ve written Dr. Hart inquiring about this paper.
It’s not okay to endanger ill people with ill-informed speculation masquerading as science. Dr. Hart should know that. As for author Irmak, well, he’s probably beyond redemption.
_________
Irmak, M. K. 2014. Schizophrenia or Possession? Journal of Religion and Health 53:773-777 LA – English.
Here’s an update on the poll taken by the Lebanon Daily Record on Principal Lower’s graduation prayer. As you may recall, the paper polled readers about whether Lower’s prayer was appropriate for graduation. You can see the results by going to the Lowery-loving column by Katie Hilton, “Hats off for Lowery!“, and then clicking back to “home” at the upper left to see the poll’s results at the bottom of the front page.
A reader informed me of the results, sending a screenshot a few minutes ago. Curiously enough, they were firmly against Lowery’s behavior.
But what is really funny is one datum: the percentage of respondents saying that Lowery’s remarks weren’t appropriate. Here’s a screenshot I just took:
66.6%: The mark of the Beast!
Coincidence? Or is Basement Cat in Lebanon? You be the judge. I would, however, urge the residents of the town to think about the meaning of this omen.
I should also note that Lebanon is famous for having been a stop on the old transcontinental highway, Route 66.
The kildeer (Charadrius vociferus) is famous for not only laying its eggs in a nest on the ground, but, because of the danger of predators finding its eggs, for giving several displays to lead predators away from the nest. As the Cornell Lab website notes:
The Killdeer’s broken-wing act [it acts as if it’s injured while walking away from the next, tempting predators to nom the faux-wounded bird and ignore the eggs] leads predators away from a nest, but doesn’t keep cows or horses from stepping on eggs. To guard against large hoofed animals, the Killdeer uses a quite different display, fluffing itself up, displaying its tail over its head, and running at the beast to attempt to make it change its path.
You can hear five of its calls here. Reader Stephen Barnard (surprise!) sent a series of photos of a bird engaged in its distraction display. His notes:
This Killdeer was luring me from the nest.
Before anyone gets on my case for stressing birds, let me say that I wasn’t looking for the nest or chasing the bird. I was inspecting my 2-acre native wildflower seeding project for weeds and I had my camera.
I’ve also sent a photo of last year’s nest, which was literally right next to where I’d get in my truck. They hatched and raised four.
This looks like the “fluffing-up” display, though Stephen doesn’t note whether the bird was running at him.
But this looks like a broken-wing display:
Fluffed up? The bird isn’t running at the photographer.
What lovely eggs!
