Antonin Scalia tries to tear down that wall (the one between church and state)

January 4, 2016 • 12:30 pm
On Saturday, Antonin Scalia, Supreme Court Justice, conservative, Catholic, and “originalist” (one who thinks that law must ultimately rest on the original and unchangeable meaning conveyed by the authors of the US Constitution) gave a short speech at Archbishop Rummel High School, a Catholic school in Metairie, Louisiana. In that talk, as reported by two sources (the Associated Press and the New Orleans Times-Picayune), he basically reinterpreted the First Amendment to the Constitution. Instead of claiming that that amendment protects believers and nonbelievers alike, he claimed that it applied only to the faithful, not to atheists or agnostics.  That is a stunning reversal of precedent, and, if you know anything about history, a rejection of Scalia’s own originalism.
Here’s what he said (my emphasis):

He told the audience at Archbishop Rummel High School that there is “no place” in the country’s constitutional traditions for the idea that the state must be neutral between religion and its absence.

“To tell you the truth there is no place for that in our constitutional tradition. Where did that come from?” he said. “To be sure, you can’t favor one denomination over another but can’t favor religion over non-religion?”

and

The Constitution’s First Amendment protects the free practice of religion and forbids the government from playing favorites among the various sects, Scalia said, but that doesn’t mean the government can’t favor religion over nonreligion.

That was never the case historically, he said. It didn’t become the law of the land until the 60s, Scalia said, when he said activist judges attempted to resolve the question of government support of religion by imposing their own abstract rule rather than simply observing common practice.

If people want strict prohibition against government endorsement of religion, let them vote on it, he said. “Don’t cram it down the throats of an American people that has always honored God on the pretext that the Constitution requires it.”

That’s just wrong. Here’s the First Amendment, written by James Madison in 1789 and passed in 1791 (my emphasis):

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.

Madison was at most a deist, and there’s no indication of religious belief in any of his writings. He was, however, a good friend of Thomas Jefferson, who was again at most a deist, but more probably an atheist/agnostic. And Jefferson’s own views on religion clearly influenced Madison’s.

Three years before the First Amendment was written by Madison, and five before it was passed, Jefferson’s own law, the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, had been passed. (Jefferson actually wrote it in 1777 and introduced it to the Virginia legislature two years later). That statute, by the way, was one of three of his accomplishments that Jefferson wanted engraved on his tombstone. The other two are his authorship of the Declaration of Independence and his founding of the University of Virginia; his Presidency isn’t mentioned. What’s clear is that Madison’s First Amendment is based on Jefferson’s law.

It is clear in the Virginia Statute, as well as in Jefferson’s own writings, that he held nonbelief to be just as privileged as other beliefs. Here’s the conclusion of the Virginia Statute (my emphasis):

. . . .Be it enacted by General Assembly that no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief, but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of Religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge or affect their civil capacities. And though we well know that this Assembly elected by the people for the ordinary purposes of Legislation only, have no power to restrain the acts of succeeding Assemblies constituted with powers equal to our own, and that therefore to declare this act irrevocable would be of no effect in law; yet we are free to declare, and do declare that the rights hereby asserted, are of the natural rights of mankind, and that if any act shall be hereafter passed to repeal the present or to narrow its operation, such act will be an infringement of natural right.
Note the crucial phrases: “no man. . . shall suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief” and that “all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinion in matters of Religion.” What is nonbelief but “an opinion in the matter of religion”?
If Scalia were really an originalist who interpreted the Constitution according to the authors’ intent, he wouldn’t be saying that it’s okay to favor religion over non-religion. That would have appalled both Jefferson and Madison, and their documents don’t say anything about denigrating nonbelief.
Further, anyone who’s studied American history knows that Jefferson was a man without belief—a deist only if you stretch the term. But Scalia denies even that, jettisoning the palpable facts of history. As the Times-Picayune reports:

Scalia noted that Thomas Jefferson, who first invoked the idea of a “wall of separation between church and state,” also penned Virginia’s religious freedom law, founded a university with dedicated religious space and, in writing the Declaration of Independence, regularly invoked God.

Such deference for a higher power has been consistent ever since, Scalia said.

Has Scalia read the fricking Declaration of Independence? (The Constitution, by the way—the document to which Scalia says he adheres—does not mention God ONCE.) There are two mentions of goddy beings in the Declaration, the first being the rights that come from “The Laws of Nature and Nature’s God”, which is a dubious way to invoke a deity—indeed, it could be seen as pantheism. The other mention is this: men “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights. . .”.   That’s a pretty watery statement, probably designed as a rhetorical flourish, and hardly shows Jefferson “regularly invoking God.” If you want to know what Jefferson believed and what Madison intended in the Constitution, look at their personal histories and statements of belief. You won’t find anything about a personal God, and their laws were clearly designed to protect nonbelievers as well as believers.

Oh, Scalia said more:

Citing a quotation attributed to former French President Charles de Gaulle, Scalia said “‘God takes care of little children, drunkards and the United States of America.'” Scalia then added, “I think that’s true. God has been very good to us. One of the reasons God has been good to us is that we have done him honor.”

That is a severe case of faith-based delusion. Why isn’t God so good to Muslims, who do him (in the form of Allah, peace be upon him) even more honor? And clearly God has been best to Scandinavia, where most people are atheists but societal well-being is far higher than in the U.S. Clearly, God loves those best who deny Him most.

Scalia should not be sitting on the Supreme Court. He’s not only addled by faith (remember his belief in Satan?), but he’s violating his own originalistic philosophy when it’s convenient for him to do so. That is judicial activism. Let’s hope that he’ll be off the bench within the next decade, giving Hillary Clinton an opportunity to replace him with someone sensible.

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U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia speaks at Archbishop Rummel High School in Metairie on Saturday, January 2, 2016. (Photo by Brett Duke, Nola.com |The Times-Picayune)
h/t: Les, Randy

Brother Tayler’s Sunday secular sermon

January 4, 2016 • 9:30 am

Clearly Jeff Tayler has no intention of letting up on religion in 2016. Amazingly, Salon continues to publish his regular Sunday attacks on faith, yesterday’s being “Religious delusions are destroying us: “Nothing more than man-made contrivances of domination and submission.”

This is his year-end summary of all the damage done by faith in 2015, including, of course, the Charlie Hebdo attacks and similar instances of Islamist terrorism. Nor does he let Christianity off the hook, noting the Republican attacks on Planned Parenthood, the failure of “abstinence-only” sex education in the American South, the continuing saga of the Duggar family, and the ways that Christian fundamentalists still try to sneak creationism into public schools.  N.B. The link to one intriguing study cited by Tayler below is incorrect. I hadn’t known about that work:

That religion retards children’s cognitive development has been well established: little ones indoctrinated to believe in miracles find it tough to distinguish fact from fiction.

A working link to a description of that study is here, and the published study itself is here (reference at bottom, free access). I haven’t yet read the paper, and I’m dubious about these psychological tests, but I’ve printed it out to peruse. (Note the correct usage of the frequently misused term “peruse“.) Here’s the abstract:

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Tayler’s paragraph below encapsulates several of the characteristics of New (as opposed to “Old”) Atheism: the claim that gods and religious dicta are hypotheses, many testable in principle; that they fail the test of reason and evidence; and on that basis we should not only reject religion, but persuade others to do so, engaging in “anti-theism”. (Tayler’s reference to heads and eye sockets refers to trepanation and lobotomy, which he earlier characterized as the medical equivalent of faith):

The baseline for progressives should be, however, the truth. If a proposition, however unpleasant, can be supported by objective evidence, we need to recognize it as true, at least until new evidence arises that disproves it. If we’re interested in the wellbeing of our fellows, and we see them behaving in accordance with disproven propositions, we should tell them so and help them see the light. We should, thus, importune our faith-addled friend on the way to the church, mosque, or synagogue, and patiently explain to him the errors of his ways. He needs religion, in short, like a hole in the head or an icepick up the eye socket, and we should tell him so.

After listing the woes of the year, he also gives some high spots, and I was chuffed to find my book among them:

Yet harbingers of real progress did emerge. The brave, indomitable Ayaan Hirsi Ali published “Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now,” and one of New Atheism’s founders, the neuroscientist Sam Harris, put out, with former Islamist Maajid Nawaz, “Islam and the Future of Tolerance: A Dialogue.” Both tomes deal with the faith and what can be done to mitigate the extremism it produces. On religion and its discontents more generally, the University of Chicago evolutionary biologist (and 2015 Richard Dawkins Award winner) Jerry Coyne authored “Faith Versus Fact: Why Science and Religion are Incompatible,” a well-crafted vade mecum for all rationalists wishing to mount a cogent challenge to the religiously deluded. And David Silverman, president of American Atheists, helped close out the year on a positive note with his “Fighting God,” a polemic for firebrand atheism that will pour oil on faith’s funeral pyre. Yes, that pyre is already burning. The “Nones” are rising, as readers of this column know.

I’ve read all those books save Fighting God (which I will read); Heretic and the short Nawaz-and-Harris book are well worth reading, though I seriously doubt whether Hirsi Ali’s solution for Muslims, which involves reading the Qur’an non-literally, will really work.  A huge majority of Muslims throughout the world see the Qur’an as the literal word of Allah.

Finally, Tayler urges us to keep the pressure on faith and the “religiously deluded” (a term that will make him no friends among their ranks!), but really, isn’t what he says about religion in the second paragraph the truth? Religion is to adults what Santa Claus is to children.

We need to argue our case relentlessly, challenge the faith-deranged in every venue, and never lose sight of how free speech about religion can and does convert believers into nonbelievers.

We need to stress the indignity of religion. Superstitions ordaining us to submit to God are the enemies of human dignity. That God is wholly imaginary only compounds this indignity. Coddling the religiously deluded by showing “respect” for the undignified shams to which they are attached (denouncers of “Islamophobia” take note!) drags out the misery they impose on themselves and on the rest of us. In contrast to religious folk, we nonbelievers know how to live free and should never hesitate to point this out. Religion and freedom are incompatible. In fact, religion and true adulthood can’t coexist. One who shies away from bleak facts surrounding our time on Earth is really a child, no matter his or her age.

“No gods, no masters,” declared early feminist Margaret Sanger. Such is the slogan for human dignity and reason, whether we are male or female.

We should remember this during the upcoming year, which may be anything but easy.

___________

Corriveau, K. H., E. E. Chen, and P. L. Harris. 2014. Judgments about fact and fiction by children from religious and nonreligious backgrounds. Cognitive Science, DOI: 1111/cogs.12138

 

 

The enormous paws of the Canadian lynx

January 4, 2016 • 8:00 am

Although I have a comfortable backlog of readers’ photographs, I’ll take a break today to highlight a magnificent felid, the Canadian lynx (Lynx canadensis), and especially its gigantic paws. This beast is a denizen of northern North America; here’s its range:

Canada_Lynx_area

First have a gander at its paws (photos from Animals Guide). Now those are some mittens! Note that the paws are furred on the bottom:

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The photo below is real:

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Lynxes are about 2-3 times heavier than your average housecat.

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Okay, you’re probably asking yourself two questions: “Are those paws really disproportionately large compared to those of other cats?” and “If so, why are they so fricking huge?”

The answer to the first question is “yes.” Here’s a comparison of lynx with bobcat (Lynx rufus) forepaws from Naturally Curious with Mary Holland. As the notes below indicate, the two cats have about the same body size. Bobcats, of course, live much farther south than do lynxes.

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Now we’ve established that the lynx’s paws are indeed relatively large. Why? It’s universally recognized that this is an adaptation to walk and run on snow more effectively: the animal equivalent of snowshoes that distribute body weight over a larger area. Some authorities add that they may also help seize prey (the lynx diet is almost exclusively snowshoe hares [Lepus americanus]), though I don’t buy that explanation since all cats are predators.

As the Mary Holland page notes:

Bobcats and Canada Lynx are in the same genus, and are roughly the same size (averaging 15 to 35 pounds), with Bobcats usually weighing a bit more than Lynx. The size of their feet is vastly different, however, and not proportional to their relative weights. A Lynx has much larger feet and longer legs than a Bobcat. Its range extends further north, which means it must be well equipped to deal with snow much of the year. A Lynx has big, furry paws, and when its feet land the toes spread way out. Both of these adaptations help a Lynx’s feet act like snowshoes, helping it to chase down food in the winter. Much of the time, this food consists of Snowshoe Hares –anywhere from 60 to 90 percent of the diet of Lynx is made up of hares. The soles of Snowshoe Hare feet are also well-furred, particularly in winter, enabling them to run on soft, deep snow without sinking in very far. Because Snowshoe Hares are extremely fast and agile (reaching speeds of 30 mph and jumping 12 feet in a single bound), the feet of any serious predator must also be well adapted to traveling on snow.

The range of the hare is almost coincident with that of the lynx, and their numbers cycle together, a well known ecological phenomenon that, while having an intuitive explanation—when hares fall in number, so do their predators, and when the hares recover so do lynxes—is in fact not fully understood. The hare range:

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Range: snowshoe hare

The famous cycle:

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Back to those paws. Now it’s a reasonable explanation that the “snowshoe effect” of walking over friable snow has selected for those big mitts. After all, if you can’t run fast on snow, you can’t eat. But I wonder if it’s ever really been tested. Have they actually shown that lynx can walk and run more effectively on snow than, say, bobcats? I don’t know, but if they haven’t, then these adaptive explanations should be hedged with a caveat: “It’s hypothesized that these paws are disproportionately large because.  . .”

I’ve written before about the lynx, sharing Peter Vickery’s story about monitoring wild lynxes (go look at his lynx kitten photos!), and included the amazing photo below. It’s real—I remember seeing it in the Time-Life book—and here’s the caption I gave it:

[Here’s] one of the most impressive wildlife pictures I’ve ever seen:  a lynx catching a snowshoe hare, photographed by Robert Walch for the Time-Life book The World’s Wild Places: The American North Woods (1972). Look at the size of those paws!

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Wikipedia notes other lynx adaptations for nomming hares:

Like all lynx, it has 28 teeth, with four long canines for puncturing and gripping. The lynx can feel where it is biting the prey with its canines because they are heavily laced with nerves. The lynx also has four carnassials that cut the meat into small pieces. In order for the lynx to use its carnassials, it must chew the meat with its head to its side. There are large spaces between the four canines and the rest of the teeth, and a reduced number of premolars, to ensure that the bite goes as deeply as possible into the prey.

Adaptations that lynx have for manoeuvring through the deep snow are feet with a large gap between the first and second toes and their big toe set at a wide angle which gives them a better vicelike grip on the snow.

Well, see for yourself. Here’s a video (possibly staged) of the classic duel between hare and lynx. Note that the hare, not having any cover, tries to escape by both zigzagging and burrowing beneath the snow. It doesn’t look to me like those big paws help the cat very much, but of course a bobcat might sink to its belly in that snow!

h/t: Wendell R.

Monday: Hili dialogue

January 4, 2016 • 6:00 am

First things first: if you missed or haven’t voted in the “Most Soulful Soul Song” poll, go over and choose your favorite.

Today 2016 begins in earnest, as everyone goes back to work and, in Chicago, our students creep unwillingly like snails back to school. It’ll be cold in my town as well, as winter seems to have set in: no more freakishly warm weather. I will add only one event in history: on this day in 1903, Topsy the Elephant was brutally electrocuted to death at Coney Island, New York, to get rid of her as a liability; she had done nothing “wrong.” The Park had earlier contemplated hanging or strangling her. It was a sad event, which you can read about (and see the video) here, and something that, thank Ceiling Cat, would not be repeated today. Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili has parked her sizable carcass on Andrzej’s desk:

A: Hili, you are disturbing me.
Hili: You must be joking.

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In Polish:
Ja: Hili, przeszkadzasz mi!
Hili: Chyba żartujesz.
And, as lagniappe, here’s a new photograph of Gus, the adorable white cat whose ears were frozen off when he was live-trapped two winters ago. He’s staffed by reader Taskin and lives in Canada.
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Aren’t we doing it already?

January 3, 2016 • 2:00 pm

More Republican madness, courtesy of Matthew Cobb, who found this on Twi**er. I do NOT think it’s a joke; have a look at his other tw**ts and judge for yourself:

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That reminds me of the old quote, “If English was good enough for Jesus, it’s good enough for me,” variously attributed to the benighted (including Michele Bachmann); but the quote is fabricated.

In case you’re wondering who old Grover is, he has a long Wikipedia page detailing his conservative politics (in case you hadn’t guessed he’s a Republican), PuffHo has called him “The most hated man in Washington D.C.,” and here’s his Twi**er descriptor:


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We Got Scared: a paean to science and rationality

January 3, 2016 • 1:00 pm

This nine-minute piece was created by DogmaticCure, which has produced a number of rationalist videos. It touts rationality and science as a palliative for the fear and divisiveness produced by ideology and religion. It’s essentially a visual presentation of Pinker’s Better Angels of Our Nature, though it doesn’t really mention the decline of violence in the last few centuries. I also like to think of it as the victory of fact over faith.

Sadly, among the byproducts of human rationality that this film promotes is the realization—unique among all species—that we’re going to die.  And that makes us scared in a way that’s hard to overcome. So long as we can’t, religion will stay with us.