Some success from the FFRF campaign to get public universities to stop paying football chaplains

October 29, 2015 • 10:00 am

UPDATE: Just in from PuffHo, an unbelievable occurrence. Praying coach Joe Kennedy, mentioned at the end of the piece below, has been placed on leave for refusing to obey the directive not to pray on the field—after a student asked a Satanist to given an invocation on the field.

“The school district needs to create religious opportunity for everyone or ban it completely,” class president Abe Bartlett, one of the students who contacted the Satanic Temple, told the Kitsap Sun. “There can’t be a middle ground.”

The district said that while no players complained about the prayer sessions, some may have felt coerced to join in.

“It is very likely that over the years, players have joined in these activities because to do otherwise would mean potentially alienating themselves from their team, and possibly their coaches,” the statement said. “The District has a fundamental obligation to protect the rights of all of its students.”

The district didn’t mention the Satanists by name in its statement, but said it would not allow other groups to make use of the field during district functions such as the football game.

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In August I posted about the Freedom from Religion Foundation’s (FFRF’s) “Pray to Play” initiative, exposing the growing trend of public universities (especially but not exclusively in the South) to hire team chaplains for their football squad. Those chaplains are invariably Christian, and this constitutes pressure for the students to accept Jesus, thereby propitiating the coach who hires those chaplains. It’s truly “pray for play”.

This is of course a violation of the First Amendment, particularly because the chaplains often receive perks like free travel, football tickets, and even a salary.

The FFRF’s report is here, and involved 18 universities. At one of them, the University of South Carolina, the team preacher even went onstage at a church along with four football players (wearing their university “Gamecock” shirts), preaching creationism. At the behest of the FFRF I got involved, writing the entire biology department to make them aware that while they were teaching evolution, another arm of their university was proselytizing creationism. I didn’t suggest any action, but just let them know the situation. I heard back that they’d discuss the issue at a faculty meeting, but that seems to have been the last of it, and I don’t plan to go further.

The FFRF has now issued a news release reporting marginal progress in at least one university, but nothing yet from USC:

Virginia Tech is no longer giving preferred access to the school’s football bowl games to religious advisers following the “Pray to Play” exposé by the Freedom From Religion Foundation. For the first time, Virginia Tech has received reimbursements from all 2014 bowl game expenses incurred by chaplains.

FFRF, a national state/church watchdog with more than 23,000 members, issued a report in mid-August condemning more than 25 public universities for allowing football coaches to impose their personal religion on players by hiring Christian chaplains. The 25-page report is the result of more than a year of investigation, scrutinizing hundreds of university documents and records.

Whit Babcock, Virginia Tech’s director of athletics, wrote FFRF to explain that “in prior years preferred access to bowl games, et cetera may have been given to religious advisers. However, we have stopped this practice and all 2014 bowl expenses have been reimbursed.”

. . . In a separate but related action, Jerry Coyne, the noted biologist, author and honorary FFRF board member, wrote a letter to his colleagues in the biology department at the University of South Carolina regarding Adrian Despres, the chaplain of the South Carolina Gamecocks football team, after reading FFRF’s “Pray to Play” report. Despres, the report notes, regularly preaches creationism and even claims to have debated some of the top experts in the field. Coyne searched for the debates Despres claims to have participated in and concludes that his claim is “simply untrue.” [Indeed, I haven’t found any such debates, much less with “top evolutionary biologists.”]

“Despres is simultaneously undercutting the teaching of evolution at USC by questioning evolution and promoting creationism in public, and is also doing so as an official representative of your university,” Coyne wrote. “This is, then, a twofold violation of the legal requirement that government officials not use their position to promote a particular faith (Christianity in his case).”

During the 2014 football season, Despres was paid $4,500 as a “character coach” to counsel players and speak to recruits. However, he functions as the team chaplain, as former head coach Steve Spurrier has called him “preacher” or “reverend.” Spurrier, who surprised many by retiring in the middle of the season, had specifically said: “That’s what he is, he’s a preacher… He preaches the Word – the gospel … what we all need to hear.”

I hope USC will take action similar to that of Virginia Tech. In the meantime, the FFRF has a new report that, on, Tuesday 47 members of Congress signed a letter supporting Joseph Kennedy, a school coach in Bremerton, Washington who was told by the school district that his public praying on the 50-yard line after football games was illegal, and that he should stop (the Congressional letter is here). The 47 signers are all Republicans, of course (28 are also members of the Congressional Prayer Caucus), and three are U.S. Senators. Here’s an excerpt of that letter from the Republicans to the Superintendent of the Bremerton School District:

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Kennedy, now represented by the Christian, right-wing Liberty Institute in Texas, vows to defy the district’s order, while the legislators are trying to negate consistent court rulings about schools’ display of prayer). The FFRF has responded to the school district, urging it to obey settled law (letter here). An except:s

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While organizations like the Liberty Institute defend Kennedy’s actions—and other incursions of religion into public schools—as instantiating “freedom from religion,” in reality that’s precisely opposite of what the Founders wanted: a government in which there was no public endorsement of religion. (In the case of Kennedy and the Liberty Institute, that would be Christianity).

While this may seem like small potatoes, remember that each time a school gets away with this kind of stuff, it makes it easier, both legally and psychologically, for it to happen again, and then again and again. Before you know it, we’re on our way to theocracy. Eternal vigilance is the price of secularism.

“Heaven vs. hospital”: dying 5-year-old given a Hobson’s Choice by Christian parents

October 29, 2015 • 8:30 am

Here’s a short but ineffably sad piece at PuffHo about a five-year old girl from Oregon, Juliana Snow, who has a horrible and terminal neurological disease that will end her life her very soon:

Juliana Snow has suffered from an incurable neurodegenerative illness called Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease, or CMT, since birth. [JAC: description of the illness here.] The child can’t move or eat, wears a breathing mask at all times, and is confined to the four walls of her family’s Portland home.

Juliana is sick of repeated visits to the hospital, and so her Christian parents have had a conversation with her about whether she wants to prolong the largely fruitless treatment, which buys her a few more weeks of misery, or simply stay at home and die in the presence of her family. The sticking point for me is that they’re telling her what I see as a lie: that she’ll go to Heaven, where she’ll some day be reunited with her family.

On her own website, Juliana’s mother Michelle recounts a conversation she had with her daughter:

Mom: You don’t want to go to the hospital, right, J?

Juliana: I don’t like NT [naso-tracheal suction, the thing she hated the most from the hospital].

M: I know. So if you get sick again, you want to stay home?

J: I hate NT. I hate the hospital.

M: Right. So if you get sick again, you want to stay home. But you know that probably means you will go to heaven, right?

J: (nods)

M: And it probably means that you will go to heaven by yourself, and Mommy will join you later.

J: But I won’t be alone.

M: That’s right. You will not be alone.

J: Do some people go to heaven soon?

M: Yes. We just don’t know when we go to heaven. Sometimes babies go to heaven. Sometimes really old people go to heaven.

J: Will Alex [her 6-year-old brother] go to heaven with me?

M: Probably not. Sometimes people go to heaven together at the same time, but most of the time, they go alone. Does that scare you?

J: No, heaven is good. But I don’t like dying.

M: I know. That’s the hard part. We don’t have to be afraid of dying because we believe we go to heaven. But it’s sad because I will miss you so much.

In a later post, Michelle recounts what she told Juliana about Heaven:

We had taught Julianna our belief that there is a better place for her. In heaven, she will be able to walk, jump and play. She will not need machines to help her breathe, and she will be able to eat real food. There will be no hospitals. Very clearly, my 4-year-old daughter was telling me that getting more time at home with her family was not worth the pain of going to the hospital again. I made sure she understood that going to heaven meant dying and leaving this Earth. And I told her that it also meant leaving her family for a while, but we would join her later. Did she still want to skip the hospital and go to heaven? She did.

PuffHo recounts how the parents’ wish to give Juliana the choice is controversial among medical ethicists:

In response to the mom’s blog posts, some have praised the family’s decision, while others have been vehement in their criticism. The issue has even divided the medical ethics community.

“This doesn’t sit well with me. It makes me nervous,” Dr. Art Caplan, head of the Division of Medical Ethics at New York University’s Langone Medical Center, told CNN. “I think a 4-year-old might be capable of deciding what music to hear or what picture book they might want to read. But I think there’s zero chance a 4-year-old can understand the concept of death. That kind of thinking doesn’t really develop until around age 9 or 10.”

Dr. Chris Feudtner, another renowned bioethicist and pediatrician at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, disagreed with this sentiment, however.

“To say [Juliana’s] experience is irrelevant doesn’t make any sense. She knows more than anyone what it’s like to be not a theoretical girl with a progressive neuromuscular disorder, but to be Julianna,” he said.

In general I agree with Feudtner. What harm is being done here, even if we’re pretty sure that Juliana isn’t going to go to Heaven after she dies? How much of the child’s decision really rests on her notion that she’ll have a nice afterlife, versus on the reality of the medical torture she’s enduring now? This is a tough question, but I can’t bring myself to urge the parents (who, as Christians, wouldn’t do it anyway) to tell the child that when she dies, that’s it. This may be one of those rare cases where faith-based delusion is actually helpful.

When I was young, my 13-year-old cousin had liver cancer, and we all knew he was going to die. But he was told he had “pleurisy” and would eventually recover. Whenever I visited him in the hospital, I felt horrible, as if we were all participating in some hideous charade, and that my cousin really should be told that he was going to die. But he was 13, not 5.

As a nonbeliever, I think that Juliana’s parents are deluding her with false promises of her fate after death. But I see no way to prevent them from doing so, and, in truth, little harm in it. Would she seek more medical care if she knew death was final? Can a five-year-old make any kind of responsible decision about this? Should the parents have decided for her, without deluding her about Heaven?

These are difficult questions, and I have no answer, though I lean towards accepting the parents’ wishes. Reader are invited to weigh in below.

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Juliana and her dad. (Credit: CNN)

Readers’ wildlife photographs

October 29, 2015 • 7:30 am

Reader Ed Kroc shows us The Life of Pigeons. I’ve always maintained that we don’t recognize the beauty of these birds only because they’re so common, and because they befoul our cities.

Attached are some photos of probably the most universally recognized example of urban wildlife: pigeons! Not just any pigeons though, these are common Rock Pigeons (Columba livia) that raised a couple of chicks on my balcony this past summer.

Actually, these are the third pair of pigeons that attempted to nest on my balcony this summer. The first couple, staking out their claim in May, seemed rather clueless, laying two eggs in the middle of the balcony, not even next to each other. They rolled around in the breeze and were abandoned after a couple days. Then a different pair arrived in June and built an impressive nest of twigs between two of my flower pots. They laid a single egg, but the very next day a crow spotted them and snatched the egg for lunch. These two then abandoned the site too.

Next came a solitary pigeon. I dubbed him “bachelor pigeon,” as he would sleep alone every night underneath one of the chairs on my balcony. He held this routine for about three weeks before a third pair of pigeons showed up and summarily evicted him from his roost. He tried to reassert his claim for a few days, but was forced to concede after several extended beak-clamping and wrestling matches! This third pair cleverly avoided building a nest by commandeering one of my flower pots that was only half full of foliage. The first attached photo shows one of them in the pot incubating the pair of eggs they laid in mid-July.

1-on the nest

After a little more than 2 weeks (a very short incubation period, at least compared to the gulls I usually watch!), the chicks hatched one day apart from each other. They are strange looking things, half-naked, with bills and eye “patches” that are almost adult-sized, but tiny bodies no bigger than their eggs. You can see in the second photo, taken at one-day and less-than-one-day old, that their eyes are not yet open.

2-Hatchlings
One of the parents is seen with the chicks at 3 and 4 days old in the third photo. The membrane that seemed to be covering their eyes upon hatching had just dissolved away, and you can see their pronounced ear-openings.

3-family portrait

The fourth photo shows one of the chicks being fed. It always looked like the parents’ exerted considerable effort when feeding, forcibly arching and heaving their bodies forward to expel the crop milk into the chicks’ open mouths4-feeding
Photo 5 shows the chicks at 6 and 7 days of age, already nearly tripled in size.

5-growing up

The next portrait, taken five days later, shows how the chicks were slowly morphing into something that vaguely resembled an honest rock pigeon. Their newly sprouting feathers gave them a porcupine appearance at this age, with most of their yellow baby-fluff still sticking out in between. Notice too the conspicuous earhole.

6-portrait

Photo 7 shows the chicks at about two and a half weeks old, with most of their outer wing feather grown in. I like this photo because I can see their different personalities in it: the one in the back was suspicious and hostile, rearing up on his/her legs and snapping in my direction whenever I would step out onto the balcony. The one in front never minded me at all.

7-big babies

At almost 4 weeks, the chicks finally jumped out of the flower pot for the very first time. The eighth photo was taken right after the first chick leapt out. I had to leave town for the weekend right after this picture was taken, and when I returned home three days later, the chicks were gone, fledged off the balcony (21 storeys up!) and dispersed out into the city below. They left a horrendous mess for me to clean up, and the tortured remains of a once healthy plant (also pictured in the last photo). Still, it was nice to provide a home for new life!

8-ready to fledge

Thursday: Hili dialogue

October 29, 2015 • 4:56 am

Weather for Chicago, cloudy with a chance of rain, high of only 51°F (11°C). I can hear the wind howling outside as I lie abed, but soon I must venture out in it. The sun will not be back until Sunday. In Britain, a couple has put together a “safety video”, like the airlines, telling visitors to their home how to deal with their cats Cole and Marmalade. Be sure to watch it. Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is espousing some rare empathy, and you will be heartened (if you like d*gs) to see their friendship:

Hili: Isn’t love better than hate and fear?
Cyrus: Absolutely.

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In Polish:
Hili: Czy nie lepsza jest miłość od nienawiści i lęku?
Cyrus: Zdecydowanie.

Wil Wheaton rebuffs the odious and stingy HuffPo

October 28, 2015 • 2:00 pm

Wil Wheaton, who became famous for his teen-star appearance on Star Trek, and who now appears regularly on The Big Bang Theory (a show I’ve never watched), was asked by PuffHo if they could re-post one of Wheaton’s own website posts, “Seven things I did to reboot my life.” Here they are, if you’re interested:

  • Drink less beer.
  • Read more (and Reddit does not count as reading).
  • Write more.
  • Watch more movies.
  • Get better sleep.
  • Eat better food.
  • Exercise more.

That’s good grist for PuffHo’s “life improvement” mill, so it’s no surprise that they wanted it, especially because Wheaton’s so well known.

What then happened to Wheaton is exactly what happened to me: PuffHo asked if they could re-publish one of my website posts, and I asked them, “What are you paying?” And their response—the same one they gave to Wheaton—is that they don’t pay but they can give you valuable exposure. Thus the title of Wheaton’s post describing his run-in with Arianna’s site, “You can’t pay your rent with ‘the unique platform and reach our site provides‘.”

His account of his interactions with the Odious Site, and one of his tw**ts:

A very nice editor at Huffington Post contacted me yesterday, and asked me if I would be willing to grant permission for the site to republish my post about the seven things I did to reboot my life.

Huffington Post has a lot of views, and reaches a pretty big audience, and that post is something I’d love to share with more people, so I told the editor that I was intrigued, and asked what they pay contributors.

Well, it turns out that, “Unfortunately, we’re unable to financially compensate our bloggers at this time. Most bloggers find value in the unique platform and reach our site provides, but we completely understand if that makes blogging with us impossible.”

I translated this on Twitter thusly:

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Although Wheaton isn’t sure he “made the right call,” I think he did. As the Wall Street Journal points out, HuffPo may be worth a billion dollars, and is projected to bring in $168 million in revenue this year. (While it has yet to turn an operating profit, HuffPo says that’s because it’s plowing the revenues into growth.) But what this journalistic octopus is doing is completely devaluing professional writing. Hopeful writers will write for free, counting on getting the exposure on PuffHo needed to turn their avocation into a profitable career.

That usually doesn’t happen, and so we see a bunch of young writers giving PuffHo the means to earn its millions, and all they get is unproductive exposure. But exposure, as Wheaton says, won’t pay the rent. This is what’s killing serious journalism all over the U.S., and driving down the wages of those who do earn money.

I won’t write for HuffPo until they pay for my words, and neither will Wil. Yes, I write here for free (it cost me money to keep the site up), and I get no revenue from ads. That’s because I write for my own amusement, and to expel my thoughts into the ether. But if other people want to make money from those thoughts, they’ll have to pay me.

Blogger Raif Badawi reportedly scheduled for second flogging

October 28, 2015 • 12:48 pm

Most of us have heard of Raif Badawi, one of the most prominent victims of Islamic blasphemy laws. Badawi, 31, was convicted by a Saudi court in 2013 of apostasy (he was supposedly insulting Islam on his website), and was later sentenced to 10 years in prison and 1000 lashes, to be doled out in 20 sessions of 50 lashes each. This is no light punishment, for a lashing is a severe beating that can severely injure or even kill a prisoner.

In January of this year, he was given his first flogging, publicly, in a mosque in Jeddah. Badawi was severely injured, and further floggings were postponed because his medical condition—diabetes and hypertension—might kill him if he were whipped again.

Now the soft-hearted Saudi government is set to resume this inhuman punishment, at least according to Badawi’s wife, who lives in Canada with their children. CNN reports:

In a statement published on the Raif Badawi Foundation website Tuesday, [Ensaf] Haidar said that an “informed source” told her that Saudi authorities had approved resuming the floggings.

“The informed source also said that the flogging will resume soon but will be administered inside the prison,” Haidar said. The sentence originally called for the floggings to be carried out in public.

“It is worth mentioning that the same source had warned me of Raif’s pending flogging at the beginning of January 2015 and his warning was confirmed, as Raif was flogged on 9th January,” she said.

Haidar, who has been granted political asylum in Canada along with the couple’s three children, urged the Saudi King to show mercy.

The new Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has joined Haidar in requesting Badawi’s release:

Sadly, Obama has refused to condemn this inhumane punishment, ducking the question when asked about Badawi. It’s a blot on the U.S. that we can’t even bring ourselves to criticize such barbarity by our “allies.”

I’m still hopeful that this torture can be stopped, for not only is it cruel and unusual punishment, but it’s been imposed solely because the Saudi theocracy doesn’t like what Badawi said. Remember, too, that this crime and its punishment would not exist without religion, for the very meaning of apostasy depends on the hegemony of Islam. This one can’t be pinned on the West, or on colonialism.

Let’s hope that three children don’t go fatherless much longer, and that Badawi can find asylum in Canada.

This is supposedly a photo of Badawi being flogged, but I can’t verify that it’s him. But it doesn’t matter, for it can stand for the Saudi’s barbaric form of justice, which normally mandates death for apostasy.

flogged