U.S. senator: God says that there can’t be global warming

March 12, 2012 • 4:28 am

I don’t think I need to comment on this, except to add that this is an embarrassment to not only America, but my many foreign readers.  But it least it tells you how religiously insane my country is.

From Right Wing Watch :

Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) appeared on Voice of Christian Youth America’s radio program Crosstalk with Vic Eliason yesterday to promote his new book The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future [JAC: if you must see the book, it’s here], where he repeated his frequent claim that human influenced climate change is impossible because “God’s still up there.” Inhofe cited Genesis 8:22 to claim that it is “outrageous” and arrogant for people to believe human beings are “able to change what He is doing in the climate.” . .

Inhofe also says that Richard Cizik, the former Vice President of the National Association of Evangelicals, was bought off by environmentalists and “has been exposed since then to be the liberal that he is”…because apparently liberals can’t be Christians?

Here’s the dude, standing tall and proud next to Our Flag:

And here’s a transcript of part of the talk; you can hear the audio clips at the link above.

Eliason: Senator, we’re going to talk about your book for a minute, you state in your book which by the way is called The Greatest Hoax, you state in your book that one of your favorite Bible verses, Genesis 8:22, ‘while the earth remaineth seed time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease,’ what is the significance of these verses to this issue?

Inhofe: Well actually the Genesis 8:22 that I use in there is that ‘as long as the earth remains there will be seed time and harvest, cold and heat, winter and summer, day and night,’ my point is, God’s still up there. The arrogance of people to think that we, human beings, would be able to change what He is doing in the climate is to me outrageous.

What about the arrogance of people who won’t lift a finger to stop our depredation of Earth because they believe in the literal truth of an ancient book of fiction? Does Imhofe also favor slavery and execution for adultery? After all, the Bible supports those, too. Some reporter should ask him that.

This is from a second audio clip:

Caller: Senator, do you quote any Scripture in your book?

Inhofe: Yeah, as a matter of fact I do. My favorite is Genesis 8:22 which is ‘as long as the earth remains there will be seed time and harvest, cold and heat, winter and summer, day and night,’ you know, God’s still up there. There’s another piece of Scripture I’ll mention which I should’ve mentioned, no one seems to remember this, the smartest thing the activists did in trying to put their program through is try to get the evangelicals on their side, so they hired a guy named Cizik, and he had his picture in front of Vanity magazine dressed like Jesus walking on water. He has been exposed since then to be the liberal that he is. I would say that the other Scripture that I use quite frequently on this subject is Romans 1:25, ‘They give up the truth about God for a lie and they worship God’s creation instead of God, who will be praised forever.’ In other words, they are trying to say we should worship the creation. We were reminded back in Romans that this was going to happen and sure enough it’s happening.

Remember, this is an elected United States senator, a member of the most powerful legislative body in the U.S. Can you imagine a European legislator saying this?

h/t: Stan

Where the readers are

March 11, 2012 • 9:38 am

WordPress has just added a new feature that enables me to see where the readers are. I’m heartened to see that they’re scattered throughout the world, with most, of course, being Anglophones.  Here’s a “contour map” of readership from yesterday, out of a total of 15,435 views.  Most countries aren’t shown, of course, because they contain few readers.

Over the past week, readers were worldwide, and I put below and applaud those countries that produced one view! (Click to enlarge.)

Those people in central Africa, South Korea, Iran, and Greenland: step up! (We may be banned in Iran; I don’t know.)

A Hunanese lunch!

March 11, 2012 • 9:07 am

Lunch yesterday was a true delight: a foray to a new Hunanese restaurant in Chicago’s Chinatown.  The restaurant, Lao Hunan, is one of a string of very successful regional Chinese restaurants opened by entrepeneur Tony Hu, who realized that some Americans (like me!) crave authentic regional Chinese food—as do Chinese people who want to eat out. I’ve been cooking Szechuanese food since I was in graduate school, and, except in China itself, have never found many restaurants that can prepare Chinese food as good as I can make at home. (There are about three in Chicago, one in San Francisco, and a couple in New York. Forget about the UK.)

Restauranteur Hu’s success in Chicago  began with Lao Sze Chuan (a Szechuanese restaurant that became wildly popular), a place I used to frequent but then abandoned when it became too crowded.  He then opened Lao ShangHai, Lao Beijing (serving the eponymous cuisine), and then, about eight months ago, Lao Hunan, to which I was introduced by posts on Chicago’s best food website, the LTH Forum (itself named after a Chinese restaurant, the Little Three Happiness).  The uniform approbation for this place led me to take my visitor there, violating my long-standing policy to never take a visitor to any restaurant I hadn’t sampled beforehand.

But it turned out very well: the place was not only authentic (despite the Mao kitsch), but terrific. From the outside you might not think it’s anything special, though.  I like the slogan.

Inside it’s Mao-themed (Mao came from Hunan, and loved its rich and spicy food), and the waitstaff are forced to wear Chairman Mao uniforms (see below).

The walls are bedecked with photos of famous people from Hunan, including Ding Ling, a woman with a name that sounds funny to Westerners but turns out to be a very famous Chinese writer persecuted by both Chiang Kai-Shek and Mao’s regimes:


But first, the food.  A good sign when we went in was that all the diners were Asian, and were scarfing down delicious-looking plates of food. We ordered amply, starting with a “salad” made from tree ears (a dried fungus rehydrated in hot water and then served cold) with pickled garlic, red pepper, scallion, and a terrific dressing that must have contained soy sauce, sesame oil, and other unknown spices. It was great! (Click this and other photos to enlarge.)

The best dish of the day, recommended by the LTH group, was green chilis with black beans, a dish that looked strange but was absolutely and addictively delicious.  It really brought out the vegetable qualities of the chili.  It was hellishly hot but both my friend and I pronounced it the best dish of the lunch.  (Fermented black beans are one of the great but underappreciated ingredients of Chinese cuisine, and I cook with them often.) I’ll certainly order this every time I go back.

Chairman Mao’s favorite dish was reputed to be Hunanese pork belly: a dish made from a fatty cut of pork (half of the meat chunks were pure fat) stewed with star anise, five-spice powder, soy, and other goodies that delicately infused the pork.  it included peppers and garlic.  This is a dish that will scare the bejeezus out of health-conscious Americans (indeed, the waitress asked us if we knew what was in it [I did]), but life is short and food is not medicine.  It was luscious and rich, another wonderful dish. Let me not see any health-police commenting below about this one!

Finally, an ample portion of twice-cooked duck with red chilis, which was very good but not up to the standards of the rest of the meal. Eaten in any other restaurant, this dish would be pronounced delicious, but it was dwarfed by the three dishes above.  I’m not sure whether twice-cooked duck is a genuine Hunanese dish; the menu had many dishes that were from other regions of China.

My fortune.  Just once I’d like to get a fortune that wasn’t stupidly optimistic: perhaps something like, “You’re going to be miserable and die alone,” or “You are about to suffer a great misfortune.”  (The classic fortune is, of course: “Help! I’m prisoner in a fortune-cookie factory!”)  In many restaurants in Chicago’s Chinatown, the non-Chinese diners get fortune cookies while the Chinese ones get fruit, a form of discrimination that always ticks me off.  But here both kinds of customers got fortune cookies—chocolate ones.

Afterwords I chatted with the genial server named Venus, of all things. She was really nice and gave us a lot of information about which dishes she liked, and which ones were most popular. I asked her about the Mao suit, and she didn’t appear to mind wearing it.  The owner told us that Venus was “very popular.”  She has a Buddha tattoo on one arm and one I couldn’t identify on the other.

I hate taking visitors to places that turn out to be mediocre, but in this case we got lucky. I will be back for sure.  Dishes range from $5.00 (for the salad) to $14.00 (for the duck), but average about $8-$10 each.

Squabble about public prayer—in Britain!

March 11, 2012 • 6:23 am

Although you Brits may know about this, I wasn’t aware it was going on. The Washington Post reports a national kerfuffle about something that is (supposedly) settled in the U.S. but not in the UK: the right of government assemblies to be free from religion of any sort:

. . . The move to ban public prayers in tiny Bideford — and potentially across all of England and Wales — has erupted into a national proxy fight over the question of whether Christianity should still hold a privileged place in a modern, diverse and now highly secular society.

The match that lit the fires was struck in this quaint town, site of the last witch trials in Britain. Local lawmaker Clive Bone, an atheist, was backed by four of his peers in challenging the long-standing tradition of opening public meetings with blessings by Christian clergy. After losing two council votes on the prayer ban, Bone took the town to court — winning a ruling last month that appeared to set a legal precedent by saying government had no authority to compel citizens to hear prayer.

And the Conservatives, like the Republicans in the U.S., are defending public prayer and the status of Britain as a Christian nation (which it is officially, of course):

. . . the Conservatives in power have unleashed a number of moves seen by opponents as an attempt to claw back lost ground for Christian traditions — including a vow by the national education minister to send a King James Bible to every school in England.

Even normally behind-the-scenes Queen Elizabeth is dusting off the monarch’s historic role as “defender of the faith” and supreme governor of the Church of England, suggesting in recent weeks that by targeting public prayer, secular society has gone too far.

“The concept of our established church is occasionally misunderstood and, I believe, commonly underappreciated,” the queen, deploying her trademark power of understatement, said in what was widely viewed as a thinly veiled reference to the prayer debate. . .

Even before the ruling came out, Cameron, a moderate Conservative by British standards, was wading into the explosive issue of religion. In a landmark speech in December, the prime minister conceded that he was entering “the lion’s den” in a diverse and secular nation by declaring, “We are a Christian country, and we should not be afraid to say so.” . . .

The government’s move came amid what supporters of a secular Britain describe as a rare campaign by the government to give new footing to the eroding Christian tradition here. Education Minister Michael Gove, for instance, has also moved to make it easier for religious groups to receive state funding to set up schools.

“It is extraordinary to me to see a modern British government promoting religion,” said Terry Sanderson, president of the National Secular Society. “It’s an indication that the Conservatives are flying a kite to see whether the tactics of the American Republicans might fly here. I have a strong suspicion they won’t. Britain is not America, and in trying to establish a religious right, Cameron will find himself shot in the foot.”

Let’s hope so.  There’s a note of humor at the end:

One person with a decided opinion, though, is the Rev. Alan Glover, 64, the curate at St. Mary’s — a stately church that holds 1,000 but where less than 180 regularly attend Sunday services.

“What a load of rubbish this all is,” Glover said. “I’d never imagined that anyone could be offended by a kind prayer. If you don’t like it, side with tolerance and don’t listen.”

I wonder if Glover would be “tolerant” if there was a Jewish prayer or Muslim invocation.

Michael Shermer and Ken Miller debate the compatibility of science and faith at HuffPo

March 10, 2012 • 8:23 am

Goodtimez!  Over at HuffPo (in the “Science” section, for crying out loud!), there’s a “point-counterpoint” argument with the awkward title of “Science, religion incompatible? Hot-button debate features Dr. Kenneth Miller, Dr. Michael Shermer.”  And you get to vote on whether they’re compatible both before and after you read their pieces.

Here’s my take:

Shermer (incompatibility):

  • Michael did a creditable job, but I take issue with his assertion that there is no such thing as the “supernatural” or “paranormal”: he says that these “just provides a linguistic place-holder until we find natural and normal causes.”  Well, that presumes from the outset that there is no God or “paranormal” phenomena that don’t obey the laws of physics.  I agree that there’s no evidence for that, but it is logically possible that there are such phenomena, and that science can investigate them. That’s what studies of intercessory prayer are about. If we found that, say, the prayers of Jews but not Catholics healed people, would that phenomenon then become a “natural and normal cause”?  “Natural,” to me, means “obeying the laws of nature as we understand them”, and prayer that works doesn’t do that; indeed, it can’t unless it’s some kind of ruse.
  • Michael properly emphasizes the shrinking role of God as simply an name for ignorance, a filler for what we don’t understand, and notes the many problems whose solutions were once imputed to God and are now explained by science. And his conclusion is excellent:
Until then, I believe that it is time to step out of our religious traditions and embrace science as the best tool ever devised for explaining how the world works, and to work together to create a social and political world that embraces moral principles and yet allows for natural human diversity to flourish. Religion cannot get us there because it has no systematic methods of explanation of the natural world, and no means of conflict resolution on moral issues when members of competing sects hold absolute beliefs that are mutually exclusive. Flawed as they may be, science and the secular Enlightenment values expressed in Western democracies are our best hope for survival.
I know he had limited space, but I wish Shermer had emphasized a little bit more the huge incompatibility in methods between science (doubt, skepticism, use of empirical test to resolve dissenting views) and religion (dogma, revelation, and acceptance of what you’re taught). Nor does he mention the incompatibility of outcomes: that faith does make truth claims, and that many of these conflict with those of science (creation ex nihilo, Adam and Eve, the exodus of the Jews from Egypt,and so on). It didn’t have to be that way: scripture could have been literally true, but it wasn’t.
But Michael makes good points, and of course, given that I agree with his view at the outset, I judge him the winner.
Miller (compatibility):
It’s no surprise that I find Miller’s performance embarrassing: he’s an observant Catholic and a scientist, and must defend the compatibility of his faith and his vocation.  In doing so, he drags out all of the tired old chestnuts of accommodationism:
  • Religion gave birth to science, and many early scientists were religious:
Modern science developed in the context of western religious thought, was nurtured in universities first established for religious reasons, and owes some of its greatest discoveries and advances to scientists who themselves were deeply religious. From Roger Bacon, the 13th century Franciscan who pioneered the scientific method, to George Lemaître, the 20th century Belgian priest who first developed a mathematical foundation for the “Big Bang,” people of faith have played a key role in advancing scientific understanding.
This is hogwash.  Science began well before Christianity: with the ancient Greeks like Archimedes or Eratosthenes (who measured the circumference of the Earth with amazing accuracy), or with heathens like Galen.  Then Christianity took over  and plunged empirical study into the Dark Ages. It wasn’t until 1500 years later that science came along. If Christianity was such a valuable influence on science, why was science dead for a millennium and a half after Christianity took hold?
And of course modern science was developed by Christian people, but that’s because it developed in Europe (note: not in the Christian areas that were Eastern Orthodox!), and everyone was a Christian back then.  One can’t impute science to Christianity, any more than one can impute the rise of the novel to Christianity.  Correlation is not causation.
  • Much of science denial has nothing to do with religion.  Here Miller mentions climate-change denialism (not realizing that much of it stems from religion), the tobacco companies’ attempt to unlink smoking and cancer, and even the fact that an “atheist” regime, Stalin’s, promulgated an incorrect view of genetics.  He then says that one could argue that socialism and free-market capitalism are incompatible with science?
No, because such an incompatibility is not inherent in capitalism or socialism.  In extreme forms, though, any ideology or worldview can be used to suppress scientific inquiry if that inquiry produces results inimical to one’s creed.   Unlike religion, capitalism and socialism do not themselves specify methods of inquiry (revelation, adherence to scripture) that are in direct conflict with science.  In seeking its “truth,” though. Religion does.  Curiously, Miller mentions his biggest bane—biological creationism—but doesn’t seem to realize that the prevalence of creationism in America, against which he’s fought admirably, is due directly to an ontological and methodological incompatibility between how science finds truth and how religion finds “truth.”
  • Sure, religion did bad stuff, but so did science.  Miller says:
Science is a revolutionary activity. It alters our view of nature, and often puts forward profoundly unsettling truths that threaten the status quo. As a result, time and time again, those who feel threatened by the scientific enterprise have tried to restrict, reject, or block the work of science. Sometimes, they have good reason to fear the fruits of science, unrestrained. To be sure, it was religious fervor that led Giordano Bruno to be burned at the stake for his scientific “heresies” in 1600. But we should also remember more recently that it was science, not religion, that gave us eugenics, the atomic bomb, and the Tuskegee syphilis experiments.
This argument is irrelevant about the compatibility of science and faith: all it says is that bad or misguided people can use technology in detrimental ways, just as they can foment religious wars or the Inquisition. But remember that intolerance and divisiveness is inherent in religion but not in science, which is a unifying activity.  Science gives us facts; what one does with them is based on extra-scientific considerations.  But since religious people think they are in possession of fundamental moral truths about the universe, it is inherent in many faiths to try to impose those truths upon others.  When you compare science with faith in this way, ask yourself this: would you rather live in a world in which there had been science and no faith, or a world in which there had been religion but no science?
  • Science and faith are compatible because there are religious scientists and because many of the faithful embrace science. Miller:

To a theist, God is nothing less than the source of the profound rationality of nature. Naturally, a non-believer seeks another reason for that rationality. Yet despite these differences, both can embrace the systematic study of nature in the project we call science. That is the ultimate source of compatibility between science and religion.

And that is another bogus argument. Not just because of the untestable and unscientific argument that the “rationality of nature” comes from God (where’s the evidence for that?), but because embracing science and religion simultaneously shows not that they’re compatible, but that humans can hold two conflicting worldviews in their head at the same time. The ultimate source of incompatibility between science and faith is that they use different methods to ascertain “truths,” and only one of them, science, is able to increase knowledge (used in the sense of “verified true belief”) about the universe.

Miller also says this:

But on a personal level — and I will state this plainly — it seems to me that any faith that might require the rejection of scientific reason is not a faith worth having.

But his faith does! It requires (see previous post) that one believe in virgin births, immaterial souls, bodily resurrections, and the literal transformation of crackers and wine into the body and blood of Jesus.  Catholicism, with its assertions about the equivalence of a fertilized egg with an adult and its acceptance of certain non-negotiable miracles, absolutely requires the rejection of scientific reason. Miller rejects it every time he says the Nicene creed, or takes communion.

  • Scientists think that science and faith are compatible.  Here Miller cites some findings of Elaine Ecklund:
What do working scientists actually think of the relationship between science and religion? A 2009 study by Elaine Howard Ecklund and Jerry Z. Park concluded that “in contrast to public opinion and scholarly publications most scientists do not perceive there to be a conflict between religion and science.”
Well, I have Dr. Ecklund behind this sign, and her results don’t say that—not at all. In a guest post written at this site, reader Sigmund noted the following about Ecklund’s study:
In fact, [Ecklund’s] latest results show that 85% of scientists find science and religion to be in conflict, either occasionally, depending on the context (70%), or always in conflict (15%).
Curiously, Miller’s assertion links not to Ecklund’s paper itself, but to her summary of it, and, as well all know, she has constantly distorted her survey results to force a compatibility between science and faith.
Upshot:  Shermer 1, Miller 0.  Miller profoundly neglects the real incompatibility between science and faith: a difference in methodology, philosophy, how one finds out stuff, what stuff one finds out, and whether what religious people find out through their faith comports with what people of other religions find out through their faith.  As methods of ascertaining what is true about the universe, science and religion are profoundly and permanently incompatible.
______

As of this morning, these are the voting results, given in a screenshot from the site (click to enlarge). Most people found science and faith incompatible both before and after the debate (57% before, 60% after), while the figures also went up by 3% for those who found them compatible (33% before vs. 36% after).  Both increases were both at the expense of those who were undecided (10% before, 5% after; notice that the figure don’t add to 100% in the “afters”). Given this, why does HuffPo pronounce that Ken Miller “changed the most minds”?

Guest post: the Vatican says bishops trump theologians

March 10, 2012 • 4:31 am

Reader Sigmund notes a Vatican report that seem to slap down Catholic theologians a bit:

_____

What is the function of Catholic theology?

by Sigmund

The question above was the focus of a new report “Theology Today: Perspectives, Principles and Criteria”, published on the Vatican’s website on Thursday March 8th.

According to an article in the “On Faith” section of the Washington Post, the Vatican’s report:

“aimed at defining the principles of theological research in the Catholic Church and at exploring the limits of theologians’ freedom. “

According to the Washington Post writer, Allesandro Speciale, the Vatican commission that prepared the report—an advisory group of theologians that answers to the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith—concluded that “The task of giving the “authentic interpretation” of the Catholic faith ultimately belongs to bishops, not theologians.”

The report, according to Speciale:

“states that “’dissent’ towards the magisterium has no place in Catholic theology,” but stresses that “investigation and questioning” are “justified and even necessary.” Bishops and theologians have “distinct callings, and must respect one another’s particular competence,” the panel said. But in the end, the “’authentic’ interpretation of the faith” is a prerogative of church authorities, namely the bishops, and theologians cannot “presume to substitute the teaching office of the church’s pastors.”

So theology is all well and good, so long as you do not dissent from the message of the hierarchy.

Does that mean that theology has no independent function?

Helpfully the report is not silent on this question and provides a clear answer,

“In all its endeavours, in accordance with Paul’s injunction always to ‘be thankful’ (Col 3:15; 1Thess 5:18), even in adversity (cf. Rom 8:31-39), [theology] is fundamentally doxological, characterised by praise and thanksgiving.”

Theology is fundamentally doxological?  What does that mean?

According to Wikipedia, “a doxology (from the Greek δόξα [doxa] “glory” + -λογία [-logia], “saying”)is a short hymn of praises to God in various Christian worship services, often added to the end of canticles, psalms, and hymns.”

In other words theology, as understood by the Catholic Church, is not an intellectual pursuit of defining meaning in religious teachings but is, at its base, primarily aimed at singing praises to God!

______

JAC addendum:  If Catholics are to take this report seriously, then they must abjure the interpretations of liberal theologians such as John Haught, who interpret Scripture differently from the “bishops.”  They must hew to the Church line on issues like homosexuality, sex outside of marriage, and divorce.  I believe that the Church has also affirmed a literal Adam and Eve, so they should adhere to that, too!

In view of this report, the onus is now on theologians to explain why we should adhere to their interpretations of Church teachings rather than those of the Church itself.

Here are the conclusions of the report (my emphasis):

CONCLUSION

100.  As theology is a service rendered to the Church and to society, so the present text, written by theologians, seeks to be of service to our theologian colleagues and also to those with whom Catholic theologians engage in dialogue. Written with respect for all who pursue theological enquiry, and with a profound sense of the joy and privilege of a theological vocation, it strives to indicate perspectives and principles which characterise Catholic theology and to offer criteria by which that theology may be identified. In summary, it may be said that Catholic theology studies the Mystery of God revealed in Christ, and articulates the experience of faith that those in the communion of the Church, participating in the life of God, have, by the grace of the Holy Spirit, who leads the Church into the truth (Jn 16:13). It ponders the immensity of the love by which the Father gave his Son to the world (cf. Jn 3:16), and the glory, grace and truth that were revealed in him for our salvation (cf. Jn 1:14); and it emphasises the importance of hope in God rather than in created things, a hope it strives to explain (cf. 1Pet 3:15). In all its endeavours, in accordance with Paul’s injunction always to ‘be thankful’ (Col 3:15; 1Thess 5:18), even in adversity (cf. Rom 8:31-39), it is fundamentally doxological, characterised by praise and thanksgiving. As it considers the work of God for our salvation and the surpassing nature of his accomplishments, glory and praise is its most appropriate modality, as St Paul not only teaches but also exemplifies: ‘Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen’ (Eph 3:20-21).