One Step Forward--Hopefully NO Steps Back

Washington, D.C., joined the list of states which have legalized same-sex marriage with a council vote (please, no quibbling over the fact D.C. is a district and not a state) and the assured signature of Mayor Fenty. The District, which had previously authorized recognition of gay marriages performed elsewhere, now only has to wait out a 30-day Congressional review period--and fend off court challenges from the bigots who are demanding another shot at tyranny of the masses via a referendum (did they all flunk Civics 101 and the fact we have a representational democracy?).

Fortunately, it does not seem likely that Congress and the President will get involved; beyond the fact that Democrats control both, the matter is one of self-determination for the District. (Before we celebrate too much, do consider that Congress unanimously voted to override the dignity of that poor woman in Florida, a silly, unconstitutional cause which stirred President Bush into taking an emergency flight back to Washington from his Crawford ranch.) Court challenges are likely, but given that this was a legitimate act by an elected, representative government--and an act which has been upheld by the courts at every stage so far--it also seems unlikely the bigots will win via an appeal to the judiciary.

Speaking of bigots, check out "activist" Bob King from the article linked above:

"God's war has just started," Bob King, a community activist who lives in Northeast, said a few minutes after the vote. "Shame on them. We're going to get to the ballot box through either the courts or the Congress. So tell everyone: Don't let the marriage licenses start flowing."

"God's war?" I'm sorry, but like so many of the American Taliban, not only did Mr. King sit out the part of Civics class that taught about representation, he missed the whole First Amendment bit about not mixing church and state.

If there is a god (or goddess, or pantheon of deities), surely he or she has something better to do than keep two loving people apart. And those who would worship under the aegis of religion most assuredly should have higher priorities for a holy war: things like achieving world peace, stemming hunger and poverty, and working to ease suffering and illness. From a Christian perspective, there are far more--I'd wager an order of magnitude, at least!--commandments and guidances to do good and sacrifice one's earthly possessions for the betterment of one's brothers and even sworn enemies than there are condemnations of homosexuality. (The strongest Biblical basis for being anti-gay aren't even strictly scriptural; they're in St. Paul's various epistolary books.)

Yet while it's apparently a primary mission in life for many of these bigots to shout about homosexuality, stomping around and waving signs at protests and bringing wasteful lawsuits and demanding ballot initiatives, they don't seem to be much bothered by wearing clothes of two fabrics, working on Sunday, people playing football (yes, this violates Leviticus 11:7-8--a football is a pigskin, after all) or building up worldly wealth. I suggest a look at the Rev. Mel White's take on what the Bible says about homosexuality, as well as a thorough reading of the Bible itself for those who claim they have God on their side here. What it comes down to is that their religion is used as a crutch to justify their prejudices, not as a real basis for those beliefs.

It still amazes me that there are people who do not see the parallel between the bigotry of the civil rights era--say, opposing interracial marriage, which was in fact illegal at the time!--and what is happening today. Or (and perhaps I'm being a bit unfair) opponents of gay marriage also oppose interracial marriage.

It also amazes me to hear people talk about the "sanctity of marriage" somehow being damaged. Although this is not surprisingly ignorant of most of world history--during which polygamy was the norm, not "one man, one woman"--as well as the Christian Bible itself (explain Solomon, I ask you), what gets me is that no one seems able to really explain how they would be harmed by someone else's marriage. Are their own relationships so weak and flawed that they cower in complete fear of their own marriage collapsing around them? Sad, little minds, I have to say. As a heterosexual, married male, neither someone else's sexuality nor their chance at wedding someone they love bothers me in the least, and certainly doesn't threaten my own marriage.

Fortunately, though, for the moment there is a bit of good news on the fight for equality. With all the setbacks seen over the past couple of years, supporters of gay rights will take what victories they can get.

Should Health Insurers Cover Paying for Prayers?

That's apparently what the Christian Scientists want, and they're pushing to have language added to the health care bills presently being debated in Congress. I hadn't heard about this before today--most of the coverage seems to be on things like "death panels" (de-spun: covering "end of life" counseling services), abortion coverage, and the way the current health care system is really a hunky-dory Candy Land with chocolate waterfalls and fluffy edible cotton candy clouds of goodness where your employer can't yank your choice of plans from you and insurers can't deny you coverage.*

* If you pay attention to any of the flood of rabidly anti-reform US Chamber of Commerce-sponsored ads, you might be fooled into that belief, insisting we'd lose the "guarantees" we already don't have--things like choice of health care plans (which is already limited and can change without notice from your employer and insurer), keeping your current doctors (when your employer changes the plans it offers, or your doctor changes what plans he or she accepts, there's no guarantee you can keep yours as it is--I've had to change before), etc. But this is all fodder for a separate post.

But according to a NY Times blog piece, the same church whose attitudes toward medical care have led to the deaths of children (Google Rita Swan for one infamous example), want the government to lean on private insurers to cover the costs of what boils down to prayer:

The church’s provision says that any insurer offering health insurance on the exchanges that would be created in the health legislation could not discriminate against a health service “on the basis of its religious or spiritual content.” Such content would be defined as medical expenses for which the Internal Revenue Service now allows deductions. The I.R.S. specifically names Christian Science practitioners, who pray for people at a cost of about $20 a day or care for them in nonmedical ways, as deductible expenses.

That's right: apparently, you can currently write off the cost of paying someone to pray for you on your taxes. Now, making a charitable donation to a church is one thing--but writing it off as a medical expense? Why can't I deduct my gym dues, then? After all, a good exercise regimen has proven health benefits, whereas the most thorough study to date found no health benefit to prayer (and was conducted by the religion-oriented Templeton Foundation, which had the guts and honesty to publish the results despite being sorely disappointed in them).

Now, the First Church of Christ, Scientist (aka the Christian Scientists) are pushing to incentivise (read: strong-arm) private insurers into covering the same services. They have tried to dodge the constitutional issue of separation of church and state by excluding any coverage from a potential public insurance option (and that would include any insurance with federal funding, it would seem), as well as offering a broad definition nondiscriminatory "spiritual" care.

Under that definition, perhaps I should be able to write off the cost of admission to national and state parks, my mileage driven to/from nature preserves, and so forth, all as medical expenses (and expect my health insurer to cover them!). Clearly, there are health benefits to getting outside, hiking around, and such--as well as spiritual value; to paraphrase a gentleman Beth encountered in the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge on a Sunday morning several years ago, "THIS is church for me."

I don't think the Christian Science proposal is going to get much traction in Congress (despite its bipartisan support, which included of all people the late Senator Ted Kennedy). But that IRS deduction already exists, which I do find rather shocking. Seems to me the better way to handle this would be to make a donation to your church if so inclined and write that off as a charitable contribution--though then you're stuck with determining the "less the value of goods/services received in return" component of said donation, I suppose. If you value the "medical" benefits of prayer so highly they're your preferred health care treatment, seems that return value might eat into your donation quickly.

What's next? The Catholic church lobbying for the buying of indulgences to be written off on one's 1040 Schedule A?

Preaching Hatred: The Dove Church in Gainesville, FL

This past weekend, Beth and I made a trip to Florida for a wedding. Driving into Beth's mom's neighborhood, we came across the following signs on the grounds of a local church:

Beth's mom gave us the scoop; the local church--which I'd jokingly remarked on previous visits as being a "compound" and likely filled with some radical sect like Branch Davidians--have decided to express their particular brand of fundamentalist hatred by labeling all Muslims as devil-worshipers. This goes back to at least July (the date of this Gainesville Sun article on the original, one-sign display), and subsequently the church supplemented their Burma-Shave-esque trio of signs with an effigy of an Islamic person hanging a Christian. The latter, according to Beth's mom, was burned by outraged vandals (and not by the church itself).

I'm not making excuses for Islamist extremists and their terrorism, nor for the way women are treated in many basically-theocratic Muslim countries (though, to be fair, plenty of fundamentalist Christian sects are pretty misogynistic, too). However, the preaching of hatred by churches of any of the legs of the Abrahamic triangle of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity is equally despicable and indefensible. And for extremist Christians, whatever happened to Matthew 5:44 and Jesus' command to love and do good to one's enemies?

The church had added another sign to the grounds when we visited Gainesville this past weekend: "Fort Hood is only the beginning," it read. I'm not quite sure what to make of that one--what, exactly, do the church's leaders and members seem to think is the appropriate remedy to violence that they equate with an entire religion? Outlawing a religion has never had much success, and I can only imagine that conducting any sort of organized campaign against Muslims is only going to stir up such hatred and violence from extremists so as to leave us playing out all the bad events from bad movie Invasion: USA minus Chuck Norris to save the day--all while punishing countless innocents.

To top things off, according to the Gainesville Sun, the church faces accusations from former members that the pastor used parishioners to make furniture sold by the owners' for-profit business on eBay. If there's any substance to these accusations, it's possible that the owners/pastors could end up facing tax charges--like fellow Florida fundie pastor "Dr. Dino" Kent Hovind, currently in the federal pen. Even if no charges are forthcoming or warranted, taking personal profit from a church for one's worldly comfort seems just a tad bit un-Christian, don't you think?

Perhaps though the days of the Dove in the neighborhood are numbered; from the Gainesville Sun articles linked above, the 20 acre compound is up for sale, including the furniture factory, at the relative bargain price of $4 million.

Incidentally, am I the only one to see the irony in a church named for the bird symbolizing peace slandering an entire religion whose name translates as "peace?" The actions of this fundie church do no justice to doves everywhere; perhaps vulture would have been the better mascot for Gainesville's preachers of hate.

Tyranny of the Masses: Referendums Need to Go

In yet another state, gay marriage was brought to referendum and defeated tonight in Maine; every single state which has held a "direct democracy"-style referendum has dealt a blow to gay rights by outlawing same sex marriage. "The people have spoken; it's the will of the voters," the bigots who defend this abhorrent abridgment of human rights claim--which is, quite frankly, a view completely ignorant of the history of democracy in the United States. I'll be up front: it's time for referendums and other vehicles for voters to directly decide policy issues to go for the incredible threat of tyranny of the masses they enable.

Worse, in Maine, the elected legislature had expressly legalized gay marriage; there was no wiggle room for conservative bigots to shout about "activist" judges. Rather than undertaking the proper representative democratic process, through which unhappy voters would campaign to unseat supporters of the enacted law and replace them with representatives who could then enact legislative change, the mob mentality prevailed yet again.

Our founding fathers--heroes one and all to the conservatives who are so hell-bent on depriving honest couples the legal codification of their relationship--expressly opposed direct democracy and instead favored representative democracy, where voters elect representatives who in turn vote to enact or repeal legislation. This mechanism serves as a powerful check on demagoguery and mob rule and works to help ensure the minority groups (be they by race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religion, or even political philosophy) are not trampled upon by the majority.

Once again, too, the churches played a huge role in the political process--a move which should cost them their tax-exempt status and could be seen as a violation of election law. Where the Mormons dumped cash and deceptive activism into enacting California's Proposition 8 last year, in Maine it was the Catholic church who played the primary role. Both from within the state and across the country, the Catholic church itself sent millions of dollars to support this anti-gay-marriage miscarriage of fundamental rights.

(Let me indulge for a moment in a bit of anti-Catholic jeering: just ponder the irony of a church which has a documented and extensive history of enabling sexual perversion and pedophilia and harboring its guilty practitioners spending millions on ad campaigns which made such outrageous claims as gay marriage would mean sexual predators in schools, kids being taught to embrace gay marriage, etc. It's rather sad when you think of it, and it's little wonder to me why there's so much anti-Catholic hatred out there when such a large and supposedly benevolent organization continues to practice such rampant discrimination and hurt.)

And a hint to the opponents of gay marriage who make the (potentially dubious) claim that they stand with the majority: the majority once supported slavery, too. The majority once opposed interracial marriage (and ridiculously, at least one moronic public official in Louisiana still does...) How about you lead and choose to stand on the right side of history for a change? Don't the churches claim they made a big deal in helping end slavery? Wouldn't it be a feather in their caps to be able to say, "In the interests of human rights and justice for all, we as Christian leaders feel it is time for the discrimination to end."

Personally, as a straight, married man, I don't get what the big deal is for all the folks who get their panties in a wad over gay marriage. For those citing religious reasons, hey, think about this for a moment: the Christian Bible also says the cure for leprosy involves sacrificing several birds, and that women should be subservient to men in all things. But mainstream Christianity has rejected those (and many other) ridiculous notions--so how about rejecting the utterly ridiculous notion that gay marriage is evil? No one is going to make you get married to someone of the same sex, and the notion that allowing gay marriage will require your kids be taught to embrace homosexuality (or will allow pedophiles into schools--or even that gays are somehow all pedophiles) is simply ridiculous and an insult to anyone of intelligence.

So, back to my original point: we have representative democracy (a republic, as conservatives are so wont to point out when it's convenient for their purposes); even our President is elected indirectly via the much-loathed Electoral Congress rather than directly by voters. What we saw last year in California and now this evening in Maine are proof of just why we have representative rather than direct government, and why referendums like this need to go.

Revisionist History from the Religious Right, Deep in the Heart of Texas

When I said I'd have to take up the ridiculous notion that America was somehow founded to be a Christian nation in a future blog post, I didn't realize I would be writing on that topic so soon!

A recent article in Britain's Guardian newspaper describes the logical (if deeply disappointing) extension of the fruitcake fringe's attempts to force creationism into our science classrooms: the Texas state school board is "considering" revising the state's history curriculum to include the "role" [the Christian] God played in the history and success of the United States.

From the Guardian article:

One of the panel, David Barton, founder of a Christian heritage group called WallBuilders, argues that the curriculum should reflect the fact that the US Constitution was written with God in mind including that "there is a fixed moral law derived from God and nature", that "there is a creator" and "government exists primarily to protect God-given rights to every individual".

Barton's knowledge of history clearly deserves a bright red "F" and reflects an apparently- growing misconception of the United States' founding amongst religious (and perhaps broader) circles, which erroneously conflates the historical fact of the religious backgrounds of many of our earliest settlers with the demonstrated and deliberate secular principles of government laid down by the founders.

Yes, the Constitution was written with "God in mind": if you accept protecting citizens from the tyranny of religion as having had God in mind. Madison, Jefferson, Paine, et al, expressly excluded the very concept of a state religion in the First Amendment to protect citizens of all faiths (and none) from the very religious persecution so many groups had fled in Europe.

Debate about recognizing Christianity did arise amongst the founders, but examining Jefferson's own words on drafting Virginia's Statute for Religious Freedom, it's clear that the intent, time and time again--from the Declaration of Independence to the Constitution--was against establishing Christianity and indeed to reject that it and other religions as having some special place in our government:

Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed by inserting "Jesus Christ," so that it would read "A departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;" the insertion was rejected by the great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohammedan, the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination.

-- Thomas Jefferson, from his autobiography

Jefferson's writings are filled with similar sentiments, as are those of other of the founding fathers who played a critical role in the shaping of our government and the early history of our country.

Likewise, a common notion offered up by revisionist Christian "historians" is that the Declaration of Independence somehow defines America as a Christian nation, which fruitcake-fringer and TX school board advisory panel member David Barton seems to be talking about with his references to the laws of "God and nature" and a "creator." Disregarding for the moment that the Declaration is hardly of real legal standing in our system of government (unlike, say, the Constitution), or the fact that it was written largely by no friend to religion (Thomas Jefferson), let's look at the language so often cited by these revisionist fruitcakes:

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

-- US Declaration of Independence (emphasis mine)

Oh, my--see that "Nature's God" and "Creator" bit? Doesn't that mean the Christian God is explicitly spelled out in one of the most important documents in America's history?

Not quite. Well, not even close.

As any real historian would be able to explain, "Nature's God" and the generic "Creator" do reflect a religious belief... just not a Christian one. They are hallmarks of deism, an Enlightenment philosophy held by several of our founders and which do not bear much resemblance to Christianity (they're also--to the delight of conspiracy theorists--the hallmarks of Freemasonry, to which many of the founders also belonged). If these terms were reflective of the Christian--or even the broader Abrahamic God, to include the Judaic God and Islamic Allah--then why use such a generic term as "Nature's God?"

The acclimation of "a creator" is common to nearly every religious faith, but you do not see Barton demanding a recognition of the creation accounts of classical Greek mythology, the many Native American mythic traditions, or the farcical faiths of the Invisible Pink Unicorn or Flying Spaghetti Monster, do you?

Simply put, Barton and his ilk are poor historians at best, deliberate revisionists at worst, and rather telescopically Christiancentric in their views.

Of course, Barton doesn't limit his ignorance and ethnocentrism to religion; he twists and conflates the very notions of democracy and republican government with none other than the Democratic and Republican political parties; in a bit suitable for a late-night comedy sketch, he says (again, from the Guardian article):

Barton, a former vice-chairman of the state's Republican party, said that Texas children should no longer be taught about democratic values but republican ones. "We don't pledge allegiance to the flag and the democracy for which it stands," he said.

The most frightening aspect of this discussion--aside from the fact it exists at all--is that unlike prior attempts to insert Christian religion into the public school system, it is not occurring in a backwater like Kansas, Louisiana, Arkansas, or rural Pennsylvania (no disrespect to residents of those areas; stick with me for a moment), but in Texas. As described by Diane Ravitch in her fantastic (and non-partisan) lament for the detrimental role of special interest groups in the public education system, The Language Police, school textbook publishers base much of their content on the demands of the public education systems of two states: California, and Texas.

That means should the religious right successfully rewrite history as presented by the Texas public school system, their egregiously incorrect revisionism could show up in textbooks used throughout the United States. While a footnote on "intelligent design" in a Dover, PA, school biology text would make local residents the butt of late-night jokes, such a ridiculous addendum would not find its way into the science texts in Massachusetts, Idaho, or Hawaii.

As a sad footnote, the Guardian article also points out that the religious right succeeded in Texas in introducing religion into science class. Discussion of evolution now includes the widely-discredited notion of irreducible complexity of the eye, a favorite canard of (un)intelligent design advocate Michael Behe, saying that evolution cannot explain eyes. Evolutionary science has demonstrated credible mechanisms for modern eye development for decades, a fact Behe, who continues to make the argument, is blithely (and likely deliberately) ignorant of; adding this ID notion to a science class is akin to teaching that the Earth might actually be the center of the universe; after all, geocentricism was only discredited a few centuries ago.

The Little Problems of Flood Geology

Today's Washington Post ran an article about an annual "field trip" that Liberty University Biology majors take to the Smithsonian's Natural History Museum (under the auspices of a required "Creation Studies" course), along with the broader phenomenon of creationists visiting science museums.

Maybe I should cut the creationist museum-goers some slack, given I've mused before about the dubious pleasures to be had of paying a call at Orlando's "The Holy Land Experience" (getting a good chuckle with my wife and sisters as we drove past and I made some rather blasphemous suggestions for photo ops), or perhaps federal convict Kent "Dr. Dino" Hovind's Pensacola-based "theme park" (what is it with Florida and nutty creationists, by the way?)

Still, though, I find creationists on a field trip to see fossils and scientific proofs that basically ruin their entire worldview to be something of an odd happening. What really baffled (and irked, I must admit) me, though, about the article was the "paleontologist" Dr. Marcus Ross, who holds a doctorate in geosciences yet claimed that the Smithsonian's timeline of 630 million years of the dinosaur fossil record isn't true: as a young-earth creationist (YEC), he holds the view that almost all fossils were laid down in the Flood (of the Noah's Ark story) just 4,000 years ago.

This so-called "Flood geology" exposes one of, if not the most damning, flaws in creationism in that it is heavily contradicted by evidence from almost all branches of science, and the "scientific" hypotheses YECs propose in support of Flood geology are without fail easily and completely falsified. To read the Abrahamic Flood mythology as anything but allegory--and mind you, creationists must do just that or see creationism collapse like the house of cards it is--is sheer folly and worthy of every bit of scorn which can be heaped upon it.

First, there's the problem of the fossil record, which under Flood geology supposedly was laid down during the bliblical flood. Creationists avow that a principle they call "hydrologic sorting" would account for the order of fossils in the thus-deposited strata, which is problematic in several ways. It represents a typical creationist misunderstanding of evolution (to the point of it being a straw man view of evolution, in fact): creationists think evolution says things go from simple to complex over time (evolution says no such thing). Too, it shows the downright wrong thinking that because dinosaurs are prehistoric, they as huge organisms would thus be "sorted" and be at the lower levels of fossil strata, whereas more recent organisms which are smaller would, by density, end up progressively higher up in the fossil record. (To see why this is so ridiculously wrong, consider that the giganticism of the dinosaurs' eras was abnormal, and far older fossils such as those of the trilobites with which every grade schooler is familiar are both smaller and located deeper in the fossil record--so how did the largest fossils end up in the middle, so to speak?)

Second, Flood geologists invariably get tangled up in the amount of water which would have had to fall to cover all the land on Earth as described in Genesis. You see, accepting that Mt. Everest was covered by water over its peak (or else was somehow pushed up by the weight of all that water, a favored alternate argument by creationists) requires a heck of a lot of H20.

So they try to explain that problem away by claiming the weight of the waters as well as the sediments which would shortly become our fossil record pushed down the sea beds and pushed up the mountains--a concept which boggles the mind in addition to requiring the suspension of known physical laws.

Then, there are the myriad problems of where did the waters of the Flood come from, and where did they go? The favored "vapor canopy" theory and related notions of giant ice comets exploding in the atmosphere simply fail laughingly with any scrutiny whatsoever, resulting in such nonsense as pressure cooker conditions that a Venusian would envy. Literal readings of the Bible lead to notions of subterranean upwellings (again, where did all that water come from?) which defy all scientific plausibility.

I often wonder why creationists don't simply abandon the flood mythology as a literal, historical incident and instead look at it through the lens of allegory, and its likely origins in very localized but severe floods of the river plains of early civilizations? Surely for people who didn't travel more than a few miles, such floods would seem to be global, not to mention the poetic license and hyperbole employed in crafting narratives based on such events. Because, as described above in short detail, the flood mythology and its associated "geology" simply fails, contradicting both itself repeatedly and also several laws of physics and the observed geography of the Earth.

I suppose creationists feel that if any part of the Bible isn't taken literally, then their entire case for special creation is thereby weakened--ignoring the forest for the trees when you consider what a laughingstock is made of their "theories" by unbending insistence on literalism.

Creationists and IDers: If We're God's "Perfect Creations," What's Up With Tooth Decay?

One thing you hear a lot of from Creationists and "Intelligent Designers" is that humans are God's "perfect creation," created in "His" image.  This statement conveniently neglects such obvious imperfections as the vestigial vermiform appendix and tooth decay--and I can personally attest to the latter, if not (hopefully ever) the former.  If humans are so perfect, what's the deal with tooth decay?

Two years ago, I developed an abscessed wisdom tooth; my prior dentist had actually assured me the small missing chip from the tooth was "fine" (it was a sign of decay, duh!).  The pain peaked around the time I was in my cousin Michael's wedding; I could hardly bite down without feeling like I was eating glass or had a mouthful of needles.  I made it through the ceremony with the assistance of massive painkiller doses, and somehow the abscess itself cleared up and gave me several more months without a problem--I ended up keeping the appointment I'd originally made to have them removed vs. going in for an emergency.

Wisdom teeth in and of themselves are of debatable value when examined under the "design" and "perfection" lenses.  They add little to modern humans' mastication; complications range from the dreaded but common teenage pronouncement of impaction to biting surfaces partially covered by the gums or skin, leading to inevitable decay--leaving one to wonder what sort of perverse deity would design such teeth and inflict them upon their beloved creations.

Creationists believe the Earth and humankind were created by their God, not by natural processes like the Big Bang and evolution; likewise, IDers state with no small degree of smugness that the universe and life are too complex to have arisen naturally and thus require "design" by their God--i.e. creationism in a tuxedo, or perhaps a liptsticked pig of creationism (though thoughts of lipstick in conjunction with the strongly patriarchal and often overtly-misogynistic culture typically associated with ID brings to light disturbing images of Ted Haggard in drag).

Friday evening, one of my two remaining wisdom teeth--a tooth I'd had problems with and knew needed to come out eventually--started hurting a bit.  As I'd an empty stomach and was headed to dinner, I figured I'd take an Advil once I had something on my stomach.  Although the tooth had hurt off and on for some time, unlike my prior wisdom tooth, I'd always been able to control the pain with one or at most two Advil--and of late, hadn't needed a dose for at least several weeks.

Over the next five minutes, the tooth went from a bit of pain to an exploding hammer drill in the side of my head.  Given we were headed to our favorite Indian restaurant, perhaps the Christian God felt a bit of petty jealousy for the Hindu pantheon.  But during that short drive--the restaurant is about a mile from our house--I realized something was seriously wrong with my tooth.  This was the worst pain I'd ever experienced in my life, inescapable and nearly unbearable in intensity; it shot from my jaw around my entire mouth and up along the side of my head in waves of pounding agony.  I did manage to eat--by then, the pain and low blood sugar from hunger were making me sick, and I had to ingest something.

Through luck my creationist and IDer brethren would ascribe to providence, my wife reached my doctor's office even on a Friday night, and in short order I had prescriptions for antibiotics and painkillers.  Even taking the maximum dose of painkillers, my tooth throbbed; the antibiotics took about three doses to kick in, after which the pain began to at least be controllable.

One might ask of the Creationists and IDers: even if we allow for the fact of tooth decay itself under your "creation" and "design" schemes (or the Christian notion of the Fall, which seems to explain everything from pain in childbirth to aging and disease), then wouldn't humans be more perfect if they regrew adult teeth, as do some animals including sharks?  Wouldn't an even more impressive feat of perfection be the body's shedding of decayed teeth and their subsequent natural replacement by God's "perfect" creation?

Or will I get the answer and argument that it's all part of an inscrutable "plan," that my tooth pain is punishment for my scoffing skepticism yet the luck of reaching my doctor and getting a Monday morning appointment for extraction signs of that same vengeful god's mercy and grace?  Sometimes I feel like I'm arguing with the Ouroboros, the mythological snake devouring its own tail, in the level of circular reasoning thrown up by my opponents.  Sigh.

Celebrating the Holidays Early--Gotta Make That the Plan!

Each year, the holiday season--Christmastime, to the vast majority of Americans, myself included--seems to arrive sooner. I'm never ready. No matter how much shopping for gifts I've done ahead of time, there's still those last few to find and wrap. The menu doesn't get planned out, so hopefully the pantry's well-stocked for those forgotten-but-critical items needed after even Wal-Mart closes its doors on Christmas Eve. Decorations still need to be put up. And for someone creative like myself, the deadline for completing those hand-made gifts looms like the proverbial freight train at the end of the tunnel. Don't forget, either, the visits to friends and family spread out across several states--even though both Beth and I enjoy spending Christmas at home together.

Beth and I came up with what we thought was a pretty good idea to help address these stress-inducing holiday problems a couple of years ago: celebrate on the Winter Solstice. That leaves us Christmas itself to spread out, round-robin, amongst the family we want to visit.

Too, for the pair of us atheists, it helps divorce our own celebrations from a Christian holiday. Not that we object at all to "Merry Christmas" or decorating our "Christmas tree," mind you (we're not soliders in the religious right's preceived "War on Christmas" at all, and we both absolutely love Christmas time!)--but we would like to have people realize our celebrations aren't so much for the birth of the central figure in their mythology but rather to enjoy the spirit of giving and of family and companionship that this time of year brings.

(To go off on a brief tangent, if the average Christian were honest with himself, he'd realize that "Christmas" as practiced by 99.99% of Americans is an absolutely secular holiday with but a passing nod to the birth of Jesus--who, if he existed at all, almost certainly wasn't born anywhere near December 25th, the date chosen by the Church to try winning over converts who observed the Roman Saturnalia or various other "pagan" celebrations set around the time of the Winter Solstice. Charlie Brown's decades-old lament about the commercialization of Christmas should be truer for Christian observants today than ever!)

Anyway, though we've talked up that notion before, we've yet to actually incorporate it into our holiday planning. As was the case the past two years, a major gift to several family members is going to be my bird book, which highlights the best of my bird photography for the past year.  Let me tell you something: putting that book together is NOT easy! I thought I'd made good progress this year well ahead of schedule, as I had done a good two-thirds of the layouts by September, leaving room for the inevitable photos I'd get on several fall business trips to the west coast. Alas, despite several late nights and a day taken off work, I still got the book off to the publishers about two hours past the cutoff for Christmas delivery (though there's still the chance they'll ship today, I guess). And there are gifts I've still to make for others: artwork to be done, cards to be designed, and photos to be presented.

Perhaps if we really set the Solstice as our deadline to celebrate, we'd not be running right up to Christmas. Next year?

The New Jim Crow, Or a Sad Night for Equality

Despite the elation of bringing change to the White House (and keeping Caribou Barbie as far away from it as possible), there was a big vote last night that fell solidly on the sordid side of history: it appears Proposition 8, aka "Proposition Hate," has passed in California.

Several states had ballot initiatives which addressed the rights of those of us who differ from the majority only in their sexual orientation, from three decisions on the legality of same-sex marriage to another which banned adoption by gay couples, but ostensibly California's Proposition 8 was the most important such measure to see the ballot, ever--for not only is California the largest state and thus carries a heavy impact upon the rest of the nation, but also its courts had thrown out a prior ban--making Proposition 8 a measure not only denying a right, but one which would explicitly take away an existing right.

That these issues were even on the ballot at all is a sad enough commentary on the United States electorate and the backwards views and bigotry apparently so prevalent in our country.

I'm a happily-married, heterosexual male, and I just don't get it why anyone feels their own marriage is somehow threatened by allowing a basic right to all.  Or why allowing gays to marry somehow threatens children.

I also don't understand how people can be quite so bigoted--particularly so many people who collectively have historically themselves been the victims of discrimination and persecution.  The Mormon church, for example, has certainly been one of the more persecuted religious groups in the history of the United States--and has even faced its own share of non-traditional marriage issues--yet they pumped tens of millions of dollars into California from out of state to ensure the passage of Proposition Hate.  African Americans by and large voted heavily in favor of 8 as well--reminding me of the gay black character in Kevin Smith's Chasing Amy, who lamented being "a minority of a minority."

One thing is for sure: we're seeing the creation of a new Jim Crow, and it's not a pretty sight.

Now, for the fallout.  I am neither a lawyer nor do I play one on television (and I most certainly did not stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night), but I wonder if the passage of 8 can see legal challenge in courts in California?  Ballot initiatives do not give anyone the right to violate the Constitution, so perhaps "equal protection" arguments can successfully be made, either at the state or Federal level (though with the latter, said challenges need to wait to for some of the damage done by George Bush's conservative appointees to be remedied--I would hate to see a Supreme Court of Scalia, Alito, Roberts, and Thomas taking up such a crucial issue).

And will existing same-sex marriages be rendered void, ruining the lives of many happy couples?  Surely that will be a sordid spectacle both in the legal courts and that of the public spectacle.  Is it time to push our Congresspeople to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act at the federal level?

I just don't know.  But I nonetheless find this a very sad day to be an American, making the triumph of the election of Obama bittersweet.  I don't even have a dog in this race, so to speak, with my happy, "traditional" marriage.  Yet I find I must shed a tear for this step backwards for equality and the civil rights of all Americans, and the dark blot on the pages of history Proposition 8 and its sister measures across the country represent.

Blame Creationism! (Or: How a Nutjob at a Debate Made Me Into an Atheist)

People often talk about experiences that strengthened their faith, or which brought them to discover religion or otherwise have an epiphanous revelation about God. Recently, Greta Christinia asked in her blog a similar question for non-believers: what caused us to move away from theism? (Thank you to the Freethinkers at Virginia Tech for pointing me to Ms. Christiania's blog!)

Like most Americans, I grew up in a Christian household, and like most children, I never questioned the things I was taught in church--much like I'd never questioned the existence of Santa Claus, either. Adults tell you something is true, and you tend to believe it, particularly when everyone tells you the same story. All those authority figures can't be wrong, can they?

To make a long story short, by the time I'd reached my own adult years, I'd already begun to question the tenets of a belief system I'd been told was true all my life. What about other religions? Who decides which is "right," and why? What about people who never are exposed to the "right" religion--are they damned for their innocently-ignorant beliefs?

But what really pushed me off the edge of the cliff of theism and into that wild, scary realm of disbelief was my own strong foundation in science and reason. The whole flood mythology of the Bible's Old Testament simply cannot be reconciled with any notion of science, history, or reason; likewise, the biblical creation account contradicts science when taken as anything but allegory. Oh, I'd gone through the phase of creating my own epicycles, rationalizing six-day special creation and biblical chronology of a "young earth" which somehow meshed with the billions-of-years of age the Earth and broader universe clearly possessed, but dismissed those rationalizations before my teenage years had even passed.

To answer Ms. Christiana's question, I can even identify the exact moment I took that big, bold step over the theism cliff: February 24, 2002 (ironically, a Sunday), at the "Evolution vs. Creationism Debate" hosted by the Campus Bible Fellowship and Freethinkers at Virginia Tech. By then, I'd become an agnostic, but the exposure to the sheer intellectual dishonesty and self-deceit of the creationist speaker--and, in turn, the broader creationist movement--make up the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back.

The creationist speaker, Dr. Randy Guliuzza from the Institute for Creation Research (ICR), based his entire side of the debate around erecting a strawman of "evolution" which he then attacked, coupled with the false dichotomy of saying, "If you are wrong, then I am right." He didn't produce a single piece of evidence for his position (creationism), and when I called him on that during the question & answer phase, asking him point-blank to produce some evidence to support his argument, he simply responded that all he had to do was debunk evolution to prove creation (if you don't see the false dichotomy of that notion, I'm not sure I can help you).

Though Dr. Guliuzza couldn't replicate "Dr. Dino" Kent Hovind's infamous 300 creationist lies, his arguments did suffer from nearly 50 major problems in such a short debate, which I took down during the debate. He only had a couple of hours, so I guess he does deserve some credit for making that many mistakes, deceptions, misrepresentations, and outright lies during the debate (the numbers below come from the order he presented them in, as I listed them during the debate).

Some of his real laughers included defending creationism's validity by presenting public opinion polls (#1); claiming scientists have no "data" or "details" to support evolution (#2) because articles published in Discover and Popular Science lack them, as do books in the popular press (#3); that scientists condenscendingly think "you" are stupid (#5); appeals to authority ("Some scientists believe in creationism, so it must be true!" and "I have an M.D., so what I say about biology is true!") (#13 & #15); that evolution isn't "useful" (#12); and so on.

His strawman of evolution--a common tactic of creationists--included such ridiculous notions that evolution is "too broad" (#6) whilst simultaneously demanding it explain cosmogenesis (#23) and other aspects of physics, not biology, as well as areas of biology not remotely related to evolution, like abiogenesis (#22); and the insulting notion that "scientists say humans come from worms," (#27) and that "scientists have to use computer animations showing one animal turning into another" (#4 & #26). This is the same tactic Dr. Dino (who currently resides in federal prison, I might add...) uses in his "$200,000 challenge" whereby he claims he'll give anyone who can "prove" evolution a big sum of cash--yet they have to "prove" something not even remotely identifiable as evolutionary theory. Of course the audience (and even scientists) would agree his strawman "evolution" is no good... the problem is, it simply isn't evolution.

The whole notion of debates as "proof" of one's theory also irks me; creationists are good at winning debates with laypeople audiences, who quite honestly aren't capable of making a proper evaluation of the science behind evolution, and who may be easily swayed by the strawmen and ad hominem attacks of creationist arguments. "Show us the data!" the creationists cry; despite the fact mountains of such data exist in the academic literature or even a decent biology textbook, they claim victory when the scientist at the debate doesn't display table after table of mind-numbing data, even when refusing to produce any evidence in support of creationism itself (remember that false dichotomy I mentioned?)

Dr. Guliuzza went on to make several demonstrably false scientific statements as well; ever wonder why creationists spend so much time picking at evolution instead of layout out evidence for their own theory? It's because they can't do science, and what science they try to do is quite poor. For example, he claimed an evolutionary change resulting in a loss of functionality or information contradicts evolutionary theory (#28)--another straw in that big man-shaped bale of hay. He made the oft-repeated claim that "all mutations are bad" (#40); that bacterial antibiotic resistance doesn't exist (#35), that HIV has not and is not changing as a virus (#41), and several other real whoppers which simply are wrong in all factual regards.

Finally, creationists often accuse evolutionary theory of failings which in any sense actually apply more to creationism than evolution, and if to be taken as points against a theory, must condemn their own position! If evolution is "too broad" to be an acceptable theory (#6, an accusation demonstrably incorrect to begin with), what of the notion that "Goddidit" to explain everything, from cosmogenesis to abiogenesis to evolution and beyond? If evolution has "no predictive value" (#14, and again, demonstrably incorrect), what of the Bible and creationism?

Creationists claim scientists "force" data into "unnatural" configurations to support evolution (again, provably wrong, and #10 on Dr. Guliuzza's list of lies)--what, then, of all the epicycles invented by creationists to try to fit observable science to a "theory" broadly and wholly contradicted and disproven by said science? I suggest the interested reader check out the topics of "flood geology," "hydrological sorting," and the "vapor canopy," and get back to me on who exactly is forcing data into unnatural configurations--and afterwards, take a look at the ridiculous notions of variable speed-of-light ("tired" light is responsible for redshift, so says that "theory"), incredibly variable rates of radioactive decay only stable in the past few years (to explain away radioisotope dating, among other things), and mutation and speciation rates far in excess of anything evolution demands to account for all the biological diversity we see today having arisen a few thousand years ago from Noah and his rinky-dink Ark.

Looking back on my notes from that 2002 debate, I found this gem:

Finally, as I have indicated before and likely will again, isn’t it hypocritical for creationists to accuse someone else of using “just-so” stories (like, maybe, “God did it!”) to explain their position? Forgive me if I am wrong, but my exposure to creationism has left me with the feeling that the whole platform is based on one great big just-so story called the Bible.

Using that as segue back to my original topic of how that particular debate drove me away from theism one and for all, that day's events are what really opened my eyes to the particular sort of dishonesty (intentional or through ignorance; it doesn't matter) and refusal to partake in any meaningful discussion or rational argumentation about either science or religion that makes up not just creationism (and its "lipstick on a pig / monkey in a tuxedo" cousin, (un)intelligent design), but on a broader level religion as a whole. Religious beliefs are just that: beliefs. They cannot be supported factually, yet many of the claims of religion run counter to observable, factual science. When you scrape away all the fluff, all that's left is a warm fuzzy notion of "god," and to me, that's simply not enough to justify a belief in the face of all other rationality.