Secular Jews Have Magic Powers

This was reported on Haaretz.com, prepare to laugh:

"During the ultra-Orthodox demonstrations against Intel in Jerusalem two weeks ago, something strange happened: toward the end of the protest, when the police began pushing the demonstrators out of the Har Hotzvim industrial zone, the Haredim withdrew.

But at one point they reached a pile of plastic boxes on the road, and suddenly refused to retreat any further. Some began fighting the police, while others simply fled to the sides of the road, giving the police more impetus to disperse them forcefully.

The reason for the sudden panic was that under the boxes, on the street, someone had spray painted the name of God - Yahweh. The boxes had been placed on top of the graffiti as a holy roadblock by an anonymous group of secular Jerusalemites who have taken upon themselves to act lawfully and creatively against the Haredim.

..The underground also dispersed pornographic material at the site, which was like spraying tear gas at the protesters, who fled in disarray at the site of the smut."

French court finds Scientology: GUILTY

Today rationality won a small battle over the cult known as The Church of Scientology. A French court found that the cult's use of it's "e-meter" to justify "prescribing" vitamins and supplements to it's members was fraudulent and fined several members of the church somehwere around 400,000 euros each. The original cnn article can be found here: http://m.cnn.com/#___2__

Specifics are not given, but presumably the court found that the e-meter is a very rudimentary polygraph machine, a fact that has long been known, which is why the device is not FDA approved for medical use in the states. The court probably found that since the device has no diagnostic abilities, the cult was being fraudulent by using "results" obtained through use of the device to justify any kind of treatment regimen.

Are Atheists Arrogant?

A common "argument" leveled at Atheists is that they are arrogant, whether it's for simply not believing in God or simply for having the audacity to be so confident in that belief. But is it arrogance? Is it more arrogant to believe in something for which there is no evidence, or to not believe in something for which there is no evidence? Am I arrogant for openly and unabashedly denying the existence of unicorns?

The truth is that while many atheists, and theists, may very well be arrogant, there is certainly nothing intrinsically arrogant about requiring there be evidence to back up one's beliefs, it is simply rational; and many atheists, and non-theists, would contend that it is precisely our rationality that sets us apart from animals-what makes us human. It would be truly tragic if the very thing that made us human... made us arrogant.

In the end, however, does it really even matter whether Atheists are arrogant? Does arrogant = wrong? I've always loved rhetoric (the art of argumentation), and one thing I've always noticed is that when people can't attack and argument, they attack the argue-er. This is what's referred to as an ad hominem attack and in reality it should be taken as a compliment to the strength of the argument it opposes. The proponent of the ad hominem attack might as well be admitting that the argument they are opposing is without flaw, and so naturally they must instead attack the undoubtedly flawed person extolling said argument. So in a sense, the very fact that the Atheist's opponent calls them arrogant, is a validation of the veracity of their argument.

Liberals blaim Obama for their own faulty expectations

Phil Graham famously said that this nation has become a nation of whiners, and as much as I hate to say it, on this point (and this point alone) I happen to agree with him. Of course, he was blaming the recession on our whining, whereas I am merely claiming that it is responsible for the continued indecision, infirmity, and impotence of the democratic party.

Believe me when I say that this is the last thing I thought I'd ever be writing about. Although I supported Obama during the primaries as well as the general (obviously) I never felt that overwhelming zeal so many liberals seemed to have for him. I'm not saying the Hillary supporters weren't equally as zealous, they were (remember how many of them claimed that if she lost the primary they would vote for McCain, how did that go?). But I simply didn't have the fervor so many people seemed stricken with when it came to Barack Obama. Which makes it doubly odd for me to see so many of the same people completely ABANDONING him not only when he needs them most, but also after doing a completely respectable job so far. In fact I would contend that these same liberals gave more deference to George W. Bush during his first year after allowing the single largest terrorist attack to occur on his watch, than they are to President Obama who has gotten the ball running on revoking don't ask don't tell, reforming healthcare, saved the domestic car industry, and brought back the stock market from the brink, all the while keeping this nation safe.

And they wonder why the democratic congress hasn't been able to pass a public option yet? Because they, and not the Congress, have no concept of loyalty and trust nor any idea of political practicality. Has our time with Bush left us so jaded that we can't even trust in our own candidate? They've already turned on him after less than a year, despite the fact that they elected him for FOUR years, not one. I don't know a single liberal who thinks that Obama deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. Why? Because what has he done for them? They certainly didn't ask who his competition was. That's something no one mentions. Which is odd because if you found out that Barack Obama won the gold medal in the men's five hundred, the first question you'd probably ask is, "who the hell was he running against?" They forget that Al Gore won the same prize for making a movie. And while his movie was quite influential, it didn't really have anything to do with peace, but I don't remember any of them mentioning that. But liberals don't really care right now. They've already turned. He failed to meet their wildest expectations. He failed to wave his magic wand and make all our troubles go away. And for failing to be the messiah, something he never claimed to be (but maybe looked the other way when others claimed it for him), they're punishing him. Punishing him even though he's already being punished by every republican for every move he makes. So how could Congress-people take as big a leap as the public-option when they know that their base is fickle even with their Golden Boy?

All you hippies in the democratic party should realize that Obama needs to get re-elected in four years, which is what you want. It's either him or a republican, I promise, and then you can kiss the very idea of healthcare reform goodbye. Please remember the average American has the attention span and memory of a gnat (as evidenced by the fact that you already seem to forget that we were going backwards for the previous eight years), and it might be better for everyone involved if he healed some of the lepers in his other three years. Would it really be the end of the world if he reformed healthcare this year, and repealed don't ask don't tell next year? If there is such a rush where was your rancor in the Clinton-Bush years? What's that? Healthcare reform without a public option is worthless? Who says? What the hell do you know. That's like saying no sex is better than a little sex. I'll take a little sex thank you very much. I'll take what I can get. Maybe instead of assuming that if something doesn't immediately pass the way you want it to it's Obama's fault, you should assume that it couldn't pass. Why shouldn't we assume he's doing everything humanly possible to live up to his word?

Finally, how is it that succeeding in keeping America protected from terrorist attacks (a commendable enough feat to convince many liberals that a President who stole his first term deserved a second) has now become par for the course. Barely worth mentioning. What has he does for us lately? STFU.

For more Obama/Nobel related cartoons, go here.

Awesome Religious Person of the Day: Phillip Craig Garrido

There's nothing religious people like to do more than count up the deaths caused by "Atheists." It has to be their single favorite argument; "Hitler, Stalin,Pol Pot were all Atheists, and look how many deaths they caused." I guess that means Atheists are wrong? Anyway, as silly as I think this kind of calculus is, I can't resist pointing out that if every crime caused by an Atheist is due to their Atheism (note that I do not necessarily agree that these men were Atheists, and I certainly don't agree that it was their Atheism that led them to kill people), then presumably every crime committed by a religious person is caused by their religion. The staggering thing to me is that considering the sheer volume of religious people, they should be the last people to want to count up murders, since of all the non-fascism related murders, they are far more likely to be the perpetrator, especially once you consider that Atheists are markedly underrepresented in prison (.21% as opposed to their ~10% representation in the general population, and no it's not because people convert in prison, the numbers are taken upon booking, go here for the data).

But since religious people love keeping track of the awful things Atheists do, I've decided to start a regular entry, which points out the obvious, that religious people do horrible things too, like kidnap, rape and impregnate eleven year-old girls, as did Phillip Garrido. It also appears that his wife was complicit in this disgusting affair. Garrido has a business called "God's Desire" which he refers to as a church. Garrido even claims that God speaks to him through a box. Who would have thought that people who hear voices could commit horrifying crimes?

Now I'd just like to make it clear in this first post (then I won't mention it again) that I'm not using this as an argument against religious people. The fact that millions of religious people rape and murder other people every year, is not an argument for whether or not God exists. If scientologists never committed any crimes would that prove that they're right? One thing it certainly does prove is that being religious certainly doesn't make someone a saint. Not by a long-shot.

Obama has kept us safer than Bush did: A memo to moderate republicans

The Republican idea of success:

With 9/11 four days behind us it surprises me that no one has made what seems to me a fairly obvious point: Barack Obama has already protected this country better than President Bush did in a very measurable way... four days better. That means that everyone who voted for Bush in 2004, or claimed to reelect Bush for national security reasons, now has to vote for Obama by their own logic.

Let's look at the reasoning that was largely behind Bush's second campaign, and his reelection. Premise #1: If the single biggest terrorist attack on American soil happens while you're President... it's not your fault. This has to be one of the premises behind the logic that got Bush reelected. Certainly if people held him accountable for the deaths on 9/11 (which I'm not saying he should be) they wouldn't have voted for him. On a side note, I think people should know that as many people were killed from the increase in car travel, as opposed to air travel, that was generated by 9/11. So in reality, the death toll of 9/11 is at least twice that of those killed in the World Trade Center. Premise #2: Despite premise #1, the President is responsible for every terrorist attack that does not happen on American soil, i.e. the President gets credit for every day America goes terrorist-attack-free. Premise #3: If we then start a long, unprofitable war with another country on faulty intel, that too is not the President's fault. Obviously these premises make no sense, but it is indisputable that these were at the heart of any pro-Bush argument. Simply saying, "Bush kept us safe," which was a ubiquitous statement when he was running for reelection, requires all three premises.

“It takes a liberal to suggest or to say directly that liberating 53,000,000 people is a war crime. It takes liberals to say that keeping this nation safe from another horrific attack by terrorists amounts to a war crime.”
Tammy Bruce, O’Reilly Factor, January 27, 2009

If we apply these premises to Obama what we find is that, not only has he kept us safer for longer than Bush did, but we can still have one major terrorist attack on U.S. soil and he can start a long and unprofitable war on faulty intel, and one could still say, "Obama kept us safer than Bush." Do I think this is a ridiculous outcome? Yes. It cannot be that the President is only responsible for protecting us... when there aren't any terrorist attacks, but once we have an attack his responsibility resets; and the President cannot claim to keep us safe when he sends our brothers and sisters to die based on information that someone gathered off of a bathroom stall wall. The truth is obvious, the President is responsible for any attacks that happen on American soil, we just weren't allowed to say it because in Republican-America saying anything anti-Bush was unpatriotic and made you a terrorist sympathizer.

Although the logic that reelected Bush was poor, this logic is undeniable. 1. No major terrorist attacks have occurred on American soil while Obama has been President. 2. Obama has started no wars on faulty intel. If you're a "national security" republican, it's hard for me to see the logic in voting for anyone else in 2012. And since I know someone is going to say it, even if he is a "tax and spend liberal trying to socialize medicine," how many Americans have lost their lives because of him? Comparing the issues of healthcare and stimulus to 9/11 is an insult to those who gave and lost their lives on that day. Democrats protested a war in Bush's America, what the hell are Republicans protesting at their omnipresent "Tea Parties?" Higher taxes? Whose taxes have been raised? Government spending? Don't remember them complaining when Bush was President. Socialized healthcare? Ok, maybe. So I guess that means that they think providing all Americans with healthcare so that we aren't, as Russell Brand said, "letting people die in the streets," is as reprehensible an act as sending our bravest Americans to die for a lie. So I guess the real question is for the so-called "moderate Republicans..." what the f^ck are you thinking? You're on a sinking pirate ship, and you're sticking with the pirates.

On the importance of non-falsifiability: The lethal consequences of ignoring the importance of non-falsifiability.

Non-falsifiability (or unfalsifiability) is, in my opinion, one of the most important concepts period, and I urge the reader to struggle through the first few expository paragraphs in order to understand just how the idea of non-falsifiability can change your entire world view. Ever argue with someone, and at some point the person says something that seems so stupid... you can't even respond to it? It's so meaningless and nonsensical, that you are left dumbfounded? Generally these aren't the first arguments posited by your opponent. The first line of defense is usually rationalization, however, that is easy to defeat if you're on the better side. The arguments I'm talking about are the last lines of defense. Once a person's “reasons” have been defeated, these are the arguments they cling to when the only thing standing between reality and their delusions is their own ignorance. These are called non-falsifiable arguments, and I am constantly amazed at how many intelligent people have no idea what that means.

Let's start with the definition (wiki): Falsifiability (or refutability) is the logical possibility that an assertion can be shown false by an observation or a physical experiment. So non-falsifiability is just the negative of that, or: the logical IMpossibility that an assertion can be shown false by an observation or a physical experiment. E.g. “I was abducted by a UFO last night.” This could be falsifiable. I could say, “Well, none of your neighbors saw anything, your husband was asleep in the bed next to you and he didn't see or hear anything, and presumably nothing set off the U.S. Military's defense systems. But if the abductee were to respond, “Well the aliens are invisible and silent to everyone but me, they abducted me by teleporting me out of my bed from across the galaxy and they replace my body with a copy of me which is indistinguishable from my own real body.” Now we've entered the territory of non-falsifiability. It has now become impossible to disprove this person's claim. Even if we could go back in time and stand in their bedroom staring at them all night, we could not prove that they were not abducted. We cannot refute their statement because they've created a set of facts which make it impossible to do so. Of course most of us just write these people off, and rightfully so. But what allows us to do this, and why is it so important?

We can ignore non-falsifiable arguments because the odds of them being correct are so small that they are in effect negligible. The abductee may have been abducted since I cannot prove that they weren't, however, the odds that they were abducted are so small that it would be unreasonable to believe they were. First of all, most true things are relatively easy to prove. If aliens did come down to earth someone would have seen it, especially in today's age where almost everyone has a video camera in their cell phone and free access to millions of people through youtube. Not to mention the sophisticated equipment that the U.S. Government has. In addition, it doesn't make logical sense. The idea that an alien species so advanced that they have figured out how to teleport a human across the universe would even be interested in studying a human makes no sense. What secrets could our bodies possibly contain that would be of interest to a species whose intelligence is so vastly beyond our own that it probably wouldn't view us as any different than the house pets we live with?

This example also gives us an opportunity to see an easy and obvious use for the idea of falsifiability. Since we know that the abductee's claim is non-falsifiable, and all non-falsifiable claims should be treated as if they are not true, then we know that anyone who makes such claims is either lying or hallucinating. Of course I'm sure this is all fairly obvious to the reader, however, I feel that an obvious example will ease the reader into applying the same logic to the less obvious example that will be coming.

The interesting thing is that it is precisely the non-falsifiability of such claims that generates the interest and belief in them. Non-falsifiability highlights a pervasive flaw in reasoning that is endemic in humans. Evolutionarily speaking, it behooves us to apply the rule, “If you cannot prove someone wrong, believe them.” If someone in your clan says, “Don't eat those berries, they're poisonous,” it's much better to believe them, than to eat one and find out. Of course, you could perform an experiment on some animal, but that requires a great deal of energy and time, both of which are extremely valuable commodities in the state of nature. Better to simply not eat the berries and find something else to eat. If someone runs through the village in the middle of the night and screams, “A massive army is about to attack us!” Better to run or at least prepare to fight than to just lay in bed and assume they're lying. The problem is that many claims aren't non-falsifiable, but they are still very difficult to disprove, and the farther in time we go back the harder things become to disprove. Remember that for the vast majority of human evolution, the height of technology was stone tools. Those are the circumstance in which we evolved, not the age of DNA testing and CSI. If somebody said there was a man-eating lion nearby, believing them had a far lower cost than not believing them. After all, if you believe them you just have to be a little more careful, maybe travel in packs more frequently. But if you don't believe them you risk being killed.

So there was a time when the rule, “If you can't disprove something someone says, believe them,” was a good rule to follow, and so our genes began encoding the rule and telling our brain to follow it. But that time has passed. First, it requires very little energy to disprove someone today. If someone tells me something is poisonous I can google it, not to mention the fact that if I am purchasing food it is most likely in some kind of market that would be out of business, and whose owner's would be in jail, if it was in the habit of selling poisoned fruits.

Now we can get to the bit about why non-falsifiability is so important. It's important because people often allow non-falsifiable arguments to guide their perception of reality because they can't disprove them, despite the fact that this is precisely the reason why we should not believe them. People believe Barack Obama is a Muslim and or/that he was born in a different country, people believe that 9/11 was a conspiracy, people believed that there were WMDs in Iraq, people believe that Jews run the banks, that blacks are an inferior race, etc. The one thing these things all have in common is that you cannot prove the proponent wrong, and unless you want to be no different than the people who believe those things, you will have to force yourself to obey a new rule: If something is non-falsifiable, I will treat it as if it is not true. This will be harder than you think, especially if you're religious, since the idea of “god” is the king of all non-falsifiable claims.

At this point I'd like to illustrate how one of these arguments might go down. Many political arguments are non-falsifiable, like the claim that Obama was born in Kenya. I believe that Obama was born in Hawaii because I have been shown, through photographic evidence, that he was born there. People who disagree disregard that evidence. My view is falsifiable. If you show me proof that he was born elsewhere, then I would at least have to give it relatively the same weight I give the Hawaiian birth certificate. Their view is non-falsifiable because no matter what I show them, they will respond with something like, "that was forged." The problem is that by that logic, every President might have been born in Kenya! George W. Bush? His birth certificate was forged too! Prove me wrong. Obama-care creates government run death panels, I don't care if that's not written anywhere in the bill, I know that's what he really wants. Prove me wrong. Ok, but why is this dangerous?

There is no more clear proof of the danger of believing in non-falsifiable claims than the AIDS denialist community. Believe it or not, there is a group of people who deny that AIDS is a virus that causes death. Though I'm sure the consequences of this are obvious, I'd like to give a few examples, just so the importance of non-falsifiability is obvious.

1. The magazine Continuum, which repeatedly denied the existence of HIV and AIDS was shut down when all its editors died of the disease.¹

2. The South African government was sympathetic to AIDS denialist claims, which led to a pathetic response to the contries massive AIDS epidemic. According to the Harvard School of Public Health, more than 330,00 deaths and about 35,000 infant HIV infections were caused by South Africa's resistance to the use of antiretroviral drugs to treat HIV/AIDS.² Peter Mandelson has referred to the deaths as “genocide by sloth.”³

3. “Christine Maggiore was an HIV-positive denialist who founded the "Alive&Well AIDS Alternatives" denialist organization. She wrote and self-published the book What If Everything You Thought You Knew about AIDS Was Wrong? Her 3-year old daughter Eliza Jane Scovill died of AIDS-related pneumonia after Maggiore had refused to take medication to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV or to have the child tested for HIV. Christine Maggiore died at the age of 52 in December 2008.⁴

What this shows is that one illogical belief creates a snowball effect that is often more harmful the belief it stems from. Even if one makes perfectly rational decisions all the time, if those rational decisions are predicated on one irrational belief, they too will be irrational. If you don't believe in the AIDS virus, it then becomes rational to not treat it. Not only that but it becomes irrational to even seek a cure. So we should be very thankful that AIDS denialist meme hasn't gained nearly as wide acceptance as certain other nonfalsifiable.

While it might be tempting to attribute these deaths to a few crazy people, the truth is that ignoring the importance of non-falsifiability was the real killer. The truth is that the people responsible for the deaths were not crazy. They had jobs and families, they took care of themselves and others. People are not selectively crazy. You cannot be a lunatic in one small (but significant) facet of your life and completely sane in all others. The sad fact is that any one of us could play host to such memes if we are not careful.

So how can we tell when someone, or ourselves, is holding a non-falsifiable belief? Simply ask yourself, “Is there anything that can convince the person holding the belief (even if it's me) that they are wrong?” If the answer is “no” then for the sake of all of us you have to at least treat the view with a healthy dose of skepticism.

1"AIDS Denialists Who Have Died". aidstruth.org. http://www.aidstruth.org/denialism/dead_denialists. Retrieved June 15, 2009.

2Chigwedere P, Seage GR, Gruskin S, Lee TH, Essex M (October 2008). "Estimating the Lost Benefits of Antiretroviral Drug Use in South Africa". Journal of acquired immune deficiency syndromes (1999). doi:10.1097/QAI.0b013e31818a6cd5. PMID 18931626. Lay summary

3Nattrass N (February 2008). "Estimating the Lost Benefits of Antiretroviral Drug Use in South Africa". African Affairs 107 (427): 157-76. doi:10.1093/afraf/adm087.

4“AIDS Denialists who have died.” http://www.aidstruth.org/denialism/dead_denialists.