The Atheist News Podcast

This is just too amazing to not propagate.  Pharyngula links to this spectacular piece of right-wing kitsch that depicts Jesus (Caucasian, like he should be) personally delivering the Constitution to a group of awed on-lookers who include, children, school teachers, US Founding Fathers (including, ironically, notoriously atheistic Thomas Payne), Ronald Reagan, dead astronauts, black soldiers (specifically), and a godless group of professors, Supreme Court Judges, politicians, and Hollywood producers.  Every individual and object in the picture has a nice little mouseover text (eat your heart out, Randall Munroe!) describing how that individual either worked to create the United States of Jesus America, or how he is working to bring Satan (can you find him in the picture?) into the White House.  This is absolutely golden.  Enjoy!

Jesus delivers the Constitution

There has, over the centuries since Darwin posited his theory of natural selection–and, more specifically, of the descent of man from early ape ancestors–been much wailing and gnashing of the teeth.  One of the more frequently wailed notes (translated into language that can be understood by reasonable people) goes something like this: if Darwin was right in even the broad strokes about the origin of humanity, where are all the links between our old-world ape-like ancestors and modern humans?  Why, that is, don’t we see more fossil records of things that look not quite human, but not quite ape-like either?  Discounting the fact that there are a multitude of such forms on record already, where (the wailers say) are our early hominid fossils?  Where, that is, are our Bigfoot fossils?

There are a lot of reasonable answers on record to this.  Even Darwin recognized what he called the “problem of transitional species” in the Origin of Species, and he went out of his way to address it: “[W]e should bear in mind that animals displaying early transitional grades of [any given] structure will seldom continue to exist to the present day, for they have been supplanted by the very process of perfection through natural selection.  [...] Hence the chance of discovering species with transitional grades of structure in fossil condition will always be less, from their having existed in lesser numbers, than in the case of species with fully developed structures” (this is near the middle of chapter five, page 209 in the 2003 edition of the Origin of Species edited by Joseph Carroll).  Darwin’s response to this objection raises a few philosophical problems–perhaps chiefly, it leads us naturally to ask what the hell he means by “perfection through natural selection”–but, I think, the core of his resolution rings true.  Fossilization is an extraordinarily rare phenomenon: it requires precisely the right conditions (rapid burial in sediment) that just don’t obtain very often, at least considering the number of organisms that might be fossilized.  This seems particularly true for even the early hominids, which might well have had the resources to avoid such burials in ways that other animals wouldn’t have been able to take advantage of.

Those points aside, it looks like there’s yet another link in the chain.  Wired reported yesterday on a recent discovery of another early hominid skeleton.  This one predates the previous record holder–Lucy–by at least one million years, and suggests that the line of species that eventually led to humanity originated in the forests rather than the Savannah, as previously thought; the new fossil, which the scientists have named “Ardi,” had thumb-like toes for climbing, walked upright, and had a thick coat of fur.  The artist’s rendition in the Wired article looks suspiciously like the paradigmatically “missing-link” Big Foot.  Perhaps more interesting than the physical features, though, are the hypothesized cultural features that Ardi might have shared with us: based on tooth and jaw structure, the evolutionary anthropologists have postulated that Ardi and her species lived together relatively peacefully, had a cooperative social structure, and generally lived more like humans than like chimpanzees, which have a relatively violent society.  This suggests that our cultural evolution may have been as important in the history of our species’ development as our physical evolution–indeed, the two may be closely linked.

In any case, this is just another piece of evidence for the evolution of man, not that the theory needed any more bolstering.  Any bets on how long it will take for a creationist to point out that now there are two more transitional forms required?

The Pew Research Center recently compiled a lengthy and exhaustive study on the state of science education in the United States.  The project–which sampled about 1,000 randomly selected US citizens–tackled a variety of issues in the public perception of science.  Some of the results were surprising–84% of Americans think that science’s impact on society has been almost entirely positive–and some where less surprising (that is, more disheartening): fewer than half of those surveyed knew if an electron was smaller or larger than an atom.  The Pew Center correlated the results with a few different factors, including education (which, not surprisingly, correlates very strongly with scientific literacy), age (the 30-49 age group was the most scientifically literate, while the 65+ age group was the least literate), and sex (on average, men know more than women).  They did not, however, bother to correlate the results with religion, which would yield some interesting results, I suspect–specifically, my (perhaps unfounded) suspicion is that religiosity will correlate negatively with scientific literacy: I’d be willing to wager that the strongly religious know less about science than the irreligious.  At the very least, I imagine that atheists would do better than average on a quiz like this–now, thanks to the pure awesomeness that is the Internet, we can test my hypothesis.

Since the official results have already been compiled, the Pew Center has made the original literacy quiz available on their website: you can answer the same questions that the original respondents answered, and see where you score for your gender, education, and age.  The quiz is short–only 12 questions long–so I’d recommend taking it, if just for the inevitable ego boost that it will give you.  If you do decide to take the quiz, post your score (as well as whether you identify as an atheist, agnostic, Christian, &c.) in the comments; let’s see if my hypothesis that atheists will do better than average–the average score overall was a bit less than 8 out of 12.  I got all of them right, which means that I don’t have to commit seppuku, at least not today.  How’d you do?  Were there any questions that gave you pause?  Anything about the results in general that you find surprising?

Link to the quiz.

Link to the study analysis.

In the second of what I suspect will be a scattered series of posts on Darwin–I’m TAing a class on him this semester–I bring you some facepalm-worthy news on this godless Sunday morning.  The UK’s Telegraph reports that a new drama about the life and times of Charles Darwin has recently made its premier at the Toronto Film Festival to much acclaim.  The film–which, judging by the trailer, looks quite good–is titled Creation, and is apparently centered around a portrayal of Darwin as a father, husband, naturalist, and human (rather than as an almost legendary scientific figure); it seeks to depict Darwin’s “struggle between faith and reason” as he wrote the Origin of Species, and throughout his life.  The producers have had no trouble finding distributors for the film in most of the world, but have been unable to find a single distribution company willing to take the film on in the United States.  The reason?  The film’s central topic–evolution–has been deemed too controversial in the United States.

As shocking as this might seem, I suppose the distribution companies are on firm statistical ground here: a Gallup poll conducted in February (to mark Darwin’s 200th birthday) found that fewer than 40% of Americans endorse the theory of evolution even in the broad strokes, and the number falls to just 24% if only those who regularly attend religious services are considered.  That makes for some reasonably fierce opposition to the topic of Creation, and perhaps some good reason to think that the film might struggle to find a wide audience in the United States.  Even still, though, I find it hard to believe that there’s no audience here at all: Bill Maher’s Religulous, after all, was able to find enough of an audience for a release, so it can’t just be that Creation offends America’s religious sensibilities.  Is there a deeper opposition at work?  Perhaps.  Much of US culture is profoundly anti-scientific and anti-intellectual, so perhaps the fact that Creation is about science (or, rather, about a scientist) is as off-putting as the fact that it covers evolution specifically.

Whatever the reason, I hope that the film’s producers are able to strike a deal soon: this looks like a really entertaining and well-done look at Darwin the man.  I was happy to see hints at the inner turmoil he must have experienced as he pushed his theory to its limits and yet still tried to maintain a close relationship with his highly religious wife Emma, for whom he cared a great deal.  It also seems to deal with the tragedy that was the death of Annie Darwin, the scientist’s favored daughter, at age 10–the event was to haunt Charles for the rest of his life, and may well have helped shape his waning religious sensibilities as well.  Non-American atheists can expect to see the film soon; my fellow Yankees and I may have to wait a bit longer.  Still, I suspect it will find its way here eventually.

Recently I had the distinct pleasure of viewing a skateboarding documentary on television.  The channel was “JCTV,” and the documentary was called “D.O.P.E.”  At first I was turned off to the whole concept simply because it was on the cool young adult version of TBN, but as I forced my self to watch the whole thing I was pleasantly surprised by the first hour and the second hour wasn’t half bad.

The film follows young professional skateboarders in the 70’s and 80’s when, “sidewalk surfing,” morphed into the sport I know and love today.  Blah, blah, blah, all the skaters spiral into a heavy drug addiction - and it all started when they took that puff of weed (if only they hadn’t inhaled, they could have became governor of California).  Their lives take a one-eighty, they start hitting harder and harder drugs like meth and coke; I really shouldn’t have to explain this part, all anti-drug documentaries have the same middle section where they interview the mother and father and they say something like, “I couldn’t believe my son/daughter  was taking __________(insert drug of choice here), I had no idea until it was to late.”  Then the friend is interviewed and he says something along the lines of, “yeah I saw him taking _________(drug) and I told him to stop but he wouldn’t.  The _________ had such a strong hold on him by that point…..”  But instead of blaming it on the person’s addictive personality and the mental bond said person’s brain made between the drug and happiness, the narrator decides that it is all Satan’s fault for giving these poor kids a crack pipe.  Now the movie was all fine and dandy until this point. But at that pivotal moment I realized why it was showing on “JCTV”.

I assume everyone has been preached to at one point in their lives, if not I salute you for avoiding the mega-church scare tactics I preached for the majority of my young life.

Getting back to D.O.P.E… By this point in the film Satan had a grip on all the young skateboarders through drugs and, by golly, he was not going to let go without a miracle.  But he only saved a couple guys.  Some of them had to hit rock bottom like normal people and go to rehab and relapse and go back to rehab, I think a couple of the non-influental characters actually died, but God forbid the director focus on them - if Jesus didn’t save them, they’re not important.

So God miraculously saves these, “survivors,” from their addictions, and replaces that empty hole with another addiction: preaching in prisons, or doing crummy documentaries.  But don’t mind that they all get together at the end for a friendly BBQ to reminisce about that one time they were famous and had money, and women, and really really good crack.

There’s nothing we academics hate more than apparent infringements on our essential freedom to babble about whatever the hell we want whenever the hell we want and get paid for it.  Well, we also really hate it when meetings don’t provide free sandwiches.  Or when the coffee machine is broken.  Ooo, or when students show up to the last five minutes of office hours with some complicated question and prevent us from getting one of the free sandwiches left-over from the last meeting; we really hate that (undergraduates take note).  Still, infringements on our academic freedom are definitely in the top five things we hate.  That’s why I feel so personally offended by the news that Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, has issued a memo forbidding its teaching staff from teaching, writing, or advocating on behalf of homosexuals or homosexual issues.  I’m shocked and incensed.

Oh wait, no I’m not.

Some background: Calvin College is a fundamentalist Evangelical school named after John Calvin, the pre-Enlightenment theologian who taught that humanity is so irredeemably evil (that damn brain-fruit incident again) that no matter what we do, we’re all going to hell.  All of us.  Forever.  All of us, that is, except for a special few–the so-called “Elect”–who have been predestined (before birth, even) to go to Heaven.  Perhaps not surprisingly, the Elect are overwhelmingly Calvinists.  I’ve actually met a few Calvinists, and even co-taught a philosophy course with one of them once–he’s a very nice guy, but as he was telling me about this belief system, I had to actively suppress my total incredulity: how could anyone actually buy that?  He had an incredibly sophisticated (from a philosophical standpoint) framework in which his Calvinism was embedded–that is, he had an account of how to make sense of things like free will, moral responsibility, and God’s omnibenevolence in the face of the doctrine of predestination–but I was still shocked that anyone living in the 21st century would endorse such a palpably Medieval theology.  But they do, and they even have accredited colleges to prove their legitimacy–fine, gay-bashing institutions like Calvin College.

Here’s the thing: suppose that you’re a newly-minted PhD on the job market for the first time.  You’re looking for that first faculty position, and are trying to find somewhere that will offer you a tenure-track position so you can stop teaching 6 adjunct courses for less than you were making as a graduate student.  And so you can, you know, eat.  Take a moment to cultivate that sense of accomplishment mixed with desperation.  Now suppose that you get a job offer!  Great!  Money!  Free sandwiches!  You walk down to the coffee shop to use their free wifi (you think you can afford your own Internet connection?  ha!) and read the following on the website of your potential new institution:

Vision

Calvin College is a comprehensive liberal arts college in the Reformed tradition of historic Christianity. Through our learning, we seek to be agents of renewal in the academy, church, and society. We pledge fidelity to Jesus Christ, offering our hearts and lives to do God’s work in God’s world.

Purpose

To engage in vigorous liberal arts education that promotes lifelong Christian service

We offer education that is shaped by Christian faith, thought, and practice. We study and address a world made good by God, distorted by sin, redeemed in Christ, and awaiting the fullness of God’s reign.

We aim to develop knowledge, understanding, and critical inquiry; encourage insightful and creative participation in society; and foster thoughtful, passionate Christian commitments.

What might your first thought be?  Well, supposing that you got your PhD through normal channels and are thus not a complete moron, it probably wouldn’t be:

“Gee, I bet they have very progressive policies when it comes to gay rights!  This is the perfect place for me to do my advocacy work.”

Indeed, if you were into that kind of thing, you’d almost certainly recognize “education that is shaped by Christian faith” as a well-known code-phrase for “no gays, please.”  It’s a shame that any academic institution works that way, and I applaud the people at Calvin College who are protesting this kind of abysmal policy, but can they honestly say they’re “shocked” or “outraged” by this policy?  I don’t think they seriously can–they knew what kind of institution they were signing on with when they got hired.  You don’t enlist in the US Army and then act outraged at the prospect of firing a gun: that’s what the Army does, and if you signed up you should have known that.  Religious fundamentalism and academic freedom don’t get along very well, but that’s just common sense.  I know the job market for academics is particularly bad right now, but at least keep this maxim in mind when you’re hunting: insane people have insane policies.  If you can’t deal with the insanity, don’t sign up.

As you probably have heard if you follow our news feed, the Catholic League is calling for Penn & Teller’s Showtime show “Bullshit!” to be cancelled after an (as-yet unseen) season finale attacking Catholicism.  For those who haven’t had the pleasure of seeing “Bullshit!”–which, as you might be able to tell already, I quite enjoy–I suppose a few words are in order.  Penn & Teller are well known for their sensationalized skepticism and hatred of trickery; they are magicians who, despite being world-class illusionists, have been thrown out of the Magic Castle in Los Angles for repeatedly (and gleefully) revealing the sleight-of-hand behind various magic tricks.  Professional magicians frown on this sort of behavior, but Penn & Teller maintain that if knowing how the trick is done makes it any less amazing, then the trick wasn’t all that amazing to begin with.  They are famous, for example, for doing a version of the common Cups and Balls illusion with clear plastic cups–the trick is, at least to these eyes, no less amazing.  Indeed, knowing precisely how they’re doing it makes it all the more interesting: your brain knows what’s going on, but the speed and precision with which they execute the trick leaves you still gaping in wonder.  For my money, that’s better magic than a hidden (and often mundane) prop.  On “Bullshit!” they take this skepticism and general hostility to mysterious pretension public (as it were) by presenting a series of short episodes (they’re in their seventh season now) dedicated to debunking various ideas, movements, organizations, or practices that they find to be, well, bullshitty.  They’ve taken aim at organized religion before, but have also had episodes attacking astrology, alternative medicine, recycling, the anti-war movement, and probably at least one bit of ideology that you, dear reader, hold sacred.  That’s just how they roll, and they’re spectacularly entertaining while they do it.

Now, it seems rather clear that some attacks on bullshitty (I rather like that adjective) beliefs, while they might be amusing, do little to actually advance the cause of skepticism and rational thought: the recent 4Chan (note the distinct lack of a hyperlink there) attacks on Christian Facebookers comes to mind as a prime example.  While the defacements might be good for a cheap chuckle from the atheist crowd (yeah, I giggled a little bit), I think most of us can agree that this is not the sort of thing that the community as a whole ought to take ownership of–indeed, it’s something that ought to be condemned.  If our goal is to convince believers that not only are atheists generally nice people (or at least no less nice than any other arbitrary group) but that there’s a good chance that we’re right on the metaphysical questions, then this sort of deliberately inflammatory route is probably not the one that we want to take.  Where, though, does “Bullshit!” fall on the spectrum?  Is it closer to the 4Chan end, or closer to (say) the thoughtful, reasoned, articulate criticisms of Dan Dennett?  Should the atheist community stand behind Penn & Teller as agents of change, or should we decry them as the televised equivalent of 4chan?

Let’s explore this question a little bit.  We’ve admitted the 4chan attacks as a paradigm case of the sort of thing we want to avoid, so let’s start by enumerating the qualities that we want to eschew here.  First (and perhaps most importantly), we might notice that the 4chan attacks were directed at individuals, not at any particular set of principles or ideas: the Facebook pages that got defaced were the private pages of actual people, not the ideological charters of some organization.  That certainly counts for something: these were the digital equivalent of ad hominem attacks on religion: personal attacks on the believers rather than on the belief itself.  That’s something we ought to avoid, both on rhetorical grounds and on moral grounds–it won’t win us any converts, and (that point aside) it’s just the wrong thing to do.  What else?  The 4chan attacks were all entirely negative in nature: at no point–at least, no point that I’m aware of–was a positive point made during the attacks; the purpose was just to deface, not to put forward a constructive solution or make a constructive argument.  Note that the first and second points are not necessarily mutually entailed: it would have been entirely possible (for instance) for the 4chaners to deface personal Facebook profiles and replace them with long, well-reasoned treatises on the philosophical problems of supernaturalism.  Doing so still wouldn’t have been right–it still would have constituted a kind of ad hominem, it seems to me–but it at least would have lessened their sins.  Anything else?  Well, we might also take issue with the fact that these attacks were conducted anonymously–no individuals took ownership for any of the actions.  This isn’t necessarily a bad thing; there are times when anonymity and group action can be good for intellectual discourse (e.g. as when anonymous groups function as industry whistle-blowers), but this is not one of those times.  Indeed, the anonymity of the group only seems to underscore their lack of desire to advance the discourse with their actions; they wanted to cause chaos, nothing more.

OK, so we have a few criteria here.  The most noteworthy respects in which the 4chan attacks are to be decried at: (1) their ad hominem style, (2) their lack of positive intellectual contribution, and (3) their anonymity.  How do Penn & Teller fare?  The results, it seems to me, are mixed.  The show’s tone is certainly somewhat ad hominem in tone: there are copious uses of words like ‘moron,’ ‘idiot,’ ‘fuck-tard,’ and virtually any other iteration of that sort of thing you can come up with; Penn & Teller aren’t shy about attacking individuals with whom they disagree.  However, their attacks don’t stop there: they continue on to deal with the concepts, ideas, and belief-systems driving the individuals they attack–they’re not just aiming at individuals, but also at the belief systems that–they argue–actually make the people “fuck-tards” in the first place.  That criticism–of intellectual principles–is of varying quality, but it is at least present.  What about (2)?  P&T fare a bit better here–they’re never shy about presenting their own ideas about how to fix the systems they critique, or about what beliefs they think would make the world a better place.  They’re not presenting detailed arguments for their positions, but in a 30-minute television show, I’m not sure we ought to expect them to–they are, at least, presenting the positions they hold and making some semblance of a positive argument.  (3) is clearest of all: appearing on a television show with your name in the title is about as far from being anonymous as one can get.  They very loudly and proudly take ownership of their ideas and actions–both for good and for ill.  They’ve admitted bias in the past, and at least make a cursory effort to revise their opinions when they’re shown to be in error.  More importantly (at least for this criterion), they’re putting themselves out there and acknowledging the opinions being expressed as their own.  They have at least some of the courage of their convictions.

Are P&T perfect?  Certainly not–they’d be the first to admit that, most likely.  Is the show perfect?  Again, I think they’d be among the first to say that it isn’t.  Are they biased, sometimes one-sided, crude, prone to ad hominems, and generally academically suspect?  Sure, but they’re running a TV show, not a university lecture series.  At the very least, they are exposing people to the controversy surrounding some of these issues, and they’re doing it in an entertaining and eminently watchable way.  They’re also equal opportunity in their attacks: contrary to what the Catholic League would have you think, only a small minority of the show’s content as been directed at Catholicism, or even religion in general; the vast majority has been spent on other instances of so-called bullshit, including some bullshit that I happen to agree with.  They are, I think, doing more good than harm.

What do you think?  Where should the line be drawn on this issue?  What’s productive, and what’s not?  How low can we sink in trying to make these ideas public before we’re guilty of doing something wrong?