Skeptigator

I have recently finished reading Susan Jacoby’s Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism. It is in my opinion an essential read in understanding the history of FreeThought and Secularism in America. I have re-read a number of sections and followed up on other articles and a number of historical points.

It’s hard for me to understate what an enormous impact this book has made in my understanding of freethought and secularism. I’ve had bits and pieces before, like the secular roots of the American Constitution, Robert Ingersoll and the role of many humanists and secularists during abolition, women’s suffrage and the early civil rights movement. But I’ve never had these pieces woven together into a cohesive history.

I’m so impressed I’ve decided to write a 4-part post on this one book alone. I won’t make any one post too lengthy however it looks like the book and the history of secularism in America could be broken into 4 rough periods. The first is the remaining portion of this post, Revolutionary FreeThought (c. 1776-1861)*, specifically the role that secular thought played in the founding of America, the way minority religious sects embraced secularism and the early foundations of freethought activism in the form of abolition and feminism.

I have posted in the past regarding the secular and specifically non-Christian origins of the American Constitution however this book spends only a small portion of the first chapter talking about the beliefs of Jefferson, Adams, Madison and other Founding Fathers. Instead, Jacoby focuses on the debate that raged around the wording of the Constitution and how any mention of any God was a strong point of contention among religious clerics at the time..

Secular Thought During the Revolution

During the formation of this country with rare exception each State had an official and established state church. And in some of those states you had to take an oath supporting that church in order to hold public office, elected or appointed. The Founders knew that if there was going to be strong and unified Federal government then religious tests for office would have to be eliminated and hence the following line shows up in Article 6 of the Constitution

…no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States

To further extend the clear fear that the Founding Fathers, particularly Jefferson and Madison, had of sectarian strife within the new nation, they clearly infused the American Constitution with the same philosophy that embodied Virginia’s Statute for Religious Freedom. Madison conveyed his views on the dilemma posed by sectarian differences (let alone the pluralistic society we live in today) to the Virginia Assembly to proposed funding of religious schooling

Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other Religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other Sects? That the same authority which can force a citizen to contribute three pence only of his property for the support of any one establishment, may force him to conform to any other establishment in all cases whatsoever? 

Thomas Paine

Perhaps the most notable Freethinker during this revolutionary period was Thomas Paine. A man that contributed directly to the people’s support of the American Revolution to only be reviled as the Arch-Infidel upon his return from imprisonment in France. Of course, the author of Common Sense and The Rights of Man, the former a support for the American Revolution and the latter a support for the French Revolution and a critique of hereditary rule, was looked upon quite differntly after publishing The Age of Reason.

The Age of Reason was a scathing critique of many of the Biblical doctrines at the time. He soundly rejected divine revelation and miracles. He wholesale discounted all supernatural aspects of the Bible, Old and New Testament alike. He puts forth not a disbelief in God, despite the accusations of atheist at the time, but a belief in a deistic God. One who could be known through Nature’s Laws.

Religious Support of Secular Government

The most notable subplot, if you will, during this period was the role that early Evangelicals played in supporting the secular nature of government. As you can imagine some of the most outspoken critics of the Constitution at the time came from established, state-sponsored Christian denominations, such as The Episcopal Church (official church of Virginia) or to Protestantism in general. Catholics in America at the time were highly distrusted due to the perceived dual obligations to the papacy and to the civil governments. For example, Massachusetts only allowed Catholics to hold office if they renounced the papacy’s authority in all matters civil. New York, ironically, allowed Jews the right to hold office but not Catholics.

In the previously mentioned debate in Virginia regarding special assessments to fund private, religious education it was the minority religious sects, such as, the Quakers, Baptists, Lutherans, Methodists and Presbyterians who opposed the special assessments and ultimately would support Virginia’s religious freedom act.

It’s not at all surprising although ironic that the early roots of the Evangelicals around today would fight so strongly to oppose religious language only to turn around in the 20th century to fight to have it included. It only goes to show that the Founding Fathers were right to fear the mixing of religious and political power. Because yesterday it was the Episcopal Church and today it’s the Baptists.

I have also posted over on FreeThought Fort Wayne’s blog about a need to cultivate religious advocacy of secularism in America. I now have a better understanding that I wasn’t proposing anything new and that there is a history of support that needs to resurface

The next section will talk about the Golden Age of FreeThought (c. 1861-1920).

* I know the timelines don’t have “clean” demarcation but it helps to give an idea of the time periods involved.

I just finished doing 3 experiments from the book, How to fossilize your hamster. All of the experiments we did are from the book. We made a bomb with baking soda and vinegar, by the way, use a small ziplock bag, the large ones are too big. We did the Diet Coke and Mentos experiments. We also made slime from corn starch and water.

These were very easy to do and very fun as well. The book is worth the read even if you don’t do any of the experiments in the book. The author, Mick O’Hare from the New Scientist magazine, does an excellent job of laying out the experiment and the science behind what you are seeing. The book is sprinkled with just the right amount of humor to keep you chuckling to yourself.

Ha! Richard Dawkins just put out an awesom parody of Expelled called Sexpelled.

Also, SciAm has a very brief but perfect article on the Six Things in Expelled That Ben Stein Doesn’t Want You to Know.

My favorite is Expelled quotes Charles Darwin selectively to connect his ideas to eugenics and the Holocaust. Read the article because you have no idea how badly they selectively quoted Darwin, to the point of actually making Darwin say the exact opposite of what he wrote. If Darwin were alive today I would think he would have a basis for a lawsuit.

I would like to first congratulate the pope on finally acknowledging in the strongest language possible that the sex abuse by catholic priests was wrong and that it is completely incompatible with catholicism. Sad that it even has to be said but important that he said.

“I am deeply ashamed and we will do what is possible so this cannot happen again in the future,”…

“We will absolutely exclude pedophiles from the sacred ministry,” Benedict said, speaking in English. “It is more important to have good priests than many priests. We will do everything possible to heal this wound.”

Pedophilia is “absolutely incompatible” with the priesthood,” Benedict said.

About freakin’ time. It only took you 7 years after publicly being embarrassed about it. Of course, like any closed group they won’t say what they are doing to stop it, what they are doing to existing priests (read the Philadelphia Grand Jury report if you can stomach it) but a strong condemnation is important. The only complaint (well…) I have is the following comment,

“It is a great suffering for the church in the United States and for the church [in] general and for me personally that this could happen,” Benedict said. “It is difficult for me to understand how it was possible that priests betray in this way their mission … to these children.”

Poor pope and his suffering [please read with as much derision and condescension as possible). Try being a 12 year old boy forced to wear a diaper and chained in a priests bedroom. You Douche Bag!!!

Cool little interview of Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman from the AV club.

And hence the reason I love Mythbusters.

AVC: You guys don’t have any formal scientific training, but you generally seem to follow scientific methods and procedures when you’re testing myths. To what degree are you attempting to scientifically prove something, vs. just indulging your own curiosity?

JH: If it turns out that we’re doing proper science from time to time, it just happens to be that that’s the most efficient way of doing it. We go into each of these stories with an open mind, and one of the great things about how the show works is that we’re not approaching it from a doctoral point of view, we’re just trying to see what happens. And we have relatively little time and a whole lot of curiosity, so the most efficient way to get there is what we do, and that often happens to be some form of science. We may not have a sample size larger than one, or we may not have unlimited resources—it’s a TV show, and we generally turn these things around in about a week or so. That being said, the fact that we don’t have formal training, that makes what we’re experiencing a little bit more accessible to the viewers. If we actually knew what we were doing ahead of time, it would just be like talking at you, instead of experiencing the situation with you.

AS: We don’t necessarily stand by our faults every time, but we will always stand by our methodologies and ethos. And the methodology is much more important to us. Given the restrictions of television, we understand why our results might not be unassailable, but whenever, for instance, on the Discovery Channel online message boards, people pipe in and say we’re idiots and we don’t know what we’re doing and we got something totally wrong, interestingly, the people who jump most vigorously to our defense are working scientists. These are people from everywhere, from Lawrence Livermore and JPL and Sandia National Labs, the FBI, all over the place, real scientists who see what we’re doing, and they consistently thank us. “I agree your results aren’t always right,” they’ll say, “but your methods are clearly showing that science is a re-creative process, and it’s an interesting process because it’s messy, and no other shows show that.”

I know this is old news but man it’s funny, http://www.theonion.com/content/node/38575

Money quote,

“We now believe that the [Law of Difficulty] theorem is 99.999% likely to be true, after applying these incredibly complex statistical techniques that gave me a splitting headache,” Farian said. “A theorem is like a theory, but, I don’t know, it’s different.”

Here’s an interesting YouTube video with some statistics regarding atheism. It’s an interesting video however there are not enough citations of where these statistics came from. There is one statistics that 16% of Americans are atheists and references a Pew study, hmmm…. that number I believe a) significantly diverges from the 4%-5% that I believe is generally agreed upon (and I discussed on my personal blog), and b) that number seems to neatly correlate with this Pew study’s categorization of the number of U.S. citizens that are “Unaffiliated” with any particular religion, not necessarily that they are atheist/agnostic. Ah well, you know what they say about statistics…

via FriendlyAtheist

I just finished reading Richard Wiseman’s book Quirkology. Richard Wiseman is an experimental psychologist who conducts research into areas that you wouldn’t normally think psychologists necessarily spend their time. Among the many topics that the author covers in the book are

• What is the world’s funniest joke.
• In what month are the luckiest people born.
• How can you tell a fake smile from a real smile.
• What simple little tricks can waiters/waitresses do to increase their tips.
• Why the letter K really is the funniest letter.
• How do ultra-low frequencies contribute to religious experience (my personal favorite)

 One of the quick little experiments was to have you trace the letter Q on your forehead. Depending on which way you “crossed” the Q indicated whether you were a good or bad liar. Now I know this experiment shows an interesting correlation but it’s not 100%. I happen to be an excellent liar however my Q indicated that I was not.

I have read a number of other reviews online and perhaps the biggest criticism is that the book is a bit shallow. Many of the topics in the book never go into any real depth but that’s OK with me. Personally I’ve taken psychology classes, snooze-o-rama. I don’t think I would have nearly enjoyed the book so much if it had gone into detail.

I highly recommend the book and you can even get a little taste of the kinds of research being performed and even join in the research right now if you go to Quirkology.com.

As you can imagine Pat Condell has something to say regarding the Dutch movie, Fitna. I had previously posted on the subject and even provided the video links to it, which are now removed from YouTube, cowards. 

 Here’s the Youtube video.

Found via FriendlyAtheist

Something that continues to fascinate me since hearing of Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s life is Dutch politics. In recent weeks a “right-wing” Dutch politician, Geert Wilder, has produced a short film, called Fitna (the word strife in arabic). It portrays Islam in a rather negative light. Actually it’s pretty blunt about the problems with Islam within a democratic, pluralistic society. Ok, fine, it’s actually a bit Michael Moore in its portrayal of Islam. Like Michael Moore’s filmmaking, the truth is all in how you tell the story, or put that story together. Each individual part can be true but when put together it may not tell the whole picture.

Geert Wilder’s Fitna, basically says that Islam is a religion of hate. One could certainly make that argument (and he does) but I wonder if his approach, a) won’t change anybodies mind and b) will likely get him killed. Of course, if a muslim kills him it only goes to reinforce the point, but still. As a film, it’s more like a PowerPoint presentation. The Hirsi Ali/Van Gogh film, Submission Part 1, was much more artisticly done.

Here is the only English Version link I could find, http://www.liveleak.com/e/7d9_1206624103, and WordPress doesn’t let me embed from there (at least I can’t figure it out).

Edit: Ooh, originally it looked like YouTube were going to be a bunch of chicken shits (like Network Solutions) but here it is.

Double Edit: Guess what? YouTube are a bunch of chicken shits. These videos don’t work anymore, I’ll see what I can do to get them from BitTorrent and then post them for good. Ah, Google Video to the rescue (ironic that Google Video has it but YouTube, owned by Google, won’t play it).