Why America is NOT a Christian nation in logic anyone can follow

The evidence that the constitution of the United States was crafted to keep religion out of politics is fairly straightforward. This fact however does not stop those in power who want to wedge their beliefs and preferences into public discourse and laws.

Religion is a powerful force in human affairs. It not only motivates individuals, it can move entire groups and nations to act in ways both good and bad.

It can also be divisive — subjugating the needs and rights of others for an interpretation of an ancient text which the adherent believes is the divine word of the creator of the universe.

So why am I addressing this issue? The tipping point for me was reading about how Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore is trying to ban same-sex marriage in his state for purely theocratic reasons.

The lengths Conservative Christians and sympathizers will go in order to argue that they and their views deserve special privileges because they are Christians is astounding.

We could go back and look in depth at the history of the US, the founding documents and invoke all kinds of arguments. Ultimately though, the best arguments against such horrendous attempts to overhaul the United States are very simple.

So let’s dive straight into Roy Moore’s flawed reasoning and I’ll demonstrate, in terms everyone can verify and understand, why America is not a Christian nation in the legal sense of the word.

When asked “Are laws themselves superseded by God?” Chief Justice Moore said:

CLAIM ONE: “I think you’re correct in saying that,” he answered. “This is a Christian nation by the fact that 90% of the churches in America are Christian churches and it’s certainly founded upon Christian principles.

I’m sure most churches in America are Christian. That wasn’t the concern of the founding fathers. The establishment clause preventing the government from favoring or discriminating on the basis of religion was largely to prevent one religious group rising up above all the others.

Furthermore, the constitution guarantees equal treatment under the law regardless of religious affiliation. The appeal to a majority is just an attempt by Roy Moore to lend his arguments credibility that they don’t deserve. It’s also a form of bullying.

CLAIM TWO: “The supreme law of the land is the Constitution of the United States which recognizes many of those principles.”

Here’s the kicker — the Constitution is overtly non-religious (secular) and in a fatal way to Christianity.

Compare the very first of the Ten Commandments to the first amendment to the Constitution.

First Commandment: “Thou shalt have no other gods before me”
First Amendment: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The First Amendment (the very first issue the founding fathers felt they needed to address) directly contradicts the First Commandment, presumably the most important commandment to Yahweh.

CLAIM THREE: “Our freedom to believe what we want comes from God. When it comes from God, no man or no court, can take it away. That’s a God-given right under the Declaration of Independence, which is law itself.”

This is ignorance and wishful thinking in its extreme. Again, taking the First Commandment, God has clearly said you have freedom to believe in one god only. That’s not freedom,that’s coercion.

If history is a guide, the human species only attains freedom after fighting off the oppression of autocratic regimes. Multitudes of humans have met their demise bringing this fight. Christianity, as a monotheistic religion, has autocracy as a fundamental principle.

You can’t argue that freedom comes from God and then advance a book he supposedly inspired that is filled with punishments and inducements for disobeying his rules, especially when some of those rules fundamentally oppose basic human rights (such as self determination).

“Why must they continue to flog dead arguments?”

But despite all this obvious evidence, conservatives still try to bring religion to the table. Why? Because it gives them unchallenged power to control the populace. They can justify whatever backwards and regressive laws they like, no matter their real world consequences.

The ambiguity of religious texts means they’re able to pick and choose their interpretations and become righteously indignant to those who stand in their way. In many cases, this feeling of moral superiority and absolute certainty has led to genocide and war — both civil and with other nations.

The religious impulse to absolutism sows the seeds of dictatorship. Just listen to the likes of Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee. They explicitly want to force everyone else to comply with their beliefs. This is not the role of a public official who is in power to represent the people… ALL people.

Constitutional protection was established so that no one could use their own religious interpretations to enforce their own theocratic versions of the law.

The irony is, most conservatives who buy into this “Christian Nation” fallacy are highly critical of nations that employ the same ideology, but in a different religious background.

They must be envious of government officials in Iran and Saudi Arabia, nations where they can enforce theocratic law in ways that contravene most basic human rights.

CONCLUSION

What escapes these fundamentalists is that by saying freedom comes from God (the one they believe in) they’re ignoring their own rule book — the Ten Commandments, which categorically states you are free to believe in only one god — Yahweh.

This coercion is intrinsic in the Bible, especially the Old Testament, where many passages point to the death of all who oppose the will of Yahweh.

Freedom makes no sense when it comes with strings attached as it does with monotheistic religion. God quite clearly states that their can only be one true deity. All others are strictly prohibited.

The founders of the US knew this and went on to make the very first amendment to the constitution in direct opposition to what the creator of the universe laid out in the first commandment.

Hence… America is not founded on any religion. The humanistic philosophy that underpins the founding documents strictly prohibits the state from religious  meddling.

Being products of the Enlightenment, they knew full well what religious tyranny look liked and realized the only true way to ensure everyone is equal under the law was to scribe a secular constitution that prevented such abuses.

• American Constitution Society blog article on Roy Moore

Rethinking the role of pleasures in life

Many people don’t even consider the role of pleasure in creating a ‘good’ and ‘flourishing’ life.

In fact the word flourishing probably doesn’t factor in to any one person’s philosophy of life.

This is primarily a cultural thing — very few of us are ever presented with the idea of questioning the cultural norms and attitudes we are inculcated in. You’re a consumer, you consume and thereby participate in the great cultural experiment of no-limits capitalism.

It is my contention that life truly worth living requires some critical reflection on the relationship we have with pleasure and the external objects and events that we rely on for fulfillment.

To some, the idea that pleasure isn’t somehow connected to a valuable and worthwhile life is dumbfounding. This was certainly my realisation when I first discovered Stoicism and virtue ethics as a way of developing a personal code for living.

In fact, the pursuit of pleasure, despite being a tremendously self-centred preoccupation, often leads to discontentment or worse, addictions.

“It is self-discipline, above all, that causes pleasure.”
— Socrates

As it turns out, philosophers have been debating ideas around what constitutes a good life for at least 2500 years. Only in the last few centuries has philosophy been preoccupied with areas that are academically interesting, but bare little relevance to practical living.

Epicurus and the “pleasure garden”

Of the Hellenistic schools, the Cyrenaics and the Epicureans held that pleasure is the only intrinsic good. In fact, the Cyrenaic school only lasted a century — their project essentially carried on by the Epicureans.

Like most words pertaining to Greek philosophy that survive in modern English, ‘Epicurean’ distorts the original meaning of the word.

Epicurus did expound a hedonistic philosophy, but his take on pleasure was vastly different to that of the modern standard. His hedonistic ethics were aimed at the attainment of ataraxia — freedom from unnecessary pain while being content with simple pleasures.

Epicureans were not rampant pleasure seekers at all costs. Food, drink and sex were not objects of unusual desire for them. Instead, Epicurus and his ardent followers did all they could do maintain this blissful state including:

• Withdrawing from politics and, to a large extent, public life
• Retiring to a plush garden to practice philosophy and live the good life among friends
• Enjoy pleasures in moderation while abstaining from unhealthy pleasurable pursuits
• Avoiding superstitious beliefs that cause undue existential harm (e.g. Gods that punish us in an afterlife).

The latter point to me is the most interesting as a modern skeptic. Epicurus’ theory of atomism stemmed from his insistence that beliefs should be proportioned to the empirical evidence. Epicurus thought it unnecessary to worry about the gods and to fear the consequences of judgement from the gods. This was a bold departure from the beliefs of the populous at the time.

So Epicureans pursued a state of tranquility through the taming of desire, because they knew that wantonly fulfilling desires is an unending pursuit that leads to discontentment.

Staunch Stoics

The Stoics went one further than the Epicureans — pleasure is not a good at all, in fact virtue (those actions that perfect one’s character) is the only good. The Stoics were unimpressed with pleasure and craving after desires. They thought these to be the cause of much human unhappiness.

The way to combat perturbations or “unnatural movements of the soul” is to live apatheia (without passions). To achieve this state, one must pursue only those things that are within one’s control. Any ‘passion’ in Stoicism is inappropriate because the presence of such intense emotions can only arise in a person if they mistakenly place value in an external object, sensation or event (which are only indifferents with respect to a flourishing life).

That is Stoicism in a nutshell — quell passions like desire by judging only internal things within our control to be good. Value those things and be indifferent to everything else (in fact we should love whatever befalls us because that is what nature has willed).

Stoic practice is therefore training to hone one’s wisdom about what is truly good and what is truly bad and to act in accordance with nature.

As with much of the Stoic canon, Epictetus is bang on when he says: “It is impossible that happiness and yearning for what is not present, should ever be united.”

The mental disposition of yearning, craving or lusting after something external is the very definition of discontentment. However, this way of thinking, puts us squarely at odds with the frantic, never satisfied life we’ve landed ourselves in.

What that means for us today

Many people from all walks of life are waking up to the fact that there is more to life than just fulfilling every desire that enters their consciousness.

In rich countries, we’re sold on the idea from multiple sources — the media, big business, governments… That the goal in life is to have the house, the car the toys, the holidays and everything in between. We’re supposed to work ourselves into the ground to pay for these things and when we can’t we can just sign on the dotted line and go in to debt.

The above narrative is not only faulty it is the also the cause of a great amount of human unhappiness, environmental degradation and social problems. The lie persists, however, because so much is at stake for those who profit from us buying into it.

Socrates said that “the unexamined life isn’t worth living”. Perhaps the most insightful and life changing aspect of my study in Hellenistic philosophy stems from challenging the role desire plays in my life. For me, preoccupation with pleasure has reduced dramatically and the positive results as well as increased sense of well-being has flowed into all aspects of my life.

Your path might be different to mine — I have principally studied Stoicism, but it really doesn’t matter. Eastern philosophies and religions have also much to say about how desires and aversions rule our lives. The point is: examine your life, don’t just sleepwalk through it. And evaluating the effect of pleasure and desire in your life is about as fundamental an examination as you can get.

Even if you come out of your study of practical philosophy as a full blown consumerist hedonist, at least you’ll know why and be able to recognise the limitations of that philosophy of life and be prepared for any challenges that you may face.

• Learn more about the Hellenistic schools of philosophy with these excellent podcast resources on History of Philosophy without any gaps.

Can we at least learn something from this Mayan apocalypse mumbo jumbo?

The failed Mayan apocalypse ramblings could be a positive awakening for humanity, but it won’t be. Read on for why I’m not optimistic.

Sorry but I can’t not talk about the supposed Mayan apocalypse hubbub. I just think that we can learn some lessons from this whole thing. I mean, we laughed at Harold Camping for his absurd pronouncements about the end of the world last year (twice as the math was slightly off).

For starters, the Mayans never made such a prophecy. Even if they did — so what!? The obsession with what the Mayans may or may not have said/thought seems in part to be due to the romantic (false) notion that ancient societies were in some sort of wonderful place, in harmony with nature and the cosmos.

My basic premise

Claims such as those made about a mysterious Planet X destroying the Earth or any other apocalyptic ramblings fail because those making/believing such claims are arriving at conclusions from a faulty epistemology.

Check this list of failed predictions of apocalyptic events (Wikipedia).

Remember, ancient peoples were ignorant of many basic facts that we take for granted today. In fact, you only have to go back a few hundred years to see how primitive our collective human understanding really was. It wasn’t long ago we had no idea of: the germ theory of disease; sun centered solar system; expanding universe; DNA and heritability; evolution and the origin of species; radio waves; electricity; gravity… We were blind to so much.

Misconceptions galore — A Primer on Knowledge

A claim I was presented with recently went as follows (paraphrasing):

“At one time, the research of the day showed that the Earth was the centre of the universe”.

I hear similar statements from people quite a bit. The idea that science is somehow flawed because our understanding of the world was primitive at one point is really unconvincing.

Claims such as “the Earth is at the centre of the universe” stem from primitive intuitions based on limited data — such claims come before research is done.

Remember, science isn’t a “thing”. The word is a noun for a process of fact checking and observation. At one point knowledge on a subject is minimal. The scientific method helps us grow a body of reliable knowledge and increases our understanding. This is what makes science a reliable and valid epistemology.

Therefore (and this is the key point): Human understanding improves over time.

That means, we cast off that which is shown to be false and accept that which we find to be true.

Science has allowed us to open our eyes, lift the veil of ignorance and reveal a world that rich and wonderful and even more important — science has shown us that it is comprehensible, even to our limited brains.

“But science changes over time”

Wrong. Knowledge changes over time. Science is just the method we use to acquire knowledge/discard hypotheses. This is a good thing.

The Mayans had a primitive understanding of reality

The Mayans, like all ancient cultures were superstitious, attributing all manner of natural phenomena to gods and mystical beings. Human progress has been a long history of superstitions being replaced by real knowledge and understanding.

I think we can learn some valuable lessons from these facts about our collective understanding of the universe in which we live, and yet another failed end of the world hypothesis:

• Knowledge improves over time.
• The process by which we accumulate claims has changed: We now can produce reliable information about reality through validation and testing.
• Ancient cultures did not validate claims through a stringent process of checking facts.
• They didn’t have sophisticated tools to investigate reality and therefore couldn’t be expected to ask better questions.
• Ancient cultures were largely ignorant of basic facts about the natural order.
• Ancient cultures did not have privileged information that we don’t know now (as much as we would like to romanticise and claim they did).

Ergo… We must ask ourselves, “How does the ancient claim/philosophy square with our understanding of nature today?”

Ignorance and default thinking

People can still choose to believe that lightning is still mandated by higher powers and that cyclones and earthquakes are sent by gods but this thinking is now optional. When people didn’t know better they defaulted to the supernatural claim. That’s just part of being human.

Conclusion — why nothing will change

If human knowledge improves over time then we can’t look back into the deep past and expect to see great understanding of reality. Even if an ancient culture claimed something about today, that isn’t a reason to believe it (again the Mayans didn’t make an apocalyptic claim, people interpret it that way today).

Here is a prediction: Those invested in the Mayan apocalypse nonsense will probably not change their beliefs even after yet another failed attempt to predict the end of the world. That is just human nature, cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias in action

What we will see is more ad hoc justifications on and beyond 22 December 2012.

Then the next craze will hit town and the we will be entertained/bemused at yet another prediction stemming from flawed epistemology and more lame justifications.

Gay rights denial — the untiring bigotry of the pious

In my last post, I commented on how religious moral systems are inadequate in the ways in which they fail to properly account for the real world. Here, we’ll look at the issue of gay marriage as an example of where monotheistic attempts at morality are flawed and ultimately fail us.

In spending too much time and concern with imagined transgressions and harm, religious moral views  steer us away from the actual conditions humans and other animals actually experience. This shift in emphasis from real to imagined often creates more harm than good.

Opposition to gay marriage on religious grounds shows what is wrong with religious conceptions of morality and why secular morality is far superior in practice.

The nature of moral arguments
Whether an argument is moral or not is not determined by who says it, the volume they say it at or the numbers of people who support it. In other words, authority, power and popularity do not make moral arguments valid.

Valid moral arguments must have sound logic and valid reasons.

Pious opposition — Invalid reasons; bad logic

When you strip away the bad logic and invalid arguments, it becomes apparent that homosexuality and same-sex marriage are not moral issues.

Ask an opponent of gay marriage the following: “Can you tell me a valid reason why you as a heterosexual can marry and have all the benefits that come with it, whereas homosexual couples cannot?” What you will hear in return is a bunch of invalid reasons, including:

• The claim that gay marriage offends God (really? You know that how???)
• Others will elaborate and say the bible specifically says that the gay lifestyle is immoral and the penalty is going to hell (the Bible does not actually make this explicit claim).
• Still more assert: “I don’t want to offend the (presumably loving) being that made the rules”.
• Here is the kicker — a startling claim made by one NZ Herald respondent: that the dictionary definition of marriage doesn’t say anything about same sex couples marrying (as if moral progress is made via lexicography).

Facts
The gay lifestyle is a consequence of being gay. Many believers claim that being gay is a choice, despite the fact that all evidence points to the contrary — that sexual preference is a complex mix of developmental and genetic factors. There is a clear reason for this denial:

Homosexuality is as much as a choice as is heterosexuality. This fact poses a conundrum for the believer — being gay must be a choice or else our God is an asshole — why would God create people with the specific intention of persecuting and condemning some on the basis of a trait that God himself created? This cognitive dissonance explains why believers will deny the reality that homosexuality is not a choice.

Failure by the religious to acknowledge the fact that gay people are born gay amounts to condemnation on the basis of innate identity. This is immoral.

Condemnation on the basis of the sexual orientation a person is born with is morally the same as discrimination on the basis of colour.

Pick your flavour — biblical moral relativism

The Bible is a deeply flawed book filled with contradictions. This in part explains part of its success as a guide for believers. You can pick and choose those parts that confirm what you wish to be true while ignoring the other, contradictory and less convenient passages.

For instance, the books of the Bible gay marriage opponents point to as evidence for their position (one man one woman) also advocate polygamy among numerous other marriage arrangements, including a gem from Exodus which says a slave owner can assign male slaves to female slaves (how moral of those slave owners!) This cool infographic shows marriage according to the Bible.

Vile, evil and immoral commands in the Bible
Perhaps the most quoted biblical warning against homosexuality comes from Leviticus 20:13 (following an earlier warning from Leviticus 18:22): — “If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them”. What a loving God! Interestingly, in this same book we find passages that prohibit men from shaving their heads or trimming their beards (Leviticus 21:5); and if a priest’s daughter “plays the whore,” we are instructed in God’s infinite loving wisdom to burn her to death.

Upon reading the Bible it is clear that if we are to live our lives based on bronze-age edicts in Leviticus (Deuteronomy, Numbers, Genesis…) we are advocating for a regression back to primitive, morally repugnant times.

Conclusion

Progress in human rights has always had its challenges. Staunch defenders of the status quo is to be expected, but in the areas of human rights, moral and scientific progress, religious opposition has always been an impediment.

From slavery, the oppression of women to barbaric acts such as stoning people for working on the sabbath — we no longer accept these biblical definitions of roles and justice. We (at least in my country) have simply moved on — and a good thing too. These ideas do not deserve respect and for the most part are positively immoral.

When the issue of “should we grant homosexual couples the same status we enjoy as heterosexuals” is finally put to rest, let us look back in 20-30 years to celebrate the victory of compassion over the scornful who tried in vain to convince us that they acted morally.

For more on the science of sexual orientation:

• Curing Homosexuality: The Science of Sexual Orientation vs. Bigotry of Reparative Therapies

Bible in Kiwi schools? For what reason?

The Bible does have a place in New Zealand schools but it must be in a context of criticism and ethical philosophy — not for the indoctrination of minds into a narrow, dogmatic and exclusive viewpoint.

A handful of correspondents to the NZ Herald on this issue have pointed out that religious instruction should cover a range of world religions — what they believe and how their faith is practiced. This is a good platform, and one that flushes the religious fundamentalists out from behind the bushes.

Under the guise of “values education”, Christians seeking to teach the Bible in schools are primarily concerned with bringing ‘sheep’ to Jesus. This is not values education and unnecessary to lead a good moral life. This does, however fall under the category of indoctrination and does not belong in public schools.

Ethical teaching — a good idea

The teaching of ethics is an absolutely fantastic idea. In fact, I would say philosophy generally is under taught in schools and reflection on the ideas of some of the greatest thinkers throughout the ages can only enrich the lives of students who study them.

Philosophy begins where religion ends, just as by analogy chemistry begins where alchemy runs out, and astronomy takes the place of astrology.
– Christopher Hitchens, “God is Not Great”

Moral thought existed before the Bible and was even more important after because then it was possible to reflect on whether its ideas had moral weight. This basic requirement of any ideas — that they be critically analysed — was met with resistance when applied to the Bible. Those daring to question religious ideas persecuted and outright murdered by those privileged by Christian beliefs (notably the Catholic Church).

morality is Not the unique domain of religion

…religion gives people bad reasons for acting morally, where good reasons are actually available. We don’t have to believe that a deity wrote one of our books, or that Jesus was born of a virgin, to be moved to help people in need. – Sam Harris, http://www.samharris.org/

Morality is not dictated from on high. Moral progress is possible because of critical reflection on behaviour and the consequences of our actions.

Secular morality is concerned with the suffering of sentient beings out of basic empathy and compassion, not because we are commanded to. This includes the experiences of non-human animals as well. This necessarily requires the understanding of the experiences of others (the basis of empathy) and therefore the acceptance of differences.

The Bible is not a reliable manual on morality because it does not teach understanding; instead it inspires the believer to be incredibly judgemental and conceited (hey, I’m only speaking on behalf of the creator of the universe here). The Bible contains many immoral acts — some by God, others commanded by him. The Bible doesn’t mind slavery, glorifies rape and incest in places and stresses ‘obedience or else’ threats from a supposedly ‘loving’ God.

Hence, the Bible is a ‘pick and choose’ book — the choosing done on the basis of personal opinion using an obvious external; standard of morality. This makes biblical morality a perfect example of the moral relativism that is often claimed of non-religious morality (also evidenced by the fact that different denominations cannot agree on basic doctrines and interpretations).

literature and philosophy are superior to holy books

We have had to ignore the Bible on so many fronts in order to progress passed our innate petty, fearful and xenophobic traits. The following is a short list of areas where we have sought moral and human rights progress only to be confronted by religious opposition:

• The abolition of slavery
• Women’s rights and equality
• Women’s health and sexuality (and therefore the alleviation of poverty and emancipation of women from being male property)
• Progress away from racism
• Gay and lesbian rights
• Environmental concerns and conservation
• The ethical treatment of animals
• Treatment of non-believers and rival religions…

Progress in these areas requires ignoring the pronouncements of holy books. Indeed, in the case of the Bible, the above items are either not addressed or it advocates diminishing the rights of others — thereby causing more harm in the process.

In religion there is no mechanism for internal improvement of moral codes. After all, how can you improve on God? The emphasis is on inflexible rule dictation with the presumption of truth not requiring external validation. These have shown to be impediments to scientific and positive social change.

Literature is far better at approaching moral conundrums and dilemmas while philosophy enriches our moral intuitions by questioning beliefs and assessing how actions impact individuals and societies in the real world.

Religion is optional and not necessary to teach people to be virtuous and so belongs in NZ public schools without privilege; requiring the same criticism we apply to all philosophical ideas.

Next post – the finer points of morality and why religions have utterly failed us in that respect.

Further resources

• The Superiority of Secular Morality – Talk given by Matt Dillahunty of the Atheist Community of Austin
• An excellent series on morality YouTube by QualiaSoup
• Secular morality entry in Iron Chariots Wiki
• The Myth of Secular Moral Chaos – Sam Harris on the Council for Secular Humanism website

Church makes outrageous healthcare claims, highlights need for clear thinking

Church billboards can say a variety of things, good and bad, but “Jesus heals cancer” is ridiculous. So what can we learn from this outrageous pronouncement by a Napier Church?

File this one under the ‘very odd’ category but the billboard put up by Napier’s Equippers Church has attracted a lot of attention, which I suspect is the main reason it was erected.

First I’ll say what the media should say about this issue, but lacks the balls: We know the reasons the church offers for such incredible claims are false.

The NZ Herald reported that at least one family was appalled by the billboard’s cancer claim and that the matter has been submitted to the Advertising Standards Authority.

Even Steve Novella, prominent skeptic and author of the Neurologica blog has added his weight behind the issue, essentially saying religious freedom is one thing but protecting the public from misleading health claims is another.

The trouble with outrageous claims on billboards, websites etc… is that you never know how an individual will respond to them. If one person in a hundred buys the message and forgoes proper medical treatment then we have a problem. Misinformation about medicine and health is always a bad idea for this reason.

Beware! Magical thinking lurks

Appeals to magic, and prayer is such an appeal, can be treated with extreme skepticism from the outset just as sacrificing goats should be.

It raises some important points about how we know something is true and also prompts one to ask: “Does prayer actually work?” and “Why do people make claims like this?”

The church billboard is irresponsible, as Steven Novella points out. Even if people sincerely believe they are doing the right thing by advertising such messages, the truth of the matter is their efforts can only subvert truth and cause harm.

Good questions expose pseudoscience

Belief-based ideas about what constitutes a medical treatment are simply worthless. Human cultures operated on ignorance of the facts for millennia before some bright spark said, “I wonder if any of this is true”.

Using scientific thinking, we can get to the heart of medical claims. We can ask questions like:

• What exactly was healed?
• How do you know X cured this ailment?
• How would you know if X didn’t cure it? (exposes criteria)
• What about Y? How do you know whether Y had no effect on the cure?

The Pastor admits the people who were claimed to be healed of cancer completed their medical treatments. So I ask, how does he then claim that it was Jesus that cured them? What criteria did he use to eliminate other influences, like medical scientific interventions?

Someone’s self report of what cured them of ailment X is riddled with problems and is worthless in terms of determining fact for the following reasons:

• Motivated reasoning
  Given a set of data, a person will concoct an interpretation based purely on their beliefs and worldview. Other people will construct different interpretations.
• Confirmation bias
  Given a set of data, a person will unconsciously filter out evidence that falsifies their conclusion while endorsing only that which confirms their prior beliefs (this is the default setting of the brain).

Sloppy thinking and the inadequacy of prayer

A great illustration of motivated reasoning and confirmation bias can be seen in the way that people interpret experiences, first as spiritual, then as solely in terms of their spiritual/religious beliefs.

Buddhists have experiences they interpret in Buddhist terms, Mormons in Mormon terms and so forth. Research shows conclusively that people experiencing the same stimuli inside the brain will self-report those experiences purely terms of their spiritual worldview.

Furthermore, every controlled test of prayer has been negative (shows prayer doesn’t work) and it does not matter which deity one prays to. The practice of prayer shows how motivated reasoning and confirmation bias/ad hoc reasoning work to produce and reinforce beliefs.

Scenario: Heads I win, tails I win!
For instance, if we pray to a deity with a vague request (help with our finances), this leaves the door wide open for interpretations and therefore we can never know if the prayer worked at all. If we pray for a specific goal, (say $1000 by March 3) then we run the risk of falsifying our prayer.

Confirmation bias will come to our rescue. If we find $50 on the street, hey presto – God/Jesus answered our prayer, not completely but who are we to question God? If our finances do not improve, we can reason that God heard our prayer, but God chose not to grant it because he has a plan.

Ergo – If God has a plan, and he’s going to stick to it regardless, what is the point of asking? It is this kind of not making sense that leaves us non-believers scratching our heads

Conclusion – not just a religious problem

Rightly, many people are outraged by the sheer audacity of the false claim that ‘Jesus heals cancer’. However, I suspect some of those people also believe equally ridiculous ideas about what can cure cancer.

Selective skepticism such as this is a constant reminder of why we need objective studies to confirm the reality of any treatment/modality.

Skepticism and scientific reasoning has to be applied across all healthcare claims if we truly care about doing no harm.

The fact is, cancer is not one disease but a class of diseases that emerge and behave in a wide variety of ways. For this reason, one “cure all” panacea for cancer simply holds no basis in reality.

The church has the right to make whatever claims they want on their billboards, but we too can point out that it is ridiculous and irresponsible and hopefully limit any damage such magical thinking can inspire.

Debunking – how to do it and why many of us get it wrong

Debunking is a necessary part of skepticism and intellectually rigorous discourse. Unfortunately, many of us writers (me included), instead of destroying myths in a puff of facts and logic, we may actually be reinforcing said myths in the minds of others. Time for a change of approach…

I’ve been going about this all wrong. By “this” I mean the approach to blogging and as someone who claims to change one’s mind when the evidence suggests so, I must embrace the research that has been neatly compiled in this superb (free) document – The Debunking Handbook. Do yourself a favour and read this short ebook.

In the book, you will learn what the psychological research says about how to communicate in order to update and correct the information inside a person’s head. Specifically, you’ll learn about the various backfire effects that often hinder writers attempting to dispel myths, including:

• The Familiarity Backfire Effect
• The Overkill Backfire Effect
• The Worldview Bsckfire Effect.

The book describes approaches to presenting information that increases the probability of successfully changing minds (reducing the likelihood of backfire).

**For background on The Debunking Handbook and why it was created, listen to the Point of Inquiry interview with one of the authors, John Cook, Climate Communication Fellow for the Global Change Institute at the University of Queensland in Australia.**

Don’t use a nuclear weapon where a simple pistol would do

I had been conscious of the fact that in writing 1000 word-plus blog posts may not be doing the reader any favours. In attempting to thoroughly obliterate ridiculous arguments and myths, I may have inadvertently reinforced the scandalous memes I was aiming my skeptical rocket launcher at.

Any good writer, especially the web content kind, knows the rule is that brevity is king. This is certainly true in the sense that people just don’t have the time or patience to read something that threatens to overturn the schedule for more than 5 minutes.

For a science writer and skeptic, this appeal to brevity takes on new meaning when the research quite clearly shows that excessive verbose corrections of myths will often lead to strengthening a myth’s hold on a person’s mind.

Besides, the cognitive appeal of a short snappy myth only increases when weighed up against a giant 20 point debunking.

So, I must be humble before the evidence and thank the authors of The Debunking Handbook for tying together what many of us intuitively knew about science writing but failed to really understand.

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The Debunking Handbook is written by John Cook and Professor Lewandowsky – Australian scientists and founders of www.skepticalscience.com –  a great climate change resource for the public.

Science and supernaturalism – what we can and can’t know

A recent commenter in the New Zealand Herald made the claim that science assumes naturalism and therefore it is justifiable to assume supernaturalism also. This view, though riddled with fallacies, can teach us something about the nature of science and the limits of what we can know.

This post is a critical response to David Balchin (Presbytarian Reverend) of Waihi who claims that science isn’t justified in excluding God from scientific explanations. He does this by equating the efforts of legitimate scientists (evolutionists) with those done by creationists (non-evolutionists as he calls them).

… But science has now come to be redefined as the pursuit of knowledge within a naturalistic framework only. Thus God has been, by definition precluded from scientific pursuit, something that would have staggered the first scientists… Both naturalism and the supernaturalism that undergird each definition of science are non-falsifiable faith positions committed to an understanding of mankinds origin and purpose that is simply not empirically demonstrable.

Let’s look at the features of science that are relevant in showing the above claims about science are incorrect:

1. Falsification. Evolutionists (scientists) are trying to falsify a hypothesis. Non-evolutionists (creation scientists) are cherry picking data and conclusions to support a priori commitment to their belief in God.
2. Science is a method. No “faith” position is necessary to do science.
3. It is not the fault of science that supernaturalism is precluded, it is a flaw inherent in supernatural claims. If you can’t produce a testable outcome then we by nature can’t do anything with it. No test means there is no possibility of any new knowledge.
4. False equivalence – The methods employed in legitimate science are the opposite of what creation scientists do. Science progresses with reliable, verifiable knowledge. The fruits of intelligent design pseudoscience is disinformation.

No unjustified assumptions necessary

In practice, scientists don’t operate by the naturalism/supernaturalism distinction. They simply devise a test in an attempt to understand the phenomenon in question. How does it arise? How does it operate? There is no presumption a priori of naturalism.

“Science operates without any a priori ontological commitment as to what sorts of entities exist.” -Tom Clark, Why Science Can’t Get Us To God, Naturalism.org

Science is in a word, ‘agnostic’ to untestable entities.

But doesn’t science assume methodological naturalism?

Methodological naturalism allows science to get off the ground. When scientists devise tests they proceed on the basis that effects have causes that are in principle observable and quantifiable. If they didn’t the whole exercise would be pointless. By proceeding with experiments they implicitly assume there is a point to this exercise and there will be natural, testable phenomena.

“However, this assumption of naturalism need not extend beyond an assumption of methodology. This is what separates methodological naturalism from philosophical naturalism – the former is merely a tool and makes no truth claim.” – Rational Wiki

Philosophical naturalism is a position an individual can take but, contrary to what some theists claim, it is not needed in science.

Creationists are not doing empirical tests

5. Science requires that a scientist demonstrate how the claims were arrived at. This makes the process open to others to investigate, reinforce or falsify (science is an open system).

The scientist devises a hypothesis and sets out to test it. There is no commitment to any conclusion up front and they follow the evidence where it leads.

The creation scientist already believes certain unknowable (therefore unjustifiable) supernatural propositions and sees the world through that lens. Data is filtered through that prior assumption.

Creation scientists already bring a supernatural agenda to the table and therefore engage in confirmation bias – selecting evidence to support their claims while lying, denying and rejecting that which does not. This selective reasoning is exactly what enlightenment philosophers and scientists saw as barriers to unfettered pursuit of knowledge.

Of course, the creation scientists assume more than just the claim that God is a causal agent in the universe. Some believe the Genesis account is accurate history while other theistic scientists accept an older age of the Earth, others reject all those but still claim God can perform miracles at a whim.

**This poses a problem, if science was based on the presuppositions of the scientists involved, whose presuppositions do we accept? Catholic ones? Protestant ones? Muslim ones?**

Science would not be possible if presuppositions of untestable entities and unjustified assumptions were to infiltrate the process. Again, the fact that science can be done regardless of nationality, culture and beliefs is a strength of the method.

This way we converge on strong, reliable theories rather than divergent opinions of reality as is a feature of religion.

6. Supernatural claims are either unjustified presuppositions or premature conclusions.

At the end of the day, if there is an unjustified assumption X and the claimant cannot demonstrate why he or she thinks X is true, then it can’t be put forward as science. We use Occam’s razor to eliminate such unjustified assumptions.

After all the data is in we could still say, “Well God guided that process to happen”. This explains nothing and we are left with no choice but to ignore such pronouncements on scientific grounds. People are free to believe this if they wish but it cannot pass as scientifically valid.

This economy and parsimmony of science is one of its strengths.

Conclusion

While nothing can disprove an entity whose claimed existence is outside space and time (a contradiction as the very word existence implies physical existence) this is not a fault of science but more a fault with the proposition being made.

One of the strengths of science is that we can assign justifiable certainty to propositions – we can know something about the universe. This leads to theories that in turn allows us to make predictions about future observations. If validated, these predicted observations further strengthen the theories they stem from.

Science is a method that is simply agnostic – it says nothing about untestable entities or imagined realities. It simply deals with what is – a strength that separates science from other human endeavours.

Why science is the best tool we have to understand reality

In my previous post I was presented with some odd comments about science and how we can develop justifiable certainty. These are my responses.

There are various ways to minimise the cognitive dissonance that we experience when science treads on our precious beliefs. Denial is one way, the comments below that I respond to are largely blanket dismissals of science.

Statistical significance

Claim: “I believe my experience over what others tell me or insists is true.”
Response: I’ve never been to Madagascar but people tell me it exists. I couldn’t possibly believe them unless I went there myself.

It takes a degree of ignorance to make the statement that someone’s personal experience on a matter is somehow more valid than thousands of people who carefully test ideas over several years and decades.

This is why scientific medicine works while belief-based medicine is like a blind man in a dark warehouse trying to hit a dartboard.

In medicine, it is unreasonable to expect people to try treatments “just to see what it’s like for themselves”. People should be able to find out if a treatment is safe and efficacious from reliable evidence. Besides, there is an endless production line of nonsense treatments and remedies and it would be an unwise waste of time to just trust people’s subjective opinions (which by nature are biased and subject to a host of cognitive biases).

I am not a scientist and am not qualified to do the research that scientists do in any field you care to think of. It would be silly for me to just flat out reject science because I haven’t experienced it myself. I can, though, be open to reason and learning and benefit from the knowledge that took others a lot of hard work to acquire. The observations, facts and logic are all open to me if I choose to study further.

The scientific method employs careful checks and balances that leads to information we can rely upon. No other area of culture employs such a rigorous standard of intellectual honesty.

Imagine if everyone settled on reality by way of accepting only their subjective experience. What could we possibly learn about external reality?

Everyone’s subjective experience is by nature different and so we stumble around without an external reference checking system.

We can develop technology, medicine and understanding because we all live according to the laws of physics and our anatomies, genetics, neurology and biochemistry are all the same (with obvious genetic variations).

Be objective as possible

Claim: “All interpretations are subjective”
Response: Aside from being a hasty sweeping generalisation it also represents a false equivalence. Subjectivity and objectivity exist on a continuum. Science allows us to be as objective as possible by controlling all the variables that could influence the outcome of an experiment.

The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences do not determine what’s true. – Carl Sagan

There are legitimate philosophical debates about the nature of knowledge and objectivity. However, it is a fallacy then to say that scientific findings are as subjective as the musings of individuals.

Furthermore, the only reason a person would dismiss science and advance their own subjective conclusions is because it justifies them advancing whatever nonsense they like and calling it reality.

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion but not to their own facts. -Steven  Novella

Facts are not negotiable and are by definition  publically verifiable. Facts are objective. Regardless of disagreements, if we make an observation that same observation could be made by someone else.

A molecule called DNA carries all the genetic  information for an organism. The effect of mass is to curve space. The human eye can detect only light in the 390-700 nanometre range. The atomic weight of cobalt is 58.93 and trilobites are fossilised in Cambrian rock. These are objective facts.

Detection and measuring equipment has further increased our ability to make finer and precise objective readings of reality. The effect has been to develop more accurate models of reality and thus better technology.

Knowledge constantly evolves

Claim: “Interpretations in science change all the time”.
Response: Yes, scientific interpretations change constantly because our knowledge improves. This is a strength of science.

The fact we don’t know stuff and we learn more is what keeps scientists busy! The march of human progress and understanding continues!

An excellent analogy is that scientific theory is like the car. Components can be substituted or improved upon, without changing the overall truth of how a car functions. Theories will always be improved upon because the limits of  knowledge mean there will always be more to learn.

One presumption implicit in the “well science changes” argument is that somehow it shouldn’t — as if science is useless unless we have absolute unchanging knowledge. This is an unrealistic expectation of science and the knowledge accumulating process.Another fallacy is that interpretations change willy-nilly much like they do in politics. This is a false analogy as the mechanisms in politics (democracy, authoritarianism etc…) are different to those of science (meritocracy, rigorous testing against reality, logical conclusions).

By contrast, modes of thinking based on personal experience and belief tend to stay stultified in the ideas of the past. Such is  the mechanisms of belief and cognitive biases. Science was designed explicitly to overcome these human tendencies to make faulty inferences and defend prior beliefs. Pseudoscience and superstition stop where science begins.

The false premise here too is that science somehow contradicts itself by changing all the time. However, this isn’t historically accurate. Major shifts in scientific ideas have overturned premature ideas sure, this is to be expected. However, major advances often don’t overturn well established theories, they merely increase the resolution and precision.

Einstein’s theories of general and special relativity didn’t replace Newton’s laws of motion — relativity gave us insights into the fabric of space-time and how physics operates at high speeds. Likewise, quantum theory doesn’t negate relativity but does give us a look into physics of our universe at sub-atomic levels.Over time science converges on the truth – our  understanding of reality is constantly improving.

Converging on the truth

Claim: “There are multiple ways of interpreting data”.
Response: This comment is a version of “it’s only a theory” and it stems from ignorance of what a theory actually is. Science is a tool to discriminate between fact and folly.

Multiple ways of interpreting data is a feature of preliminary findings. Science advances by knocking down theories (falsification). While there may be multiple interpretations to explain a body of facts these are always provisional and multiple interpretations are gradually knocked off as scientists attempt to demonstrate that each interpretation is false.

After a time, it becomes absurd to hold on to any given interpretation because it is clearly false. The fact that people often do hold on to falsified theories is another reason why personal intuition is insufficient.

A strong interpretation (theory) connects all the dots from different lines of evidence and can predict as yet unobserved facts.

Read more information on the scientific method.

CAM practioners in the UK taken to task for extravagant claims

The Advertising Standards Authority is coming down hard on quack remedies and modalities and it’s about time too.

And CAM (complementary and alternative medicine) practitoners are scrambling. Unregulated, “alternative”, unscientific medical interventions are squarely in the crosshairs of the British Advertising Standards Authority (ASA). Purveyors of dubious remedies and magical “cures” are now being taken to task for claims on their websites.

The immediate reaction of the CAM practitioners is of course predictable: “They’re limiting health freedom”, “the medical establishment are greedy”, “but the ASA are supposed protect the public”.

Which leads me to some specific reactions from an NLP trainer, practitioner and therapist Nick Kemp. Uneasy with the implications of the newfound teeth of the ASA, Nick wrote a blog post outlining what he sees as an organised attack on alternative health modalities.

The NLP (Neurolinguistic programming) community is unregulated externally and has a number of features of a pseudoscience. Nick is all to aware of this, pointing out that many NLP individuals and institutions write cheques they can’t cash in terms of claims.

Mentalists and skeptics Derren Brown and Banachek point out that there is some good stuff in NLP, but as a field unhinged from the need to prove its claims NLP amasses a fair degree of quack alternative ideas also.

Evidence please?

People who make claims that are supported by evidence have nothing to be afraid of.

However, CAM modalities are alternative because they do not pass scientific muster. If a modality works it becomes accepted as medicine and does not remain “alternative”.

There is no ‘alternative versus conventional medicine’ dichotomy. The CAM industry has created this “us versus the elite establishment” semantic distinction, but it doesn’t represent the reality that there is either science-based medicine or unscientific belief-based medicine. The only real question that needs asking is “Is there objective evidence that it works?”

Avoiding the real question (does it work?)

So most of the complaints by CAM practitioners are elaborate red herrings and non sequiturs designed to evade the question “does it work?” Not just anecdotally, but is there science showing it works?

Nick Kemp’s main beef is that the ASA is being far too strict and doesn’t understand NLP or alternative therapies. Essentially, practitioners of all stripes, homoeopaths, naturopaths, chiropractors, NLP practitioners… Are crying foul and pulling the martyr card.

The need for public watchdogs

Mr Kemp also conveys some disdain for the Nightingale Collaboration – a campaign that challenges questionable claims made by healthcare practitioners in order to hold them accountable.

He says:

“Groups like The Nightingale Collaboration actively encourage “skeptics” to make complaints about websites to support their own agenda.”

He is dismayed by the fact the Nightingale Collaboration has previously attacked chiropractors, homoeopathy and cranial sacral therapy.

I pointed out to Mr Kemp that there is good reason why these health modalities deserve criticism – they don’t work! In the case of chiropractors, the essence of chiropractic (still claimed by many chiropractors) is sympathetic magic. When this was pointed out by journalist Simon Singh The British Chiropractic Association responded by suing him. This kicking of the hornets’ nest is why skeptics and other concerned citizens upped the anti in opposing false and potentially harmful medical claims.

Aside from a handful of good journalists like Singh and Ben Goldacre, the media has proven itself incapable of  properly informing the public about the reality of CAM quackery.

The public needs groups like the Nightingale Collaboration to publically hold purveyors of quackery accountable for the very real danger they pose in promoting belief-based medicine over solid science.

(See this Guardian article for some background information on the Nightingale Collaboration and why Simon Singh and others formed the organisation).

“Leave your logic and science at the door thanks”

When I put forth the true state of the evidence for homeopathy (it doesn’t work beyond placebo) this is the response Mr Kemp gave:

“As someone who has used homeopathy for 30 years I have enough evidence that it’s not placebo.

“As for the ASA vetting, well they are check ad copy and have no therapeutic insights. I could write a lengthy post about the absurdity of many ASA deductions, but don’t really have time at present!”

It is a shame Mr Kemp doesn’t have more time because I would really like to know how the ASA is making absurd deductions AND I would like to know what he uses homoeopathy for.

The deductions the ASA make are simple – if there is objective evidence something works and you are a properly qualified practitioner then great. If the objective evidence is not in or worse if it repeatedly shows the treatment is hooey, then you can’t make claims to effectiveness.

Mr Kemp’s statement about absurd deductions is rather ironic. Any way you look at homoeopathy, the deduction that it works beyond placebo is absurd.

Homoeopathy is absurd because:

• Double blind placebo controlled trials repeatedly show homoeopathy does not work.
• The proposed mechanism for homoeopathy violates the laws of physics, therefore proponents have a huge burden of proof on their hands that they cannot meet.

Unfortunately, Nick Kemp displays the precise thinking the ASA is meant to safeguard the public against.

Firstly, his appeal to 30 years of personal experience of homoeopathy typifies the kind of anecdotes that the CAM industry relies on as the definitive evidence. As clinical data is unfavourable to their cause they have to use anecdotes. They either don’t like science or believe anecdotal reports trump science. This is the very problem the ASA must throw cold water on.

Testimonials are great marketing devices (people love stories) but testimonials are poor evidence of clinical effectiveness. The reliance on testimonials is a huge red flag when flicking through practitioner websites.

Cures

Regulators like the ASA (UK) and FDA (US) have become increasingly sensitive to the word “cure” due to the large number of unsubstantiated claims to cures for all kinds of ailments, especially those relating to cancers.

Most of the claims with “cure” in them come from scientifically discredited modalities. The public absolutely needs to be on guard from these kinds of extravagant (read: absurd) claims by internet charlatans.

There are countless stories about people abandoning their cancer treatment, medical treatment and prescribed medicine on the advice of a quack practitioner. Until now, purveyors of cancer cures have been largely unaccountable for the claims on their websites.

Conclusion

Unregulated, unscientific modalities and practices need to be brought to the surface so that the public can make informed choices based on the best evidence available. This protects the public from being misled, ripped off and prevents the promotion of harmful (untrue) medical advice.

For too long claimants have not been required to meet reasonable standards of objective evidence. Often claims are reduced to what people want to hear, what people want to believe rather than what is responsible and effective. It is misleading and dangerous to make false claims and then hide behind “well, I am giving people the freedom to decide what’s best for them”.

If CAM practitioners really do subscribe to the dictum “first do know harm” why are they so unwilling to submit their work to the evidence?