The Onion divines it all

Pat Robertson’s asinine claim that the earthquake in Haiti was the result of a centuries old pact with the devil inspired the brilliant minds at The Onion. They’ve compiled a list of other tragedies and exactly who pissed off god to make them happen. My favorite:

Oakland Hills Firestorm, 1991: Emily Garrity pointed out a logical inconsistency in the concept of an omnipotent god to her Sunday school teacher

Watch out, critical thinking is dangerous stuff!

Don’t mark your calendar

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that Bay Area biblical “scholar” Harold Camping predicts that the rapture will occur on May 21, 2011. People believe him, which is laughable with just that sentence as context; that becomes absolutely absurd when you consider these facts:

• Camping previously predicted that the rapture would occur on Sept. 6, 1994.
• People who swallowed Camping’s prediction then are still following him today; one even said his faith in Camping has been strengthened.
• Camping has the chutzpah and complete lack of introspection and self-awareness to mock people who believe the Mayan-fueled prophecy that world will end in 2012.

One of Camping’s followers demonstrates the complete suspension of critical thinking that’s required to believe silly supernatural fairy tales like this: When asked what he would do if [editorial comment: when] Camping is wrong again, Rick LaCasse, who witnessed Camping’s 1994 failure, said: “I can’t even think like that. Everything is too positive right now. There’s too little time to think like that.”

And, once again, this story provides us with more evidence for why religion must not be exempt from rational criticism.

Another red flag

A couple of months ago, I wrote about a religious tract that warned readers to resist the temptation of college. Via dwasifar, here’s another version of that same warning:

The advice to “skip class, not church” is from Penn State’s Alliance Christian Fellowship. If you miss your weekly — or twice weekly, or thrice weekly — brainwashing sessions, how do you expect your religious leaders to be able to undo the critical thinking skills you’re learning at university?

What I wrote about the religious tract applies here, too:

Folks, if your religion or faith pooh-poohs science, logic, reason, or critical thinking — subtlely or, as in this case, blatantly — it’s a red flag that its leaders know full well that the stuff they’re peddling can’t withstand scrutiny.

If you believe that god created the universe and all that’s in it, that means you believe he also created you with the ability to think, to reason, to examine evidence. Why would god give you those capabilities and then demand that you not use them?

It’s becoming my mantra lately, but it bears repeating: Religion must not be exempt from rational criticism.

What is science?

It’s a perspective, it’s a way at getting at the truth, it’s critical thinking, and it needs protection:

If you want to help protect it, participating in the Richard Dawkins Foundation fundraiser is a good way to start.

Idiocy run amok

The Boston Globe reports that a Methuen, Mass., woman named Mary Jo Coady believes Jesus appeared on her dirty old Wal-Mart iron. Here’s the image:

Here’s why this is idiotic:

1. No one knows what Jesus looked like.
2. The person in this image looks like she either has the mumps or is gathering acorns for the winter in her left cheek.
3. With all the problems in the world that could benefit from supernatural attention — for example, world hunger, war, genital mutilation, AIDS, childhood cancer — why would Jesus spend his time appearing on an iron (or a grilled cheese sandwich, or a store window, or a water tower, or any of the other ridiculous places the faithful have claimed to spied him)?
4. Given all the problems that Coady herself is facing — the Globe reports that recently Coady “separated from her husband; moved out of the home they owned and where they had raised their family; watched her hours get trimmed at work; and unpacked slowly in the rented two-family house where she now resides with her daughters, up against Route 110″ — why in the world would this dumb image be “uplifting” for Cody?
5. Does this look any more like the European, non-Jewish Jesus that appears in most Christian images of Jesus than it looks like, say Minnie Driver, or even Coady herself? Sheesh, it barely looks human.
6. This is news?

At least this critically thinking-challenged Christian is just seeing Jesus on an iron, instead of doing real damage like so many other religious folks who are busy trying to impose their supernatural beliefs on every one else and decimating the constitutionally mandated separation of church and state in the process.

Update 12/2/09:

Travis Morgan tells Mary Jo Coady that he’ll see her “Jesus” on an iron and raise her one Flying Spaghetti Monster on an iron:

Can you see his noodly appendage?

Grateful for 10-year-old’s inspiring critical thinking

“Critical thinking is a mystery to me. What is it?” ~ Fred Oliveri, letter to the Morgan Hill Times editor about one of my columns

I write frequently about critical thinking. I do so because fostering this skill is integral to the survival of core American principles. Without it, we’re swayed by outrageous claims, fallacious arguments and seductive half-truths promoted by greedy, power-hungry fear-mongers. This Thanksgiving week, I’m grateful that Oliveri provided me another opportunity to write about an important topic.

Critical thinking is “… the careful, deliberate determination of whether we should accept, reject, or suspend judgment about a claim, and the degree of confidence with which we accept or reject it.” (Brooke Noel Moore and Richard Parker in Critical Thinking)

In his article “An Introduction to Critical Thinking,” Texas Citizens for Science president Steven Schafersman wrote, “A person who thinks critically can ask appropriate questions, gather relevant information, … sort through this information, reason logically … and come to reliable and trustworthy conclusions about the world that enable one to live and act successfully in it.”

I find that examples are helpful in understanding difficult concepts. Let’s consider 10-year-old Will Phillips, a fifth-grader from West Fork, Ark. Phillips, like most elementary students, rotely recited the Pledge of Allegiance in his classrooms for years.

Critical thinking hope

Will Phillips, a 10-year-old in West Fork, Alabama, gives me hope that some of our kids are learning the critical thinking skills that are utterly key to the survival of American ideals as expressed in the Constitution. He’s refusing to say the Pledge of Allegiance because, as he told the Arkansas Times, “I’ve always tried to analyze things because I want to be lawyer. I really don’t feel that there’s currently liberty and justice for all.”

Will sees that homosexuals do not have “liberty and justice” because of the disastrous Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy, because of the Defense of Marriage Act, because of people like Rhode Island Gov. Don Carcieri, because of their inability to marry in the vast majority of states.

And he’s taken the most concrete action that a fifth-grader can against it, even in the face of juvenile and predictable peer pressure aimed at bringing him back in line with the ignorant masses. All at the tender age of 10.

You go, Will. I’m proud of you.

Critical thinking basics

An important part of being able to think critically is being able to spot logical fallacies, which are errors in reasoning. You need to ensure that you don’t use them in your thinking and debating, and you need to be able to spot them in other people’s arguments.

The Nizkor Project, a web site dedicated to refuting Holocaust deniers, offers a useful listing of 42 logical fallacies, providing definitions and examples of each. Don’t let anyone get away with using the slippery slope or appeal to ridicule fallacies, for example, on your watch!

‘Utopianism for the powerful’

The Atlantic blogger Ta-Nahisi Coates reacts to cries of “bigotry” after the election results in Maine:

Conservatives pride themselves on their skepticism, and generally dismiss liberals as soft-headed Utopians. But in so many ways, political conservatism is Utopianism for the powerful. It isn’t broadly skeptical of human nature, so much as it’s broadly skeptical of people its agents don’t particularly like. Hence the sense that Americans are intrinsically “good people,” that this country “is the best nation that ever existed in history,” that the South is home to “the greatest people that have ever trod the earth,” and that the murder of four little girls in Birmingham was the work of a “Communist” or “crazed Negro,” which had “set back the cause of white people.”

Hence the notion that those voting against gay marriage, are not actually, in the main, motivated by bigotry, but a belief in tradition and family. But very few people would actually ever describe themselves as bigots. We think we know so much about ourselves. This is a country–like many countries–which is deeply riven by ethnic bias, and gender discrimination. And yet we don’t seem to know any of the agents of that discrimination.

I think the description of political conservatism as “utopianism for the powerful” is apt for some conservatives, but it doesn’t explain why so many non-powerful people are conservatives; for that I think you have to look at their power brokers — very often very wealthy (hence, very powerful) religious leaders. In ways subtle and overt, these politically conservative religious leaders manage to convince their unquestioning, blind-faith followers to vote not only against their own economic self-interest by voting for conservative candidates, but also to vote for politicians who support policies that violate their own religious tenets, things like loving your neighbor as yourself and the assertion that you will be judged by how you treat the least among you.

It’s a pretty nifty trick, and but one that cannot work when religion (and assertions about it made by self-appointed religious leaders) is not exempt from rational criticism. It’s why that two-word dictum — Question Authority — is so important. But it’s not enough; you also have to scrutinize the answers you get, looking for fallacies. If more religious folks asked their pastors and priests questions like these and accepted only those answers that held up to critical thinking, we’d have a vastly reduced religious right wingnut contingency:

• Pastor, why don’t you rail against people who eat lobster or who wear clothing of mixed fiber, or who cheat on their wives like you rail against same-sex couples?
• Father, why do you oppose health care reform even though it will help our poor brothers and sisters get access to health care?
• Father, why was the doctor who performed an abortion on a 9-year-old rape victim excommunicated? What about the rapist who got her pregnant? What about the thousands of molesting priests whose crimes were hidden instead of reported and prosecuted?

And that’s only a few public policy-related examples — the list doesn’t touch the tons of non-public policy contradictions contained in just one “holy,” allegedly infallible text.

Ask questions. Scrutinize the answers. Do not exempt religion from rational criticism.

Supernatural beliefs contradict our smug sophistication

Supernatural — of or relating to an order of existence beyond the visible observable universe; especially of or relating to God or a god, demigod, spirit, or devil (Merriam-Webster)

New Gilroy Dispatch columnist Erika Mailman (welcome to the club!) recently wrote about her 17th-century ancestor who was twice accused and acquitted of being a witch. With our 21st-century sophistication, we smugly scorn the ignorance and gullibility that allowed our forebears to accept supernatural explanations for mysterious phenomena.

Mailman correctly notes that witch hunts aren’t confined to history. She cites present-day witch hunts in Africa, India and Papua New Guinea and looks for motivations, concluding that witch hunts often result from “desperation, as war-torn families found themselves with limited food supplies. If one person is pushed out of the house, there is more food for those doing the accusing.”

Her assessment might be correct in some cases, but it misses the bigger picture: Tolerance of supernatural beliefs allows witch hunters to successfully persecute innocent victims.

If enough people reject supernatural explanations as the utter nonsense that they are, if they demand evidence for assertions, identify and reject fallacies, and think critically, witch hunts will disappear like dodo birds and dinosaurs.

Unfortunately, that’s hard work, so it’s not the way most people operate, even in the savvy 21st century.