NCAA Football Championship

It's old news now that the Gators are going to Glendale, AZ, to play the Buckeyes on Jan. 8th for the BCS win.

If anyone is interested in going, details on tickets are here, and I found a round-trip flight with JetBlue for ~$500/adult (as of now) out of Orlando to Phoenix, 1/5 to 1/9. This was my first attempt to get a figure for airfare, though, and I'm sure better deals are out there. Email me if you're considering going, or if you want to help me procure tickets, then turn around and sell them to me (I really need to get one for my wife, after that it's mutual profit).
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Technorati tags: Sports

Worth a Moment's Read

There are many arguments for atheism. It is rare, however, to find a carefully-thought-out argument for atheism along moral grounds. Raymond D. Bradley wrote just one such argument, in an essay entitled, "A Moral Argument for Atheism".

An excerpt from that paper in defining moral objectivism:

We mean a set of moral truths that would remain true no matter what any individual or social group thought or desired. The notion of objective morality is antithetical to all forms of moral subjectivism. It holds, first, that we have moral beliefs that are either true or false; that they are not mere expressions of emotion, akin to sighs of pleasure or pain. It holds, secondly, that the truth or falsity of our moral judgments is a function of whether or not the objects of moral appraisal, agents and their actions, have the moral properties that we ascribe to them; that their truth or falsity is not merely a function of the thoughts, feelings, or attitudes of individuals or the conventions of society. And it holds, thirdly, that there may well be moral truths still awaiting our discovery, through revelation (on the theist's account) or through reason and experience--together, perhaps, with our changing biology--(on my account).

Something I have no doubts of is that morality must be approached objectively if one is to use reason to discuss moral truths -- ie if one assumes that moral facts exist. I have tried to explain how my own view of morality can be grounded in simple truths about human survival, socialization, and empathy. In short, if humans exist, and if there are a range of options about how they might behave towards one another, then cooperative, kind behavior is one of those options. The reason it is good, I argue, is that it leads to more pleasure, happiness, less pain, longer lifespan, health, wealth...etc. Moral behavior, derivable from a simple set of virtues, can be shown to produce these effects. If we agree that these effects are good, then you now know what is good, and if you know what is good, you ought to do good for the sake of good itself. This is certainly a consequentialist view, but such a simple precept seems quite compatible with a standalone deontological virtue theory.

All that said, I will gladly admit that I have more reading to do and need to strengthen my arguments for objective morality. But there is some part of me that questions, still, whether morality is a metaphysically ultimate, absolute and normative.

Although I am quite sure that reason/logic are metaphysically ultimate and necessary entities, and therefore not contingent upon any other conditions or truths, I am not sure that the same applies to ethics. This is something I've been thinking about for some time, but I haven't done enough reading on to feel confident either way. I am not a moral relativist, per se, but I do not know if the same sort of transcendent status can be applied to morality as can be applied to logical and mathematical truths.

Bradley argued against Dr. Paul Chamberlain in a debate about the question, "Is Objective Morality Possible Without God?" Bradley mentioned this debate in reference [8] of the paper above, and an overview of the debate was written up in The Peak, the student newspaper at SFU. Check it out.
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Technorati tags: God, Religion, Philosophy

Gators Win the 2006 NCAA Basketball and Football Championships?

We'll find out.

Go Gators!!!!

Boy, this has been a good week :)
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Technorati tags: Sports

Another Gainesville Sun Article on Dixie County

The Gainesville Sun has a new article* about the FFRF's press release about this case that I mentioned earlier. I'm not sure what to make of it. On the one hand, I think they're helping the cause of defending the Constitution by running this; yet the tone of the article is a bit pro-Dixie County -- it cites how poor, white, and Christian they are, as if that matters. It seems to want solely to point out that these people want it there:

"I really don't see why this is anybody's business outside of Dixie County - why it is the business of someone who does not pay taxes here, who does not live here, who does not intend to ever live here," said county coordinator Arthur Bellot. "We did not invite this. It was something private individuals did for the county."

Yet another example of illiteracy: this time legal, rather than grammatical. It has no legal bearing on the matter if I move to a county full of Klansmen, [and apparently, that wouldn't be too hard to do around here] then erect a statue to Nathan Forrest in front of the county courthouse, and cite how "everyone in the county wants it, what business is it of anyone else's?". Or a county of Muslims and erect a statue to Allah. It is completely irrelevant to the legality of any action to fallaciously appeal to argumentum ad populum -- rule of the majority. If people can ever grasp this, all of the frivolity of such lawsuits need not occur. Erect the monument on someone's front lawn, some churchyard, whatever. Just not on government property!

I would advise anyone seriously interested in the arguments of proponents of 10 Commandments on government property to read this and this. Unfortunately, I didn't get to go into these sorts of things in my recent interview.** I want to post a clarification about why I responded to Sean with, "No," when asked "how far I want[ed] to take it" -- removing God from the Dec. of Independence, etc. I've caught some flak for it, although I don't really understand why.

Stay tuned and I'll keep you constantly informed about this developing situation.

*See the first Gainesville Sun article, and this and this Alligator mention.

**You can now download the .flv file (13.6 MB) of my YouTube clip. You will need Martjin Devisser's .flv player (you can save Flash movies to your desktop and play them there) here, or here to view it.
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Technorati tags: Church-state, God, Religion

Does Religion Correlate to Spousal Abuse?

I am not with Dawkins in insisting that all religious teaching to children is akin to child abuse. That said, Austin Cline's recent article (thanks, Ed) about the parallels in the relationship between God and believer and the relationship between spouse abuser and spouse victim presents some solid logical arguments. I have always thought it obvious that the only religions which have survived are those which have successfully exploited human psychology and sociology to the max, following the memetic hypothesis of Dawkins. If a religion does not exploit fear, dependency, self-deprecation, etc., then it will not exist for long -- because people will instead learn to be independent, value themselves, place hope in tangiable goals...

Read it:

God as Abuser: Similarities Between the Christian God and Abusive Spouses
From Austin Cline

• God and Spousal Abuse:

It’s common for Christians to compare the relationship between humanity and God to that between husband and wife. God is the “man” of the house to whom humanity owes obedience, respect, and honor. Usually this relationship is portrayed as one of love, but in far too many ways, God is more like an abusive spouse who only knows how to love through intimidation and violence. A review of classic signs and symptoms of spousal abuse reveals how abusive the “relationship” people have with God is.

• Victims are Afraid of the Abuser:

Abusers instill fear in their spouses; believers are instructed to fear God. Abusers are unpredictable and given to dramatic mood swings; God is depicted as alternating between love and violence. Abused spouses avoid topics which set off the abuser; believers avoid thinking about certain things to avoid angering God. Abusers make one feel like there is no way to escape a relationship; believers are told that there is no way to escape God’s wrath and eventual punishment.

• Abusers Use of Threats and Intimidation to Force Compliance:

Violence is a primary means by which abusers communicate, even with their spouses whom they are supposed to love. Abusers aren’t just violent towards their spouses — they also use violence against objects, pets, and other things to instill more fear and to force compliance with their wishes. God is portrayed as using violence to force people to comply with certain rules and Hell is the ultimate threat of violence. God might even punish an entire nation for the transgressions of a few members.

• Abusers Withholds Resources from Victims:

In order to exercise greater control over a victim, abusers will withhold important resources in order to make the victim more dependent. Resources used like this include money, credit cards, access to transportation, medications, or even food. God is also depicted as exercising control over people by controlling their resources — if people are insufficiently obedient, for example, God may cause crops to fail or water to turn bad. The basic necessities of living are conditioned on obeying God.

• Abusers Instill Feelings of Inadequacy in Victims:

A further means of exercising control over a victim is instilling feelings of inadequacy in them. By getting them to feel worthless, helpless, and unable to do anything right, they will lack the self-confidence necessary to stand up to the abuser and resist the abuse. Believers are taught that they are depraved sinners, unable to do anything right and unable to have good, decent, or moral lives independent of God. Everything good that a believer achieves is due to God, not their own efforts.

• Victims Feel they Deserve to be Punished by Abusers:

Part of the process of encouraging the victim to feel inadequate involves getting them to feel that they really do deserve the abuse they are suffering. If the abuser is justified in punishing the victim, then the victim can hardly complain, can she? God is also described as being justified in punishing humanity — all people are so sinful and depraved that they deserve an eternity in hell (created by God). Their only hope is that God will take pity on them and save them.

• Victims are Not Trusted by Abusers:

Another part of the process of making the victim feel inadequate is ensuring that they know how little the abuser trusts them. The victim is not trusted to make her own decisions, dress herself, buy things on her own, or anything else. She is also isolated from her family so that she can’t find help. God, too, is depicted as treating people as if they were unable to do anything right or make their own decisions (like on moral issues, for example).

• Emotional Dependency of the Abuser on the Victim:

Although abusers encourage victims to feel inadequate, it is the abuser who really has problems with self-confidence. Abusers encourage emotional dependency because they are emotionally dependent themselves — this produces extreme jealousy and controlling behavior. God, too, is depicted as dependent upon human worship and love. God is usually described as jealous and unable to handle it when people turn away. God is all-powerful, but unable to prevent the smallest problems.

• Blaming the Victim for the Abuser’s Actions:

Victims are typically made to feel responsible for all of an abuser’s actions, not just deserving of the punishments inflicted. Thus victims are told that it’s their fault when an abuser gets angry, feels suicidal, or indeed when anything at all goes wrong. Humanity is also blamed for everything that goes wrong — although God created humanity and can stop any unwanted actions, all responsibility for all evil in the world is laid entirely at the feet of human beings.

• Why Do Abused People Stay With Their Abusers?:

Why do women stay with violent, abusive spouses? Why don’t they just pack up and leave, making a new life for themselves elsewhere and with people who actually respect and honor them as equal, independent human beings? The signs of abuse described above should help in answering these questions: women are so emotionally and psychologically beaten down that they lack the mental strength to do what is necessary. They don’t have enough confidence to believe that they can make it without the man who keeps telling them that only he could possibly love such an ugly and worthless person such as they.

Perhaps some insight on this can be gained by rephrasing the question and asking why people don’t abandon the emotionally and psychologically abusive relationship they are expected to develop with God? The existence of God isn’t relevant here — what matters is how people are taught to perceive themselves, their world, and what will happen to them if they make the mistake of trying to leave the relationship in order to make a better life for themselves elsewhere.

Women who are abused are told that they can’t make it on their own and if they try, their spouse will come after them to punish or even kill them. Believers are told that they can’t accomplish anything of value without God, that they are so worthless that only because God is infinitely loving does he love them at all; if they turn their backs on God, they will be punished for all eternity in hell. The sort of “love” which God has for humanity is the “love” of an abuser who threatens, attacks, and commits violence in order to get his own way.

Religions like Christianity are abusive insofar as they encourage people to feel inadequate, worthless, dependent, and deserving of harsh punishment. Such religions are abusive insofar as they teach people to accept the existence of a god which, if human, would have long ago been shut away in prison for all his immoral and violent behavior.

Wow. Can anyone honestly deny how clear those parallels are? I challenge any Christian to show how these comparisons are not accurate.

PS: Check out Austin Cline's amazing artwork in the War on Xmas and Theocracy.
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Technorati tags: God, Religion

Scary Amoral Conservatism

My title is not just rhetoric. Read this recent article by Amy Barath from a right-wing rag:

...It is the fear of God which prevents us from dousing fellow citizens with kerosene and lighting them ablaze. It is the fear of God which prevents us from shooting a disabled man in his wheelchair and then pushing him in to the sea. It is the fear of God which commands us to choose right over wrong...

It is the responsibility of the Conservatives to protect the concept of God as the golden thread which holds our Republic together in the way it was intended as set forth by our founding fathers. Although we have become tired of the tantrums from the Left, we must muster our energy, fight this one and win. If we do not, if we allow the Left to erase the meaning of God from our memories and disallow us to teach the future generations of this country the importance of fearing God, one day we will be strolling down Main Steet whistling Dixie when a member of the Anti-Whistling Dixie Brigade stops us, throws acid in our faces and then sets as ablaze. [emphasis mine]

Yikes! I hope to never meet this Amy Barath on the street when she's having a bad day, or wrestling with doubts about God. People like Amy apparently cannot be swayed by rational argument to be good to others out of of self-interest: reciprocity and justice cannot exist if we all do not agree to treat each other fairly and well. She's scary.

What is it about rational arguments for moral behavior that these kinds of people don't get? They're think humans are like dumb animals who need to be broken by fear and caged by religious mandate to keep from killing one another (and, in her mind, immolating each other). They seem to deny that 99% of people raised in loving homes who are educated and encouraged go on to lead nonviolent, healthy, productive, normal lives, with or without religion. In denying the effects of modernism, and the shedding of religion, Amy snubs secular humanistic values and the attendant fruits thereof. The concepts of positive reinforcement and behavior modification [which I use to train two beautiful and gentle giant animals], with empirically-established facts, apparently don't exist in her tiny wingnut brain.

Studies have shown that atheism correlates to lower rates of imprisonment, and to healthier societal indicators (such as abortion rates, teen pregnancy rates, murder rates...). Free societies [versus communist ones] like Sweden, Germany and Japan have very little "fear of God" and no human torches. Why is that, Amy? Why aren't more wheelchair-bound citizens of those countries shot and pushed into bodies of water? I have to wonder how Amy responds to those facts, or if she can even process them...

I'm really not trying to go overboard with the rhetoric when I say people like her honestly frighten me. It is possible that people like her are born with no empathy, or that they have been conditioned to lose it. And those people are dangerous.
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Technorati tags: God, Religion

And So It Begins...

The FFRF has written the Dixie County Commissioners and asked them to remove the display, informing them of the legal potential in this case. They are also soliciting plaintiffs from the area -- this news release from the FFRF was carried in a NC-based newswire service yesterday. Keep tuned, more to come, I'm sure.

http://bbsnews.net/article.php/20061201120201768

Yet Another Court House Ten Commandments Monument

Friday, December 01 2006 @ 12:02 PM EST

State/Church Watchdog Groups Seeks Plaintiffs to Sue Over Dixie County Decalog

FFRF via BBSNews 2006-12-01 -- The Freedom From Religion Foundation, a national state/church watchdog group, is looking for Dixie County residents willing to join a lawsuit challenging the placement of a 6-ton monument of the Ten Commandments on the steps of the Dixie County Courthouse last week.

The Foundation, an association with nearly 8,000 mostly atheist and agnostic members nationwide, has a successful track record in suing over the "faith-based initiative." This fall, its litigation got the Federal Bureau of Prisons to back down from plans to open "single faith" ministry pods in federal penitentiaries.

The Foundation sent a formal request today to the Dixie County Board of Commissioners asking it to remove the monument. Spokeswoman Annie Laurie Gaylor noted that the county is flouting well-established law, including a ruling by the 11th U.S. Court of Appeals in Atlanta in the notorious Judge Roy Moore case. Moore was ordered to remove a Ten Commandments monument placed in the Alabama state courthouse. The county's action also violates last year's decision by the Supreme Court ruling that Kentucky officials violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment in placing a Ten Commandments display in a courthouse.

"This display is far more visible, unavoidable and intrusive than the one deemed unconstitutional in the Kentucky case," Gaylor said.

The fact that the granite monument depicting an open bible was paid for privately does not mitigate the violation, Gaylor said, pointing to a 1980 ruling by the Supreme Court in the Stone v. Graham case, which said government display of donated Ten Commandment posters was an impermissible endorsement.

"The First Commandment alone makes it obvious why the Ten Commandments may not be posted by government bodies. Dixie County has no business telling citizens which god they must have, how many gods they must have, or that they must have any god at all!"Gaylor said.

Making the violation even more egregious is the inscription at the base admonishing citizens to "Love God and keep his commandments."

The Foundation has been contacted by many of its Florida membership. "We plan to sue, but we do need at least one local plaintiff who lives in Dixie County or who has very regular business at the courthouse," Gaylor said.

Anyone potentially interested in being a plaintiff is asked to contact Gaylor at info@ffrf.org, 608/256-8900, or may write FFRF, Inc., at PO Box 750, Madison WI 53701.
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Technorati tags: Church-state, Religion

Mount Soledad Cross Saga Continues...

Remember the action taken by Bush to prevent the Mount Soledad Cross from being taken down?

An appellate court upheld the law (HR 5683) on church-state grounds [ie they didn't find that it violated the Est Clause]. But, there are outstanding motions challenging the eminent domain basis of the law, independent of how it impinges upon the 1st Amendment. (HT: RC)

These sorts of things are such a waste of time and money. Pitiful.
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Technorati tags: Church-state, Religion

Of "Committ[ing] Adultry" & Florida Fundies

**UPDATE: It appears the illiterate rednecks of Dixie County got their monument fixed. Unfortunately for them, it won't likely be there much longer.**

What is it with these Florida fundies and spelling the 7th of the Decalogue correctly when they place it on government property? If you're too dumb to even spell it right, you shouldn't be able to display the 10 Commandments.

#7: "committ"

#7: "adultry"

Maybe it's parapraxia -- revealing that they have a hard time obeying that one.
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Technorati tags: God, Religion, Church-state

New Eddy

I got a laurel from the editorial board of the Alligator for my interview:

Next, we pass a godless-in-a-good-way LAUREL to UF's own Daniel Morgan, who ventured into the lion's den - Fox News Channel - to argue against a Ten Commandments monument in a Dixie County courthouse this week. Morgan appeared on "Hannity & Colmes" opposite a local attorney, who apparently fears a rash of graven images, false gods and ass-coveting if the six-ton Decalogue is removed.

He's not the only one. Locals greeted the UF student with outright hostility - one shouted, "This atheist is coming down here to take away our Ten Commandments!" as if Morgan planned to rip the monument in two with his superhuman atheist strength. Which is absurd. He only uses his powers to fight crime.

Besides, the really important parts of the Ten Commandments - thou shalt not kill, for instance - are already enshrined in American law. And in every other kind of law, for that matter. As for the other stuff? Keeping the Sabbath holy and all that? We say the Christians' real beef is with the National Football League, not the justice system.

Remember how Joey pointed to the community support, and cited no negative letters to the editor being published, except one from Gainesville...? He co-owns the only paper. I'm sure he uses objective editorial judgment though, are you not?

The Dixie County Advocate has a short article up at the moment on the monument, but I talked to an editor there who said she was working on an in-depth article about Wed. night's segment. [the server appears to have crashed from high volume, but keep checking in]

Also, read this interesting tangential WorldNUTdaily article on Roy Moore. I actually agree that the generic usage of "God" does not establish or endorse religion, per se. I would like to see those things removed, but: i) I want to see it happen via Congress [give it 50 more years]; ii) I think the legal/judicial route will be ultimately impotent to make the case that the motto and pledge insertion violate the Establishment Clause.

Also see: my interview post
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Technorati tags: God, Religion, Church-state