Beware

I have just posted a video related to this topic on my YouTube channel.

Some religious people are good, and some are bad. As I described previously, the bad ones use force and have more effect on the world. But we must admit the existence of the good ones. Back when I was religious, I was one of the good ones, I think. And I know a lot of good religious people. So do you.


Religion is a minefield. You may walk through it unharmed, but there is a great risk that you will touch one of those mines. Those mines are the memes of religion. Some of those memes provide a framework by which your rage and destructiveness can come pouring forth, in which pity for your adversaries is considered a sin. We all have rage and arrogance, but some religious memes provide the ultimate justification for them. They are like catalysts that allow chemicals that might otherwise lie dormant to explode. Religious memes are perhaps the most effective way of turning good people into bad people.

Religious memes do not always release rage and destructiveness. They can also facilitate mental slavery, in which people are simply unable to think outside the confines of the meme. I have had numerous creationist students who were sincere and often very intelligent, and would go to incredible lengths to justify their beliefs. For example, God moved the fossils around during the Flood to make them look like they had an evolutionary order. I feel sorry for such brainwashed students.

Peter Abelard said that it was a sin to say a prayer if you do not understand what it means. He also said that by doubting we come to inquiry, and by inquiry we come to truth. This viewpoint was considered heretical by conservatives such as Bernard of Clairvaux. Look before you step. Think carefully before you embrace any aspect of religion.

Making a Difference

I recently received an email that I wanted to share, from a student who was in one of my classes over a decade ago at my previous institution (Southwest State University, now Southwest Minnesota State University). There are few surprises more pleasant for a professor than to hear from a student who benefited from a class. The class was “Earth through Time and Space,” which was an overview of the evolutionary history of the cosmos. It was a general education class, not directly relevant to anyone’s major or professional preparation.

The student expressed appreciation that I challenged the class to think about their assumptions, including religious assumptions that conflicted with scientific evidence. I do not recall preaching any atheism or agnosticism (I was still a conventionally religious person at the time), and I don’t recall any students leaving in protest (of course, it was a big lecture room and this could have happened without my knowledge). I wasn’t trying to turn students into agnostics, but this is what a few of them ended up being.

I can barely remember that far back. But it gives me a lot of satisfaction to know that some of the good that I tried to do is still remembered and still having an effect. I would like to quote the email, without including the name of the writer.

Mr. Rice,

I am not certain what made me think of the class I had with you at Southwest State University back in the late 90's, but it is one class that I will always remember.

Why? Because you were the first person in my life that ever questioned religion. And rather than storm out like many did that day, I decided to begin thinking and researching not only religion, but just about every thing else in life.

I learned how to be a critical thinker.

This may seem like a bizarre letter to you, but when someone asked me how I got started being a skeptic, I traced the roots back to Marshall and more specifically, your classroom.

So...thanks. You have no reason to remember me, as I was not a particularly great student....but I certainly remember you and the impact you had on my life.

I hope all is well with you.

The Weight of Evil

Sometimes it is really difficult to get motivated. It seems that the overwhelming weight of evil in the world will crush all efforts at goodness. Just think about people like the late Wangari Maathai and Wes Jackson, and all the good that they have done and do. Think about the people who change the lives of prisoners by teaching them to garden. There must be tens of thousands of such people who have made the world better. (Oh, by the way, Mitt, remind me again: what exactly is the good that you have done for the world?) But for each one of these people there are thousands of selfish people, and thousands of people who have lost all hope. In the past decade or so, over 200,000 farmers in India have committed suicide, mostly using the pesticides that they can no longer afford. Industrial agriculture is considered progress, and it is a relentless force. And it is just one such force in the world. There’s mountaintop removal, and…I’d rather not go on. What can good people possibly do against such odds?

Those who are evil will trounce those who are good almost by definition: the evil people believe in using power to trounce others, and good people believe that this is wrong. Good people believe force is wrong and that reason is right; therefore force is almost always on the side of evil.

For example, Christians who believe in a Jesus who has a sword sticking out of his mouth and believe that they can take whatever they want from gullible followers overwhelm the Christians who believe that these actions are wrong. Consider the arrogant Christian who cuts down every tree he can (I have met one), and the meek one who defends trees: perhaps even more trees get cut down because the presence of the meek Christian affronts and emboldens the arrogant one. The forces of industrial agriculture are relentless; and against them, there is Michelle Obama’s little organic garden. The forces of industrial agriculture even get stronger because many conservatives are offended at Michelle’s garden. (Chemical companies wrote letters to her urging her to use pesticides when she started the garden back in 2009.) Climate scientists explain the scientific evidence of global warming. But climate deniers use force and lies: they literally threaten the lives of climate scientists (see Popular Science, July 2012). The Heartland Institute, which is dedicated to climate denialism and is funded primarily by a single donor, issued a poster that proclaimed climate scientists to be the equivalent of Ted Kaczynski the Unabomber. Senator Jim Inhofe claims that climate scientists may be criminals.

Those in power got where they are by using simplistic thinking and force. It has always been this way. Intellectual honesty has always been the weaker party. It was their logical thinking, rather than their disastrous love affair, that proved the downfall of Heloise and Abelard in 1115. (And it was almost certainly their bracing intellectual honesty, honesty they found so rare in the world, that made them fall so much in love with one another.) Then as now, conservatives (like Bernard of Clairvaux) wanted to control the minds of everyone else and thus found it necessary to keep Heloise and Abelard as silent as possible.

And if there is a powerful, personal God who is present in the world, then he is allowing powerful evil people to be his spokesmen. I can either believe that God wants them to be his spokesmen, or that a powerful personal God does not exist. These appear to be my only two choices. I choose to remain agnostic about the existence of a powerful personal God rather than to believe God is evil.

All I can do is to encourage people of any faith or of no faith to make their world better. I do this through my teaching and writing and personal contacts. I must put these ideas out into the web, where they might do some good, rather than simply writing them down where they can be destroyed. In my teaching, I tell students about the ecological problems of the world. But many studies have shown that they do not listen, because bad news makes them just feel powerless. This is, as this essay attests, understandable. But what can I do? I decided to revive an idea I used a couple of years ago: I had the students make contracts with themselves to reduce their carbon footprint in some realistic but meaningful way. The problem is, I never followed up on it. This fall, I will have them make such contracts with themselves, and then report (as one of their required papers) how much success they had or did not have, and what they learned in the process.

It is easy to feel like Qoheleth, the author of Ecclesiastes, who is nearly immobilized by thinking about the weariness of the world and its weight of evil. “This too is vanity…” And if you feel overwhelmed into inaction, I cannot criticize you, for I almost feel that way myself. But we have one life in which to try to make some difference in the world. And it might work, a little. The world, at least, has not forgotten Heloise and Abelard.

She Died in 2008

She died in 2008. The years are passing, and at some point she will be forgotten. And what connection could she possibly have for me? A little Mexican girl I never met. I very much doubt she was a saint. She was probably just as worldly and selfish as any other human being. Why, then, does her story bring tears to my eyes?

Josseline Janiletha Hernandez Quinteros was fifteen years old when she joined a group of her fellow Mexicans to cross the border illegally into Arizona. All she wanted was to find her mother, who was in Los Angeles. She sustained an injury, and the mercenary group leader decided to leave her behind in the desert. When the group got out of the desert, her brother asked volunteers for help in finding her. They found her. The first thing they saw was her bright green tennis shoes. The next thing they saw, and smelled, was her rotting corpse.

I realize that there are many issues connected with illegal immigration. These people are breaking the law. Yes. These people may consume resources that are already in short supply for Americans, including legal immigrants. Yes, although one look at a fast food dumpster makes the supply argument look pretty vacuous. I dispute none of these things. But what bothers me is the zeal of moral rectitude that some people take against the illegal immigrants, a zeal that has gotten the federal government to spend millions of dollars. First, the federal government has spent enormous amounts of money to build a high-tech fence to prevent border crossings. A portion of Interstate 8 comes close to it outside of Yuma. Last summer I saw this fence. It reminded me of a Stalag confinement or the Berlin Wall. And it stretched into the distance. Millions of dollars to keep illegal immigrants out. But the zeal has gone further. It is illegal to provide food or water to these immigrants, as activist Daniel Millis found out in 2010. If you see one of them dying in the desert, you have to break the law to help them to survive. At this point I will ask the obvious question: What would Jesus do?

Why do some people like to hate illegal immigrants so much? The Old Testament prophets, from the early Amos to the later Jeremiah, criticized one king after another because they did not do justice and provide for the poor, the widows, the orphans, and the aliens (also called sojourners). The least we can do, to avoid God’s wrath (if there is a God with wrath) is to not hate the illegal aliens. Is that too much to ask? We may have to arrest them and send them back, but at least we can avoid hating them. I assume most Border Patrol officers are professionals and do their jobs without showing disrespect to the people whom they must arrest. I am thinking more about the civilian activists who make illegal immigration sound like the Black Death and illegal immigrants like rats.

And like any government, our federal government exults in its own power. The Border Patrol points to the fact that, since the big fence has been in operation, there have been far fewer desert crossings by illegals. The credit, they believe, goes to our technology and to the fact that the Border Patrol has been kicking Mexican butts. But as a scientist I have learned to recognize the difference between correlation and causation. During the time that illegal border crossings have declined, there has also been a recession. (I know, the recession is officially over; have you noticed?) Many poor Mexicans have weighed the danger of a desert crossing, plus the declining prospects of employment, against the danger of staying home and putting up with drug cartels. Many of them have decided that, at this time, a border crossing is not worth the risks and expense (the mercenary group leaders demand steep payment).

Like anyone else driving through California, I have had to wait in the long lines on the freeways as Border Patrol officers screen each car. They have signs up telling how many pounds of illegal drugs they have confiscated during these searches. I concede this point, and appreciate it. But something is wrong if it is a crime to help a little girl dying in the desert.

This topic is not one to which I have given much attention. So why am I writing this? Just look in Janiletha’s eyes, and you will know.



Why I Gave Nothing to the Beggar at the Corner

I always feel guilty passing up the beggars on the street corners. Don’t you? My inclination is to jump out of my car, cause a traffic jam or crash, and run over and give the guy a wad of money. But I never do, and it is only partly because I do not want to cause a traffic snarl. It is partly because I wonder how many of them are actually homeless and poor. I saw one using a SmartPhone. I have not allowed myself the expense of getting one of these. But that is not an important reason either.

My major reason is that I am the steward of limited resources for a few years on Earth. As circumstances have turned out, I have two houses: one in the town where we raised my daughter and my wife works, the other in the town where I work, 160 miles away. That’s a lot of bi-weekly commuting. I drive a small car. I also take trips, largely at my own expense, to scientific meetings to share my research results and learn from other scientists. My wife works half time. Keeping up two houses on 1 ½ incomes is not easy. My daughter’s college education, to the repayment of which she is contributing, was also expensive (and well used). To pay down debts and mortgages, I deny myself many pleasures that most people consider ordinary. We hardly ever eat out. I am extremely frugal. When my air conditioning went out, I chose to swelter in 105 degree heat (91 inside my house) rather than to immediately get a new unit. My wife and I are the kind of people who are not helping the economic recovery very much: our idea of a good time is to stay home and read library books or watch library videos. While we are not suffering the way homeless people are, I can in good conscience say that I am living as frugally as my circumstances reasonably permit. You probably are too (if you are the kind of person who would even bother to read this essay). My lifestyle frugally (did I say that already?) supports my writing as well as my academic work, and to cut back would hamper my writing, on which I spend most of my spare time. I think I owe my talents to the world. I am not spending very much on my own pleasure. And I am trying to save up a little bit in case our rich rulers turn America into a nation of a few very rich and a massive underclass, of which I will be a part.

So, sorry, guy, my money is spoken for, after very careful consideration. Maybe later.

The Giant Cross

On the very last day of my summer trip, described in preceding entries, I stopped along the interstate in Groom, Texas to see the world’s largest cross. It was built by the Catholic Church and is a frame covered with what appears to be fiberglass siding. It was big, all right, but the surrounding prairie, and the mass of air in the fierce wind, was much larger.

This is not the Precious Moments Chapel in Missouri. This is a courtyard with metal statues that depict the last moments of Jesus in graphic detail. Whatever else may or may not be true about Christianity, Jesus was certainly a lover of humankind and certainly suffered intensely for it. Even an atheist would be moved by it. And the statues depicted some defiantly altruistic things that Jesus did. In one statue, he is encouraging his female followers to remain courageous, even as he is dying—women whom he may have considered his equals. In another statue an obviously black Simon of Cyrene (also known in scripture as Niger) helps him carry his cross. You cannot sanitize or trivialize a story like this. If you cannot handle brutal human reality, don’t stop here—go on to the Precious Moments Chapel instead.

Inside the gift shop, it was a different story. It wasn’t quite Precious Moments, but it told quite a different story than the statues outside. Decorations were for sale that celebrated patriotism (implying the United States is God’s nation). You can buy a reproduction of the painting of Washington crossing the Delaware. The connection with Jesus is not immediately evident. So while the gift shop has the same flag-waving consumerism as does most of conservative Christianity today, the statues outside confront us with the story of a man so good that history has been unable to explain him.

The photographs show Simon Niger helping Jesus with his cross, and Pontius Pilate trying to evade his role in the messy and religion-drenched political history of the ancient Near East.

Races of the Human Species: A Visit to Manzanar

During my trip to California, I visited a place that has special significance to people who are interested in the religious ethics of race relations. This essay also appears on my evolution blog.

Owens Valley, just east of the central Sierra Nevada, is a place of open, windswept desert scrub. The desert is formed by the rain shadow of the highest of the Sierras, which tower immediately above it. Because there is little rain, and because what little bit of water there is has been mostly claimed by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power since the early twentieth century, there is little development. The desert sweeps up from the valley to the peaks with hardly any interruption. The beauty is almost heartbreaking. To the east, another range of tall mountains (dominated by White Mountain) rises almost as high as the Sierras.

The slopes of Owens Valley look almost the same today as they did in 1942. This was that year that the United States government, at war with the Empire of Japan, established the War Relocation Administration. Its directive was to relocate all people of Japanese origin from their homes into internment camps. Because they all had to sell their homes at once, the bottom fell out of the market, and they received a pittance for their property. They had to leave everything behind and live in barracks at the internment camps, spread widely over the American west. The thin-walled barracks were cold in the winter and hot in the summer. One of these camps was Manzanar, located near the present day town of Lone Pine. When the war ended in 1945, the Japanese were released, after being given $25 each.

The injustice of this action is well known. The internees were all Japanese Americans, most of them issei (first-generation immigrants) or their nisei (second-generation) children. They were American citizens who lost everything without due process of law. The issei had come to America to become Americans. Hardly any of them had any loyalty to Japan. Whole families were relocated. Because no such action was taken against German or Italian immigrants or their families, the Japanese internment is widely and correctly considered an example of racism. Germans, Italians, and Japanese Americans were related to the people of enemy nations, but only the Japanese were not white.

The Japanese, and the white American soldiers who supervised them, made the best of it. The internees had an amazingly positive attitude. They founded their own newspaper, the Manzanar Free Press. In the first issue of this paper, April 11, 1942, the headline read, “Manzanar Booms into Valley’s Biggest Town.” A small section on the front page read thus: “The citizens of Manzanar wish to express in public their sincere appreciation to General John L. DeWitt and his Chiefs of Staff…for the expedient way in which they have handled the Manzanar situation. The evacuees now located at Manzanar are greatly satisfied with the excellent comforts the general and his staff have provided for them. ‘Can’t be better,’ is the general feeling of the Manzanar citizen. ‘Thank you, General.’” Manzanar was an internment camp, not a concentration camp. Despite the inherent unfairness of the situation, the white rulers appeared to have done their best to keep the internees safe, clean, comfortable, and happy. The mother of a childhood friend graduated from high school in Manzanar. She said that they did not suffer.

What does this have to do with evolution? Quite simply, it is that when altruism evolved in the human species, it facilitated cooperation and friendship within groups but was often fed by antagonism toward other groups, especially if those other groups looked different. Racism is part of the flip side of altruism. And yet, antagonism toward outsiders is something that we can unlearn. Children who are raised in multi-ethnic neighborhoods have no problem forming altruistic bonds with members of other races. One of the biggest transformations in the human species during the past century has been the gradual, uneven, and partially-successful dissolution of racism.

During World War 2, the federal government was reeling with confusion, fighting a war on two fronts, trying to accomplish massive tasks in incredibly short spaces of time. And they got some things wrong. The War Relocation was one of them. They may not have even recognized the racism behind it. They got other things wrong too, such as the firestorms that incinerated thousands of civilians in Germany and Japan, and, of course, the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Altruism is instinctual, but the way we use it is determined by culture and by collective decision. The best we can hope for is that we learn from the mistakes of the past.

One of the lessons of Manzanar is that, when sudden social or political disruption occurs, altruism can be one of the first things lost. It can get trampled by confusion and wrath right at the time we need it the most. This is what happened in the former Yugoslavia when the Soviet regime collapsed, and in Rwanda when resources became scarce. I wonder if it could happen in American society today, where many outspoken people, most often of the extreme conservative persuasion, talk as if people who disagree with them are not their fellow citizens or not even worthy of human rights. Are they just talking, or should we believe that when they stockpile weapons they might actually have a use planned for them? All I can do is to preach the gospel of altruism and hope that as many people as possible believe it, so that those who would take extreme measures in a time of crisis will be as few as possible.

I posted a similar entry on my evolution blog.