A New Video

I have just posted a video on the Darwin and the Bible channel about what Charles Darwin (standing out in a heavy rain) (link here) might think of the environmentalist message of the story of Noah's Ark--a message almost wholly ignored by Bible believers today.

Subtle Misinformation from Christian Radio

When I was driving through Texas recently, my radio choices were between Christian radio and Christian Christian radio. I thought I would listen awhile.

On at least two radio preacher programs, the message was the same: in relationships, it is most important to cultivate a close relationship with one person than to be promiscuous with lots of partners; and that a lasting relationship begins with a strong bond of shared values, and grows out into physical intimacy from there.

Actually, most non-Christians that I know believe this also. With few exceptions, the people I know who are not conservative Christians also form long-term bonds (usually marriages) that are based on character and values, not just sex; and with few exceptions, these people are not promiscuous.

So I did not have a problem with what the preachers said about the best way of forming, and the value of forming, deep lasting relationships (for many of us, that means with a spouse). What I found objectionable was that these preachers were consistently portraying all non-Christians as being sex-driven promiscuous maniacs. They did not actually say this, but their implied advertising message was, “Are you a sex-driven promiscuous maniac? If not, then join us and send us your money.”

Conservative Christians routinely lie about liberal Christians and about non-Christians. This is particularly outrageous because many famous evangelical preachers have been promiscuous and sex-driven.

So the radio preachers may be right about what they say about long-term intimate relationships, but they are consistently wrong, and I believe deliberately wrong, about what they say about those people who are not allied with them.

Another Advantage of Frugal Living

Frugal living has always been a good idea. I know modern conservative Christians do not think so. For example, in a previous blog entry, I documented that one leading conservative group thinks that the way to show God that you love him is to waste as much fossil fuel as you can. I wonder what these Christians think about Jesus and His frugal way of living. God made gold and silver, but Jesus showed how much He hated God by never seeking any. Throughout the ages, many religious people (of diverse traditions) have seen frugality as a way of respecting the created world and its creator. Not so modern conservative Christians. Let them hate Jesus, and let them hate me, for our frugality.

But there is another advantage of frugality. It seems that neither the government nor corporations feel obligated to fulfill their contractual obligations unless you sue them. Here are the corporate examples. I signed a contract with Sears for siding on my house. They cashed my check then repeatedly put off the work, until I told them that I was ready to hire a lawyer; then they began the work. The computer on which I am writing came from Best Buy, back when we naively trusted it, and in less than a year it is crashing. I also bought a camera from them last year; twice in a row, they had to fix it, the second time to correct damage they had inflicted on it while repairing it the first time. I had to threaten legal action to get them to replace the camera. A camera and a computer are staples in my work. Anything that is not fundamental to my work I will simply not purchase from a corporation. Farmer’s markets? They are pretty good.

The government example is an agency everyone knows and despises: the IRS. We all know we have to pay taxes; but the IRS is a corrupt agency. They were recently in the news for targeting conservative groups for special scrutiny on tax-exempt status applications. But there is a bigger problem. We all know that they take months to send refunds back. But during those months, they provide no information about what is going on. You can check on their website, but if you do click on “Where’s my refund?” you will almost certainly get a message that says that no information is available. I had to write a letter to the White House (not quite a legal threat) before the IRS checked up on it. It turns out that they were working very very very had to give me a bigger refund than I had requested, which is great news, only for those months I was waiting, I had no idea if they had even processed my return. I had a delivery confirmation, so I knew they had received it; but I had no way of checking whether they had subsequently misplaced it. Recently, I received a letter from them explaining to me why my refund was delayed, but not explaining to me why they had kept the process a secret for so long. All we want is to know what is going on, and for IRS to not be a totally secret organization reminiscent of Soviet days.

A refund is not a privilege that we are requesting from the IRS; the refund amount is the amount of money by which we overpaid on our withholding. It is our money, not theirs. So now I have greatly reduced my withholding; I plan to pay taxes each March (I do not wait until April) rather than to expect a refund. I can be absolutely sure the IRS will cash my check the moment they receive it, and within a day or so it will show up on my bank website. The ousted IRS director loudly proclaimed, “We provided horrible customer service.” But the news reports focused on a minor aspect of this ineptitude. What about the millions of us who waited for our refunds, and kept in the dark while we were waiting?

None of us can do anything about the fact that the IRS is corrupt, other than to minimize our withholding. But there is something we can do about corrupt corporations. We can simply purchase as little as possible. Quite simply and obviously, the more we buy, the more opportunity there is for corporations to take our money without delivering acceptable goods and services. Anything that seems even remotely unnecessary or luxurious, I will reject it. I occasionally eat out, but only when traveling or for special occasions, such as my daughter’s birthday. Even on those rare occasions, I often get temporarily double-charged for the bill.

If rejecting most luxuries sounds like what Jesus said to do, that is more than just an interesting coincidence. Let the conservatives decry me as evil for my opposition to large corporations. Let them call me unpatriotic if they like. But if they call me unchristian, they should take a second look at the Bibles that they wave in the air without reading.

A New YouTube Channel

I have just started a new YouTube channel, http://www.youtube.com/darwinandthebible. On this channel, Charles Darwin goes through the Bible and comments on it. I did not want to clutter up my science-based YouTube channel (http://www.youtube.com/StanEvolve) with religion, so I created this new channel.

The purpose of the new Youtube channel is to explore what we can learn from the Bible not by reading it as a devotional, the way conventional religious people do, or by attacking it, as anti-religious people often do. The Bible is a collection of books in which many people over the course of a millennium have struggled with the big issues (where did we come from, where are we going, what are we doing here, and why do bad things happen). They came up with many different answers (thus contradicting one another). But maybe we can have our own minds challenged by the stories they came up with to express their thoughts.

So if this sounds interesting to you, check it out. I expect that some of the things you will see on the darwinandthebible channel will be ideas, some of them possibly outrageous, that you have probably not heard before. Among the topics already posted:

1. The Bible is not a book. It is a collection of contradictory books written over a millennium. The Bible contains no list of books that are supposed to be in the Bible.
2. Genesis 1 is not a history of the Earth, either correct or incorrect, but a portrait of "creation."
3. You can think of Genesis 1 as a song in the style of Rodgers and Hammerstein.
4. You can even think of Genesis 1 as a description of life colonizing a volcanic island. I realize that this interpretation is wrong, but hey, it works as well as other interpretations, and better than most.

See you there. Or, I'll just keep seeing you here.

Fundamentalists Equate Fossil Fuel Use with Godliness

If anyone needs yet another example of how religious zeal can lead to intellectual blindness, I here provide one. This example comes from Bryan Fischer and the American Family Association. I am not saying that Fischer is stupid, but simply that his zeal has blinded his presumably latent ability to reason. Nor am I saying that all religion leads to such blindness. However, among American fundamentalists, such blinding zeal is very common. I wish I could say that Fischer’s viewpoint was as singular and ignorable as are those of the geocentrists, but I fear that this is not the case.

Fischer said that fossil fuels are a gift from God, and that by not using these gifts, we are insulting God. Therefore the development of alternative energy systems is an insult to God, in Fischer’s view. Fischer equates those of us who support a transition away from fossil fuel dependence to the “evil servant” whose master gave him some money and he buried it. See the full story here.

So, all of you who try to conserve energy: Prepare for Hell!

Where does one begin to analyze the absurdity of his viewpoint? First, if you believe in God, would you not also say that sunshine and wind and biomass are also gifts from God? Second, there is utterly no chance that we will stop using fossil fuels. Third, it is no insult to whatever God there may be if we use his gift wisely and frugally, rather than wastefully. Suppose I were to give a large sum of money to my daughter. She would accept it, and then use it wisely. That’s the kind of person she is. But I would be disappointed in her if she blew all the money on brief pleasures. Fischer seems to think that God wants us to use all of God’s gifts in an orgiastic fashion. But apparently this does not include such gifts as sexuality and wine.

This should all be perfectly obvious to religious people, even those who do not have a particularly well developed sense of stewardship of God’s good green Earth. But Fischer’s version of religion, which is widespread and infectious, blinds its adherents to even religious reason.

Religion is as powerful as any recreational drug and should be used, if at all, cautiously.

This essay appeared recently on my evolution blog.

Bryan Fischer also participates in a Friday morning comedy segment for American Family Radio. I therefore wondered if his statements were meant as a joke. I emailed him, and he confirmed to me directly that he was serious about what he said.

An Altruistic Taliban?

It’s enough to tickle the cockles of your heart. How genuinely sweet.

A while back, a Pakistani school girl, Malala Yousafzai was shot in the head by members of the Taliban. She has recovered from the attack enough that she addressed the United Nations on her sixteenth birthday, which was July 12. She continued the same message that she had been proclaiming before the attack: that everyone, including girls, deserves educational opportunities, and that the Taliban should stop being afraid of education.

Then today, July 17, a Taliban official, Adnan Rashid, released an open letter to Malala Yousafzai. He did not apologize for shooting her, of course; how could anyone who has a direct connection to the mind of God ever have to apologize for anything? But he said he was shocked at the shooting and wished that it had never happened. He claimed that the Taliban welcomes education, and he invited her to come back to Pakistan (perhaps so that they could have another try at her). He wrote to her, “I was thinking how to approach you. My emotions were brotherly for you because we belong to same Yousafzai tribe.” The sweetness that exudes from his message is enough to make you cry. I suppose that if Rashid had shot his brother in the head, he would have felt a similar degree of sadness.

Obviously, Rashid’s letter was just a publicity stunt, as was pointed out by Mansur Mahsud, a research director at the FATA (Federally Administered Tribal Area) Research Center in Islamabad. But what kind of publicity stunt was it?

It was an attempt to garner the power of altruism to help the Taliban. As many books, including my own Life of Earth, have pointed out, there are at least three ways in which the capacity for altruism can evolve. One of these, indirect reciprocity, may be unique to humans. Indirect reciprocity occurs when someone is nice to someone else, expresses love and respect and concern for someone else, in order to gain the goodwill not of the recipient but from the observers. A reputation for goodness is worth more than a lot of money in the bank. And apparently, according to Rashid, it is worth more than guns and IEDs. The reputation of goodness can be derived either from genuine goodness or from pretense. Rashid’s letter demonstrates that even one of the most evil groups in the world recognizes the necessity of having a reputation for goodness.

Rashid’s letter demonstrates that altruism is such a pervasive component of human psychology that even the Taliban has to tap into its power. It is a desperate attempt that fools nobody, but it is clear testimony to the importance of altruism in the human species. Our species has had the capacity for altruism for thousands or millions of years, but only in the last couple of centuries has this capacity had a chance to reveal itself as fully as it does today. Can you imagine Vlad the Impaler writing such a letter to, say, the family of one of his victims?

This essay also appeared today in my evolution blog.

Expect Nothing in This World

Independence Day has just passed. For many Americans, it is nearly a religious experience. But what is the American religion?

The American religion, which conservatives conflate with Christianity, is that we deserve to have instant access to every pleasure, regardless of the effects our pleasures have on other people. This is in complete contrast with Buddhism and also with Jesus, who told us to take no thought for the morrow, of what we should eat or drink or wear. And our economy depends on stoking our desires for instant gratification. If people started acting like Buddha or Jesus, our economy would collapse instantly. No corporation can thrive by pandering to the pleasures of people who do not feel the need to seek pleasures.

I am pretty good at not having desires and cravings for physical pleasure, at least for those pleasures that cost money and require time. But I am not perfect. During a recent excursion into the world of cravings, I learned a couple of things that helped me to understand better that physical gratification offers essentially nothing but frustration.

You will probably think this is weird, but I really like watching Perry Mason reruns from the 1960s. Perry Mason shows were a particular art form with a very specific structure. Even though each episode concerns a heinous crime, the structure of the show (the courtroom scene always begins at the half hour, for example, and the true criminal confesses his crime about eight minutes before the end) offers a comforting structure to the world. Everything is well, chaos is in retreat, when Perry Mason is at work. But where can you find these reruns? Perhaps online, if you subscribe to a download service. I do not, since I would use it only to watch a few Perry Mason reruns every summer. Blockbuster? Forget it. They do not even know that television existed in the 1960s. That leaves the public library. In Tulsa, you can find Perry Mason DVDs at libraries. Well, except that they are usually checked out by people even older than I am. It turns out that, if you want to put a hold on one, it will take at least three weeks before you can get it. There is no such thing as watching one of these DVDs on a whim. Since watching videos for pleasure is not something I often do, I am not accustomed to planning my video watching three weeks in advance. This is, for me, a formula for frustration.

There are three ways to avoid this frustration. One is to allow substitutibility for pleasures. (Did I spell that right?) If you want to watch a video, you should be open to almost any video—and they are mostly alike, and have blood and violence as their principal content. If you desire only to see a bloody, violent video (which Perry Mason is not; if there is blood, it does not show up well in black and white), then you can walk into any Blockbuster and find something that will please you. The second is to be willing to wait, which is frustrating. The third is the way that Jesus and Buddha talked about: to simply not desire any such pleasures.

My choice is somewhere between number 1 and number 3. I have lots of books, and lots of CDs I bought about a decade ago.  I can simply choose to enjoy what I already have, assuming that I can convince myself to substitute one of them for Perry Mason. I have not quite gotten to the point of desiring nothing. But I don’t have to, so long as I can be satisfied with whatever I happen to already have access to. And when I spend an evening with my wife, we can read stories to one another. But I’m sure Jesus was able to enjoy some pleasures also, even if it was only the pleasure of finding some cool fresh water in the desert.