Let's experiment: Everyone pray for rain in Indiana!

Forget Colorado and Texas and all the other places that have droughts this year. Just pray for Indiana, or if you are lazy about prayer, just pray for Muncie, so I can stop watering my day lilies every day. C'mon give it a go. Squeeze your eyes real hard like you're passing a rock hard piece of people-scat. Pray to whatever god you wish. The more the merrier. If more people praying makes things go your way, then you'd think that more gods being prayed to would be even better. But skip Allah. He seems to be a fan of desertification. And being fucking evil, he'd probably send a flood. I only want enough rain to green up the lawn, keep my day lilies from dying, and if you have some prayer mojo left over, pray for my baby zinnias. They're so tiny. Letting them die now would be like a zinnia abortion.

More Child Abuse by Christian "Parents"

http://www.indystar.com/article/20120625/NEWS/120625033/Muncie-parents-face-neglect-charges-after-not-feeding-children

Muncie parents face neglect charges after not feeding children

MUNCIE — Two parents are in jail after admitting to not feeding their young children for days a time, leaving one child hospitalized for severe malnourishment.

Amy J. Doty, 34, and Jason Doty, 40, were jailed Friday, each facing two charges of neglect of a dependent, one a Class B felony and one a Class D felony. Both were being held without bond.... 

The family moved to Branson, Mo., in March “to follow a church ministry,” both parents told police according to probable cause affidavits. Once their savings were used up, they didn’t have the resources to feed their children or themselves; as a result, the children would go for 2-4 days at a time without anything to eat besides water and maybe a few crackers, Cook said.

...By the time the Dotys returned to Muncie on June 16, both children were visibly underweight — the 19-month-old weighing only 17 pounds, according to cook — and the toddler had been unable to walk for the past few weeks. Amy and Jason Doty also admitted to police that the children would complain of being hungry.

... Both children were visibly underweight, but the younger child’s appearance in particular resembled photos of starving children in a third-world country, Cook said.

 What the hell is wrong with this picture?  Were they just following the example of their wonderful God who allows babies to starve every day?

Links of Shame: Religion in the News

Finally a criminal conviction for a Catholic official who enabled priests to molest kids: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-rt-us-usa-crime-churchbre85l138-20120622,0,7600946.story

The Taliban attacks other muslims at a vacation destination WTF?  How do they justify this to themselves?

http://www.ajc.com/news/nation-world/taliban-gunmen-lay-siege-1462353.html

Ex-Mormons helped to convert to Christianity.  Out of the fire into the frying pan?

http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/lifestyle/54334211-80/church-transitions-lds-mormon.html.csp

Religious boot camps http://youtu.be/T5U4prBnQss

SBC’s new name.  They want everyone to forget they "used to be" racists. I look forward to the day when they want us to forget that they used to be batshit crazy:

 http://www.kansascity.com/2012/06/20/3668263/southern-baptist-convention-changes.html

Hasidic Jews are child molesters too: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/22/nyregion/4-ultra-orthodox-men-charged-with-trying-to-silence-accuser-in-abuse-case.html?pagewanted=all

Oh puh-leeze.  Do any real scientists really say that because some old bones are old bones that they have identified a fictional character?

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2012/06/22/bulgarian-bones-could-be-john-the-baptists-as-claimed-scientists-say/

Big surprise:  Warren Jeffs' cult discriminates against people from other cults:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-faith/apnewsbreak-attorney-says-feds-to-sue-ariz-utah-polygamous-towns-claiming-discrimination/2012/06/21/gJQADbmNtV_story.html

Only 15% of Americans believe humans evolved without an assist from a supernatural entity:

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/06/creationists-vs-evolutionists-an-american-story/258384/

A lawsuit over an "emergency" baptism by an Orthodox priest.  I want to see more details, like how much money they're demanding because this priest prayed for their preemie.  As an theist, I'd be offended but I'd LOL.  Oh and this happened two years ago.  Lemme guess, they have big debts from having to care for a preemie?  http://www.timesonline.com/ap/state/aliquippa-couple-sue-hospital-priest-over-baptism/article_0b9270fd-9987-53dc-8c98-2885066621f4.html

Pastor & wife used church's money for gambling:  http://blog.chron.com/newswatch/2012/06/former-pastor-wife-accused-of-gambling-with-church-money/  ...lots of it

Apparently God can cure a pastor of his child-pornography habit, but chooses not to despite being prayed to:  http://www.news-leader.com/article/20120621/NEWS01/306210096/Southwest-Missouri-pastor-prayed-for-God-to-intervene-in-his-child-porn-problem?odyssey=nav%7Chead&nclick_check=1

Tea party cry baby pastor can dish it out but he can't take it.   Oh boo hoo hoo someone made an ad critical of him in a political campaign.  Who would do such a thing?  http://newsok.com/edmond-pastor-files-lawsuit-over-political-ads/article/3686811

In Ghana:  A "Healing camp" pastor's daughter killed by "lunatic" sent there for non-treatment:  http://www.dailyguideghana.com/?p=52906  WTH did they expect?  God's seers were being confined by chains instead of being treated by healers with training from Bible colleges.  *sigh*

Pushback from the Air Force's decision to obey the Constitution and stop prosletyzing.  And this pushback comes from people who have sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution:  http://www.stripes.com/blogs/stripes-central/stripes-central-1.8040/republican-lawmakers-charge-air-force-hostile-to-religious-freedom-1.181080

...but there's a little good news in Israel:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/israel-jewish-settlers-say-theyll-leave-illegal-west-bank-enclave-homes-to-be-moved/2012/06/21/gJQAj2EzrV_story.html  ... though it would be even better if they'd leave them behind for Palestinians to live in


 

We've Lost One

http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/06/19/12299214-atheist-blogger-leah-libresco-converts-to-christianity

Atheist blogger Leah Libresco converts to Christianity

By Louis Casiano, msnbc.com

A prominent atheist blogger says she has converted to Christianity. 

Leah Libresco made the announcement on Monday on her Patheos blog, "Unequally Yoked." The blog post, titled "This is my last post for the Patheos Atheist Portal," details how Libresco came to her decision.

---

She said she struggled with moral law, exploring where it comes from and what's behind it. As an atheist, she states that friends told her that her philosophy was unsustainable.

I've never heard of her before.  *shrug*  Anywho, aside from msnbc, all the "news" outets with this story are Christian sites, of course.  They're peeing their pants over this conversion, if it is indeed a conversion.  I am always dubious of the claim that deconversions are people who "were never true Christians," and likewise whether atheists who embrace a religion were ever true atheists, but in this case I question whether she was ever truly an atheist.  From her final post:

I believed that the Moral Law wasn’t just a Platonic truth, abstract and distant.  It turns out I actually believed it was some kind of Person, as well as Truth.  And there was one religion that seemed like the most promising way to reach back to that living Truth.  I asked my friend what he suggest we do now, and we prayed the night office of the Liturgy of the Hours together (I’ve kept up with that since).  Then I suggested hugs and playing Mumford and Sons really, really loudly.

Moral Law is some kind of Person?  Huh?  And just coincidentally, one the predominant religions of her culture is the true Truth.

I have put in a lot of thought about morality and never came to the same "conclusion."  She apparently wants to believe that some supernatural deity made us behave the way we do, not evolution.  If she'd even just take a look at the animal world she'd see that "morality" is natural, not supernatural.

I think it's John Loftus who says "You can't reason someone out of faith because they were never reasoned into it."  On the surface this seems to be the rare conversion based on reason, because she argued, philosophized, and researched, but in the end her "reason" for converting was the need for agency in the Big Questions of Life.  This isn't reason; it's emotion, or at the very least an evolutionary brainfart.  The human mind conceptualizes other minds ("Theory of Mind") and extends that conceptualization into the inanimate/supernatural ("Agency").


Would she have come to the same "conclusion" if she'd been reading skeptical literature instead of philosphy?

I have been wondering what neophytes to atheism need to "know," like how much about science or the history of religion.  I'm starting to think that combatting our natural inclination to believe in nonsense really does take some work, just as scientists work to take their biases out of their experiments.

Ethics of Genetic Testing on Fetuses

One of my facebook "friends," that I really don't know, posts a lot of anti-abortion crap, and even if something isn't anti-abortion she will post it with an anti-abortion twist.  The lastest is this news item, introduced with her editorial comment that "Hitler would be proud."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/9315265/Babies-could-be-tested-for-3500-genetic-faults.html

Babies could be tested for 3,500 genetic faults Scientists could soon be able to routinely screen unborn babies for thousands of genetic conditions, raising concerns the breakthrough could lead to more abortions.

A team has been able to predict the whole genetic code of a foetus by taking a blood sample from a woman who was 18 weeks pregnant, and a swab of saliva from the father.

They believe that, in time, the test will become widely available, enabling doctors to screen unborn babies for some 3,500 genetic disorders.

At the moment the only genetic disorder routinely tested for on the NHS is Down’s syndrome.

This is a large-scale genetic defect caused by having an extra copy of a bundle of DNA, called a chromosome.

Other such faults are sometimes tested for, but usually only when there is a risk of inheriting them from a parent

By contrast, the scientists say their new test would identify far more conditions, caused by genetic errors.

However, they warned it raised “many ethical questions” because the results could be used as a basis for abortion.
These concerns were last night amplified by pro-life campaigners, who said widespread use of such a test would “inevitably lead to more abortions”.

Well, duh! That's kind of the point -- to prevent unnecessary suffering by aborting a fetus before it can feel pain or have sentience.  If a baby is going to suffer and die, how is it ethical to force it to be born?

I deleted most of my reply, and decided just to post just this much, because curiously this anti-abortion nutter never seems to post anything about taking care of living people:

Let's see some posts about orphan drugs, adoption agencies that specialize in disabled children & crack babies, charity hospitals, and programs that help families with non-medical expenses of caring for disabled children, and programs to help the older children of families with disabled children who have been basically abandonned by their parents' attention to a severely ill baby

Waiting...  So far there's been no spate of posts on these topics.  Apparently the anti-abortion network that sends links around to scare the Christian saps who are "pro-life" for fetuses doesn't send around links that deal with quality of life for the living.  One of the other responders to this post has a child with Down Syndrome.  She wrote:

We have a daughter born with Down Syndrome. Now read this part very very carefully.......I WOULD NOT CHANGE AN SINGLE SOLITARY THING...

Oh boo hoo.  How is Down Syndrome comparable to the other diseases a family would want to know about?  So I replied:

Nobody would force you to change a thing. But, you would force a family that had lost 4 children to Tay-Sachs disease to lose more children to it rather than aborting a child that's doomed to die. How ethical is that? Seems rather Fascist actually, since it doesn't leave the decision to the individual & family

I wonder what kind of Reality Show it would be if the Duggars had that gene.  Wouldn't that be a hoot?  Instead of Stepford children traveling the world we'd have a funeral a year and instead of nail-biting ultrasounds we'd have parents getting the bad news that their latest cooing baby is doomed to die.  Now that would be some good TV!

At the end of the article they mention schizophrenia & autism as being de novo DNA boo-boos, but they are also genetic disorders.  I've been reading up on schizophrenia & DNA lately (this book:  http://www.amazon.com/The-Origins-Schizophrenia-Alan-Brown/dp/0231151241). The promise of whoever is touting this test is highly overblown.  It's as if they tried to whip up panic in the anti-abortion camp.  "In the [near?] future we'll be able to tell ifyour baby has the wrong color eyes!  Eugenics to the rescue!"

One of the posters at the original article claims that Stephen Hawking's accomplishments are proof that this test should  never be done and abortions should never be done for any disorder.  We atheists now should genuflect... [go ahead, I'll wait]  ... and think about how all of his findings in science would never have happened if he'd never have been born.

Think....
Think...
Think...

*sniff*  Pretend you don't know that every scientific discovery has had its genius and its also-rans who came to the same conclusions or virtually the same conclusions at about the same time because all of them read and studied the same things at the same time....   Just pretend...   Now imagine that of all the 7 billion people on the planet, nobody, NOT ONE ... is a genius scientist.

Now, imagine a family finding out that their baby would have a dread disease that would strike when that baby is in his 30s.... and imagine the family having an abortion because of that. 

Uh oh my brain just exploded.  How many people who want children would really do that?  Wouldn't most bet on science coming up with a cure or better treatment by the time the disease hits?

Now imagine a family that finds out their fetus won't survive to tern and their choice is between having an easy abortion now or digging out the stillborn fetus some way later (because a normal labor would be impossible) and that family actually choosing to wait until the fetus dies on its own.

Well, I believe in choice so I think it would be okay to allow them to make the more painful choice especially because they can be such great martyrs.  I bet it would be a real tear jerker to waddle up to the podium to tell people how their big belly is harboring a dying baby.  Hallelujah.  *sniff*

*sigh*  Fascists.  They only believe in choice when it's their choice.

Magical People Amongst Us

A big reason for my atheism is that I've been around psychotic people enough to view the revelations of holy books as symptoms of mental illnesses.  As I continue to read Michael Shermer's The Believing Brain, all this comes back to me.  He goes into the neurology of mystical experiences, and how the brain is supposed to sort out fact from fiction.  Of course the big problem is that the brain itself is not qualified to discern when the brain itself is the source of false information.  This is why my step-dad clung to his delusions until his death and why my brother doesn't believe he has schizophrenia and my mom can't tell the difference between footprints in the snow that indicate the meter reader's been to the house from footprints in the snow that indicate she's being watched by the FBI.

But beyond the individual's psychotic symptoms is the wish within society for someone with magical powers to give the rest of us all the answers.  After all, in a large group there will be someone who is better than everyone else at tracking game, and someone who is better at starting fires, and someone who always comes up with the solution to a logical problem, so why wouldn't there be someone who has access to another dimension the rest of us can't perceive?

Shermer has a long discussion of sensed presences, which coincidentally tend to happen under periods of great stress.  Not just cramming for your algebra exam stress, but life-threatening stress like hypoxia on a mountaintop,   Many religions incorporate rituals that create just enough stress to bring about other-worldly experiences, and then there's peyote...  So for some reason not only do we experience these things, we seek it out and normalize the experiences.

When you grow up in a household where these experiences are normal, I guarantee you won't seek them out!  The last thing I want to do is ingest peyote in order to experience a visit from my ancestors.  And with a paranoid mother who went through my stuff looking for evidence of who-knows-what, I have a heightened sense of privacy and in no way would I welcome the "spirit" entering my body during a voudon ceremony, pentacostal hoe-down, or any other religious ceremony.  I also know that people who believe they can hear actual voices in their heads don't really hear other people, because if they did my mom would have heard loud and clear, "STAY THE FUCK OUT OF MY ROOM!"

But despite these experiences and attitudes, I really did try to be "open" to spirituality for many years.  It seemed to be the thing to do, a way to meet people, have community, dispel fears, and in general be a wholesome person.  I really wanted to believe that Moses saw a burning bush and that Jesus appeared to his disciples, but I couldn't.  It seemed so ridiculous, well no, it seemed CRAZY.  Why didn't everyone else see it that way?

And why did I try so hard?

One part of the answer may be that  I grew up in the 1960s, and I watched a lot of TV.  My favorite genre was comedy, though I did watch some of the spooky anthlogy shows like One Step Beyond and The Outer Limits.  Here are some of the comedies my family watched, including my now-psychotic brother:

• Mr. Ed, about a talking horse that only his owner can hear
• Betwitched, about a witch that only her husband knows about (aside from her witchy family)
• My Favorite Martian, about a martian whose origin is known only to his housemate
• I Dream of Jeannie, about a magic woman who seems normal to all but her boyfriend (and later, his friend)
• The Addams Family, about a spooky family in the neighborhood
• My Mother the Car, about a woman reincarnated as her son's car (No, I'm not making that up!)

Of course children have always been told fairy tales and children's entertainment has always included talking animals and imaginary friends.  Superman / Clark Kent was a magical person amongst us, too, but he didn't let anyone in on his secret.  The Wonderful World of Disney actually ran many realistic movies (My favorite was Charlie the Lonesome Cougar).  These shows about the crazy being real seemed to kind of promote a respect for psychosis.

Worse yet,  these paranormal comedies were on prime time TV for adults (presumably) so this trope wasn't invented for the consumption of baby boomer children.  There had been some famous movies with the theme of a person who has a paranormal experience (think, "Harvey" and "It's a Wonderful Life"), but not comedies like this.  We certainly seemed to be set up for serious gullibility beyond what our parents would have recognized.  Is it a concidence that we became the "Age of Aquarius" and wound up being "open" to "new" experiences?  Would people have found LSD so appealing if they hadn't been primed by popular culture to think that hallucinations could be real?  (or at least entertaining)

The subliminal message isn't just that we should be open to these experiences ourselves, but that we should respect others who "society" would call "crazy."  This is a major theme of Scientology, concidentally.  The anti-medication movement is also trying to make the case that normal people are being unnecessarily medicated -- that what I would consider "suffering" that should be relieved is considered by them to be normal and to be endured by these people.  Is it a coincidence that One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was an iconic film of the time?

At the same time, incredible realities were on our consciousness, like space travel and nuclear bombs (yeah it was twenty years earlier but we were very aware of it!)  and war.  We saw nature shows and variety acts and dramas about law and medicine too.  That was the "normal" within which the "paranormal" could hide.  Scary times inspire ridiculous fantasies.

In the 2000s and 2010s there has been a spate of "reality" shows about the "paranormal," though it was never a dead topic.  The X-Files validated the spooky in the 1990s after all, and George Burns as God spoke to John Denver in "Oh God."  Things do seem to be tipping away from respect for psychosis, though.

Recently I've seen commercials for a new show about a doctor who practices out-of-body medicine while in a coma.  (Nope, not making that up either).  There's currently an idiot-savant show about an autistic child with the ANSWERS if only people would interpret his mathematical ramblings correctly.  I haven't seen these shows but they don't seem to validate psychosis.  I sure hope they don't.

In the 1960s anti-psychotic medication was still very new.  My mom's generation was the first not to be forced to spend the rest of her life in a "home."  Although she remained reality-impaired in many ways, she was functional enough to participate in society.   Ditto, my step-dad.  My bro however, believes his hallucinations are real and we're all just bigass downers.

It seems ironic to me that mental illness is still stigmatized and feared, yet we want crazy shit to be real.  We can't have it both ways.  If someone believes his horse is talking but only to him, he probably needs meds.  If you believe your blond-haired blue-eyed live-in lovers is actually a 2,000-year-old Arab genie, you both need meds.  Trust me on this.

But if your car talks to you, it's OnStar and you should probably do what it says.