Miscellanea Agnostica

With all of the problems the Anglican Church is facing worldwide (I’ve blogged on that church’s controversies here and here), you would think its head — Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams — would want to avoid any additional controversies. But he has reignited one that’s over a century old (as the (UK) Guardian reports), but had been dormant for decades. That controversy is called “disestablishment,” whether or not to sever the ties of the Anglican Church to the the British government (specifically, the monarch’s status as head of the Church):

The Archbishop of Canterbury has reignited the debate over the separation of church and state by saying that “it would not be the end of the world if the established church disappeared”.

In an interview with this week’s New Statesman, Rowan Williams argues there is a “certain integrity” to a church free from state sanctions.

Williams, who was born in Swansea, grew up in the Church of Wales, a disestablished church, and spent 10 years working as one of its bishops.

He said: “I can see that it’s by no means the end of the world if the establishment disappears. The strength of it is that the last vestiges of state sanction disappeared, so when you took a vote at the Welsh synod, it didn’t have to be nodded through by parliament afterwards. There is a certain integrity to that.”

At the time of his elevation to Archbishop, it had been thought — or perhaps, in some quarters, feared — that Williams might pursue disestablishment; but he never did. This is the first time the matter has come up during his tenure.

It seems an odd time in the history of the Anglican Church for Williams to kick up this matter, which had been somewhat contentious near the end of the 19th century. The (UK) Telegraph offers a possible reason:

What the Archbishop’s supporters say he is doing is defending the Church’s place in a society where only a minority are believers. The Church boasts that 1.7 million people attend its services each month, but the other side of this statistic is that almost 50 million of the English population do not do so. Therefore it must point to the other good works it undertakes on behalf of those who are not to be found in the pews each Sunday. Anglicans are estimated to carry out 23 million hours of voluntary work each year, helping the sick, homeless and needy.

Indeed, the second most senior figure in the Church of England, the Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, recently said he wanted it to be more like a hospital and open to followers of any religion or none. “The Church remains the last bastion of defence for those who would find themselves close to jettison by society,” he wrote.

In other words, this is a way of converting the Anglican Church into the proverbial “Big Tent,” and giving it a wider appeal. Perhaps Williams is doing this at this very moment, precisely because he’s under siege by archconservatives within his own ranks and the Anglican Union already faces a pending schism … there appears no better time than this, to try to open up his Church.

At Fox News, the concept of a “war on Christmas” is old news, that gets kicked up every year like clockwork. Erstwhile host John Gibson penned a book on the subject in 2005, The War On Christmas, positing that there is a secular movement to outlaw the celebration of Christmas in the US, and implies that this war on Christmas is merely the first salvo in a much larger campaign to abolish Christianity altogether.

Yes, it’s paranoia. How else can one account for the idea that using the phrase “Happy Holidays” is a way to wipe all memory of “Christmas” from the minds of Americans? Nothing other than “paranoia” can explain such thinking. No one is swiping Christmas trees from people’s homes or taking lighted reindeer off their lawns. No one has outlawed “mall Santas.”

Simply put, there is no effort to abolish Christmas, let alone Christianity.

Each year, Gibson’s former colleague Bill O’Reilly is actually the major champion of the “there’s-a-war-on-Christmas!” mantra. All through December, it’s a nightly segment on his show. His outrage over it is palpable, even though it’s utterly irrational.

Recently Gretchen Carlson, another Fox News host, was on O’Reilly’s show to kvetch and whine about it:

O’REILLY: So you were brought up in Minnesota, right?
CARLSON: Exactly.
O’REILLY: OK, now think back many, many years ago to when you were a child.
CARLSON: Thank you, Bill.
O’REILLY: I do that to everybody. None of this existed, correct?
CARLSON: No, my grandfather was a minister. So I have to - I’ll say that because I grew up spending a lot of time in the church.
O’REILLY: But none of it existed. There was no controversy over Christmas. …
CARLSON: We actually called it Christmas. …
O’REILLY: … What’s changed?
CARLSON: What’s changed is the whole politically correct environment that we live in. I’m all for people to have their rights of free speech. Just don’t choose December 25th to do it.

So … we have someone who claims to support free-speech rights, but admits she’d like to limit that right, one day a year.

Yes folks, you read that right. One day a year, no one should have free-speech rights.

On top of that, she insists no one ever said “Happy Holidays!” when she was a kid, only “Merry Christmas.” Well, she must be much older than she admits to, because — get this — people were saying “Happy Holidays” decades ago … this phrase even led to the Irving Berlin song “Happy Holiday,” which was in the 1942 movie Holiday Inn.

Did you catch that? Back in 1942, Irving Berlin and all the other folks who produced one of the most-beloved holiday films, took part in that “War on Christmas.” Oh yeah, I believe that.

Not!

It’s time for the religionazis of this country — and their leaders on Fox News — to grow the hell up and stop fabricating stuff so they can justify feeling persecuted and outraged. It really has grown old, you know. Enough already!

Following my earlier blog entry today on the same topic …

The power of vitamins to accomplish miracles is widely touted in the US. While it is true that they are essential nutrients, a deficiency of which can lead to a wide variety of health problems, including diseases like scurvy and rickets, the fact is that vitamins are not miracle workers. The more they are studied, the less it appears they can do; for example, there’s this report from U.S. News & World Report:

Selenium, vitamin E and vitamin C won’t prevent men from getting prostate cancer.

In findings that were released early because of the public health implications, the results of two large randomized, controlled clinical trials showed the supplements failed to provide a cancer-prevention benefit, despite past findings that seemed to indicate great promise — particularly for selenium. Both studies were expected to be published in the Jan. 7 print issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

“Our results showed no evidence of benefit from selenium and vitamin E on prostate cancer and other cancers,” said the lead author of one of the studies, Dr. Scott Lippman, a professor of medicine in the division of cancer medicine at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, in Houston.

This is not the only lesson conveyed in this USN&WR story; it goes on to point out:

These studies are just the latest in a long list of recent research that’s been discounting the use of individual vitamins and supplements for chemoprevention. Other recent studies have suggested that vitamins, B, C, D, E, folic acid and calcium taken alone, or in various combinations, aren’t effective for cancer prevention.

I have no doubt that essential nutrients such as vitamins enhance health and may even fend off disease. The problem here is “‘magic bullet’ thinking,” or the tendency to view one in particular as being the single best way to fend off or cure an illness. Somehow I doubt human biochemistry is as simple as that. It’s more likely that there is a complex interplay among nutrients which is more effective, but one that’s too complex to be able to isolate down to a single most-efficacious substance. Nonetheless, many people believe it is this simple, and I doubt the series of studies this article refers to will change people’s minds about that.

The mass media once again dutifully follow and relay, as if it were true, the “alternative medicine” narrative, trumpeting how often people resort to alternative or “complementary” remedies (I guess this was a slow news day, huh?):

Many Americans turning to unconventional medicine

About four in 10 U.S. adults and one in nine children are turning to unconventional medical approaches for chronic pain and other health problems, health officials said on Wednesday. …

About 38 percent of adults used some form of complementary and alternative medicine in 2007, compared to 36 percent in 2002, the last time the government tracked at the matter.

For the first time, the survey looked at use of such medicine by children under age 18, finding that about 12 percent used it, officials said. The reasons included back pain, colds, anxiety, stress and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, according to the survey.

Folks, this is not proof that alternative or complementary medicine works. Just because people do something, or believe something is true, does not grant it veracity. To believe this is known in Latin as argumentum ad populum, and in English by various names, such as appeal to popularity, bandwagon fallacy, argument by consensus, or authority of the many. Whatever name you give it, it’s wrong. Once upon a time most of humanity believed the earth was the center of a cosmos only a few thousand miles in diameter, with the sun, moon, etc. revolving around it. All of those people turned out to have been wrong.

In a similar way, that lots of Americans resort to questionable remedies, does not mean they actually work. It just means that lots of people think they work. Big difference.

The Reuters story continues:

Overall, the most common category of complementary and alternative medicine used was natural products such as herbal medicines and certain other types of dietary supplements other than vitamins and minerals.

The problem with this is that, it turns out a lot of these herbal remedies don’t work! The more studies are done on them, the more we find out out how useless they are. Here are some stories showing how this is the case:

Echinacea unproven to have value as cold treatment

Ginkgo Biloba Does Not Reduce Dementia Risk, Study Shows

Saw Palmetto No Better Than Placebo For Enlarged Prostate

… and many more, all available by Googling “<herb name> effectiveness”

In fact, I will have more to say about the effectiveness of dietary supplements in my next blog entry …

The latest “God” story out of Kentucky — home of the infamous Creation Museum — is a bit odd because it’s not exactly “news.” It is, rather, a “discovery” of something that was actually done back in 2006:

Today’s Lexington Herald-Leader reports on a little-noticed provision in Kentucky’s law enacted in 2006 to create the state Office of Homeland Security. KY Code 39G.010 requires that the agency’s executive director is to “publicize the findings of the General Assembly stressing the dependence on Almighty God as being vital to the security of the Commonwealth by including [specified findings] … in its agency training and educational materials.”

Yes folks, that’s right — God is “vital” to Kentucky’s security, and now everyone knows this is true, because it was a “finding” of the Commonwealth’s legislature. You know, of course, that the legislature governing the home of the Creation Museum could not possibly be wrong on that score, don’t you?

// End sarcasm mode //

I find it a bit odd that this has only just been uncovered. There’s more to this story, methinks, than meets the eye.

At any rate, it’s clear that the religionazis of this country will leave no stone unturned — and no ceremonial language out of legal statutes — in their effort to proselytize. I can’t help but wonder why it is that they’re so insecure in their beliefs, that they need to see the importance of God cited in a law and on a plaque? Are they really that immature and weak-minded?

… No, don’t answer that, I already know what it is …

My home state of Connecticut is one of the most secular and progressive in the country, sometimes running far ahead of the rest of the US, as for example when — just this October — it became only the second state to legalize gay marriage. But Connecticut began as a primarily-Puritan colony (actually as three, one based in Hartford and the other two being New Haven and Saybrook). As such Connecticut has a history of religious prudery like none other, and a tendency remains here to revere religion in spite of all else. There are a lot of Catholics here, for example; the archdiocese of Hartford and dioceses of Bridgeport and Norwich have become militant, activist, and more parochial over the last few years, a trend of questionable legality I blogged about earlier.

The Hartford Courant reports, today, on one religious effort which has Hartford’s government sanction, and is an overtly proselytizing operation:

The men who live at Taste-N-See Outreach Ministry in Bridgeport have been praising God in song and scripture for a good hour when Pastor James Jennings urges them to their feet shortly after 7:30 a.m. …

Taste-N-See, which is named from Psalms 34:8, “Taste and see that the Lord is good, Blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him” — is one of about 20 faith-based agencies receiving federal funds through the state Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services.

Connecticut has embraced faith-based services, one of the initiatives to come out of the Bush administration after it created the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives in 2001. Eleven federal agencies took up the charge, making federal money and support more accessible to faith-based and community organizations.

Way to go Connecticut, throw money at churches and allow them to use people in prison — whose options are limited and to whom access is restricted by necessity — to indulge their missionary impulses. Of course, it’s not as though no one knows this is wrong:

“A lot of these programs contain a significant amount of evangelizing or proselytizing, and from our position that type of outreach should never be funded with taxpayer dollars,” says Rob Boston, senior policy analyst for Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

“There should be no taxpayer-funded evangelizing, period.&dquo;

But Jennings, a former drug addict himself who found healing in his faith, sees a distinction between using taxpayer money to evangelize and using it to show people, through mercy and kindness, a better path.

While I am sure that a lot of addicts like the program, and one could claim it works so let’s keep doing it even if it’s unconstitutional, as I said the fact remains that the options of prisoners are limited at any given moment and programs like this may be the only reasonable choices available to them. Hence, they end up being forced into religion, when they should not be. Oh, but not to worry — Connecticut officials are equipped with a rationale for why this is acceptable:

Thomas Kirk, commissioner of the state Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services, says he understands why people get skittish about this, but insists there is a fundamental misunderstanding among the public about what faith-based programs do.

“We don’t pay for prayer,” Kirk says flatly.

That means that while Taste-N-See Outreach Ministry might offer prayer as part of its program — and an unabashedly Christian perspective as well — the state isn’t paying for that particular element of the program.

Instead, the government funds the housing and case management services offered by the program.

Sorry to break it to Commissioner Kirk, but giving money to a religious operation that proselytizes, does in fact — and in all cases — fund the proselytizing as much as it does anything else. Merely giving an overtly-religious program exclusive access to prisoners, which other programs do not get, is wrong. Prisoners in the program who are trying to prove themselves, are going to go along with all of that program — including prayers — because not doing so will reflect badly on themselves … not to mention it might earn the derision of their praying peers (and as one might imagine, prisoners have ways of coercing each other into doing things they might not otherwise do). The idea that participants in Taste-N-See are truly “free” to opt out of praying, is simply not true.

The Courant story goes on to mention that the efficacy of these programs is not known with certainty (even if the faith-based providers themselves claim they are). Kirk and other officials behind this admit the statistics aren’t in yet … but they quite frankly don’t care. They’re going with them anyway.

The religiosity of these programs aside, I wonder how smart it is for officials to be spending public money on programs they don’t know will work! Seriously … why throw money at unproven things? Everyone in Connecticut, religious or not, should be concerned about this cavalier and casual attitude toward public expenditures by Commissioner Kirk and our other elected and appointed officials.

Fox News has been all over this one for a couple days, and they claim — falsely — to have been the only outlet reporting on it (the Seattle Post Intelligencer had mentioned it by November 29, i.e. last Friday). So you may well have heard about the atheist sign that had been put on display in the Washington state capitol in Olympia, next to a nativity scene and a menorah. America’s religionazis went berserk, as one might expect, and it’s been the talk of the country for a while. Today (Friday Dec. 5), the sign was found to have been missing. It has since been found under mysterious circumstances, as CNN reports:

An atheist sign criticizing Christianity that was erected alongside a Nativity scene was taken from the Legislative Building in Olympia, Washington, on Friday and later found in a ditch.

An employee from country radio station KMPS-FM in Seattle told CNN the sign was dropped off at the station by someone who found it in a ditch. …

The sign, which was at the Legislative Building at 6:30 a.m. PT, was gone by 7:30 a.m., [Freedom From Religion Foundation co-founder Annie Laurie] Gaylor said. …

Gaylor said that police are checking security cameras pointed at the building’s entrances and exits to see if they can see anyone stealing the sign.

“It’s probably about 50 pounds,” Gaylor said. “My brother-in-law was huffing and puffing carrying it up the stairs. It’s definitely not something you can stick under your arm or conceal.”

I suspect the “investigation” will be minimal and not lead anywhere. As for the radio station’s possible involvement … who knows? Country stations are one of the three radio abodes for the Religious Right (the other two being talk-radio and gospel), so the station cannot be ruled out.

Curiously, the Republican (yes, Republican!) attorney general of Washington had declared that the atheist sign — no matter how repugnant it may be to Christians — was legal and should remain in the state capitol:

[Governor Christine] Gregoire, a Democrat, and Republican Attorney General Rob McKenna put out a joint statement Wednesday noting that [a prior] federal lawsuit led the state to create a policy allowing groups to sponsor a display “regardless of that individual’s or group’s views.”

The sign may be offensive to Christians, but it is a statement of belief (or rather, of non-belief) which is exactly what nativities and menorahs are, so I cannot see how it could be precluded.

As for whichever Christian (they are, after all, the only likely thieves) briefly stole the sign, may I remind you of a couple of things:

You shall not steal. (Ex 20:15)

You shall not steal … (Lv 19:11a)

You shall not steal. (Dt 5:19)

Was there anything about these that you missed? They’re your own scripture; if you won’t obey these words, who will?

Better yet, religionazis, why not try growing the hell up and keeping your outrage to yourself?

Religiosity has cost another life, this time that of an infant, as Fox News reports:

A young East Texas couple was arraigned Wednesday on capital murder charges accusing them of beating the woman’s 1-year-old daughter to get rid of “the demons.”

Authorities said that the child was also bitten more than 20 times.

Blaine Milam, 19, and Jessica Carson, 18, remained jailed Wednesday in lieu of a $2 million bond for each.

They were arrested Tuesday after Rusk County Sheriff’s deputies responding to a 911 call found 13-month-old Amora Bain Carson beaten. Investigators think the couple used a hammer to “beat the demons out” of Amora, Carson’s daughter.

It’s unfortunate this happened in Texas, because as I blogged back in June, that state has a “religious exemption” notion in its laws that permit people to harm others, so long as it’s done during a religious ceremony. The court in this case asked for a very high bond, however, this does not mean this case will not somehow “go away” once the hubbub dies down and the Texas authorities can cook up some excuse about how “religious freedom” must be preserved at all costs — even that of a baby’s life! — and after all, the haven’t the parents suffered enough already?

Let’s hear it for Texas, the Buckle of the Bobble Bayelt.

Back in July I blogged about the possibility of a schism within the Episcopal Church (i.e. the Anglican Church within the United States). It looks as if that schism is underway as reported here by the Los Angeles Times:

Split in Episcopal Church hits new level

Conservatives who fled liberal views of Scripture have formed a breakaway church in North America

Hundreds of conservative Episcopal congregations in North America, rejecting liberal biblical views of others in the denomination, formed a breakaway church Wednesday that threatened to further divide a global Anglican body already torn by the ordination of an openly gay bishop.

Leaders of the new Anglican Church in North America said they took the extraordinary step to unify congregations and dioceses that had fled the American Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada over issues of Scripture.

Folks, don’t let the claims of this breakaway faction fool you — the problem that has driven them off is not merely “issues of Scripture,” it is homophobia, plain and simple. The seeds of this schism were planted several years ago when openly-gay Episcopal priest V. Gene Robinson was elevated to the rank of bishop. There is no other issue at stake here, since this schism would not have happened, had Robinson never been elevated.

Someday the religionazis of the world — such as these breakaway Episcopalians — are going to be honest about what they’re doing and why they’re doing it. But apparently today is not that day.

The new Visitors’ Center in the US Capitol just opened. Normally such occasions are when Congressmen congratulate each other over the completion of yet another massive boondoggle project and make long speeches about how great they are the country is. But Jim DeMint, Theocrat GOP Senator from Bibleland South Carolina, chose this grand occasion instead to whine and pout like a brat:

Delete Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) from the list of admirers of the new Capitol Visitor Center.

DeMint issued a statement Tuesday criticizing the new facility for “omitting the history of faith.” DeMint noted that the new tourist spot ignored his request to include the phrase “In God We Trust” and the Pledge of Allegiance.

Waah waah waah. Grow the hell up, Senator, and stop using your office to proselytize. Didn’t anyone tell you that it’s undignified for a US Senator to whine?

What DeMint and other theocrats do not understand — or else they understand, but choose to deny — is that the oft-said crap about the United States being “a Christian nation” is simply not true. And no amount of motto-izing or bellyaching over the Pledge of Allegiance can change that. The historical record is clear; continued denial by the forces of the Religious Right only make them look more juvenile than they already do.

Enough already.