For the past few weeks, I’ve been carrying my camera with me everywhere I’ve gone in hopes of snapping a photo of this guy. I saw him a couple of times on a corner on my route to and from the gym, and I was curious about what he was peddling. I have to say that displaying a big sign like this on a busy corner isn’t the best way to get your message out. I was never able to read it. Of course, he also has a little microphone setup, but I was never able to hear him (thanks, Doppler). He also has, um, a dummy whose mouth he moves as he talks. It’s all very intriguing.

The other day, I saw him and was able to read something about Noah’s having received a revelation and using his ark as the instrument for its fulfillment. The sign also said something about his (street corner guy) dummy being the instrument for his revelation’s fulfillment. Or something like that.

Mleeka recently got a few pictures of him, and in one of them, you can get the gist of one side of his sign. Here’s my transcription (all obvious things sic):

God reveal to me the first beast over 23 years ago Revel.13 18 Ronald Wilsom Reagon 666. Also one of his seven heads or members was wounded unto death an was healed Revel.13.1,3 Now the second beast is out their an he is coming from this nation. Also he might be in power Now is know time for you to be living in sin. My friend turn unto the lord Jesus now people and he will save your soul. Jesus is the only way.

So, there you have it.

Via Erik: Down with Dildos! In short, in Tennessee senate bill 3794, it’s proposed that anyone who “sells, publishes, advertises, or exhibits”  “any three-dimensional device designed or marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs” can be charged with a misdemeanor. Notable exceptions include the display of such items in libraries (public or school).

Question: If I exhibit my penis to my wife, can I be charged?

The article’s author notes that in spite of the recent overturning of portions of a similar law in Georgia, the tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum responsible for the legislation “went ahead and introduced their bill last Thursday, and on Monday, it passed a perfunctory first reading. In other Monday developments, Tennesseans died from a lack of health care, remained poorly educated and were among the most obese state populations in the nation.”

The speakeasy-type abortion clinic I’ve previously blogged about as a harrowing possible scenario in South Dakota shouldn’t scare only South Dakotans. As progressive and rational as the citizens of Tennessee are renowned for being (ahem, Scopes trial), our government is also seeking to pass legislation that would erode women’s privacy and quite probably force some women into such dire straits. The offending bill is SJR127, and, procedural “WHEREAS” type stuff aside, it reads as follows: “Nothing in this constitution secures or protects the right to an abortion or requires the funding of an abortion.”

According to an alert published by the Tennessee ACLU, here’s why this is a much more dangerous bill than it appears on the surface:

The introduction of this amendment is the result of the ACLU/Planned Parenthood victory in the Tennessee Supreme Court. We successfully challenged several restrictive provisions in the Tennessee Abortion Statute. In September 2000, the Tennessee Supreme Court ruled that several provisions were unconstitutional and that the Tennessee Constitution afforded women a right to privacy regarding their right to seek an abortion. The decision is momentous because it reaffirms the right to privacy found in the Tennessee Constitution.

In short, the idea in South Dakota, Tennessee, and other states is to slowly introduce legislation that erodes women’s privacy so that when Alito and Roberts overturn Roe v. Wade, women in these states will have no rights to an abortion within their states. To pass these laws is effectively to hand state sovereignity on this issue to the federal government.

This matter is of very little consequence to the daughters of the sorts of privileged people who pass such legislation. Their rich white daddies will fly them secretly to the progressive state of their choosing for an abortion should one ever prove necessary. Meanwhile, the welfare mom raped on her way home from her second job will have no choice but to bear an unwanted child she can’t support or rely on an unsafe alternative for an abortion.

If you have an opinion on this issue, please consider contacting the relevant politicians. Tennesseans can find contact information pretty easily using the following links:

• Senators
• Districts by voting precinct (if you don’t know your district)

The other day, I posted a quick jab of a comment about the recent South Dakota legislation making it illegal for abortions to be performed in cases in which the mother’s life wasn’t in danger. I was angry because the thinking behind such a decision seems hypocritical and a little dim. The tradeoff in many cases is the physical, emotional, and mental health of a functioning and victimized woman for an unwanted potential life devoid of anything approaching the actual worth of the woman. To cry that it’s immoral to abort a fetus on the grounds that life is precious, even when saving that fetus contributes to the spoilage of another person’s life, just doesn’t compute. So I was mad, and I posted a quick bit about girls whose dads rape them and cause them to get pregnant.

That sort of blather isn’t really very useful, though. It’s just a vent for concerns and sympathies that even a couple of days later I can’t pretend to express eloquently. So to follow up, I’d like to point you to something that is useful. It also happens to be one of the scariest things I can remember ever having read.

A blogger named Molly has written the first in a series of tutorials on how to perform abortions. It can be done relatively inexpensively at home, and she explains how. Apparently, in the ’60s and ’70s, an organization called Jane provided abortions to the Chicago area, and it is in response to a likely need for a similar organization in South Dakota and probably elsewhere (including my state) in the coming years that Molly writes her tutorial.

When I first got the link to the blog, I thought it was going to be something satirical, an over-the-top description of what the world would be like for many women if abortions were outlawed. And at times it does read rather like such a story. But she’s in earnest. She’s providing a mostly detached and clinical, but straightforward, description of the procedure as performed in a non-medical environment. I’m picturing now a world in which poor women go to their friends’ houses to have kitchen-table abortions performed, and as surreal as that vision is to me, I can’t help thinking that for some, it’s not too far off. Here are some of the things that scare me about the tutorial:

There’s no way you can see into the uterus. From here on out — this is the scary part — you will have to operate on feel alone. Don’t feel too afraid. Each element in the uterus feels different from the others, and as long as you are careful and understand exactly what the procedure involves at each step, it will not be too difficult.

Save the material until the end of the procedure on a piece of plastic, so that you can be sure the entire fetus has been removed.

Scraping softly could leave tissue behind, and if there’s anything you don’t want, it’s that.

When you feel the curettage and removal is complete, make sure you examine the fetal material you have already extracted. If you’re missing anything obvious — for instance, a head — make sure to find and remove it.

Imagine for a moment that you have a daughter or a niece or a sister who’s been raped but who for whatever reason doesn’t have the means to get a medical abortion. Maybe she’s too poor to leave work for a week to travel out of state and get an abortion. Or maybe your niece’s parents are fundamentalist Christians who would force her to endure the pain and shame of bearing her rapist’s child even at the cost of her own well-being. And imagine further that, poor or controlled as she is, she’s resourceful after all and finds someone who will perform a kitchen-table abortion for her. And so there she lies, nervous and stripped of a family support network, the pressure cooker (to sterilize instruments) ticking behind her, with a friend or, worse, an anonymous home abortionist (perhaps a profiteer) scraping out her uterus like a Halloween pumpkin. Is the feeling of moral superiority for having prevented doctors from being able to perform abortions with expertise and under sterile conditions really worth all that?

I know it’s tempting, when you strongly belive something that has pretty black and white ramifications (life and death, no less) to base your conclusions on black and white premises. It’s very tempting to think that if the means of legally getting abortions is cut off, abortions will not be performed. But people often don’t operate according to such principles in real life. If people need abortions, they will get them, one way or another. More women will become ill or die from infections (thanks to fetal matter left behind during amateur procedures, for example) than currently do, and the babies will be dead as well. (Some who cite the sanctity of life to buttress their argument will chuckle that these women got what they had coming. Did I mention hypocrisy?) Since there’ll be no oversight, abortions will be performed late term. Maybe some crass home abortionists will even find a way to make a profit from the fetal tissue. Moreover, maybe they’ll actively seek clients and will provide bad (not to mention unqualified) advice to women who might otherwise choose a different option. It’s an ugly prospect to consider, but it’s how some percentage of the world population works, and crying that they shouldn’t doesn’t change the fact that they will.

Accordingly, I think we’d do better to make sure that those who need abortions can get them safely, lest we lose two lives instead of just the one for any given abortion. An appreciation for the sanctity of life really demands that we try to guarantee as much. There’s more to sanctity, I think, than an appreciation of simple existence. To force a life where none is wanted is to demean that particular life rather than to revere life in general. Forcing such a life is like eating food simply because it’s on your plate rather than because you need it to nourish your body. It is a sort of gluttony, a form of greed, and the worst, most misplaced, sort of moral masturbation.

Desperate women in South Dakota now have what appears to be a workable, if frightening, set of instructions for terminating unwanted pregnancies. I’m not generally a squeamish person, but thinking about these home-grown procedures and all the things that can go wrong — a tiny arm left in the uterus by a first-time scraper, for example — all the things that can go much more wrong in such a setting than in a clean environment with a practised professional — makes my gorge rise a little. It’s terrifying.

In a not-at-all quaint, nostalgic, roaring-20s sort of way, I can’t help thinking of the home abortion clinic as a sort of modern-day speakeasy. Say the password, slip the bouncer a little cash, and make your way in to the seedy if necessary back alley. What a grim picture.  Have we forgotten how Prohibition turned out?

It’s very much in opposition to that grim picture that Molly writes, and she’s rendering a valuable service, if an unsavory one. How much more palatable is her scenario than one in which a coathanger is used to perform an abortion and in which antibiotics aren’t even a consideration? And how much less so than the alternative currently (if, alas, fleetingly) available in most states? It breaks my heart that there may be a need for such a document, but I’m glad somebody’s been pragmatic enough to write it.

Beware, adolescent females of South Dakota: If your daddy fucks you and gets you pregnant, you’re shit outta luck.

The South Dakota House today approved a bill banning abortions in all cases in which the life of the mother isn’t at risk. The potential life of a potential human being thus trumps the actual life and rights of a person physically mature enough to produce offspring.

Small clump of cells 1, victimized child 0.

In arguing against naturalistic accounts of how the world got to be as it is, some religious folk advance the argument that it’s inconceivably improbable that the earth could have come into existence more or less randomly, given how well-suited it seems to be for the life that thrives upon it. For example, it’s often pointed out that the earth is just the right distance from the sun to get sufficient light without getting too much heat for the life that thrives here. On the surface, this seems a compelling argument in favor of an intelligent designer.

But in fact this is a backwards approach. It’s not that the earth was especially formulated to accommodate the physical makeup of human beings and the other extant organisms. Rather, it seems reasonable to suggest that the planet emerged as it did and that whatever organisms could survive under its conditions survived. Organisms that require extremely high or low temperatures or greater or lesser light than our sun provides simply died out. For those of us left, it may seem as if the earth was especially formulated to our needs. And while that is perhaps a plausible assumption, it certainly isn’t a necessary assumption, and it doesn’t on its own make a very good case for the existence of any intelligent designer.

A thought experiment may be useful here. Consider a basketball tournament. Let’s assume that all games are played on the same court. Initially, there are many contenders for a championship title. As playoffs progress, less able teams are pared off the bracket. Finally, you get down to two teams, and one of them prevails. Now one could suggest that the basketball court was created in such a way that it was ideal for the team that ultimately won. That is, it was created in such a way that its court and rims and backboards provided just the right bounces for the winning team, that its acoustics were just right, so that cheering in favor of the winning team bolstered the team, while jeers went essentially unheard. In this case, one must surely credit the builder of the basketball arena for the team’s victory. But this is backwards. It was of course the team’s collective skill that led to its ultimate victory.

Similarly, in the matter of the fitness of the earth for its inhabitants, one must conclude that the inhabitants of the earth are those who were suited to inhabit it and not that the earth was suited to its ihabitants.

The recent mine explosion and the deaths and heartache it caused has made me think a lot about the nature of certain aspects of faith. I blogged the other day about the impotency of prayer, for example. Another topic that’s come to mind has been the popular understanding of miracles. Many have suggested that the survival of Randy McCloy is a miracle. I suppose that in a twisted way, you can call this a miracle. I say twisted because it seems certainly a mixed blessing that anyone should survive with probable brain damage. What’s so miraculous or great about someone’s surviving to remain a vegetable or a shadow of himself? What kind of blessing will it be for McCloy’s wife and children to have (if this turns out to be the case, and let’s hope it doesn’t) an invalid to care for over the next 40 - 50 years?

The notion that any miracle has happened here seems even stranger when you consider the bigger picture. Twelve fucking people died in the mine! How can you label “miracle” a situation in which the alleged miracle-inducing agent allowed twelve to die while half-saving one? It would take a demented god to produce a people that can see a miracle in this situation. And it would take a demented god to permit a situation like this to begin with.

Of course the reason people see miracles in such situations is that they’ve been told for their whole lives that God is merciful and omnibenevolent, etc. And it’s hard to let go of deep cultural conditioning like that, especially when clinging to it in spite of reason somehow actually does help you to get through tough situations. To reconcile pain and suffering with an omnibenevolent god, the religious must always be on the lookout for a silver lining to attribute to the god, nevermind that he’s the author of the much more substantial thundercloud itself and should thus be vilified rather than praised (think of it in human terms: if a person killed a dozen people but only maimed one, we wouldn’t praise him for maiming the one while writing the twelve off as the reasonable product of mysterious designs). I can understand the emotional gymnastics people have to go through in order to negotiate this reconciliation, but viewing it from outside the funhouse mirror room of faith is sure maddening.

I’ve long been astonished at how forgiving Christians are of their god. They’ll pray hard for something (eg, “Please don’t let my husband be dead at the bottom of that collapsed mine”), and when their god fails to honor their pretty reasonable request, they give him a free pass. “God works in mysterious ways.” Any reasonable person would conclude either that there is no god or that he’s not so nice as he’s cracked up to be.

Let’s do a little thought experiment. Say that when you were hired at your job, your boss said things like “Ask and ye shall receive” and you were led generally to believe that your boss was a pretty nice guy with your best interests at heart. So say you go to him one day and ask for a small raise. Let’s say you’ve got a sick spouse and the hospital bills are just killing you. You’re not asking for a million bucks. You’re asking for maybe a 1% raise to help defray the costs a bit. And let’s say also that you’re a great employee, always working hard for the company and doing your best to honor the company’s values. And then say that your boss declines your request. Later, when things get even worse, you ask again and he declines again. This goes on for a while, and even as you ask for smaller and smaller things that any reasonably decent human being would grant, your benevolent boss either refuses to answer you or just declines to give you any breaks. After a while, you’re going to conclude that your boss is a jerk and that the general perceptions of him are mistaken. You’re not going to talk about how he works in mysterious ways or has your best interests at heart. He’s negligent or cold-hearted at worst and simply a capitalist at best. And he’s human, in any case, with his own interests to protect.

So then if you won’t give this guy a free pass and go on raving about what a good guy he is (and if you say you would, I charge you with lying to yourself), why would you give a supposedly omnibenevolent god a free pass for being equally (or more) negligent? It’s a cop out to allow that God works in mysterious ways when your reasonable prayers go unanswered and to give him credit for being omnibenevolent and merciful when things happen that make it seem as if your prayers have been answered. It’s a sort of cognitive dissonance to allow this, and I can’t understand it.

Of course, prayer is very problematic anyway. If one can influence an omnipotent, omniscient god through prayer, that god’s judgment would seem to be in question. That is, by asking for something, you’re in effect undermining the god’s omnipotence and omniscience and omnibenevolence by suggesting that you can offer some direction. To do this suggests that you’re not convinced of the god’s omni-anything and thus raises the question of why you’re appealing to the god in the first place. And on the other side, if you trust your god’s judgment and figure he’ll do what he wants anyway, then what’s the point of prayer? If you don’t believe your prayer can actually influence your god, why bother praying?

The fact is that prayer is really just a literary form that’s been passed down for thousands of years. It’s well-documented. First a direct address (”Our father, who art in Heaven”). Then some praise and grovelling (”Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth as it is in Heaven.”). This is a transparent appeal to the god’s vanity and has always struck me as sort of a sycophantic trick that really sort of insults the god’s intelligence, though flattery, as they say, will apparently get you everywhere. After you’ve got the god reeling from your flattery, you tuck in your request (”Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation. But deliver us from evil.”). Finally, you close with some solemn word and often more praise and hallowing (”Amen” or “In your holy and gracious name, Amen”). This form appears across at least western religious history and seems to me to reflect a broader religious ritual that people have been lulled through tradition into enacting more than a real attempt at communication with any god.

At any rate, it seems to me that given all the bad things that happen in the world and all the praying that gets done asking for reprieve from bad things, either prayer fails miserably and is, as I’ve proposed, an empty ritual, or the various gods are really lying down on the job. Neither proposition is an especially glowing recommendation for prayer or for religion.

I got an email today from a random person who’s on to my atheism. Since I’m trying to be a little more public about my atheism lately (not with the intention of converting anybody but with the intention of just letting the few who read me in on the fact that atheists aren’t necessarily evil and sad), I’m posting the email and my reply here.

The email:

I feel truely sorry for you. Someday I hope you will see the light of Jesus Christ. I just wonder, according to your athiest beileves, What is the point of your existence? Do you have one? According to athiest beileves it is just to simply pass on your genetic material and die is it not? Think about it.

Now also think, that doesnt sound like a very good reason to be alive does it? What are you helping, what are you doing to help humanity, what exists after death? according to you, nothing. That beileve is truely foolish because that would mean as soon as you have children, your point of existence is over, and you have no reason to live anymore. Now truely think about this, doesnt being athiest sound stupid? oh well why even bother, when you die you’ll see who was right. hopefully atleast you lived your life rightously and saw god just before you died and will atleast goto purgatory.

My reply:

Hi, <name omitted>. Please don’t feel sorry for me. I’m a happy man with a loving family and a full life. And to top it all off, I’m unemcumbered by the guilt that religion inspires in many.

As a humanist, I believe the value of human life trumps any fictional gods. Accordingly, I do plenty of things to help humanity. For example, I’ve recently been volunteering to help people displaced by Hurricane Katrina who have been sent to my city. I also donated a substantial sum of money to my local Red Cross to help with the effort. I did all of this not because I was trying to be a sycophant to a god whom I’m told I should fear but because I value human life and dignity and wish to help others in trouble.

Sure, I believe there’s nothing after I die, and I’m fine with that. It’ll stink for those who love me when I die, but I’ll be dead and won’t miss a thing. I’m also not hung up on there being a point to life. Now that I’ve got a child, a large part of my purpose is to enjoy watching her grow up. It’s a very fulfilling purpose, and it’s one I’ve discovered on my own rather than one I feel I have to live up to or else face an eternity of pain designed by a god I’m supposed to believe is benevolent. If you ask me, being religious sounds much more stupid than atheism when you boil it down to contradictions like that.

Of course, I’m happy to acknowledge that religion means something to many people, and so I wouldn’t for the world interfere with anyone’s inclination to be religious. Religion I suspect is as fulfilling to many as my family and my accomplishments are to me, and I’m happy those people have found something that brings them comfort and happiness. What they’ve found just isn’t my bag. And as long as they don’t try to force their views on me (and I certainly don’t try to force mine on others), I’m pleased as punch to stick to a “live and let live” philosophy.

I’m not interested in any sort of debate. Please don’t expect me to engage further. I did want to assure you that atheists don’t sit around and gnash their teeth and wail in pain all day. We’re as happy and fulfilled on average as the religious population is on average. Best wishes to you,

I got an email today from a kid doing some research for a religion course at his school. He wanted me to answer six questions, and I thought I’d post my answers here as well because they state in a nutshell some of the reasons religion’s not my cup of tea. His questions appear in bold print and my answers immediately follow each question.

1. Do you believe in god or gods?

No, I don’t believe in any god.

2. Why or why not?

One of the big reasons people believe in gods is because they (gods) are thought to give an adequate explanation of how we came into existence. People are inclined to think it self-evident that everything must have a creator (else how did it get here). So they cite an omnipotent god as the creator of everything and consider the problem solved. But it’s not solved. Who created their god? And who created their god’s creator? There’s no satisfactory way to answer the question. I’m content just to acknowledge that we don’t yet understand how we got here.

Other people have spiritual needs that believing in a god fills. I simply don’t have these needs, or at any rate, I don’t find that believing in a god helps to satisfy them for me, though I can see how religion might fill a void for many people.

3. What is this god or gods like that you believe or do not believe in?

I believe in no gods. When evangelical Christians question my atheism (they’re the only ones who seem to be greatly bothered by it), I’m always happy to respond that I believe in just one less god than they do. As I don’t believe any god exists, I’m at a loss to describe what they’re like. They’re like nothing because they don’t exist!

4. How do you know?

Call it an educated guess. I’ve never seen evidence that I think suggests that there’s any god. I disbelieve in gods for the same reasons I suspect we all disbelieve in invisible pink unicorns: There’s simply no objective evidence to suggest that they exist. I don’t know that gods don’t exist; I just think it’s highly improbable. Similarly, there’s no way for me to know for sure that invisible pink unicorns don’t exist; I just haven’t seen any compelling reason to think that they might exist, and I’m happy to assert, until I’m proven wrong, that they don’t exist.

5. Does the existence of god or gods make any difference? Explain.

This is kind of a weird question, and I’m not sure exactly what you’re asking. If I think there are no gods and the Judeo-Christian god does in fact exist and behave as described in the Bible, I suppose it’ll make a difference because I’ll find myself in Hell when I die instead of just beind dead. But that’s not a proposition I can really test right now, so there’s not really any way for me to posit that the existence (or lack of existence) of gods makes any difference.

Let me approach this from a different angle, though. I don’t think the existence of gods makes any difference with respect to morality. I believe things are moral or not moral independently of any law or proposed deity. Whether or not there was a god, I’d think certain things were wrong, and I’d think it whether the god(s) proclaimed them wrong or not. So in that sense, the existence of gods makes no difference to me.

6. Imagine that you have been given an opportunity to interview god. What questions would you ask?

I don’t believe in god, so this is sort of an irrelevant question. I’ll play along for a minute, though, and pretend that the Judeo-Christian god exists and that I could interview him. I’d probably ask something like this: Given that you’re all-powerful, all-loving, all-knowing, how do you account for pain (physical and emotional), disease (spina bifida in innocent babies, for example), human cruelty, aging, death, all manner of things that are simply irreconcileable with an all-loving, all-powerful god? These things don’t seem very loving at all coming from an entity with the power to revoke them.