Talking to Protesters Outside Planned Parenthood

 ✨✨  ✨✨ Today's to do list:

✔ Pulled my bike over in front of Planned Parenthood on my way home.

✔ Talked to a religious couple with signs protesting the clinic.

✔ Learned about how they hadn't convinced anyone to change their mind about abortion.

✔  Learned they have never actually been inside a Planned Parenthood or used their services.

✔ Learned about how nobody who works at the clinic is interested in talking to them, yet they continue standing outside their workplace anyway, which is stalking behavior.

✔ Pointed out to them that their presence while wearing camouflage probably intimidates people who visit or work at the clinic, especially given the history of bombings and shootings by right-wing terrorists.

✔ Pointed out they are probably there to make themselves feel better, not to help anyone else, and their behavior is creating harm.

✔ Asked how they would feel if people made a practice of organizing protests in front of their church, especially based on intentionally misleading information about their church, while demanding that their right to worship was outlawed.

✔ Got them to admit they weren't comfortable with: 1) the federal government fully banning abortion, 2) the conditions of other countries in which abortion is banned, especially for women and girls, 3) locking up poor women for getting one while incentivizing wealthy women to receive one overseas, and 4) creating medical injuries or deaths from back alley abortions on the inevitable black market.

✔ Assured them that God had sent an atheist to deliver these important messages for them to pray about. ✨✨  ✨✨

The Religious Lottery

Imagine I told you that I believe I won the lottery.

That's a specific, provable claim.  There are a number of pieces of evidence that could do this: the winning lottery ticket, a news report from a verifiable source that I won the lottery, a screenshot of my bank account after depositing the check, photos of my lavish new purchases with my lottery winnings.  That's all good evidence.  But just telling you that I know I've won the lottery and my faith assures me of it is not enough evidence for you to believe my claim that I won the lottery.

Also notice what happens when I tell you why I believe I won the lottery.  If I told you:  "I believe I won the lottery because it cheers me up when I'm sad, it gives me hope for the future, my friends and family enjoy talking about what we will do with my lottery winnings, and anyway... I don't want to live in a world where I didn't win the lottery!"

What would you think about this?

You probably wouldn't believe that I won the lottery.  You might find it very strange that I believe I won the lottery in an apparent effort to make myself feel better.  You also might feel concerned or even somewhat sorry for me, wondering how I will adjust if I no longer engage in self-deception about winning the lottery.  Should you try to explain to me that there's no evidence that I won the lottery, that it's possible for me to win the lottery but it hasn't yet happened to me?  Should you respect my belief that I won the lottery even though it now seems clear I hold this believe not based on evidence but based on faith?

Now imagine that no one has ever won the lottery.

We tell ourselves, "we have people who play the lottery every day, so surely there must be some lottery winnings out there!  People have been playing this lottery for thousands of years.  They take their family to play the lottery every Sunday.  Billions of people play the lottery.  While no one has been able to produce evidence that they won the lottery, we have to have faith that they will."

At what point does a rational person, with more inquiry into the nature of this lottery, simply conclude it is very unlikely anyone will win this lottery... and that perhaps it may not be the best use of our time and attention to play the lottery without compelling evidence that it yields winners?

At what point does it no longer appear reasonable to play a lottery for which there is no evidence that anyone wins?  And with billions of people playing very different versions of this lottery, we don't know - without evidence - that any of them are more likely to produce a winning ticket than any other.

That's the dilemma of religious faith and the limits of its pragmatism.

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Drawing Muhammad

Bosch Fawstin's controversial winning cartoon of the recent “Draw Muhammad” contest speaks for itself.

image courtesy of Bosch Fawstin

Science vs Prayer

Too Nice - a true story

It was my junior year of high school and the colored lights were twirling overhead in the typical fashion.  It was a slow song - the kind that obligated every timid teenage boy to find a shy teenage girl and awkwardly maneuver onto the dance floor.  Luckily for me, I found a friend of mine to dance with and she and I were enjoying ourselves, making polite conversation to the music.  It was during this time that she invited me to another dance the following night at her church.

"You should really come" she said.

"It's at your church?" I asked.  This seemed mildly disquieting to me already, but I kept my feet shuffling to the rhythm.

"Yeah, what church do you go to?" she asked.  That, of course, was the question I grew up finding creative ways to answer in America's Bible Belt.

"Well, I don't go to church" I replied.  She seemed to take this thoughtfully but given that we were cheek-to-cheek, it is anyone's guess what her facial expression actually was.

"Don't you believe in God?" she asked.

"No, I'm an atheist."  That was probably one of the first times I responded so directly with that answer.  I had been using the word "atheist" since I learned it in fourth grade but it was only now that I could comfortably identify myself as such.  She stopped dancing and held me at arms length.

"You're not an atheist!" she exclaimed.  I laughed in mild disbelief.

"Oh, I'm not?"

"No" she continued.  "You're too... nice."

It was at that moment that I realized she not only knew what an "atheist" was but also that she had been told what kind of people atheists are.  They are not nice.  And that stigma was the first of many manifestations I would come to experience.  I would learn that the phrase "under God" was added to the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954 to distinguish the USA from the "godless communists" during the Cold War - the very same phrase I grew so uncomfortable repeating during mandatory incantations that I simply kept quiet for two words out of every Pledge.

I would later learn that polling results of the American electorate frequently rank atheists as the "least trusted" group - lower than Muslims, homosexuals, convicted criminals, and about as little as rapists (source).  Parents frequently state during polling data that atheists are the people they would least like their own children to marry (source) - despite other data that shows atheist couples have the lowest divorce rates of any religious affiliation (source).

But on that evening, during that slow dance, I learned exactly what assumptions many theists hold about atheists: they are not nice.

I'm a Secular Progressive - Ron Paul doesn't Scare Me

It's always disappointing to me how predictably insular and myopic opposition to Ron Paul is from the left.  Progressives largely support his foreign policy position of non-aggression and diplomacy and he remains among the only Republicans who want to end military occupation and bring the troops home (something like 800 military bases in over 100 countries is frequently cited).  These are positions that institutional Democrats pretend to be interested in on the campaign trail but clearly have no intention to uphold in office.  Paul is also an outspoken critic of government collusion with the financial industry as well as the corrupting influence money has on the political process - the hallmark issues emerging from the Occupy Wall Street movement.

So what criticism is leveraged at Paul?  In debates I've had on this subject over the past year, it is always divisive wedge issues like abortion, government policy regarding race relations, or personal religious beliefs  (source).  And instead of producing convincing video clips or analysis that succinctly illustrate the objection that liberals have to Ron Paul, the rebuttal always comes in the form of obscure, cherry-picked quotes from an Internet echo chamber with limited and outdated source material.  Clearly, this is the rebuttal of last resort because more substantive objections do not exist.

I have watched dozens if not hundreds of interviews and debates Ron Paul has done over the years.  I remain in agreement with him on over 90% of his positions - far higher than Barack Obama and certainly higher than the rest of the GOP Freakshow.  And I'm a pro-choice atheist.  The matters that continue to be raised in the "scary Ron Paul quotes" genre remain marginal and trivial in light of the very real issues our country is facing - none of which include the subject matter raised in these spurious red herring arguments.

Meanwhile, the people of Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, and other countries continue to suffer under the oppression of the military industrial complex by way of  predator drone strikes, bombing campaigns, collateral damage from kill/capture raids, and similar injustices. Further, the people of the United States watch their civil liberties erode on all fronts while the purchasing power of the U.S. dollar continues to decline from Keynesian economic policy.  It is as though the pitcher of Obama Kool-Aid must be protected at all costs, even as President Obama continues defying the core electoral mandates of his base (ending war, restoring personal liberty, addressing reckless corporatism, etc.).

So should an atheist like myself be scared by obscure Ron Paul quotes?  To the contrary, secular progressives should be much more concerned with Barack Obama:

• As with virtually every other politician including Ron Paul, Obama is also a Christian (despite xenophobic assertions by the Birthers).  Yet Obama's views on same sex marriage remain "evolving" (source) while Paul flatly stated in a 2007 debate that he believes all associations - including same sex marriage - remain voluntary and should be religious functions rather than state functions (source and source).
  
  
• Paul also supports gays and lesbians serving openly in the military - much to the distress of Christian conservatives (source).
  
  
• Conversely, Obama also continues to support the death penalty (source) while Ron Paul has come to believe it should no longer be applied (source).
  
  
• Paul wants to end the disastrous "war on drugs" (source) while Obama continues to escalate it (source).
  
  
• Obama has now set historical precedent by assassinating American citizens without due process of law under secret government panels (source) while Paul vehemently opposes this practice and insists doing so is an impeachable offense (source).
  
  
• With deep opposition from his base, Obama uncritically renewed the PATRIOT Act (source) - a vile hallmark of the Bush Administration that liberals almost universally decried.  Ron Paul has been consistently opposed to it (source).
  
  
• And obviously, Obama has continued and in some cases expanded Bush-era military policies  (source) while Paul remains steadfastly opposed to them and has emerged as a true champion of peace (source).

Progressives can wring their hands and make excuses about these and other Obama betrayals, but the unhappy fact remains that their champion has been bought and paid for by Wall Street (source) - which goes a long way in explaining why Obama has shrugged off the notion of prosecuting anyone from the 2008 financial melt-down - the largest theft of capital in modern history.

Once upon a recent time, progressives cared about these issues.  And I thought they cared about the issues more than party politics.  I certainly do.  And that is why, on these and many other issues, Barack Obama has been the Left's Big Letdown - yet so many remain opposed to Ron Paul for little more than fear-mongering claims of theocracy.  But personality politics are irrelevant.  What matter are governing philosophies and legislative actions - of which progressives share far more with Ron Paul than many Democrats (including Obama).

So I will take my chances with Ron Paul's personal beliefs on Creationism - particularly since he has never said anything approaching the state-mandated teaching of it in the classroom.  While Ricks Santorum and Perry regularly bring their religious views to the forefront of their campaigns, Ron Paul's religious convictions rarely if ever enter his campaign platform and that's the way I like it.  The scattered and obscure objections that are frequently presented against Ron Paul by the left don't scare me - and of course the protestations from neo-conservatives are why I will further support him in the 2012 Republican Presidential Primary.

If you haven't yet, you should, too: http://www.ronpaul2012.com/

Abortion and Libertarians

Amidst the budget battle brinkmanship Harry Reid and John Boehner were entrenched in this week, contentious claims about Federal funding for health services provided by Planned Parenthood took on an unduly insular central role in a much larger fiscal debate (source).

Abortion.  It is an ultra-contentious issue in general.  And according to Free State Project spokesman Chris Lawless and correspondent John Stossel, there is no larger wedge issue for libertarians (source @9:35).  I am puzzled by how polarizing this issue is to otherwise liberty-minded people.  I will venture a guess: most libertarians come from the political right - an ideological domain in which being "pro-life" is a litmus test for conservative credentials.  Yet as a "progressive libertarian" who comes to the liberty perspective from the political left, I have a different position to share: being "pro-choice" on a woman's uterus.

Any serious libertarian understands that freedom starts with self-ownership.  That means the freedom to decide what we do with our own bodies, including controversial choices such as drug use, providing commercial sex services, or life-termination decisions (all of which I believe should be legal activities).  On these issues, most libertarians would agree.  Yet abortion poses a problem for many libertarians due to its apparent violation of the "do no harm" principal - that is to say one has the right to do whatever they choose so long as their actions do not harm another individual or their property.  This is a fair contention.

"Don't tread on my uterus!"

Clearly, the termination of a pregnancy is a unique situation for which no perfect analogy exists.  So please permit this admittedly imperfect one: property ownership.

If I am the owner of a property, I decide who is welcome and who is not.  If an unwelcome person persists in remaining on my property (an "intruder"), I have the right to use every means up to and including deadly force to remove this person from my property.  Naturally, I am going to seek out non-violent means to resolve this conflict first, however at some point if the person refuses to leave my property ("like it or not, I am living in your dining room for the next nine months"), I may choose to use physical confrontation to remove this person.  You see where I am going with this; if a woman has self-ownership over her body, then clearly she is the sole decision-maker as to whom is welcome inside her body.

Some would argue that by engaging in sexual activity, the woman is in fact "welcoming" another potential person into her body.  We can disagree about the purely procreative nature of sex, particularly in an era of readily-available contraception, but it seems inescapable that even a person welcomed in the front door can later become unwelcome.  It is probably unwise to allow unwanted people inside your house but just because a couple did not use contraception, does not obligate them to carry a pregnancy to term.  And while having the unwanted person live in someone else's dining room after nine months is one option ("adoption"), in a free society property owners should remain able to elect to use deadly force to enforce property ownership ("abortion").

Indeed, this can be a morally difficult scenario.  Being "pro choice" means having to make difficult choices on a variety of issues.  But let us consider the alternative: a government prohibition on abortion services.

As I have written previously (source), prohibition never works!  Minors have mouse-click access to pornography, escort services exist in every major American city, and there isn't a town between Seattle and Miami with a shortage of marijuana to smoke.   The "pro life" position necessarily forces the continuous demand for these services into an unregulated, overpriced, and frequently unsafe black market.  It is a position that requires government intervention in private medical decisions (like, um, "Obamacare").  It is a position that places the interests of an unborn person above the woman whose body is now the unwilling carrier of this person.  And most importantly, it is a position in which a government closely regulates the activities of a woman's uterus.  This is hardly a libertarian position - yet something like 50% of liberty-minded individuals fail to realize this.

I would venture to guess that religious dogmatism is largely to blame in blinding pro-liberty individuals in this debate - specifically the commonly-held theistic view that, in the arithmetic of souls, life begins at the moment two gametes form a zygote (apparently gametes do not have souls, but zygotes do).  Whatever unproven metaphysical claims one might make about the origin of non-physical beings, there is a reason we celebrate our birthdays and not our conception days.  It is for the same reason that we are named at birth and not at conception.  That reason is: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness begin at birth.

Libertarians should not support a mandatory welfare state inside a woman's body.

Sam Harris' Moral Landscape

For far too long, non-believers and religious skeptics have been dogged by questions not of fact but of value.  Most religious fundamentalists, and certainly religious moderates, claim that their faith is born not out of factual claims about their (outdated) religious texts but rather out of the ethical guidance their religion gives them.  Atheists, many religious practitioners allege, have no "moral compass" as they have no basis on which to substantiate their values.  While secular societies tend to be the least violent in the world, a common assumption remains that without an objective framework by which to evaluate ethical problems, atheists are lost in a sea of moral relativism.

source: 2009 Global Peace Index

And for far too long, scientists have taken explicit exception to the notion that their fields of study have normative implications.  Science, as Hume would argue, can only tell us what is - not what ought.  As a result, the public has rightly perceived moral questions as being outside the bounds of objective, secular inquiry - leaving only religious zealots to questions of good and evil.  While moral relativism may comfort many atop the ivory towers of academia, the intellectual battle for civilization fought on the grounds far below demands greater than the nuanced, subjective posturing of effete liberalism.

Along comes Sam Harris, a favorite author and lecturer of mine.  Having had the pleasure of meeting him and attending his presentation in person recently, I can say with sincere conviction that his new work addresses the problem of science and human values in a compelling, lucid way.  Have a quick glimpse at Harris' summary of his new book, The Moral Landscape, just released this month:

Of course, Harris' previous books - The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation - have become bestsellers and powerful manifestos of "The New Atheism" - a term applied to a handful of non-believers who have made it their stated mission to refrain from adhering to the social taboos and sacred cows of religious dogmatism any longer.  Recounting his experiences upon completing his previous books, Harris notes that few religious practitioners are eager to engage in evidentiary debates with him about the existence of Noah's Ark, Muhammad's ascension into heaven on a winged horse, or the specific whereabouts of Vishnu.  Rather, theists contend that these stories and the allegorical meaning behind them inform their lives and give them a sense of right and wrong.  Further, Harris discovered, most Americans in particular believe that atheists are the least trustworthy minority (source) because they have no singular source for their ethical intuitions.

With his newest book, Harris asks readers to imagine that all of human experience exists on a moral landscape - one in which peaks of happiness and valleys of suffering express individual and societal consciousness.  Utilizing a variety of academic and scientific disciplines, ranging as widely as physics and neurobiology to sociology and even philosophy, Harris argues that objective answers can be discovered to questions of morality.  Further, without such a framework, secular society will continue to be held hostage to the claims of religious superstition.

The beginnings of
a universal morality?

I believe Harris is suggesting a way forward in a globalized society, one in which the tribalism of religious belief can no longer stand for the best insights into human livelihood.  While too many ecumenical liberals are eager to concede their own convictions to the moral relativism of "every culture is defensible in its own way," Pakistanis are having their mosques bombed and population killed or maimed for being Shia or Sufi (source), Afghan girls are having their faces burned by battery acid for learning to read under Taliban rule (source), and the Catholic Church continues to believe that condom use in HIV-infested Africa is a greater moral problem than the institutional protection of their pedophilic priests (source and source). With The Moral Landscape, Harris outlines a rational system by which questions of value can be answered.  It is the tip of the secular morality iceberg, no doubt, but such a model is urgently needed in a world of increasing cultural confrontation.

It is easy for me to understand why Sam Harris is among the most important intellectuals of our time - and conversely why he is so widely threatened and harassed by religious fundamentalists and moderates alike.  Yet until the separate moral communities of religious tribalism - making genuinely incompatible claims about the nature and purpose of human identity - can be bridged through scientific reasoning and secular common ground, the moral landscape remains daunting and distant.  Harris' book is indeed a start.