On Faith and Values

Faith is not a value.

The reason faith is not a value is that people can have faith in anything they accept without evidence (or in spite of it). Faith can lead people to believe anything that many people would value or few people would. They can believe in peace and love, but they could also believe that homosexuality and adultery should be punishable by death, for example.

Faith has been on all sides of every issue at any given time. During the anti-communist hysteria in the United States of the 1950s, the focus was not on the totalitarianism of the USSR or its forced economic ideology, but on its "godlessness". It was during this period of American history when "In God We Trust" was adopted as the national motto and placed on our currency. It was at this time that the Pledge of Allegiance--already illegal for schools to make children recite because of freedom of speech issues--began to include the words "under God".

During the period of our history when slavery was legal, abolitionists and slaveowners alike used faith to justify their positions. There are rules in the Bible for slavery, and the slaveowners would cite these rules as justification for their practice. The abolitionists would focus on the New Testament, where wealth was condemned, equality encouraged.

The Irish Catholics and the Southern Baptists fought each other for decades, often violently, during the 1800s, all over which version of the Bible to use in a public school setting. It's one of the many reasons both sides began to accept separation of state and church as a good thing, especially in public schools.

Faith can lead to delusion. Some people believe so strongly in their chosen ideology that they will ignore even the strongest evidence against their faith-based convictions. Biblical literalism is one example. No matter how much it is pointed out to biblical literalists that the Earth cannot be six thousand years old, that there was no global flood, or that human beings can't survive in the digestive tracts of sea creatures, based on scientific observations, they will dismiss the science, often demonizing it in the process.

Since faith is subjective, it leads to arbitrary values. Believers will often argue that moral relativity is the hallmark of atheism, and that it's a bad thing, but they never seem to analyze the moral relativism inherent in faith. Here is how religion is divided around the world:

• Christianity: 35,000 denominations, most under eleven sects
• Islam: Three major sects; twelve denominations (at least); various schools of thought under each
• Judaism: At least seven, with various schools of thought under each
• Hinduism: 3 major sects with several denominations under each
• Buddhism: 3 major sects with many subdivisions
• Shintoism: 25 groups
• Thirty-four other major religions with thousands of subdivisions and cults.

Faith does not lead everyone to the same end; if anything, it divides everyone. It is not the only thing that divides people; economic and political ideologies also make their contribution, but these are also a brand of faith, complete with their own apologists and preachers.

I am not going to tell you that dropping faith will lead to worldwide unity. I doubt that it would. What I would like to explore is what values might be considered universal, and why.

What seems to be almost universal to human beings is empathy. According to research in neuroscience and psychology, empathy is at least partially an automatic response. There are exceptions, such as psychopaths and sociopaths, but empathy does appear to be something that the vast majority of humans the world over seem to have.

To what values can empathy lead? All cultures have laws against homocide; people do not want to have their lives taken from them, so they see it as wrong when someone takes a life from someone else. There are shades of gray here; some people would include termination of pregnancy as the "murder" of the unborn; most people would allow a justification for self-defense; some would justify execution for certain crimes (especially murder). In any case, murder is outlawed universally to some degree.

In light of the universality of the outlaw of murder, how can anyone justify war? My personal take on war is that the instigator must be a sociopath, a psychopath, or paranoid-delusional. That opinion comes only from the idea that in order to send soldiers to kill and to die, a person must not have much empathy, if any, or must be so scared out of his (or her, I guess, but I can't think of a female instigator of war off the top of my head) mind that he imagines threats or creates them, then works very hard to draw everyone into his delusion and paranoia.

The next near-universal value based on empathy is the idea that stealing is wrong. There are shades of gray and different schools of thought here, too, but for the most part, people don't want other people to take their stuff, and most won't take from other people as a result. I think people feel less empathy when shoplifting, because they aren't thinking about their theft in terms of doing harm to another individual; they see a business making profit, and their petty theft isn't going to hurt, they believe. They don't think about how the reduction in profits will cause an increase in prices for honest people; they don't think about how when insurance covers stolen items, premiums go up for everyone contributing to the pool.

Charity comes from empathy. People want to to good for other people, not only because it feels good, but because they would like other people to do good for them.

The willingness to pass knowledge to other people can come from empathy; people who want to learn will share their knowledge in return.

Empathy is not relative like faith. Perhaps if people went with their empathy instead of faith, they would get along to a greater agree.

Ken Ham--unsurprisingly--gets it wrong about evolution

Ken Ham, the founder and CEO of Answers In Genesis, a creationist organization, recently wrote an article that appeared on Forbes.com. It may be found here. This is my reply to it, since it would not fit in the comments section, and I like to share.

As usual, Ken Ham displays his ignorance of how science works and does his best to defame evolutionary biologists in the process.

The first point Ham attempts to make is that evolution leads to moral relativism. I say we have it anyway, regardless of worldview. For example, people who call themselves Christians have as many different different views on what is sinful and what is moral as there are sects of Christianity, if not as many as there are individual Christians. Christian moral relativity is great enough to have divided Christianity among approximately 35000 sects worldwide, each with its own unique background and doctrine. They have different versions of the Bible, from the King James to the Catholic version to the New International--they can't even agree on which anthology reflects their beliefs, let alone whether to interpret each literally or contextually.

The reason why I don't kill people, steal from them, or otherwise harm them is because I have empathy (it's also why I'm likely to help them). I can put myself into their situations and understand how the consequences of my actions will affect them. Humans would not have thrived as a species without empathy and cooperation.

His second point about what is being taught in science classrooms is poorly supported by a plaque in Darwin's house and a vague reference to how evolution is taught, but that wasn't my experience in high school biology, or even college biology. Religion was not discussed because it requires faith, and faith is not within the scope of science, by definition. Science is about what can be observed, not about what people accept as true without evidence. We couldn't possibly bring religion into a science classroom (or any classroom, for that matter), since there is so much division among religious people about origins. Origins are not a discussion in a classroom involving evolution anyway, since evolution is about changes in species over time, and not how they came to be in the first place. It's an obvious progression from learning about changes to inquiring about origins, but since nobody really knows exactly how life began on Earth, origins aren't typically the subject of high school biology texts.

Ken Ham's next point represents his transition from ignorance about evolution and how it is taught to defamation of those who teach science and those who learn it. His example of the killer in a 2007 Finland school shooting (I have not researched this incident) fails, because clearly, the killer did not understand evolution at all. If by killing people he believed that he was a "natural selector", he clearly did not understand what is meant by "natural selection". In natural selection, sentient purpose does not drive the process; when purpose enters into it, it is artifical selection. Ironically, this killer selected himself out of the gene pool by being caught (or killing himself; again, I haven't researched the incident), thereby eliminating his chances of mating and passing on his genes. Of course, ideas aren't heritable traits, but perhaps his urge to kill other people and his apparent lack of empathy toward others might be.

In his fourth attempt to defame evolution, Ken Ham again uses an example of people misusing evolution to promote an agenda that displays their ignorance of how it actually works. Evolution is not progressive; there is no species "more evolved" than any other. What one might say is that a species is more specialized (i.e., has adaptations more suitable) for a given environment, but to claim superiority in evolution would be folly. In any case, scientists today do not subscribe to the idea of racial superiority in relation to evolution; the human genome project should have erased any such idea. The idea of "survival of the fittest" isn't even Darwin's; in natural selection, the heritable adaptations that are passed to the next generation that allow it to survive, in its turn, to reproductive age are what matter most.

None of the examples Ken Ham presents of how people misuse and misunderstand evolutionary theory have any bearing on whether or not evolutionary theory is valid. The theories regarding the mechanisms of evolution find validity in their predictive power and in the evidence that reinforces them. The validity of any scientific theory is independent of public opinion.

Questions That Atheists Should Answer?

I use Google Alerts to get news about subjects that interest me. One of these alerts is a search for "atheist", because, in case you don't know already, I am one. I do see a lot of news articles, but the search also includes blogs. I have toyed with the idea of excluding blogs from the searches, since many of them are just people like Ray Comfort, painting caricatures of atheists with their outrageous stereotypes, putting words in our mouths that many of us--the atheists I know, anyway--would never say.

In any case, I ran across a video from a young man who had five questions he believed atheists should answer. He wanted a YouTube video response or a response in his comments, but I don't think my responses would fit in one comment, I don't want to post several, and I'm definitely not doing a video at this hour--but I thought I'd answer his questions. I will be posting this link in his comments, so I hope he'll run across this page.

Question 1: "Atheists believe that the universe began millions and millions of years ago. Now, how would you know this for a fact, or is it just a guess?"

Greg's Take: Let's parse this question first, because I have some issues with it.

First, there's the "Atheists believe" part. I have been hanging with Atheists long enough to know that we're as diverse a group of individuals as any other group can be; the only thing we have in common is our rejection of theism. There's no worldview that you can assign to all atheists. Some Atheists know very little about cosomology and don't care. Many Atheists don't know a thing about evolution, either, and don't care. They leave these things to astrophysicists and biologists, respectively.

Secondly, there's the word, "believe". Many of us reject the word, "believe", for its implication of acceptance without evidence. I know I do. I have no place for faith in my life, and "believe" is something I'm trying really hard to remove from my vocabulary, because it doesn't do justice to the amount of research I put into the things I know.

Thirdly, there's the idea of the universe beginning. Scientists don't know if the universe had a beginning. They don't. Seriously. All they know for certain is that the universe expanded. How do they know? You know that famous telescope named Hubble? That telescope was named after the scientist who, through the discovery of a phenomenon known as red shift, found out that everything in the universe appeared to be moving away from everything else, and on a certain trajectory. Everything seemed to be moving away from a center.

Fourth of all, it's not "millions and millions", but "billions and billions". The universe started to expand about 13.7 billion years ago.

Finally, no, it's not a guess. Red shift is real. The universe is expanding and has been. Scientists--notice that I didn't say "Atheists", because not every Atheist is well-versed in physics/cosmology--know that the universe is at least 13.7 billion years old because a) the speed of light is a constant, b) we can measure the distance from Earth to the stars we can see with Hubble, c) light had to travel the distance necessary for us to see it, and d) no plausible alternative explanation backed by evidence can explain how light could reach us without traveling this distance. In order for light to be here from where the universe began to expand, it would have had to travel faster than light. I repeat: light would have to travel faster than light.

Question 2: Why are atheists like Richard Dawkins actually afraid of admitting to the fact that they could possibly be wrong and that there is a god?

Greg's Take: Let me begin by answering that there are no Atheists like Dawkins. He's an international Atheist celebrity. He's a household name. There are a few with his level of fame: Hitchens, Harris, Madelyn Murray O'Hair, some comedians (e.g., George Carlin), but not many with his knowledge of biology, his soft-spoken manner, and his intellect.

I would argue that Dawkins would say--actually, he has said--that he is 99.9% sure that there is no designer, like a good scientist would say about anything. He also says he's 99.9% sure there are no fairies. Scientists do not rule out possibilities, but science deals only with what can be observed and quantified, so things people accept on faith are outside the realm of scientific thought.

For my part, I say that the burden of proof is on those making the claim that their god exists. Bring on your evidence, because I haven't seen any. It always comes down to faith.

Question 3: Why do atheists think that it is illogical for Christians and religious people to believe in god, because they can't see him, feel him, hear him, et cetera, believe that we don't have proof of god, when apparently, atheists believe and have faith in the big bang theory and evolution? Atheists love to preach it and teach it in schools, so wouldn't that make atheism a religion?

Greg's Take: We come back in this question to the mistaken noting of Atheists believing things. Think of it more like this: Atheists, for the most part, from what I've seen and experienced, trust scientists. At least, those among us who know science (or are scientists ourselves! Not me--I'm an IT professional) trust scientists, because scientists deal in what is observable, quantifiable, and verifiable. I will admit that many Atheists get overzealous in their defense of evolution and the big bang (which I prefer to refer to as the expansion of the universe as we know it) and go a little far, taking liberties with what science is actually available, but as a former biology major and someone who really enjoys science, as someone who reads journals and science news, I can tell you that evolution is a fact, that it is inevitable, and it takes more knowledge than I can impart to you in this blog entry to understand how it works.

To simplify evolution as much as I possibly can, it's all in the genes. To expand just a little, I can say with certainty that during reproduction, a little bit more information is added to DNA. This addition is an observable, verifiable fact. With additional DNA, there is a possibility that different genes will be active in the next generation of a species, which explains population genetics, but I won't go into that at the moment. What I can say is that when you add mutation (which is the only mechanism creationists seem to think exists for evolution; it's not) and gene-crossing to the mix, you have all sorts of possibities that open up.

I can expand and expand and expand, but unless you've taken a few courses in biology at the college level, you're not going to get it. Evolution is a fact; it's the theories regarding evolution that are not 100% proven--but they are 99.9% there. Evolution has so much predictive power in science. For example, you know the flu vaccines that are administered every year? Scientists know how to make these vaccines because they can predict the evolutionary path of viruses--and it is a statistical fact that people who get flu shots are less likely to get the flu, and more likely to recover faster from it if they do get it.

I already touched on the Big Bang theory, so I won't go over it again. I would just advise you to think of it as an expansion of the universe, because nobody knows what happened before 13.7 billion years ago. Nobody. There are some educated guesses, but there is no certainty.

Oh, and no, atheism is not a religion. If Atheism is a religion, bald is a hairstyle. The reason evolution and the Big Bang are taught in schools is because science must be taught in science classrooms. It is unfair to students who want a career in the sciences to waste time in science class on things that are not science. Creationism is a matter of faith, and does not belong in a biology or physics classrom. What you learn in science classes has everything to do with the body of knowledge that scientists have built, and has nothing to do with popular opinion or debates between people of faith and people of no faith.

Question 4: If the big bang theory were true, then how did everything in the universe come to be designed the way it did? Like for example, how could the Earth be in the perfect position for the sun to give it light, and if it moved by an inch or so, we wouldn't have light like we have now, and the Earth is the only planet with supplies for human life? [I tried to correct for grammar here, but you get the gist, right? I gave up because I hate playing the grammar police.]

Greg's Take: First of all, the Earth moves much more than inch toward or away from the sun, depending on where it is in its orbit. Secondly, how do you know that Earth is the only planet that can support human life? It's a big universe out there, and there could be thousands, millions, or billions of inhabitable planets in it. We just don't know. The odds are good that there is some more life out there in some form, given the number of stars, and given the number of solar systems with planets astronomers are now discovering.

Life has always been a struggle on Earth. While life begets life, life also eats other life. Life has to contend with climate changes and natural disasters, geographic separations and limitations on food sources. Species after species forms and dies. Warm-blooded species last an average of twenty-five million years; cold-blooded species last around three hundred million. I should say that the genus lasts that long, because there is a blurry line where the species becomes so different that it can no longer breed with creatures like its ancestors. Given what geneticists know now about the amount of information that is added with reproduction to DNA, enough change will occur over a twenty-five million year period to make the descendents become very different from their ancestors.

To say that this life is "fine-tuned" for life (which is how it is usually worded) is to have it backwards: life struggled and thrived due to adaptations that allowed it to live under the conditions that existed already. This planet was uninhabitable 3.5 billion or 4 billion years ago; whatever the first life was had to have the correct adaptations to allow it to survive under the conditions that existed then. I am fairly certain that more than one combination of self-replicating proteins appeared, but only the combination(s) producing the characteristics giving it survival advantages thrived.

Question 5: When Christians like my brothers and sisters in christ and I spread the word of god in a loving and perfect way, why do you have so much hate towards us when we share with you about the gospel of our lord and savior jesus christ, when he came to this world to save sinners, he died on the cross for our sins, and was risen from the dead?

Greg's Take: I can't speak for all Atheists. No Atheist can. What I can say is that I do not hate you. I don't know what reactions you're receiving that you translate as hate, but I can guess, because when I first rejected religion, I was angry, frustrated, and alone. I knew a precious few people who were Atheists, and when I came out to my Christian friends, they just wouldn't leave me to it. They felt that I was "lost" and that my "soul" needed "saved", but they--and you--have no idea how condescending that sounds to someone who has just undertaken an intellectual journey away from religion. I read the Bible at least twenty-seven times through during my life, referring to various versus hundreds, perhaps thousands of times during the course of my journey. I studied ancient religions, I studied philosophers and apologists--rejecting faith wasn't something I came to lightly. For people I once considered friends to treat me as though I was being foolish, going through a phase, or as if I had lost my way somehow was disheartening and annoying. That's probably one of the perspectives you're meeting.

I'm well beyond that point now. I'm not angry as much anymore, though I do get passionate about defending kids from being ostracized from their religious classmates, or when a town turns against a family for wanting to keep religion out of government, or when Atheists are painted as hateful, bitter, morally corrupt people. In any case, toward individual Christians, I am pretty much done being angry, but it can get a bit annoying, hearing the same thing over and over. Having debated with Christians since 1991, I can tell you that I haven't come across anything new in about ten years. Sure, there are new spins on old arguments, but it always comes down to the same thing: you have faith, you have ancient texts, and you have artwork. You have no real evidence to prove that your Bible is true, you have no evidence that your god exists, and Jesus is just mythical as any other figure in your anthology of myths. You truly believe that Jesus performed all of those miracles, that he was born of a virgin, that he rose from the dead; I can't buy into any of it. There's scant evidence that he was even a historical person, let alone this magical man-god that your Bible makes him out to be.

Do you really believe Jonah could have survived in the belly of an ocean-dwelling creature? He wouldn't have drowned, asphyxiated, or been digested over the three days he supposedly spent in there?

Don't even get me started on Noah's flood. If you believe that story, please build me a boat with those dimensions that will float--without steel supports, entirely of gopher wood (whatever that is). The longest wooden boat ever built without steel supports was less than three hundred feet long. The reason why was a phenomenon known as "keeling". Essentially, the wood would crack and the boat would sink. Never mind explaining how all of the salt water and fresh water life survived, how algae could have survived without sunlight for forty days and nights, or any other of the long list of things in that story that just aren't possible.

I don't hate you; I just get a bit annoyed by the constant attacks on physics and biology by people who have, at best, a limited understanding of the subjects. Do you know the complexity of the math involved in physics and biology? Have you taken an advanced chemistry class? These subjects aren't ones just anyone can take; science involves heavy mathematics and logical thinking. It's not surprising that most people aren't scientists, but it is surprising how many people reject science out of hand when they haven't taken even the freshman level courses at the college level, if they even took the very basic high school level ones.

I don't hate you, but your Bible bothers me. I don't like being called filthy, foolish, a liar, and an antichrist. I don't like the execution orders your Bible gives regarding Atheists in at least four verses. I don't like how your Bible treats women as the property of men. I don't like its support of slavery. It bothers me that the only way your god character could think of to absolve human beings of sin was to make a humiliating blood sacrifice of his only begotten son (if I would even go as far as to accept this myth, which I don't). It also bothers me that this concept of original sin was born of a myth about a man and woman who didn't have the knowledge of good and evil, but were expected to know that it was evil to disobey your god when they were punished for eating fruit (!) that somehow gave them this knowledge.

Conclusion: I hope I've answered your questions to your satisfaction. Feel free to ask follow-up questions.

Republicans: You Were Wrong. Now Shut The Hell Up!

The United States is a mess right now. We have a financial crisis, we have two occupations, and a crumbling infrastructure.

Republicans: you did this to us. You were in charge for the past eight years--in total control for four--and you did this to us. You caused the financial disaster by working actively to put as much money as possible into the hands of people who were already wealthy, while also working hard to collapse the middle class.

Your supply-side economics is just what Geoerge H. W. Bush said it was: "voodoo economics". The reason it was so obvious to him and others is because it's so infernally stupid. Here's the theory: put more money into the hands of the wealthy, and they'll invest in more jobs, thereby causing the wealth to trickle down to the rest of the populace. No! Wrong! Stupid, stupid, stupid! How many of you own businesses? How many of you believe you have time to start other businesses? Why would you think that a business owner or the top executives of corporations would have time, with their schedules as full as they are, to create more jobs? They're going to take that money and put it into safe investments--and those that create jobs aren't usually all that safe. Budding businesses fail more often than they succeed.

Stupid. You're stupid and you need to shut the hell up. We don't need your input on the stimulus package, because your input for the past eight years has done nothing to our benefit. Nothing. You have sought only to benefit yourselves and the wealthiest among us, and now even their fortunes are disappearing.

You know what happens when you give more money to the poor and the middle class? They spend it. You know what that spending causes? More businesses will thrive when more people are spending money. The more businesses there are that are thriving, the more jobs we'll have. The more people we put to work, the more secure and prosperous we'll be.

We don't need your input. We don't need it. Shut up. Shut up, already! If I have to hear one more Republican (Boehner) whine abou thow Pelosi won't listen to him, I'm going to scream. I'm so tired of hearing the whining. Isn't it obvious from the number of colleagues that you lost in this last election that the majority of Americans don't give a rat's ass what you say? Don't you realize that America isn't about you? We're hurting. We don't need your political games. We don't need your incorrect policy decisions. Obama is President and the Democrats decisively control Congress. Americans want change. Unless you can come up with something other than tax cuts for the wealthy or other typical Republican fair, your input is not required, and you should be shut out of the process.

Bipartisanship is highly overrated right now. You have demonstrated that you're not capable of compromise, so bipartisanship isn't even possible. Let the adults run things now. Your reign of stupidity is over.

I wish Sarah Palin would just go away

Every time I come across anything about Sarah Palin, it makes me want to write something about why I wish she should go away. However, every time that thought comes to me, I also think about how I am contributing to the total number of things out there about her, and worry that I'm just fanning the flames.

I can't stand it anymore. I have to get it off my chest. This will be absolutely the last time I write anything about her, and I'm hoping that this post inspires others to ignore her as much as humanly possible.

When Sarah Palin became John McCain's choice of running mate, she was unknown to me. The more I got to know about her, the more I had to wonder why McCain didn't choose someone more qualified. I wouldn't have voted for him anyway, but at least I would have been slightly more comfortable if he had won.

The first story I heard about Sarah Palin was that she tried to get books banned from the library in Wasilla, Alaska. What is true about the story is that she asked the librarian how she felt about banning certain "objectionable" material. The books were never banned, and the list that circulated in a viral manner all over the Internet was a hoax, but the truth regarding that story was enough to make me dismiss her as a viable choice for any office under the United States. If she was willing to try--even try--to ban books from the library, she could not uphold the Constitution.

The next thing I began to hear about was her religion. As someone who supports and defends the Constitution, I fully support the Free Exercise and Establishment clause in the first Amendment, as well as the prohibition of religious tests provided in Article VI. I would feel like a hypocrite if I simply condemned her because she's part of a fundamentalist sect whose members feel as though they're entitled to a separate set of facts about the world than the rest of us, simply because that, to me, would be a religious test. My concern is that she cannot separate state and church, so she will not leave me the freedom to choose not to exercise religion--which is a necessary component of the Free Exercise clause. We can't have free exercise if I am forced to choose a religion; I must be free to abstain from that choice. Sarah Palin's record on the First Amendment is poor in this regard.

Palin's positions on choice, endangered species, drilling for oil, and just about everything else are opposite of mine. I don't favor eliminating opposing viewpoints, but she struck me as someone who is unwilling to compromise--just like George W. Bush. Someone who will not compromise will ignore the will of the people--just like George W. Bush. We don't need another George W. Bush.

Palin demonstrated time and again that she knows nothing about world affairs. The very idea that she would be a heartbeat away from the Presidency was unsettling to me.

Finally, she associated with Alaskan secessionists. The fact that her husband was involved witha secessionist organization and that she spoke to that organization--praising it--tells me that she does not have the best interests of the United States in mind. Why would someone who hates this country want to hold its highest office? I suppose the reasoning involves the notion of changing the country to fit one's own politics.

The media just won't leave Palin alone now. I wish they would. I'm tired of seeing her. I'm tired of hearing about her. She isn't relevant anywhere but Alaska at this point. If the GOP is insane enough to run her again in 2012, I'll be surprised, but until then, can we just be shut of her? Can we just pretend like she never happened? Sure, she was great for comedy, but that's no reason to keep her story alive.

When a friend becomes a fan of the Roman Catholic Church

For some reason, I have profiles on Facebook and MySpace. I really don't know why. It has been a way for people from my past to contact me, but the other day I realized something: almost none of these people know me anymore.

Chances are that if you met me before high school and haven't seen me since, you really don't know me anymore. I am not that person you knew in elementary or junior high.

If you met me in high school, I'm not sure you really know me all that well, either. My political leanings have changed, my willingness to take risks, my tastes in music (which expanded)...you'd have a lot of catching up to do if we met now.

If you knew me in college or after, you pretty much know me as I am today. I have matured, I've settled down, but I went through some radical philosophical changes around age 19 that solidifed at around age 21, and I haven't been the same since.

All of this intro brings me to the title of this entry. I went into Facebook the other day, and I found that one of my friends became a fan of the Roman Catholic Church.

Wow.

I was raised in the Roman Catholic Church. I went to Catholic schools from K through 9, was an altar boy, read in church, and even wanted to become a priest at one point (just before puberty hit, in fact). I had doubts from at the age of eight at the latest, asking, "If God created everything, who created God?" I was told I had to accept on faith that this "God" character is eternal, and that I shouldn't question. Well, if I shouldn't question, why was curiosity so much a part of my nature? In any case, my questions were silenced, and I went along with the religion thing. I kept doubting myself, kept thinking that there just had to be proof out there of the existence of this deity, and that something must be wrong with me because everyone around me believed in this stuff. I did pray, but as I got older, as I became used to none of my prayers being answered--not one damned prayer--they began to start with "Jesus[/God], if you're there..." I was teased endlessly by my peers in Catholic school, and no matter how much I prayed for that to stop, or for me to have the strength to endure it, or for my life to change, it only stopped when I made the changes myself.

I can hear the apologists now: "Oh, you had it in yourself to change; that's why God didn't force it," or "Your prayers were all about you, and that's selfish." Yeah? Well explain why my Uncle Ronnie died at 36 when I prayed for his cancer to go away so my mom wouldn't have to see her younger brother suffer. Explain why my prayers for world peace were answered with more war. Explain...nah, forget it. If you're an apologist, you'll come up with some lame reason why my prayers weren't answered, or you'll tell me that they were, and I just wasn't paying attention, or you'll tell me that they will be, or you'll tell me, as the song goes, "Sometimes God's greatest gifts are unanswered prayers." Gag.

Oh, and you know what I changed the most about myself? I tried very, very hard to show no outward signs that I am an intelligent person. I always stood out like a sore thumb in that regard. When I dumbed myself down superficially, I gained friends. Great change, huh? But it made my life more tolerable.

The bottom line is that I read the Bible more than most people have, in various versions, and what I got from it, at least the parts were Jesus was involved, was that faith could move mountains and prayers would be answered--even if someone had faith "as a grain of mustard seed." Well, I did have at least that much, and it never worked for me. Faith has never been useful in my life, so I discarded it eventually.

The first thing that made me turn from the Catholic Church in particular was confession. I hated confession, and the reason I hated confession was that I rarely did anything that could be considered sinful. I was a good kid--ask my parents! Still, when I told this to the nun who took us to confession for the first time, she told me to think hard, because everyone was a sinner, and I had to have done something. I went in and gave the priest a really lame excuse for a sin. He was probably laughing on the inside. The penance was a pittance.

What you don't want to do is tell a priest that you don't have anything to confess, that they're just making you go. I tried that, and the priest gave me a major penance for "lying". Damn it, I really was a good kid! I always tried to help people. Always. Still do. Unfortunately, that willingness to help sometimes comes off as arrogance; some people see me stepping in to help them as a comment on their capabilities or lack thereof, and feel insulted that I would think they would need help. That's another story, though. The bottom line is that if you're a Catholic, you are guilty until proven innocent, and even then, you're guilty. You're a sinner. No way around it.

Well, good riddance to my involvement with the Catholic Church. I'm still altruistic to a fault, and even though I have my moments that could be considered "sin" by you, I'll be the judge of that, not you. I am NOT one of your FANS!! I know my own flaws, and I am answerable to myself. I am my own worst critic, and I am a harsh one. I feel guilty if I hurt people because I have empathy, not because someone is threatening with eternal hellfire, pergatory, or any other bullshit you try to heap on people. I also feel good when I help people, because I know what it feels like to be helped--by other people, for motives having nothing to do with Catholic guilt.

Here's the thing: I probably wouldn't unload on the Catholic Church at all right now if it weren't for the pedophilia scandal. I know the caricature of the pedophile priest is a running joke right now, but what makes me mad is that the Catholic Church actively worked to cover up child rape. That's what it is. Let's not be so damned clinical about it. They were raping kids. Raping. These priests raped children, and the Catholic Church would sometimes move them from parish to parish, with no oversight regarding what sort of activities they would engage in at their new homes.

It's so insidious, I get nauseous writing about it. Before the pedophillia scandal, priests were well-respected and trusted, because they were "men of the cloth", doing the work of "the Lord" and such. Let's apply what happened with the Catholic Church to another institution where people are generally trusted with our kids: the education system. Image if you will that the same percentage of teachers were involved in child rape within our school systems. Now, imagine the school catching them, then simply relocating the offending teachers to other schools in other parts of the country, never turning them in to the authorities. First, it was just the teachers who were guilty; now, school administrators are complicit. Would you or would you not have their heads, figuratively speaking?

A lot of people left the Catholic Church after the pedophilia scandal, but they're still the largest sect in the United States, even after losing thirty-eight percent of their parishoners here. The Pope let priests get away with child rape, and people still attend Catholic mass. The Pope, his cardinals, and his bishops let priests get away with child rape, and people still tithe--still give ten percent of their earnings to the Church. The Church hierarchy let priests get away with child rape, and they are still in business.

I don't understand why anyone would want to be a fan. I am sure she has to be blissfully unaware of how much the Catholic Church knew about the pedophilia going on at the priest level, but I am not sure I'm comfortable having her name on my Facebook page anymore.

Testing for Autism During Pregnancy

Recently, there has been a controversy regarding the possibility of a test for autism during pregnancy. With this information in hand, the parent(s) can make an informed decision on whether to continue the pregnancy, or else prepare for a challenging life as (a) parent(s) of a child with autism.

My problem with this approach is that it presumes that autism most definitely has a genetic marker, and that set of genes alone is responsible. Did they arrive at this conclusion only by analyzing the DNA of people with autism, or did they have a control group of randomly-sampled neurotypical people? Perhaps the genetic marker is really a way to tell whether a person is more susceptible to heavy metal poisioning or gluten/casein allergies, and the cause is partially environmental. The evidence that caused me to form my hypothesis that both are to blame involves a recent study that demonstrates a correlation between rainfall and the number of cases of autism in a given area. The more rainfall there is, the higher the number of cases of autism there are. To me, this correlation (though correlation is not necessarily causation) leads to the possibility that some pollutant (mercury from coal-fired power plants?) is getting into the ground water, then into our children's bodies. Some children can process this pollutant; some cannot.

Parents keep bringing up vaccines as a possible cause for autism. Many "know" that it's the cause. The contradictory evidence comes from a study done on children who have received the MMR combination vaccine. This evidence ignores the fact that there is no safe recommended dose of mercury for children under six months, and many vaccinations are given long before MMR. In the first six months of my daughter's life, she received twenty-six vaccines. Did any of them contain thimersol, a mercury-based preservative, or another, aluminum-based one? I don't know. It's worth studying. I'm betting on the atmospheric mercury from coal-fired power plants combined with moderate to heavy rainfall, but vaccines could still play a role. The way to tell is first demonstrate that cases of autism occur more frequently in places affected by pollution from coal (follow the acid rain path for this data; sulfuric acid raid is directly caused by coal's SO2 pollution, and mercury would follow the same direction), then follow it up by demonstrating that even more children have autism who have had vaccinations in these areas.

The bottom line for me is that no test for autism during pregnancy is valid until someone can show me that the sole cause is genetic.