Seriously, IRS?

Steven Miller during a Congressional hearing regarding the recent IRS targeting of political groups.

According to the IRS, a 501(c)(3) organization is an organization that is "organized and operated exclusively for exempt purposes." The IRS defines exempt purposes as follows:

The exempt purposes set forth in section 501(c)(3) are charitable, religious, educational, scientific, literary, testing for public safety, fostering national or international amateur sports competition, and preventing cruelty to children or animals.  The term charitable is used in its generally accepted legal sense and includes relief of the poor, the distressed, or the underprivileged; advancement of religion; advancement of education or science; erecting or maintaining public buildings, monuments, or works; lessening the burdens of government; lessening neighborhood tensions; eliminating prejudice and discrimination; defending human and civil rights secured by law; and combating community deterioration and juvenile delinquency. [Emphasis added.]

In that light, it's curious that the IRS would withhold 501(c)(3) tax exempt status from the Coalition for Life of Iowa pending the Coalition's answers to the following:

2. Please explain how all of your activities, including the prayer meetings held outside of Planned Parenthood are considered educational as defined under 501(c)(3). Organizations exempt under 501(c)(3) may present opinions with scientific or medical facts. Please explain in detail the activities at these prayer meetings. Also, please provide the percentage of time your organization spends on prayer groups as compared with the other activities of the organization.

3. In a phone conversation with POA it was asked about certain signs that may or may not be held up outside of a Planned Parenthood. Please explain in detail the signs that are being held up outside Planned Parenthood and explain how they are considered educational.

What does the phrase "opinions with scientific or medical facts" even mean? The Coalition can only present opinions "with facts"? Facts aren't opinions by definition. One of my pet peeves is actually when people say "In my opinion, [factual statement]." You know why? Because that's not an opinion.

But more to the point, why was the IRS even asking about prayers or signs specifically in terms of educational purposes? I'm no attorney (thank goodness) but my understanding of the "exempt purposes" of a 501(c)(3) organization is that they include educational purposes in addition to many other purposes, including, for example, religious ones. And while I strongly prefer that pro-lifers stick to secular arguments, that's not relevant to whether their purposes are considered exempt under federal law.

Apparently once the Coalition's attorneys responded, the IRS gave it up and gave the Coalition their tax exempt status. To me that further suggests the IRS knew its questions were baseless, but whatever. They let it go. That's great.

However, Coalition for Life of Iowa is one of several pro-life groups the IRS pressed with what then-acting IRS commissioner Steven Miller described as surprising and unusual questions. The IRS is already in the wake of an unfolding scandal regarding its targeting of conservative groups, so I guess these queries of pro-lifers are just additions to a list of IRS problems. Hardly reassuring, is it?

Yes, I am judgmental.

And I'm fine with this definition.

After the Boston marathon bombing and before the authorities had any suspects, someone I know claimed no one has the right to judge whoever set off bombs in a crowd of spectators. This person quoted multiple Bible verses about not judging lest we be judged, and claimed that people are calling the bombing "evil" to try to feel better about themselves, when they shouldn't feel better. I interpreted this as equivocating all sins, implying that none of us are any better than the bombers.

It made me kind of grateful I'm not a Christian, if being Christian means stifling my own anger at injustice and wrongdoing by trying to convince myself that the mistakes of my life make me no better than a person who blows up innocent bystanders, including children.

Perhaps from the Christian perspective, that's true. It seems like a rather binary view: you're either a sinner or not (and we all are), and there's no gradation for type or frequency of sin.

I understand the idea that none of us are perfect. I understand and appreciate remembering your own mistakes before being too harsh with others. I admire grace, and I can see it's healing power in some circumstances.

But I don't buy this notion of no judgment. Instead of not judging people so that we won't be judged ourselves, I think we should judge people and be open to being judged in turn. By "judging people" I don't mean "stop thinking and just hate." It seems like that's what some people think "judgment" means. I guess I just mean "be willing to say, 'hey, this is wrong, and you're wrong.'" The do-not-judge crowd sometimes seems to object even to that (which I would argue doesn't go with biblical teaching anyway--I recall plenty of instances in which Biblical protagonists called out other peoples' wrongdoing.)

I also don't think this binary view of wrongdoing makes sense. Yes, everyone makes mistakes--and not just mistakes, everyone willfully chooses to do bad things at some point. But all mistakes aren't equal. Imagine a world where everyone cheated on their taxes and shoplifted, but no one raped or killed anybody. Are you at all unsure which world you'd rather live in? Of course not, it's obvious. All of those actions are bad, but they aren't all equally bad. And it makes sense to me that the thieves would look with disdain on the murderers, because murder is worse.

And I mean it when I say we should be open to being judged ourselves. Again, by judgment I don't mean blind hate, but I would hope and expect people who care about me to call me out when I'm doing something stupid or wrong. Judgment is part of the process of holding me to higher standards, standards I want to be held to, and I'm fine with people saying "Hey, you're being a jerk and knock it off" if that's what I'm doing. If I am doing wrong, why shouldn't I be judged?

I'm not going to stay silent about things I think are wrong, especially not out of a misguided desire to not have anyone ever tell me I'm wrong either. Both of those seem like bad ideas to me.

So yes, I'm judgmental. And I'm fine with you judging me for it.

On Gay Marriage

I'm for gay marriage, but I don't think I've really examined how I got to that stance. In this post I am exploring my own thoughts, so it might be pretty meandering.

I was raised to believe homosexuality (or, to be more specific, homosexual sex) is wrong. I vaguely agreed until midway through high school when I became friends with a select few gay people. And here I'm not talking about teenagers who want attention and make a big deal about coming out one month and then are back to being straight the next. Here I'm talking about people who hid that they were gay. They tried not to be gay through prayer or heterosexual dating or sheer will, and they feared the reactions of their parents and friends should they find out.

Through witnessing their struggles--in some cases desperately so--to not be gay, I came to believe that being gay isn't much of a choice. Or rather, I think it might be sort of a choice for some people and not as much for others. I agree with people who say sexuality is more of a spectrum than a bunch of check boxes. I know people who are so straight (or gay) that the thought of sex with the same (or opposite) sex just completely weirds them out. And I've known bisexuals that seem pretty open to either. I've also known people that are open to dating the same sex but mostly prefer the opposite, or vice versa. In that sense I expect there are some people who could more easily choose to live a heterosexual lifestyle than others, because they already lean hetero so it's not as much of a leap. But even in those cases I'm not convinced people choose to be "a little bit bi."

On the other hand, I'm dubious that being gay (or straight, really) is purely biological. I suspect there's a strong biological basis but that other factors from birth until whenever can influence it one way or another. I'm sure there are plenty of non-straight people even now that are completely aware of their sexualities but won't come out for fear of the repercussions. But I also think there are a lot of people who genuinely consider themselves straight that, if they'd been raised in a very different culture, would be much more open to sexual interactions with the same sex. Not everyone, of course. I think it's clear that the strong majority of people are simply straight. Still I expect if no one objected to homosexuality we'd have both a lot more people coming out and a lot more people (who never felt repressed in the first place) experimenting.

Anyway, all that is to say I don't think sexuality is wholly a choice, or that much of a choice, and I don't see any reason to believe it's wrong. But--unlike what seemingly all gay marriage proponents suggest--I think whether homosexuality is immoral is a distinct topic from whether gay marriage should be legal.

The gay marriage debate annoys me because gay marriage proponents seem to sincerely think that the only reason you could oppose gay marriage is bigotry. I may not find the arguments against gay marriage compelling, but I think most of the people who make those arguments find them compelling. I'm not going to do that thing where you assume your ideological opponents secretly agree with your premises and only oppose you because they're just bad people. I'm not going to assume that arguments against gay marriage are just a flimsy cover up for homophobia. Some people are homophobic, yes, I'm not denying that--I'm just rejecting the idea that everyone who has a problem with gay marriage must, by definition, be homophobic. (By the way, this sounds exactly like the assertion that everyone who is pro-life must, by definition, hate women.) It's just so much easier to ignore our opposition when we vilify them first.

As I said, I was ambivalent on gay marriage for a long time, and for three main reasons:

1. Unlike (apparently) most secularists, I think freedom of religion is important.
2. I don't understand why the government is involved in marriage in the first place.
3. I generally think the arguments for gay marriage are pretty weak.

#1: I don't want to tell you what you can (or can't) believe any more than I want you to tell me. And I don't want to say "Sure, believe what you want, as long as you don't actually try to live your life according to beliefs I disagree with." What's the difference between that and telling you what to believe?

I think situations where freedom of religion comes in conflict with civil rights are pretty tricky. Secularists tend to dismiss these situations as an excuse for prejudice, and certainly they can be used to justify prejudice, but I don't think it's that simple. How about the Muslim barber who wouldn't cut a woman's hair because it's against his religion? The woman was angry because she felt discriminated against based on her gender; the barber was upset because he believes it's wrong to touch a woman outside of his own family. Secularists tend to dismiss the barber because they don't share his beliefs about gender and family. But what's the difference between us dismissing (or trying to legally override) religious beliefs because we feel our beliefs make more sense, and religious people dismissing (or trying to legally override) our beliefs because they think theirs make more sense? It's a culture clash but I don't think it makes sense to assume by default that whichever is the religious side ought to lose.

It's like free speech. I don't agree with how everyone uses the right (I'm looking at you, WBC) but I want the right protected even for people I heartily disagree with because I also want the right protected for myself. The same goes for freedom of religion--I want people to be able to believe what they want and live accordingly--even if I don't think their beliefs make sense--because I want to be able to believe what I want and live accordingly too.

Obviously this can't be unlimited. If someone follows a religion that says you should shoot all 4-year-old, we're going to have a problem. My point here is not that freedom of religion should be unlimited (how can it be, with so many conflicting views?) My point is to say that freedom of religion is relevant and should be taken into account in the discussion.

I don't think legalizing gay marriage inherently takes away from freedom of religion. But I do think there's merit to the suggestion that as gay rights increase, religious people and institutions are open to legal action if they refuse to perform marriages for gay people, or set up adoptions, or teach their children that homosexuality is acceptable, and so on. In other words I doubt we can expand gay rights without limiting religious freedoms, and while that may be well worth, it I still think we should acknowledge the point.

#2: If we could strengthen gay rights without limiting any other rights I don't know that there'd even need to be a conversation about this; it's all benefit, no cost. However I think expanding the rights of some necessarily limits others. That might be okay (it certainly was when we ended segregation, after all) but I think it's worthwhile to look at costs and benefits. And this is another reason I used to get tripped up. I don't see a huge benefit to allowing gay marriage because I don't see a huge benefit to having state recognition of marriage in the fist place, gay or straight. In fact, I kind of wish we just got rid of legal marriage entirely, so in a sense gay marriage is moving in the opposite direction of where I think we should go.

Don't get me wrong. It's clear marriage is monumentally important to a lot of people. I don't think society needs to get rid of marriage. I just don't see the point of having the legal recognition. My best friends are important to me too, but I don't need the government to formally acknowledge it and in fact I'd feel pretty irritated if people thought my friendships were somehow "lesser" than their friendships based solely on the fact that I hadn't gotten the government to acknowledge my friendships. What the hell do I care what the government thinks?

Ultimately marriage is what the people in the marriage make it. I think the ideas of love combined with lifelong commitment are lovely, and I also think you can have those whether the government gives you a license or not. When it comes to it, I would respect and admire a legally unmarried couple who loved each other and stayed together for life a great deal more than a legally married couple that treated each other like crap and eventually got divorced (as we know so many of them do). That's not to say the only options are sucky legal marriages or wonderful cohabitations--not at all. Some people get legally married and love and commit to each other for life. And that's awesome. I just think the love and commitment are way more important and I don't really see what the legal part brings to the table, relationship-wise.

Yes, I know being legally married includes certain rights and benefits, but frankly I don't see why. What's the government/societal interest there? Why should married people pay less in taxes than single people? Is it because we want to encourage people to create families? We can just give tax credits to people who have children, no? Don't we already do that anyway? Why should married people who don't have children pay less in taxes?

And why should only spouses and blood relatives be able to visit you in the hospital? Goodness knows our blood relatives are not necessarily the people we're closest to, or even the people we love. You should be able to designate whomever you want to visit you in the hospital, or to make medical decisions for you when you're not capable--and I may be ignorant on this, but I think you can do that anyway. I don't see why you should need legal marriage to be able to do that.

Again, this is not to say I want to get rid of marriage itself. Given my way people would continue to get married in whatever weddings or commitment ceremonies they see fit, but the government wouldn't have anything to do with it. Society can reflect how seriously it takes marriage and how sacred marriage is just as much by continuing to get married and then making those commitments priorities. Envision a society where people commit to each other without legal enforcement and then stay committed to each other because, hey, they really meant it in the first place.

Not to mention this solution eliminates the gay marriage debate anyway. No special government treatment if the government is irrelevant to marriage.

#3: My overall understanding of the argument for gay marriage is that consenting adults who love each other should be able to marry each other. Some gay marriage proponents mock their opposition for acting as if this definition implies way more than it does. For example, check out this graphic explaining why gay marriage would not necessitate allowing pedophilia, necrophilia, or bestiality.

However, notice the graphic leaves out polygamy and incest. People get indignant when you suggest either of those are somehow related, but, well, they are. If the definition we are to accept is "consenting adults who love one another," there's nothing in it about the number of consenting adults or whether they're related. And you can add in that, sure--say the definition is "between two consenting, unrelated adults who love each other"--but I'd be pretty interested to hear the objective rationale for limiting marriage to two people, or to unrelated people. Most opponents of gay marriage use religious reasoning, which they can also apply when they oppose polygyny, polyandry, polyamory, incest, and so on. But from what I've seen gay marriage proponents tend to reject (or ignore) religious authority on the subject, so it'd be tricky to invoke that same authority in order to ban other formal recognition of other sexual relationships.

I've known some gay marriage proponents who readily accept polygamy and even incest (in some forms) as the logical conclusions of their argument. I've known some who reject the ideas, but I suspect they might not personally care so much but are thinking "one battle at a time." It's not pragmatic for the gay rights movement to openly embrace polygamy and incest; it would only strengthen the opposition right now. And then I've known a few who sincerely reject polygamy and incest, but it's amazing how their reasons for rejection sound so similar to older arguments against homosexuality.

This whole thing seems like a struggle between these ideas: "Marriage is the thing where man and woman commit and love one another and probably have kids together" or "Marriage is the thing where adults commit and love each other." Given the changing purposes and definitions of marriage over time, these definitions seem about equally arbitrary to me. One is just a lot broader than the other.

Anyway, so I do think fighting for gay marriage amounts to fighting to redefine marriage as something far broader and then, perhaps, less meaningful than marriage was supposed to have been in our country's history--at least our recent history. And arguing that any adults who love each other should be able to marry doesn't seem that compelling to me, since the government can't stop you from lifelong commitment whether they formally recognize it or not, and since I don't really get why the government recognizes it in some cases in the first place, nor why people should care whether the government recognizes it or not.

So then why am I for gay marriage?

A few reasons:

1. I don't find anything morally objectionable about being gay and I think the government should treat people equally. Since the government isn't actually going to get out of straight marriage, may as well open it up to whomever.
2. Even if I think gay marriage specifically doesn't make a ton of sense, I also think the fight for gay marriage is contributing to more compassion and acceptance of gay people, which is good.
3. I find the arguments against gay marriage even weaker than the arguments for it.

#1: I think religious institutions should have the freedom to serve according to their beliefs, which includes the freedom to refuse to perform homosexual weddings, if that's what they want. I don't think you should be able to make people do things they think are wrong, (although I can think of exceptions and I recognize an inherent conflict of rights here). However I think the government should have to treat people equally, absent a compelling argument for a difference (e.g. children are treated differently than adults because they lack the experience and rationality required for adult responsibilities). I think the better equality, again, would be to get the government out of marriage, but no one is really considering that, so here we are.

#2: Even if a couple doesn't care whether the government recognizes a relationship, it matters that society treats people so differently. And if I trusted people to acknowledge differences but still be kind, I might not make this point. However I have seen enough stories (and personally heard enough statements) of broader anti-gay feelings to believe that society would be improved by being more accepting of homosexuality. I think the fight for gay marriage very much influences people to be more accepting, so while I'm dubious about the marriage part itself, I think the fight is having a good effect.

#3: So far the arguments I've seen against gay marriage boil down to the belief that marriage requires procreation. Now, obviously procreation is important to our species as a whole, and to our country specifically and so on. However:

• Plenty of straight married people don't have and never intended to have kids, and it doesn't seem to be a problem for the married people who have kids anyway.
• Procreation is important, but I don't see why it is only important when done naturally by a man and woman. Lesbian couples can do IVF. Gay couples can get surrogates.
• Procreation is important, but so is a stable home for child-rearing. I sometimes wonder whether gay marriages can bring more gravity and honor to the institution of marriage because they've shown how much it means to them to make that commitment, and not just live with each other. Ideally gay marriages would be especially stable, and gay couples could adopt. (In reality I see no reason to believe that gay divorce rates would be any different than straight ones, but you can always hope.)
• Given how many children wait for adoption,  I think the more loving couples we have that want to adopt, the better. I do believe that a mother and father are ideal because they can teach about the different genders, but I also believe that a mother and mother or father and father are a good deal better than foster care.

I can see a societal interest in creating stable family units, I'm just not convinced gay marriage undermines that interest.

I am really tired, I think I'm just going to stop here. Abruptly.

Catholicism and Pedophilia

I woke up this morning to a lot of statuses about the Pope resigning. Most of them were from Catholics  reflecting on the Pope's teachings and wondering what will happen next. Some of them were from atheists making joking comparisons between the Pope and Emperor Palpatine (there are those that see a physical resemblance). And, as with pretty much any situation where Catholicism is in the headlines, I saw a lot of statuses about child abuse and pedophile priests.

Seems to me that non-Catholics, especially secularists, associate pedophilia a lot more with the Catholic Church than other institutions (such as other religious denominations, public schools, or say, the family.) Look, it's bad no matter where it comes from, but I'm dubious the Catholic Church merits the close association everyone assigns it. As Pat Wingert of The Daily Beast explains,

Many point to peculiarities of the Catholic Church (its celibacy rules for priests, its insular hierarchy, its exclusion of women) to infer that there's something particularly pernicious about Catholic clerics that predisposes them to these horrific acts. It's no wonder that, back in 2002—when the last Catholic sex-abuse scandal was making headlines—a Wall Street Journal-NBC News poll found that 64 percent of those queried thought Catholic priests "frequently'' abused children. Yet experts say there's simply no data to support the claim at all.

...

Since the mid-1980s, insurance companies have offered sexual misconduct coverage as a rider on liability insurance, and their own studies indicate that Catholic churches are not higher risk than other congregations. 

According to Wingert's article, estimates suggest 4% of Catholic priests have abused children, compared to roughly 10-20% of the general male population.

Of course if the best defense for the Catholic Church is that everyone else is even worse, I don't find that terribly reassuring. After all, 4% is still way too high. But my point here is not to defend of condemn Catholics, but to figure out why Catholics are associated so much more strongly with child abuse when they actually abuse at a rate equal to or less than everyone else. A few thoughts:

1. People react strongly to hypocrisy. Child abuse is always bad. Child abuse from institutions that are supposed to be moral authorities in the world is even worse.
2. You'd think, then, that people would be equally appalled by all other religious denominations (not to mention school teachers) that abuse. And I expect people would be equally appalled, but you hear about it more in regard to Catholics. Wingert suggests a few reasons for why this is the case:

• Catholicism is one of the largest religious denominations in the country (there are more protestants than Catholics, but Protestantism is broken into many denominations). The rate of Catholic abuse may be equal or less than others, but the raw numbers will be higher as compared to smaller denominations.
• Catholic sex abuse scandals have been made public in waves. Victims often delay reporting, but when some come forward others realize they aren't alone and feel encouraged to report as well. What might seem like a high concentration of scandals is actually a diffuse pattern over years or decades that comes to light all at once. This pattern is similar to abuse patterns for the general male population, but it appears much worse because of the way it's reported.
• The Church has been historically bad at punishing and preventing this sort of abuse, and this can result in a single priest abusing many children before he is revealed. In other words there haven't been very many abusive priests, but many of those who have been abusive have been able to go on for far too long without intervention. One study estimated over 160 abuse cases per abusive priest.

Again, it's not exactly reassuring to think that Catholics aren't that special because everyone else abuses children at least as much, if not more. It's freaking awful. 

However, given the seeming eagerness of some detractors to bring up pedophilia every time Catholicism gets mentioned in any context, and given my own (now confirmed) suspicions that it is not somehow a Catholic-specific phenomenon, I tend to see the accusations as more of an anger at Catholicism (or religion in general) than as an anger over child abuse. Although there's no reason it can't be both, really.

Thoughts on polling and labels.

Even as Planned Parenthood moves away from the "Pro-choice" label, more Americans are adopting it. Again. 

According to Gallup 48% of Americans describe themselves as "pro-choice," compared to 44% who describe themselves as "pro-life." Yet only last year Gallup reported a record low number of self-described pro-choicers (41%, compared to 50% "pro-life"). That's a lot of fluctuation, and (again according to Gallup's trends) the labels have been fluctuating for several years now.

Depending on which way the percentages move, one side of the other will emphasize the poll and talk about long-term, big-picture changes in the never-ending national abortion debate. Maybe they're right, but I don't think we can really see that from these polls. 

Labels like "pro-life" and "pro-choice" are not as well-defined as abortion activists like to suggest. I suspect people's reasons for choosing one label or another have to do with a lot of factors beyond their perspective on abortion specifically. For example, some pollsters suggest recent changes may be due to ignorant Republican comments about rape and pregnancy, or due to last year's contraception debates. I also suspect adherence to pro-choice and pro-life labels have a lot to do with how people feel about the Democrat and Republican parties at a given time, even if their feelings about the parties change due to topics other than abortion.

And of course there's a lot of ambiguity about what the terms "pro-choice" and "pro-life" imply. To my mind, a pro-choice person is someone who believes, at minimum, that women should be able to get abortions for any reason during the first trimester, and for severe reasons (rape, life/health of the mother, fatal fetal abnormalities) in the second two trimesters. A "pro-life" person is someone who believes, at minimum, that abortion should be illegal throughout all stages of the pregnancy except for those severe reasons. There are more "pure" pro-choicers and pro-lifers who may argue that the above definitions compromise too much, but my point here is not ideological purity. I'm trying to summarize what I think the majority of people in the abortion debate would consider "pro-choice" or "pro-life."

Yet I've met people who think that they are technically pro-choice because they believe in exceptions for rape and life of the mother. And I've met plenty of "personally pro-life" people who think abortion is a necessary evil that should be legal. How do people like these respond to polls?

Meanwhile, as Secular Pro-Life has pointed out, a recent Pew Research Poll found only 62% of adults knew Roe v. Wade was about affirming a woman's right to an abortion. In fact, 17% of adults thought the case had to do with school desegregation, the death penalty, or environmental problems. I don't really blame them--if you're not passionate about abortion I can understand not knowing anything about Roe v. Wade. I'd be hard-pressed to name a landmark SCOTUS decision about the environment.

Still, I wonder how much national ignorance plays a roll when Gallup asks people whether they thought Roe v. Wade should be overturned (53% said no, 29% said yes, and 18% said they don't care).

It's also interesting how the "pro-choice" and "pro-life" demographics break down:

Religion.

Having no religion is the biggest predictor for being pro-choice--bigger, even, than being liberal. Note, though, that the intense correlation doesn't cut both ways: 80% of the nonreligious are pro-choice, yet only 50% of non-Catholic Christians and 45% of Catholics are pro-life. In fact, more Catholics called themselves pro-choice than pro-life! And yet we're allegedly a Catholic movement?


Politics.

73% of liberals and 63% of Democrats call themselves pro-choice. 63% of conservatives and 67% of republicans call themselves pro-life. I never have been that clear on the distinctions between liberal/Democrat and conservative/Republican. They seem to generally follow the same polling trends. In any case this still leaves roughly 1/3 of Democrats who don't consider themselves "pro-choice" and 1/3 of Republicans who don't consider themselves "pro-life." If the labels weren't so strongly associated with specific political parties, how might that change peoples' self-descriptions?


Education.

The more college education a person has, the more likely they are to say they're pro-choice. Other polls have shown the more college education a person has, the less religious that person tends to be. And it's no surprise that education is positively correlated with income. In other words, while it's clear that education and the "pro-choice" label are correlated, it's not clear whether (a) increased education causes people to be pro-choice, (b) being pro-choice makes it easier for people to increase their education (how many women cite disruption to their education as a reason to get an abortion?), or (c) being pro-choice and being well-educated are both correlated with some third causal factor, like being non-religious.


Income.

I think this factor surprised me the most. According to Guttmacher, 73% of women who get abortions cite financial problems as a major reason. Yet the less income a person has, the less likely they are to say they're "pro-choice." I'm not sure what to make of that.


I would love to see a poll that asks more about the legality of abortion, and less about labels. It should also ask not just whether abortion is moral or immoral, but why respondents think it's moral or immoral. Maybe that would shed more light on the national perception of the abortion debate.

Re-posted at Secular Pro-Life

2D Religious Belief

How people approach religion goes well beyond whether they believe in the supernatural or don't. Here's a more detailed perspective:

I'm sure you can get into a lot more detail than that, but at least this gives a continuum: a 1-7 scale of belief:

But, as with any viewpoint, I find there are at least two components: (1) your perspective, and (2) how much you care about the topic. 

I think some people tend to still see religious views as kind of one-dimensional anyway. Maybe religiosity correlates to passion, so people think of it something like this:

Or maybe certainty correlates to passion, so people think of it like this:

Personally, I don't find either of those quite right (although I think the 2nd one is closer to the truth than the 1st). I think it's more like this:

I've met strong atheists who are very passionate on the subject, and de-facto theists who don't seem to put much thought into it at all. Personally I'd say usually I'm somewhere between Pure Agnostic and Weak Atheist, and probably about two notches up toward the Care Passionately side. And I've noticed that I tend to be more satisfied with people on the Care Passionately side almost no matter where they are on the belief scale, compared to Strong Theists, Strong Atheists, and everyone in between that tends toward Completely Indifferent. 

Although, come to think of it, I don't think I've personally met a Strong Theist who is Completely Indifferent. I suppose that makes sense. If you're 100% sure there isn't a god, you probably have less reasons to care about religious belief at all. If you're 100% sure there is a god, you may have a lot of reason to care about what that means in your life.

And then of course there's one more factor you can add to just about any topic: are you able to discuss it in a respectful way, or are you a jackass about it?

I was going to say there seems to be some correlation between how much people care and how much they act like jackasses, but I immediately thought of several exceptions, both theists and atheists. I suspect the respectful/jackass scale is more a function of personality than passion.

So really my favorite people to talk to are going to be anyone on the Respectful and Care Passionately end, but anywhere along the belief scale.

The Power of Prayer?

I saw this picture in connection with the CT school shootings:

I also saw many, many statuses in which people offered prayers.

I also saw some atheist statuses complaining about the uselessness of the prayer statuses. And that really pissed me off.

People have many different ways of coping with stress or heartbreak. Some people drink or go on medication. Some seek out the company of family and friends, some seek time alone to reflect. Maybe you journal more, maybe you write a poem or paint something or garden. And guess what? Some people pray.

So two things:

1. As long as they don't hurt others, I don't care what people do to get through the hard times in their lives. If they've found something that helps them, I'm glad for them. Do I believe God answers prayers? I don't even necessarily believe God exists, and no, I don't see a lot of evidence that people get what they pray for. So what? I also don't think alcohol and poems and paintings will magically make your problem go away, but that's not really the point, is it? They are all different methods of processing emotions, of working through grief. I'm not such an asshole as to tell grieving people "This doesn't work for me, and therefore it's useless for you to try it." Wow.

2. Prayer actually does help people. Maybe not in the "If I pray long enough, I will win the lottery" way, sure. But research has found that prayer can be a psychological balm, much like meditation. I get not believing that prayer can stop bullets, but it's just incorrect to say that there's no "power" in prayer. For those who believe in prayer, it can be quite powerful. And I'm glad those that believe in prayer have one more tool to help them help themselves and each other during really difficult times.

The Reason for the Season

Last Thanksgiving I saw this cutesy photo on Facebook:

Underneath it someone had linked to this:

One indication of moral progress in the United States would be the replacement of Thanksgiving Day and its self-indulgent family feasting with a National Day of Atonement accompanied by a self-reflective collective fasting.

...

Simply put: Thanksgiving is the day when the dominant white culture (and, sadly, most of the rest of the non-white but non-indigenous population) celebrates the beginning of a genocide that was, in fact, blessed by the men we hold up as our heroic founding fathers. 

Then the other day I saw this:

Ok, so here's the thing.

For most people, Thanksgiving means talking about what you're grateful for, spending time with your family, and eating a lot. Christmas is similar, but with the addition of buying each other gifts, and, for Christians, rejoicing that their savior came to earth in the first place. 

That's the meaning of those holidays for most people. You can insist that the holidays "really" mean whatever you want, but it's not like there's some objective arbiter to enforce the meanings you've chosen to insist on for all cultures throughout all history. 

You can tell people all you want that when they eat a bunch of turkey and candy yams and talk about how grateful they are for their jobs that really they are celebrating genocide--but they're not. It's not like as long as you insist that's what people think and feel, it'll be true. It's not like you can instill in them a secret happiness at the deaths of others just by insisting that's what it means to hang out together and bake pies.

And you can tell people all you want that when they hang their kids' Popsicle-stick ornaments on their Christmas trees and give each other presents that really they are worshiping Babylonian idols--but they're not. As the cartoon itself shows, traditions are mixed, mingled, adjusted, and evolved over time and geography and so on. Why should the person co-opting Charlie Brown get to decide which time in history versus all other times is the most relevant to modern-day Christmas? In the distant future I doubt someone studying the American Christmas tradition would insist it's based on Babylonians.

This is just another version of telling people what they think and how they feel, and then decrying the thoughts and feelings you've assigned that they haven't embraced. Plus, to my mind, this attitude comes off as at least as self-righteous and obnoxious as the very behavior you're complaining about.

I actually am not a big fan of genocide, and I'm still going to celebrate Tday every year because I love being with my family. I don't believe in fertility gods and I'm still going to put up a Christmas tree because they fill me with a happy nostalgia for my childhood. 

You can just get over it.

Science Denial

Came across this short article from the National Center for Science Education. In it, author Joshua Rosenau discusses the causes of science denial (denying evolution, climate change, vaccinations).

Rosenau claims there's a disconnect between scientists and science deniers: scientists will focus on scientific facts and evidence, while deniers will focus on moral and social repercussions.

The conversation might begin with a dispute about the evolution of the bacterial flagellum, the significance of antibiotic resistance, or the veracity of Archaeopteryx fossils, but before long the discussion leaps to the implications of evolution for the human soul, morality, or religious truth. Discussions about vaccines may open with fears about autism, heavy metals in preservatives, or how many antigens a baby’s body can handle, but rapidly shift to anger about limits on parents’ rights to make choices for their children. Climate change conversations rapidly shift from science to free market capitalism and private citizens’ right to make decisions about their families and their homes. Without addressing these fears first, it is impossible to correct scientific errors and undo the harm caused by science denial. [emphasis added]

Rosenau explains that science denial gets rooted in social identity. Perhaps creationists feel they can't really be Evangelicals if they accept evolution. Same thing with climate change and being conservative. Maybe parents of children with autism feel more socially supported by the anti-vaccine groups than by medical offices.

Trying to force feed evidence to people is only so effective when we don't address the social, emotional, and psychological reasons for denial in the first place. It may be more effective to highlight people within these social groups that already do accept the scientific claims. As Rosenau says,

The messengers most likely to break through will be those who share a social identity with the science-denying audience. Their mere existence undercuts the belief that an individual cannot belong to this group and accept the science.

He goes on to list examples of people already working from this strategy.

I think most people prefer to see the world in black and white; it's easier to understand and work with. In fact, a big part of why I like the sciences is because the answers are black and white. Objective evidence is unaffected by human emotion, social custom, or even morality. Scientists (being human) may cloud the truth through error or even sabotage, but with enough people following the scientific method, the truth wins out. Science leads to more than never-ending, conflicting opinions; it leads to verifiable answers. I love that.

While scientific truths may be black and white, peoples' beliefs are all shades of gray. Our thought processes are complex, and we form our beliefs based on many factors in addition to (or in spite of) raw evidence.

Promoting scientific truth, then, may require a more complex strategy than reiterating  evidence and deriding anyone who resists. We'd like for everyone to be purely logical and rational, but that's not how people are. We can't just talk about chemistry, biology, or physics; we need to talk about emotions, social identity, religious beliefs, political views, psychological states. Science denial isn't just about physical reality; it's about people.

Philosophy X

Philosophy X (could be political, religious, whatever) says its adherents should do a, b, and c good deeds, but most of the adherents to philosophy X follow a distorted version of the philosophy that leads them to do x, y, and z bad things. OR most of the adherents of philosophy X do a, b, and c good things, but there's a high correlation between adhering to philosophy X and also doing x, y, and z bad things. We want to get people to stop doing x, y, and z.

So do we try to get rid of philosophy X itself? Or do we try to get people to see the ideal (true) version of philosophy X and respond accordingly?