Neurologist Laments Tech-Driven Brain Changes

Human identity, the idea that defines each and every one of us, could be facing an unprecedented crisis.

It is a crisis that would threaten long-held notions of who we are, what we do and how we behave. It goes right to the heart - or the head - of us all.

This crisis could reshape how we interact with each other, alter what makes us happy, and modify our capacity for reaching our full potential as individuals.

And it’s caused by one simple fact: the human brain, that most sensitive of organs, is under threat from the modern world.

Video games are weakening the ability to think for ourselves.

Unless we wake up to the damage that the gadget-filled, pharmaceutically-enhanced 21st century is doing to our brains, we could be sleepwalking towards a future in which neuro-chip technology blurs the line between living and non-living machines, and between our bodies and the outside world.

It would be a world where such devices could enhance our muscle power, or our senses, beyond the norm, and where we all take a daily cocktail of drugs to control our moods and performance.

Already, an electronic chip is being developed that could allow a paralysed patient to move a robotic limb just by thinking about it.

As for drug manipulated moods, they’re already with us - although so far only to a medically prescribed extent.

Increasing numbers of people already take Prozac for depression, Paxil as an antidote for shyness, and give Ritalin to children to improve their concentration.

But what if there were still more pills to enhance or "correct" a range of other specific mental functions?

What would such aspirations to be "perfect" or "better" do to our notions of identity, and what would it do to those who could not get their hands on the pills? Would some finally have become more equal than others, as George Orwell always feared?

Of course, there are benefits from technical progress - but there are great dangers as well, and I believe that we are seeing some of those today.

This excerpt demonstrates how Susan Greenfield’s new book ID: The Quest for Identity in the 21st Century tends toward an unscientific techno-alarmism. Written by an Oxford neurologist, the book proves a scientific education is not enough to prevent fear from overwhelming reason. A review of this book at New Humanist gives the nod to Greenfield’s credentials, but lambastes her lack of philosophical sophistication. Like others who get worked up over screen violence, Greenfield seems to ignore positive aspects of games such as motor skill and team building, and the idea that working out violent fantasies virtually can prevent them from being enacted in real life. The only favorable angle (mentioned in the Amazon capsule review) was her acknowledgment of the harmful effects of fundamentalism on the mind. But her vicious attack on video games and other entertainment options ignore the benefits of the sea-change involving former consumers entering the creative community through participatory feedback.

For a more realistic and hopeful view of this trend, I’m looking forward to checking out Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody, discussing the expansive prospect of self-organizing communities built out of former passive content consumers. This new cognitive army has the potential to generate thousands of Wikipedia-like spontaneous open-source initiatives.

Greenfield also badly needs to read Ray Kurzweil’s The Singularity is Near. Barring a global catastrophe, most of the changes to our brains she laments will certainly happen–and then some, and I would argue that’s a good thing. We need to dump the sentimental notion that somehow our unaltered humanity is something worth preserving. Technological development is on an irreversible course toward physical and mental enhancement and an interconnectedness we can’t even fathom. It represents the next step in human evolution, except this time we will boldly decide our own directions based on our individual priorities.

I’m continually amazed at how Luddites cling to ignorance and tradition. While technological progress certainly has its pitfalls, these must be weighed against the risk of failing to act. Our planet is beset with both severe structural problems and a burgeoning population. The same technology enabling changes to our brains also promises to revolutionize food and energy production as well as stabilizing greenhouse gases. Inaction or technological relinquishment will guarantee ever-worsening humanitarian crises, and could never be enforced in any case. Whatever can be done in terms of human enhancement will be done. And there will be accidents and mistakes–as with any new endeavor. We cannot eliminate risk. But we need to press on bravely into the terra incognita.

Sadly, technophobes spin every foray into these areas as some sort of existential threat. We should ignore them. The first salvo in this neo-Luddite rebellion was fired by Bill Joy in his infamous 2000 article Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us. Greenfield mines the same rich vein of technophobia plundered by Joy. From the excerpt at least, she makes no new arguments, and shows no evidence of understanding even the concept of the Singularity. She seems to have a puritanical streak, fretting that we might be getting addicted to our machines or that (horrors) we might learn to derive direct pleasure from them and spiral down into a hedonistic cultural collapse. Sounds to me like an electronic version of the "Reefer Madness" hysteria.

We must come to terms with the fact that humans are absolutely nothing but very sophisticated machines. We are beginning to understand how those machines work and how to make them better. In the process we might also join ourselves with our artificial intelligence and become smarter, happier and experience more pleasure, and radically enhanced opportunities for still more progress. I’m always confounded that someone manages to turn that into a "bad thing." In the next decades, each of us will be faced with two choices: ride the wave or become obsolete.

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Some Cambodians Pray to the ‘Spirit’ of Mass Murderer Pol Pot

ANLONG VENG, Cambodia (AP) — Ten years after the death of brutal Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot, his grave has become a symbol of spiritual comfort to some in the village where he is buried.

Villagers pray at the site, asking for blessings of luck, happiness and even protection from malaria — despite the mayhem he wrought upon their country. He died on April 15, 1998, apparently of heart failure.

"I know it is odd, but I just do as many people here do, asking for happiness from his spirit," said Orn Pheap, a 37-year-old woman who lost a grandfather and two uncles during the Khmer Rouge’s reign of terror from 1975 to 1979.

For most, Pol Pot is remembered as a murderous tyrant with fanatical communist beliefs. Under his leadership, the Khmer Rouge turned the country into a vast slave labor camp, causing the deaths of some 1.7 million people from starvation, forced labor and execution.

But Cambodians believe in the influence of spirits and superstitious forces on their daily lives and fortunes, which may be why some worship at Pol Pot’s grave.

Last week, the grave — a pile of dirt covered by a knee-high corrugated zinc roof — was cluttered with clay jars filled with half-burned incense sticks, a sign of prayer and worship.

Many may still view their former tormentor as a powerful figure, said Philip Short, author of "Pol Pot: The History of a Nightmare," a biography of the former despot.

"Evil or good is not the issue," Short said. "He has imposed himself on Cambodians’ imaginations, and in that sense he lives on" in the spirit world.

Just wow. Is there anything a ‘religious’ figure can’t do and still be worshipped? If killing and starving millions of people doesn’t prevent veneration, what possibly could? How lost and desperate can people be? I’m speechless.

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Variety is my bible. It’s simply indispensable daily reading in my business. Which is why I was so incensed by their Expelled review. The whole imbroglio is such a groaner, I hate to even waste my time. The film is simply one more forgettable propaganda piece created for church screenings and summer Jesus camps, harping on the only note creationists seem to have left in their repertoire, "teach the controversy." But even this modestly successful strategy finds them continuing to wallow in outright deception. Since their entire premise is a blatant lie, I’m sure it’s not that hard to feel OK about lying in support of it.

Stein, Frankowski, Craft, Ruloff, Sullivan and the entire crew over at Rampant Films have brought shameless and cynical pandering to a new low. Their fraudulent interviews of PZ Myers and Richard Dawkins, their ham-fisted expulsion of Myers from a screening, and their outright theft of John Lennon’s Imagine are only the beginning. From countless reviews (including this one), Expelled itself is a disjointed and unskilled piece of film making–woefully unfit to challenge the overwhelming evidence on the side of evolution. But not only does their poor effort leave science untouched, the producers of Expelled have set themselves up to be mocked, pilloried, and publicly flogged (figuratively) for their monumental artlessness.

Instead, Variety’s Justin Chang wrote them a milquetoast postmodernist take-no-sides review, (that of course ended up being far too charitable). He begins:

There’s an intelligent case to be made for intelligent design, which is why "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed," a flimsy attempt to discredit Darwinist theory as the cornerstone of modern biology, reps such a missed opportunity. While roving interviewer Ben Stein extracts some choice soundbites from scientists on both sides of the creation-vs.-evolution debate, the film’s flippant approach undermines the seriousness of its discourse, trading less in facts than in emotional appeals. A probable punching bag for film critics and evolution proponents alike, docu will be a natural selection for Christian audiences and should spread like the gospel on homevid.

Really, Justin? There’s an intelligent case to be made for intelligent design? There’s a debate? Care to state the case or even provide a link? Of course not. Writers like Chang are the useful relativist idiots who can’t believe anyone has the right answer to any question–ever. It’s all so controversial, you see–roughly 150 years after The Origin of Species was published. And of course, in typical two-sides-to-every-story fashion, consensus scientists have now been reduced to "evolution proponents."

"Freedom is the essence of America," he drones, his point being that the freedom to dispute Darwinism has been quashed by a scientific community that treats evolution as fact, not theory. Pic effectively argues that the debate is often shut down before it can even begin, rattling off a laundry list of scientists (among them Richard Sternberg, Caroline Crocker and Guillermo Gonzalez) who have lost grants, teaching posts and academic standing for expressing their views that life did not originate by random chance.

What do you do with a paragraph like that? First, evolution is both a fact and a theory–which highlights the public misunderstanding of both terms. But second, let’s answer the charge. The ’scientists’ who were "expelled" were fired for cause: spouting unscientific drivel as egregiously wrong as if they had "expressed the view" that the the moon was made of green cheese. I can hear them now "Have you been there? Do you know for a fact that it’s not green cheese?" You can’t say things like that as a tenured professor at a respectable university. Remember, universities are places of learning. If you flat-out refuse to learn, you can’t stay there. This in a nutshell kills the entire premise of Expelled. Facts matter in academia–and everywhere else.

Stein does find some eloquent ID supporters in movement co-founder Stephen C. Meyer, Paris-based mathematician David Berlinski and Oxford professor Alister McGrath, who argue that scientists have become slaves to their own dogma, willingly misreading the evidence to support their claims. Pic is most compelling when it contrasts this level-headed reasoning with the vitriol of evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, whose brief screen time constitutes a thorny, fascinating study of atheism taken to hateful extremes.

The Dawkins ad hominem again. What exactly did Dawkins say? Can’t quote it, can he? Because of course Dawkins didn’t say anything hateful. But it must feel so good for Chang to repeat a charge he’s heard other people make, and it keeps him so safely above the fray ("those silly hateful scientists") When you’ve got such good copy, why bother with accuracy? And he also didn’t even bother to mention that Alister McGrath is hardly an unbiased source, having penned not one but two books attacking Dawkins, one called The Dawkins Delusion. There’s no excuse for that kind of omission in the age of Google.

Finally at the end of the review, we get table-scraps of substantive critique:

First-time director Nathan Frankowski strikes a relentlessly jokey tone throughout, using black-and-white film clips as comic punctuation (after news of a professor’s axing, pic cuts to a shot of a guillotine). In addition to being just plain irritating, this jittery style seems to reinforce the perception of the pic’s target audience as a bunch of intellectual lightweights.

Even more offensive is the film’s attempt to link Darwin’s "survival of the fittest" ideas and Hitler’s master-race ambitions (when in doubt, invoke the Holocaust), complete with solemnly scored footage of the experimentation labs at Dachau. Evocations of the Berlin Wall, treated as a symbol of a bullheaded scientific establishment on the verge of collapse, are equally fatuous.

Heavily sampling footage from classic films (including "Inherit the Wind," natch), "Expelled" is technically well-mounted, though its aesthetics trump its ideas at every turn. If evolution is worth debating, it’s worth debating well, and by a more intelligently designed film than this one.

Oh. A film more intelligently designed…I get it.

And the dead-obvious puns keep on coming to the bitter end. Proving that the red states and Hollywood are more alike than different–strong on style, short on substance. And shallow cleverness and creationist fantasies will continue to outshine those dreary facts every time. Natch.

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"People in the middle ages didn’t know about radio waves, yet they were everywhere. They just didn’t have receivers in those days. How can you be sure that there are not spiritual ‘vibrations’ all around us, and our instruments are just not refined enough to detect them?"

"Many things (like every known invention/technology) were once thought by scientists and others to be impossible. As the instruments of inquiry become more sensitive, more of the ‘truth’ becomes known."

These statements appeal to common human cognitive biases toward making assumptions about the unknown. Some of these tendencies are hard wired. Others are an outgrowth of accelerating advancements and discoveries (and people’s inability to keep up). Most people are baffled by the pace of discovery and change. So they throw their hands up in a kind of "what will they think of next?" confusion. They then wrongly conclude that anything they can imagine that seems "futuristic" is equally likely to be eventually discovered.

These are also arguments from ignorance, and they are less analytical than a declaration of a desire by the person for a state or phenomenon. The new-age "subjective wish fulfillment" progression is a pernicious mental trap. It goes something like this:

1. I thought of it, or I felt it, or I dreamed it, or I experienced a powerful "ineffable gestalt."
2. It gave me a sense of freedom, of possibility, of oneness, and I felt transcendent–for a moment I escaped the humdrum of normal materialistic existence. I want to discover how to inhabit that state permanently (and potentially overcome death).
3. We really don’t know everything. You can’t prove it’s not real or it couldn’t someday be real.
4. True or not, it gives me hope, and I’d rather have hope than despair, so don’t try to analyze it (because I’m secretly afraid it might not hold up to scrutiny).

The shifting of the burden of proof is the key here. It is one thing to have an imagination–a state of respectful anticipation, saying "I wonder if that might be possible…?" Then we can systematically go about dissecting the problem, and slowly discovering the solution. That takes firm discipline.

But believers refuse to be limited to either a sense of possibility or a methodological approach. They want their quick fix. They get downright specific and declarative about what exists and what will be discovered. They consider it to be self-evident, and they get extremely petulant when pressed to support their claims. They accuse anyone who questions them of harboring "negative energy." Even Buddhists (who I consider to be the least destructive of the major religions) get carried away with such ideas as: "We are pure energy. We are part of the universal "ground of being." We are pure thought, all matter is maya (illusion)." Et cetera.

Worse, having dreamed up a universe of pure consciousness, they populate it with personalities of their own choosing–usually archetypes from scriptures or that reflect traditional visions of human perfection or transcendence. These are metaphorical superheroes who are not subject to the puny laws of physics. In so doing they have embraced Platonic dualism, turning an elusive and invisible daydream into a reality they consider to be more concrete than the world in which they live. All mystical persuasions ultimately fall back on the inability to disprove this alternate reality, and the impenetrability of personal experience and subjective consciousness.

But back to our original subject: the painstaking work it took just to make meaningful sense out of something as simple as radio waves. (And radio’s a walk in the park compared to the "ground of being.") There were many interim steps. Anyone who might have imagined the concept of radio in the middle ages remained a dreamer so long as they lacked a detailed understanding of electromagnetism. My favorite example is of course Leonardo da Vinci, who designed workable concepts for airplanes 500 years before they were ever built. Da Vinci was on the right track, but his designs were impractical because they lacked sufficient propulsive power. Da Vinci knew he was a visionary. Instead of purveying vague notions, he charted a path to the future–one that would remain unrealized until long after his death. It took centuries of scientific discipline to finish what he started.

Dreams without discipline lead nowhere, sap the dreamer’s energy, and confuse others. Dreams with discipline lead to steady material progress and vastly increased awareness.

Practical steps toward the invention of radio began long before the middle ages with Thales of Miletos initial scientific discussion of magnetism around 600 BCE. He also discovered static electricity by rubbing amber. It would be nearly 2,500 years before the true nature of the actual link between electricity and magnetism was discovered. It took more than a half-dozen separate discoveries or developments to bring radio from a concept to a useful and ubiquitous technology:

1. Electricity
2. Magnetism
3. Calculus and differential equations
4. Physics of electromagnetic wave propagation–simply put: that electric and magnetic fields propagate by inducing each other and travel in 2 separate planes separated by 90 degrees.
5. The precise analysis of #5 through Maxwell’s Equations
6. Materials science to develop metals needed to construct large radio towers such as the one pictured above.
7. Development of high-power amplifiers, first using vacuum tubes, then solid state components.

These steps made radio possible. But entirely other steps were needed to make it commercially practical.

1. Wired telegraphy.
2. Wired telephony.
3. Wireless telegraphy.
4. Radio.

This admittedly pedantic discussion has a point: Hindsight is 20-20. And since most of the 2,500 year development cycle for radio took place before we were born, there are few people alive today who remember the days before radio was a fact of life. So there is little direct experience for the incredibly lengthy and detailed process of discovery which led to its use.

So the next time you hear someone use the radio wave argument, remind them of this process. In the middle ages, only a charlatan could have claimed any knowledge of radio. People may have imagined it conceptually, but it would have been about as useful for communication as Da Vinci’s airplane drawings circa the late 1400s were for practical flight. Which is to say, totally and completely useless. His unsuccessful flight test on January 3, 1496 underscored this point.

We should be highly suspect when people claim that science will ultimately "catch-up" to spirituality by validating new-age or Buddhist concepts like "non-locality" or consciousness as "the ground of being" or the spirit world as the origin of the material world. Such claims should be scoffed at and ignored unless and until the phenomena in question can be subject to detailed scrutiny. We should consider these claims as lunatic as some town crier in medieval times trying to sell us airtime on an imaginary radio network.

Here’s a challenge to the know-it-all new-agers who claim "science doesn’t know everything" as they babble about such lofty subjects such as quantum uncertainty and wave-particle duality: If you want to be taken seriously, start by learning to derive Maxwell’s equations. Then we’ll talk.

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Classroom Evolution Kids Can Watch

Evolution has taken another step away from being dismissed as “a theory” in the classroom, thanks to a new paper published this week in the online open-access journal PLoS Biology. The research article, by Brian Paegel and Gerald Joyce of The Scripps Research Institute, California, documents the automation of evolution: they have produced a computer-controlled system that can drive the evolution of improved RNA enzymes—biological catalysts—without human input. In the future, this “evolution-machine” could feature in the classroom as well as the lab, allowing students to watch evolution happen in their biology lessons.

The evolution of molecules via scientific experiment is not new. The first RNA enzymes to be “evolved” in the lab were generated in the 1990s. But what is exciting about this work is that the process has been made automatic. Thus evolution is directed by a machine without requiring human intervention-other then providing the initial ingredients and switching the machine on. 

As all students of Darwin know, evolution occurs when there is variation in a population; where some variants confer a survival or reproductive advantage to the individual, and where the basis for this advantage can be inherited. Finally, there must be a selection pressure—a reason that not all animals can survive or reproduce—such as a limited supply of food or a predator that must be avoided. These are the principles that the Paegel/Joyce system uses. The system begins with a population of RNA enzymes, which are the individuals that will evolve, and these enzymes vary slightly from each other. The enzymes are challenged to catalyse a reaction, and those that do catalyse it bind a “promoter” sequence to themselves in the process. Other enzymes in the machine (which act like part of the machine, rather than part of the experiment) cause any RNA enzyme bound to a promoter to be reproduced; therefore, enzymes that are good at reacting with the substrate become more numerous. This is analogous to those animals that are most successful being able to reproduce, both of which lead to the advantageous variation becoming more common.

It’s kind of hard to dismiss evolution as a "theory" when it’s happening right in front of your eyes.

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Recently I was called out by Elisheva Hannah Levin, a hypocritical homeschooling mom (supposedly a degreed Biologist). Levin balked at my stance (previous article) in favor of some form of regulation of home school science curricula. Like Dawkins and many others, I consider the teaching of blatantly false creation stories to children in the guise of science to be a particularly pernicious form of child abuse. It should be banned. I responded to Levin by telling her (previous article) to stop supporting parents lying to their kids.

I’ve shied away in the last couple of years from engaging in drawn out comment or blog wars. They usually turn into a dialog of the deaf. But since I’ve heard from so many people lately who feel complacent about the lies being taught to children, I thought it was a cause worth my effort. For my trouble, Levin (who runs a blog called Ragamuffin Studies) has labeled me a fascist and a totalitarian. She conflates my pro-science stance with Nazism and Communism, and accuses me of supporting policies I actually find completely abhorrent. Her flailing intellectual confusion and straw-man attacks would be funny if she wasn’t so serious, and if she hadn’t so thoroughly drunk her own Kool-Aid.

I’m also now banned from commenting on her blog. Nowhere was I abusive, nor did I use foul language, nor did I engage in the kind of ad hominem attacks she leveled at me–disparaging me in her initial post as "The Anointed," then later mocking me as the "Black Sun Messiah." I pointed out that it was inconsistent for her to be a scientist, yet not see the harm in lying to children about scientific questions. I wondered if she wouldn’t be in favor of some kind of objective standards. She responded with an unqualified "no." I asked if there was anything parents shouldn’t be able to say to their kids–like for example denying the Holocaust. She refused to answer the question, instead launching into a long-winded diatribe about how what I’m proposing (standards for science curricula) is just like what happened in Nazi Germany! No, I’m not kidding. Godwin’s law aside, here’s the whole thing:

The Holocaust denial question is not a good question. It requires almost no reflection on my part. The asker assumes that it was because people could speak freely in their own homes that Hitler was able to murder millions of people. That assumption is completely wrong. No, it was because it was illegal for anyone in Germany to teach anything or speak anything that was not "Party approved" that the Shoah happened. Everyone who disagreed understood that they would be sent to camps and killed if they spoke out on behalf of the Jews. Interestingly enough, it was a small number of religious Christians, mostly Protestant, the people that you disdain, who were the most likely to risk their own lives to save the lives of Jews.

It is precisely because of the Shoah that I will continue to defend the freedom of people who disagree with me to do so.

Clearly, you need to do a bit more critcal analysis of history. Maybe some homeschoolers could tutor you in critical thinking about this. My homeschooled fourteen year old saw through your argument immediately. He says: It was Fascist government of Germany that suspended the rights of its citizens, confiscated literature, and outlawed the teaching of religion by parents to children. In fact, they removed all German kids from parental influence through the Nazi Youth Movement and through fear and intimidation by instructing children to inform on their parents. The Nazis did all these same things that you wish to perpetrate against religious people in this country.

Talk about a straw-man, this is a 75-foot-tall bamboo-man. I tried to respond, but the following comment was blocked and deleted. So much for supporting the rights of those who disagree with you, right Elisheva?

So apparently you’re conceding that it’s OK for people to teach their kids that the Holocaust never happened?

I just want to make sure I have that correct. Your slurs on my character are just a fancy grown-up version of schoolyard name-calling. As far as the rest goes? You’re so caught up in the concept of your opinion vs. other people’s opinion that you seem to have totally lost the concept of objective truth and empirical evidence. For a scientist with advanced degrees, your blatant disregard for the importance of objective facts is both frightening and pathetic.

It gets even worse. Earlier, I accused her of "whining about totalitarianism" because her hysterical paragraph about the Hitler youth movement was an overreaction to what I was proposing–objective science standards. Admittedly, I might have muddied the waters a little by talking about poll testing and objective government (previous article), an alternative to laissez-faire democracy I’ve been considering as a thought experiment for many years. But hey, it was the comments section, and I thought I was having an intellectual discussion–sue me.

I was totally unprepared for the utter preposterousness and laughable excess of her next post. She named it for a line from one of my favorite songs–Heresy by Rush–All Those Wasted Years. Levin is so off-base and ignorant of my position on human freedom that she had the audacity to throw a Neil Peart song at me. Hah! Not only do I know every word of that song by heart–Peart is one of my intellectual heroes–but he’s actually taken a position on this very issue in the first line of Armor and Sword.

The snakes and arrows a child is heir to
Are enough to leave a thousand cuts
We build our defenses, a place of safety
And leave the darker places unexplored

Peart is clearly talking about religious indoctrination here. He specifically mentioned Dawkins position on religious child abuse in an article in the Globe and Mail from April 28, 2007.

"All of these well-armed religions start with children," Peart explains, mentioning Richard Dawkins’ bestselling book The God Delusion. "A Christian child, a Muslim child - there’s no such thing. They’re made that way by their parents….Faithless was born out of the same reflection..Faith, for some people, can be a consolation, an answer to the big questions or solace when they’re feeling hurt and lonely. It’s a kind of armour. But bad faith, that’s a kind of sword."

So, Elisheva, it pays to know Peart’s position if you’re going to quote him.

But this illustrates the larger problem with Levin’s thinking: she’s a relativist. She doesn’t care about the truth of parents’ statements, just that they be allowed to make them at any cost. As I’m fond of repeating, "relativism is the ocean in which all bad arguments swim." I’m not going to digress into all the implications of that here. (Go read the Wikipedia article on the subject). But I will say that for objectivity or science to have any meaning, our observations must be followed with appropriate action. If we use our senses and the scientific method to discover fundamental truths, we must incorporate them into our thinking and act on them with conviction. That includes politically. Levin seems to disagree. Though ostensibly a working scientist, she thinks we can just ignore that evolution is both a fact and a theory and allow people to go about their lives and beliefs as they would if it had not been discovered. Something just doesn’t make sense.

Levin is correct that in an ideal society, everyone should have unfettered freedom of expression. I would heartily agree with the statement often attributed to Voltaire "I may disagree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it." But if I may go out on a limb, I will surmise that he was talking about political speech or reasoned discourse between equals–not false indoctrination of children.

Most people already consider children to be so precious and in need of protection that a separate set of rules apply. They are not our equals, nor are they capable of exercising full intellectual rights we claim in a free society. They just aren’t up to the task. They need special treatment because of their vulnerability and trust of authority figures. So parents have a responsibility to find and convey the best information available, which should reflect the consensus of the best minds of the day. We guard children’s bodies with laws against sexual exploitation–I’m simply saying let’s defend their minds as well.

Cynical creationist "belief tanks" such as Answers in Genesis and the Discovery Institute know they have lost the battle on the facts. They have also repeatedly lost in court (most recently in Dover, Pennsylvania). Their devious agendas are unchecked by the so-called morality of the religions they claim to represent. And their resulting intellectual dishonesty reduces them to essentially lobbying organizations–cadres of Machiavellian political strategists. So they rely on home schooling dupes like Levin to build a self-perpetuating support network. They count on such electronic echo-chambers of self-righteousness (bolstered by the red-herring of "free speech") to keep their nonsense being drilled into young minds.

Like child pornography or nuclear weapons plans, there are things we must ban no matter how free we wish our society could be. As a clear and present danger to our future, creationist propaganda materials fall squarely into that category.

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After posting about keeping all gods off money (previous article), I was starting to wonder what would be on the ideal currency. I was thinking it should be fun, pleasing to the eye, and totally offensive to both modern prudes and medievally inclined spirit-worshipers. Then I got these gorgeous designs forwarded in an email.

Voila!

It’s a pretty good litmus test for sanity, I think. What offends us more, gods and dead presidents, or beauty and life-giving breasts? Think of what kind of a better world it would have to be if we were to "embrace" this currency. Quoting the email:

Muslim terrorists have to kill themselves if they so much as glance at a picture of a naked woman–much less fondle one! Those Canadians always find the solution. Must be the pure water up there in the North.

Thanks, Canada!

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I ran across this $20 bill recently–no, this was not my handiwork.

But I couldn’t agree more! Hells yeah. Anyone know where to buy this stamp?

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Three simple words. "No, they don’t."

A few weeks ago, I was having a conversation with a former CUT member who I hadn’t spoken to in about 15 years. We talked for about an hour, and as inevitably happens in these conversations, the discussion turned to belief, specifically my beliefs. I calmly explained to her that I tried not to have any beliefs at all, and only paid attention to or respected what was supported by the evidence. She practically snorted, "Well, everyone believes in something."

I tried to explain what I meant: That I systematically discounted and ignored anything that was not empirically supportable. Still she insisted that was a belief.

Usually at this point, I direct people to read my article Atheist Metaphysics and Religious Equivocation. In it, I explain how using the word "belief" in multiple contexts (to describe belief without evidence, belief in spite of evidence, or belief based on evidence) as if they were the same thing is equivocation. It’s like saying "day" actually also means "night" because a day has 24 hours. Technically, it’s true, but you have to qualify it, and make the distinction, explaining that when you say "day" you mean the entire rotation of the earth and not just "day" the time when it’s light. Deliberately confusing the two in conversation would be either woefully imprecise or downright mendacious. But that’s just what gets done every day with concepts involving "belief."

This discussion has been done to death in skeptical circles. Everyone who bothers to follow even the basics of critical thought is already aware of this potential for linguistic legerdemain. But it bears reiteration because as it turns out, this tactic only seems to be gaining strength in the popular press. It’s pretty evident many people find their hold on reality to be tenuous at best. They walk around strongly influenced by the latest thing they’ve heard or read. They mindlessly forward every ridiculous chain email about 9/11 conspiracies, numerology, gas boycotts, electronic "sensitivity" causing migraines (aggravated of course by ubiquitous 802.11 WiFi), without bothering to check snopes.com or even asking themselves if it makes any sense. They also fail to understand that bad information crowds out good, that erroneous beliefs prevent true understanding and make the world a worse place to live. But that is of small consequence to the believer mentality. They have convinced themselves that not only are beliefs not harmful–they are necessary and beneficial. Such people are so driven by their beliefs, and more specifically fears, they can’t be bothered to run a reality check. They really do inhabit Carl Sagan’s "Demon Haunted World." Their emotional response is so strong, they have a vested interest in being riled up, and riling other people up in turn. For them, reality is just a party pooper.

But it’s part of a larger problem: People who are used to operating on beliefs can’t imagine living without them. They gain an emotional reward and a sense of narcissistic control by imagining that their opinions actually mean something. They feel something, and it is SO. They’ve essentially made themselves non-accountable for responding to anything going on outside themselves. This works OK until physical reality intervenes: "Gee, a concrete block just landed on my foot. I don’t believe it." But they still have to go to the hospital. Amazingly, such a person might still cling to their other "less concrete" beliefs even though their brush with reality has left them severely injured. They rationalize that "maybe their angels were on strike" and left them vulnerable. Anything but take simple responsibility for failing to get out of the way of the physical hazard.

It sounds mean to mock someone who’s been injured. But far worse than a severed foot is severance from knowledge. How many people have lost that tether? How many people live in a vast swirling sea of "I don’t fucking know?" Flailing blindly, they grasp onto any flotsam or jetsam, whether or not it’s carrying them further from shore. Rather than saying "Hey, over here, you’ve got to let go of the driftwood and grab the life preserver!" some people would rather we just let them all be swept out to sea.

For believers, any conveyance of information–no matter how factual or dispassionate–is viewed through a religious lens. They simply can’t imagine a life without beliefs. Every premise is weighed on its emotional value. Specifically, how does it impact the maintenance of their belief system? Is it friendly to how I want the world to be? I believe it. Is it threatening? It’s not true. They see conflicting information in terms of a conversion narrative. Because conversion is how they latched onto their current views, and conversion is the only way they would consider changing them. The possibility of de-conversion and the recognition of the tyranny of belief (previous article) is as unfamiliar as it is frightening.

Consider the following recent headlines:

• Apostles of Atheism
• Is Atheism Just a Bundle of Sentiments?
• Gospel of Godlessness
• Student Club Aims to Proselytize Atheism
• Atheism as a Stealth Religion

So here we are back at square one. We have blatant and deliberate equivocation trumpeted in headlines. Like my earlier example of including "night" as an equivocated definition of "day," the authors of these headlines fail to distinguish between types of information. Every one of these articles casts skepticism, the scientific enterprise and those who value rigor in the same mold as believers. I always chuckle at this. Because if the believer mentality is so great, why use words like "apostle" (an ardent promoter), "gospel" (a revered text), "sentiments" (beliefs) as pejoratives about atheism? Aren’t believers accusing atheists of doing exactly what they proudly do? Doesn’t that just boggle the mind? "The Apostle Paul was great, but we should all run from the Apostles of Atheism." Really?

Either an apostle is a good thing or it’s not. I would say that depends highly on what the ‘apostle’ is promoting. Content, baby. Substance over style. But this very construction exposes the rotten core of belief. Believers know damn well that conversion depends not on the truth value of what the apostle is saying, but the emotional content. They only ask, "Is the apostle sincere and convincing? Is he on fire for his message?" Never "Is the apostle right?"–unless it’s an ‘apostle’ of atheism. It’s a category error. They know that describing any message in terms of a "gospel" (God’s spell) removes it from analysis. It must simply be accepted. Unless it’s scientific or skeptical. As they retreat to this contradictory and intellectually rotten core, (what an awful and frightening place to live) believers know they couldn’t be in a weaker position. Their world view literally collapses in on itself as it’s challenged from literally every corner. So they project the abject weakness of their very own beliefs out onto every area of human knowledge they find to be threatening or inconvenient.

It is a cowardly and futile enterprise. Yet seemingly more popular than ever.

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