The Templeton Foundation’s Big Bad (Really Bad) Questions

If you’re listening to the voices—
Those that no one else can hear,
Just a disembodied speaker
When no mortal soul is near—
If you’re listening to the voices
And you think they’re in your head,
There’s a Ph.D. with Templeton
Who thinks it’s God, instead.

If you’re listening to the voices
And you know that you’re alone
You could claim “hallucination”—
Such phenomena are known—
Or a slight misapplication,
An heuristic acting odd;
Or, it’s rational, says Templeton,
To think it could be God

These heuristics often help us;
They’re some helpful rules of thumb
We ignore them at our peril,
So denying God is dumb.
Hearing voices in the static
Seeing faces in a cloud
Why, of all the explanations,
“Cos it’s true!” is not allowed?

If you’re listening to the voices
And you think it’s just your mind
There’s another explanation
That we’d like to help you find:
If you want to say you’re hearing God
But logic says you can’t…
Call the Templeton Foundation
And they’ll offer you a grant

Sometimes I hate my aggregator. It’s one thing when I see ignorant comments in comment sections; it’s quite another when people who should know better are spouting ignorant nonsense; it is still worse when this spouting ignorant nonsense is precisely why somebody is giving them money.

So, yeah, the Templeton Foundation is behind “Big Questions Online“; the current Big Question is “Is Atheism Irrational?”, by Kelly J. Clark. It begins with a misunderstanding of the nature of atheism (which, as you know, is a privative category), conflating it with positive belief. It proceeds with an exploration of “belief in God” (rather than “belief in a god”), as if the perceptual heuristics he speaks of are all leading perceivers to observe the same thing, when in fact the people who claim to be listening to God disagree tremendously. He suggests at one point that atheists don’t see God because we, like autistics, have a cognitive deficit with regard to those heuristics:

If there is a God, one who occasionally speaks to people, then in at least some cases of unbelief, there may be a plausible scientific explanation. Autistic individuals lack, to varying degrees, the ability to impute thoughts, feelings, and desires to personal agents. This undergirds their lack of empathy, which hinders, to varying degrees, their ability to enter into normal interpersonal relationships. The loving parent may speak to them, reach out to them, and embrace them, but the autistic child may be incapable of recognizing and responding to them.

In short, some autistic individuals may be incapable of cognizing a personal God (if there is a God): some are as constitutionally incapable of recognizing a personal God as they are of recognizing a friend.

Recent studies demonstrate a correlation between atheism and autism—one is vastly more likely to be an atheist or agnostic if one is autistic. The higher up one is on the Autism Spectrum, the more likely one is to be an atheist.

(mind you, this does not explain those of us who came to our atheism after decades as believers) (also, I am really doing my best, but now failing, to not mention the correlations between schizophrenia and religious ideation)

And now, the crux:

According to a culturally influential narrative, religious beliefs are irrational because they are caused by unreliable cognitive mechanisms, whereas atheism is rational because it is the product of rational reflection on true beliefs. We have debunked a portion of the narrative: atheism, at least in some cases, is correlated with and mediated by a cognitive deficit.

Some atheism is the product of rational reflection. It’s not at all a requirement, though. Some disbelief in gods (depending on the gods) is shared with religious believers (I’m fairly certain Clark shares my disbelief in Thor). Some is an accident of birth. Some comes from an understanding of physics, or biology, or psychology–but only of one science, and not the others, or perhaps of all. There simply is no single path to atheism, so Clark’s “culturally influential narrative” is a straw man.

Yes, some people have personal experiences that are very moving, and in the absence of a complete understanding of the cultural, biological, and psychological factors involved, those people might rationally decide that their experience is evidence of a god. It would be, too, in precisely the same manner as the face in the clouds is evidence of a man in the sky, or that a tornado is evidence of an angry storm-entity.

But we do know about these cultural, biological, and psychological factors. It is not that the individual following personal experience is irrational, it is rather that he or she is missing the parts of the puzzle that would allow a natural explanation. Given their available evidence, they are quite reasonably arriving at a conclusion that just happens to be wrong when more evidence is brought to bear.

And while individual atheists may be rational, irrational, reasonable, or unreasonable, atheism itself, as a privative, is “none of the above”. This “Big Question”, strangely enough, has a very simple answer: “Mu“.

Which Team Is God’s Team?

You can hear the pundits prattle
Over Denver and Seattle
As they set off to do battle
In the Super Bowl today

And I’m left a bit befuddled
Cos the logic’s gotten muddled—
As I see the players huddled
Not for football, but to pray

Seems a strange thing in this setting,
But I think what I’m forgetting
Is, the Super Bowl means betting
So they’re working on the odds

We can’t tell at the beginning
Which team’s virtuous, which sinning,
But they’ll show us all, by winning,
So we’ll know which team is God’s!

As we approach game time, and every conceivable bit of trivia has been milked for its own 2-hour sports-TV retrospective, one of the variables examined is the role religion plays among the players. Yesterday’s NJ.com article “Super Bowl, 2014: Religion runs deep for many NFL players and teams” examines the phenomenon:

Each Friday afternoon, about 10 players from the Seattle Seahawks gather around Karl Payne in a room deep inside the team’s headquarters in Renton, Wash. They come carrying Bibles, notebooks and pens, dressed in their team-issued blue-and-gray sweatpants and T-shirts for an hourlong Bible study.

Payne might lead a discussion on the Book of James, outlining lessons about controlling what you say, how the price of your soul is the same as the next man’s and how challenges can either bury people or spring them to success. Or he might open a discussion, inviting the men to share their thoughts and talk about the issues they are confronting.

I have heard fairly often about the strong role of religion in sports–from controversy over prayers before games at public high schools, to a recent article on a very religious college coach in Connecticut, to Tim Tebow–but it seems to me a subject with more popular than scientific writing. The above quote, for instance, describes what the article calls a team where, in particular, several players are driven by their religion. But in a nation of 80+% Christians, the 10-player bible study group represents under 20% of the 53-player roster. Naturally, more players are Christian than attend the study group, but is having a couple handfuls of very devout players unexpected? Or simply reflective of the population from which players are drawn?

Clearly, not all NFL players are Christian, or even religious. Tebow’s requests for others to join him in prayer have not always been welcome, for instance. I have not been able to find, in any journals of sport, psychology, & religion, any information as to actual numbers–are professional (american) football players any more religious than anyone else? (Vyse reports that superstition is more prevalent among better athletes–more chances to pair success with a superstitious behavior, so no surprise there–but there are good reasons to suspect that athletic superstitions are quite different from institutionalized superstition.)

I have written before about this silliness. At least, I always assumed it was silliness to think that praying about football would matter–especially when fans and players on opposite sides desire opposite outcomes–but no less than William Lane Craig assures us that nothing is too trivial for God:

I think the overriding thing I want to say is God’s providence rules all of life, even down to the smallest details. Nothing happens without either God’s direct will or at least his permission of that event. That includes every fumble, every catch, every run. All of these things are in the providence of God, and therefore, we should not think that these things are a matter of indifference. These are of importance to God as well even though they seem trivial.

And I don’t want to hear about praying for everybody to be safe and uninjured, and to do their best. If you wanted them safe and uninjured, enough to do more than to pay lip service, there are real world things that can be done. As is, the very hits likely to be cheered the most also happen to be the ones most likely to cause brain injury.

Which cannot be treated with prayer.

Rendering Unto Caesar

A little-known sacrament, hidden from view,
But it’s there if you happen to search…
Is the sacred ability—really, God’s right—
For a renter to park at a church.

The law is the law, and the rule is the rule,
Though enforcement has been, well, relaxed…
For over a decade, they’ve taken in money
But this year, their profits are… taxed!

University parking is scarce as can be;
The demand far outstrips the supply
Local businesses often will lease out some spots—
If they’re taxed, they don’t often ask why.

But churches are used to more delicate treatment
They’re not just a business, their business is God’s
And churches, of course, enjoy tax-exempt status—
It’s not like the faithful are frauds!

The church provides parking, on tax-exempt land,
That sits empty the rest of the week
So it’s “render to Caesar”, and time to pay up,
The end of their non-paying streak

They’re grudgingly paying their taxes this year;
The power of Christ can’t compel—
I still have a question they don’t want to hear:
Can we sue for back taxes as well?

Oh, the little things that show up in my aggregator! A couple of churches had been renting out parking spaces in a university town, and are shocked–shocked, I tell you–to receive a tax bill for their commercial and non-religious enterprise.

Two churches in downtown Durham that rent parking spaces to students and other motorists received an unpleasant surprise last year: A property tax bill.

Leaders of St. George’s Episcopal Church and Community Church of Durham say they’ve leased parking spaces for more than a decade without issue. Both plan to challenge the $2,737 assessment.

Ten years of windfall profits! If they didn’t expect to be taxed, they couldn’t have been making much money from them–as churches, this was probably very nearly a charity, right?

Durham Tax Assessor Jim Rice discovered last year the churches were not being taxed for the parking leases. At the time, he said, each church leased 30 spaces for $600 each.

Rice set the value of each church parking lot at $90,000. Based on that figure, the churches owed $2,737 for the 2013 tax year. Both have paid the tax bills.

“For whatever reason, they were never assessed in the past,” Rice said of the church lots. “There is no reason the taxes should not have been assessed.”

Other non-profits in town are taxed when they profit from leasing property–including another church that leases office space. No persecution here, just a case of presumed privilege, and an assumption that the rules don’t apply.

Frankly, ten years worth of back taxes would likely help the town… I doubt very much that they will go after the money, though. Even if it is legal, it will be viewed as attacking churches.

This Machine

Roots are neat things–they can intertwine in odd ways sometimes. I mentioned a couple of days ago that were it not for Pete Seeger, there would be no Digital Cuttlefish. Seeger’s influence, though, does not take just one direct path–Seeger influenced lots of people who (unintentionally, I assure you) shaped me in turn–Dylan, for instance, and Mojo Nixon, and Tom Waits, and Bruce Springsteen… sometimes you can see direct influences of these people in a verse I write (in such cases I usually try to apologize to Bob Dylan, for instance), and sometimes it is more subtle.

One such intermediate influence is Roy Zimmerman. He doesn’t know it, but we’ve met, a couple of times, and I have quite a few of his CD’s autographed by him (the others, not yet signed). His facility with wordplay is as inspiring as the ideas thus presented, which is saying something. Anyway, the video below was just sent out via his newsletter–if you aren’t already receiving it, click through to youtube and follow the link to subscribe (I’d link here, but I’m assuming he gets revenues through youtube as well, so give an artist some clicks)–and it is inspired by and dedicated to Pete Seeger. I’d explain the “this machine” reference, but Zimmerman does, and I don’t want to steal his thunder.

My own machine has no strings at all, but (I am reliably told) it is mightier than a sword.

All Gods Are Versions Of The One True God (Mine, Of Course)

There are thousands of gods, so the atheists claim
And they note that they all disagree;
But I’ve figured the source of their silly confusion—
And so, you can take it from me:

Some people once worshipped a handful of gods,
Like Athena, Poseidon, and Zeus
All manifestations of one, greater, God,
A reasonable mind might deduce.

When mortal perceptions, inherently flawed,
Attempt to perceive the divine
The gods that they see are distortions, of course,
Of the true God (and that one is mine).

How sad that the fact of our fallible minds
Is the cause of dissension and wars:
All gods are versions of my God, of course,
But no gods are versions of yours.

I remember my sister once (decades ago) saying “it doesn’t really matter what you believe, just that you believe. I didn’t get it then, but I do now. All gods are manifestations of the right one, which is my one. Of course, my one couldn’t possibly be a distortion of a different god, because reasons. Oh, yeah, because that’s how my god is actually defined. The sophisticated theology version of “because I said so.”

Pissing Off The Atheists

They took the crosses down, that used to stand at City Hall
The took the face of Jesus from its place there on the wall
They didn’t leave a single thing—they took them, one and all
So I’m hatching up a plan to make them pay!
You put a cross in your yard, and I’ll put a cross in mine
For every cross they’ve taken down, we’ll put up eight or nine!
They’ll be visible from everywhere, as proof of the divine!
And the atheist complainers said… “Ok.”

Clearly, that was insufficient, so we’ve got to do some more
We can airbrush the Last Supper on our walls, or on our door
We can proudly fly the Christian flag, and tell them what it’s for
Or explain it on a billboard or a sign
They say we’re not a Christian town—well, this will give them proof
We can paint a crucifixion scene on every Christian’s roof
We’ve been humble long enough; we can’t afford to be aloof
And the atheist complainers just said… “Fine.”

If the godless won’t get angry, then it feels like they have won,
Though we’ve crosses by the hundreds more than when we’d first begun
If it doesn’t bug the atheists, it isn’t any fun
Having crosses scattered all across the town
If we try to bug the atheists, and all they do is yawn
Once the crosses on the public lands were taken down and gone
And our crosses are a nuisance when we try to mow the lawn…
Well, screw it, then, I’m taking my one down.

So, over at The Blaze (don’t blame me!), they are reporting on that story from a couple of days ago about Stratton, Ohio, where the mayor took the solicitor’s advice and is removing the unconstitutional crosses, and relocating them to private yards where they are constitutionally protected. A perfect illustration of both the establishment and free exercise clauses of the first amendment. We (and they at The Blaze) do note that a number of citizens are upset at the reeling in of privilege, and that there is more than a bit of snark in noting that, in their new locations, the crosses will be more visible than the had previously been.

As if the visibility of the crosses has been the problem, rather than the unconstitutional locations of the crosses. And the commenters at The Blaze (who inspired today’s verse, and are hilarious) are certain that the FRFF (variously a communist, socialist, marxist, atheist, or muslim organization) will be terribly upset that the crosses are even more visible than before, and just you wait, the atheist/muslim/marxist/communist/socialist FRFF will soon begin phase two, where even privately displayed crosses are verboten. Because Christianity is under attack by atheists and muslims, communists, socialists, marxists, darwinists, southpaws and redheads. Even though majority rules and this is a Christian country and you atheists, muslims, communists, socialists, marxists, darwinists, southpaws and redheads had better never forget it!

Yes, the real goal of the FRFF (“I know I read it somewhere”) is that there be no more crosses anywhere, public or private.

Frankly, I want everyone who wants to, to have a cross up in their own yard. And I want them to feel free to raise one, or not raise one, or put up a crescent moon, or a star of David, or a flying spaghetti monster, or whatever, if they want to do so, and on their own property. Given that freedom, the unfettered ability to erect the symbol of your choice on your own property, then and only then would I honestly wish for everybody to realize that the world is a more beautiful place without all that clutter, and decide, each for themselves, not to put one up.

I don’t claim to speak for anyone else.

“We Assert That Images Of The Spiritual Leaders Of All Religions Should Be Deemed To Be Respectful”

So… if, by law, religious figures
Are deserving of respect
From the meditating Buddha
To the Manson, spittle-flecked,
From the image of Mohammed
To the memory of Jim Jones,
From Joseph Smith to Jesus Christ
To dusty relics’ bones
From the ancients on Olympus
To the modern Kanye West,
I’m required to respect them
Shall we put this to the test?
Say “there is no god but Allah”;
Aren’t you disrespecting Thor?
And if “Jesus is the only way”
That’s disrespect, once more—
If we see such disagreement
On what is—or not—divine
Can you force me to respect your views
Without respecting mine?
I won’t ask for your approval
Of the way I choose to live
(Which is fine, cos we both know it’s not
A thing that you would give)
I won’t ask you bow to other gods
I know you’ve got your own…
And in exchange, the thing I want,
Is left the fuck alone.
Your holy rules apply to you;
Their holy rules are theirs
You break each other’s holy rules
And no one really cares.
I have no god I worship, so
It’s really plain to see
Your holy rules apply to you…
They don’t apply to me.

(We all are bound by civic law,
And that is quite enough;
You want me to respect your god?
My one-word answer: tough.)

Context, and Cuttlecap tip to Ophelia.

Wait… A Town Is Going To Move Its Cross Without Going To Court?

Though the Christians could say “Batten
Down the hatches!” here in Stratton
They’ve decided unexpectedly to follow good advice:
“You’d do best to cut your losses
By distributing the crosses—
Maybe put them in some private yards; I’m sure they’d still look nice.”

Former Mayor, Fred Abdalla
Found removal hard to swallow:
“Move our crosses? For outsiders? We’ll do nothing of the sort!”
A solicitor-advisor
Whose opinion was the wiser
Said the crosses were illegal, and they’d surely lose in court

Current mayor, John (Fred’s brother)
Though they share, of course, a mother,
Seem to differ in opinion (and it’s John’s that wins the day)
Seems the town can’t be religious
‘less they want to get litigious
So the Stratton village crosses, now, are gonna go away.

So, yeah, the FFRF told the Village of Stratton, Ohio that some crosses displayed on public property were illegally placed, and warned that they would sue if they were not removed… and the village is, quite sensibly and unexpectedly, removing them. Mind you, they don’t want to, and a good number of locals would rather fight their relocation… but:

“I refused to remove them at first,” Mayor John Abdalla told The Herald-Star. “I have them for safekeeping. (The foundation) even raised hell about the manger scene at the front of the building.”
After speaking with the village solicitor, Abdalla decided the crosses were to be removed. But despite the removal, the crosses will now be given to private landowners to display on their property.
“At the regular council meeting at the council of the village of Stratton, council unanimously resolved to give the crosses that were taken off the building,” Stratton Village Solicitor Frank Bruzzese told WTOV-TV. “The result will be that (the crosses) will be on display actually more visible to the public than they used to be.”

A win-win! The FFRF will have no problem with crosses on private property, and the villages who love the crosses will get to have them all the more visible! Perfect, isn’t it? Well… not quite:

[Stratton Village Soliciter, Frank] Bruzzese stated that the atheist group has not produced anyone that was offended by the crosses.
Even though the crosses will still be displayed on private land, Abdalla is not happy about the situation.
“They don’t have the guts to come up and say, ‘It’s me that’s saying this,’” Abdall told WTOV. “Everything is anonymous.”

Cos if nobody is offended by you violating the constitution, then apparently it doesn’t count. Or worse, if you an intimidate people into not vocalizing their offense at your violation of the constitution, it doesn’t count.

It doesn’t help, though, that the former mayor and current sheriff (and the current mayor’s brother) wants to put up a fight:

But his brother, long time Stratton resident and former mayor, sheriff Fred Abdalla says they must stand up for themselves.

“We are not going to bow down and say oh well take the crosses down no well fight and let the fight begin,” sheriff Abdalla said.

And town residents ought to listen to the solicitor as well:

Some residents believe the village should be able to keep the crosses there.

Dan Carman of Hopedale says he does not understand the groups motives.

“You can be whatever religion you want. I don’t understand why you have to worry about satisfying anyone not being religious,” he said.

That’s right, Dan, you can be whatever religion you want. But your village cannot. It’s that simple.