Sometimes even I forget how many stupid things people still believe. When I debate religion with believers, I often use astrology as an example of something that is totally absurd but once was given credence by a huge number of people, to show that just because something is widely believed does not mean that it has any merit. One has to go beyond that and provide evidence. The idea that the configuration of planets and stars could have an effect on people’s daily lives is now considered so absurd that to publicly espouse it is to declare oneself to be primitive and superstitious. In the Dover trial on so-called intelligent design, the point where advocate Michael Behe was forced to concede that if their definition of science were to be accepted then astrology could be considered a science too was considered to be a low point for them, discrediting their carefully constructed case that intelligent design was a science.

Hence it always comes as a shock to me when I find that many people still take astrology seriously and determine both big and small decisions on the basis of it. It is to the great shame of my native country Sri Lanka that its political leaders always consult astrologers before making any major decisions, though for a few there were suspicions that they were not true believers and cooked the books (so to speak) by having astrologers provide answers that the leaders had already determined on a more rational basis. Astrology is highly malleable and open to wide interpretation and it is not hard to find an astrologer who will tell you what you want to hear. But the very fact that even these suspected skeptics felt the need to go through this charade of publicly avowing belief shows the power that this particular superstition has on the general public.

For example a new harbor is nearing completion at the southernmost tip of the island to serve as cargo container distribution center. This harbor is being built by Chinese engineers with aid from the Chinese government. A news report says that astrologers had given an ‘auspicious’ time for the opening of the harbor but it was 10 months ahead of the scheduled completion date. The opening went ahead anyway because what government would want to risk offending the stars and the planets?

Despite the Chinese Company in charge of this Hambantota project objecting to the holding of this ceremony ahead of the completion of the project, the water filling opening ceremony was carried out on the 15th of August owing to the fact that there is no suitable auspicious time (nekath time) in the days ahead for the President.
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Answering inquiries made by us, the Chinese Engineers engaged in the Hambantota port project stated the water filling ceremony was really scheduled to be launched about 10 months later.

As a result of this astrology-based stupidity, the engineers now have to work around the premature release of the water, adding to the cost and the time of the project.

For people who believe in astrology, the time of birth is of great importance because the alignment of the stars and planets at that moment supposedly determines the future of the child, even to the extent of predicting whom they will marry, their careers, health and prosperity, etc. So the exact time to the minute is noted when a baby is born so that astrologers have the most accurate information to work with it. (On a personal note, my older daughter was born in Sri Lanka and my younger daughter in the US – yes, we are the proud parents of an ‘anchor baby’! – and in both cases there were discreet requests from extended family members as to the time of birth. We of course deliberately did not bother to record this information and since we knew what the purpose of the request was, we refused to give out indications of even the rough time of day, thus foiling their plans to create astrological charts for them.)

Given my awareness of the influence of astrology at least on the Indian sub-continent, I should not have been surprised to read an article by Eric Bellman in the October 5, 2010 online edition of the Wall Street Journal that women in India are using astrology to determine the best time to have a baby and then requesting their doctors to perform c-sections at that time. This is raising serious health and ethical questions because there can be negative health consequences with artificially shifting the date of birth. As Bellman says, “Moving a birth up by even one week can lead to complications such as breathing problems in babies whose lungs have not fully developed. Mothers face increased risk of infection, blood loss and even death from the procedure, which delivers the baby through a surgical incision.” But apparently for the mothers who believe, “the large potential benefits of having a child blessed by the stars outweigh concern about potential complications from a caesarean.”

Although beliefs in astrology transcend any specific religion, there is no question that the irrational ways of thinking that religion encourages make people more susceptible to this kind of nonsense. I wonder if there are any atheists who take astrology seriously?

For a long time, scientists and historians and philosophers of science have struggled to try and figure out how we can know which theories of science are true and which are false. It is a very difficult problem, and my first book Quest for Truth: Scientific Progress and Religious Beliefs (2000) focused on this very question.

But Albert Mohler, president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, has found the solution!

Are science and Christianity friends? The answer to that is an emphatic yes, for any true science will be perfectly compatible with the truths we know by God’s revelation. But this science is not naturalistic, while modern science usually is. Too many evangelicals try to find middle ground, only to end up arguing for positions that combine theological surrender with scientific naïveté. [My italics]

Got that? We don’t need no stinkin’ evidence and reason and logic and math and all that high falutin’ stuff to determine which scientific theories are true. The ones that agree with what is in my particular holy book as interpreted by what my particular Magic Man whispers in my ear is what is true. Simple, isn’t it?

Of course, this is what the pope told Galileo a long time ago. If we had simply listened to the pope then, we could have stayed at the same level of scientific development as at that time. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?

The invaluable cartoon strip Jesus and Mo deserves to have the last word on this topic.

If you are ever going to publicly debate a religious person, I recommend that as part of your preparation you watch this 15-minute collection of clips of brutal Christopher Hitchens put-downs, referred to as ‘Hitchslaps’. The one he administers to someone defending circumcision (it begins at 11:50 and I think his victim is Harold Kushner) is a thing of beauty.

(via Machine Like Us.)

If there is one thing that the sex scandals in the Catholic Church should have taught us, it is that young boys should not be left unsupervised in the presence of clergy.

But now come reports that the Sri Lankan government, in another shameless attempt to pander to the majority Buddhist community, plans to have 2,600 boys as young as 10 years of age ordained next year as Buddhist monks to commemorate year 2600 according to the Buddhist calendar. This means that the boys will have their heads shaven, be put in robes, and made to live in temples with older monks.

People are protesting on many grounds, one of which is that the boys are too young to make such a drastic decision. The second is that there have long been strong rumors of sexual abuse in Buddhist temples in Sri Lanka, but it is a taboo subject that people are fearful to bring out in the open or investigate. Like with the Catholic Church for so long, the authorities have been hesitant to take the allegations seriously.

Poor parents often give up their children to become Buddhist monks because then they will have food and shelter and clothing and receive some sort of education. There is also apparently a bizarre belief that by ‘donating’ their children to the priesthood, the parents receive ‘merit’ that can be cashed in to get a better next life (Buddhists believe in reincarnation) or even gain nirvana, the ultimate goal. It is amazing how children are used as pawns in religious games.

It should come as no surprise that as a result of being conscripted, some Sri Lankan Buddhist priests become venal, showing little resemblance to the ideals preached by their founder Siddhartha Gautama.

A strange and sad story has surfaced. A person claiming to be Michael Behe’s son has said that he has rejected his family’s Catholic faith and become an atheist. Those who have been following the ‘intelligent design’ movement will be familiar with Behe. He is the author of Darwin’s Black Box, the book that became the Bible of that movement with its claims that things like the bacterial flagellum and the blood clotting mechanism were conclusive evidence of the existence of a supernatural designer.
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Jerry Coyne has a good article in today’s edition of USA Today with the above title.

Tomorrow the US Supreme Court will hear the case as to whether the Westboro Baptist Church has the right to conduct their anti-gay protests at funerals.

I think it is misguided to try and use the law to suppress the Westboro group because not only it does infringe on their free-speech rights, it also gives them the kind of publicity they crave and allows them to act as First Amendment defenders.

What should be done is to organize flamboyant counter-demonstrations, the way that the people at Comic Con did in July of this year or as Michael Moore did back in 1999 in his TV show The Awful Truth.

Or as Red State Update did.

Ridicule and humor is the best weapon against hateful speech. We should laugh them out of business.

It must be really frustrating to be a thinking person who believes in god because he doesn’t help you in the least. Since god does not seem to actually do anything that you can point to as incontrovertible evidence of his existence, believers have to look in obscure corners of knowledge, as was the case with so-called intelligent design. God seems like this passive-aggressive personality who wants you to believe unquestioningly in his existence and worship him but doesn’t give you anything in return. As a result, believers have to confront the question of why god is so elusive.

A rabbi by the name of Alan Lurie has taken up the challenge and written an essay titled “Why Does God Hide?” His essay lays out the problem clearly enough:

This notion, that God’s presence is hidden, is a significant dilemma for many, and for some is clear proof that God does not exist. Why, one asks, would the creator of the Universe be so difficult to spot? Surely if such a creator exists, there would be obvious evidence. And why wouldn’t this creator, in order to silence disbelievers and recruit more faithful, simply appear on the White House lawn, announce his presence, and miraculously end all war, hunger, and disease? For some, this hidden presence is evidence that even if a creator deity does exist, such a being is not worth worshiping. What kind of a god, who religious people say loves us, would stand by as horrible atrocities happen, and silently allow us to suffer? Such a god is either not all-powerful, not all-knowing, or certainly not completely benevolent. Many site [sic] the Holocaust, for example, as clear proof of God’s impotence or indifference.

Why yes, rabbi, these are excellent points and exactly what we atheists say. But please go on.
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On Tuesday 9:00am-10:00 am, I will be on our local NPR affiliate WCPN 90.3 on their Sound of Ideas program to discuss the results of the latest Pew survey on the state of religious knowledge, in which atheists/agnostics came out as the best informed.

You can listen live or to a podcast after the show.

[Update: This show has been pre-empted and will be re-scheduled.]

Blog reader Norm sent me this link to something called “The first annual conference on geocentrism” to be held in South Bend, Indiana near the University of Notre Dame. It has the title Galileo Was Wrong: The Church Was Right.

My first reaction was that this was an Onion-type spoof but it seems to be legit.

Of course, the choice of any point in space to be the origin of the frame of reference is purely arbitrary. Which frame one chooses depends on one’s purpose. For purely practical purposes such as navigation, choosing the Earth to be at rest makes sense. The heliocentric model is the best choice for describing the motions of the planets, and the center of a galaxy is most convenient to describe the motions of stars in the galaxy.

The church was wrong in insisting that the geocentric model was the only choice and it was Galileo’s assertion that there were alternatives to it that disturbed them. All this has been well known for some time and so the point of this conference completely mystifies me. Are the organizers really suggesting that there is only one allowed frame of reference and that its origin is at the Earth?