Boobquake vs. Feminism

For those who hadn’t heard, some idiot Muslim cleric said the other day that “women who do not dress modestly” cause earthquakes. So Jen McCreight, aka Blag Hag decided to test this proposition scientifically. This became known as Boobquake. There was much tittering on the intertubes, and it quickly became more popular than any of the myriad thoughtful posts she’d written up til then.

But it also apparently raised the ire of feminists, on the grounds that encouraging women to show cleavage promotes the objectification of women. Okay, I can see that as being a valid concern.

Now, I like to think of myself as a feminist, in the sense of someone who thinks women should be equal to men in most situations. So of course I’m opposed to seeing women as nothing more than sex objects.

However, there’s a difference between not being merely a sex object; and not being a sex object at all. I have friends who are fantastic cooks, and I’d be a fool to turn down a dinner invitation from them. But that doesn’t mean they’re merely cooks, that they aren’t fully-rounded people. And it certainly doesn’t mean that I can just expect them to cook for me whenever I want, or that if I walk by when they’re cooking, that it’s somehow acceptable or even expected that I’ll be so overcome with hunger that I’ll be unable to resist stealing their lunch.

Having said this, I don’t deny that sexism is still a problem in the US (where, after all, “she was asking for it, dressed the way she was” is still a credible excuse for rape in some circles). But we’re still light years ahead from the sort of society where women are expected to be covered head to toe lest the sight of an unclad earlobe send a man into an involuntary libidinous frenzy or, worse yet, challenge his assumed superiority in all things, including control of women’s bodies. And that alone makes Boobquake a worthwhile poke in the eye to more repressive societies.

But I’m not going to tell anyone to participate in Boobquake who doesn’t want to. That’s an individual decision. But in the final analysis, the whole thing is a bit of fun, albeit with a serious underlying message. And if you can’t have fun with sex, you probably have other problems.

The Essence of Crackers

For some reason, I’ve been thinking recently about the eucharist. Specifically, how a piece of flavorless bread can be transformed into a piece of Jesus while still looking and tasting like a flavorless piece of bread. I’d like to think that this is because I try to be fair to theists, but it might also be that I have too much free time.

The best analogy I could come up with was when I bought my house: you could have watched it the whole time I was at the signing ceremony, with electron microscopes and whatnot, and you wouldn’t have seen the moment when “some guy’s house” became “my house”.

What happened, of course, is that by virtue of me signing the paperwork, the rules for interacting with that house changed. The seller and I — and the rest of society — have agreed that once the paperwork is signed, I am allowed to come and go as I please, knock down walls, and take furnishings out to the dump, things that would have been considered breaking and entering, vandalism, and theft before the signature.

It seemed reasonable to conclude that something similar goes on at mass: once the bread has been blessed by the priest, the rules for interacting with it change. By mutual agreement, the congregation treats the wafers like Jesus Pieces.

Then I realized that that’s just a long-winded way of saying that it’s symbolic, and all the Catholics who raised a fuss over Crackergate were quite adamant that that wasn’t the case.

Here’s what the Catholic Encyclopedia has to say (or at least part of it, since the Catholic Encyclopedia can never give a plain and simple answer to anything):

The study of the first problem, viz. whether or not the accidents of bread and wine continue their existence without their proper substance, must be based upon the clearly established truth of Transubstantiation, in consequence of which the entire substance of the bread and the entire substance of the wine are converted respectively into the Body and Blood of Christ in such a way that “only the appearances of bread and wine remain” (Council of Trent, Sess. XIII, can. ii: manentibus dumtaxat speciebus panis et vini).

As I understand it, this means that everything has an essence that makes it what it is. A dog remains a dog even if it loses a leg; an albino ape is still an ape; if you break the arm off of a statue, it remains a statue. What happens at mass is the reverse: instead of the thing changing and the essence remaining the same, the thing remains the same, but its essence, its what-it-is-ness, changes.

Which is all well and good, except that it’s also bullshit.

If you keep breaking pieces off of a marble statue, at some point it stops being a statue and becomes gravel. If you keep changing pieces in a Lego house, it can become a Lego spaceship. If you eat a hunk of cow muscle, its atoms get rearranged and become human liver and bone, as well as a pile of feces. Which brings us neatly back to theology.

The notion that a communion wafer has an essential what-it-is-ness separate from the atoms that constitute it and the way they’re arranged is of a piece with belief in souls that survive the death of the body, and the “it’s still just a fruit fly” argument against evolution. It may look on the surface as though things have a magical essence, but that’s an illusion. Just because we see it, doesn’t mean it’s there. In fact, our economy is based in large part on the notion that things can change from one thing to another — that pile of rocks can become a pile of iron which can become a Ford Taurus; that a fistful of acorns can become a dining table.

The closest thing I can think of to essentialism that isn’t bullshit is intellectual property law. If I draw a cartoon mouse with a round head and round ears, the Disney Corporation will be able to successfully argue in court that I’ve infringed on their copyrighted image of Mickey Mouse®. In effect, they’ll argue that the essence of my picture is something that belongs to them. But even there, if I make enough changes, my picture will stop being Mickey Mouse.

I haven’t looked into it, but I imagine that while essentialism is an illusion, it’s a practical one. It’s useful to put men with beards in the same mental category as men in general, and to think that if a person loses a leg they don’t automatically stop being a person. So it’s a useful heuristic (a heuristic being defined as a rule that gives you something close to the right answer most of the time, but much more quickly that solving the problem properly).

Wafer-to-Jesus transformation clearly falls outside of the realm where the illusion of essence is useful or true. It’s time for theologians to stop twisting themselves into pretzels to pretend that it has any correspondence to reality.

Update, May 5, 2010: Inserted a missing “instead”. Oops.

Pope Calls for Penance

Hermes: What do we do when we break somebody’s window?
Dwight: Pay for it?
Hermes: Heavens, no! We apologize! With nice, cheap words.

— Futurama, The Route of All Evil

The pope said today that the Catholic church must “do penance” for its history of covering up child abuse. Reuters quotes him as saying,

“Now, under attack from the world which talks to us of our sins, we can see that being able to do penance is a grace and we see how necessary it is to do penance and thus recognize what is wrong in our lives,”

and

“opening oneself up to forgiveness, preparing oneself for forgiveness, allowing oneself to be transformed”

This is all very well and good and seems to be a step forward, but I see no mention of actually doing anything useful. It looks as though Benny hopes to put the abuse coverup scandal behind him with “nice, cheap words”.

Fundie Pharmacy Folds

The Washington Post reports:

The Divine Mercy Care Pharmacy in Chantilly proudly and purposefully limited what it would stock on its shelves. But it turns out that no birth control pills, no condoms, no porn, no tobacco and even no makeup added up to one thing:

No customers.

The self-described “pro-life” pharmacy went out of business last month, less than two years after it opened to great fanfare, with a Catholic priest sprinkling holy water on the strip-mall store tucked between an Asian supermarket and a scuba shop.

No word on whether he returned for last rites.

The article goes on to say that Northern Virginia probably wasn’t the right place to have a drug store like this, since most people don’t equate mascara with Satan. Also, that the K Mart across the way has a pharmacy, which probably didn’t help business.

Tiny violinBut above all, I like to think that this represents the dangers of confusing ideals with reality.

The reason most drug stores carry mascara, condoms, and cigarettes is not that they want people to get tarted up, fuck like bunnies, then share a smoke afterwards—though that would probably suit them just fine. It’s the same reason health food stores sell homeopathic supplements, book stores carry Deepak Chopra’s woo, and hotels sell porn flicks: for better or worse, these products make money.

If you run a business, you are, of course, free to choose what you’ll carry. But if you refuse to sell a certain product—especially a popular one—on the grounds that people shouldn’t be using it, then you’re gambling that either a) you’ll attract enough business that that’ll make up for the loss of revenue from the “bad” product (like a vegetarian restaurant), or b) if you drive away the “perverts” who want the “bad” product, there are still enough “good” people left who’ll shop with you that you can still make a profit.

But if most of your clientele wants “taboo” products once in a while and you drive them away, then that’s a recipe for failure. You’re free to bemoan the teens who buy condoms, but wishing your clientele to be different won’t make it so.

This is just like praying the gay away, or pushing abstinence-only sex “ed”. If something doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. And refusing to look at the world the way it really is won’t help you achieve your goals.

I Get Email

I don’t I Get Email as often as PZ does, but I figured I’d share this one, sent in by someone going by “Your Name”. I’m not entirely sure what he’s on about, but I think it’s this, which I wrote in a moment of being tired of being calm and reasonable all the time.

Ok, I stumbled your page basically tearing down creationists and their
lack of “facts” or “proof” and it seems that your logical scientific
mind cannot comprehend that:

A: The entire premise of religion, philosophically, is based upon faith.

Nice way to concede right out of the gate. Faith is not a reliable way of figuring out what’s true or false. Rather, it’s an excuse people use to believe something they already want to believe.

To believe in something that cannot be proven by human logic or with
fancy math problems. To ask a person to prove that god exists clearly
shows you have absolutely no clue what religion is, what it means, and
its connection to what makes us human. We’re soooooo smart. We know it
all, yet, the leading scientists in the world cannot explain even the
most basic aspects of human emotions and behavior. Can you prove that
electricity can charge carbon particles that, by some miracle,
“transform” into complex proteins to “magically” evolve into life?
Although Darwin titles his most popular work “the origin of species”,
Darwin’s evolution is NOT the origin of species. It is a theory and the
only parts of it that have any validity are that species (that are
already here) adapt to their environment through natural selection.

And that’s why he titled his book The Origin of Species and not The Origin of Life.

You
let me know when you, or anyone for that matter, electrically charges
carbon to create complex proteins necessary for life to evolve. Please.
Let me know.

Nice collection of strawmen you’ve built yourself there.

B: Creationism has a legitimate right to be taught in schools

In the same way as phlogiston and the ether have a legitimate place in physics class: examining failed hypotheses can be useful in learning how not to make the same mistakes in the future.

Okay, now it’s getting late, and I don’t have the energy for a point-by-point fisking. See the Index of Creationist Claims for more rebuttals.

and to
exist as a theory on the origin of species, seeing as how there is no
solid, universally accepted theory that has been proven as FACT. How can
we learn if never exposed to differing ideas? Isn’t that the point of
education, especially in terms of philosophical perspectives on the
origin of life? I thought all you smartie smarties were all about
exposing others minds to different ideas and perspectives to give them a
true broad sense of whatever it may be that is being discussed so they
come to an educated conclusion? Hmmm. Seems like that attitude has gone
out the window as of late. God forbid someone have a different opinion
(yes OPINION) than you.

I am by no means trying to contradict your opinions and do not wish to
impose any specific ideology on you, rather I suggest you scale back the
vitriol towards others who may not agree with you or have a different
perspective of life. Elitists are constantly insulting us “simple” folk
who accept the fact that we are merely tiny insignificant humans in a
great big universe (many of them depending on what kind of science you
choose to read about.) that we possibly cannot understand. Some would
have us believe humans are DEFINITELY the most advanced and most
knowledgeable creatures in existence. Surely, we know everything there
is to know. Please note the sarcasm.

I started out atheist. I do not go to church. Never have and never will,
but I will tell you what changed my mind in terms of believing in
something that greater than myself, or my species for that matter, that
cannot be proven with science. Its when I started reading about
theoretical physics and the quantum theory and the likes. The fish in a
fishbowl analogy, we’re fish in a fishbowl. We can see whats outside but
cant understand it as we only understand what is known to us in our
reality. Now, I’m no expert, nor am I a scientist, but I think those
theories alone should convince any hard headed atheist that there is
simply too much about our universe that is, and will always be, foreign
to us to the point where we will NEVER understand it. Which is why faith
is so necessary in relation to what makes us human. Einstein didn’t want
to disprove the existence of god, he wanted to know and understand the
way things were built by him. Honestly, I do not even really know what
“creationism” is other than teaching that there are theories life didn’t
“poof” out of the sky during a thunderstorm some odd billions of years
ago and I tend to agree with that because frankly, that’s bullshit. I
find the whack job “were all aliens from outer space” theories more
believable than that.

Do I read the bible? Yes. Do I take it literally? Hell no! People who do
need help. They are the ones that give halfway intelligent believers a
bad name, and are the cause for the “evils” in the world that are blamed
on religion and give your kind reason to speak so poorly of those who
believe. Tell a moron who truly believes in whatever god that god wants
him to kill said person and he will. No one can help that for thousands
of years religion has been misused to herd mindless idiots into groups
to do horrible things to our fellow men. Did Jesus come to earth and die
for our sins? Is he the “son” of god? Is there heaven, hell? Who knows
for sure, but I tend to gravitate towards Christianity as the purpose of
the messiah in Christianity is to move people away from ritualistic
nonsense of the old testament and come to an understanding that FAITH
and believing in something greaterthan ourselves is the true point to it
all. I always get a kick out of the fact that self proclaimed geniuses
who claim to have such a broad and open mind are, in fact, some of the
most narrow minded people on earth. Irony. Great, isn’t it?

I’m not the smartest guy on earth, but I’m far from stupid and have
always loved science and technology though unlike you, I have managed to
merge the faith of religion with the rigidity and logic of science.
Science cannot explain what makes us human, though I believe religion
can. I don’t think any specific religion is “right” or “wrong”. I don’t
say religion is “truth” like many of the mindless idiots out there as
that is contradictory to faith, but you are not insulting just those
types with your words. There are many like me, who can look at things
from the proper perspective, whom you insult as well. Which is why you
may want to tone it down. Not every person with faith is an idiot and
not every math whiz computer programmer guy, like yourself, is the all
knowing supreme master of all things life. Have a little humility. Just
please understand. Others may be wrong or illogical, but that doesn’t
make you right. You push a theory and claim it as truth. Sounds a little
like the religious folks you so despise.

Even if evolution were 100% fact. Where did space time come from? What
initiated the big bang? The origin of LIFE goes back much further than
Darwin’s theories predict or even earth itself and the funny thing is;
Well never know. So please stop insulting those who do not think like
you. No individual of faith will ever be able to win a fact based
logical argument because you cant argue the origins of life in that
manner. There are no supporting or contradictory facts on either side.
No one is “right” and no one is “wrong”. You cannot disprove the
existence of a god as I cannot prove it. It is an argument that cannot
be won by either side. Faith is not a competition or judgment of
intelligence. Maybe it is to you but then again, maybe your not as smart
as you think you are.

BillDo Doth Protest

Back on February 23, 1997, the Hartford Courant published an article about Father Maciel, accused of abusing nine children:

The men, in interviews in the United States and Mexico, said the Rev. Marcial Maciel Degollado, the founder of the Legionaries of Christ, molested them in Spain and Italy during the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s. Several said Maciel told them he had permission from Pope Pius XII to seek them out sexually for relief of physical pain.

(Emphasis added.)

Bill Donohue wrote a letter to the Courant, saying

To think any priest would tell some other priest that the pope gave him the thumbs up to have sex with another priest–all for the purpose of relieving the poor fellow of some malady–is the kind of balderdash that wouldn’t convince the most unscrupulous editor at any of the weekly tabloids. It is a wonder why The Courant found merit enough to print it.”

(I haven’t been able to find this letter in the Courant. The quoted part above comes from BillDo’s article published on Monday.)

As I understand BillDo’s argument, he’s saying “It’s ridiculous to think a priest (including the pope) would give another priest permission to molest boys. Therefore, it didn’t happen. The people who said that Maciel told them that are lying or mistaken, and Father Maciel is innocent.”

At least, that’s all I can make of it. What’s odd is that BillDo is quoting this in a post entitled “DONOHUE NEVER DEFENDED Fr. MACIEL” (shouty title in the original, as befits his character).

Anyone who’s familiar with BillDo knows that he reflexively leaps to defend the Catholic church against any slight, perceived or real. So all I can figure is that he’s now trying to distance himself from his earlier words through Clintonian parsing (“it depends what the meaning of defend is”).

On Hitchens’s Tone

One question that came up in a discussion of Christopher Hitchens’s book god is not Great was: Hitchens is blunt, brutal, and uncompromising. So who on earth is his target audience? Religious people won’t read past the first few pages, and the people who will finish it already agree with him. And is he really doing anyone any favors by being so loud and obnoxious?

Some of the standard answers were discussed at the meetup: it galvanizes the troops. Religious people will read it to know the enemy. He is a significant voice in the debate, and you can’t just ignore him; if you’re going to argue for God, you have to have some sort of reply to Hitchens.

But another answer occurred to me: like many atheists, I suspect, I held on to religion for quite a long time because I thought you were supposed to, because it didn’t occur to me that I could just opt out of the whole thing.

I think that if there had been someone like Hitchens around in the 80s when I was trying to find a religion I could live with, someone who was willing to just come out and say look, religion isn’t “flawed”, it isn’t “an approximation of truth”, it isn’t “flawed humans’ best effort to understand the transcendent”, it’s a load of fetid dingo’s kidneys and here’s why, then I would have jettisoned the whole thing more quickly.

Plus, let’s face it: iconoclasm can be fun. If you’ve ever played death metal or gotten a tattoo to annoy your parents, you understand this. I’m sure there are people who’ll read Hitchens simply because he’s one of those People You’re Not Supposed To Like. And they may come out with the attitude that yes, it’s okay to speak out against patent nonsense.

And the more people feel that way, the more religion’s armor against criticism erodes, and religion has to defend itself on its own merits. And we all know how that ends.

Happy Meal Game: Find the Blasphemy

A bunch of Catholics in France are offended by this image:

Read More

Judges 6:31

Chapter 6 of the book of Judges in the Bible is the beginning of the story of Gideon. The Midianites are being murderous dicks again, Israel appeals to God, God picks Gideon as Israel’s champion, all according to formula. An angel performs a couple of miracles, Gideon is impressed and gets religion.

Then God tells Gideon to start fighting a competing religion, that of Baal, starting with Gideon’s own father:

25 That same night the LORD said to him, “Take the second bull from your father’s herd, the one seven years old. Tear down your father’s altar to Baal and cut down the Asherah pole beside it. 26 Then build a proper kind of altar to the LORD your God on the top of this height. Using the wood of the Asherah pole that you cut down, offer the second bull as a burnt offering.”

Gideon’s not a complete moron; he’s afraid of what’ll happen if the townspeople catch him desecrating religious edifices. So he does this at night.

In the morning, the townspeople find the altar demolished, the sacred pole burned to sacrifice a stolen bull. They go to Joash, Gideon’s father, and tell him to give them his son the iconoclast. Presumably one of Joash’s duties as a head of family is to uphold religion. But he also doesn’t want to have his son killed, which puts him in a bit of a predicament. So he says:

But Joash replied to the hostile crowd around him, “Are you going to plead Baal’s cause? Are you trying to save him? Whoever fights for him shall be put to death by morning! If Baal really is a god, he can defend himself when someone breaks down his altar.”

This is a precursor to “What does God need with a starship?“: “if Baal is really all that, why does he need you people to fight his battles for him?”

But of course, the question can be turned to YHWH, or any number of other gods. If anyone claims to be doing some god’s work by executing gays, or flogging adulterers, or feeding the hungry, or spreading their holy book, or outlawing abortion, ask them what God needs with a starship. Surely any god worthy of the name would be capable of snapping his/her/its fingers and make manna fall in the Sahara, or make gays fall down dead, or add a gene that prevents conception in people who aren’t married and financially stable.

Presidents and kings need spokespeople because they’re only human and don’t have time to answer everyone’s question. But on important policy matters they step out in front of the cameras and explain what they’re trying to achieve. Or, if they can, they issue orders and make stuff happen.

Why can’t gods do the same?

News Items

VA AG tells universities to be more bigoted

The WaPo reports that the attorney general has urged colleges and universities in Virginia to rescind their policies against discrimination against gays.

You might think the Post got it wrong. That he’s saying that Virginia has no laws against discrimination against gays; that universities who do have such policies are going above and beyond what they’re required to do.

You’d be wrong. The AG’s statement says:

It is my advice that the law and public policy of the Commonwealth of Virginia prohibit a college or university from including “sexual orientation,” “gender identity,” “gender expression,” or like classification, as a protected class within its non-discrimination policy, absent specific authorization from the General Assembly.

(emphasis added)

So yeah, the AG just said that universities have to seek special permission to not be bigoted.

TX judge calls death penalty unconstitutional

Also from the Post:

A Texas judge in the county that sends more inmates to death row than any other in the nation ruled in a pretrial motion this week that the death penalty is unconstitutional, saying he could assume that innocent people have been executed.

Sounds good to me. I don’t disagree with the idea that there are people who deserve to be put to death, sometimes by chainsaw, but I nonetheless have a problem with the death penalty, because in the case of a mistake, there’s not a whole lot you can do to undo it. That’s on top of the other arguments against it.

Naturally, the judge is now taking flak from Texas governor Rick Perry. And the Texas AG is calling this “judicial activism”. Figures.

KS considers taxing churches

Finally, the Kansas state House is considering a bill that would raise taxes on churches. Or at least that’s what the hoopla is about. The Kansas City Star and ABC’s have articles about this, but perhaps the clearest explanation comes from the KC Star’s Prime Buzz blog:

The bill would impose the state’s 5.3 percent sales tax on power, gas and water bills. It would also remove a sales tax exemption enjoyed by churches and some particular business transactions.
…

Right now the state exempts 96 specific groups or types of business transactions from the state’s sales tax. Those exemptions add up to more than $4 billion. Lawmakers eager to avoid deeper cuts to schools and other state services suggested the repeal of some of these breaks to help eliminate a nearly $500 million deficit.
…

The [House Tax] Committee removed a provision repealing the sales tax exemption for non-profit organizations and for home repairs.

As I understand it:

• Kansas currently does not tax utilities; the bill would impose this tax on utilities, for everyone in Kansas.

• On a separate topic, there are various groups that currently don’t pay sales tax on anything. This bill would repeal a lot of these exemptions, including the one for churches and non-profits.

I’m not sure how I feel about this. I agree that nonprofits that do good for the community should be given tax breaks (and I’m willing to concede for now that churches fall into this category). But these are lean times, and these tax breaks are costing the state revenue. At the same time, lean times mean that people need charitable organizations more than ever.

Of course, I haven’t read the bill, so I don’t know the details. Maybe it maintains exemptions for nonprofits that clearly do good, like soup kitchens and homeless shelters, and raises taxes on organizations that provide only nebulous benefit like “spiritual uplift”.