Bayesian Believer

Vatican proposes a comparative study of gays and celibate men

2010-04-12T18:18:00.000-07:00

The Vatican just can't help themselves.

No, I don't mean they can't help hiding child molesters, although they seem to be good at that too. I mean they can't help making things worse they try to explain their situation using appeals to science.

Apparently, Vatican's Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone has heard that there is a much stronger correlation between homosexuality and pedophelia than enforced celibacy

I say heard because he said "I have recently been told" about this body of research. Well, perhaps the Vatican should conduct some real studies along these lines because I'm pretty sure that's never been done.

Such a study would compare gay men in general with some population of men undergoing enforced celibacy and having access and authority over many children. The problem is the only significant population of the second type are priests of the Catholic church. And I'm thinking they've never allowed such a study to be conducted.

If you were to carry out such a study you'd need to control for a number of variables:

you'd have to make sure you get a population of gay men with similar access and position of authority over small children, like gay elementary schools teachers
then, you'd have to somehow control for the members of the priest population that are also gay. These would have to be removed from the study. Unfortunately Catholic priests will be very unlikely to tell you they are gay since the church hates gays so much they are willing to shift blame onto them to get out of their sex scandal. This is also not an insignificant concern as many estimates of the numbers of priests that are gay are much higher than the average population, perhaps as high as 30-40% of priests.

Once you had these two groups you'd have to track them over many years and see how many children they molest over a long period. Keep in mind, even once you'd found evidence that one of the members of the study had molested children, you wouldn't be able to report them to the authorities as this would skew the results by reducing the chance that individuals would repeat offend. Needless to say, it might be rather difficult to ethics approval and funding for a such a study, especially from God.

So seriously, whatever study the Cardinal thinks he saw, it wasn't testing that. If the church believes that they can make some kind of rational argument that gays are more likely to abuse children than 'heterosexual' men who've forcibly bottled up their natural sexual urges their entire lives they are truly living in the 19th Century. They are just making it worse with such ludicrous theories.

If this is the kind of thinking going on within the walls of the Holy City, I don't have much hope that whatever they come up with to fix it will be based on a modern view of reality.

As I've said before, the only hope for the church to diversify and grow into the 21st century is to openly embrace gay priests, women priests and married priests and to root out the legion of child molesters amongst their ranks.

Meanwhile they are still attacking the only ones that can save them while Rome burns.

Schenk and FutureChurch have got it right about women priests

2009-12-13T01:20:00.000-08:00

Here's a great article over at NCR about Sister Christine Schenk, director of the Catholic reform group FutureChurch. The discussion afterwards is a great example of the divide in the current Catholic church and in many mainstream churches. There is a group that wants to go backwards, that want to retrench in some scripture, that views the lower attendance rates or lower number of priests as a result of being 'too liberal' or 'too modern'. For these people, the past is glorious and golden. Punishment comes from deviating from their idea of God's word. What you'll see though is that they are really just defending their claim to certainty. Any change or modernization brings doubt and requires thought, all of which undermines certainty. For a conservative, even fundamentalist religious person, certainty is everything. Religion is about certainty for them.

For more modern believers, certainty is a disease. For someone to be certain of anything, even of what some scriptural passage indicates about the intent of the Divine, indicates a lack of thoughtfulness. The world is a complex and mysterious place. All religious scriptures were written by human beings, who are all flawed. Divine inspiration or not, there is nothing in the world that we can be completely certain of. This is why all world religions teach humility. Fundamentalists rail against adultery, abortion, graven images and more yet they rarely say anything about a lack of humility in the modern world. Arrogance and certainty tell a tale all their own about a person and their motives.

The other half of the comments on articles like this on NCR are from thoughtful believers who are not rigidly tied to some scriptural interpretation or Vatican edict. They know women are equal to men, that they are better than men, in general, at a lot of things. Particularly, women are better at a lot of things that would make them good priests such as empathy, organizing, understanding people and holding a community together. So it should be obvious to any thinking person, who's ever met a strong, intelligent, sincere woman that obviously they should be allowed to be priests. And obviously, if you someone told you that scripture implies that God does want it to be so, then that person is reading the scripture wrong because God is not an idiot (by definition). Also, if they haven't met such a woman as described above, firstly, they haven't looked very hard, and secondly, they might notice next time they are in church that everything useful being done is being done by a woman except the getting up and speaking fire and brimstone part.

Bb

RedBedHead: US Catholic Church Opposes Healthcare Reform

2009-11-03T15:59:00.000-08:00

RedBedHead: US Catholic Church Opposes Healthcare Reform
Well this is dissapointing, I would hope that improving health and life span would override their other concerns about abortions. Surely everyone realizes that there is no way there will be a 'good' healthcare reform that actually makes a difference but just leaves out the possibility of covering abortions. The Catholic church may be turning into a one issue institution (well maybe three issue, don't forget anti-gay, anti-woman) but that is not how society functions and not how the government should work.

Free to Repress the Freedom of Others, How Nice...

2009-10-23T23:58:00.000-07:00

Further reaction to the Catholic Church's annoucement about accepting Anglican priests into the church. Form a former Anglican priest who converted to Catholicism 13 years ago:

But after the CoE ordained woman priests, he felt those traditions had finally been abandoned and says converting to Catholicism was liberating.

"For me there has always been a tremendous sense of relief. Living as an Anglican - honestly trying to live as a Catholic priest within Anglicanism - involved for me all kinds of compromises," he said.

"Becoming a Catholic.. .it's a very freeing experience."

I find this so offensive, how can they not see what they are saying? How can they not see that they are complaining about equality and freedom being some kind of burden that they have to 'free' themselves from? Its unbelievable.

How could a Catholic who already has reservations about their Church's repressive policies embrace a new priest who came over to your Church because it was so freeing to be able to properly repress people? I'm stunned.

Rome Opens a Door for Traditional Anglicans, So What About Liberal Catholics?

2009-10-22T10:12:00.000-07:00

A few days ago the Vatican released a bombshell by announcing a new Apostolic Constitution that promises to set up a system for a mass defection of Anglicans to the Catholic Church without giving up most of their Anglicanism. Technically, the Pope has issued a decree to establish Personal Ordinariates which are non-geographical dioceses in the church such as are used for those in military service and the Opus Dei. This means they have a bishop and parishes but need not all reside in one region or country.

Here are some facts about the new Catholic rules, and some more from a progressive Catholic news source (yes there are some!)

For a flurry of anglican opinion the best place to check out is as always thinkinganglicans.org.uk. Some discuss provocatively that this will be the end of the Anglican church. Others reach a more hopeful conclusion that the Anglican Communion can be the forward looking 21st century church the world needs.

My first response to this news is "What about us?" by which I mean, progressive Catholics who look longingly at the progressive Anglican Church in the US and Canada that has somehow managed to create a modern church that accepts priests and bishops who can be married, women or gay (or all three perhaps?) without dissolving in flames. It does this while maintaining a fairly ornate church order that hardly seems Protestant at all. My wife often asks me why I don't just become an Anglican since I disagree with so much of what Rome says on political and social issues. I'm not sure why, I just can't, I am a Catholic. I call myself a Bayesian Catholic or a Progressive Catholic but to me it seems like an ethnicity you can't rub off by choice. Also, I want to see the Church, the largest religious body in the world and one with enormous influence over the happiness of so many millions to enter the 21st century and open its eyes.

So when I found out that conservative Anglicans were going to have the option to pretend to be Catholic, I thought, hey Canterbury, can we have a little quid pro quo? There are many, many progressive Catholics in the world who would like to remain part of the Church while attending a more progressive congregation that actually realizes that God sees all human beings as equal in all things, with no exceptions for the priesthood and marriage.

I don't know how this would work though. In my ideal world, the Anglican Communion becomes a kind of progressive arm of the Catholic Church, the Pope agrees to not interfere with with its running and Anglicans aren't forced to accept the infallibility of the Pope and all that. This of course is impossible unless the UK undergoes complete historical amnesia and various other reasons.

Another, more plausible effect of all this will be that the Catholic Church will contain more married priests coming over from the Anglican church. It already contains a few that have been accepted from other churches on a case-by-case basis. But if there is a large influx of married, Anglican priests the impact on the optics of a celibate priesthood would be interesting. Even stranger, Catholic bishops will need to be celibate even if they originally came from the Anglican communion, that's sure to be an interesting discussion around the dinner table: "Dear, I think I might get promoted to bishop this year, so we best take advantage of the time we have left, if you know what I mean...".

(oops, lost some readers, oh well)

But seriously, the issue of married priests is a big one in the Catholic church in the US (personally I don't understand why this seems more important than removing the ban on women priests). So, it may cause more reform push in the church from some quarters which is clearly not what Rome is after. I believe what they are really after is a way to increase the number of adherents and especially priests coming into the Church and to gather together traditionalist religious Christians under the One, Holy and Apostolic Church.

Where does that leave more progressive people who happen to be Catholic, I'm not sure. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Dr. Williams, we're waiting for your rebuttal offer. Stay tuned.

Love and Marriage

2009-10-04T11:25:00.000-07:00

I was sitting in mass today and once again wondering not only at the Divine beauty of the universe but at the ability of priests to miss the core truths in what they reading to us. Today's Catholic mass contains readings on the creation of Man and the creation of Woman from Man's rib. The other readings and the psalms focus on the unbreakable bonds of Love and specifically the lifelong love between a man and a woman. The message today is that man and woman are two halves of the same whole and that love binds them together for life in an equal, unbreakable unity. At the very end, in the last line of the gospel today there is the famous line "blessed are the children" which doesn't really fit with this theme.

The intro in the sunday missal for today's mass, an essay usually written by some knowlegable layperson focussed on this last point about the children. The priest at my church focussed his sermon on how horrible divorce is and rambled on about the divine unitary existence without explaining it. Fine, not bad topics, but is that really the most pertinent topic in today's readings?

The one thing common theme today other than love was a discussion and description of woman, their role in society and the rights and obligations of men towards them. The sunday missal intro actually mentioned "considering the lesser in society : children, women and the poor..." Excuse me? Maybe in Jesus' day but isn't that a little antiquated nowadays? There was no discussion in the homily at my church of the struggle women have had to gain equality throughout history. No discussion of what equality and love for women should imply. Just a standard repetition of the Church line on divorce. I'm sure it was the same in many churches across the world today.

Today's homily should have focussed on women. What amazes me is the ability of male priests in the Church to continue to hold onto an ancient view of the relation between men and women while all around them women prepare the church, do the readings, alter girls deliver and prepare the gifts for service. It truly is a wonder to behold to watch an old man in fancy robes stand up there in front of a church full of more women than men, aided and assisted by women, pausing to listen to the woman singing and playing organ and tell us that today's readings should remind us how wrong divorce is rather than how unfair the church's attitude towards women is.

In other ironic Catholic leadership news, the Pope is currently holding a general synod in Rome focussing on Africa. Well, that's nice, lots of problems in Africa to solve, although I don't think lack of religion is one of them. The goals of the synod are mostly noble, they are not simply to spread the faith but to help raise Africa out of poverty and war. That's great, and the more groups helping to do that the better. But there is some serious irony going on here as well that I'll bet isn't getting much discussion in the rooms of the Vatican. The Church apparently has 150 million adherents in Africa and this number is growing rapidly. That's 150 million people living on a continent undergoing an AIDS pandemic who are being told that using a condom when having sex is a sin and that if they don't want to get AIDS or have a child then they simply shouldn't be having sex. If the Pope really wants to help Africa he could have saved all the expense and difficulty of running this synod and do two things that would save more live and improve the lives of more Africans than anything they can agree on this week in Rome. They could drop the ban on passive contraceptives like condoms and use their network of churches and missionaries to distribute condoms and educate people on their use. This would save millions of lives and I'm telling you, God would not be annoyed one bit.

Catholic church could learn from its nuns

2009-09-14T21:36:00.001-07:00

I read this today and it made my blood quietly boil on a low simmer.

Vatican looks at changing world of U.S. nuns

The Vatican does this from time to time, and in this time of ultraconservative control of the Church it seems to be a good time for such inquisitions. According to the article they say that

the current review is not about reining in dissent, but rather "to identify, clarify it and find out what is the situation" because of questions raised about the religious women's communities and "their commitment to the Catholic faith."

Well then, that sounds fine. Bull. That's Church code for an inquisition. They are questioning their commitment because they don't always wear a habit. What is more important, who you help in the world or what you wear?

"It does destroy community, and a lot of times it's important to worship together and to be a real community instead of a group of separate individuals." In the past four decades, the numbers of nuns in the U.S. have diminished dramatically from about 180,000 in 1965 to 60,000. And some believe a return to the church's roots might, in fact, increase membership at women's religious orders.

Hitchcock says the more traditional orders are attracting the most new adherents.

That is exactly the problem. The majority of Catholics, and I believe the majority of adherents in many religions, are moderate, they don't want more fire and brimstone. They want understanding, they want advice about how to live in the modern world, about where to find meaning in a scientific, non-secular world. That is what mainstream religions should be focussing on. More women in the US avoiding a religious life not because the church has lost its way, but because the church has lost touch with their reality. Asking women to work for the church, to serve it, to be integral to its life and then to tell them they are unequal and not worthy for any position of authority, that is offensive to the modern mind.

Women run the Catholic church, from preparing the bread and wine at the church, cleaning the clothes, the churches themselves, running community events. If you go to your local church and see any service or event of interest to the community, who is running it? A woman. The male priest pretty much just does the bit with the talking, the bit with the raising of the hands and then more talking. These days even most of the alter servants are no longer alter boys, they are alter girls.

So how dare the church look at the state of affairs of its loyal nuns and think,

"oh, not wearing habits? Working in useful jobs? Can't have that, these women need a talking to" Its incredibly offensive. Its one of the reasons even as a practising Catholic I never donate any money to my church anymore. Not until they correct they turn towards a sane view of the modern world:

a world where women are completely and totally equal to men. If your interpretation of Jesus' words and deeds does not let you accept that then you are misreading Jesus
a world where homosexuality exists, and is a natural part of life, not some unholy aberation
a world where disease is real and can be transmitted through sex, and where people are weak, so proclaiming to them to abstain and not use condoms is as bad as injecting women in Africa directly with HIV

end rant

sigh.

God doesn't mind photography

2009-07-25T07:00:00.000-07:00

News today that the Canadian Supreme court ruled that an Alberta law that requires driver's licenses to include a valid photo does not violate the religious freedoms of a Hutterite community.

As the CBC describes it

The Hutterites fled Russia for the Canadian Prairies in the early 20th century to escape state oppression. Members of the colony believe that the Bible's second commandment — "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image" — prohibits them from having their photograph willingly taken.

This is one of those religious traditions that may have grown more out of the group's history of oppression than from true biblical literalism. Several religions have similar restrictions against images, but they are usually interpretted to be a restriction of representations of God or a prophet, not of every individual person.

Of course, that isn't the point, people have religious beliefs that may seem reasonable to one person and unreasonable to another. I am definitely in favour of protecting those rights. One concern that comes up in discussions of gay marriage is that church's, which conduct weddings as authorized public entities in some parts of Canada, might be forced to wed gay couples even if the church does not condone such weddings. I think there is no contradiction between fervently supporting the right to gay marriage whilst simultanesouly allowing church's to choose not to wed couples that do not adhere to the particular strictures of that religion.

Similarly with this photo id case, we cannot begin from a position of judging whether someone's religion is valid, that's what freedom of religion means. All we can do is judge whether, given their belief, enforcing laws that conflict with those beliefs violates their rights. I think in this case, the Supreme Court made the correct judgement. A certain level of identification is a requirement of being a member of our society. This is so that the state can ensure that people have been approved for different restricted activities, such as driving, and that everyone is obeying the laws of the land. In the modern world, verifying someone's identity is becoming increasingly important and increasingly difficult as counterfeiting techniques also improve. So this isn't an unreasonable request.

Religion Doesn't Kill People, People Do

2009-07-13T15:46:00.000-07:00

There is a very interesting article in HuffPost on Right Wing Atheists. Robert Wright discusses the new wave of publicly vocal atheists such as Richard Dawkins. He argues that they are generally more conservative and political issues than the majority of atheists who tend to do be quite progressive and liberal. He may have a point. I'm not in total agreement that the atheist talking heads we hear these days are all calling religion 'evil' as Mr. Wright contends, but there is a common argument from many atheists these days that religion is the source of many of the worlds problems. Mr. Wright contends that this is a not usually a causal relationship. That people are doing the horrible things they do for their own reasons. Religion is a convenient tool for justifying actions and unfortunately many terrorists, dictators and criminals have twisted religion to explain why they are justified. But I agree with Mr. Wright that removing religion would not stop such people. Other excuses are always forthcoming and people will find a way to rationalize whatever it is they want to do.

The problem with religion is that it is perhaps the most potent such rationalization since it accepts to argument or fact, at least in its traditional form. This is why I would encourage those who feel a religious connection to subject that religion to reasoned, scientific thought and to ask questions. A truly aware religious person can innoculate themself from imoral uses of their faith by those who seeks power or revenge. It is up to each person, whether they are religious or not to make thier own judgements about the motivations of others. If someone is trying to convince you to strap explosives to your chest you should be question him regardless if he invokes your god, your nation or any other emotional force.

2009-03-28T12:09:00.000-07:00

The UN forum on Racism has passed a resolution condemning defamation of religions.

Not individuals right to their religious views mind you, defamation of the religion itself. So saying something like "Scientology is a crackpot cult that just wants people's money", that's probably defamation. Apparently this is no longer allowed.

The representatives from Canada summarized the widespread complaints about this resolution best:

"It is individuals who have rights, not religions," Ottawa's representative told the body. "Canada believes that to extend (the notion of) defamation beyond its proper scope would jeopardize the fundamental right to freedom of expression, which includes freedom of expression on religious subjects."

All individuals have the right to believe what they like. One cannot discriminate against a believer because they are a Scientologist, just to pick an example, or incite hatred or violence towards them. They are free people who can choose to believe in what they like, I can disagree with them but I cannot discriminate against them for those beliefs no more than they can discriminate against my Bayesian Catholic beliefs.

But I also have the right to free speech which allows me to say their religion is stupid, its a sham made up by a science fiction writer on a bet and is just trying to get peoples money. Similarly, the now very angry Scientologist could denounce my Church for many of its grevious views and horrible hypocrisy. No problem. There is no reason we can't allow people to discuss the pros and cons of different religions while still protecting the right to freedom of religion. My discussing your religion openly, whatever religion it is, does not detract from your faith or diminish your rights.

This is essentially the same discussion that arose after the cartoons of the prophet Muhammad in the Danish newspapers. Freedom of religion doesn't mean we don't talk about, critique, ridicule and analyze your religion. It just means that no matter what we think of it, we don't interfere with you. If someone can explain what is wrong with that line of thinking and why this defamation idea is good please do enlighten me.

Open letter to Pope Benedict XVI - Stop Dissing Condoms

2009-03-18T01:01:00.001-07:00

The latest from the infallible Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI. He's not backing down on the Church's view that condoms would be bad for Africa.

His Holiness describes the situation in Africa where millions are dying from AIDS as

a tragedy that cannot be overcome by money alone, that cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which even aggravates the problems

The first part is technically true, money alone is not enough. An enormous amount of will and work on the ground must also be done by NGOs and African governments to get people medical care, educate and change behaviour patterns. Of course, most of that will and effort is already present. His second point is totally wrong. Condoms are the simplest, most effective single thing that could help Africa get a grip on this problem. And the Catholic church provides the convenient excuse to every man refusing to use one that 'its a sin'.

The church has an opportunity to save millions of lives by using their distribution network, their trusted network of nuns and missionaries and charities to distribute condoms and educate people about their importance. Instead, they continue to barrel on about abstinence as if millions of years of lack of evidence of lack of human restraint does not exist. As if this evidence does not even exist within their own church of celibate priests. Abistinence is against human nature, we are sexual beings. We surely can say that anyone knowningly having sex once they are infected with AIDS is committing a grevious crime/sin. But, that is not enough, that will not save people's lives. That will not reduce the number of orphans or infected children. That will not begin to heal Africa.

Africa needs many things to heal, but one of them is most assuredly condoms and the removal of the roadblock of the Cathloic church to their more widespread usage. As a Bayesian Catholic I am ashamed of my church for continuing this stance. I am sure it is ashamed of me for many things but there are many of us modern Catholics out there who see the church's ban on passive contraceptives for what it is. Cowardice and hypocrisy pure and simple.

It says that the potential life is worth more than the real one. It says that every sperm is sacred and the intent to stop conception is a sin, even if that conception is not certain and only passing of disease is certain. It asks normal mortals, sinners all that we are, to behave as saints. Meanwhile those who demand such purity cannot even attain it themselves and when they are found out cannot even face the responsibility for those they have hurt and betrayed.

This is why so many Catholics ignore their church. We find the faith itself, the ceremony, the symbols as beautiful and deep messages to us. But the church itself and its politics are mostly alien to us, stuck in the middle ages. When will the church reform and fully accept the reality of the world?

I don't mean the modern world, I mean the world.

Disease, human sexuality, equality of men and women. These are not cultural inventions of the twentieth century. They are facts built upon science and centuries of human knowledge. There is no shame in admitting you were wrong about them just as you were wrong about Gallileo's views on the Earth going around the Sun.

No shame at all. More than that, it is shameful not to. If you believe God, or Jesus, or St. Peter will meet you in the end, do you think H/he'll praise you for sticking to your guns? For staying true to St. Augustine and the bigotry of the middle ages? Do you think you'll be rewarded for not changing even after you found out things about the world that all of your predecessor's could not have known or understood? Would not God want you to use all of your body, soul and mind to bring more Love into the world? Isn't that the most important goal of the church? Why does the sexual behaviour of people have to do with saving lives and bring Love into the world?

If God does judge people in the end, I think its a very pragmatic test that takes account of everything you knew and everything you should have known. You should know better, your Holiness, swallow your pride and change this policy.

Bb.

What's missing in the Design/Evolution Discussion is Math

2008-09-16T15:26:00.000-07:00

I was just reading this article on NewScientist about the ongoing controversy over at the Royal Society about accomodating the desire to teach Creationism or Creation Science alongside Evolution.

One of the more reasonable pro-creation-science people said the following:

" It lies in the probability that such complexity arose out of undirected blind chance. Everything that we know about complexity outside of biology is that it arises from information, and that information arises from mind."

I had been reading for a while and could no longer contain myself, here's my reply:

Actually, thats not true. Complex products of human endeavour or of any lifeform may fit into that category, but there are many things in the universe that do not. The stars and galaxies are pretty complex, but the science explaining their behaviour and origin is much more detailed and precise than evolution and no mind is required. But there is an even better example. And the fact that it never comes up is evidence I think of why this discussion always goes round and round in circles. It has to do with Math. Have you ever seen the Manderbrot Set? Google it if you haven't. Its a mathematical construction based on a few very simple rules. Those rules don't require a mind to exist, they are just mathematical facts, and when applied to each other in a simple way you get this complicated and actually beautiful picture. And its not just complicated...its infinitely complicated. There are countless other fractal functions of this type. The point is, that a lot the people who accept natural selection as true don't do it because they've been duped or are being brainwashed. We accept it because its so obviously true to the mathematically inclined. The idea of natural selection itself isn't a theory, its a provably true algorithm for population given a few assumptions about that population. Now, biological evolution is a theory because in theory we can't never mathematically prove that natural selection is how life got where it is. But as long as the assumptions (about reproduction, inheritence of traits, and competition for scarce resources) apply its a very very plausible theory.

We'll have to get to more of this later. But interesting things are afoot in the jungle.

Why the Paranormal is Normal

2008-07-18T12:25:00.001-07:00

About Spirituality
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Birth Control, Viagra Question Makes McCain Squirm (VIDEO)

2008-07-10T11:39:00.001-07:00

About John McCain
It was definetly prudent for him...its always prudent to avoid answering a question when you don't know what your stance is, or what it should be given the latest polls and expectations from various voting blocks you are trying to court. Not exactly straight talking. When Americans are faced with a choice between someone who has clear beliefs and sticks to them and someone like McCain who is now willing to throw out even his most cherished issues (Vets) it would seems like an easy choice.

But given his recent track record of speaking off the cuff it was definetly prudent. I'm not sure it will convince voters though when they can't even figure out what he really believes.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Pre-christian stories of Christ

2008-07-07T11:59:00.000-07:00

Very interesting story about a newly discovered stone tablet containing some stories that are very similar to events from the life of Jesus. The thing is, the tablet was written a few decades before the birth of Jesus. Ooops. Now, this could be described as a very accurate prophecy but they are actually subtly different stories. Its easier to imagine that the story of the real Jesus was elaborated along the lines of such contemporary literature than that its some huge coincidence.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1032642/The-ancient-scripts-predate--rewrite--Bible.html

This is not at all inconsistent with the writings of Tom Harpur who, in his later years, has discovered other similar evidence from Egyptian writings. His belief is that Jesus may not have historically existed in the way we think but that the stories we know were reworked versions of many ancient spiritual stories floating around at the time. If you are interested in that pick up Mr. Harpur's fantastic book "The Pagean Christ". I'll write a blog about that soon, its a great book, a challenging one, but great.

Ice on Mars: Good for the Jews?

2008-06-30T13:48:00.001-07:00

I agree, fantastic article. As a scientifically minded spritual person who probably spends too much time worrying about existence and not being productive its great to hear this perspective. I definetly hope for such an interrupting announcement but I hadn't considered how useful it might be if it gets people thinking beyond the da to day who aren't naturally inclined to it.

As for the needles in the haystack Sebastian111, I agree the Earth should be the number one focus but the exploration is still very worthwhile. Unless we change our nature fundamentally we will eventually overrun this beautiful little planet. And as astronomers have long suspected and are beginning to find out, that haystack really seems to be literally full of needles. And there's no reason to think many of them will contain life.

Back to 2001, the swamp at the end is on the moon Europa which still is the second most likely place to find remnants of life (after mars) and probably the most likely to currently have life.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Separation of Church and State: Part II

2008-04-29T13:35:00.000-07:00

This is such a good topic I have to visit it again.

Its in the news again, Rev. Wright is defending his church against all the criticism he percieves its getting. Perhaps this is partially true in some right wing quarters. There are white american christians who are offended by the emotional and angry elements in african-american churches. This reaction comes, I think, mostly from fear that they are hiding their own true nature. White americans like to either not think about racism or think the problem has largely been solved. As Dave Winer pointed out recently in an excellent writeup, there are lots of religion and cultures that have a story of slavery and struggle at their core. And some of them (such as Jews) have been retelling and living those stories for thousands of years. Why should we expect african americans to "get over" slavery and let go of that anger? Why should they ever let it go? As long as they can live in society at the same time, how they release this frustration and weave it into the story of their people is their business, and no one else's.

But I digress. I wanted to point out that this discussion of religion in American politics it fudamentally strange and even dangerous. Some people think that religion is its own political party in America, and that it influences the behaviour of those in the mainstream parties.

I wish even that were true.

But the fact of the matter if that you cannot get elected for any high office in America without being religious. So all parties are religious and atheists or those who think religion and politics should be independent are locked out. They need to hide and pretend they are more religious than they are. Its a really bad idea. Most other western countries would be outraged at any one of the religion stories that has come up in this election, let alone the entire religious tone of it. Remember that most wars through history have been justified by those claiming both political and religious authority. The ironic thing is that America has probably the strongest constitutional separate of church and state on Earth and yet they basically require all politicians to be religious. In Britain, where the church and state are inextricably linked through official support of one religion, no politician would dare talk about God for any kind of justification of policy. It just isn't done.

I'd love to hear from someone who believes religion is an important test for politicians to pass to explain why. Hopefully it doesn't just come down to the idea that you must be religious to be moral. Buts another post I think.

Thomas D'Arcy McGee

2008-04-26T09:55:00.000-07:00

I'd like to suggest a book by David Wilson entitled "Thomas D'Arcy McGee: Passion,Reason and Politics". It sounds like an interesting biography of the ideas of McGee who was one of the founders of Canadian confederation and was the first Canadian politician to be assasinated.

His life and death (1825-1868) are fascinating and very relevant today for a world struggling through a time of religious turmoil. McGee was an Irish-Catholic which strong revoluntionary goals for the emmancipation of Ireland from Britian and the formation of an Irish Republic. He lived for a time in the United States and became frustrated with the discrimination against Catholics there and Irish-Catholics specifically. He eventually moved to Canada and become involved in politics and helped bring about the independence of Canada into Confederation in 1867.

McGee continued to hope for Irish independence all his life but sought to do so through peaceful, political means. He saw how Catholics and Protestants were able to compromise to form a balanced union in Canada. Because half the population of Canada was French-Catholic the laws and constitution of Canada struck a compromise between the two groups. Canada had publicy funded seperate schools for Catholics which was not possible in the US. Ontario still has 'seperate' schools boards for Catholics although anyone can attend them if they choose their taxes to be directed there and religious indoctrination is very moderate.

What cost McGee his life was that he chose to speak out against another group of Irish Republicans based in the the US called the Fenian Brotherhood. The Fenians were an offshoot of frustrated reform movements and violent rebellions in Ireland in the 1850s. Based on Boston the Fenian Brotherhood has as its goal the violent capture of Canada from Britian. Once in control of Canada the Fenians hoped to make a deal with Britian to trade Irish independence for control of Canada. Due to organization, partial and only intermittent support from the US government and a small force they were defeated by British/Canadian forces several times starting in 1866. McGee denounced these violent efforts and rather encouraged Irish people to immigrate to Canada to gain their freedom. On April 7, 1868 a Fenian supporter shot McGee in Ottawa.

These days it isn't Catholics and Protestants who are fighting each other for religious and national reasons its different sects of Islam against each other and Palestinian-Muslims with Israeli-Jews. Surely those groups can look at this example and take some advice from history. Violence isn't the answer. The Fenians failed but their approach caused much death and terror for years and influenced the struggles that continued in Ireland for another century until compromise and diplomacy eventually laid the struggle to rest.

Surely it would be better to spend 50 or even 100 years on diplomacy than a single year in war.

Why do Catholic's support Hillary?

2008-04-23T16:34:00.001-07:00

Recent polls and the primary in Pennsylvania show a continuing trend that Catholics in the US support Hillary Clinton more than Barack Obama. As a Catholic myself, although a Bayesian one and not even American, I find myself wondering why this is. If I were voting in the US election I would confidently vote for Obama.

In some ways he would seem very appealing to Catholics:

He's inspiring, using high flown rhetoric and symbolism that Catholics love to fall for. We're suckers for symbols and metaphors, its the best thing about our religion. By comparison Clinton seems reminiscent of a dry homilist who is always reminding us to go to confession and do our part because actions speak louder than words. Which is fine, but Catholics are big on words. In the beginning was the Word, you know.
He's an underdog, just like Jesus in some ways, striving against the stereotypes of society to get through. And he's getting through with a fairly pure message of hope and belief in people rather than reference to seniority or traditions like the Saducees might have argued. (see a ironic point to this below)

But then again catholics may like some other aspects of Hillary that may turn out to be stronger identifiers

Hillary doesn't really talk about faith much, she's not overtly religious. Just like many Catholics. Catholics these days don't going around talking about it, we're the old church, many, or most Catholics are quite relaxed about their faith and don't want to be preached to by others.
Obama doesn't preach but his style of presentation is evangilical, lots of emotion an energy. Thats actually very un-Catholic, we like symbols and metaphors, but don't get too excited about it. Its just unseemly. So maybe that puts people off.
What I said about the Saducees and Jesus, thats from the bible, but in reality todays Church really is all about tradition and seniority. Complete justification is found in what was said by other Pope's in the past and conservative catholics stop arguments by challenging your belief in the infallibility of the Pope. Many modern or Bayesian Catholics think this is a real problem with the Church. But if you actually like that then you'd want the establishment candidate and if Jesus came back today to preach in the temple and turn over the money changers tables, well, then he might have go. Its ironic but true.

So the fact that she's getting these votes must mean that in America anyways, most Catholics don't read the same things out of their faith that I do. Well, what else is new?

Bb: Its not another religion, its a way for religions to talk to one another

2008-04-02T11:00:00.000-07:00

I was just listening to another fascinating podcast of CBC's Tapestry. Mary Hines was talking to a fellow by the name of Michael Dowd who has his own personal religious philosophy that has grown out of christianity and uses creative evolution as a central metaphor. He has some very interesting ideas, not particularly novel ones but positive. His ideas come quite close to my own personal philosophy, although he gives a lot of focus to evolution as a central metaphor whereas I tend towards chaos theory and quantum physics.

I was thinking about how to write about this idea of his here, what would the Bayesian Believer say about Creative Evolution? Then I realised that a Bb would have nothing to say about the details of Mr. Dowd's philosophy at all. They would merely notice that he has an evolving view of his own religious philosophy, based in his upbringing but informed by the evidence he saw all around him in the world. The Bb would applaud this perspective and encourage others to follow his example. But his philosophy and his mission is to get people to buy into his particular metaphor for spiritual belief. He is, in essense, peddling a new religion that depends on science and acknowledges reality but has its own way of viewing the universe.

This is different from what I am doing with Bayesian belief. Bayesian belief is not a new religious concept, it will not have adherents or followers. Bayesian belief is a framework for understanding religion, it is a label that carries meaning, like "fundamentalist", "lapsed-X", "liberal" and "traditional". Bayesian belief has no particular tenets of belief in subjective concepts that must be adhered to by any Bayesian believer. It specifically does not require a belief in evolution as put forward by scientists, or a belief that the universe is 14 billion years old or that salvation comes from someone names Jesus, Mohammad, Buddha or indeed anyone at all. Bayesian belief is a framework for classifying believers into two groups. Those from any background that are open to reason, experience and human fallibility and those that have closed their minds to any debate.

Now I would argue that Mr. Dowdsatisfies all these criteria with his personal philosophy, so he is a Bayesian something. But we will not end the religious wars that have plagued our world since the dawn of history by coming up with a new religion that integrates science and spirituality in just the right way. I used to think I could do this too. I used to say to myself that "if people could just understand evolution and math and science the way I do they'd see how there is no need to fight over which god is God." But I see now that this has been tried and tried for centuries or even millennia.

What we actually need is a new atmosphere of acceptance. An acceptance by all reasonable people, be they religious or not, of other people as valid in themselves. That includes their lives and their beliefs. I could propose a criteria for a caring, loving, positive religion but that cannot help but be biased by my own Christian belief patterns. Instead, I propose a criteria for reasonable religious people. I call them Bayesian believers, if they adhere to the following:

Accept the universe as it is and be willing to engage in true scientific debate about the nature of the universe.
Accept that religious scriptures are all written by human beings whether divinely inspired or not.
Accept that God/Enlightenment/Cosmic Truth is undoubtedly greater than can be described by any human being.
Accept that anything written by human beings is necessarily a product of their times and society and human fallibility. No observation, document or belief by any human being has been or ever can be infallible. This goes for scientific beliefs as well as religious ones.
Actively engage your religious beliefs and assumptions. Confront them with the evidence you see in the world around. Strive to improve your understanding of the Truth of the Cosmos by seeing how others live and how the world actually works rather than referring to ancient writings subject to the previous rules.

These seem to be the basic requirements necessary for healthy religious discussion that does not devolve into illogical arguments and mere citing of opposing scriptures.

In future articles I will try to deal with each of these principles in turn and argue for why they are essential.

Bb

If Earth Hour works lets try Earth Shabbat next.

2008-03-28T23:21:00.001-07:00

Religions have lots of intricate and ancient traditions. Some of these often don't seem to make sense in the modern world. Take the Jewish Sabbath or Shabbat. This is an ancient Jewish restriction that the every senventh day there is an enforced day of rest.
This was good for society and was helpful for conserving resources and encouraging community in ancient times. The specific restrictions focussed on refraining from farm work and baking and starting a fire for any purpose. Today these specific restrictions ring hollow and its difficult to observe a day of rest in our 24/7 world. But many religions have similar structures built in somehow to force people to stop, smell the roses, enjoy life and save some food.

Now today he World Wildlife Fund is organizing Earth Hour where at 8pm local time in each time zone on earth people are asked to turn out all their lights for one hour. This could save millions of tons of CO2 emissions and show the widespread concern and support people have for improving the environment.

I plan to turn my lights out, and I hope you will too.
But I also hope, that if Earth Hour is successful this year people start thinking about how we could do more.

Instead of once a year perhaps we could have an Earth Hour once a month. Or once a week, surely that wouldn't be too hard. And if we were really serious, couldn't we really come up with a new kind of Shabbat. One where we are not using electricity or burning fossil fuels not because of observing the Lord's day of rest but observing our detrimental effect on our Mother Earth?

Surely we could come up with a set of simple rules for Earth Shabbat. Rules that express a simple attempt to sacrifice, once a week, our wasteful, polluting ways. We would not be cynical and pollute more the other days of course. But I think Earth Hour is getting a lot of attention because its a sacrifice that is achievable. People are willing to change, to make a sacrifice, but it is very hard to give up everything an become selfless in a consumerist, capitalist society that does not reward selflessness.

Earth Hour every Saturday at 8pm would be the next step. People could deal with that. And the reduction in pollution, though small in the grand scale would still be significant. Then as they grow comfortable people could do more. And slowly we may return to the ancient idea of a day of rest, not necessarily from work but from consumption, from pollution.

This new Earth Shabbat would not be religious at all but be tied to ancient religious themes that speak deeply to people religious and nonreligious alike.

Scientology: Great Name for a Bad Religion

2008-02-19T10:47:00.000-08:00

Its really too bad that the name Scientology is taken already. I wonder if I could sue them to give it up on account of it being false advertising and being more applicable to my religion than theirs?

Probably not.

I was just wondering because it's really quite a strange religion, if it's a religion at all, and while Bayesian believer is very precise in its meaning, the name Scientology lets you know you are dealing with someone that puts science first in their philosophy of the cosmos. At least, the name should mean that. So lets deal with these two points one at a time shall we?

'Science'

The first thing to realize about Scientology is that the 'science' stands for 'science fiction'. And I'm not even exagerating that.

Is Scientology a Religion?
Obviously a Bb has to be very careful about denouncing anyone's beliefs. The whole idea is to encourage diversity of belief and accept many different paths to the truth about existence. So I won't say Scientology is a cult or that its a completely invalid religious faith. The Bb philosophy tries to accept many paths to truth. Very many. That doesn't mean just any arbitrary path will do. The fact that Scientology has so many adherents argues more strongly than I can refute that there is something worthwhile there. Tom Cruise may be crazy, but Wil Smith, him I can respect, so I'm open.

In favour of being critical of Scientology there is the fact that after respect for other faiths, the other essential quality of a Bayesian believer should be that critical thinking and criticism are essential parts their faith. That is, just like a scientific theory, any religion that is unwilling or unable to stand up to intense analysis and criticism should be tossed aside. At the very least the concepts in that religion that are inconsistent or irrelevant should be pruned away to more clearly see the spiritual core underneath.

For each Bayesian believer these portions to be pruned will be different. For myself, as a Catholic, there are inumerable things that had to be cast away, or at least reinterpretted, in order to gain a semblance of order. My fear with Scientology is that their may be so much to prune away that there is nothing left in the end. But I could easily be wrong about that, only a believer in Scientology could determine that.

Now I haven't thoroughly researched a scathing analysis of Scientology and its problems but here are some tidbits I've gathered that Scientologists who may think their Bayesian Scientologists (see how awkward that sounds?) should consider:

The founder of Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard was a science fiction writer. Now I wouldn't claim that science fiction writers shouldn't start religions. If Issac Asimov of Dan Simmons had started one I'd probably join but there is evidence that Mr. Hubbard actually created the idea of the religion as a lark. He apparently made a bet with another SF writer about being able to start one. Then it took off so well he got carried up in it and maybe even believed it.

Frankly, it doesn't matter, if the great prophet of any religion is wise then the religion can be just as useful. But its something to be skeptical about.
They sue everyone! I mean the Catholic Church is litigious but its usually defensive not offensive. They forced the federal government to give them tax exempt status as a religion and then demand huge fees for membership from their believers.

What makes the world go round? Money, money, money money money....
They have some very strange quasi-science beliefs about psychology and healing your mind. It involves undetected energies and other dimensions I think. But hey, I believe in a soul and instant purging of sins when I say I'm sorry. Then again, I don't try to claim any scientific evidence for the sins being purged, sins aren't detectable. (At least I hope not!)

This is getting rambly. What started me off thinking about Scientology again was Anonymous and their protest against it. Its a very interesting new form of random, social protest. Look it up. google://anonymous+scientology should do it.

Great Quotes

2008-02-08T13:57:00.000-08:00

Everyone knows what Jesus taught, except for Christians.

- Mahatma Gandhi

On Fasting

2008-02-06T17:00:00.001-08:00

Today marks the beginning of Lent, this is the closest thing Christians get to fasting. For Catholics, no meat is allowed today, Ash Wednesday or on Good Friday two days before Easter. The entire forty days of Lent are also a time of 'fasting' where something is generally given up in your life. The goal is to improve yourself through sacrifice, through fasting. Many other world religions perform fasting, most much more intense than the requirements of Lent. Muslims cannot eat at all while the sun is up during the whole month of Ramadan. Many Buddhists are not meant to eat on the first and fifteenth day of each month. And people have been fasting for probably as long as people have been eating.

Fine, so the question is why? And does fasting have any relevance for modern believers who value reason and science as central concepts in their religious view of the universe. Does a Bayesian believer fast?

The answer of course is "they can if they want to". But does it make any sense?

Fasting is often performed as a symbol of sacrifice and love for God. It may be meant to show God that the believer is so committed to their faith that they are willing to go against one of the most basic drives of their body - hunger.

Think about the significance of this act in ancient times when food was scarce and there were no supermarkets to bring you food out of season from around the world. To refrain from eating weakens you, opens you up to danger and disease. But they did it anyways, because they felt that in some ways being hungry actually made them stronger. Recent scientific studies would tend to agree with this ancient wisdom at least in some ways.

Studies have shown the long held suspicion that hunger brings greater alertness and improves memory. Other studies have also shown that hunger can lead to an extended lifespan, at least in mice. Ancient people didn't really have much issue with being overweight but perhaps they gathered circumstantial evidence over time that periods of hunger raised awareness, improved learning and memory and tended to lead to longer life.

Fasting is also often described as cleansing for the soul. By resisting the desire of our body to eat we are asserting control of our mind over our body and pushing away the raw, insatiable hunger of our bodies bred by evolution to eat whenever the opportunity arises, lest the chance does not come again for a long time. This is a psychologically powerful act, to overcome your bodies wishes and impose something on it that you know is good for it. Exercising has a similar effect to this. We are forcing our body to exercise or eat less, knowing that it will make it stronger. But the body resists with pain, aches and the will must overcome it. When we succeed and run that marathon or complete that fast we feel accomplished. We feel stronger.

So perhaps the ancients weren't crazy to fast. These are all good reasons to fast right here, today, given everything we know about ourselves. We don't have to fast because God said its a sin to eat meat on fridays or during ramadan. We can fast because its good to challenge ourselves. To focus the division between body and mind and show body who's in charge in the body-mind relationship.

Now a reasonable believer should find it odd that God, creator of the heavens and the earth and Master of the universe should care that we do not eat meat on fridays or do not eat while the sun is up during a particular month.

A Meditation

2008-02-06T15:43:00.000-08:00

You come from a place, do not deny your history.

The beginning of your path is always the beginning.

You see the way the world is, do not deny the truth of your senses.

Take in what the world is telling you.

Be aware that you can only see through your own eyes.

The prism of your bias is constant and awareness of that bias does not diminish it.

Ponder your place in the world, in history, in the cosmos.

What part of All That Is can you see from the tiny mound of sand that is your home?

Ponder this until you find perspective and humility.

Then go out and act.

The Separation of Church and State

2007-11-12T08:13:00.000-08:00

This past Remembrance Day, or Veteran's Day for my American readers, I was reminded by a friend how it is a little strange in a secular society how the public memorials honouring soldiers and their sacrifices is so overtly religious in nature. The ceremony I went to began with a prayer invoking a loving God, God Save the Queen and a reading from Isaiah in the Bible. Its the reading that is the origin of the phrase 'turning swords into plowshares' so I'm sure its used a lot in similar ceremonies.

Of note was that Jesus was not mentioned and the religious elements were kept as non-denominational as possible. That being said, it was clearly non-denominationally Christian so I'm not sure how a Muslim or a Hindu would feel about it. But as I was talking to my friend afterwards we agreed that in this country there seems to be the ability to not get so worked up about religion being used in such a way as long as its done with respect and openly. Most western nations have a concept of keeping religion and the state separate but I don't think most have very specific rules about it. So when religion is used in traditional state ceremonies, such as honouring soldiers, it doesn't cause a crisis.

The United States is the ironic exception here I believe. In America there is a very strong, constitutional ban on intermingling of church and state activities. But I think there is often confusion by Americans and non-Americans about what this means. Americans assume that the separation is in place primarily to protect the religions. You do not want the state favouring one religion over another, or at least not one Christian denomination over another, because then they could persecute people based on religion and that is just what many of the early pilgrims came to America to avoid.

When this is explained to Europeans or Canadians the usual reaction is shock and disbelief. "No, that could not be. Its the other way around." You see, in Canada and many European nations such as Britain and France there is a strong
feeling that church and state are separate but this is to protect the integrity of the state, not the religions. This is usually the point where the Americans will look at you funny. "Why does the state need protection?" Ever hear of the Wars of religion? Or the counter-reformation? Or really any war in the past 500 years in Europe. It was almost always partially justified by attacking a neighbouring country with the opposing religion of the official state religion. In France and Britain they are very open and accepting of all religions but there is a very clear idea of what the main religion of the state is, Catholic and Anglican respectively. But for the government to mention religion officially or during campaigning is taboo because that would be trying to entrench religion into politics, which generally leads to conflict.

The irony is that in America, with its constitutionally mandated separation of church and state its impossible to get elected to any office without publicly avowing your deep belief in God and showing up at some respectable church regularly to prove it. This is anathema to most of the rest of the West. Even the conervative party in Canada which now holds a tenusous grip on power and has a fairly religious base would never get into religion. Its just not done, its bad form. The recent election in Ontario, Canada's most popular province, was neck and neck until the conservative party talked about extending publicly funded religious education in that province to all major faiths. Their support plummeted and their leader lost his seat in the election.

This explains some of the confusion America's friends have about the functioning of some of their politics, the direction this separation rule points has a huge impact on how public discourse is carried out. In America, irrational, religious explanations and citation of bible passages is often accepted as a form of argument. Whereas in other nations deeply devout leaders must often back legislation that they personally disagree with, such as gay marriage, because the rights codified in law require it. And if a church threatens to excommunicate or eject a politician was following reason in this way rather than dogma, the church would be shouted down in the media, not the politician.

Clearly I'm in favour of the reasoned approach. An elected politician must see themselves as an embodiment of the office they hold, not their personal beliefs. It shouldn't matter what religion they follow or if they don't follow one at all. It shouldn't matter because it shouldn't enter into their decision making, they should uphold the law of the land in letter and in spirit. For a rational person this should not be a contradiction just a challenge.

God's angry and he's going to punish you like a mean mafia boss.

2007-11-06T16:50:00.000-08:00

As in "Ok, if that's the way you're going to be about it, fine. Don't change. But I'm just kill this guy over here. Doesn't matter who, just some innocent guy, minding his own business, dead cause you won't do what I want."

So some people say all religions are crazy.
I always sigh and try to make the case for moderate religious belief. I argue that most religious people aren't crazy at all and really are just trying to get a little bit closer to the truth in the short time we have on this Earth. But then sometimes, you hear about something like this:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-ridley/god-hates-fags-not-acc_b_71378.html

Now, there's dumb, and there's irrational and then there is willfully hateful people seeking to cause pain to anyone else who doesn't share their extreme, unfounded beliefs. These people protest at the funerals of soldiers because they believe God is sending a message about American acceptance of gays by killing her brave soldiers. Her brave straight soldiers.

There are so many things wrong with this it boggles the mind. Pardon me a moment while I list them.

First thing, take out soldiers, take out gays, why are you protesting at people's funeral? No matter who it is, let their loved ones mourn in peace. Second thing, why try to hurt these people who aren't even related to the issue you are protesting. They aren't protesting at the funerals of gay soldiers, they are doing it at the funerals of any soldiers.

Frankly, these particular people don't even warrant a response, but their general approach does because it is more common even if all its adherents don't resort to such offensive measures.

People often spout the old "God is punishing us" bit when they think their society is veering away from morality. But really, couldn't God be punishing America for any number of sins? How do you know which it is, maybe its everything rolled together. Maybe its because you eat pork. And in with these particular people wouldn't it make more sense for God to kill American soldiers for reckless, unnecessary wars America has started? What do gays have to do with war?

But that's really beside the point.
The really aggravating thing about this kind of thinking for a moderate Christian or any moderate religous person is that the Christian God should not be punishing us at all. Jesus wasn't into that. That's so old testament. Its like God destroying the towns of Sodom and Gomorrah for their sinful ways. Jesus saw people selling in the temple, what did he do? He created a big mess and shouted at them. "Stop doing that! You're never going to get to heaven that way." Isn't that how the Christian God should work?

And another thing, if God were really punishing America wouldn't He do something more dramatic. When did the God of the old testament ever do something as weak as kill people and make it look like someone else did it? Never. When God wants to punish you he floods the entire world! Or maybe he kills all the firstborn sons on one evening, or brings a plague of locusts out of nowhere. Killing soldiers while they're at battle is way too vague for Yahweh, doesn't send a strong enough message.

The belief in divine retribution is one of the most irrational and inappropriate uses of religion. It indicates that the believer is trying to justify their faith. They are trying to square three inconsistent things:

their belief in certain strict codes of morality
their belief in an proactive, interested God
their observation that the world does not follow their moral code.

How do you deal with this? There seems to me there are three possible options open to you:

accept that your strict moral codes aren't universally valid, that one person's sexual perversion is another's healthy lifestyle choice. Also accept that this does not mean that all morality is relative just that the set of things we are all going to agree on is going to be very small and that there isn't anything wrong with that.
accept that your God is not proactive or not interested enough to actually punish you directly in this life. Optionally you could stop believing your God exists, but this is not necessary.
you see that the world does not follow your morals but don't question 1 and 2 so the logical conclusion must be that God is in fact punishing you right now for the sins of society. So you look around for something that is going wrong and claim that this is the punishment for whatever you think is wrong with society's morals.

So I think its clear these people are following option 3. It lets fundamentalists unhappy with the state of the world vent their anger at innocent people and feel justified. But that anger is coming from inside them. They've had to resort to option 3 because they can't accept that options 1 or 2 are possible and they are angry at themselves for not understanding the changing morals of society.

Or maybe they're angry at God for not doing something about it.

Maybe they should go give God of piece of their mind instead of attacking people who are filled with grief and have done nothing to harm them.

But exactly which circle of Hell do Atheists and Agnostics go to Bb?

2007-11-03T23:21:00.000-07:00

Well...I only bring up levels of Hell because someone asked about it in facebook group last week. Not atheists though, liars. Did you know liars go to the eighth level of hell? Pretty harsh.

But I digress.
What do we do with Atheists and Agnostics in the Bayesian Believer labeling system?

I mean, isn't Bayesian atheist redundant?
They thought enough about religious inconsistencies and hypocrisy to drop religion altogether, thats a strong update of their beliefs but so what?

Possibly. If someone who grew up religious then cast away religion and dropped all belief in a God then yes they would be a Bayesian atheist. But that doesn't mean its a redundant term. There are many atheists who are brought up with no religious indoctrination and thus being an atheist is their prior, they don't even question it. Many radical atheists who denounce the whole idea of religion as a scourge on the Earth are in this situation, they can't understand why you would even want to be religious. These people are not being very open about their beliefs and updating their theory of existence.

Case in point, Barack Obama.
He apparently grew up in a very secular household but came to find a place for religion in his life later on as part of a journey to understand himself better. Now maybe a politician isn't the best example, it could all be part of a 20 year plan to improve his electability. But people do come to want a religion if they are brought up with a type of atheism that isn't spiritually fulfilling. So I would say, being a Bayesian atheist does mean something, so they can use the term too.

Now excuse me if you aren't a statistics of computer science geek like I am, but there is also a nice fit for atheists and agnostics into the whole Bayesian belief framework.

Recall that I borrowed the term prior from Bayesian statistics to refer to the initial set of religious/spiritual/philosophical beliefs you grew up with. My upbringing is Catholic, so my prior is Catholic even though I've modified it quite a bit and that is why I'm a Bayesian Catholic, because I'm willing to modify my belief system based on evidence.

So if we can accept that the Bayesian label applies just as well to atheists and agnostics the question is, what is their prior? You see, if someone grew up Anglican and then became an atheist they have essentially thrown out their prior as misleading and useless. So do they have no prior at all? In statistics your prior has to be a probability distribution, so if you add up all the possible things in the world your probabilities still add to one. You can't believe in nothing. However, you could assign a zero probability to any number of specific things. Its just that the gap has to be made up somewhere else.

So atheists have a prior that says anything involving a supernatural God is bunk, it has probability zero. You got a theory without a supernatural God, and we can talk.

But what about agnostics? They don't know what to believe, but they are very suspicious of the whole religion and supernatural God bit. But they aren't discounting it. In statistics a uniform prior would be an initial distribution that says all things are equally possible. I think agnostics fit in nicely there. By becoming agnostic you have thrown out your initial prior about religion and set it to be uniform.

So how's that for inclusiveness?
I think this is important to clarify since I suspect most atheists and agnostics would have the same goal as I do, to bring moderation to religion. To provide a vocabulary for admitting you are a moderate, reasonable believer in God, and drown out the loud, extremist minority with the moderate, reasonable voice of the majority. And if we all use the same term then we're in the majority.

Bb.

Are there no moderate Catholics?

2007-10-28T22:30:00.000-07:00

Excuse me for devolving into a post specifically about the Catholic faith, of which I claim to be a part, but I think the general topic applies to all religions, and I suspect no one is reading this anyways :)

I say I claim to be a Catholic because, according to many people posting on Facebook, I apparently have no right to that claim. I was surprised to learn today that Facebook is in fact a hotbed of Catholic orthodoxy. It began with me joining the playfully named group We're not crazy, we're just Catholics. The jokes on the group intro indicate a healthy, humble view of the Catholic faith with a sense of humor about itself. Well, the discussion groups are anything but humorous or, I believe, healthy.

It seems like a small number of orthodox zealots are jumping on all subjects with 'The Truth' in response to people's questions. Most answers come down to the Catholic version of the child's answer to the question of why they did something, "Because". The proper phrase for the answer "Because" in Catholic circles is "infallible doctrine". This refers to the 'fact' that the Bible and various Papal encyclicals and other writings are "infallible" because the leaders of the Church are infallible.

Think about that word. Infallible. It means to never make a mistake, to always be right. Always.

Now, I understand a religious person wanting God to always be right, to be infallible, thats a loaded topic in itself which I'll address later. But people? Nowhere in the Bible do they say this is the infallible word of God. In fact, in some parts they actually try to convince you that what they are saying is plausible, because good honest people, in good standing told the writer about the events. He was in fact trying to provide evidence that his story was legit. If he was so confident of his infallibility that wouldn't be necessary.

Infallibility solves a lot of problems. Why can't women be priests? The doctrine of such and such a year said its outside the power of the Church to make women priests. Why can't we change that doctrine? Oh, that doctrine was infallible. QED.

So, if you believe in reason, in science, if you believe that free will is a good thing and that if Someone created us then They gave us a brain for a reason, then infallibility is a pretty difficult pill to swallow. But apparently, for some orthodox, belief in the infallibility of the Pope, all the previous Popes and many official writings of the Church is really what makes you Catholic.

The framework of Bayesian Belief that I am forwarding says that what makes you Catholic, for example, this applies to any religion, is that you have always been Catholic and continue to be Catholic. You are Catholic because that is where you started, that is the flavour of your faith in The Divine. In my terminology if it you prior belief system, meaning the one you started with without any evidence, not the the one you previously held. It is the starting point for you and everyone is at a different point in their journey from their initial belief system towards, hopefully, the Truth, whatever that may be.

The Truth is most likely much more complex and beautiful than we can conceive of so it is no surprise we all have different answers. But if you look closely at the bedrock of different moral/spiritual belief systems you will see they are essentially all talking about the same thing. On the other hand, if you let the details distract you, not only will you not learn to understand and accept the beliefs of others, you'll never fully understand your own beliefs. You'll continue to think, as you did as a child, that it is the details that matter, that it is the golden chalices and the incense and the infallible Pontiff that make you Catholic rather than the simple belief that you should put the good of others before yourself and that Jesus happens to be a great example of how to live a good life.

So I finally did find a reasonable Facebook group or two, Catholics for a Free Choice is one. But they are vastly outnumbered by the orthodox masses. Or maybe that is just an illusion.

Like the 1.1 Billion strong Catholic Church itself, I think many, if not most Catholics are quite moderate in their beliefs and take everything the Pope says with healthy dose of very fallible salt. They don't post on the boards because they don't want to get into a fight just like they don't go to mass every week because they're tired of hearing they're going to burn in hell because they don't have six children yet.

But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm alone. Maybe the world is mostly made up of orthodox, religious fundamentalists and absolute atheists, just like the media tells us. Maybe myself and all the moderate religious people I know are a skewed sample, an outlier, doomed to be ignored.

If so, so be it.

But I would hope that if the voices of moderation are actually in the majority that they wouldn't get drowned out by small groups on the fringe with angry rhetoric and big megaphones.

Even if they are infallible megaphones.

Bb.

This Tuesday, Oct 23, party like its 6011!

2007-10-20T19:02:00.000-07:00

You probably aren't aware of this, but this coming Tuesday is a very special anniversary. Its the 6011'th anniversary of the creation of the World.

At least that's according to a famous calculation by Irish Archbishop James Ussher (1625-1656) based on Biblical passages. For the record, the Earth was created on October 23rd, 4004 BC. Other's later refined to be around 6pm the previous evening. But they were just being pendantic.

Working out the age of the Earth was a popular pastime in those days in Europe as the bible was their primary source of information about where the universe came from and it seemed to have lots of details about real dates that could be tracked backwards. In a way, they were trying to be scientific. They were curious about the age of the Earth and they explored the best theory they had at the time, the Bible. Of course, this soon came into conflict with findings from the study of geology and the bones of long dead animals in the rock. Over the years it became harder to hold onto a six-thousand year old Earth and still have dinosaurs and all that.

This is still an issue today, not a debate of course, all scientists agree that the Earth is somewhere around 4.5 billion years old. But many people still hold onto the idea of a seximillenial Earth, despite all the evidence, they've even built a museum to explain how it works. Just like Ussher himself, they are trying to be scientific about their theory. This just shows that even fundamentalists often want the satisfaction of evidence. They just aren't willing to accept any evidence that conflicts with their preordained answer. A museum makes the creationist "evidence" look stronger by wrapping it up in fancy packaging. But these people are fundamentally different than a Bayesian believer who is compelled by reason and logic to seriously consider evidence. The evidence of the fossil record cannot be ignored or argued away with animatronic displays of dinosaurs and people living together. Science isn't a marketing competition and the world doesn't become what you want it to be just because you want it.

A Christian with a true respect for science and reason must find some way to integrate all of this evidence into their spiritual philosophy. This requires the humility to admit you aren't always right, that something you believed once may in fact be different than you thought. It requires the respect of others to admit they can't all be wrong or part of some plot to destroy you. And it requires an understanding of what is really important about your beliefs. Is it the age of the Earth or the purpose of life that is important to you?

In some ways, I wish the Earth were really just 6011 years old. Dinosaurs and people, certain knowledge, no worries about the heat death of the universe or the big bang, it would make you feel special to be that close to creation. But then I think, naw, I rather a 4.5 billion old Earth.

I mean, if Ussher was right, just think about the party we all missed on October 23, 1996.
Damn.

Bb.

Why do people become fundamentalists?

2007-10-10T16:22:00.000-07:00

This is a big question, and an important one given that fundamentalism seems to be on the rise.

Many people adopt a fundamentalist stance to their religion after they return to it. They are 'reborn'. This happens in Christianity but many other religions as well. I think that this behaviour can be explained within the framework of Bayesian believers. A person who forsakes their religion often does so because of overwhelming evidence that it is a sham in their judgement. This evidence could be the cruelty of those promoting it such as priests or their parents, it could be hypocrisy on social issues, it could be a feeling that God is not listening to their prayers or it could just be lack of interest.

Whatever the reason, the reborn fundamentalist is often someone who left and then returned to the religion. When they return they are in a way admitting that their previous judgement was mistaken. They gave up too quickly or misinterpreted the meaning of faith, or something of that kind. After admitting this failure of reason it is very difficult to again be sceptical and questioning about the elements of religious doctrine. They are grateful to be taken back into the fold. They are humble and they do not judge their faith again. They simply accept
everything, they accept it blindly. Thus we get the ultra-religious, fundamentalist, middle age believers. They try to convert others, to help them reopen their eyes. They want everyone to experience the blinding, simple confidence they have found that comes from being told
exactly what to think and removing the possibility of questioning.

This is the antithesis of the Bayesian believer who is always willing to hear reasonable discussion of issues, who is always willing to question anything that does not make sense. They may believe in magic, in mysticism and supernatural miracles. Not everything needs a explanation through science. But everything must have an explanation that is consistent within itself. The Bayes believer wants consistency with the facts over all else. The fundamentalist is willing to ignore facts if they conflict with their religious doctrine because they have learned to distrust their judgement of truth. Thus they have turned over their search for truth to someone else more qualified who will provide them with the answer fully formed.

What a comforting life that must be.

Bb.

Proverbs for Bayesian Believers

2007-10-01T02:01:00.000-07:00

Here are some sayings that have come to me that seem to sum up the idea of Bayesian belief. Feel free to add your own in the comments, sayings or proverbs from religions that are consistent with Bayesian belief would be especially interesting:

The only thing that we can say with certainty about any religion is that it is wrong,
or more precisely it is at best, incomplete.

I believe not because I must or because a book has told me so.
I believe because I have seen and felt the Divine.

Religion is just the beginning of faith, not the end.

Faith requires doubt and constant re-evaluation,
If you are certain of your faith then it will die.

Bb.

What is a Bayesian believer?

2007-09-13T01:51:00.000-07:00

What does it mean to be religious in a world of reason? Can reasonable people who also happen to be religious square the doctrines and beliefs of their religion with the observations of science, history and their everyday lives? I think the answer is yes and I that in fact there are many people in the world today who live quite happily in this state. Let me explain how I think it works. Along the way I think we'll find a way to talk about these reasonable people of faith and see that there is a way to unite all reasonable people interested in questions of spirituality be they atheists or religious believers.

To begin, consider someone raised as a Catholic, I was raised catholic so I have the most experience about that. Catholicism has a fairly all encompassing set of doctrines, beliefs and stories to draw from when raising children. There is a large infrastructure for indoctrinating children into the faith in school, church and Sunday schools. All of this information is taken in without question by the child. But as the child gets older, into their teens say, they naturally ask more questions. The reasonable person will look for ways to explain the inconsistencies within the religious stories they were taught. If they are honest with themselves they will eventually find that there are none. They will see how history conflicts with major assumptions of the religion. They will see that the experience of their daily life conflicts with the religion. They will never have seen miracles and talking bushes. In fact, they will discover that no one does, except the people in those stories at church. These reasonable young people will realize that the inconsistencies cannot be argued away or hidden without using blind faith. But blind faith is basically a choice to ignore facts, to ignore reason, it is a choice to become unreasonable. Young people at this stage often leave their religion of simply stop participating regularly. This happens a great deal in the Catholic church since it is a very mystical form of Christianity which holds on to many symbols that are obviously not literally true such as the physical transformation of the communion bread into the body of Christ.

There are other people, however, that pass through this stage with their faith in tact somehow. They strive to hold on to their faith despite these inconsistencies. For them, there is still a core of truth to their faith that is sustaining. They will not toss aside all religion because of some inconsistency. Yet, they will not toss aside reason either. Perhaps only a few core concepts of the religion remain untouched for them. They find that there need not need to be many of these concepts in order for the religious experience to be sustaining spiritually. They want a religion that contains these truths but is not filled with inconsistencies and mundane restrictions.These people want a spiritual life. But they want it guided by the symbols and rituals of the religion they know, they are not interested in shopping around for a new religion. A new religion for them would just be a replacement of one set of symbols for another and other inconsistencies would remain.

These people instead use the faith they learned as a child as a base, a starting framework. Over time they dismiss inconsistent notions, blatant political or hypocritical choices, power grabs and discriminatory or violent tendencies. These are all hold overs from the history of the religion's formation. They recognize that religions are frameworks for understanding God, or the cosmos, but fundamentally, religions are created by people. Anything made by people cannot be pure and perfect. It can only be understood within the context of those people, when and where they lived, what culture they lived in.

Many of the rules and doctrines in religions are created by people for mundane, practical reasons. Food laws inhibit the spread of disease for example. Such laws were more effective if it was God telling you to prepare food that way because it pleases Him. Marriage laws are similarly very useful for maintaining a cohesive community. Creeds of belief were often written to appease the political establishment or church leaders in order to avoid persecution or schism. These historical facts do not invalidate the core truths of a religion. However, the reasonable, faith filled person, upon learning the historical conditions that formed their religion must update their faith. They learn to let go of these mundane rules rooted in history. They let go of inconsistent political stances that their religion requires of believers. They support the moral and spiritual core of the religion rather than its socio-political aims.

So here's how I think it works.

I think the religious beliefs of a reasonable person of faith is a like a theory about God or the cosmos. The religion they learned as a child is their initial theory. It is provided, a priori, or before they can think about it, by their parents, their teachers, their priest. As these they get older and gain more experience they acquire new evidence and they update this theory. How do they do this? Most people update their faith very cautiously. They do no 'pick and choose' concepts. Every time any religious person hears a solid argument against a part of their faith they are shaken, sometimes to the core. It affects them deeply and it can be terrifying. They can then either run away from the new information, lashing back in anger or choose to go away quietly and ponder it. The reasonable person looks up supporting evidence, they read the history, they check sources. They compare authorities. Parents and priests on one side, scientists, friends and historians on the other. They think about the motivations of each of these groups. They slowly decide how to weigh this evidence based on how likely it is and accept it or discard it accordingly.

In statistics there is a very similar kind of model to what I have just described. Such a model or one who uses it is called Bayesian. Bayesian statistics models an event or fact, called a variable, as having some probability of occurring or being true. Initially, the model contains some prior belief about the events or facts. This prior belief is what you start with and it can be anything at all. It is not built up over time from experience as in traditional statistics, called frequentist statistics. Instead, the prior is simply given right from the start, it is a belief about how the world works before you have even seen the world.

The Bayesian is always willing to consider new evidence. The name Bayesian comes from the Reverend Thomas Bayes (1702-1761) who came up with a rule for how to update the prior belief based on new evidence in a consistent way. All the evidence discovered later on can be integrated as well and the evidence is weighted by how reliable it is. So, if one piece of faked evidence is offered that is completely inconsistent it can be discarded or given very little weight because it is very unlikely. This allows the Bayesian theory of the world to be slowly improved without discarding the prior beliefs. These methods are popular because they are able to get close to the truth with very little evidence as long as the prior theory is reasonable. If the prior is not even close, however, then you can still reach the truth eventually, it just requires a lot more evidence.

The reasonable, religious people I have been talking about seem to me to fit this Bayesian mold of belief very well. So I propose naming these people Bayesians believers. I am, for example a Bayesian Catholic. I have discarded many mundane, politicized and hypocritical Catholic doctrines and beliefs after considering extensive evidence. However, I am still at core a Catholic because my prior is a Catholic prior.

This seems like a clear and simple naming convention. It allows you hold onto your original religion as the initial framework of your beliefs while simultaneously telling people you follow reason and listen to other points of view. If you are a Bayesian Jew then I know Judaism is where you came from, where your identity was formed. I also know you have opened yourself to the historical truth about the formation of your religion and of everyone else's.

At the same time the Bayesian believer is now part of another community. A community of reasonable people that cuts across all faiths. Its a simple badge, a category for a new age of reason. We have many other such categories for belief. 'Bayesian' is just another label like 'Atheist', 'fundamentalist', 'lapsed' or 're-born'. But it carries a meaning which is been sorely lacking in current debates about religious belief. It lets the reasonable people into the discussion.

I believe that many religious people, perhaps the majority, are actually Bayesian beleivers.

They just don't know it yet.

It is time for a religious revolution.

It is time for a revolution of reason and openness to counter the growing fundamentalist tendencies of
the world's religions.

It is time for the silent middle, the Bayesian believers, to stand and be counted.

It is time to take back your faith from fanaticism and apathy.
There is a middle ground, and many people are there with you, you are not alone.

Join the Bayesian believers movement.

Declare yourself a Bayesian believer of your religion.

Bb.