"Are You Saved? Do You Know?"

In my experience, downtown Winnipeg bus stops are usually littered in equal parts with discarded Tim Hortons cups, bottles of mouthwash, Bible tracts, and copies of The Watchtower. I have a tract here that I found at just such a bus stop, and I figured that I might as well give it a read. It's no Chick tract (although Chuck and Leighton have dissected those in the past, here and here), but it'll have to do.

Tracts are all the fun of a Jehovah's Witness, but with the portability of a sandwich wrapper. Generally speaking, they tend to assume that you're a lapsed theist of some sort, and you just need to be reminded that Jesus needs you to polish his sandals; they rarely even offer any actual rationale for believing in a deity.

Let's play along, shall we? "Er, I don't know. Whatever do you mean? Saved from what?"

Do you know that the Bible teaches that all men are born in sin, and are naturally inclined to do evil?

"Gasp! I had no idea! Plus you've backed up your assertion with evidence, straight from the Bible!"

Do you know that until you demonstrate that a deity exists and he is particularly fond of your book, appeals to the Bible will remain unpersuasive?

Do you know that the Bible teaches that God has no pleasure in the death of a sinner, and is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to the knowledge of the truth and be saved?

"Golly gee whiz, you're kidding! God is truly merciful!"

Well, since God is purportedly omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent, he knows exactly what it would take for me to "come to the knowledge of the truth and be saved", it is within his power to convince me, and he is inclined to spare me eternal torment. Strangely, he has yet to prevent any evidence.

Strange.

Do you know that the Bible teaches that God's plan of salvation is very simple and effective?

"Just like homeopathy and the Q-Ray pendant! Cool!"

Seriously, though, one would assume that God's plan would be sensible, efficient, and efficacious; he is, after all, the supreme creator of the cosmos, who is a perfect incarnation of the appearance that a leader should have.

God's plan is simple and effective: it involves creating a race that is, after all, only human, yet holding them to an impossibly high ethical standard. After ejecting the humans from paradise for having the audacity to seek to know right from wrong, God no doubt realises his mistake and drowns just about every living being on the planet. He then lays down 613 hopelessly confused rules and regulations to a small band of desert-dwelling savages and instructs them to spread the good word by slaughtering as many of their neighbours as possible.

A few thousand years later, much to his chagrin, God notes that people are still having trouble following the rules: they're still enjoying ham and cheese sandwiches and blended fabrics and the like. Rather than simply drowning everyone again, however, he decides to wander around the desert for a bit and see if he can't talk some sense into people. Instead of creating a body the old-fashioned way (sculpting one out of dust and breathing on it), he decides to impregnate a woman without her permission (always a winning strategy). Once born, he walks around the desert for a bit, introduces his disciples to communism, and then is brutally slaughtered by the Romans and/or Jews.

But that's all part of the plan. You see, even though he makes the rules, he can't forgive people without human sacrifice. So long as you recognise that you are unworthy scum and admit that you don't deserve life, God will forgive you for the egregious sin of simply existing, and will admit you to the great amusement park in the sky—but only if you don't have any trouble believing in precisely the right version of the events described above.

Not to worry, though, because God, in his literally infinite wisdom, provided us with evidence that this is all true, in a badly-preserved, consistently mistranslated book with a decidedly provincial outlook that contradicts many major branches of scientific inquiry and endorses a moral code that would make Genghis Khan blush.

Yes, simple and effective are precisely the words that I would use to describe that plan.

Do you know that the Bible teaches a saving experience that you may know you are saved?

"That sounds great! Subjective experience is always more reliable than independently verifiable evidence!"

I've never had a "religious experience" that I can recall, but I've spoken with those who have. By and large, the feelings that they describe are similar to those that I experience when listening to power metal or watching Zach Snyder's adaptation of Watchmen (I know, I know, there's no accounting for taste). I've heard Matt Dillahunty express similar sentiments.

Personal, subjective experiences are unreliable.

Do you know that the Bible teaches that a saved person has fruits as evidence of his salvation?

"You mean that if I convert, God will give me stuff? Just like Santa? Neato!"

Presumably God will also ensure that such fruits are completely exempt from confirmation bias.

Do you know that the Bible teaches that a saved person is in danger of being deceived and of losing his salvation again?

"Gosh... Well, I'd better stop thinking critically, then; I wouldn't want to lose my way!"

The message here seems to be: once you've made up your mind, never change it.

Do you know that the Bible teaches that God has a plan by which to keep your soul?

"Great! I guess that means that I don't have to worry about it!"

As we've seen, God's plans have a marked tendency to be fairly strange—and to be incidentally beneficial to those who claim to be his messengers. Weird.

Do you know that the Bible teaches that a saved person is active, mission-minded, and in appreciation of his salvation endeavours to help others find their Saviour too?

"Wait a second... That sounds like work! You tricked me!"

Of course it does; otherwise, how would the meme propagate itself?

"Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord..."

Even though this Isaiah quotation is often used by disingenuous apologists, I still kind of like it. If only the writers of this pamphlet actually understood what "reason" was...

So, am I saved? Probably not. That said, I have no reason to believe that the author of this tract is, either, nor have I any reason to believe that there is anything from which salvation is necessary.

More tracts to come!

Bravo, BioWare

I've been a huge fan of BioWare games ever since a high-school friend introduced me to Baldur's Gate. I was enormously fond of Dragon Age: Origins, and although I was disappointed by some of the changes that were made for Dragon Age II, I've found it to be an altogether enjoyable game.

One of the aspects of the Dragon Age games that has impressed me most is the way that inter-character romances are handled: when interacting with the player character, some NPCs are clearly heterosexual, while others are attracted to characters of the same gender*. The fact that the game doesn't tiptoe around (or simply ignore) LGBT issues deserves high praise in my opinion, and serves to expand gameplay options while at the same time doing its small part to destigmatize homosexual relationships.

Unfortunately, this choice on the part of the developers isn't without its detractors. Take this post from the BioWare forums, for example:

To summarize, in the case of Dragon Age 2, BioWare neglected their main demographic: The Straight Male Gamer.

I don’t think many would argue with the fact that the overwhelming majority of RPG gamers are indeed straight and male. Sure, there are a substantial amount of women who play video games, but they’re usually gamers who play games like The Sims... That’s not to say there isn't a significant number of women who play Dragon Age ... but there should have been much more focus in on making sure us male gamers were happy.

...

The fact that a "No Homosexuality" option, which could have been easily implemented, is omitted just proves my point.

Seriously? So you're saying that you want your video game to have an option that will make all gay characters straight?

BioWare's response, however, was pitch-perfect:

The romances in the game are not for "the straight male gamer". They're for everyone. We have a lot of fans, many of whom are neither straight nor male, and they deserve no less attention. We have good numbers, after all, on the number of people who actually used similar sorts of content in DAO and thus don't need to resort to anecdotal evidence to support our idea that their numbers are not insignificant... and that's ignoring the idea that they don't have just as much right to play the kind of game they wish as anyone else. The "rights" of anyone with regards to a game are murky at best, but anyone who takes that stance must apply it equally to both the minority as well as the majority. The majority has no inherent "right" to get more options than anyone else.

...

And if there is any doubt why such an opinion might be met with hostility, it has to do with privilege. You can write it off as "political correctness" if you wish, but the truth is that privilege always lies with the majority. They're so used to being catered to that they see the lack of catering as an imbalance. They don't see anything wrong with having things set up to suit them, what's everyone's fuss all about? That's the way it should be, any everyone else should be used to not getting what they want.

...

And the person who says that the only way to please them is to restrict options for others is, if you ask me, the one who deserves it least. And that's my opinion, expressed as politely as possible.

David Gaider, the BioWare rep. quoted above (and lead writer for DA:O and DA2), got it right when he said, "an ignorant opinion politely expressed doesn't make it less ignorant".

For more commentary, go here.

Hat tip to Kyle Eros.

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* I believe that these characters are actually all programmed to be bisexual, at least in Origins, but I'm not certain.

SoS Presents: An Ode to the Brain

I love Symphony of Science.

What makes medicine "alternative"?

From Hua Shou's "Expression of the Fourteen Meridians".
Public domain image courtesy of Wikipedia.

A friend of mine recently sent me this quick email.

What makes a medicine conventional or alternative ?
Or maybe neither.

Thoughts ?

As I was packing for a trip to Cuba at the time, I had to be brief. Here was my reply:

"Conventional", "allopathic", and "Western" are all (generally derisive) labels that are applied to science-based medical practices. Conversely, "alternative" or "complementary" or "integrative" medical practices are generally those that are eschewed by the science-based crowd. The labels used are meant to present a false equivalence to the consumer, implying that "alternative" medicine is just as good as "conventional" medicine. Some completely reasonable, evidence-based practices (such as good diet, exercise, etc.) are presented as "alternative" health practices, even though they are commonly recommended by mainstream medical practitioners.

To quote John Maynard Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind."

Generally, "alternative" health practices are those that have not been shown to be effective in rigorous, well controlled, properly blinded scientific studies. Here's the key point: Once something has been shown to work, it becomes part of "conventional" medicine. On the other side of that coin, "alternative" medicines generally resist change, and refuse to admit defeat when the evidence shows them to be ineffective. Homeopathy is a prime example. Acupuncture is another (although acupuncture is tough, because there is some evidence to show that it does work; the problem is, almost all of the positive studies are for electro-acupuncture, which is actually not acupuncture at all but simply a TENS unit, an real medical treatment for pain).

To quote Tim Minchin, "By definition ... alternative medicine ... has either not been proved to work, or has been proved not to work. You know what they call alternative medicine that's been proved to work? Medicine."

...

For more information, I highly recommend checking out the Science-Based Medicine blog at sciencebasedmedicine.org.

I hope that helps!

Plants are people, too!

I'm a vegetarian. If you're interested in my rationale, I recommend listening to episode 43 of Reasonable Doubts; although Singer and I aren't entirely on the same page, the doubtcasters' discussion of Singer's work was what convinced me to forgo eating meat. And I'm still mad at them for it.

I'm not a preachy vegetarian. In fact, I don't even like to self-identify as a vegetarian, because there are a lot of granola kooks out there.* But I'm not shy about expressing my opinion when I feel that it's warranted.

From Haeckel's Kunstformen der Natur. Public domain image courtesy of Wikipedia.

I was sort of looking forward to this article in the New York Times, because I really miss eating meat and I'd love an excuse to start it up again.

But then I read it. Even the title annoyed me:

No Face, but Plants Like Life Too

No, no they don't. As far as we've been able to determine, you need a nervous system in order to "like" something. I eat plants, and avoid eating animals, because we have no evidence that plants suffer in the way that animals do when we slaughter them.

But just like a chicken running around without its head, the body of a corn plant torn from the soil or sliced into pieces struggles to save itself, just as vigorously and just as uselessly, if much less obviously to the human ear and eye.

Seriously?

When a plant is wounded, its body immediately kicks into protection mode. It releases a bouquet of volatile chemicals, which in some cases have been shown to induce neighboring plants to pre-emptively step up their own chemical defenses and in other cases to lure in predators of the beasts that may be causing the damage to the plants.

I don't see how any of this is relevant. Those are evolutionary adaptations geared toward increasing the biological fitness of the plant and its relatives; when these defences aid in gene propagation, the defences are passed on. That does not mean that the plant "wants" to survive, because there is no evidence that plants "want" anything, and indeed they do not possess any of the organs that as far as we can tell are required in order to want something.

If you want to look at these "protection mode" adaptations in a fair light, the fight-or-flight response in animals is probably analogous. So ask yourself this: when you are in a job interview, or when you're talking to a pretty person of the opposite (or same) sex, or when you're being grilled by your boss about how you spent that sick day last week, do you want your heart to start racing and your palms to start sweating?

No, probably not. But it's a biological adaptation that was evidently evolutionarily useful. Even when you're running from a mugger, the fight-or-flight response isn't something that you call upon; it's an automatic response that occurs irrespective of our desires. The fact that plants are subject to evolutionary pressures (just as we are) doesn't mean that they "want" to not be eaten.

Maybe the real problem with the argument that it’s O.K. to kill plants because they don’t feel exactly as we do, though, is that it’s the same argument used to justify what we now view as unforgivable wrongs. Slavery and genocide have been justified by the assertion that some kinds of people do not feel pain, do not feel love — are not truly human — in the same way as others.

Seriously? You've elected to go the Godwin route? You're equating salad to the holocaust and slavery? I'm not offended; I just want to make it clear where we stand.

Any reasonable person can see (and could, at the time, if they cared to look) that Jews, Africans, and any other subjugated, enslaved, or otherwise downtrodden people were capable of the same feelings as anyone else. But not only is there no plausible mechanism for plants to have the same (or similar) feelings, there is substantial evidence that they couldn't have any analogous feelings.

For example, physicians once withheld anesthetics from infants during surgery because it was believed that these not-quite-yet-humans did not feel pain (smiles were gas, remember).

Okay. And as soon as you demonstrate that plants do feel pain, then I will reassess my position.

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* Edit: Mike pointed out that using a term like "granola kook" to could damage my credibility here. In retrospect, I realise that it's probably not going to help.

It was an off-hand remark that I should probably clarify: for whatever reason, vegetarianism seems to correlate rather highly with many beliefs that I don't share, and although it's probably unreasonable for people to assume that I share these beliefs (that natural is better, for example) simply because I'm vegetarian, people seem to do so anyway.

Even so, that's probably not a good reason for me to avoid using the term "vegetarian"; it seems to me like that's akin to avoiding calling yourself an atheist because you're worried what people might think. And regardless of the correlation, I seem to be engaging in fairly base stereotyping.

Interesting.

The Ghost of Carl Sagan

Image credit: me.

I've mentioned Ghost Carl Sagan briefly before (when I told some ghost stories, and again in my incredibly long-winded talk to the Humanist Association of Manitoba), but until today I was completely unaware of this short article in The Onion:

Appearing as a hovering, wraith-like vision above the Cornell University Physics Building where he taught for years, the ghost of recently deceased astronomer/author Carl Sagan warned former colleagues Monday against a belief in superstition. "Exercise skepticism!" Sagan said, clanking a large metal chain. "Whenever possible, there must be independent confirmation of all facts pertaining to any so-called 'magical' or 'mystical' event or phenomenon!"

Hat tip to Dustin Hildebrandt.

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Edit: As the previous Ghost Sagan picture was rife with compression artefacts, I replaced it with a much nicer PNG version, above. You can find the original here.

Felicia Day is the Best Active Ingredient of All

Someone posted this on the Winnipeg Skeptics Meetup site, and I couldn't resist reposting it.

Putting Homeopathy into Perspective... with the help of Felicia Day.

Hat tip to Kyle Eros.