http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/02/02/neals_yard_bogo_scientists_asa/

Is this for real?

Crisis Pregnancy Centers are basically anti-abortion organizations pretending to be confidential medical clinics. They are not regulated by HIPAA and are not staffed by licensed medical care providers. They give pregnancy tests and then try to shame and scare women out of getting an abortion, in some cases even before the test results come in. Women walk in thinking they’re seeing a real doctor, and in fact they’re just seeing preachy evangelicals in lab coats and latex gloves.

That’s the point of having licensing for medicine in the first place, right?

Well a Crisis Pregnancy Center sued them, saying it infringed on their right to free speech. No, my conservative friends, you have no right to make women think you’re a medical clinic when you really aren’t.

Check out these links:

Medical News: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/172119.php

A Post Editorial letter in defense of CPCs:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/22/AR2009112201605.html

Local MD blogger: http://www.sarahsaysblog.com/2010/10/crisis-pregnancy-centers.html

NARAL: http://www.prochoiceamerica.org/media/fact-sheets/abortion-cpcs.pdf
NARAL MD investigation: http://www.prochoicemaryland.org/assets/files/cpcreportfinal.pdf

The Maryland lawsuit: http://bluewavenews.com/blog/2010/05/31/crisis-pregnancy-center-in-maryland-sues-county-so-they-can-keep-lying-to-women/

An investigation published by the British medical journal BMJ concludes the study’s author, Dr. Andrew Wakefield, misrepresented or altered the medical histories of all 12 of the patients whose cases formed the basis of the 1998 study — and that there was “no doubt” Wakefield was responsible.”

-CNN

The now-discredited paper panicked many parents and led to a sharp drop in the number of children getting the vaccine that prevents measles, mumps and rubella. Vaccination rates dropped sharply in Britain after its publication, falling as low as 80% by 2004. Measles cases have gone up sharply in the ensuing years.

In the United States, more cases of measles were reported in 2008 than in any other year since 1997, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More than 90% of those infected had not been vaccinated or their vaccination status was unknown, the CDC reported.

-Anderson Cooper 360

Robert Putnam co-wrote a new book on religion in America called American Grace.  In the interview linked above, he talks a lot about the Nones.

Good news all over the place.  For instance, over 80% of Americans believe that there is truth in most religions, per a survey question that also gave the option to respond that their religion was the only one that’s right.

Is this some form of Pascal’s Wager (what if I dis the wrong religion) or is it something deeper — growing reason?  The belief that what you were told is right and what others were told is wrong is a deep acceptance of an argument from authority.  The belief that everyone is basically right about most things, despite the fact that most religious dogma disagrees, is thinking for yourself.

Thoughts?  Feel free to listen to the interview and comment on Kojo’s site instead.  Just link me to your comment so I can read your insights

(And…  Yes, I know it’s been a while since my last post.)

The Family chronicles the history of American fundamentalism, both popular and elite.  He focuses on the branching of elite fundamentalism, though, and its implications for American politics.  The thesis of the book is that there is an elite fundamentalism that is largely independent of political party that reveres power through the belief in the concept of Key Men — God puts key men into positions of power.  This philosophy tautologically justifies a powerful man’s actions and helps him feel like he not only deserves his power, God wills it.  The Key Man idea requires sister concepts such as submission to authority — those beneath the Key Man must submit to God’s Will through him, and he must submit to Jesus.  If a man deposes another man for power, it was because God willed it; if he fails, it is because it was not God’s Will.  Power, power power.  Let me quote a passage:

“Absence?” I said, realizing that what he meant by the absence of doubt was the absence of self-awareness…

…God was just what Bengt desired him to be, even as Bengt was, in the face of God, “nothing.”  Not for aesthetics alone, I realized, did Bengt and the Family reject the label Christian…  His commands phrased as questions, His will as palpable as ones own desires.  And what the Family desired, from Abraham Vereide to Doug Coe to Bengt, was power, worldly power…

 

Power is revered by prayer cells at the highest levels, arranged by The Family, the group that runs the National Prayer Breakfast among so many other things.  They use prayer cells as ways to organize access to power, to enforce consensus on political aims, and to spread the Idea.  What political ideas does the Family push?  Concepts that help their Key Men in positions of power, of course:  Free-trade and electoral obfuscation (e.g. the Citizens United case); but also politics of authority:  Pro-life, anti-gay-marriage, etc.

Sharlett returns to this theme over and over.  Contemporary American fundamentalism does not care for the nuances of scripture, so arguments from scripture are pointless.  That leaves only arguments from authority and appeals to emotion — the tools that are used to drive elite and popular fundamentalism, respectively.

One problem I found with The Family is that Sharlett doesn’t offer a good alternative.  He spends one or two pages discussing “deliverance” (by seeking, questioning, reflecting) as an idea that can defeat the big idea of “salvation” (through submission and banishing reflection); but he doesn’t create a clear path to a nationwide elite or popular ideology of deliverance — secular or sacred.

It made me want to go back to writing a book on how Jesus was a communist.

The exercise of reason requires unbiased, factual information; so it’s no surprise that atheists are the most knowledgable.  Those who care to reject religion in favor of rational secular ethics have typically studied it before they made that decision.  So, as the LA Times points out,

American atheists and agnostics tend to be people who grew up in a religious tradition and consciously gave it up, often after a great deal of reflection and study, said Alan Cooperman, associate director for research at the Pew Forum.

“These are people who thought a lot about religion,” he said. “They’re not indifferent. They care about it.”

What interests me is that the “nones” have some of the lowest religious knowledge, lower than white mainline protestants, even.  Given what the LA times said about atheists, this implies that the “nones” are people who don’t think a lot about religion and don’t care about it.  And that’s OK, too; while it’s always better to think hard about your ethics, if you’re going to make a decision without engaging in a lot of reason and analysis, it’s better to disbelieve passively than to believe passively.

Other sources:  Times, NPR

Jones is clearly outside the mainstream.  His views don’t represent basically anyone who lives in the USA, and I applaud mainstream Christianity for publicly and emphatically distancing themselves from this loon.  But…

…He kinda made a point.  Unintentionally.

Terrorists — and here I refer to Jones as a terrorist, so keep that in mind — do what they do to provoke overreactions from their enemies and to provoke violence on both sides.  Now, Terry Jones didn’t plan to do anything illegal in the US, but what he did is a very serious crime in some of the countries he was aiming at infuriating.  So when Jones plotted his burning, he was engaging in a form of terrorism.  It certainly horrified Muslims, and that’s the point he made.  And it provoked violence.  Specifically, it got the following reactions:

Afghanistan:  Mass protests, blocked roads, clashes with security forces, deaths and injuries, attack on a NATO base, arson.

Pakistan: Pakistani Christians burned an effigy of Jones; as did Muslims; lawyers are burning Amrican flags in the streets.

Iran:  Threat of “a crushing response by Muslims across the world.” And conspiracy theories by President Ahmadinejad: “[The proposed burning is a] Zionist plot that is against the teachings of all divine prophets. Zionists and their supporters are on their way to collapse and dissolution and such last-ditch actions will not save them, but multiply the pace of their fall and annihilation.” And the Ayatollahs put out a hit on anyone who burns a Koran.

‘Those who can make you believe absurdities

can make you commit atrocities.’

- Voltaire, 1694-1778

Terry Jones has proven that the men who shout in the streets that they are our (America’s) dire enemies, are a mix of absurd beliefs and atrocious actions.  This is absurd:

• Rioting in the streets as a result of a canceled threat of burning some books.
• Threats of murder, and even orders to murder someone for burning a book.
• Burning flags and effigies in the streets because someone said they would burn a book.
• Threats of worldwide violence, even acts of war, for burning a book.
• Attacking a NATO base, assaulting soldiers of your own country, and arson because someone disrespected a book.

This is ridiculous.  Let’s follow the logic here…

If the book represented them, as a nation, and someone burned it, it would be an insult.  I understand metaphors and symbols.  That would be a big insult, worthy of retributive insults.  Maybe a symbolic retributive burning, like the Pakistanis burning American flags and effigies.  Sure.  Jones didn’t go through with it, but it was still an insult, so some non-violent protest action is merited.  Yet there were protests over the weekend attacking NATO bases, burning buildings, and physical attacks ending in deaths.  Plus, Iranian Ayatollahs threatened death to anyone who burned the Koran.  That’s atrocious.

Let’s face it, the Koran is just a book.  Even if you believe the self-deification of Mohammed contained therein, the book is still just a book.  It may be a symbolic representation of Muslims worldwide, but it’s not a person.  So Terry Jones made a point, in that way that terrorists do:  He proved that the religious zealots in Afghanistan and Iran irrationally place their reverence for a symbol over their respect for peace and human life.  But in doing so, Jones inflamed those atavistic impulses.

I can blame Terry Jones for the weakened relations between Americans and Afghans and the relatively rational flag-and-effigy burning; but I don’t blame him for the death and destruction following his hateful threat, like some will.  I blame religious zealots in Afghanistan and their own irrational beliefs.  The fault lies in the actual perpetrators of violence, and always should.