A Right to be Healthy

"Why should someone who doesn’t take care of their body get the same rate as someone who does?" - from discussion about health care on Facebook. Below is my response.

I wish we lived in a country where we had this kind of problem to solve, but we're so far from the point of rewarding self-care and preventative care that we're treating birth defects as if they're the baby's fault.

Until the Affordable Care Act was passed, insurance companies could simply refuse to provide coverage for people with preexisting conditions ranging from the category of conditions you're probably referring to (smoking leading to cancer, poor diet and exercise leading to diabetes or obesity) to congenital heart defects, scoliosis, FAS, or other genetic defects that a person can't do anything to prevent. Also in this spectrum is damage from accidents that are likewise not under a person's control. Even if they provided some coverage, they'd often either exclude coverage for symptoms they deemed to be caused by a preexisting condition or charge incredible amounts for coverage to the point where it's beyond most people's ability to pay.

The reality is there's no amount of self-care or personal responsibility that will prevent needing access to the most expensive and inefficient health care system in the industrialized world at some point in your life. The Affordable Care Act recognized this and moved us towards a system whereby the treatments are considered the same regardless of the causes, and prevented insurance companies from choosing who lives and who dies based on a profit motive.

It's a step in the right direction and the best we could get under the political circumstances at the time, but we need to go much further in order to truly take care of each other and make sure everyone has a right to be healthy.

When they go low, we pursue justice

The Alt-Right Playbook: You Go High, We Go Low

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAbab8aP4_A

This was a very challenging video to watch as a liberal, and I encourage all of my friends to watch it and consider. It challenges some deeply held liberal ideals, and that's a good thing. The summary: liberals have come to idolize process over policy. "When they go low, we go high." But instead of defining "going high" as pursuing just and good policies, we've defined it as following the rules and norms that have been summarily smashed and disregarded by Republicans. In doing so, we tell ourselves we're trying to prevent a rulebreaking arms race that will lead to the collapse of the whole system of governance we've relied on lo these many years. That speaks to some deep liberal moral insticts: people are basically good, the good ideas always win out eventually, it would be hypocritical to do what we criticize others for doing, and that maintaining decorum is an end in itself. As Obama frequently liked to quote, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice" But the universe doesn't bend towards justice unaided. It must be bent, and often quite forcefully. Hitler's defeat was not inevitable. The abolition of slavery in the US required a civil war. The right to vote is contested to this day (see voter suppression in red states/precincts across the country). We as liberals have come to believe that it's a moral victory in and of itself to point at the norm-breaker in chief and say "YOU CAN'T DO THAT!" For this week's example: When Trump announced his intent to eliminate birthright citizenship by EO, the response on the left was almost universally "well he can't, the rules say he can't," whereas the response on the right ranged from "hey, that's a good idea; finally someone is doing something about these illegal babies" to the more tepid "it's a fine idea, but you can't legally do it that way." Note that no where on either side of that discussion does anyone say "It's wrong to want to abolish birthright citizenship." The left has largely abstained on the moral argument over the POLICY, in favor of dismissing the issue as outside the PROCESS. Conversely on the right, we likewise see no moral debate over the topic, because that ground has been ceded by the left so they've internally assumed victory in the policy argument, leaving them only to debate how best to go about doing it. That's not to say no one on the left or right is an outlier bucking these trends or that the left generally doesn't think the policy proposal is immoral. The point here is that by leading with the counter that "it's against the rules" rather than "it's wrong," we are unilaterally disarming in the fight over the policy itself. The Republicans have shown us they don't care about the process, they only care about the policy. While we scream at them for the hypocrisy of denying Merrick Garland his SCOTUS seat, they only cared about denying Obama another supreme court pick so they could populate the court with Justices more amenable to their policies. They likewise stole hundreds of lower federal court seats, for the same reasons. If the Democrats' idea of how to fix this is to shame Republicans for breaking the rules, that will fail. Even in the case of the hypothetical EO overturning the 14th amendment, it's within the rules as written for the Supreme Court to outright declare that the President can do that even when it's blatantly obvious that he can't according to the rules. After all, according to the rules, the Supreme Court gets to decide what "according to the rules" means. Continuing to argue about the fairness of the process isn't going to change the policy. Instead, we need to stop letting the GOP pick the high ground we die on for us. Instead of defining following the rules as the moral high ground, define pursuing just policies as the high ground. We shouldn't ignore the rulebreaking entirely, but it also shouldn't be our primary argument against it. To the extend we can use the fact they broke the rules to prevent the bad policy from being implemented, we should. Sue on procedural grounds if that's what will stop the policy from taking effect, but remember that the end goal is stopping the policy not enforcing the rules. Trump went through several drafts of his Muslim ban before it got through the courts, but he still got his Muslim ban in the end. Victory is when we have immigration reform that makes it easier for people to integrate into our society legally and is welcoming of diversity, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free. When a GOP secretary of state purges the voter rolls a couple weeks before the election, instead of just suing to force him to let the people vote on the grounds he can't do that, campaign on automatic voter registration that would prevent the possibility in the first place. When the president tries to ban trans people from serving in the military, don't just sue under the equal protections clause, make the argument for why trans people deserve to be treated equally. The constitution, the courts, and the process are means, not ends. We must never lose sight of the ends, because those ends are things like access to healthcare, kids being gunned down in schools, minorities being shot in their own back yards by police, LGBT people being able to marry the ones they love and not be discriminated against in employment or society more generally. Following the process is only as important as the policy outcomes it leads to. That doesn't mean that all means are justified by the ends, but likewise good means don't justify bad ends.

The Demographics of Voter Suppression

I posted this challenge to my Facebook feed along with data visualizations from 538:

If you vote republican, ask yourselves why if only non-white people voted in this country only 10% of congress would be Republican? Then ask yourself why republican lawmakers and governors across the country are making it harder for minorities to vote.
Source

In the comments, a challenging question was asked from a non-Republican friend. What if the question were reversed, and Democrats had to answer why the result would be flipped if only white people got to vote, given that many white people in America consider themselves oppressed.

It was a fair question I believe to be in good faith, so it was worth an in-depth response.

So how would I respond?

First, I'd start with the context that white men for the first 100 years of the country were the sole voters and ever since then have been actively suppressing minority votes. So, it's not a symmetric comparison and any discussion we have can't be divorced from that crucial context.

Second, I'd acknowledge that it's understandable to be cynical and say Democrats are only making it easier to vote because it helps them in elections. I don't think that's true, but it definitely makes it a lot easier to see (especially as a white person) the voter suppression and racist history that leads to this, without having to confront as much cognitive dissonance or facts contrary to self-interest. I'd like to think that even if colors on those maps were reversed, I would still be pushing for higher voter turnout and against disenfranchisement.

Third, I don't know how to respond without directly contesting the claim that white people are oppressed (part of the reason I started with the context). It would be challenging to unpack white privilege and structural racism over the course of a single conversation, but that's the root of the issue so there's no way around addressing it. Most likely I'd start with the classic article "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack" by Peggy McIntosh.

Fourth, I'd highlight that it's less about the parties than it is about who makes up the parties. The Republicans used to be the progressive party of Lincoln, and the Democrats the party of the clan that was responsible for putting most of those early voter suppression laws in place. When the parties flipped socially in the 60s-70s, it was explicitly over the Civil Rights Act, and the Republicans took up all of the racist vote that abandoned the Democrats under Johnson. It wasn't a sudden change, but that was more-or-less the capstone of the shift. Now when you look at groups like the KKK, neo-nazis, proud boys, etc they're almost exclusively Trump supporters (except for the ones that believe Jared Kushner is Trump's Zionist puppetmaster).

Finally, isn't the point of democracy to have everyone have a say? This isn't a both-sides issue. One party is trying to make it easier for everyone to vote, and the other is trying to make it harder to vote in demographically targeted ways. Ideally we would all agree that's a bad thing right? Voting rights shouldn't be a partisan issue. The fact that we don't have national automatic registration is shameful.

There's no equivalency between the parties on this issue, but both parties should at least agree that more people voting is good right?

Starting again

This blog has fallen idle for quite a while, primarily because I got a job that took so much of my time and energy I had to cut back somewhere.

I find myself having a lot to say over the last two years though, and my mini-blogs on Facebook and Twitter just aren't sufficient anymore. I need this outlet again.

So I'm going to try to write something as often as I can. With one of the most important elections of my lifetime (to date) coming up in only a week, I suspect I'll be writing about politics a lot.

20 Questions Feminists Asked of Men Answered Poorly.

Saw this article and felt the need to respond: http://thelibertarianrepublic.com/20-stupid-feminist-questions-men-answered/

I really should be getting to work but this is going to bug me if I don't weigh in so let me elaborate my position.
First some general thoughts then I'll go one by one:
The most frequent problem I encountered with this article is equivocation. Just because two different issues facing men and women violate the same underlying principles doesn't mean they are the same or cancel each other out.  Both men and women get raped, therefore the fact that it happens to women at a sickeningly higher rate is irrelevant. Circumcision and abortion both are bodily autonomy issues, therefore they are the same issue. Society puts body image pressure on both men and women to some degree, so it's the same.I think relative severity is important and that you can simultaneously recognize that two problems are real and serious without thinking that all problems are equally so.
Now to his answers
1. I don't have much of a problem with this one other than to mention that "someone, somewhere is going to call me an attention whore" is not quite the same as the occurrence being "common" as the questioner said.
2. I think he's right that both men and women are belittled in this way, but I don't see any reason to believe that "that criticism comes equally from both men and women." Again, the key word is "common." Minor point though relatively speaking.
3. Yes, gender roles cut both ways, but when one gender role gives you an automatic check box in the interviewer's "do I hire this person?" checklist I don't think the two are equally damaging.  Yes there is pressure on men to put work first and family second (though that situation is improving, thanks in no small part to feminists challenging gender roles in general), but the complementary pressure on women is to not work at all and put family above career at all times.
4. Circumcision (or MGM whatever you prefer), is a bad thing. Babies die from it, have botched procedures, accidents, occasionally get herpes (from the traditional briss ceremony) and they get no say in the matter. The evidence doesn't point strongly either way for health benefit or detriment in sexual health, but that just makes it an unneccessary ellective surgery at best. Absolutely, I think the practice should be discontinued until a reasonable age of consent. It's a bodily autonomy issue that we need to deal with in this country and for the most part are not.
However, this does not mean that MGM is nearly as bad a situation as the state of abortion rights in this country. Childbirth/abortion and MGM are orders of magnitude different in terms of life impact, financial impact, an health risk. If it's not already readily apparent why giving birth and raising a kid is tougher than having a 95% functional penis (baring the complications I mentioned above) then I'm not sure what I could cite in defense of my view that would convince.
5. Femenazi and misogynist are not gendered synonyms. The former is a pejorative used exclusively to dismiss the opinions of opinionated women regardless of substance, while the latter has genuine use in describing attitudes and culturaly ingrained pressures which women have to put up with. By analogy, a racist may find the term pejorative but that doesn't make it any less of a diagnostic term (and no I'm not comparing misogynists to racists, I'm comparing the terms only)
6. "Women generally aren't funny..." That's what misogyny looks like. "see what it is that women almost universally want in a mate." Sweeping generalizations.
7. In addition to only wanting us for our sense or humor, apparently women only want us for our careers? This is mostly tone trolling, but the generalizations bug me again. Also I found his parenthetical about the "small percentage of women" who are attracted a bit entitled.
8. This one pissed me off because the comparison was so lopsided. "In the media and journalism field, it’s sure as hell not a meritocracy. Ladies, if you’re gorgeous, you don’t need to be all that talented to get a job in reporting. You just have to be able to read off the teleprompter, look great in a tight dress, and you’re booked. For us chubby white dudes, no one wants to see us on TV. We’ve got to be smarter, more educated, have all of our hair, and be willing to claw our way to the top." Saying "gorgeous ladies" have it better in media than "chubby white dudes" is no more to the point than saying handsome men with "all of our hair" have it easier on TV.
Media wants attractive people, male or female. The fact that men CAN overcome this barrier with hard work while women usually cannot is not a point in the author's favor.
9. No issue with this one, other than I think he missed the point that usually women don't have the luxury of waiting until you were established in your career before starting a family. The pressure on women to have a family early often precludes that option.
10. "And if you do reject a drunk female, beware! They’re dangerous! The best thing to do is just to ignore them, and don’t lie about having a partner because they will stalk you until they find out you’re lying, and then they will hunt you down to make you suffer. It happens. Not frequently, but occasionally." Right, NOT FREQUENTLY. Consider the converse situation. "And if you do reject a drunk female, beware! They're dangerous!" The former brings up a legitmate (though rare) concern about stalking. The latter brings up the disgustingly FREQUENT cases of rape, assault, battery, and sometimes outright murder.
Yes, men get raped. But to say that risk is the same as the all too legitmate fear that women have to deal with in this situation on a daily basis.
11. Exhibit A in missing the fucking point. Women being judged by the length of their pants or skirt happens all the time and is usually accompanied by accusations of "slutiness" or worse the victim blaming attitude of "she was asking for it." Your receeding hair line is not remotely comparable. To make it worse, saying "you can do something about your skirt" is an example of victim blaming (though I think born out of ignorance of the questioner's intent in this case). The woman shouldn't have to do a damn thing about her skirt length.
12. "I wish I could just go on a diet and be skinny and have that be sexy. No, we men have to go on a diet, AND lift weights to get ripped, shredded, cut, whatever. It’s a lot harder." Fuck you sir, I have no response to give beyond that.
13. Everyone should be a good listener. Not sure "shut the hell up" is the best way to convey that message but ok.
14. Again, missing the point. The man being expected to pay for things in a relationship is not at all equivocable to victim blaming in the case of rape, sexual assault, catcalling, etc. See #10,#11.
15. Ok, took this one a bit personal as a gamer who does enjoy identifying with RPG characters much like I would those in a novel or film. "I’ll try not to be condescending to the intelligence of someone who seriously compares themselves to Hobbits, Twileks, Elves, He-Men and mutants." Try harder. Sexism in gaming and character design is a whole separate conversation that is definitely worth having, but not here.
16. I'll pass on this one, as I'm not quite sure I'm understanding either party correctly.
17. Again, see #10,#11, #14. Entirely different forms of relief are expressed in a woman saying "made it home safe" than a man saying it in our society.
18. I disagree with the relative frequency of the occurances, but for once he's making a fair comparison.
19. Signing your initials avoids the risk that people will not take your work seriously or look at it differently just because a woman produced it. At least this time he recognized that he missed the point. For example: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/25/science/bias-persists-against-women-of-science-a-study-says.html?_r=0
20. See #15. A discussion for another time about the "girl gamers" terminology but I'll give and example of the concern. It's not uncommon for a "girl gamer" to simultaneously riddiculed for defying the (woefully inaccurate) gender steryotypes about gamers, while being belittled for her successes in game because "people went easy on her" or "she only got ahead because she's a girl." Again, another time for that discussion.

Amazing Air Traffic Visualization

Freedom to Discriminate: Part 1

My latest column has been posted in the Daily Pennsylvanian.

Since November of 2012, 10 new states have legalized same-sex marriage by court decision, legislation or popular referendum. Pending appeal, Utah, Oklahoma, Kentucky and Virginia are poised to j oin them in the next couple of years. In reaction to this tremendous push forward, several state legislatures are trying to pull us back to the 1960s. 

Idaho, Mississippi, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee and Arizona have all put forward similar legislation that seeks to promote “religious freedom” by allowing anyone from small business owners to emergency responders to deny service based on their sincerely held religious beliefs. So far, Arizona’s is the only one to have passed a state congress.

While these laws have grabbed national headlines, they are just the most outrageous examples of a nationwide response to the changing social attitude towards marriage equality. Last year, in my home state of Minnesota, the Minnesota Family Council successfully lobbied against an anti-bullying law on the grounds that it would be a “gross intrusion on parental autonomy and religious freedom.” 

At the core of all these fights is a very specific claim: By making laws against anti-gay bullying or discrimination, we are violating the “religious freedom”of people who want to bully and discriminate. 

No.

Religious freedom means you get to believe whatever you want. Religious freedom means you are free to practice your religion to the extent that it does not harm others.

Read the rest here. My next column is also submitted and will be a followup discussion to this week's.

Robots don't Kill People

Recently, I attended a seminar entitled “How to NOT build a Terminator” by Ronald Arkin, director of the Mobile Robot Laboratory at the Georgia Institute of Technology . The talk explored how roboticists should approach the ethics of robots with lethal autonomy, especially in light of increased military interest in robotics. Advocacy groups around the world are calling for preemptive actions ranging from a moratorium on robots capable of deadly force to a total ban on robotics research.

Especially over the past year, drones have been a constant source of both excitement and fear. From Amazon Prime Air to “signature strikes” in Pakistan, drones have captured the public’s attention.

But as a roboticist, it frustrates me that public conversations surrounding “killer robots” have little to do with actual robotics. So, I’d like to address some common concerns and misconceptions about robots to help the discussion be more productive.

Read the rest here:
http://www.thedp.com/article/2014/02/robots-dont-kill-people

The original talk (or a version of it anyways) can be found here.

So that was interesting

In preparation for the Ravi Zacharias event at UPenn, I wrote an opinion column laying out some of my concerns about Ravi's style and beliefs. Apparently it struck a nerve.

Here's the full text of my column:

Not ready for Ravi
The Devil’s Advocate | Ravi Zacharias may be an evangelist to the intellectuals, but he's no intellectual evangelist 

Pastor Aaron Campbell of Philadelphia’s Antioch of Calvary Chapel has been independently planning the upcoming Ravi Zacharias lecture for over two years. According to Campbell, Ravi’s talk will be “one of the most intellectually stimulating lectures you have ever been to.”
I’m sorry, Aaron, but intellectually stimulating is not the same as mentally taxing. 

It concerns me greatly to see so many intelligent Penn students praising Zacharias as an intellectual heavyweight. Ravi is an expert rhetorician and apologist, but his views and arguments hardly deserve the term intellectual. 

Let us start with his reasons for rejecting the theory of evolution:
“The ascending of biological forms into more complex and superior designs also comes into conflict with the Second Law of Thermodynamics in Physics,” Zacharius wrote in his book, “The Real Face of Atheism.” This is an embarrassing and egregious misunderstanding of science propagated by anti-science organizations like the Institute for Creation Research and Answers in Genesis. 

While he has repeatedly made clear that he does not accept evolution for this and other equally ridiculous reasons, accounts vary regarding what he does believe. In private correspondence he is reported to be “firmly committed to a young earth” and to have “always held to the literal six day creation.” His ministry takes no official position (usually a sign it wishes to avoid embarrassment) but apparently considers it an important enough question to put first on its website’s Q&A page. 

Not content to stop at science denialism, Ravi goes on to promote a sinister revisionist history:
“Hitler’s point was that the destruction of the weak is a good thing for the survival of the strong … as is taught by atheistic evolution’s tenet of natural selection. …We have been down the atheist road before, and it ended in a holocaust,” he wrote in “The End of Reason.”
Elsewhere in his book, he puts abortion morally on par with child pornography and claims “atheistic philosophy is having its way with our children” on both counts. The connection seems obvious to him, but escapes me.
When asked about homosexuality, Ravi said, “Sex is a sacred gift of God. I can no longer justify an aberration of it in somebody else’s life than I can justify my own proclivities to go beyond my marital boundaries.”

It pains me to realize many still consider Ravi a great moral teacher. 

However, unless someone specifically brings up these topics in a question, Ravi is unlikely to address them in his talk. He surely knows his positions will not endear himself to the Penn community at large. 

What you can expect at the lecture is Ravi routinely distorting his opponents into vile straw men. 

For example, famous ethicist and animal rights activist Peter Singer put forward an argument against animal testing which includes a thought experiment directly comparing the suffering of intelligent animals and young children of below average intelligence. Ravi twists this nuanced and clever argument into “[Peter Singer believes] that a pig is of more value than a child with a disability.” Not even a Princeton professor like Singer deserves such malicious misrepresentation. 

Ravi has similarly shown his lack of intellectual integrity by distorting the views of thinkers such as Sam Harris, Sartre, Nietzsche, Descartes, Buddha, Gandhi and others. 

As for the Q&A session, one of Ravi’s favorite toys is the red herring. When asked a difficult or uncomfortable question, Ravi will begin telling a seemingly unrelated (and usually apocryphal) anecdote. By the time he reaches the point of the story, if there is one, so much time has elapsed that most have forgotten the original question, allowing Ravi to instead answer the question he would have preferred. 

I am still planning to attend his lecture, but that’s because I have a tendency toward mental masochism. If you choose to attend, keep any questions you ask him short and memorable. Otherwise, we’ll never be able to move beyond Ravi’s rhetoric and search for the substance. 

As of this writing, the column has 272 comments, which is a new record for me and possibly the Daily Pennsylvanian. The vast majority of the comments are a few people defending Ravi's ridiculous claims that atheism caused the holocaust or arguing that homosexuality is in fact immoral.

A few comments broke the mold and instead tried to save my soul.

Find Jesus and you will understand every word Ravi says, Mr Collins Boots. People who do not have Jesus in their hearts can not understand the Word, which will teach, for one, not to judge others who do not share your beliefs. He has SAVED people's souls. Evolution is nowhere near as important as that, if that's where you are going to base your argument against Ravi. As an intellectual, which you claim to be, you should be open to all arguments rather than oppress them. Why do you feel his lectures are such an attack on your own self, enough to print such a critical review. Mediocre as well, might I add. If you feel so strongly towards Ravi's lectures, I suggest you stand up and debate him yourself. Many profound men before you have done so and found themselves wanting.

...

I ache for you then, Mr. Boots and pray you will find your way back home. God be with you.

- Link

I also received a couple direct emails to the same ends:

It is by no surprise that you appose his viewpoints and presence on campus. In fact, the unadulterated Word of God says that the "natural" man cannot understand the things of the "spirit". So, it is really not your fault that you can't see the intelligence and brilliance of the sound doctrine that he speaks. You simply have rejected the Holy Spirit, which is a requirement to fully understand the relevance and power of His Word.

What I truly give you kudos for however is that it is apparent that you proclaim to be the devils advocate and your philosophies as partially articulated in your article, substantiates that you are a servant of the devil. The Word says that He would prefer for people to be either HOT or COLD towards Him, but those that are lukewarm will be spewed out of his mouth. So, you are actually in better grace with the Lord than those that are not quite sure what side of the philosophical spectrum they sit on. ...

If you attend the event from the posture of the curious student, I strongly believe and pray that your heart can be touched by the power of the Lord Jesus Christ. Saul, was also a devils advocate and lived of life that persecuted the Church, but when he became Paul his life was turned around and he ended up being responsible for penning 2/3 of the new testament.

God Bless you Collin, and I pray that you enjoy your evening and that the Lord has an opportunity to be invited into your heart.

Thanks, I guess?

Another emailer was much more succinct:

I will listen in and cannot wait to hear the question that you pose.......just to see if you hold sand or like the hourglass! You have had over two years to prepare. It is sad when one can be a critic while quoting from books written by others! I like a good debate.

Actually I only had about a month, but to be fair I never stated that publicly.

My article also garnered many prayers for my soul and for Ravi on facebook:

So apparently not everyone is a fan of Ravi Zacharias... we're in Philly for an open forum at University of Pennsylvania, and Ravi's visit is causing quite a stir on campus!

Check out this column in The Daily Pennsylvanian by Collin Boots of the Penn Secular Society... in which he argues that Ravi is "no intellectual," "promotes a sinister revisionist history," and "routinely distorts his opponents."
"It pains me to realize many still consider Ravi a great moral teacher," he writes. http://bit.ly/LR73YD
This column demonstrates the intense campus environment we're going into... and we'd love your prayers for Tuesday's event as our team seeks to operate with grace and truth. #RaviUPenn" 

-Link 

This post is interesting for several reasons. First, she seems surprised that not everyone is enraptured by Ravi's sermons. I hope I'm not reading that correctly. Second, my one column apparently constitutes an "intense campus environment" and "quite a stir." The persecution complex is strong with this one.

What's more concerning though are the follow up comments.

"These pseudo-intellectuals amaze me. They don't even make sense. How can morality be immoral? I guess when it's not based on their particular view. No absolutes and no boundaries." 

"“The wise men shall be put to shame; they shall be dismayed and taken; behold, they have rejected the word of the LORD, so what wisdom is in them?” Jeremiah8:9 Praying!!!" 

"Wow. Lord have your way in that room tomorrow night! You are mighty to save!"

"It's a shame there's no freedom of speech in America, for some people! Everyone can say anything, but once you say something about Jesus, you have no freedom to speak anymore."

I shouldn't need to explain to my likely audience what is wrong with these comments.

Apparently, Ravi himself read my column and his ministry posted a link to it and the companion letter to the editor on his website.

“I have been made aware of some of the antipathy and anxieties over our presence on campus,” remarked Zacharias. “I earnestly hope that as civil and meaningful discourse prevails, all the fears and concerns will be put to rest. Thank you to the organizers for giving me the privilege of speaking here.”

He even spent the first 5 minutes or so of his talk addressing his "critics" and the "hostile campus," making explicit references to my column 3 or 4 times. He even took the time to straw man my critique and make a glancing ad homenim. He said I decried his style for being anecdotal, and said I would have to throw out most of western culture and history if I didn't like anecdotes. Classic Ravi: fitting a straw man and an appeal to the consequences in the same breath.

What I actually said, as you can read above, is that Ravi frequently uses anecdotes as red herrings to distract from the fact he didn't answer the question. That was clearly in evidence Tuesday night.

As an aside, Ravi's website made this false claim in support of their "hostile campus" argument.

For example, posters advertising the event have been taken down, and there have been numerous articles in the campus newspaper as well as posts on social media reflecting the hostility and confusion on campus when it comes to discussing different worldviews.

What actually happened was the Ready for Ravi team violated the poster rules for several of the college halls and they were taken down for being posted in violation of house policy. That's not a hostile environment, that's not following the rules and crying "help help I'm being repressed" when you get caught.

Several people have suggested to me that my column had a mediating effect on Ravi's rhetoric. I have a knee jerk reaction against my writing being that directly influential and doubts about Ravi being so easily dissuaded or thrown off message by < 700 words. Still, it was clear on Tuesday that he put a lot less emphasis on stating his beliefs and a lot more on obscurantist rhetoric than usual. When he was specifically asked about homosexuality, he spent what felt like 10 minutes explaining why he couldn't answer that question.

I was saddened to see that the questioner seemed to think her question was in fact answered. Ravi did mention that "[homosexuals] will stand before God in judgement one day," but that was easy to miss.

Overall, I'm amazed by the response. I don't think anything I've ever written has been so widely circulated and discussed. It's been a very tiring week, but if I got nothing else out of it I have this screenshot to cherish forever:

I welcome brother Ravi into the fold, along with his 128k+ followers he tweeted my article to.

Bill Nye vs Ken Ham Debate Retrospective

I did not go into the debate last night with high hopes. In fact I said publicly that Ken Ham had a very good chance of winning the debate. Ever since the debate has been announced I was one of those naysayers who argued scientists shouldn't debate creationists because it gives them a platform they don't deserve.

Bill Nye may have just changed my mind last night.

I had never seen Nye participate in a formal debate before, but he surprised me with how well he managed it. Perhaps my favorite moment of the night was the start of Bill Nye's 30 minute presentation, where he said

"Thank you very much, and Mr. Ham, I learned something. Thank you. But lets take it back around to the question at hand. Does Ken Ham's creation model hold up? Is it viable?"

 This was the perfect response to Ken Ham's presentation, which can be summed up as:

• There is a difference between historical science and observational science
• Here are a few scientists and engineers who are young earth creationists that do good science
• Secularism/atheism are "hijacking" the words science and evolution in order to indoctrinate children with their naturalistic atheistic evolutionist religion.
• This chart showing Ham's version of evolution (the "orchard" of life):

Note that dinosaurs apparently survived the flood event (presumably on Noah's ark)

Of Ham's 30 minutes, perhaps 5 of them were dedicated to showing what the creationist view was. The rest was devoted to saying creationists can still do science and be a creationist.

Bill then went on to provide a Gish Gallop of evidence, including some simple math demonstrating the absurdity of the flood account. For example, if there were only 7,000 or so "kinds" on the ark and they branched out into all the 16,000,000 or more extant species today (not to mention all the extinct species) in 4000 years, we would be expecting around 11 new species per day on average. 

Ham later suggested Nye was wrong and there were only about 1,000-2,000 kinds on the ark, which Bill pointed out only makes the problem worse. This sort of belief in hyper-evolution is rather remarkable.

Now let me give a few points of critique on Bill Nye's performance.

First, Nye made the mistake of letting Ham have all of the film rights to the event. Nye was paid expenses plus a speaking fee (which was undisclosed, but his usual fee is $50,000-$75,000). That's a decent sum if that's what he got, but Ken Ham is going to be selling DVDs of the debate, reusing clips out of context, and making money off of Nye's celebrity for as long as his creation museum stays afloat, perhaps longer. Fortunately, the live stream was available on youtube unedited so a full unedited version of the event does exist on the internet for comparison and analysis.

Second, and more importantly Bill Nye showed his inexperience with debating creationists when couldn't efficiently rebut a few very common creationist claims. If Nye only had the talkorigins.org Index of Creationist Claims open during the debate he could have found the claim's details in seconds.

Ham made several claims straight out of the index:

Claim CD011.5: A piece of wood was fossilized in the Hawkesbury Sandstone, Australia, which most geologists date to the middle Triassic, about 225 to 230 million years ago. The wood was dated by Geochron (a commercial dating laboratory) using the carbon-14 method. Geochron determined its age to be only 33,720 +/- 430 years before present. Contamination by recent microbes or fungi cannot explain the discrepant age.

The general rebutal to this claim is that Carbon-14 dating isn't effective past 50,000 years so it makes no sense to try and date a sample in that layer and expect accurate results. Talkorigins goes into more detail about potential sources of contamination, the question of whether or not the sample was actually wood, and the fact that the creationists told Geochron nothing about the sample that would have led them to test the sample appropriately.

Unfortunately, Nye spit-balled that the layer moved over the trees, which is not true. Ham will capitalize on debunking that hypothesis, I guarantee it.

Claim CD013.1: The conventional K-Ar dating method was applied to the 1986 dacite flow from the new lava dome at Mount St. Helens, Washington. The whole-rock age was 0.35 +/- 0.05 million years (Mya). Ages for component minerals varied from 0.34 +/- 0.06 Mya to 2.8 +/- 0.6 Mya. These ages show that the K-Ar method is invalid.

Once again, we have a sample that is being tested outside the accuracy range of the method. Creationists routinely use dating methods incorrectly to show they are inaccurate. All they have shown is that dating methods don't work when they aren't supposed to.

Claim CD410: Ice cores are claimed to have as many as 135,000 annual layers. Yet airplanes of the Lost Squadron were buried under 263 feet of ice in forty-eight years, or about 5.5 feet per year. This contradicts the presumption that the wafer-thin layers in the ice cores could be annual layers.

Greenland has a snowfall rate of about 2m per year. More than enough to account for the rate of cover. Also it's warmer than the arctic so it can have multiple thaw/freeze cycles a year.

He made a lot more claims on the index, but these were three that Nye specifically addressed and clearly wasn't familiar with.

Overall, I think Nye took a good strategy: don't try to go into Ham's version of "science" and debunk his claims there, marginalize his "science" as unique and always speak of science "on the outside." It feeds right into Ham's paradigm of secular censorship and his followers will see that, but I think it will have a strong impact on the middle of the road creationists out there. Nye did a good job of demonstrating how outside the mainstream of both science and religion Ken Ham really is, and that alone may make the debate worth it.

Nature is Beautiful

Amazing photography from National Geographic

Photo by OLIVIER GRUNEWALD

That is electric blue lava on the slopes of Kawah Ijen crater in Indonesia.

The effect is caused by sulfur burning on contact with the atmosphere. Since sulfur burns blue, we get amazing shots like this. Please go check out the original images and more here.

Papal Bull

My first column for the Daily Pennsylvanian student newspaper was just published yesterday. My column will be running under the heading "The Devil's Advocate." Here's the whole column, enjoy. 

During his Christmas address in Vatican City, Pope Francis reached out to atheists, saying, “I invite even nonbelievers to desire peace. [Join us] with your desire, a desire that widens the heart. Let us all unite, either with prayer or with desire, but everyone, for peace.” The line received an uproarious ovation, but I wish to withhold my applause.

Which nonbelievers do not already desire peace? Does he think we prefer war, death or destruction? Why not ask us to work toward peace, instead of just desiring and praying for it?

Now, before you start jumping all over me for being too pedantic, allow me to explain why I’m so hesitant to take Pope Francis’ grand gestures at face value.

In early 2013, Pope Benedict XVI captured the public interest by resigning the papacy because “God told him to.” Benedict’s tenure as pontiff was marked by a sharp turn to the right, seeking what he called a “smaller purer church.” Compared to the much beloved Pope John Paul II, Benedict was a disaster for the church’s image. So when the papal conclave elected Pope Francis, the first non-European Pope since 1272 and a man who was renowned for his kind manner and work with the poor, the contrast was incredibly stark.

Ever since, I have watched countless liberal pundits and writers proclaim Francis a godsend for progressive values. I cannot help but be reminded of 2008’s enthusiasm for Obama’s “Yes We Can” campaign. Both generated a large amount of early enthusiasm through their eloquent pronouncements before actually making policy changes — Obama received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, and the pope was named Time’s 2013 Person of the Year.

Let us revisit some of the pontiff’s highlights from his first year:

On May 23rd, Pope Francis suggested that “even the atheists” can go to heaven. Amid the ensuing media sensation, Vatican spokesman Thomas Rosica quietly released a statement clarifying that the Pope meant atheists can go to heaven … by becoming Catholic.

In a “surprise interview” on a plane back to Rome on July 29th, Francis said, “Who am I to judge a gay person of goodwill who seeks the Lord?” Once again, proponents of social justice lauded the sentiment as new gospel — forgetting to mention that Francis has never changed the church’s opposition to homosexuality. As recently as 2010, he called gay adoption a form of discrimination against children and claimed marriage equality would “seriously damage the family.”

It should have come as no surprise that two months later the pontiff would order the excommunication of Australian priest Greg Reynolds, who was advocating for gay marriage and the ordination of female priests.

Perhaps everything the pope says that sounds remotely liberal should be followed by an asterisk.

“But, Collin,” I hear you cry, “you’re an atheist! Why do you even care what the pope has to say?”

I care because the Catholic Church leads and influences over 1.2 billion (as it likes to boast) parishioners worldwide, with over 70 million in the United States alone.

I care because Pope Francis has made no effort to correct the lie that condom use increases AIDS transmission — a falsehood propagated in Africa by the previous pontiff.

I care because estimates suggest the church’s annual spending approaches $170 billion worldwide, 10 times the annual profits of Walmart. I say “estimates” because the church is tax-exempt, so it is not required to report its earnings.

What do you think?

I care because the Catholic Church spent over $2 million in 2012 fighting marriage equality in Maine, Maryland, Washington and my home state of Minnesota.

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I care because Catholic hospitals account for 15 percent of hospital beds in the United States and many more worldwide, and the church’s stances on contraception, abortion and end-of-life care often dictate which medical interventions are prescribed.

I care because Pope Francis could change it all.

Regardless of your beliefs about the pope and his alleged hotline to heaven, he holds tremendous power over many of the people and issues I care about greatly. I hope I am wrong about Francis being purely a PR campaign, but actions still speak louder.

XKCD Nails "It's Cold Out" Global Warming Trolls

I love the XKCD for today.

It so perfectly summarizes all of my frustrations when it comes to climate change.

Beck says Compares Creationists to Galileo

I'm sorry for sharing this. I'm so, so sorry.

But when Beck claimed that Bill Nye is on the wrong side of history for attacking creationism, I couldn't just keep that to myself.

Not only did Beck knock common core standards and refer to fighting creationism as "segregat[ing] a group of people" and "eradicat[ing] a type of thought," but he equated Bill Nye's "Big Think" video on creationism to the Catholic Church's attacks on Galileo.

GOP Calls for more Abortion Talk?

The GOP is apparently considering renewing it's vocal opposition to abortion rights.

In the last few years the GOP has tried to tone down it's rhetoric when it comes to women's health issues, especially in the wake of such luminaries as Todd "Shut that whole thing down" Akin. Some strategists and advocates within the party seem to think this was a mistake.

“Not talking about it has not worked well for us. Not responding has not worked well for us. It’s a conversation the party has to have.”-Ellen Barrosse, Delaware National Committeewoman

The proposed measure says "Pro-Life Republicans should fight back against deceptive rhetoric regardless of those in the Republican Party who encourage them to stay silent."

Here's the problem with this strategy. The reason your whole "let's not talk about it" strategy on rape, abortion, and contraception doesn't work very well in conjunction with renewed efforts at the state level to restrict women's healthcare access. Cutting back on rhetoric while taking more actions only makes you look sneaky and disingenuous.

Beardyman finishes like a skeptic

I've been a Beardyman fan for a while. He's more machine now then man, but it only makes him cooler.

So I was extra delighted when he posted a new show on youtube which ends with an ad libed skeptics version of "I Believe I can Fly."

The relevant bit starts at around 59 minutes.

Oh ya, kinda NSFW.

New Rule: Republicans must stop claiming Lincoln

Today, the Republican Party of Minnesota decided to take this MLK day to remind us of how they've never stopped fighting for freedom. 

Included in their mailing was a link to this video of Louisiana Senator Elbert Guillory explaining why he switched his party affiliation to Republican. I for one cannot follow his reasoning.

It is the right decision, not only for me but for all my brothers and sisters in the black community. You see in recent history, the Democratic Party has created the illusion that their agenda and their policies are what's best for black people. Somehow, it's been forgotten that the Republican Party was founded in 1854 as an abolitionist movement with one simple creed: that slavery is a violation of the rights of man.

Fredrick Douglas called the Republicans the party of freedom and progress, and the first Republican president was Abraham Lincoln, the author of the emancipation proclamation. It was Republicans in Congress who authored the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments giving former slaves citizenship, voting rights, and due process under the law.

The Democrats, on the other hand, were the party of Jim Crowe who defended the rights of slave owners. 

It was the Republican president Dwight Eisenhower who championed the civil rights act of 1957, but it was the Democrats in the Senate who filibustered the bill. 

The rest of the video cries out for rebuttal as well, but this quote was the root source of my irritation.

Yes, Abraham Lincoln and Eisenhower were Republicans, when the Republicans were the liberal party fighting against the racist conservative Democrats. The Parties have change dramatically over the centuries, most drastically over the last 50 years. Eisenhower may have championed a civil rights bill as a Republican liberal Republican, but it was Lyndon B. Johnson (D) who in 1960 would fill in the holes and compromises the 1957 legislation.

When LBJ made that decision, he rightfully feared retribution from his own party, particularly southern democrats. Nixon would soon arrive on the scene to pioneer "The Southern Strategy" which finally secured the southern state voting block for the Republican party. Over the next decade, the Republican Party solidified it control of the Bible belt. Soon, the rise of evangelical movements like Jerry Falwell's "Moral Majority" would come to dominate the Republican party in the name of social conservatism.

In a very short span of time, the pro-segregation Democrats gave way to the pro-equality Democrats and the liberal Republicans morphed into the party evangelical conservatives they remain to this day.

So don't give me any of this "Lincoln was a Republican" bullshit anymore. The only thing the two parties have in common over all this time is the name.

But Guillory isn't done yet:

You see, at the heart of Liberalism is the idea that only a great and powerful big government can be the benefactor of social justice for all Americans. But the Left is only concerned with one thing: control. And they disguise this control as charity. Programs such as welfare food stamps, these programs aren't designed to lift black Americans out of poverty, they were ALWAYS intended as a mechanism for politicians to control the black community.

The idea that blacks, or anyone for that matter, need the government to get ahead in life is despicable. 

And even more important, this idea is a failure. Our communities are just as poor as they've always been. Our schools continue to fail children. Out prisons are filled with young black men who should be at home being fathers. Our self initiative and our self reliance have been sacrificed in exchange for allegiance to our overseers who control us by making us dependent on them.   

Sometime [sic] I wonder if the word freedom is tossed around so frequently in our society that is has become a cliche. The idea of freedom is complex and it's all-encompassing. It's the idea that the economy must remain free of government persuasion. It's the idea that the press must operate without government intrusion. And it's the idea that the emails and phone records of Americans should remain free from government search and seizure. 

It's the idea that parents must be the decision makers with regards to their children's education, not some government bureaucrat. But most importantly it's the idea that the individual must be free to pursue his or her own happiness, free from government dependence and free from government control. Because to be truly free is to be reliant on no one other than author of our destiny [Guillory points heavenward]. 

These are the ideas at the core of the Republican Party, and it is why I am a Republican. So my brothers and sisters of the American community, please join with me today in abandoning the government plantation and the party of disappointment so that we may all echo the words of one Republican Leader who famously said: 'Free at last, Free at last, Thank God Almighty we are free at last.'

Let's assume for a minute that the Democrats are indeed the party of disappointment and they have failed in their attempts to alleviate suffering in the African American community. Even so, I don't understand how you can justify turning to the party implementing Voter ID laws in many states that were considered far too obviously racist by the Voting Rights Act to be implemented before conservatives on the Supreme Court struck it down because apparently racism doesn't exist anymore.

I don't understand wanting government to have less control and joining the party of mandatory ultrasounds and .

I don't understand calling for emails and phone records to remain "free from government search and seizure" and joining the party that instituted the Patriot Act in the first place.

I don't understand joining the party that needs to be coached on how not to sound racist in order to better fight for racial equality.

I don't get it at all.

Read at your own Risk Pt 2.

Our friendly neighborhood silent mouthpiece of right wing inanity is back at work. The street preacher I saw last semester was back again this week with new material.

This one is full of goodies about the horrors of GAY MARRIAGE!!

Here's the full document. The sloppiness is (mostly) due to my scanner.

I especially love the citation at the end:

"Continuous Informatin: Mark Levin, Steve Deave, Glen Beck, Mark Steyn, David Barton, Phyllis Schlafly, D. James Kennedy, Ph. D., Michael Youssef, Ph. D., Walter E Williams"

You can't lose when you've got good material.

Did XKCD Steal My Identity?

It's like he IS me!

Adorable Animated Animals

Just wanted to share this. Great graduation film from 2011, created at the National Film and Television School by Richard Phelan.



Damned from Richard Phelan on Vimeo.