Guns in the U.S.

This is a reprint from the Oct. 21 2015 edition of eSkeptic magazine.

This is a controversial and never ending subject for which there is no clear answer. Proponents on both sides claim they hold the moral high ground, but the bickering still continues with no acceptable solution in sight. Guns have been a part of our nation’s legacy since the beginning, and I suspect any concessions will be slow to come.
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Guns in the U.S.

By Michael Shermer

We’re better at killing Americans than our enemies are

If your gut tells you that mass public shootings are alarmingly common, your gut’s right.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation defines a mass murder as four or more deaths during a single incident with no distinct time period between killings. By this definition, according to Northeastern University criminologist James Alan Fox, between 1980 and 2010 there were an average of 20 mass murders per year, or an average of one every 2.6 weeks.

Now it looks like that interval is shrinking. According to shootingtracker.com, there were 30 mass public shootings with four or more dead in 2014, and there have been 31 this year through the Oct. 1 tragedy in Roseburg, Ore., or one every 1.6 weeks.

No wonder President Obama feels like he’s repeating himself with sullen regularity in his post-shooting speeches.

Our gun problem of course extends beyond mass violence. In 2014 alone, for example, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recorded 11,208 people shot to death, 33,636 injured by gunfire and 21,175 who killed themselves with a gun. That’s a total of 66,019 people who were killed or injured by a gun, which comes out to 1,269 per week, 180 a day or 7.5 per hour.

Add up all the gun fatalities since 1970 (approximate annual average of 30,000, according to the CDC) and you get the staggering figure of 1.35 million dead, which is disturbingly close to the figure of 1.39 million Americans who have died in all wars since the American Revolution.

Perhaps this is the gruesome price of freedom. The 2nd Amendment guarantees us the right to own a gun, and the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld that right in two recent cases. But should you, dear reader, choose to own a gun?

Consider this finding from a 1998 study published in the Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery: “Every time a gun in the home was used in a self-defense or legally justifiable shooting, there were four unintentional shootings, seven criminal assaults or homicides, and 11 attempted or completed suicides.”

In other words, the fantasy many of us have of facing down an intruder with a firearm is belied by the fact that a gun is 22 times more likely to be used in a criminal assault, an accidental death or injury, a suicide attempt or a homicide than it is for self-defense.

If you own a gun and keep it safely locked up and unloaded with the ammunition somewhere else (recommended by gun safety experts), do you really think that, in the event of a break-in, you could get to your gun, find your ammo and load it, engage the intruder, accurately aim and kill him, all before he takes your things? If you do, you’ve been watching too many movies. Go to a firing range and try shooting a handgun. It isn’t easy to do. It requires regular training.

If you own a gun and you don’t keep it safely locked up — if you keep it loaded and under your pillow, say — you might have a chance against an intruder, but you’re also setting yourself up for an accident. A depressed relative or perhaps a child could find the gun.

A 2009 study corroborated these findings. Conducted by epidemiologists at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and published in the American Journal of Public Health, it found that, on average, people with a gun are 4.5 times more likely to be shot in an assault than those not possessing a gun.

But let’s go back to your gut for a second. What if you acknowledge the validity of the statistics above, but your intuition tells you that gun control laws just won’t work to reduce the carnage. Is your gut right? No, it’s almost certainly not.

For a 2013 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Assn. Internal Medicine, researchers mined a database of 121,084 firearm deaths between 2007 and 2010. Then they compiled a “legislative strength score” for all 50 states based on the number and force of their gun control laws, and divided the states into quartiles. As it turns out, the states in the highest quartile of legislative strength had the lowest overall firearm fatality rate, and those in the lowest quartile had the highest fatality rate. This correlation held for both homicides and suicides.

The authors were careful to note that correlation does not imply causation. But earlier studies have also found that the higher a state’s gun ownership rate, the higher its rate of gun-related homicides and suicides. Yes, people can kill one another and themselves with knives, ropes, lead pipes, wrenches and candlestick holders, but the data match the growing national intuition that guns are a major problem.

Additional Thoughts

Not surprisingly—given the heat generated by the gun debate in America—this op-ed produced a lot of mail.

First, let me assure readers that I am aware that there are lock boxes for hand guns that allow owners to store them safely and get to them relatively quickly for home defense in the event of a break in. Still, most likely you would need more than one gun in the home with the lock boxes positioned to be accessed relatively quickly wherever you happen to be in the event of a burglary, and of course you need to actually keep your guns stored in their lock boxes—or even get a lock box when you purchase the gun, which is not always the case.

Second, if you’re still not convinced that there’s a gun problem in America, since the October 1 mass shooting in Oregon that I wrote about there have been six more mass shootings through October 10, totally 6 dead and 20 wounded, bringing the 2015 total up to 300 for all types of mass shootings, and 31 that match the FBI’s definition of 4 or more dead. By the end of 2015 the average for mass shootings of any type will be 1 per day, and for the 4-or-more dead type the average will come in at around 1 every 1.5 weeks. No other Western country comes close to the U.S. in gun violence.

On the positive side, the Pew Research Center reports that the gun homicide rate is down 49% since the peak in 1993. The biggest plunge was in the late 90s, with declines less dramatic since 2000. The survey also found that, “The victimization rate for other violent crimes with a firearm—assaults, robberies and sex crimes—was 75% lower in 2011 than in 1993. Violent non-fatal crime victimization overall (with or without a firearm) also is down markedly (72%) over two decades.” Supporting my thesis in The Moral Arc that our brains are more geared to noticing short term trends of bad news while ignoring long term trends of good news, the survey also found that, “56% of Americans believe gun crime is higher than 20 years ago and only 12% think it is lower.”

Finally, my op-ed was primarily triggered by recent mass public shootings, but it is worth noting that between 1980 and 2008 these account for less than 1% of all homicide deaths. So if we want to reduce the carnage overall, the place to focus on is individual homicides.

Published on Oct 22, 2012

EcoJet: Definitive Edition. Like all great feats of the imagination, the EcoJet began life on a napkin. As an auto enthusiast, Jay Leno had always wanted to design his own turbine-engined car, and when he conceived the notion for a high-performance, yet environmentally friendly, vehicle the pen and napkin came out. Eight months later the results were premiered at the 2006 Specialty Equipment Market Association (SEMA) show in Las Vegas.

EcoJet: Definitive Edition - Jay Leno's Garage

 

Microsoft Band 2 watch review

What the Microsoft Band 2 smartwatch does, it does very well. But buyers wanting to download apps and other games are out of luck.

After reviewing the Microsoft Band 2, I’d dub it the Microsoft Zune of wearables: a proudly specialized device that hasn’t yet realized that it’s on the wrong side of history.

 

Microsoft Band 2 watch review

I don't care if God exists, and neither should you

This is the introduction to a new ten part series, The God Distraction: I don't care if God exists, and neither should you.

As always... ask your own questions, do your own research, form your own independent opinions based on evidence. Don't be led by others' influence and prejudices. Discovery is a personal path, follow yours.

The God Distraction

 

The Best Protein-Eating Strategy for Weight Loss

Instead of loading up in one go, learn why it's important to dole out your daily dose of protein at breakfast, lunch, and dinner!

Still protein loading post-workout? Your body will see more benefit if you spread those grams out over the course of the day rather than loading up at one or two meals. People who balance their protein throughout the day, eating some at each meal, saw more weight loss or maintenance than those who skimped on the nutrient at certain meals, reports a new study analysis in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Researchers from the University of Missouri reviewed 24 studies on protein consumption and found that people who incorporated it at each meal, balanced throughout the day, saw the most weight loss benefits, including the loss of fat and the preservation of lean mass.

Now, most people have no problem downing protein later in the day, since our dinners are normally centered around meat or dairy. But you should also start the day off strong. "Eating a protein-rich breakfast containing about 30 grams of protein leads to even greater satiety throughout the day and can reduce unhealthy snacking by improving appetite control,” study author Heather Leidy, Ph.D., assistant professor of nutrition, said in a press release. (Convinced, but still need suggestions? Ask the Diet Doctor: Healthy High-Protein Breakfasts.)

Spreading your protein out can also lead to big gains on your guns. People who ate 30 grams of protein at breakfast lunch and dinner saw more muscle protein synthesis—or the building up of muscles—than those who ate less at breakfast and loaded up on the nutrient at dinner, according to a study last year in The Journal of Nutrition.

Leidy recommends the same—her study found that the most benefit came when people ate 25 to 30 grams with each major meal of the day. That's about one 4-ounce chicken breast, one personal-sized Greek yogurt with hemp seeds added, or one cup of quinoa. (If that sounds like a lot for one day, read Ask the Diet Doctor: Is Eating Too Much Protein a Waste?) In addition to the weight loss, Leidy’s team found this amount also helped keep triglycerides and blood pressure low, which helps boost your overall physiological health.

Phew, we’re glad those three chicken breasts we had grilling don’t have to be eaten in one sitting anymore!

Three Reasons You Need to Eat More Red Meat

Last night, I went out on a man-date with a friend to celebrate his recent promotion and eat some big-ass, extra rare steaks.

Firstly, let me just say that I'm in full favor of a weekly man-date.

As we’ve gotten older, the drive to go out to bars on weekends has kind of died down. Instead, I find myself at more tame dinners with my boys during the week, and because we all have such busy schedules, we end up pairing off more and more often.

For some reason, this seems to draw some looks from other people at the restaurant.

Can’t two young, exceptionally well-dressed, exceptionally good looking guys with meticulously styled hair go out for a nice dinner without everyone assuming they’re getting naked together? Just because a guy dresses in the latest fashions, wears a lot of purple, and has an impressive shoe collection, does that automatically make him a homosexual? I submit that it does not.

Anyway, as I am wont to do, I ordered the largest steak on the menu, cooked as rare as possible. 

“Must be nice to be able to eat that without worrying about getting fat," my buddy said. 

Sigh. This argument again. 

He wasn't trying to be an ass; he just honestly believed that red meat was bad for your diet - a pretty common misconception. 

So let me draw the line in the sand and say definitively: red meat is one of the world's healthiest sources of protein -- hell, one of the world’s healthiest foods. Here's why:

1. Arachidonic Acid

Yes, turkey and chicken have much less fat and, consequently, fewer calories than red meat, but a lot of the newer dietary research has shown that white meat pales in comparison (oh you better believe that pun was intended).

But not only does the higher fat content slow the rate of digestion (keeping you fuller for longer), but there are slightly less well-known benefits of red meat –  and I’m not talking about the satisfaction of tearing zombie-style into an extra rare steak.

Red meat is rich with an Essential Fatty Acid (EFA) known as arachidonic acid. This particular EFA is a building block for dienolic prostaglandins, a class of hormones with profound physiological effects: specifically, an increase protein turnover and synthesis.

Of particular interest to weight lifters, studies have shown prostaglandin concentrations to increase following resistance training; researchers believe that the eccentric component is the most important stimulus to the muscles, as the stretch appears to free arachidonic acid from muscle cells for synthesis of prostaglandins.

In short, higher levels of prostaglandins will allow you to maintain and possibly build more muscle while dieting – which is why a steak can be one of the most potent anabolic weapons in your arsenal.

2. Stearic Acid

The main saturate found in beef in particular is stearic acid—the consumption of which has been shown to decrease plasma and liver cholesterol by reducing intestinal cholesterol absorption.

That’s right, steak can be good for your cholesterol levels.

On top of that, stearic acid may protect against type 2 diabetes, and it helps to prevent arterial clotting and the formation of fatty deposits within the arteries to fight off heart disease.

3. Testosterone

For one thing, less than half the fat in red meat is saturated fat. But most importantly, not all fat is bad – in fact, saturated fat falls squarely in the “good” column.

Saturated fat is easily the most unfairly vilified nutrient of all time.

The reasons are complex, but the problem with saturated fat is mostly the fault of a dude called Ancel Keys, who devised an extraordinarily malformed study in the 1950s that saw a correlation in saturated fat intake and heart disease.

The globe-spanning study was very flawed, cherrypicking seven countries and ignoring those with moderate to high saturated fat intake and a low incidence of heart disease, like Germany and Norway, as well as smaller communities like the Kenyan Masai and the Tokelau in Polynesia. The misinformation snowballed for decades, culminating in the god-awful food pyramid of the 1990s. You know, the one that prescribed up to 11 daily servings of rice and pasta and basically as little saturated fat as possible.

Happily, more recent studies are showing that saturated fat almost certainly doesn’t cause heart disease, including a 2010 evaluation of 21 studies and nearly 350,000 people. Plus, there’s evidence that the stuff  encourages the liver to dump its fat cells, helping it to function more effectively.

But the icing on the steak cake is that eating saturated fat, especially when combined with regular weight lifting, creates a perfect storm of manliness and prompts the body to produce more of everybody’s favorite muscle-building, fat-burning elixir of youth, testosterone. That’s right, you always knew how macho steak was—and now the science backs it up. 

I love red meat with my belly and my heart and my intestines and anything else it might cause damage to do. 

Even if you told me that you could 100% GUARANTEE that eating red meat was going to take 10 years off my life, I wouldn’t stop.

Seriously.

If you said I had to live till the ripe old age of 105, in perfect health, and die blissfully in my sleep, but I could never eat red meat again, I’d pass. That sounds truly miserable. I don’t want to live another 70 years without eating steak. It would make me all kinds of sad. Good thing that doesn't have to happen.

John Romaniello
Author, Engineering the Alpha
Chief Bro King, Roman Fitness Systems

My child is not in heaven

Losing a newborn is always hard, but grieving as an atheist in a world of believers added loneliness to grief.
My child is not in heaven: Your religion only makes my grief harder

Everything Doesn't Happen For A Reason

I emerge from this conversation dumbfounded. I've seen this a million times before, but it still gets me every time. 

Everything Doesn't Happen For A Reason

How Our Brains Stop Us From Achieving Our Goals (and How to Fight Back)

As admittedly wonderful and fascinating as the human brain is, it can also feel like the brain is out to get us sometimes. In some circumstances, our brain's natural reaction actually does more to sabotage than help. Here, Sparring Mind founder Gregory Ciotti explains how to combat your brain's own brilliance, overcoming the instinctual reactions which often have devastating effects on your long-term goals.

How Our Brains Stop Us From Achieving Our Goals (and How to Fight Back)

Do You Really Need a Good Night’s Sleep to Exercise Well?

 “Get a good night’s sleep” is classic advice before a big race or event. But if you stayed up late picking out your best shoelaces and then woke up early to make it to the start line on time, have you ruined your chance at a good performance?

Do You Really Need a Good Night’s Sleep to Exercise Well?

Introduction to Cells

Take a great ride with this amazing video. 

This HD dramatic video choreographed to powerful music introduces the viewer/student to the wonder and miracle of cells. It is designed as a motivational "trailer" to be shown by Biology, Biochemistry and Life Science teachers in middle and high school and college as a visual "Introduction" to this amazing microscopic world.

Introduction to Cells 

 

Americans Have Spent Enough Money On A Broken Plane To Buy Every Homeless Person A Mansion

It isn't Americans, it's American politicians.
Let's face it, the American government is stupid with money paid for on the backs of its citizens.

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Just days before its international debut at an airshow in the United Kingdom, the entire fleet of the Pentagon’s next generation fighter plane — known as the F-35 II Lightning, or the Joint Strike Fighter — has been grounded, highlighting just what a boondoggle the project has been. With the vast amounts spent so far on the aircraft, the United States could have worked wonders, including providing every homeless person in the U.S. a $600,000 home.

Americans Have Spent Enough Money On A Broken Plane To Buy Every Homeless Person A Mansion

 

 

Inequality and the American Child

Children, it has long been recognized, are a special group. They do not choose their parents, let alone the broader conditions into which they are born. They do not have the same abilities as adults to protect or care for themselves. That is why the League of Nations approved the Geneva Declaration on the Rights of the Child in 1924, and why the international community adopted the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1989.

Read the full article:
  
Inequality and the American Child

Berkeley Lab Scientists to Help Build World’s First Total-Body PET Scanner

Very cool proposal. I hope they continue to work on technology developments like this. What it could mean for disease diagnosis in the future is staggering.

Scientists from the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have set out to help build the world’s first total-body positron emission tomography (PET) scanner, a medical imaging device that could change the way cancers and other diseases are diagnosed and treated.

Berkeley Lab Scientists to Help Build World’s First Total-Body PET Scanner

Ghost Stories 2015

 Halloween is almost upon us, which means it's time again to turn down the lights, crank up the podcast, and share some ghost stories.

Ghost Stories 2015

 

Look twice for motorcycles

15 Parenting Comics

If you are a parent, you will enjoy these. I think we've all been through most of these at one point. They should get a grin out of almost everyone.

15 hilarious parenting comics that are almost too real.

 

Putting faith in its place

As a part of another discussion, someone put up this video into the discussion.

It sure is a lot to soak in, but if you take the time to think about it, it's a start.

Putting faith in its place

Brain Surgeon—or Brain Addled?

The following is a reprint from the October 14, 2015 eSkeptic magazine.

Brain Surgeon—or Brain Addled?

by Donald R. Prothero

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time. —F. Scott Fitzgerald

What is it with brain surgeons? The strange ideas of leading GOP presidential candidate and retired brain surgeon Ben Carson have been making the headlines a lot lately. I have previously written about about brain surgeon Dr. Eben Alexander, who launched a new career on the lecture circuit after writing a bestselling book, Proof of Heaven, in which he claimed he visited heaven while in a coma, then come back to life. But as the detailed investigation showed, he made all sorts of statements that showed his “trip to heaven” was a hallucination. Even worse, he said things demonstrating that he doesn’t seem to know the first thing about neurophysiology; he appears to just know how to cut brains.

Then there are other weird beliefs by otherwise well educated doctors. Take, for example, Dr. Paul Broun of Georgia. He was elected to Congress, yet he said “All that stuff I was taught about evolution, embryology, Big Bang theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of hell. It’s lies to try to keep me and all the folks who are taught that from understanding that they need a savior. There’s a lot of scientific data that I found out as a scientist that actually show that this is really a young Earth. I believe that the Earth is about 9,000 years old. I believe that it was created in six days as we know them. That’s what the Bible says.” Unsurprisingly, Carson, Broun, and the other fundamentalist M.D.s in politics not only deny evolution and Big Bang cosmology, but also climate change and other aspects of science that doesn’t fit the party line…

Continue reading the article..

When the force awakens, where will you be?

 

The Force Awakens

Stanford Francis Owusu incredible touchdown

In case you didn't see this, it is the most incredible catch I have ever seen. Blinded by a player from the other team, Owusu reaches around him and makes a blind catch of the football. I've seen this several times now and I'm still stunned.

Stanford Francis Owusu incredible touchdown catch around the defender

 

 

Can You Drink Alcohol & Still Lose Fat/Weight?

I don't consume much alcohol these days. The people around me don't, so their avoidance of alcohol has rubbed off somewhat. That being said, I still enjoy an occasional beer, glass of wine, etc. I don't consider it a factor in my own weight management, but there are plenty who might... and should, if they want to lose or maintain theirs. Find out what is right for you own situation.

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Alcohol and weight loss are enemies, but an occasional drink can have a place in a healthy lifestyle. In fact, many experts note the potential health benefits of consuming a single drink per day, including a reduced risk for high blood pressure. If, however, you are exceeding one drink daily, you might be sabotaging your weight loss plans.

Alcohol is metabolized differently than other foods and beverages. Under normal conditions, your body gets its energy from the calories in carbohydrates, fats and proteins, which are slowly digested and absorbed within the gastrointestinal system. However, this digestive process changes when alcohol is present. When you drink alcohol, it gets immediate attention (because it is viewed by the body as a toxin) and needs no digestion.

On an empty stomach, the alcohol molecules diffuse through the stomach wall quickly and can reach the brain and liver in minutes. This process is slower when you have food in your stomach, but as soon as that food enters the small intestine, the alcohol grabs first priority and is absorbed quickly into the bloodstream.

As the alcohol reaches the liver for processing, the liver places all of its attention on the alcohol. If you drink very slowly, all the alcohol is collected by the liver and processed immediately—avoiding all other body systems. If you drink more quickly, the liver cannot keep up with the processing needs and the alcohol continues to circulate in the body until the liver is available to process it. That's why drinking large amounts of alcohol (or drinking alcohol quickly) affect the brain centers involved with speech, vision, reasoning and judgment.

When the body is focused on processing alcohol, it is not able to properly break down foods containing carbohydrates and fat. Therefore, these calories are converted into body fat and are carried away for permanent storage on your body.

Alcohol is a diuretic, meaning that it causes water loss and dehydration. Along with this water loss you lose important minerals, such as magnesium, potassium, calcium and zinc. These minerals are vital to the maintenance of fluid balance, chemical reactions, and muscle contraction and relaxation.

Alcohol contains 7 calories per gram and offers NO nutritional value. It only adds empty calories to your diet. Why not spend your calorie budget on something healthier?

Alcohol affects your body in other negative ways. Drinking may help induce sleep, but the sleep you get isn't very deep. As a result, you get less rest, which can trigger you to eat more calories the next day. Alcohol can also increase the amount of acid that your stomach produces, causing your stomach lining to become inflamed. Over time, excessive alcohol use can lead to serious health problems, including stomach ulcers, liver disease, and heart troubles.

Alcohol lowers your inhibitions, which is detrimental to your diet plans. Alcohol actually stimulates your appetite. While you might be full from a comparable amount of calories from food, several drinks might not fill you up. On top of that, research shows that if you drink before or during a meal, both your inhibitions and willpower are reduced. In this state, you are more likely to overeat—especially greasy or fried foods—which can add to your waistline. To avoid this, wait to order that drink until you're done with your meal.

Many foods that accompany drinking (peanuts, pretzels, chips) are salty (not to mention, empty calorie), which can make you thirsty, encouraging you to drink even more. To avoid overdrinking, sip on a glass of water in between each alcoholic beverage.

Skipping a meal to save your calories for drinks later is a bad idea. Many drinkers know they'll be having some alcohol later, whether going to a bar, party, or just kicking back at home. Knowing that drinking entails extra calories, it may be tempting to "bank" some calories by skipping a meal or two. This is a bad move. If you come to the bar hungry, you are even more likely to munch on the junk snacks, and drinking on an empty stomach enhances the negative effects of alcohol. If you're planning on drinking later, eat a healthy meal first. You'll feel fuller, which will stop you from overdrinking. If you are worried about a looming night out with friends, include an extra 30 minutes of exercise to balance your calories—instead of skipping a meal.

What are more important, calories or carbs? You might think that drinking liquor is more diet-friendly because it has no carbohydrates, while both wine and beer do contain carbs. But dieters need to watch calories, and liquor only has a few calories less than beer or wine. Plus, it is often mixed with other drinks, adding even more empty calories. Hard liquor contains around 100 calories per shot, so adding a mixer increases calories even more. If you are going to mix liquor with anything, opt for a diet or club soda, instead of fruit juice or regular soda. Sweeter drinks, whether liquor or wine, tend to have more sugar, and therefore more calories. In that respect, dry wines usually have fewer calories than sweet wines.

The list below breaks down the number of calories in typical alcoholic drinks. Compare some of your favorites to make a good choice next time you decide to indulge in a serving of alcohol.
 

Drink	Serving Size	Calories
Red wine	5 oz.	100
White wine	5 oz.	100
Champagne	5 oz.	130
Light beer	12 oz.	105
Regular beer	12 oz.	140
Dark beer	12 oz.	170
Cosmopolitan	3 oz.	165
Martini	3 oz.	205
Long Island iced tea	8 oz.	400
Gin & Tonic	8 oz.	175
Rum & Soda	8 oz.	180
Margarita	8 oz.	200
Whiskey Sour	4 oz.	200

When you work as an IT support guy...

 

Catcopter

Dutch artist turns his dead cat into a helicopter.

Catcopter

Horrific Video Showing Pair Speeding To Their Deaths Released By Families

This article and video show a pair of boys racing to their death. It is a little tough to read and watch knowing the inevitable end. From the looks of the inside of the car, it did not take place in the USA, but the message is still clear. The use of drugs and high speed are a bad mixture, and when adding in the use of a vehicle, it will never end well.

This is a wake up call to those who think they are invincible. 
No... you're not.

Horrific Video Showing Pair Speeding To Their Deaths Released By Families

In my area a commercial precedes the video. In this video, they are advertising a car in which you can hook up seven different items to the internet. As I wait for the video to begin I'm thinking... really? Chevrolet is boasting the ability to use the internet, giving you enhanced multitasking while in your car. In this whole article and clip, this is the thing I find most offensive.

Science, Critical Thinking, and Skepticism

I normally don't plug Facebook anything, but in this case I'm willing to make an exception. I find this site to be an enjoyable part of my day. It gives me stuff to think about requiring actual brain power, and I like the people behind it.

If you find yourself looking for more, this is a good place to start.

Check it out:

Science, Critical Thinking, and Skepticism

Holy Ship!!

Volunteer Application Form for the Creation Museum

Wow, I never saw such an application before.
You talk about digging into your personal life...

Volunteer Application Form

Quality of Death

I didn't know anything like existed.

It's an interesting read.

The quality of death

Traffic in Beijing

Thousands of Cars Stuck in Beijing Traffic Jam on 50-Lane Highway.

Wow!

Do We Need God?

This is a reprint of the October 7, 2015, eSkeptic magazine. It’s a little long, because I put the whole text here, but I feel this is some very good brain food.

Do We Need God?

By Michael Shermer

On September 30, 2015, Michael Shermer and Larry Taunton debated the question “Do We Need God?”. The debate will eventually be posted online for viewing. In the meantime, we present Michael Shermer’s notes for the debate. Michael did not have time to cover the morality of the New Testament (compared to the Old) but we include his notes here nonetheless in case readers would like to use this material. Much of it comes from his book The Moral Arc.

Do We Need God? No. Thank you. Okay, seriously, there are at least 10 reasons why we do not need God…

1. Ben Carson, or Religious Ignorance. Only belief in God could infect a brain as smart as the renowned neurosurgeon and prominent Presidential candidate Ben Carson to mangle the Big Bang theory and preposterously propose that Darwin’s theory of evolution is a trick of Satan.

2. Kim Davis, or Religious Bigotry. Only belief in God could convince an otherwise decent and loyal civil servant that her personal interpretation of the Bible trumps the U.S. Constitution, the Supreme Court of the United States, and the law of the land.

3. ISIS, Al Qaeda, & Islamism, or Religious Extremism. Only belief in God could lead large groups of people to believe that the most moral thing they can do is to murder people in the most gruesome manner imaginable—beheading—anyone who does not believe their barbaric and primitive religious tenets, such as capital punishment for apostasy.

4. Crusades, Witch Hunts, and Wars, or Religious Violence.Only belief in God could lie behind these catastrophic moral blunders: the Crusades (the People’s Crusade, the Northern Crusade, the Albigensian Crusade, and Crusades One through Nine); the Inquisitions (Spanish, Portuguese, and Roman); witch hunts (the execution of tens of thousands of people, mostly women); Christian conquistadors (extermination of native peoples by the millions); the interminable European Wars of Religion (the Nine Years War, the Thirty Years War, the Eighty Years War, the French Wars of Religion, the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, the English Civil War); the American Civil War (in which Northern Christians and Southern Christians slaughtered one another over the issue of slavery); and the First World War (in which German Christians fought French, British, and American Christians, all of whom believed that God was on their side—German soldiers, for example, had Gott mit uns—God with us—embossed on their belt buckles.) And that’s just in the Western world. There are the seemingly endless religious conflicts in Indonesia, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan, numerous countries in Africa, and of course Islamist terrorism.

5. Slavery and Civil Rights, or Religious Intolerance. Only belief in God kept the slave trade alive through religious and biblical arguments that blacks were inferior to whites, that slavery was good for black souls, that slavery gave blacks civilization, that blacks liked being enslaved, or, later, that blacks should not have the same civil rights as whites (such as equal treatment under the law—interracial marriage was illegal until 1967) simply because the pigment in their skin was darker.

6. Women’s Rights, or Religious Suppression. Only belief in God would lead otherwise good men to think that women should not have the same rights as they, which is what almost all Christians believed until the women’s rights movement of the 20th century (and many today still believe in wanting to control women’s sexuality and reproductive choices). Like the meddling Puritanical control freaks of the Early Modern Period there are still men today who think they should decide what women do with their vagina. Women flourish in societies that are either not very religious or those, like the United States, that have separation of church and state; i.e., less religion equals more rights and equality.

7. Gay Rights, or Religious Moralizing. Only belief in God could cause otherwise decent Christians to become perversely obsessed with what other people do with their genitals in the privacy of their bedrooms, and that if these people don’t insert their genitals into the biblically correct orifice, or if genitals are stimulated in a biblically unapproved manner, they should not have the same Constitutional rights as straights.

8. Tribalism, or Religious Xenophobia. The world’s religions are tribal and xenophobic by nature, serving to regulate moral rules within the community but not seeking to embrace humanity outside their circle. Religion, by definition, forms an identity ofthose like us, in sharp distinction from those not us, those heathens,those unbelievers. Most religions were pulled into the modern Enlightenment with their fingernails dug into the past. Change in religious beliefs and practices, when it happens at all, is slow and cumbersome, and it is almost always in response to the church or its leaders facing outside political or cultural forces (slavery, civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights).

9. Absolutism, or Religious Dogmatism. The foundation of the belief in an Absolute Morality is the belief in an Absolute Religion grounded in the One True God. This inexorably leads to the conclusion that anyone who believes differently has departed from The Truth and thus is unprotected by our moral obligations; even more, they must be forced to see the Way, the Truth, and the Light. Unlike science, religion has no systematic process and no empirical method to employ to determine the verisimilitude of its claims and beliefs, much less right and wrong, so it can never self-correct its mistakes, which are legion.

10. Preposterous Moral Rules, or Religious Immorality.The morality of holy books—most notably the Bible—is not the morality any of us would wish to live by. Put into historical context, the Bible’s moral prescriptions were for another time for another people and have little relevance for us today. In order to make the Bible relevant, believers must pick and choose biblical passages that suit their needs; thus the game of cherry picking from the Bible generally works to the advantage of the cherry pickers.

In the Old Testament, for example, the believer might find guidance in Deuteronomy 5:17, which says, “Thou shalt not kill”; or in Exodus 22:21: “You shall not wrong a stranger or oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” But the handful of positive moral commands are desultory and scattered among a sea of violent stories of murder, rape, torture, slavery, and all manner of violence, such as occurs in Deuteronomy 20:10–18, in which Yahweh instructs the Israelites on the precise etiquette of conquering another tribe:

When you draw near to a city to fight against it, offer terms of peace to it. And if its answer to you is peace and it opens to you, then all the people who are found in it shall do forced labor for you and shall serve you. But if it makes no peace with you, but makes war against you, then you shall besiege it; and when the LORD your God gives it into your hand you shall put all its males to the sword, but the women and the little ones, the cattle, and everything else in the city, all its spoil, you shall take as booty for yourselves….

Nice. Or consider what Moses did with an army of 12,000 troops Numbers, 31:7–12:

They warred against Mid′ian, as the Lord commanded Moses, and slew every male. They slew the kings of Mid′ian … And the people of Israel took captive the women of Mid′ian and their little ones; and they took as booty all their cattle, their flocks, and all their goods. All their cities in the places where they dwelt, and all their encampments, they burned with fire, and took all the spoil and all the booty, both of man and of beast. Then they brought the captives and the booty and the spoil to Moses.

That sounds like a good days pillaging, but when the troops got back, Moses was furious. “What do you mean you didn’t kill the women?” he asked, exasperated, since it was apparently the women who had enticed the Israelites to be unfaithful with another God. Moses then ordered them to kill all the women who had slept with a man. “But save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man,” he commanded, predictably, at which point one can imagine the thirty-twothousand virgins who’d been taken captive rolling their eyes and saying, “Oh, God told you to do that, did he? Right.” Was the instruction to “keep the virgins for yourselves” what God had in mind by the word “love” in the “love thy neighbor” command? I think not.

Of course, the Israelites knew exactly what God meant (this is the advantage of writing scripture yourself—you get to say what God meant) and they acted accordingly, fighting for the survival of their people. With a vengeance.

What about the New Testament? The angry, vengeful God Yahweh of the Old Testament, Christians claim, was displaced by the kinder, gentler New Testament God in the form of meek and mild Jesus, who two millennia ago introduced a new and improved moral code. Turning the other cheek, loving one’s enemies, forgiving sinners, and giving to the poor sounds like a great leap forward in moral progress.

Yet, nowhere in the New Testament does Jesus revoke God’s ludicrous laws. In fact, quite the opposite (Matthew 5:17–30 passim): “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill.” Jesus doesn’t even try to edit the commandments or soften them up: “Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven.” In fact, if anything, Jesus’ morality is even more draconian than that of the Old Testament: “Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment: But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment.”

In other words, even thinking about killing someone is a capital offense. In fact, Jesus elevated thought crimes to an Orwellian new level (Matthew 9:28–29): “Ye have heard it was said by them of old time, Though shalt not commit adultery: But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.” And if you don’t think you can control your sexual impulses Jesus has a practical solution: “If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.” May I see a show of hands of those who agree with this moral precept?

As for Jesus’s own family values, he never married, never had children, and he turned away his own mother time and again. For example, at a wedding feast Jesus says to her (John 2:4): “Woman, what have I to do with you?” One biblical anecdote recounts the time that Mary waited patiently off to the side for Jesus to finish speaking so that she could have a moment with him, but Jesus told his disciples, “Send her away, you are my family now,” adding (Luke 14:26): “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.”

Charming. This is what cultists do when they separate followers from their families in order to control both their thoughts and their actions, as when Jesus calls to his flock to follow him or else (John 15:4–7): “Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned.” But if a believer abandons his family and gives away his belongings (Mark 10:30), “he shall receive an hundredfold now in this time, houses, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands.” In other passages Jesus also sounds like the tribal warlords of the Old Testament:

Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household. Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. (Matthew 10:34–39)

Even sincere Christians cannot agree on Jesus’ morality and the moral codes in the New Testament, holding legitimate differences of opinion on a number of moral issues that remain unresolved based on biblical scripture alone. These include dietary restrictions and the use of alcohol, tobacco, and caffeine; masturbation, pre-marital sex, contraception, and abortion; marriage, divorce, and sexuality; the role of women; capital punishment and voluntary euthanasia; gambling and other vices; international and civil wars; and many other matters of contention that were nowhere in sight when the Bible was written, such as stem-cell research, gay marriage, and the like. Indeed, the fact that Christians, as a community, keep arguing over their own contemporary question “WWJD” (What Would Jesus Do?) is evidence that the New Testament is silent on the answer.

Middle Statement

Empirically speaking we can see why we don’t need God:

• Millions of Americans have no belief in God whatsoever, and 10s of millions have no religion and they’re doing just fine. There are no measures that believers are more moral than non-believers.
• Tens of millions of people in many Northern European countries such as Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Belgium, Holland, and Germany have no belief in God or religion and not only are they doing just fine, by any measure they are far healthier societies than the most religious nation in the Western world: America.
• Gregory S. Paul study: 17 first-world prosperous democracies in the Successful Societies Scale database (Australia, Austria, Canada, Denmark, England, France, Germany, Holland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United States). 25 indicators of social health and well being 1–9 scale: homicides, suicides, incarceration, life expectancy, gonorrhea and syphilis infections, abortions, teen births, fertility, marriage, divorce, alcohol consumption, life satisfaction, corruption rates, adjusted per capita income, income inequality, poverty, unemployment.
• Religiosity 1–10 scale: belief in God, biblical literalism, church attendance, prayer frequency, belief in an afterlife, and belief in heaven and hell.
• U.S. most religious by far & highest rates of homicides, suicides, incarceration rates, STD rates, teen pregnancy rates, abortion rates, divorce rates, income inequality rates & poverty rates.
• If belief in God & religion is such a powerful force for societal health, then why is America—the most religious nation in the Western world—also the unhealthiest on all of these social measures? If religion makes people more moral, then why is America seemingly so immoral in its lack of concern for its poorest, most troubled citizens, notably its children?

Concluding Statement (From Chapter 4 of The Moral Arc)

The Bible is one of the most immoral works in all literature. Woven throughout begats and chronicles, laws and customs, is a narrative of accounts written by, and about, a bunch of Middle Eastern tribal warlords who constantly fight over land and women, with the victors taking dominion over both. It features a jealous and vengeful God named Yahweh who decides to punish women for all eternity with the often intolerable pain of childbirth, and further condemns them to be little more than beasts of burden and sex slaves for the victorious warlords.

Why were women to be chastened this way? Why did they deserve an eternity of misery and submission? It was all for that one terrible sin, the first crime ever recorded in the history of humanity—a thought crime no less—when that audacious autodidact Eve dared to educate herself by partaking of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Worse, she inveigled the first man—the unsuspecting Adam—to join her in choosing knowledge over ignorance. For the appalling crime of hearkening unto the voice of his wife, Yahweh condemned Adam to toil in thorn and thistle-infested fields, and further condemned him to death, to return to the dust from whence he came.

Yahweh then cast his first two delinquent children out of paradise, setting a Cherubim and a flaming sword at the entrance to be certain that they could never return. Then, in one of the many foul moods he was wont to fall into, Yahweh committed an epic hemoclysm of genocidal proportions by killing every sentient being on Earth—including unsuspecting adults, innocent children, and all the land animals—in a massive flood. In order to repopulate the planet after he decimated it of all life save those spared in the ark, Yahweh commanded the survivors—numerous times—to “be fruitful and multiply,” and rewarded his favorite warlords with as many wives as they desired. Thus was born the practice of polygamy and the keeping of harems, fully embraced and endorsed—along with slavery—in the so-called “good book.”

As an exercise in moral casuistry, this perspective-taking question comes to mind: did anyone ask the women how they felt about this arrangement? What about the millions of people living in other parts of the world who had never heard of Yahweh? What about the animals and the innocent children who drowned in the flood? What did they do to deserve such a final solution to Yahweh’s anger problem?

Many Christians say that they get their morality from the Bible, but this cannot be true because as holy books go the Bible is possibly the most unhelpful guide ever written for determining right from wrong. It’s chockfull of bizarre stories about dysfunctional families, advice about how to beat your slaves, how to kill your headstrong kids, how to sell your virgin daughters, and other clearly outdated practices that most cultures gave up centuries ago. It’s time we all gave it up now. Won’t you join me?