Steel City Skeptics

Join us in celebrating our anniversary this Friday!

It’s our anniversary! Not just of Drinking Skeptically, but also of Steel City Skeptics! Come out and party with us at The Bar (2132 E. Carson) this Friday at 7:30pm!

We’re going to try something wild and crazy this time. We’re not moving tables. When a table fills up, people will just have to split up and seed a new table with the newest arrivals. This is a pub night, not a formal dinner, right? The long meeting-hall style dining is not welcoming to new folks and it’s less than fun for anyone stuck in a place that requires seven or eight people moving just to get another drink.

It all started a year ago with a bunch of strangers saying “hello!” and introducing themselves. Don’t be shy! Remember, we’re all geeks here!

You can RSVP here, or on Facebook or Meetup.

See you there!

I am late to the party on this one (mistakingly thought it was next week). I’m just pasting in the only info I have from an email I was forwarded. All online info I’ve been able to find on this comes from ID websites and is the same cut n’ paste job. (No link love from SCS! Although we could nofollow, as per the excellent advice of Skeptools. Great site! Do read!)

“Grill the ID Scientist”

Tuesday, June 9
7 PM, University of Pittsburgh Campus (room TBA)

A network of scientists known as the Intelligent Design (ID) community continues to question basic tenets of Darwinism and origin-of-life scenarios. Not only are their views controversial in scientific circles — many in the evangelical world, who might be expected to embrace ID, are also not sold on the value of the ID program.

This event brings together a panel of scientists associated with the ID movement. After a short presentation, the bulk of the evening will be given to questions from the audience. This event is aimed primarily at researchers, graduate students and advanced undergrad students in the sciences. It is open to anyone, but participants must register in advance by sending email to snoke @pitt.edu. In the event of limited seating, preference will be given to grad students and researchers in the life sciences.

Panel:

– Doug Axe, Biologic Institute (formerly of Cambridge University)
– Michael Behe, Lehigh University
– Ann Gauger, Biologic Institute
– David Keller, University of New Mexico
– John Sanford, Cornell University

+ others TBA

moderated by David Snoke, University of Pittsburgh

This is tomorrow night, and is sadly not an actual BBQ. If you want to go, it seems like you’ll need to contact Dr. Snoke.

I’d love to hear some reports from those who attend!

[Hat-tip to DF for the info.]

For the past few days, I’ve been meaning to write down some thoughts on the murder of Dr. George Tiller, a late-term abortion doctor who was shot in his church last Sunday. The murder was, of course, reprehensible; but I’d like to take a brief look at how pro-life/anti-choice/anti-abortion groups have responded to the news.

Abortion is not arbitrarily controversial; it’s one of those issues that lends itself to controversy by attempting to draw a line in the middle of a nine-month gray zone. Very few outside the Catholic church would claim that the potential for human life equals human life, that birth control is murder, that a frozen embryo is a child, or that one cell (the likes of which you could destroy right now by scratching your head) equals a person. Likewise, very few would claim that a newborn baby is not a human being. Drawing the line is hard (“viability” might be the most common way), but most serious ethical decisions are hard; we have to do the best we can.

I present this brief explanation of the controversy to indicate that no one I’ve heard interviewed in the past week, on either side of the issue, has claimed that killing a child is acceptable. The anti-abortion folks like to claim that the pro-choice folks thinking killing babies is okay, and this is where the communication breaks down; their definitions of what constitutes a baby are different (though they’d probably both agree it’s not a zygote). Nobody I’ve heard on TV thinks killing babies is acceptable.

In that sense, I largely view the pro-choice response to Tiller’s murder as consistent. What would strike me as laughably inconsistent if it weren’t so tragic is the anti-abortion response. Remember, these are people who openly and sincerely equate abortion with homicide (have you seen the t-shirts?). Here’s a quote from the CNN article:

Operation Rescue, which has led numerous demonstrations at Tiller’s clinic, called the shooting as a “cowardly act.” And the National Right to Life Committee, the largest U.S. anti-abortion group, said it “unequivocally condemns any such acts of violence regardless of motivation.”

Can you feel the irony here? I mean, the whole we-oppose-murder-in-all-its-forms line grants their position some superficial credibility, but let’s be serious. If you truly believe that conducting abortions is the same as running around and killing little children playing in the streets, surely this response is too passive!

National Right to Life reports 49,551,703 abortions in the United States since 1973, and I’m using their language when I say that this many murders would be far worse than the genocide inflicted on the world by Hitler (thank you, Godwin’s Law). If this is the language you use to discuss the issue of abortion, should you really be so surprised (or even disappointed?) when some guy listens to you and takes matters into his own hands?

Operation Rescue released a statement directly after Tiller’s murder, which said, “We are shocked at this morning’s disturbing news that Mr. Tiller was gunned down.” Why on earth would you be “shocked”? In fact, wouldn’t it be more shocking if, after years of “abortion is homicide” rhetoric, nobody stepped up to the plate and took action? If you really believe that abortion in America is the greatest infanticide in history, why are you condemning Tiller’s murder at all?

I am consistently frustrated by organizations that repackage harsh beliefs to make them more socially acceptable. Operation Rescue and National Right to Life are certainly such organizations; any religious denomination that believes every human inherently deserves to be tortured forever simply for being human — that’s another. I wouldn’t discourage anyone from framing their beliefs in a positive way (everyone does this), but covering up harsh beliefs and pretending that they don’t have consequences is dishonest, despicable, and dangerous.

We are thrilled to announce a fabulous new change to our favorite monthly social gathering! We’re moving to The Bar at 2132. (That’s E. Carson St. — A Pittsburgh phrase meaning “where the bars live.”)

The owner has not only graciously let us reserve the front section of this posh place on a Friday night, but has offered to make us the official beverage of savvy skeptics the world over: Buzzed Aldrins. How awesome is that? “So awesome” is correct.

Look how sweet this place is:

See that? That’s room to mingle! And it’s all ours! We even have our own section of the bar so you can order your own drinks and maintain your own tabs. Plus, there’s food. Booze and food and space to move! This just might be the greatest Pittsburgh Drinking Skeptically yet!

Well, that is if you will be there! See you May 15th around 7:30!

RSVP here or at Meetup or Facebook.

This month’s Center for Inquiry discussion group offers a talk and Q&A with journalist and atheist activist, Rob Sherman.

You remember Mr. Sherman — Illinois Representative Monique Davis interrupted him while he testified before the Springfield House State Government Administration Committee to spectacularly flip her shit:

I don’t know what you have against God, but some of us don’t have much against him. We look forward to him and his blessings… I’m trying to understand the philosophy that you want to spread in the state of Illinois… This is the land of Lincoln where people believe in God… What you have to spew and spread is extremely dangerous… It’s dangerous for our children to even know that your philosophy exists… Get out of that seat! You have no right to be here! We believe in something. You believe in destroying! You believe in destroying what this state was built upon.

This is just a sample of Mr. Sherman’s experiences. Come out and join the discussion this Tuesday!

When: Tuesday, May 5th 2009, 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm
Where: Quaker Meeting House, 4836 Ellsworth Ave., Pittsburgh, PA 15213 (Oakland/Shadyside)

Orbs, dust, April showers, or have you just been Drinking Skeptically?

Come and join us at Claddagh’s Irish Pub, for an evening of drink and merriment. The Facebook invite is here, or you can find us on Meetup. (Or you can comment here. We’re flexible!)

Hope to see you there!

Oh hey! This Friday our friend Hemant Mehta¹, The Friendly Atheist, will be speaking at Carnegie Mellon, hosted by CMU’s AHA group. Pasta will be served!

More deets at the AHA’s Facebook invite and also at Hemant’s site.

Oh hey Part Two: Internet podcast talk show host The Infidel Guy interviewed local “paranormal investigator” John Lewis² who appears to have a physical aversion to questions. He apparently came down with the flu in the middle of the interview and his wife came on the line, apologized, and hung up on the call.

Here are links to IG’s show notes and to the archived show.

For the past couple weeks, I’ve been receiving regular e-mail updates on the status of a friend’s friend who had an accident that left her essentially paralyzed. Naturally, it’s a very sad situation, and the doctors are doing everything in their power to minimize or reverse the effects of the accident.

The e-mails I’ve been getting about the situation have all been from religious people. They guy writing the majority of the e-mails wanted us to “beg everyone to pray” and assured us that he would be “on my knees praying for the next six hours.” The girl who was paralyzed “needs people to believe that God can perform a miracle,” yet she “understands if it is not God’s will and she will still honor and glorify him either way.” These are real quotes.

I’m sure most people have received e-mails like this before, so I’d like to make a few general comments on the public perception of faith healing in Evangelical America, and I’d like to ask a few specific questions to people who believe in it.

I’ll start here: Do you believe God can heal? I.e., to rip of Epicurus, do you believe that God is both willing and capable of healing? (Some Christians would say no, claiming that God does not interact with the world, but the kind of Christians who send out prayer request e-mails like the one I’m referring to believe that God can heal.) If you do believe this, have you ever grappled with what kind of a God would base his help on how many hours you pray or on how firmly you believe that he’ll answer positively–while at the same time keeping openness to “God’s will” in the back of your mind so you’ll be submissive if his will is negative? Why do we “need people to believe that God can perform a miracle”? Why do we need to be “on our knees for hours”? If it’s not enough to ask once (nicely) for God to heal, then we’re dealing with a situation where cajoling and coercion can produce divine results–the exact scenario presented as a failure of pagan prayers in 1 Kings 18:25-29. Similarly, in the gospel of Luke, Jesus himself describes God as an eager giver of good things:

So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened. Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him! (Luke 11:9-13)

If anyone has to reinterpret this passage away from its clear meaning (and I haven’t yet met a Christian who doesn’t), it is not because the context demands a different meaning by itself; it is solely because the promise of Jesus is not true and has to be squared with reality in some way. The paralyzed girl I mentioned at the beginning of this post is in a situation where her earthly father wants her to be in better health than God does–in contradiction of Luke 11:13. If her father was given the opportunity to snap his fingers and make her better, I don’t think for a minute that he’d say, “Let me go talk with God and make sure it’s his will, because maybe you’re supposed to stay like this.” He’d just heal her–like Jesus apparently did. And if it’s clearly not God’s will to heal, why are we still praying/begging him to do it weeks and months later?

These are impolite questions, and they’re usually suppressed with appeals to God’s unknowable will. I’m asking them because it’s an insult to the paralyzed woman and her family to tell them that if they just pray harder, maybe God will do something. The reason we pray so long for things is that God isn’t there to answer. When we pray long enough, 1) we feel like we’re doing something helpful, and 2) it’s easier to slap on a “creative solution” answer over time and pretend like prayer works. Christians always leave God a loophole. In this case, sadly, she “understands if it is not God’s will and she will still honor and glorify him either way.”

Another question for the believer: If you think Jesus’ promises in Luke 11 (and elsewhere: Matthew 21:22; Mark 16:18; James 5:14-15) should not be taken literally and directly for some reason, how do you explain away the fact that the promises are given in stark, unqualified, direct terms? In other words, pretend for a moment that Jesus had wanted to give believers unqualified permission to ask for whatever they wanted; how could he have said it? Would he just have had to add an “I really mean this” clause to the end of the promises? Check out the passages above. They are already as strong and unqualified as possible…and demonstrably false.

Even so, what will happen if, in a month or so, this paralyzed girl is able to wiggle her toe or gain some mobility thanks to her determination and the quality of medical care she’s received? I’m confident that God would get all the glory. I’ve seen this many times, and it’s an utterly reprehensible reaction–from anyone’s perspective, Christian or not. Not only is it an insult to the doctors and PT practitioners who might have worked hard to achieve that result, it’s an insult to God. Think about it: months of prayers to an omnipotent being, and the best he can do is a partial restoration of health or mobility? What a god! If you’re omnipotent, it’s all the same for you. (And yet, of course, God never heals amputees…only people who might have gotten better anyway.)

Again, the practical Christian understanding of God is not defined by theology and grand ideals of omnipotence; it’s defined by reality, and we are therefore left with a weak, impotent, insecure, controlling, and ultimately imaginary deity who requires hours of prayer and strong faith mixed with the constant caveat that he might just not want to do it.

It was last March that I decided to be an “out” atheist, and the past year has been an interesting one. I’m a sucker for anniversaries, so indulge me in a few observations.

The biggest surprise of my experience as an atheist has been the response of my close Christian friends. I’m not entirely sure what I expected, and I wasn’t coming “out” to examine the reactions, but I’ve been surprised at the ecumenical, nonconfrontational interaction I’ve had with them. On the surface, this seems like a good thing–and I’ll admit that it’s been comforting to have the tacit support of people I love and respect. After a bit of consideration, however, I have to use this opportunity to call those people out on this blog in the way I like best–anonymously and behind their backs.

The main reason for this is simple: Hell. (To be fair, I’m also friends with a number of Universalists; and while I have no clue why they’d voluntarily make that choice, I’ll take up my quarrel with them another time.) The majority of my Christian friends, however, openly admit to believing in hell as a Real Place of Real Punishment–forever. To every one of you who believes in hell and hasn’t breathed a word to me about religion since finding out I’m an atheist: fuck you.

Too harsh? I don’t think so, and here’s why: I don’t even have to consider someone my friend to warn her about a potential, minor disaster that could occur in her future. And you can bet your ass that if I believed with all my heart that someone was going to be tortured forever, I wouldn’t care if he was my worst enemy–I would at least give him a warning based on the evidence I had to suspect (or know!) that he was going to receive what no moral judge would ever decree: infinite torture for finite transgression.

If you think that, as an atheist, hell is in my future, and you haven’t bothered to say a thing to me about it, you are either A) not a real friend, or B) not a real believer. If you think that you wouldn’t be able to convince me (despite the fact that my mind was open enough to be changed at least once), then why are you convinced? And if you are indeed convinced that so much is at stake, isn’t it at least worth a shot? I can’t recall a single instance where I’ve revealed my atheism to a believer and not accompanied it with the acknowledgment that I’m willing (and eager, in fact) to hear anyone and everyone out at least once.

In the past two days, I’ve received two unrelated e-mails from Christian friends that included the words “I love you.” It’s very nice, and those are sentiments that I would return in a heartbeat. But I can’t help seeing those words, taking a look at the religious quotes in the facebook profiles of the two people I’m referring to, and then wondering what the hell they actually believe–about me, and about their religion.

Perhaps this analogy will illustrate why I can’t get comfortable with the disparity between those beliefs and actions in the lives of my friends. If you knew right now (via revelation from God) that in one year, the holocaust was going to be repeated and millions of people were going to lose their lives in gruesome, awful ways, and that you had even a 1 percent chance of saving people you knew by talking to them and telling them, would you do it? Of course. Any reasonable person would.

As an unbeliever who thinks that hell is fiction and that I’m not going there, why do I care about this issue? I care because you do. Say there was a hand grenade lying on the sidewalk that I knew was not armed, but you thought it was; someone else runs up, also thinking the grenade is armed, looks at you, and then lobs it into a crowd. If your reaction is nonchalant and you make no move to stop the man who you thought was picking up a live grenade with malicious intent, then I think I’m justified in calling you an asshole. It doesn’t matter that the grenade was not armed.

I’m not writing this to invoke proselytization. I don’t necessarily want to talk about religion (although I’m always up for discussion). I just want to know why you don’t want to talk to me about it. I want to know why you feel okay believing in something that should make you very, very uncomfortable. When pressed, I suspect that many wouldn’t claim that I’m going to hell. How else could they be so casual? But it’s my sincere hope that everyone I know (including myself) will grow to care more and more deeply about living the examined life.

Ask yourself why you believe what you do. If you can’t come up with reasons that are convincing or worth sharing with others, why are you believing it? If you do have reasons, share them with people you care about. Tell them why. Who knows? Christianity (or Islam, etc.) could have it right, and perhaps I’ve missed something. God knows I’ve made a lot of mistakes in the past. Take the time to examine your beliefs. If they don’t hold up, you’ve saved yourself from believing a lie. If they do hold up, you have what is arguably the most important thing in the world to tell the unbelievers you love.

“It’s official: Ghosts Haunt Slippery Rock auditorium” reads the Post-Gazette’s headline from Friday, March 20th. There’s even a video. Here’s just a bit of this questionable article:

It’s official, folks. Miller Auditorium is haunted. But the good news is, they’re friendly ghosts.

“Almost everyone on our team had personal experience,” Mr. Lewis, owner of Titusville-based Baelfire Paranormal Investigation, said yesterday at a news conference in the theater lobby. “I pretty much feel this place is haunted.”

On Feb. 28, he and his 11-member crew spent the night in the auditorium looking for evidence of paranormal activity. Free of charge, they set up infrared video cameras and had digital and 35mm still cameras and digital, analog and micro-cassette audio recorders.

Eleven hours of audio and video and 758 photographs later, they believe to be true what professors and students have suspected for years.

In addition to personal experiences, investigators captured inexplicable digital images of a thick, neon green mist in that same backstage area — the scene shop — and heard voices.

You got that folks? Inexplicable digital images. Not only does that mean it must be ghosts, it is clearly the truth because it says so in the Post-Gazette.

An "inexplicable digital image" taken from Baelfire Paranormal Investigation site. Figured out what causes this, yet? Take a stab in the comments. Bonus points if you recreate the effect yourself and send it in.

Forget science, friends! We’ve been wasting our lives. It only takes some people who know how to take bad photos and a lazy reporter to prove it.

“Inexplicable digital images“, writes L.A. Johnson. Did you ask anyone other than the folks who took them?

Oh, and my previous post about this nonsense has conjured head honcho of the spooky squad himself, Mr. John Lewis, right here to Steel City Skeptics. His comments offer up some new insight into the story, where I am no longer comfortable making light of the potentially mentally ill.

My original post was more about shoddy journalism reporting on unscientific poppycock and adding credibility to professional swindlers, like psychics and ghost hunters, anyway. These folks are free to believe that they’re doing something meaningful, but society at large does not have to humor them. It is irresponsible and dishonest of the local news outlets to do so.

So, I’m going to stick with knocking bad journalism. L.A. Johnson, of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette? I’m looking at you.

A few believers in a theater reinforcing each other’s beliefs does not equal “investigation” — it’s a sleepover party. It sounds like these folks had a fun time and that’s great, but it’s not news.