One of the raging debates in the atheosphere, not to mention the rest of the reality based community, is what atheists should call themselves. One might say “Well, duh! Atheists!” However for a number of reasons that has become more and more unsatisfactory.

First, there is the baggage, unjustified, but nevertheless there, that seems to tag along with the term. Negative connotations abound, from the fact that various mass murderers in history self-described as atheists, to the general feeling, again unjustified, that atheism is equated with immorality. Usually, it’s religious people who think the latter, due to the indoctrinations of their various cults, (I’m looking at you, Christians) and even if the sentiment is not rationally supported, it’s there. A stigma attaches to the word, and it’s hard to shake.

Second the term itself is simply the negation of the word theism, which by itself presumes and gives validity to the root word. As some of us have been discussing here, the term implies a lack of something that atheists feel no lack of. We are not missing theism, because theism is actually a virus that has attached to humanity that we have simply and successfully inoculated ourselves against. We’re deficient in theism only in the same sense that we are deficient in cancer.

Attempts have been made to find another term, the most well known being advanced by the Bright campaign. However, that term just hasn’t caught on, I think, because of its condescending implication that those who are not bright are, well, dim. It’s well meaning, yet ultimately falls a bit short of the mark of attempting to have the world accept and embrace a term for atheists as it did for gays.

However, I’m happy to say that in one of the comments in the discussion above, I think we’ve found a good word. The Exterminator, our resident wordsmith, has thrown into the ring the word:

FaithFreeism

making we atheists, faithfreeists, who regularly discuss their freedom from faith in the Faithfreeosphere. The pronunciation is with emphasis on the first syllable so that it rhymes and sounds like atheism. Thusly:

FAYTH′ free izm

It has the advantage of being self-explanatory and self-defining. It’s not the negative of a positive worldview, it’s simply a statement that the proponent is free of faith, and instead uses logic, reason and critical thinking to structure his/her life. Initially, it doesn’t slip off the tongue as readily as atheism, since one has to get one’s tongue around those two “f”s in one word, but with a little practice, it works quite well.

I like the word. I like it enough to blog about it, and try to get it out there into the faithfreeosphere, and better yet, into the MSM (Main Stream Media).

I think others should do so too. Pass it along.

Our ability to detect things lights years away from us seems to be increasing in leaps and bounds. Scientists are predicting that it will be only a matter of time, perhaps as soon as five years, before they are able to say they’ve discovered Earth’s twin, another planet in another solar system, circling another star, capable of supporting some form of life.

Momentum is building: Just last week, astronomers announced they had discovered three super-Earths — worlds more massive than ours but small enough to most likely be rocky — orbiting a single star.

Not bad. Three solid planets in one system. Apparently, since the 1990s, they used a detection method know as the radial velocity method, which looks for the interaction of the gravitational tug of the circling planet on the star. But with a new method, known as the transit method, they detect a slight change in the light of the star they are observing as a solid planet passes in front of it.

Both methods are limited by their ability to block out the overshadowing light of the host star. For instance, the sun is 100 times larger, 300,000 times more massive and up to 10 billion times brighter than Earth. “Detecting Earth in reflected light is like searching for a firefly six feet from a searchlight that is 2,400 miles distant,” writes a panel of astronomers recently in their final report of the Exoplanet Task Force.

With the hundreds of billions of stars in the observable universe, it’s becoming more and more of a statistical certainty that there would be other planets capable of forming and sustaining life. The type of life is still up in the air, but it would be life nonetheless. The fact that life spontaneously arose on this planet (as seems to be agreed by the prevailing theories, save one, and we try not to call that a theory) seems to point to the obvious conclusion that it could and probably did happen elsewhere. Given the fact that most of the matter in this solar system seems to be present in the rest of the universe, that this solar system arose out of common matter found everywhere, and given the immense passage of time involved, it is inevitable that life as it arose on this planet could also arise on others under similar circumstances.

I wasn’t aware of this, but you learn something new every day:

…computer models have shown that plate tectonics, the forces that move continents and lift gigantic mountain ranges, are key to life on Earth as we know it, and possibly to life on other worlds. That’s because as the rocky plates that form the planet’s outer shell move about, they also recycle carbon dioxide. This greenhouse gas keeps our planet’s temperature balmy, but not too hot. And the telltale signal would be certain levels of carbon dioxide, suggesting that just as on Earth, this other world relies on plate tectonics to cycle carbon.

The Earth is so infinitely complex, with so many systems and sub-systems needing such precise balance to continue to support life, it’s no wonder it took us thousands of years to understand it all, assuming that we fully do, which I doubt.

So let’s assume that we will ultimately find this doppelgänger. So what? What good will it do us, one might ask. Especially those who believe that we are the center of the universe, and whose core beliefs would be seriously threatened if we found another Earth-like planet.

My answer, and it’s certainly not the best one, is that this is what we do. We constantly stretch our minds in the search for knowledge. I personally would be quite heartened to find that there is another planet out there like ours, because one of my core beliefs is that we are not special, that we are not the center of the universe, and we are not some god’s chosen people. Wouldn’t it be nice to know that the formation of a planet with tectonic plates, recycled carbon and an atmosphere capable of supporting life actually existed light years away from here? Wouldn’t that confirm the natural explanation that such a planet could easily form, by itself, out of the stuff of universal matter, as an almost evolutionary process? Wouldn’t it tend to confirm that this planet we call home is the result of natural processes common to the universe, and not a special act of god?

I think so.

I grew up in the Fifties and Sixties, but I really came of political age in the early Seventies, because it was right around that time that I watched the national drama we now know as Watergate as it unfolded. Talk about Reality TV, this was the original! The actual break-in that started the scandal occurred about 2 months prior to my 18th birthday, and Nixon eventually resigned just prior to my 20th. I was a history major in college, and here was history, that I just knew was going to be studied in the future, being played out on our televisions and newspapers. The man we elected to uphold the Constitution and the laws of the land had violated that same Constitution and committed criminal acts in conspiracy with others, then tried to cover it all up. When the smoke cleared the constitutional process envisioned by the likes of Jefferson and Madison had worked. A corrupt president had been forced out of office, and everyone responsible had been charged and convicted of various crimes (save one). The nation breathed a collective sigh of relief, with a sense that we had tested ourselves, and passed with flying colors, and with a knowledge, bordering on certainty, that it couldn’t happen again.

Little did we know.

Vincent Bugliosi has written a book with a challenging title, The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder. Bugliosi is also the author of numerous other non-fiction books, and is perhaps best remembered as the prosecutor of Charles Manson. The premise of his most recent book is that George W. Bush is responsible for the deaths of over 4000 servicemen and women, not to mention at least a hundred thousand Iraqis. He  needlessly invaded the country of Iraq, based on lies. He lied and mislead the American public, Congress, and the rest of the world about the real reasons for invading Iraq, and as a result hundreds of thousands died. He purposely deflected our focus on bin Laden, choosing consciously to stop efforts to bring him to justice “dead or alive”, instead focusing on a country that he knew had nothing to do with 9/11. He allowed Congress to authorize a military invasion, giving them doctored and falsified information and a false sense that he was trying to obtain redress for 9/11. Bugliosi makes a viable argument that while it’s probably too late to impeach him, as the process would take to long, once he’s out of office all of the necessary elements for a sustainable charge of homicide in the first degree exists, which could be prosecuted to a guilty verdict against George W. Bush.

Initially I scoffed at the notion. What District Attorney or U.S. Attorney in their right mind would take on this unprecedented action?  And frankly, having finished the book, I can’t see it being done in this political climate. Our current crop of politicians, both Republicans and Democrats, are spineless. But I have to admit that, as I read the book, and especially after reading the voluminous notes, I became convinced that, on paper, it’s doable. Bugliosi has done considerable research into the words and statements of Bush leading up to, during and after the invasion and occupation of Iraq, along with finding corroborating government documents, and it is quite clear that not only can it be proven that Bush knew that what he was advocating was not only misleading, but downright false, before he even gave the order to invade, but that he clearly had the malice necessary to substantiate a conviction for the deaths he knew would result. He could even be given the death penalty in the proper jurisdiction.

However, the value of this book for me was not in the convincing argument for a successful prosecution, but in the exhaustive rendition of the events and information that led to the Bush administration’s decision to start this fateful war, laid out all in one nice neat little package with a ribbon wrapped around it and a bow on top. In effect, it’s an amicus curie brief prepared in advance for any willing prosecutor.  All the research, arguments, and answers to anticipated defenses are here for the prosecutorial taking. Here are some interesting tidbits, information and arguments I enjoyed:

• The main thrust of Bush’s reasons for invasion was that  Iraq had weapons of mass destruction they refused to give up. However, a classified intelligence report was summarized in a White paper (unclassified) given to Congress before the crucial vote on the war, which watered down the dissenting opinions contained in the classified report, and by taking the supporting opinions and changing them into facts. Bush, Cheney and Rice all were well aware of the unclassified version.
• The second reason justifying the invasion was the implied and sometimes even explicitly stated contention that Saddam Hussein and Al-Queda were linked, and that Iraq was responsible for 9/11, despite the fact that Bush admitted after the invasion that there was no evidence for a 9/11-Iraq link. However, he left everyone under the impression that it was true (as did Cheney and Rice), without correcting it,  to the extent that to this day, an astounding 90% of the armed forces in Iraq still believe it.
• I particularly found this quote to be enlightening, referring to the real reason for the war was to simply get rid of the man who tried to have Bush’s father killed (though the evidence for even that is far from certain) and “bring democracy to Iraq”.

“Democracy doesn’t mean simply holding elections….First, you need a democratic culture - a tradition of voluntary associations, a tolerance for nonconformism and pluralism, a shared belief in the dignity of the individual, separation of political power from religious authority and a belief in the legitimacy of dissent.”

• Sounds just like Iraq, doesn’t it?

That’s just a taste. Buglisoi makes a cogent argument for this prosecution however he does so in a way that indicates his extreme hatred for what Bush has done to this country, which tends to undermine his argument a bit, as it almost sounds too personal. But in the end, it is possible, and given the lessons we learned in Watergate, it should be attempted. No President should be above the law. If you compare what Bush did to what Nixon did, there is really no comparison in terms of loss of life. No one died as a result of Nixon’s second rate burglary and cover up. That scandal pales in comparison to 4000 dead soldiers who gave their lives for what? So that Bush’s friends in the oil industry could recover what they lost when the oil industry was nationalized 40 years ago? So that a man with a huge ego and a small brain could stroke the former without exercising the latter?

This country went through a wrenching process 34 years ago, but if we allow Bush to get away with murder, it will all be for nothing.

I’ll leave you with a quote that I had read before, but which I re-discovered near the end of the notes in this book. This is from a book entitled A World Transformed, by George H. W. Bush (his father):

Trying to eliminate Saddam [by] extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq would have incurred incalculable human and political costs…Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land.

Further proof that Bush is not only guilty of murder, but he cannot read.

While I was busy celebrating up to my eyeballs, a wonderful, iconic comedian died this past week. I spent many mirth-filled hours listening to him on vinyl, not to mention watching him on Johnny Carson and HBO. This was a man who did not have to contrive his humor - he found it easily enough in life.

In belated Memorium, I offer you two of my favorite pieces, apropos to a blog such as this.

On Religion

On the Ten Commandments

Finally, I’ll leave you with a recent interview with the man.

R.I.P, George. Requiescat In Pace

Within a few hundred views, I’m going to hit a small milestone. Small in comparison, to say Daily Kos, or even Pharyngula. But for this humble blogger, it’s a lot more that I ever anticipated when I started this blog.

Roughly fourteen months after I decided to go public with those precursors to mental illness we commonly call brain farts, i.e this blog, I’m about to hit the 100,000 view milestone.

I’m not sure whether that’s really significant. In fact, being the critical thinker I imagine myself to be, I’m sure it’s not significant. However, it is a very large number. I’m actually into six digits. If that was income, I could afford my kid’s college education, or at least his drug rehab.

So my question to you, my faithful reader (you know who you are) is this. How do I mark this momentous occasion? How do I celebrate it? Do I bring out the L’il Inquisitors and have them show you what they’ve learned, lo, these past 14 months? I’m sure they have some mementos of the past few months that they are quite proud of. I seem to remember a few skulls, though I’ve shied away from their videotape collection.

You tell me.

Should I buy a cake? With 100,000 candles?

Should I call it quits and shut down, conceding that I’ve said everything that could possibly be said? Or at least typed everything that could possibly be typed in the hunt-and-peck style I employ?

Should I get my friends in the Atheosphere to petition Congress to pass a Resolution congratulating me on my overworked and underwhelming milestone? Do you think Bush would sign it? Or could I hope for, dare I say it, a presidential veto?

Should I get PhillyChief to photoshop the L’il Inquisitors into maturity?

Should I provoke The Exterminator into a attitude of pissedoffedness? (This is not a state of mental well being to be emulated, though frankly, it is easy to pull off. I’ll just write in Pastor John Hagee in the upcoming Presidential election.)

Should I acknowledge that this was all a dream, that JR Ewing made me write this blog, and that when I awoke, I realized that I was a committed Christian?

From Texas, no less?

I’m really at a loss, here.

I need some suggestions.

Anybody?

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[With thanks to PhillyChief for the eyeballs]

WordPress has a nifty little feature I just discovered. It lists the top search terms that were used to find my site, not only by day, week, month, quarter and year, but for all time. For all time! Can you imagine?

Now, of course, my blog has been around for only a short time, so the term, for all time, when applied to my blog, only means about 14 months. But those were significant months, by my standards, and my standards are what counts. I’m getting close to a hundred thousand views, so it’s interesting to find this little feature that tells me exactly what motivates people to view this blog. I thought for starters I’d list the top five:

Would you expect that the top five search terms on an atheist site involve those words? Heaven and Hell maybe, but sexual positions and sex positions? And snow? What’s with the snow?

But beyond that, exactly why would someone who was looking for heaven, use a search engine to find it? Or snow, for that matter? I can see Googling sexual positions, especially if you find that the trusty old missionary position just isn’t marinating your love life like it used to, and you happen to have a computer in your bedroom.

Let’s analyze these statistics a little more closely:

First, look at the leader: Heaven. Someone typed that word into Google, and found me, almost twice as many times as they typed the runner up, snow. Perhaps that’s because snow is somewhat seasonal (at least in the more temperate climes) whereas Heaven is fairly static. People might think of heaven on a regular, year round basis, whereas snow might not pop into their minds unless the weather is bad (or good, depending on one’s point of view. Especially if you are an Eskimo who, I hear, has multiple words for snow).

But wait, maybe snow isn’t second! If you add the last two, sex positions and sexual positions, on the theory that they are really the same thing, then sex(ual) positions jumps to # 2. Which sort of makes more sense, because, ask yourself, what’s on everyone’s minds more than sex? Well, in this case, obviously it’s Heaven. However, my theory is that heaven is what people are thinking of when they are experiencing orgasms, and hell is another word for bad sex, so actually, it looks like there are a lot of people with only one thing on their minds.

Or perhaps that’s just me.

So apparently there are a lot of people reading my blog (did I mention that this was an atheist blog?) who are in the throes of a hormonal backlash, or there must be something on the blog that attracts the search engines to inquiries involving heaven and hell, snow and sex(ual) positions. I’d love to believe that it’s the former, but I’m resigned to the fact that it’s the latter.

What’s really disheartening is that tied for last is this term:

Atheism.

I wonder what I’m doing wrong?

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Here’s an interesting story from the world of the media. The Philadelphia Inquirer, and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, two fairly respectable newspapers at opposite ends of the state, have provided, or are planning to provide, a supplement to one of their Sunday editions consisting of — get this — the New Testament. Local papers in Harrisburg, York and Lancaster are being targeted for the same thing. This is the brain child of the International Bible Society — Send the Light of Colorado Springs, Colorado, purportedly one of the world’s largest Bible ministries.

Their objective is to

“…reach the unsaved of this area,” said Jim Wakefield, a volunteer for the Philadelphia project. “The newspaper was selected since it could cover a widespread area at a reasonable cost, and then churches could continue any relationships that would develop.”

I don’t know, but does this sound just a tad silly to you? I know newspapers are privately owned and operated, and hence the limitations of the 1st Amendment’s proscriptions on religion don’t apply to them, but as the Fourth Estate, do they need to be so visibly tied to a particular religion? What next, copies of the Koran and the Upanishads? Are there not enough Bibles in the world, that if someone needs a copy, they don’t already have them, or at the very least, could steal one from the local Holiday Inn the next time they check in? The Gideons wouldn’t mind.

My local paper is being pragmatic.

However, the newspaper recognizes that it has readers who are not Christian and who have no interest in a New Testament, said David Newhouse, the executive editor.

“For that matter, there are probably readers who simply have several Bibles and don’t need another one,” he said. “So if this happened, we’d make sure to publicize places such as Bethesda Mission or other charities where people could donate any unwanted copies.”

I save the paper to use as starter fuel when I need to light a fire in the fireplace. So if I get one, I think I’ll save it for that, so that I can experience some Holy Smoke.

Clark wondered what the reaction would be if someone wanted to use a newspaper to distribute the writings of scientologist L. Ron Hubbard, for example.

Yes. One wonders. How about if we distribute The God Delusion?

Here’s what gets me though. They want to reach, and presumably save, the unsaved, by distributing a book. This is central Pennsylvania, often compared, favorably or unfavorably, depending on your point of view, with Alabama. If people here aren’t already saved, a free half-Bible stuffed in with the grocery coupons and window offerings isn’t going to save them. Besides, it takes a lot more than a free book to save people, I always thought. Don’t they need some follow-up, someone to knock on their doors and explain what’s in this book? Isn’t it necessary for one to turn off the intellect and accept what’s in the book on faith alone in order to be saved? If that’s the case, isn’t there a bit of an incongruity involved in distributing these bibles to people who actually read newspapers?

The whole concept seems doomed from the start.

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The current Non-Believing Literati book is Zadig, by some guy named Voltaire. My copy indicates that it was “Translated from the French Original of M^r. Voltaire”, and was published in MDCCXLIX, so if some of the quotes I use look a bit archaic, you now know why.

As I read it, I couldn’t help but compare it to Æsops Fables, as it is structured as a series of tales surrounding the exploits of Zadig, a sort of superman of the Middle Ages. He doesn’t have supernatural powers, rather he is possessed of a heightened intellect, coupled with a charm and sophistication which he uses to sway commoner and king alike. Traveling around the Near East, he rises to the heights of royalty and the depths of slavery, all the while charming the pants off of men and women alike. (Not literally, he seems to be a sexual celibate.) And each tale ends with a moral, a life lesson for the rest of us.

I’m thinking Lynet picked this book for its relevance to atheism, or at the very least, skepticism and the use of reason. There certainly is a lot of “Reason trumps superstition” laced throughout these fables. For instance, the story of the widow who planned on throwing herself onto the funeral pyre of her deceased husband, primarily because it was the custom to do so in her society. Zadig is appalled by the mere thought of it. Arguing with his master (he’s a slave at this point, though an almost irresistible one at that), Setoc (his master) states:

‘Tis now…above a thousand Years since the Widows of Arabia have been indulg’d with this Privilege of dying with their Husbands; and how shall anyone dare to abrogate the Law that has been establish’d Time out of Mind? Is there any Thing more inviolable than even an antient Error?

Zadig has the answer:

Reason is of more antient Date than the Custom you plead for.

Interesting thought, isn’t it? We atheists confront this sentiment routinely in debates with theists. How often do we have to refute a book written anywhere between 2000 and 4000 years ago, depending on the appropriate chapter? This is “antient’ wisdom we’re talking about here, set down, if not by god, at least by god’s scriveners. Well, now I’ve got the perfect rejoinder.

“My reason predates your stupid book. Nyah, nyah, nyah”

The ability to use our brains, logic and reason is what defines us as atheists. The willful choice to turn off those brains is what defines theists. Getting back to our tale, good old Zadig uses his age old reasoning prowess to talk this widow out of self-immolation. He asks her, “Were you especially fond of your husband?”

“No, he was a Brute”, she says.

“Do you harbor some secret pleasure of being burnt alive?”

“Not really, but I must comply with the Law and the custom of my people. If not, everyone will laugh at me” She says.

Zadig so forcefully persuades her that what she contemplates doing makes no rational sense, that she changes her mind. In the process, he asks her what it would take to drop this foolish notion:

Why, said Dame, with an amorous glance, I think verily I should accept of yourself for a second Bed-fellow.

And he walks away, the fool!

__________________________

Zadig seemed to live a life of contemplation. He was always philosophizing, or as he put it

…he gave himself up to this Flux and Reflux of sublime Philosophy and Anxiety of Mind…

At one point, while star gazing, he ruminates:

He reflected with Admiration on those immense Globes of Light, which appear’d to the naked eye no more than little twinkling Lights; whereas the Earth he was then traversing, which, in Reality, is no more than an imperceptible Point in Nature, seem’d, according to the selfish Idea we generally entertain of it, something very immense, and very magnificent. He then reflected on the whole Race of Mankind, and look’d upon them, as they are in fact, a Parcel of Insects, or Reptiles, devouring one another on a small Atom of Clay.

This is another sentiment we often have to refute. That we humans are the center of the universe, that it was created by God for us, to do with as we please. There is sheer arrogance and extreme egotism involved in thinking that the hundreds of billions of galaxies, within the immense vastness of the universe, were created for our entertainment, even though they can neither be seen, nor, given our current state of knowledge, visited by man. We are but a “Parcel of Insects” scrabbling for existence on this “Atom of Clay”. We most decidedly are not creatures of god.

This just Idea of them greatly alleviated his Misfortunes, recollecting the Nothingness, if we may be allow’d the Expression, of his own Being, and even of Babylon itself.

Notwithstanding my previous post, perhaps there is something to this Philosophy thing.

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

- William Shakespeare, Hamlet Act I, Scene 5

It’s been a while since my last post, but frankly, the last couple have kept me somewhat preoccupied with the amount of feedback I received, particularly from the Christian community. It was good, though not exactly fruitful, to have such an outpouring of discussion from both camps. I’m not sure we resolved anything except to harden our respective positions with regard to the Question of Suffering, a/k/a the Problem of Evil, and by extension, the existence of god. One of the reasons I feel this occurs is because of the nature of the setting in which the discussion takes place. I don’t mean this blog, but rather the philosophical environment. It strikes me that the freewheeling, almost limitless, ability to analyze philosophically actually acts as a limitation or impediment to resolution of any given question. Let me see if I can explain what I’m thinking.

First, because a lot of the difficulties in the last couple of posts involved agreeing to the definitions of the concepts we were discussing, let’s set forth a definition of philosophy.

Philosophy: n., pl. -phies.

1. Love and pursuit of wisdom by intellectual means and moral self-discipline.
2. Investigation of the nature, causes, or principles of reality, knowledge, or values, based on logical reasoning rather than empirical methods.
3. A system of thought based on or involving such inquiry: the philosophy of Hume.
4. The critical analysis of fundamental assumptions or beliefs.
5. The disciplines presented in university curriculums of science and the liberal arts, except medicine, law, and theology.
6. The discipline comprising logic, ethics, aesthetics, metaphysics, and epistemology.
7. A set of ideas or beliefs relating to a particular field or activity; an underlying theory: an original philosophy of advertising.
8. A system of values by which one lives: has an unusual philosophy of life.

[Middle English philosophie, from Old French, from Latin philosophia, from Greek philosophiā, from philosophos, lover of wisdom, philosopher. See philosopher.]

For purposes of this discussion, I’m going to restrict myself to the second and fourth definitions, as I think those best describe the process of analyzing these questions.

Anyone following the comments in the post The Christian Response might have noticed a certain disconnect between the two sides of the discussion. Those who I’d place in the atheist camp embraced the introduction (by a theist, ironically) of the Epicurean Dilemma because it so succinctly sets forth a logical and rational quandary, the existence of which leaves one with serious doubt about the existence of an omnipotent and omni-benevolent god. However, those who I’d place in the Christian camp seem to find all sorts of reasons to obfuscate the dilemma, by posing what we affectionately called four “flawed suppositions” or “flawed exceptions” that tried to counter Epicurus by presuming alternative explanations for his dilemma.

I’m not going to rehash that argument here. If you want to contribute to that thread, feel free, but keep Epicurus out of this one. What I want to point out is how thoroughly obfuscatory the philosophical attack on reality can be. The human brain, most of us would agree, is an incredibly complex and complicated organ, and the mind, the conscious part of the brain, is capable of hypothesizing all kinds of scenarios, many of which could not exist in reality. The square circle. The married bachelor. Angels dancing on pinheads. Oxymorons in general.

And God.

While Philosophy (and its little sister, Theology) pretends to attempt to explain reality (see definition #2, above) by its very nature of stringing out hypothesis after hypothesis, testing it against reason and logic, and ultimately rarely, if ever, arriving at a conclusion, it simply continues to allow those with strongly held beliefs, often not based on any evidence whatsoever, to continue believing unsubstantiated notions ad infinitum, ad nauseum. By using the imagination, and the brain’s ability to conceptualize things beyond the ability to prove, philosophy just sets us up for disappointment, while leading us to beleive we are actually accomplishing some intellectual legerdemain. If one wants to understand reality, philosophy is a poor vehicle for getting there. The Exterminator calls it a “masturbatory exercise“.

The point of philosophy is to start with something so
simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with
something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.
- Bertrand Russell

The Dilemma we batted around is fairly straightforward, almost self-explanatory. By taking a philosophical approach, one Christian in particular seemed to delight in muddying the water, rather than trying to explain away the quandary, as if making the issue murkier somehow showed the pointlessness of the Dilemma. At its heart, however, the Christian approach always works backwards. As usual, the Christian assumes the existence of god, one who is omnipotent and omni-benevolent, but one who also is apparently unburdened by, or even blind to, the question of human suffering. Once this assumption is made, the logic and reasoning twists backwards to find a premise to support the conclusion, rather than the other way around, as logic and reason would dictate, and as the Epicurean Dilemma insists. This is a nice example of Christian apologetics at work.

Reality shouldn’t be that hard to grasp. Philosophy, by it’s very nature, makes it hard, shrouding what feels right in a mist of irrelevancies, undue complexities and misdirections. While it uses mental mechanics that sharpen the intellect, ultimately the results are unsatisfactory.

If one would like to have a good grasp of reality, a better vehicle is science. Science makes use of some of the same tools as philosophy - logic, reason and critical thinking - yet attempts to arrive at a consensus of facts, rather than esoteric notions of probability. The strong indication that science is on the right track, while philosophy is stagnant, is that we are still arguing the same philosophical questions posed 500 years ago, without resolution, while at the same time science has answered almost all of the questions asked of it, and has repeatedly progressed to new levels of questions unimagined a half-millennium ago.

The explanatory power of science so far exceeds that of philosophy, it’s no wonder the latter seems like a dead subject, constantly debated and re-debated by dead philosophers. Science has explained the previously thought of unexplainable, and continues to do so on a daily basis.

Philosophers say a great deal about what is absolutely
necessary for science, and it is always, so far as one
can see, rather naive, and probably wrong.
- Richard Feynman

The National Center for Science Education reports that there is a definite move afoot to introduce bills in various state legislatures with the intention of requiring the teaching of “alternative theories” to evolution. The Louisiana Science Education Act is the first in a a number of bills, embellished by The Discovery Institute, that paragon of intellectual and scientific credibility, to be introduced.

On May 21, 2008, Senate Bill 733 (PDF), the so-called Louisiana Science Education Act, was unanimously passed by the Louisiana House Education Committee. Before passage, the bill was amended slightly from the form which passed the Senate on April 29, 2008, as previously reported by NCSE. It now moves to the full House.

Other states contemplating a similar bill are Oklahoma, Texas and New Mexico.

The bill singles evolution out from other scientific theories, and states that a teacher “may use supplemental textbooks and other instructional materials to help students understand, analyze, critique, and review scientific theories in an objective manner.”

This sounds suspiciously innocuous, but in reality, it will open the classrooms up to whatever teachers want to use, and in the hands of the religious, that will be anything the Discovery Institute puts in their hands. The sponsor of the Louisiana bill has made it clear what his motives are.

Senator Ben Nevers (D-Bogalusa) insisted to the AP on May 21 that “I plainly state in this bill that no religion will be taught,” he previously told the Hammond Daily Star (April 6, 2008 ) that the bill was drafted by a group which “believe[s] that scientific data related to creationism should be discussed.” Similarly, bill supporter David Tate, a member of the Livingston Parish School Board, told the New Orleans Times-Picayune (April 18, 2008 ), “I believe that both sides — the creationism side and the evolution side — should be presented and let students decide what they believe,” adding that the bill is needed because “teachers are scared to talk about” creationism.

[On a side note, it's always comforting when the proponents of clearly unconstitutional legislation, offered in a constitutional guise, talk openly on the record about their motivations. It provides good evidence when the case ends up in court, as it did in the Dover decision.]

Informed readers will see the similarities in previous legislation, morphing from the legislation of Arkansas that was declared unconstitutional in Epperson v. Arkansas (1968 ) ( which banned outright the teaching of evolution), through Tennessee’s “equal time’ bill struck down in Daniel v. Waters (1975) (by the 6th Circuit), then the Louisiana law (what’s with Louisiana?) requiring the teaching of the newly named “creation science” that was ultimately struck down by the US Supreme Court in Edwards v. Aguillard (1987), up through the most recent decision in Dover (2005).

The editorial writer for the Baton Rouge Advocate got it exactly right.

The bill will “provide a full-time living for dozens of lawyers in the American Civil Liberties Union. They will have a field day suing taxpayer-funded schools as groups use Nevers’ language to push Bible-based texts in the schools. That’s unconstitutional, and we can see the taxpayer paying — and paying, and paying — for this policy in the future.”

One of the admirable characteristics about America is that everyone is entitled to equal access to the courts, and to our legislators. Unfortunately, in the hands of agenda driven theocrats, our system of government gets abused. It seems that the people, the religious nut cases if you will, behind this constant, never relenting push to impose their religious fantasies on the rest of the population have figured that a combination of changing the tenor and tone of the argument, while keeping it front and center in the public consciousness, combined with the knowledge that a large portion of the rank and file who actually teach science to our children are in agreement with them, or worse, don’t care, will produce a society in which science will lose and religion will win.

The only remedy for this is eternal vigilance and good lawyers.