Sunday Assembly redux, and some thoughts about blind spots

I always know that some reconsideration is in order when I start getting "you're WRONG" posts from people who I, by all rights, should be agreeing with.

After my post yesterday on the Sunday Assembly -- the recently-formed "church for atheists" -- the comments started coming in hard and fast.  And these were not, for the most part, the kind of comments that make a blogger lean back, hands cupped behind head, and bask in the glow.

For those of you who didn't catch yesterday's post, the gist was that I suspected that the Sunday Assembly was going to be short-lived, because it's easier to form a long-term association around common belief than it is around common disbelief.  Well, the disagreement on that count was loud and clear.  Here is one comment I received:

I share your reluctance to go to something like the atheist church. I'm very happy to be solitary for the vast majority of the time, and when I do socialise I much prefer very small groups. But I don't agree with your take on social gatherings. I think that in any group situation, something will be needed to bring the group together initially but, very soon, the group becomes its own thing. People will go to church, slimming class, book club, whatever and then if they become friends they are just friends, and it immediately moves beyond that initial glue you mention. How they became friends becomes just a point in the past. Something like this could start out as a gathering of recent atheists who miss their old church trips, or long-term atheists who just want to meet people. But it would succeed or fail based on whether or not the people show up and become friends. If they do, then it would just become a regular get-together between friends who may well start to meet in other contexts. And if they do want to do some organised outreach activities, like the Atheist Community of Austin, then it should contribute to the pushback against religious claims and default assumptions in society. I think it's wrong to think of it as "basing a church around not believing in something", and much better to think of it as a gathering of people who have certain things in common. Unbelief in gods would be one thing, but atheists tend to have other things in common too.

There was also the following:

Perhaps its because I identify as an agnostic rather than an atheist, but I derive tremendous satisfaction from congregating (usually unintentionally) with other atheists and agnostics. As you may remember from school, I have a LOT to talk about, but it's usually challenging to engage people in conversation about religion and its impacts on the globe without provoking their defense mechanisms. It might be nice to walk into a room and recognize that many of the people there are likely to be rational, intelligent, and open-minded.

I think that humans have a fundamental need to form communities and social constructs, and that cohesive belief structures arise as an emergent property of these constructs.

If Eddie Izzard is to be believed, the Church of England isn't really much more than a Sunday social club at this point anyway. If someone extended an invitation to a social club that met weekly and gave me a wink and said "don't worry, no religious people allowed" I would probably jump at the opportunity.

And this:

Although it may be hard to imagine the godless moving beyond the conversation that there is no god, that is exactly what SA have managed. As their public charter states "We don’t do supernatural but we also won’t tell you you’re wrong if you do". The talks revolve around how to live a better life and how to help others, not belief systems or religion bashing. Speakers are different at every service so there are no central tenets to the talks beyond them all being advice from public speakers in a particular field: community workers, academics, doctors etc.

One may argue that they are proselytising that central message of 'Live better, help often, wonder more' and if that's the case, it's the best darn message I've ever heard being proselytised.

In my opinion, you should attend an assembly one day. Hang out at the back, don't join in and leave early. At least then you can write an informed blog on something you've actually experienced.

Well.  Like I said, when like-minded individuals are more-or-less unanimous in telling me that I got something completely wrong, I'm not just going to sit there with my fingers in my ears chanting, "la-la-la-la, not listening."

The whole thing reminded me of a conversation I had a week or so ago with a friend about blind spots.  She and I were discussing places in our lives where our unquestioned assumptions about how things work make us miss stuff that is obvious to others.  Everyone, my friend said (and I agree), has these blind spots; the thing is to try to become aware of yours.  It's unlikely that you will ever get rid of all of them, but we should work to fix the places where we aren't seeing clearly.  In the words of the wonderful Paul Brady song "The World Is What You Make It" -- "clean up them windows, let the sun shine through."

And it seems as if one of my blind spots has to do with what people get out of social interactions.  I wouldn't call myself antisocial -- but I am very shy, and extremely hesitant to speak up in social situations.  (This may come as a surprise, given how outspoken I am in written form.  All I can say is that writing gives me an outlet for my creative, thoughtful, and emotional side, and that I'm not nearly this voluble in person.  In fact, a friend of mine has described me as being the quietest person she knows.)

It's easy to slip into the blind spot that given a specific set of circumstances, everyone would react the same way you would -- and that seems to be what I did here.  Now I still doubt, even after the cogent and articulate responses I received from readers, that I personally would be inclined to join a Sunday Assembly, should one open up near me (which is unlikely, given that I live in the hinterlands).  But evidently, there are many other atheists who find such a thing extremely attractive, and even in my original post I was in no way trying to imply that they are wrong to feel that way.  The connections that would be established by meeting with other "godless heathens" (as one commenter put it) are apparently enough of a draw that the Sunday Assembly could well become a going concern, despite my prognostications of doom.

And, for the record, I would like to state that I think this is a good thing.  If my original post was read to mean that I somehow was hoping that the Sunday Assembly would fail, all I can say is that you should blame it on a lack of clarity in my writing and not on my actual intent.  It was simply hard for me to imagine a group of atheists getting together and then doing what I would do -- standing around, cow-eyed, waiting for someone else to say something -- week after week.

So I appreciate the correction, and am honestly glad that there are enough non-theists out there that this may spread to other areas.  And to anyone I offended or annoyed by my original post, I humbly apologize.  If a Sunday Assembly ever does open up near me, I promise to attend at least once, so I can have some first-hand experience before commenting further.

I might even try to talk to someone.

The First Church of Atheism

Some of you may have heard of the recent weird twist that has occurred in the world of non-theists -- the founding of an "atheist church."

Lest you think that I'm just being funny or hyperbolic, let me say up front that I'm not the one who is calling it that, although its founders have been studiously avoiding the term.  London atheists Sanderson Jones and Pippa Evans purchased a deconsecrated church this January and have turned it into a spot for what they are calling the "Sunday Assembly," which they describe thusly:

Life can be tough... It is. Sometimes bad things happen to good people, we have moments of weakness or life just isn't fair.  We want The Sunday Assembly to be a house of love and compassion, where, no matter what your situation, you are welcomed, accepted and loved.

Which sounds like at least they have the right approach.  They have said that if they are successful -- which, thus far, they are, showing a 3000% growth rate in just under ten months -- they will open other Sunday Assemblies elsewhere in England.  Their stated goal is to create "a godless assembly in every town, village, and city that wants one."

As Harry Cheadle of Vice put it:

Since I'm an atheist, I'll base this claim on data: Studies have shown that those who go to church are happier, more optimistic, and healthier than others; attending religious services helps kids fight depression and by some (admittedly biased) accounts makes people more charitable.  Obviously most atheists won't have a very good time gathering at a church or synagogue or temple where everyone is devoted to praising and beseeching an imaginary being, but if you believe these studies, they could do with attending something like church.

Ian Dodd, cofounder of a similar assembly in Los Angeles, said wryly, "The church model has worked really well for a couple of thousand years.  What we're trying to do is hold on to the bath water while throwing out the baby Jesus."

The friend who sent me the news story about this movement ended his email with, "See you there next Sunday?"  My response -- after thanking him for the lead -- was "not very likely, sorry."  Which got me thinking why it was that I didn't find this idea immediately attractive.

You'd think I would, wouldn't you?  Getting together with a community of like-minded individuals, supporting each other in difficult times, discussing the ramifications of our beliefs (and lack thereof), and so on -- it all should be quite a draw for an "out" atheist like me.  And yet I can say with some assurance that if such a "congregation" started in my home town, I probably wouldn't attend.

Part of it is personal.  I am actually a very shy individual.  I'm intensely uncomfortable in large social groups.  At parties I'm much more likely to be the guy standing in the corner silently sipping a glass of scotch and watching the goings-on than I am the person at the center of attention.

Which is probably part of why I'm a writer, although it does make me wonder sometimes how I ended up in the teaching profession.

But it's more than that, and I think that the additional reasons are going to make it very unlikely that the Sunday Assemblies will succeed in the long-term.  And it has to do with what brings churchgoers together in the first place.

Churches cohere as institutions, I think, because of a commonality of belief and the shared acceptance of a set of core values.  Now, there can be disagreement about the details, and sometimes even serious argument; but there is a set of unquestioned assumptions at the basis of belief, and those are generally universal to all members.

It's hard to see how disbelief could provide the same kind of philosophical and social glue.  There are, after all, a great many more versions and gradations of disbelief than there are of belief.  If you think that Jesus rose from the dead to save us from original sin -- well, you can differ in the interpretation of what exactly that means, but the basic concept is the same for everyone.

But why do people disbelieve in that claim?  I know people who reject the central tenet of Christianity because (1) they don't like a lot of the Christians they know, and don't want to be associated with Christianity because of it; (2) they would rather there not be an all-knowing, all-seeing deity watching them and judging their actions; (3) they figure that if they believed, they'd be compelled to go to church, and like to have their Sundays free; and (4) they just don't give a damn about the whole argument, and prefer not to think about it at all.  All of the above consider themselves atheists -- and, frankly, I doubt they'd have much to say to one another about it.

As for me, of course, my objections to the core beliefs of religion come from a different source still -- the lack of evidence for religious belief.

So it's hard to see how you could base a "church" (or whatever you want to call it) around not believing in something.  It'd be a little like having a bunch of guys who get together every week so they can eat pizza and not watch football.

So my suspicion is that the whole thing will be short-lived, because groups need a common purpose to survive, not just a shared lack of identification.  There's only one common purpose I can think of that an atheist gathering could have that would induce them to hang together -- the purpose of proselytization.  Spreading the good word that there's no Good Word.  Sending out missionaries to induce religious people to deconvert.

And once again -- I have no interest whatsoever in this.  To me, belief (or disbelief) is an intensely personal decision.  I am, obviously, up front about my own atheism, and have no problem with describing how I arrived where I am philosophically.  On the other hand, by doing so I am honestly not trying to talk anyone into, or out of, anything.  Proselytization implies an unequal power structure -- "I know what is correct, and I will instruct you about it if you will just open your mind and listen."  There's an undercurrent of condescension there that I find repellent.  So I'd be happy to discuss what I think, with anyone who isn't inclined to pull out a machete when they find out I'm an atheist -- but I'm just really not into persuasion.

So I think I'll be staying home next Sunday.  Happy for you if you like this sort of thing, but not my cup of tea.

The ghost on the road

Coming right on the heels of yesterday's post about proof, souls, and always keeping in mind the possibility of being wrong, a friend of mine sent me an interesting story about something that happened to her last week.

Here's the story, quoted directly from her email to me (and used with her permission).  Keep in mind, as you read this -- although you'll have to take my word for it -- that this friend of mine is one of the most intelligent, rational individuals I know.

I was driving to Tim Horton's after dropping off [my son] at school, and I have to pass the lovely Keefer Inn.  I always look up at it as I pass.  Today, there was a man standing on the right hand side of the road, dressed in an old brown suit with a funny tie and leaning heavily on a cane.  Sour face, kinda chubby.  Dour.  He stared at my car as I passed, so of course I stared back.  Then I checked my rear view mirror.  Didn't see him.  So I craned back to see if he was in my blind spot.  Not there.  Not anywhere.  So on impulse, I pulled into the nearby arena drive, parked, and scanned for where he could have gone, keeping in mind he needs a cane.  I supposed he could have ran quickly behind the other house, but why would he?  So I drove back up the hill, and saw no one.

I tried to dismiss it, went to Tim's, got my tea, but it bugged me... So I looked up the mansion...

George Keefer's picture is in there. He's the original owner, was a Captain in war of 1812, EXACT SAME GUY.  

*cue scary music*

Like I said, you'll just have to believe me when I say that this friend of mine is not given to woo-woo flights of fancy.  She's been a regular reader of Skeptophilia for years, and is far more likely to respond to my posts with "Yeah!  Get 'em!  You tell 'em, dude!" than to defend the purveyors of the paranormal.  So the question is:

Did my friend see a ghost?

As a skeptic, we have to admit that possibility.  It certainly is a suggestive story, and I've heard many others like it -- although this is the first time that I've had one from a trusted (and rational) friend.

Here, though, is how she explains it -- and at this point, it bears mention that my friend is the inimitable horror writer A. J. Aalto, author of Touched, Death Rejoices, and Cold Company, whose novels combine brilliant humor and gut-clenching terror better than just about anyone:

This just happened -- but keep in mind that I've been under a lot of stress lately, so my brain is capable of all sorts of wonkiness.  I've been info-cramming ghost stuff for book 3, and I have researched the mansion in question long ago, so my brain is clinging to stuff that I don't even remember that I know, if that makes sense...

[And Keefer's] face is also on the website, and I know I've scanned that site in the past, so I could have seen him and just filed that away.

But for about two seconds there...  I ALMOST believed I saw a ghost this morning.

OH, I forgot the BEST PART. I was driving in my driveway after seeing him, and Pearl Jam's "Rearview Mirror" came on the local station, and I hate that song, but I burst out laughing.  It was too perfect.  I'm using it ALL in book 3.

I just think it's amazing what the human brain can do when your subconscious knows what you want to see.  How it can just make connections and go, "well, I could show you anything right now, but I'm going to choose George Keefer out of your memory banks from that one time you might have glanced at his pic in passing, and throw him in time-appropriate clothing, and then make him vanish."

And for (estimating here) a good five minutes, my heart was pounding so hard, and my whole world view went WHOMP to one side, like I had the answers at my fingertips.  I was very disappointed to unravel this riddle.

Now, before you say, "Well, of course she perceives the supernatural -- she's a horror writer!", allow me to point out that my novels are about the paranormal, too.  I've found that paranormal writers are often skeptics, in fact.  We're very clear on the fact that our works are shelved on the "Fiction" aisle.  Even H. P. Lovecraft was an ardent rationalist -- he used to respond to people who wrote to him with earnest letters about how they'd found the ruins of Innsmouth and Dunwich and were descended from Obed Marsh with the curt response, "I'm sorry to have to point this out, but my stories are works of fiction.  I know this for a fact, for, you see, I made them up myself."

But still, the possibility remains that A. J. saw something real as she was driving past the Keefer Mansion.  And that others who, like her, report running into spirits, have also somehow seen the remnant images of the dead.

If we're being honest with ourselves, we have to weigh all possibilities -- that the human mind, with its flawed perceptual apparatus, imprecise processing ability, and plastic memory systems, has created something because we were primed to see it; or that what we are seeing is something that has a real, external existence, albeit one that science has yet to detect.

Interesting, though, that even after her rather alarming experience, A. J. is still putting her money on the former.  But she did have an interesting postscript to add, to the effect that we skeptics have a vested interest in science being right -- because we're as comforted by science as the paranormalists are by their worldview:

If I didn't have a background in science, I'd have absolutely considered this a ghost sighting.  Especially after Googling Keefer and seeing the same face staring back at me.  My mouth went dry.  It was SO MUCH FUN.

But I'm telling you right now... if I see him again?  That's it.  I will be forced to have some serious thoughts.

I'm a closet want-to-believe-er.  I really really really want to think that was George.  My doubts prevent it.  And if it ever DID happen, I'm not sure I'd handle it well.

Maybe we're skeptics because the possibility of ghosts is too scary?  Science as security blankey.  Or teddy bear.

Oh, and I'm going to stay at Keefer Mansion soon, in this guy's own bedroom. Then we'll see, won't we?

Yes, A. J.  That we shall.  Make sure you bring your blankey along -- and your skepticism.  Given how suggestible we all are -- even us skeptics -- you may find that you need them.

Proof, souls, skepticism, and being wrong

I think one of the problems with scientists and non-scientists not understanding each other revolves around the meaning of the word "proof."

I ran into two interesting instances of this in the last couple of days.  One of them was a response to my post last week about the conspiracy theorist conference that's being held next Saturday in my home town, in which I wrote (amongst other comments) a rather snarky paragraph about people who believe in chemtrails, anti-vaxx propaganda, and so on.

Well, that sort of thing always upsets some readers.  "I hate these damn skeptics," wrote one commenter, "who think they have everything proven!  The world always has to be how they see it!"

First off, in my own defense, I've never claimed that I was infallible; only that the evidence very much supports the contention that (1) chemtrails don't exist, and (2) vaccinations are safe and effective. And just because I'm pretty certain to be right about these two things doesn't mean that I think I'm right about everything.

But the more interesting thing is the use of the word "proof."  Because in science, disproof is usually far easier than proof.  If you have a model of how you think the world works, you design a test of that model, and see if the results are consistent with what the model predicts.  If they are not -- assuming that nothing was wrong with the research protocol -- then your model is disproven (although scientists generally prefer the word "unsupported").

Of course, the problem is that in this context, you never really "prove" your model; you simply add to the support for it.  Nothing is ever proven, because additional experiments could show that your model hadn't predicted correctly in all cases, and needs revision.

But still the sense persists out there amongst your average layperson that scientists "prove their theories," and that all you need is some hand-waving argument and a few fancy-looking diagrams to accomplish this.

As an example of the latter, consider the site that is making the rounds of social media with the headline "Scientists prove the existence of the soul!"  Of course, when I clicked on the link, I was already primed to view the whole thing with a jaundiced eye, because it's not like I don't have my own biases on this particular topic.  But I'm happy that in this case, I wasn't off base in my skepticism, because this link turned out to be a wild woo-woo claim par excellence.

The whole thing is based upon the "research" of a Russian scientist who claims to have photographed the soul leaving the body as someone dies.  Here's a pair of his photographs:

And here is the accompanying explanation:

The timing of astral disembodiment in which the spirit leaves the body has been captured by Russian scientist Konstantin Korotkov, who photographed a person at the moment of his death with a bioelectrographic camera.

The image taken using the gas discharge visualization method, an advanced technique of Kirlian photography shows in blue the life force of the person leaving the body gradually.

According to Korotkov, navel and head are the parties who first lose their life force (which would be the soul) and the groin and the heart are the last areas where the spirit before surfing the phantasmagoria of the infinite.

In other cases according to Korotkov has noted that "the soul" of people who suffer a violent and unexpected death usually manifests a state of confusion in your power settings and return to the body in the days following death.  This could be due to a surplus of unused energy.

Well, first, those doesn't look to me like Kirlian photographs.  Kirlian photography is a way of capturing an image of the static electrical discharge from an object, and shows distinctive bright "flame" marks around the object being photographed.  Here, for example, is a Kirlian photograph of a leaf:

What Korotkov's photograph looks like to me is a false-color photograph taken with an infrared camera, which colorizes the regions of a human body (or anything) based upon its temperature.  So naturally the heart (positioned, as it is, in mid-torso) and the groin would tend to be warmer.  I don't think it has anything to do with your soul sticking around because it's especially attached to your heart and your naughty bits.

I also have to wonder how Korotkov was able to study people who experienced "violent and unexpected deaths."  It's not as if you can plan to have a scientist around for those, especially the unexpected ones.

But in the parlance of the infomercial -- "Wait!  There's more!"

The technique developed by Korotkov, who is director of the Research Institute of Physical Culture, St. Petersburg, is endorsed as a medical technology by the Ministry of Health of Russia and is used by more than 300 doctors in the world for stress and monitoring progress of patients treated for diseases such as cancer.  Korotkov says his energy imaging technique could be used to watch all kinds of imbalances biophysical and diagnose in real time and also to show if a person does have psychic powers or is a fraud.
This technique, which measures real-time and stimulated radiation is amplified by the electromagnetic field is a more advanced version of the technology developed for measuring Semyon Kirlian aura.

Korotkov observations confirm, as proposed by Kirlian, that "stimulated electro-photonic light around the tips of the fingers of the human being contains coherent and comprehensive statement of a person, both physically and psychologically."

In this video interview Korotkov speaks of the effect in the bioenergy field with food, water and even cosmetics. And emphasizes one umbrella drink water and organic food, particularly noting that the aura of the people in the Undies [sic] suffers the negative effects of nutrients as technologization distributed in this society.

Korotkov also speaks of their measurements in supposedly loaded with power and influence that people have in the bioenergy fields of others. Checking Rupert Sheldrake's experiment of the feeling of being watched : Because a person's bioenergy field changes when someone else directs his attention, even though it is backwards and not consciously perceived. Also a place fields are altered when there is a concentration of tourists.

Well then.  We have "electro-photonic light" (is there another kind?), "bioenergy fields" (sorry, Sheldrake, but there's no evidence they exist), a reference to "real" versus "fraud" psychic powers, and a contention that tourists affect a person's soul.  Not to mention the thing about "undies," which I sincerely hope was a typo or mistranslation, because I would hate to think that my boxers are somehow creating negative effects in my spiritual nutrients.

And this is what people read, and say that it "proves the existence of a soul?"

Of course, what we have going on here is confirmation bias -- when you already believed something, so a tiny piece of sketchy evidence is all you need to shore up that belief.  I think I can state without fear of contradiction that no one who didn't already believe that souls exist would be convinced by this article.

So that's the problem, isn't it?  And not just in this admittedly ridiculous claim that equates dead bodies cooling off with their souls escaping.  Think of people who listen, uncritically, to "news" about their favorite controversial story -- evolution vs. creationism, the safety of vaccinations, the role of human activities in climate change, whether the public school system is headed for disaster.  If you uncritically accept what you're hearing as proof, just because it supports the contentions you already had, you'll never find out where you've got things wrong.  And that, to me, is the heart of science -- and the only way to lift yourself above your biases.

If you have fifteen minutes, and want to listen to someone who demonstrates this point brilliantly, take a look at the TED talk by Kathryn Schulz called "On Being Wrong."

I can honestly say that watching this short video was to me an eye-opener to the point of being life-changing.  She asks us to shift our viewpoint from trying to "prove" what we already believed to be true, to thinking seriously about the possibility of our being wrong -- and frames it in a way I had honestly never considered.  I think that the first time I watched it, I spent the last half of it listening with my mouth hanging open in sheer astonishment.

You have wonder how much pain and suffering could be averted in the world if more people would entertain the possibility of their being wrong.  Right now, there are hostages being held in a mall in Kenya (and 68 known dead in the incident) because of men who are so convinced that their worldview is right that they are willing to slaughter innocent people in its name.

Maybe we have been, as a species, looking at things the wrong way round.  Maybe we shouldn't constantly be looking for proof for what we already believed.  Science (at its best) approaches the world tentatively, testing, probing, and wondering -- and constantly asking the question, "what if this model is wrong?"  I know we can't all be scientists, and that not all problems are scientific in nature, but the general approach -- always keeping in mind our own fallibility -- has a lot to recommend it.

Ethics, religion, and the right to die

One of my failings is that I never seem to be able to see ethical questions in black-and-white.

Life would undoubtedly be easier if I did.  Humans, myself included, appear to me to be impossibly complex, full of competing motives, attitudes, thoughts, and prejudices, with an incomplete access to the facts (and a fallible machine with which to process those facts).  Given all that, a lot of the time I really don't know how to make decisions on ethical matters -- I can too easily see the arguments from both sides.  All of which makes it all the more baffling to me how people can seem so sure of themselves in (for example) politics.

Maybe it's why I'm comfortable in the realm of science.  There, there's a clear decision-making protocol, and rules of logic that govern it.  Things may not always be simple in science, but they sure are a hell of a lot clearer.

I ran into an especially good example of this yesterday, with the story of the seventeen-year-old Sydney, Australia boy who is fighting in court for the right not to be treated for his probably-curable Hodgkin's lymphoma.

The boy is a Jehovah's Witness, and they believe that you are showing a lack of faith in god if you seek medical care when you're ill.  You should, they say, pray for healing.  If you die, then (1) you didn't pray hard enough, or in the right way, or (2) it was god's will that you died.  Either way, they're insulated against criticism of the claim, which strikes me as pretty convenient.

The case was in the courts in April, and was characterized as a situation of neglectful, ultra-religious parents victimizing an ill child by denying him treatment.  Supreme Court Justice Ian Gzell agreed, stating in his ruling that, ''The sanctity of life in the end is a more powerful reason for me to make the orders than is respect for the dignity of the individual.  X is still a child, although a mature child of high intelligence.''  The boy was ordered into Sydney Children's Hospital, where he began chemotherapy.

But the case jumped back into the news when it was reported that the boy himself is threatening to rip the IV needle out of his arm -- after his father wrote a line from the bible on a whiteboard in the boy's hospital room that allegedly supports the contention that it is against god's will to have a blood transfusion.

A spokesperson for Sydney Children's Hospital said the boy had a ''cocooned upbringing'' and his family had ''little exposure to challenges of their beliefs from outsiders''-- implying that he and his family were simply wrong, and therefore incapable of making a responsible decision.  The boy himself expressed horror at the thought that he might be sedated and treated against his will -- likening it to being raped.

So, what's the answer?  I teach seventeen-year-olds, and a good many of them are highly mature, sensitive, and intelligent.  Some are less so.  Even the less mature ones feel strongly that they should be able to make their own decisions.  In the eyes of the law, however, they are still legally their parents' responsibility.

Then we have the religious aspects.  It's easy enough to ridicule the beliefs of these folks from the outside -- but put yourself in their places.  What if you really, truly believed that death was not final, that your soul lived on -- but that you might end up in eternal torment if you sought out medical care?  You are in pain now, but that's temporary.  Hell, on the other hand, lasts forever.  Wouldn't you choose a few months' discomfort over an eternity in agony?

Then there's the aspect of "brainwashing" -- as it's been widely characterized.  I agree to the extent that the Jehovah's Witnesses' view of the world is unsupported by everything I know about science, logic, and nature.  There is, in my opinion, not a shred of evidence for their claims.  Still -- shouldn't we all be allowed to make those decisions for ourselves?  Why should my reliance on science and logic dictate what someone else does?  I sure as hell would resent that if the situation were reversed -- which it sometimes is.

It's not an easy thing to decide, is it?  It would be different if the boy were younger; but even that is an ethical conundrum, because there's no on/off switch for maturity.  Are you capable of making this sort of decision at sixteen?  Fourteen?  Ten?  In most places, you become the master of your own fate at eighteen, but even that is an arbitrary number.  I know some people who are more mature at fifteen than others are at twenty-five.

So I'm left with a question.  We have a boy who is almost certain to die because of his, and his parents', religious beliefs, and a hospital that is desperately trying to stop that from happening.  And all I can say is that I'm glad I'm not the one who has to make the decision about what is best to do.

The Freedom Festival comes to town

Much was my surprise when I found out that the wingnuts are coming to visit my own home town.

Let me say, at the outset, that my home town is tiny.  It has no stoplights.  Traffic jams consist of times you have to wait for three cars to pass before you can turn into the Shur-Save Grocery Store.  The high point of excitement in my village, and I am not making this up, is the day once a month when the Doug's FishFryMobile parks at the Fairgrounds so you can get takeout fried fish for dinner.

It is not, to put it mildly, a happenin' place.

So I was a bit surprised to find out that we were going to be the hosts of the Finger Lakes Freedom Festival.  Of course, at first, I didn't know what the Finger Lakes Freedom Festival was going to be; from the name, it sounded like it could be anything from a picnic for veterans to a meeting of the local Tea Party members.  The flyer didn't give anything much further in the way of clues:

FINGER LAKES FREEDOM FESTIVAL

Share your passion for freedom!  Learn how to preserve it!

Trumansburg Fairgrounds @ Trumansburg, New York

Saturday, September 28, 2013 10 AM - 10 PM

Movies, Seminars, Info booths, Vendors, Exhibits, BBQ

Enter contests:  Art, Essay, Poetry, Song, and Bumper Stickers!

Still not much to go on.  Could be innocuous, could be... scary.

My first inkling of what was actually happening came from a student of mine, who said, and I quote, "I think these people are insane.  You might want to look into it."  Then a colleague of mine said that he'd been given one of the flyers by a parent, who seemed a little... intense about the whole thing.

So I started doing some research.  And let me tell you, this is a dog-and-pony show of considerably larger proportions than I realized.

Let's look, for example, at the guest speakers.  Starting with:

Tom DeWeese, who is going to be speaking about "Sustainable Development and the Wrenching Transformation of America."  Again, innocent enough title -- could be a talk by a Natural Resources professor at Cornell, from the sound of it.

Nope.  In fact, DeWeese has been flagged by Daily Kos' "Wingnut Watch," who characterizes him as follows:

At the risk of giving him and his organization exposure, I thought it worth putting up a post here so we can be on the watch for him and his message. If you're serious about wanting to deal with major problems the world is facing - growth, energy, climate - you need to know about DeWeese. Because he's bound and determined to keep anything effective from being done. He's a classic case of Libertarian paranoia gone toxic.

If you're someone interested in seeing your local community adopt policies that save energy, conserve resources, and plan for the long run, Tom DeWeese is there to make sure it's not going to happen. He'll turn you into a communist/internationalist/socialist seeking to tell people what they can and can't do. He'll accuse you of brainwashing their kids, trying to take away their guns, driving jobs out of town, and just about anything he can get away with. He'll help organize all of the local low-information, paranoid folks to stop you. And he'll portray it all in terms of doing the Right Thing, the Patriotic Thing, the American Way.

Then we have Sheriff Richard Mack, the Arizona sheriff who gained notoriety by suing the Southern Poverty Law Center for slander, libel, and defamation, and sued the United States itself on the grounds that the Brady Handgun Violence Protection Act was unconstitutional.

But Mack seems sane as compared to Rosa Koire, whom the North Coast Journal describes as follows: "[Koire is] a 'forensic commercial real estate appriaser' from Santa Rosa who helped found a group called the Post Sustainability Institute. Koire explains how local governments use something called the Delphi technique to brainwash people into believing in such nefarious concepts as smart-growth, environmental stewardship and energy conservation.  'This is war,' Koire declares."

Then there's Laurie Murray, whose LinkedIn profile reads:

Save lives through education and awareness of suppressed information about the causes, prevention, and recovery from serious chronic diseases such as Mercury Poisoning, Autism, Cancer, Multiple Sclerosis, Alzheimer's, ALS, Diabetes, and other autoimmune and neurological disorders caused by environmental toxins and heavy metals.

That is: chemtrails, anti-vaxx, and so on.

Ultra-right-wing political contributors will include KrisAnne Hall ("The Roots of Liberty and the Bill of Rights"), Michael Chapman ("Our Censored Heritage" and "Education for Sustainable Tyranny"), and Judith Whitmore ("Citizen Vigilance Centers - Holding Elected Officials Accountable to the Constitution").

All in all, it should be good times.

I think what bothers me about all of this is how surreptitious they're being about the whole thing.  The names of the talks don't tell you much; the anti-vaxx, anti-public-education, conspiracy-theorist leanings of these people are being fairly thoroughly smothered under a veneer of respectable-sounding words like "freedom" and "liberty" and "constitutional" and "accountable."  If they aren't trying to hide anything, why don't they come out and be up front about what this "festival" is?

The answer, of course, is that they want to (1) get lots of people to show up who don't know what's going on, in the hopes of catching them off guard and convincing them; and (2) avoid hecklers.  While I can understand (2), (1) really pisses me off, because it smells of being disingenuous.  These flyers are being handed out all over my school, and kids are considering going without knowing the level of propaganda this represents -- and that isn't even addressing the political slant.  As I've mentioned before, I'm neither qualified nor inclined to comment on politics most of the time, but I do know science -- and the claims of these people that are scientific in nature are simply bogus, unsupported, and irresponsible.

I'm probably not going to attend, however.  For one thing, I'm not into seeking out conflict, especially in my home town.  I have to live here, after all.  For another, I don't think anything I say is going to convince any attendees who aren't already convinced.  But I do think it's important to know what you're getting into, if you are a local who's trying to decide whether to attend.

What seems certain is that the agenda is going to have to do with a lot of other things besides "freedom."

Magnets, politics, and preconceived notions

Two stories showed up just in the last couple of days that are interesting primarily in juxtaposition.

First, we had a scholarly paper published in PLOS One, entitled "Copper Bracelets and Magnetic Wrist Straps for Rheumatoid Arthritis – Analgesic and Anti-Inflammatory Effects: A Randomised Double-Blind Placebo Controlled Crossover Trial."  In it, we find out what most skeptics suspected from the get-go -- that magnetic and copper bracelets and anklets and necklaces and shoe-sole inserts and so on are a complete non-starter when it comes to treating disease.

These claims have been around for years, and usually rely on pseudoscientific bosh of the kind you find in this site, wherein we have the following "explanation:"

Life developed under the influence of the earth's geomagnetic field.  We are surrounded by a sea of magnetism.  The human body, its individual organs and each of the millions of cells making up the organs and the body bathed by this sea are magnetically charged.  Cell regulation, tissue function and life itself are controlled by internal electromagnetic currents.  In disease states, these electromagnetic potentials are altered but fortunately can be favorably influenced by the external application of magnetics...  Used correctly, Electro-Magnetic Energy Fields are a proven therapeutic modality.  Research and clinical experience has established that the very gentle, EULF, low power pulsed magnetic energy improves the repair of damaged tissue and reduction of pain, improved oxygen transport in the red blood cells, increased nutrient and oxygen uptake at the cellular level.  Greater elasticity of blood vessels, changes in acid/alkaline balance, altering of enzyme and hormone activity, all play an important role in the return to good health...  Negative magnetic fields oxygenate and alkalize by aiding the body's defense against bacteria, fungi, and parasites, all of which thrive in an acid medium.  In degenerative diseases, calcium is found deposited around inflamed joints, bruised areas on the hell, and in bones and kidney stones.  Infections occur because they function well in an acidic, oxygen deficient state.

Which, in my opinion, should win some kind of award for packing the most bullshit into a single paragraph.

So the whole copper-and-magnet thing never did make much sense.  But don't take my word for it; here's what Richardson, Gunadasa, Bland, and MacPherson said, after having run a double-blind efficacy test on magnetic bracelets:

The results of this study may be understood in a number of ways. The most obvious interpretation is that they demonstrate that magnetic wrist straps, and also copper bracelets, have little if any specific therapeutic effects (i.e. beyond those of a placebo) on pain, inflammation, or disease activity in rheumatoid arthritis...  The fact that we were unable to demonstrate... a difference for the primary outcome measure on its own, nor indeed any of the other core measures employed, strongly suggests that wearing magnetic wrists straps, or copper bracelets, in order to minimise disease progression and alleviate symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis is a practice which lacks clinical efficacy.

But as I said, this is hardly a surprise to skeptics, who doubted the whole thing pretty much from the outset.

The second story at first seems to connect to the first in only a tangential fashion at best.  Chris Mooney, a skeptical writer of well-deserved high reputation, wrote about it this week in Grist in a piece called "Science Confirms: Politics Wrecks Your Ability to do Math."   In Mooney's article we hear about a study by Dan Kahan and his colleagues, of Yale Law School, in which two groups of people were asked to solve the same (rather difficult) mathematical problem -- but one group was given the problem in the context of its being about "the effectiveness of a new skin cream for rashes," and the other group that it was about "the effectiveness of a new law banning private citizens from carrying concealed handguns in public."

What Kahan's study found was that when the problem involved the relatively emotionally-neutral context of a skin cream, your ability to solve the problem correctly depended upon only one thing -- your skill at math.  In other words, both Democrats and Republicans scored well on the problem if they were good at math, and both scored poorly if they were bad at math.  But when the problem involved handguns, a different pattern emerged.  Here's how Mooney explains the results:

So how did people fare on the handgun version of the problem? They performed quite differently than on the skin cream version, and strong political patterns emerged in the results — especially among people who are good at mathematical reasoning. Most strikingly, highly numerate liberal Democrats did almost perfectly when the right answer was that the concealed weapons ban does indeed work to decrease crime...  an outcome that favors their pro-gun-control predilections. But they did much worse when the correct answer was that crime increases in cities that enact the ban... 

The opposite was true for highly numerate conservative Republicans: They did just great when the right answer was that the ban didn't work... but poorly when the right answer was that it did. 

Put simply: when our emotions and preconceived notions are involved, data and logic have very little impact on our brains.

This is a profoundly unsettling conclusion, especially for people like me.  Every day I get up and write about how people should be more logical and rational and data-driven, and here Kahan et al. show me that all of the double-blind studies in the world aren't going to convince people that their magnet-studded copper bracelets aren't helping their arthritis pain if they already thought that they worked.

It does leave me with a sort of bleak feeling.  I mean, why test wacko claims, if the only people who will believe the results are the ones who already agreed with the result of the experiment beforehand?  Maybe this justifies the fact that I spend as much time making fun of woo-woos as I do arguing logically against them.  Appeal to people's emotions, and you're much more likely to get a result.

On the other hand, this feels to me way too much like sinking to their level.  I live in hope that the people who are convinced by what I write -- and maybe there have been a few -- have been swayed more by my logic than by my sarcasm.

But given human nature -- and Kahan's experiment -- maybe that's a losing proposition.