Science vs. religion

I just wanted to get this down before I forgot it:

• Science is like walking into a pitch-dark room with a small, powerful flashlight. You may not see much at first, but it may stop you from stumbling. Slowly, painstakingly you’ll begin to form a pretty good idea of where you are.

• Religion is like walking into that same room with a glow-in-the-dark Lightsaber. Sure, it feels cool, but you keep swinging away at invisible phantoms. And the light cast is too weak to actually see by. May the force be with you!

All are not equal before the law

The Italian Chamber of Deputies decided it didn’t want to dignify homosexuality by approving a law that would make hate crimes against gays punishable. On. Fabrizio Cicchitto of the PDL explains:

We’re not homophobic. Our position is basically this: we consider gays citizens equal to everyone else. For precisely this reason we contest every legal attempt at differential treatment which would thereby admit and accentuate diversity, which is in substance unconstitutional.

Which isn’t true at all. They don’t consider gay citizens “equal to everyone else.” It’s for this reason that gay marriage is still illegal here (among other forms of discrimination). They’re taking cues from the Vatican, of course, which has perfected the art of discriminating while playing the victim. They cry out about the tyranny of minorities, about how if you give them an inch they take a mile, that the majority (read, “Catholic heterosexual majority”) are somehow in danger of a rabble that wants wants wants…equality.

It’s always the same story: Italian politicians will not risk going against “Catholic values” for fear the Vatican will…what, exactly? What are they afraid of? That they’ll ask a nuncio to come home from his plush quarters down the street? That they’ll get “serious” – always a sign that someone has managed to piss off the Privileged Few? That the Catholic masses will be mobilized to take action against them? And when has that ever happened?

The Italian Constitution has this to say:

(“All citizens have equal rights and are equal before the law, without distinction by sex, race, language, religion, political opinion, or personal or social condition.”)

All of which sounds great, but isn’t true, either. (Notice, for instance, it doesn’t mention “sexual orientation.” Maybe that’s grouped under “personal/social condition.”) That’s why in every courtroom in Italy there is a huge wooden crucifix above the words, “The law is equal for everyone.”

But we know this is a lie, too. Just ask Judge Luigi Tosti.

How do you say “facepalm” in Hebrew?

h/t R.S.H.T.

Yaakov Swisa, founder of FaceGlat – an ultra-orthodox Jewish version of Facebook – has this to say:

“People who are God-fearing and care about their children’s education – cannot tolerate the ads and pictures one sees on the regular Facebook. I personally know people who have deteriorated spiritually because of all kinds of things they were introduced to there.”

You mean people who believe in a neurotic, psychopathic deity can’t deal with ads for, say, vacation houses in Croatia? (I just took a quick look to see what Facebook was offering me.) What’s wrong with them?

As for their children’s education, does Swisa really think Facebook offers tutorials on the theory of evolution, the age of Earth or any of those frighteningly atheistic things normal people learn about in school? No worries!

If people can’t have fun on FaceGlat and meet some interesting folks – or even converse with their own spouses – then what the hell are they doing there? Aren’t there enough morality police in Mea Shearim already?

Postcard from Ectoville

Spooked out

In June we made our first trip to the United States with our baby daughter. After a trying week at the beach, we settled into a rented cottage immersed in the lush green of Hanover County, Virginia. Cows grazed next door. A family of chickens wandered over the grass to visit us each morning. In the evening, an industrious spider materialized on the porch, spinning its web anew, only to vanish by dawn.

By the standards of small town Virginia, we immediately became local celebrities. (My sister compared us to Jennifer Aniston, who is reportedly dating a man whose mother lives nearby.) A buzz built up around us: “The Italians are here!” We brought them real Parmigiano cheese (compare with “parmesan”), olive oil from Umbria (compare with “Goya”) and taralli laced with fennel (incomparable). We didn’t want to disappoint anyone.

The pinnacle was Ashland’s July 4th parade. My brother-in-law was named honorary parade marshal, giving him and his family had the right to ride in a horse-drawn carriage with the mayor — an exciting prospect for my 10-year-old niece.

The whole town — except the misanthropes, if there are any — gathers yearly along Main St. to watch inventively named “brigades” march from one end of the township to the other. We saw the Lawn Chair Brigade composed of people doing a kind of Full Monty routine with, well, lawn chairs. There was also a Latin brigade, whose members mouthed the Roman greeting “Salve” and sported white togas. A man pedaled an old-time penny-farthing and an eccentric doctor marched on stilts. Then there was the patriotic dog contest…

The next day, my sister gave me a copy of the Richmond Times-Dispatch. “Look,” she said, “you’re in the paper!” And there I was, looking on as the antique Big Wheel rolled along, part of the annual crowd. It’ll make a nice clipping for the family archive.

But it was a meeting at the barbecue the night before that most struck me. Over a plate of South Carolina peach cobbler, in an enormous, white antebellum home, I met a woman who introduced herself to me as a “ghost-buster.” I soon learned that she had cleansed the place where we were now standing of ectoplasm. It was a perfect setting for the conversation that followed.

I kindly probed as to just what is was that she did. Given the choice between a rational, materialistic explanation and a paranormal one, she told me, one should always choose the latter. “Why close oneself to the possibilities?” she said.

As I patiently listened to tales of angels and spirits I began wondering if there was anything she didn’t believe in. I proposed unicorns. Maybe they were making the strange puttering noises that came from the attic. She dismissed the thought. Given her credulity, I wondered how she could shut out unicorns.

It was a weird conversation, hung with dusty spider webs, creaky staircases and relics of haunted house lore. She even spoke of a mysterious “third” dimension (spooky!). But when she knocked on a wooden bookcase we’d both been leaning on and announced, “This isn’t real,” I decided that further inquiry was pointless. Where do you go from there?

To save any embarrassment, I came clean. I told her I was skeptical, that I didn’t believe in angels, demons or the paranormal in general. I told her there was not a shred of evidence for any of the things she’d described. As she’d been frank with me, I’d return the favor. We parted amiably, returning to our respective beer coolers.

I love visiting Ashland. It’s like some long lost town in an America that probably never existed except on celluloid and the covers of the Saturday Evening Post. An overwhelming feeling of innocence, of childhood, creeps up on me.

Now that I have a daughter I’m coming to better appreciate innocence. Think about it: here is a human being with almost no sense of danger. She trusts people. She’ll put anything into her mouth. We, her parents, must keep watch over her lest she tumble down a flight of stairs or swallow a tack. I’ll be happy when Melissa is a jaded cynic, though; innocence is dangerous. It isn’t meant to last.

This observation illustrates the way I look at Ashland. Every time I visit, I wonder if it will still be the same. When will it morph into just another Richmond suburb? When will it shed that special cocoon of simplicity that so fascinates me, and which Ashlanders work to protect?

The moment we move into town, no doubt.

Published in The American

Spousal advice

My wife ripped this off and handed it to me. “You’ll appreciate it,” she said. I think she meant I might learn something from it.

The Italian Parliament is not secular

Italy’s Northern League wants a crucifix in Montecitorio, the Italian Parliament. They’re taking the Lautsi vs. Italy decision as carte blanche to impose their religious views in every angle of Italian life. The problem is, according to Cronache Laiche, they’re right:

Hanging a crucifix in Parliament is an act of coherence. The opposition, istead of lashing out, should have approved – even raised the bid – asking to hang a crucifix, a huge crucifix, in every angle of the Chamber and Senate as a warning to anyone who still thinks that the secular State functions independently of religion. A provocation? No, just the unavoidable truth. So that Europe and the entire world can see who we are, not that which we pretend to be.

Seriously, I thought they already had crucifixes in Parliament. How did they not get them on the walls before now?

A poison apple

Today my wife is attending a funeral for a young man – twenty five! – who recently died of a brain tumor. He was diagnosed only a month before.

My aunt died of cancer a few years ago, after a four year struggle. She was a very religious Catholic, went to church, kept statues of Padre Pio in her home and pictures of the Virgin Mary on the wall of her bedroom. She took trips to sanctuaries. She counted priests among her friends. And yet…she withered away to almost nothing. She lived in tremendous pain. Then she died.

So where is this great God believers speak of? Either he is fucking with us – in which case he is an evil God – or he just plumb don’t exist. Why it would give anyone solace to have faith in  such a thing baffles me. Even some atheists I know talk of the “gift of faith” with not a little nostalgia (that they never received it.) All I can think is, What’s wrong with you people? We can do better than this!

We all suffer, atheist and religionist alike. No one is exempt. Life will end in death for all of us, with no regard for our belief systems, education, successes and failures. We all know this. It does no good to pretend that there is a benevolent being who is looking out for us, who is amenable to prayer and flattery, and who will save us when the going gets rough. It does no good because this is quite obviously not true.

Let’s stop pretending it is, and that faith is a gift. It’s a poison apple if it’s anything.

Of sacred cows and sacred unicorns

Meet Paisley, my pet unicorn

Ophelia Benson wrote a post yesterday about sacred cows. In it she asks readers what their cows are, and the responses are fairly typical of what one would expect from skeptical rationalists: democracy, the “golden rule*”, equality, etc…of course no reader of B&W holds actual cows to be sacred, or Jesuses or golden calfs (or is it “calves”?). That’s what you get when you ask a question like that to a gaggle of atheists.

My understanding of the term “sacred cow” is something beyond question, a thing we know is probably undeserving of intellectual protection yet which is protected, shielded from inquiry. It’s not necessarily something which we have fairly good reasons for holding dear, such as basic human rights or hygiene. Those make sense under even the most severe scrutiny (unless you are a sociopath or a pope.)

“David” – perhaps the one who sparked Ophelia’s post – posted a comment along these same lines:

I have a friend for instance who is a skeptic in almost all things but she wants so bad to believe in life after death so that she can think her mother is still somewhere that [sic] she believes in ghosts. She wont discuss it with anyone she does not go ghost hunting or anything but she simply will not consider any evidence against it.

Which is kind of funny because I’ve been thinking about ghosts lately; so I mentioned on Facebook that I have a sacred unicorn.

Here’s a little background:

Last week I had the opportunity to meet a ghostbuster at a 4th of July barbecue in Virginia. After a while of patiently listening to her tales of ectoplasm on walls, angels, spirits and other dimensions (she spoke of an imperceptible “third” dimension…spooky!) I mentioned that maybe what she thought were ghosts were really invisible unicorns. She let slip a telling smile, as if to say, “Nonsense!” I thought, “Gotcha!” Why are unicorns, invisible or not, any less plausible than what she believed were the real causes of unexplained noises in an old wooden house?

This woman was not a skeptic in any sense. In fact, she told me straight out that, when given the choice between a rational, materialistic explanation and a paranormal one, one should always choose the latter. “Why close oneself to the possibilities?” she said. Then why chuckle at unicorns?

So that’s how my sacred unicorn came into this world. She grazes imperceptibly with all those cows in a field of golden wheat somewhere beyong the horizon. If you see her, do me a favor: shoot.

* The “golden rule” is appropriately ridiculed in the comments section of the original post.

Ahh, freedom

That’s me at the Ashland 4th of July parade (standing, with baby carriage). Dressed to the nines, as usual. We struck up a conversation with the photographer, Eva Russo, who grew up in Turin. Perhaps she ran this photo out of solidarity, or pity, I’m not sure which.

Europe, less secular than you think

It sometimes surprises Americans to learn that “secular” Europe isn’t as secular as it might seem. It has less to do with Italians attending church on Sunday (which they do in ever-fewer numbers) than just how pervasively the state ensures Europe’s religious infrastructure. Europe has no American-style church-state separation. Even two of the world’s most secular nations — Denmark and Sweden — have state-funded churches.

Italy gave up Roman Catholicism as its official state religion in 1984. In its place came the obligatory “8 per mille” (eight one-thousandths) religious tax, which permits the state to apply .8 percent of all taxable earnings to charitable religious works.

But the “8 per mille” concept so bewilders taxpayers that most don’t even bother choosing who gets their “donations.” In a recent poll conducted byOcchiopermille, a website created by the Italian Union of Rationalist Atheists and Agnostics (UAAR), 60.4 percent of a sample of 2,000 people said they simply ignored the question of where the money should go. Another 4.07 percent choose the state, while 34.56 percent indicated the Catholic Church. This in a country that’s often labeled “95 percent Catholic.”

At first glance the “8 per mille” sounds reasonable, even fair. Eight one-thousands of what you earn is a pretty small amount of money, right? And you get to choose your confession (if you have one), right?

Well, yes and no.

The form is friendly if you’re Jewish, Waldensian, Adventist, Catholic, Lutheran or a member of the Assemblies of God. But what if you’re Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Methodist, Wiccan or one of thousands of other religious confessions? None of these religions are represented on tax forms. They can’t receive your money (at least not your tax money.)

What if you happen to be an atheist, agnostic, or simply don’t want to participate in tax structure dedicated to supporting religion? You can give your money to the state. But based on UAAR polling figures only about four percent of Italians actually choose that option (just as well, since the state turns funnels a part these earnings to none other than the Catholic Church). The 60 percent who stand pat probably do so because they have no idea what they’re expected to do or why it matters. The Italian state is notoriously corrupt, which doesn’t make contributing to it particularly appealing.

So what happens if you don’t choose? The state distributes the income in proportion to the percentage of people who actively choose a specific confession. That works out to roughly 87 percent for the Catholic Church, 10 percent for the state, and about three percent split by the other five confessions allowed to partake. In essence, the Catholic Church ends up with the lion’s share of the money, about €1 billion a year — even when most people don’t explicitly want them to have it.

It’s an elegant system, at least in the way viruses may be said to be “elegant.”

But how does the Catholic Church spend the money? On the poor and needy, surely? As Raffaele Carcano writes, in the magazine L’Ateo:

“The billion euro that the Church obtains thanks to the 8 per mille is destined for things like the salaries of priests, the building of new churches, etc. for which the state already provides financial help. Nonetheless, the annual report of the CEI (Italian Episcopal Conference) is succinct, opaque and doesn’t mention the enormous amount spent on the relentless ad campaigns… misleading ads, focused as they are exclusively on charity and relief in developing countries, on which only a fifth of the received funds is spent.”

Carcano concludes:

“The picture is so negative that the UAAR has no choice but to intensify its information campaign… the 8 per mille is an authentic calamity for non-believers…who have to pay to explain a mechanism that discriminates against them in every way.”

For the skeptical UAAR, the discrimination consists in citizens being forced to finance a religion that is not theirs, which they do not want, and which discriminates against them at every opportunity.

As bleak as this reality may be, the website Concordat Watch suggests that the situation in Germany isn’t much better:

“In Germany church and state are interwoven such that the sacrament of baptism automatically places you in a tax category. That ceremony can oblige you later on to pay taxes to the church and force your employer to withhold church tax prepayments from your income. In 2010 this brought the German churches €4.794 billion. The only way to end this is to formally leave the church.”

In Switzerland “church tax is levied by each canton for the religious groups it recognizes. And it’s not just people who have to pay. In 18 of the 26 cantons firms must also subsidize the churches, even though they’ve never been baptized and they can’t leave the church. This is now being challenged by a computer specialist who belongs to no church himself, but must still pay church tax for his one-man company. In September 2010 the Swiss Supreme Court ruled that [the law] was constitutional and now he is taking his complaint before the European Court of Human Rights.”

Given the European court’s March ruling that the presence of crucifixes in Italian schools was perfectly consonant with secular principles and didn’t violate the European Convention on Human Rights, I wouldn’t get my hopes up that legal challenges are going to get very far any time soon.

Published in The American