Human sexuality is naturally promiscuous, primarily polyamorous

by Ken Fisher

LONG BEACH, CA—Thursday afternoon at the TED2013 conference got a little steamy. Christopher Ryan, a PhD of Psychology and co-author of the book Sex at Dawn, sexed up the stage by talking about what he believes is the evolutionary nature of human sexuality. “Human beings are not descended from apes," he told the crowd. "We are apes. We’re [genetically] more closely related to chimps and bonobos than they are to any other primate.” As Ryan puts it, the question is “what kind of ape are we” in terms of our sexual natures? It turns out, we’re also closely related to chimps and bonobos in sexual practices—and the latter are famous for their sexual promiscuity and even “homosexuality.”

Consider that the average human has sex about 1,000 times per birth. According to Ryan, we share that number of sexual encounters with chimps and bonobos, but the other primates are vastly different. Gorillas and all other primates have sex typically only 12 times per birth.

And, Ryan added, the frequency of sexual engagement is one reason humans, chimps, and bonobos have external testicles. Humorlessly comparing testicles to a beer fridge, Ryan noted that the idea is to be ready for a big party at any moment with plenty to share. In other words, external testicles are all about frequent and spontaneous ejaculation.

What does this mean for human sexuality? Ryan argued that human sexuality evolved to function first and foremost as a bonding function, with reproduction being secondary (note this is sexuality, and not sex itself). This would mean that humans are indeed very similar to chimps and bonobos, which use sex for social purposes. Bonobos take socially-driven sex to an extreme, in both hetero- and homosexual ways.

Ryan noted that the standard narrative of human sexuality is men have bargained for women’s sexual functions by being providers/hunters, and women have complied as a result of this benefaction and protection. But the problem with this narrative, he suggested, is the origin of human civilization doesn’t support this model. Before the advent of agriculture, we lived in hunter/gatherer societies which were fiercely egalitarian. Everything was shared.

Wouldn’t that include sexual relationships? Ryan says yes. Sexual exclusivity came later, after the advent of agriculture and more complex notions of property and exclusivity arose. But this development doesn’t change our nature. “Just because you have chosen to be a vegetarian,” he jokes, “doesn’t mean that bacon stops smelling good.” Just because we live in societies that generally organize around monogamous principles does not mean monogamy is the natural state of human sexuality. Like chimps and bonobos, it is natural for humans to have sexual desires for bonding.

In the end, Ryan argues that we must cease to conflate desires with property rights. We need to move beyond "men are from Mars and women are from Venus," he proclaimed to much applause. "The truth is that men are from Africa and women are from Africa.”

Supreme Court kills activists’ challenge to FISA spying law

5-4 decision holds groups can't sue unless they can prove they were spied on.

by Joe Mullin

In 2008, Congress passed the "FISA Amendments Act," or FAA. This expanded the government's ability to use electronic surveillance on people located abroad—and, apparently, any Americans they're speaking to. A lawsuit was quickly filed by an array of civil rights groups, labor unions, and media organizations, including Amnesty International, the American Civil Liberties Union, The Nation magazine, the Service Employees International Union, and an international group of criminal defense lawyers.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, was originally designed to allow spying on the communications of foreign powers. But after the September 11 attacks, FISA courts were authorized to target a wide array of international communications, including communications between Americans and foreigners. While it's tough to know exactly what kinds of communications are being picked up under the FAA rules (because it's all been kept secret), the evidence suggests there has been widespread dragnet-style surveillance of phone calls originating in the US.

In this case, the plaintiffs' groups said their communications were likely being scooped up by the government's expanded spying powers in violation of their constitutional rights. Today's decision, a 5-4 vote along ideological lines by the nation's highest court, definitively ends their case. In an opinion [PDF] by Justice Samuel Alito, the court ruled that these groups don't have the right to sue at all, because they can't prove they were being spied on.

One by one, the legal challenges to expanded government spying in the post-9/11 era are failing in court. In another case—in which an organization did have concrete evidence of spying—the government came up with another legal theory to make the lawsuit go away. In a third case being litigated in a San Francisco federal court, government lawyers are trying to shut down a lawsuit brought by EFF lawyers by asserting the state secrets privilege.

Clapper v. Amnesty International: The case below

Even though they couldn't prove they were being surveilled, all of the plaintiffs argued that they were likely interacting with persons and groups outside the country who were being wiretapped—foreign sources for reporters, activists, and defendants in court cases. They argued they were getting wrapped up in an expanding government initiative of foreign and domestic data collection, and their due-process rights were being violated.

They lost their case in New York district court when a federal judge said they didn't have standing to sue because they couldn't prove they were personally being surveilled. They had nothing more than an "abstract fear that their communications will be monitored" under the new law, wrote the judge.

That order was overturned by a New York federal appeals court, which held that the groups were indeed being injured and should be allowed to sue. They had to take (costly) extra steps to avoid surveillance, and their fear that government agents were listening to them was not "fanciful, paranoid or otherwise unreasonable." It was "extremely likely" that the government would indeed "undertake broad-based surveillance" under the new law, and the advocacy and media groups had "good reason to believe that their communications" would be intercepted, said the appeals panel. The government didn't dispute the fact that those groups were communicating with "likely targets" of surveillance under the new law.

Justices say spying fears of journalists and lawyers are “speculative”

Justice Alito's opinion attacks the group's two main theories supporting their right to sue.

First, he says, there's doubt about whether any surveillance of these groups will take place at all. "It is speculative whether the Government will imminently target communications to which respondents are parties," he states.

Accordingly, it is no surprise that respondents fail to offer any evidence that their communications
have been monitored under §1881a, a failure that substantially undermines their standing theory.

The groups believe the government will target "their foreign contacts," but even that belief is speculative, he notes. "Respondents have no actual knowledge of the Government's... targeting practices." The opinion quotes statements from journalist Christopher Hedges, Scott McKay (an Idaho lawyer who successfully defended a Saudi national against terrorism charges), and previously represented Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the highest-profile detainee at Guantanamo. The journalist and lawyer state that because of the FISA Amendments Act, they have been forced to operate under the assumption that their communications are being monitored.

But because the plaintiffs "have set forth no specific facts demonstrating" their foreign contacts will be monitored, their argument fails. Even if the government did try to get their communications, they have no idea whether the FISA court would authorize that surveillance, the opinion states. Thus, the plaintiffs' theory rests of a "speculative chain of possibilities" that don't establish any impending injury.

As to the costs and burdens of avoiding potential surveillance, Alito is dismissive. "Respondents cannot manufacture standing merely by inflicting harm on themselves based on their fears of hypothetical future harm that is not certainly impending," Alito writes.

The majority opinion was joined by Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Anthony Kennedy, as well as Chief Justice John Roberts.

Four justices disagreed with today's ruling. Journalists, lawyers, and human rights researchers who collect information from foreigners "with knowledge of circumstances related to terrorist activities" are going to be a tempting target for the government's expanded powers, writes Justice Stephen Breyer. He is joined in a dissent by Justices Ruth Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan.

"The Government, after all, seeks to learn as much as it can reasonably learn about suspected terrorists (such as those detained at Guantanamo), as well as about their contacts and activities, along with those of friends and family members," Breyer writes.

The government's future spying targets can also be reasonably guessed at based on past behavior, the dissenters suggest. Scott McKay notes that the US government already "intercepted some 10,000 telephone calls and 20,000 e-mail communications involving [his client] Mr. Al-Hussayen." McKay often has to travel abroad to avoid telephonic communication with foreign clients, which might be intercepted.

While the dissent doesn't express any opinion about the actual merits of the case, it argues that the plaintiffs should have been allowed to move forward with their case. The Supreme Court has found standing to sue in other cases, "where the occurrence of the relevant injury was far less certain than here," Breyer notes.

Only 14, Bangladeshi girl charged with adultery was lashed to death

By Farid Ahmed and Moni Basu

Shariatpur, Bangladesh (CNN) -- Hena Akhter's last words to her mother proclaimed her innocence. But it was too late to save the 14-year-old girl.

Her fellow villagers in Bangladesh's Shariatpur district had already passed harsh judgment on her. Guilty, they said, of having an affair with a married man. The imam from the local mosque ordered the fatwa, or religious ruling, and the punishment: 101 lashes delivered swiftly, deliberately in public.

Hena dropped after 70.

Bloodied and bruised, she was taken to hospital, where she died a week later.

Amazingly, an initial autopsy report cited no injuries and deemed her death a suicide. Hena's family insisted her body be exhumed. They wanted the world to know what really happened to their daughter.

Sharia: illegal but still practiced

Hena's family hailed from rural Shariatpur, crisscrossed by murky rivers that lend waters to rice paddies and lush vegetable fields.

Hena was the youngest of five children born to Darbesh Khan, a day laborer, and his wife, Aklima Begum. They shared a hut made from corrugated tin and decaying wood and led a simple life that was suddenly marred a year ago with the return of Hena's cousin Mahbub Khan.

Mahbub Khan came back to Shariatpur from a stint working in Malaysia. His son was Hena's age and the two were in seventh grade together.

Khan eyed Hena and began harassing her on her way to school and back, said Hena's father. He complained to the elders who run the village about his nephew, three times Hena's age.

The elders admonished Mahbub Khan and ordered him to pay $1,000 in fines to Hena's family. But Mahbub was Darbesh's older brother's son and Darbesh was asked to let the matter fade.

Many months later on a winter night, as Hena's sister Alya told it, Hena was walking from her room to an outdoor toilet when Mahbub Khan gagged her with cloth, forced her behind nearby shrubbery and beat and raped her.

Hena struggled to escape, Alya told CNN. Mahbub Khan's wife heard Hena's muffled screams and when she found Hena with her husband, she dragged the teenage girl back to her hut, beat her and trampled her on the floor.

The next day, the village elders met to discuss the case at Mahbub Khan's house, Alya said. The imam pronounced his fatwa. Khan and Hena were found guilty of an illicit relationship. Her punishment under sharia or Islamic law was 101 lashes; his 201.

Mahbub Khan managed to escape after the first few lashes.

Darbesh Khan and Aklima Begum had no choice but to mind the imam's order. They watched as the whip broke the skin of their youngest child and she fell unconscious to the ground.

"What happened to Hena is unfortunate and we all have to be ashamed that we couldn't save her life," said Sultana Kamal, who heads the rights organization Ain o Shalish Kendro.

Bangladesh is considered a democratic and moderate Muslim country, and national law forbids the practice of sharia. But activist and journalist Shoaib Choudhury, who documents such cases, said sharia is still very much in use in villages and towns aided by the lack of education and strong judicial systems.

The Supreme Court also outlawed fatwas a decade ago, but human rights monitors have documented more than 500 cases of women in those 10 years who were punished through a religious ruling. And few who have issued such rulings have been charged.

The government needs to enact a specific law to deal with such perpetrators responsible for extrajudicial penalty in the name of Islam.
--Sultana Kamal, head of rights organization Ain o Shalish Kendro.

Last month, the court asked the government to explain what it had done to stop extrajudicial penalty based on fatwa. It ordered the dissemination of information to all mosques and madrassas, or religious schools, that sharia is illegal in Bangladesh.

"The government needs to enact a specific law to deal with such perpetrators responsible for extrajudicial penalty in the name of Islam," Kamal told CNN.

The United Nations estimates that almost half of Bangladeshi women suffer from domestic violence and many also commonly endure rape, beatings, acid attacks and even death because of the country's entrenched patriarchal system.

Hena might have quietly become another one of those statistics had it not been for the outcry and media attention that followed her death on January 31.

'Not even old enough to be married'

Monday, the doctors responsible for Hena's first autopsy faced prosecution for what a court called a "false post-mortem report to hide the real cause of Hena's death."

Public outrage sparked by that autopsy report prompted the high court to order the exhumation of Hena's body in February. A second autopsy performed at Dhaka Medical College Hospital revealed Hena had died of internal bleeding and her body bore the marks of severe injuries.

Police are now conducting an investigation and have arrested several people, including Mahbub Khan, in connection with Hena's death.

"I've nothing to demand but justice," said Darbesh Khan, leading a reporter to the place where his daughter was abducted the night she was raped.

He stood in silence and took a deep breath. She wasn't even old enough to be married, he said, testament to Hena's tenderness in a part of the world where many girls are married before adulthood. "She was so small."

Hena's mother, Aklima, stared vacantly as she spoke of her daughter's last hours. She could barely get out her words. "She was innocent," Aklima said, recalling Hena's last words.

Police were guarding Hena's family earlier this month. Darbesh and Aklima feared reprisal for having spoken out against the imam and the village elders.

They had meted out the most severe punishment for their youngest daughter. They could put nothing past them.

Health Dept.: Homeless Can’t Eat Deer Meat

By Todd Starnes

Hunters across Louisiana are outraged after state health officials ordered a rescue mission to destroy $8,000 worth of deer meat because venison is not allowed to be served in homeless shelters.

The Dept. of Health and Hospitals ordered the staff at the Shreveport-Bossier Rescue Mission to throw 1,600 pounds of donated venison in garbage bins – and then ordered then to douse the meat with Clorox – so other animals would not eat the meat.

“Deer meat is not permitted to be served in a shelter, restaurant or any other public eating establishment in Louisiana,” said a Health Dept. official in an email to Fox News. “While we applaud the good intentions of the hunters who donated this meat, we must protect the people who eat at the Rescue Mission, and we cannot allow a potentially serious health threat to endanger the public.”

That statement set off a firestorm among hunters and lawmakers who called it outrageous and insulting.

“That’s a mild understatement,” said Richard Campbell, one of the founders of Hunters for the Hungry, a group that has been donating wild game to shelters since 1993. “Hunters are going nuts over it. It’s created an outrage across our state and even over into Mississippi.”

The controversy started when someone being fed at the rescue mission complained about being fed deer meat.

Henry Martin, executive director of the mission, told Fox News they’ve been serving deer meat for years – from deer chili to deer spaghetti.

“This was really good meat,” he said. “It’s high in protein and low in cholesterol. It’s very healthy.”

Martin said he was extremely bothered by the way state health inspectors handled the situation.

“You would think we would have due process,” he said. “But they meant to destroy the meat – that’s for sure.”

The mission’s chef asked if they could at least return the meat to the processing plant – but the state officials said no.

“They actually took it out to the dumpsters, split the packages open and poured Clorox on it,” Martin told Fox News.

He said the rescue mission serves 200,000 meals a year – without a single dime of assistance from the state or federal governments. As a result of the confiscation, he said as many as 3,200 meals were lost.

“It seems like this was a senseless act,” he said. “I don’t think hungry people who come to our mission appreciate the fact they could have been eating some really good venison and as it is now – no one can eat it.”

The Health Dept. defended their actions and said they had to pour Clorox on the meat as an “extra precaution so that animals would not eat it from the dumpster and become sick or die.”

“This is a process called ‘denaturing,’” they stated.

Campbell said the venison comes from deer management programs – where hunters have to kill a lot of deer.

“We ask our hunters once they fill up their own freezers to give the extra to the needy,” he said.

Once the deer is donated, a local processing plant prepares the meat for the shelters.

And hunters in the Sportsman’s Paradise have always responded to the call – including State Rep. Jeff Thompson.

“As a hunter and somebody who has personally donated deer to this program, I’m outraged and very concerned,” he told Fox News. “You hear about these stories anywhere and it’s a concern – but when it happens in your own backyard it’s insulting.”

Thompson said he is meeting with the heads of state agencies as well as state lawmakers to make sure the rules are changed.

“We take pride in helping our neighbors and to see thousands of dollars worth of meat that would help the hungry go to waste is absolutely disturbing to me,” he said.

Thompson said at the very least the meat should have been returned to those who donated it.

“We want to make sure the generosity of hunters and processors are honored and the hungry are provided with the food they are very much in need of,” the lawmaker added.

DOJ admits Aaron’s prosecution was political

The DOJ has told Congressional investigators that Aaron’s prosecution was motivated by his political views on copyright.

I was going to start that last paragraph with “In a stunning turn of events,” but I realized that would be inaccurate — because it’s really not that surprising. Many people speculated throughout the whole ordeal that this was a political prosecution, motivated by anything/everything from Aaron’s effective campaigning against SOPA to his run-ins with the FBI over the PACER database. But Aaron actually didn’t believe it was — he thought it was overreach by some local prosecutors who didn’t really understand the internet and just saw him as a high-profile scalp they could claim, facilitated by a criminal justice system and computer crime laws specifically designed to give prosecutors, however incompetent or malicious, all the wrong incentives and all the power they could ever want.

But this HuffPo article, and what I’m hearing from sources on the Hill, suggest that that’s not true. That Ortiz and Heymann knew exactly what they were doing: Shutting up, and hopefully locking up, an extremely effective activist whose political views, including those on copyright, threatened the Powers That Be:

A Justice Department representative told congressional staffers during a recent briefing on the computer fraud prosecution of Internet activist Aaron Swartz that Swartz’s “Guerilla Open Access Manifesto” played a role in the prosecution, sources told The Huffington Post.

Keep in mind that Aaron did not in fact distribute the articles he downloaded from JSTOR. Keep in mind that he had the legal right to download each and every one of those articles individually. Keep in mind that the Guerrilla Open Access Manifesto that the DOJ cites was written by a group, not by Aaron individually, several years before Aaron’s actions — and take it from me that several years could be an eternity in the evolution of Aaron’s political views. Keep in mind that many independent commentators made an extremely plausible case that Aaron was interested in doing statistical research on the archive of articles, not distributing them.* And keep in mind that the government’s ONLY evidence that Aaron wanted to distribute the articles was this co-authored manifesto.

Does that seem like sufficient cause to destroy someone’s life? Let alone the life of one of the most promising technologists and entrepreneurs in the country?

Yes, it does: If the system’s main purpose is to maintain the status quo at the expense of anyone who tries to disrupt it.

This is making me angrier than almost anything I’ve heard since Aaron died. I finally figured out why: Because I worked my ass off to elect the Obama administration in 2008. I helped these people get in power. And then they drove the man I loved to suicide because they didn’t like something he said once.

And not only that: They are standing by their actions!

The DOJ refuses to admit the possibility that this might have been a mistake:

Reich told congressional staffers that the Justice Department believed federal prosecutors acted in a reasonable manner, according to the sources.

And to make matters even worse, everything I’m hearing from the Hill confirms that the DOJ is actively opposing against any changes to the CFAA, the law Aaron was prosecuted under. (The same law that says that anyone using a fake middle name on Facebook is committing a federal felony.)

If you know someone in the Obama administration, especially in the DOJ, ask them: How do you live with yourself right now?

And if you don’t, ask yourself: Do you feel safer?


UPDATE: I want to clarify something: Even if Aaron’s intention was in fact to distribute the journal articles (to poor people! for zero profit!), that in no way condones his treatment.

But the terrifying fact I’m trying to highlight in this particular blog post is this: According to the DOJ’s testimony, if you express political views that the government doesn’t like, at any point in your life, that political speech act can and will be used to justify making “an example” out of you once the government thinks it can pin you with a crime.

Talk about a chilling effect on freedom of speech.

UPDATE #2: A DOJ official says (in the outlet “Broadcasting & Cable,” an odd choice if you ask me…) that my characterization of the prosecution as “political” is inaccurate. No argument as to why or how, so color me unconvinced.

California High School Principal Orders Student to Delete Video of Teacher Stealing

By Carlos Miller

A high school student in California who caught her gym teacher on video rummaging through student’s belongings, possibly stealing items, took the video to the principal in the hopes he would take action.

Linden High School Principal Richard Schmidig assured her he would investigate.

But then ordered her to delete the video.

Fortunately, Justine Betti had the foresight to send the video to her father, which is apparently the only reason it survives today.

The mainstream media, which broke the story, doesn’t bother going into details that explain whether or not the video was actually deleted nor did they even bother to name the principal.

But they did confirm the gym teacher has been placed on leave and is being investigated by both the Linden School District and the San Joaquin County Sheriff’s Department.

According to News 10:

Both cameras show her teacher going through backpacks, with one clearly showing what appears to be money being taken from a pink backpack.

“I was like, oh my God, I can’t believe I got this on video and I couldn’t believe that I got it and I kept watching it over and over,” she said.

Betti and several friends took the video to the principal.

“He said that he’ll investigate it and he told us to delete the video but I had already sent it to my dad.

The student had hid in a locker with a camera and set up another camera in another locker after items kept going missing. She was surprised when it was her gym teacher who was caught stealing.

The gym teacher’s sister told the media that her sister would never steal from students.

Her sister said she was only going through their personal belongings without permission.

- See more at: http://www.photographyisnotacrime.com/2013/02/27/california-high-school-principal-orders-student-to-delete-video-of-teacher-stealing/#sthash.l0f9xTsG.dpuf

Wash. state man arrested for having 'green tongue'

By: Mikael Thalen

Kent police have arrested a Puyallup man for supposedly driving under the influence of marijuana, based on the fact that the man's tongue appeared to have a 'green film.'

“As soon as the officer came to the vehicle, he asked me to stick out my tongue,” said Simmons to Q13 Fox.

31 year old Mike Simmons said he was put in jail Tuesday for 13 hours and is now in debt $5,000 for fee's including lawyers and towing due to the incident. He has also been told he can not drive while out on bail.

Simmons said that the officer told him that the green film on his tongue was a sign that he was using marijuana. Simmons said he had used marijuana three days prior, but was completely sober during the incident, while on his lunch break.

Despite nothing being found in Simmons car, the police claimed the tongue was probable cause. Simmons denied the police's request for a blood sample stating that he wanted a lawyer present for the blood draw. Under Washington state's newly established marijuana legalization, the law dictates that a driver can't have more than 5 nanograms of THC in their blood.

“I just feel like the system they have is unfair,” said Simmons.

Washington state criminal defense lawyer Steve Graham, who has dealt with such claims before said, "we find no case stating that recent marijuana usage leads to a green tongue. The only case we could find that remotely supports such a proposition is State v. Baity, 140 Wn.2d 1, 991 P.2d 1151 (2000), wherein the opinion’s fact section mentions that the defendant, who had admitted to recent marijuana usage, also had a green tongue. Beyond this observation, however, the court never analyzes whether the green tongue and the recent marijuana usage are linked."

Simmons says he may also sue the Kent Police Department.

Just last year Washington's newly-elected Governor Jay Inslee met with U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to discuss Washington's new marijuana legalization policies, including the controversial DUI provision.

At this time it appears the federal government may attempt to stop Washington and Colorado from moving foward based on comment's made by Gil Kerlikowske, President Obama’s Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy.

How to Defend Atheism

[This speech was delivered before the Society of Separationists in 1976. It was transcribed from an audiocassette which had the title, "Atheism: The Case Against God." However, in order to avoid confusion (since Smith has published a book under that same title), I have retitled this speech as "How to Defend Atheism." -- jjl]

By George H. Smith 
I'm especially pleased to be speaking before the Society of Separationists meeting because, as you may know, there are very few explicitly pro-atheist organizations left in the world, let alone in the United States. And of those that remain, S.O.S. is undoubtedly the largest and most active. And since I'm addressing an atheist organization, I shall be speaking to you for the most part as fellow atheists. I won't be attempting to convert anyone and I won't insult your intelligence by attacking Christianity or the Bible and so forth. Instead, I will be concerned with discussing basically what atheism is, why it's important, and how best to defend it successfully. And just in case there are a few religionists in the audience, I invite you to stay around and experience for an afternoon what it feels like to be part of an intellectual elite.

Now before discussing atheism directly, I want to make some preliminary comments that are quite important, because unless you understand my general philosophical approach, I don't think you'll understand my approach to atheism. If there's one major intellectual problem facing America today, I would say it's the credulity crisis. Or, to put it more bluntly, I would say that we're plagued with a blight of gullibility in America. It never ceases to amaze me how people are willing to accept the most absurd, moronic beliefs not only without supporting evidence, but often times in the face of conflicting evidence. It is sometimes said that religion is on the decline in America, but even if this is true we are not witnessing a corresponding decline of irrationalism. Irrationalism, by which I mean ignorant disregard or disrespect for reason, is still going strong. It changes its form from time to time, but nevertheless it's still with us. So, while we may say, that some traditional Western religions seem to be on the decline and have been for some time, irrationalism continues to rear its ugly head, whether it's in the form of occultism, Eastern mysticism, or in the form of Uri Geller, demonic possession movies, and even some psychological fad groups such as Este, which are closer to religious cults than to any legitimate psychology.

Now, what accounts for this resurgence of irrationalism in America? Well, there are undoubtedly many factors involved, but certainly one of the most significant is the inability or unwillingness on the part of many, many people to reason well. Most people do not know how to think critically beyond a very rudimentary level. America, for all of its stress on technology and science, continues to produce an abundant crop of intellectual vegetables who neither care about what is true nor even if they did, how to go about ascertaining what is true. So make no mistake about it: you are born with the capacity to reason, but you are not born with the skill to scare? To reason. Proper reasoning must be learned and practiced. Even with the proper guidance, it can take years for to ingrain proper reasoning habits, to the point where they become second-nature.

We are supposed to be an educated nature, but when is the last time you heard of a course on critical thinking being given at the grade-school level, for example? Did you ever wonder why, when children were being force-fed every subject from geography to social studies and other useless topics, that they are not given the opportunity to learn to think correctly? Well, this isn't too surprising if you think about it, because you cannot teach critical thinking without inevitably stepping on someone's toes. Can you imagine the reaction of many parents, if Johnny came home with the homework assignment to investigate the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus? Of course, this wouldn't go over too well.

The basic point I wanted to make about atheism in regard to this is: atheism is important only when viewed in this larger context which I will call the "habit of reasonableness." Atheism is significant only if and when it results from this habit of reasonableness. The American child who grows up to be a Baptist simply because his parents were Baptist and he never thought critically about those beliefs is not necessarily any more irrational than the Soviet child who grows up to be an atheist simply because his parents were atheist and because the state tells him to be an atheist. The fact that the Soviet child in this particular case may have the correct position is irrelevant. So it's no so much what one believes, or the content, as it is why one believes as one does. So the issue of reasonableness pertains to the concern for truth, concern for the correct methodology of reasoning. And just because a person espouses atheism is no guarantee -- believe me -- that person is necessarily reasonable.

This is basically why I never crusade for atheism per se outside of a wider framework. Atheism is significant, to be sure. But it's significance derives entirely from the fact that it represents the application of reason to a particular field, specifically the area of religious belief. Atheism, unless it is ingrained within this greater philosophical defense of reason, is practically useless. When, however, it is the consequence of the habit of reasonableness, then atheism stands in opposition to the wave of supernaturalism and mysticism we are currently experiencing. In other words, irrationalism in any form it may occur.

Now what this means is that atheism will not get very far simply by attacking religious belief. Rather, we have to defend reason, first and foremost, and then criticize religion within that framework. If you understand that most people adopt religion for psychological rather than intellectual reasons, you will understand why I think direct, frontal assaults on religion rarely, rarely persuade anyone to atheism. If, as atheists have been pointing out for many years, religion is an emotional and psychological crutch, then you don't get a person to stand on his own two feet simply by kicking out the crutch, if for no other reason that the person will hold onto it for dear life. Rather, you must first convince the person that the crutch is unnecessary and even harmful. And then, you can convince him that he's able to get along much better off without the crutch. So you don't have to kick it out, at this point, he will simply throw it away himself.

So to demonstrate that there is no need for a religious crutch, we must first be concerned with demonstrating the crucial and significant role of reason in a person's life, philosophically, psychologically, practically, and every other way. Above all, there is one message we must communicate: one has nothing to fear and everything to gain, from the honest pursuit of truth. The desire for knowledge, for facts unvarnished by emotional prejudices and so forth, will always function for a man's long-range benefit. It can never be against your interest to know what the truth is.

This means that the atheist, to effectively communicate his message, must display reasonableness in all aspects and areas of his life. You cannot crusade for free and critical thinking in religion, and then display slavish conformity in other areas of your intellectual life, such as your political beliefs. Any defense of atheism from a person who compartmentalizes his beliefs in this fashion is only subjecting some of them to scrutiny and will reek of insincerity, and justly so. This atheist will rightly be accused of hypocrisy. He's willing to go only so far in critical examination of beliefs.

The reason I'm mentioning this is, besides my atheism which some people consider to be quite radical, I also hold political beliefs which by many standards are quite radical. I'm what's known as a libertarian. And I must admit that I am quite amazed when I am confronted by fellow atheists who seem despondent by my political beliefs, not because they disagree with them -- which is certainly their right -- but simply because I am politically a radical. And my point is here: if you're afraid of the term "radicalism" -- if the idea of being an intellectual radical frightens you -- then you're in the wrong business by being an atheist. Certainly atheism, in most people's eyes, is the most radical position you can hold.

So this is the first major point I wish to emphasize: that if you're going to have a significant impact on the religious community, I think it's necessary to put atheism within the broader perspective of reason. Let me elaborate on a little bit by what I mean by the "habit of reasonableness." There's a lot that could be said about this, but for obvious time limitations I'll simply give you an outline.

First of all, let me distinguish reasoning from thinking. Thinking I consider to be any type of mental, cognitive process. If you're daydreaming, remembering, any activity like this, you're said to be thinking. Reasoning, however, is a much more specific term. Reason pertains to a goal-directed mental process which attempts to acquire knowledge. Whenever you set your mind in action, with the intent of arriving at truth, distinguishing truth from falsehood, you are said to be engaged in a process of reasoning.

The interesting thing about reasoning is that it is really a kind of decision-making process. Reasoning is concerned with, "Should I accept X as true?", "Should I accept Y as true?", "Should I accept X as probable, possible, or pertinent?", and so on and so on. In other words, we have to make decisions in our intellectual life just as we have to make them in our everyday life. So what reasoning is concerned with -- the philosophical approach -- what we should be concerned with is establishing the proper criteria or standards of reasoning. To put it another way, you don't have a choice as to whether you're going to make intellectual decisions. You have to by your very nature. You have to accept some things as being true. You simply don't have any choice. You would die if you didn't.

The only choice you have here is, first of all, whether or not you're going to make your standards of knowledge explicit, whether you're going to be aware of what they are, as contrasted with simply accepting them as some sort of osmosis from a culture or whatever people tell you. And secondly, whether your standards of knowledge will be appropriate standards. And by that I mean, will they actually get you what you want, in this case, truth. Now, I'm going to suggest that of all the goods and virtues that man has, knowledge is the most important. Knowledge is a fundamental value for man because it stands at the root of all of his other values. We must know facts; we must know something about the world before we can determine anything about what is of value to you in the world. Thus, knowledge is indispensable to our very survival. And it's only through our reason, through our power of conceptual thought, that we can apply our knowledge.

Because we have arrived at certain standards of knowledge, like the laws of logic, the laws of evidence, and so forth; because they enable us to distinguish between true and false beliefs; and because their goal, knowledge, is the fundamental good of man, I'm going to suggest that what I call the "habit of reasonableness," by which I mean the ability to have ingrained in one self these standards of knowledge, to employ them habitually, to employ them almost as if they were second-nature, as if they were a character trait. I'm going to say that this habit of reasonableness is a primary virtue in human beings. Reasonableness I consider to be the primary intellectual virtue possible to man. And this leads to an interesting conclusion regarding atheism. If, as I have suggested, knowledge is a fundamental value for man, and if the habit of reasonableness is a primary virtue, and if atheism is a consequence of reasonableness, then it turns out that atheism is actually a consequence of being virtuous. Atheism is a consequence of a particular intellectual virtue. I'm saying this to counteract the prevalent, nonsense notion that atheists are immoral. Not only is this false, but quite the reverse is true. Atheism should proceed and often does proceed from reasonableness which actually signifies a virtue, a very important virtue. So you can take some pride in being an atheist if, in fact, it results from reasonableness.

The reasonable person, when examining religious claims, will be concerned only with the truth-value of those claims. One often hears that religion makes people feel better, happy, etc., but these are all side-issues. I'm not going to go into arguments against what I call "intellectual humanism," namely believing something just because it makes you feel good. I'm going to suggest that if you are concerned with reasonableness, then your foremost concern in any discipline, certainly religion, should be with the truth of religious claims. When the atheist is confronted with the claim that God exists, he's concerned first and foremost with the question, "Is that claim rationally justifiable?" As corollaries of that, he will be concerned with, "What is God?" How do we define that term? Is the definition intelligible? It's not. And secondly, even if we can make some sense out of the concept of God, is there any evidence or supporting arguments in support of the existence of a god? Again, there are not. The atheist, proceeding from the habit of reasonableness, will ultimately reject the claims of religion and the claims of theism as false. And therefore he will reject the belief in God as being unreasonable.

Going back to a point I made earlier, you often also hear it said that this is irrelevant to most religious people. Religious people don't believe for intellectual reasons. If you talk on an intellectual level to religious people it won't hit home with them, because it's not personal enough for them. To this I can only say, yes, it's unfortunately true that many religious people are not concerned with the issue of truth and falsehood. My point here is that that's their problem, not mine. And it's not your problem. And if they persist in their irrationalism, then they can and they often do convince themselves of almost anything. Let me remind you that standards of knowledge are our only means of selective discrimination in our beliefs. The standards of meaning, evidence, argument, and so forth are the sift (??) by which we discriminate those beliefs that are worthy of acceptance from those that are not. If you abandon these standards, if you consider them unimportant, then you will be at the mercy of any belief that happens to come your way. You will have no standards by which to distinguish this a is a good belief or whether it's not. Very likely, you will be at the mercy of one intellectual fad after another. This is quite common nowadays. You see people going from one cult of Easter mysticism to a cult of psychology and back and forth in quasi-religious cults. This is the logical consequence when reason is abandoned. There is no longer a grounding-point or a means of discriminating between beliefs. A person who is irrational by choice is at the mercy of his feelings at a particular time. I think it will come as no surprise to anyone if I point out to you that most Christians, if they were raised in a Moslem culture, would be Moslems, not Christians. Most Moslems, if they were raised in a Christian culture, would be Christians, not Moslems. And because atheism, at least in American culture, represents an unorthodox position, this accounts for why by and large atheists are independent thinkers. To become an atheist in this culture you have to have at least enough independence to question the prevailing wisdom concerning religion, because you are inundated with this in school, by your parents, by your culture, and certainly by the mass media.

Now there a few side issues I want to point out before I get into an actual definition of atheism because I think these are quite important. These are more practical issues than philosophical ones. I'm sure that if you have tried to argue atheism, you have encountered certain practical problems in communicating your beliefs.

The first thing I want to point out is rather depressing to some people. Since reasonableness is a habit to be learned, not everyone is capable of conducting a good argument. For that matter, not everyone is capable of arguing in an intelligible sense at all. Argument is also a skill that has to be learned and practiced. What this means is that, for the most part, you are probably wasting your time if you argue with many religionists, for the simple reason that many of these religionists are incapable of arguing well. It's almost like you have to educate some Christians before you can persuade them to atheism. You have to first convince them that they should be concerned with what's true and what's not. They should be able to distinguish between rational and irrational argument. And so on and so on. And then two months later, you might be able to say to this person that if they carry this out, it will lead them to atheism. But unless you have a lot of personal interest in this person, unless they are personally significant to you, you will probably not want to waste a lot of your time educating or re-educating this person to the principles of reason. What do you do? Some people just give up on the person. Some people, you have to. Some people you might refer to books. This is where books play a crucial role in education, that if a person sits down with a book he is able to gleam a lot of information that you are not able to communicate in a short period of time.

This leads me to a second area of practical advice: take religionists at their word. If they say they are not interested in reason or truth, then cease the conversation possibly, making the remark, that it is impossible to communicate with someone who, by his own admission, is not concerned with rationality. In other words, if you understand the importance of reasonableness and what it signifies, you will understand that you must back up your conviction in practice. You must make it clear to your adversary that you are not willing to waste your time and energy with him if he is not even willing to concede the fundamental principles of reason. It's like you are talking in two different languages with no means of translation. All you are doing in situations like this is giving yourself a headache. I think it's important to make religionists totally aware of the consequences of their irrationalism. It will irritate religionists to no end if you simply refuse to speak to them after a certain point because they undoubtedly wish to convert you. But if you make it clear that you are unwilling to discuss the issue until he is willing to concede the basic fundamental principles of reasoning, then I think you will impress upon him in a very practical sense how important you take reason to be. What happens when you don't do this is that you suffer from his irrationalism. You end up with a headache or frustration because he refuses to be rational.

With these preliminary comments, let me proceed into the meat of the subject matter which is, of course, atheism. There's a lot that can be said about this. I've written an entire book about this subject and there are a number of other books available. So I don't want to repeat a lot of material that you can get simply by reading books on this subject. I do want to sketch in briefly what atheism is. I then want to move over to some issues which I had not covered that thoroughly in some of my writing.

First of all, before we can understand atheism, we have to understand what theism means because obviously a-theism is a derivative of the term theism. Well, theism is simply the belief in a god or in any number of gods. If, to the question, "do you believe in the existence of a god or gods?", you answer "yes," you are philosophically a theist. But the raises the additional problem, what is a god? Much ink has been spilled over this question, but for our purposes this afternoon by "god" I mean any kind of supernatural or transcendent being. Any kind of being, in other words, who in some way transcends or is exempt from the natural laws of the universe, whether it's a creator god, the god of Deism, the god of pantheism, etc. Whatever it might be, if this being has the ability to, in some way, circumvent the laws of nature, then this being would properly be designated as supernatural -- in other words above natural law -- and would then qualify as a god. This would mean, for all practical purposes, that if you believe in the existence of ghosts or magical elves -- if these creatures had supernatural powers -- then they would be gods.

If theism is the belief in some kind of supernatural being, what is atheism? Again, there is a lot of controversy over this. I've given one entire talk over what the definition of atheism should be; here I will simply state the conclusion. Atheism, properly considered, is simply the absence or lack of theistic belief. In other words, to the question, "Do you believe in God?", you answer, "No," for whatever reason, you are an atheist. You will often hear it said that an atheist actually denies the existence of a god or gods. This is true; many atheists do but not all. This kind of overt denial of the existence of a god or gods is a sub-category of a broader kind of approach which should in a general sense be known as atheism. This gets quite complex to go into all of the reasons why some atheists would not wish to deny that any gods exist. Just take my word for it that historically and philosophically it's very justifiable to say that the best, most generic definition for the term atheism is simply the absence or lack of belief in a god.

There's one overriding principle that is operative here if you understand this definition of atheism. It is what is known as the burden of proof or the onus of proof. What this principle states is that the onus of proof is on the person who asserts the truth of a proposition. If I say to you, X is true, I am intellectually responsible for providing some kind of reasons for accepting it. If I do not provide you any reasons or I provide reasons that are invalid, you are legitimately justified in rejecting my claim to knowledge as unfounded and hence irrational. This is probably the single most important principle in regard to the defense of atheism. The theist asserts an affirmative proposition; he asserts that a god or gods exist. The burden of proof falls entirely upon the theist to prove or demonstrate the reasonableness of that claim. It is not up to me or to you as an atheist to demonstrate that a god does not exist. It is up to us to say to the religionist, "You have made an assertion. It is your responsibility to demonstrate the truth of that assertion. If your claims hold up, then you are rational. If your claims do not hold up and you continue to believe as you do, then you are irrational." That is the most central, fundamental point in regard to atheism. You do not have the burden of proof as atheists; the religionist does. You are not asserting the truth or existence of anything; you are challenging the theists' claim to truth. Your only responsibility in this regard is to examine critically the views of religionists, subject them to rational scrutiny, and either accept them or reject them on that basis. That is your sole responsibility. You have done your job after that.

I should mention briefly the problem that sometimes comes up. Isn't it true that some atheists do deny the existence of a god? Yes, it's true. I would, for example, not only say I don't believe in the Christian god, but that such a being does not exist. Again, this would get us into some philosophical points that I can't go into here, but basically the reason for this is that if you examine a concept and it turns out that it is inherently self-contradictory, in the same way that a "square circle" is self-contradictory, then I may reasonably say that such a being cannot possibly exist. And this is indeed the case with the Christian god. It is internally muddled and self-contradictory. I think it's interesting that if you come across a Christian who says to you, "Well you can't say that God doesn't exist!", you might ask the Christian an interesting question: "Do you believe in the god of Zoroastrianism? Do you believe in Allah? Do you believe in Zeus?" There are literally hundreds of gods that the Christian himself does not believe in. The Christian himself would say that these gods do not exist. Well how does the Christian know that? If he is so hot to trot to say that we cannot know that a god does not exist, then how can he say that Zeus does not exist? Well, of course, the Christian is liable to say in response, "Well that's ridiculous! Everyone knows that Zeus doesn't exist. It's a mythical idea." He'll go on at some length and give some very good arguments which, if applied to his own beliefs, would demolish them entirely. Monotheists, the people who believe in one god, are very close to being atheists. They are only one step removed from atheism. They're just a hairline away from being an atheist. All I have to do is get rid of that one last god and he's made it over the line. This is a rather novel way of looking at monotheism but I think it's justified. All you have to do is ask the Christian to apply his own standards by which he rejects the hundreds of gods that have been offered throughout mankind's history, and apply them to his own beliefs, and they will demolish that belief as well.

I want also to mention briefly a term which is very important in the history of atheism. This is the term "freethought." I won't spend a lot of time on this, either, but it does bear mentioning because "freethought" is a term that has been used quite widely historically. What is the significance of "free" in "freethought"? In a sense, all of your beliefs are free. Nobody can force you to believe something you don't wish to believe. Well the significance of "free" in "freethought" is morally free. The freethinkers historically were reacting to the doctrine that you are morally obligated to accept a certain set of beliefs -- a dogma -- as true, that you are in some sense immoral, for example, if you do not accept the tenets of Christianity. Along came the freethinkers and they said, "No! One ought to be morally free to investigate beliefs to the best of one's ability, without being morally obligated to accept any one set of beliefs n particular." This is the primary significance of freethought. It relates back to the point that I made earlier of the importance of the habit of reasonableness. One who is concerned with being reasonable will, of necessity, be a freethinker.

I want to get to get a little bit into the murky waters of the concept of God and just make a basic point as to why proofs for the existence of God invariably. In my book and in books written by other authors, such as Antony Flew, Chapman Cohen, Wallace Matson, and others, you will find quite detailed refutations of arguments for the existence of a god. The argument from a first cause, the various cosmological arguments, the argument from design, and so forth. I obviously cannot cover those here. But I do want to make reference to the basic problem involved in such "proofs." The basic problem is this: the concept of God -- the concept of the Christian god in particular -- once you strip away all of the verbiage that surrounds it, the concept of God always turns out to be some kind of unknowable being. Now notice I didn't say, "unknown," I said, "unknowable." This is the basic and central belief of theism. The belief in some kind of unknowable creature. By "unknowable," I mean a creature which by it's very nature can never known by man. We don't just mean some thing we don't presently have knowledge of. There are lots of things we don't have knowledge of. We're talking about something in principle that cannot be known. There seems to be an obvious problem with attempting to prove, much less even talk about, a being which by the theists' own admission is unknowable. How can you talk about, conceptualize, or demonstrate, the existence of such a thing? It is, in principle, impossible. This, basically, is why all of the alleged proofs must ultimately fail. There is one passage from the famous eighteenth century materialist and atheist Baron D'Holbach that is quite good in this regard. After noting that theology has "for its object only incomprehensible things," D'Holbach argues that "it is a continual insult to human reason." He continues as follows:

No religious system can be founded otherwise than upon the nature of God and of man and upon the relations they bear to each other. But in order to judge of the reality of these relations, we must have some idea of the divine nature. But everybody tells us that the essence of God is incomprehensible to man. At the same time, they do not hesitate to assign attributes to this incomprehensible god and assure us that man cannot dispense with the knowledge of this god, so impossible to conceive of. The most important thing for man is that which is the most impossible for him to comprehend. If God is incomprehensible to man, it would seem rational never to think of him at all. But religion concludes that man is criminal if he ceases for a moment to revere Him.

D'Holbach concludes, quite well I may add, that "religion is the art of occupying limited minds with that which it is impossible to conceive or to comprehend." You simply cannot intelligibly discuss, much less prove, the existence of an unknowable creature. It's philosophical nonsense. The concept itself is meaningless.

Of the many "proofs" that have been offered, probably the most popular on a layman level is what is known as the argument from religious experience.

I have not talked about this or written about this previously, so I want to spend a few minutes on this because this is the argument you'll most frequently encounter. And it confuses some people, with justification because it's a confusing argument. By the argument from religious experience, I mean some variation on a theme such as, "I know God exists because I've had some sort of personal experience", to put it in fundamentalist terms, "Jesus has come into my heart," and so on. To put it in Eastern mysticism terms, "I've had some sort of experience with the Oneness of the universe." Whatever the terms might be, this is the basic idea: attempting to prove some philosophical point with reference to personal experience of some kind. This is the argument most commonly resorted by religionists or mystics.

The first problem with this argument is that it is not really an argument. An argument presumably has some sort of premises, follows a chain of reasoning, and has a conclusion. This "argument" is simply a bald assertion. It's not an argument at all. I might just as well say that there exists invisible fairies in this room because I've had personal experience with them. Or there's an invisible green elf sitting on my shoulder because I've had personal experience of it. In other words, once you resort to this balderdash you can "prove" or argue anything. This is the complete abandonment of any kind of rational criteria. To attempt to make a philosophical point about the existence of something simply by referring to some kind of internal experience, a feeling.

There have been a number of attempts to defend this kind of argument. One of them that you'll commonly hear is that this feeling is unique. The religionists or the mystic cannot communicate his experience to you because it's so unique it cannot be communicated. To this I would answer that every experience is unique. Every experience you have is unique. There is no one experience you have that is totally like any other experience you have. The point is you have a mind, you have the ability to conceptualize, and this is what conceptualization all about. Concepts enable us to ferret out the differences among our experiences and focus on the most common elements and communicate among ourselves. This is what concept-formation consists of; this is how we reason. The religionist's claim that he cannot communicate his experience because it is unique, if carried out consistently, would mean that we could not communicate at all because all of our experiences are unique. I think it would be more accurate to say that the religionist's experience is simply unintelligible. He doesn't understand what it is or why it occurred, so he makes up a reason that suits his purpose.

There's another kind of response that is sometimes made. This is the parallel that you'll often hear to the mystic, the person who claims to have had some sort of personal contact with a deity. It is in relation to ordinary man as a sighted man is in relation to a blinded man. I'm sure many of you must have heard this at one time or another. Not only do laymen use this argument, but sophisticated philosophers and theologians who should know better also resort to it. We're sometimes given the illustration that if a sighted person went among a race of blind persons and he tried to convince them of what the world was like, they would say he's irrational and deny that such things exist. Of course, the mystic wants to put himself in that same category. "I have a special intuitive faculty" or "I have a special hotline with God" and this enables him to have a special knowledge that mere mortals are not capable of having.

There are many, many problems with this so-called "argument;" I'll point out just a couple. First, it's true that there is a difference between sighted persons and blind persons, but this difference is attributed to some kind of difference in physical capacity. We can explain why -- physically - a sighted person is able to have sense perceptions whereas a blind person is not. There is nothing mysterious about it, whereas this is not at all the case with the mystic. The mystic is claiming some kind of intuitive or special physical capacity -- a new sense? If he is, let him provide us with some information about it so we can test it out. Second, the sighted person does not claim access to an inaccessible, supernatural realm. The sighted person is dealing with the same world as the blind person. He simply has an added sense ability that the blind person does not. I do not have to contradict the present knowledge of a blind person to explain what I see. He can test out independently, in his own way, the claims that I make. If I say to the blind person, "There is a wall immediately in front of you," he doesn't have to take my word for it. He can reach out and he can touch it, feel it, sense it, using the sense modalities that are open to him. This is another crucial point to keep in mind in regard to this argument. It's not that the blind person and the sighted person are dealing in two separate worlds; the blind person does have a means of checking out our verifying the claims of the sighted person. Unfortunately, again, we do not have this opportunity when it comes to the claim of the mystic. What types of verifiable procedures or tests can we bring to bear on the mystic's claim that he experiences some ineffable, supernatural realm. There is no way whatsoever because he not only claims to have a special sense, power, or ability, but that he claims to sense or know something that lies in another realm altogether. This is totally arbitrary, indefensible, and insupportable. There are a number of other things we could point out here as well, such as the fact that the blind man does not use different standards of knowledge than the sighted man does. They simply have different means of gathering evidence, whereas the mystic would require us to abandon many of the current standards of knowledge that we presently use. I'm sure you can imagine many other objections that might be made to this particular line.

Sometimes you hear it said that the mystic has undergone a lot of special training. He's gone through meditation or whatever it takes, and through this special training he has acquired this special ability to in some way perceive a supernatural being. That doesn't really mean anything except that you can go through years and still come up with a ridiculous conclusion, just as you can come up with that ridiculous conclusion in thirty seconds or a minute. And in fact I think you may understand that if you devote years of study to a discipline, after a while there arises a certain vested interest in the truth of that discipline. If I say I'm going to go out to the Himalayas and try to get in touch with the oneness of the universe, I go out there and I'm told I have to meditate for five years and go through certain practices in order to attain this, I think emotionally it would be very difficult after my five years are up to come back and say, "Well, it was a waste of time." There is involved here a certain emotional vested interest in hoping what you devoted all this time to has some merit to it. You run into this problem not only with mystics, but also professors of theology. Can you imagine going through a seminary, going through years of theological training, having your livelihood depend on it, only to say one day, "Well, I guess this is all just a waste of time. It's nonsense." It's very difficult to do that kind of thing and it takes an extraordinarily independent mind to be able to go against the grain of so much vested interest.

One last point I want to make about the religious experience argument. This is more practical, something you can use. One of the major problems with the claim to have religious experience is that there is no possibility of falsifying such a claim. In other words, if we are to believe the mystic, he wants us to undergo a kind of experiment. He wants us to subject ourselves to some kind of procedure and then we will see that his beliefs are correct. The way you will encounter this most often is when a fundamentalist comes up to you and says, "Look, if you will only get on your knees and pray to Jesus Christ to come into your hear, then you will see that what I'm saying is true. I can't communicate this to you unless you go through these procedures." Certainly you've all ran into that from time to time. Let's suppose this fundamentalist is of a philosophical bent and he wants to defend this argument here. He might say,

You claim to be reasonable. You claim to be open-minded. All I'm asking you to do is undergo an experiment. All you have to do is get down on your knees, look up at the sky, hold your hands, and ask Jesus to come into your heart. Now if you're really open-minded, wouldn't you be willing to do at least this little bit to check out my claim? Isn't that what open-mindedness consists of?

I want to point out here an interesting thing that never comes up when the fundamentalist argues this way. The fundamentalist wants to set up an "experiment," as he would put it, but he doesn't want to take the risk that is inherent in any experiment. In other words, if there's a possibility of an experiment succeeding, then it must also be possible that it will fail. If there's a possibility of success, there must be a possibility of failure. There must be a risk involved in the experiment. The fundamentalist has a hypothesis: "Jesus is your personal savior or should be" or "God exists" or whatever. He wants to test this hypothesis so he tells you to accept Jesus. Here's what you say to the fundamentalist:

You have a hypothesis. You've set up an experiment. I am wagering the truth of my claims on this experiment, but you have to put up similar stakes. You have to wager the truth of your claims on the experiment. So if I get down on my knees and do what you say is necessary, if what happens is what you say will happen, then I will be convinced. If, however, I get down on my knees and it doesn't happen, that will falsify your hypothesis and you must give up your belief in God.

This is very, very important to understand what I'm saying here. If that "experiment" is to be a legitimate experiment, there has to be risk on both sides. But the trick comes when you find the religionist is not willing to do that. Is he willing to take the corresponding risk of giving up his belief if you are not saved after you get down on your knees? Is he willing to do that? I would say that in 99.9% of the cases, "no." What would he say? "Maybe you weren't sincere" so he'll blame it on you. Or "maybe God didn't feel like saving you at the time" so he'll blame it on God. But never will he blame it on himself. Never will he blame it on his own ideas. The next time you're in this situation, instead of just dismissing it as absurd -- which it is -- you might ask this question of the Christian: "If you really want to the scientific spirit about this , I'll test this out. I'll do this. But if it fails, you have to give up your beliefs and become an atheist." That seems fair, but of course he won't do that. As a final reminder, I will suggest that if he says he will do it, get it in writing, or get it in front of a group of witnesses, because Christians are not known for their intellectual integrity on matters such as this. You may recall the passage by Paul that "I become all things to all men in order to save" which is a call to intellectual hypocrisy in the name of spreading Christianity.

You often hear many objections to atheism. There are so many I cannot cover all of them. One of the ones that I want to comment on is the claim that "If atheism is correct, then we're faced with a cold, indifferent universe, there's no purpose to our universe, we're insignificant specs on a whirling planet in a vast galaxy." Well, that's quite true. The universe doesn't give a damn about you. It doesn't give a damn about me. The point is you're supposed to give a damn about yourself because if you don't, no one will. Certainly the universe won't. And in that sense I suppose you are insignificant as far as the universe is concerned. If you died tomorrow, the universe is going to hold a funeral for you or stop in its tracks. The universe will continue on its merry way. It's not really correct to say you're insignificant because the idea of significance and insignificance makes no sense when you consider an inanimate cosmos. Significance is a term that only applies to some sort of conscious evaluation. But nonetheless, in a sense, you are not that significant as far as the totality of the universe is concerned. So far as the problem, "What purpose is there in man's life?", there is no purpose in man's life. There is a purpose hopefully in your own life but it is up to you to set it. Again, if you don't, no one will for you.

I think this is why religion is so devastating, not only philosophically but also from a psychological point of view. You sometimes hear it said, "What would we do without religion? What would we do without Christianity?" I don't understand what we do with religion or what we do with Christianity. I don't understand what religion is supposed to solve. What if I believe in Jesus? That's not going to make my life successful. Either I'm going to fail or succeed; I'm going to try or not; and simply believing in some sort of mythical deity will not change that. It's still up to me. It's still a personal matter. I don't understand what this great psychological, moral benefit that religion is supposed to be that religion has offered throughout the ages. Undoubtedly, it gives some people a sense of comfort. If comfort is foremost in your life, even at the expense of truth, then perhaps you will believe in God. But as I pointed out at the beginning, I think the foremost concern should be truth. Truth may be somewhat painful on some limited occasions, but in the long run I think it's clear that it will always work to your long-range interest. This is one benevolent, good effect of atheism. Atheism clears the air, as it were. It clears away the psychological, moral, and philosophical debris. It allows people to set out on their own to pursue rational goals, rational values, and so forth.

As one final argument or satire on an argument, you may have heard of Pascal's wager at some point. Blaise Pascal was the famous French mathematician, philosopher, and theologian. He came up with this argument which consequently became quite famous, which went something as follows. Reason can't prove or disprove the existence of God. Weigh the odds. If the atheist is correct, we're going to die, nothing will happen, and nothing is lost. But if the Christian is correct, the nonbelievers are going to believe in Hell for eternity. So it seems like the practical odds would lie with Christianity. We would wager on Christianity because the practical odds are so important. If you wager on Christianity and there is no god, you don't lose anything.

The first obvious problem with this is it completely shoves aside the whole issue of intellectual integrity, as if you can just do a complete turn-about in your beliefs willy-nilly without suffering any psychological damage, which simply isn't possible. It would require such a gross miscarriage of intellectual integrity to do this kind of thing that it's inconceivable that someone with Pascal's kind of mind would even offer it.

But I want to offer you a kind of counter-wager, called the "Smith's wager." Here are the premises of my wager:

1. The existence of a god, if we are to believe in it, can only be established through reason.
2. Applying the canons of correct reasoning to theistic belief, we must reach the conclusion that theism is unfounded and must be rejected by rational people.

Now comes the question, "But what if reason is wrong in this case?", which it sometimes is. We are fallible human beings. What if it turns out that there is a Christian god and He's up there and He's going to punish for eternity for disbelieving in Him. Here's where my wager comes in. Let's suppose you're an atheist. What are the possibilities? The first possibility is there is no god, you're right. In that case, you'll die, that'll be it, you've lost nothing, and you've lived a happy life with the correct position. Secondly, a god may exist but he may not be concerned with human affairs. He may be the god of traditional Deism. He may have started the universe going and left it to its traditional devices, in which case you will simply die, that is all there is to it, again, and you've lost nothing.

Let's suppose that God exists and He is concerned with human affairs -- He's a personal god -- but that He is a just god. He's concerned with justice. If you have a just god, he could not possibly punish an honest error of belief where there is no moral turpitude or no wrongdoing involved. If this god is a creator god and He gave us reason as the basic means of understanding our world, then He would take pride in the conscientious and scrupulous use of reason the part of His creatures, even if they committed errors from time to time, in the same way a benevolent father would take pride in the accomplishments of his son, even if the son committed errors from time to time. Therefore, if there exists a just god, we have absolutely nothing to fear from such a god. Such a god could not conceivably punish us for an honest error of belief.

Now we came to the last possibility. Suppose there exists an unjust god, specifically the god of Christianity, who doesn't give a damn about justice and who will burn us in Hell, regardless of whether we made honest mistakes or not. Such a god is necessarily unjust, for there is no more heinous injustice we could conceive of, than to punish a person for an honest error of belief, when he has tried to the best of his ability to ascertain the truth. The Christian thinks he's in a better position in case this kind of god exists. I wish to point out that he's not in any better position than we are because if you have an unjust god. The earmark of injustice is unprincipled behavior, behavior that's not predictable. If there's an unjust god and He really gets all this glee out of burning sinners and disbelievers, then what could give him more glee than to tell Christians they would be saved, only to turn around and burn them anyway, for the Hell of it, just because he enjoys it? If you've got an unjust god, what worst injustice could there be than that? It's not that far-fetched. If a god is willing to punish you simply for an honest error of belief, you can't believe He's going to keep his word when He tells you He won't punish you if you don't believe in Him because He's got to have a sadistic streak to begin with. Certainly He would get quite a bit of glee out of this behavior. Even if there exists this unjust god, then admittedly we live in a nightmarish universe, but we're in no worse position than the Christian is.

Again, if you're going to make the wager, you might as well wager on what your reason tells you, that atheism is correct, and go that route because you won't be able to do anything about an unjust god anyway, even if you accept Christianity. My wager says that you should in all cases wager on reason and accept the logical consequence, which in this case is atheism. If there's no god, you're correct; if there's an indifferent god, you won't suffer; if there's a just god, you have nothing to fear from the honest use of your reason; and if there's an unjust god, you have much to fear but so does the Christian.

We come back full-circle to our original point, that atheism must always be considered within the wider context of the respect for reason and the respect for truth. I think that, as atheists, when you try to communicate the atheistic message this is the central point you should hammer home again and again.

The Copyright Propaganda Machine Gets a New Agent: Your ISP

It’s been a long time coming, but the copyright surveillance machine known as the Copyright Alert System (CAS) is finally launching. CAS is an agreement between Big Content and large Internet Service Providers to monitor peer to peer networks for copyright infringement and target subscribers who are alleged to infringe—via everything from from “educational” alerts to throttling Internet speeds.

As part of the launch, the Center for Copyright Information, which administers the program, has revamped its website. The website is supposed to help educate subscribers about the system and copyright. Unfortunately, it’s chock full of warning signs that this whole campaign is not going to go well.

For example, on the process for targeting subscribers, the site explains that:

"Before each Alert is sent, a rigorous process ensures the content identified is definitely protected by copyright and that the notice is forwarded to the right Subscriber."

Just because content is copyrighted doesn’t mean sharing it is illegal. It would be better to have a rigorous process that ensures the use identified is actually infringing. It would be even better to have a process that was vetted by a truly independent entity, and public review of the full results.

And then there are these nuggets:

"While CCI encourages all consumers to secure their home networks, it is especially important for consumers who have received a Copyright Alert."

In other words, if you’ve received a notice, you’ve better lock down your network, and fast. As we’ve explained, this seems designed to undermine the open Wi-Fi movement, even though open wireless is widely recognized to be tremendously beneficial to the public.

"Subscribers are responsible for making sure their Internet account is not used for copyright infringement."

Not so—at least not under copyright law, unless additional conditions are met. We don’t all have to sign up to be copyright police, though if your ISP is part of the deal—AT&T, Cablevision, Comcast, Time Warner, and Verizon—you’ve signed up to be policed.

Then there’s the generally maximalist approach to copyright. For example, while we were able to find at least a nod to fair use in CCI’s materials, they are also replete with statements like this (from the section on what students and teens need to know):

"Whenever you create something like a poem, a story or a song, you own it – and no one else can use it without your permission."

Not so: thanks to the fair use doctrine, others can in fact use the works you create in a variety of ways. That’s how we help ensure copyright fosters, rather than hinders, new creativity and innovation.

Equally worrisome: the CCI site directs users to the Copyright Alliance to learn more about the history of copyright. The Copyright Alliance is hardly a neutral “resource”—it was a leader in the battle to pass SOPA and remains a staunch advocate of copyright maximalism.

Finally, CCI is promising to to partner with iKeepSafe to develop a copyright curriculum for California public schools. It will be called: "Be a Creator: the Value of Copyright." Based on what we’ve seen so far, that curriculum will do little to help kids understand the copyright balance. Instead, it is going to teach kids that creative works are “stuff” that can be owned and that that you must always check before using that “stuff.”

Not to toot our own horn, but EFF has developed a copyright curriculum that explains what copyright law permits as well as what it forbids and, we hope, encourages students to think critically about creativity, innovation and culture. And it’s CC-licensed, so the CCI should feel free to save itself some time and money by using it.

In the meantime, we are disappointed if not surprised by the tenor of the CCI’s approach to surveillance and education. Watch this space for more on the CAS and what you can do to challenge it.

Peanut butter-loving flier seeks $5 million from TSA worker and Port Authority cop for putting him in sticky situation

Frank Hannibal is suing after LaGuardia Airport security imprisoned him for not taking his 'explosive' joke when screeners questioned his oily sandwich spread.

By John Marzulli AND Corky Siemaszko

Take a jar of fancy peanut butter, add a dumb joke about explosives at airport security, and you’ve got the makings of a nutty federal lawsuit.

A former New Yorker is suing a TSA worker at LaGuardia Airport and a Port Authority cop for $5 million after they busted him for trying to bring a jar of Crazy Richard’s peanut butter on the plane.

Frank Hannibal claims in a complaint filed in Brooklyn Federal Court that he wound up in the sticky situation when the screener noticed the layer of oil atop his gourmet peanut butter — and ordered him out of the line.

“They’re looking to confiscate my explosives,” Hannibal sarcastically told his wife and twin 6-year-old daughters, the court papers state.

The TSA worker, identified in the papers as Edwin Sanchez, overheard Hannibal, apparently didn’t get the joke — and called the cops.

Minutes later, Officer Spencer Newman slapped the cuffs on Hannibal and charged him with falsely reporting an incident, a felony.

Hannibal said he spent the next 25 hours in a lockup.

Adding insult to injury, Hannibal — an admitted peanut butter snob who said the 16-ounce jar that retails for about $6.99 — said the prison chow consisted of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

“The jelly looked like pus, the peanut butter like God knows what and the bread was hard as a rock," Hannibal, 50, told the Daily News.

Hannibal, who lived in Harlem at the time and now lives in Arizona, said he was eventually allowed to leave and the Queens district attorney declined to prosecute him.

But he still hasn’t gotten over the incident.

“It sounds laughable now but at the time to be led out of there like a terrorist was unbelievable,” Hannibal said. “My whole life was up in the air. It was a nightmare. My children were overwhelmed. It was crazy.”

Conditions in the lockup were, in Hannibal’s words, deplorable. He said he was threatened at one point by another prisoner over the use of a pay phone.

Hannibal said the peanut butter that landed him in a jam was confiscated by the cops, but he was able to retrieve it after his release from jail.

“I ate it,” he admitted.

The TSA prohibits passengers from carrying on liquids in containers larger than three ounces to prevent the possibility of a liquid explosive being brought aboard a jetliner.

“The liquid oil that separated from the peanut butter had them baffled,” Hannibal said.

His lawyer, Alan D. Levine of Queens, said all this could have been avoided if airport authorities exercised some common sense.

“It’s a sorry state of affairs in this country when sarcasm is considered a felony,” Levine said.

A Port Authority spokesman said they have no comment because the agency had not yet been served with the court papers.

Highly Religious People Are Less Motivated by Compassion Than Are Non-Believers

"Love thy neighbor" is preached from many a pulpit. But new research from the University of California, Berkeley, suggests that the highly religious are less motivated by compassion when helping a stranger than are atheists, agnostics and less religious people.

In three experiments, social scientists found that compassion consistently drove less religious people to be more generous. For highly religious people, however, compassion was largely unrelated to how generous they were, according to the findings which are published in the most recent online issue of the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science.

The results challenge a widespread assumption that acts of generosity and charity are largely driven by feelings of empathy and compassion, researchers said. In the study, the link between compassion and generosity was found to be stronger for those who identified as being non-religious or less religious.

"Overall, we find that for less religious people, the strength of their emotional connection to another person is critical to whether they will help that person or not," said UC Berkeley social psychologist Robb Willer, a co-author of the study. "The more religious, on the other hand, may ground their generosity less in emotion, and more in other factors such as doctrine, a communal identity, or reputational concerns."

Compassion is defined in the study as an emotion felt when people see the suffering of others which then motivates them to help, often at a personal risk or cost.

While the study examined the link between religion, compassion and generosity, it did not directly examine the reasons for why highly religious people are less compelled by compassion to help others. However, researchers hypothesize that deeply religious people may be more strongly guided by a sense of moral obligation than their more non-religious counterparts.

"We hypothesized that religion would change how compassion impacts generous behavior," said study lead author Laura Saslow, who conducted the research as a doctoral student at UC Berkeley.

Saslow, who is now a postdoctoral scholar at UC San Francisco, said she was inspired to examine this question after an altruistic, nonreligious friend lamented that he had only donated to earthquake recovery efforts in Haiti after watching an emotionally stirring video of a woman being saved from the rubble, not because of a logical understanding that help was needed.

"I was interested to find that this experience -- an atheist being strongly influenced by his emotions to show generosity to strangers -- was replicated in three large, systematic studies," Saslow said.

In the first experiment, researchers analyzed data from a 2004 national survey of more than 1,300 American adults. Those who agreed with such statements as "When I see someone being taken advantage of, I feel kind of protective towards them" were also more inclined to show generosity in random acts of kindness, such as loaning out belongings and offering a seat on a crowded bus or train, researchers found.

When they looked into how much compassion motivated participants to be charitable in such ways as giving money or food to a homeless person, non-believers and those who rated low in religiosity came out ahead: "These findings indicate that although compassion is associated with pro-sociality among both less religious and more religious individuals, this relationship is particularly robust for less religious individuals," the study found.

In the second experiment, 101 American adults watched one of two brief videos, a neutral video or a heartrending one, which showed portraits of children afflicted by poverty. Next, they were each given 10 "lab dollars" and directed to give any amount of that money to a stranger. The least religious participants appeared to be motivated by the emotionally charged video to give more of their money to a stranger.

"The compassion-inducing video had a big effect on their generosity," Willer said. "But it did not significantly change the generosity of more religious participants."

In the final experiment, more than 200 college students were asked to report how compassionate they felt at that moment. They then played "economic trust games" in which they were given money to share -- or not -- with a stranger. In one round, they were told that another person playing the game had given a portion of their money to them, and that they were free to reward them by giving back some of the money, which had since doubled in amount.

Those who scored low on the religiosity scale, and high on momentary compassion, were more inclined to share their winnings with strangers than other participants in the study.

"Overall, this research suggests that although less religious people tend to be less trusted in the U.S., when feeling compassionate, they may actually be more inclined to help their fellow citizens than more religious people," Willer said.

In addition to Saslow and Willer, other co-authors of the study are UC Berkeley psychologists Dacher Keltner, Matthew Feinberg and Paul Piff; Katharine Clark at the University of Colorado, Boulder; and Sarina Saturn at Oregon State University.

The study was funded by grants from UC Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center, UC Berkeley's Center for the Economics and Demography of Aging, and the Metanexus Institute.

Army Vet Charged For Possession of Illegal Clip

Dave McKinley

WATERTOWN, NY - Nate Haddad retired from active duty in the U.S. Army in 2010 (following 12 years of service) after he hurt his shoulder during special forces training.

Last month he says he was parked along a road not far from his home in the state's North Country, where he still works at Fort Drum as a civilian employee.

When approached by police, he told them he was meeting someone interested in perhaps buying from him some empty, 30-round magazines for an AR-15 rifle, the same type he once carried into combat.

Since 1994, however, magazines over 10 rounds have been illegal in New York State, unless they were manufactured prior to when that law went into effect.

"I certainly did not think I was committing a felony crime by having these," Haddad told WGRZ-TV, while speaking of the magazines, which he claims he bought at an army surplus store.

"My understanding of what I had in my possession was that it was manufactured before 1994, but the arresting officers told me otherwise after I showed them the magazines that I had in my possession," Haddad said.

Haddad now finds himself charged with five counts of Criminal Possession of a Weapon in the Third Degree, a Class D Felony in New York State punishable by up to seven years in prison.

Earlier this week, Jefferson County prosecutors offered Haddad a deal, according to Haddad's attorney Seth Buchman, who said the offer was for his client to plead to five misdemeanor counts, in exchange for which Haddad would get a conditional discharge, sparing him from incarceration.

Haddad turned down the offer.

"Even if I took that deal I would still be branded as a criminal, and I don't think I should be," Haddad said.

Beyond principle, though, there is also a practical reason behind Haddad's reluctance to plead guilty.

"At this point, I can't say for sure how doing so might impact my access to Fort Drum. If it were to be restricted, then I would likely lose my job," Haddad said.

The Jefferson County District Attorney's Office did not return a phone call seeking comment.

It is often said that the price for freedom is high.

Though that phrase is usually in reference to the waging of wars, it is applicable in Haddad's current battle to maintain his freedom.

Waging a defense in a criminal case is costly, and so Haddad's brother, who still lives in Chautauqua County, has started raising funds though an on-line site to defray the cost of Haddad's legal bills.

In just one-month's time, nearly $40,000 has been pledged toward an ultimate goal of $100,000.

"I am absolutely touched by the generosity of people who have donated anywhere from five dollars to even 300 dollars," Haddad said.