It’s the Thought that Counts

Given all the comments on my post about people who readily admit to being bad at math, as well as the discussion occurring on various other blogs, I figured it was time to respond to some of what’s been said.

There were some people who expressed skepticism of the phenomenon I was complaining about.  These comments (both here and elsewhere) were things like “I always talk about how bad I am at writing” or “I’m an English major, but I know plenty of science.”  I have no doubt at all that the incidents cited in the comments really did happen, and they do go against the trend I talked about, but I think they are the exception rather than the rule.

Putting aside for a moment the question of how much knowledge someone should have about any particular field, I want to give some clear support for my assertion that math/science people do know more about the humanities than humanities people know about math and science.  I should first be clear about what I’m counting as what.  By “humanities” I mean not only literature and fine arts, but also history, social sciences and languages.  While there are some arguable cases (economics comes to mind), I think it’s pretty clear that that stuff clearly goes on the humanities side of the divide.  When I refer to “sciences,” I mean technical fields in general, including both theoretical and applied math, computer science, engineering, and applications like medicine.

It’s obviously impossible to compare levels of understanding in two different fields.  How much calculus do you need in order to equal the amount of knowledge that encompassed by fluency in a foreign language?  It doesn’t make any sense to compare these things directly.  Still, I believe that we can make the general claim that some incredibly basic, simple science is considered “equivalent” to much more advanced levels of humanities knowledge.  Z commented to this effect, using Jeopardy! questions as a proxy.  Something a little more quantitative (ha, ha) would of course be preferable.

The best metric I could come up with was simply to look at how much effort was being put into learning material on the other side of the divide, rather than how much material was actually being learned.  I decided to look up core curricula at some of the country’s most prestigious universities.  These curricula seem as good a proxy as any for what the intellectual class feels a well-educated person should know.  The humanities part of the core requirement generally determines how much time a science student has to spend on humanities, while the reverse is true of the science part of the requirement.  Of course, many on both sides choose to learn much more than is required, but I think the requirements are a good proxy of what is considered necessary in order to consider yourself well-educated.  I tried to vary the colleges I looked at.  I chose two schools with a technical focus (MIT and Caltech), three general top universities (Harvard, Princeton, and Yale), and two of the top liberal arts schools (Swarthmore and Williams).  Results below:  read the rest »

Tags: culture, education, math, science

I saw the below video today, thanks to the awesome and always fascinating blog Sociological Images. It’s a clip from the ABC’s The View, a coffee klatsch sort of show aimed generally towards women of whatever age range it is that doesn’t mind listening to Barbara Walters talk. You can read all the hosts’ bios here, but the two primarily involved in this conversation are Whoopi Goldberg and Elisabeth Hasselbeck.

There are a couple things in this clip that stuck out to me. The first is the general topic of the power of language. I understand why it’s considered more acceptable for black people to use “the n-word” than for white people to do so. I have no problem making self-deprecating jokes about any number of my personal qualities, but if a friend of mine laughed and chimed in with agreement, I’d be a bit offended. When I say it, it’s a funny joke; when you say it, it’s rude. The question is, is that rational? Does the meaning of what’s said really depend that much on who says it? I find that hard to believe. It’s not offensive for me to use a slur referring to a group I’m a part of, because of course I didn’t mean it “that way” — but surely you are capable of not meaning it that way either. It seems more than a little unfair that, simply by virtue of your existing and your being born with certain qualities, a layer of meaning has been added to all your statements which you can never really escape. Your words will always be white-person-words or black-person-words or [fill in an adjective]-person-words, never really just words.

The position that’s argued in the video by Goldberg, and to a lesser degree by Sherri Shepherd, is that the word “nigger” has history which ought to be remembered and which is an important part of black culture. It’s “taking back” a slur, making it your own. It’s similar — though obviously different in magnitude — to a woman calling herself and other women “chicks” with a sense of female empowerment, or to LGBT folks saying “fag” or “dyke” with pride in their sexual orientation. The idea is that by embracing the term, you can make a once-derogatory word into a simple descriptive adjective, or even a positive quality.

That brings me to the second issue: to what extent do we create the society we live in simply by acting and imagining? Hasselbeck says, “We don’t live in different worlds. We live in the same world,” and the other hosts disagree. They’re right, of course — issues of “race” (whatever that means) and ethnic differences are not yet non-issues. There’s still discrimination and prejudice. Hasselbeck’s response to this is to acknowledge that there’s nothing fundamentally different about people with different skin pigmentation, and to try to live her life as though no differences exist. On the other hand, Goldberg’s response is to try to use a racial slur as though it were a friendly, endearing word. Both seem to have the ultimate goal of creating a society without prejudice. Who’s using more pretending and wishful thinking to try to get there? Whose approach is more likely to be successful?

It seems to me that both of them could be right, but at different times. Reclaiming a slur can encourage pride in one’s identity, and it can turn something deeply offensive into something hardly worth remarking upon. That’s worthwhile progress — it means moving past the worst parts of prejudice. However, I don’t think it’s a permanent solution. I said hardly worth remarking upon, not totally unremarkable, because keeping special terms that only “our people” are allowed to say, that continually remind everyone of past persecution of “our people” by everyone else, isn’t really going to eliminate boundaries. To create a society where we really all “live in the same world,” we need to give up language that serves only to exaggerate differences.

Tags: culture, discrimination, race

Well, McCain has had a bad week (though it wouldn’t be obvious to you if you were just watching the polls).  There was of course Obama’s trip overseas, which gave him all the presidential photo-ops he could ask for.  Obama got supported on Iraq by the Iraqi prime minister.  McCain made more in a series of misstatements that would make most candidates look like they don’t understand key issues — except McCain, at least on foreign policy, is immune from that interpretation, so they just make him look old and generally out of it.  No one can fault the McCain campaign for feeling a little bit desperate at the moment.  I’m even willing to let them slide a bit for pulling stupid tricks like pretending they’re about to announce their VP pick in order to get attention.

I am not, however, willing to forgive the suddenly harshly personal tone that the campaign has taken.  I have no problem with negative ads when they attack policy differences.  I have no problem with negative ads on personal qualities that are relevant for governance (leadership experience, or intelligence, or whatever).  I have no problem with negative ads that assault someone’s character when there are actual grounds for doing so.  McCain’s most recent ad (below) is negative, personal, and has no basis in reality.

The main attack point of the ad is that Obama canceled scheduled visits to military bases in Germany.  That’s true, but the reason the Obama campaign gave was that they were worried it was inappropriate to visit troops in the campaign-funded part of the trip.  McCain’s ad says that Obama “made time to go to the gym, but canceled a visit with wounded troops. Seems the Pentagon wouldn’t allow him to bring cameras.”  It then adds that “John McCain is always there for our troops.”  Did the Obama campaign cancel the visit because of a lack of allowed cameras?  Maybe.  Anything is possible.  But as far as I can tell, there is is no evidence to support it.  (It’s the one statement about Obama in the ad that doesn’t have a citation appear on the screen for it.)  Really, though, the thing about this ad that goes beyond mean into sheer idiotic is the picture in the background.  It’s criticizing Obama for going to the gym instead of visiting troops, and it has a clip of him playing basketball.  The only problem is, the clip is from his visit with US troops in Kuwait a couple days earlier!  The people in the background are US soldiers.  I really am at a loss for words here. I can’t do anything other than marvel at the amazing level of shameless, meaningless attack that is going on here.

This comes after McCain has started using the line that “It seems to me that Obama would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign,” implying that Obama is choosing a popular position he knows is harmful to US security.  I have said before that I think too much has been made of Obama’s early opposition to the war as a measure of good judgment, but at the very least it shows that this is clearly a positions he’s had since well before the presidency was remotely on the table, and that it’s not just political opportunism.

I don’t know why the campaign is taking such a personal tone all of a sudden.  There has been a lot made of McCain’s supposed personal dislike of Obama, so it might just be that showing through.  It might also be a calculated (and not unreasonable) political decision that in a year where a generic Democrat would clearly defeate a generic Republican, the only way for McCain to win is to make it personal.  Nevertheless, it’s the kind of thing where you would expect better of McCain.  The message here is supposed to be that Obama would do anything to win, but I think McCain is being much more successful in proving such a thing about himself than about his opponent.  Those of us who value intelligent debate shouldn’t be surprised, but we should be sad.

Tags: barack obama, john mccain, politics

Lest you think I was making up that radio show I mentioned the other day, I happened to catch another one, and at the right point in the broadcast to hear its name. (Yep, I’m just that lucky… or radio is just that bad.) It’s called Adventures in Odyssey. From their Parents Page:

It began as an experiment. In 1986 Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family wanted to produce a drama series for the radio that would appeal to 8-12 year olds – in the hope of countering some of the questionable programming many kids were getting from Saturday morning cartoons. The program would take place in a small town where characters could explore the events, concerns and issues facing today’s families.

Seriously — this is James Dobson’s show. This is Focus on the Family, not some guy in his basement recording some independent program for local distribution. So you’d think they’d be better at making their religious messages actually, you know, religious… but just like the episode I heard before, this one seemed to make a stronger case against Christianity than for it.

You can find a summary of this episode (and others) on their website. Basically, it’s about a boy named Isaac who has a problem with procrastination. Isaac has a history project due today, but it’s not done. There’s a geometry assignment due in a week that he’s supposed to be working on with his friend Lucy, but he hasn’t done his share of the work yet. He also promised to have made some illustrations for the local newspaper’s kids section, and he hasn’t even started. When Isaac later complains of getting a C on his history report for turning it in late, Mr. Whitaker, the sagely ice cream store owner and the star of the show, offers to help him out. He diagnoses Isaac with “chronic procrastinitus” (which Isaac, predictably, is unable to pronounce). While there is no cure, there is a treatment: a special elixir which Mr. Whitaker just happens to have in his office, since he has chronic procrastinitus too. Isaac drinks some, and it gives him the boost he needs to get motivated to do those illustrations he promised! But it was just Mr. Whitaker’s special lemonade recipe, not a magical elixir — and the power to do all that hard work came from within Isaac himself! (Bet you didn’t see that coming.) With newfound energy, Isaac rushes off to work on his geometry assignment.

But wait! Where’s the Christianity? It comes from a narrator right after the story finishes. She quotes Proverbs 10:4 and explains that God wants you to work hard and not be lazy. If you’re having trouble with laziness, just read Proverbs for a little motivation.

If you’re wondering why I listened to the show, other than the fact that there was no good music on any other station, it’s because of this: I was amazed, entranced, almost hypnotized by the possibility that they could really be making the point I thought they were making. And they were. Your hard work and good deeds don’t come from some magical, cure-all (omnipotent?) solution. They come from your decisions and your effort.

It’s not that it’s a bad message — it’s a great one. I just don’t think it jives with what they’re advocating the rest of the time. Focus on the Family says that if your friend is struggling with their marriage, you should talk to them and listen to their problems. But that’s tip #2 — tip #1 is to pray, so that God can give you the wisdom to talk to them and listen to their problems. No, it couldn’t be that you had sympathy or interpersonal skills on your own. It must have been that God gave those abilities to you. There are tons of examples of this sort of message. I guess if you’ve trained your followers not to use critical thinking, it’s not too hard for them to hear this broadcast and still say, “Thanks, God, for helping me understand the message and learn not to be lazy.”

I can’t believe these people don’t deconvert all their listeners by accident. Now, maybe James Dobson plans to do the Mr. Whitaker thing himself and make an announcement in a couple weeks. “Hey, everyone, remember that ‘God’ we told you was helping you through all your hard times and giving you strength and wisdom? Well, that was all a lie, and all that strength and wisdom was within you all along.” Somehow, though, I don’t think we should hold our breath.

Tags: atheism, christian radio, religion

Yesterday I was skipping around on the radio when I came to a Christian station broadcasting a story. Read slowly, deliberately, and with almost comical voices for the different characters, it was the tale of a young girl who had seen a TV preacher explaining why next Saturday was the day of Christ’s Second Coming. He had an equation (?) and a book all about it, and that convinced her, so much so that she began putting up posters all around her town. Her parents, good Christians of course, saw this as crazy behavior, but they weren’t sure how to talk to her about it. After all, if they told her that Jesus wouldn’t be returning on Saturday, she’d start to question whether he’d ever return at all! They didn’t know how to get her to stop acting crazy without shaking her faith.

The real issue seemed so blatant I couldn’t believe they were just sweeping it under the rug. What are the actual reasons for believing in the deity of Jesus, and for believing in the apocalypse accompanied by his return? Why is a televangelist’s take on this not seen as credible, but a local church minister’s is? How can you challenge one irrational belief without applying the same sort of scrutiny to your other beliefs? That’s exactly what the parents were worried about — that the “good” skepticism they wanted to teach her would turn into “bad” skepticism (i.e., distrusting things she was supposed to believe blind).

It got me thinking about… well, not exactly hypocrisy, because I feel like that word should be reserved for intentional cases. I suppose I should say contradictions. We all (perhaps to differing extents) compartmentalize various controversies and rationalize beliefs we’re predisposed to, rather than making judgments from first principles. It’s very easy for this to lead to a situation in which you hold very different opinions simultaneously. The more rational you are, the more likely you are to catch these instances when they do occur, and the quicker you resolve the inconsistency. However, understanding the importance of rational thinking doesn’t mean that you never hold contradictory beliefs.

This is more than just the doctor who smokes, or the obese gym teacher. There’s the “creation scientist” who, after being presented with carefully constructed scientific theories that have withstood rigorous testing, demands proof beyond any shadow of a doubt (clearly misunderstanding the concept of science), but who would never think of turning such a critical lens on the religious beliefs that form their large set of assumptions. There’s the pro-life advocate who wants abortion to be illegal because it is murder, but who would never consider assigning sentences of the same magnitude as what murderers get. There are liberals who think of the Constitution as a set of fundamental principles, which justifies giving absolute protection to expression and religion even if that’s not how the Founding Fathers would have interpreted it — but prefer to look to 18th-century laws to justify gun control in the face of the 2nd Amendment. Alternatively, you have conservatives who would oppose the “fundamental principles” interpretation in general, deferring to the attitudes of the Founders to define Constitutional protections — except in cases about gun control where they’re happy to embrace it.

I’m not saying you can’t believe in making abortion illegal while also supporting low sentences for it. What I’m saying is that, if that’s your position, you have to have reasonably subtle logic to back it up. A good way to examine whether your opinion on a topic is rational is to look at the underlying principles and assumptions, and see if you agree with the implications of those assumptions — in all cases, not just in the limited context of the original situation.

I also think this is good to keep in mind during discussions with others. Say you present some scientific evidence to a creationist, and they respond with criticism of the study methods. It’s not worth your time to defend the study; take their point about scientific rigor and run with it. If they really believe in the scientific method, they can’t make a reasonable claim that creationism is science. Rather than just trying to refute every statement they make as though the conversation were some horrible game of Whack-a-Mole, it can be helpful to agree with them while they’re making the portion of their arguments that are better suited to your side.

This way of thinking — about basic principles that reach beyond isolated opinions — seems especially helpful in political debates. Among most intelligent people, the controversy over, say, school vouchers isn’t really about school vouchers. It’s about underlying ways of thinking about political issues, with opposing views on vouchers being obvious conclusions based on different philosophical starting points. Testing and debating those underlying beliefs is more productive (and much more interesting) than trying to deal with the specific policy issue in question.

Update: I found the radio show I mentioned at the start of this post. It’s called Adventures in Odyssey, and you can read a plot summary of the episode here.

Tags: christian radio, debate, politics, psychology, religion, science

I care a whole lot about the environment and humanity’s impact on it, but I hesitate to describe myself as an “environmentalist.” That’s because I disagree vehemently with one of the fundamental beliefs of major environmentalist organizations like Greenpeace and the various PIRGs. I think nuclear power is a big part of the answer to our environmental woes, rather than part of the problem. When canvassers with clipboards and pamphlets approach me on the street to ask for a donation, I ask them if they’re still against building nuclear power plants. Then, when they launch into a prepared speech beginning with an enthusiastic yes (they think I’m on their side), I tell them to call me when they change their mind, and I walk away.

Setting aside all the science for a (brief!) moment, I want to point out that the tactics environmental groups use for pushing this anti-nuclear agenda are often pretty shady. It’s often merely implied by the language they use — for an example, see this US PIRG report that constantly refers to “fossil fuels and nuclear power,” that exact phrase, as if they’re equivalent in all important respects. Fossil fuels are bad for the environment, so it’s implied that nuclear plants must be equally so. After all, they’re always right there, one after the other! Never mind that the vast majority of the text devoted to explaining this is actually only talking about fossil fuels.

That said, let’s get to it. This “fact sheet” written in 2005 claims to explain why nuclear power is “expensive, dangerous, and unnecessary”. It’s full of generalizations and misleading statements, and not full enough of hard facts (though it’s decorated with lots of pretty charts to help disguise that). I could go through it sentence by sentence, but that wouldn’t do much more than make me too angry to finish this post. Instead, I will explain why all three of those adjectives aren’t fitting, and that nuclear power is affordable, safe, and absolutely necessary. read the rest »

Tags: energy, environment, nuclear power, science

Until recently I have been torn about what to do in Iraq.  That makes me a bit of an exception, since most people who are well-informed and care about the issue have very strong opinions.  Still, while I have leaned towards the anti-war view, I’ve always been very conflicted about it.

I believe that, in retrospect, the war was clearly a mistake, but I don’t blame most of the people who supported it at the time.  At that time, the argument hinged largely on the existence of WMDs, or at least substantial WMD programs, and that existence was vouched for in very strong terms by the nation’s intelligence agencies.  Given a belief in the WMD accusations, the decision to go to war, while still somewhat dubious, was at least understandable.  I don’t think there was any real reason to doubt the WMD accusations at the time, either.  Even most people who opposed the war believed there was some truth to those accusations.  Saddam was definitely acting as though he had something to hide.  The real blame for the error in going to war lies in my mind with the intelligence agencies who got the facts wrong, and (most importantly) with the Bush administration, which from all accounts created an atmosphere where dissenting opinions were ignored, and delivering evidence and/or analysis to support preconceived goals was rewarded.

Once in, of course, there are lots of reasons to try to succeed in Iraq despite the fact that we shouldn’t have been there in the first place.  A stable, friendly democracy in the Middle East would be a huge improvement, and an unstable, fractured, and dysfunctional Iraq would be a huge disaster.  The real problem for me in determining the right course of action was the great degree of uncertainty connected to either course of action.  Withdrawal could put pressure on the Iraqi government to step up, make some tough decisions, make the political compromises it needed to, and really take control.  However, it could also lead to total failure.  Similarly, staying in could eventually produce an acceptable outcome, but could also be hopeless, leading to the same disaster but with more lives and money wasted in the meantime.  Given that all four of these outcomes seemed possible to me, there was not much of a way to decide on a clearly correct course of action.

One thing that was clear to me was that if we were going to stay in, the surge was the right way to do it.  It was at least a clear improvement over what had been the status quo up to that point.  (On a related point, another reason I don’t blame those who supported the choice to go to war is that much of the cost of the war has been more the result of mismanagement than a necessary cost of such an endeavor.  Yes, the danger of mismanagement is always something you should take into account when making a decision like that, but the level of idiocy in the conduct of the war seems like something that someone should be forgiven for not foreseeing.)

All of my indecision has gone away recently, though, as the Iraqi government has begun to push for the kind of timeline that Democrats have been asking for all along.  The most extreme example came today when al-Maliki said that Obama’s 16-month time frame was correct.  As far as I’m concerned, whether a timeline was a good idea before or not, this request from Iraq makes it the obviously correct course of action now.  Iraq is a sovereign nation with its own democratically elected government.  Because Iraq depends on the US for its security, the US has incredible leverage over the Iraqi government, but that should not be mistaken for a lack of Iraqi sovereignty.  In the end, if Iraq asks the US troops to leave, they have to go.

McCain has said this himself in the past, but now seems to refuse to acknowledge the legitimacy of the request.  The reason he gives, that al-Maliki is just doing this for domestic political reasons, is idiotic.  That’s what’s supposed to happen in a democracy.  If the vast majority of voters within a country believe something to be good policy, their leaders should be forced to fall in line with that belief.  If anything, the fact that this is the will of the Iraqi populace rather than of al-Maliki personally should make it a more important request.  Is it best for Iraq if the US leaves?  Probably.  It’s definitely not certain, but it’s the future of Iraq that is at stake, and when there’s a tough call to make, it’s the Iraqi people who should get to make it.

Tags: barack obama, foreign policy, george w bush, iraq, john mccain

If you work or study in a technical field — particularly if you’re in math itself — you get used to a particular type of reaction when you tell someone what you do.  It’s far from universal, but frequently the response is something like, “I was never very good at math” or “Math just wasn’t my thing.”  You learn to get used to it, but really, I’m sick of it.

It’s not that it’s not true.  Probably these people really are bad at math.  Probably it was always their worst subject.  I’m just tired of no one feeling bad about it.  These kinds of sentiments are very common, but imagine how weird it would be if you replaced “math” with “English” or “reading.”  Do you think authors, when they tell people they write for a living, ever get told “I was just never very good with words” or “I’m just not a reading person”?  They obviously don’t, because it’s not acceptable to be lacking in reading skills.  Some people are, but they would never go around saying so, and they usually work very hard to get better.  Somehow it’s become dishonorable to admit English is a bad subject for you, but perfectly fine to say the same for math.

It’s really sad that in a technical age, where more and more people are engineers, scientists and computer programmers, we don’t have this deep societal appreciation for math and science.  The same thing that makes people freely admit their math skills also affects college curricula.  Look at the required curricula at most liberal arts colleges, which proudly proclaim the value of the “well-rounded” education that they give.  There are very few math/science/computer/engineering classes, and extremely few math classes in particular.  What requirements there are can always be filled by worthless classes.  Then look at the curricula for technical, math/science-focused schools.  They always have a substantial humanities requirement, and a totally unscientific survey of people I know has found that there tend to be few joke courses to fill those requirements, and that most students don’t take them.  Which schools really give the most well-rounded education?

In this day and age, there is no excuse for brushing off math.  It’s tough if you’re bad at it, especially since faking competency is a lot harder in math than in the humanities.  Nevertheless, brushing it off and not caring is not an acceptable defense mechanism.  There’s a part of me that really wants, next time I hear someone say “I was always bad at math” to respond with “Well, I guess you’re just stupid.”  It’s obviously not the correct response, but at least it’d move the average in the right direction.

Update: some follow-up comments here.

Tags: culture, education, math

I saw this article in the New York Times and wanted to pass it on.  The author, Gregory Mankiw, is a Harvard professor who was part of the Bush economics team. He lists eight ideas that are generally accepted by economists but which aren’t quite so popular among voters at the moment.

I definitely don’t agree with him on a lot of his less-universally-accepted views.  Nevertheless, these are pretty solid.  Any one of them could be a full post in itself, so I won’t get into the details here.  I will say, though, that I could get behind the policies of free trade, taxing energy and/or carbon dioxide, phasing out farm subsidies, and allowing a lot of skilled workers to immigrate.  Add undoing the Bush tax cuts and I’d be much happier.  As far as I’m concerned, the big strike against Obama isn’t free trade, which I believe he supports.  (He’s never said otherwise, though he definitely did play up the caveats a lot in Ohio.)  The big strike is support for ethanol, which is to be expected from an Illinois senator, but which is idiotic.

At any rate, the article makes for good reading. I hope to write about some of these specific issues here in the near future.

Tags: economics, politics

PZ Myers recently called on atheists to steal communion wafers from Catholic churches so that they can be descrated/abused/whatever.  This is the result of an incident in Florida where a college student stole one and got in trouble for it.  Now, I consider myself an atheist and have a lot of sympathy for PZ’s general position, but this request is idiotic.

If you want to convince people that religion is irrational and they should question the beliefs they were raised with, the first thing you have to do is convince people that it’s not necessary to be religious to be a good person.  If people think atheists are evil, they won’t ever give the message a chance.  This is counterproductive in the extreme.  Ames at Submitted to Candid World has an excellent post on this.

I think there’s a larger point here.  Yes, the reactions to the original wafer-stealing were more extreme than can possibly be justified, and it’s tragic when people start getting death threats for things they have every right to do.  That said, taking the wafer is wrong.  It’s offensive and disrespectful on several different levels.

I first of all think it’s important to have respect for religious beliefs, even if they’re dumb and irrational.  In a society that is pluralistic and accepting of various beliefs, there is room for dialogue.  People talk about ideas, hear about what others think, and over time the better beliefs tend to win out.  This is the rationale for free speech, freedom of religion, and democracy in general.  In a society where everyone is hostile and combative towards each other, no dialogue happens.  The beliefs that win out are those with the most numerous/powerful supporters.  Which situation do you think is better for atheism?  It’s not just about the legal rights of free speech.  It’s also about the general level of dialogue in society, and actions like this seriously undermine what dialogue exists.

It’s also just offensive because any time a symbol of some faith/group/country is denigrated, it’s offensive.  I really don’t think most Catholics, especially in the US, think the wafer really becomes the body of Jesus.  I think they just take it as a religious ceremony.  Sure, Catholic dogma says it transforms, but Catholic dogma also says the Bible is the literal word of God, which only 23% of US Catholics believe.  The thing is, whatever you believe, it’s a religious object.  It represents the religion that uses it, and it has meaning to followers of that religion.  It has meaning the same way that a US flag has meaning to Americans.  (Even those who fight to keep it legal to burn it are generally offended when it’s burnt.)  You wouldn’t cover the walls of a synagogue in antisemitic graffiti just because you (correctly) believe that taking all Jewish beliefs literally is irrational.

Think of it this way.  Sticking up your middle finger at someone is offensive, but sticking up your pointer finger is just fine.  There’s nothing inherent in one finger that makes it more offensive than the other.  Noting that believing one to be offensive and the other not is an irrational belief is not reason enough to go outside, stick up your middle finger at someone, and be upset when they’re offended.  You know it’s something that they would be bothered by and you did it for no reason other than to bother them.  The same goes for stealing the wafer.  For whatever irrational reason, lots of people are offended by it.  Simple human decency says that if something you consider doing would deeply upset tons of people, and you don’t have some important reason behind doing it, you shouldn’t.

It’s one thing to think that religion is irrational and argue against it.  It’s another thing to think that religious people deserve to be harassed because of their beliefs.  PZ Myers usually does the former, and I’m all for it, but this is a clear instance of the latter.

What I find at least as upsetting as the post, though, is the comments below it.  If you read through the comments you will see several people, Z included, who commented expressing similar reservations.  They were called dicks, trolls, and all manner of other names, but were almost never responded to intelligently.  For a movement that claims to be based on the willingness to debate logical ideas and rationally defend what they have to say, this whole episode is a pretty embarrassing showing.

Tags: atheism, culture, religion, religious freedom