Happy birthday, Carl

Today, November 9, 2008, would have been Carl Sagan's 74th birthday. Sadly, he passed away in 1996, but not before leaving the world a great legacy of scientific inquiry and compassion for all humanity. I think about him often, and I am sad that I never met him. This week's quote is one I think of nearly every day, and it even comes with an accompanying video. Dr. Sagan's words taught me to put the earth in perspective, and not a day goes by when I don't visualize the earth from a distance outside the moon's orbit, outside the solar system, outside the galaxy, or across the universe. Thanks, Carl. You made the world a better place.

Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.
– Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994

Thousands in downtown SLC protest the LDS church's Prop 8 involvement

This is just excellent. Apparently thousands of people swarmed downtown Salt Lake City last night, to protest the Mormon church's involvement in passing Proposition 8 in California. I really wanted to be there, but I needed to spend some time with my family, and that's more important. Gee, it's nice for me to be able to spend time with my legally wedded spouse and our children, don't you think? I wish everyone were able to enjoy the same privilege.

Shockingly, the church finds the protest "disturbing" and objects to being "singled out" for exercising its right to free speech. Well, here's a news flash. When you, a large tax-exempt religious institution, claim that your leaders speak for God and then mobilize your membership by telling them that they need to vote in a certain way on a particular political proposition regarding the civil issue of same-sex marriage... you're going to get singled out.

You can't have it both ways. On the one hand, you call this issue your "Gettysburg", read letters about Prop 8 from the pulpit, call for donations and volunteers, organize call chains, and generally make it felt that every member of your religious organization in the state of California is expected to sacrifice for the cause of taking away others' right to marry. On the other hand, you act surprised and hurt when those whose rights have been stripped become angry, members of your own church actively voice their disapproval, and thousands of protesters show up at your doorstep to protest your coordination of this exercise in codifying discrimination into law. Pardon my candor, but what the hell did you expect?

In the comments to the Salt Lake Tribune article linked above, a commenter named slgb8 condemned the protesters, saying that the church has its own right to free speech and the protesters were trying to take that away. He said:

Don’t take rights away from others that you would not want to have taken from you. I think we should be careful not to take away others rights to free speech even when we don’t agree with them. We could start the country on a road the end with none of us having basic rights.

I agree with that completely, but Prop 8 is not a free speech issue. It's an issue of marriage. Let's substitute the phrase "free speech" with the word "marriage", shall we?

Don’t take rights away from others that you would not want to have taken from you. I think we should be careful not to take away others rights to marriage even when we don’t agree with them. We could start the country on a road the end with none of us having basic rights.

Much more relevant. It's the correct idea, but this particular commenter had the wrong idea about who is attempting to take away rights from whom. In fact, who has succeeded in doing so.

I seriously am about as close to resigning my membership as I ever have been. This has been an emotional election season, and I am emotional as I type this, but I think that even with a clear head and a calm spirit, I do not want to be part of an organization that so confidently proclaims its willingness to take away others' rights. That is the exact opposite of what I hope to stand for.

Hey, that's my pumpkin!

Looks like the pictures of my FSM pumpkin made it onto the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster Halloween page, as well as The Friendly Atheist. Cool!

My Flying Spaghetti Monster pumpkin

My family and I went to the in-laws' house last Sunday, as we usually do, and we all carved pumpkins. I usually abstain, and go sit on the couch and read instead. But this year I felt inspired to create something, and here it is. Unfortunately by now, almost a week later, the center part is mostly shriveled up, but the overall shape still looks okay.

Reading The Reason For God

I'm a little disappointed with how much time I spend thinking, reading, and writing about religious or philosophical topics. On the one hand, it's obviously a very important subject, and one that I've been giving a lot of thought to in the past few years. On the other hand, I don't think it's very important at all, and it bothers me that I spend so much time on a subject that is essentially arguing about fairy tales.

Recently, a Christian friend on another message board recommended The Reason For God by Timothy Keller, so this week I checked it out from the library. It purports to address the most frequently heard "doubts" that skeptics raise, and to point the way to the true path and purpose of Christianity. So I was hopeful that this book might contain some actual meat. Unfortunately, here is the list of specific questions the book appears to address:

• Why does God allow suffering in the world?


• How could a loving God send people to Hell?


• Why isn’t Christianity more inclusive?


• How can one religion be "right" and the others "wrong"?


• Why have so many wars been fought in the name of God?

I can only speak for myself, but these are not the kinds of questions I tend to ask. These questions seem to presume the existence of a God, and not just any God, but the Christian God. They seem like questions that a struggling Christian might ask, not questions that an actual atheist or skeptic would ask. My questions are more along the lines of, "Why is it necessary to posit the existence of a supernatural realm?", "What does the evidence suggest?", and "How does the God hypothesis explain the data better than naturalism?"

After reading the Introduction, I don't have very high expectations of this book, but I would love to be surprised. The major premise seems to be that skeptics ought to doubt their doubts. Funny, that's the exact same thing my father-in-law said to me after I came out as a skeptic, and it still makes no sense. Doubting your doubts will lead you to believe anything and everything. For example, check out this paragraph:

Some will respond to all this, "My doubts are not based on a leap of faith. I have no beliefs about God one way or another. I simply feel no need for God and I am not interested in thinking about it." But hidden beneath this feeling is the very modern American belief that the existence of God is a matter of indifference unless it intersects with my emotional needs. The speaker is betting his or her life that no God exists who would hold you accountable for your beliefs and behavior if you didn't feel the need for him. That may be true or it may not be true, but, again, it is quite a leap of faith.

I don't see why not believing in God is a huge leap of faith. Is it a huge leap of faith not to believe in Santa Claus, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster? Here's my version:

Some will respond to all this, "My doubts are not based on a leap of faith. I have no beliefs about the Flying Spaghetti Monster one way or another. I simply feel no need for the Flying Spaghetti Monster and I am not interested in thinking about it." But hidden beneath this feeling is the very modern American belief that the existence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is a matter of indifference unless it intersects with my emotional needs. The speaker is betting his or her life that no Flying Spaghetti Monster exists who would hold you accountable for your beliefs and behavior if you didn't feel the need for him. That may be true or it may not be true, but, again, it is quite a leap of faith.

I simply substituted the word "God" with "Flying Spaghetti Monster", and now it sounds pretty ridiculous, doesn't it? Is it really a leap of faith not to believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster? Why not? What's the difference between this paragraph and the original one? What makes this one ridiculous while the other one supposedly isn't?

The only difference I can see is that humanity has a long history of believing in an anthropomorphic "God" (or gods), thus the concept is so familiar to us that it does not seem crazy when someone talks about it. The Flying Spaghetti Monster enjoys no such tradition.

I'm not sure whether the book will get better once I dig into it, but I'll let you know if it does.

More Prop 8 nonsense

Three things.

First, the arguments being used to support Proposition 8 are generally false, misleading, and based on faulty logic. Don't take my word for it; see Mormon lawyer and scholar Morris Thurston's rebuttal of the "Six Consequences" memo for detailed examples. It bothers me greatly that the Mormon church is doing all it can to push this deceptive nonsense forward.

Second, apparently the latest Yes on 8 ad uses images of children without their parents' consent and against their wishes, and some of these children's parents want it taken down. Just beautiful. Way to go, Yes on 8. Way to think of the children. Oh, the irony.

Third, conservative Christian leaders are quoted in the New York Times as calling Prop 8 "Armageddon", "more important than the presidential election", and saying "we will not survive . . . as a nation" if Prop 8 does not pass. Yes on 8 is looking to raise $2 million this week, and with this kind of rhetoric it's likely they'll get it. If you care about this issue, please donate any amount to Equality For All (at the bottom of the page). Polls are showing that voters are moving back and forth on this issue, and the outcome may well depend on who spends more advertising dollars in the home stretch. Sad but true.

If you're in California, please vote NO on 8.

Standing For Something

If we can't think for ourselves, if we're unwilling to question authority, then we're just putty in the hands of those in power. But if the citizens are educated and form their own opinions, then those in power work for us. In every country, we should be teaching our children the scientific method and the reasons for a Bill of Rights. With it comes a certain decency, humility and community spirit. In the demon-haunted world that we inhabit by virtue of being human, this may be all that stands between us and the enveloping darkness.
– Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World

As you may know, I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons), though my personal beliefs and feelings seem to move farther in the opposite direction day by day. On Friday, I had the privilege of joining a group of about 50 Mormons and former Mormons who delivered a package to Church headquarters, to protest the Church's heavy involvement in the campaign to pass Proposition 8 in California. The event was organized online via the web site Signing For Something.

Proposition 8 is a proposed amendment to the California constitution to ban marriage between people of the same gender. The Mormon church has used church time and resources to actively campaign for Prop 8, and has directly solicited the time, money, and effort of its members to campaign for Prop 8's passage. It has organized massive efforts via its membership network, which we believe violates its own stance of political neutrality, for example as stated in Doctrine & Covenants 134:9, "We do not believe it just to mingle religious influence with civil government."

Our delivery on Friday contained about 300 letters written by individuals, carnations to symbolize those who have lost their lives over this issue, and copies of a petition explaining why we oppose the church's involvement. The petition can be found here, and has currently been signed by about 700 people, Mormons and non-Mormons alike. Those who have signed the petition hold various positions on the issue of same-sex marriage, but all are opposed to the Mormon church's attempts to use their religious influence to impose their beliefs on the larger secular society in this civil matter.

The event was covered on almost all of the local news networks, and you can see coverage at the links below. You can actually see me in some of the videos; I have a beard and ponytail, and was wearing a purple dress shirt and tie.

• Fox 13 - I consider this the best coverage, with the clearest explanation of our position.


• KSL - a station owned by the Mormon church; it's interesting to compare how they chose to report the story.


• ABC 4 - also good coverage.


• Salt Lake Tribune


• Deseret News - a newspaper owned by the Mormon church; again, interesting to compare the differences.

Honestly, I doubt the petition or the letters will have any effect on the church's stance toward same-sex marriage, much less its stance toward homosexuality. But I cannot imply my agreement on this issue by remaining silent. I find it sad that the church characterizes this as a moral issue, when I see the issues of gay rights and same-sex marriage as analogous to the issues of black civil rights and interracial marriage in the 1950s and '60s. This has nothing to do with morality.

If you are in California, please vote NO on 8. Wherever you are, please donate to Equality For All (at the bottom of the page - contributions through ActBlue are being matched only through today!), sign the Signing For Something petition, talk to your friends and neighbors about this issue, or do whatever you can. And regardless of your feelings on this or any other issue, remember to vote on November 4.