Claiming our rightful destiny

The following is adapted from a comment I wrote at this posting at the excellent Black Sun Journal (which I recommend to everyone interested in the subject). I though it fit in well here too, with the debate on transhumanism below.

The Luddites and pro-deathers have almost as limited a concept of “nature” as they do of what defines our identity as humans.

Our intelligence is our species’s natural armament for survival, just as much as the shell of a tortoise or the speed of a gazelle.

It’s in the nature of intelligence that it creates tools and improves them. It’s natural that human intelligence creates technological progress over time, and that this progress accelerates.

The achievement of the Singularity will be just as much a part of the natural development of humanity as the transformation into a butterfly is of the natural development of a caterpillar.

Chell, who is one of my favorite bloggers but who approaches this particular issue from a philosophical stance almost 180 degrees removed from mine, said that it makes no sense to fix things that are not broken, and that the natural cycle of life and death (and the current level of our intelligence) are not “broken”.

A caterpillar is not “broken”, but to halt its transformation into a butterfly and keep it a caterpillar forever would be a hideous and grotesque violation of its nature, if anything would be.

I don't want mankind to remain a caterpillar forever. And it will not.

Debating transhumanism

Last week I had an e-mail discussion with blogger Chell about transhumanism, which I thought was interesting enough to adapt into a posting. Her comments are in italics, mine are in regular print.

Isn't human intelligence just what it is? It's like kids going to school. They gain an education, but it does not increase their intelligence. Neither does each passing year. A person's intelligence, regardless of eduction or life experiences is at a pretty set level, is it not?

Human intelligence has been creeping upward for a long time -- I think the average IQ in the US has risen 18 points since 1950 or something like that. It's the result of things like improved health and nutrition, healthier mothers having healthier babies with healthier brains, which is cumulative from generation to genera-tion, the way each generation of children is growing up a little taller than their parents. What I was referring to for the future is more fundamental. Based on the current rates of improvement of our scanning technology and computer processing power, the functioning of the brain should be thoroughly understood by about 30 years from now at the latest, and we'll be able to start integrating nanocircuitry into it to enhance its abilities (we're already enhancing the brain with artificial processors in very crude ways, as with the implants for Parkinson's disease). By around 2045, machine intelligence (that which we now think of as "computers", though it will be far more sophisticated by then) will be fully integrated into the human mind. Imagine being able to access all the information on the internet in exactly the same way that you can recall facts or images in your own memory, being able to "think" with the same speed and precision with which computers can process information, etc., while still having your normal human abilities and personality. Organic brains are very good at certain things, but they do have their limitations. We need to overcome those in order to reach our full potential. As Vernor Vinge (one of the first proponents of the concept) said, we today can no more imagine the cultural and technological flowering that will follow the Singularity than a flatworm can imagine an opera.

Have been thinking about how you said each generation is more intelligent than the last, like each is taller. I can only wonder how many new generations there would be, if people were able to live forever. We couldn't go on endlessly multiplying, packing our-selves on this planet (or even others we might make habitable) like sardines. So there would eventually be no new, more intelligent generations.

On this I'll fall back on Aubrey de Grey's formulation: certainly a cure for aging would create problems, but it would not create any problems as bad as forty million people a year dying of a ghastly, wasting disease, which is the current situation. Birth rates are declining all over the world anyway; they're below replacement level in most advanced countries. Once molecular manufacturing becomes widespread in another two decades or so, we'll see an explosion of material wealth which will dwarf that produced by the industrial revolution. We'll be able to accommodate any population growth resulting from the end of aging very easily, while eliminating most of the damage our industries now do to the environment.

Before we have the technology to do real machine-mind integra-tion, we'll have widespread full-immersion virtual reality (that is, computer-generated environments indistinguishable from reality to all the senses), and I think that after the Singularity, most human activity will migrate into virtual reality quite rapidly. Billions of people will be able to live like Louis XIV if they feel like it, without occupying any physical space in the "real world" or using any resources except computer processing power. So I'm not worried about overpopulation. As for continuing to produce new generations, that will be a matter of individual choice, as it is now.

Sure, we could add computers to our brains (those of us who would be willing, anyway). We make artificial hearts and limbs for people who need them now. In my opinion, there's a difference between heart failure or loss of limb and having a normally functioning human brain. Who or what would make these computers/chips/wires that would "enhance" our brains? If humans made them, there would be human error and glitches. Would you like to be happily zipping around in a Jetson's style saucer, and all of a sudden have your brain freeze except for a box that has "continue" and "cancel" buttons, both of which do nothing? And we still wouldn't be more intelligent. We'd just have an artificial something placed in our heads.

Adding the capabilities of computers (much more advanced than present-day computers, remember) to our existing human intelligence would greatly increase our intelligence by any reasonable definition, it seems to me. There's very little anatomical difference between a human brain and a chimpanzee brain except that the human brain is about three times bigger -- it has more neurons, more synapses, more processing power. That's what accounts for the fact that humans are more intelligent than chimpanzees. Mind-machine integration would increase the processing power of the mind far more -- not just three times, but ultimately by however much any given individual wanted for any given purpose.

We're already using machines to enhance our thinking -- consider how much faster and more accurately we can get information on the internet or do complex calculations on a computer than we could if we relied purely on our own brains. The problem is that we're still stuck with accessing that computer intelligence through slow, clumsy interfaces of keyboards and monitors, instead of directly. That's what will change.

By the way, I'm not primarily talking about surgically implanting electronics (more likely nanocircuitry, by then) in people's heads, though I suppose that might happen as an intermediate stage. Machine-mind integration will ultimately take the form of mind uploading. If you haven't read it already, this (rather long) posting explains that.

As for reliability, the question to me is not whether using nanocir-cuitry as the physical substrate for a human mind would be abso-lutely reliable, but whether it would be more reliable than the organic substrate (the brain) that the mind is dependent on right now. The organic brain has many reliability problems -- it's made of fragile material, it's ill-designed for backing up information so it can be restored if lost, its efficiency depends on a constant supply of various nutrients, something as trivial as five minutes' oxygen deprivation can cause an irreversible total system crash, etc. Computer systems with extremely important functions can be made very reliable. Systems which had our own selves "running" on them would be made the most reliable of all -- certainly far more reliable than the brains we have now.

Maybe most of the world will be like that someday. To me, it's sounds like the most frightening situation imaginable. It sounds like people would attempt to cast aside their humanity to become robots. I would rather not be here for that.

I've never understood this reaction, unless it's the cumulative product of endless unimaginative treatment of such themes in science fiction. There's no reason why increasing human intelligence would make us less human -- less emotionally sensitive, humane, or whatever other attribute one might consider to be part of that "humanity" to be "cast aside". Just the opposite. I think our emotional and aesthetic lives are much richer and subtler than those of chimpanzees, because of our increased intelligence. I don't think we've lost anything by becoming three times as intelligent as chimpanzees. That's how we gained our humanity. Becoming even more intelligent will enhance our humanity, not cause us to lose it.

The only thing we stand to "lose" by achieving the Singularity is our limitations -- being limited to a certain maximum life span or a certain maximum range of mental capabilities allocated by the blind processes of evolution. The idea of defining the essence of "humanity" by its limitations seems awfully -- well -- limiting.

Paganism is such a blanket term. All sorts of Pagans have all sorts of views on life and an afterlife, and on immortality. I believe we are all immortal already. Even looking at it in the most basic way, when we die, our bodies decompose. But we don't just disappear. Our bodies merge back with the elements of Earth. We continue in this way, at least. If I believed that's all there was, that would be fine. But I believe something must also become of our spirits. That energy must go somewhere. I do believe in reincarnation, but I also think we don't all come back to the world we can most easily see right now. As far as a man-made immortality, I think that's up to each individual, if he wants to attempt that or to live that way. The progress of science shouldn't be held back, since facts are not "bad" things.

Well, of course, I don't believe I have a "spirit", so that's a moot point. The physical material my body is composed of is not the essence of me either; every molecule that was in my body 20 years ago has been replaced by now, but I'm still the same person. So if I die, I don't much care what happens to the organic material -- I'm still dead, regardless. As for reincarnation, if I die and another entity is born somewhere which is supposed to be a continuation of me, but that entity doesn't remember being me, then it isn't me. I'm still dead.

I do find it curious that many people who say they would not want to live forever find the idea of an afterlife attractive. They think they would be bored in an ever-changing, ever-advancing civilization whose culture we today (as I said) can no more imagine than a flatworm could imagine an opera, but they would be just fine "living" forever in a static Heaven.

I think deep down almost everyone actually wants to survive. Look how eagerly the mass public mind laps up stories like Bridey Murphy which supposedly provide evidence for reincarnation, even though reincarnation is a heresy from a Christian viewpoint. They want to believe existence can go on. It's just that the idea of achieving this through technological means in the real world is so new and unfamiliar.

There may well be people who want nothing to do with life extension or virtual reality or intelligence enhancement or whatever -- though I don't think there will be many, once it becomes clearer what it all actually means. We have people like the Amish right now. Nobody bothers them, but there aren't many of them, and they win few recruits from the mainstream society.

Evolution has produced many remarkable things, but it is a very cruel process. In a sense, what humans are starting to do is to take charge of that process, to start directing it consciously rather than merely being the victims of its blind operations. I hope you can see it that way.

Through evolution the mindless universe has finally produced something greater than itself: the mind. Now the mind will take charge, and ultimately spread itself throughout the universe, remaking the universe as it sees fit.

Technology as liberator: an example

In one of my earliest postings, I pointed out that technology has been the leading force for the liberation of human beings and the improvement of human life. Now the Group News Blog offers a concrete example (please do read the whole thing).

Until recently, induced abortion was always a surgical procedure, one which had to be performed at clinics; and as we all know, the visibility and easy accessibility of those clinics made them, their clients, and their employees easy targets for harassment and for terrorism (if you think the word "terrorism" is an exaggeration, see the list of crimes about four paragraphs into the GNB posting).

But now RU-486, available in the US since 2000, is emerging as an alternative to surgery for most early abortions. Prescribed by a doctor and taken at home, it does what cars, home computers, the internet, and other such innovations have done in other areas: it decentralizes power by enabling individuals to do what formerly only some large institution could do.

It's not hard to imagine that in the near future, most abortions will be performed using RU-486 and abortion clinics will practically disappear because they are no longer needed. Robbed of a high-profile single target, the fanatics will, as the GNB puts it, be left "all dressed up and no one to terrorize".

There'll just be women here and there at home, carrying out their own decisions without having to go to some central location which is permanently fixed in the cross-hairs of the fanatics. Once again technology gives a boost to individual freedom.

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A note: This is my 1,000th posting on this blog.

35 years later

Yesterday was the 35th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade. Blogger assessments here and here.

I've taken a stand on this issue before. And I intend to do so again, by doing whatever I can to help prevent any Republican from winning the Presidency -- and thus the right to appoint Supreme Court judges -- this year.

The Dream

Martin Luther King, Jr. speaks in Washington in 1963.

Most Americans know bits and pieces from this speech, but only by hearing it in full like this can you really grasp how this man electrified millions and changed the course of history.

To the contemporary ear (to mine, at least), one of the striking things about the speech is the unabashed patriotism which undergirds it. There is nothing here of the willful wallowing in cynicism and alienation which debilitates too many on the left today. King was calling his nation to account, challenging it to better itself and live up to its own ideals -- which is what a true patriot does.

Link roundup for 25 November 2007

Apparently the Apocalypse is coming again.....yawn.

I love this sign.

Every time I think Chick tracts couldn't possibly get any stupider, Jabberwock finds one that is even stupider. But surely this one must be the absolute rock bottom -- and Jabberwock's dissection is hilarious as usual.

Watch a priest go berserk.

I wonder if the Ron Paul campaign accepts these as donations.

Yet another televangelist sinks out of sight into a tar pit of sleaze. For more Christianity news, check out this megachurch leader and this bullying weirdo in Florida (found via Mendip). On a similar note, Daylight Atheism takes a look at the "prosperity gospel".

Russia is planning to develop nanotechnology-based weapons.

Italians resort to a simple but clever mosque-abatement tactic.

A British hair-salon owner is being sued for refusing to hire a Muslim who insisted on wearing a headscarf.

Bloggasm assesses the impact of Richard Dawkins's book The God Delusion.

I'm glad to see this appreciation of Canada, whose contribution to the Afghan campaign should be more recognized in the US.

When is a terrorist not a terrorist? When he's a "counterweight".

More shameful denialism, this time on Iraq.

A California teacher describes how his views on illegal aliens changed due to personal experience (found via Chell's Roost).

The gun is civilization. Reason shows how gun control is wreaking havoc in Uganda, while Of Arms and the Law tells of how gun rights helped protect peaceful citizens from violent mobs in 1906.

Here's more debunking of the myth of US decline -- at The Times, at The Telegraph, at Real Clear Politics, and at The Economist.

Joshua Muravchik clarifies the problem of Iran's nuclear program in stark terms. And anyone who thinks that a nuclear-armed Iran could simply be deterred the way the USSR was needs to read this.

Shameful persecution

[I originally wrote this item in April for Enter the Jabberwock, but I'd like to have it on my own site as well, so here it is.]

I’ve been thinking lately about the odd position Christianity occu- pies in the United States. Despite being a majority of 80% to 90% (according to surveys) of the population, some Christians claim to feel besieged by secularism — even to feel that their religious freedom is being taken away. Do they have a case?

Surprising as it may seem, I think they do! Consider the question of religious displays on public property. After all, this is one of the most obvious ways in which Christians can exercise their freedom to assert the dominance of their religion over everyone else’s — to make atheists and followers of false religions feel like second-class citizens when dealing with their own government. Yet no sooner does some government official erect, say, a display of the Ten Commandments in a courtroom or legislative chamber, than the ACLU files suit, and a Soviet-style jackboot of a court ruling descends upon him, demanding that he remove the display. Thus he is forced to acknowledge unbelievers as equals before the law and the state — coercing him to violate his religious beliefs.

Then there is the issue of abortion. Few freedoms are more precious to the Christian fundamentalist than the freedom to force women to carry unwanted pregnancies to term. Yet in 1973 Roe vs. Wade swept away this crucial freedom with one totalitarian blow. Ever since then, fundamentalist Christians have been coerced — coerced by the power of the state — to permit women to make their own decisions about their own bodies. How long will they have to wait before a more enlightened era restores their precious freedom to control the reproductive behavior of women?

Then there’s homosexuality. Until recently at least some states did recognize basic Christian rights; believers were free to pass and enforce laws requiring homosexuals to be arrested and impri- soned for engaging in homosexual activity in the privacy of their own homes, even though they were disgracefully robbed of the right to apply the Biblically-mandated death penalty in such cases. But in 2003, disaster struck, in the form of the Lawrence vs. Texas case; once again liberty lost out, as Christians were robbed of their freedom to prevent and punish private homosexual behavior. Their fundamental right to force others to live according to Biblical morality was trampled. And we call ourselves a free society? Hah!

Many other examples could be cited. Under the auspices of the obviously Communist-inspired First Amendment, Christians have very little freedom to ban books, movies, and websites which offend them by including sexual content or making unflattering references to the Christian God and religion. They are forced by the state to permit others who want to see those things to have access to them. Believers have had some success at preserving their liberty to prevent scientists from engaging in stem-cell research, but there is every sign that this last freedom, too, will eventually be eroded and lost.

So support the Christian Right — only when they have completely triumphed will our land once again enjoy those liberties which are so precious to us all.

Link roundup for 28 October 2007

For a religion which believes that its priests' mumbo-jumbo can transform wine and crackers into the blood and body of God, I suppose declaring a giant rat to be a fish is no big deal.

This ad from 1963 celebrates "the making of a man".

Of course the giant fires in southern California were caused by homosexuality. I mean, it's so obvious. Nothing to do with global warming. No sirree.

Forward-looking Muslim leaders have written a guidebook for practicing Islam in outer space. So if you've ever wondered what would be the correct technique for stoning women or beheading unbelievers in zero gravity, there's now an authoritative source.

This posting makes an interesting point about the idea that man was created in God's image.

Wiccans open a school in a small Illinois town -- and are greeted with a hysterical paroxysm of bigotry.

Laws against abortion do not reduce the number of abortions -- they just make them more dangerous. There's only one thing that actually reduces the number of abortions, and the anti-abortion movement is against it.

Well, this woman won't be smoking marijuana any more. I hope the prohibitionists are satisfied.

John C. Bogle, founder of the Vanguard Group (thus certainly no socialist agitator or ivory-tower academic) warns that the US economy is becoming dysfunctional, giving the greatest rewards to those who merely move wealth around rather than creating it.

Know the enemy -- an Australian view.

Is the Iran crisis coming to a head? Read this too.

Rethinking Hillary Clinton

A little over a year ago I argued that Hillary Clinton should not be President, and for most of this year I've considered Rudy Giuliani to be the best choice. I don't hold that view any more. Here's why.

What I want from the President (and from the government in general) is to defend and expand personal freedom in domestic policy while also taking a tough stance -- including willingness to use military force when necessary -- against external enemies. In a nutshell: to defend the free society against both the Christian fundamentalist threat within and the Islamic imperialist threat from overseas. Given the ideological views represented by each of the two main parties, this creates a dilemma. Most Democrats could be counted on to support Roe vs. Wade, restore separation of church and state, repeal restrictions on stem-cell research, encourage equal rights for homosexuals, and so forth, but their firmness against the Islamic threat is far more questionable. With most Republicans, the problem is the other way round.

In Giuliani, a popular Republican with liberal views on many social issues, I thought I'd found an answer. But it has become increasingly clear that we couldn't count on him, as President, to do anything concrete to ensure that Roe vs. Wade is upheld (Supreme Court appointments are the only way a President can really influence abortion policy, so it does us no good to have a pro-choice President if his appointments don't reflect that view). Recently he has "seemed receptive" to a more actively-hostile stance. Abortion is not only a high-profile issue but also a good "litmus test" for revealing how a politician is likely to act on other social issues; if Giuliani is willing to appease the Christian Right on abortion policy, it's legitimate to suspect that he might do the same on stem cells, gay rights, et cetera.

If Giuliani has moved away from the political center and toward his party's base, Clinton has been moving in the opposite direction on foreign policy for some time, especially the crucial Iran issue. She is easily the most hawkish and least internationalist of the major Democratic Presidential candidates -- a position reflected in the fact that she is now almost as much demonized on the far left as on the far right.

It's commonly said that Clinton (along with her husband) is too ruthless and Machiavellian. But these are not necessarily bad traits in a President. The President needs to deal with people like Putin and Ahmadinejad and the Beijing thugocracy. Those guys don’t play nice.

Isn't the problem of illegal immigration an argument against voting Democratic? I don't think so. It would be hard for any Democrat -- or anyone at all -- to be worse on that issue than Bush, who fought tooth and nail to pass the amnesty bill back in June. What defeated that bill was a mass popular uprising, not the Republican party as such. For the foreseeable future, regardless of which party is in charge, the struggle to uphold an enforcement-only approach to illegal immigration is going to be waged by the broad mass of the people against the pro-amnesty elite which dominates both parties.

Finally, what about the point I made last year, that Democratic control of the Presidency and Congress would completely shut conservatives out of power, and that this would be as unhealthy in a polarized country as the total shut-out of liberals in 2000-2006?

I think, now, that this is the lesser of two evils. The Republican party is so strongly wedded to the anti-freedom and anti-science Christian Right, and is also so dangerously mired in reality-denial, that in its present incarnation it is simply not fit to exercise power in any area. There are sane, secular Republicans, many of them. Giuliani is certainly one. But they need to take back control of the party from the fundamentalists and re-anchor it in the real world. If a crushing electoral defeat in 2008 spurs them to take on that fight at last, the result will be to restore conservatism to a form that a rational person can support, and revitalize the two-party system. In the meantime, Hillary Clinton as President is our best option.

Two of a kind?

Here's hoping.

Come out!

Richard Dawkins introduces the OUT campaign (found via Atheist Hussy).

But of course atheists are intolerant, right?

Would President Giuliani protect abortion?

This posting makes the case that we can't count on it.

State of the election

After holding steady for months during his supposedly-damaging support for the Iraq campaign, John McCain's poll numbers have abruptly imploded during the battle over the illegal-alien amnesty bill, of which he was a key supporter. Pollsters are starting to raise the "indelicate question" of what happens when he either drops out of the race or at least ceases to be a real factor. These figures show that Giuliani would be the main beneficiary -- not surprising since McCain and Giuliani have both run as secular candidates relatively indifferent to the "social issues" (that is, religious obsessions) of the Christian Right, and thus have arguably been dividing the secular Republican vote between themselves.

Here's how I see the Presidential race now. Among the Democrats, Hillary Clinton has consistently maintained a huge lead, and barring some implausible cataclysm, she will be nominated. The Republican contest is much less predictable, given the smaller and less-consistent lead of the front-runner (Giuliani), the discomfort with him among the Christian Right, and the surge of interest in Fred Thompson. If the Republicans nominate Giuliani, he'll win the general election. If they nominate anyone else, Clinton will win.

Last year I argued that it would be a bad idea for Hillary Clinton to become President; she is too polarizing a figure, and with both Houses also held by Democrats, the right would be totally shut out of the federal government -- a situation as unhealthy as that which prevailed during 2000-2006, when the left was totally shut out.

But it's now the right themselves who will determine whether this argument has validity. If the Republicans nominate Giuliani, it will be a sign that the right has accepted secularism and prefers to emphasize the area where it has the most to contribute -- strength in the fight against Islamic imperialism. If they nominate any of their other serious candidates, it will signal that they still cling to their vision of a Christianized America where government policy on abortion, stem-cell research, homosexuality, and personal freedom in general will be determined by ancient religious taboos and dogmas. The choice is theirs. If they opt for the latter course, a few years of total exclusion from power might actually be the only thing that can shock them back into the real world.

Audience appeal vs. the moralists

Chris Bradley has some interesting observations about the Hayes code and women in the movies.

Ron Paul

Two bloggers I read, Andrew Sullivan and Joshua Minton, have been calling attention to Ron Paul's longshot candidacy for the Republican Presidential nomination, so I decided to take a look at his website. Clicking on "Issues", the first thing I saw was this:

Congressman Ron Paul (R-Texas) is the leading advocate for freedom in our nation’s capital. As a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Dr. Paul tirelessly works for limited constitu-tional government, low taxes, free markets, and a return to sound monetary policies.

Scrolling down for positions on specific issues, I next saw this:

The right of an innocent, unborn child to life is at the heart of the American ideals of liberty. My professional and legislative record demonstrates my strong commitment to this pro-life principle..... I have authored legislation that seeks to define life as beginning at conception, HR 1094.....Many talk about being pro-life. I have taken direct action to restore protection for the unborn.

Sorry, but if he favors legislation to limit the right to abortion, he is not by any stretch of the imagination an "advocate for freedom".

Dividing the nation

I've written before about how any serious intrusion of religion into politics threatens both technological progress and individual freedom. But even the apparently milder forms of establishment of religion pose a subtler danger -- the risk of creating a category of second-class citizens, a situation where some Americans are a little less American than others.

The endless conflicts about whether crosses and nativity scenes and the Ten Commandments should be displayed on government property are far more than mere arguments about what kind of kitsch is appropriate where. Symbols are, well, symbolic -- they have a significance far beyond themselves. The hammer-and-sickle logo displayed on government buildings and official documents in the Soviet Union did not just mean that its rulers were interested in nails and wheat; it meant that the state supported and identified with a specific ideology, privileging it above other ideologies. The presence of that symbol, and its disappearance from such settings after 1991, both sent clear messages about the official identity of the whole society.

Just as the hammer and sickle in official settings proclaimed the Soviet Union to be a Communist state, as opposed to one in which Communism was merely one of a number of accepted ideologies, so Christian symbols in official settings in the United States (if they became as pervasive as their proponents hope) would inexorably assert that our country was a Christian nation, one in which Christianity had a privileged connection with national identity which other religions would not have.

What would be wrong with that, some might ask? Isn't it simply a fact that Christians are the majority of the population (even if not so overwhelming a majority as we are usually told)? And isn't it simply a fact that the United States is part of Western civilization, a civilization whose history was influenced far more strongly by Christianity than by Buddhism or Zoroastrianism or whatever?

To see more clearly what is wrong with this, try to imagine that that there were a drive under way to lace official settings with symbols representing the white race, with the aim being to assert the identity of the United States as a "white nation". No one would accept the claim that this was merely an innocuous recognition of the fact that white people are a statistical majority of the US population, or that our society is part of Western civilization which was built mostly by white people. It would immediately be seen for what it would in fact be: an effort to make non-white Americans feel that they were second-class citizens, that the state was not really theirs, that they were a little less American than the majority.

That's why I can never accept displays of superficially-innocuous Christian symbols on government property, or inscriptions of the Ten Commandments in the courtrooms where the laws of the state are interpreted. These symbols have meaning. Their meaning is that I and millions of other Americans are second-class citizens, that the state belongs primarily to a defined category of people of which I am not a member, that I am not quite as American as they are.

The Russians banished this kind of ideological branding of the state from their country sixteen years ago. Let's not allow the fundamentalists to take our own country in the opposite direction.

Note: this posting is a contribution to the July 2007 Blogswarm against Theocracy project. For other contributions and more information, see here. Also recommended is First Freedom First, an organization dedicated to separation of church and state.

The new wave of atheism in America

Is it possible that "unbelievers" actually make up as much as one-fourth of the US population? That's what this essay argues, based on analysis of several surveys of religious belief.

Atheism has recently won new prominence and respectability in our country due to the fiery and popular books of Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens, and Dennett. But even before that, it may actually have been much more widespread than most people imagine. This is certainly the case among the most educated:

After all, unbelievers are concentrated at the higher end of the educational scale--a recent Harris American poll shows that 31 percent of those with postgraduate education do not avow belief in God (compared with only 14 percent of those with a high school education or less). The percentage rises among professors and then again among professors at research universities, reaching 93 percent among members of the National Academy of Sciences. Unbelievers are to be found concentrated among those whose professional lives emphasize science or rationality and who also have developed a relatively high level of confidence in their own intellectual faculties. And they are frequently teachers or opinion-makers.

The essay argues that the time is ripe for a coalition of unbelievers and secular, non-fundamentalist believers who are equally fed up with the Christian Right and its excessive influence over national politics. The latter have more in common with the former than they do with the extremists. Together we can restore the secular character both of the government and of society.

Giuliani shifting on abortion

In this posting, I expressed doubt about Rudy Giuliani due to his apparent willingness to countenance an erosion, albeit very marginal, of abortion rights. I'm not the only one who has been put off by Giuliani's efforts to straddle the issue; his position so far has apparently been that he favors the right to abortion, but "hates" it and would appoint "strict constructionist" Supreme Court judges (inviting rightists to take this as meaning judges who would endanger Roe vs. Wade, though in fact his wording is open to broader interpretation). Since Supreme Court appointments are the main way in which a President can influence abortion policy, there seems little point in having a pro-choice President if his judge appointments will not reflect his views. Giuliani's ambiguous position has merely succeeded in arousing suspicions among pro-choicers, while not making him much more acceptable to the hard-line fundamentalists who make abortion a litmus test -- that is, it puts him in a worse position than if he committed himself clearly to one side or the other.

Apparently realizing this, Giuliani now appears ready to ditch the studied ambiguity and come out forthrightly for what everyone knows is his real position. The assumption is that this will alienate few Christian Right voters who were not alienated already, while solidifying his appeal to secular Republicans -- and of course to centrist and liberal voters in the general election. The risks of this stance are reduced by the fact that several large states such as California and New York have moved their primaries early in 2008, reducing the importance of the activist-dominated contests in Iowa and New Hampshire. Anti-abortion views remain a major factor among Republicans (according to the New York Times article, "41 percent of Republicans thought abortions should be prohibited, compared with 23 percent of Americans in general; in addition, 53 percent of Republicans said they wanted a Republican presidential nominee who would make abortions more difficult to get"), but their terror of a Democratic Presidency has made electability an even more critical issue; the fear that "a vote for Romney/Thompson/Brownback is a vote for President Hillary" may trump all other concerns.

This response by Pat Buchanan expresses the betrayal felt by the hard core of the Christian Right. It is striking, however, that he raises the specter of a foreign entity meddling in the American electoral process against Giuliani -- "the Vatican will not be silent" -- as if this were something Giuliani should fear. The Catholic hierarchy's moral authority in the US has been hugely damaged by the child-molestation scandals, and American Catholics largely disregard the Vatican's fulminations about other issues such as contraception. I doubt that Giuliani is trembling at the prospect of the Pope telling Americans not to vote for him -- any American who would be swayed by such a pronouncement probably would not have voted for him anyway.

But I expect the Christian Right to grow steadily more agitated over Giuliani. After all, if a pro-choice candidate becomes the Republican Presidential nominee and wins the election, then the anti-abortion position is very likely to become permanently marginalized in American politics -- and the Christian Right with it, since it is their signature issue. Their power depends on the claim that Republicans cannot hope to win national elections without their support. If that claim is demonstrated to be false, it's a whole new ball game.

Hypocrites

Many who seek to deny choice for others still demand it for themselves.

Penn & Teller on gun control

A great video dissertation. Note: some obscene language.