Lucky for you, the U.S. is not a Christian nation

In the United States, we’re supposed to have a strict separation of Church and state.  Our founding fathers specifically established our country as a secular nation that was neutral on religion. The very first part of the first amendment reads, ‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.’ No where else in the Constitution (our system of laws) is religion mentioned (artfully crafted messages to King George don’t count).

In other words, the government is not allowed to tell us how or when to worship.

Nonetheless, some people wish the United States were not a secular nation. They’d like the U.S. to adopt a national religion, which they think will be theirs. I say, let’s play along. 

If we’re going to establish a state religion, the obvious question is: which religion should it be? Traditionally, that answer was ‘whatever the leader’s religion happens to be’. However, we live in a democracy so perhaps it should be majority rule. Fair enough.

At first glance, it may seem as if the majority of citizens would welcome the United States officially adopting the Christian religion. According to the latest data by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, that group makes up 78% of the populace, if you count all Protestants, Catholics, Mormons and their offshoots. However, the dissimilarities between those groups is so great that it would be meaningless to lump them together. We're going to have to be a little more specific if we expect our citizens to follow any particular set of laws. 

Within Christianity, the largest religious affiliation is Protestant (44%). Great, we’re all Protestants. Of course, different Protestant denominations have quite different rules. I mean, do we all have to speak in tongues like the Pentecostals? Can we not go to the doctor like Christian Scientists? Do we have to be pacifists like Quakers? Or what about one of the other two dozen Protestant denominations? They disagree on some pretty fundamental things, like whether gay people can be ministers, whether you can shop on Sunday and whether your faith requires you to handle venomous snakes. Maybe we need to look at the biggest subgroup within Protestantism and go with that. That means we all get to be Baptists (11%). I hope nobody minds that we will no longer be baptizing infants.

Except, hold on a minute, if we’re no longer considering all Protestants as one block, that gives Catholics (24%) a considerable lead. In fact, even the unaffiliated (atheist, agnostic and ‘nothing in particular’-16%) outnumber the Baptists. Since we said we’d go with majority rule, I guess the United States will be a Catholic country. Evolution and cosmology are in, contraceptives and divorce are out. 

The 76% of the country who aren’t Catholic probably aren’t going to be too happy about this, and I suspect that a fair number of people who are Catholic won’t be that excited about it either, once the government starts enforcing Catholic dogma. But there’s one thing I do know. Religious people will find the new regime a lot more oppressive than we atheists will. 

Don’t forget, once the government establishes a religion, all citizens would be expected to follow that religion. If that’s not the one that you happen to adhere to, you could be in big trouble. Face the consequences of the state for failing to obey their religious laws, or face the consequences set forth by your particular religion.

Even if we went with majority rule, at least three quarters of the country would be deeply unhappy with any particular set of enforced dogma. The fact that there are so many factions within each denomination (which I didn’t even address) suggests that only a tiny minority of people would actually agree with any particular state religion.

As an atheist, I may consider being forced to attend Mass to be a nuisance and a waste of time, but I won’t lose any sleep over it. Depending on the penalties, I may even choose to lie and pretend that I find the rituals meaningful. Again, it’s no more than an annoyance to me. If you’re forced to practice a religion that you strongly believe will result in divine retribution against you or your loved ones, can you say the same?

The great thing is that, thanks to the wisdom of our founding fathers, we don’t have to have these battles of conscience. As long as the government is secular, we can all practice our own religions as we see fit. Once again, neutrality means we all win.

Worst state in the union to be a young woman

It’s a close race, but right now, the winner of the ‘Worst state in the union to be a young woman’ is…. Ohio!

I know, you thought it was going to be Kansas, North Dakota, or possibly Texas, thanks to Rick Perry’s recent shenanigans. Yes, those states put up good fights, but when you see what kind of anti-woman legislature Ohio has recently passed, I think you’ll agree that Ohio is the clear winner. Here’s what they now have:

Medically unnecessary vaginal ultrasounds. I know what you’re thinking. These days, lots of states force women to have ultrasound wands inserted into their vaginas for no medical reason. Nothing special about that insult to women’s autonomy or to medical personnel’s integrity. Fair enough. Let’s move on.

Doctors must lie to women. In Ohio, doctors must lie to women about whether abortions cause breast cancer (they don’t), whether fetuses feel pain (not at the developmental stages cited), whether abortions increase the risk of infertility (again, nope), and whether abortions are medically risky (if performed legally sans coat hanger, they’re much less so than giving birth). Women would have to wait 48 hours to mull over all that misinformation before getting an abortion.

People pretending to be doctors must lie to women. Cuts to Planned Parenthood mean that many women in Ohio will no longer have access to cancer screenings, contraceptives, and other health services. But good news, money will be available for religious zealots to dress up as doctors and give women anti-abortion propaganda. Besides giving women the kind of false medical information I mentioned above, these ‘Crisis Pregnancy Centers’ also mislead women about how and where to get legal abortions in the hopes that by the time the women figure out the ruse it’s too late. 

Again, these sorts of deceptive practices are by no means unique to Ohio. But don’t worry, there’s more.

TRAP laws. Some states have used Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers (TRAP) laws to force their abortion clinics to close. An example of this is a law that requires clinics that provide abortions to have doorways that are least an inch wider than whatever size they were when the anti-abortion inspectors came to call. You can imagine that most of these clinics cannot afford to remodel their rooms and hallways to comply with these medically useless laws. Some states only have a single abortion clinic left in the entire state, and laws like this may force even that one to close, effectively outlawing abortion in those states.

Here’s where Ohio really wins this season’s War-On-Women trophy. Ohio passed legislation requiring clinics that perform abortions to have emergency transfer agreements with hospitals. They also banned public hospitals from having such transfer agreements. Yes, you read that right. To run a legal abortion clinic in Ohio, you must have a transfer agreement with a private hospital, which don’t even exist in many parts of the state. Not to mention the fact that private hospitals are often religious and are likely to refuse such an arrangement.

If you are having an abortion and something goes horribly wrong, you can’t be transferred to a public hospital. You’d better hope you’re near a private hospital that won’t choose to let you die on its doorstep. This new law is courtesy of a group of people who like to call themselves ‘pro-life’.

So congratulations, Ohio, on being the worst place in America to raise daughters. And for everyone who lives there, I hope you’ll keep all this in mind come election time.

You don't actually have all the time in the world

A female friend of mine in her late twenties recently wrote a blog post pondering the question of when to have children. That is clearly a deeply personal choice that each woman or couple must decide for themselves. So, naturally, I'm going to weigh in. I’m going to tell her the same thing I ignored when I was in my twenties. If you’re a woman, you don’t actually have all the time in the world. 

My husband and I found out the hard way that I was infertile when we were both 27 years old. We did manage to have a child three years later, but it was not easy or cheap. Granted, most women do not experience infertility as early as I did. Nevertheless, age-related infertility is not a myth perpetuated by the male patriarchy. It’s real. A woman in her twenties who is actively trying to get pregnant will have a monthly success rate of up to 25%. By the time she’s 35, that rate is down to 10%. Meanwhile, her miscarriage rate will have more than doubled and her risk of having a child with Down syndrome nearly quadrupled. Once you hit 40, you’re almost certainly going to need the help of fertility specialists to have a child and they’re probably going to recommend that you consider using eggs that are donated from another (much younger) woman, aka ‘adoption in utero’*.

The moral of this story is that, no matter how much you moisturize or exercise, as far as your ovaries are concerned, forty is not the new thirty. 

Unless in your specific case, it is. 

And that’s what makes these kinds of decisions so difficult. Even if you have a family history of either infertility or late-in-life pregnancy, there are no guarantees. So what’s a woman to do? Start trying to conceive before they’re emotionally or financially ready for a child, something we’ve been telling them since they were little girls is a terrible idea, or wait until the perfect moment when their relationships and careers converge, something which might never happen?

This blog post is sounding very bitter, and I don’t mean it to be. My husband and I are very happy with the way our lives have turned out. However, my experience does make it hard to know what to tell young women who are considering the question of when to have children. Common sense tells me to say ‘don’t start too soon and have a child you’re not ready for, or worse yet harbor regrets about paths not chosen and pleasures not sampled.’ But biological sense implores me to say ‘don’t wait too long and find out that it’s already too late.’ 

*There’s also ‘regular’ adoption which, like donor eggs, can be used by women of any age. Women who don’t mind considering these options obviously have more time to play with.

What is the real point of abstinence only sex education?

You might argue that abstinence only sex education is meant to prevent teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). I submit that if you did so, you would be wrong. I contend that the actual purpose of abstinence only sex education is to shame and control young people by teaching them to despise themselves for having normal human emotions and experiences.

To begin with, abstinence only sex education is an abysmal failure at preventing either pregnancy or STDs. States that insist on using abstinence only sex education have higher rates of teen pregnancy than states that offer comprehensive sex education. A 2011 study conducted by researchers from the University of Georgia found that “increasing emphasis on abstinence education is positively correlated with teenage pregnancy and birth rates”. In addition, abstinence only sex education does not prevent the spread of STDs or delay sexual initiation for any meaningful amount of time.

That’s because kids who are subjected to abstinence only sex education don’t actually learn anything about sex. Being human, sooner or later they’re going to have sex and when they do they won’t know the first thing about preventing STDs or pregnancy. Abstinence only sex education programs actually teach false and misleading information.

Students are taught that condoms have a 14% failure rate (it’s actually 2-3% with proper usage), and that condoms don’t prevent the spread of HIV or other STDs (completely false). 

Does this sound like useful information? 

In short, abstinence only sex education increases rather than decreases teen pregnancy, does not reduce STDs or sexual activity and provides kids with false and dangerous propaganda. Why would anyone sanction a program that was such an unmitigated disaster? Because it is effective at its true mission.

Here are a few things Pam Stenzel, an abstinence only sex education spokeswoman who regularly gives lectures to high school students, tells her captive teenage audience:

If you take birth control, your mother probably hates you.

No one has ever had more than one [sexual] partner and not paid.

I could look at any one of you in the eyes right now and tell if you’re going to be promiscuous. 

In other words, abstinence only sex education is used to personally attack and shame young people. If that doesn’t turn your stomach, consider the story of Elizabeth Smart. 

Smart was abducted from her Salt Lake City home in 2002 when she was only 14 years old. Against all odds, she was discovered alive nine months later and reunited with her joyous family. She subsequently revealed that during her captivity, she did not take advantage of opportunities to escape. Why not? Smart credits abstinence only sex education:

I thought, ‘Oh, my gosh, I’m that chewed up piece of gum, nobody re-chews a piece of gum, you throw it away.’ And that’s how easy it is to feel like you no longer have worth, you no longer have value. Why would it even be worth screaming out? Why would it even make a difference if you are rescued? Your life still has no value.

Think about that for a moment. A fourteen year old girl is kidnapped and decides that no one will want her back because she was raped by her captors. That's the lesson she learned from abstinence only sex education.*

In summary, abstinence only sex education doesn’t work unless it’s intended purpose is to make girls feel dirty and worthless. In that case, its been a big success.

*Elizabeth Smart now runs a Foundation to help protect and educate children about sex crimes. She teaches children that "you will always have value and nothing can change that."

Climate change: it's past time to accept the science

I’ve written about this issue over at my science blog. For more background, check out Global warming is real and Human-caused climate change--Now even realer.

To summarize the data, virtually anyone who knows anything about climate agrees that global warming is real and that it’s caused by humans. Most of those people also agree that it’s going to be terrible. A large fraction of the human population is going to suffer and die, thanks to our inaction on this issue. Yet, nearly half the population of the United States does not know that this is settled science because our politicians and pundits have been misleading people to think there’s still some controversy over the issue. Nothing could be further from the truth.

One reason people remain skeptical of global warming is because of something that happened four years ago. In 2009, 1000's of private emails were hacked (i.e. obtained illegally) from climatologists at the University of East Anglia. The emails included suspicious phrases like: 

I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (i.e. from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline. 

In what became known as ‘Climategate’, the denialists pounced on this and other comments as proof that the scientists were altering their data to make it look like the climate was changing when it wasn’t. 

Unfortunately, the public didn't get the memos completely debunking the allegations. For example, ‘trick’ is shorthand for 'mathematical technique' (am I committing fraud if I use the ‘trick’ of adding all the digits in a number to see if it’s divisible by nine?) and in this case ‘decline’ was referring to tree rings not temperature. Remember, these were private emails between colleagues. Like people in any business or community, climatologists use jargon and terminology when talking amongst themselves.

But don’t take my word for it. Six independent investigations have cleared all the scientists involved of any wrongdoing. And even if some data had been fudged (again, none was), that wouldn’t change the overwhelming amount of evidence that human-caused global warming is a fact.

If we’re talking about unethical practices, what’s more likely, that a small fraction of the scientific community was bought off by 'Big Oil & Coal' to say that things are fine the way they are, or that the vast majority of climatologists were bought off by… what, 'Big Academia'? To make false reports that won’t earn them an extra dime and will probably result in getting them humiliated and fired? Or by 'Big Clean Energy', so the government will increase their energy subsidies all the way to 20% of the amount given to the fossil fuel industries? What exactly would anyone have to gain by pretending that global warming was real?

Who are you going to believe? Politicians or your lying eyes?

I’m not saying that the few holdouts from accepting anthropomorphic global warming are lying. I’m sure they’re convinced that they are correct. I am saying that their financial incentive to retain that position is much stronger than any incentives the rest of the scientific community could have for accepting climate change.

Now to the last part of my title. One argument that people make goes something like this, ‘OK, climate change is real and we’re the cause, but will it really be all that bad?” I guess the answer depends on who you are and where you live. I attended a conference last year where one of the speakers, who was a climate change denialist, said that if he turned out to be wrong, he would just build a retaining wall around his house. How convenient for him. The people of Newtok Alaska, low-lying Pacific Islands and Bangladesh aren’t going to have that luxury. Instead, they have the privilege of being among the first climate change refugees. They won't be the only ones to feel the effects of global warming though.



2013 CoreLogic Storm Surge report

Here's something else to think about. CO2 levels haven't been this high for several million years. That means that our species has never experienced this type of climate. 

If it isn’t already too late, and there’s some debate over this, anything we do from now on to fight the effects of climate change will be far more expensive than they would have been if we hadn’t been obstructed from acting for so many years. In the interim, we can also expect to pay in treasure and grief for the storms, droughts and floods that will become the new normal. Greg Laden provides an interesting approximation of what our planet might look like in 300 years if we do nothing: 

It's time for us all to demand action from our leaders on climate change. If you prefer to be part of the solution, here’s a good place to get started. And after all, what's the downside to taking action?

Things that kill more people than guns and why I don’t care

I find it particularly irritating when people make the argument, ‘X kills more people than guns, but no one tries to take X away from people.’ Invariably, those comparisons are completely ridiculous.  Let’s visit a few examples of ‘X’ and see why.

Cars
It is a fact that more people are killed in automobile accidents than through gun violence, though the difference isn’t as great as you might think, especially considering the daily per capita use of cars versus the daily per capita use of guns. However, there are two important facts to consider. First, people need their cars to conduct their daily business. That just isn’t the case for guns, no matter how fond of them people are. Second, being well aware of the dangers posed by cars, we license and regulate both cars and drivers. We insist that car manufacturers continually increase safety features, both through regulation and through the free market. If you want to treat guns the same way, I would be all for it.

Swimming pools
Swimming pools do take the lives of more children than guns do. Fair enough. However, swimming pools are also stationary objects that can be avoided. I have never once worried that someone would bring a swimming pool to my child’s school. Nor have I ever glanced suspiciously around a crowd to see if anyone was carrying a concealed swimming pool.

Falls
Yes, many people are killed by falls. Definitely exercise caution the next time you change the bulbs in your chandeliers. But rest assured, you are safe from people trying to force step ladders under your feet at the mall.

Medical errors (taking wrong medication, malpractice, surgical errors, etc.)
Yup, this is a huge problem that we should work to minimize. It’s not one I worry about when I’m at the movie theater though. The person next to me may be loud and obnoxious, but he’s not slipping insulin into my popcorn or trying to amputate the wrong limb.

Cancer
Yes, I’ve actually heard a person make the ‘X kills more people than guns do!’ argument about cancer. Okay, you got me. Cancer does kill more people than guns. Is that supposed to mean that it’s not fair to ban guns if we’re not going to also ban cancer? Besides, doctors and scientists around the world are working day and night to cure, prevent and eliminate cancer. Are you suggesting we treat guns the same way?  I’m still waiting to hear someone say, ‘instead of limiting guns, why don’t we ban old age!’

Knives, hammers, baseball clubs, fists, spatulas, etc.
These items shouldn’t even be on this list because they kill no where near as many people as guns do, no matter what nonsensical rhetoric you hear. There have been at least two mass knifings since Newtown, and no one died in either of those cases. In contrast, there have been over five thousand gun deaths just since last December. If you can stomach checking it, Slate is keeping a running tally.

Did you notice something all these items have in common? 

First, with the exception of cancer, everything on this list has a primary use that is completely unrelated to violence. People don’t buy ladders with the idea that they might one day have to shove someone off of one. They buy cars and screwdrivers and even medication because they expect to use them to go somewhere, or build a cabinet, or lower their blood pressure. That isn’t the case for guns, which are constructed specifically to inflict harm, be it on an animal or a human. 

Second, most of these items are no threat whatsoever in the public square. They will not follow me into the grocery store, they won’t make an appearance at a political rally, and they won’t confront me at the playground. If I’m not taking any medication, I’m in no danger from your bottle of pills.

The point isn’t that guns are the most dangerous things on Earth. The point is that guns are dangerous objects that no one needs except for the express purpose of making things more dangerous for themselves and others. Comparing them to other dangerous objects is disingenuous if not absurd.

Actually, I do kind of care that the government is spying on me

The National Security Agency (NSA) says they had a court warrant to collect the ‘metadata’ (times, phone numbers, duration and frequency) of phone calls from all Verizon, AT&T and Sprint customers, over 250 million Americans. The NSA also has access to all kinds of online content (email, web searches, file transfer, live chats, etc.) directly from the servers of Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube and Apple.  None of this is under dispute, despite some weak denials. Who you call, what websites you visit, everything you say online (except through Twitter, which so far hasn’t cooperated) is being recorded.

I’m not going to address the questions of whether Edward Snowden was a hero or a traitor for letting the rest of us know that this was going on, or whether the NSA was within its legal rights to collect this kind of information. I don’t claim to be an expert on either constitutional law or whistleblowing. I’m also going to leave aside the question of whether this kind of spying is effective.

I do, however, have an opinion about how much we should care about any of this. I think we should care a lot.

I’ve heard people argue that they don’t mind the NSA spying on them because they’ve never done anything wrong. Maybe not, but are you sure you’ve never done anything that could be misconstrued? You’ve never sent an email that you later regretted? Or posted an inappropriate comment on Facebook? We all have enough ‘stuff’ out there on the internet that anyone wanting to put together a negative portfolio of us could easily do so. That’s why the police aren’t allowed to indiscriminately search your house for no reason. A thorough enough fishing expedition is bound to turn up something, especially if every piece of data can be saved for a ‘rainy day’, like when your political opponent wants to discredit you.

I’ve also heard people say that the sheer volume of data is itself protective. 'The government can’t possibly sift my data out of the haystack of online information.' If that’s true today, it certainly won’t be within a few years. We will have the capacity to record, store and retrieve any particular piece of information about anyone. Of that I have no doubt.

Okay, the truth is that the vast majority of Americans will never notice nor care a day in their lives whether the NSA or any other government agency is collecting data on them. I’m not really worried about the government showing up at my door, and I’m certainly not afraid to post this blog, even though I’m using Apple, Google and Facebook to do so. However, if you think your online life doesn’t connect in any meaningful way to your real life, think about this. Snowden was tracked to his Hong Kong hotel by twitter users identifying the lighting and furnishings in the background of his video (though he had already checked out by then). Anyone looking through our online information can find out anything he wants about us.