Rosenau jumps on the Gnu Atheists = Teabaggers bandwagon

There was a time when Josh Rosenau was one of the more reasonable of the anti-gnu brigade. He would occasional make a point I felt was worth listening to and contemplating. But some time in the last year or so, he went completely off the deep end. His latest stunt: He has bought into the absurd comparison between New Atheism and the Tea Party. His justification? Tea Partiers (some of them) say that Obama is a secret Muslim; Jerry Coyne says that Obama is a secret atheist.

Where to begin? On a superficial level, this sounds like a convincing analogy, but just the tiniest iota of honest reflection shows it to be a completely ludicrous comparison.

Now, I need to start off by saying I disagree with Coyne on this one. I think the preponderance of evidence suggests that Obama is sincere in his Christianity (though I do think he considers the literal truth or falsity of it to be irrelevant) and in any case, we ought to respect people's self-identification unless it is clearly erroneous. Obama says he's a Christian; that makes him a Christian. If it turned out the Pope didn't believe in God, would that mean bears didn't shit in the woods?

With that out of the way, let's look at a few things here. Let's start with motivation, because that's the easiest one: Coyne is nominally attempting to discern the truth, and if we dig a little deeper we see he is probably being optimistic. He wishes Obama was an atheist, because a) he thinks an atheist president would do a better job, and possibly b) he admires Obama and so wants to view Obama as part of his tribe. Now, I'm speculating about Jerry's internal subconscious motivations here, and I could be way off -- but the point is, we see that at worst Jerry is being irrationally optimistic. There is certainly nothing nefarious in Coyne's intentions, of that we can be sure.

Contrast this with the Tea Party. It is plainly obvious they are painting Obama as a Muslim in an effort to discredit him. Do we really think there are Tea Partiers saying, "Yeah, it doesn't effect Obama's ability to do his job, but I do think he is secretly a Muslim"? Come on... On a side note, if we imagine a hypothetical devotee of Islam who speculates positively that Obama might be a secret Muslim, while that would obviously be pretty irrational, it's not the kind of attempted slander being perpetrated by the Tea Party. There's a big difference between saying, "I bet this guy is secretly on my team," vs. "Look out, that guy is secretly on the other team!"

Next let's look at what is being claimed. It is a feature of Tea Party conspiracy theories about Obama that he is not only secretly a Muslim, but that he is doing so in an attempt to covertly usher in Islamic influences to American politics -- even that he is seeking to "destroy America". In contrast, Coyne is speculating that Obama is a secret atheist who nevertheless approves of faith, and is simply concealing his unbelief in order to avert prejudice against him. Again, if we imagine our hypothetical Muslim who claimed that Obama was secretly a moderate believer in Islam, that he nonetheless approved of Christianity and other faiths, and that he simply had to hide his true faith in order to maintain electability... well, that's a little crazy maybe, but it does not merit comparison with the Tea Party.

Lastly, let's look at plausibility. Now, I am inclined to take any given politician at her word regarding her faith. But does Rosenau really think there are no closet atheists in American politics?!? That we have never had a congressperson (or even a president! It's a virtually certainly we have) who privately found religious belief to be logically untenable, but kept it to himself anyway? I think it's a safe bet that there are a number of secret atheists in Congress, and at all levels of politics. We know there are plenty of ordinary folks, people who aren't even in the public eye, who have to conceal their atheism from their employer. Why would it be remarkable if the president happened to be one of those people?

We also know that plenty of churchgoers are secretly atheists. (Fuck, thanks to Dennett and LaScola, we know that plenty of clergy are secretly atheists) Many of these people aren't even hiding their atheism out of fear or anything: They appreciate the communal and ritual aspects of their chosen church, but find true belief to be a fanciful and unlikely position. These people are all over the place.

Now, I must reiterate here that I think Obama is sincere in his faith; reading Dreams from My Father gave me the impression that while Obama was initially drawn to Christianity for the potential of black churches to organize community activism, that he soon became so enamored with the whole thing that he ceased to care about the validity of the truth claims and was willing to swallow the dogma along with the community whole hog. However, the fact that Obama goes to church is not evidence that he couldn't possibly be an atheist. Quite the contrary, it says very little -- especially for someone who has admitted that he joined initially for political reasons, and especially for someone whose employment, and possibly whose very life, would be in danger if he were to come out as a nonbeliever. While I do not believe it to be the case, it is entirely plausible that Obama might have attended Christian churches for decades and publicly professed Christian faith, while all the time being an atheist.

Is it just possible that Obama did all those things while secretly adhering to Islam? Well, I guess, but it seems far less plausible. For one, it's not hard to imagine an atheist publicly praying to Jesus and not feeling as though she is doing anything wrong. It's more difficult to imagine a devout Muslim doing the same thing and feeling like that was okay, that it was not a betrayal of his values. (And if the Muslim in question is not unflaggingly devout, why would he maintain his faith intact through decades of immersion in a different faith community?) For another, when Obama first became involved with Christian churches in Chicago, if he had really been a Muslim at the time it seems somewhat more likely that he would have sought out members of that faith community for the purpose of grassroots organizing. I suppose it's just possible that this very young and politically raw Obama had the foresight and the cold calculating nature to recognize that black Christian churches were a more fertile field for organization, and so to have hid his Muslim faith in order to mine that community... Yes, this is all possible, but it's far more of a stretch than Coyne's rather modest suggestion that he chose to embrace this community despite a disbelief in their central truth claims and dogmas.

So let's check our scorecard: The Tea Partiers' claims that Obama is a secret Muslim are malicious, conspiratorial, and implausible. Jerry Coyne's claim that Obama is a secret atheist is benign or optimistic, matter-of-fact, and (although unlikely in my opinion) at least baseline plausible. The only thing the two have in common is they probably aren't the most rational position.

Rosenau is engaging in a rather sick, twisted, and frankly obvious bit of false equivalence here. The only question is whether he is doing so intentionally and dishonestly, or if he really is that much of a fucking idiot.

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Why I eschew the use of the phrase "pyramid scheme"

"It's not a pyramid scheme, it's multi-level marketing!"

Leaving aside for a moment the fact that I've never really heard the difference articulated in a way that I understand, if proponents of MLM feel that the label "pyramid scheme" unfairly tars them, I am perfectly happy to criticize MLM on its own merits (or lack thereof). Telling someone that their MLM endeavor is nothing more than a pyramid scheme distracts from the central issue by allowing them to protest ad hominem. I prefer to avoid the terminology dispute altogether: Make "MLM" the dirty word, and leave the antiquated phrase "pyramid scheme" in the dustbin of history.

MLM induces people to take business risks they are often not fully cognizant of, it tends to turn people into annoying evangelists for their product and encourages them to exploit their friendships for the purposes of making money (even if the exploitation is not often conscious), and it almost always results in crappy products.

The reason for the last point, in my opinion, is that with MLM the business model is the primary product. Individual profit incentives focus on selling the business model, whereas the nominal product is secondary, a placeholder. I had to say "almost always" in the previous paragraph, because I am told Avon products are pretty good - but the vast majority of everything I've ever seen sold via MLM has been utter shite.

A friend recently spammed all of his Facebook friends to try and recruit them for Herbalife. Blech. I don't want to say anything (see my Three Rules for Facebook for why I believe in basically never calling someone out on Facebook) but man, that's annoying. Why do people do that crap?

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Strawman much?

I think I just encountered the most strawman-ish description of New Atheism ever in this inflammatory post from Jacques Berlinerblau:

For those not familiar with their world-view, let me help you understand their central and timeless insight: Unless you as an atheist are willing to disparage all religious people, describe them all as imbeciles and creeps, mock every text and thinker they have ever produced, then you must be some sort of deluded, self-hating, sellout, subverting the rise of the Mighty Atheist Political Juggernaut...

Emphasis in the absurd original.

I stopped reading right there, because, WOW, that's the worst description of such I have ever seen. I did skim down to the end where he admits never having debated with a New Atheist -- but of course that doesn't stop him from pronouncing himself an expert on their positions! Dumbass...

(h/t Ophelia Benson)

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Revisiting "strong" vs. "weak" accomodationism

When I set up an RSS reader for my new phone, I added Phil Plait's blog. I've been enjoying it quite a bit. Reading an article right now about the accelerating expansion of the universe -- cool stuff.

Phil Plait's got a little bit of a bad name in the gnu community at the moment, because of his infamous Don't Be a Dick speech, but I think it's unfair to lump him in with the likes of Mooney, Rosenau, and Ruse. The reason is related to a post I did a while back on the difference between "strong" and "weak" accomodationism.

In a nutshell, a "weak" accomodationist prefers an approach of reconciliation between science and religion, often asserting that faith and reason are perfectly compatible. This describes people like Eugenie Scott, who has advocated for faith/science compatibility as part of her job as executive director of the NCSE. A "strong" accomodationist not only prefers this approach, but thinks anybody who doesn't is Not Helping and should STFU. This describes your Mooneys and your Rosenaus, who constantly denigrate the gnus. The former don't bother me; the latter are annoying as all get-out. (FWIW, I think some of the gnus spend a bit too much of their time tackling the accomodationists -- Jerry Coyne's blog is one of my favorites, but he pushes it sometimes, for instance -- so it's not a problem restricted fully to the other side.)

Despite the DBAD speech, I think Plait clearly belongs in the former category. Now, the lack of specificity in that speech is problematic: I'm not actually sure whether I disagree with him or not. But let's assume for sake of argument that he meant that speech in the most anti-gnu possible interpretation. Then I would say I disagree with him, but that's okay, and since he isn't constantly writing blog posts about how stupid people like me are for disagreeing with him, I'm not all that interested in constantly writing blog posts about how stupid people like him are for disagreeing with me.

The problem with Mooney and Rosenau and Ruse is not that they have a different tactical approach. It's that they are constantly saying how destructive our approach is. I think they think the same about us, judging from comments about accomodationism being a "cardinal sin" (that was actually the 3 Quarks Daily guys, but the sentiment has been expressed by the others). Yet I think one will be hard pressed to find very many blog posts from gnus strongly condemning Genie Scott, Michael Schermer, or even Phil Plait (despite the recent noise over the aforementioned speech) -- because they have their opinion and don't seem to be bothered by the fact that other people have different opinions.

The "cardinal sin" is not asserting the compatibility of faith and science. The "cardinal sin" is asserting, even by implication, that it's not okay to proclaim their incompatibility. Because we care about open dialog -- in fact, the goal of stripping away the special deference towards religion which prevents open dialog is pretty much the defining characteristic of "New Atheism" -- assertions that seek to shut down an open dialog really piss us off. Go ahead and disagree with me about faith/science compatibility, but don't tell me I don't even have a right to my opinion or that I'm not allowed to say it in polite company.

My two cents on that.

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An update on cooking steaks

From the blog Serious Eats comes a post similar to the one I did last month on cooking steak. It largely matches what I had to say, with three important divergences, all of which sound reasonable to me:

If you haven't salted yet and are going to cook your steak in less than 40 minutes, salt it immediately before it goes in the pan. You will have to read the Serious Eats article for the technical explanation of this, but it sounds completely reasonable to me. I imagine you could mitigate the problems of late salting somewhat by thoroughly patting the steaks dry with a paper towel immediately before cooking, but I won't assert that without trying. Still, with that one important caveat, the Serious Eats post confirms my conclusion that salting well in advance is best.

The butter and oil mixture I use might not quite be the best approach. In my previous post, I repeated the claim I had heard that combining equal parts butter and oil raises the overall smoke point. Serious Eats says this is crap, because the milk solids will still burn regardless of whether they are immersed in oil or butterfat. I had wondered about this from the get go, but was inclined to believe that it really did raise the smoke point, because a) I heard it from a trusted source, and b) experientially I have gotten excellent results with a one-to-one mixture.

I suspect there is still some merit in my approach, possibly because even butter with burnt milk solids still imparts a nice toasty flavor, and the mixture with oil allows it to keep cooking at a higher temperature even as the milk proteins break down. I absolutely disagree with Serious Eats that the best approach is to only use oil, but the technique they mention of adding butter to the pan at the last minute so that it doesn't have time to burn sounds promising. I will likely try this next time I do steaks.

Serious Eats has a lot to say about flipping, whereas I didn't even mention it. When I cook a steak, I flip it only once. I'm not religious about this, and in fact I didn't even mention it in my previous post. But Serious Eats insists that you must flip your steak every 15 to 30 seconds in order to ensure a good sear while minimizing the "grey zone" of overdone steak that often appears between the crust and the pink or red interior.

Before going further, I should mention that this is probably really bad advice if you are grilling or if you have not used sufficient fat in the pan. The reason is that under those conditions the steak will tend to stick until a certain amount of sear has been achieved -- and if the crust tears off, your steak will look bad and taste bad. But with the oil-sufficient pan-searing method both I and Serious Eats endorse, at the very worst frequent flipping should be harmless. So is it actually helpful?

Maybe. I find that I get a virtually non-existent grey zone anyway, even with the one-flip method. But then again I have a nice heavy cast-iron skillet, I have a gas rather than electric range, one of the burners is extra large with an absurdly aggressive flame (it is labelled "POWER BOIL"), and I exploit all of these advantages to the fullest in order to get a really high temperature going in the pan. Not everyone may be able to achieve such a hot cook surface with their equipment, however, and the frequent flipping method seems like it should at least in principle mitigate any issues created by a somewhat lower cook temperature.

So, I cautiously endorse the frequent flipping approach, with the aforementioned caveats about grilling or pan-searing with insufficient fat. It's far more important that the steak releases fully from the cook surface than it is to minimize the grey zone, so if it's sticking at all, just leave it until it's ready.

(Edit: I looked up the post on which Serious Eats bases this advice, and their conclusion turned out to be remarkably similar to what I wrote above. I quote: "[T]his testing doesn't take into account variables like cooking at a higher or lower heat, getting nice grill marks on an outdoor grill... And for all you single flippers out there? Well, you can keep doing what you're doing and it probably won't hurt your burgers none, but lighten up a bit, will ya?" In other words, what I previously believed turned out to be largely correct: Single-flipping can produce better appearance in a grill application, surface cooking temperature affects the usefulness of multi-flipping, and in the end it really doesn't make that much of a difference after all.

I had also mentioned in passing that I sometimes stand it up on edge to sear the sides but had downplayed the importance of this, while Serious Eats is insistent on it. They mention the "edge is often the fattiest, most delicious part of the steak," which I suppose is true depending on the cut, and when that is true making sure to get a sear on that and render some of the fat would indeed be important. So I buy all that, too.

On a side note, the Serious Eats post mentions that searing, contrary to popular belief, does not seal in moisture. They are absolutely correct. However, a properly seared piece of meat still tastes moister, because the complex molecules generated by the Maillard reaction cause you to salivate more. The only time that this knowledge has any practical value is when roasting. Some recipes for roasting have you start with a very hot oven to get a good crust (or crisp the skin in the case of roast bird) and then reduce the temperature, while others have you start with a moderate temperature and then crank it up at the end to get the crust/crisp effect. It doesn't actually matter which you do; those who advocate the former method on the grounds that it seals in moisture are just plain wrong. The latter method probably has some modest advantages in that it is easier to avoid burning the exterior of whatever you are roasting, but in practice I don't think it matters that much. I have used both methods and don't find that one is tremendously better than the other. (Edit: Serious Eats makes a convincing case that it matters a lot in the case of prime rib.)

There is one more thing I should mention which was covered in the Serious Eats article, but regrettably overlooked in mine: How do you tell when it's done? I had mentioned a couple of times that you take it out of the pan as soon as you have a good sear, and I more or less stand by that, but having some way to gauge doneness is important too. I'm afraid I overlooked this point because over time I've gotten pretty good at just telling doneness by feel -- somewhat ironically, my most important practice for this was from a summer job as a fry cook at the rather crappy family restaurant chain Perkins, where, despite the steaks I churned out being of relatively low quality and not cooked all that skillfully, the sheer number I cooked, and the time pressure which precluded any more involved investigative methods, helped me to hone this skill -- so I don't tend to consciously think about this issue very much. My bad.

Serious Eats' coverage of this topic is both fascinating (I would never have guessed the cut-and-peek method did so little harm to the steak!) and apparently sound. One very brief point I have to make: In the end, they endorse the use of a "good, accurate digital thermometer." My response to this is "Yes, but" -- yes, if you are willing to shell out the cash, a good digital thermometer is the best method for determining internal temperature; but if you intend to cheap out, as I did (twice), an inexpensive analog thermometer is superior to a poor quality digital thermometer. I used to own the latter and now own the former. Leaving aside that it would have been better to have not cheaped out in the first place, since in total I ended up spending almost as much as it would have cost to get a good digital thermometer, I am much happier with the analog one than I ever was with the digital one. The cheap digital one never seemed to be all that accurate, and if I attempted to use it in a very hot environment, e.g. on the grill, it had a tendency to glitch out sometimes. The analog one is accurate, trustworthy, and was dirt cheap. The only disadvantage of it is that it takes a few seconds to get an accurate read, whereas a good digital thermometer can give you an internal temp right away. Since I mostly use it for testing the internal temperature of roasted poultry (which can take on the order of an hour or more to cook) that few seconds is a non-issue. But if I were using it for pan-seared steaks (where you are cooking them on the order of a couple of minutes) that few seconds could become a problem I suppose.

Anyway, there you have it. In all honesty, Serious Eats is probably a much more reliable source than myself for these sorts of things, as testified by their rigorous experimentation (whereas I'm basing all of my B.S. on mere experience and accumulated knowledge). You'll notice, however, that there is significant convergence in our conclusions. Proper salting technique in particular is, I think, one of the most overlooked skills for most home cooks. So if there's one take-home from these two posts, I think that would be it.

(h/t Ed Brayton)

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Do you have a God-shaped hole in your heart?

This post from PZ mentions that inane expression about how we all have a God-shaped hole in our heart that can only be filled by Jeebus. Gag me with a spoon.

But I think from a certain perspective, we do all have an existential deficiency that one might (if one were so-inclined) describe as a "God-shaped hole in the heart", whether we are aware of it or not. Only problem is, God doesn't fit, and neither does anything else. That's because the "hole" is a hallucination, an inherent artifact of human cognition. The God delusion works for some people to distract them from the "hole", because all of the inherent contradictions and incoherencies make it difficult to maintain a sharply-reasoned focus on the problem at hand; but it really doesn't do anything to address the problem.

The "hole" which I am referring to is the lack of an existentially satisfying answer to two of the Big Questions, specifically, "Why is there something rather than nothing?", and "Why do we actually experience our sentience?" It is my opinion that both of those questions, as reasonable as they sound (and still sound to me), aren't really questions at all, they are just meaningless words, no more useful than "This sentence is false." But they sure don't feel meaningless, and this is why I say we all, whether we admit it or not, have a specific existential deficiency.

I talked about the question of subjective conscious experience in a recent post, and also mentioned the problems with "Why is there something rather than nothing?" I want to amplify what I said in that post: Both of those questions are apparently subject to an infinite regress, but I believe that regress is a result of a cognitive deficiency inherent in being a human (and maybe inherent in being a sapient being of any kind). Just like the sensation of free will, they are nothing more than hallucinations -- but a hallucination that is impossible to avoid.

The correct answer to "Why is there something rather than nothing?" lies in physics and cosmology. I will not attempt to mount any sort of answer, because 1) I'm not qualified, 2) I'm not sure we really have the right answer yet anyway, and 3) I'm not entirely convinced the right answer is knowable by us even in principle. Note that this last point is entirely distinct from whether there is a right answer. In the distant future, the accelerating expansion of the universe will mean that galaxies are moving apart faster than the speed of light, and so any sentient observers that might be around at that time would have no way of knowing even in principle what the rest of their universe looks like -- but that doesn't mean the rest of the universe wouldn't be there. I don't rule out that the physical answer to this question may be similarly inaccessible to us.

But that still leaves us with the distinct feeling that there is a metaphysical question that remains unanswered, that for any physical explanation one can always say, "Okay, why that?" I am pretty sure that is nonsense. It's not existentially troubling (well, to me at least) to think that there are fundamental particles for which the question, "Okay, but what are those made of?" is invalid and a bit silly. So why should it be existentially troubling for there to be fundamental laws that just "are", and don't need some other deeper layer to explain them? Well, it's existentially troubling anyway, and knowing that it's nonsense doesn't really help.

It seems trivial to me -- so trivial that I continue to be baffled that philosophers and theologians ever took this stuff seriously, let alone that they still argue about it to this very day -- that any sort of goddy explanation is equally vulnerable to the apparent infinite regress. That is, if fundamental laws of physics are not an acceptable answer to the something-rather-than-nothing question (and I think it is acceptable, it just doesn't feel that way to us silly humans), then neither is the god hypothesis. Many people feel like it does, but they are just being distracted. "Okay, why that?" "Magic!" That's not an answer at all.

I've already covered the other question, but in brief, the correct answer to the problem of subjective experience is to point to our neurology. The infinite regress here is, "Okay, but what's actually experiencing those neural impulses?" It's a nonsense question; the question was already answered. It just doesn't feel like it has, because of our difficulties in comprehending our own non-existence. And just as with the other one, the theistic explanation dazzles rather than explains. If neural circuitry is not a sufficient substrate for conscious experience (and I believe it is, it just doesn't feel like it), then neither is the "soul" a sufficient substrate. "It's magic!" is no answer at all.

Most of the other Big Questions I think do have rather satisfying answers. "Why are we here?", for instance, has the literal answer that rests in natural selection, and the metaphysical answer that, since sapience is the substrate of meaning, the "why" has to come from us. We have a monopoly on meaning, and the idea of an external meaning to ourselves is just silly-talk. It's not even that our existence is externally meaningless; it's that meaning-external-to-sapience is nonsense words. You might as well ask about light-external-to-photons. Once we realize that 100% of meaning is determined by ourselves, I think that's both liberating and inspiring. The correct answer to "What happens after we die?" is troubling, I suppose, but it's a clear and unambiguous answer, with not even the appearance of an infinite regress or anything like that. And so on.

But yeah, we do all have a "god-shaped hole in our hearts", and it's the inability to ever give an existentially satisfying answer to those two hallucinatory questions. God doesn't actually fill that hole, but for some of us He's shiny enough to distract us from it!

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I finally understand why people think same-sex marriage "threatens traditional marriage"

This quote from PZ was one of those "Oh damn, now I get it" moments for me:

If we strip marriage of the asymmetry of power, as we must if we allow men to marry men and women to marry women, then we also strip away the man and wife, dominant and submissive, owner and owned, master and servant relationship that characterizes the conservative view of marriage.

Of course! I was always really puzzled how anyone could assert with a straight face that allowing more people to get married was somehow destructive towards the "institution of traditional marriage". But my confusion was a result of me thinking that the definition of "traditional marriage" was simply that it was between a man and a woman. If that were the case, then I would be right, same-sex marriage poses no threat to that "institution" because, with the possible exception of a few sexless sham marriages, the number of people getting "traditional marriages" would be exactly the same as before, and the couples in them would be entirely unaffected.

But if the definition of "traditional marriage" inherently implies patriarchy as well, then of course same-sex marriage is corrosive to that institution. No heterosexual person is going to look at someone else's same-sex marriage and say, "Hey, that looks like fun, I think I'm going to decide to be gay!": sexual orientation doesn't work like that. But it's entirely plausible that many heterosexual women might look at a happily married well-adjusted same-sex couple and say, "Hey, how come they treat each other like equals? Shouldn't I be treated as an equal with my husband?" And that's just bad for business. If you're a misogynist patriarchal theocrat, that is.

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