History of Xmas from the Wall Street Journal Website

I think that everyone really needs a winter solstice holiday, regardless of one's belief, or lack thereof, in supernatural deities. It's a time when we can all look past the gloomy darkness of winter and celebrate the days getting longer again. The suns starts to climb higher in the sky and we anticipate the renewal of the Earth in the coming springtime. This visceral reason to mark the occasion makes it not very surprising that the Winter Solstice has been celebrated almost universally throughout vastly different cultures and eras. Of course, in ancient times this was put in terms of gods, spirits, and assorted other religiously significant entities being "reborn" or "resurrected" et cetera. What may be surprising to some is how many of the "modern" Christmas rituals are taken from earlier Solstice holidays, as detailed by John Gordan from the Wall Street Journal online.


FROM WSJ.com
COMMENTARY
A Brief History of Christmas
By JOHN STEELE GORDON
December 21, 2007; Page A19
Christmas famously "comes but once a year." In fact, however, it comes twice. The Christmas of the Nativity, the manger and Christ child, the wise men and the star of Bethlehem, "Silent Night" and "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" is one holiday. The Christmas of parties, Santa Claus, evergreens, presents, "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" and "Jingle Bells" is quite another.
But because both celebrations fall on Dec. 25, the two are constantly confused. Religious Christians condemn taking "the Christ out of Christmas," while First Amendment absolutists see a threat to the separation of church and state in every poinsettia on public property and school dramatization of "A Christmas Carol."
A little history can clear things up.
The Christmas of parties and presents is far older than the Nativity. Most ancient cultures celebrated the winter solstice, when the sun reaches its lowest point and begins to climb once more in the sky. In ancient Rome, this festival was called the Saturnalia and ran from Dec. 17 to Dec. 24. During that week, no work was done, and the time was spent in parties, games, gift giving and decorating the houses with evergreens. (Sound familiar?) It was, needless to say, a very popular holiday.
In its earliest days, Christianity did not celebrate the Nativity at all. Only two of the four Gospels even mention it. Instead, the Church calendar was centered on Easter, still by far the most important day in the Christian year. The Last Supper was a Seder, celebrating Passover, which falls on the day of the full moon in the first month of spring in the Hebrew calendar. So in A.D. 325, the Council of Nicea decided that Easter should fall on the Sunday following the first full moon of spring. That's why Easter and its associated days, such as Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, are "moveable feasts," moving about the calendar at the whim of the moon.
It is a mark of how late Christmas came to the Christian calendar that it is not a moveable feast, but a fixed one, determined by the solar calendar established by Julius Caesar and still in use today (although slightly tweaked in the 16th century).
By the time of the Council of Nicea, the Christian Church was making converts by the thousands and, in hopes of still more converts, in 354 Pope Liberius decided to add the Nativity to the church calendar. He also decided to celebrate it on Dec. 25. It was, frankly, a marketing ploy with a little political savvy thrown in.
History does not tell us exactly when in the year Christ was born, but according to the Gospel of St. Luke, "shepherds were abiding in the field and keeping watch over their flocks by night." This would imply a date in the spring or summer when the flocks were up in the hills and needed to be guarded. In winter they were kept safely in corrals.
So Dec. 25 must have been chosen for other reasons. It is hard to escape the idea that by making Christmas fall immediately after the Saturnalia, the Pope invited converts to still enjoy the fun and games of the ancient holiday and just call it Christmas. Also, Dec. 25 was the day of the sun god, Sol Invictus, associated with the emperor. By using that date, the church tied itself to the imperial system.
By the high Middle Ages, Christmas was a rowdy, bawdy time, often inside the church as well as outside it. In France, many parishes celebrated the Feast of the Ass, supposedly honoring the donkey that had brought Mary to Bethlehem. Donkeys were brought into the church and the mass ended with priests and parishioners alike making donkey noises. In the so-called Feast of Fools, the lower clergy would elect a "bishop of fools" to temporarily run the diocese and make fun of church ceremonial and discipline. With this sort of thing going on inside the church to celebrate the Nativity, one can easily imagine the drunken and sexual revelries going on outside it to celebrate what was in all but name the Saturnalia.
With the Reformation, Protestants tried to rid the church of practices unknown in its earliest days and get back to Christian roots. Most Protestant sects abolished priestly celibacy (and often the priesthood itself), the cult of the Virgin Mary, relics, confession and . . . Christmas.
In the English-speaking world, Christmas was abolished in Scotland in 1563 and in England after the Puritans took power in the 1640s. It returned with the Restoration in 1660, but the celebrations never regained their medieval and Elizabethan abandon.
There was still no Christmas in Puritan New England, where Dec. 25 was just another working day. In the South, where the Church of England predominated, Christmas was celebrated as in England. In the middle colonies, matters were mixed. In polyglot New York, the Dutch Reformed Church did not celebrate Christmas. The Anglicans and Catholics did.
It was New York and its early 19th century literary establishment that created the modern American form of the old Saturnalia. It was a much more family -- and especially child -- centered holiday than the community-wide celebrations of earlier times.
St. Nicolas is the patron saint of New York (the first church built in the city was named for him), and Washington Irving wrote in his "Diedrich Knickerbocker's History of New York" how Sinterklaes, soon anglicized to Santa Claus, rode through the sky in a horse and wagon and went down chimneys to deliver presents to children.
The writer George Pintard added the idea that only good children got presents, and a book dating to 1821 changed the horse and wagon to reindeer and sleigh. Clement Clarke Moore in 1823 made the number of reindeer eight and gave them their names. Moore's famous poem, "A Visit from St. Nicholas," is entirely secular. It is about "visions of sugar plums" with nary a wise man or a Christ child in sight. In 1828, the American Ambassador Joel Roberts Poinsett, brought the poinsettia back from Mexico. It became associated with Christmas because that's the time of year when it blooms.
In the 1840s, Dickens wrote "A Christmas Carol," which does not even mention the religious holiday (the word church appears in the story just twice, in passing, the word Nativity never). Prince Albert introduced the German custom of the Christmas tree to the English-speaking world.
In the 1860s, the great American cartoonist Thomas Nast set the modern image of Santa Claus as a jolly, bearded fat man in a fur-trimmed cap. (The color red became standard only in the 20th century, thanks to Coca-Cola ads showing Santa Claus that way.)
Merchants began to emphasize Christmas, decorating stores and pushing the idea of Christmas presents for reasons having nothing whatever to do with religion, except, perhaps, the worship of mammon.
With the increased mobility provided by railroads and increasing immigration from Europe, people who celebrated Christmas began settling near those who did not. It was not long before the children of the latter began putting pressure on their parents to celebrate Christmas as well. "The O'Reilly kids down the street are getting presents, why aren't we?!" is not an argument parents have much defense against.
By the middle of the 19th century, most Protestant churches were, once again, celebrating Christmas as a religious holiday. The reason, again, had more to do with marketing than theology: They were afraid of losing congregants to other Christmas-celebrating denominations.
In 1870, President Ulysses S. Grant signed into law a bill making the secular Christmas a civil holiday because its celebration had become universal in this country. It is now celebrated in countries all over the world, including many where Christians are few, such as Japan.
So for those worried about the First Amendment, there's a very easy way to distinguish between the two Christmases. If it isn't mentioned in the Gospels of Luke and Mark, then it is not part of the Christian holiday. Or we could just change the name of the secular holiday back to what it was 2000 years ago.
Merry Saturnalia, everyone!
Mr. Gordon is the author of "An Empire of Wealth: The Epic History of American Economic Power" (HarperCollins, 2004).

Interpreting Away

Compare the following two statements:

Statement I: The biblical prohibition against eating pork (Leviticus 11:8 and Deuteronomy 14:8) doesn’t apply in modern times since it was primarily intended to prevent parasitic diseases, such as trichinosis, that can contracted by eating pigs. At most, the injunction should be considered a “good suggestion.”

Statement II: The biblical prohibition against touching a pig carcass (Leviticus 11:8 and Deuteronomy 14:8) doesn’t apply in modern times since it was only intended to prevent ritual contamination ("tumah" in biblical terminology) during pilgrimage festivals when one would visit the sanctuary, which was prohibited to someone in a state of tumah (eg. Leviticus 15:31, Numbers 5:3). At most, the injunction should be considered a “good suggestion.”

[See the end of the post for additional context]

Individuals making statement I in the presence of certain Orthodox Jews should do so only if prepared for a vigorous debate. The assertion that some Biblical commandment is “obsolete” due to changing circumstances directly contradicts a major religious tenet - that G-d’s laws are immutable and transcend the rationalizations of mere mortals to explain away. Ritual law, they will say, is just as imperative now as when Moses transcribed it directly from heaven. By the end of the conversation, one would likely run a serious risk of being labeled a heretic or worse, “Reform."

Statement II, in contrast, represents the normative traditional interpretation (Rashi commentary quoting the Babylonian Talmud Rosh HaShanah 16b. See also Rashbam and Ramban) even though it is logically the same as Statement I, just applied to the second half of the same verse!

This is not merely an academic discussion. Pig consumption is one of the most powerful and pervasive taboos in Judaism. There are many disaffected Jews that, while observing no other kosher stricture, will still avoid eating any pork. However, there are plenty of completely observant Jews who would never dream of eating anything even suspected of being unkosher but would willingly touch a piece of leather made from pigskin, reasoning that everyone is considered to be in a state of ritual contamination in modern times anyway.

The importance of interpretation highlighted here is one of the reasons I am so skeptical of people who use Biblical quotes in lieu of rational arguments to prove a point, expecting others to be awed into agreement by "G-d's incontrovertible Word." Besides the whole issue of whether listeners should automatically accept the divine origin and/or inerrancy of any particular scripture (which is, ultimately, always just book that people told you was important without any actual proof), by appealing to the authority of an ambiguous and often contradictory book, one is really arguing for one's own interpretation to have the same weight as if divinely proclaimed. This is a very common issue in the debate over Gay marriage. For a Cristian to assert that since the Bible calls homosexual intercourse an "abomination" means that Gay marriage is out of the question is not sufficient, since there are many, many things that the Old Testament forbids (eating shellfish, wearing garments made of both wool and linen, etc) that Christians have no problem with. The example with Jews touching but not eating pork shows how easily even a deeply ingrained taboo can to modified just by applying a particular interpretation.

REFERENCED TEXTS:

Deuteronomy 14:3-8

3 Do not eat any detestable thing.
4 These are the animals you may eat: the ox, the sheep, the goat,
5 the deer, the gazelle, the roe deer, the wild goat, the ibex, the antelope and the mountain sheep.
6 You may eat any animal that has a split hoof divided in two and that chews the cud.
7 However, of those that chew the cud or that have a split hoof completely divided you may not eat the camel, the rabbit or the coney. Although they chew the cud, they do not have a split hoof; they are ceremonially unclean for you.
8 The pig is also unclean; although it has a split hoof, it does not chew the cud. You are not to eat their meat or touch their carcasses.

Leviticus 11:1-8

1 God spoke to Moses and Aaron, telling them
2 to speak to the Israelites, and convey the following to them: Of all the animals in the world, these are the ones that you may eat:
3 Among mammals, you may eat [any one] that has true hooves that are cloven and that brings up its cud.
4 However, among the cud-chewing, hoofed animals, these are the ones that you may not eat: The camel shall be unclean to you although it brings up its cud, since it does not have a true hoof.
5 The hyrax shall be unclean to you although it brings up its cud, since it does not have a true hoof.
6 The hare shall be unclean to you although it brings up its cud, since it does not have a true hoof.
7 The pig shall be unclean to you although it has a true hoof which is cloven, since it does not chew its cud.
8 Do not eat the flesh of any of these animals. Do not touch their carcasses, since they are unclean to you.

Rosh HaShanah 16b

Rashi ibid.

(*NOTE* The discussion in the Talmud about touching a carcass from an unkosher animal should not be so obscure, as it immediately proceeds what is probably the most quoted passage in High Holiday Sermons: The "Three Books opened on Rosh HaShana." )

Ctrl+Alt+Del Comic

Happy Independence Day!

The 4th of July is a great holiday, with special meaning for empiricists. Today we celebrate the anniversary of the day a group of Deists signed a document that claimed independence based on the philosophy of The Enlightenment. Far from creating a "Cristian Nation," the signatories of the Declaration of Independence envisioned a country based on the principles of liberalism, personal freedom, and government by "the consent of the governed." Freedom of thought and belief are some of the most valuable and enduring legacies of our Founding Fathers.

To commemorate the occasion, I reproduce below some quotes from the author of the DoI. As indicated bu these selections, Tomas Jefferson should be remembered for his strong rationalist beliefs; at one point he literally cut out all the description of miracles from his Bible.

"To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, god, are immaterial, is to say they are nothings, or that there is no god, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise: but I believe I am supported in my creed of materialism by Locke, Tracy, and Stewart. At what age of the Christian church this heresy of immaterialism, this masked atheism, crept in, I do not know. But heresy it certainly is."

"They [the clergy] believe that any portion of power confided to me, will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly; for I have sworn upon the altar of god, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. But this is all they have to fear from me: and enough, too, in their opinion."

"If we did a good act merely from love of God and a belief that it is pleasing to Him, whence arises the morality of the Atheist? ...Their virtue, then, must have had some other foundation than the love of God."

"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between church and State."

More from The Onion

Skeptic Pitied

Tammuz

A common tactic employed by Jewish educators to help ensure that their young charges are not tempted to leave the faith by Christian missionaries is to point some of the similarities between Jesus and earlier pagan gods that were also worshiped as divine incarnations who were killed but later resurrected in order to provide salvation for their respective followers. This type of deity was so common in the ancient world that it has its own category - the "dying-and-rising" gods. Some notable examples are Mithras, the Egyptian Osiris, and the Greek Attis. The back-story of each is pretty much the same. There is some fight or betrayal that leads to the tragic demise of the deity, followed by a great deal of mourning before the god makes his/her triumphant, supernatural return. The death and rebirth of each deity was supposed to mirror the annual cycle of the earth in which the summer vegetation withers each winter, but is rejuvenated again each spring. On a deeper level, the stories also reflects a very universal human response to our own life-cycle of birth and inevitable mortality, as well as a reaction to loss in general. Followers of these gods usually had elaborate mourning rituals, often at the end of summer, to commemorate the annual "death" of their deity, along with the rest of nature.
The educators could argue that one should identify Christianity as just another adaptation of these earlier pagan belief systems and therefore could not possibly be "true." However, what they didn't tell us is that Judaism may also have some vestiges of this concept.

The very idea of Judaism acquiring religious concepts from outside influences is so beyond the pale for most traditional practitioners that is never even considered. However, some of the tenets of faith considered to be most intrinsic to Judaism are completely absent from its early forms. For example, ask most religious Jews today what their "goal" is in observing the commandments and the most common response will likely be that s/he is working towards earning a premium spot in Olam Haba ("the world to come"), even though this post-life paradise is mentioned exactly zero times in the Old Testiment. The concept of an afterlife where goodness and obedience to the Divine commandments on Earth is rewarded - or in fact, a post life existence more elaborate than the generic Sheol, a state of dreary oblivion that awaits both the righteous and the wicked - is a later transplant picked up during the Babylonian exile.

From the Babylonians we also got - and even your Rabbi will admit to this - the familiar names for the months in the Jewish calendar. In the Pentateuch, the months are referred to simply by number, the first month, the second month, etc. After the start of the first exile, they suddenly have the Babylonian names attached, for example, in the book of Ester:

"In the first month, that is, the month Nisan, in the twelfth year of king Ahasuerus, they cast Pur, that is, the lot, before Haman from day to day, and from month to month, to the twelfth month, that is, the month Adar." (Ester 3:7)

As sacrilegious as it may sound to use pagan names for our scared calendar, it get worse. Tammuz, the month that started this past Sunday according to the Jewish calendar, is named for a Babylonian deity, one of the dying-and-rising kind. For them, the month named for Tammuz began at the summer solstice, when the daylight hours begin to decline. Each year the Babylonian tradition dictated that there be severe mourning, some of which is even recorded in the Bible:

"Then he brought me to the door of the gate of the Lord's house which was toward the north; and, behold, there sat women weeping for Tammuz. Then said he unto to me, 'Hast thou seen this, O son of man? turn thee yet again, and thou shalt see greater abominations than these." (Ezekiel 8:14-15)

This much is not disputed. However, while I realize that what comes next is a bold assertion, I don't think that it is a coincidence that the month of Tammuz, along with the following month of Av, is considered to be a time of mourning in the Jewish annual cycle. Traditionally, Moses broke the Tablets on the 17th day of Tammuz, and Holy Temple was destroyed (twice, by the Babylonians and then the Romans) on the 9th of Av, which becomes the most sober day of the year. Both of these are observed as fast days and the period in between, the "three weeks," are considered to be time of mourning when restrictions on weddings, live music, and haircuts are kept. Jews pray all year for the Temple to be rebuilt, but these prayers take on extra fervor during this time. It may be that, directly or indirectly, this morning process is the Jewish take on "dying and rebirth," but with reference to the Temple instead of a deity. The fact that the destruction of the Temple is said to have occurred at the end of the summer may just be a historical quirk (that's when wars are fought, after all) but I think that the timing, along with the naming of "Tammuz", indicates that there is quite possibly a connection to an ancient mourning for a deceased god.

Evolutionary Psychology

Physics is great for explaining the natural world, but offers little help when it comes to explaining human nature. Since one is likely to run into other humans in the course of any given day, it is usually advantageous to have some idea about why people act the why they do. An extremely powerful tool for doing this is evolutionary psychology, which extends the concepts of natural selection to the workings of the human brain. By thinking about specific emotions and cognitive strategies as being beneficial or detrimental adaptations no less than organs or limbs, human predilections that seemed incomprehensible before can be made sense of. Even the popular media invokes EP as the prevailing scientific theory. Time magazine periodically does so; recently, it devoted an entire cover story to the science of hunger, in which it details humans have evolved a strong desire for fat and calorie rich foods, which were rare prizes for our ancestors but now are all too readily available.

Although evolutionary psychology is sometimes criticized as consisting of contrived, post-hoc explanations, it does make testable, falsifiable predictions that have been tested and confirmed by experiment. Almost as important, it has great explanatory value regarding human behavior that is mystifying otherwise. Why do we crave unhealthy foods? Why do teams sports come so naturally to us? Why are we generous to our relatives and distrustful of outsiders? Why do we find certain people to be attractive potential sexual partners more than others? Why do we feel compelled to enforce fairness and punish cheaters, even if it is not in our immediate self-interest? Consider the alternative religious explanation: "Humans act that way because that's just how God made us." In addition to the fact that this has zero explanatory value, it also doesn't make sense on it's own. Why would a deity create us a propensity to selfishness, a desire to mate with forbidden partners, or a mind that come up with rival gods and religions? To say that "the creator (or the devil or whatever) is just testing us" is to engage in real post-hoc storytelling.

The Onion

I Believe In Evolution, Except For The Whole Triassic Period

I liked this Onion piece because it satirizes some of the unusual ways some believers try to reconcile what they have been taught to believe with scientific evidence. Often this results in a strange hybrid in which "God directed evolution to create life" or "The six days of creation really took billions of years." These syncretist solutions usually end up mangling both science and religion in the attempt to get them to mesh. The article also takes the "God of the Gaps" approach to logical extreme - as science continually improves its naturalistic explanation of the world, there is less and less room to invoke the supernatural.

Willful Ignorance?

Recently, I was at someone's apartment and the conversation turned to Sam Harris, the noted atheist author who had written Letter to A Christian Nation, which addresses, among other things, the dangers of mixing religion and politics. The host owned a copy of one of Harris's earlier books, The End of Faith, which also argues in favor of reason over belief. As the book was taken off the shelf and handed to a guest, someone else present said (in effect) "You probably shouldn't read the book. It makes some good arguments - not as good as the author thinks they are, but still pretty persuasive." Silently, I was taken aback. Clearly there was a lot of cognitive dissonance in the room. The speaker obviously had a great deal of questions about his faith, or at least, enough to read a book that completely demolishes what he has been taught to believe. His response after reading the book, for which, he admits, he has no satisfactory arguments in defense of his faith, was not to revise his beliefs but to advise others not to read the book in the first place. To me, this borders on an attempt to help others remain willfully ignorant. In contrast, if someone handed me a book and was able to persuade me that there was a strong likelihood that that, after reading it, I would be convinced that God exists, or that Unicorns control the UN, et cetera, I would be edger to read it because I'm really interested in finding the truth (or at least, I hope I am). However, it is human nature in many instances to prefer confirmation of one's beliefs, even when mistaken, above being faced with facts that may lead to having to change one's opinion. This is especially true when the person has made a large investment in a particular course of action, and a lifetime of religious belief and practice certainly qualifies. Nevertheless, I'm still encouraged by the fact that there are religious young people who possess the open mindedness to question what they have been taught, even if they are not quite ready to take the next step in the process of moving beyond faith.

Slate.com book excerpt

Previously, Slate has run several interesting features on religion, such as a very engaging "Blogging the Bible" recurring column in which a modern reader offers his impressions after actually reading the book so many claim as indisputable cannon. Recently, the website posted a excerpt from Christopher Hitchens's new book, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. Hitchens makes some very powerful points, and I'm sure that even many believers will agree with him, provided they are talking about all the other religions, not the specific one they personally maintain to be absolute truth.

Demystifying Love

Empiricists often hear objections to the effect that "science provides a reasonably good description of most phenomena, but there are just some things, such as god, or love, or human consciousness, that simply transcend any attempt to be explained by any purely materialistic theory. These critiques can usually be recognized as simple reformulations of the "god of the gaps" philosophy ("since I can't explain it right now, it must be the work of a god or gods or some other unexplainable source"). By simply giving up it , the objector is ignoring the track record empiricism has had against the god of the gaps (eg. lighting is not really a projectile from Zeus). Science is constantly making headway on questions formerly considered to be completely intractable. This is not to say that scientists will ever have all the answers - it may turn out that some things are really beyond human comprehension, but don't count on it. Therefore, upon being called a "materialist," one can rejoin, "you say it like it's a bad thing!"

One area in particular that has long been thought to be the Provence of the transcendent is romantic love. Ironically, it is on this topic that evolutionary biologists and sociobiologists have made huge progress, showing how "love" can be explained as an vital evolutionary adaptation. In fact, The New York Times "themed" this Tuesday's Science Times with the science of "desire." Some traditionalists might be unhappy to hear that the "transcendent" romantic attraction between sweethearts is really nothing more than a matter of neurotransmitters acting in very down-to-earth biochemical reactions, however, reality is not always so accommodating to our wishes. Richard Dawkins likes to say, science and religion try to answer the same questions. Science has the added benefit of usually being right. Besides, explaining our world doesn't make it less interesting by "ruining the mystery." On the contrary, science has shown that the universe is so much more facinating than humans could ever had imagined. As Daniel Dennett points out in Consciousness Explained, knowing that the sun is a huge thermonuclear furnace teeming with atoms in ceaseless activity is a lot more interesting than thinking it to be pulled across the sky by a chariot.
So instead of taking all of the excitement out of life, empiricism helps inspire a sense of awe that a pile of molecules we call a human being could love and think and have a sense of awe in the first place.

"Theistic Evolution"

I attended a lecture recently on evolution by an ordained rabbi who also happens to be a university biology professor. He maintained that the empirical evidence in favor of the scientific consensus regarding evolution and the age of the universe is overwhelming, but argued very passionately that, far from being a challenge to traditional Judaism, modern science can be seen to fit well with the classical Biblical commentaries of the Talmudic and Medieval eras. He showed how mainstream Judaism has never taken a literal view when reading Genesis and severally criticized the fundamentalist Christians (and more recently, ultra-orthodox rabbis) who reject evolution outright. I found his talk to be refreshing but not necessarily novel. I remember that when I was growing up the vast majority of my teachers and peers each came up with some scheme within his or her own mind to reconcile religious faith with science, since they held both to be correct. I found that in practice, this meant that there was not a great deal of difference in how they approached the natural world compared to atheists, except that they would think "look how marvelous God made the world to be," instead of "look how marvelous geological forces and natural selection have made the world to be." Believers in this kind of "theistic evolution," which holds that God directed natural forces as a means to create human life, can (and do) become successful Biologists and Biomedical researchers. This is in stark contrast to fundamentalists who feel that they have to reject huge swaths of science (cosmology, geology, biology, physics, astronomy, paleontology...) in order to justify a literal understanding of a ancient book. I strongly doubt that such a person could really participate in real research without a huge amount of mental compartmentalization and/or cognitive dissonance.

However, I am not so thrilled by theistic evolution either, even though I used to be a strong believer in it for many years. It is really a compromise, a forced syncrotism for the times when one wants so badly for one's dearly held religious beliefs to be in sync with empirical observations . So while I commend believers who possess the intellectual honesty to say that the evidence backing evolution and the age of the universe is convincing, I wish that they could just take that one further step and see how having a deity is no longer a necessary component. However, I know from experience that there is a huge emotional gap between believing in theistic evolution (and therefore being about to go on with one's regular religious beliefs and practices) compared to taking that final step and becoming an atheist.

On a related note, I've also found a rather lengthy but very well researched letter from a religious Jew which articulates a litany of logical difficulties inherent in belief in the inerrancy of the Bible and Talmud. I've always been especially disturbed by apologists who try to justify statements in the Talmud about spontaneous generation, folk remedies, or astronomy etc. that are currently known to be wrong by saying that "the sages were right then, but now nature has changed." I feel that to claim that, for example, lice really did come grow out of the dirt two thousand of years ago (as was believed by the Greeks) but nature suddenly changed between then and now so that they reproduce sexually just because an text taken to be "received wisdom" says so shows how strongly critical thinking is being suppressed. This is especially ironic considering that the Talmud itself is basically one long exercise in critically analyzing rabbinic dicta.

Happy Darwin Day!

Today, Feb 12, has been designated "Darwin Day" in recognition of the 198 Birthday of Charles Darwin. This holiday gives us a opportunity not only to reflect on the development of the theory of evolution, which is, in my humble opinion, among the top three ideas in all of science. [As a physicist, I would have to put quantum mechanics, and possibly special relativity first, but I do spend most of my spare time thinking about Evolutionary Psychology, as I hope to detail in some future posts.] Indeed, it is almost impossible to overstate the importance of evolution to modern Biology. It is literally the linchpin of all descriptions of life. See, for example, the classic essay by Theodosius Dobzhansky, "Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution."

However, as momentous as this occurrence is, we should also realize why celebrations of scientific personalities is so rare. Contrary to what some Creationists have alleged, Evolution is not some "received wisdom" venerated like some anti-religious doctrine. And it goes without saying that Darwin is not looked on as an inerrant prophet whose ideas are mindless accepted as dogma. Scientists accept evolution because of its immense predictive power as well as the huge amount of fossil, molecular, anatomical, and genetic evidence in its favor. Like all theories, evolution has changed many times as new evidence is discovered and better explanations are formulated. As scientists, we do our best not to become overly emotionally attached to any theory, and to accept or reject them based on their merits. While it may seem a little disappointing that, unlike most religious believers, scientists cannot point to an idea and claim that it is the absolute and immutable truth, most of the ideas that form the foundation of modern science, like evolution, are so well founded by observations that, while constantly subject to improvement, are extremely unlikely to ever be completely overturned. This is why the theories, as opposed to the people, usually get most of the attention. But in the current debate over evolution, it is often valuable to have a symbolic figure to point to. So Happy Birthday, Darwin!

Pictures

Penn Jillette from Penn & Teller is one of the most visible atheists in popular culture. He does an excellent job injecting a bit of skepticism into our daily lives via their TV show. He has also contributed a very good Essay in the NPR "This I Believe" Series. I've put his picture on the sidebar as the first of what I hope will be many famous free-thinkers, a designation that is not so trivial given that the overwhelming percentage of the world population claims belief in a deity of some sort.

The Necessity of Atheism

Like all great poets, Percy Bysshe Shelley had a knack for expressing a lot of information in a few words:

"If he is infinitely good, what reason should we have to fear him? If he is infinitely wise, why should we have doubts concerning our future? If he knows all, why warn him of our needs and fatigue him with our prayers? If he is everywhere, why erect temples to him? If he is just, why fear that he will punish the creatures that he has filled with weaknesses? If grace does everything for them, what reason would he have for recompensing them? If he is all-powerful, how offend him, how resist him? If he is reasonable, how can he be angry at the blind, to whom he has given the liberty of being unreasonable? If he is immovable, by what right do we pretend to make him change his decrees? If he is inconceivable, why occupy ourselves with him? IF HE HAS SPOKEN, WHY IS THE UNIVERSE NOT CONVINCED? If the knowledge of a God is the most necessary, why is it not the most evident and the clearest?"

-From The Necessity of Atheism by Percy Bysshe Shelley

I think, if I may presume to give an answer, that the reason religion is filled with all these contradictions between the doctrine of a deity's omnipotence and omnipresence with its actual practices is that we humans have a irrepressible need to anthropomorphize. Witness our tendency to portray animals as human-like characters in stories and our eagerness to assign human traits to our favorite pets. From an evolutionary standpoint, it makes complete sense that the humans that are most likely to survive are the ones who can identify other humans as rational beings like themselves and act accordingly. This "social consciousness," which includes actions like praising, bargaining with, and asking favors or forgiveness from others is a vital part of human interaction. Since we don't have any other template to use, we just adapt our existing models. Therefore, God is our "father" or our "king," and we are supposed to act accordingly, even though most of what we do really doesn't make sense if we are working under the assumption that this is deity who is all-knowing and all-powerful. Once again, I think this is an example of where an empirical explanation of religion ("it makes sense when you consider the evolution of human intelligence") is much more compelling than that offered by a theologian (eg "God is real and wants to have a 'relationship' with us so he acts like he is not omnipotent even though he is" or "the mysteries of God are beyond human comprehension" etc)

Magical Thinking

The New York Times had a excellent article in the Science Times section on what it calls "magical thinking." It points out that, rather than being a aberration, the belief in the ability to change reality through counterfactual methods like wearing lucky socks or performing certain pregame rituals is widespread, even among people who "know better" and admit that it has no logical basis. It would seem that the ability to detect complicated cause-and-effect relationships, especially when the mechanism is unknown, is so adaptive from an evolutionary standpoint that it outweighs the possible cost associated with mistaken beliefs. For example, the impulse to stick with a successful hunting technique or tool, even if one cannot rationally explain why it works, is extremely beneficial even if the same impulse also leads one utter a magical incantation as well. The potential upside (continued success) is much greater than the potential downside (spending a few seconds performing a ritual of questionable value).

About Me

I decided that before I jumped into some of the more substantial posts about my thoughts on religion, I would give a little bit of information about my background. I am a graduate student in physics at a major University in the Midwest. I come from a Jewish family that started out moderately religious, and is now Orthodox. Consequently, growing up I was a firm believer in God and received a rather extensive religious education, which I feel is extremely helpful in understanding why people are drawn to belief, and also where it can be shown to be logically flawed. Some of the smartest people I know are able to apply fantastic intellectual feats in a effort to understand Talmudic intricacies, and yet also believe that the Earth is less than 6,000 years old. I have been able to see that religion is not simple mental laziness, which means that although it may seem easy for atheists and agnostics criticize religion, without having experienced it firsthand, or understanding exactly what people believe and why, it is often difficult to do so effectively. Some of the most compelling reasons to be skeptical of western religion come from the Bible itself. That is why the ability to quote chapter and verse is as useful, if not more, to the atheist than it is to to the believer.

Religion as Natural Phemonenon

I think that religion is a mystery to most people. Many atheists wonder how intelligent people can believe such inherently counterfactual ideas. Similarly, believers have to explain why anyone would adhere to any other (i.e. mistaken) religion. Empiricists, on the other hand, who look first for naturalistic explanations for all phenomena, realize that the error was thinking that religion was an exception to this rule. For a long time, materialistic explanations of religion were hard to come by. However, with advances in many diverse fields such as evolutionary psychology and brain imaging, a conception of religion as a natural human behavior has now taken shape. An excellent book that describes this materialistic theory of religion is "Religion Explained" by Pascal Boyer. This book is very accessible even to people without a background in psychology. Another good book on this subject, but considerably more dense, is "In Gods We Trust" by Scott Atran. In future posts, I hope to talk about these ideas more fully, but the fundamental idea is that religion is a natural consequence of the evolution of human intelligence, most notably the development of agency-detection and social interaction faculties. Simply put, our ancestors evolved mental templates that made supernatural agents like gods and spirits plausible.
Unfortunately, this formulation of religion has yet to be adopted by some very influential atheists. Richard Dawkins is a fantastic writer and has done more than anyone in bringing a more complete understanding of evolution to the masses. However, Dawkins sees religion as a unmitigated disaster that stems from simple human irrationality passed down from parent to child in the form of a "mind virus" which will eventually be eradicated as we advance our scientific thinking. Similarly, blogger Sam Harris has written a post with the unambiguous title "Science Must Destroy Religion." I feel that this totally misses the reason that religion exists at all. The position that religion is totally destructive or that it is even possible that it could be eliminated so easily is not supported by the facts. Progressive RJ Eskrow writes that it cannot be definitely concluded that organized religion is a negative force, on balance. In fact, religion has done many positive things, mostly acting as a framework to organize our inherent morality, as I hope to explain later. However, when it comes to describing the world we live in, religion makes a manifold of unsubstantiated claims.
The solution is that atheists need to do a better job of acknowledging the source of religion and what it has done right. At the same time, we have to show how evidence-based thinking works better and demonstrate that human morality is possible without resorting to the supernatural. Religion may be natural, but that doesn't make it inevitable.

Lies we tell our children

It seems to me that there is something profoundly wrong about the lead-up to Christmas. Every year, starting weeks or even months before the big day, millions of parents across the globe perpetrate a great falsehood on their impressionable children, leading them to believe in the existence of a certain man with supernatural powers. The youngsters are told that they should be good, for goodness sake, since this mysterious man, the ultimate arbiter of who is naughty and who is nice, is constantly watching and can be relied upon to bestow gifts on those deemed worthy and withhold them from the unfortunate remainder. This lie has major advantages as far as the parents are concerned, not least of which being that while their offspring know mommy and daddy aren’t omniscient, good behavior is still assured because little Billy and Suzy are under the impression that there is someone out there scrutinizing their every move. This ability to detect even the most covert act of naughtiness cannot be in doubt, since the kids are told that the big guy knows when each of them is sleeping, or conversely, when he or she happens to be awake. Indeed, the normal limitation of physics don’t seem to apply to him at all, or at least, they don’t hinder his ability to judge and distribute each person’s just reward. The giant deceit is supported by elaborate subterfuge that even includes specially decorated areas, complete with actors, where the children are told that their requests will be heard. Although the truth may be revealed later in life, children are induced to adhere to a model of approved action in anticipation of this fictional Christmas Eve arrival.

If you, gentle reader, protest that Santa Claus is a harmless ruse and, indeed, one of the most beloved elements of childhood, I would respond that I wish it was jolly old St. Nick that I was referring to. In fact, I’ve been describing another significant Christmas figure, someone who, impressionable youths are told, will judge mankind and mete out rewards and punishments as he deems fit. At least Santa’s good opinion only means the difference between the latest gaming system and a lump of coal, not whether you will spend all eternity in unfathomable pleasure or torment. After all, the man in the red suit is only tempting you into being good with playthings, not everlasting salvation.

Inaugural Post

In this first post, I hope to outline the purpose of this blog and give some kind of idea about what can be expected in future posts. My primary reason for writing this is to collect and organize my thoughts about why I have chosen an empirical epistemology as my worldview. In other words, I will attempt to advocate for a more rational approach in deciding what is true and what is false, one based on the scientific method of experience and experiment, and not, for example, on revelation, received knowledge, or superstition. This is not to say that supernatural explanations have been excluded a priori, but rather it will be clear (hopefully) that materialist explanations have invariably been shown to be superior. Many of the posts on this blog will be essays about why I think religion, pseudoscience, and superstition are wrong. Although I don't try to offend my readers' sensibilities, I understand that some people may be scandalized. My humble request is that, whether you agree with me or not, you keep an open mind. As you will find, I have a strong aversion to ad hominem arguments, and I firmly believe in the value of evaluating issues on their merits. My goal is that people (including and especially me), will think critically about what he or she believes and why. Periodically, I might also feel the urge to throw some political opinion into the mix, but, ironically, these will probably be the least controversial posts.

In conclusion, I want to show that the real world is fascinating and awe-inspiring enough on it own. We don't need to embellish it by inventing deities, spirits or other superstitions. While all these may be natural human reactions to an unknown and frightening world (as I hope to explain later), I feel that it is in our capability as rational beings to do a better job about deciding what to accept as true. Above all, we should never lose our sense of wonder about the Universe we find ourselves in. This is the best we can hope for during our short time on this planet.