When a new sect with strange and unfamiliar beliefs bursts onto the scene, it almost invariably meets with hostility (most of it from the old sects with strange and familiar beliefs). And depending on the nature of the newcomer, there are two common responses. It may stress its own virtue and righteousness all the more strongly, wearing its persecution as a badge of pride. Or it may become bitter and apocalyptic, denouncing its enemies as God's enemies and warning of a day of reckoning. Those sects that travel farthest down the latter path often end up waging acts of terrorism or going out in a blaze of suicidal glory.

But oddly enough, the teachings of the sect before it's forced to make this choice don't predict what the decision will be. Such is the moral of today's post on a particularly strange and curious sect.

The guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh was born Chandra Mohan Jain in 1931, to a wealthy Jain family in the Madhya Pradesh state of central India. By his own account he was an intelligent and well-educated young man, but rootless and lacking a sense of purpose. Around the age of 21 he fell into a spiral of depression, which he later claimed was finally lifted when he suddenly had an experience of enlightenment:

The moment I entered the garden everything became luminous, it was all over the place – the benediction, the blessedness. I could see the trees for the first time – their green, their life, their very sap running. The whole garden was asleep, the trees were asleep. But I could see the whole garden alive, even the small grass leaves were so beautiful.... The whole universe became a benediction.

After a brief stint as a philosophy professor, he found his calling as a lecturer, traveling across India to give sermons critical of socialism and traditional Indian religion, which he viewed as empty and ritualistic. In their place, he preached his own unique blend of ecstatic mysticism, universal love, and "dynamic meditation" that alternated periods of silence with jumping, shouting and dancing. It was an unoriginal blend of ideas, albeit one which seemed harmless enough. But most controversial of all, he spoke openly about sex, which drew the wrath of conservative Indian authorities even as it made him more popular.

In the 1970s, he opened an ashram in Pune to promote his teachings. It was popular from the beginning, attracting wealthy patrons and devotees from around the world. But the more attention and followers Rajneesh attracted, the more hostile attention he got from India's conservative Hindu government, which harassed and impeded him. Land use permits were denied, tax violations were assessed, tourist visas to visit were refused; a Hindu fanatic even attempted to assassinate him.

In 1981, deciding enough was enough, and perhaps taking a cue from the increasing numbers of Western tourists at his ashram, Rajneesh packed up and moved to the United States. His secretary, Ma Anand Sheela, bought a large ranch in rural Oregon, and Rajneesh's followers flocked to the site, turning it into a bustling town of 7,000 almost overnight. Rajneesh himself was of course the focal point, although by this time he rarely lectured in public anymore and had acquired a taste for luxury, as evidenced by his diamond-encrusted Rolex watches and fleet of custom Rolls-Royces. Every day, hundreds of his disciples lined up alongside the road to get a glimpse of him as he drove past. (It also emerged later that he had developed a drug habit, becoming addicted to Valium and nitrous oxide.)

The Rajneeshis' relations with their neighbors, however, soured even more quickly than they had in India. Their land-use plans stated that they intended to use the ranch as a small farm, but as more and more followers arrived and more buildings were constructed, it soon became apparent that they were building a town. Rajneeshis also moved into the neighboring town of Antelope and began purchasing lots and registering to vote there. When the Antelope city council denied them a permit to run a mail-order business, the Rajneeshis voted en masse for their own candidates, packing the council and effectively taking over the town. The ranch was also incorporated as a separate town called Rajneeshpuram.

By this point, the Rajneeshis had become aggressive and litigious, filing libel suits against critics and busing in devotees to stage counterdemonstrations when they were picketed by local churches and community groups. Their private police, the "Peace Force", controlled security in Antelope and Rajneeshpuram and publicly displayed semiautomatic weapons. Sheela, Rajneesh's secretary, had become the public face of the movement and was caustic and abusive toward its critics in media interviews, calling them "bigoted pigs", "fascists", and "full of shit", as well as making thinly veiled threats.

The biggest remaining obstacle to the cult's expansion was the Wasco County land-use commission, and in November 1984, several county commissioners were up for reelection. Sheela and other senior Rajneeshis hatched a plan: by exploiting a social program called "Share-a-Home", they had several thousand homeless people bused in whom they hoped they could persuade to vote for their own candidates. But that was only half the plot. In a more horrifying step, they ordered samples of Salmonella typhimurium bacteria from a medical supply company. Rajneeshi doctors cultivated the bacteria, then went to The Dalles, the county seat, and deliberately spread the bacteria on salad bars at local restaurants. The intent was to sicken anti-Rajneeshi voters so that they would stay home on Election Day. (see also)

But this act of bioterrorism, however malevolent, failed to achieve its goal. 750 people fell ill with salmonella poisoning, and about 50 required hospitalization, but there were no deaths. Forewarned local officials enforced voter registration laws, and an angry electorate turned out in droves, overwhelmingly defeating the Rajneeshi candidates. At the time, however, no one realized the salmonella outbreak had been an intentional act.

In September of 1985, Rajneesh himself gave a press conference, one of his first public appearances in years. He stated publicly that the salmonella poisoning was intentional, that it had been masterminded by his followers, and that Sheela and other top cult officials, whom he denounced as a "gang of fascists", had fled the country. Stunned local officials swooped in to investigate, and found a fully-stocked bioterrorism lab in the Rajneeshi compound. Even more alarmingly, they found evidence that the group had been planning to assassinate numerous public figures who had been hostile to them, including U.S. District Attorney Charles Turner and Oregon Attorney General Dave Frohnmayer. The plan had progressed to the point of buying guns, choosing specific Rajneeshis to fire the fatal bullets, and renting an apartment to serve as the base of operations.

By this time, law enforcement had arrived en masse. Rajneesh himself was arrested on board a private plane in North Carolina in October, apparently attempting to flee the country. He was never charged in connection with the bioterrorism or assassination plots, though state officials believed he had known about them. Instead, he was charged with conspiracy to violate immigration laws by arranging sham marriages to get citizenship for his non-U.S. followers. He pleaded no contest and was deported to India. Sheela and other top Rajneeshis, meanwhile, were arrested the same month in West Germany, deported, and pled guilty to felony charges of conspiracy, assault and attempted murder. Without its leaders, the Rajneeshi cult rapidly dissolved, and Rajneeshpuram was abandoned and bankrupt by 1987. Rajneesh resumed his lectures in India, though he took pains to be less controversial than he once was. These appearances became less and less frequent as his health declined, and he died in 1990.

Until the post-9/11 anthrax attacks, the Rajneeshi plot was the only organized bioterror campaign waged against the United States. One would think that such a prominent association with that degree of evil would end one's career as a guru. But amazingly, despite being both disgraced and dead, Rajneesh himself has bounced back - this time under the name of "Osho", the posthumous head of a thriving publishing empire churning out self-help books, videos, and seminars based on his teachings. The whole awkward cult-compound/drug-addiction/bioterrorism thing is tactfully omitted from these materials, of course.

The Rajneesh cult's story, like other cults that collapsed in disaster, shows the peril of following gurus. Even when the initial teachings seem harmless, people who give their absolute obedience to a single leader are all too easily exploited for evil ends - and absolute power over one's followers is a dangerous temptation that even good people find hard to resist. It also shows how easy it is for true believers to ignore criticism and whitewash the reputation of their beloved leader, even after he's fallen prey to that temptation. This is a point that atheists would be well advised to remember the next time we hear an argument about how some other cult leader or self-proclaimed prophet proved the truth of his words by his supposedly unimpeachable morality.

Other posts in this series:

• Strange and Curious Sects

People who are ignorant of science sometimes speak as if the scientific method was some esoteric, arcane method of problem-solving, applicable only to a few highly specialized areas of inquiry and having no relevance to everyday life. But nothing could be further from the truth. In reality, the scientific method is just a more sophisticated, more careful way of asking and answering questions about what is true, with extra safeguards built in to counteract the ways that human beings often fool or mislead ourselves. In principle, science can answer any question whose answer is a matter of empirical fact and not just a matter of opinion or subjective judgment.

This fact has implications for a broad range of religious claims, especially about the efficacy of prayer. Large, well-designed scientific studies have repeatedly failed to find any evidence that sick people who are being prayed for recover faster or more completely than people who aren't. In response, many apologists have retreated to claiming that prayer's effectiveness can't be tested scientifically, such as this one:

Luckily for everyone, scientific attempts to prove or disprove God are all doomed to failure. We live in exactly the world the thoughtful Christian would expect to find. For those who believe, hints of God are everywhere. But none are convincing. Faith remains a requirement...

But this claim probably says more than its originator intended. When theists say that prayer is untestable, what they're really saying, whether they realize it or not, is that prayer has no measurable effect on the world. If it did have a measurable, repeatable effect, we could easily design an experiment that would show it. But since believers say that this can't be done, they must mean that prayer has no benefits that can be proven by any test. Consider some of the consequences that necessarily follow from this claim:

• Sick theists who pray for healing are no more likely to recover than sick atheists. If people who were prayed for recovered more quickly or more fully than people receiving no prayer, we could easily show this with a test. That was the point of the MANTRA study I linked to above. But if prayer is untestable, then that must mean that prayer has no measurable effect on a person's recovery, regardless of how many people are offering prayers for them or how fervent those people are in their faith.

• Theists who pray for success and prosperity are no more likely to receive it than atheists. Prosperity-gospel churches often teach that the more money a believer tithes, the more God will reward them. Again, a longitudinal study tracking the amount of people's donations and comparing it to their subsequent financial success could easily show this to be so. If prayer is untestable, however, this must mean that the amount of money you give to your church has no effect on the odds of your subsequently becoming rich.

• More committed, more faithful believers have their prayers answered at the same rate as more casual, less committed believers. Even if you start with the assumption that God only grants prayers that agree with his will, it seems like a reasonable guess that more devoted, more committed believers would have at least a slightly greater understanding of God's will than casual, apathetic churchgoers, and hence their prayers would be more likely to come true. But if prayer is untestable, there must be no such measurable effect, which means that one's level of commitment means nothing to the effectiveness of one's prayers.

• The number of people praying for some outcome makes no difference to its probability. Even if the level of one's devotion makes no difference, you might guess that the number of people praying for some outcome would be correlated with how likely that outcome is. But if prayer is untestable, then it must make no difference whether one, a hundred, or a million people pray for something - it would be just as likely, or rather unlikely, to come true.

• The specific beliefs of the people praying for some outcome makes no difference to its probability. If there's one true religion, it seems likely that God would only answer the prayers of believers in that religion, or at least would answer their prayers more frequently than the prayers of heretics. But that would also be an easily testable effect. If prayer is untestable, there must be no such effect, and this means that people of all religions - Christian, Muslim, Mormon, Hare Krishna, Jain, Zoroastrian, Shinto - would see their prayers come true with roughly the same frequency.

• People who pray daily are no more happier, no more virtuous, and no more trustworthy than people who rarely or never pray. Some people claim that prayer doesn't produce miraculous effects in the world, but is intended to strengthen the faith and improve the character of the believer. But even this can't be true if prayer is untestable. If people who are otherwise alike in social standing are measurably different in any positive psychological trait, depending on whether or how often they pray, this would be a testable effect. We could measure it with the same kind of epidemiological surveys that measure the beneficial health effects of diet or exercise. If this kind of test wouldn't work, then it must be the case that prayer produces no detectable change in the character of the believer.

• Nations populated by people who pray frequently are no more socially healthy than irreligious nations. Building on the last point, if prayer has no measurable effect, this must apply to nations as well as people. This means that nations of fervent believers who pray frequently are no different from godless, atheist nations in every measure of social health: divorce rates, crime rates, number and severity of natural disasters, overall happiness of the populace, and so on.

The Language of God, Chapter 1

By B.J. Marshall

The chapter begins with a description of Collins' experiences growing up. His parents shrugged off the business world and lived an agrarian life on huge tracts of land in the Shenandoah Valley. His father went on to teach at a women's college. Collins was homeschooled, and faith did not play a part in his upbringing. He went to an Episcopal church, but it was more for music appreciation than theology. OK, so we have a picture here of an ardent scientist who really didn't have a place for theism.

It's funny how, written from a theist perspective, he paints such a picture of atheists. Collins recounts how, as a student at the University of Virginia, conversations would easily turn to religion, where Collins' sense of the spiritual was easily challenged by the one or two "aggressive atheists one finds in almost every college dormitory" (p.15). Later, he says he enjoyed his agnosticism because it was "convenient to ignore the need to be answerable to any higher spiritual authority" (p.16). Collins likens this to practicing the "willful blindness" of his number one idol, C.S. Lewis (p.16). After college, he pursued a Ph.D. program at Yale and shifted to atheism, where he felt "quite comfortable challenging" the spiritual beliefs of others (p.16).

That comfort obviously didn't last long. After moving from chemistry to biology and getting accepted by the University of North Carolina, he did work that put him in intimate contact with very ill patients nearing death. He was astounded by their spirituality, and in one conversation a elderly woman simply asked him what he believed. He said he wasn't really sure and admitted to himself that he had never really weighed the arguments for and against belief. He realized he "could no longer rely on the robustness of [his] atheistic position" (p.20). How does one go from being quite comfortable challenging theists to having their "robust" atheistic world-view crumble? Apparently all it takes is to have an elderly sick woman ask what one believes. Incredible. I would have loved to have seen the atheistic Collins in action when he felt comfortable challenging the spiritual beliefs of others. Of course, Collins never says whether those challenges ended in his favor; I'm guessing they probably didn't.

So, Collins decided to look for answers and was pointed by a Methodist minister to look into the theology of C.S. Lewis. Collins marveled at how Lewis' arguments seemed to anticipate what Collins was thinking. The idea that most rocked Collins' ideas about science and spirit: The Moral Law and a Christian penchant for capitalization of random words. He then details a bunch of everyday problems, noting how it seems to be a universal human attribute to defer to some sort of unstated higher standard. "Though other animals may at times appear to show glimmerings of a moral sense, they are certainly not widespread, and in many instances other species' behavior seems to be in dramatic contrast to any sense of universal rightness" (p.23).

Of course, Collins never cites his sources, so we are left wondering how he knows how narrowly spread these non-human glimmers of morality are, and we are left asking how Collins is able to differentiate between "any" sense of universal rightness and these animals' behaviors - let alone the assertion that humankind's behavior is all that noble and aligned with universal rightness. Ask Hitler, Pol Pot, or even Mother Teresa.

Jessica Pierce and Marc Bekoff's book Wild Justice highlights the broad range of what we would call moral behaviors - fairness, trust, empathy, reciprocity, and more - in other animals. (I say "other" animals, because too often theists imagine humans apart from the animals). Pierce was interviewed on the Conversations from the Pale Blue Dot podcast. Here are some examples from her web site:

• An older female elephant chasing away a male to protect and care for the younger female he injured in his rambunctiousness,
• A rat in a cage refusing to push a lever which, although he knows he will receive food, he knows that pushing the lever will shock a neighboring rat, and
• A group of chimpanzees punish latecomers because no one can eat until everyone arrives.

(I encourage you to add your own examples in the comments)

Over at Why Evolution Is True, Greg Mayer addresses this same excerpt of Collins' book, so I will simply link to it rather than expound here.

Not only does he confuse how animals can be moral, but he goes further to conflate morality with truth: "Let me stop here to point out that the conclusion that the Moral Law exists is in serious conflict with the current post-modernistic philosophy, which argues that there are no absolute right and wrongs.... If there is no absolute truth, can postmodernism itself be true?" (p.24). I'm not here to discuss the merits of postmodern philosophy, but I do find it amusing that he goes from moral relativism to the rejection of absolute truths. I can easily see how someone who holds to a relativistic standard of morality would still be perfectly well off thinking it's absolutely true that all rocks dropped in Paris will fall to the ground.

Collins sees altruism as a stumbling block to naturalistic explanations. He claims that selfless altruism - he explicitly rules out reciprocal altruism - cannot be attributed to individual selfish genes that want to perpetuate themselves. He gives three arguments from sociobiologists such as E.O. Wilson (though Collins never cites his sources, so we don't know without looking it up ourselves whether Wilson actually posited any of these three) that Collins think fail:

1. Altruism as positive attribute for mate selection,
2. Altruism as indirect reciprocal benefits, and
3. Altruism as benefiting the whole group.

Before we unpack these arguments, we should note that Collins states that if altruistic behavior on the basis of its positive value to natural selection could be shown to be a credible argument, "the interpretation of many of the requirements of the Moral Law as a signpost to God would potentially be in trouble" (p.25). Well, sorry to say for Collins' sake, there's a lot of literature out there (check the references at the bottom of the page) explaining how evolution could have led to altruism - and not just in humans. Dawkins mentions four good reasons for individuals to be altruistic in "The God Delusion" (p.250-251):

1. Genetic kinship: We evolved in small groups, allotting plenty of opportunity for kin altruism to develop,
2. Reciprocal altruism: This one is out by Collins' standards, but we'd have plenty of time to develop this altruism given that we'd meet the same people over and over,
3. Reputation: Dawkins states that biologists see a survival benefit to not only being a good reciprocator but having a reputation for being a good reciprocator, and
4. Conspicuous consumption: Those who can provide food/shelter/protection with no expectation of compensation can flaunt their superiority.

Additionally, I argue that reciprocal altruism might not be as plainly seen as Collins might think. OK, there's the obvious "I scratch your back, you scratch mine." But I think there are plenty of examples of altruistic behavior with no tangible repercussions. For example: We had a huge snowstorm, and I helped my elderly neighbor shovel out her parking space. I am not expecting anything from it, and it doesn't even fall in line with Dawkins' lines of evidence (genetic, reputation, or conspicuous consumption). I did it because it fulfilled in me a desire to help my neighbor. I felt good doing it. Collins would not have been able to see that.

So, it appears that altruism as a positive attribute for mate selection corresponds nicely with kinship altruism and conspicuous consumption. It appears to me that having a reputation for being generous does indirectly benefit oneself, so maybe Collins would cry foul that this is a type of reciprocal altruism. However, it seems to me and others that a group consisting of individual members with unique and sometimes competing desires living cooperatively together seeks a stable solution to cohabitation.

Since Collins thinks that altruism must come from outside humanity, where does it come from? Well, he quotes his beloved Lewis again (Collins says he was stunned by the logic you are about to read): "If there was a controlling power outside the universe, it could not show itself to us as one of the facts inside the universe - no more than the architect of a house could actually be a wall or staircase or fireplace in that house. The only way in which we could expect it to show itself would be inside ourselves...." (p.29). OK, so let me get the analogy straight. We can't expect God/architect to be a fact inside the universe/house, so the only place we would expect to find God/architect is within us?? I'm in the universe, too, so why should I expect to find God in me and not outside me? On what grounds is this good logic? Although, it does explain why I've been haunted by my architect. Oh wait, no I'm not.

Collins has now found God, and he wonders what sort of God this is. He rules out deism out of hand on the grounds that, if Collins did indeed perceive God, then God would want a relationship with me. Sadly, I've tried to use this logic on Alyson Hannigan in vain for years. Given the high standards of the Moral Law, Collins concludes this God must be holy and righteous. He doesn't even consider Euthyphro's dilemma in trying to figure out the correlation between his God and the Moral Law: Does God arbitrarily dictate what is moral (in that case, isn't he amoral?), or does God say stuff is moral because that stuff is moral (in which case, why's God the middle man?). He also apparently didn't consider any other god who might desire a relationship with him. Nope - just Yahweh. Well, Jesus: Yahweh 2.0.

It became clear to Collins that science would get him nowhere in questioning God. Collins states that, if God exists, then he must be outside the natural world (but inside all of us, I guess), and therefore outside the purview of science. Oh, if he could only get off that easily.

As a wedding present to ourselves, my wife and I bought the DVDs of the original Star Trek, and these past few months, we've been working our way through them. For myself, it was a test: I hadn't seen most of these episodes since my childhood, and I was curious to see if they held up. I'm pleased to say that, for the most part, they more than hold their own. There's plenty to criticize, but after all this time, it hasn't lost its charm.

Despite everything that makes me roll my eyes about Star Trek - the dated special effects, the hammy acting, the hackneyed plots, the ludicrous science - there's a powerful heart of optimism beating beneath the surface of the show. The idea that human beings have conquered our own divisions and become united as a species, that we're setting out to explore the universe purely for the sake of exploration, that we've become members of a galactic civilization of intelligent life - for all these reasons, the world of Trek could be fairly described as a utopian vision of humanist philosophy. And that's why it's no surprise that Star Trek's creator, Gene Roddenberry, was himself a humanist and a nonbeliever.

As Susan Sackett, Roddenberry's longtime personal assistant, put it to a humanist group in Massachusetts:

Ms. Sackett said that Star Trek, like humanism, promoted ethics, social justice and reason, and rejected religious dogma and the supernatural.... She said Mr. Roddenberry, who lectured in Worcester in the 1990s, strived in his Star Trek ventures to affirm the dignity of all people.

"Rationality was the key... There was no recourse to the supernatural," she said.

Ms. Sackett said Roddenberry was so resolute about religion that he refused suggestions to add a chaplain to the crew of the starship Enterprise.

And Roddenberry himself said:

"I have always been reasonably leery of religion because there are so many edicts in religion, 'thou shalt not,' or 'thou shalt.' I wanted my world of the future to be clear of that." (source)

Brannon Braga, one of the original writers and producers, expressed similar thoughts at a 2006 atheist conference in Iceland:

STAR TREK, as conceived by Gene Roddenberry, portrays the epic saga of humanity's exploration of space and, in turn, their own struggles as a species. Every episode and movie of STAR TREK is a morality tale in which human beings find solutions to conflict through enlightenment and reason. Through science. Through wit and intellect. Through a belief in our potential as animals that can supercede our baser instincts. In Gene Roddenberry's imagining of the future (in this case the 23rd century), Earth is a paradise where we have solved all of our problems with technology, ingenuity, and compassion. There is no more hunger, war, or disease. And most importantly to the context of our meeting here today, religion is completely gone. Not a single human being on Earth believes in any of the nonsense that has plagued our civilization for thousands of years. This was an important part of Roddenberry's mythology. He, himself, was a secular humanist and made it well-known to writers of STAR TREK and STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION that religion and superstition and mystical thinking were not to be part of his universe. On Roddenberry's future Earth, everyone is an atheist. And that world is the better for it.

Star Trek's humanist ethic comes through clearly in several classic episodes, including "Who Mourns for Adonais?", in which the crew of the Enterprise is confronted by an alien being who claims to be the god Apollo and demands their worship; or the Next Generation episode "Who Watches the Watchers?", in which the crew's existence accidentally becomes known to a primitive society, and they must convince those people that they are not gods.

With all that said, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that Star Trek has spawned its own devotees who follow and imitate the show with an almost religious fervor. But even this, I think, is testimony to the hunger for an optimistic, humanist vision of the future, one not based on the supernatural, and that's the kind of thing that all atheists should be doing our utmost to provide.

Other posts in this series:

• The Contributions of Freethinkers

As you've surely heard by now, Judge Vaughn Walker issued a ruling last week striking down California's Proposition 8 on equal-protection grounds. You might also have heard that Argentina has legalized same-sex marriage and that a Mexican court upheld a marriage-equality law in Mexico City, rejecting a challenge by the conservative Calderon government.

Of course, all three of these victories are cause for jubilation. The wins in Mexico and Argentina are particularly welcome, insofar as they show that marriage equality isn't just a cause of the wealthiest nations but is taking root throughout the developing world. They also show the weakening power and fading influence of Christianity in general and the Catholic church in particular - which, to no one's surprise, continues its resolute march in the wrong direction by tenaciously opposing these decisions. Meanwhile, in California, conservatives who scream and gnash their teeth over "judicial activism", by which they mean any court ruling they disagree with, now have a new villain: the notorious hippie liberal who first nominated Judge Walker, Ronald Reagan.

There's little question that the relatively liberal Ninth Circuit will uphold Judge Walker's decision, but the real question is how this ruling will fare at the Supreme Court. It's safe to assume that there are four votes in favor of overturning the ruling no matter what happens - the anti-marriage-equality side could come into the court dressed in clown costumes, conduct their cross-examinations in mime, and deliver a closing argument consisting solely of honking a bicycle horn, and Scalia, Roberts, Thomas and Alito would vote in their favor.

But Justice Kennedy, the swing vote, is almost impossible to predict. Although he's a conservative Catholic and refused to enforce the separation of church and state in some truly horrendous decisions, he also joined the majority in Lawrence v. Texas, the decision striking down sodomy laws as an infringement of the right to privacy. It's just barely conceivable that he might actually rule the right way on this.

However, it's hardly desirable to stake the fundamental freedoms of millions of Americans on the whim of a single justice; we might as well trust a coin flip to deliver equality. I think there's a better way of defending this decision.

Whatever happens at each stage, it will take years for this case to work its way up to the Supreme Court. If Judge Walker refuses to stay his ruling, and if the Ninth Circuit upholds that, there could be tens of thousands of same-sex marriages in the meantime throughout the Ninth Circuit's jurisdiction. By the time the case reached the Supreme Court, it would be a fait accompli. It would be so firmly established that I can picture even a conservative Supreme Court being loath to overturn it. In that case, I could imagine the court simply refusing to hear the issue, letting Judge Walker's decision stand but not applying it to the rest of the nation.

The other possibility is that we could fight for a new ballot initiative. After all, Prop 8 passed by only a small margin, and the percentage of the electorate supporting same-sex marriage is growing every year. If California passes a new constitutional amendment repealing Prop 8 and affirming Judge Walker's ruling, the issue would be moot. Again, this would most likely result in a split where same-sex marriage was legal in California but not elsewhere. This isn't ideal, obviously, but it might be important strategically. Every victory we win, every legal beachhead we establish, builds momentum for the cause of equality and proves to wider society that the doomsday shrieking of the religious right is a heap of contemptible lies.

And the same holds true in Mexico City and Argentina: the more places that same-sex marriage moves into the mainstream, the more it will become familiar and accepted. More and more, people are getting the chance to see for themselves that gay and lesbian couples are normal human beings, deserving of the same rights as everyone else, and religious prejudice is weakening. Every fight we win sets the stage for further victories, and brings us ever closer to the time when true equality is the rule everywhere, not the exception.

In an old essay on Ebon Musings, "Finding Beauty in the Mundane", I wrote in a contemplative mood:

Have you ever considered the trees? Though their kind of life is far grander, slower and more patient than ours, they are each individuals, as different as human beings are. They add beauty to the world, give peace in their dappled shade, freshen the air and enrich the earth, and turn even the most hard-edged urban environment into a blossoming garden. We humans grew up beneath the trees, and we love them still...

Several years later, I still find this to be true. Whether I'm depressed or whether I'm already feeling good, it's almost always the case that visiting a botanical garden or a nature preserve, or even just going for a walk on a tree-lined street, noticeably improves my mood. The sight of sunlight slanting down through green leaves never fails to give me a sense of calm and peace. I tend to think the cause is that looking up at a tree reawakens one's sense of perspective: it's hard to see your own troubles as so serious in the presence of an organism that measures time only in years and decades.

But trees have more than just aesthetic benefits. Human beings feel an instinctive attraction to nature and wilderness, what E.O. Wilson called biophilia, and we flourish in its presence. For example, in one famous study, surgical patients who could see trees outside their window recovered faster and required fewer painkillers than patients whose window looked out on a brick wall. Other studies have found that greener urban areas have lower crime rates and that being in green environments lessens the symptoms of ADHD and improves schoolchildren's academic performance. (And that's not even to mention the many environmental and economic benefits of trees, either.)

The most likely explanation for this is that millions of years of evolution have instilled in us a built-in preference for certain kinds of environments, namely those most similar to our species' ancestral habitat. Wilson argues that this is the savanna, an open grassland broken up by patches of forest. This is the habitat we evolved in, the one we're best adapted to, and when we're placed in such an environment, we tend to fare better both mentally and physically. Urban environments, by contrast, present very different stressors that the human species never evolved to deal with.

I wonder if this feeling of displacement from nature is something that plays a role in religious conversions. When people live only in cities, surrounded by concrete and fluorescent lights, separated from nature, they do feel a sense of isolation and loss, and most of them don't know why. Religious proselytizers, of course, claim they can offer something to fill that void, and to people who don't know the true cause of these feelings, it's probably an effective sales pitch.

But when you know the true source of these feelings, the imitation can't compare to the reality. As I found for myself, the feeling of awe induced by direct contact with nature at its most spectacular is an ecstasy that easily compares to anything offered by any church. That's a piece of knowledge we ought to spread more widely. If more people understood the true, natural roots of human spirituality, the artificial attractions of religion might not prove so resilient.

By B.J. Marshall

In The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief, Francis Collins presents what he believes to be the strongest arguments for theism: what he calls the "Moral Law," the origins of the universe, and life on earth. In a nutshell, Collins sees the ubiquity of morality to be the work of God on our hearts; he sees the marvelous universe and the nature of reality to be "an insight into the mind of God" (p.62); and he sees life on Earth to be the handiwork of God. While the brand of theism he supports is specifically Christian, he does not spend a great deal of time arguing the point. He does spend one chapter apiece devoted to refuting atheism, agnosticism, creationism, and intelligent design. He then posits what he calls "BioLogos" as an alternative worldview (Bio meaning life and Logos meaning word.)

Well, that covers the gist of the book. Before we delve into it, starting with Collins' introduction, I would like to introduce my plan of attack here. I intend to post weekly, where I will most likely cover a chapter in anywhere from two to four weeks depending on the content of the chapter. I openly welcome your comments to my content, so feel free to use the comment section liberally.

To understand Collins' perspective, it is helpful to know a little about him. Here's an excerpt of his Wikipedia entry: "Francis Sellers Collins (born April 14, 1950), M.D., Ph.D., is an American physician-geneticist, noted for his landmark discoveries of disease genes and his leadership of the Human Genome Project and described by the Endocrine Society as 'one of the most accomplished scientists of our time.' He currently serves as Director of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. Collins... was president of the BioLogos Foundation before accepting the nomination to lead the NIH. On October 14, 2009, Pope Benedict XVI appointed Francis Collins to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences."

Collins starts his book by recounting a press conference with Bill Clinton, Tony Blair (connected via satellite), and others to announce the complete mapping of the Human Genome. He asks the reader to consider blatant religious references by political figures (Clinton referred to this event as "learning the language in which God created life" (p.2)) and the number of scientists who hold a belief in God. Collins is obviously discouraged that there exists such antagonism between the spiritual and scientific worlds, and he claims that a synthesis of the spiritual and scientific worlds is possible, although he maintains the notion of non-overlapping magisteria.

Collins asks why a president and a scientist would feel compelled to invoke God. In reply, he lists a few possibilities: is it poetry, hypocrisy, currying favor from believers? Presidents and prominent figures invoke God all the time. Every State of the Union address has "And God bless America." Although I try hard not to, I still invoke god with surprise "OMG!" or when I stub my toe (use your imagination to think of what I say). Given that almost everything a president says is carefully crafted, Clinton's statement may very well be to curry favor from the 92% of Americans who believe in God.

Collins also attempts to demonstrate to readers how many scientists believe in God, but I found it to be disappointing. Collins mentions a 1916 study that asked scientists whether they believed in a God "who actively communicates with humankind and to whom one may pray in expectation of receiving an answer" (p.4). In 1997, the survey was conducted again with much the same results - about 40%. Collins doesn't cite his source for this study, so we don't know who these "scientists" are. Are they they same scientists who doubt evolution? According to a 1996 article in the journal Nature, in which scientists who were members of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) were polled, more than 65% did not believe in God. (Percentages varied by fields of study.) Many who did not believe were agnostic. In the table of the link I provided, one figure for personal belief in God is only 7%. That's a far cry from 40!

Whatever the number of scientist-believers are, Collins maintains that "[s]cience's domain is to explore nature. God's domain is in the spiritual world, a realm not possible to explore with the tools and language of science" (p.6). There are two glaring problems with this. First, wouldn't God's domain be both the spiritual and natural realms? I mean, he's omnipotent and omnipresent, right? Second, the Christian deity is apparently one that operates in the world. Recall how the study Collins cited asked scientists whether they believed in a god who actively communicates and answers prayers. (I'm assuming at least some of those prayers have expected results that are tangible.) As soon as God enters the natural world, science can test those claims. In fact, it has in many cases.

Collins at least gets it right when he states that science "is the only reliable way to understand the natural world" (p.6). So I wonder how he justifies a belief in something he can't validate. He says that science can't answer certain questions like "why did the universe come into being," "what is the meaning of human existence," and "what happens after we die?" I think it might be these questions which spur him to look at something beyond the natural.

In the next chapter, Collins shares with the reader his journey from atheism to belief in a "God who is unlimited by time and space, and who takes personal interest in human beings."

Last month, I concluded my post series of chapter-by-chapter responses to Lee Strobel's The Case for a Creator. I'm happy with the way this project turned out, and I'd been wanting to do it again, but I wasn't sure if I had the stomach to tackle another apologetics book in such detail so soon.

Well, fortune favors the bold! Earlier this year, I got an e-mail from a Daylight Atheism commenter who offered to write his own book-length rebuttal. After seeing some of his writing, I decided he'd be a more than worthy contributor to this site. With that in mind, I'd like to introduce B.J. Marshall, who's going to be addressing Francis Collins' The Language of God. (Having given creationists their turn, it seemed only fair to give a theistic evolutionists a chance to prove themselves.)

I'll let B.J. introduce himself in his own words:

With a BA in Economics from Oswego State University, BJ began his career in 1999 working for the Federal Government where he still works. During his career, he obtained a MS in Management from the University of Maryland University College, got Master's Certificates in both Business Analysis and Project Management, and became a Certified Project Management Professional. He currently works as a Business Analyst in IT, where he serves as a liaison between program areas that think they need IT solutions and the IT personnel who actually provide the software applications to meet those needs. Given the Federal Government's stereotypical dysfunction, he'll be busy for a very long time.

BJ grew up Roman Catholic in a small city in rural Upstate New York. He became very active in the church proclaiming the readings at mass, singing in choirs, participating in Small Church Communities, leading a Young Adult Ministry, and in general kicking butt at being Catholic.

He began having serious doubts with his faith about five years ago, when he started studying philosophy and seeing that the claims he held to be true were based on rather poorly grounded assertions. His search for God attained Ludicrous Speed when his wife announced she was pregnant with their son. He read books from both the theist and atheist perspectives, listened to debates and podcasts, and discovered the wealth of information that is the blogosphere.

He decided last summer to come out to his close friends and family. While his friends have been accepting, his parents have actively tried to reconvert him, lovingly giving him "The Case for a Creator" for his birthday (along with a new Bible and a pamphlet for those who have left the church). He found Ebonmuse's rebuttal of Strobel's book to be of great assistance. BJ's parents gave him "The Language of God" as a Christmas gift, and he'd like to return the favor to the Daylight Atheism readership.

He would like to sincerely thank his wife, who is made of 100% awesome, for supporting him throughout his deconversion. He finds it ironic that the person he stood the most to lose through his deconversion was the one he came out to at the onset and relied on for support over the past five years.

B.J.'s first post will appear later today. Stay tuned!

As a neutral observer of religion, one of the most striking characteristics I find is the rampant misogyny in nearly every religion in the world. Worldwide, women are denigrated as lesser beings, barred from positions of leadership, commanded to be subservient, and told that they're weaker or more sinful than men. Even in the relatively few religions where women play a significant role, it tends to be a late-arising development brought about by modern moral progress. By comparison, just consider how many major world religions clearly state in their founding documents that women and men are equal (can you think of any?). Why is the hatred and oppression of women such a common thread, even in faiths that otherwise have nothing in common?

In the wake of some recent discussions about feminism, I had an inspiration, and I'd like to share it: it's rooted in how religion propagates itself.

Despite the evangelistic efforts of some faiths, it's clear that the primary vector of religious memes is vertical, from parents to children. And conservative religious leaders know very well that women hold the key to that effort. Given the choice, most women limit the size of their families, but it's not in the best interests of religious authorities to allow that. Hence, all their misogynist rhetoric, demands for female subservience, opposition to sex education and contraception, and alloting sole authority over sex to men (who, it has to be said, have far less at stake): all part of a strategy to ensure that women don't exercise control over when or whether to have children.

This suggests a counterstrategy: to advance the atheist cause and stop the spread of religions that seek to grow by proliferation, we have to work to ensure that women have access to contraception, abortion and other reproductive health services. And for that reason, I was very pleased to read this article about a massive charitable gift by Warren Buffett:

Last year, The Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, named for Buffett's first wife, who died in 2005, gave more than $2 million each to Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Abortion Access Project Inc. and Washington-based Catholics for Choice and more than $40 million to Ipas, which works to expand the availability of safe abortions and provides reproductive health care.

There's also this encouraging article, "The New Abortion Providers". It details how doctors' groups are making a greater effort to train abortion providers and bring them into the medical mainstream, while anti-choice activists' attempts to intimidate and harass doctors are meeting with less success than they used to. There's an important point in it that clinics which only offer family planning services are easy for zealots to target, whereas if abortion care is brought into hospitals and performed like any other procedure, it makes it much more difficult for them.

And besides charitable gifts and support from the medical profession, there's one more very effective way we can give women control over their own reproductive destinies: make it possible for women to abort a pregnancy themselves, without having to travel or find a cooperative doctor or clinic. That's why I was greatly encouraged to read this column by Nicholas Kristof about the increasing use of misopristol, a cheap, common drug used to treat ulcers and hemorrhaging. It's one component of the RU-486 pill, but it's almost as effective at terminating pregnancy if taken on its own. It also causes a miscarriage indistinguishable from a natural one, which is crucial in countries whose theocratic laws punish women who are found to have exerted control over their own biology.

Unfortunately, there are still such countries. One of them is the Philippines, whose laws are largely dictated by the Catholic church. Abortion is outlawed there without exception, with the following result:

According to the Center for Reproductive Rights, more than half a million Filipino women undergo illegal abortions every year. Of this number, 90,000 suffer complications, and a thousand eventually die, the center said. Abortion-related complications, it said, are one of the top 10 causes of hospitalization among women in the Philippines. According to the World Health Organization, 20 percent of maternal deaths in the country are a result of unsafe abortions.

It's often observed, but still indisputably true: outlawing abortion doesn't prevent abortion, it just makes women more likely to die or be maimed in the bargain. As in many other countries around the world, Filipino women's lives are being sacrificed on the altar of Catholic dogma, their bodies treated as breeding stock to produce more children for the church. Atheists and freethinkers have every reason to stand against this - to reduce the power of a tyrannical religion, to promote human happiness by ensuring that every child is wanted, and to defend human liberty. But if we're ever going to succeed, we need to build alliances with all women and treat them as full and equal partners in the effort, capable of exercising autonomy over their bodies and minds alike.