Jesus, Take The Wheel!

Jesus, you’re facing the wrong way.

I hope you’re all staying inside gorging on chocolate bunnies (you damn gluttons), because Christians are rallying around demonstrations of faith, one of which is removing their hands from the steering wheel of a car for five minutes and letting their savior drive.

Ok, just kidding. It’s a fake event made up by us evil atheists to exemplify the stupidity of entrusting everything to a divine being. And if anybody actually does it, then I suppose today will live up to my nickname for it: Natural Selection Day.

But it’s true that some religious folks are going somewhat nutters in their application of faith to real life, and to the rational-minded their actions are no less ridiculous than suggesting that Jesus will take over and steer you safely down the highway.

We have our fair share of medically-preventable deaths because of the “faith healing” fad: a boy whose appendix burst died from infection that was not successfully prayed away, and his parents aren’t serving any jail time; a woman and her newborn died from childbirth complications after her pastor refused her parents’ requests to stop praying and take her to the damn hospital, but at least there was a $100 million compensation awarded by a jury; a couple is in prison for six years for failing to seek help for their two-month premature baby, who lived for nine hours before his underdeveloped lungs and staph infection overwhelmed his little system; Jehovah’s Witnesses routinely refuse such mundane and common medical treatment as blood transfusions, which severely limits any other procedures that can be done- many surgeries are out because they would require such transfusions, and a girl who needs a liver and kidney was removed from her parents’ custody when they refused the transplants.

The faith healers don’t even believe in what they do (I presume because they’ve seen their dismal success rates), and this guy went to the hospital for cancer treatment while he let a 15 year old girl die of cancer under his prayer care.

So tell me how these cases are any different than suggesting you pray your car to the grocery store.

Ask me again why I can’t just live and let live, and leave the innocent religious folks alone. I will by no means claim that most religious people are this extreme, but these few cases are more than enough to show the potential dangers of superfaith, and if you give me this bullshit you’re too far gone for help.

Show me a place that encourages faith and is able to entirely objectively separate that from law and I will concede that religion can be safe or even good. But for now I still think it’s just like our wisdom teeth: good for our ancestors, but now a pain in the neck and dangerous until removed.

New Pope, old ideas

I’m sure most of you have heard by now that the next Pope has been chosen. It’s this guy.

Photo credit: Natacha Pisarenko / AP

His real name is Jorge Bergoglio, and he came from Argentina. As Pope, he will be called Francis. And other than that, we don’t know a whole lot about him. He was discussed this morning on the Diane Rehm Show, and as I was listening during my morning commute I appreciated the insight of Father James Martin, an American Jesuit priest. The transcript of today’s show hasn’t been published yet, so I must paraphrase his comments:

‘Bergoglio is a conservative Catholic, so I don’t see him changing the Church’s policies towards gays or contraception.’

Fair enough. A little disappointing, but not surprising for the leader of an oppressive worldwide religious institution.

But then Martin goes on to stick his foot in his mouth, as religious folk are wont to do. Once again, I paraphrase:

‘But the Pope shouldn’t really be worried about social issues like that. Now is a time to bring the gospel to the people and introduce them to Jesus.’

Oh. Is that so? You’re kind of a prick if you think the head honcho of the religion that preaches love should ignore the suffering of the LGBTQ community, ranging from simple marriage discrimination to execution. Contraception was discussed in the context of financial inequality, but apparently the Pope gets to disregard the plight of even devout Catholic families with too many mouths to feed. Father Martin, if you really wanted to introduce more people to Jesus’ teachings of tolerance and support for the poor, you could start by following his damn example.

Besides dismissing the blatant opportunity to emulate the good deeds of your savior, you suggest that more people need to be introduced to Jesus. Really? Christianity is one of the largest religions in the world and has a vice-grip on social and legal policies in many regions, but you still think spreading it further is a higher priority than alleviating suffering? Either you lack the compassion you claim to hold so dear, or you’re stupid.

Not that it’s even the Pope’s responsibility to reach barbarians who haven’ t heard the good word yet. That’s what missionaries are for. And then local priests reinforce it. No, Francis will ride around in his Popemobile, trusting God to protect him with bulletproof glass and speaking Latin. He might announce that God spoke to him about those social issues we should be ignoring, but he sure as hell won’t be telling clergymen how to keep their parishioners in line.

On a rather tangential note, SASHA has been having our own Popewatch for the past several weeks, and I was really hoping we’d end up with this lovely fellow.

Photo credit: Pier Marco Tacca/Getty Images

This is Angelo Scola of Italy, and he has the coolest God-damned stick of any of the major Pope contenders. Sure, Francis has bling, but this guy knows where it’s at. Ah, well. At 71 years old, he’s five years Francis’ junior, so maybe he’ll be around for the next conclave.

Dave’s Mailbag: Why do you deny the existence of God?

I received the following from “Anon Imity”:

Hi Dave,

I came across your name on the CS website where you scored 100% on a religious quiz.  I only scored  94%,

I missed two questions. Anyway, it made me want to know a couple of things about what you believe and why.
-

I am curious to know why you deny the existence of God.  What makes you so sure that God does not exist, and

above all, what if you’re wrong.  Please tell why you are convinced, and what evidence you may have that makes

you willing to bet your eternal destination that you are right. It has to be pretty compelling, eternity is a long time

for any of us to be wrong.
-

I know that you’re probably very busy, but I really would appreciate it, if you would take the time to reply to me.

I just want the best arguments for your denial of the existence of God. I truly am looking forward to hearing from

you.  I hope you take the time to write.
-

Thanks Dave.
-

Anon

Here is my reply:

Hi “Anon”!
-
Thank you for your email. I appreciate you taking the quiz and hope you enjoyed it.
-
I wouldn’t say that I deny the existence of gods. I’m simply not convinced that any gods actually exist, the same way that most people simply aren’t convinced that unicorns or Santa exist. If I were to be presented with good evidence that a god or gods exist, I would readily change my stance. Despite years of searching for such evidence, I haven’t found anything that I consider even remotely convincing.
-
I would never make the claim that God does not exist – I have no way of knowing that! I think that is a common misunderstanding of what the word “atheist” means. Atheists do not claim God does not exist; rather, it’s a question of what we believe.
-
As far as wagering eternity, I would say to you that you too are wagering eternity. If you are a Christian, you are wagering that Islam is not true. If you are a Christian and Islam is true, you are going to the Islamic hell. If you are a Muslim, you are wagering that Christianity is not true. If you are a Muslim and Christianity is true, you are going to the Christian hell. And so on and so on for many other religions.
-
To quote Stephen F. Roberts, “When you understand why you dismiss all other gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.” Or another good one from Richard Dawkins: “We are all atheists about most of the gods humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.”
-
As far as the best arguments for the non-existence of gods, I think the single best line of reasoning is simply that god is unnecessary to explain the world. Science does an excellent job of that. In the past, before we had the scientific method, it may have made sense to attribute certain things we didn’t understand to gods – lightning was caused by Zeus throwing down lightning bolts, or Thor striking his hammer, for example – but now we know where lightning really comes from and we no longer think a god did it. It’s the same for every mystery throughout history so far and we have no reason to think this won’t continue.
-
I hope this has been helpful to you. I encourage you to continue asking questions, and feel free to keep the conversation going if there’s more you’d like to know.
-
If you’re looking for reading material, I recommend the website http://www.godisimaginary.com, and the book “The God Delusion” by Richard Dawkins. The aforementioned website has 50 simple explanations of different reasons we can feel confident that there are no gods. “The God Delusion” is quickly becoming a modern classic and is a favorite among American Atheists’ membership.
-
Thanks for writing!
-
- Dave Muscato
-
Public Relations Director
American Atheists

Until next time,

Dave

Dave Muscato is the Public Relations Director for American Atheists based in Cranford, New Jersey. An atheism activist, blogger, and public speaker, he is also a board member of MU SASHA. He is a vegetarian, LGBTQ ally, and human- & animal-welfare activist. Dave posts updates to the SASHA blog every Monday, Thursday, and Saturday; twice monthly for the Humanist Community at Harvard, and monthly or more on SkepticFreethought.com. His website is http://www.DaveMuscato.com

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Well, at least he’s not doing anything useless… wait…

Last week marks the end of an era: Pope Benedix XVI delivered his final public blessing, according to CNN Breaking News.

The Pope said he will continue serving the church by, according to the article, “taking up a life of prayer and meditation.”

Um… what?

How is this serving anyone or anything?

Meditative prayer has been linked to things like reducing stress and lowering blood pressure, but let’s not kid ourselves here: The Pope is not serving anyone by taking up a life of prayer. What is a life of prayer, anyway? That’s essentially saying, “I’m done contributing to the world.” There has never been a proper double-blind study that has shown any statistically significant effect of intercessory prayer. Not one.

At best, the Pope is no longer doing damage as leader of an organization which rails against condom use, abortion, stem-cell research, gay civil rights, women’s rights, etc, etc, etc.

Roy Speckhardt, Executive Director of the American Humanist Association, made an excellent point in a Huffington Post article that I think bears repeating: A new pope, regardless of whether he is more liberal or more conservative, will be a good thing for rational people. If the new pope is liberal, he will work to enact policy changes that are better for stem-cell research, AIDS prevention, abortion access, women’s civil rights, LGBTQ civil rights, and relations with secular people. If the new pope is conservative, he will drive even more “C&E” Catholics (Catholics who only care about their religion on Christmas and Easter) away from the Church and toward the wonderful world of reality in the 21st century.

Until next time,

Dave

Dave Muscato is the Public Relations Director for American Atheists based in Cranford, New Jersey. An atheism activist, blogger, and public speaker, he is also a board member of MU SASHA. He is a vegetarian, LGBTQ ally, and human- & animal-welfare activist. Dave posts updates to the SASHA blog every Monday, Thursday, and Saturday; twice monthly for the Humanist Community at Harvard, and monthly or more on SkepticFreethought.com. His website is http://www.DaveMuscato.com

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Saying goodbye to an old friend **Updated**

**UPDATE** See bottom of page.

—

Hello all,

It’s with a heavy heart that I update the SASHA blog today. Here goes:

Once is too often; unfortunately this happens more regularly than that.

Dave, please mail my late dad’s book to me at [address removed]. I wish you the very best in life, but I have to delete you on Facebok. You take pride in making fun of the reason I have a peaceful spirit and a happy life. I have other atheist friends who are not so blatant. I just can’t deal with being made fun of constantly. I don’t find those types of posts even remotely humorous. We obviously are on opposite ends of the spectrum with respect to God. Humor me for one second here. If God exists, I will have to stand before Him at the Great White Throne of Judgment and be a witness against you. I do not want any part of that, Dave. I like you too much for that. No hard feelings. I just want peace and not sick feelings when I read posts. Take care and thank you, in advance, for mailing my dad’s book.

Hi [name removed]!

Thanks for your message. It makes me sad to hear that, although you like me, you’re not interested in being friends with me anymore. I make a deliberate effort only to criticize the beliefs themselves, and not the people who hold the beliefs with which I disagree. It was never my intent to cause you sadness or pain.

As you may have heard, I was recently hired as the new Director of Public Relations for American Atheists, a non-profit based in New Jersey that advocates for separation of church & state and civil rights for atheists. I’m actually moving to New Jersey this Thursday.

I apologize for the delay in responding; I wanted to find your book before I wrote you back, and I finally found it today. I will mail it to you as soon as I can.

If you ever change your mind and decide you want to be friends, my door is *always* open. I care about you and your family very much and I sincerely hope this isn’t the last time we speak. But if so, I want you to know that I think you guys are great, and I thank you for being such an important part of my life the past 13 years.

Take care [name removed],
Dave

I do not apologize for my views on religion. I think it is the single most harmful and deleterious invention humankind has ever come up with. In the words of Christopher Hitchens, it is without exaggeration that I believe religion poisons everything. I of course recognize that religion has some redeeming qualities—providing a social safety net, providing a sense of community—but there is no need for dogma or superstitious silliness in order to have these things. In fact, in my personal experience, Humanists do it better.

Until next time,

Dave

—

**UPDATE** She responded to my message saying that she would like to remain friends outside of Facebook; she just doesn’t want to have to see posts about atheism on her feed. I feel so much better now! It really is a huge relief to learn that our friendship has a more-solid foundation than I feared. Atheist readers, are you good friends with any very religious people? How do you handle it? Thanks in advance for your comments.

Dave Muscato is the Public Relations Director for American Atheists based in Cranford, New Jersey. An atheism activist, blogger, and public speaker, he is also a board member of MU SASHA. He is a vegetarian, LGBTQ ally, and human- & animal-welfare activist. Dave posts updates to the SASHA blog every Monday, Thursday, and Saturday; twice monthly for the Humanist Community at Harvard, and monthly or more on SkepticFreethought.com. His website is http://www.DaveMuscato.com

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Does stress cause leukemia? A skeptic asks two experts

Hello all!

It’s been awhile since we’ve done a good skeptical debunking—most of our articles lately have been counter-apologetics and so on, so I thought it was time for a change of pace! Enjoy.

A friend of mine recently posted on Facebook:

Did you guys know that stress can lead to leukemia?

As it happens, my parents are both hematologists/oncologists & cancer researchers. FYI, leukemia is cancer of the bone-marrow stem cells.

I responded:

Is this like in the way drinking water can lead to leukemia? I’d love to see some peer-reviewed research if not!

She responded:

There is peer-reviewed research.. but it’s like connecting the dots. I had my blood levels checked a few months back and saw that I had high MPVs [editor's note: mean platelet volume] from stress. Then, I went on to learn about large blood platelets which have an average life span is 5-9 days. So if the stress were to continue consistently for long enough, leukemia could develop. I did so much digging only to realize that I needed to find a way to chill out, asap. The stress was from neuro-lyme.

I was skeptical of my friend’s claim that stress can lead to leukemia, especially since it seems to be based on anecdotal evidence, and so I asked for my parents’ opinions. They are both Ivy-League trained, practicing clinicians with medical degrees. My father has authored about 16 research papers in proper peer-reviewed academic journals, and my mother about 5. Between them, they have over 60 years of experience treating and researching cancer, and are both Fellows of the American College of Physicians. For their full credentials and CVs, please visit marymuscato.com and joemuscato.com.

My father and mother (left and second-from-left) with two other doctors at a 2006 American College of Physicians conference

I called my father and asked if stress can cause leukemia. He said:

Nope. Of all the diseases where I think it couldn’t be related, that would be it.

My mother asked if she could supply me with a written response, so I’m just copying & pasting what she wrote. Here’s what she had to say:

Where do I begin? Normally, platelets live 10 days, and are big, juicy, sticky platelets when they “hatch”, and come into the bloodstream, from the marrow. As they age, they put lots of “fingers in the dike,” and the resultant platelets are smaller. If the MPV, mean plt volume, is big, it means that platelet turnover is increased, suggesting a shortened plt survival, less than 10 days. The most common cause of this is “ITP”, which means idiopathic (now autoimmune), thrombocytopenic purpura, where a person has antibodies against the platelets. This is an autoimmune problem, where the person, for unknown reasons, makes these antibodies, that attack the platelet membrane, and alert the spleen that there’s something wrong with the platelets. The spleen then does it’s assembly-line job of removing these abnl platelets from the circulation, destroying them in the spleen. Hence, the shortened platelet survival time, and the new baby plts, made, maybe 10-100 times the nl rate, are big. They work really well, and people who have this disease don’t have as much bleeding as one’d think, as the plts are extra big and sticky. 

If someone has low platelets from decreased production, rather than increased destruction, as in aplastic anemia, or leukemia, where, in the former, the marrow is pretty empty – no seeds in the garden, so no platelets will be made and released to the circulating blood. This usually occurs with red cells (anemia), and white cells, (no white cells to fight infection, phagocytize bacteria and then engulf bacteria, killing them). People with leukemia don’t have empty marrows, but their marrows are overrun with infant marrow cells, that don’t mature into normal red, white cells or plts, but stay as infant cells, almost always the white cells, neutrophils, and the marrow gets tons of these useless infant cells, called blasts, or myeloblasts, that take up all the room in the marrow, so there is no room for normal clones of cells to do what the body needs – normal red, white cells and plts.

Those people with AA or leukemia, have decreased production of plts, and their MPVs are NOT increased – they’re not making much of anything. They have terrible problems with bleeding, infection, anemia, often need transfusions of red cells and platelets, need to be in the hospital as they’re totally vulnerable to get infections w/o having good, mature white cells. The MPV is a result of not making many plts, and is the effect of decreased production. It is not the CAUSE of anything, but the result of not making new platelets very quickly.

The MPV is not a cause of leukemia at all. It is an effect of not making lots of platelets, as baby plts are big. True, true and unrelated. [emphasis added]

Leukemia is formed when an abnormal clone of white cells gets a directive to grow faster than the normal clones, so the bad clones overrun the good marrow cells.

I added to my friend that I’d be happy to pass along citation numbers for any papers she finds that show a causative link between stress & leukemia, if she’d like my parents to give them a look and respond to them. If that happens, I’ll post their responses on the blog as well.

I’m not saying I agree nor disagree with my parents; I have zero knowledge of this subject. However, my parents do have knowledge of it—expert knowledge of it—and I think it makes sense to trust the experts until or unless a convincing body of good evidence is presented that indicates they’re wrong. That’s really how we should approach all claims like this, if you ask me. Experts can be wrong sometimes, sure. But we go with the best information we have, and trusting people who know more than you do is necessary for making our way in this world.

I think it’s irresponsible to post things like “Did you know…?” as though this is an absolute fact, if this is not the consensus view of professionals. In this particular case, it happens to be physically impossible as well, given the actual mechanisms of leukemia.

Have a great Friday, everyone!

Dave

Dave Muscato is an atheism activist, blogger, and public speaker. He is also a board member of MU SASHA. He is a vegetarian, LGBTQ ally, and human- & animal-welfare activist. Dave posts updates to the SASHA blog every Monday, Thursday, and Saturday; twice monthly for the Humanist Community at Harvard, and monthly or more on SkepticFreethought.com. His website is http://www.DaveMuscato.com

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My Book, Your Book, Their Book, No Book: Exploring Secularism (panel discussion)

Hello all!

Last Wednesday, February 13th, several SASHA members, plus Dr. Dennis Kelley (Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Missouri) participated in a panel discussion at Mizzou called “My Book, Your Book, Their Book, No Book: Exploring Secularism.”

The panelists were (from left to right) me, Dr. Kelley, Katie Huddlestonsmith (undergrad and SASHA officer), Robbie Curran (undergrad and SASHA officer), Theo Tushaus (undergrad, SASHA member, and President of TriCo), Tony Lakey (undergrad and President of SASHA), and Jeremy Winn (doctoral student and SASHA member).

Video of the panel is now live on YouTube. Enjoy!

The panel was organized by the University of Missouri Chancellor’s Diversity Initiative with the help of the student ambassadors and Charlie Parker, Jr of the CDI office. We’re very grateful for their help with this!

If you like it, please feel free to share on Facebook/tweet to spread the word if you like it! You can also upvote it on Reddit.

Until next time,

Dave

Dave Muscato is the Kansas/Missouri-Area Volunteer Network Coordinator for the Secular Student Alliance. He is also a board member of MU SASHA. He is a vegetarian, LGBTQ ally, and human- & animal-welfare activist. A non-traditional junior at Mizzou studying economics & anthropology and minoring in philosophy & Latin, Dave posts updates to the SASHA blog every Monday, Thursday, and Saturday and twice monthly for the Humanist Community at Harvard. His website is http://www.DaveMuscato.com

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