Greta Christina's Blog

The Case of the Missing Bisexual

This piece was originally published on the Blowfish Blog. I never reprinted it here, for reasons that now escape me. But the Blowfish Blog archives are apparently no longer on the Internets, and the original piece is no longer available. So in the interest of completism and making all my published works accessible, I'm going ahead and posting it here.

Harebrained speculation time:

Why aren't there more "true" bisexuals? ("True" in quotation marks -- so please don't all start yelling at me.)

One of the interesting puzzles about sexual orientation is the way it's distributed in the population. It's very far from a neat bell curve, with a few heterosexuals and homosexuals at either end, and a big peak in the bisexual middle. It's not even a slanty bell curve, peaking sharply at "more or less heterosexual" and sloping down gradually towards "more or less homosexual."

Instead, it's a double bell curve -- with one peak near "leaning towards straight," and another, smaller peak near "leaning towards gay." (The height and shape and location of these peaks vary depending on who's doing the study... but the basic "double bell curve with one high peak and one low" pattern seems to hold pretty steady.)

Translation: Very few people are strictly straight or strictly gay... but most people do have something of a preference for one gender or the other. Quote unquote "true" bisexuals, people who are attracted to women and men equally, are fairly rare. Even if we take self-identification out of the picture -- even if we define orientation purely on the basis of desire or behavior -- we still see this tendency.

Why would this be?

If sexual orientation were entirely genetic -- if there were some evolutionary reason for humans to be more heterosexual than not but to have some fluidity around that -- why would we have the double peaks? Wouldn't we just have the slanty bell curve, peaking around 1 or 1.5 on the 0-to-6 Kinsey scale, and gradually curving down towards 6? Why would we have a small second peak at around 4.5 or 5?

I freely acknowledge that there might be some good genetic reason for this "double bell curve" phenomenon, one that we just don't know yet. I'll even acknowledge that there might be some good genetic reason for this phenomenon, one that somebody else knows but that I don't. I'm definitely not a sexual orientation constructionist (translation: person who thinks orientation is entirely constructed by society). The science is still shaking out, but it does seem to be pointing to genetics as at least a significant factor in determining which gender or genders we like to boff. And it might well turn out that genetics play an important role in this "double peak" pattern.

But I'll also say this:

I think it's quite plausible that the double peak is entirely cultural.

And there are two specific cultural trends that I think may be skewing our orientations towards the two peaks.

The first is homophobia... and the way it's sorted our culture into Straight and Gay. The two mix and overlap, of course -- straight people have gay friends, and vice versa -- but they're still distinct social categories. Especially in parts of the country and the world that are more homophobic. Because of homophobia, people who lean towards being queer have a strong need to create a gay culture, a community shaped around sexual and romantic desire towards people of the same sex. And of course, because of homophobia, straight people have historically shunned queers -- and have denied any queer tendencies in themselves. This has improved dramatically, but it's only improved fairly recently, and it does still go on today.

So because society has sorted itself into two intermingling but distinct groups -- Gay and Straight -- people somewhere in the middle often feel a need to pick one. There is a bisexual community, but it's nowhere near as visible, or as well-organized, as either the straight or gay worlds. And it can be very hard to drift back and forth between those two worlds. People whose natural orientations lie close to the middle of the scale -- say, a 2.5 or 3.5 on the scale of 0 to 6 -- often wind up picking a side, and more or less sticking to it.

And that tendency can be self-perpetuating. A cultural preference for straight society or the gay community can slant your sexual preference towards women over men, or vice versa. I know that I tend to get more interested in women when I'm spending more time in dyke culture, and I get more interested in men when I'm hanging around straight people more. It's a simple matter of who's on my mind. Not to mention who's available. Love the one you're with, and all that. Or lust after the one you're with, anyway.

So that's Harebrained Speculation Number One for the double peak.

Harebrained Speculation Number Two: Biphobia.

There's a strong bias against bisexuals in both straight and gay cultures. Gay culture tends to see bisexuals as traitors, fence-sitters, kinky thrill-seekers, people who can't commit either politically or personally. Straight society tends to see bisexuals as fickle, unreliable, secretly gay people who just can't admit it. Plus straights often see us as promiscuous... and, of course, in the age of AIDS, they see us as vectors of disease. And both gays and straights tend to see us as confused, experimenting, "going through a phase."

All of which exacerbates people's tendency to sort into gay or straight culture. The strong biases against bisexuality -- from both gays and straights -- push many people to pick one camp or the other... people who might not otherwise need or want to. People who might have identified as bisexual can internalize this biphobia, and decline to call themselves bi. And people who privately identify as bi are often reluctant to do so publicly.

So largely because of homophobia from the straight world, we have a tendency to sort ourselves into straight society and the gay community. Because of biphobia from both straight and gay cultures, this tendency gets exaggerated. And this cultural tendency gets transformed into personal sex behavior and desire... which then turns into a self-perpetuating feedback loop. Hence, the "double peak" pattern in our sexual orientations -- a pattern that might be much less pronounced, and might not even be there at all, if these social trends weren't there.

I'm not sure how you'd test this hypothesis. But here's what I'd expect to see if it were true:

If it were true, then in parts of the world that were less homophobic -- and less biphobic -- I'd expect to see a less vividly pronounced double peak. (If the less-homophobic, less-biphobic trend had been happening for long enough, anyway.)

And if it were true, then if society continues to become less homophobic -- and less biphobic -- over the coming decades, I'd also expect to see the strong double peaks soften and flatten towards a more standard slanty bell curve.

It might not flatten out entirely. Again, there may be some genetic reasons for the double peak in the bell curve, ones that we don't know about. And even in an entirely non-homophobic, non-biphobic society, we still might have something of a cultural tendency to sort into gay and straight cultures. For dating/ cruising purposes if nothing else. But I think without these cultural factors, this double peak would very likely flatten out significantly.

I'm not saying "everyone is basically bisexual." I think that's bullshit. Some people are clearly not bisexual. Some people are clearly gay or straight. And even though most people do have at least some capacity to be attracted to both/all genders, that still doesn't make them "basically bisexual." Sexual identity is complicated -- it's about political identity, cultural identity, sexual history, romantic and relationship preferences, etc., as well as basic sexual attraction. And when people are deciding which identity (if any) works best for them, they get to decide for themselves which of these factors gets priority. I don't want someone insisting that I'm "basically lesbian" because I'm currently hovering around 5 on the Kinsey scale -- so I'm not going to insist that someone else is "basically bisexual" because they're currently hovering around 4.

So I'm not saying "everyone is basically bisexual." I'm saying that, at least for those of us in the wide sloppy middle of the Kinsey scale, sexual orientation is at least somewhat malleable. Like I wrote in my piece, The Learned Fetish, the finer points of our sexual desires can be shaped by our experiences as adults -- even if the basic outlines are set early on.

I'm not sure why I think this is important. I'm not sure the answer would have any effect in figuring out social policy or political strategy or dating strategy, or any other practical decisions we might make about sex. I'm even not sure that it is important, except that figuring out what is and isn't true about reality is always important.

But I sure do think it's interesting.

So what do you think? If you lean more towards one end of the Kinsey scale, do you think you might lean more towards the middle if society weren't so divided into Gay and Straight? And if you're already pretty squarely in the middle, do you think you'd have had an easier time getting there if it weren't for the two camps?

Sex Addiction or Sexual Compulsion?

This piece was originally published on the Blowfish Blog. I wasn't planning to reprint it here, since after it came out some errors in it were called to my attention (specifically on the neuroscience of addiction). But the Blowfish Blog archives are apparently no longer on the Internets, and the original piece is no longer available. So in the interest of completism and making all my published works accessible, even the ones I no longer totally support or that are no longer relevant, I'm going ahead and posting it here.

Let's start with something we can all agree on. Some people have a hard time controlling their sexual behavior. Some people have sex in ways that damage themselves, and damage others... and they keep doing it anyway. Some people pursue sex -- specific sexual activities, or just any kind of sexual pleasure generally -- in ways that seriously interfere with their lives: ways that screw up their relationships, or create financial hardship, or even injure their health. And despite this harm, despite the fact that their behavior is making them unhappy, they don't seem to be able to control themselves, and they keep doing it anyway.

I don't think anyone would disagree with that.

Does this mean these people are "sex addicts"?

My immediate answer is No.

And my non-immediate answer, my answer after long and careful consideration, is also No.

No, no, no, no, no.

Abso-fucking-lutely not.

The right word for this behavior is "compulsive." Or "obsessive." Or "fixated." Or "self-destructive." Or "harmful."

Why?

Why am I so passionately opposed to the very concept of "sex addiction"?

Why am I being such a stickler about this language?

Part of my problem is that the word "addiction" has a particular pharmacological meaning. It's a specific relationship to a particular set of drugs, such as heroin or cocaine or alcohol: needing higher doses to get the same effect, withdrawal symptoms when the drug use stops, etc. It's a fairly specific concept. And it's a different concept from compulsive behavior, or self-destructive behavior, or having a hard time stopping a certain behavior. To say that people are "addicted" when they're being compulsive about exercise, or working, or collecting things -- or sex -- is just not accurate.

But I'm not usually this much of a stickler about definitions. Quite the opposite. In fact, regular readers may be getting very confused at this point: I'm usually an ardent usagist when it comes to language, a descriptivist rather than a prescriptivist, and I've defended this non-stickler position with great passion and waving about of hands. I think words mean what they're generally understood to mean by most of the people using the language, and I think it's nonsensical to complain that a word "really" means X when most people speaking and hearing it think it means Y. I understand that the meanings of words change over time. And I'm generally fine when words with specific, technical meanings acquire different meanings in casual, colloquial conversation.

So why am I being a stickler about this one?

Why do I get my panties in a twist about the phrase "sex addiction"?

Partly it's because, although I am usually a happy- go- lucky usagist when word meanings change, I'm more of a stickler when a word's original meaning is useful -- and there isn't another word to replace it. (I object to the word "literally" being used as an intensifier, for instance, not because "that's not what the word really means," but because we don't have another word to express the concept that "literally" used to express.)

And this is definitely true about the word "addiction." The concept of "a specific pharmacological relationship to certain drugs, characterized by withdrawal symptoms, needing increasingly higher doses, etc." is a useful one. It's a very different concept from "any sort of obsessive or compulsive behavior that people have difficulty stopping." And while these two concepts are obviously related, the distinction between them is worth preserving.

But in the case of the word "addiction" -- and especially in the case of "sex addiction" or "porn addiction" -- there's another reason I'm being a stickler. And it's a far more important one.

The word "addiction" has, I think, certain implications. They're implications inherent in the original technical definition of the word, and they carry over into the colloquial, casual, non-technical use.

And they're implications I think are grossly inaccurate, wildly misleading, and seriously harmful when they get applied to sex.

The word "addiction" refers to a specific kind of relationship: not just with drugs, but with specific drugs. Some drugs are addictive -- others are not. Heroin and cocaine and alcohol, for instance, are addictive: marijuana is not. People can certainly form unhealthy relationships with weed -- but those unhealthy relationships don't include withdrawal symptoms, needing increasingly higher doses to get the same effect, etc. People can and do get those symptoms with heroin and cocaine and alcohol. That's what addiction means.

So as a result, we tend to see addiction as being a problem that's rooted in the substance itself. We tend to see addiction as a problem, not with the quirks of the human brain, not with the way certain human brains deal with certain drugs, but with the drugs. We're obviously not very consistent about this -- we happily demonize heroin and cocaine, while we have a much more accepting attitude towards alcohol -- but we still tend to see the harmful potential of addictive drugs as somehow inherent in the drugs themselves. Maybe we shouldn't -- okay, we definitely shouldn't -- but we do. And while this isn't the most useful attitude towards drugs humanity has ever come up with, there is a grain of truth to it. Our relationships with addictive drugs are different from our relationships with non-addictive drugs. Or they often are. I certainly don't think it makes sense to demonize addictive drugs... but I do think it's reasonable to acknowledge that they often have a different effect on us, and to set them apart in some ways.

But this is a very, very bad approach to take when we're talking about sex.

And it's an approach that feeds into our culture's existing demonization of sex. The concept of "sex addiction" treats sex as an experience that is inherently harmful: an experience that has financial disaster and screwed-up relationships and ruined health somehow inherent in the experience itself.

When we're talking about people having a hard time controlling their sexual behavior, "compulsive" or "obsessive" are much better words. Because when we talk about compulsive or obsessive behavior, we understand that the problem doesn't lie in the specific thing being obsessed about. We understand that people can get compulsive about anything: work, exercise, eating, falling in love, collecting Simpsons memorabilia. In fact, we understand that people tend to get compulsive about positive, pleasurable experiences, experiences that are central to human existence. We don't blame work or exercise, food or love, for the fact that some people get compulsive about them.

And sex should be in that category. It's not a substance, like heroin or alcohol, that people can form pharmacological dependencies on. It's a fundamental human behavior, like eating or working or falling in love: a behavior that, tragically but understandably, some people get destructively compulsive about.

But when we talk about "sex addiction" -- as opposed to "sexual compulsion" -- it places the blame on sex itself. It treats sex, not as a positive and necessary part of human life that can sometimes go wrong, but as a dangerous and harmful substance: best avoided entirely if at all possible, to be treated like a minefield if you absolutely have to engage with it.

And that's both denigrating to sex, and flat-out mistaken.

I would never deny that sex can be harmful. Anything can be harmful. And I think it's quite possible that sex has more potential to cause harm than many other human behaviors. Sex is a powerful drive, an irrational, deeply ingrained, lizard-hindbrain urge: it has hundreds of millions of years of evolution powering it, and our fears and desires and feelings about it run deep and hard. We're not going to be as smart or as self-controlled about it as we are about, say, collecting Simpsons memorabilia. Strong drives have more potential to go wrong, and to go wrong more badly. That's true of hunger, and fear, and pleasure, and competition, and family loyalty, and love: these experiences are powerful -- which means they have more power to screw us up.

But these experiences are also our most fundamental ones. They have the power to harm us, of course -- but they also have the power to give us joy, to inspire us towards greatness, to take us out of ourselves, to connect us with our future, to keep us alive, to engage us with the world.

We're not going to cope with the problems they create by treating them like poison... as if evil and destruction were woven into their very core.

The Fat Positive Feminist Skeptical Diet, Phase 2, Part 2: How Do You Know When Enough Is Enough?

This is Part 2 of a two-part post. In yesterday's piece, I talked about the process of switching from weight loss to weight maintenance... including the strange attraction of the process of losing weight, and the challenges of letting go of that process and embracing lifelong weight management. Today, I talk about how you even decide what a healthy weight might be... and how loving and accepting your body is part of that decision.

So, like I said yesterday: I am officially done losing weight. I've reached my target weight. Or, to be more accurate: I have reached the bottom of my target weight range. Or, to be even more accurate than that: I have made a final decision as to what my target weight range should even be -- something I wasn't sure of at the beginning of this project -- and have reached the bottom of that range.

But how did I make that decision?

Deciding when to stop losing weight was an interestingly tricky question. Much trickier than I'd thought it would be. I knew I didn't want BMI (weight to height ratio) to be my only metric of healthy weight. I knew that BMI, while a fairly good measure of healthy or unhealthy weight in populations as a whole, isn't the best metric for individuals. It can give some good broad strokes -- I knew that at five foot three and 200 pounds I should definitely lose weight, and that at 160 pounds I should probably keep going for a bit -- but when it comes to the fine-tuning, it's really not the best gauge. There's too much variation in how people of different heights are built -- different frames, different muscle masses, etc.

So once I got closer to my "ideal" BMI, I had to decide when to stop.

And I had to decide how to decide.

Which metric of healthy weight should I use? Body fat percentage? Waist circumference? Waist to hip ratio? Should I use body mass index after all? Some combination of the above?

Yoni Freedhoff (of the Weighty Matters blog), an evidence-based doctor/ weight loss expert I've been following and whose work I greatly respect, advises his readers not to get too hung up on external metrics. Instead, he says, we should find a weight we're happy and healthy at, one with a calorie budget we can sustain and not be miserable with. And there's some real value in that. When I was hovering near my "ideal" BMI and trying to decide whether to stop or keep going, one of the factors I considered was whether I could be happy dialing down my calorie budget a little more to lose a few more pounds... or whether that would restrict my eating too much for me to be happy with.

But there are also real problems with this approach. The whole point of this weight control project is that my own instincts about what is and is not a healthy weight are pretty broken, and I can't trust myself to make that decision without some external metrics. After all, I deluded myself for years into thinking that I was happy and healthy at 200 pounds... and that eating any less than I was eating would make me miserable. And on the other side of those broken instincts lurk eating disorders. Like I wrote yesterday, the process of losing weight itself has a strange appeal, with its constant cycle of victorious accomplishments and new goals to reach for. I could see myself coming up with a rationalization for continuing the process, even if I had no earthly health-related reason to do so. And since even at a completely healthy weight, my body still isn't the exact perfect body I'd choose if I could, it'd be easy to delude myself into thinking that more weight loss would solve that imperfection. I could see myself deciding that I'd be happier with my body if I lost just a little more weight... and then lost a little more... and then just a little bit more after that...

So I knew this "decide for yourself what weight you want to be" method wouldn't work. I didn't just want to paint a target around myself and call myself "done." I knew that my powers of rationalization would make that a dangerous path. It'd be way too easy, if my weight slid up again (or slid too far down), for me to just keep re-painting that target at every new place that I landed. I needed some other way of deciding.

But what else? BMI isn't great, for the reasons I detailed above. Waist-hip ratio isn't bad, it's pretty strongly linked to health outcomes... but the problem is that you can't really do much about it. Spot reducing (i.e., losing weight in one particular part of your body) doesn't work -- so if you want to improve your waist-hip ratio, all you can do is lose weight, and hope you lose more of it in your waist than your hips. Waist circumference? Seems a bit weird for that number to be the same for everyone, regardless of height or frame. But sure, I'd gotten that below the danger point. Was that enough?

I decided to go with a combo of BMI, waist circumference, and body fat percentage. I figured if all three were in a healthy range, I was probably fine. So when the first two were where I wanted them to be, I signed up with a hydrostatic body fat testing company -- you know, one of those places that measures your body fat percentage by dunking you in a tub of water -- and got that number.

And here's where it got interesting.

According to the Tub of Water Dunking Company (no, not their real name), my body fat percentage is 23%. And according to the company's calculations and categories, this puts me squarely in the "healthy" range. In fact, it puts me close to the bottom of that range.

I had my answer. I was done.

In theory, anyway.

But according to the Tub of Water Dunking Company and their calculations and categories, my 23% body fat percentage put me very close to the "athletic" range. And the moment they told me that, I found the idea almost irresistibly appealing.

I have never, in my entire life, considered myself "athletic." I've always been nerdy, indoorsy, a bookworm. Growing up, I was always a fat, gawky, "last picked in gym class" kid. Even when I lost weight in my teens, even in high school and college when I was taking tons of dancing classes and getting an A in fencing -- hell, even when I was dancing at the Lusty Lady peep show fifteen hours a week and making a living being professionally beautiful and sexy -- I never once thought of myself as "athletic." And now, finally, according to the Tub of Water Dunking Company, if I lost just a few more pounds of body fat, I'd officially be in that category.

And I thought: Maybe I'm not done after all. Maybe I should lose a few more pounds, and get my body fat percentage into that "athletic" range. Maybe it would be worth it to keep going, just a little bit longer.

It took some time, and some thinking, and a bit of Googling, to realize that something was very wrong here.

The Tub of Water Dunking Company had ranges for body fat percentages that they considered too high -- but they didn't have any that they considered too low. Their categories were Obese, Overfat, Healthy, Athletic, and Excellent. They had no category for You Don't Have Enough Body Fat. They had no category for You Are Dangerously Thin And Need To Start Gaining Weight Now.

And that was very disturbing.

So I did some Googling. Mostly to get a reality check on my "Yes, a 23% body fat percentage is totally healthy, you can stop losing weight now" answer... but also to get a reality check on my disturbance. And I got both. Yes, the body fat percentage range that the Tub of Water Dunking Company called "healthy" is also called "healthy" by the somewhat more reliable World Health Organization and National Institutes of Health. I really and truly didn't have to lose any more weight. Yay!

But here's where it gets really interesting. The body fat percentage range that the Tub of Water Dunking Company called "athletic," the WHO and NIH call "underfat." Yes, many athletes have a body fat percentage in this range... but athletes often have serious health problems, and sacrifice their long- term health to reach short-term goals. Serious athletic training is about achieving extraordinary feats of performance -- not about good health.

And I started thinking:

Why was I so eager to be in that "athletic" range?

Why was I so eager to keep losing weight?

A lot of it, I think, has to do with what I talked about in yesterday's post. There is a powerful appeal in the process of losing weight, and in the sense of accomplishment and approaching a concrete goal that it gave me. That's been surprisingly hard to let go of. I also knew how much harder weight maintenance is than weight loss, and I think I was nervous about embarking on this new leg of this project that everyone says is so much more difficult. So as relieved as I was at the thought that I was done, a part of me was disappointed, even somewhat scared... and eager to jump at an excuse to keep going. And again, even at my "ideal" weight, my body still wasn't the perfect body I would choose if I could ...and since weight loss had gotten me so much closer to where I wanted my body to be, it was seductive to think that a little more weight loss would get me a little closer to that ideal.

But some of the appeal, I'm embarrassed to admit, has to do with that word "athletic" -- and the feeling of validation and approval I could feel in having someone else, someone with some sort of objective eye, apply it to me.

Even if it was just the guy at the Tub of Water Dunking Company.

There's a Simpsons episode that perfectly illustrates what I'm talking about here. (Because there's a Simpsons episode to illustrate everything important about life.) It's the one where Homer and Marge go on the couple's counseling retreat, and Homer sneaks off to go fishing for the legendary giant catfish the locals are obsessed with, and thus be respected and admired. When Marge asks him, "By whom?", he answers, "Those weirdos down at the worm store!"

Why on earth did I care about those weirdos down at the worm store?

Why on earth did I care whether the guy at the Tub of Water Dunking Company thought I was an athlete?

And this is where I come back around to Yoni Freedhoff, and his "whatever weight you're happy with and can sustain without being miserable" metric.

The truth is that we don't really know what a healthy weight is. A lot of research is being done in this area, but right now, we just don't know. There are lots of different metrics, and not much agreement about which one is best, or where on each metric it's best to be. The answer is almost certainly a range, not a single fixed number. The range is almost certainly different for different people. And we don't really know exactly what that range is, or how wide it might be. We have some clear ideas of what a definitely unhealthy weight is... but we don't have a clear idea of what a healthy weight is. We have some very broad outlines... but for any given person, the question, "What should I weigh?" does not have an obvious answer.

So ultimately, I do need to take responsibility for this decision myself.

Yes, I need my decision to be evidence-based, informed by the best available research I can find. Yes, I need to avoid denialism about the serious health problems connected with overweight and obesity. (And, for that matter, denialism about the serious health problems connected with underweight and disordered eating.) Yes, I need to be aware of my human ability to rationalize and justify decisions that I find comforting and convenient. And so yes, I need to find reliable outside sources that will give me a good reality check.

But I don't need the guy at the Tub of Water Dunking Company to tell me I'm athletic. I know I'm athletic. I pump iron three days a week, most weeks. I'm doing bicep curls with 25-pound dumbbells. I can run up a flight of stairs without getting winded or breaking a sweat. I can dance for hours, and be disappointed and ready for more when the night is over. I can bench press half my weight. (Not that I would, usually: my trainer says bench pressing is a waste of time.) And when I flex my biceps, I look like a freaking Amazon goddess. I don't need to get my body fat percentage below some essentially arbitrary line, above which I'm just an ordinary schlub, and below which I am somehow magically transformed into Martina Navratilova.

I know I'm athletic. And more importantly: I'm healthy. My body does most of what I want it to do, most of the time. In fact, lately it's been doing things I never in my wildest dreams would have thought to ask of it. It's not perfect, and it never, ever will be. But it's strong, and it's sexy, and it's awake and alive and happy, and it connects me intimately with this universe I love so much.

And I'm learning to be okay with that.

Also in this series:
The Fat-Positive Diet, 7/28/09
The Fat-Positive Skeptic (Part 2 of 2), 7/29/09
An Open Letter to the Fat-Positive Movement, 11/11/09
The Fat-Positive Feminist Skeptical Diet: An Update, 3/8/10
Weight Loss and Strange Emotional Stuff: The Fat-Positive Feminist Skeptical Diet, Part 2, 3/9/10
The Fat-Positive Feminist Skeptical Diet, Part 3: The Actual Diet, 3/10/10
Some Evolving Thoughts About Weight and Sex, 3/17/10 (reposted here 6/28/10)

The Fat Positive Feminist Skeptical Diet, Phase 2: Switching from Loss to Maintenance

I'm done.

I am officially done losing weight. I've reached my target weight. Or, to be more accurate: I have reached the bottom of my target weight range. Or, to be even more accurate than that: I have made a final decision as to what my target weight range should even be (something I wasn't sure of at the beginning of this project), and have reached the bottom of that range. My goal was to get my weight between 135 and 140 pounds; as of this writing, I weigh 135. I'm done. I am off of weight loss... and am now on what everyone informs me is the much harder project of life-long weight management.

As I always do when I write about this stuff, I promise yet again: This is not going to turn into a weight control blog. If you want to know the details of how I lost the weight, you can read them here: but I'm not going to bore you every day, or indeed every month, with the tedious details of what I'm eating and how much I weigh and how I feel about it all. I'd rather lock myself in a box with snakes. And as I always do when I write about this, I want to make it clear: I'm not evangelizing about weight loss for every fat person. I know that weight loss takes a lot of work, I know that it's harder for some people than others, and I think the cost/ benefit analysis of whether that work is worth it will be different for everybody.

But enough of you have been interested in the other writing I've done about this project, so I wanted to update you on where I've gotten... and where I'm going from here.

Or, to be accurate, where I think I'm going from here. Because everything I've read tells me that, as difficult as it is to lose weight, it's more difficult by an order of magnitude to keep it off. Lots of people lose weight; relatively few people lose weight and keep it off. It does happen, but it's less common by far. I do have some ideas of what I need to do (and not do) to make this work: I've done a lot of reading about this, I know what many of the pitfalls and success strategies are, and since forewarned is forearmed, I feel reasonably confident that I'll be able to make this happen. But this part of the project is very new to me -- I've only been on maintenance for a couple of weeks now -- and this post is going to have a lot more questions in it than answers.

The first question, of course, is, "What am I going to do to maintain my weight?" And in an entirely practical sense, that question has a very simple answer: I'm going to do exactly what I did to lose the weight in the first place. I'm counting calories, and I'm exercising almost every day. The only difference -- and I mean the only difference -- is that my daily calorie budget is a little higher. I am not changing anything else... and I don't plan to.

Everything I've read about maintaining weight loss says the same thing: One of the biggest mistakes people make with weight loss is that they think they're done. They think that, once they've lost the weight, they can go back to their same old eating and exercise habits. And their old habits are what got them to gain the weight in the first place. As I've said many times when I've written about this topic: Our "natural" food instincts cannot be trusted. Our "natural" food instincts evolved 100,000 years ago on the African savannah, in an environment of food scarcity, and they are not capable of coping with a food environment where Snickers bars are easily and cheaply available on every street corner. Our "natural" food instincts are dummies. That's just reality. Weight control isn't something you do once and then forget about. It's a permanent lifestyle change. Like any lifestyle change, it becomes less self-conscious and more automatic as time goes on... but it's still a permanent lifestyle change, and not a one-time project. (That's why it's so important for weight loss programs to be sustainable: if you lose weight, but don't learn healthy eating and exercise habits that you'll be happy with for life, it's not going to work in the long run,) When people stop consciously managing their weight, and go back to their old unconscious eating habits, they gain the weight back.

And I can see exactly how that could happen. The day I decided, "I'm done," one of the first thoughts that came rushing into my head was, "Woo hoo! Now I can go have a frappuccino at Peet's! I can get a double cheeseburger with fries at the Double Play! I can eat anything I want! I'm not losing weight anymore!"

Fortunately, forewarned is forearmed. I knew this was coming. And I knew it was a bad, bad idea. I knew that this inner "Woo hoo!" was the siren song leading me back to 200 pounds. So I ignored it. I kept up my program. The day I decided, "I'm done," I ate exactly as I would have if I'd still been on the weight loss program. I think I ate a cookie, and let myself go over budget by about 50 calories. (Both of which are things I did fairly often, even when I was on weight loss.) I've since dialed up my calorie budget slightly, and am still trying to decide what it ultimately ought to be... but the nuts and bolts of my program are the same. Counting calories; staying within a daily calorie budget; exercising almost every day.

But weirdly, and very unexpectedly, the other thought that rushed into my head when I decided I was done was, "You could lose a little more."

"Come on." the voice said. "Keep going. Five more pounds, and you'd be a Size 6! Ten more pounds, and your body fat percentage would be in the 'Athletic' range! You can do it!"

This wasn't about anorexia, or any other body image distortion. I didn't think I was too fat, or even fat at all. This was about being weirdly attached to the process of losing weight. The little victories, the sense of accomplishment, the feeling of having a goal that I was getting closer and closer to every week... that's been very deeply satisfying. And it's been strangely hard to let go of. As difficult as this process has been, I'm going to miss it. I clearly have to find some Zen-like way of seeing ongoing weight management as a victorious goal in itself. (I'm thinking anniversaries. Celebrating six months of maintenance, a year of maintenance, two years, three years... those are goals, too. And getting to a year of successfully maintaining weight loss will mean getting to sign up for the National Weight Control Registry... and I'm enough of a nerd to think that will be loads of fun.)

What's more, the process of losing weight has been bringing me attention and compliments that ongoing weight management probably isn't going to provide. There's going to come a time when the people I've known for years are finally used to the weight loss, and they're going to stop mentioning it. And new people I meet aren't going to know that I ever looked any different. I do have seriously mixed feelings about the compliments -- there is a "What was I before, chopped liver?" quality to them that annoys me -- but they're still compliments, and I know I'm going to miss them when they start to fade.

And some of it is just a mental habit I need to break. For a year and a half now, I've been thinking that losing weight was Good, and that maintaining the same weight was Not Good. I now need to unlearn that mental habit, and learn the new one. Maintaining Weight Good. Maintaining Weight From Week To Week = Success.

But there's another reason the "losing weight" part of this project is proving hard to let go of.

It's that I now, officially, have to accept my body the way it is.

For many months now -- for the year and half since I've been on this project -- I've been very focused, not on what my body was like at the moment, but on what I was trying to get it to be. Don't get me wrong: I've been very happy with my body during this process. I've actually been happier with my body during this process than I've been in a long time. I've been getting tremendous pleasure out of my body, and I've had many, many stretches of being intensely present in it, and very much in the moment with it. But as much as I've been enjoying my body, I've also been very focused on the goal of getting it to a different place. And it was easy to displace any anxiety or unhappiness I had about my body onto my weight... and to assume that, as the weight dropped, the unhappiness would too.

And some of it has. A lot of it has. But it's not like my body is now the exact perfect body I would choose if I had the power to. I still have a flat butt, droopy breasts, chronic middle- aged- lady health problems I won't bore you with (nothing life-threatening, just annoying). Since I've been losing weight, a lot of my anxiety about my body has transferred from my size to my age -- something I really can't do anything about. And the weight loss itself has brought on a few changes in my body that I'm not thrilled with. (Have we talked yet about loose skin? Oy fucking vey.)

So now that I'm officially done losing weight, I have to accept it: This is the body I have. Sure, there are a few things I can tinker with still -- getting my abs stronger, my legs more muscled, my bicep curls back up to 25 pound dumbbells and maybe even higher. But when it comes right down to it, this is my body. It's not going to change that much, except for a few gradual changes from strength and stamina training, and the gradual changes of getting older. I have to learn to accept it, and to love it, and to find peace in it. I am way, way happier with my body than I have been for years; it works better, it feels better, and I'll admit that I think it looks better. But it's not perfect. And it never, ever will be.

And I have to learn to be okay with that.

To be continued tomorrow. In the meantime: If any of you have been through this process, I'd love to hear what you have to say about it. If you've lost weight and kept it off successfully, I'd like to hear what maintenance strategies have worked for you; if you've lost weight but then gained it back again, I'd like to hear what you think made maintenance harder. Forewarned is forearmed.

Born or Learned? Sexuality, Science, and Party Lines

On Sunday, AOL news -- perhaps not the best source of science reporting on this beautiful green earth -- reported on a study supposedly showing that gay parents are more likely to have gay kids. Unfortunately, some of the responses I've seen from the LGBT community have focused, less on whether the science in question is sound (it seems likely that it's not), but on whether the conclusions of this study are likely to hurt our cause. So it seemed like a good time to revive this piece from the archives, on the dangers of criticizing science simply because it reaches conclusions we don't like.

When I first came out into the gay community, one of the most common party lines going around was, "Gay parents aren't any more likely to have gay kids than straight parents." Some of the big political battles being fought at the time had to do with gay parenting, and the community was trying to reassure/ convince the straight world that it was "safe" for gay people to have and raise kids, that our kids wouldn't be any more likely to be gay than anyone else's. (Of course, many of us personally thought, "So what if our kids turn out gay? There's nothing wrong with being gay, so why does it matter?" But we knew the straight world didn't feel that way. Hence, the line.)

Not too long after that, I started hearing the party line, "Being gay isn't a choice -- we're born that way." Again, this was used in political discussions and debates, as a way of putting anti-gay discrimination in the same civil rights camp as racist or sexist discrimination... and as a way of gaining sympathy. Now, this would seem to be in direct contradiction with the "Gay parents aren't any more likely to have gay kids" line. If people are born gay, doesn't that mean it's genetic, and doesn't that mean gay parents are more likely to have gay kids? But in fact, these two party lines overlapped. I heard them both at the same time for quite a while... and I never heard a good explanation for why they weren't contradictory. (Please see addendum at the end of this post for clarification of this point.)

Then I started hearing the strict constructionist line. "Sexual orientation is a social construct," it said. "Our sexuality is formed by our culture. All that 'we're born that way' stuff -- that's biological determinism, rigid, limiting, a denial of the fluid nature of sexuality and sexual identity." (I am embarrassed to admit that I bought and sold this line myself for quite some time, in a pretty hard-line way... solely because I liked the idea.)

And now... well, now it's kind of a mess. Some in the queer community say, "it's genetic," and argue that this is a core foundation of our fight for acceptance. Others fear that the "genetic" argument will lead to eugenics, parents aborting their gay fetuses, the genocide of our community. The constructionist line about rigidity and determinism still gets a fair amount of play. And more and more I'm starting to hear the combination theory: sexual orientation is shaped partly by genetics, partly by environment, and may be shaped differently for different people.

And in all of these debates and party lines, here's what I never heard very much of:

Evidence to support the theory.

Or, to be more precise: Solid evidence to support the theory. Carefully gathered evidence. Evidence that wasn't just anecdotal, that wasn't just personal experience.

The line of the day -- and the debates in our community surrounding it -- always seemed to be based primarily on personal feeling and political expedience. I'd occasionally hear mention of twin studies or gay sheep or something... but that was the exception, not the rule. And the line has shifted around over the years, based not on new evidence, but on shifting political needs, and shifting ways that our community has defined itself.

I am profoundly disturbed by the ease with which many in the queer community are willing to dismiss the emerging science behind this question. Yes, of course, scientists are biased, and the research they do often reflects their biases. But flawed as it is, science is still the best method we have for getting at the truth of this question (and any other question about physical reality). Double-blinding, control groups, randomization of samples, replication of experiments, peer review: all of this has one purpose. The scientific method is deliberately designed to filter out bias and preconception, as much as is humanly possible.

It's far from perfect. No reputable scientist would tell you otherwise. Among other things, it often takes time for this filtering process to happen. And it completely sucks when the filtering process is happening on your back: when you're the one being put in a mental institution, for instance, because scientists haven't yet figured out that homosexuality isn't a mental illness. But when you look at the history of science over time, you see a consistent pattern of culturally biased science eventually being dropped in the face of a preponderance of evidence.

And if you're concerned about bias affecting science, I think it's important to remember that many of the scientists researching this question are themselves gay or gay-positive. We can no longer assume that scientists are "them," malevolent or ignorant straight people examining us like freakish specimens. Many of them are us... and if they're not, they're our allies. Yes, science often reflects current cultural biases... but right now, the current cultural biases are a lot more gay-positive than they used to be. And that's even more true among highly educated groups such as the scientific community.

But more to the point: What other options are being offered? How else do we propose to answer this question? Or any other question about the possible causes of human behavior? If answering it based on science is subject to bias, then isn't answering it based on our own feelings and instincts even more subject to bias? How can we accuse scientists of bias in their attempts to answer this question -- and use that accusation as a reason to dismiss the science -- when our own responses to the question have been so thinly based on evidence, and so heavily based on personal preference and political expedience?

Unless you're going to go with the hard-core deconstructionist argument that there is no reality and all of our perceptions and experiences are 100% socially constructed, then you have to accept that the question, "Is sexual orientation genetically determined, learned, or a combination of both -- and if a combination, how much of each, and how do they work together?"... well, it's a question with an answer. It's not a matter of opinion. And it's exactly the kind of question that science is designed to answer: a question of cause and effect in the physical world.

I'm not a scientist myself. But I've been following this question in the science blogs for a little while now. And as best I can tell, here's the current scientific thinking on this question:

1) Sexual orientation is probably determined by some combination of genetics and environment (with in utero environment being another possible factor). (Here, btw, is a good summary of the current scientific research on this topic, and how it evolved.)

2) We really don't know yet. The research is in the early stages. It's probably a combination of genetics and environment... but we really don't know that for sure, and we don't know which factor is more influential, or how they work together, or whether different people are shaped more by one factor and others by the other. We just don't know.

But I've said it before, and I will say it again: We should not be thinking about this question on the basis of which answer we would like to be true. We should not be thinking about this question on the basis of which answer we find most politically useful. We should be thinking about this question on the basis of which answer is true. We should be thinking about this question on the basis of which answer is best supported by the evidence.

If we don't, then we are no better than the creationists, refusing to accept evolution because it screws up their view of the world. We are no better than the 17th century Catholic Church, refusing to accept that the Earth revolves around the Sun because it contradicted their theology. We are no better than the Bush administration, refusing to recognize clear warnings about Iraq and Katrina and global warming because it got in the way of their ideological happy thoughts. We are no better than the "Biology for Christian Schools" textbook, which states on Page 1 that, "If [scientific] conclusions contradict the Word of God, the conclusions are wrong, no matter how many scientific facts may appear to back them."

If we expect the straight world to accept the reality of our community, the reality that our lives and relationships and families are as healthy and stable as any other, then we ourselves need to be a committed part of the reality-based community. And we therefore need to accept the reality of the causes of our orientation... whatever that reality turns out to be.

So why don't we try a different angle for a while. Maybe something like this:

"We don't really know what causes sexual orientation. And we don't think it matters. It's probably a combination of genetics and environment, but until more research is done, we don't really know for sure. And we don't think it matters. It's an interesting question, one many people are curious about -- but it doesn't really matter. Homosexuality doesn't harm anybody, and it doesn't harm society, and our relationships are as healthy and stable and valid as anybody else's... and it isn't anybody's business but our own.

"We deserve rights and recognition because we are human beings and citizens: as much as racial minorities, whose skin color is inborn, and as much as religious minorities, whose religion or lack thereof is learned. The 'born versus learned' question is a fascinating one, with many possible implications about human consciousness generally. But it has absolutely no bearing on questions like job discrimination, or adoption of children by same-sex couples, or whether we should be able to marry. We don't yet know the answer to this question... but for any practical, political, social, or moral purposes, it absolutely does not matter."

*****

Addendum: As several commenters to the original post pointed out, it is actually possible for a trait (such as sexual orientation) to be genetically caused or influenced, and still not be any more likely for parents with that trait to have kids with it than parents without it. Fair point, and worth knowing. But I think my basic point about party lines, and the prioritization of political expedience over scientific evidence,still stands. After all, we didn't know that in the early '90s. Geneticists may have known it, I don't know -- but lay people in the queer community definitely didn't. And yet we were still willing to repeat both tropes: the "we're born that way" trope and the "gay parents aren't any more likely than straight parents to have gay kids" trope.

Why Near Death Experiences Are a Terrible Argument for the Soul

This piece was originally published on Alternet.

"But when people are near death, they have out- of- body experiences. Some of them, anyway. Doesn't this prove that there's an immaterial soul, separate from the body, that leaves the body and survives when we die?"

As I've written before: Most arguments for spiritual belief that I encounter are so bad, they don't even count as arguments. But some believers in religion or spirituality do try to make real arguments for their beliefs, and try to defend them with evidence and logic. This evidence and logic are never very good... but they are sincere attempts to engage with reality instead of ignoring it. So I want to do these argumemts the honor of taking them seriously... and pointing out how they're completely mistaken.

Today, I'm taking on, not an argument for God, but for some sort of soul, separate from the brain and the body, that sparks consciousness, animates life, and survives death. More specifically, I'm taking on the argument that near- death experiences are evidence of this immortal soul.

*

Here's the argument being made. Sometimes, when people are near death, they have weird experiences: experiences that seem like their consciousness is leaving their body. These experiences are rare -- even those who believe in the soul acknowledge that NDE's only happen to a small proportion of people near death -- but they happen. And there are some reports that people having these experiences see things they couldn't have known were there. These experiences can only be explained -- so the argument goes -- by a soul, separate from the brain, that departs from the brain when it's near death, and returns to it when death is staved off.

That's the argument.

So here's the problem.

There's this phenomenon -- consciousness.

There are essentially two ways to explain it. Either it's a physical, biological product of the brain -- or it has a component other than brain function: a soul that is separate from the brain, and that survives when the brain dies.

And there are two sets of evidence supporting these two explanations.

The evidence supporting the "biological product of the brain" explanation comes from rigorously- gathered, carefully- tested, thoroughly cross-checked, double-blinded, placebo- controlled, replicated, peer-reviewed research. An enormous mountain of research. A mountain of research that is growing more mountainous every day.

I cannot emphasize this enough. Read any current book on neurology or neuropsychology... or at least, any current book on neurology or neuropsychology that isn't written by a woo believer with an axe to grind who's cherry-picking the data. Read Oliver Sacks, V.S. Ramachandran, Steven Pinker. We are getting closer to understanding consciousness every day. The sciences of neurology and neuropsychology are, it is true, very much in their infancy... but they are advancing by astonishing leaps and bounds, even as we speak. And what they are finding, consistently, thoroughly, across the board, is that, whatever consciousness is, it is intimately and inextricably linked to the brain. Changes in the brain result in changes in consciousness -- changes sometimes so drastic that they render a person's personality entirely unrecognizable. Changes in consciousness can be seen, using magnetic resonance imagery, as changes in the brain. This is the increasingly clear conclusion of the science: consciousness is a product of the brain. Period.

And this evidence has been gathered, and continues to be gathered, using the gold standard of evidence, methods specifically designed to filter out biases and known cognitive errors as much as is humanly possible: rigorously- gathered, carefully- tested, thoroughly cross-checked, double-blinded, placebo- controlled, replicated, peer-reviewed research.

Now. Compare, please, to the evidence supporting the "independent soul" explanation of consciousness.

Including near-death experiences, and the supposedly inexplicable things that happen to some people during them.

The evidence supporting the "independent soul" explanation is flimsy at best. It is unsubstantiated. It comes largely from personal anecdotes. It is internally inconsistent. It is shot through with discrepancies. It is loaded with biases and cognitive errors -- especially confirmation bias, the tendency to exaggerate evidence that confirms what we already believe, and to ignore evidence that contradicts it. It has methodological errors that a sixth-grade science project winner could spot in ten seconds.

And that includes the evidence of near-death experiences.

There is not a single account of an immaterial soul leaving the body in a near-death experience that meets the gold standard of scientific evidence. Not even close. Supposedly accurate perceptions of things they couldn't have seen by people near death? Bogus. Supposedly accurate predictions of things they couldn't have known by people near death? Bogus. The "shoe on the window ledge that the dying person supposedly couldn't possibly have known about?" Bogus. The supposed eerie similarity of near-death experiences? Bogus. (The similarities that these experiences do have are entirely consistent with them all being created by human brains... and the differences between them are not only vast, but exactly what you would expect if these experiences were generated by people's brains, based on their own beliefs about death. Christians near death see Jesus, Hindus near death see Hindu gods, etc.)

These claims -- and the claims that these experiences could not possibly be explained by anything other than a supernatural soul -- are anecdotal at best. Second- and third- hand hearsay. Gossip, essentially. And like most gossip, it leaves out the parts of the story that are less juicy, less consistent with what we already think about the world or what we want to think about it... and exaggerates the parts of the story that tell us what we already believe or want to believe. Believers in the soul love to tell the bogus story about the shoe on the window ledge. They're less likely to tell the stories about the people near death who saw things that weren't there, or who made predictions that didn't happen, or who saw people alongside them in their supposed out- of- body experience who weren't actually near death themselves.

And every time a claim about a soul leaving the body when near death has been tested, using good, rigorous methods, it's utterly fallen apart. Every single rigorously-done study examining claims about near death experiences has completely failed to show any perceptions or predictions that couldn't have been entirely natural. Again. And again. And again, and again, and again. And again. And... oh, you get the idea.

And I have yet to see a good explanation for a believer in near-death experiences of why they don't happen to everyone: why they only happen to a small percentage of people who are near death. Are they saying that only about 10% of people have souls? Really? Is that an argument you want to make?

What's more, believers in the immortal soul, and in near-death experiences as evidence of this soul, consistently fall back on bad arguments and poor logic to defend it. "You can't prove with 100% certainty that it isn't true; therefore, it could hypothetically be true; therefore, it's reasonable to think it's true." "Neither side can prove their case with absolute certainty; therefore, both sides are equally likely; therefore, it's reasonable for me to believe whatever I want to." "Science has been wrong before; therefore, it could be wrong this time; therefore, I don't have to provide any good evidence for why it's wrong this time." "Scientists are human, subject to as much human bias as anyone else; therefore, I don't have to show exactly how their bias is affecting their conclusions in order to reject them." "Lots of smart people believe it; even some scientists believe it; therefore, it's reasonable to think it's true."

It seems clear that, for most believers in an immortal soul, this belief is unfalsifiable. It shouldn't be; in theory, this is an evidence-based conclusion that should be open to changing upon seeing better evidence. But in practice, it clearly is. In practice, for most believers, there is no possible evidence that could convince them that they're wrong. They will reject the best available evidence, and clutch at the worst, since the latter confirms their belief and the former contradicts it. (Which is understandable -- death sucks, and we'd all like to live forever and see our dead loved ones again -- but it doesn't make their arguments very convincing.)

Now, many believers in the soul will argue that yes, they are biased in favor of their belief -- but so are the scientists who've concluded that consciousness is a physical process and the soul doesn't exist. But this makes no sense whatsoever. Scientists are human, too: they don't want to die, and they'd be just as happy as anyone to learn that they were going to live forever. In fact, for centuries, most scientists did believe in the soul, and much early science was dedicated to proving the soul's existence and exploring its nature. It took decades upon decades of fruitless research in this field before scientists finally gave it up as a bad job. The conclusion that the soul does not exist was not about proving a pre-existing agenda: quite the opposite. It was about the evidence leading inexorably to a conclusion that was both surprising and upsetting. What's more, if any scientist today could conclusively prove the existence of the soul, they'd instantly become the most famous and respected scientist in the history of the world. What possible motivation could they have for being biased against the soul hypothesis?

This is patently not true for the claim about the immortal soul, and the claim that near-death experiences are good evidence for it. This claim is not only unsupported by any solid evidence, and flatly contradicted by plenty of solid evidence. It is also, very clearly, based on the most wishful of all wishful thinking -- the deep, intense, completely understandable desire to not die.

So.

Given that all this is true.

Given that the evidence supporting the "biological process of the brain" explanation is rigorously gathered, carefully tested, thoroughly cross-checked, internally consistent, consistent with everything we know about how the brain and the mind work, able to produce mind-bogglingly accurate predictions, not slanted towards wishful thinking, and is expanding our understanding of the mind every day.

Given that the evidence supporting the "immortal soul separate from the brain" explanation is flimsy, anecdotal, internally inconsistent, blasted into non-existence upon careful examination, totally at odds with everything we know about how the brain and the mind work, and strongly biased towards what people most desperately want to believe.

Which of these explanations of consciousness seems more likely?

And which explanation of near-death experiences seems more likely?

Forget about the "you can't disprove it with 100% certainty" fallacy. We're not talking about 100% certainty. We don't apply the "100% certainty" test to anything else in our lives, so let's not apply it here. Which explanation is more plausible? Which has more credibility? If we were talking about any other question -- if we were talking about global climate change, or evolution, or whether the earth orbits the sun -- which set of evidence would you give greater weight to?

Yes, weird things sometimes happen to some people's minds when they're near death. Weird things often happen to people's minds during altered states of consciousness. Exhaustion, stress, distraction, trance-like repetition, optical illusion, sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation, sensory overload... any of these physical changes to the brain, and more, can create vivid "perceptions" that are entirely disconnected from reality. It's been extensively demonstrated. And being near death is an altered state of consciousness, a physical change to the brain. (What's more, as my wife Ingrid keeps pointing out: Near death experiences are not death. What happens to consciousness when the brain is briefly deprived of oxygen tells us nothing about what happens to consciousness when the brain is decayed in the grave into dust and nothingness.)

So which explanation of this weirdness is more plausible? The physical one -- the one that says, "Yeah, the brain does weird things sometimes when deprived of oxygen or otherwise altered, and these experiences are completely consistent with what we know about the brain"? The one that's backed up by a mountain of rigorous, replicated research?

Or the supernatural one -- the one that's backed up by anecdotes, cognitive biases, bad logic, and wishful thinking?

Look. I don't want to die, either. Just about nobody wants to die. That includes scientists, and it includes researchers into neurology and neuropsychology and consciousness. When I was letting go of my spiritual beliefs, this was by far the hardest part: letting go of my belief that my soul was immortal, and accepting that death is permanent. It's true that, when I think about it carefully, it's impossible for me to imagine an eternal afterlife that wouldn't be intolerable... but that doesn't change my intense emotional attachment to life, and to the people I love. We evolved from millions of generations of ancestors who really, really wanted to survive: it makes sense that we would fear death, and want to stay alive. We evolved from thousands of generations of ancestors in social species; it makes sense that we would love other people and grieve for them when they die. And it makes sense that we'd want to believe that death isn't final.

But if we care whether the things we believe are true, we can't just believe that we'll live forever, simply because we want to.

Reality wins. Reality is more important than anything we could make up about it. (And it's a whole lot more interesting.) If we want to be intimately connected with the universe, we need to accept what the universe is telling us, through evidence, is true about itself. We need to not treat the world we make up in our heads as more important than the world outside our heads. If we want to be intimately connected with the universe, we need to accept the reality about it.

Even when that reality contradicts our most cherished beliefs.

Even when that reality is frightening, or painful, or sad.

And that includes the reality of death.

If we find the idea of death upsetting, we need to not cover our eyes and ears in the face of death, and pretend that it isn't real. We need, instead, to find and create secular philosophies of death that provide comfort and meaning. We need to find value in the transient as much as in the permanent. We need to see change and loss and death as inherent and necessary to life, without which the things we value in life would not be possible. We need to see death as providing inspiration and motivation to experience life as fully as we can, and to get things done while we still have time. We need to view death as a natural process, something that connects us with the great chain of cause and effect in the universe. We need to take comfort in the idea that, even though we will die and our death will be forever, the memories people have of us will live on, and the world will be different because we were here. We need to take comfort in making this life as meaningful and valuable as we possibly can: for ourselves, and for everyone else around us. We need to recognize how astronomically lucky we were to have been born into this life at all, and not see it as a tragedy because that life won't last forever.

When we let go of religious or spiritual beliefs, it can be painful to accept the reality and permanence of death. But we can take comfort in the knowledge that, whatever secular philosophies of death we have, they aren't based on sloppy evidence and wishful thinking and an intense effort to avoid cognitive dissonance. We can take comfort in the knowledge that our philosophies of death are built on a solid foundation of good evidence, reason, plausibility, and the acceptance of reality.

And that's more comforting than any spiritual belief I've ever held.

Also in this series:
Why "Everything Has a Cause" is a Terrible Argument for God
Why "Life Has To Have Been Designed" Is a Terrible Argument for God's Existence
Why "The Universe Is Perfectly Fine-Tuned For Life" Is a Terrible Argument for God
Why "I Feel It In My Heart" Is a Terrible Argument for God

Why "The Universe Is Perfectly Fine-Tuned For Life" Is a Terrible Argument for God

This piece was originally published on AlterNet.

"But the Universe is so perfectly fine-tuned for life. What are the chances that this happened by accident? Doesn't it seem like the Universe had to have been created this way on purpose?"

As I've written before: Many arguments for religion and against atheism are so bad, they can't even be considered arguments. They're not serious attempts to offer evidence or reason supporting the existence of God. They're simply attempts to deflect legitimate questions, or ad-hominem insults of atheists, or the baffling notion that "I want to believe" is a good argument, or attempts to just make the questions go away. Or similar nonsense.

But some arguments for religion do sincerely offer evidence and reason for the existence of God. They're still not very good arguments, and the evidence and reason being offered still don't hold water.... but they're sincere arguments, so I'm doing them the honor of addressing them.

Today's argument: the argument from fine-tuning.

The argument from fine-tuning goes roughly like this: The Universe is perfectly fine-tuned to allow life to come into being. The distance of the Earth from the Sun, the substance and depth of the atmosphere, the orbit of the Moon, the nature of matter and energy, the very laws of physics themselves... all are perfectly tuned to let life happen. If any of them had been different by even a small amount, there could not have been life on Earth. And the odds against this fine-tuning are astronomical. Therefore, the Universe, and all these details about it, must have been created this way on purpose. And the only imaginable being that could have created the universe and fine-tuned it for life is God.

Okay. We have some serious misunderstandings here.

The Perfectly Fine-Tuned Puddle Hole

Let's assume, for the moment, that the Universe really is perfectly set up for life, and human life at that. I don't think that for a second -- I'll get to that in a bit -- but for the sake of argument, let's assume that it's true.

Does that imply that the Universe was created that way on purpose?

No. It absolutely does not.

Here's an analogy. I just rolled a die ten times (that's a six-sided die, all you D&D freaks), and got the sequence 3241154645. The odds against that particular sequence coming up are astronomical. Over 60 million to one.

Does that mean that this sequence was designed to come up?

Or think of it this way. The odds against me, personally being born? They're beyond astronomical. The chances that, of my mom's hundreds of eggs and my dad's hundreds of millions of sperm, this particular sperm and egg happened to combine to make me? Ridiculously unlikely. Especially when you factor in the odds against my parents being born... and against their parents being born... and their parents, and theirs, and so on and so on and so on. The chances against me, personally, having been born are so vast, it's almost unimaginable.

But does that mean I was destined to be born?

Does that mean we need to concoct an entire philosophy and theology to explain The Improbability of Greta-ness?

Or does it simply mean that I won the cosmic lottery? Does it simply mean that my existence is one of many wildly improbable outcomes of the universe... and if it hadn't happened, something else would have? Does it simply mean that some other kid would have been born to my parents instead... a kid whose existence would have been every bit as unlikely as mine?

Yes, life on Earth is wildly improbable. And if it hadn't happened, some other weird chemical stew would have arisen on Earth, one that didn't turn into life. Or life would have developed, but it would have evolved into some form other than humanity. Or the Earth would never have formed around the Sun, but some other unlikely planet would have formed around some other star. (Maybe one with cool rings around it like Saturn, only Day-Glo orange with green stripes.) If life on Earth hadn't happened, something else equally improbable would have happened instead. We just wouldn't be here to wonder about it.

Douglas Adams (of The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy fame) put this extremely well in his renowned Puddle Analogy. He said:

Imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, "This is an interesting world I find myself in, an interesting hole I find myself in, fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!"

Yes, the hole fits us rather neatly. But that doesn't mean the hole was designed to have us in it. We evolved to fit in the hole that happened to be here. If the hole had been shaped differently, something else would have happened instead.

And how perfect is this hole, anyway?

Bitter Expanses of Cold and Blasting Chaotic Heat -- The Perfect Vacation Spot!

Douglas Adams's puddle analogy doesn't end there. It continues:

This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it's still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise.

How perfectly fine-tuned for life is the Universe, really?

Life on Earth has only been around for about 3.7 billion years. Human life has only been around for 200,000 of those years (more or less, depending on how you define "human").

And since the surface temperature of the Sun is rising, in about a billion years the surface of the Earth will be too hot for liquid water to exist -- and thus too hot for life to exist.

The universe, on the other hand, is about 14 billion years old. (Post Big Bang, at any rate.)

Therefore, the current life span of humanity is a mere one 7,000th of the current lifespan of the Universe.

And after Earth and all of humanity has boiled away into space forever, the Universe will keep going -- for billions and billions of years.

How, exactly, does that qualify as the Universe being fine-tuned for life?

To use Adams' puddle analogy: The sun is rising. The air is heating up. The puddle isn't getting smaller yet, but it's destined to. And yet, many droplets in the puddle are still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright... because this world was supposedly built to have us in it.

And that doesn't even take into account the mind-boggling vastness of space -- the mind-boggling majority of which is not hospitable to life in the slightest. The overwhelming majority of the universe consists of unimaginably huge vastnessess of impossibly cold empty space... punctuated at rare intervals by comets, asteroids, meteors (some of which might hit us, by the way, also negating the "perfectly designed for human life" concept), cold rocks, blazingly hot furnaces of incandescent gas, the occasional black hole, and what have you. The overwhelming majority of the universe is, to put it mildly, not fine-tuned for life.

In other words: In the enormous vastness of space and time, one rock orbiting one star developed conditions that allowed the unusual bio-chemical process of intelligent life to come into being for a few hundred thousand years -- a billion years at the absolute outset -- before being boiled into space forever.

Somehow, I'm having a hard time seeing that as fine-tuning.

A couple of weeks ago, I asked the question: If biological life was intentionally designed by a perfect, all-powerful God... why did he do such a piss-poor job of it? Why does the "design" of life include so much clumsiness, half-assedness, inefficiency, "fixed that for you" jury-rigs, pointless superfluities, glaring omissions, laughable failures and appalling, mind-numbing brutality?

Today, I'm asking a similar question: If the universe was "fine-tuned" for life by a perfect, all-powerful God... why did he do such a piss-poor job of it? Why was the 93- billion- light- years- across universe created 13.73 billion years ago... just so the fragile process of human life in one tiny solar system could blink into existence for a few hundred thousand years, a billion years at the absolute most, and then blink out again? Why could an asteroid or a solar flare or any number of other astronomical incidents wipe out that life at any time? If the universe was "fine-tuned" for life to come into being, why is the ridiculously overwhelming majority of it created to be so inhospitable to life? (Even if there's life on other planets, which is hypothetically possible, the point still remains: Why is the portion of the Universe that's hospitable to life so absurdly minuscule?)

Atheists are often accused by religious believers of being arrogant. But it's hard to look at the fine-tuning argument and see any validity to that at all. Believers are the ones who are arguing that the Universe was created just so humanity could come into existence... and that the immeasurable vastness of stars and galaxies far beyond our reach and even beyond our knowledge was still, somehow, put there for us. Maybe so we could see all the pretty blinky lights in the sky. Atheists are the ones who accept that the Universe was not made for us. Atheists are the ones who accept that we are a lucky roll of the dice; an unusual bio-chemical process that's happening on one planet orbiting one star that happens, for a brief period, to have conditions that allow for it. (I know this is kind of a buzz-kill; here's a nice humanist philosophy about it that might cheer you up.)

Yes, the existence of humanity is unlikely. But so is my personal existence, and the existence of the Messier 87 galaxy, and the roll of a die in the sequence 3241154645. That doesn't mean these things were designed to happen. We are a puddle that evolved to fit in a convenient hole. There is no reason to think that the hole was created for us. And there is every reason to think that it was not. If "The existence of life in the universe just seems too unlikely" is the only argument you can make for why the universe was designed by God, you're going to have to find a better argument.

Also in this series:
Why 'Life Had To Have Been Designed' Is a Terrible Justification for God's Existence
Why 'Everything Has a Cause' Is a Terrible Justification for God's Existence

Why "Life Has To Have Been Designed" Is a Terrible Argument for God's Existence

This piece was originally published on AlterNet.

"Just look around you. Look at life, and the universe, and everything. Doesn't it seem like it had to have been designed?"

A lot of arguments for religion are very bad indeed. A lot of arguments for religion aren't even arguments: they're deflections, excuses for why the believer isn't making an argument, bigoted insults, expressions of wishful thinking, complaints that atheists are mean bad people to even ask for an argument, heartfelt wishes that atheists would just shut up.

But some believers do take the question "Why do you believe in God?" seriously. Some believers don't want to believe just out of blind faith or wishful thinking; they care about whether the things they believe are true, and they think that the question "What evidence do you have to support this belief?" is a valid one. And they think they have good answers for it. They think they have positive evidence for their spiritual beliefs, and they're happy to explain that evidence and defend it.

The argument from design -- the argument that life had to have been designed, because it just looks so much like it was designed -- leads the list of these answers. According to Michael Shermer's How We Believe, the argument from design is the single most common reason that religious believers give for why they believe.

So since these people are taking atheists' questions about their religion seriously, I want to return the favor, and take their religious answer seriously.

And I want to talk about why this is really, really not a good answer. At all. Even a little bit.

Have You Heard Of This Darwin Fellow?

The argument from design argues that the evidence for God lies in the seemingly inexplicable complexity and functionality and balance of life: of individual life forms, of specific biological organs and systems, of the ecosystem itself. "Look at the eye!" the argument goes. "Look at an ant colony! Look at a bat's sonar! Look at symbiotic relationships between species! Look at the human brain! They work so well! They do such astonishing things! Are you trying to tell me that these things just... happened? How can you possibly explain all that without a designer?"

Not to be snarky, but: Have you heard of this Darwin fellow?

I'm assuming that I'm not talking to creationists here. Creationists definitely do not count as people who care about reason and evidence and whether what they believe is consistent with reality. I'm assuming that I'm talking here to reasonably educated people, people who accept the basic reality of the theory of evolution... but who still think that God had to have been involved in it somehow. I'm assuming that I'm talking to people who understand that the theory of evolution is supported by a massive body of evidence from every relevant field of science (and from some that you might not think of as relevant)... but who still think that evolution, while a jolly clever idea, is still not quite sufficient to explain the complexity and diversity and exquisite high functioning of biological life.

To those people, I say: You really need to study evolution a little more carefully.

The theory of evolution is completely sufficient to explain the complexity and diversity and exquisite high functioning of biological life. That's exactly what it does. The whole point of evolutionary theory is that it explains exactly how life came to be the complex and amazingly balanced web of interconnections that it is, with species beautifully adapted to their environments -- not through design, but through natural selection and descent with modification. It explains it beautifully, and elegantly, and with no need for any supernatural designer to explain anything. Descent with modification; the survival and reproduction of life forms who are best able to survive and reproduce; great heaping gobs of time. That's all it takes. (Here's a good primer on what evolution is and how it works; for a more detailed explanation, you can check out Why Evolution Is True by Jerry A. Coyne, or The Greatest Show On Earth: The Evidence for Evolution by Richard Dawkins, or Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters by Donald R. Prothero, or... oh, you get the idea.) The more familiar you become with evolution, the more you understand that it is more than sufficient to explain what seems at first glance to be design in biological life.

And in fact, biological life is an excellent argument against God or a designer.

Why? Because so much of this supposed "design" of life is so ridiculously piss-poor.

The Three Stooges School of Design

Yes, there are many aspects of biological life that astonish with their elegance and function. But there are many other aspects of biological life that astonish with their clumsiness, half-assedness, inefficiency, "fixed that for you" jury-rigs, pointless superfluities, glaring omissions, laughable failures, and appalling, mind-numbing brutality. (Here's a very entertaining short list.) I mean... sinuses? Blind spots? External testicles? Backs and knees and feet shoddily warped into service for bipedal animals? (She said bitterly, getting up to do her physical therapy on her bad knee.) Human birth canals barely wide enough to let the baby's skull pass... and human babies born essentially premature because if they stayed in utero any longer they'd kill their mothers coming out? (Which sometimes they do anyway?) A vagus nerve that travels from the neck down through the chest only to land back up in the neck... travelling ten to fifteen feet in the case of giraffes? Digger wasps laying their eggs in the living bodies of caterpillars... and stinging said caterpillars to paralyze but not kill them, so the caterpillars die a slow death and can nourish the wasps' larvae with their living bodies? The process of evolution itself... which has brutal, painful, violent death woven into its every fiber?

You're really saying that all of this was designed, on purpose, by an all-powerful God who loves us?

Evolution looks all this epic fail, and explains it neatly and thoroughly. In the theory of evolution, living things don't have to be perfectly or elegantly "designed" to flourish. All that matters is that they be functional enough to survive and reproduce, and to do so more effectively than their competitors. In fact, in the theory of evolution, not only is there no expectation that the "designs" be perfect or elegant -- there is every expectation that they wouldn't be, since every new generation has to be a minor adaptation on the previous one, and there's no way to wipe the slate clean and start over. And the comfort or happiness of living things matters not in the slightest bit to the process of evolution... unless it somehow enhances the ability of that living thing to survive and reproduce.

The argument from design looks at all this epic fail, and answers, "Ummm... mysterious ways?"

Before and After Science

If we didn't know about evolution, the argument from design might have some validity. Even Richard Dawkins, hard-assed atheist that he is, has acknowledged that atheism, while still logically tenable before Darwin, became a lot more intellectually fulfilling afterwards.

But once you know about evolution -- not just about Darwin, but about the rich and thorough, broad-ranging and finely-detailed understanding of life that evolution has blossomed into in the 150 years since "On The Origin of Species" -- the argument from design collapses like a house of cards in a hurricane.

The theory of evolution provides a powerful, beautiful, consistent explanation for the appearance of design in biological life, one that can not only explain the past but predict the future. And it's supported by an overwhelming body of evidence from every relevant field of science, from paleontology to microbiology to epidemiology to anatomy to genetics to geology to physics to... you get the point. The argument from design explains nothing that evolution can't explain better. It has massive, gaping holes. It has no predictive power whatsoever. And it has not a single scrap of positive evidence supporting it: not one piece of evidence suggesting the intervention of a designer at any point in the process. All it has to support it is the human brain's tendency to see intention and design even where none exists, leading to the vague feeling on the part of believers that life had to have been designed because... well... because it just looks that way.

And if "it just looks that way" is the only argument you can make for why life was designed, you're going to have to find a better argument.

Also in this series:
Why "Everything Has a Cause" Is a Terrible Justification for God's Existence

Are Atheists Open-Minded?

"You have to keep an open mind. That's the trouble with you atheists/ materialists/ skeptics. You're just as bad as fundamentalists. You're so convinced that you're right, and you're not willing to consider the possibility that you might not be. The universe is profoundly strange: we've been surprised by it thousands of times in the past, and our assumptions about it often turn out to be mistaken. So how can you be so close-minded about the universe? How can you just reject the idea that God, or the soul, or a spiritual realm, might be part of it?"

If you're an out atheist -- heck, if you're an entirely closeted atheist who reads atheist blogs and forums and whatnot -- you've almost certainly heard some version of this spiel. And it's almost certainly made you want to scream and tear your hair out.

I've been running into it a lot lately. So today, I'm taking it on. I'm summing up some ideas I've written about before... and I'm presenting some new ones. (Please note: There are a few places in this piece that are more strongly worded than usual, as my feelings on this particular form of anti-atheist bigotry run high. Consider yourself warned.)

*

There are a zillion things to say about this canard. For starters: "You have to have an open mind" is not the same as "Here's some good evidence for why my idea is right."

Yes, it's good to have an open mind. How is that an argument for religion or spirituality being correct? I mean, if someone insisted that they had a three- inch- tall pink pony behind their sofa who teleported to Guam every time anyone looked back there -- and, when faced with people who were skeptical about this hypothesis and asked for some evidence in support of it, merely said, "You have to keep an open mind"... would you consider that a good argument for the pink pony hypothesis?

And if not -- then why is it a good argument for religion or spirituality?

The fact that a hypothesis can't absolutely be disproven with 100% certainty doesn't make it likely or plausible. And not all hypotheses are equally likely to be true. To persuade me to accept an idea -- heck, to persuade me to seriously consider it, or even to respect it as a reasonable possibility -- you have to do more than show me that it hasn't been absolutely disproven, and then scold me about having an open mind. You have to show me some good, solid, positive evidence supporting your idea. And you have to use good logic to show why this evidence supports your idea better than any other idea.

But wait! There's more! Whenever believers ask atheists and materialists and skeptics to be open-minded and not to close ourselves off to possibilities, I always want to ask them: Do you honestly think atheists have not considered the possibility of religion?

Religion is the dominant paradigm in our culture. Non-believers have considered it. We continue to re-consider it all the time. We can't help but consider it. It is constantly in our faces. We're soaking in it. Telling atheists, "Have you considered the possibility that religion or spirituality might be true?" is like telling gay people, "Have you considered the possibility that you might be straight?" I mean -- do you seriously think this idea has never occurred to us? Do you seriously think this is the first time anyone's suggested it?

In fact, most atheists were believers at one time. Most atheists are former Catholics, Baptists, Muslims, Hindus, Jainists, religious Jews, moderate or progressive Christians, New Age believers, and more. The culture of religion we're steeped in isn't limited to traditional or fundamentalist belief, and most of us have considered a wide range of religions before rejecting them all. It's the very fact that we do have open minds that led us to change our minds about religion and become non-believers in the first place.

What's more, the accusation that atheists aren't open-minded is extra- aggravating -- because it so often comes from people with completely closed minds. When it comes to religion, anyway.

Ask most atheists, "What would convince you that you were mistaken? What evidence would make you change your mind about God or the supernatural world?" Most of us can answer that question. (Or, if we're too busy/lazy to answer it ourselves, we'll point you to someone else who answered that question really thoroughly, and whose answers pretty closely dovetail with our own.)

Ask most believers the same question... and they'll say, "Nothing could persuade me that I'm mistaken about my God. That's what it means to have faith." Either that -- or they'll dither. They'll say that their beliefs are too complicated and subtle to summarize. They'll say that they don't want to proselytize... even though they've been directly asked to explain what they believe and why. They'll say that they don't know for sure what they believe... they're just trying to keep an open mind. (Even though you know perfectly well that they have very definite beliefs -- they just don't want to explain them to a critical audience.) They'll come up with some standard of proof that's ridiculously impossible. They'll offer "evidence" for their beliefs that's flatly terrible -- not replicable, not double-blinded, not controlled, not screened for confirmation bias or the placebo effect, with methodology a sixth-grade science class could poke holes in. They'll turn the debate about the evidence for religion into a meta-debate about how atheists are being big meanies, and how we're rude or intolerant to ask these questions in the first place. They'll insist that our questions and critiques are valid when it comes to other religious beliefs, but not to theirs... without explaining why theirs should be the exception. They'll change the subject. (And then, three sentences later, they'll once again accuse atheists of being close-minded.) In my experience, the overwhelming majority of religious and spiritual believers will do anything at all to avoid explaining exactly what it is that they believe, and what evidence they have to support that belief -- and most importantly, what evidence would persuade them to change their minds.

So on what basis are these believers accusing atheists of being the close-minded ones?

Then, of course, this "close-minded" canard ignores a basic fact about atheists that we keep repeating until we're blue in the face -- namely, that atheism doesn't mean being absolutely, unquestioningly, 100% certain that God does not exist. It simply means being certain enough. It means concluding that the God hypothesis isn't plausible or supported by any good evidence, and that until we see better evidence, we're going to conclude that there's almost certainly no God.

In other words: Atheism doesn't mean we've absolutely made up our minds, without the possibility of ever reconsidering. Atheism means we've provisionally made up our minds. That doesn't make us close-minded. Being close-minded doesn't mean reaching a conclusion; it means being unwilling to reconsider that conclusion even when new evidence contradicts it. And that doesn't describe most atheists. Atheists understand that we're not perfect and that we might be mistaken. If you give us some good evidence showing that we're mistaken, we'll reconsider.

But -- to repeat my first argument -- you have to actually show us some freaking evidence already. Just repeating "Have an open mind" -- that does not qualify as evidence. That just qualifies as annoying.

Okay. Most of this is stuff I've said before.

Here's the part I haven't said before.

*

The world of science -- the world of carefully examining cause and effect in the universe, using rigorous methods of testing hypotheses designed to filter out bias as much as possible -- has given humanity our most surprising, shocking, unexpected, counter-intuitive, mind-expanding, mind-boggling revelations about the true nature of existence.

Science shows us that solid matter is almost entirely made up of empty space. Science shows us that the ground beneath our feet is not solid, but is constantly shifting. Science shows us that the universe is expanding. Science shows us that space bends. Science shows us that time is not constant, that it moves differently depending on how we move. I could go on, and on, and on. Science -- carefully examining cause and effect in the universe -- has shown us things about the world we live in, and about ourselves, that we would never have come up with if we'd set our best poets and artists on the project for ten thousand years. Science has opened our minds to possibilities we would never have imagined without it.

And maybe more to the point: Science has given us revelations about the world that are not only mind-bogglingly surprising, but that have been profoundly unsettling and difficult to accept.

Science shows us that we are not at the center of the universe, not at the center of our galaxy, not even at the center of our puny little solar system: that the Earth is nothing special, only one of billions of rocks orbiting one of billions of stars in one of billions of galaxies in a universe that dwarfs us. Science shows us that humanity is simply another life form: not uniquely created with a special purpose by a loving divine maker, but just another species that evolved from proto-organic soup along with sponges and slugs and seaweed. Science is showing us that, whatever the heck consciousness is, it's a biological product of the brain, and that it therefore dies forever when the brain dies. Science shows us that the Sun is one day going to expand and heat up, and that when it does, all the Earth will be boiled into molten rock. Science shows us that the universe itself is eventually going to die.

So don't go telling skeptics and non-believers that trusting science and scientific evidence makes us close-minded and unwilling to consider new possibilities.

We're the ones saying, "Yup -- humanity isn't that special, and death is the end. Those are hard realities to accept. But that's what the evidence overwhelmingly suggests, so therefore we accept it." Believers are the ones sticking their fingers in their ears and saying, "I can't hear you, I can't hear you, I can't hear you! Humanity is a special snowflake, and we're all going to live forever!"

So yet again, I ask: On what basis are believers accusing atheists of being the close-minded ones?

Now. At this point, many believers will step in and say, "I'm not against science! Science is great, it's shown us wonders! But science is limited. It's flawed, It doesn't know everything. Therefore, God."

Yeah. See, here's the problem with that.

You don't get to pick and choose. You don't get to say, "I accept the scientific consensus showing that continents drift -- but when it comes to the scientific consensus showing that life developed entirely naturally through evolution by natural selection, I'm going to insist that life must have been designed, because that's what my preacher tells me, and besides, it sure seems that way to me." You don't get to say, "I accept the scientific consensus showing that germs cause disease -- but when it comes to the scientific consensus showing that consciousness is a biological product of the brain, I'm going to dither and equivocate and say that it hasn't been proven with absolute 100% certainty and therefore it's reasonable for me to believe in an immaterial immortal soul." You don't get to say, "I accept the scientific consensus showing that the universe is expanding -- but when it comes to the fact that supernatural hypotheses have been repeatedly tested using rigorous scientific methods and have never once been shown to be true, when it comes to the fact that science has probably been applied to religion and spirituality more than any other topic and has consistently come up empty, I'm going to repeat 'Science is sometimes wrong, science is sometimes wrong' until the skeptics give up and go away."

You don't get to say, "With ideas I already agree with or am comfortable with, I'm willing to accept the rigorous process of using reason and evidence to sift through ideas and reject all but the most plausible ones. But when it comes to ideas I don't believe or that I find troubling, I'm going to prioritize my highly biased intuition -- which tells me that the things I already believe or most want to believe are probably true. I'm going to keep pointing out all the flaws and mistakes of science... and completely ignore the far greater flaws and mistakes in intuition. And unless you can prove to me with absolute 100% certainty that I'm wrong, I'm going to keep believing."

Well, okay. Obviously, you can do that. People do it all the time. And it's certainly your right to do that.

But if you do that, then one last time, I must ask:

On what basis are you accusing atheists of being the close-minded ones?

I Feel The Earth Move: Boobquake 2010!

As you may already have heard -- it's not only been all over the atheosphere, but all over the news -- Iranian Muslim prayer leader Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi was recently quoted as saying, "Many women who do not dress modestly ... lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which (consequently) increases earthquakes."

Blag Hag blogger, atheist student leader, and all-around badass Jen McCreight is conducting a scientific experiment: Get women around the world to dress immodestly for one day -- today, Monday, April 26 -- and see if we cause a significant uptick in seismic activity.

So with Jen, for the sake of science, I offer my boobs. (And Ingrid offers hers.)

Why Did Gayness Evolve?

I have a new piece up on the Blowfish Blog. In it, I discuss the current scientific thinking about sexual orientation being genetically determined, at least partly if not mostly or entirely. I pose the question that this thinking automatically leads to: namely, if homosexuality evolved, why? What evolutionary purpose would it serve? And I point out that, when discussing the evolution of particular traits, we have to be sure we're asking the right question.

It's called Why Did Gayness Evolve?, and here's the teaser:

But when you accept the idea that homosexuality is genetically wired, you get faced with a very puzzling question:

Why would that be?

Why, from an evolutionary perspective, would a not-insignificant number of us have been born wanting to boff people we have zero chance of reproducing with?

Why wouldn't that trait have been selected out long ago?

There are lots of hypotheses as to why this might be. I'm not going to argue for or against any of them here (if for no other reason, it would make this piece way too long). Instead, I want to point a very important and often overlooked fact about evolution:

To ask "What is the evolutionary reason for (X)? Why did (X) evolve?" is often the entirely wrong question.

To find out why this might be the wrong question, read the rest of the piece. Enjoy! (Oh, and for the record: Someone has already corrected the error I made about spandrels being less likely to evolve out of existence. Please just ignore that. Thanks.)

Geek Girls, Go Where I Send Thee: A Christmas Song Parody for Math Nerds

It's that time of year again -- the time for Christmas song parodies!

So there I was at a holiday party I go to every year, a party at which the singing of Christmas carols is a central feature. And yes, I go to this party voluntarily. I love Christmas, and I'm one of those freaks of nature who actually likes Christmas music. (As long as it's not drippy Muzak versions being forced into your ears at the supermarket.) And this party takes a very irreverent attitude towards the whole thing, with an entertaining emphasis on the more gruesome and depressing carols ("Sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying/Sealed in the stone cold tomb"), and lots of nerdy song parodies. (The Christmas-themed "Bohemian Rhapsody" and the H.P. Lovecraft ones are the best.)

So there we were, lustily singing "Children, Go Where I Send Thee," one of those endless counting songs (here's a nice version of it on YouTube if you don't know how it goes), and we were getting silly about the endlessness of it all ("I'm gonna send thee 127 by 127" ), when somebody -- it may even have been me -- chimed in with, "I'm gonna send thee pi by pi..."

And a song was born.

Or rather, a song is being born. Here's the current draft. Suggestions for new verses or revisions on these verses are welcomed. Quick ground rules: The numbers have to be actual numbers: I regretfully rejected c ("c for the speed of li-ight"), as it's a constant that would change depending on the units of measurement being used. They do not, however, have to be real numbers. Hence, i and aleph (yes, it should be "aleph null," but that doesn't scan, so suck it up). And I looked it up, and the concept of imaginary numbers seems to have been born in Renaissance Italy. Woo-hoo!

Geek Girls, Go Where I Send Thee

Geek girls, go where I send thee
How shall I send thee?
I'm gonna send thee i by i
i for the 'maginary
Was born in Renaissance Italy

Geek girls, go where I send thee
How shall I send thee?
I'm gonna send thee phi by phi
Phi for the golden ratio
i for the 'maginary
Was born in Renaissance Italy

(Repeat, with these additions)

e for the logarithm
Pi for the perfect circle
Google for the hundred zeroes
Aleph for the weird infinities

Any suggestions? Bring it on!

Atheism, Openness, and Caring About Reality: Or, Why What We Don't Believe Matters

Why do atheist activists focus so much time and energy on what we don't believe?

What's the point of a worldview and a social/ political movement that's all about not believing in something? Can't we be open to possibilities? Why do we have to be so negative all the time?

I've been, as is my wont of late, debating religion on Facebook. (By the way, if you're on Facebook, friend me!) In one of these recent debates, I was exhorted by a believer to "be a little more open to the universe" (an exhortation I've heard many times now, from many different believers). In another, I was told that "a belief system based on what isn't seems reductive," by someone who added that, "When I turn my mind toward the things I don't believe in, my world gets smaller."

So today, I want to talk about some of the positive things that, as an atheist and a humanist, a materialist and a rationalist, I do care about and believe in. I want to talk about what being "open to the universe" means to me.

And I want to talk about why the things I don't believe in -- namely, God or any kind of supernatural/ immaterial/ spiritual entities or forces -- are a crucial part of what I do believe, and a crucial part of how I practice being open to the universe.

***

My belief system is not, in fact, based on "what isn't." And neither is that of any atheist I know. My conclusions about "what isn't" are only part of my belief system, and not necessarily all that big a part. I have a positive worldview, a set of priorities and values that shape how I live.

I could gas on about the positive things I believe in for hours, days, years, and still not be done. But here's the short version of the part that's relevant to this discussion:

I believe in reality.

I believe that reality is far more important, and far more interesting, than anything we could make up about it.

Pretty much by definition.

And I believe that trying to understand reality, to the best of our abilities, is one of the most important, most interesting, most deeply valuable, most richly satisfying things we can do -- individually, and as a species.

The real universe, the universe as we currently understand it, is magnificent, and awe-inspiring, and far weirder than anything we would have made up about it. Solid matter that's mostly empty space? Black holes at the center of every spiral galaxy? Billions of galaxies all flying away from one another at breakneck speed? Space that bends? Continents that drift? Life forms that are all cousins to one another? Consciousness that somehow arises from brain chemistry? That rocks my world.

And we've found all this stuff out, not by giving up on trying to understand it, not by saying, "It's a mystery and we'll never fully understand it," but by saying, "We may never fully understand it -- but let's try. Let's understand it to the best of our abilities." We've found all this stuff out by being willing to let go of beliefs and preconceptions and opinions we were attached to -- and being willing to reject all ideas except the ones supported by the rigorous gathering and testing and cross-checking of evidence. (A very humbling process, I might add.)

But here's the thing.

The negative part of that process? It's absolutely crucial. We can't say, "Yes, the earth orbits the sun," without saying, "No, the sun does not orbit the earth." We can't say, "Yes, the universe is expanding and will continue to expand," without saying, "No, the universe is not in a steady state." We can't say "Yes, all life on earth evolved by descent with modification from a common ancestor," without saying, "No, life forms were not created fully formed all at once, more or less as they exist today." We can't say, "This what almost certainly is true about the universe," without saying, "That is what almost certainly is not true."

There is an impossibly huge infinitude of things that we could imagine about the universe. Only the tiniest fraction of those things are actually true. If we're going to be truly open to the mind-altering magnificence and hilarious freakiness of the universe, if we're going to truly understand and accept and explore what is true about the universe to the best of our ability, we have to be willing to say "No" to the overwhelming majority of things we can imagine about it. We have to be rigorous in sorting out reality from unreality... and relentless in our rejection of unreality.

Which leads me to this business of being open to the universe.

And which leads me to this:

It was being open to the universe that convinced me there was no God, and no supernatural world.

It was being open to the universe that convinced me to let go of my spiritual beliefs, on the grounds that they just weren't internally consistent, or consistent with the evidence, or in any way plausible. It was being open to the universe -- i.e., paying careful attention to what the universe, through evidence, was saying about itself -- that led me to let go of what the inside of my head, based on confirmation bias and wishful thinking, believed about it. It was being open to the universe that led me to the conclusion that the universe is almost certainly an entirely physical entity, and that God and the supernatural have no part in it.

That was an extremely difficult thing to do. I was very emotionally attached to my religious beliefs. In particular, I was deeply attached to my belief in an immaterial soul that survives death. I don't like death any more than anyone else does, and accepting the finality of death -- mine, and that of the people I love -- was among the hardest things I've had to do.

But reality wins. The universe wins. The carefully gathered, rigorously tested, relentlessly cross-checked evidence about the universe wins out over my biased, demonstrably flawed, wishful- thinking- based intuitions and opinions about it. The most reasonable evidence- based conclusion about what's probably true wins out over my hypothetically possible but entirely unsupported and thoroughly implausible belief about what might be true.

Being open to the universe doesn't just mean being open to possibilities about what might be true. It means being open to possibilities about what might not be true. It means being willing to say "No" to most of the stories about the universe that we can imagine -- even the stories we're most attached to -- if it turns out that those stories aren't likely or plausible.

Let me be very clear: I have absolutely no problem with making up stories about imaginary realities. I love stories about imaginary realities. They can help us frame our experience and give it meaning; they can give us fresh perspectives on the world, and even help us see new things about it. Stories and imagination are essential parts of what make us human. And besides, they're just fun.

But if we care about reality, we need to not deceive ourselves into believing that our stories are true. We need to be very careful about distinguishing between our useful metaphors about the world, and our accurate descriptions of it. We need to be very careful about distinguishing between the stories we make up in our own heads about the universe... and what the universe, through evidence, is saying about itself.

Our world does not get bigger when we place our subjective experience of the world over the world itself. Our world does not get bigger when we treat every possibility that we can imagine as equally likely... and then choose between them based on which ones we find most attractive. Our world does not get bigger when we hang onto beliefs about reality that are almost certainly not true, clinging to the gossamer- thin thread that "it might be true, you can't absolutely prove that it isn't." Our world does not get bigger when we treat the space inside our head as more important than the space outside of it.

Our world gets bigger when we let the world in. Our world gets bigger when we let the world itself take priority over whatever ideas we might have about it. Reality is bigger than we are. Our world gets bigger when we let that reality be what it is... and when we pay careful attention to what it is, the most careful attention we possibly can.

And that's why I care about what isn't. That's why I spend so much time and energy thinking and writing about what I don't believe.

Yes, I do often focus on "what isn't" in my writings. I do this, in large part, because the beliefs in entities that almost certainly don't exist (a) are very widespread, (b) have a real effect on the choices people make, and (c) on the whole do, IMO, more harm than good.

But I also do it because caring about "what isn't" is a central and crucial part of caring about "what is."

I do it because, when we fill our brains with stories about what almost certainly isn't true or even plausible -- and convince ourselves that these stories are true or plausible, and hotly defend the stories against the evidence opposing them -- we are armoring ourselves against reality. We are practicing the mental gymnastics that help us ignore or deny reality.

And reality is what I believe in.

"You Can't Disprove Religion": Three Counter-Examples

"You can't disprove religion."

I'm seeing this trope a lot these days. "You can't disprove religion. At least -- not my religion."

"Well, of course," the trope continues, "many outdated religious beliefs -- young-earth creationism, the universe revolving around the earth, the sun being drawn across the sky by Apollo's chariot -- have been shown by science to be mistaken. But modern progressive and moderate beliefs -- these, you can't disprove with science. These are simply matters of faith: things people reasonably choose to believe, based on their personal life experience."

Then there's the corollary to this trope: "Therefore, atheism is just as much a matter of faith as religion. And atheists who think atheism is better supported by evidence are just as dogmatic and close-minded as religious believers."

The usual atheist reply to this is to cry, "That's the God of the Gaps! Whatever phenomenon isn't currently explained by science, that's where you stick your God! What kind of sense does that make? Why should any given unexplained phenomenon be best explained by religion? Has there ever been a gap in our knowledge that's eventually been shown to be filled by God?"

Which is a pretty good reply, and one I make a lot myself. But today, I want to say something else.

Today, I want to point out that this is simply not the case.

The fact is that many modern progressive and moderate religions do make claims about the observable world. And many of those claims are unsupported by science... and, in fact, are in direct contradiction of it.

I want to talk today about three specific religious beliefs. Not obscure cults or rigid fundamentalist dogmas; not young-earth creationism, or the doctrine that communion wafers literally and physically transform into the human flesh of Christ somewhere in the digestive tract, or the belief that the human mind has been taken over by space aliens. I want to talk about three widely held beliefs of modern progressive and moderate believers: beliefs held by intelligent and educated believers who respect science and don't think religion should contradict it.

And I want to point out that even these beliefs are in direct contradiction of the vast preponderance of available evidence... almost as much as the obscure cults and the rigid fundamentalist dogma.

So let's go! Today's beliefs on the chopping block are:

1: Evolution guided by God.

Also known as "theistic evolution." Among progressive and moderate believers, this is an extremely common position on evolution. They readily (and rightly) dismiss the claims of young-earth creationists that humanity and all the universe were created in one swell foop 6,000 years ago. They dismiss these claims as utterly contradicted by the evidence. Instead, they say that evolution proceeds exactly as the biologists say it does... but this process is guided by God, to bring humanity and the vast variety of life into being.

A belief that is almost as thoroughly contradicted by the evidence as young-earth creationism is.

Nowhere in anatomy, nowhere in genetics, nowhere in the fossil record or the geological record or any of the physical records of evolution, is there even the slightest piece of evidence for divine intervention.

Quite the contrary. If there had been a divine hand tinkering with the process, we would expect evolution to have proceeded radically differently than it has. We would expect to see, among the changes in anatomy from generation to generation, at least an occasional instance of the structure being tweaked in non-gradual ways. We would expect to see -- oh, say, just for a random example -- human knees and backs better designed for bipedal animals than quadrupeds. (She said bitterly, putting an ice pack on her bad knee.) We would expect to see the blind spot in the human eye done away with, perhaps replaced with the octopus design that doesn't have a blind spot. We would expect to see the vagus nerve re-routed so it doesn't wander all over hell and gone before getting where it's going. We would expect to see a major shift in the risk-benefit analysis that's wired into our brains, one that better suits a 70-year life expectancy than a 35-year one. We would expect to see... I could go on, and on, and on.

And it's not just humans. We'd expect to see whales with gills, pandas with real thumbs, ostriches without those stupid useless wings.

We don't see any of this.

What we see instead is exactly what we would expect to see if evolution proceeded entirely as a natural, physical process. We see "designs" of living things that are flawed and inefficient and just plain goofy: "designs" that exist for no earthly reason except the slow incrementalism that's an inherent part of the physical process of evolution. We see anatomical adaptations severely constrained by the fact that each generation can only be a slight modification on the previous generation, with no sudden jumps to a different basic version. We see anatomical adaptations severely constrained by the fact that each new version has to be an improvement on the previous version (or at least, not a deterioration from it). We see a vast preponderance of evidence showing that evolution proceeds very slowly, very gradually, with the anatomy of each generation being only slightly altered (if at all) from that of the previous generation.

And that isn't how things designed by a conscious designer, or even things tinkered with by a conscious designer, work.

Even when a designer is stuck with the outlines of a previous design, they can still make significant, non-incremental changes. They can tear out the cabinets and replace them with windows, and move the stove to the other side of the room where the fridge is now. They're not stuck with moving the stove one inch at a time, once every week or year or twenty years. And they're not stuck with a system in which every inch that the stove moves has to be an improvement on the previous inch. They're not stuck with a system where, if the stove has been moving across the floor in a series of incremental improvements, it's going to have to stop if it starts blocking the door... because blocking the door is a serious disadvantage.

And if a designer is omnipotent, they're not even stuck with the outlines of a previous design. They're not stuck with anything at all. Why on earth would an all-powerful and benevolent god, a god who's capable of magically altering DNA, bring life into being by the slow, cruel, violent, inefficient, tacked- together- with- duct- tape process of evolution in the first place?

Now, it's true that we do see some evidence for what are sometimes called "jumps" in the fossil record: evidence that evolutionary changes sometimes happen very slowly, and sometimes happen more rapidly. (It's a controversial position, but it is one held by some respected evolutionary biologists.) And some believers in theistic evolution leap onto this hypothesis and hang on like it's the last helicopter out of Saigon.

But the "rapid jumps" thing is very misleading. "Rapid," in evolutionary terms, means "taking place over a few hundred years instead of a few thousand" (or "a few thousand years instead of a few hundred thousand.") And as recent research has repeatedly shown, evolution can take place surprisingly rapidly, in a matter of decades... and still be an entirely natural process of small changes, incremental alterations in each generation from the previous one. Exactly as we would expect if evolution were an entirely natural, physical process of descent with modification. So even if this "rapid jumps" (or "punctuated equilibrium") hypothesis is true, it still doesn't point to theistic evolution. Not even a little bit.

Again: There is not the slightest bit of evidence supporting the idea of evolution guided by God. And there is a significant body of evidence that strongly suggests the contrary.

More:
Stupid Design: Rube Goldberg Brains and the Argument for Evolution

2: An immaterial soul that animates human consciousness.

I will acknowledge freely: We don't yet understand consciousness very well. The sciences of neurology and neuropsychology are very much in their infancy, and the basic questions of what exactly consciousness is, and where exactly it comes from, and how exactly it works, are, as of yet, largely unanswered.

But research is happening. The foundations for our understanding of consciousness are beginning to be laid. There are a few things that we do know about consciousness.

And among the things we know is that, whatever consciousness is, it seems to be an entirely biological process. A massive body of evidence points to this conclusion.

When we make physical changes to the brain, it changes consciousness. Drugs, injury, surgery, sensory deprivation, electrical current, magnetic fields, medication, illness, exercise -- all these things change our consciousness. Sometimes drastically. Sometimes rendering an entire personality unrecognizable. Even very small changes to the brain can result in massive changes to consciousness... both temporary and permanent.

This works vice versa as well. Magnetic resonance imagery has shown that, when people think different thoughts, different parts of their brains light up with activity. Changes in thought show up as changes in the brain.... just as changes in the brain show up as changes in thought.

And, of course, we have the drastic change in consciousness created by the very drastic change in the physical brain known as "death."

All the available evidence points to the conclusion that, when the brain dies, consciousness disappears. (And by "when the brain dies," I don't mean, "when the brain is temporarily deprived of oxygen for a short time," a.k.a. "near death experiences." I mean when the brain dies, permanently.) The belief that consciousness survives death has probably been researched more than any other supernatural hypothesis -- nobody, not even scientists, wants death to be permanent -- and it has never, ever been substantiated. Reports of it abound... but when carefully examined, using good, rigorous scientific methodology, these reports fall apart like a house of cards.

Everything we understand about consciousness points to it being a physical, biological process. Physical changes cause observable effects. When we see that in any other phenomenon, we assume that what's going on is physical cause and effect. We have no reason to think that anything else is going on with the phenomenon of consciousness.

And there is not a single scrap of good evidence supporting the hypothesis that consciousness is even partly a supernatural phenomenon. There are many gaps in our understanding of consciousness -- that's a massive understatement -- but there is not one piece of solid, rigorously gathered evidence suggesting that any of those gaps can and should be filled with the hypothesis of an immaterial soul. There's not even a good, testable theory explaining how this immaterial soul is supposed to interact with the physical brain. All there is to support this belief is a personal intuitive feeling on the part of believers that the soul has to be non-physical because, well, it just seems like that... plus thousands of years of other believers with a similar intuitive feeling, who have told it to one another, and taught it to their followers, and made up elaborate rationalizations for it, and written it into their holy texts.

Again: There is not the slightest bit of evidence supporting the idea of an immaterial soul that animates human consciousness. And there is a significant body of evidence that strongly suggests the contrary.

More:
Why I Don't Believe in the Soul

3: A sentient universe.

You might ask why I'm including this particular belief in my Big Three Targets. You might wonder why, among all the widely held religious beliefs in the world today, I'm aiming my sights at this New Age/ Neo-Pagan/ Wiccan belief in a World-Soul.

My answer: I live in Northern California. 'Nuff said.

So that's why I want to debunk this belief. And I'm pretty much going to repeat what I said in #2 above:

We don't yet understand what consciousness is. But we do know that, whatever it is, it seems to be a biological product of the brain.

And the universe does not have a brain.

The universe does not have a physical structure capable of supporting consciousness. The universe does not have neurons, dendrites, ganglia. The universe has stars, and planets, and other astronomical bodies, separated by unimaginably vast regions of empty space.

And stars and planets and so on do not behave like neurons and dendrites and so on. They behave like stars and planets. They behave like objects that, as nifty as they are, are not alive, by any useful definition of the word "life."

If consciousness is a biological process -- as an overwhelming body of evidence suggests, see #2 above -- then the universe, not being a biological entity, cannot possibly be conscious. To say that it is would mean radically redefining what we mean by "conscious." And we have no reason to do so... other than a wishful desire to think of the universe as sentient.

Consciousness has, for a long time, been a mysterious and utterly ineffable phenomenon. So, before Darwin, was the tremendous variety and mind-boggling complexity of life. And like the variety and complexity of life, consciousness is no longer ineffable. It is being effed. The unexplainable is being explained. And it is being explained as a biological phenomenon -- as physical cause and effect.

Again: There is not the slightest bit of evidence supporting the idea of a sentient universe. And there is a significant body of evidence that strongly suggests the contrary.

More:
Why I Don't Believe in the Soul (again)

***

Now. I can hear the chorus already. "How can you prove that? You don't know that with absolute certainty! God could be intervening in evolution -- just in ways that are indistinguishable from natural selection! There could be some sort of immaterial soul interacting with the biological process of consciousness, in ways we don't yet perceive! There could be some weird form of consciousness that we don't understand, one that's generated by stars and planets and lifeless astronomical bodies! You can't prove with absolute certainty that there isn't! Your non-belief is just an article of faith!"

My answer:

No. We can't prove that with 100% certainty.

But neither can we prove with 100% certainty that the universe wasn't created 6,000 years ago, by a god who deliberately planted the fossil record and the genetic record and the geological record and the laws of atomic decay, all to test our faith. (Or all of which was planted by Satan, to trick us and tempt us into disbelief.) We can't prove with 100% certainty that communion wafers don't turn into Christ's physical body on contact with the human digestive system. Hell, we can't prove with 100% certainty that the earth goes around the sun, and that all our senses and logical abilities haven't been fooled by some trickster god into thinking that it does.

And it doesn't matter. As I've said many times: 100% unshakeable certainty is not the objective here. Reasonable plausibility, supported by carefully gathered and rigorously tested positive evidence, is the objective. And there is no reason to apply the "Reasonable plausibility supported by evidence" standard to the belief in young-earth creationism... and still apply the "If you can't disprove it with 100% certainty, then it's still reasonable for me to believe it" standard to the beliefs in theistic evolution, and an immaterial soul, and a sentient universe.

If you're going to accept that young-earth creationism has been conclusively disproven by a mountain of scientific evidence, even though we acknowledge a .00001% hypothetical possibility that it might be true... then, if you're going to be consistent, you have to apply that same standard, that same willingness to accept the reasonable conclusions of science about which ideas are and are not plausible, to all religious beliefs.

Including your own.

Especially your own.

Not everything is a matter of opinion or perspective. Not everything can turn into something completely different if you just look at it differently. Some things are either true or not true. It is not true that the universe was created 6,000 years ago. It is not true that the sun goes around the earth. And it is not true that evolution is shaped by the hand of God, or that consciousness is animated by an immaterial soul, or that the universe is sentient.

These things aren't true for exactly the same reason that young-earth creationism isn't true. They aren't true because the evidence simply doesn't support them. They aren't true because the evidence actively contradicts them.

If you're going to be a moderate or progressive religious believer; if you're going to be a religious believer who respects and supports science instead of treating it as the enemy; if you're going to be a religious believer who wants their beliefs to at least not be directly contradictory with the available scientific evidence... then you need to be willing to consider the possibility that your own beliefs are every bit as contradicted by that evidence as the beliefs of the fundamentalist crazies.

And if the answer is "yup, that belief seems to be contradicted by the evidence"... then you need to be willing to let go of that belief.

An Open Letter to the Fat-Positive Movement

Dear Fat-Positive Movement:

Here is a fat-positive manifesto I could live with.

We need to make major changes in how our society views weight, fatness, and fat people. Our society has an excessively narrow definition of what constitutes an acceptable body type, and it's a definition that is unattainable for the overwhelming majority of people. People can be healthy, happy, and attractive at a variety of sizes; the standard medical definition of a healthy weight range is almost certainly too narrow, and some evidence suggests that it may be too low. Furthermore, many popular weight loss programs are grossly unhealthy, both physically and psychologically, and are aimed, not at maintaining good health, but at an almost certainly fruitless attempt to attain the cultural ideal of beauty. And many people who try to lose weight have no earthly medical reason for doing so.

We demand that people be treated with respect and dignity regardless of their size. We demand an end to job discrimination based on size. We oppose the moral outrage that is commonly aimed at fat people, and the persistent media representations of fat people as objects of disgust and ridicule. And we demand an end to medical discrimination based on size: we expect doctors to treat fat people with respect; to discuss weight loss with fat people as one option among many instead of the one course of action that must be pursued before any other; and to treat non- weight- related conditions equivalently for all patients, without regard to size.

Weight loss is both very difficult and very uncommon, especially in the long term. And we don't yet know why it's so difficult, or why a few people are able to do it while most people are not. We therefore think it's completely valid for a fat person to decide that weight loss isn't where they want to put their time and energy. Many of the health risks associated with being fat diminish significantly when people eat a healthy diet and get regular exercise -- even if they don't lose weight. We therefore encourage fat people to be as healthy as they can be: to eat healthy diets and get regular vigorous exercise, even if they don't lose weight doing so. And we encourage people who do choose to lose weight to do so in a healthy, sustainable way.

We understand that there are health risks associated with being fat. There are health risks associated with many things -- things we have control over, such as playing rugby; things we have no control over, such as carrying the breast cancer gene; and things we have limited control over to differing degrees, such as where we live. We think it is reasonable for people to decide for themselves whether they are willing to live with these risks, or whether they want to take action to reduce those risks -- whether that's by quitting rugby, having a pre-emptive mastectomy, moving, or losing weight. Both fatness and weight loss can involve health risks and loss of quality of life, and each individual must determine for themselves their own cost/benefit analysis of those risks and that quality. No person can decide that for another.

We do understand that fatness is a health concern -- and we think it should be treated as such, as a public health issue and not as a moral failing or a character flaw. We support social and political changes in the way our society is structured around food and exercise -- changes that will improve the health of people of all sizes. We support bike lanes, cities and neighborhoods designed to be walked in, farmers' markets, accuracy in food labeling, laws prohibiting wild and unsubstantiated claims in the advertising of weight-loss products, yada yada yada. We passionately support healthy eating and exercise programs for children, since fatness in children can cause even more long-term harm than it does in adults... and is easier to address as well, at an age when set points and eating/exercise habits are more malleable. And we oppose the American food-industrial complex's use of psychological manipulation to sell excessive amounts of unhealthy, highly- processed, non- nutritious food, and their prioritization of profit over all other concerns.

Finally: We want to base our movement on the best understanding of reality we can get. We encourage people of all sizes to base their cost/ benefit decisions about food, exercise, and weight, not on wishful thinking, but on a realistic assessment of the best hard data currently available. We support careful, rigorous, unbiased scientific research into why people come in different sizes, and why sizes vary not only from person to person but from culture to culture. We support careful, rigorous, unbiased scientific research into maintaining and improving people's health at the size that they are. And we also support careful, rigorous, unbiased scientific research into safe, sane, effective weight loss for people who choose to pursue it. Our bodies, our right to decide.

Now. Here is a fat-positive manifesto I can't live with:

Weight loss never works. Never, never, never. Virtually nobody successfully loses weight and keeps it off for the long term; the number of people who successfully lose weight and keep it off is statistically insignificant. Weight is entirely or overwhelmingly determined by genetics, and behavior and environment have virtually nothing to do with it. There are no serious health risks caused or exacerbated by being fat: health problems that appear to be caused by fatness are always really caused by something else. And if there are health problems caused by fatness, they can always be better addressed by some method other than weight loss. Even when weight loss is successful, the harm done by it -- physical, psychological, or both -- is terrible: so terrible that, in all cases, it completely outweighs the benefits. If weight loss happens naturally, as part of a healthy diet and exercise program, that's fine. But nobody should ever consciously attempt to lose weight, under any circumstances. People who are attempting to lose weight, for whatever reason, even to address serious and immediate health concerns, should be actively discouraged from doing so.

In my recent discussions of weight loss here in this blog, the fat positive movement responded vociferously with this second manifesto, both in comments and in private emails. And here's why I can't live with it:

It is completely out of touch with reality.

It is flatly absurd to argue that nobody ever successfully loses weight and keeps it off for the long term. Just in my life, in my not- very- large circle of immediate friends and family, I could name you a dozen or so people who have lost weight and kept it off for years. And as far as I can tell, they are not psychologically damaged: they seem to be fine and healthy (or if they're neurotic, they're no more neurotic than they were before they lost the weight). Yes, they're in the minority... but it's not an insignificant minority. It's a big enough number for me to pay attention to. And the studies on weight loss support this: most people who try to lose weight either fail or regain it in the long run, but there are a handful of people who succeed.

There's a weird circularity to the arguments as well. "Weight loss never works... but when it does work, it's harmful... but even if it would be beneficial, it doesn't matter, because it never works." And the arguments are rife with logical absurdities. If set points can get re-set upwards with crash diets or poor eating and exercise habits, then why can't they be re-set downwards? If it's okay to accidentally lose weight as a side effect of a "health at every size" food and exercise plan, then why is it so unhealthy to consciously lose weight... even if the "conscious weight loss" plan is identical to the "health at every size" plan? If weight is genetically determined and diet and exercise have nothing to do with it, then why have Americans become so much heavier in the last 50 and indeed 20 years... and why do other cultures who start eating an American diet almost immediately start putting on weight?

But this second manifesto isn't just unrealistic, or circular, or logically absurd. It seems to be unfalsifiable as well. Here's what I want to ask the fat-positive movement: What evidence would convince you that you were mistaken? How many people would have to successfully lose weight for you to change your mind about it never working? How long would they have to keep the weight off for you to change your mind about it not being sustainable in the long run? And what would you consider as valid evidence that they haven't been psychologically damaged by the process?

Or are you just going to keep moving the goalposts? Are you just going to make the No True Scotsman argument? Are you just going to argue that nobody successfully loses weight... and that people who do are suffering from eating disorders or other psychological damage? Or that if they seem healthy and happy, they're psychologically scarred on the inside, or have sustained unseen but serious damage to their health that will ruin their lives in years to come? Are you going to argue that conscious lifelong attention to weight loss and weight maintenance is an eating disorder by definition? Or that the people who do sustain healthy long-term weight loss are statistical flukes and don't count?

Is there any way that your hypothesis could be proven wrong?

Because if there isn't, then that's not a hypothesis. It's an article of faith. And there's no reason I should take it seriously.

In addition, an unsettling tendency has apparently developed in the fat-positive movement: a tendency to take the most extreme positions -- no matter how logically absurd or morally repugnant -- simply to avoid having to concede any points whatsoever. Many fat-positive advocates insist that weight loss never, ever, ever works. Others insist that there are no health problems caused by any degree of fatness. Still others insist that even if some health problems are caused or exacerbated by fatness, weight loss is never, ever, ever the more healthy choice for anyone to make. Ever. Even if you weigh 400 pounds and have had three heart attacks… you still shouldn't try to lose weight. And if you're me, if you weigh 200 pounds and are having serious mobility impairment due to knee problems and have exhausted all other treatment options for it... forget about it. It's better to have a fourth heart attack, it's better to gradually lose mobility over the years to the point where you can no longer climb stairs or walk more than a block, than it is to try to demonstrate that any belief of the fat-positive movement might be mistaken.

I was frankly shocked at how callous most of the fat-positive advocates were about my bad knee. I was shocked at how quick they were to ignore or dismiss it. They were passionately concerned about the quality of life I might lose if I counted calories or stopped eating chocolate bars every day. But when it came to the quality of life I might lose if I could no longer dance, climb hills, climb stairs, take long walks, walk at all? Eh. Whatever. I should try exercise or physical therapy or something. Oh, I'd tried those things already? Well, whatever.

I'm going to repeat something from my first manifesto, the good manifesto. It may have gotten lost in the shuffle, and it's important, so I'm going to call it out here:

Both fatness and weight loss can involve health risks and loss of quality of life, and each individual must determine for themselves their own cost/benefit analysis of those risks and that quality. No person can decide that for another.

Yes, this manifesto applies to rabid weight-loss advocates: people who insist that anyone who's even 20 pounds over the medical definition of a healthy weight should start losing immediately, even if their blood pressure and blood sugar and cholesterol and joints and exercise habits and family history of heart disease are all totally fine. But it also applies, every bit as much, to the fat-positive movement. It is not up to you to decide for me that the costs of losing weight are greater than the costs of losing my knee. It is not up to you to decide for me that the long odds against successful long-term weight loss (roughly 10 to 1) mean that my attempt to treat my bad knee by losing weight isn't worth it. My body. My right to decide.

Let me ask you this. If you read a post from a blogger saying that they were a heavy drinker, but it was adversely affecting their health and they'd decided to quit... would you send them comments and emails saying, "Don't bother, it's a waste of time and energy, the overwhelming majority of problem drinkers who try to quit eventually fail, and the ones who succeed get obsessed with it and have to go to all these meetings for the rest of their lives and aren't any fun to be around any more, and anyway the connection between heavy drinking and poor health has been totally made up by our anti- drinking society, so instead you should just focus on being the most healthy drinker you can be"?

If not -- then why would you say it to someone who's losing weight?

And here's the thing I've begun to realize about the "weight loss never works" mantra:

It's not actually very fat-positive.

In fact, it's actively fat-negative.

The stubborn insistence that healthy, sane, long-term weight loss is impossible -- in flat denial of evidence to the contrary -- seems to concede that if fat people could lose weight, then therefore they should. It's essentially conceding that the only valid justification for being fat is that fat people have no choice. IMO, it's a whole lot more fat-positive to say that people have the right to decide for themselves whether the difficult, time- consuming, attention- consuming, "10 to 1 odds against success" process of weight loss is something that's worth pursuing.

I do think I see where a lot of this stuff is coming from. Our culture is powerfully biased against fat people and fatness; and even when they are being moderate and evidence- based, the fat-positive movement often gets dismissed as wackaloons, by both the medical community and the culture at large. So given that they've largely been ignored even when they make valid points, I can see how the movement would become increasingly insular, increasingly unwilling to listen to anyone but one another.

But that's no excuse. I am here today, not as an outsider, but as a fat person, and as someone who has thought of herself as both fat and fat-positive for many, many years. And I am saying to you now: It is possible to be fat-positive and still acknowledge that being fat does carry some serious health risks. It is possible to be fat-positive and still acknowledge that some people do successfully lose weight and keep it off. And it is possible to be fat-positive and still be supportive of people who are trying to lose weight. Being fat-positive doesn't require you to treat people who disagree with you as objects of excoriation or pity. And being fat- positive doesn't require that you deny reality.

Now, I'm sure some fat-positive advocates are going to insist that their position is reality- based, and they're going to point to papers and books supporting this conclusion. To them, I say in advance: Yes, you can find papers and books supporting the idea that weight loss never works and is always harmful. You can also find papers and books supporting the idea that vaccines never work and are always harmful. You can find papers and books supporting the idea that global warming isn't real, and that even if it is, it isn't caused by human activity. You can find papers and books supporting the idea that the moon landing never happened. You can find papers and books supporting the idea that the earth is flat.

But that's not the scientific consensus.

And as a skeptic, I need to be informed by the scientific consensus.

Yes, the scientific consensus could be wrong. It certainly has been in the past. Scientists are fallible humans, shaped by the biases of their culture... and our culture is very strongly biased against fatness and fat people. The overwhelming scientific consensus that fatness is a major contributing factor to a whole host of serious health problems... that could be wrong. Or it could be exaggerated. Or it could be right when it comes to some health problems, wrong about others. Or it could be getting the nuance wrong: it could be right about fatness being one co-factor, but wrong about the emphasis it places on it compared to other co-factors. There are some real problems with the ways medical researchers have studied the health effects of fatness: they tend to conflate moderate overweight-ness with serious obesity, for instance, and they often don't control for different eating and exercise habits among people of similar sizes. And an important part of the scientific method is questioning and opposition -- both from inside the scientific community, and from smart laypeople outside it.

But if the fat-positive movement wants to be a serious voice of opposition to the current scientific consensus, it needs to stop denying reality. It needs to stop with the circular reasoning, the cherry-picking of data, the "all or nothing" thinking, the taking of good ideas to ridiculous and repugnant extremes, the logical absurdities, the elaborate rationalizations, the insularity, the flat denial of simple facts that are staring them in the face. It needs to be willing to follow the evidence wherever it leads... even if where it leads is unpleasant or upsetting. It needs to stop with the true believerism. It needs to treat the principles of fat positivity as hypotheses that can be debated -- not as articles of faith.

And I heartily wish it would do that.

Because we really, really need a sane, evidence- based, reality-based fat-positive movement.

I completely stand by my first manifesto. I think these are important issues, and I think we need a social and political movement that's speaking out about them and is working to address them. And just speaking personally: I want and need a fat-positive movement. The smarter, more reality- based ideas of this movement have been invaluable to me: they helped keep me sane and happy as a fat person, and they taught me to think of my fat body as valuable and worth taking care of. And even when I've lost all the weight I plan to lose, I'm still probably going to be seen by most people as overweight. I could really use a community that supports me in my new size as much as it did in my old one.

But in my years as an atheist and skeptical blogger, I have learned to tell the difference between thoughtful disagreement and close-minded true belief. I have learned to recognize denialist crazy. And as it stands now, the fat-positive movement has really started bringing the crazy. It's moving away from being a serious voice in the social/ political/ medical worlds, and is instead becoming an insular, cultish community that only listens to itself. It has taken some very good ideas and has completely run off the rails with them. It has become utterly unconvincing to anyone who isn't already predisposed to agree with it. Hell, it's not even convincing to me -- and I agreed with it just three months ago. I started writing about this issue, in part, to figure out what I thought about it: to think out loud, to get some new perspectives, to hear the best arguments from both sides and refine or rethink my own shifting ideas. And nothing the fat-positive advocates have said so far, in either comments or private emails, has convinced me that I'm wrong to try to lose weight. It has, instead, convinced me that the movement has gone off the deep end.

I really, really want to be part of a sane, evidence- based, reality- based fat-positive movement. But it looks like I may have to find a way to do that on my own.

Abstinence, Birth Control, And The Difference Between Theory And Practice

This piece was originally published on the Blowfish Blog.

So how effective -- really -- is abstinence as a birth control method?

Bristol Palin, Sarah Palin's famously "unmarried and pregnant at 17 and an unmarried mother at 18" daughter, went on a tour of the TV talk shows earlier this year, advocating -- in an irony so massive I feel puny standing next to it -- abstinence for teenagers.

And one of the arguments she made -- with her baby on her lap -- was that abstinence is the only 100% effective way to prevent pregnancy.

Now, if Bristol Palin, or anyone else, had gone on the TV talk show circuit arguing that, say, birth control pills were the only 100% effective way to prevent pregnancy -- and they’d done so with their unplanned baby on their lap -- they'd have been laughed off the stage. But people tend to see abstinence as different. People -- and not just right-wing ideologues -- tend to see a failure of abstinence as a failure of the people practicing it... not as a failure of the method.

So today, I want to talk about how we do -- and do not -- measure the effectiveness of any given method of birth control.

Many years ago, I worked as a counselor and educator at a birth control and abortion clinic. And I learned a standard way of measuring the effectiveness of any birth control method that's absolutely crucial to this discussion. It's this:

When you're evaluating how effective a birth control method is, you have to look at the difference between how effective it is in theory... and how effective it is in practice. You have to look at the difference between how often women using this method would get pregnant if they used it perfectly every time... and how often women who use this method actually do get pregnant.

And the reason you have to do that is the reality of human imperfection.

Example. A diaphragm is about 95% effective if it's used perfectly every time. But humans aren't perfect. We can, in our haste to start fucking, put the diaphragm in wrong, or not put in enough spermicidal goop, or something. And we can also, in our haste to start fucking, decide, "To hell with it, just this once let's not bother." A diaphragm that gets left in the nightstand drawer while its owner boffs is a diaphragm with a very good chance of, shall I say, bringing down the effectiveness rate of diaphragms. Therefore, while they're 95% effective in theory, diaphragms are only about 85% effective in practice.

Ditto with every other birth control method. People can forget to take birth control pills; put condoms on wrong; miss their appointment to get their Depo-Provera shot. Even supposedly foolproof birth control methods have some degree of disconnect between theory and practice. (How many women with IUDs actually check the string every month like they're supposed to? I know I don't.)

In fact, when you're deciding which birth control method is best, this gap between theory and practice is one of the most important things to pay attention to -- whether you're a birth control educator or just a person using birth control. For people who are highly self-motivated and organized, methods like diaphragms can work very well, and the gap between theory and practice won't be all that wide; for people who are more impetuous or whose lives and schedules are more unpredictable, methods like the pill and the IUD, which are less likely to be used incorrectly or not at all, are generally a better choice.

Fine. So what does all this have to do with abstinence?

I bet you can see where I'm going with this.

In theory, Bristol Palin is absolutely right. In theory, abstaining from penis- in- vagina intercourse is the only 100% effective method of preventing pregnancy.

But in practice?

It's difficult to find hard numbers on this. While other birth control methods have had their practical failure rates studied extensively, abstinence hasn't received the same attention, and most of the sources I found just said "We know it fails a lot, but we don't know exactly how often." But the one source that I found with hard numbers puts the "in practice" failure rate of abstinence among teens at between 26 and 86%.

That's huge. Even the lowest number on that scale is huge. That's one of the highest failure rates of any birth control method we know of. That ranks just above "crossing your fingers."

Of all the birth control methods available, abstinence is probably the one that's most likely to be left in the nightstand drawer. Sex is, among other things, a fundamental and powerful physical drive, deeply ingrained in us by millions of years of evolution. If your birth control method depends on your ability to just say no to sex until you're ready to have kids... it's a bit like having a birth control method that depends on your ability to refuse to eat. For a week. In a bakery.

So where does this idea come from that abstinence is 100% effective, even though it fails more than just about any other method of birth control?

It comes -- I think -- from the fact that people tend to see a failure of abstinence, not as a failure of the method, but as a failure of the people practicing it.

If you put the condom on wrong or forget to take your birth control pill, people tend to see that as a human mistake that could happen to anyone. But if you go ahead and have sex when you swore to yourself that you wouldn't, people are more likely to see that as a personal failure, a failure of will power and self control.

Now, from a purely philosophical perspective, I suppose you could make that argument. I certainly wouldn't -- I consider it grossly sex-negative to think that abstaining from sex until you want kids is a reasonable thing to expect people to do. But in an abstract, "angels fucking on the head of a pin" sense, I'd be happy to debate the question of whether the failure of a birth control method that relies entirely on the free will of the people practicing it should be seen as a failure of the people or the method.

But from a practical viewpoint?

It makes no sense at all. From a practical viewpoint, if what you care about is preventing unwanted pregnancy -- especially unwanted teenage pregnancy -- then we need to treat abstinence like a condom that rips 26-86% of the time; like birth control pills where, out of every four packets, one to three packets is filled with placebos. We need to treat abstinence like what it is: a birth control method that results in pregnancy in 26-86% of the teenagers who practice it.

And when it comes to making sure that teenagers don't get pregnant?

I, for one, don't give a damn about philosophy.

I want them to not get pregnant.

(P.S. Apparently, the Obama administration agrees. The new budget eliminates funding for the conspicuously failed abstinence- only sex education programs, and re-directs it towards evidence- based programs to prevent teen pregancy. Yay!)

The Fat-Positive Skeptic (Part 2 of 2)

So how do you be a fat-positive skeptic?

Yesterday, I wrote about being a fat-positive feminist who's losing weight. Today, I'm finishing up with a look at one of the trickiest and most loaded balancing acts in this struggle: being both fat-positive and a skeptic.

See, here's the thing. As you may or may not know, there is something of a pitched battle between feminist fat- positive advocates, and advocates of a skeptical, science- based view that fatness is medically harmful. (I'm not sure what to call the anti-fat-positives. Fat-negatives?) The fat-positives think the fat-negatives are hysterics who exaggerate the health risks of being fat; the fat-negatives think the fat-positives are denialists who dismiss those risks too easily. The fat-negatives point out the well- documented connection between being fat and a whole host of health problems; the fat-positives point out that many of these health risks significantly diminish with a healthy diet and regular exercise... even for people who don't lose weight.

Now, I don't generally cotton to the "golden mean" fallacy: the misguided notion that in any dispute between two opposing sides, the truth will probably fall in the middle. But in this case, I genuinely do think that both sides have some valuable ideas... and that both sides are missing some seriously important truths.

I completely agree that the fat-positive movement does often trivialize the very serious, extensively documented, no-joke health risks of being fat. I think they focus on their political ideology about bodies and feminism, at the expense of the actual scientific facts on the ground. I think they're often guilty of wishful thinking: of acting as if the mere act of saying "Fat is as healthy as not-fat" over and over again will somehow make it true, regardless of the medical evidence. And I think they dismiss the fact that, while it's fairly easy to be a healthy, active fat person in your youth, it gets increasingly harder as you get older.

I also think that when the fat-positive movement keeps repeating the "Dieting doesn't work" mantra, they support this view by stubbornly focusing on the stupidest, most extreme diets out there. It's certainly fair to point out that a lot of popular diets are essentially semi- starvation, guaranteed to make you crazy and miserable and ultimately guaranteed to fail. But it's also fair to point out that not all weight-loss programs are that dumb. (Of course, this is also true for fat-negative skeptics, who focus on the stupidest, most extreme forms of fat-positivism while largely ignoring the more moderate, pro- exercise- and- eating- right, "be as healthy as you can at the weight that you are" folks...)

And when the fat-positive movement insists that weight loss doesn't work, they're ignoring the fact that we now know a whole lot more about weight loss than we used to. Good, careful studies have been done, looking not at the details of specific weight loss plans, but instead at the 10% of people who do lose weight and keep it off, and what they have in common. And apparently, it doesn't matter so much what kind of diet or exercise plan they're on: low-carb, high-protein, low-fat, high-vodka, whatever. What matters is that they're counting calories, keeping food journals, weighing themselves regularly, getting lots of exercise, losing the weight slowly (no more than two pounds a week on average)... and seeing all these things as a permanent lifestyle change instead of a one-time thing.

(Of course, that does beg the question: Why are some people able to sustain behavior changes like these, and others aren't? Diets generally don't work partly because many diets are stupid and unsustainable... but it's also partly because people don't stick with weight loss plans even when they are reasonable. But why is that? There's a whole science about behavior change and why it's so hard... and we need to not frame it as a moral judgement about weak character. It's common across humanity. As a society, it's been like pulling teeth to get people to quit smoking and wear seatbelts. If we're serious about addressing the American obesity epidemic, we need to be looking at major social and political change about how we deliver food and design our cities... not just haranguing people about how fat they are.)

The fat positive movement also often claims that being fat is purely genetic, not behavioral... a claim that ultimately isn't supportable. Yes, there's clearly a genetic component: in a perfect world where everyone ate a perfect diet and got loads of exercise, people would still come in different sizes, and one of those sizes would be fat. Besides, it's not so easy to draw a bright line between "genetic" and "behavioral." Appetite triggers, for instance, may be genetic, some people may be born being more easily triggered by external food cues than others... but the triggers shape our behavior, and we can make choices to deflect those triggers, or alter them, or avoid them. But if it were true that fatness is purely genetic, then why are Americans -- and non-Americans who eat an American diet -- so much fatter than the rest of the world? And why are Americans so much fatter now than we were 50 years ago, or even 20? If size were purely genetic and eating and exercise behavior had nothing to do with it, none of that would be true. Evolution doesn't work that fast.

So yes, I think the fat-positive movement has been missing the boat. A lot of boats.

But I think the hard-line fat-negative skeptics are overlooking some important truths as well.

I think they often overlook the degree to which American obesity is not a personal problem, but a political one. I think they often overlook the ways that American obesity is created and exacerbated by deeply-laid social and economic structures: city planning based around cars instead of walking or biking; an economy in which people are overworked at sedentary jobs and don't have time for exercise; the phenomenon of food deserts (large urban areas with no access to healthy, unprocessed food); the multitudinous evils of the American food industry, with its emphasis on shelf life over nutrition and profit over absolutely everything. I think they overlook the ways in which weight loss is a privilege, far easier for people in progressive cities with ready access to healthy food... and for financially comfortable people who can afford trainers and gym memberships. (Both categories that I freely acknowledge I belong to.)

I definitely think the fat-negative skeptics can be dismissive of just how difficult and complicated this issue is, and how loaded it is -- emotionally, psychologically, indeed politically. Especially for women. (The practical mechanics of how I'm losing weight are insanely simple: counting calories, keeping a food journal, regular exercise, patience. The emotional and psychological and political mechanics are a minefield. Did I mention the endless processing, the obsessive planning, the hysterical crying fits in grocery store parking lots?) I think the skeptics often ignore our culture's obsession with an unattainable ideal of physical perfection -- especially for women -- and the effect this has on people who are never, ever going to even come close to that ideal, no matter how healthy they become. And I think the skeptics can be oblivious to the effect their words have on people: how, for a fat person, especially for a fat person who's tried more than once to lose weight, hearing something like, "Weight loss is simple, it just takes will power, just eat less and exercise more" basically translates as, "And if you don't, it's your fault, you're weak and lazy and you deserve to get sick and die."

I also think that fat-negative skeptics tend to overlook -- or are maybe just ignorant of -- the venomous contempt and hostile bigotry that gets aimed at fat people in our culture on a regular basis. I'm not just talking about third-graders who get teased at school, or the scores of personal ads seeking partners who are "fit and trim" (or, more bluntly, "No fatties"). I'm not even just talking about endless, degrading fat jokes in the media... and the way said jokes are a normal, unquestioned part of the media landscape. I'm talking about things like actual, well- documented job discrimination, and medical discrimination in areas that have nothing to do with weight. We need some sort of pride, some sort of positivity, just to keep from collapsing into depression and self-loathing.

And for all their passion about being reality- based and sciencey, the fat-negatives have a serious blind spot when it comes to one very important, extensively- documented fact about weight loss:

It rarely works.

Consistently, across the board, about 90% of people who try to lose weight either fail, or gain it back within a year. To my knowledge, every single method of weight loss that has ever been rigorously tested has a failure rate of roughly 90%. (Interesting tangent: If you join Weight Watchers, and you lose and re-gain the same 20 pounds three times? They don't count that as a failure. They count it as three separate successes.)

10% success. That's not a very good rate. And it's something that fat-negative advocates need to deal with. I mean, what the hell is the point of raising the Dire Warning Alert System and telling everybody, "Being fat is horrible for you, being fat will ruin your health, being fat can kill you" -- if, once you've successfully freaked everybody out, you don't have anything constructive to offer about what they can do about it?

Now, as Ingrid often points out: Quitting alcoholism or other drug addiction also has about a 90% failure rate, and you'd still advise addicts to kick if they can. The fact that weight loss is difficult and rare doesn't mean it's not worth trying. (And we are learning more about weight loss, and are beginning to get a good, science-based, reality- based picture about what works and what doesn't. Again: counting calories, keeping a food journal, regular exercise, regular weigh-ins, patience.)

But given that this 90% failure rate is true, and until it is no longer true, then at least some of the visions and goals of the fat-positive movement are still pertinent. The idea that it's useful to eat a healthy diet and get regular vigorous exercise -- even if you don't lose weight? As long as weight loss efforts fail about 90% of the time, that's a pretty damn important message to get across.

And here's a freakish irony: The ideas and ideals I learned from fat-positivism? They've been incomparably useful to me in my efforts to lose weight.

Here's what I mean. The degree to which I've had to alter my life in order to lose weight has been pretty dramatic. If I'd had to do it all at once, I probably wouldn't have done it at all.

But I already had a head start. I was already exercising regularly: not as much as I needed to for weight loss, but more than probably 90% of Americans, and enough to improve my mood and my energy, my sleeping and my libido, my joint problems and my mental health. And I was already eating a healthy diet: not low-cal enough for weight loss, but better than probably 90% of Americans, and mostly consisting of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and lowfat proteins. So shifting gears from "generally healthy lifestyle" into "weight loss," while it was hard, was not nearly as hard as I'd thought it would be. I was already more than halfway there.

And a huge part of why I was more than halfway there was my fat-positivism, and the ideals I learned from that movement. I was flipping the bird at the corporate mainstream media industry that wanted me to look like Paris Hilton... but I was also flipping the bird at the corporate mainstream food industry that wanted me to eat a steady diet of Cheetos and Hot Pockets and Stuffed Crust Pizza. I was committed to being as healthy as I could be at the weight that I was... and that involved eating well and getting regular exercise. Goals that the fat-positive movement actively and passionately encourages. (The fat-positive activists I was reading, anyway.)

Plus, the fat-positive movement gave me the tools I've needed to frame my weight loss primarily as a health issue and not as a cosmetic issue: to pursue it, not to fit some mold of ideal womanhood, but for myself, for my health and the enjoyment of my life. If my efforts to eat better and get exercise had been entirely focused on the goal of looking better, I might well have given up long ago. After all, no matter what I do, I am never, ever going to look like Paris Hilton. Or even Heather Graham. I'm short, I have a square, stocky frame, and I'm 47. It's not gonna happen. But because of the fat- positive movement, I was already thinking of how I eat and exercise, not in terms of what society expected of me, but in terms of my own pleasure and health. So paradoxically, once my weight started being a serious impediment to my pleasure and health, it didn't take much to shift gears.

Yet at the same time, I'm ticked off at the fat-positive movement as well. I do think that I put this off for a lot longer than I should have, at least partly, because I drank the Kool-Aid. I bought the idea that I could be every bit as healthy at 200 pounds as I would be at 140. I pored over the handful of studies saying that weight loss was no big deal, and ignored the mountain of studies saying, "Is Too." I ignored the fact that my bad knee was getting worse, until it got almost too bad to do anything about it.

And the skeptical movement has also given me tools that I need to do this. Being part of the skeptical movement inspires me on a daily basis to face reality, no matter how difficult or emotionally loaded it might be. It inspires me to base my decisions, not on wishful thinking, but on the best hard evidence currently available. It's gotten me thinking more clearly about the evolutionary aspects of food and appetite and weight loss... and has thus given me some seriously useful practical strategies to bypass the triggers that evolved on the African savannah 100,000 years ago.

So I'm not sure what to do here. I'm ticked off at both sides. I'm grateful to both sides. I see truth and value, and stubborn obliviousness, on both sides. In my personal life, I'm just going to keep doing what I'm doing: taking what I need from wherever I can get it, doing whatever works for me to be as healthy and sane as I can. But as a writer, and as a member of two conflicting social and political movements, I'm not sure how to handle this.

Thoughts?

Fast Food wasteland photo by Apathetic duck.

The Fat-Positive Diet

How do you be a fat-positive feminist who's losing weight?

Don't worry. This isn't going to turn into a diet blog. I'd rather hit myself on the hand with hammers. But this thing has been happening with me: it's kind of a big effing deal for me, and I think it may be of interest to my readers. So although I'm finding myself with an uncharacteristic reluctance to talk about something this personal, I've decided to take the plunge.

I am, as anyone who knows me or has seen photos of me knows, fat. I have been fat for a long time, and have been more or less okay with it for a long time. My attitude towards my fatness has largely been shaped by the feminist fat-positive movement: I wasn't going to make myself miserable trying to force my body into the mainstream image of ideal female beauty, and I was instead going to work on being as healthy as I could be -- eating well, exercising, reducing stress, etc. -- at the weight that I already was.

But a few months ago, my bad knee started getting worse. I've had a bad knee for a long time (I blew it out doing the polka and it's never been the same since); but as bad knees go, it wasn't that bad. I had to be careful getting in and out of cars; I had bad days when I had to rest it; I had to quit doing the polka. No big deal. I can live a rich, full life being careful getting in and out of cars and not doing the polka.

But a few months ago, it started getting worse. Like, having trouble climbing hills and stairs worse.

That was not okay. I live in San Francisco. I need to be able to climb hills and stairs. And I know about knees. They don't get better. I could see the writing on the wall: I knew that if I didn't take action, my mobility would just get worse and worse with time. I could easily lose more than just stairs and hills. I could lose dancing. Fucking. Long walks. Walking at all.

Short of surgery, there's really only one thing you can do for a bad knee that I wasn't already doing.

And that's to lose weight.

How do you be a fat-positive feminist who's losing weight?

It's really hard not to feel like a traitor about this. When I reach a benchmark in my weight loss and get all excited and proud, or when someone compliments me on how good I look now and I get a little self-esteem-boosting thrill, it's hard not to feel like a traitor to my feminist roots, and to the fat women who fought so hard to liberate me from the rigid and narrow social constructs of female beauty.

And even apart from feeling like a traitor, there are about eighty million emotional traps along the way: traps that threaten to upend years of hard mental health work spent learning to love myself the way I am.

For starters: I know that weight loss typically fails about 90% of the time. So far this weight loss thing is working; but I've only been at it for a couple of months, and I know that in the long run, it could easily fail. And if this fails, then I get to feel like... well, like a failure. I get to be back at Square One, with my bad knee and everything -- but without the emotional supports I built up during my "Fuck You, Body Fascists" anti- dieting years.

But if I'm one of the 10% that succeeds... well, then I feel like an idiot for having whined about it for so long, and for not having done this sooner. (I'm already feeling like that now. In a purely practical sense, this has been easier than I'd thought it would be, and so now I'm feeling like a jackass for having insisted all these years that it was all but impossible.)

And if I am successful, the last thing in the world I want to do is get all smug and judgmental about how easy it was and how if I can do it, anyone can. If there's anything I hate, it's when people who've lost weight (or never gained it) get smug and judgmental about how if they can do it, anyone can. (I'm looking at you, Dan Savage.) That is a huge, ugly trap, and it's one I'm desperate to avoid.

Plus, it's so hard to let go of thinking that food and the appetite for it should be "natural." I mean, it's food. It's one of the oldest, deepest instincts we have. (Reproducing and escaping from predators also leap to mind.) The fact that I can't just "eat naturally," the fact that I have to pay careful, conscious attention to everything I eat and when... it's hard not to see that as a failure of character.

And as much as I want my weight loss to purely be about my health, the reality is that, now that I'm in the process, it's become more about my appearance than I'd like. I really don't want that: I find it politically troubling and emotionally toxic, and I think in the long run it'll undermine what I'm trying to do. But it's hard. As much as I like to think of myself as a free-spirited, convention- defying rebel, the reality is that I'm a social animal, and social animals care about what other animals think of them. And since I'm non-monogamous, I have to be aware of the realities of the sexual economy... and the reality of the sexual economy is that I'll almost certainly get more action and attention as I lose weight. I dearly wish I didn't care about that, but I do.

In case you're curious: So far, I've been successful. As of this writing, I've lost 20 pounds in two and a half months. And in case you're curious, I don't have any great secret to my so-far success. Counting calories; keeping a food diary; regular exercise; patience. Absurdly simple in theory. In practice, it's been a fucking minefield, especially at the beginning: crying fits in grocery store parking lots, heavy conversations with family and friends, planning that at times borders on obsessive compulsive, a painful and complicated emotional dance every time I have dinner with friends or eat out, and way more processing with Ingrid than I ever wanted to have to go through. (And I don't even get to call this a success yet. 90% of people who lose weight gain it back within a year; so until I've lost all the weight I want and have kept it off for a year, I don't get to relax and think of this as a win. And to some extent, I'll never get to completely relax: I'll probably have to do some form of calorie- counting and weight management for the rest of my life.)

But it is getting easier with time, as I get more and more used to my new eating habits. It's getting physically easier: for the first week or two, 1800 calories a day just didn't make me feel full, and I was cranky on good days and despairing on bad ones. Now 1800 calories feels like plenty, as my body has adjusted its sense of how much food is enough. And it's gotten easier mentally as well, as I've found some strategies -- emotional, psychological, practical strategies -- that so far have helped.

It's helped to remember that my appetites and instincts about food evolved about 100,000 years ago on the African savannah, in an environment of scarcity. The taste for sweets and fats; the tendency to gorge when I'm hungry; the impulse to keep on eating even after I've had enough; the triggers that make me hungry when I see or smell food... that's not weakness or moral failure. That's millions of years of evolution at work: evolution that hasn't had time to catch up with the modern American food landscape. And as a rationalist and a skeptic, in the same way that I'm not going to let myself believe in deities just because evolution has wired my brain to see patterns and intentions even where none exist, I'm not going to let myself eat three brownies at a party just because evolution has wired my brain to think I might starve to death if I don't.

It's helped for me to think of this as a political issue. It helps to remember that the multinational food corporations have spent decades carefully studying the abovementioned evolutionary food triggers, so they can manipulate me into buying and eating way more food than is good for me. It helps to think of weight loss, not as giving in to the mainstream cultural standards of female beauty, but as sending a big "Fuck You" to the purveyors of quadruple- patty hamburgers and Chocolate Chip Pancakes & Sausage on a Stick.

It's helped for me to remember that my other "natural" impulses aren't so natural, either. It's worked for me to remember that as a non-monogamist, I have to think carefully about who to have sex with and when; that as a city dweller, I have to think consciously about whether I'm genuinely in danger or am just being paranoid (or conversely, whether I'm genuinely safe or am just being oblivious). Food is no different. It's "natural" for humans to be rational animals, and to think about our choices instead of just reacting.

Doing this with Ingrid has been a huge help. Being able to support each other, encourage each other, plan meals together, share strategies, vent... it's been invaluable. I don't know if the people studying weight loss have looked at whether it's more effective to do it with a partner or friend... but it wouldn't surprise me in the least.

Keeping a food diary has helped enormously. It helps in the obvious way: that's how I keep track of my calories. But more than that, it helps me be more mindful and present about how I eat. I'm a lot less likely to run to the corner and get a Snickers bar if I know I have to write it in my journal. (If you have an iPhone, btw, there's a wicked cool calorie- counting app called LoseIt. I can't tell you how much easier it's made this process. If you don't, though, not to worry: the Interweb has made calorie- counting a relative breeze.)

It helps to think of this as a permanent lifestyle change. It's hard, but it helps. If I think of this as something I'll just have to do once and will then be finished with... well, that wouldn't just make this harder to sustain in the long run. It'd also make it harder in the short run: easier to blow it off for a day, and then another day, since all I'd be doing is postponing my "final" goal by a day or two. Thinking of this as "This is just how I eat now" makes it easier to keep it up.

It helped a lot to get a sane calorie count from my medical provider that took into account how much exercise I get. (As much as I love my little LoseIt iPhone app, if I'd have gotten my daily calorie count from that, it would have been way too low... since the gizmo apparently assumes that anyone using their program is about as active as a recently- fed boa constrictor.)

It helps to avoid using moral language about weight loss: to avoid thinking of "cheating" on my diet, "forbidden" foods, etc. It's hard enough to not eat the things I'm trying not to eat, without making them seem more attractive because they're naughty and wicked.

It helps to eat real food... and to avoid "diet" food like the plague. No diet shakes, no power bars, no lowfat cardboard cookies from the industrialized food industry. Fruit, vegetables, bread, meat, rice, beans... that sort of thing. I don't even eat lowfat cheese. I'd rather just eat regular cheese, and eat less of it.

It helps to eat slowly. Partly because it gives the "fullness" trigger in my brain time to catch up with my stomach... but partly because I get more pleasure from my food, and don't feel deprived. And it helps to eat smaller meals more frequently: since I never get all that hungry, I can make smarter and more conscious choices about what to eat.

It helps to measure my food, as much as I can. For calorie counting, it's pretty much essential. My instincts about what constituted a cup of soup or a teaspoon of butter were way, way off. I don't whip out the cup measure when I eat out, obviously... but I almost always do it at home, and since I've been doing it, my estimates on portion size when I do eat out have gotten a lot better.

It's helped to break down my ultimate long-term goal into smaller, more manageable goals. When my health care provider told me I should lose 60 pounds to be at my maximum good health, I just about gave up in despair right then. Instead, I decided to fuck that noise, I was simply going to lose 20 pounds... and then I'd see how I felt, and how hard it was, and whether I wanted to continue or stay put. I am now shooting for another 20 pounds... and when that's gone, I'll once again re-evaluate and decide whether or not I want to keep going, and how far.

It's helped to make incremental, non-drastic changes in my eating and my exercise. I think this is what trips up a lot of people who are trying to lose weight: they want to become health- obsessed gym bunnies overnight, and when that's too hard, they give up. It helped instead to add one workout a week to what I was already doing... and then, when I got used to that, to add one more.

And on a related topic: It's helped to be aware that weight loss can happen in fits and starts: there are natural fluctuations, with some weeks where I lose a lot and others where I don't or even gain a little. One of my big hysterical grocery-store crying fits came early on in my program, during a week where I gained weight... and it took Ingrid forever to convince me that this didn't necessarily mean I was doing something wrong, or that I had to make an already difficult weight-loss program even more strenuous. But she was right. It makes much more sense to keep my focus on the big picture, the overall arc. If I gain half a pound a week three weeks in a row, then I might decide that I need to step things up. But if I gain half a pound one week, I'm not going to decide that what I'm doing isn't working. I'm just going to stick with it.

It's helped for me to find exercise that I love doing. I am now doing bicep curls with 20 lb. dumbbells. I feel like a fucking Amazon goddess. Weightlifting rules.

It's helped for me to do some sort of exercise almost every day. It's not just that I burn more calories that way. It's that it makes exercise into a normal part of my daily life: not a special thing I do a couple times a week and can blow off if I'm not in the mood, but an everyday routine like brushing my teeth.

When I'm not in the mood to exercise, it helps to remember that I never, ever, ever have been sorry that I worked out. Ever. No matter how crummy I felt when I started, I have always felt better afterwards.

Going to the gym helps. It's not absolutely necessary; if you can't afford a gym membership, you can get good exercise without one. But for me, the gym has been a lifesaver. The thing about the gym is it takes minimal willpower. All I need is the willpower to get in the car and get my ass to the gym. Once I'm there, of course I'm going to work out. I mean, what else am I going to do?

But it's also helped to have some exercise equipment at home. Nothing fancy or expensive: some dumbbells, a stability ball, a resistance band, a mat. Having exercise equipment at home means I can easily do at least a little exercise every day, even if I can't get to the gym. And that's helped turn it into a regular part of my daily life, like brushing my teeth.

It's helped to get a trainer. (Hi, Marta! We love you.)

It's helped for me to to find healthy foods that I love. (Summer fruit season has made this so much easier: I can eat peaches and cherries and strawberries for months and never get tired of them.)

And it's helped to not be a purist: to eat the occasional cheeseburger, the occasional barbecued ribs, the occasional donut. I have to budget my day's calories for it (or else budget for the occasional day when I don't worry about it). But thinking, "I can never have another donut again as long as I live" would make this intolerable. Thinking, "I can have a donut today if I have a light dinner" makes this do-able. An entertaining challenge, even. Like my food for the day is a puzzle, and I'm trying to get all the pieces to fit together.

Finally, more than anything else, it helps me to remember my knee. It helps to notice how much better my knee already feels now that I've lost the 20 pounds: to notice that I'm climbing stairs and hills again, with little or no problem. It helps to think of how much better my knee will feel when I lose another 20, and then another. It helps to pick up the 20 lb. dumbbells at the gym and think about how rough it would be on my knees to walk around carrying them all day... and how much better it would feel to set them down. It helps to think that I might even be able to do the polka again someday. And when I start thinking that this weight loss thing isn't that big a deal and I can have that ice cream if I want it, it helps to imagine my old age, and to think about whether I want to be spending it dancing, walking in the woods, exploring new cities, on my knees committing unspeakable sexual acts... or sitting on a sofa watching TV and waiting to die.

There's something Ingrid has said about this, something that's really stuck with me. She's pointed out that if I were diabetic or something, and I was told I had to change my eating habits in order to stay alive... I'd do it. I might gripe about it, but I'd manage, and I'd even find a way to enjoy it if I could.

Well, the reality isn't that far off. I have a choice between a good shot at a healthy, active, pleasurable middle and old age... and a long, steady decline into a vicious circle of inactivity and ill health. I am, as the old '80s T-shirts used to say, choosing life.

So that's what's working for me. If you're doing this as well: What's working for you?

Important note: I am most emphatically NOT looking for diet tips. Anyone who offers diet tips will be banned from this blog. I am only partially kidding. I already know the mechanics of what I need to do: count calories, keep a food journal, exercise regularly, be patient. Rocket science.

What I'm looking for is psychological tips. Ways of walking through the emotional minefield. Ways of framing this that make it more sustainable. Ways of answering the question:

How do you be a fat-positive feminist who's losing weight?

And for that matter, how do you be a fat-positive skeptic?

(To be completed in tomorrow's post.)

A Hedonistic View of Physical Health

Overheard this weekend (can't remember where):

"Eat healthy; exercise regularly; die anyway."

It's a sentiment I've heard many times before. You're going to die anyway -- so why bother living healthy? Why not just enjoy life? Sure, eating well and getting regular exercise might lengthen your life a little... but is it really that important to have a longer life? Isn't it more important to have a satisfying one?

So today, I want to evangelize a little for the cause of eating well and getting regular vigorous exercise.

And I want to do it, not in opposition to hedonism, but in passionate support of it.

If the only reason I worked out was to extend my life, I might well not do it. I certainly wouldn't do it as much. After all, what's the point of having more time if you're just spending that extra time walking on a treadmill?

So I don't work out so I'll live longer.

I work out so I have more energy. So I sleep better, and am not tired all day. So I'm less likely to suffer from depression. So my joints don't hurt when I dance, or walk, or indeed when I try to fall asleep. So I'm better able to focus and stay alert and present. So I have a higher libido. So I feel more at home in my body.

And ditto all that with eating a healthy diet.

In other words:

Eating well and exercising aren't obstacles to an enjoyable life.

They're what make it possible.

Sure, when I was in my twenties, I could live a happily sybaritic life and still eat junk and never work out. I could dance 'til three, stay up all night playing cards, do drugs, chase women, march in the streets -- all the things that made my twenty- something life worth living -- with practically no effort.

But I'm 47 now. If I eat crap, I feel like crap. If I don't work out, I get logy, irritable, depressed, easily bored, easily distracted, and physically uncomfortable. (The effect isn't subtle, either: if I have to skip the gym for even just a couple weeks due to illness or travel or something, I start to feel achy and crabby very, very fast.)

But if I eat well and get regular vigorous exercise, I have the energy, and the focus, and the mood, to engage in the things that make my life meaningful and fun. I can put in a full day at the office, and still go out dancing, or spend an hour cooking a meal, or work on my book proposal, or write my congressperson. I can take a two- mile walk showing friends and family the wonderful neighborhood I live in. I can spend a day running around doing errands and still go out to a party at ten at night. I can dance all night, fuck all night, stay up all night talking with friends, stay up all night blogging. (Well, maybe not all night -- but fairly late.)

And so I say again: Eating well and exercising aren't obstacles to enjoying my life. They're what make it possible.

I thoroughly agree that living this life to its fullest is crucial. (And no, that doesn't mean being thoroughly selfish or self-indulgent; in fact, I strongly think that "living life to its fullest" includes empathy and social responsibility and staying connected with the world around us.) I think this life is the only one we have, and that not experiencing it with as much richness as we can is a tragic waste.

But if this life -- and this body -- is the only one we have, then don't we want it in good working order? If you had a car that you knew for a fact was the only one you were ever going to have for the rest of your life, wouldn't you give it regular tune-ups and oil changes? Like, to a psychotically obsessive degree? Not just so it ran long, but so it ran well, and could reliably get you where you wanted to go?

And assuming the answer is yes... why should you treat your body any differently?

I don't think being healthy means constant self-deprivation. The occasional donut, the occasional Manhattan or three, the occasional day spent in bed or on the sofa... these have an important place in a healthy life. As Dr. Hibbert said on The Simpsons, "I feel a balanced diet can include the occasional eating contest."

But these bodies are the only ones we're ever going to have. In fact, I'll go further than that. We don't have our bodies. We are our bodies. The best evidence we have is that our consciousness, our ability to choose, everything we think of as our selves... all of that comes from our brains, and from our brains' interactions with the rest of our bodies and with the rest of the world. And our brains are one of the main body parts we have that functions and feels better with a healthy diet and regular vigorous exercise.

And since we are our bodies, making our bodies happy is how we make ourselves happy.

I get that it's hard. Boy howdy, do I get it. Especially at first. It does get easier with time, as your habits change: as you find healthy food that you think is delicious, as you find types of exercise you think are fun, as you learn to connect your moods and energy levels with how you're eating and moving. But I won't deny that it can be hard. (I recommend incremental change: adding one or two workouts a week, changing two or three meals a week from junk to actual food... and when you're adjusted to that, adding one or two more.)

But my point is this: I think it's a mistake to look at eating well and exercising as punishment, or as deprivation, or as virtuous but purgatorial and boring. I think it makes much more sense -- and is much more sustainable -- to look at eating well and exercising as a gateway to a delightfully hedonistic, richly satisfying, vigorously pleasurable life. I say one more time: Taking care of our bodies is not an obstacle to enjoying life. It is what makes enjoying life possible.

Other posts in this series:
The Eroticism of Exercise

Blinded With Science: Sex, Sexology, and What Women Really Want

This piece was originally published on the Blowfish Blog.

So why do people do the sexual things they do?

And more to the point: If you have a theory about why people do the sexual things they do, how would you prove it?

There's an article in the New York Times that's been making the rounds, a piece about current sexology research and what it says about female desire. The bit that's getting the most attention is the research by psychology professor Meredith Chivers on different types of visual erotic stimulation (images of men and women doing it, images of two men doing it, images of two women doing it, images of solo men, solo women, monkeys, etc.), and which types aroused men compared to women. And what this says about male versus female sexuality. And what that says about how our sexualities evolved.

The data everyone's talking about, though, isn't so much about what kinds of dirty pictures women and men like to look at. (Although that is interesting and pertinent: if the research is correct, men tend to be aroused by a fairly narrow band of imagery that clearly correlates with their sexual orientation, while women tend to be aroused by imagery that's all over the map.) What's getting the attention is the stuff about how hard it is determine which images women are aroused by... because women's self- reported mental responses, and their involuntary genital responses, don't match up.

At all.

Hm.

Now. Chivers' conclusion is that women are physically aroused by a broader range of visual stimuli because, due to evolutionary pressure, it behooves women to be physically ready for sex they don't want. To put it more bluntly: Women get raped. If women are physically aroused by a broad range of visual stimuli, we will be physically ready for sex even if we don't want it, and are thus less likely to be injured during rape. Thus increasing our chances of survival.

Um...

Okay. That's the preface. Here's what I want to talk about.

I want to talk about how difficult it is to draw useful conclusions about the evolutionary reasons behind any behavior. But especially sexual behavior, and behavior related to gender differences... since both sexual behavior and gender roles have heavy cultural baggage, and are the subject of intense social pressure, both conscious and unconscious, pretty much from birth.

So here's my argument.

Is Chivers' explanation plausible?

Sure.

And I've spent the last twenty minutes or so coming up with a whole passel of explanations that are also plausible.

Why are women stimulated by a broader range of visual stimuli than men?

It could be that women's sexuality is more bound up with emotional attachment than men's... and emotional attachment is more complex than simple lust, with a wider range of potential objects.

It could be that women live in a culture steeped in imagery of sexual women, a culture where women are constantly presented as objects of sexual desire, and thus even straight women learn to see other women that way.

It could be that women's sexual desire is less gender- specific than men's. (There's some other data in the Times article backing up this theory.)

It could be that women are less aroused by visual erotic stimulation than other forms (such as verbal), and that showing women visual images isn't the best way to figure out what we're aroused by.

And it could be that women's sexual desire is more complex and multi-factorial than men's in many ways, with a less specific and more sweeping scope.

And why is women's self- reported mental arousal less likely than men's to match our measured genital arousal?

It could be that women are taught from birth to be disconnected from our bodies and our sexuality, so we don't find it as easy to identify our genital sexual responses.

It could be that women are taught from birth that being sexual is dirty and bad, and so aren't as comfortable speaking frankly about it as men. In other words, women don't want to admit what it is that's turning them on. (Even to themselves. See above.)

It could be that male physical arousal is easier to notice -- what with the boner and all -- and thus men are more likely to define "arousal" as "genital arousal," and to self- report it as such.

It could be because of Chivers' "surviving rape" explanation.

And it could be, again, that women's sexuality is more complex and multi-factorial than men's, with a stronger "purely mental" component.

To be very clear: I'm not actually advocating any of these positions. I'm coming up with them to make a point. That point:

I could do this all day.

And I'm not sure how you would test any of these theories.

See, here's the thing. As evolutionary biologist PZ Myers points out, there are enormous problems with these sorts of evolutionary "just-so stories." They're very easy to come up with (fun, too!), but they're very difficult to test. You have to somehow screen out cultural influence (was the study done cross- culturally, or just in North America?). You have to screen out historical influence (if X behavior pattern is universal now, how do we know it was universal a thousand years ago, or thirty thousand?). And you have to screen out behaviors that are inborn from behaviors that are learned. As Chivers herself acknowledges, "The horrible reality of psychological research is that you can't pull apart the cultural from the biological."

And as any good skeptic knows: If a theory isn't testable or falsifiable, it's worthless. Whether it's a belief in God, or a conspiracy theory, or a simple theory about the evolutionary forces driving the development of certain sexual responses... if there's no possible data that could prove your theory incorrect, or no way to acquire further data either supporting or contradicting your theory, then your theory is useless. It has no power to explain the past or predict the future. It's pointless. It's not even wrong.

It's easy to come up with possible explanations for behavior. Especially when it comes to sex. It's almost like a Rorschach test: in the absence of a truly excellent set of supporting data, the theories people come up with to explain sex tells you more about the theorizers than they do about the theories.

It's a lot harder to come up with theories that are really supported by all the evidence; theories that explain and predict evidence that can't be explained or predicted any other way; theories that are more than just examples of the human brain's amazing ability to come up with explanations for stuff.

By all means, we need to be doing careful scientific research into human sexuality. I wouldn't in a million years suggest otherwise. We just need to be very cautious, very rigorous, and very slow, about coming to conclusions about what that research means.

These ideas were developed in a comment thread on Pharyngula.

Blinded With Science: Sex, Sexology, and What Women Really Want: The Blowfish Blog

I have a new piece up on the Blowfish Blog. It's about recent scientific research into female sexual desire, research showing (among other things) that women's physical reactions to sexual images don't tend to line up with our mental reactions (you know, the New York Times article everyone's talking about)... and the dangers of jumping to conclusions about the "real" reasons for any particular sexual behavior.

It's called Blinded With Science: Sex, Sexology, and What Women Really Want, and here's the teaser:

It's easy to come up with possible explanations for behavior. Especially when it comes to sex. It's almost like a Rorschach test: in the absence of a truly excellent set of supporting data, the theories people come up with to explain sex tells you more about the theorizers than they do about the theories.

To read more, read the rest of the piece. Enjoy!

Oh, and a small favor: If you comment on this piece here, could you also cross-post your comment on the piece itself on the Blowfish Blog? They like comments there, too. Thanks!

Just Sitting Around Thinking: The Difference Between Philosophy and Theology

It's been a little while since I've formally studied philosophy, so please forgive me if I get some of this wrong (and of course, please correct me).

So if just sitting around thinking about stuff doesn't count as exploring the world, then what, if anything, is the value of philosophy?

The other day in my blog, I wrote an excoriation of the idea that the question of God's existence "should require further exploration." The essence of my excoriation: How, exactly, does this theologian propose that this exploration take place? What research does he propose doing? Does he plan to "explore" this question by doing anything at all other than sitting around in his living room thinking about it?

In response, Paul Crowley made a very fair point:

I think that there are ways in which the study of philosophy can be said to make progress, and in many ways there's not much more to philosophy than the activities you set out here.

A valid point, and one that deserves to be addressed. Especially since I have philosophers in my family, and to some extent consider myself one (albeit something of the armchair variety). And yes, I do think philosophy is a valid and important practice, one which can yield truth and insight. At least sometimes.

I had to think about this question for a bit, and this is definitely one of my "thinking out loud" pieces. But my initial, probably oversimplified response is this:

I think philosophers do have a responsibility to do more than just sit around and think.

I think philosophers have a responsibility, among other things, to keep up on the current science, and research in other fields of non- just- thinking- about- stuff investigation, that relates to their field.

If they're philosophers of epistemology or ethics, they should be keeping up with research in psychology, and sociology, and history. If they're philosophers of the mind and consciousness, they should be keeping up with research in psychology and biology. Philosophers of language need to stay current in the latest research and current thinking in linguistics. Political philosophers need to stay current in psychology and sociology (as well as history, of course). Etc.

And I think every philosopher, in just about every field of philosophy, needs to be paying attention to neuropsychology. Especially epistemologists, and ethicists, and philosophers of the mind and consciousness. But everybody, really. Aestheticians, logicians, political philosophers, philosophers of language -- everybody.

Why?

Because I think one of the main differences between philosophy and theology -- ideally, anyway -- is that philosophy deals with this world. The real world. The one we all live in and share. The one that we -- how shall I put this? -- know exists. (Or at least, the one that we know exists as well as we know anything.) It often deals with the real world in some rather abstract and arcane ways; it can often seem inaccessible and irrelevant (hell, it can often be inaccessible and irrelevant). But the basic idea is that it's meant to shed light on reality: human reality, and the reality of the world around us, and the relationship between the two.

Philosophy cares about the real world. And science is the best tool we've come up with so far for yielding accurate data and useful working theories about the real world. So philosophy should care about science. At the very least, it should be sure that it's not flatly contradicting the scientific consensus. And at the very best, it should be staying on top of the science, helping translate it to the layperson, putting it in context, and pointing to possible new fields of exploration and inquiry.

In other words: I think it's fine that philosophers largely just sit around and think... when what they're doing is thinking about reality as it's currently best perceived, informed by the best tools we have for perceiving it.

Which -- to bring it back to the main point -- is exactly what theologians don't do.

You can argue that theologians don't just sit around and think, either: they read, they study. But what do they read and study? Religious texts? Other theologians? History written by people who share their religious beliefs? Look at the theologians cited in my original piece on the weakness of modern theology. Their theologies reveal a blithe ignorance of (a) basic science that contradicts their theology, and (b) the lack of reliable historical support for their view of history. An ignorance that I frankly found shocking.

I'm sure that's not universal. I'm sure there are theologians who are reasonably well- versed in history and science and such. But again, I have to ask the question I asked yesterday, the question that I and every other atheist I know keeps asking again and again:

Is there anybody at all doing any sort of "exploration" into the field of theology, other than just sitting around thinking about it?

Is there any basic research being done to fuel the theologian's sedentary musings? Are there even any proposals on the table for how such basic research might be done? Is there any careful and rigorous observation of reality going on here at all? Or is it all simply a thoughtful, extensive, beautifully- worded exegesis on the state of one's navel?

And on the rare occasions that such reseach is being done -- such as the study on the efficacy of medical prayer, showing that prayer not only doesn't work but can be detrimental -- does any of it at all ever come out on the theologians' side?

Which brings me to another difference between philosophy and theology. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems to me that honest non-theological philosophers don't cheat in their arguments by inserting "Then a miracle occurs" at a crucial point. They don't cheat in their arguments by devoting paragraphs, or chapters, or indeed entire books, to justifying why they can legitimately argue for the objective truth of a statement by saying, "I feel it in my heart."

Reality matters to philosophy... and therefore science matters to philosophy. And I think philosophy matters to science, too. Or sometimes it does. The philosophy of science has been a tremendous force in shaping and improving the scientific method. The idea that a theory has to be falsifiable to be useful; the idea that the scientific community is a culture with cultural biases that need to be acknowledged; the idea that scientists work with assumptions that they hold onto until the evidence against them becomes overwhelming... these come from philosophy. (I once read an old piece by Martin Gardner, a review of Thomas Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions," seething with righteous outrage at the notion that the practice of science was anything less than perfectly objective and open- minded, and that scientists had any bias at all for old ideas over new ones. Kuhn's ideas are now not only not particularly controversial -- they've been folded into the scientific method.)

Yes, the activities of philosophy often don't amount to much more than sitting around thinking. But -- when it's done right -- it involves sitting around thinking about reality. Not just about stuff people have made up, but about the real world we live in. About things that we know, with a fair degree of certainty, to be true... and that we are willing to let go of if they later prove not to be true.

Which makes it very different from theology indeed.

(Note: The exception to this, I think, is the branches of philosophy that are less concerned with reality and more concerned with meaning, how we interpret the world and our experience of it. But (a) I think even those philosophers should probably be staying current with psychology and neuropsychology, and (2) unlike theology, those philosophies don't pretend to be about external reality while actually just being about the inside of the philosopher's head.)

The "Exploration" of God, or, How Do You Solve A Problem Like Religion?

So how is it that theists propose to discover the truth about God?

When I wrote my piece the other day about the Big Theologians' Big Questions for Atheists -- and how embarrassingly weak they were -- there was a bit that I overlooked. And frankly, I'm somewhat disappointed with myself. Yes, it was just one passing phrase in a sea of bad arguments. But it's a passing phrase that cuts to the heart of one of the most basic problems with religious belief, and I can't believe I missed it. So I want to make amends for my sin of omission, and talk about it today.

It's in this question for atheists by philosopher Paul Copan:

Given the commonly recognized and scientifically supported belief that the universe (all matter, energy, space, time) began to exist a finite time ago and that the universe is remarkably finely tuned for life, does this not (strongly) suggest that the universe is ontologically haunted and that this fact should require further exploration, given the metaphysically staggering implications?

Emphasis mine.

"Further exploration."

Okay. Here is my question.

How, precisely, do you propose to "explore" this issue?

Like I said the other day, I don't at all concede the "fact" of the supposed fine-tuning of the universe. But even if I did concede that: How do you propose "exploring" the questions of how the universe began and why it seems to be fine-tuned for life? How do you propose "exploring" whether these questions are more or less likely to be answered with God?

When scientists say that they're going to explore the answer to some question -- like, oh, say, how the universe began -- they can tell you exactly how they're going to go about that exploration. Usually in mind- numbingly specific detail. They can tell you what equipment they're going to use, how they're going to measure, how large a statistical sampling, what kind of control groups, etc. And they can tell you exactly how someone trying to prove them wrong would go about doing it.

When theologians say that they're going to explore the answer to some question -- like how the universe began -- what they generally seem to mean is that they're going to sit around in their living room thinking about it.

Now. I have absolutely no objections to sitting around in your living room thinking about stuff. Seventy percent or so of what I do for this blog involves sitting around in my living room thinking about stuff. (The other thirty percent mostly involves reading, looking stuff up on the Web, commenting on other blogs, and talking to people. And sometimes taking pictures of my cats.)

But I am under no illusions about what sitting around thinking about stuff ultimately produces. I am under no illusions that sitting around thinking about stuff will somehow result in a universal truth about the nature of reality. I am completely aware of the fact that sitting around thinking about stuff tells me absolutely nothing other than... well, what I think about stuff.

And even I base my living- room noodlings on stuff that other people have gone out and explored. Evolutionary biology. Neuropsychology. Astronomy. Physics. Explorations that Copan and other theologians seem depressingly unaware of... especially since they shed important light on their most central arguments.

Sitting around thinking about stuff is important. It's useful. It's how we see problems in other people's ideas and theories. It's how we come up with new ideas and theories to test. But it is not "exploring" anything except the insides of our own heads.

This is the question I keep asking: If religious belief is a real perception of an entity that really exists, then why, in the centuries and millennia that we've been "perceiving" that entity, has our understanding of it not improved? Why do religious believers around the world still have such radically differing "perceptions" about God? Why is it that they have no shred of consensus about God... or even any method for arriving at a consensus about God?

And this is a point Ingrid keeps making: Everything that religion has to offer just comes from people. There's no data, no hard evidence. It's all just books people wrote, speculations people have come up with, opinions people have passed down. It's all just stuff people made up.

So again I ask: How would Copan, or any other theologian, propose to "explore" the question of God? How would he propose to "explore" the question of whether the beginning of the universe (if indeed there was a beginning) was created by God? How would he propose to "explore" the question of whether the universe was fine-tuned by God for life to come into being? (And if he did, why did he do such a piss-poor job of it?)

Does he have any definition of "exploring" the question of God's existence other than reading other theologians, and talking to other theologians, and sitting around his living room thinking about it?


Other pieces on this topic:
Blind Men and Elephants: Religion, Science, and Understanding Big Complicated Things
"A Different Way of Knowing": The Uses of Irrationality... and its Limitations

Stupid Design: Rube Goldberg Brains and the Argument for Evolution

If you think the astonishing complexity and functionality and internal balance of living things is sure evidence for our design -- if you think living bodies are intricately- tuned machines that simply had to have been put together by a conscious hand -- then how do you account for the parts of the machine that are just... well, goofy?

I've just finished this book, Kluge: The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind. Written by psychology professor Gary Marcus, this "evolutionary neuropsychology for the layperson" book explores how the human brain and mind evolved -- not by looking at how the mind works, but by looking at how it doesn't; by looking not at its astonishing achievements, but at its laughable failures. And along with being a fascinating and funny look at how the human mind works (always one of my favorite topics), it offers one of the best arguments for evolution -- and against any sort of belief in intelligent design, or indeed any sort of interventionist god that tinkers with evolution -- that I've read in a while.

The main point of the book: The human brain is a kluge.

And it's a kluge because evolution is a kluge.

Pronounced "kloodge" (it rhymes with "stooge"), a kluge is an engineering term for an ad hoc solution that's inelegant and imperfect but basically functional. It's a solution that's required because you can't start over from scratch: you have to work with an existing design. You need more space in your house, say, and you don't want to tear the whole house down and start over -- so you stick on an extra room at the side. It's clumsy, it looks funny, it doesn't have good access to the bathroom... but it's cheaper and less disruptive than tearing down the house and building a whole new one with an extra room. And it's fine. It'll do.

Evolution is a kluge. It's the klugiest kluge that ever kluged.

The process of evolution happens gradually, with small changes being made on a previous arrangement. So it can't wipe the slate clean and start again. It's way more constrained even than an engineer. An engineer can say, "You know, it'll be more expensive, but if you tear out these cabinets and move your stove to the other side of the kitchen, you'd have a much better setup. The basic shape of your kitchen is still gonna be weird... but it'll be a lot better than if you leave the layout as is." Evolution can only take the cabinets out one shelf at a time; it can only move the stove an inch at a time... and it can only do it if each step of the process, each removed shelf, each inch that the stove moves across the floor, confers a selective advantage over the previous step. (Or at least, doesn't confer a disadvantage.) There are arguments among evolutionary biologists about exactly how big those steps can be (can the stove move one inch at a time or four inches at a time?)... but the basic principle is the same. Each generation is a modification of the previous one.

So if evolutionary forces are pressuring a four-footed species to stand upright, for instance, it'll have to happen by gradual alterations to the all-fours setup. And if that means bad backs and bad knees and bad feet... tough beans, pal. (I am somewhat bitter on this point, having just turned 47.) Evolution is both callous and lazy: if you survive long enough to reproduce with fertile offspring who can also survive long enough to reproduce, then evolution doesn't give a shit about anything else. There's no evidence of any guiding hand coming in and fixing things so they work a little better. In fact, there's plenty of evidence to suggest otherwise.

And this isn't just true of our knees and our backs and our feet. It isn't just true of our eyes, wired backwards and upside-down; and our vagus nerve, wandering all over hell and gone before it gets where it's going; and our vas deferens (well, not mine, but you know what I mean), ditto.

It's true of our brains, and our minds.

You have to read the book to get the full details. I'm not going to recount the whole thing here. But our memory, our language, our decision- making processes, our mental health, the way we pursue happiness and pleasure, the way we decide what to believe and what not to believe... none of these work optimally. We can remember a face from a 30- year- old yearbook, but we can't remember what we had for breakfast yesterday. We make choices based on shoddy cost- benefit analysis, poor understanding of probability, and immediate satisfaction over long- term gain. Our languages are beautiful and expressive... but they are also imprecise and confusing, often wildly so, and sometimes with serious consequences. Our pursuits of pleasure and happiness are often not just counter- productive in the long run... they often don't even give us much pleasure or happiness in the short run. Our mental health is fragile and easily disrupted.

And don't even get me started on belief.

These systems work pretty darned well, all things considered. We wouldn't be such a thumping evolutionary success if they didn't. But all of them show clear signs of having been kluged onto previously existing mental systems. We are living in a complicated, highly technical, deeply interconnected civilization... with minds that evolved on the African savannah, to find food and shelter, and have sex, and escape from predators, and generally survive just long enough to produce the next generation. Our minds evolved to escape from tigers, not to prevent global warming. And the minds on the African savannah evolved from previous forms, which also evolved from previous forms. The human mind was kluged onto the mind of its monkey ancestors, which was kluged onto the mind of its tetrapod ancestors, which was kluged onto the mind of its fish ancestors, and so on, and so on, and so on.

Which brings me back to intelligent design. And indeed to theistic evolution: the idea that evolution proceeded the way scientists describe it, but that this process was and is guided by the hand of God.

The klugey, ad-hoc, cobbled- together, Rube Goldberg nature of so many biological systems -- including the systems of the human mind -- throws the whole idea of any sort of all- powerful, all- knowing, interventionist god into a cocked hat.

If we really were designed by a perfect God, why would our bodies and minds be so klugey? If God is so magic that he can invisibly tinker with our DNA and make our legs just a skosh longer than our parent's generation -- or our minds just a skosh better at risk-benefit analysis -- then why isn't he magic enough to do a full-scale overhaul? Why wouldn't God reach into the fetuses of the next generation and go, "You know, this generation isn't having so much trouble with immediate survival, and at this point they really need better long-range planning abilities instead. Let's just reach in there, and turn the volume way down on the short-sightedness. And while I'm at it, this vagus nerve is bugging me. I know it had to look like that for the fish, but... okay, there we go. Much better. And let's seriously re-think those knees. For a quadruped, sure... but for a biped? What was I thinking? Makeover time!"

There is no evidence that this has ever happened. Even to the smallest degree.

There is, instead, ample evidence to the contrary. There is ample evidence for the idea that evolution is an entirely natural process: descent with modification, from one generation to the next, with each generation being a modification of the one before it.

And the klugey, Rube Goldberg, "work with what you've got" nature of our bodies -- including the part of our bodies that produces our minds -- is Exhibit A.

How Perfect Is the Universe, Anyway?

Before I start: A quick apology for the unscheduled blog break over Thanksgiving. I kept thinking I’d have time to blog over the holiday, and it kept not happening. My bad.

So how perfect is the universe, anyway?

There's an argument I've been seeing a lot lately in support of religious belief. It's sort of a cosmic version of the argument from design (the idea that biological life is too complex and too perfectly balanced to have just come into being on its own). Now, when it comes to the development of biological life, anyone who understands the theory of evolution knows that the argument from design is a non-starter. But the cosmic version of it has been making the rounds, even among people who completely accept evolution... and it's what I want to hammer at today.

The cosmic version goes like this: The universe itself -- indeed, the basic laws and forces of physics -- is all perfectly set up to allow life to come into being. Too perfectly. The force of gravity, the forces that hold atoms together, all that good stuff... if any of it had been even just a tiny bit different, the universe would look radically different, and would be completely inhospitable to any life, much less human life. It would have all flown to pieces in an instant, or collapsed back in on itself, or something. But the way it turned out was perfectly suited for life on Earth to come into being.

Therefore, the universe had to have been designed.

I've talked about this before. I've pointed out how human- centric this argument is; how it assumes that, because we are here, therefore we were required to be here. I've pointed out that the fact that you, personally, against astronomical odds, were born, doesn’t mean that you were required to be born, or that we need to come up with an entire philosphy or theology to explain your birth... and the same is true for our species. I've pointed out that if you roll ten dice and they come up 4636221434, that particular pattern is wildly improbable… but the fact that it's wildly improbable doesn't mean it was designed to happen. If it hadn't happened -- your birth, the existence of life, the roll of 4636221434 on ten dice -- then something else would have happened instead. Something equally improbable.

But today, I want to make a different point.

How perfect is the universe, really?

Let's take a quick look at the past. The post- Big- Bang universe is about 14 billion years old. The Earth has only been around for about 4.5 billion of those years. Life on Earth has only been around for about 3.7 billion of them. And human life has only been around for a ridiculously puny 200,000.

And now let's take a quick look at the future. The surface temperature of our Sun is rising. In about one billion years, the surface of the Earth will be too hot for liquid water to exist, thus putting a big ol' kibosh on this whole Life on Earth project. And if our current understanding of astronomy is correct, the universe itself is just going to keep expanding and expanding forever, until everything in it is dissipated into atoms drifting in space.

In other words:

The post- Big- Bang Universe is about 14 billion years old. The slice of that time that includes life is only 3.7 billion years -- less than a third of its total existence. And the slice of that time that includes human life is only 200,000 years -- one 7,000th of its total existence so far.

And even if human beings defy all evolutionary odds and survive for the entire existence of life on Earth... well, life on Earth won't be around past another billion years. And even if the insanely improbable happens, and humankind somehow figures out interstellar travel and planetary colonization and thus survives past the Sun's big Red Giant kaflooey... well, planets themselves aren't going to be around forever, what with the universe's eternal expansion and all. Things fall apart; the center cannot hold, as the great W.C. Fields once said. If current astronomy is correct, the life-span of the universe is going to be far, far longer than the life-span of humanity.

How, exactly, is that perfect?

I don't know about you, but I find this something of a buzz-kill. And it sure as heck doesn't look like a universe perfectly designed to make human life possible. A nice, calm, steady-state universe, where everything just hangs around in more or less its current form forever, would have been a lot more human-friendly. It sure would have looked a lot more like a universe designed for life and humanity than this one does.

The great Douglas Adams (of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" fame) made a point that's very pertinent to this idea. In his posthumous book, The Salmon of Doubt, he said, "Imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in -- an interesting hole I find myself in -- fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!'"

He was talking about the evolution of life on Earth, and the hubris of assuming that, because we fit so neatly into our environment, therefore both we and our environment must have been specially designed. But his argument applies equally well to the cosmic version of the argument from design, every bit as much as the biological version.

The hole for the puddle of life on Earth has a maximum life span of about 5 billion years before it dries up. The hole for the puddle of human life on Earth has a maximum life span of about one billion years. In the life span of the universe so far, that’s pretty minor... and in the life span of the universe from here to eternity, it’s a tiny blip on the radar. It is the height of arrogant, human- centric hubris to assume that the entire vastness of the Universe -- including planets and stars and galaxies that we can’t see and will probably never see -- was deliberately designed by a loving creator so that the chemical process of life could, for a relatively brief span of time, come into being, and then flicker out again.

---

UPDATE: I realized after I posted this piece that I ended it on kind of a downer note. I have therefore written a follow-up, Atheist Meaning in a Small, Brief Life, Or, On Not Being a Size Queen, that explores some possible ways to find positive meaning and value and importance in this particular world view.

The Human Animal: An Atheist's View of People and Nature

In an atheist's worldview, what is our relationship with nature?

Let me rephrase that. In this atheist's worldview, what is our relationship with nature?

In many religions -- traditional Judeo- Christian- Islam in particular -- the answer to that question is clear. Our relationship with nature is that nature was made for us. Animals, plants, even the sun and the moon and the planet itself... all were made for people to use. To subdue, to have dominion over, as Genesis 1:28 so charmingly puts it. Every single living thing on the planet -- they're all just one big all- you- can- eat buffet, laid out specially for the human race. (Except for the poisonous living things, and the living things that are trying to eat us, and the living things that are just plain useless. But that's not important right now.)

But if you don't believe in a creation made with humans in mind, then how do we fit into nature? What's our connection with it?

A few years ago, I read a book by Michael Pollan (of The Omnivore's Dilemma fame), called The Botany of Desire. It's a history of four different cultivated plants -- apples, tulips, potatoes, and marijuana -- written to examine and explore people's relationships with plants. Fascinating book. Highly recommended. But it's not what I want to talk about today.

In The Botany of Desire, Pollan talks about the co-evolution of flowers and bees. Specifically, he talks about how certain flowers evolved, and continue to evolve, in response to bees' very specific preferences. Flowers with characteristics that bees like -- certain bright colors and patterns, for instance -- will get chosen by the bees for pollination, and will get to win the Darwinian Reproduction Lottery. Flowers that don't, won't. (Unless they find some other way to get pollinated.)

And it suddenly struck me:

How is that so different from human cultivation?

Flowers with characteristics that humans like -- certain bright colors and patterns, for instance -- will get chosen by the humans for pollination (or grafting, or cloning, or whatever agricultural methods we're using to breed more of the flowers we like), and will get to win the Reproduction Lottery. Flowers that don't, won't. (Unless they find some other way to get pollinated.)

Is that really so different? Is there really that much difference between human intervention in tulips' evolution, and beevine intervention in tulips' evolution?

(Before you jump all over me: Yes, I think there is some difference. I'll get to that in a minute. For now, stay with me.)

This is the point I want to make. It's a point that most of us know and understand consciously... and yet it's a point that we have a striking tendency to forget.

We are animals.

I'll say that again:

We. Are. Animals.

We are an animal species: in the primate order, in the mammalian class, in the vertebrate sub-phylum. We are a product of evolution; a product of nature.

Yes, we're animals with an unusual ability to shape our environment. But it's an unusual ability -- not a unique one. Other living things have made dramatic physical impacts on the planet as well. Coral, for instance. Earthworms. And, of course, plants. Plants breathing in carbon dioxide and breathing out oxygen made a huge, radical change to the atmosphere of the planet. (A change that, so I've read, was a serious ecological threat to plant life, until animals came along and re-balanced the ecosystem.)

And yes, humans are the dominant life form on the planet right now. But even that doesn't make us special. Other life forms have been dominant in the past: trilobites, for instance, and dinosaurs. They were around for tens of millions of years. We've been the dominant species for what -- ten thousand years? Less? In geological terms, we're not even a blip.

It's so easy to think of human beings as somehow apart from nature. It's deeply woven into our language and our way of thinking. Nature versus nurture. Nature versus culture. Natural versus man-made. Is such- and- such plant a native, or was it brought to this region by people? Is X (global warming, homosexuality, the tendency of twenty- something human males to get into stupid accidents) caused by human beings and human culture, or is it natural? It's a way of thinking that's very pervasive. Even among people who aren't talking about religion. Even among atheists.

When people talk about evolution, for instance, they -- we -- often do it as if human beings were evolution's pinnacle, the goal it's been inexorably moving towards... as opposed to just one tiny, short-lived twig on an enormously huge, four- billion- year- old tree. Ditto when we talk about the food chain. There's a decided tendency to talk about the food chain as if it all headed straight into our mouths.

And it's a way of thinking that shows up a lot when science collides with politics or morality. When the question comes up of whether human gender roles are born or learned or both, we tend to forget that we are animals -- and that most animals have some sort of innate gender- differentiated behavior when it comes to sex and reproduction. When the question comes up of whether human homosexuality is born or learned or both, we tend to forget that we are animals -- and that homosexual behavior has been observed in hundreds upon hundreds of other animal species. We don't think of zoology as applying to us. We think of ourselves as different.

Now. I'm not saying there's no difference at all. When it comes to the tulips' evolution, for instance, I think there is a difference between human intervention and bee intervention. The difference is consciousness. Humans intervene with the tulips consciously: making observations about what sort of interventions create what sorts of changes in the tulips, making plans for the direction we want those changes to go in, making calculations about how to make those changes happen. Bees, as far as we know, don't.

And that does confer a moral responsibility on humans that we probably wouldn't apply to other living things. Nobody would say that algae were immoral or short-sighted for overbreeding and choking a pond to death. We would say that human beings are immoral and short-sighted -- not to say stupid verging on criminally insane -- for continuing to pour greenhouse gases into the atmosphere when we know it's potentially choking our planet to death. I'd say that, anyway.

But I'm reluctant to draw a bright line between humans and other animals on that basis alone. Not yet, anyway. We just don't know that much about consciousness yet: what exactly it is, how it works, how the brain produces it. And until we do, I'm reluctant to say that consciousness is unique to human animals. We have a long, stupid, wrongheaded history of assuming that other animals don't have certain kinds of experiences -- they don't feel pain, they don't feel attachment, they have no innate morality, etc. -- simply because they don't have language, and can't tell us about it.

Besides, even if consciousness does turn out to be unique to the human species... isn't that part of our nature as well? Spiders have the unique ability to spin webs; bats have the unique ability to navigate with sonar. Having an ability that's unique among all other living things... that doesn't make us unique. If that makes sense.

And even if our consciousness does turn out to be unique... it is still, as far as all the evidence currently points, a product of our brains. Which are products, yet again, of evolution. Of nature.

So what is humanity's relationship with nature?

Humanity's relationship with nature is that we are part of it.

We are an animal species: in the primate order, in the mammalian class, in the vertebrate sub-phylum. We are a product of evolution; a product of nature. Even the things we do that seem most unnatural -- building museums, building strip malls, belching greenhouse gas into the air, sending rockets to the moon, buying bras on the Internet -- are no more unnatural than coral building a reef, or earthworms turning rocks into soil, or algae blooming in a pond, or plants belching that toxic oxygen crap into the atmosphere.

I'm not saying that everything we do is part of nature, and therefore everything we do is okay. I'm not saying that everything we do is part of nature, and therefore it's fine for us to be self-serving hedonists. Far from it. Plenty of things are part of nature that we'd consider immoral: rape, torturous cruelty, biting the heads off one's mates. And if for no other reason, self- preservation alone should inspire us to not act like immoral, short-sighted dolts.

If anything, I'm saying the opposite. We have the capacity for consciousness -- and we therefore have the capacity for foresightedness and choice, and the moral responsibility that comes along with it. And that, too, is part of our nature, a fundamental part of how our minds and our social functions evolved. A part that has generally served us well, I might add. It's a part of our nature that we should embrace. Given the power we have to radically fuck up the world... our capacity for consciousness and foresightedness and moral responsibity is a part of our nature that we really, really should embrace. Hard.

And I propose that seeing ourselves as a part of nature -- not separate from it, not above it or isolated from it, but deeply woven into it, as deeply woven as coral and bats and tulips and algae -- is a crucial part of that embrace.

What Does Science Have To Do With Atheism?

What does science have to do with atheism?

Atheists and atheist writers yak about science a lot. Myself included. If you read a lot of atheist writing, you might think atheists are laboring under the delusion that atheism is a prerequisite for practicing science... and/or that science has somehow proven religion wrong.

For the record: I don't think either of those things is true. (And neither does any other atheist I know.) I know that good scientists can be religious believers; in fact, until this century, almost all scientists were religious believers. And I am under no illusion that science has conclusively disproven the existence of God.

But I do think there's a real -- and strong, and completely valid -- connection between atheism and science.

What is it?

Why do atheists talk so much about science? Why do we act as if science is our natural ally? If atheism isn't necessary to practice good science, and if science doesn't prove atheism right, then what's the connection between the two?

Here's the connection. It's actually pretty straightforward.

1: Science disproves specific religious claims.
2: Science makes religion unnecessary as a way to explain the world.
3: Science provides an alternate method for understanding reality.

Let's take these one at a time, shall we?

1: Science disproves specific religious claims.

Science will probably never be able to prove all religion to be unquestionably mistaken. (If for no other reason, it's notoriously difficult to conclusively prove that something doesn't exist.)

But if your religion claims that the Earth was created 6,000 years ago? That there was, in recorded human history, a gigantic planet-wide flood that wiped out almost every living thing? That humans were created in one shot out of whole cloth -- or whole dirt -- and plonked down on the earth by the hand of God in basically the same form we're in now?

Science sure has something to say about that.

"No" is what science has to say about that.

And that's not just true of the more extreme wackaloon claims of religious belief. If you believe evolution happened but God nudged it along in the direction he wanted? Science can't definitively disprove that... but in pointing to the deeply flawed, seemingly pointless, Rube Goldberg nature of so much of the "design" of living things, it sure can make the idea look wildly implausible. If you believe you have an immaterial soul that's the ultimate recipient of your perceptions and the ultimate source of your choices and actions? Science can't definitively disprove that -- yet -- but in pointing to all the ways that physical changes to the brain shape our perceptions, our choices, our actions, our sense of self, everything we think of as the soul, the sciences of neurology and neuropsychology sure are putting a dent in it. Etc., etc., etc.

And in doing all this, science doesn't just disprove specific claims of specific religions. It repositions religion as just another hypothesis about the world. It pushes religion into the marketplace of ideas, as just one other idea among many, with no special privileges and no automatic right to any unusual respect. And then it sits there expectantly, waiting for religion to defend itself. (At which point, atheism swoops in to actually do battle with religion... in an arena where religion has never really had to stand on its own.)

But I'm getting ahead of myself. That's actually a point all its own, and I'm not quite there yet. For now, let's move on to:

2: Science makes religion unnecessary as a way to explain the world.

Once upon a time, hundreds and thousands of years ago, there really wasn't any better explanation for the world than religion. There were all these questions, like: Where does weather come from? Where do the seasons come from? Where did people come from? Why does the sun rise and set? Why do people get sick? Why do children look like their parents? We didn't have good answers to these questions, and for millennia, the best answers we came up with came from religion. Of course all this happened because of gods and spirits. Like, duh.

But now, almost all the major questions that religion once answered have gotten far better answers from science. Over the last few hundred years, science has given us a relatively coherent picture of the world and the universe we live in -- a picture that's enabled us to explain, predict, and shape the world, with an astonishing degree of precision and accuracy.

Sure, there's a handful of those old questions that are still unanswered. What exactly is consciousness and selfhood? How did the process of life begin? What is the origin of the universe itself? But these are being worked on by science even as we speak. And given the track record of scientific explanations for things replacing supernatural ones thousands upon thousands of times, versus supernatural explanations for things replacing natural ones exactly never... well, let's just say that if you're betting on religion over science to answer these questions with any degree of certainty, you're really not playing the odds.

In other words:

When it comes to explaining why the world is the way it is, science doesn't conclusively disprove religion.

It simply makes it unnecessary.

Which is a pretty important connection.

And now we come to what I think is the biggest, bestest, most important connection of all between atheism and science:

3: Science provides an alternate method for understanding reality.

Once upon a time yet again, the method we had for figuring out what was and wasn't true about the world was a combination of basic observation, personal intuition, basic analysis based on pattern recognition and past experience, believing what everyone else believed, and trusting in authorities who had lived longer than us, and studied harder than us, and presumably knew more than we did. Or else trusting in books and texts written by long-dead versions of those authorities. (A method that, I feel compelled to point out, did keep us fed and sheltered and safe from tigers, for a very, very long time.)

But over the centuries and millennia, we began to figure out that this method was limited at best, and prone to gross, flat-out errors at worst. We began to figure out that our senses could not always be trusted. We began to figure out that past experience couldn't always predict future performance. We began to figure out that our minds tend to see patterns even when no patterns exist. We began to figure out that our intuition could easily lead us astray; that it tended to make us think what we most wanted to think, and see what we most expected to see. And we began, very importantly, to understand that neither crowds nor authority figures could automatically be trusted as reliable sources of information.

And we developed -- and are continuing to develop -- a systematic method for sorting out good information from bad; useful theories from mistaken or useless ones. We developed a slow, painstaking, rigorous method of testing our ideas about how the world works, to see how well they represent reality. We developed, in a word (okay, three words), the scientific method.

This is the crucial thing about science that many folks fail to grasp. Science is not, primarily, a collection of theories and facts and data. Science is, primarily, a method. It's a method that uses, among other things, large and carefully selected sampling sizes, careful control groups, double- blind and placebo- controlled testing, transparency of results and methodology, peer review, the expectation that results be replicable, the expectation that theories be falsifiable, yada yada yada. All to ensure that all the flaws I just talked about, all the traps and pitfalls we can fall into when we try to understand the world, are minimized, as much as is humanly possible.

Now.

Compare, please, to the method of religion.

Religion is also, among other things, a method for understanding the world. And it's a method that relies almost entirely on one or more of the following: personal intuition, the authority of religious leaders, the authority of religious books and texts, our tendency to think that if everyone around us thinks something then it must be true, our predisposition to believe what we already believe, our predisposition to believe what we were taught as children, and our tendency to see both patterns and intentions regardless of whether they exist.

And we know -- as well as we know anything -- that every single one of these sources is profoundly unreliable.

Which brings me back to the whole "marketplace of ideas" thing.

I said before that science -- the very existence of science -- pushes religion into the marketplace of ideas. It takes religion off its pedestal as the One Thing We All Have To Believe If We Don't Want To Be Called Heretics Or Get Condemned To Hell (or, in the pedestal's more modern incarnation, the One Idea We All Have To Treat With Respect And Veneration, Even If We Don't Agree With It). It pushes religion off its pedestal and onto the playing field, to fight it out with all the other hypotheses about how the world works and why it is the way it is.

But it doesn't just do this by comparing claim against claim: by comparing penicillin to faith healing, say, or meteorology to prophecy.

It does this by comparing the methods themselves.

It does this by saying, "Yeah, sure, you can try to understand the world with the methods we used tens of thousands of years ago, when we were hunkered around campfires in caves. Or you can try to understand the world using this systematic method we've come up with, where we rigorously test our ideas and reject the ones that don't work. Let's see which method works better -- shall we?"

And when that comparison is made, religion doesn't stand a chance.

When religion has to fend for itself on a level playing field; when it can no longer resort to any of the "Shut up, that's why!" arguments that it's used for so long to armor itself against criticism; when it has to defend not only its hypotheses but its methods of arriving at those hypotheses... then that's the beginning of the end.

No, science can't tell us with 100% certainty whether or not religion is true. (As if that mattered.) But it does shed hard, serious light on the question of whether or not religion is plausible. Science doesn't just offer alternate explanations for the world. It offers an alternate method for figuring that world out. It doesn't just offer different -- and better -- answers. It offers a different and better way of asking the questions.

And that's why science is relevant to atheism... and why atheists can't, and shouldn't, shut up about it.

Election Snippet: The McCain Campaign and Science

Today's election snippet: The McCain campaign and its consistently hostile, contemptuous, and trivializing attitude towards science.

PZ Myers at Pharyngula rants about this better than I could, so mostly I'm just going to link to him. The gist: The McCain/ Palin campaign, in its effort to demonize taxes and earmarks, has shown a repeated pattern of bashing science: acting as if it's not a necessity but a frivolous luxury, something an advanced civilized society can easily do without.

You know, it's easy to make fun of small scientific research projects. (And as Homer Simpson would say, "Fun, too!") It's easy to trivialize people who study some obscure frog in some tiny swamp. It's easy to mock researchers who want funding for their research projects as self-absorbed whiners sucking on the public teat, spending years studying petty details about stuff that nobody else cares about and expecting the taxpayers to foot the bill.

But that attitude shows a stupendous ignorance about how science works.

Science consists largely of lots and lots and lots of little pieces, being put together into an increasingly coherent big picture. Everyone admires Big Breakthroughs in science... but Big Breakthroughs are rare. And the Big Breakthroughs are dependent on all the little pieces being done, and being done right. (What's more, you never know which little breakthrough is going to lead to a Big Breakthrough.)

We are a highly technological society. Medicine, communication, transportation, agriculture... science and technology are woven into the fabric of our everyday lives, and that's just becoming more and more true with time. Even seemingly weird little projects can have a great impact on our lives. (As Skeptico points out, the fruit fly research that Sarah Palin disparages was research into the olive fruit fly -- a major pest that threatens California’s olive farmers.)

Loving your country, and wanting it to be prosperous and successful, means valuing science.

To understand our world -- for both practical applications and the simple enhancement of our lives that greater understanding gives us -- we need research into things like fruit flies. And bear DNA. And planetariums to teach kids about science. And all that stuff the McCain/ Palin campaign holds in such casual contempt.

Tee Hee, You Said "Bonk"

This review was originally published on the Blowfish Blog.

If ever a book was tailor- made for me to enjoy, this is it.

I'm a huge science nerd. I'm a huge sex nerd. How could I not love a book called Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex?

Well, let me tell you how. Exactly.

First, I should disclaim for a brief moment: Bonk is not a terrible book. The subject matter -- the history of the scientific study of sex, and some of the more interesting examples of its current state -- is a compelling one, loaded with fascinating ideas both about sex itself and the appallingly/ entertainingly conflicted attitudes society has about it. And the author -- Mary Roach, celebrated author of Stiff and Spook -- is no slouch. She's a thorough researcher and a clear, fun writer, adept at taking complicated and potentially boring scientific ideas and making them accessible to the lay reader.

Please note that I refrained from making a childish, Beavis and Butthead- esque sex joke about the "lay" reader.

Which brings me to the problem.

The problem is this: The author's attitude towards sex is annoyingly adolescent, bouncing back and forth between giggling and gross-out Especially when it comes to some of the more unusual or extreme sexual variations she's writing about.

And that really gets up my nose. It's irritating; it's insulting to my intelligence... and it leads to some actual misinformation.

Take this. From the introduction, discussing the fact that she injected some of her personal experiences into the book:

My solution was to apply the stepdaughter test. I imagined Lily and Phoebe reading these passages, and I tried to write in a way that wouldn't mortify them. Though I've surely failed that test, I remain hopeful that the rest of you won't have reason to cringe. (p. 18)

Well... no. Why would I cringe? I'm reading a book about sex. Why would I cringe at descriptions of the author's sexual experiences, or responses, or participation in sex studies?

In fact, I did cringe when reading this book. Repeatedly. But it wasn't because the author was being too sexually explicit. It was because she was clearly cringing herself.

Or this:

One research team collected specimens of the expulsion [female ejaculate] and asked outsiders to characterize it. It is a testimony to the generosity of the human spirit that these volunteers both smelled and tasted the specimens. (p. 198)

Hey, you know what? I have both smelled and tasted female ejaculate. And it didn't require any "generosity" on my part. I was, to put it mildly, happy to do it. Admittedly it wasn't in a laboratory setting... but the point remains that not everybody would need to search for the generous spirit in their hearts in order to take part in this experiment. If Ms. Roach is grossed out by female ejaculate and would need to buck herself with a spirit of volunteerism in order to smell and taste it, that certainly doesn't make her unqualified to be a sex writer... but her blithe assumption that everyone shares her reaction is a pretty big strike against her.

Or this:

I'm not saying there's a link between Catholicism and sex toys. I'm just saying I've got a brand-new interpretation of Isiah 49:2 ("The Lord... hath made me a polished shaft"). (p. 216)

Tee hee. You said "shaft," Beavis.

And my final example before I move on:

In one of the sections on erectile dysfunction, Roach has a fairly long and detailed discussion about cock rings. But the discussion focuses almost entirely on cock ring mishaps -- trips to the emergency room and whatnot -- resulting from too-tight cock rings made of too-rigid materials.

And nowhere in this odyssey of penile disaster does she mention that the majority of cock rings are flexible and removable: made of stretchy material such as leather or rubber, and fastening with snaps or laces or Velcro or some such for easy removal. If you read Bonk and had never heard of a cock ring before, you wouldn't come away thinking, "Hm, interesting, that could be a nifty alternative to Viagra." You'd come away thinking, "Who in their right mind would do something that stupid?" And you'd come away misinformed. I don't know if Roach didn't know about flexible/ removable cock rings, or if she simply chose not to mention them because the disasters were funnier. And I don't much care. Either excuse is, well, inexcusable.

I understand that she's trying to present her subject with humor. That's not the problem. I'm all in favor of the humor, and have even been known to apply it to the topic of sex myself from time to time. But there are varieties of humor available to a writer other than adolescent fits of grossed-out giggles. And they're rather more appropriate to sex writing... both for an adult writer, and for an adult audience. I hate, hate, hate sex writing by writers who seem embarrassed by their topic.

It might be easier to talk about what this book does wrong by comparing it to a book that does it oh so right. The Technology of Orgasm: Hysteria, the Vibrator, and Women's Sexual Satisfaction is hilarious. It had me laughing out loud on roughly every tenth page... a feat that Bonk almost never accomplished. And at no point in the book did I get even a whiff of a sense that the author was embarrassed by her topic. Quite the contrary. Rachel Maines approaches sex in general, and the history of vibrators in particular, with an earthy, blunt, clear-eyed gaze, and no embarrassment whatsoever.

And that absolutely does not interfere with her humor. Heck, it's the foundation of it. Maines is vividly aware of how laughably absurd sex -- and people's reactions to it -- can be. But she doesn't find the very existence of sex to be the source of the laffs. Her humor isn't the humor of discomfort. It's not the unnerved giggle of an adolescent; making light of sex to dilute its importance, and making a show of being repulsed by it to deflect the powerful hold it has.

Roach's humor in Bonk, alas, is exactly that.

And while it doesn't make Bonk completely unworthy, it does turn it into an interesting but irritating book... when it could have been a great one. I have rarely opened a book with so much excitement and anticipation. And I have rarely closed it with so much frustration at the opportunity it missed.

Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex. By Mary Roach. W.W. Norton. ISBN 978-0-393-06464-3. Hardcover. $24.95.

The Technology of Orgasm: Hysteria, the Vibrator, and Women's Sexual Satisfaction. By Rachel P. Maines. Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 978-0-801866-46-3. Trade paper. $17.95.

Election Snippet: Nobel Scientists for Obama

In this video, Marty Chalfie, one of this year's winners of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, explains why he -- along with 61 other Nobel Laureates in science -- is supporting Barack Obama.

I'll be talking more in future Election Snippets about the role of science in this election... and the respect, or lack thereof, that the candidates have shown towards science. But I need to post and run today, so today, it's just the video.

Video below the fold. Enjoy!

Blind Men and Elephants: Religion, Science, and Understanding Big Complicated Things

Is there a good reason that different religious believers disagree so much about God? Could it just be that God is very large and complex and difficult to perceive, so naturally different people don't all perceive him the same way?

Could religion be like the fable of the blind men and the elephant -- where everyone's perceiving a different part of God, but they're all still perceiving the same real thing?

You've probably heard this fable before. There are different versions, but the basics are these: Six blind men are standing around an elephant, touching it to figure out what an elephant is. The one touching the trunk decides that an elephant is a big snake; the one touching its leg decides an elephant is a tree; the one touching its tail decides an elephant is a rope; etc. It's supposed to show the limitations of individual perception, and the importance of not being narrow-minded, and how people with different beliefs can all be right. Or all be wrong. You get the gist.

It was recently suggested in this blog that this fable makes a good metaphor for religion. God is too large (it was suggested), too complex, too multi-faceted, for any one person to perceive correctly. Therefore, Reason #2 in my Top Ten Reasons I Don't Believe In God -- the inconsistency of world religions -- isn't a fair critique. The fact that Muslims see God one way and Catholics another, and Hindus yet another, and Jews, and Neo-Pagans, and Taoists, and Rastafarians, and Episcopalians, and so on -- in ways that are radically different, even contradictory -- it's just different people perceiving different parts of the elephant.

But I don't actually think this fable makes a good metaphor for religion.

It does, however, make an excellent metaphor for science.

Or rather, it could.

Here's the thing. In some versions of the elephant fable, the blind men groping the elephant just fall to hopeless arguing with no resolution. In other versions, a wise man explains to them what's really going on. And that does make it a good metaphor for religion. Either people trust what someone else tells them is true, or they squabble endlessly and even fall to blows, with no means of resolving their disagreements.

But here's the interesting thing:

I have never seen a version of the fable in which the blind men start explaining to one another why they think the elephant is what they think it is. I have never seen a version where the blind men say, "Hey, come over here! Follow my voice, and check this out -- this is why I think it's a snake!" (Or a tree trunk, or a rope, or whatever.)

And yet, that's exactly how science works.

Yes, of course, if God existed, he would be immense and complex and difficult to perceive and understand.

And what -- the physical universe isn't?

The physical universe is both far, far larger and far, far weirder than we had any conception of 500 years ago, or indeed 100. Billions upon billions of galaxies all rushing apart from each other at blinding speed; everything made up of atoms that are mostly empty space; space that curves; continents that drift... I could go on and on. It's way too big, way too complex, way too multi-faceted, for any one person to accurately comprehend.

And yet, the blind men are coming to a fair understanding of what an elephant is.

Every century, every decade, every year, the blind men are getting a better and better picture of an elephant.

And here's how.

For hundreds of years now, thousands even, the blind men have been saying to each other, "Over here! Check this out! This is why I think it's a snake!" And the other blind men come over and check out the snake, and one of them says, "I agree, this part has a lot in common with a snake, but it also has these differences... and interestingly, the surface feels very much like the tree trunk I was feeling yesterday." And they each form departments to study the different parts of the elephant... and they compare notes and rigorously critique one another's findings about the different elephant parts... and they come up with theories to explain what an elephant is, some of which make better or worse predictions about what they'll find in between the snake-like thing and the tree-like thing... and then they embark on their Top Of The Elephant exploration program, and send probes and explorers and the Voyager Ladder to the top of the elephant and discover these amazing Ear things that they'd never imagined...

... and as each year and decade and century passes, we get a clearer picture of what an elephant is. It's not perfect -- there are big holes in the picture, and almost certainly mistakes as well. But we have theories about elephant-ness that make astonishingly accurate predictions about how the elephant will act and what we'll find next on our continuing elephant explorations. And we have better and better forms of elephant perception all the time: both better techniques for exploring the elephant, and better methods for testing that our theories and data about the elephant are good. Our understanding of an elephant is better now than it was a century ago, and in another century it'll be better still.

Why does this work?

Because the elephant is really there.

Because there is actually something out there that we can compare notes on. Because when two blind men feel an elephant's trunk, they're feeling the same real thing.

Now.

As I said in The Top Ten Reasons I Don't Believe In God (and about 63 other places on this blog):

Compare, please, to religion.

In religion, we have no such consensus. The Snakians and the Treeists and the Ropafarians are still squabbling, still dividing up into sects, still coming up with no better argument for their beliefs than "Other people say it" and "I feel it in my heart" and "You can't prove it didn't happen." And they're still coming up with no clearer picture of the elephant: no better ability to predict what the elephant will do, no better skill at guiding the elephant in the direction that they want, than they had a year ago, or a hundred, or a thousand.

Why?

Because there's nothing there.

It's all just stuff people made up. Consciously or un-. People can't show each other the evidence for the Snake, or the Tree, or the Rope, and convince each other on the basis of the evidence... because there is no evidence. There is no snake, no tree, no rope. There's nothing there. There's just the conviction that the snake has to be there, because everyone else says there's a snake, and our mother and father and all our teachers and authorities say there's a snake, and we Snakians have believed in the snake for generations, and we've known about the snake since childhood, and besides we just feel the snake in our hearts.

The reason that there's no increased consensus about religion? The reason that different religions today are as different, as inconsistent, as mutually contradictory, as they always have been, for thousands of years? The reason that prayer and prophecy haven't gotten any more effective over the years?

The reason isn't that God is a huge, complex, multi-faceted elephant that no one person can completely and accurately perceive.

The reason is that there is no elephant.

Gratitude For Small Favors: "Evolve: Sex" (The Blowfish Blog)

I have a new piece up on the Blowfish Blog. It's a review of the "Sex" episode of the new History Channel series, "Evolve"... and it talks about why, despite a number of complaints I have about the program's handling of sex, I'm overall giving it a thumbs-up. It's called Gratitude For Small Favors: "Evolve: Sex," and here's the teaser:

I suppose I should be grateful.

And I am grateful.

But it's a bit sad that I should be grateful about something that should be ridiculously obvious -- and ridiculously common.

I'm grateful for this: On the History Channel's series "Evolve," on the episode about sex, they say the word "penis."

Several times. Casually, matter- of- factly, as if they were saying the word "jaw" or "kidney." When they say, "The penis is a good example of convergent evolution," they could just as easily have been saying, "The eye is a good example of convergent evolution."

Ditto with the words "intercourse," "sperm," "sex organs," "climax," "ejaculate," and more.

And, of course, the word "sex" itself.

To find out more about why I liked this show despite my complaints about it -- and what exactly those complaints are -- read the rest of the piece. Enjoy!

Tee Hee, You Said "Bonk": The Blowfish Blog

I have a new piece up on the Blowfish Blog: a review of the new Mary Roach book, Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex. It's titled Tee Hee, You Said "Bonk", and here's the teaser:

If ever a book was tailor- made for me to enjoy, this is it.

I’m a huge science nerd. I’m a huge sex nerd. How could I not love a book called Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex?

Well, let me tell you how. Exactly.

First, I should disclaim for a brief moment: Bonk is not a terrible book. The subject matter — the history of the scientific study of sex, and some of the more interesting examples of its current state — is a compelling one, loaded with fascinating ideas both about sex itself and the appallingly/ entertainingly conflicted attitudes society has about it. And the author -- Mary Roach, celebrated author of Stiff and Spook -- is no slouch. She’s a thorough researcher and a clear, chatty writer, adept at taking complicated and potentially boring scientific ideas and making them accessible to the lay reader.

Please note that I refrained from making a childish, Beavis and Butthead- esque sex joke about the "lay" reader.

Which brings me to the problem.

To find out what my problem with this book is, read the rest of the review. Enjoy!

The Problem of Unfishiness: Religion, Science, and Unanswered Questions

How do we deal with unanswered questions? Especially when it comes to the most basic things we believe in?

I once had a Christian friend tell me that she didn't have a really good answer to this question, which she called the "problem of evil". I was flabbergasted; it seemed that merely naming it was enough to keep its rhetorical force from having an effect.

It's like meeting someone who thinks that everything in the world is made of fish, but when you ask why things don't feel like, smell like, or behave like fish, they say "ah, the 'problem of unfishiness', it's occupied our brightest fishists for many years!"

One of the peeviest of atheist pet peeves is the way so many religious believers, in the face of huge unanswered questions about their beliefs, essentially throw up their hands and say, "Yup, it's a mystery."

Exhibit A: the comment above from Paul Crowley. The question at hand is a familiar one: an all- knowing, all- powerful, all- good God, but evil and suffering in the world, blah blah blah. And the answer... well, the answer varies, from person to person and from sect to sect. But essentially, the answer is always some version of, "We don't know."

"It's a mystery." "God moves in mysterious ways." "It is not up to us to question God's ways." "That's where faith comes in."

And as Paul pointed out, this drives atheists insane. Far too often, it's exactly as he described it: you point out to an ardent fishist all the different ways that the world is not fishy, and they nod sagely and reply, "Ah, yes, the problem of unfishiness." And then they go on blithely believing in the fish-based world: as if the unanswered question had no relevance, as if it didn't reveal a major crack in their fishy foundation. (Possibly getting mad at you in the meantime, for being so intolerant.)

But are atheists being fair here?

After all, the world of science and secular knowledge is also full of unanswered questions. Big ones. What is consciousness? How did life originate? What happened before the Big Bang, i.e. what caused the Big Bang, i.e. why is there something instead of nothing? And the world of science responds to these questions by essentially saying, "Yup, it's a mystery. We don't know the answer. Sorry."

But I think there's a difference.

A huge one.

For one thing: When science is confronted with a question it doesn't know the answer to? It doesn't just give up. It doesn't throw up its hands, gaze into the air, and revel in the glorious mystery. It says, "We don't know the answer to that question -- yet."

"Yet" being the key word.

Science's response to unanswered questions is to say, "Hm. Interesting question. What might the answer be? We really don't know -- but we're working on it. We have a number of possible theories; we're gathering data; here are some of the promising directions we're moving in."

Whereas, when religion is faced with questions it doesn't know the answer to, it just gives up. It takes the empty places in the coloring book, the places we haven't filled in yet with actual tested knowledge... and fills them all in with a blue crayon. And it calls that blue crayon God. And it thinks that's an answer.

(In other words, when science is faced with a question it doesn't know the answer to, its response is, "Processing... processing..." Whereas, as Ingrid put it, religion's response is, "Error... error...")

Which is a big problem. It's a practical problem: for one thing, when an actual real answer to an unanswered question does come along, it can be damn difficult to scrape the blue crayon out of people's brains and replace it with the right color. (Witness the difficulty many Christians have accepting the theory of evolution, or the age of the planet and the universe.) And in my mind, it's a philosophical and ethical problem as well. When faced with an unanswered question, I think it's a lot more honest to say, "I don't know," than to say, "The answer is God." (And despite atheists being so frequently accused of arrogance, I think it shows a lot more humility as well.)

But I think there's another difference as well. An even huger one. And it has to do with the nature of the unanswered questions themselves.

The questions that religion can't answer? They cut right to the heart of their theory. They reveal profound inconsistencies of the theory with observable reality...and fundamental contradictions within the theory itself.

The obvious example is the one this whole post started with: the obvious contradiction of an all- knowing, all- powerful, all- good God who nevertheless permits horrible evil and suffering, and even causes it directly himself. I have never seen a theology or an apologetic that explained this without either (a) conceding some portion of God's knowledge, power, or goodness... or else (b) copping out with "mysterious ways." The hypothesis of the God who is all- etc. and yet permits and creates terrible suffering is fundamentally flawed: a theory that completely contradicts everything we see about the world, with a logical paradox at its very heart.

Whereas in science, the unanswered questions are simply unanswered questions. They're gaps in the knowledge... but they're not flaws in the knowledge. There's a difference.

Example. Take evolution. As of right now, the question of abiogenesis -- how the process of life originated in the first place -- is unanswered. It's a question that's being worked on, but right now we don't know the answer. But that doesn't undercut the theory of evolution. The theory of evolution -- the theory of how life forms became so well adapted to their environments, how complex forms of life descended from simpler ones, etc. -- is still supported by a massive, overwhelming body of evidence from every field of biology... regardless of how the process started. Abiogenesis could have come from some chemical process whose exact nature we don't currently know, or it could have come from visiting space aliens, or it could have come from the invisible magic hand of Loki... and the theory of evolution would still hold up. The unanswered question of abiogenesis is a big one -- but in the science of biology, it's not a flaw. It's merely a gap.

And when actual flaws in scientific knowledge are revealed, then the knowledge gets discarded as mistaken pretty damn fast. In science, if your theory is shot full of internal contradictions, or if it conflicts with a massive body of data, then that's it for the theory. Individual scientists may cling to their pet theories, but the scientific community as a whole discards it, and moves on to a new theory that better explains all the data, and that makes better predictions about the future, and that isn't shot full of internal contradictions.

And scientists who cling to their pet theories, despite the contradictions, aren't admired as "people of faith."

Hanging on to the fishist viewpoint, coming up with elaborately contorted rationalizations for it, devoting your life to explaining either why it makes sense or why it doesn't have to -- and refusing to let go of even one aspect of the fishist hypothesis to make it more consistent both with itself and with reality -- is not seen in the world of science as noble, or admirable, or a sign of strength of character.

Which is a big, big difference.

Why I Don't Believe in the Soul

I spend a lot of my time in this blog arguing why I don't believe in God. Today I want to do something a little different. I want to talk, not about why I don't believe in God or gods, not about why some particular religion's belief in God is mistaken or contradictory... but about why I don't believe in the soul.

A lot of people who don't believe in God per se still believe in some sort of soul, some sort of metaphysical substance or animating spirit that inhabits people and other living things. And I think this is mistaken. I think it's every bit as mistaken an idea as God is.

And today, I want to talk about why. I want to talk about why everything that we think of as the soul -- consciousness, identity, character, free will -- is much more likely to be a product of our brains and our bodies and the physical world, than a metaphysical substance inhabiting our bodies but somehow separate and distinct from it.

Much, much, much more likely.

Here's the thing. I know that there are enormous unanswered questions about how the mind works, and indeed what it is. The questions of what consciousness is, how it's created, how it works... these are questions that we don't really have answers to yet. Ditto identity and selfhood. And we're not sure that free will even exists, much less how it works. The science of neuropsychology, and the scientific understanding of consciousness, are very much in their infancy. In fact, I would argue that "What is consciousness?" is one of the great scientific questions of our time.

But infant science or not, there are a few things we know about consciousness, identity, character, the ability to make decisions, etc.

And one of the things we know is that physical changes to the brain can and do result in changes to the consciousness, the identity, the character, the ability to make decisions. Changes caused by injury, illness, drugs and medicines, sleep deprivation, food deprivation, oxygen deprivation, etc., can and do result in changes to everything we think of as the "soul." Even some very small changes to the brain -- small doses of medicine or drugs, injuries or interventions to just a small area of the brain -- can result in some very drastic changes indeed.

In some cases, they can do so to the point of rendering a person's personality completely unrecognizable. Physical changes to the brain can make people unable to care about their own families. They can make people unable to make decisions. They can make smart people stupid, anxious people calm, happy people irritable, crazy people less crazy. They can render everything we know about a person, everything that makes that person who they are, totally null and void. Read Oliver Sacks, read V. S. Ramachandran, read any modern neurologist or neuropsychologist, and you'll see what I'm talking about. It's fucking freaky, actually, just how fragile are mind and self, consciousness and character.

And, of course, we have the rather drastic change to consciousness and character and coherent identity and the ability to make decisions, known as "death."

Simply cut off oxygen or blood flow to the brain for a relatively short time, and a person's consciousness and self and ability to take action in the world will not just change but vanish -- completely, and permanently. (Attempts to find solid evidence supporting life after death have been utterly unsuccessful: reports of it abound, but when carefully examined using good scientific methodology, they fall apart like a house of cards.)

Now.

Think about any other phenomenon in the world. When Physical Action A results in Effect B, we think of that as a physical phenomenon. Apply heat to water, and get steam; apply force to an object, and get motion; apply electricity to metals in certain ways, and get magnetism; apply vinegar to baking soda, and get gobs of rapidly expanding foam. These are physical events, every one. Only the most hard-line religious believers insist that God's hand is in every physical action that takes place everywhere in the universe. Most rational, reasonably- well- educated people understand that the physical world is governed by laws of physical cause and effect.

So.

We have a phenomenon, or a set of phenomena: consciousness, selfhood and identity, character and personality, the ability to make decisions. There's a lot we don't know about these phenomena yet, but one of the few things we do know is that physical changes to a person's brain will result in changes to the phenomena. Small changes or drastic ones, depending on the stimulus.

Doesn't that look like a biological process?

Doesn't that look like phenomena that are governed by physical cause and effect?

Even though we don't fully understand them, don't these phenomena have all the hallmarks of a physical event, or function, or relationship?

I mean, even when we didn't know what gravity was (which, if I understand the science correctly, we still don't fully grasp), once we got the idea of it we understood that it was a physical phenomenon. Once we got the idea and began studying and observing it, we didn't try to explain it by invisible spirit- demons living inside objects and pulling towards each other. We could see that it was physical objects having an effect on other physical objects, and we understood that it was a physical force.

In other words, we don't need to completely understand a phenomenon to recognize it as a physical event, governed by laws of physical cause and effect.

And when you start looking at the "soul," you realize that that's exactly what it looks like, too.

Everything that we call the "soul" is affected by physical events in our bodies, and those events alter it, shape it, and eventually destroy it. Apply opiates to the brain, and get euphoria; apply a stroke to the brain, and get impairment in the ability to understand language; apply vigorous physical exercise to the brain, and get stress reduction; apply repeated blows to the brain, and get loss of memory and intelligence. Apply anesthesia to the brain, and create the temporary obliteration of consciousness. Remove blood or oxygen to the brain, and create its permanent obliteration. It looks exactly like a physical, biological process: a poorly understood one as of yet, but a biological process nonetheless.

And there's no reason to believe otherwise. The theory that the soul is some sort of metaphysical entity or substance has no solid evidence to back it up. Just as with life after death, attempts to find evidence for a spirit or soul have consistently withered and died when exposed to the searing light and heat of the scientific method. And there's never been any good explanation of how, exactly, the metaphysical soul is supposed to influence and interact with the brain and the body.

Not to mention why it can be so drastically altered when the body alters.

Is there energy inhabiting our brain and our body? Yes, of course. There are electrical impulses running through our brains and up and down our nerves; there are chemical signals being transmitted through our muscles and guts; we consume food energy and radiate heat.

But is there some sort of non-physical energy inhabiting our brain and our body? Is there some sort of non-physical energy generating our consciousness, our personality, our coherent identity, our ability to make decisions?

There's no reason to think so.

We have an enormous amount yet to learn about self and will, consciousness and character. But everything we know about them points to them being physical phenomena. And the more we learn about them, the more true that becomes.

Other posts in this series:

"A Relationship Between Physical Things": Yet Another Rant On What Consciousness And Selfhood Might Be
A Lattice of Coincidence: Metaphysics, the Paranormal, and My Answer to Layne
How I Became an Atheist, Why I Became an Atheist: Part 3

The Amazing Mechanical Leftie: Reflexive Thinking in Alt Culture

There's a common trope I've noticed among progressive liberal types. Including, I will freely admit, myself. It goes something like this:

Anything that's alternative is good; anything that's conventional or mainstream is bad.

Tattoos and piercings are good; nose jobs and boob jobs are bad. Arthouse films are good; reality TV is bad. Nature is good; industrialization is bad. (Except when you're on your Blackberry or your iPhone, or are checking your email twenty times a day.) Meditation and Wicca are good; megachurches are bad. Alternative medicine is good; conventional medicine is bad. Tai Chi is uplifting and spiritual; cheerleading is sexist and shallow. Anything you buy at Rainbow Grocery will be delicious and healthy; anything you buy at Safeway or the A&P will be tasteless and carcinogenic.

It's not that I don't understand the trope or sympathize with it. I do. I even agree with some of the statements above (parts of them, anyway). I run this trope myself, way more often than I should. As I wrote in my piece on the Galileo Fallacy (a fallacy that bears much in common with this one), "If you're a non-conformist and an independent thinker, you've probably gotten used to pushing against the current -- to the point that doing so feels more comfortable and natural than going along with it. If you've spent your life resisting popular but stupid ideas, resisting popular ideas can become a reflex."

But here's the thing, the thing it took me decades to figure out and that I still get tripped up on.

It's not just that the trope is overly simplistic. it's not just that the trope isn't always true.

It's this:

The trope makes you a puppet of mass opinion.

If you reflexively reject something just because it's mainstream, you're being every bit as controlled by mass opinion as you would if you reflexively embraced something just because it's mainstream.

You're still letting yourself be controlled by what everyone else is doing. Sure, you're doing it in a Bizarro World/ Opposite Day kind of way. But you're still doing it. You're still unthinkingly letting your life be determined by mainstream culture. No, you shouldn't do something just because everyone else is doing it. That's a bad reason to do anything. But it doesn't make any more sense to not do something just because everyone else is doing it.

I see this trope a lot when it comes to alt culture and science. Somehow, in much of alternative culture, science and the scientific community have gotten lumped in together with Big Corporations and Big Media and the Bush Administration. Somehow, the scientific community got turned into The Man.

This is very much the fuel that feeds the twin fires of alternative medicine and woo spirituality. "Conventional medicine," the trope goes, "only cares about making Big Pharma rich. It's a billion dollar industry. They want you to stay sick, so they can keep treating you and getting rich. And besides, it's so... conventional. Let's take these herbs instead. They were used by (insert extinct primitive culture of your choice here). They understood about the earth and treating the whole body. Not like those reductionist doctors." (Disregarding the fact that alternative medicine is also a billion dollar industry, and that the primitive culture in question had a life expectancy of 45.)

Or: "Of course those studies on telepathy/ astrology/ Reiki/ reincarnation/ audio recordings of the spirits of the dead didn't work. The researchers were biased. They unconsciously skewed the test. Maybe even consciously. They didn't want to see the Truth. It would blow their minds." (Disregarding the fact that, if any scientist could conclusively prove the existence of metaphysical energy fields or life after death, it would make them the single most famous scientist in the history of the world.)

Or my personal favorite: "Did you know that, according to quantum theory, (insert wild New Age interpretation of quantum theory of your choice here)? No, I didn't get that from a physicist or a physics text. I got it from Deepak Chopra (or whoever). He understands the true implications of the new science, way more than those scientists. The scientists are so mired in the physical, they can't see The Truth right in front of their faces." (Disregarding the fact that maybe, just maybe, people who have spent their entire adult lives rigorously studying quantum physics might know more about it than some New Age guru.)

Somehow, the idea has taken hold in alt culture that non- conformity means you can reject scientific consensus. And it shows a troubling lack of understanding about what science is and how it works. The reflexive tendency to assume that mainstream consensus means conformist groupthink ignores this basic truth about science: when you're trying to understand physical reality, when you're trying to figure out cause and effect in the physical world, replicability is the name of the game. And replicability means consensus.

Yes, of course, new ideas and paradigm shifts and thinking outside the box are important in science, too. But until the freaky new idea has been tested and tested and tested, by hundreds or thousands of other scientists, it doesn't make sense to embrace it. You don't embrace an idea based on a handful of papers. You can find a handful of papers to support almost any nutjob idea. You don't embrace it until it's run the replicability gauntlet. In other words, until it's no longer freaky and new, and has become part of the consensus, inside the newly expanded box.

So here's what I think is missing when people in alt culture reject science, or cherrypick it based on their personal biases and whims. (No, it's not critical thinking. That's missing too, but it's not what I'm talking about now.)

I think they don't get who they're making common cause with.

I think they don't get that they're making common cause with creationists. With global warming denialists. With proponents of abstinence-only sex education. With supporters of the War On Drugs. With a whole host of right-wing assholes who feel perfectly comfortable rejecting science and evidence and reality when it doesn't conform to their ideology.

I think that they don't get that they're participating in an old American tradition: the tradition of know- nothing- ism, of anti- intellectualism.

So let me just say this: It is not a tradition that has historically been kind to progressive, alternative, liberationist culture.

There was a time when alternative culture meant valuing the intellect. I am deeply troubled by the trend in modern alt culture that seems bent on rejecting it. Independent thinking means exactly that -- thinking. It doesn't mean reflexively rejecting the mainstream, any more than it means reflexively going along with it. It means evaluating each choice on its own merits, based on your values and experiences and the evidence you've seen. And it means having respect for people who think for a living... and who carefully test their thoughts against the reality of the world.

Other pieces in this series:
Untested by Definition: A Rant on Alternative Medicine
Airborne, and Medicine, and Why Skepticism of X Shouldn't Equal Faith in Y
Blood and Suffering: A Seriously Pissed-Off Rant About Alternative Medicine
What's the Harm in a Little Woo?

The Sameness of Imagination, The Astonishingness of Reality: Thoughts on Science and Religion

There's a really interesting new piece up on Pharyngula: it's gotten me thinking about science and religion in an interesting new way, and I wanted to link to it and talk about it a bit.

It's the piece titled A pleasant, smiling apologist is still lying to you. Now, I don't agree with everything he says here. For one thing, as is often the case with PZ, I think his tone is a bit more harsh than is really called for in the situation. And I don't think "lying" is the correct word to use when someone genuinely believes the mistaken idea they're passing on.

But a lot of the piece is good. Excellent, even. And one bit in particular made me think in a completely new and different way about religion and reality. This was the bit that jumped out at me:

One other word I must criticize in all these defenses of religion: imagination. I often hear that religion is all about using the imagination to see something beyond the literal and mundane, and imagination becomes a virtue in itself that is presented as something special to religion. It is not. It is also overrated. Imagination is essential, don't get me wrong; we need this kind of cognitive randomizer that pushes our thoughts beyond what we already know. However, one thing science has taught us is that our imagination is pathetic. The universe is more vast, more complex, and more surprising than anything our minds can conjure up. Imagination is not enough.

I hadn't thought about it this way before. But PZ is absolutely right. The things we've discovered about the world through science... they're mind-blowing. They completely eclipse anything our puny human imagination could have come up with on its own.

For just one example: Take atomic physics. Take the fact that everything around us, all the material world, is mostly empty space, a huge yawning gap between the nucleus of the atoms and the electrons whizzing around it. Everything -- not just air, but iron, wood, flesh, bone, the very Earth under our feet -- it's overwhelmingly empty space. This is an idea that we would never in our wildest imaginings have come up with just with our brains. We needed to take a close look at reality to even consider the possibility.

Right now I'm reading "The Canon," Natalie Angier's excellent book explaining the most important basic concepts of science to the layperson. And I'm in the bit about physics and atomic structure, so right now that's what's blowing my mind. But there are plenty of other examples.

Take biology. Take the fact that every living thing is directly related to every other living thing. We're all cousins: you, me, pandas, tangerines, slime molds, squid, cactus, algae, the bacteria that laid Ingrid up with a head cold a couple of weeks ago -- all of it. Every living thing shares a common ancestor. Every living thing has the same great- great- great- to- the- 10,000th grandmother. What a weird idea. Who would have thought of it if we hadn't found a mountain of evidence telling us that that's how it is?

Or take astronomy. Take the fact that we, living our boring little lives and paying our bills and watching The Simpsons, are doing all this while we're sitting on a round rock that's whizzing around a gigantic ball of nuclear fire at 90 miles a second -- a ball of fire that is itself whizzing around at 40,000 miles an hour in a spiral mass of billions of other nuclear fireballs. (In a universe, I might add, comprised of billions and billions of other masses of fireballs.) And we act as if this is normal. It is, of course. But it's also profoundly weird. There is no way we would have imagined it if we hadn't discovered that it was true.

I could go on and on. And on. Virtually every field of science has shown us things about the nature of the world we live in that completely surprised us, that took us aback, that made us completely rethink and re-imagine everything we thought we understood.

Now.

The visions of the world that the religious imagination has come up with?

Compared to the realities we've discovered about the world around us, they're kind of pathetic. In every religion I'm familiar with, God is (or the gods are) pretty much just like people, only more so. Stronger, wiser, nicer (in theory, anyway), more powerful, but still basically just this guy, you know? A character, with personality quirks, things that he wants, decisions that he makes, stuff that he does.

Even in the more modern, abstract conceptions of God, God is still an invisible collection of essentially human qualities: goodness, knowledge, the ability to make stuff happen. Sort of like Mary Poppins. Practically perfect in every way.

Ditto the afterlives. Heaven, Hell, the Celestial Kingdom, whatever: it all reads like a version of this life, with certain bits amplified or diminished for dramatic effect. It's like life, except you get to be invisible and have no body and never argue with anyone and walk around singing all day. (Singing with no body? It's just now occurring to me how nonsensical that is.) Or it's like life, except there are folks whose job it is to make you miserable forever -- and no, not just the annoying guy in the next cubicle over. It's not all that imaginative. It's just like life, only more so. It's not really anything new.

I'm not sure where I'm going with this. I'm not sure if I have a point. I think I just want to say this, something I've said before: Reality is more interesting than anything we could make up. And when religious believers critique scientists for being mundane, close-minded, unable to imagine anything beyond the puny reality of the physical world, then they need to shut the hell up. The reality of the physical world is wilder and weirder than anything in their religion, and science has come up with many more things, in the skies and on the earth, than they ever dreamt of in their philosophy.

Born or Learned? Sexuality, Science, and Party Lines

When I first came out into the gay community, one of the most common party lines going around was, "Gay parents aren't any more likely to have gay kids than straight parents." Some of the big political battles being fought at the time had to do with gay parenting, and the community was trying to reassure/ convince the straight world that it was "safe" for gay people to have and raise kids, that our kids wouldn't be any more likely to be gay than anyone else's. (Of course, many of us personally thought, "So what if our kids turn out gay? There's nothing wrong with being gay, so why does it matter?" But we knew the straight world didn't feel that way. Hence, the line.)

Not too long after that, I started hearing the party line, "Being gay isn't a choice -- we're born that way." Again, this was used in political discussions and debates, as a way of putting anti-gay discrimination in the same civil rights camp as racist or sexist discrimination... and as a way of gaining sympathy. Now, this would seem to be in direct contradiction with the "Gay parents aren't any more likely to have gay kids" line. If people are born gay, doesn't that mean it's genetic, and doesn't that mean gay parents are more likely to have gay kids? But in fact, these two party lines overlapped. I heard them both at the same time for quite a while... and I never heard a good explanation for why they weren't contradictory. (Please see addendum at the end of this post for clarification of this point.)

Then I started hearing the strict constructionist line. "Sexual orientation is a social construct," it said. "Our sexuality is formed by our culture. All that 'we're born that way' stuff -- that's biological determinism, rigid, limiting, a denial of the fluid nature of sexuality and sexual identity." (I am embarrassed to admit that I bought and sold this line myself for quite some time, in a pretty hard-line way... solely because I liked the idea.)

And now... well, now it's kind of a mess. Some in the queer community say, "it's genetic," and argue that this is a core foundation of our fight for acceptance. Others fear that the "genetic" argument will lead to eugenics, parents aborting their gay fetuses, the genocide of our community. The constructionist line about rigidity and determinism still gets a fair amount of play. And more and more I'm starting to hear the combination theory: sexual orientation is shaped partly by genetics, partly by environment, and may be shaped differently for different people.

And in all of these debates and party lines, here's what I never heard very much of:

Evidence to support the theory.

Or, to be more precise: Solid evidence to support the theory. Carefully gathered evidence. Evidence that wasn't just anecdotal, that wasn't just personal experience.

The line of the day -- and the debates in our community surrounding it -- always seemed to be based primarily on personal feeling and political expedience. I'd occasionally hear mention of twin studies or gay sheep or something... but that was the exception, not the rule. And the line has shifted around over the years, based not on new evidence, but on shifting political needs, and shifting ways that our community has defined itself.

I am profoundly disturbed by the ease with which many in the queer community are willing to dismiss the emerging science behind this question. Yes, of course, scientists are biased, and the research they do often reflects their biases. But flawed as it is, science is still the best method we have for getting at the truth of this question (and any other question about physical reality). Double-blinding, control groups, randomization of samples, replication of experiments, peer review: all of this has one purpose. The scientific method is deliberately designed to filter out bias and preconception, as much as is humanly possible.

It's far from perfect. No reputable scientist would tell you otherwise. Among other things, it often takes time for this filtering process to happen. And it completely sucks when the filtering process is happening on your back: when you're the one being put in a mental institution, for instance, because scientists haven't yet figured out that homosexuality isn't a mental illness. But when you look at the history of science over time, you see a consistent pattern of culturally biased science eventually being dropped in the face of a preponderance of evidence.

And if you're concerned about bias affecting science, I think it's important to remember that many of the scientists researching this question are themselves gay or gay-positive. We can no longer assume that scientists are "them," malevolent or ignorant straight people examining us like freakish specimens. Many of them are us... and if they're not, they're our allies. Yes, science often reflects current cultural biases... but right now, the current cultural biases are a lot more gay-positive than they used to be. And that's even more true among highly educated groups such as the scientific community.

But more to the point: What other options are being offered? How else do we propose to answer this question? Or any other question about the possible causes of human behavior? If answering it based on science is subject to bias, then isn't answering it based on our own feelings and instincts even more subject to bias? How can we accuse scientists of bias in their attempts to answer this question -- and use that accusation as a reason to dismiss the science -- when our own responses to the question have been so thinly based on evidence, and so heavily based on personal preference and political expedience?

Unless you're going to go with the hard-core deconstructionist argument that there is no reality and all of our perceptions and experiences are 100% socially constructed, then you have to accept that the question, "Is sexual orientation genetically determined, learned, or a combination of both -- and if a combination, how much of each, and how do they work together?"... well, it's a question with an answer. It's not a matter of opinion. And it's exactly the kind of question that science is designed to answer: a question of cause and effect in the physical world.

I'm not a scientist myself. But I've been following this question in the science blogs for a little while now. And as best I can tell, here's the current scientific thinking on this question:

1) Sexual orientation is probably determined by some combination of genetics and environment (with in utero environment being another possible factor). (Here, btw, is a good summary of the current scientific research on this topic, and how it evolved.)

2) We really don't know yet. The research is in the early stages. It's probably a combination of genetics and environment... but we really don't know that for sure, and we don't know which factor is more influential, or how they work together, or whether different people are shaped more by one factor and others by the other. We just don't know.

But I've said it before, and I will say it again: We should not be thinking about this question on the basis of which answer we would like to be true. We should not be thinking about this question on the basis of which answer we find most politically useful. We should be thinking about this question on the basis of which answer is true. We should be thinking about this question on the basis of which answer is best supported by the evidence.

If we don't, then we are no better than the creationists, refusing to accept evolution because it screws up their view of the world. We are no better than the 17th century Catholic Church, refusing to accept that the Earth revolves around the Sun because it contradicted their theology. We are no better than the Bush administration, refusing to recognize clear warnings about Iraq and Katrina and global warming because it got in the way of their ideological happy thoughts. We are no better than the "Biology for Christian Schools" textbook, which states on Page 1 that, ""If [scientific] conclusions contradict the Word of God, the conclusions are wrong, no matter how many scientific facts may appear to back them."

If we expect the straight world to accept the reality of our community, the reality that our lives and relationships and families are as healthy and stable as any other, then we ourselves need to be a committed part of the reality-based community. And we therefore need to accept the reality of the causes of our orientation... whatever that reality turns out to be.

So why don't we try a different angle for a while. Maybe something like this:

"We don't really know what causes sexual orientation. And we don't think it matters. It's probably a combination of genetics and environment, but until more research is done, we don't really know for sure. And we don't think it matters. It's an interesting question, one many people are curious about -- but it doesn't really matter. Homosexuality doesn't harm anybody, and it doesn't harm society, and our relationships are as healthy and stable and valid as anybody else's... and it isn't anybody's business but our own.

"We deserve rights and recognition because we are human beings and citizens: as much as racial minorities, whose skin color is inborn, and as much as religious minorities, whose religion or lack thereof is learned. The 'born versus learned' question is a fascinating one, with many possible implications about human consciousness generally. But it has absolutely no bearing on questions like job discrimination, or adoption of children by same-sex couples, or whether we should be able to marry. We don't yet know the answer to this question... but for any practical, political, social, or moral purposes, it absolutely does not matter."

*****

Addendum: As several commenters to this post have pointed out, it is actually possible for a trait (such as sexual orientation) to be genetically caused or influenced, and still not be any more likely for parents with that trait to have kids with it than parents without it. Fair point, and worth knowing. But I think my basic point about party lines, and the prioritization of political expedience over scientific evidence,still stands. After all, we didn't know that in the early '90s. Geneticists may have known it, I don't know -- but lay people in the queer community definitely didn't. And yet we were still willing to repeat both tropes: the "we're born that way" trope and the "gay parents aren't any more likely than straight parents to have gay kids" trope.

Fuck Anything That Flies: Bisexuality, Fruit Flies, And The Causes Of Sexual Orientation

This piece was originally published on the Blowfish Blog.

I love science.

From the vaunted Pharyngula science blog comes this hilarious and enlightening news of mutant bisexual fruit flies.

(As they say on Mythbusters: "Warning: Science Content." Lots of it, if you read the whole linked story.)

The gist, in case you don’t feel like reading all the darned neuroscience: In a particular species of fly, there is an occasional genetic variation -- I'm trying not to call it a mutation, that's such a judgmental word -- that causes them to behave bisexually. It causes some females to try to initiate sex with other females; it causes some males to wait for other males to initiate courtship; and it causes some males to attempt, equally, to initiate courtship with both females and males.

They will, to be blunt, fuck anything that flies.

And researchers haven't just identified the existence of the mutation -- excuse me, the variation. They haven't just identified the gene that causes it, even. They've identified the specific neurological mechanism.

(Hence the science content.)

Now, PZ Myers, Pharyngula blogger of song and story, warns that we shouldn't jump to conclusions about what this might mean for human sexuality. And I think he's right to do so. Human beings are rather more complex than fruit flies. And our sexuality is, to put it mildly, a lot more complex. Fruit flies don't, for instance, get hot for spanking, for latex, for women in seamed stockings, for men in seamed stockings, for bits and saddles, for stuffed animals, for cartoon characters, for curly-haired brunettes who look like Bette Davis.

So the fact that sexual orientation is genetically determined in fruit flies doesn't prove, even a little bit, that it's genetically determined in humans.

But it does tell us something about humans, and human sexuality.

It doesn't tell us that our sexual orientation is genetically determined, or even genetically influenced.

But it tells us that it might be.

It tells us that it's not ridiculous to consider the possibility.

It tells us that, at least in some animals, a tendency towards heterosexuality or bisexuality -- and arguably homosexuality, if you think about those male flies waiting coyly for the other male flies to make the first move -- is genetically determined. Entirely, as far as anyone can tell. And therefore, it tells us that it's not out of the question to think that it might be genetically determined -- at least partially -- in other animals as well.

Including humans.

And this is an important message: not just for the homophobic right wing, but for the queer-theory crowd as well.

There are queer theorists and activists who would be delighted to learn that sexual orientation is genetically determined at birth. For no other reason, they think it makes the civil rights battle easier to fight if they can play the "We were born this way" card. There are queer theorists and activists who think, not only that we might be born queer, but that we definitely are, and that the case is closed.

And there are queer theorists and activists who would be appalled to learn that orientation is determined by genetics. Even partially determined by genetics. Even a little bit determined by genetics. There are queer theorists and activists who actively resist this idea, who see it as dangerous and oppressive. There are queer theorists and activists who not only disagree with this theory, but who think that we should not even be considering it.

But here's the thing.

We shouldn't be thinking about this question on the basis of which answer we would like to be true.

We should be thinking about this question on the basis of which answer is true. We should be thinking about this question on the basis of which answer is supported by the evidence.

The question, "Is (X) behavior learned, genetically determined, or a combination of both -- and if a combination, how much of each, and how do they work together?"... this is, at least in theory, a question that can be answered. When it comes to human sexuality, it's probably beyond our current grasp... but that doesn't mean it always will be. It's probably going to wind up having an unbelievably complicated answer, but it's not the kind of question that inherently can't be answered with evidence and the scientific method. It's actually exactly the kind of question that the scientific method was designed to answer.

In fact, we're already beginning to gather some non-trivial data on this subject. And while the science is still in its infancy, or at least in its childhood, the current evidence seems to be leaning in the direction of "some combination of both." When it comes to human sexual orientation, genetics, at the very least, probably plays a significant role.


My inner twenty-something queer-theory constructionist is cringing at this. When I came out and started becoming active in the queer community, constructionism ("it's learned") was all the rage, and essentialism ("it's inborn") was seen as rigid and confining. It's been hard for me to accept the idea that sexual orientation may not, in fact, be entirely a product of a patriarchal society.

But my inner twenty-something queer-theory constructionist needs to get over it. The question of whether sexual orientation is born, learned, or both -- and if both, how and how much -- is not a question of opinion. It is not a question of politics or philosophy. And while there will almost certainly be ethical implications in the answer, it's not a question that should be answered based on which answer we think is morally right or wrong.

It's not a matter of opinion. It's a matter of reality. And I think that's how we should be looking at it.

Because no good -- politically, ethically, philosophically, or any other way -- has ever come from the denial of reality.

The Best Anti-Creationist Message Ever

All our atheist and anti- theocratic PR clearly needs to feature cute animals from now on.

From FreeThoughtPedia, via Cute Overload. A sentence I never expected to speak or write in my entire life...

The Blasphemy of Creationism

The story of the UC-Calvary lawsuit has been all over the atheosphere in the last few days. I'm not going to get into it in much detail (good pieces about it on Daylight Atheism and Dispatches from the Culture Wars), but to give you a quick summary so you know what I'm ranting about: A federal judge recently issued a preliminary ruling saying that UC Berkeley could, in fact, refuse to give college credit in biology for courses that taught young-earth creationism. (Calvary Chapel Christian School was trying to argue religious freedom; UC Berkeley was arguing that Calvary could have all the religious freedom they wanted, but they shouldn't expect UC to drop its academic standards and recognize non-science as science.)

So the Daylight Atheism piece on this had an excerpt from one of the textbooks in question. The textbook is Biology for Christian Schools, and the excerpt is as follows and begins now:

(1) "'Whatever the Bible says is so; whatever man says may or may not be so,' is the only [position] a Christian can take..."
(2) "If [scientific] conclusions contradict the Word of God, the conclusions are wrong, no matter how many scientific facts may appear to back them."
(3) "Christians must disregard [scientific hypotheses or theories] that contradict the Bible."

And this isn't buried somewhere in the back. This is on the very first page of the textbook. The science textbook.

After the top of my head had finished blowing off, I finally figured out why exactly this bothers me so much. Apart from all the obvious reasons, of course: the arrogance, the close-mindedness, the complete missing of the point of what science is about, etc.

What bothers me so much about it is how grotesquely disrespectful it is to their own God.

Let's say you're a theist. Let's say you believe in God, a creator god who made the world and the universe in all its beautiful and astonishing complexity.

Wouldn't you want to understand that universe, as well and as thoroughly as you could?

To me, the idea that scientific evidence is always trumped by the Bible is one of the most disrespectful attitudes you could possibly have about God. Even if you believe that the Bible was written by God (and you ignore all the evidence to the contrary), wouldn't you believe that the universe was also written by God? And in a much more direct way than the Bible was written, without having to be dictated through human secretaries? Wouldn't you put the universe, at the very least, on equal footing with the Bible? In fact, shouldn't you really be seeing the universe as much higher, much more important than the Bible, because the Bible is just one small part of God's creation and the universe is so much more vast?

It seems to me that setting your human religion above the enormous and awe-inspiring majesty of God's creation is blasphemy of the worst kind. To say that the Bible is always more real than the reality of the universe seems to me to be spitting on God and his creation. And it's not just spitting on the universe: it's spitting on that part of God's creation that is your brain and your mind, your capacity to perceive the universe and use reason and logic to understand it.

Of course, this sort of thinking is a perfect example of what Daniel Dennet was talking about in "Breaking the Spell": the ways that religion functions as a self-perpetuating meme, one that has built up an impressive array of armor and weaponry to defend itself against being seriously questioned. The idea that sacred texts can't be questioned; the idea that letting go of doubts and questions about your faith will make your life easier; the idea that holding onto faith in the face of evidence contradicting it makes you a good person... all of these function as an immune system that stops questions from breaking down the belief, or even from penetrating it in the first place.

But I think that's awfully sad. To think that your faith -- not just a general faith in the existence of God, but your particular version of the specific details of how God does and does not work -- is more real than the reality of the universe.... that's just sad. It's isolating. It's cutting yourself off from reality, from the enormous, majestic, unutterably complex, constantly- surprising reality of the physical universe. And if you believe in God, a god who created all this majesty and whatnot, it's cutting yourself off from God.

It's saying that, given a choice between trying to understand the reality of God's creation, and convincing yourself that you and your sect are right, it's more important to be right. And that really is placing yourself above God... in a way that I think is more blasphemous than anything any atheist could ever come up with.

(Photo of Synchiropus splendidus by Luc Viatour.)

Sex, Lies, and Contraception: The Male Pill

This piece was originally published on the Blowfish Blog.

A question was raised recently on the Denialism science blog, and it has all sorts of interesting implications about sexual trust between men and women.

The question: Why don’t they make a birth control pill for men?

My knee-jerk response to this question has always pretty much been, "Because the pharmaceutical industry are a bunch of sexist pigs." But this post -- and the fascinating discussion that follows -- is making me realize that the question is actually a tad more complicated than that.

For starters, it turns out that there are genuine biological reasons why a pill for men is trickier than a pill for women. What with our reproductive systems being different and all.

But that doesn't seem to be the main obstacle. The main obstacle to a male pill seems to be that there simply might not be a big enough market for it.

Which, in all fairness, I can understand.

Because this isn't simply a question of sexist men dumping the responsibility for birth control onto women. It's a question of whether women would be willing to place the responsibility for birth control into the hands of men.

Or, as Mark Hoofnagle put it in his Denialism post: "Men are liars."

A bit harsh, but I can see his point.

(And yes, women are liars too. I'll get to that in a moment.)

If I were in a trusting, long-term relationship with a man, I might be willing to let him take care of the birth control. But if I were just dating and screwing around, the way I used to in my younger days, there'd be no way I'd trust some guy I'd just met at a party or a nightclub or an orgy, who told me, "Don't worry, baby, I'm on the pill." That's way too big a gamble to leave in the hands of someone I barely know.

Besides, I'd want to use condoms anyway -- since the pill doesn't protect against AIDS or other STIs.

But for exactly this same reason, I think Mark at Denialism may be mistaken. I think there might be a real market for a male contraceptive pill.

And it comes back to my earlier parenthetical remark:

Women are liars, too.

If I were a single guy, dating and screwing around, I wouldn't want to leave the contraception question in the hands of some woman I'd just met, either. I mean, think about it. If, as a woman, I wouldn't trust some strange guy who told me, "Don't worry, baby, I'm on the pill" -- then why on earth should men trust some strange woman to tell them the same thing? The consequences for men of an unwanted pregnancy aren't as intense as they are for women... but they're not negligible. (Can you say, "child support"?)

And I think that might point to the real market for the male pill. (Or patch, or injection, or however the drug winds up getting delivered.)

Mark thinks that, even if pharmaceutical researchers could make it effective, male hormonal contraception will always be a niche market, mainly limited to men in committed long-term relationships with women who trust them enough to leave the contraception in their hands. But while I can see his point, I think he may be overlooking another key market: the market of single men who want control of their own damn reproduction, just as much as women do. I think the biggest market for the male pill might well be single men who want the moral equivalent of a temporary vasectomy: a way to guarantee that they won't get stuck with offspring they didn't expect or want.

In other words -- single men who would want the pill for the exact same reasons single women want it.

The reality is that both women and men have sex with people they don't entirely trust. They have sex with people they trust enough: people they trust not to beat them up, not to steal their car, not to paint their living room hot pink while they sleep. But both women and men have sex with people who they don't trust enough to let them handle the responsibility, and make the decisions, about pregnancy and children. I think plenty of men would be happy to take a pill to ensure that their decisions about pregnancy and children weren’t being made by the hot number they met on Craig's List three weeks ago.

If I were a single man, I'd sure as hell want that.

Memories of a Good Science Education... and Worries About Bad Ones

I didn't see the point at the time.

When I was a kid, I always got annoyed by the lab portion of my science classes. I guess I've always been more of a theory person than a research person (hence my career as an essayist instead of a journalist). Rolling balls down inclines and measuring the speed; putting nails in different liquids and seeing how fast they rusted; cutting up fetal pigs... it always seemed like a waste of time.

I mean, I never had any problem understanding the theories being taught by the books and the teachers. And I was perfectly happy to believe the books and the teachers. After all, it's not like my measurements of gravity or magnetism or whatever were going to be written up in the science journals. Even at the time, I knew perfectly well that if my numbers didn't come out the way the theory said they should, the discrepancy would, without a doubt, turn out to be caused by my experimental methodology... not the theory.

And it's not like the theories we were learning in second -grade or sixth-grade or tenth-grade science class were on the cutting edge of new scientific thinking. Again, even at the time, I knew that the stuff we were learning was well-established, and had been experimentally verified thousands upon thousands of times... by researchers who were a whole lot more careful than my sixth-grade science class. I knew we weren't really verifying the theories. The theories had been verified, many times over. We were just seeing how they worked for ourselves.

Which I didn't think I needed. I got it. The books and teachers and theories made sense. I didn't need to roll the damn ball down the damn incline to see it for myself.

So it seemed like a waste of time.

But now that I'm an adult, I see the value in it much more clearly. And especially now that I'm so engaged in the skeptical/ rational thinking/ science groupie blogosphere (what I've seen referred to as "the reality-based community"), I value it even more.

I see the value because I think there's an enormous difference between learning something purely by authority -- "it's true because I say it's true, and you can trust me" -- and learning something by seeing it for yourself. And the latter is the core of the skeptical, rational, reality-based approach to life that I think is so very valuable.

Let me give you an example. We'd learned very early on, of course, that the earth was round. But in a high school science class (freshman year, if I remember correctly), we learned how, exactly, the ancient Greeks determined that the earth was round. It had to do with comparing shadows: you measure the shadows of two poles of equal height set, say, a mile apart. You do it at noon, and again an hour later. And you do the math. The difference in the length of the two shadows will be different on a curved surface -- i.e., the earth -- than they would be on a flat surface. You can even figure out, within a crude approximation, how large the curved surface is.

So we learned how exactly this information was acquired. And then we went outside and acquired it ourselves. We did it with sticks set a few feet apart, so of course our measurements weren't super-accurate -- but we got measurable results that weren't that far off the mark.

And so now I know. I know that the earth is round, not because I read it in a book or was taught it by a teacher, but because I measured it myself. And now when I'm in a debate with some theist who says that science is just another religion and my belief that the earth is round is no different from their belief in God, I can say, "Yes, it is different. I know that the earth is round -- because I measured it myself."

Of course, in practical terms, most of what I know about science -- or what any other layperson knows about science -- is learned from authority. I haven't personally done experiments to see the effectiveness of antibiotics in treating pneumonia; I haven't personally dug up any of the millions upon millions of fossils supporting the theory of evolution. Had I but world enough and time... but I don't, so I'm not going to.

But the difference is that I could. Any smart, dedicated person with access to education can get into epidemiology or paleontology, and find out for themselves whether or not the stuff that the books say about antibiotics or fossils is true.

We can do this because scientific knowledge is transparent, and it's replicable. When researchers publish their findings, they publish not only what their results were, but how exactly they obtained them. They don't keep it an arcane secret, accessible only to those who have achieved the 34th Level of Poobahhood; they don't tell overly- inquisitive students to stop asking so many questions and just accept their teachings on faith. They say, "Here's what we think, and here's why, and here's what we did to find it out, and here's the kind of evidence that would prove us wrong, and here's exactly what you need to do to see it for yourself."

There were other good things about my grade- school and high- school science education. We learned a lot about the scientific method -- even as early as third grade, we were learning about the difference between observation and inference (illustrated with cartoons about wet tricycles on lawns -- the observation is that the tricycle is wet, the inference is that it rained... or that someone turned on the sprinkler). And we started learning very early on about the importance of careful measurements -- we were measuring liquids by reading the meniscus as early as third or fourth grade, and I remember a stern lecture from a science teacher about how screaming and cheering at the hamster running the maze would probably have a negative impact on his learning curve.

But of all the good things in my science education, I think the "see it for yourself" labs were probably the best. As annoying as I found them at the time, I now think that they were some of the most important and influential experiences in all of my early education. Because it taught me not to believe what the teacher told me, just because they were telling me. It taught me that I had the power to find things out for myself.

And it's one of the main reasons I get so upset when I read about the "No Child Left Behind," teaching- to- the- test style education that American public school kids are getting. Science education -- and indeed, all education -- needs to be about more than learning enough facts to let you pass standardized tests. Science education -- and indeed, all education -- needs to teach kids how to learn. It needs to teach kids how to think critically; how to ask questions; how to look things up. And it needs to teach kids that they don't have to believe everything they're told, just because they're told it. It needs to teach kids that they have the power to find things out for themselves.

Blood and Suffering: A Seriously Pissed-Off Rant About Alternative Medicine

Readers, be warned: This is not one of my more diplomatic pieces. I'm angry, and while I'm trying to be fair here, I'm not trying to be nice. If you don't want to read that, please don't. (It was also written under the influence of an entertaining assortment of prescription drugs; so if I'm more meandering than usual, please forgive me. Hey, what a pretty tree!)

As regular readers of this blog know, I've been home sick for several days with pneumonia. The experience hasn't been a picnic: as anyone who's had pneumonia knows, even a relatively moderate case that you don't have to be hospitalized for will totally kick your ass. I've been exhausted; I've been uncomfortable and at times in actual pain; and since all I could do for days was sit on the sofa breathing steam and watching TV, I've been bored out of my mind. (It's only been in the last couple of days that I've been alert enough, or able to stop hovering over the steamer for long enough, to do any writing.)

But the experience has given me a renewed respect for conventional medicine. And it's given me a renewed rage at the alternative medicine practitioners and proponents who are undermining it.

Here's the thing. As soon as I started suspecting that my bad cold was something more than a bad cold, I hightailed it over to Kaiser. And within two hours, I had a diagnosis, medicines in my hand, and a treatment plan. In case you're curious, here's what I'm on:

Antibiotics. Penicillin, quaintly enough. Obvious purpose -- to kill the infection in my lungs.

Cough medicine. Purpose: to quiet my cough, which had been doing this nasty self-perpetuating loop -- the cough was making my lungs irritated, which was making me cough even more. (This also reduces my pain and discomfort and lets me rest, since I got the good stuff with codeine.) Also -- not to be too gross about it -- it loosens the gunk in my lungs, so when I do cough it does some good.

Bronchiodilators. Purpose: to ease the constriction in my lungs. Thus helping me breathe, as well as helping me sleep.

Decongestants. Purpose: at the risk of thoroughly grossing you all out, to stop post-nasal drip from dripping into my lungs and gunking up the works even further. (The gross-out portion of this blog post is now complete. My apologies.)

All of which -- how exactly shall I put this? -- works. It does what it sets out to do. All of it was carefully, rigorously tested, with placebo controls and double-blinding and peer review and replicability and all that good stuff... and all of it has been shown to work. It's going to be a little while before I'm back to normal -- pneumonia is no joke -- but I started writing this three days after I started the treatment, and I'm already significantly and measurably better.

And contrary to one of the more popular misconceptions about conventional medicine, the doctor didn't just send me home with a bag of drugs. She also sent me home with instructions to breathe steam; drink enormous amounts of fluids (especially tea); stay warm; not talk too much; and rest as much as I possibly could. Plus she asked me about fifty times if I smoked. Contrary to the accusation leveled in a comment in this blog that "anything that isn't designed by a human in a lab isn't considered 'real medicine,'" a large part of my treatment plan had nothing to with anything designed in a lab or cooked up by a pharmaceutical company. And the non-drug part of the treatment didn't make anybody rich... except perhaps the Celestial Seasonings tea company. (Even the drugs in a bag weren't making anyone terribly rich; they're mostly old-school drugs that moved into generics long ago.)

Now, I haven't been tremendously happy these past few days. I've been exhausted, cranky, woozy, uncomfortable, and bored out of my mind. And let me tell you, the combination of codeine and Sudafed is one weird-ass speedball. I don't recommend it.

But here's what I haven't been:

Dead.

Or dying.

Or even suffering all that much.

The history of pneumonia before antibiotics is not pretty. Until the 20th century, treatment was pretty much non-existent. You either got better on your own, or you died. Mostly, you died. Pneumonia killed a ton of people, and it was known and feared for its special ability to kill young, healthy people in the prime of their life. And death from pneumonia is no fun at all. (I'll spare you the details, since I promised earlier to stop grossing you out.) There was some treatment beginning to be available in the early 20th century -- but antibiotics completely changed the picture.

Pneumonia still kills people today. Mostly the very young, the very old, the immune-suppressed, and people who don't get medical care in time. But thanks to conventional medicine and Big Pharma, I am rotting on the sofa for a week, feeling sorry for myself and watching all of "Firefly" on DVD... not rotting in a grave. And so are thousands of other people who got pneumonia this week. (Well, they're probably not all watching "Firefly"...)

Okay. All very good reasons for me to be happy about conventional medicine. So why is this experience making me angry about alternative medicine? Not just annoyed, not just amused, but deeply, seriously, lividly angry?

I'm angry because I think alternative medicine undermines conventional medicine.

I'm angry because so many alt medicine practitioners convince sick people to treat their illnesses, not with treatments that have been rigorously tested and shown to be effective, but with whatever powders and potions and procedures the practitioner's fancy happened to light upon, backed up at best with carelessly-done testing, and at worst with nothing but an interesting philosophy. With the best result being a placebo effect, and the worst being actual harm being done, either from neglect of the medical condition or from the sometimes harmful treatments themselves.

I'm angry because so many alt medicine practitioners promise "alternatives" that are easier, more pleasant, and more palatable than conventional treatments... along with promises of more complete and dramatic cures. I'm angry that they encourage people to pursue preventions and treatments based not on thorough testing of what does and does not work, but on what they find emotionally and psychologically and culturally appealing. I'm angry that they encourage people to abandon conventional medicine, which is often unpleasant and sometimes only partially effective, by offering appealing promises that they can't back up.

I'm angry because so many alt medicine practitioners and proponents convince people that conventional medicine only cares about symptoms and acute conditions and ignores prevention and overall health... when the reality is that doctors and nurses and public health officials around the world are desperately trying to get people to exercise, eat better, reduce their stress, and quit smoking.

Along that line, I'm angry because so many alt medicine proponents and practitioners convince people that "doctors don't know anything, and all they care about is making Big Pharma rich." (As if alt medicine practitioners were all-knowing, and nobody in the world were getting rich off of it.) I'm angry at the ways that alt medicine encourages the anti-intellectual strain so prevalent in American culture; the all- too- common attitude of, "What does that hi-falutin' doctor know anyway, with their book larnin' and their fancy degrees? Us simple folk know more about (X) than Dr. Fancy-Pants, with their years of specialized training and experience."

And I don't mean that altie practitioners and proponents encourage people to question doctors; to have a healthy skepticism about them; to treat them as fallible human beings who aren't God. I encourage people to do that. Hell, most doctors and nurses I know encourage people to do that. I mean that they encourage people, not to question doctors, but to disregard them at their whim.

Now, a lot of people will argue that many alt medicine practitioners don't do any such thing. They'll argue that many altie practitioners see alt medicine as a supplement to conventional medicine, not a replacement for it. That's why it's often called complementary and alternative medicine, or CAM -- because it complements conventional medicine, rather than supplanting it.

Okay. Fair enough. So look at it this way. If I had gone to an alt medicine practitioner with my pneumonia symptoms, one of two things would have happened.

Option A: They would have tried to treat my pneumonia with their dilutions, their energy fields, their sacred herbs, whatever. Seriously. Here are some of the gems that my Google search on "pneumonia" + "alternative medicine" turned up. We have this site, recommending that pneumonia be treated with diet, bowel and dental cleansing, and -- believe it or not -- exercise. (Exercise being absolutely the last fucking thing in the world you ought to be doing if you have pneumonia -- except maybe for smoking.) No mention of antibiotics. We have this site, which mentions antibiotics but says they're problematic, and suggests as alternatives cayenne pepper, manuka honey, and hydrogen peroxide. And then we have Holisticonline.com, which recommends that pneumonia be treated with chiropractic care, pleurisy root, and the color red.

In which case they would, in my opinion, be guilty of reckless endangerment of human life. If anyone anywhere in the world has died, or even suffered needlessly, because they acted on the advice of an alt medicine practitioner and treated their pneumonia with exercise, cayenne pepper, or the color red, then that is blood and suffering on the hands of alternative medicine.

Don't believe me? Don't think that CAM practitioners prescribe CAM treatments for serious, life-threatening illnesses -- in the place of conventional medicine? Here's a nice little story from the BBC about homeopathists in Britain telling people that they didn't need to take anti-malarial drugs when visiting Africa or other high- malaria- risk parts of the world -- they just needed to take the homeopathic remedies. Read it and seethe. And there is no reason to think they did this for malaria only and not for any other life-threatening illnesses. Even a cursory Google search will turn up alt medicine treatments for cancer, heart disease, diabetes, AIDS, and more. And check out these "what's the harm?" sites for more stories of people suffering or dying because their serious illnesses got alt medicine instead of conventional medical treatment.

So that's one option. The reckless endangerment option. But the other option is B: They would have recognized that I had a serious medical condition that they couldn't treat, hustled me out the door, and sent me scurrying to a conventional doctor. (When I Googled "pneumonia" + "alternative medicine," this is what a number of the sites I found essentially did.)

In which case, what the hell is the point? If the only thing alt medicine is good for is mild health problems that quickly go away on their own, then why bother? What on earth is the point of a multi-billion dollar alternative medicine industry if it exists solely to make people feel slightly better when they have sniffles or sore muscles or tummy aches? (If it even does that, in any way other than as a placebo.)

Conventional medicine is far from perfect. Insert a standard "I know conventional medicine is flawed" disclaimer here; I've written them before, and I don't feel up to writing another one now. But it's the best game in town. It is, pretty much by definition, medicine that has been rigorously tested using the scientific method, with placebo controls and double-blinding and replicability and peer review and all that other difficult, expensive, time-consuming stuff that alt medicine doesn't bother with.

And the chances are excellent that you -- personally -- are alive today because of it. Whether it's the polio you didn't get because you got vaccinated, the smallpox you didn't get because it's been eradicated, the heart attack you didn't have because your high blood pressure is being treated, the pneumonia you didn't die of because it got cured... I could go on and on and on. And on. The benefits of conventional medicine are often invisible, an invisibility that's enhanced by short memories and insufficient history lessons. But the fact is that we easily prevent and treat diseases and conditions that used to routinely kill thousands and millions of people.

Medicine is about the prevention of death and the relief of suffering. And conventional medicine is, by definition, medicine that has been rigorously tested and shown to prevent death and relieve suffering. Alternative medicine, on the other hand, is, by definition, medicine that is outside that rigorous testing system. It is medicine that promises to prevent death and relieve suffering, but is unwilling to spend the time and work and money making damn well sure that it can back up that promise. It is medicine that shares every single one of the flaws of conventional medicine, from greed to arrogance to cultural blindness, without offering any real benefit that conventional medicine doesn't.

And it is medicine that undermines conventional medicine; medicine that draws people away from conventional medicine by making enticing promises that it can't deliver.

So it is therefore medicine with blood and suffering on its hands.

"Created By a Schoolteacher" Or, One More Thing About the Airborne Thing

Oh, one more thing about the Airborne thing:

The company who makes the fraudulent but widely popular cold preventative makes a big deal on their packaging and in their advertising about the fact that the overpriced vitamin pill was "created by a schoolteacher." It's part of their folksy, common-sense, "we ordinary folk may not be scientists, but we sure do have 'em beat when it comes to the common cold!" marketing plan. It was created by a schoolteacher, and schoolteachers are smart and nice -- so you know it's good!

So let's take that thinking and apply it to some other fields of endeavor.

This washing machine was created by a landscape designer -- so you know it's good!

This opera was created by a software engineer -- so you know it's good!

This apartment building was created by a microbiologist -- so you know it's good!

This MP3 player was created by a master chef -- so you know it's good!

This biography of James Madison was created by a veterinarian -- so you know it's good!

Does any of that make sense?

Then why does "This cold preventative was created by a schoolteacher -- so you know it's good!" make sense?

Schoolteachers are smart and talented people, for the most part. But that doesn't make them qualified to create preventatives and treatments for medical conditions. Creating preventatives and treatments for medical conditions is hard. It requires many years of specialized training in, you know, medicine. And the common cold is a particularly tough nut to crack. Second-grade teachers aren't qualified to do medical research... any more than medical researchers are qualified to teach second grade.

I mean, would you send your kid to a school where the second grade was being taught by an epidemiologist, with no training in the education of young children?

Then why would you take a cold preventative invented by a second-grade teacher?

(Thoughts originally developed in a comment thread on Respectful Insolence. Thanks, dude.)

Airborne, and Medicine, and Why Skepticism of X Shouldn't Equal Faith in Y

In case you haven't heard about this yet: The company who makes Airborne, the overpriced vitamin pill that supposedly prevents you from catching colds but that actually does bupkis, has settled a large class action suit against them, and will be refunding $23.3 million to customers who bought the stuff. (Good piece about it on Respectful Insolence).

I don't so much want to talk about the story itself -- although I do find it interesting. Especially since the laws about making health claims for "dietary supplements" are so weak and half-assed. It's actually quite remarkable that this case succeeded. The Airborne people had an enormous amount of latitude in what kinds of claims they could make -- and they still screwed up and overstepped their extremely generous boundaries.

But that's not what I want to talk about.

There was a comment by Calli Arcale in the Respectful Insolence discussion about Airborne that really jumped out at me. I hadn't thought if it in these terms before, and it shifted some stuff around in my brain.

Here's the thought: Why should skepticism of conventional medicine translate into faith in alternative medicine?

There are good reasons to have a healthy skepticism of conventional medicine. It has horrors in its past; it's often too focused on pharmaceuticals and procedures instead of lifestyle changes (although that's changing a lot); and like all sciences, there's a huge amount it doesn't yet know. And in the United States, the conventional medical system is seriously broken. It's too corporate, too tied in with money and profit -- causing real harm to patients, and great frustration to the providers who genuinely want to give good health care. (In Europe it works a whole lot better... but that's not much help if you're living in the U.S.)

So yes. It's good to be skeptical of conventional medicine. Here, in my opinion, are some appropriate forms for that skepticism to take: Ask your doctor lots of questions. Do research on your health conditions and the treatments you're getting for them. Don't automatically take the first course of action your doctor recommends; find out what your options are. Periodically revisit your treatments and make sure they're still appropriate and up-to-date. Eat a healthy diet, get regular vigorous exercise, and for the love of Loki, quit smoking if you smoke. (Okay, those last ones aren't actually skeptical of conventional medicine -- conventional medicine is constantly begging people to eat better, exercise more, and quit smoking -- but it's a good way to improve your health and reduce the amount of time you spend in the doctor's office.)

But here, in my opinion, is a bad form for that skepticism to take: Reject conventional medicine entirely. And replace it with alternative medicine.... which has all of the flaws of conventional medicine, and just about none of its advantages.

Which brings me back to the question: Why should skepticism of conventional medicine translate into faith in alternative medicine?

Yes, conventional medicine is flawed. But a fair amount of the time, it works. Our life expectancy is almost twice that of our ancestors, and that's due in large part to conventional medicine. I could go on about it for days: from anti-depressants to heart surgery, from the elimination of huge numbers of deadly childhood diseases to the effective treatment of high blood pressure; from the eradication of smallpox to the fact that many people with AIDS can now have a pretty long and decent life.

And more to the point -- in fact, the very reason for all these successes -- conventional medicine has a system in place, the scientific method, for testing its treatments and making sure they actually, you know, work, and are reasonably safe. It's not a perfect system -- but it's far, far better than no system at all.

Which brings me back to the big question, the question I asked over and over again the last time I brought this up and to which I never got a satisfactory answer: What does alternative medicine have to offer that conventional medicine doesn't?

Alternative medicine has horrors and frauds in its past, every bit as much as conventional medicine. Read the history of the turn- of- the- century el-quacko health movement if you don't believe me. Alternative medicine is every bit as focused on powders and potions and weird procedures as conventional medicine -- they're just different powders and potions and procedures. Alternative medicine is flying in the dark every bit as much as conventional medicine -- in fact, far more so, since by definition conventional medicine is medicine that's been subjected to rigorous testing, and by definition alternative medicine is medicine that hasn't.

And alternative medicine is every bit as driven by money and profit as conventional medicine. The Airborne thing is a great example. Alternative medicine is a huge industry, and a hugely profitable one. In fact, the two are overlapping more and more: CAM companies (complimentary and alternative medicine) are being bought up in increasing numbers by the big bad Big Pharma... for the simple reason that CAM brings in pots of money, without all that pesky and expensive double-blind, placebo-controlled, peer-reviewed testing. (Funny how you hear so much about Big Pharma, but you almost never hear about Big CAM...)

So what does alternative medicine bring to the table that conventional medicine doesn't?

And once again, why should skepticism of conventional medicine translate into faith in alternative medicine?

I've seen this kind of thinking a lot. Western religion is bad... therefore Eastern religion is good. Modern strip-mall monoculture is bad... therefore our bucolic rural past was good. Capitalism is bad... therefore Communism is good. (You don't see this last one so much anymore, but it used to be very common indeed.) And in progressive lefty circles, there's almost a knee-jerk belief that anything conventional is bad, and anything alternative is good.

But it doesn't make sense. Being critical of something doesn't mean you should automatically embrace its opposite.

Put conventional and alternative medicine side by side. You get two systems of medicine, both with serious flaws. In fact, both with many of the same flaws. But conventional medicine offers something that alternative medicine doesn't: a reasonable likelihood that any given treatment has been rigorously tested and found to be effective at least some of the time.

What does alternative medicine offer?

As far as I can tell, pretty much bupkis. From homeopathy to Reiki, aromatherapy to reflexology, careful, double-blind, placebo-controlled, peer-reviewed testing has shown almost every example of it to be useless at best. It has occasional hits -- the use of meditation to relieve stress, for instance -- but it has far, far fewer hits than conventional medicine. It's a stopped clock that's right twice a day. And it has no method in place for resetting the clock.

If you're going to be skeptical of conventional medicine -- and I think you should -- you need to be every bit as skeptical about alternative medicine. Unless you want to go back to the days of unregulated patent medicines -- of Lydia Pinkham's Herb Medicine and Pulvermacher's Electric Belts, the Gold Cure for Neurasthenia and Simpson & Son's Patented Revitalizing Tonic -- you need to be just as skeptical about alternative medicine as you are about conventional medicine. And probably more so, since there's no FDA or medical establishment whose job it is to be skeptical for you. It doesn't make sense to be be skeptical of the one and credulous about the other.

Are You A Sex Addict? Part 2

Part 2 of a two part post. Please note: This post discusses many different aspects of my personal sex life -- many, many aspects -- in a fair amount of detail. Family members and others who don't want to read that, please don't. Really, really don't. This piece was originally published on the Blowfish Blog.

In the last column, we were discussing this Sexual Addiction Screening Test created by Dr. Patrick Carnes, inventor of the term "sex addiction." We saw a noticeable pattern in this test: the pathologization of unconventional sex; the pathologization of sex that other people are shocked or upset by -- regardless of whether they have any right to be; and the pathologization of people who make sex a high priority in their lives. (Thanks to Dr. Marty Klein's Sexual Intelligence blog for the tip). Today we continue going through the test, looking at all the questions that a sexually healthy person might answer "Yes" to... and examining what exactly is troubling about this test and the model of sexual dysfunction it represents.

(This piece contains explicit descriptions of sex. If you're under 18, please do not continue reading.)

Are You A Sex Addict?

Please note: This post discusses many different aspects of my personal sex life -- many, many aspects -- in a fair amount of detail. Family members and others who don't want to read that, please don't. Really, really don't.

This piece was originally published on the Blowfish Blog.

Are you a sex addict?

Probably.

I seem to be.

Via Dr. Marty Klein’s excellent Sexual Intelligence blog comes news of this Sexual Addiction Screening Test from SexHelp.com, a site designed "to help those affected by sexual addiction and compulsivity." The site was created by Dr. Patrick Carnes: inventor of the term "sex addiction," founder and designer of multiple treatment programs for sex addiction, and author of several books on sex addiction.

According to Dr. Klein, Dr. Carnes admits he has no training in human sexuality. But let's not focus on that just now.

Because according to this test, I have a problem.

Which is a bit odd. My life is good; my sex life is great. Things in my life are stable and flourishing, and sex is a happy part of that.

So I don't actually think I have a problem.

I think this test has a problem.

I think this test has several problems. I think this test represents an extremely narrow, rigid view of what can constitute a happy sex life. It pathologizes any kind of sex that's unconventional. It pathologizes any kind of sex that other people are shocked or upset by -- regardless of whether they have any right to be, or whether their sexual sensibilities are reasonable. And it pathologizes anyone who makes sex a high priority in their life.

And I think this is the problem with the way sex addiction commonly gets treated. In fact, I think it's the problem with the whole "sex addiction" theory in the first place. I don't deny that some people behave compulsively around sex, self-destructively and destructively of others. I'd be an idiot to deny that. I just don’t think "addiction" is the right word -- or the right concept -- for that problem.

And I think this shows up in this test. Specifically, it shows up in the way that unconventional sex, sex that defies conservative sexual mores, or making sex a high priority in one’s life, are all seen as signs of sex addiction.

But maybe I'm in denial. Maybe I'm one of those addicts who can't admit they're an addict. Let's take a look at the test, and at all the questions I answered "Yes" to... and let's see.

(This piece contains explicit descriptions of sex. If you're under 18, please do not continue reading.)

On Illness, Bodies, and This Weird Free Will Thing

So for the last week or so, I've been dealing with some health issues. Nothing serious, and I'm dealing with it, so don't anybody worry. That's not why I'm telling you this.

Here's why I'm telling you this. I spent much of last week pretty well flattened: in serious discomfort, occasionally verging into real pain. And I was struck -- as I always am when I'm sick or injured -- by how fragile I am.

I don't just mean my body. I mean my... well, me. My selfhood, my identity. What I would call my soul, if I believed in that.

This is what I mean. So many of the things that are central to my identity, things I pride myself on and think of as central to my self -- my optimism, my cheerful disposition, my compassion, my ability to cut people slack, my energy, my libido, my hard-workingness, my consciousness of others -- all of these were shot to hell last week. I was irritable, I was lethargic, I was self-absorbed, I was whiny. I was everything I don't like.

All because of pain.

Worse -- for me, at least -- I got almost no writing done. Partly because I was having abdominal pain and had a hard time sitting up, but largely because I just didn't want to. I didn't even want to read. I simply didn't have it in me. I didn't have it in me to do anything except lie flat on the sofa with a hot water bottle and watch TV.

And I started thinking: What if this were chronic?

What if I felt like this all the time?

Who would I be?

I have a tendency to be a bit smug and self-righteous about my optimism and cheerfulness and whatnot. I have a tendency to see having a good nature as something you can choose. Because most of the time, that's how it is for me. I see a situation, and I see in front of me the way of looking at it that's suspicious and gloomy and pessimistic, and I see the way of looking at it that's generous and hopeful... and when it's reasonable and not obviously deluded to do so, I opt for the latter. I see optimism as a choice, a conscious way of framing your life and the world that not only makes you feel better in the short run but makes actual external things in your life better in the long run. And I get truly baffled by people who can't or won't do it.

But when I'm sick or injured, I get a lot more humble about it. I realize that a huge amount of my ability to choose optimism is balanced on some very precarious teeter-totters: good physical health and financial stability being the most obvious. (It doesn't help that I'm reading the new Oliver Sacks book, "Musicophilia," and thus am reading all this stuff about the freaky ways that brain injuries can radically change the things most central to a person's self and the things that connect them with the world. Eep.)

I just kept thinking last week, as I got up to refill the hot water bottle for the twentieth time: If the pain I'm in became chronic, would I adjust and find a way back to my native optimism and energy, sucking up and dealing with the pain the way I suck up and deal with the other things in my life that are crummy? I'd like to think so; but I really don't know. I know some people can. I honestly don't know if I'm one of them. (Ingrid says there's a large body of research on chronic pain and its effect on people's selves and lives and freedom; and not surprisingly, that effect is Not Good.)

And would I even have developed my native optimism in the first place if I hadn't spent most of my life in pretty good physical health? Again, I'd like to think so; but I really don't know.

I think this is important stuff for atheists and humanists and naturalists. This is the thing that was really striking me when I was on the sofa with the hot water bottle. If there is no God and no soul, and everything we are is comprised of physical things and the relationships between physical things... then when you change those physical things, the self changes as well. Our selves are not in our own hands nearly as much as we like to think.

I'm not saying that we don't have any responsibility for ourselves and the choices we make. I think we do. I'm not quite sure what, if anything, this weird free will stuff is -- I don't think anyone does at this point -- but I do think that we have something resembling free will and moral accountability. And unless a preponderance of evidence piles up showing that human beings really are just elaborate stimulus-response machines, I'm going to go on holding myself and others morally accountable for our choices. If I'm not responsible for how I manage my pain, then nobody is responsible for anything they do... and in the absence of a preponderance of evidence to the contrary, I'm just not willing to accept that.

What I am saying is this: Whatever free will is, it seems to not be a simple matter of either/or, a light switch that's either on or off. (See the excellent On the Possibility of Perfect Humanity at Daylight Atheism for more on this.) Things happen in our lives that can limit or expand our freedom, that can broaden or diminish the choices that are available to us. Some of these are things that we can do something about; some of them really, really aren't. And I think those of us who have a lot of choices need to remember to have compassion for people who don't have as many.

Darwin Day, Judgment Day, and the Non-Science of Intelligent Design

Happy Darwin Day, everybody!

I've been meaning to blog about this for a while, and I realize I'm very late to the party. But Darwin Day seemed like the perfect opportunity.

I want to talk about the PBS program "Nova"… and their episode about the Dover trial on teaching intelligent design in the public schools, "Judgment Day: Intelligent Design On Trial." (They have an entire web page about the episode, and the program is available to watch online (as are the transcripts.)

I could easily blog about this program for pages. It was one of the best summaries I've seen or read of both the science and the controversy surrounding the Dover trial, and I strongly recommend it to everyone. But in the interest of brevity, I want to focus on what jumped out at me most dramatically from the program.

It's this: Intelligent design is not science.

I don't even mean that it's bad science. I mean that it's not science at all. The theory is not a scientific theory, and its proponents do not engage in the activities of science. It is, purely and entirely, an attempt to provide a scientific cover story for getting religion taught in public schools. And when its proponents testified under oath that ID is not based on religious beliefs or convictions, they -- how exactly shall I put this? -- lied.

The theory isn't a scientific theory for some fairly obvious reasons, reasons which I already knew about going into "Judgment Day." It's not testable; it's not falsifiable; it doesn't make predictions; any possible outcome can be explained by the theory. All of that, just by itself, makes it not a science.

And it's also not science in the sense that its practitioners either are not familiar with, or spectacularly ignore, the current scientific information, even in the areas they're most focused on. (They are, for instance, obsessed with the bacterial flagellum and its supposed irreducible complexity, how it could not possibly have evolved from previous forms... without, apparently, being familiar with the current scientific thinking on how, precisely, the flagellum probably evolved.)

But what really struck me was how dramatically intelligent design is not science... not just in theory, but in a practical, physical, day-to-day sense. Its proponents do not engage in science. They do not engage in experiments to test their theories.

And as a prime example of this, I'm going to quote a section from the trial transcript (as taken from the PBS Website): an interchange between ID proponent Scott A. Minnich and the lawyer for the plaintiffs, Robert Muise.

ROBERT MUISE (Dramatization): Now, Dr. Minnich, a complaint that's often brought up -- and plaintiffs' experts have brought it up in this case -- is that intelligent design is not testable. It's not falsifiable. Would you agree with that claim?

SCOTT A. MINNICH (Dramatization): No, I don't. I have a quote from Mike Behe: "In fact, intelligent design is open to direct experimental rebuttal. To falsify such a claim, a scientist could go into the laboratory, place a bacterial species lacking a flagellum under some selective pressure, for motility, say, grow it for 10,000 generations and see if a flagellum or any equally complex system was produced. If that happened my claims would be neatly disproven."

ROBERT MUISE (Dramatization): Is that an experiment that you would do?

SCOTT A. MINNICH (Dramatization): You know, I think about it. I'd be intrigued to do it. I wouldn't expect it to work. But that's my bias.

STEPHEN HARVEY (Dramatization): Now you claim that intelligent design can be tested, correct?

SCOTT A. MINNICH (Dramatization): Correct.

STEPHEN HARVEY (Dramatization): Intelligent design, according to you, is not tested at all, because neither you nor Dr. Behe have run the test that you, yourself, advocate for testing intelligent design, right?

SCOTT A. MINNICH (Dramatization): Well, turn it around in terms of these major attributes of evolution. Have they been tested? You see what I'm saying, Steve? It's a problem for both sides.

I'm not just going to point out that Minnich is flatly mistaken here, that the theory of evolution can be tested, and has been tested extensively. And I'm not going to go into detail about why I think he's mistaken about ID, why ID isn't actually testable or falsifiable. (Very short answer: If the flagellum developed in the experimental example he gave, they could always say, "Well, okay, the flagellum didn't need an intelligent designer -- but what about this other thing over here?")

What I want to point out is this:

Minnich believes himself that ID is a testable theory. He's even thought of an experiment he could do that might falsify the theory.

But has he done that experiment?

He has not.

This is what I mean by ID not being science. That's not what scientists do. When scientists have a theory, and an idea for an experiment that could show that theory to be false, they run the experiment. The fact that the ID proponents have not done this makes it clear as day: Whatever they're doing, it's not science. It's not a scientific theory, and it's not a scientific practice.

It is, instead, a religious belief: a belief in a supernatural power that interferes with natural processes. And one of the most dramatic parts of "Judgment Day" was the way it showed the ID proponents being caught red-handed at it.

The program reveals smoking gun after smoking gun after smoking gun. Statements by ID proponents slipping and using the word "creationism." Drafts of an ID book that originally read "creationist" having the word replaced with "design proponent" (including places with the transitional fossil, "Cdesign proponentsists"). The publisher's catalog of said book listing it under "Creation Science." Documents showing that ID books had been sent to the Dover public schools by a fundraising drive in the local church. Internal documents from the ID organization The Discovery Institute stating that they want to change American culture back to a religious foundation and plan to use ID as a wedge to accomplish this goal.

I could go on an on. The evidence is overwhelming: Intelligent design is not science. Intelligent design is a way of getting around the Supreme Court decisions banning creationism from being taught in public schools. Intelligent design is a religious belief, and it differs from science in all the ways that religion differs from science. The evidence is overwhelming... just like the evidence for evolution is overwhelming.