• Generation X More Loyal to Religion
• Drink Water to Curb Weight Gain? Clinical Trial Confirms Effectiveness of Simple Appetite Control Method
• Capacity for Exercise Can Be Inherited: Finding Suggests Pharmaceutical Drugs  Can Be Used to Alter Activity Levels in Humans
• Do-Gooders Get Voted Off Island First: People Don’t Really Like Unselfish Colleagues
• ‘Charitable’ Behavior Found in Bacteria
• Attention, Couch Potatoes! Walking Boosts Brain Connectivity, Function
• Starvation Keeps Sleep-Deprived Fly Brain Sharp
• Eating Berries May Activate the Brain’s Natural Housekeeper for Healthy Aging
• Roots of Gamblers’ Fallacies and Other Superstitions: Causes of Seemingly Irrational Human Decision-Making

Generation X More Loyal to Religion: Generation X, the set of Americans who came of age in the late 1980s and early 1990s, is often branded as a rules-rejecting, authority-questioning group. But when it comes to religion, new research has revealed that Gen-Xers are surprisingly loyal to their faith — a finding that also suggests the rising non-religious tide in the United States may be leveling off. A new study showed that Gen-Xers are, in comparison with their Baby Boomer predecessors, far more likely to adhere to their religion. In fact, Boomers are 40 to 50 percent more likely than Gen-Xers to “disaffiliate” from their faith. As Generation X continues to grow older, this loyalty may translate into a more stable nation in terms of its religiosity, he said.
Though Generation X’s religious adherents are relatively durable, the generation as a whole is still more likely than previous ones to be raised with no religious preference, according to the research. Religious non-affiliation in the United States grew from between 6 percent and 8 percent in the 1970s and 1980s to nearly 16 percent by 2006.

Drink Water to Curb Weight Gain? Clinical Trial Confirms Effectiveness of Simple Appetite Control Method: Scientists report results of a new clinical trial confirming that just two 8-ounce glasses of water, taken before meals, enables people to shed pounds. “We found in earlier studies that middle aged and older people who drank two cups of water right before eating a meal ate between 75 and 90 fewer calories during that meal. In this recent study, we found that over the course of 12 weeks, dieters who drank water before meals, three times per day, lost about 5 pounds more than dieters who did not increase their water intake.”
“People should drink more water and less sugary, high-calorie drinks. It’s a simple way to facilitate weight management.” …Water may be so effective simply because it fills up the stomach with a substance that has zero calories. People feel fuller as a result, and eat less calorie-containing food during the meal. Increased water consumption may also help people lose weight if they drink it in place of sweetened calorie-containing beverages.
Diet soda pop and other beverages with artificial sweeteners may also help people reduce their calorie intake and lose weight. However, she advised against using beverages sweetened with sugar and high-fructose corn syrup because they are high in calories. A 12-ounce can of regular soda pop, for instance, contains about 10 teaspoons of sugar. Davy noted that that nobody knows exactly how much water people should drink daily. The Institute of Medicine, an agency of The National Academies, which advises the Federal Government on science, says that most healthy people can simply let thirst be their guide. It does not specify exact requirements for water, but set general recommendations for women at about 9 cups of fluids – from all beverages including water – each day, and men at about 13 cups of fluids. And it is possible to drink too much water, a situation that can lead to a rare, but serious, condition known as water intoxication.

Capacity for Exercise Can Be Inherited: Finding Suggests Pharmaceutical Drugs Can Be Used to Alter Activity Levels in Humans: Biologists have found that voluntary activity, such as daily exercise, is a highly heritable trait that can be passed down genetically to successive generations. Working on mice in the lab, they found that activity level can be enhanced with “selective breeding” – the process of breeding plants and animals for particular genetic traits. Their experiments showed that mice that were bred to be high runners produced high-running offspring, indicating that the offspring had inherited the trait for activity.
“Our findings have implications for human health. Down the road people could be treated pharmacologically for low activity levels through drugs that targeted specific genes that promote activity. Pharmacological interventions in the future could make it more pleasurable for people to engage in voluntary exercise. Such interventions could also make it less comfortable for people to sit still for long periods of time.”

Do-Gooders Get Voted Off Island First: People Don’t Really Like Unselfish Colleagues: You know those goody-two-shoes who volunteer for every task and thanklessly take on the annoying details nobody else wants to deal with? That’s right: Other people really can’t stand them. Four separate studies have found that unselfish workers who are the first to throw their hat in the ring are also among those that coworkers most want to, in effect, vote off the island. They found that unselfish colleagues come to be resented because they “raise the bar” for what is expected of everyone. As a result, workers feel the new standard will make everyone else look bad. It doesn’t matter that the overall welfare of the group or the task at hand is better served by someone’s unselfish behavior. What is objectively good, you see as subjectively bad.”
The do-gooders are also seen as deviant rule breakers. It’s as if they’re giving away Monopoly money so someone can stay in the game, irking other players to no end. The researcher would now like to look at how the do-gooders themselves react to being rejected. While some may indeed have ulterior motives, it’s more likely they actually are working for the good of an organization. Excluded from the group, they may say, “enough already” and simply give up. “But it’s also possible that they may actually try even harder.”

‘Charitable’ Behavior Found in Bacteria: In studying the development of antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria, the researchers found that the populations most adept at withstanding doses of antibiotics are those in which a few highly resistant isolates sacrifice their own well being to improve the group’s overall chance of survival. This bacterial altruism results when the most resistant isolates produce a small molecule called indole. Indole acts as something of a steroid, helping the strain’s more vulnerable members bulk up enough to fight off the antibiotic onslaught. But while indole may save the group, its production takes a toll on the fitness level of the individual isolates that produce it. “We weren’t expecting to find this. Typically, you would expect only the resistant strains to survive, with the susceptible ones dying off in the face of antibiotic stress. We were quite surprised to find the weak strains not only surviving, but thriving.” The fact that the full complexity of bacteria strains can now be more accurately understood has significant ramifications for the medical community. “Now, when we measure the resistance in a population, we’ll know that it may be tricking us. We’ll know that even an isolate that shows no resistance can put up a stronger battle against antibiotics thanks to its buddies.”

Attention, Couch Potatoes! Walking Boosts Brain Connectivity, Function: Even moderate exercise — in this case walking at one’s own pace for 40 minutes three times a week — can enhance the connectivity of important brain circuits, combat declines in brain function associated with aging and increase performance on cognitive tasks. Previous studies have found that aerobic exercise can enhance the function of specific brain structures, Kramer said. This study shows that even moderate aerobic exercise also improves the coordination of important brain networks. “The higher the connectivity, the better the performance on some of these cognitive tasks, especially the ones we call executive control tasks — things like planning, scheduling, dealing with ambiguity, working memory and multitasking.” These are the very skills that tend to decline with aging.

Starvation Keeps Sleep-Deprived Fly Brain Sharp: As anyone who has ever struggled to keep his or her eyes open after a big meal knows, eating can induce sleepiness. New research in fruit flies suggests that, conversely, being hungry may provide a way to stay awake without feeling groggy or mentally challenged. …The findings add a new wrinkle to the complex relationship between sleep and dietary metabolism. Scientists recognized about a decade ago that inadequate sleep results in obesity and contributes to the development of diabetes and coronary disease. Until now, no one had connected genes linked to lipids with regulation of the need for sleep. Like humans, flies deprived of sleep one day will try to make up for it by sleeping more the next day, a phenomenon referred to as sleep debt. Sleep-deprived flies also perform poorly on a simple test of learning ability.
Studies in other labs have shown that starvation or, in the case of human volunteers, fasting leads to less sleep. More recent research has also shown that starvation can change the activity levels of genes that manage storage and use of lipids. Scientists tested the starving, sleepless flies for two markers of sleep debt: an enzyme in saliva and the flies’ ability to learn to associate a light with an unpleasant stimulus. Both tests showed that the starving flies were not getting sleepy. “From an evolutionary perspective, this makes sense. If you’re starving, you want to make sure you’re on the top of your game cognitively, to improve your chances of finding food rather than becoming food for someone else.”

Eating Berries May Activate the Brain’s Natural Housekeeper for Healthy Aging: Scientists have reported the first evidence that eating blueberries, strawberries, and acai berries may help the aging brain stay healthy in a crucial but previously unrecognized way. Their study concluded that berries, and possibly walnuts, activate the brain’s natural “housekeeper” mechanism, which cleans up and recycles toxic proteins linked to age-related memory loss and other mental decline. Previous research suggested that one factor involved in aging is a steady decline in the body’s ability to protect itself against inflammation and oxidative damage. This leaves people vulnerable to degenerative brain diseases, heart disease, cancer, and other age-related disorders. “The good news is that natural compounds called polyphenolics found in fruits, vegetables and nuts have an antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effect that may protect against age-associated decline.”
…Their past studies, for instance, showed that old laboratory rats fed for two months on diets containing 2 percent high-antioxidant strawberry, blueberry, or blackberry extract showed a reversal of age-related deficits in nerve function and behavior that involves learning and remembering. In the new research, they focused on another reason why nerve function declines with aging. It involves a reduction in the brain’s natural house-cleaning process. Cells called microglia are the housekeepers. In a process called autophagy, they remove and recycle biochemical debris that otherwise would interfere with brain function. “But in aging, microglia fail to do their work, and debris builds up. In addition, the microglia become over-activated and actually begin to damage healthy cells in the brain. Our research suggests that the polyphenolics in berries have a rescuing effect. They seem to restore the normal housekeeping function. These findings are the first to show these effects of berries.”
The study provides further evidence to eat foods rich in polyphenolics. Although berries and walnuts are rich sources, many other fruits and vegetables contain these chemicals ― especially those with deep red, orange, or blue colors. Those colors come from pigments termed anthocyanins that are good antioxidants. He emphasized the importance of consuming the whole fruit, which contains the full range of hundreds of healthful chemicals. Frozen berries, which are available year round, also are excellent sources of polyphenolics.

Roots of Gamblers’ Fallacies and Other Superstitions: Causes of Seemingly Irrational Human Decision-Making: Gamblers who think they have a “hot hand,” only to end up walking away with a loss, may nonetheless be making “rational” decisions. The study finds that because humans are making decisions based on how we think the world works, if erroneous beliefs are held, it can result in behavior that looks distinctly irrational. “The overarching idea is that there is typically structure in the world, and it makes sense that when we make decisions, we try to understand the structure in order to exploit it. One of the simplest kinds of ‘structure’ is when the outcome that just occurred tells you something about what is likely to happen next. Where people go astray is when they base their decisions on beliefs that are different than what is actually present in the world. In the coin example, if you toss a coin five times and all five times are heads, should you pick heads or tails on the next flip? Assuming the coin is fair, it doesn’t matter – the five previous heads don’t change the probability of heads on the next flip – it’s still 50 percent – but people nevertheless act as though those previous flips influence the next one.”
When things are actually independent over time, meaning they don’t have any structure, people will interpret results through possible structures, a way of thinking often seen among gamblers. For example, gamblers who win three hands in a row, may believe themselves to be “hot” and thus more likely to win the next hand. The research showed that similar behaviors are seen even in an optimal, fully rational computer learner given similar incorrect beliefs about the world. Furthermore, when the context of the task was changed so that subjects understood that the outcomes were actually independent, a drastic shift in their behavior was noted, with subjects all doing the “right” thing for the way the world actually worked. “This demonstrates that given the right world model, humans are more than capable of easily learning to make optimal decisions.”

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The first thing I noticed was 2 cops directing traffic. Butch commented on taxpayer resources being used for such a purpose, but they were definitely needed. This was a big church with lots of cars. The building looks more like a school than a church, if you ask me.

Here’s where we went: Chestnut Ridge Church. None of us got a good estimate of how many seats there were. It was set up like a theater with a big stage, a 6 piece pop music band, 2 giant screens where they put the words to the songs and the bible verses from the sermon, and movie theater seating. The control booth is state of the art, like you’d find for a rock concert.Free coffee was served before people went in and each seat had a cup holder like in a movie theater. There were no crosses, no crucifixes, no representations of Jesus at all, nothing that made it seem church-like. It was very casual, very relaxed.

Everyone was very pleasant and nice. We had to shake hands and everyone made eye contact. Children were all well behaved and not too many babies cried much. The TV monitors counted down to the start, then they just basically began with a rundown of the schedule, then everyone said hi to their neighbor then 3 or 4 songs which people were encouraged to sing to, with the karaoke lyrics on the screens.

People seemed to enjoy the music which was very loud. The audience had very little lighting, just enough for me to see my notebook and for people to see if they wanted to get up. But the stage had concert lighting including a smoke machine. The babies didn’t seem upset by the incredibly loud music and the bass was really cranked up on the drums. People seemed to enjoy it but no one got “into the spirit” or did anything crazy, just a bit of keeping time and singing, stuff like that, maybe a bit of clapping when prompted.

We guessed the seating to be around 1500 but that’s a very rough guess. It was about 85-90% full, mostly young people (teens to 30′s, as a rough guess), about 99.9% white. One of my heathen friends saw one black man in African garb in the parking lot when we were going in. Other than that, I only saw white people. Then again, West Virginia is very white if I recall the statistics, so it doesn’t mean too much.

But remember how small our area is. Sure, Morgantown isn’t too small, and the college kids are back for the fall semester, but this is outside of town, and I am just amazed that they had so many seats filled. One thing my friend Joe noticed was not too many older people. But we went to the 11 am service. Maybe the 9 am service catered more to older folk.

So there was about 25 – 30 minutes of singing, which was basically teaching everyone how unworthy they are without God and how much they need him to fill their hearts. And give thanks for Jesus sacrificing himself on the cross and having that bad weekend for us. The band was really good, actually. The two singers had great voices, especially the woman, and the guitar player had mad skillz. The drums were really loud but I think that was intentional to help “move” people.

Some of the songs. The words in quotes are actual lyrics from the TV screens:

• Your Grace is Enough: positive song reminding God to “remember your promise”
• We Cry Out: repent and ask for mercy
• Glory of it All: he came for redemption to save us all; he forgives.
• Unnamed song: a song about having secrets and fear. “his blood can cover us” (ew!)

After the singing, the pastor came out. Like the first guy who seemed to be the master of ceremonies, the pastor was rather unassuming, casually dressed and rather mellow. He seemed humble, in a way, but that might not be the best word to describe him. He preached for about 30 minutes and the message was generally emotional.

There was no substance or anything you could sink your teeth into with what he said. It was all intangible and boiled down to the fact that you’re useless without Jesus, who came to save everyone so you don’t have to bear your burden alone. Just ask him into your heart. He said that you’ll probably still have the same burdens – which I found interesting – but that you’ll also have Jesus. Gee, thanks. Now I have a freeloader and a burden.

It was all very wishy-washy and pleasant. Extremely watered down. Kind of like Christian Homeopathy.

Here are some of the things the pastor said. I wrote them down word for word to share with you:

• John 10:10 (NASB, NIV), Psalm 23
• Isaiah 40:30-31 (rest of bible from NIV)
• Matthew 11:28-30
• “I don’t think life is supposed to be a burden.”
• Galatians 2:20a – crucified in christ. I no longer live, but christ lives in me…
• “God wants to give you more than you can handle.” (so that you’ll let go of your burden and let christ into your heart)
• “When you put your faith in christ, you get a new identity.”
• Luke 10:38-42 – the story of Martha and Mary. Moral of the story, don’t be a Martha!
• “Christians are so busy working for christ, serving christ, they don’t worship him anymore.”
• If you’re a Martha you’re hard to live with. You’ve forgotten how to live.
• Colossians 2:6a – live in Jesus
• John 15:5-8 – the vine and branches parable. You can’t do a single spiritual thing without christ.
• But Jesus’ parables make one point, don’t take them too far. When Jesus talks about the bad branches being cut off and thrown in the fire, that’s not about going to hell. (This was his only reference to hell or any kind of punishment and he made sure that we knew that wasn’t what was meant)
• John 15:7 (again, just so you get it)
• “The burden you carry might remain the same. But now you’ll have Jesus.”
• Homework for the week: Am I Striving or Living? Striving is struggling and judging others. Living is only done through christ and is effortless and happy.
• “There’s a joy that comes when you get this.” (when you start living and stop striving, when you accept Jesus into your heart)

In essence, I felt he was saying you have to hand over your responsibility to christ. You can’t be a whole person without Jesus. And God will make your life harder until you crack and let Jesus in. But that’s just me seeing it from my heathen perspective.

A few more things. When they asked for money, they actually passed around cheap buckets! The people sitting to our right put in a $20 bill, and one of our group saw someone else put in a check for $40. I put in my envelope of quotes, and Butch put his in too. A couple others in our group also did the envelope trick. They basically only asked for money from the regulars. They said if we were just visiting we didn’t need to feel obligated to donate. See below for what Butch and I wrote. In the service the pastor mentioned that the church wasn’t doing as well as they had hoped. But I think that was a lie. They looked like they were raking it in, and everything was top notch. On the website, I think they said the church cost $12 million. Tax free, though. Of course.

Only one short prayer, and no communion, I noticed. And no baptism or mention of either. But they have many other services, some where they “study” the bible, some for adults, college kids (we have a great university here in Morgantown – go Mountaineers!), teens, kids, etc. They also have counseling and an art program. They really do want you to feel like part of a community, it seems, although the service we went to was more like a rock concert. Their other services sound like they are tailored to connect to people.

After the service, there was something called the Mix out front. There was inflatable naked twister, a badminton net, hamburgers and hot dogs being grilled, a football to throw around, all for teens and college kids. Ok, it wasn’t naked twister. But it was inflatable. lol.

I have to say, if I had to go to a church, I’d pick one like this. Everyone was so nice, but it didn’t seem fake or forced. No one seemed too fervent or angry. It was just so damned pleasant. Of course, my little Grinch heart, blackened by years of godlessness couldn’t handle it and I was itching to get out of there, but that’s just me being me, the typical curmudgeonly atheist.

There was nothing negative, no hell-fire, no hatred or bigotry displayed, no fundamentalism. This church seemed to really focus on being a nice, casual place to hang out, be part of a community of like-minded people, and be a generally nice person.

While I didn’t enjoy myself I am glad I went and experienced it. It was definitely interesting and enlightening. I can certainly see the appeal of a church like this over what I had when I was a kid.

Here are the quotes I put in my envelope and gave instead of a donation:

• I don’t want to believe, I want to know. Carl Sagan
• Scientia Vincere Tenebras (Science will defeat darkness)
• I have no need for a religion. I have a conscience.
• If God’s love is unconditional, then why does Hell exist?
• I would rather have questions that can’t be answered than answers that can’t be questioned.

Here’s what Butch wrote:
Thank you for reaffirming my atheism. Sorry there’s no money. From the look of things, you don’t need it, so you’ve got that going for you.
Have a great life,
An Atheist

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Before that, I’d have to go back to my troubled religious youth to remember being in church. Sitting uncomfortably in straight backed pews; singing vapid, falsely cheerful songs of unworthiness and worship to an invisible sky daddy; sipping grape juice and eating stale bits of savior; getting baptized 3 times in 3 different churches to ward off eternal damnation and gnashing of teeth in the sulfurous, burning pits of hell; dealing with fake smiles on fake faces adorned in Avon makeup and festooned in Sears and Roebuck Sunday best outfits; parroting bible stories carefully cherry-picked from the sordid pages of a book filled with murder, slavery and hate.

None of it was all that pleasant. All of it was forced. No one ever seemed genuinely kind or compassionate. When I learned about hypocrisy at the age of 12 I promptly called bullshit on the whole mess of religion and refused to go again. My parents were furious, but in the end they gave up on me, content that I’d eventually get my just reward in the fiery lakes of hell.

This Sunday we’re going to the mega-church about 45 minutes away. I don’t want to go but my local group wants to experience it. Since I’m the Official Cat Herder, I feel like it would be a good thing to go along. Part of me wonders what it’s like in a mega-church. What is the feel of the place? Something I thought church should do for people is give them a sense of belonging, of community. How can you get that in a huge auditorium? I have no idea how big this place is. So it’s only fair that I actually experience it, I guess.

I have some questions that I want to answer on Sunday. Feel free to comment with other questions I can try to answer as well. Here’s what I have so far. I will take notes while I’m there.

• What makes people excited to come here?
• What messages are they conveying? Fire and Brimstone (like I got in the Southern Baptist church I went to as a child?), Love Thy Neighbor? Look forward to Heaven and forget about the troubles of today? End Times? Healing?
• Are the messages cherry-picked? Are they exclusively positive or are there warnings as well?
• Is there any bigotry?
• How many people are there? How many seats are there? How many seats are filled?
• What is the overall emotion? Do people seem desperately, fakely happy? Do they seem unconnected to reality? Are they calm or elated? Are they somber? Are they quiet or excited? Are they glassy-eyed?
• Do they talk to each other? Do they all sit near each other or are they scattered about? Is there any sense of “community?”

When the collection plate comes around, I have an envelope to put in. It contains the following quotes:

• I don’t want to believe, I want to know. Carl Sagan
• Scientia Vincere Tenebras (Science will defeat darkness)
• I have no need for a religion. I have a conscience.
• If God’s love is unconditional, then why does Hell exist?
• I would rather have questions that can’t be answered than answers that can’t be questioned.

Thank you for all of your quotes that you shared with me. There were so many good ones, it was hard to decide which ones I wanted, but I had an idea of the message I wanted to convey. Someone commented that they didn’t know why I’d do such a thing. Well, I shared the idea with the rest of my group and hopefully others will also contribute an envelope of quotes to the collection plate.

Here is my reasoning. I will be uncomfortable enough in the presence of strangers ( I have severe Social Anxiety, of several diagnosed varieties, btw, so this is very stressful to me, just to go there at all), the last thing I want to do is stand out from the crowd and look really weird. As a Social Phobic, I like to blend in to avoid bringing attention to myself. I won’t sing the hymns or bow my head, but I will be very courteous and polite. I’m in their house, after all. The goal is to learn and experience. So I thought it would be nice to have something to put in the collection plate.

They will open the envelope and instead of getting hard earned (undeserved) money they will get the opportunity to experience a different worldview in a nonthreatening way. Of course, you can never teach anyone anything unless they are willing to learn.  I don’t expect my quotes to change any minds.

Now, to be completely honest, I must confess to you that part of the reason is harmless deviousness. I can’t help it. I want to smirk all the way to our brunch afterward thinking of them opening the envelope and getting wisdom instead of untaxed, undeclared income. To think I will spread a bit of Carl Sagan goodness and imagine their eyebrows raise as they realize a heathen sat politely among them tickles me to some degree.

If I have to suffer this discomfort at least I can have a tiny bit of harmless fun, can’t I? I know that my message will be discarded, probably in righteous indignation. But I picked my quotes very carefully. I tried not to be offensive or nasty in any way. I tried to show a love of science and knowledge, to show that atheists have morals, to show that asking questions and thinking critically is a wonderful human ability that shouldn’t be wasted by unquestioning obedience to an invisible man in the sky.

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1. Are there right and wrong answers to moral questions?

Morality must relate, at some level, to the well-being of conscious creatures. If there are more and less effective ways for us to seek happiness and to avoid misery in this world — and there clearly are — then there are right and wrong answers to questions of morality.

2. Are you saying that science can answer such questions?

Yes, in principle. Human well-being is not a random phenomenon. It depends on many factors — ranging from genetics and neurobiology to sociology and economics. But, clearly, there are scientific truths to be known about how we can flourish in this world. Wherever we can have an impact on the well-being of others, questions of morality apply.

3. But can’t moral claims be in conflict? Aren’t there many situations in which one person’s happiness means another’s suffering?

There are some circumstances like this, and we call these contests “zero-sum.” Generally speaking, however, the most important moral occasions are not like this. If we could eliminate war, nuclear proliferation, malaria, chronic hunger, child abuse, etc. — these changes would be good, on balance, for everyone. There are surely neurobiological, psychological, and sociological reasons why this is so — which is to say that science could potentially tell us exactly why a phenomenon like child abuse diminishes human well-being.

But we don’t have to wait for science to do this. We already have very good reasons to believe that mistreating children is bad for everyone. I think it is important for us to admit that this is not a claim about our personal preferences, or merely something our culture has conditioned us to believe. It is a claim about the architecture of our minds and the social architecture of our world. Moral truths of this kind must find their place in any scientific understanding of human experience.

4. What if some people simply have different notions about what is truly important in life? How could science tell us that the actions of the Taliban are in fact immoral, when the Taliban think they are behaving morally?

As I discuss in my book, there may be different ways for people to thrive, but there are clearly many more ways for them not to thrive. The Taliban are a perfect example of a group of people who are struggling to build a society that is obviously less good than many of the other societies on offer. Afghan women have a 12% literacy rate and a life expectancy of 44 years. Afghanistan has nearly the highest maternal and infant mortality rates in the world. It also has one of the highest birthrates. Consequently, it is one of the best places on earth to watch women and infants die. And Afghanistan’s GDP is currently lower than the world’s average was in the year 1820. It is safe to say that the optimal response to this dire situation — that is to say, the most moral response — is not to throw battery acid in the faces of little girls for the crime of learning to read. This may seem like common sense to us — and it is — but I am saying that it is also, at bottom, a claim about biology, psychology, sociology, and economics. It is not, therefore, unscientific to say that the Taliban are wrong about morality. In fact, we must say this, the moment we admit that we know anything at all about human well-being.

5. But what if the Taliban simply have different goals in life?

Well, the short answer is — they don’t. They are clearly seeking happiness in this life, and, more importantly, they imagine that they are securing it in a life to come. They believe that they will enjoy an eternity of happiness after death by following the strictest interpretation of Islamic law here on earth. This is also a claim about which science should have an opinion — as it is almost certainly untrue. There is no question, however, that the Taliban are seeking well-being, in some sense — they just have some very strange beliefs about how to attain it.

In my book, I try to spell out why moral disagreements do not put the concept of moral truth in jeopardy. In the moral sphere, as in all others, some people don’t know what they are missing. In fact, I suspect that most of us don’t know what we are missing: It must be possible to change human experience in ways that would uncover levels of human flourishing that most of us cannot imagine. In every area of genuine discovery, there are horizons past which we cannot see.

6. What do you mean when you talk about a “moral landscape”?

This is the phrase I use to describe the space of all possible experience — where the peaks correspond to the heights of well-being and valleys represent the worst possible suffering. We are all someplace on this landscape, faced with the prospect of moving up or down. Given that our experience is fully constrained by the laws of the universe, there must be scientific answers to the question of how best to move upwards, toward greater happiness.

This is not to say that there is only one right way for human beings to live. There might be many peaks on this landscape — but there are clearly many ways not to be on a peak.

7. How could science guide us on the moral landscape?

In so far as we can understand human well-being, we will understand the conditions that best secure it. Some are obvious, of course. Positive social emotions like compassion and empathy are generally good for us, and we want to encourage them. But do we know how to most reliably raise children to care about the suffering of other people? I’m not sure we do. Are there genes that make certain people more compassionate than others? What social systems and institutions could maximize our sense of connectedness to the rest of humanity? These questions have answers, and only a science of morality could deliver them.

8. Why is it taboo for a scientist to attempt to answer moral questions?

I think there are two primary reasons why scientists hesitate to do this. The first, and most defensible, is borne of their appreciation for how difficult it is to understand complex systems. Our investigation of the human mind is in its infancy, even after nearly two centuries of studying the brain. So scientists fear that answers to specific questions about human well-being may be very difficult to come by, and confidence on many points is surely premature. This is true. But, as I argue in my book, mistaking no answers in practice for no answers in principle is a huge mistake.

The second reason is that many scientists have been misled by a combination of bad philosophy and political correctness. This leads them to feel that the only intellectually defensible position to take when in the presence of moral disagreement is to consider all opinions equally valid or equally nonsensical. On one level, this is an understandable and even noble over-correction for our history of racism, ethnocentrism, and imperialism. But it is an over-correction nonetheless. As I try to show in my book, it is not a sign of intolerance for us to notice that some cultures and sub-cultures do a terrible job of producing human lives worth living.

9. What is the difference between there being no answers in practice and no answers in principle, and why is this distinction important in understanding the relationship between human knowledge and human values?

There are an infinite number of questions that we will never answer, but which clearly have answers. How many fish are there in the world’s oceans at this moment? We will never know. And yet, we know that this question, along with an infinite number of questions like it, have correct answers. We simply can’t get access to the data in any practical way.

There are many questions about human subjectivity — and about the experience of conscious creatures generally — that have this same structure. Which causes more human suffering, stealing or lying? Questions like this are not at all meaningless, in that they must have answers, but it could be hopeless to try to answer them with any precision. Still, once we admit that any discussion of human values must relate to a larger reality in which actual answers exist, we can then reject many answers as obviously wrong. If, in response to the question about the world’s fish, someone were to say, “There are exactly a thousand fish in the sea.” We know that this person is not worth listening to. And many people who have strong opinions on moral questions have no more credibility than this. Anyone who thinks that gay marriage is the greatest problem of the 21st century, or that women should be forced to live in burqas, is not worth listening to on the subject of morality.

10. What do you think the role of religion is in determining human morality?

I think it is generally an unhelpful one. Religious ideas about good and evil tend to focus on how to achieve well-being in the next life, and this makes them terrible guides to securing it in this one. Of course, there are a few gems to be found in every religious tradition, but insofar as these precepts are wise and useful they are not, in principle, religious. You do not need to believe that the Bible was dictated by the Creator of the Universe, or that Jesus Christ was his son, to see the wisdom and utility of following the Golden Rule.

The problem with religious morality is that it often causes people to care about the wrong things, leading them to make choices that needlessly perpetuate human suffering. Consider the Catholic Church: This is an institution that excommunicates women who want to become priests, but it does not excommunicate male priests who rape children. The Church is more concerned about stopping contraception than stopping genocide. It is more worried about gay marriage than about nuclear proliferation. When we realize that morality relates to questions of human and animal well-being, we can see that the Catholic Church is as confused about morality as it is about cosmology. It is not offering an alternative moral framework; it is offering a false one.

11. So people don’t need religion to live an ethical life?

No. And a glance at the lives of most atheists, and at the most atheistic societies on earth — Denmark, Sweden, etc. — proves that this is so. Even the faithful can’t really get their deepest moral principles from religion — because books like the Bible and the Qur’an are full of barbaric injunctions that all decent and sane people must now reinterpret or ignore. How is it that most Jews, Christians, and Muslims are opposed to slavery? You don’t get this moral insight from scripture, because the God of Abraham expects us to keep slaves. Consequently, even religious fundamentalists draw many of their moral positions from a wider conversation about human values that is not, in principle, religious. We are the guarantors of the wisdom we find in scripture, such as it is. And we are the ones who must ignore God when he tells us to kill people for working on the Sabbath.

12. How will admitting that there are right and wrong answers to issues of human and animal flourishing transform the way we think and talk about morality?

What I’ve tried to do in my book is give a framework in which we can think about human values in universal terms. Currently, the most important questions in human life — questions about what constitutes a good life, which wars we should fight or not fight, which diseases should be cured first, etc. — are thought to lie outside the purview of science, in principle. Therefore, we have divorced the most important questions in human life from the context in which our most rigorous and intellectually honest thinking gets done.

Moral truth entirely depends on actual and potential changes in the well-being of conscious creatures. As such, there are things to be discovered about it through careful observation and honest reasoning. It seems to me that the only way we are going to build a global civilization based on shared values — allowing us to converge on the same political, economic, and environmental goals — is to admit that questions about right and wrong and good and evil have answers, in the same way the questions about human health do.

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We’ve all experienced a highly improbable event in our lives. Probably many, in fact. Some of us more than others, some more seemingly improbable than others. There is such a thing as the Law of Large Numbers that explains these coincidences and “miracles”.

The Law of Large Numbers simply stated (sans math): with a large enough sample many odd coincidences are likely to happen.

Coincidence: an occasion when two or more similar things happen at the same time, especially in a way that is unlikely and surprising.

Miracle: an unusual and mysterious event that is thought to have been caused by a god, or any very surprising and unexpected event.

~

On a side note, I was disappointed with Dictionary.com’s listing on these words so I thought I’d go to the Cambridge Dictionary. The definition above is from the Dictionary of British English. Out of curiosity, I looked up the word miracle in the Cambridge Dictionary of American English:

Miracle: an unusual and mysterious event that is thought to have been caused by God, or any surprising and unexpected event.

A very subtle but telling difference! I think I’ll be using the British version from now on.

~

Anyway, I digress, again! I like how the definition of miracle is either caused by god, or (moving the goalposts) unexpected. Those are two very different kinds of events. One is something supernatural, manipulated by god’s hand. The other is something merely surprising. And yet the definition combines them, basically rendering it rather meaningless.

So let’s get to the numbers that Michael Shermer shared in his article. He says:

I cannot always explain … specific incidents, but a principle of probability called the Law of Large Numbers shows that an event with a low probability of occurrence in a small number of trials has a high probability of occurrence in a large number of trials. Events with million-to-one odds happen 295 times a day in America.

Shermer quotes CERN physicist Georges Charpak and University of Nice physicist Henri Broch from their book, Debunked!: ESP, Telekinesis, and Other Pseudoscience:

In the case of death premonitions, suppose that you know of 10 people a year who die and that you think about each of those people once a year. One year contains 105,120 five-minute intervals during which you might think about each of the 10 people, a probability of one out of 10,512 — certainly an improbable event. Yet there are 295 million Americans. Assume, for the sake of our calculation, that they think like you. That makes 1/10,512 × 295,000,000 = 28,063 people a year, or 77 people a day for whom this improbable premonition becomes probable. With the well-known cognitive phenomenon of confirmation bias firmly in force (where we notice the hits and ignore the misses in support of our favorite beliefs), if just a couple of these people recount their miraculous tales in a public forum (next on Oprah!), the paranormal seems vindicated. In fact, they are merely demonstrating the laws of probability writ large.

So, for example if 23 random people are asked their birthdays, there is a 50% chance that at least 2 of them celebrate the same birthday. It may seem like an amazing coincidence, but it’s not amazing at all.

Then Michael Shermer refers to a review of the above book by another physicist, Freeman Dyson. He talks about Littlewood’s Law of Miracles:

“In the course of any normal person’s life, miracles happen at a rate of roughly one per month.” Dyson explains that “during the time that we are awake and actively engaged in living our lives, roughly for eight hours each day, we see and hear things happening at a rate of about one per second. So the total number of events that happen to us is about thirty thousand per day, or about a million per month. With few exceptions, these events are not miracles because they are insignificant. The chance of a miracle is about one per million events. Therefore we should expect about one miracle to happen, on the average, every month.”

So a miracle is basically a one in a million event, according to Littlewood who was a University of Cambridge mathematician. And we all have about a million little events in our lives every month. So we all get a miracle a month, or thereabouts (actually 35 days). See how cool math is? Of course, a miracle a month is rather commonplace, isn’t it?

Then, when observing and reporting events, there is the ever present loom of confirmation bias and anecdotal evidence, which is not very reliable, if at all.

One thing I’ve never understood is when people see Jesus or Mary in bird poop or a pizza pan or a stump. (Basic everyday pareidolia, of course). Nothing special happens except that they recognize a face in a random pattern. But before you know it a shrine is constructed and people are kissing the bird poop and praying at the stump. Not being religious, I find this completely silly, but they are True Believers. Does the miracle follow the sighting? I never hear about anyone claiming a bonifide miracle from one of these sightings. (Then again, no true miracle has ever been verified, not scientifically). And Mary needs a better agent if she’s reduced to showing up in bird poop, but that’s just my humble opinion.

Other resources:

• Coincidences: Remarkable or Random?

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Here’s a 4:36 minute video and information you need. Then just go HERE to send letters to your state reps through the Secular Coalition For America. Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy.

By now, you’ve probably heard about the Texas State Board of Education’s moves to impose educational standards into its textbooks intended to indoctrinate Texas public school students with a telling of U.S. history that is based in extremist religious ideology.

You’ve probably also heard about some of the more jaw-dropping proposed changes to the curriculum, such as booting Thomas Jefferson off of a list of influential thinkers in place of explicitly religious figures, and the totally fabricated assertion that our system of government is based specifically on the laws of Moses. This comes from the same group of theocrats who famously fought to undermine evolution in science classes and delete from science textbooks the scientific consensus on the age of the universe because they conflict with the Bible.

As terrible as this religious imposition is for Texas students, all Americans have reason to fear. Due to the size of the Texas textbook market (and because other highly populated states do not use statewide textbook contracts in the say way), the backward dictates of its theocratic school board effect textbooks used by public school students all across the country.

Someone in Congress is finally standing up to this abuse of power and unconstitutional overreach by the religious extremists on the Texas State Board of Education. Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (T-DX) recently introduced a resolution (H. Res. 1593) that supports fact-based curricula in public schools without meddling by those with an avowed religious agenda. Students in Texas and all across America need to know that Congress wants them to have an education based on facts and science, not myth and religious bias.

TAKE ACTION NOW: Watch the video message above from Secular Coalition for America Executive Director Sean Faircloth supporting Rep. Johnson’s resolution, and then tell your member of Congress to become a co-sponsor.

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