Month: October 2009

Playing With The Data

Michael J. New defends the contraceptive unfriendliness of the pro-life movement against the Dish's critique. He writes:

[In] 2003, Guttmacher released an article in “International Family Planning Perspectives” that showed simultaneous increases in both contraceptive use and abortion rates in the United States, Cuba, Denmark, Netherlands, Singapore, and South Korea.

The study he links to concludes:

When fertility levels in a population are changing, the relationship between contraceptive use and abortion may take a variety of forms, frequently involving a simultaneous increase in both. When other factors—such as fertility—are held constant, however, a rise in contraceptive use or effectiveness invariably leads to a decline in induced abortion—and vice versa.

He then links to a study that found among American women "2 percent said that they did not know where to obtain a method of contraception and 8 percent said that they could not afford contraceptives." The earlier study was of 197 countries. From the BBC report:

[G]lobally, the number of married women of childbearing age with access to contraception has increased from 54% in 1990 to 63% in 2003, with gains also seen among single, sexually active women. But there were still significant unmet contraception needs, and a lack of interest among pharmaceutical companies in developing new forms of birth control that provide top protection on demand, the institute said.

And:

The Guttmacher Institute's survey found..that improved access to contraception had cut the overall abortion rate over the last decade.

Theocons cannot have it every which way. Practically speaking, if you really believe that all abortion is murder, a huge program of contraception education and access is the most practical life-saver out there. And yet the Catholic pro-lifers refuse to embrace it and go to these kinds of lengths to deny reality. By their own logic, they are the ones enabling the massacre of millions.

Beneath the Surface

Check out Massimo Calabresi's fascinating account of secret dealing between the US and Iran over re-purposing uranium stockpiles for peaceful uses. It's an impressive feat of cooperation between France, Russia, the US and Iran. Just a small thing. But telling – not least because it suggests there's more going on under the slipstream with this president than he lets on, and because it shows that a less dictatorial US can indeed get its partners to act and its foes to negotiate.

Is Faith, Or The Lack Thereof, A Choice?, Ctd

A reader writes:

Your reader writes:

"So unlike your reader I did make a choice based on research and a (hopefully) rational weighing of the lack of evidence. Ehrman started out not particularly religious, became a hard line evangelical, and then became at least an agnostic if not an atheist. So I do believe that one’s religious beliefs are a choice, it maybe a choice that many people are born into and never leave their comfort zone to question, but it is a choice."

This reader confuses and confounds two separate choices – the choice to believe, and the choice to seek truth.  If we search any subject with intellectual honesty, belief is manifest by what we find, not by what we choose to find.

That which appears reasonable or probable in some sense becomes what we believe, and we cannot choose to change this back to what we believed before we acquired this new knowledge and experience.  I believe many things.  In other words, I believe that which appears true.

I have witnessed the peace, satisfaction, and comfort that seems to come from religious faith.  I have desperately tried to believe things that will provide such comfort for me.  Unfortunately, the physical, objective truth of most religion and its hypothetical metaphysics continue to appear extremely unlikely to have any basis in reality.  Based upon the information gleaned from my senses, including the thousands of years writings and accounts of other people with similar sensory facilities, most religious doctrine doesn't fall, no matter how I try, into the "probably true" bin of my my perception of reality.  I can only choose where and how to search.  I cannot choose what I will find there, and it frustrates me.  I would rather believe in a loving god, and be able to share this faith with a like-minded community, but my mind can't do it. 

No matter how hard I try, I cannot believe that there was a man physically like ourselves, but who was somehow part deity, performed acts generally contrary to what is known of physics, and whose body physically disappeared from this plane of existence within three days of his death.

I fail to understand how believing or disbelieving such things can be a choice.  I wish it were.  Others have told me "just believe it".  Such a statement is the equivalent of a foreign language.  Believe it?  How?  It is apparently a language that is foreign to me, but fluent to others.

If you know how to flip this switch in my brain, please let me know.

Another reader makes the same point from the other side of the divide:

The reader who defends faith as being a matter of choice seems to be confusing the fact that we can choose things that will lead to a change in faith with faith itself being a choice.  I was an atheist for a long time; my family never went to church or participated in any religious events.  I chose to go to Church, to research religion.  My faith itself, however, is not a choice.  After going to church, after doing research, I was not presented with a choice between two beliefs, "God exists" and "God doesn't exist".  Instead, I simply came to believe that God exists.  While choice certainly plays a role in faith — in what knowledge we seek — it's hard to imagine that it could have been a choice to make.  For me, it was an unavoidable conclusion based on my experiences.

Perhaps this is the most civil and honest explanation of the real difference between believers and non-believers.

“Family Guy In Blackface,” Ctd

A reader writes:

You posted a critique from John McWhorter of the new Seth McFarland show as being no different from Family Guy except for the race of the characters.  McWhorter thinks it's racism.  I think it's just evidence of McFarland's utter lack of new ideas.

Witness American Dad.  It's all retreads of Family Guy.  Oh, they switched things around a little: They have a talking alien instead of a talking dog.  They gave the fish the evil accent instead of the baby.  The father hates the daughter…. wait, that's exactly the same.  They didn't change anybody's race; they just made the main character a Republican.

McFarland isn't racist; he's creatively bankrupt.  He needs some new manatees.

Yep, the problem with McFarland is not that he's a bigot, for goodness' sake. It's that he's a hack.

GOP Still Dead; Weather At 11

The only news in Chris Cilizza's post on the latest WaPo poll is that he honestly seems to believe that the first nine months of Obama's presidency have been good for Republicans. Anyone not suckered by the usual Beltway hooey – i.e. someone not paid by the WaPo to convey conventional "non-biased" wisdom – could see that the Republicans were drowning, not waving.

Their success in airing the most bizarre claims about the president, their extremist town halls, their disavowal from the get-go of any attempt to work with the new president on anything may have helped gin up enthusiasm in their base – but at the expense of making that base even smaller and alienating by large margins the independent voters they desperately need.

Once again, the GOP is all tactics and no strategy. And the Dish pointed out a while back that the party i.d. was cratering and that the generic ballot question showed the Democrats gaining again. Add the Palin circus to the mix and the Beck train wreck and most sane independents are more convinced than ever that the GOP is a lost cause for a while. They're not impressed by the Democrats, of course, and the post-election honeymoon is over for POTUS. But Obama's ratings remain firm for a newbie and his big strategic moves are gaining momentum.

Meep. meep.

Underestimating Our Officers

A reader writes:

I have been following the DADT discussions with interest as a retired Navy Captain and a SLDN supporter.  A point that I rarely see being made is that although DADT is patently unfair to our gay servicemen and women, it is also unfair and insulting to those who are straight.

The argument put forth by civilian and military leaders is usually some variation about degradation of "good order and disciple."  It is 2009, and almost every one of them knows gay men or women.  If you asked those leaders if they, personally, would do their job less effectively if one of their subordinates or coworkers was gay, how many of them would say yes? 

I would wager the answer is very few.  If that is the case, they would also be implicitly asserting that the soldiers and sailors that serve in our armed forces are either too ignorant or prejudiced to show the same degree of tolerance their leaders are ostensibly capable of.

There will of course be a few in any unit who, for whatever combination of nature or nurture, hate gays (or Blacks, or Jews, or women, etc.).  If this becomes such a problem that the unit is no longer able to function at peak efficiency, it is a leadership issue and the responsibility of the commanding officer.  If he or she cannot effectively lead a unit with gays (or Blacks, or Jews, or women, etc), then step aside because there are dozens of officers one rank below who would love the opportunity.