VALERIE TARICO, - Salon/AlterNet
Stephan: The absurdity of Biblical Literalism, and the willful ignorance required to maintain the hypocrisy of that reality is aways amazing when one looks at it close up. Here's an example of what I mean.
SALON: Valerie Tarico is a psychologist and writer in Seattle, Washington and the founder of Wisdom Commons. She is the author of 'Trusting Doubt: A Former Evangelical Looks at Old Beliefs in a New Light
Despite a defeat in District Court last week, the Catholic Bishops and their conservative Protestant allies are forging ahead with lawsuits against Obama’s health care reforms. Their goal? To ensure that American health options are dictated by religion rather than medical science. With an infallible pope and an inerrant Bible as guides, they are convinced that they know what God wants.
AlterNet
Obviously, not all Christians agree. The contraceptive mandate is a problem for the patriarchy only because most Christians have their own deeply personal understanding of God’s will and they want to live in accord with that understanding. In other words, the contraceptive mandate is an issue for the Bishops and their allies only because it is a non-issue for most lay Christians.
Then again, if they could, some Church leaders would do away with much more than the contraceptive mandate. Christian Science theologians teach that God’s will excludes most of science-based medicine because prayer alone should suffice. In fact, they have tried to get the services of ‘prayer practitioners
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RICHARD A. MULLER, PhD, - The New York Times
Stephan: This is the difference between a skeptic, even a hard core skeptic like Muller, and a denier. Skeptic is based on the Greek word Skeptikos, which means to doubt and inquire. All good scientists should be skeptics. But that is quite different than the willful ignorance of denierism. I do not agree with Muller about the glaciers, and I don't think he fully appreciates the implications of sea rise. However, in spite of his initial rejection of climate change he moved his position on the basis of data, and I think that needs to be applauded.
Richard A. Muller, is a professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, and a former MacArthur Foundation fellow. He is the author, most recently, of 'Energy for Future Presidents: The Science Behind the Headlines.
BERKLEY, CA — CALL me a converted skeptic. Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I’m now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause.
My total turnaround, in such a short time, is the result of careful and objective analysis by the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, which I founded with my daughter Elizabeth. Our results show that the average temperature of the earth’s land has risen by two and a half degrees Fahrenheit over the past 250 years, including an increase of one and a half degrees over the most recent 50 years. Moreover, it appears likely that essentially all of this increase results from the human emission of greenhouse gases.
These findings are stronger than those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations group that defines the scientific and diplomatic consensus on global warming. In its 2007 report, the I.P.C.C. concluded only that most of the warming […]
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KAY STEIGER, - The Raw Story
Stephan: Theocratic Rightists, in my view, are a very real threat to American democracy, and the world as a whole. But they have great passion, as victim movements must. And they are prepared for a knife fight to get control of the party, as this story illustrates. This is a very important trend. It is telling us there is a percentage of the American population freaking out over the changes going on in the world, and willing to do anything to make it stop, starting with denial that the transition even exists. This denierism is not helpful as we prepare to enter a perfect storm of change.
Here are just a few of the trends I see in that perfect storm:
Former Florida Republican Party Chair Jim Greer testified in a lawsuit filed against his former party that ‘whack-a-do, right-wing crazies
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JOSEPH STIGLITZ, PhD, Nobel Laureate Economist - Reader Supported News
Stephan: Over the last decade Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman are the two economists whose analysis has proved more accurate than any one else. Rightist politicians don't like what they say, because it works against the interests of their masters, the new aristocracy. But like it or not what they have to say has proven correct over and over, perhaps because it is entirely based on data, not economic ideology.
Joseph E. Stiglitz, recipient of the Nobel Prize in economics, chaired President Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers and was chief economist of the World Bank. His latest book is 'The Price of Inequality: How Today's Divided Society Endangers Our Future.'
Despite what the debt and deficit hawks would have you believe, we can’t cut our way back to prosperity. No large economy has ever recovered from serious recession through austerity. But there is another factor holding our economy back: inequality.
Any solution to today’s problems requires addressing the economy’s underlying weakness: a deficiency in aggregate demand. Firms won’t invest if there is no demand for their products. And one of the key reasons for lack of demand is America’s level of inequality – the highest in the advanced countries.
Because those at the top spend a much smaller portion of their income than those in the bottom and middle, when money moves from the bottom and middle to the top (as has been happening in America in the last dozen years), demand drops. The best way to promote employment today and sustained economic growth for the future, therefore, is to focus on the underlying problem of inequality. And this better economic performance in turn will generate more tax revenue, improving the country’s fiscal position.
Even supply-side economists, who emphasize the importance of increasing productivity, should understand the benefits of attacking inequality. America’s inequality does not come solely from market forces; those are at […]
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ENRICO FACCO1,2* and CHRISTIAN AGRILLO3, - Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
Stephan:
Science exists to refute dogmas; nevertheless, dogmas may be introduced when undemonstrated scientific axioms lead us to reject facts incompatible with them. Several studies have proposed psychobiological interpretations of near-death experiences (NDEs), claiming that NDEs are a mere byproduct of brain functions gone awry; however, relevant facts incompatible with the ruling physicalist and reductionist stance have been often neglected. The awkward transcendent look of NDEs has deep epistemological implications, which call for: (a) keeping a rigorously neutral position, neither accepting nor refusing anything a priori; and (b) distinguishing facts from speculations and fallacies. Most available psychobiological interpretations remain so far speculations to be demonstrated, while brain disorders and/or drug administration in critical patients yield a well-known delirium in intensive care and anesthesia, the phenomenology of which is different from NDEs. Facts can be only true or false, never paranormal. In this sense, they cannot be refused a priori even when they appear implausible with respect to our current knowledge: any other stance implies the risk of turning knowledge into dogma and the adopted paradigm into a sort of theology.
During the past decade, an increasing number of studies have focused their attention on the intriguing phenomenon known as ‘Near-Death Experiences
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