Pope Says Atheists Go to Heaven?

The new leader of the Catholic Church, Pope Francis, has been making plenty of news since taking over in March. Not only is it the case that he may have exorcised demons in public very recently (very old school), but now he seems to have blessed the infidels (not-so old school).

In his Wednesday sermon, he stated the following:

The Lord has redeemed all of us, all of us, with the Blood of Christ: all of us, not just Catholics. Everyone! ‘Father, the atheists?’ Even the atheists. Everyone! And this Blood makes us children of God of the first class! …‘But I don’t believe, Father, I am an atheist!’ But do good: we will meet one another there.

From this, it appears His Holiness is blessing everybody: Catholic, Protestant, Jew, Muslim, pagan, and atheist. His mention of meeting “one another there” could be a reference to the afterlife, so is the Pope saying everybody is going to heaven, even the non-believers?

Do you really think the leader of the church, Christ’s vicar on Earth, is going to say he doesn’t hold the keys of heaven first given to St. Peter? If you do, I know an antisemitic rabbi for you to meet that sells bridges.

The Pope’s message is actually that everyone is capable and ought to do good. This includes infidels, that they too are in the image of God, and God does good, so everyone ought to do good. That’s the theology happening here, not the idea of universalism, which was supported by some early church figures. For the Pope to declare universalism would require him going ex cathedra on this, someone only very rarely done, and that would have been really big news, not to mention something more than just a sermon message. Lots of paperwork to do in the holy bureaucracy.

However, this message from the Pope is marked in how it undoes a notion so many attach to non-believers, that they are immoral or incapable of doing good. Pope Francis strongly rebukes that, using the Gospel of Mark as his foundation for his argument. So while what he has said is perfectly compatible with traditional dogma, his modernization of message and tone is certainly more welcoming to non-Catholics and non-Christians generally.

However, there is another layer of theology at play, it would seem. The notion of redemption here is being used by the Pope to say all can do good, and this can bring people together (“But do good: we will meet one another there”). It would seem to suggest that by works Christians and non-Christians can come to salvation, you can come to redemption. This point is made in the comments of Fr. James Martin’s Facebook post (who gave a quote for the HuffPo post on this news event):

He’s saying be a good person, do good works, and if you do those things you will be opening yourself to Christ’s redeeming love.

This gets into points of arguments among Christian denominations. The biggest contrast to this would probably be Calvinists who see grace as unconditionally given to humans at God’s choosing, and God had made his plan on who to save timelessly; you did nothing and could do nothing to earn grace and was decided before existence itself. Others will argue that faith is all that matters, and works are not so important, though being anti-social probably isn’t a good idea. You can find biblical support for whatever you want, I don’t care. The point here is that the Pope’s message of inclusion and the encouragement for all to do good deeds requires an idea of soteriology that is divisive in modern Christianity. So while the Pope will let those with ears hear him, there will be plenty that simply cannot.

Chrono Trigger Needs More Time Travel

It’s been a long time since I have enjoyed the SNES game Chrono Trigger. And after watching this, I may need to again, just to get this special ending.

A Teenager’s Life in Ancient Rome

Via the Rogue Classicist:

A day in the life of an upperclass, teenage girl

And a teenage boy

Nicely drawn and informative. Too bad it’s focused on the upper class, but guess who wrote things down and had their work survive to today?

Star of Bethlehem Conference in the Netherlands

About two weeks ago I was contacted about participating in a conference next year at the University of Groningen. In 2014 they are celebrating their 400th anniversary so it seems appropriate it relate to something else from 1614. In that year, Johannes Kepler published his tome on chronology, arguing that Jesus was born several years earlier than was the tradition in his time (on Dec 25 in 1 BC). In that book, he also talked about the Star of Bethlehem, and this is the apparent link for this conference.

In the last few days a webpage has gone up, which you can see here, and it shows the primary idea holding the conference together, along with the guest list. And you can see, I’m there!

There are a few notable names on there, at least to me. The conference is supposed to focus on the work of Michael Molnar, as he has one of the most astrologically-informed hypotheses about the Star to date. I have had words exchanged with him before, but it has been a long while. It should be interesting to interact with him in person.

Kocku von Stuckrad has done a lot of work on astrology in the classical world, and I have used some of his research and ideas in my work. He also talks about the Star and how it may relate to triple conjunctions of Jupiter and Saturn.

Willem Drees is a philosopher and editor-in-chief at Zygon, which is where I had my most scholarly article on the Star of Bethlehem published. It may be because of him that I was even invited. If so, thank you Willem. If not, thank you for at least getting my article published.

Roger Beck is the foremost expert on the Roman cult of Mithras, and I think he has the best hypothesis to date for its origins. I can see why he is invited; people have been comparing Christianity to Mithraism for a lot time, at least back to Dupuis, and there is definitely astrological symbols in the cult. Could it provide insight into the astrology of the Christmas Star? I want to hear his opinion on the subject.

There are other names here that are less familiar to me, so I will have some homework to do. For example, Teije de Jong has done work on ancient astronomical observations. A quick search shows he done work on observations of Venus. I would be interested to see what he has to say related to that, especially since I think the motions of Venus can explain some details about Inanna/Ishtar. Rob van Gent is best known to me as the compiler of the online bibliography of Star of Bethlehem literature (see here). Plenty to read, plenty to read.

The conference is set for late October of next year. By then I should have my book on the Star of Bethlehem published, and perhaps another, academic volume on the subject as well (finger’s crossed). And since I hope to have my PhD by the end of this year (my thesis defense will probably be this August (!)), I won’t be the only person there without a fancy title. There is also the plan to having papers from the conference published in a volume through Brill. You all know you want a copy–well, Brill books tend to be expensive, so we’ll see about that.

I’m really looking forward to this, and hopefully I can do enough to prepare for it, not to mention have meaningful, scholarly engagements with some fascinating individuals.

More Guns Means Few Gun Murders? Not So Fast, Glen Beck!

On Facebook, several people I know have shared this photo from Glen Beck, taking a picture of some book:

It’s from Glen’s book Control. And as you can see, he thinks that this take is a good argument to argue that having more guns doesn’t make gun murders increase. Unfortunately, his table shows he doesn’t understand much of anything about statistics.

First off, he’s saying that the gun-related murder victim per capita is greater than 1 in any given year? That would mean, for example, 5 people in the US were killed in 1996 for every person in the US. Unless immigration is happening at the most fantastic of rates, this is what we in the business call absolutely impossible. More likely, this is the murder rate with guns per 100,000. That is how the statistics are usually provided. So already, his ability to gather data is suspect.

But let’s also note the next column, which is number of guns owned in the US. This is an absolute number, but the first column is a relative number. One is normalized for the US population, the other is not. That is important because the number of guns owned could be going up just because of population increase. So if anything, you would want to compare gun murders per 100,000 and guns per capita. In other words, Glen isn’t even comparing appropriate measures of things.

But even such a comparison doesn’t seem to be all that sensible. What if an increased number of guns per capita was happening because gun owners were owning more guns, while people who don’t have guns aren’t becoming gun owners? Let’s consider two scenarios and see which would theoretically make more sense when it comes to making us safe. Take a group of ten people and ten guns. Is this population more likely to be able to protect itself if one person owns all ten guns or if each person has a gun. Guns per capita will measure this the same way, but the latter would seem to be the better in making the population safer. Also, there is a depreciating value of of each gun if one person owns many. After all, you can only hold and fire so many guns at once. So, if anything we should be comparing the number of gun murders per 100,000 and the percentage of residences that own guns.

So, let’s assume Glen collected the murders per 100,000 correctly, and now let’s look up what the percentage of residences who say they own a gun. That data I found here and here. Now, in some years the question was asked multiple times, and there is some notable variances in the percentages. In 1996, there is a variance of 6 points. Of course, that’s an issue with sample selection and self-reported data. But let’s take it and compare it to the gun murder rate and see what’s the correlation.

You can put this data into Excel and do a linear fit to see what results I got. Using the data from 1993 to 2011, I found a positive correlation; that is, more residences with guns, the more gun murders. In fact, the variance of the data that could be explained by this factor was over 40% (R^2>0.4)! And the result was statistically significant (p<<0.05). So, using the data that is an appropriate measure and with actual statistics (rather than just lookey here), it would indicate that more guns very much explains more gun-related murders. However, that would be rather incomplete analysis. One thing I noted was how the year 1993 was such an outlier. If you do not include that data point, then the correlation is barely positive and the variance is very small. So, in the best case scenario for gun-right advocates, more guns makes us a little less safe.

However, this is no where near a complete analysis. For one thing, there are many other factors to consider. In this same time period, there were changes in law enforcement which could have simply put more bad guys in jail before they could do more murders. The population has become older, and most of the violent crime is done by young men; few young men per 100,000 means fewer likely criminals. There have been community efforts to decrease gang influence and numbers. Etc., etc., etc. A proper analysis would need to include all these factors and more, measure how strong an effect they have, and then you could say how much gun ownership played a role. But those results are hard to get, both from the assumptions in the sociological models to the data gathered. I already noted how the data about gun ownership is a bit problematic.

So I don’t make any conclusions from what I have done, other than Glen Beck is pretty much spreading propaganda, and even a basic understanding of statistics shows how wrong and incompetent he is. Still, lots of people are going to be using this argument, even though the data, when more correctly considered, gives exactly the opposite result. It’s crappy arguments like this that make people believe all statistics are invalid (except for the ones they like), and in this area of politics it means lives saved or lost. So to me, this is serious.

What’s the best solution? I don’t know. I’d need to do real research. You know, that thing Glen doesn’t do. If you want to figure things out, at least look at Google Scholar and see what’s in the peer-reviewed literature. They at least know what ‘per capita’ means.

Creationist Education–Propaganda & Bad Pedagogy

This story has been out for a bit, but only more recently was it confirmed:

This was a quiz given to 4th graders in South Carolina. It was first posted up on Reddit  but the origins of the quiz were uncertain, and there was worthy skepticism if it was legitimate. It had the craziness of young-earth creationists, but was it really the sort of indoctrination they were using in the classroom? A lot of discussion happened at The Friendly Atheist’s blog, along with more anecdotes from the father of the child that took this quiz. (Apparently, the student had learned how to repeat creationists soundbites thoughtlessly.)

Well, it is declared confirmed by Snopes, and that is because Answers in Genesis (AiG) has “confessed” to being behind this, along with confirming the school that had the quiz administered. You can see this getting Internet press, including against at the Friendly Atheist and the Panda’s Thumb.

Do I have to say anything about how terrible this is from a science point of view? The Earth isn’t billions of years old? The Flood made all the fossils? Ahhh. AHHHH!

But what was surprising to me was the structure of the test from an educational point of view. From the point of pedagogy, it is the worst possible form of teaching and makes “learning” no more than memorizing bite-sized answers in disconnected fashion. Hell, a bunch of these questions that are multiple choice are stupidly made. When you produce and MC test, you not only provide a correct (or in this case, “correct”) answer, but you also need to provide distractors that will catch students that are not getting the material. But just look at the fossil question (#16): the possible causes of fossils are tornadoes, lightning, evolution, and a global flood? Tell me, who even thinks lightning makes fossils? And ‘evolution’ doesn’t even make sense as an answer. The way this question is made not only misinforms the student, it was created by someone that doesn’t even understand the question they are trying to ask!

The question designer has confused the fossil record as evidence for evolution into evolution making fossils (there can be fossils and evolution be false); the person has confused lightning as a possible element in forming early organic molecules and led to life and the creation of fossils; the person has also apparently confused the probability arguments about evolution, such that a DNA molecule coming together by chance is like a tornado going through a junk yard and forming a Boeing 747. That’s my best guess as to how they made such a stupid, stupid question. You have to know fuck-all about biology to be this bad. And this isn’t because the answer is creationist crap; it’s because to make a good multiple choice question you have to know not just the “right” answer but the students’ likely wrong answers. This question is not even wrong!

Or take a look at the written response question about fossils (#17). Fossils are “billions of dead things”? Wow, that’s so informative. All this quiz wanted was to see if the student could recite their soundbite. Never mind about how fossils are formed (minerals replacing organics), or under what conditions will you get fossils, or anything that could even be a science question. There is only the ability to repeat what was said, not connected to anything else. It’s just a creedal statement from the Council of Ni-I-don’t-see-evidence-for-evolution-ea. I also note the student misspelled ‘buried’ but didn’t get any points off. I guess it’s good enough that the student can make the anti-science noises. Screw literacy, it’s not like we need to read anything; just believe what Ken Ham tells you.

Now, it’s not clear who created this quiz, but given the name of it, the pictures used, and the form of the questions, I’m betting it was part of the curriculum package from AiG. On their webpage where it is sold it mentions a discussion package, so I’m going to make the reasonable guess that the teacher had this quiz from AiG and made photocopies for the class. Therefore I’m pinning this creation squarely on AiG; still, that the teacher thought it was a good DVD to show and a good quiz to administer doesn’t reflect well on him or her as an educator.

Ken Ham et al. — they know just about as much biology as they know about education. They think that learning is about memorizing a bunch of discombobulated garbage that must be regurgitated on demand. This is the lowest form of learning, and it shows no depth, no understanding, no transfer of knowledge, nothing that can actually be applied to anything else besides it being some dogma. Moreover, the things that are rote memorized, such as you can’t know about the distant past if you weren’t there, that cuts off actual inquiry and discovery. It’s learning about how to not explore, how to not learn. This quiz not only rams against the last 200 years of biology and geology, it plows past the last 100 years of educational research. I’m betting the people at AiG have as much scorn for Charles Darwin as they do for John Dewey. They know as much about the Cretaceous period as they do about constructivism.

Creationists: they’re not only undermining education at the factual level, they’re undermining the very notion of education itself. They only know dogma and all else is heresy. There is no thinking, just selling a product. Please note: educate =/= indoctrinate, and teaching =/= marketing.

And really, isn’t it sad if the whole of your theology can be learned in an afternoon by 4th graders? If reading and understanding the Bible is that easy, … geez, I can’t think of a worse insult for the Bible.

Lawmakers Know Science Better than Scientists?

There has been plenty of politicizing of science by the past administration, such as censoring environmental reports, but now it looks like members of Congress are trying to strangle science in the womb–sorry for that image.

But it looks to be the case that it will be lawmakers deciding what sorts of things deserve funding, rather than the actual experts in those fields.

The legislation, being worked up by Representative Lamar Smith (R-TX), represents the latest-and bluntest-attack on NSF by congressional Republicans seeking to halt what they believe is frivolous and wasteful research being funded in the social sciences. Last month Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) successfully attached language to a 2013 spending bill that prohibits NSF from funding any political science research for the rest of the fiscal year unless its director certifies that it pertains to economic development or national security. Smith’s draft bill, called the “High Quality Research Act,” would apply similar language to NSF’s entire research portfolio across all the disciplines it supports.

Go read the rest of the article. This is basically a call back to the stupid statements such as those from governor Sarah Palin back in 2008 about spending money on fruit flies; she thought it was a waste, even though the research done with such flies has focuses on issues of neurology and pathology and issues which even one of her children has.

Do you really want know-nothing politicians who deny most of the basic science out there to be deciding what is worth researching? When all congressional Republicans deny global warming, when there is wide denial of evolution, when there are those that keep funding things like NCCAM that wastes money on things we know don’t work: are these the sorts of people you want deciding what is real? I’m sorry, but the last people to tell me about reality is a politician.

If you are in the district of one of the politicians supporting this legislation, let them know that they don’t know jack about science.

Moving the Stones of Baalbek–The Wonders of Roman Engineering

Previously I had talked about an amazing piece of computational engineering from the ancient world, the Antikythera mechanism, which was also posted up at A Tippling Philosopher. In the comments there, a discussion came up about another wonder of antiquity which has attracted all sorts of speculations among alternative thinkers. This is the construction of the temple complex at the city of Baalbek, also known as Heliopolis, in modern-day Lebanon, about 70 kilometers* north of Damascus. The site has considerable antiquity, but it is the large stones at the temple, especially the three known as the Trilithon, that have garnered the greatest attention, each weighing in around 800 tons.* And deservedly so, as they are some of the largest single objects ever moved in the pre-modern era.

There are standard explanations for this place, but as noted, alternative scholars like to also propose other ideas. So, here I will look at what sorts of strange hypotheses have been proposed, and then I will describe what is the most likely explanation based on current knowledge of the site. No matter which explanation (giants, aliens, Romans), the structure is a wonder all its own and should inspire awe. If only we could have seen it in its heyday.

First off, a little bit about the location. Baalbek is in the Beqaa Valley, which in the Hellenistic period was called Coele Syria. The location of the megalithic structures is atop of a hill in the region, known as Tel Baalbek. Numerous archaeological expeditions have gone to the site starting in the 19th century, primarily German and French groups, and into the 20th century research continued. To this day there is still literature published about the location and calls for further looks into the chronology of the place.

The site has a long history, and newer expeditions have extended that history even farther than many would have known. The first German expeditions had been unable to find anything there before the Roman period (after the conquests of Pompey in c. 64 BCE), but later expeditions have found Persian, bronze age, and even neolithic artifacts, making the place a settled area for thousands of years. After the time of Constantine, the temple complex there became devoted to Christianity, many of the pagan artifacts destroyed, and later the region would be under the jurisdiction of the Islamicate with its own architectural features and history, including the brickwork portion of the walls.

With its long history and monuments, many legends have been attached to the megaliths. While the summary by Alouf (1949) is very much out of date, it relates many of the legends of that region, mostly from Arabs. Some believed that the monument was the construction of the Nephilim, the giants mentioned in Genesis that were destroyed by the Deluge, and some creationists believe this today (see also here). For those that don’t believe in the supernatural in Genesis, they may instead see the giants as somehow related to aliens. Also related to the Bible, some believed that the structure was created by Nimrod, ordering the giants to built up the location. Others claim that this was the location of the Tower of Babel. Still others say that it was built by Adam’s son, Cain, making this the oldest building in the world.

In modern times, new legends have been attached to the site, probably the most notable one is due to one person (and rarely can we pin a legend down to an individual), Zecharia Sitchin [EDIT: Jason Colavito informs me that the following idea is older than Sitchin; in fact, it was Soviet propaganda.]. Starting in the 1970s, Sitchin made all sorts of claims about Sumerian culture and their contact with aliens from the planet Nibiru, very much of it getting academic ire. What Sitchin believed was that the site, especially the trilithon stones, acted as the landing pad for extraterrestrial space craft, probably shuttles coming from their mother ship (cf. Sitchin 1999). He also claimed to find evidence of the use of Baalbek in the Epic of Gilgamesh, though unfortunately it appears to be wishful thinking. Nonetheless, this is the idea presented in Ancient Aliens, though the show is also inconsistent in saying the Nazca Lines were runways.

Along with these legendary claims comes the belief in the extreme antiquity of the site. Various sources will claim the megaliths there are over 9000 years old, and this also fits into the idea of Genesis (the earth is less than 10,000 years old) and its race of giants, aliens making civilization-forming contact with the pre-human apes, or some sort of Atlantis-like civilization. It is of the opinion of David Childress (2000) that the construction was from a civilization known as the Osirian Empire which existed before the Egyptian dynastic period and contemporary with Atlantis. So not only are there amazing claims about who is responsible for creating this site, there are claims of extreme age.

Lastly, when it comes to legends, there are some attached to just a single stone, and one that isn’t even part of the Baalbek temple complex. It is a stone about 800 meters from the tel, still not taken out of the ground. Known as the Stone of the Pregnant Woman, it has a mass of 1000 tons!* Stories surround the object. One gives it its name: a woman was said to know how to lift the great rock, but she was pregnant and would only reveal this knowledge should she receive prenatal care and her costs of living until her due date. Once the time came, no great secrets were revealed. Others have said that touching the stone helps ones fertility. In just the last few decades, another even larger stone was found south and across the road from the Pregnant Woman stone; it was mostly buried, but it appears to have a mass on the order of 1200 tons.* These stones appear to be the same as those used in the trithilon, though they were not completely worked into shape, let alone detached from the quarry rock (Ruprechtsberger 1999). Nonetheless, these stones help show where much of the building material at Baalbek came from.

So, how on earth were these dense pieces of earth moved before the innovations of gas-powered engines or any of the machines we take for granted? Sure, we have cranes that can lift these rocks, but we have modern alloys and steel, powerful motors, and years of experience and education for engineers. How could this have been done in antiquity? According to Alouf (1949), to move the Stone of the Pregnant woman would require a team of 40,000 men, an effective impossibility of concentrated humans with the needed coordination. Doesn’t it require some sort of otherwise unknown advanced civilization to do the job?

Bitcoins and Bubbles

It was only about a month ago from a friend that I had learned about this new, electronic form of currency known as Bitcoin, and now it’s in the news. Unfortunately, it’s in the news for the reason that there is bad news. So, what is this stuff, why does anyone care, and why is it scaring some people?

First off, Bitcoin has a murky history. It was formed by an anonymous hacker among hackers, and it has several purposes that many libertarian- or anarchist-minded folks wanted, and the way it came together is rather clever. First off, the programmer and his or her crowd wanted a currency that would not have the problem of inflation: the value of the currency could not be lowered by simply making more of that currency. This is something that gold is useful for, since extracting more gold is very difficult, while printing paper dollars is easy. Second, they wanted to make transactions anonymously; it should not be possible to track who is the person that made purchase X. This is important for those that don’t want the limitations of purchases that governments may enforce, from drugs to certain toys. Third, they wanted to make it effectively impossible to fake a transaction, so unless you have a stupid-easy password then your money is safe and you can’t make up money out of nowhere. Lastly, they wanted to create market forces to make it so transactions are as a cheaply administered as possible. When you use a debit or credit card, while you do not incur a cost, the merchant can be paying as much or more than the profits made from the sale. That’s why you will often see at various locations that you must spend so much to use a credit card; otherwise they will loose money selling you things.

When it comes to these goals, Bitcoin is very impressive. When it comes to the first goal, there is a certain number of Bitcoins out there, and slowly does that amount grow over years; finally after a few decades, the number of Bitcoins in the world stops growing, and inflation is not possible. A simple algorithm will regulate this initial growth in the amount of coin in the world, enough to try and entice people to get interested, and then inflation ends. If you don’t understand why that is desirable, look at Weimar Germany, in which the inflation had gotten so bad that it took a 3 billion Mark. In such a situation, the costs of what you need to buy goes up, but your wages will be delayed; too much inflation, and it’s basically the same as getting a pay cut.

On the point of anonymity and authenticity of transactions, this is where the programmers shine. In order to hack and fake a transaction, you have to insert into the stream of past transactions that other people on their computers have stored, and it requires some amazing computing power. As it was explained to me (see also here and here), you don’t have to worry about someone decoding the system until someone builds a Dyson sphere to get the needed energy for all the computations. In other words, the NSA, CIA, FBI, or whatever shadowy organization you can think of simply cannot break the system unless that have computers that exist in time and space and made of matter. That makes things pretty safe. So long as you don’t do anything stupid, like give people access to your account. So basically, you need a TARDIS.

As for transactions, this is where markets come into play. For someone to exchange money with another person from a distance, you need someone in the middle, and they won’t do it for free. As mentioned above, this is one way that credit card companies make money, my taking a bit from one party for the cost of the transaction. But with Bitcoin, a transaction is facilitated by going out and finding those transaction chains out in the Internet and verifying them. For a cost, but then it can be competitive  If just about anyone can devote their laptop to the process, then that means there are lots of competitors vying to carry out transactions. With lots of potential folks doing that, it means there are lots of opportunities to have the transaction completed quickly and to find the lowest bidder. This is going to be the big scare for companies like Visa and PayPal, as now they can have many, many new competitors in the market.

There is a fair amount of this that can only be appreciated from a programming level, and unfortunately that is not my specialty. But when my friend who is in that category described it to me, I could see how clever it was. It is certainly admirable, and given it’s security it would potentially make one’s currency exchanges even better than if done with real green-backs; paper money can be forged, after all, but Bitcoins cannot in any reasonable sense.

Oh, and there is one other feature to consider: it’s legality. As best as I understand, the use of this item as a medium of exchange is allowed under the law, so long as no one is claiming that the currency is backed by the faith of the Federal Reserve. And that’s fine to many of the hackers out there that probably want an end to that government institution.

But what has been making this digital currency so news-worthy? What is all the hubbub, bub?

“Congressional” Hearing about UFOs

It appears that late this April, there will be a hearing with expert witnesses and congressional figures about alien contact with earthlings in modern times and what the government has been doing over the last several decades.

Well, more correctly these congressional figures are all former members of the US Congress, and this is not under the auspices of the federal government, and none of the witnesses will be under oath. Rachel Maddow talks about it here:

These sorts of fake citizen hearings are not new, and Robert Scheaffer has the background info for you check out. So don’t expect anything new to be produced here, unless something is made up–again, the witnesses are not under oath.

The truth is out there, but it may not be in Washington.