Ethics

Vocab Malone has posted a second set of arguments, addressing more directly the argument that some sort of capacity for sentience is a proper criterion for personhood. He begins with a few quotations, none of which address the question of personhood. The first, from Millard Erickson, says that abortion involves “the taking of a human life.” That’s correct. The second, from Jerome Lejeune, says that abortion “kills a member of our species.” That’s also correct. The third, from R.C. Sproul, says, “abortion-on-demand is evil, no one has the moral right to choose it. If it is an offense against life, the government must not permit it.” This doesn’t actually follow, if one thinks that it is possible to morally use lethal force in self-defense, in war time, and as a form of legal punishment. As it happens, Sproul does think that it is legitimate for governments to engage in just war and capital punishment. I’m not certain how he reconciles his views on those topics with the quoted statement, but I suspect he says that these forms of taking human life do not constitute “an offense against life” and are not evil. Vocab gives four arguments that he says he’s seen used to argue for the moral legitimacy of abortion: Sentience makes a person and the unborn are not sentientSize makes a person and the unborn are too smallViability makes a person and the unborn are not viable on their ownWantedness makes a person and the unborn are not wanted#1 is essentially my position. #3 is close to the U.S. Supreme Court’s position, but I don’t think it’s quite accurate. #2 and #4 strike me as completely implausible. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that states may not prohibit abortion for any reason prior to viability, the time at which a fetus can survive on its own independently of the mother (including with artificial assistance), or after viability when abortion is necessary to save the life of the mother. The point of viability is something that has shifted as technology has improved, and could potentially become completely meaningless, so I don’t see it as a plausible ethical criterion. So what does Vocab think is wrong with #1? He writes: “A component of this argument is it implies the pro-life position is weak because abortion is not cruel because the fetus cannot feel pain. Does this mean if I am unconscious or sleeping, I have lost my personhood?" This response misconstrues my position. Sentience is significant not just because it involves the possibility of actual perceptions at a given time, but because it allows for the sort of being that can have beliefs, desires, intentions, and interests. The absence of such a capacity entails that a being cannot have beliefs, desires, intentions, and interests. This doesn’t mean we cease to have those things when we are temporarily unconscious. When I sleep, I may not be conscious of the external world (though I sometimes do perceive external stimuli in lucid dreams), but I still have the capacity for such conscious awareness, and continue to maintain beliefs, desires, intentions and have interests. A better objection to my position would be a case where I sustain some kind of brain damage which puts me into a persistent vegetative state, yet there is still some possibility of recovery. In my opinion, the only way I would have some possibility of recovery and be the same person would be if I continued to have beliefs, desires, and intentions represented in my brain even in the persistent vegetative state. If those were all lost, and biological recovery were still possible–say, through some therapy made possibly by embryonic stem cells transplanted into my brain, which ironically, Vocab’s view would likely make unethical–the person who would then come into being would be starting over afresh as a new person. Vocab quotes Scott Rae observing that a person who has their legs cut off is harmed even if they feel no pain in the process, and even if their legs are not useful for locomotion. That is no objection to my position–I agree that there is harm there, because it is done to a person in conflict with their beliefs, desires, intentions, and interests, without their consent. Next, Vocab says that a fetus is “sensitive to touch at ten weeks and eleven weeks” and “most certainly does feel pain” by the third month. I believe it is a mistake to conflate “sensitive to touch” with “experiences sensations.” Reflexive actions don’t identify experiences. Further, I haven’t identified the ability to experience sensations with personhood, since I’ve already observed that animals can experience pain, but don’t think that necessarily entails the immorality of killing animals for food or other reasons (though I do think it probably entails a moral requirement for humane treatment). Vocab goes on to complain that a “developmental view, in which the basic thesis is humans become persons by some ability they acquire and not by the kind of entity they already are” is rarely “defend[ed] … with any rigor” and asks “Who says they get to lay out the qualification for personhood?” Regarding the first point, Vocab’s view is also one which attributes a right to life at a particular point, when two living haploid cells, a sperm and an egg, meet. He’s defended this by reference to two features, (1) that at this point there is a complete set of DNA and (2) left to itself, it will (if all goes well) develop into what we all would agree is a human being. (1) is clearly insufficient, since any somatic cell sloughed off a person’s skin has that property as well, and (2) only carries any persuasive weight from its appeal to future status rather than present. His subsequent question seems to assume that arguments for a view of personhood are dependent upon a claim to authority or power, rather than for their own intuitive force–and I think that’s just mistaken. He then asks, “Shouldn’t a civilized and ethical society desire to err on the side of life?” In the way this is written, I can’t agree–for the cycle of life requires death. I do agree that we should err on the side of protecting persons and treating humanely creatures that can experience pain, but that gives no reason to think the boundary line is where Vocab draws it. He writes that “It is an artificial and arbitrary distinction with no scientific grounding. One more reason the human/person distinction is artificial is because I have never met a person who is not a human, nor have I ever met a human who is not a person. Is this even possible?” I disagree completely with this description. The question of sentient capacities is one with very strong scientific grounding, though we are uncertain of exactly where the boundary is. The fact that Vocab only recognizes humans as a clear-cut case of persons on earth today just shows that he isn’t taking seriously the ideas that some other contemporary species (such as chimpanzees, dolphins, and whales) might meet reasonable criteria of personhood, some past species (Neandertal) probably did meet reasonable criteria of personhood, and extraterrestrial intelligent life might meet reasonable criteria of personhood. Suppose for a moment that we found out that a subset of human beings turned out to be a different species, incapable of interbreeding with the rest of us. It’s a consequence of Vocab’s view that this subset would not be persons. My intuition is completely to the contrary–creatures that are like us to the extent that they have beliefs, desires, intentions, and interests are persons, regardless of their biological makeup. Vocab’s final argument is his strongest, which is that my view has the potential consequence that some forms of infanticide and euthanasia–namely, those in cases where the conditions for personhood are not met–may be ethical. This is correct, presuming that personhood is the only justification for not permitting killing. I suggest that there are at least two other possibilities. One is just a recognition of the epistemic limits of determining personhood–that is, I believe, a reason for erring on the side of caution, and setting legal limits outside the boundaries of personhood. Another is a consequentialist argument about public policy considerations, which also argues for erring on the side of caution. While policies of permissible infanticide have been not been uncommon in history, they raise possibilities for brutalization or desensitization of the killer, among other negative consequences that go beyond the immediate act. This is itself a possible argument against abortions of fetuses that have recognizable human form. Early on in this post, Vocab wrote “It’s not as if there is a strong consensus, anyway.” On the contrary, I think there is virtually no support for Vocab’s view in history, from religion, from philosophy, or from science. In the United States, complete bans on abortion only became common after the Civil War, with the first post-quickening abortion prohibitions starting earlier, in the 1820s. I don’t think Vocab has come anywhere near making his case. He’s not addressed many of the points I brought up in my prior post, and though he cited Judith Jarvis Thomson, he hasn’t addressed the case of a conflict between two rights-holders, where one is dependent upon the other, which her violinist example brings up in an argument for the moral permissibility of abortion even if the fetus is counted as a person. Nor has he addressed the harm to non-actualized twins, or the case of cloned human beings who might develop without the process of fertilization (though I suspect he would identify them as persons at either the point of nuclear transfer or electric shock, and would probably have some reason for calling the process itself unethical). His view entails that IUDs, morning-after pills, in vitro fertilization, and embryonic stem cell research are immoral. His view suggests that if a building containing frozen embryos and small children were on fire, one should not give any preference to rescuing the children over the embryos. His view entails that a particular genetic makeup, rather than features like having beliefs, desires, intentions, and interests, is what’s relevant to personhood. His view doesn’t make sense of the idea of non-human persons. I see no plausibility to the idea that fertilization is a morally relevant event or that having a particular genetic makeup is the morally important part of being a person. UPDATE (December 14, 2009): Corrected sentence about U.S. abortion laws and added reference link to Wikipedia. UPDATE: It should be noted that Vocab misconstrues Peter Singer’s position on the relative worth of humans and animals; Singer speaks for himself on the subject on an episode of the Ethics Bites podcast: ...

Vocab Malone has put up his first post arguing for the position that “the unborn human embryo is a full person at the moment of conception and should be afforded the full rights due human beings by their very essence." Criteria of Personhood or Humanity He starts by looking at the question of what it is to be human or to be a person, citing a few historical references of individual characteristics–being rational, being “in relationship,” and “the capacity for self-objectification.” He expresses doubt that any single characteristic is appropriate, on the grounds that human beings undergo changes of state such as being asleep or being drugged, or not thinking. I agree with him that the characteristics he has listed won’t do the trick, and I also agree with him that features that go away when we sleep are inadequate. But it doesn’t follow that there is no single feature that can do the trick–if the feature is a capacity that we have, for example, that capacity doesn’t cease to exist when it’s not being used. He goes on to note that lack of personhood doesn’t entail that any treatment is morally permissible, pointing out animals as examples of nonpersons that deserve humane treatment. Again, I agree with him–and observe the converse, that possession of personhood doesn’t mean that there are no cases where it can be moral to kill a person–cases of self-defense, euthanasia, capital punishment, or war come to mind as possibilities. But what makes animals deserve humane treatment is that they have certain capacities and interests, such as an inner mental life that includes at the very least the ability to feel sensations–and note that humane treatment doesn’t necessarily entail a right to life on the part of an animal, or a duty on our part not to kill them. Vocab appears to want to lay the groundwork for rejecting the use of a criterion of personhood in favor of a criterion of humanity as his standard for arguing against abortion, but here he only offers a promissory note and doesn’t provide an argument to that effect. I think this is a mistake, however, because ethical distinctions should be based on morally relevant features, and I don’t believe species membership is any more relevant in and of itself to being the holder of rights or of being the object of duties than is race or gender. If a member of an intelligent alien species capable of language were to make contact with us, my intuition is that we would attribute personhood to that entity and give it the same consideration as a human being. Likewise if we manage to build artificially intelligent, self-directed machines with beliefs, desires, and intentions, though the intuition is not as strong there unless I imagine them to have mental lives similar to our own. Conception: Fertilization Even though Vocab hasn’t yet given a reason to reject a personhood criterion in favor of a human being criterion, the rest of his case is solely about human life rather than personhood, which I think is the wrong issue for the reasons I just gave. He argues that human life begins at conception, and clarifies that he means fertilization rather than implantation. This choice means that 30-50% of human lives are spontaneously aborted due to the failure of the fertilized ova to implant in the uterine wall. If Vocab thinks that this loss of human life is the loss of beings with rights and interests to whom we owe a duty to enable them to live out normal lives, then he has some explaining to do. First of all, why would a loving God create a human reproductive system that resulted in such a Holocaust of lives lost before they get a chance to start? Second, why has no one considered this to be a serious ethical problem that we need to urgently devote medical resources to address? We can call this the problem of natural abortion, which has both a natural evil and human evil component that requires justification. Complete at Fertilization? Vocab says that at conception (by which he means fertilization), “every human is complete and alive.” I agree that a fertilized human ovum is alive–as life is a continuous process, arising from living components, at least until synthetic biology gets to the point of creating life from entirely nonliving components. Sperm and ova are also alive. But it is certainly not complete–zygotes have no brains, no central nervous systems, no organs, no body parts other than undifferentiated, identical cells. An Individual at Fertilization? Vocab also says that at fertilization and pre-implantation, “it is not merely a collection of cells lumped together but an actual individual.” This also need not be the case. At fertilization, a zygote is an undifferentiated cell that undergoes a process of division without changing size for several days, to become a blastocyst by about the fifth day. During this period each of its cells is totipotent, meaning that each individual cell has the potential to become a full human being. Sometimes more than one of the cells does become a separate human being, as in the case of identical twins. In the case of identical twins, if they don’t split completely, they may become conjoined twins or parasitic twins, or one twin may be completely absorbed into the other or otherwise fail to develop and become a vanishing twin. Where a vanishing twin occurs with fraternal twins, the resulting individual can be a chimera, with two sets of DNA. Should we also grieve for those twins who fail to develop, either due to failure to split off or failure to develop? The science fiction scenarios of teleportation that create interesting philosophical puzzles for the notion of personal identity are real puzzles for a view that attributes personhood to zygotes, though without the additional problem of memories and experiences, since zygotes are undifferentiated cells. Blastocysts Once the zygote becomes a blastocyst, it forms into an outer layer of cells, which later becomes the placenta, and an inner cell mass of pluripotent embryonic stem cells, each of which is capable of differentiating into any kind of human cell. Only after this stage does the blastocyst implant in the wall of the uterus, about a week after fertilization, and begin taking nutrients directly from the blood of the mother–a dependency that can itself be of moral significance, as Judith Jarvis Thomson’s violinist argument shows. As already mentioned above, a great many fertilized ova do not reach this stage. Further, the percentages of implant failure are higher for in vitro fertilization (IVF), a procedure which Vocab’s criteria would have to declare unethical, even though it is the only way that many couples can have their own biological offspring. It should also be noted that the process of therapeutic cloning involves taking a female ovum (which Vocab doesn’t seem to indicate he considers to be a bearer of rights on its own), removing its haploid DNA, inserting the nucleus from a (diploid) human somatic cell (this is called somatic cell nuclear transfer), and giving it a shock to cause it to start dividing just like a fertilized egg. This occurs without fertilization by a human sperm. Once it reaches the blastocyst stage, its inner cell mass is harvested for embryonic stem cells, which destroys the blastocyst in the process. The natural process of fertilization never takes place, but there’s little doubt that reproductive human cloning is possible via this process. Vocab’s choice of fertilization as key suggests that there is no moral issue with this process, even though it also has some potential to become a human being. Further, if fertilization is a necessary, not just a sufficient, condition for rights, Vocab’s view suggests that human clones would have no rights. Fully Programmed? Vocab goes on to say that “the embryo is already ‘fully programmed’ (to use computer language). This means the pre-implanted embryo needs no more information input at any further point in its development.” While this was formerly believed to be the case about the individual embryo’s biology, we now know that the environment of development can play a role in the characteristics that will come to be exhibited, such as from mRNA supplied from the mother to a developing embryo after fertilization and prior to zygote formation. But in any case, I would maintain that it’s not our cellular biology that gives us moral value, as opposed to our capacities to have interests, desires, intentions, plans, sensations, and so forth–all capacities that zygotes lack. Vocab ends this piece with some anthropomorphizing of zygotes, which appears to me to be a highly misleading form of argument–his analogies cannot be taken literally, since zygotes have no mental processes. Human and Living = Human Being? I agree with Vocab that a fertilized human ovum is living, that it’s human, and that, if all goes well, it will become one (or more) individual human beings. I don’t agree that it’s yet a person or a “human being,” since it lacks the requisite parts and capacities. To sum up: ...

Local Christian hip-hop artist and slam poet Vocab Malone, who I’ve interacted with online and met when Daniel Dennett spoke at ASU early this year, asked me in January for my thoughts on abortion and personhood. He’s now written a paper on the subject which he’s asked me to critique, and we thought it would be interesting to see how it would work out to do it in a public manner via our respective blogs. The plan is that he will post successive sections of his paper on his blog, and I’ll respond here, with cross-links to share some traffic and discussion. Both of us allow blog comments; it probably makes the most sense to post your comments at the blog for the person you’d like to see a response from. Vocab has posted an introduction and the comments that I originally sent to him on the subject at his blog, Backpack Apologetics. He’s taking a position that I think is very difficult to justify, that full personhood and human rights are acquired at the moment of conception–we’ll have to see which definition of conception he chooses, fertilization or implantation. Just to throw out a little issue I raised this semester in one of my classes–some have argued that climate change raises the ethical issue of a duty to future generations. If we can have moral duties now to people who don’t exist at all yet, what does that imply about duties to embryos? ...

I’ve posted comments about the reasons to be skeptical about Rom Houben’s facilitated communication at a number of blogs, where the response of some seems to be that there is no point of such testing. The reasons for not testing have included (1) that the videos are a “straw man”; (2) that criticisms from a stage magician and a philosopher/bioethicist are not worthy of attention; and (3) the testimony from Dr. Laureys, the facilitator Mrs. Wouters, and Houben’s family is much stronger evidence than what we can see in the videos, and that Dr. Laureys says he already conducted a single-blind test which showed that the communication came from Houben, not the facilitator, and to reject that is irrational hyper-skepticism that assumes they are lying. The first argument makes no sense to me. The videos clearly show the facilitator rapidly typing away with Houben’s finger even while he’s looking away or has his eyes closed, which is by itself a very strong reason to be skeptical, especially in light of the past record of facilitated communication. The second argument is not only ad hominem, but further refuted by similar analysis by a neuroscientist. The last argument is a bit better, but wrongly assumes that the only alternative is that the doctor and family are lying. Facilitated communication isn’t a matter of conscious fraud, it’s a matter of self-deception of the facilitator (enhanced by the expectations and reactions of the family). Given the possibility of unconscious cuing of the facilitator by the doctor, as well as his own vested interest in a positive result, the test he described doing is still far from sufficient to overcome the evidence plainly displayed in the videos. Unfortunately, there is a very strong incentive to believe on the part of the doctor, the facilitator, and the family. To find that the communications are coming from the facilitator would be emotionally devastating, and detrimental to the doctor’s credibility. To test further is to risk a huge potential loss of what has apparently been gained, and I suspect it’s unlikely that we’ll see it happen. But look at it from Houben’s own perspective–further testing is absolutely in his own best interests. For if the facilitator is the one doing the communicating, not him, then he is being further exploited for the satisfaction of his doctor, facilitator, and family, not for his own benefit. He’s not being treated respectfully or as an end, rather than as a means. If he is, in fact, minimally conscious as the brain scans suggest, then speaking on his behalf without his genuine input is doing him even greater harm. If you reject the idea that an hour or so of Houben’s time should be used to do a conclusive, double-blind test to see whether the communications are coming from him or from the facilitator, is it because you want to believe, rather than to know? There is clear possible harm to Hoeben from not doing such a test. There is no harm to Hoeben from such a test, though there’s clearly the risk of painfully dissolving an illusion for the doctor, facilitator, and family. But Hoeben’s interests should be placed above that risk. (Previously on Houben, a post with many links and references.) UPDATE (February 15, 2010): Houben has been put to the test, and it turns out the communications were, in fact, coming from the facilitator. UPDATE (February 20, 2010): David Gorski at the Science-Based Medicine blog has a bit more from the Belgian Skeptics, who were involved in the test. ...

Hackers got access to a trove of private emails from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit that is being trumpeted by those who disbelieve in anthropogenic global warming as proof of scandal. I’ve looked through the data a bit myself–you can find a searchable archive of the emails here. I suspect this collection of emails may end up being put to good research use as the Enron email corpus was. While I found a few embarrassing things, I found no evidence of outright data fabrication or fakery. The main email that has been cited as such evidence is an email from Phil Jones that says: I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.Gavin Schmidt at RealClimate explains: The paper in question is the Mann, Bradley and Hughes (1998) Nature paper on the original multiproxy temperature reconstruction, and the ‘trick’ is just to plot the instrumental records along with reconstruction so that the context of the recent warming is clear. Scientists often use the term “trick” to refer to a “a good way to deal with a problem”, rather than something that is “secret”, and so there is nothing problematic in this at all. As for the ‘decline’, it is well known that Keith Briffa’s maximum latewood tree ring density proxy diverges from the temperature records after 1960 (this is more commonly known as the “divergence problem”–see e.g. the recent discussion in this paper) and has been discussed in the literature since Briffa et al in Nature in 1998 (Nature, 391, 678-682). Those authors have always recommend not using the post 1960 part of their reconstruction, and so while ‘hiding’ is probably a poor choice of words (since it is ‘hidden’ in plain sight), not using the data in the plot is completely appropriate, as is further research to understand why this happens.In other words, “hiding” in this case is using temperature measurement records instead of tree rings as a proxy for temperature records for a period of time where the tree rings are known not to be an accurate proxy, for whatever reason. It’s also claimed that these emails show a concerted effort to subvert the peer review process and stop publications by climate change skeptics, but most of those emails seem to center around an issue where the scandal was actually from the skeptics–the publication of a 2003 paper by Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas in the journal Climate Research that was considered by 13 authors of papers cited to have misrepresented their work. Subsequently, half of the editorial staff of the journal resigned in protest at what they saw as a failure of peer review, and the managing director of the journal’s parent company issued an apology (see Wikipedia’s summary). The emails show that these scientists were upset by Climate Research’s publication of bad science and encouraged protest and those resignations. A few blog posts that seem to have good overviews of the issues: Skeptical Science, “What do the hacked CRU emails tell us?"Real Climate, “The CRU Hack” (followed by over 1,000 comments)Real Climate, “The CRU Hack: Context” (gives background on some of the issues, including the above Climate Research issue). Greenfyre’s, “Climate change Deniers hoax themselves… again."Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub, “Smoking guns in the CRU stolen emails: A real tale of real ethics in science” (what the CRU emails show about treatment of an erroneous climate science paper) An interesting comparison to past scientific controversy is: Carbon Fixated, “Newtongate: the final nail in the coffin of Renaissance and Enlightenment ’thinking’"And, to compare to the climate change skeptics: Bishop Hill, “Climate cuttings 33” (summary of the apparent worst issues)Essex County Conservative Examiner, “Hadley [sic] CRU hacked with release of hundreds of docs and emails”Climate Audit, “CRU Correspondence”Watt’s Up With That, “Mike’s Nature Trick”Watt’s Up With That, “CRU Emails ‘may’ be open to interpretation, but commented code by the programmer tells the real story”Watt’s Up With That, “Spencer on elitism in the IPCC climate machine”The last of these posts, from Univ. of Alabama climate scientist and skeptic Roy W. Spencer, notes that: If all of this sounds incompatible with the process of scientific investigation, it shouldn’t. One of the biggest misconceptions the public has about science is that research is a straightforward process of making measurements, and then seeing whether the data support hypothesis A or B. The truth is that the interpretation of data is seldom that simple. ...

Yesterday I heard Joel Garreau speak again at ASU, as part of a workshop on Plausibility put on by the Consortium for Science, Policy, and Outcomes (CSPO). I previously posted a summary of his talk back in August on the future of cities. This talk was based on his book, Radical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies–and What It Means to Be Human. Garreau was introduced by Paul Berman, Dean of the Sandra Day O’Connor School of Law at ASU, who also announced that Garreau will be joining the law school faculty beginning this spring, as the Lincoln Professor for Law, Culture, and Values. He began by saying that we’re at a turning point in history [has there ever been a time when we haven’t thought that, though?], and he’s going to present some possible scenarios for the next 2, 3, 5, 10, or 20 years, and that his book is a roadmap. The main feature of this turning point is that rather than transforming our environment, we’ll be increasingly transforming ourselves, and we’re the first species to take control of its own evolution, and it’s happening now. At some point in the not-too-distant future, he said, your kid may come home from school in tears about how he can’t compete with the other kids who are more intelligent, more athletic, more attractive, more attentive, and so forth–because you haven’t invested in the human enhancement technologies coming on the market. Your possible reactions will be to suck it up [somebody’s still gotta do the dirty jobs in society?], remortgage the house again to make your kid competitive, or try to get the enhanced kids thrown out of school. What you can’t do is ignore it. He then asked people to raise their hands who could remember when things were still prevalent: ...

The St. Petersburg Times has published another three-part exposé on the Church of Scientology based on interviews with former high-level members. (The first three-part series from June is discussed here; I missed the second three-part series from August about new defectors; all three series may be found on the SP Times website here.) Part 1 (October 31): “Chased by their church: When you leave Scientology, they try to bring you back” An overview of this new, third series of exposures based on information from former high-ranking members of the Church of Scientology such as Mark “Marty” Rathbun and Mike Rinder. ...

Eli Rabett and Pieter Tans identified some errors in Ian Plimer’s book’s claim of selective data reporting from Mauna Loa measurements of atmospheric carbon, which Tim Lambert at the Deltoid ScienceBlog tracks to climate change skeptic Ferdinand Engelbeen. But Plimer doesn’t cite Engelbeen, perhaps because Engelbeen also refutes the argument Plimer is trying to make. This is not the first time Plimer has copied without quoting or citing sources–multiple instances in his book Telling Lies for God have previously been identified by Jeffrey Shallit and me. (Previously on Plimer at this blog.)

ASU’s State Press columnist Catherine Smith authored an op-ed piece promoting last night’s appearance of Christian apologist Ravi Zacharias. This was at least her second such op-ed; a prior one was published on September 17. My letter to the editor, below, didn’t get published, but another critic’s letter did get published. Here’s mine: Catherine Smith quotes Ravi Zacharias as stating that "irreligion and atheism have killed infinitely more than all religious wars of any kind cumulatively put together." This statement not only demonstrates Zacharias' innumeracy, it shows that he continues to make the mistake of attributing killing in the name of political ideologies like Stalinism and communism to atheism. I agree that Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot killed more than religious wars, but it wasn't their atheism that caused that killing. Those killed by religious wars, the Inquisition, and witch trials, however, were killed in the name of religion. Out of fairness, there were no doubt political issues involved in many wars over religion as well, but if you take claims of religiously motivated killing at face value, the death tolls for those killed in the name of religion far exceed the death tolls for those killed in the name of irreligion. Zacharias has a history of attacking atheism with misrepresentations in his books, as documented in Jeff Lowder's "An Emotional Tirade Against Atheism" and Doug Krueger's "That Colossal Wreck," both of which may be found on the Internet as part of the Secular Web (http://www.infidels.org/). I first heard of Zacharias back around 1991, when I sat behind someone on an airplane flight who was reading his book (reviewed by Krueger, linked above), A Shattered Visage. The parts I read were truly awful, about the quality of M. Scott Huse arguments against evolution (a step below Kent Hovind and Ken Ham). I didn't bother to attend, but would be interested in hearing any reports of how it went. UPDATE (November 24, 2017): Steve Baughman has published an exposure of Zacharias' claims to have credentials he does not possess, and to have had academic appointments that did not exist. UPDATE (September 26, 2020): Ravi Zacharias died of cancer earlier this year, but not before being caught in an online relationship scandal. UPDATE (February 11, 2021): Ravi Zacharias International Ministries has publicly released a report on an investigation into abuse charges against Ravi Zacharias, and it found a significant pattern of predatory sexual abuse and a rape allegation. The woman googled “Ravi Zacharias sex scandal” and found the blog RaviWatch, run by Steve Baughman, an atheist who had been tracking and reporting on Zacharias’s “fishy claims” since 2015. Baughman blogged on Zacharias’s false statements about academic credentials, the sexting allegations, and the subsequent lawsuit. When the woman read about what happened to Lori Anne Thompson, she recognized what had happened to that woman was what had happened to her. ...

Paul Haggis, director of the film “Crash” (not to be confused with the David Cronenberg film of the same name), has left Scientology with an open letter published on ex-Scientologist Mark “Marty” Rathbun’s blog (which has also supplied links to Scientology’s reply). One of Haggis’ main complaints is the Church’s homophobia. Was Haggis really in Scientology for three and a half decades without realizing that homosexuality is 1.1 on the “tone scale”? Good for him for leaving, but he must have had blinders on regarding everything he complains about. ...