The seven minute long video was recorded by the daughter, Hillary Adams–who clearly knew what was about to happen to her–back in 2004, [...]]]> I’ve been watching, with morbid fascination, a developing news story about a video that shows an Aransas County Court judge beating his daughter for illegally downloading a video game from the Internet.

The seven minute long video was recorded by the daughter, Hillary Adams–who clearly knew what was about to happen to her–back in 2004, but she had always kept it to herself until she uploaded it to YouTube on Thursday of last week (27th Oct 2011), apparently in response to some recent harassment by her father, Judge William Adams.

There it sat on YouTube, virtually unnoticed, until last night (1st Nov), when Hillary herself posted a link to the video on Reddit. (If you want to watch the video, follow the link. It’s too disturbing to embed into this post.) By the time I became aware of it this morning, via a news story on TorrentFreak, it had already garnered over 500,000 views. I suspect it will have been viewed by well over a million people by the end of the day.

It was interesting to see how news of the video spread through the Internet. When I first searched for the story on Google News, there were just a couple of dozen link to reports, most of them in blogs, or at sites that specialize in dredging up the latest viral story to hit the web.

By this time, the Aransas County court house was being bombarded with phone calls, (they put up a notice asking people to stop calling) and within the next hour, some of the local south Texas news outlets–TV station news and newspaper web sites–were hot on the trail. First they were posting short pieces with the barest of information about the video, but soon they were updating their articles with quotes from the daughter, the mother, and then finally the villain of the piece, Judge Adams himself. Corpus Cristi TV station KRIS now has six stories on this one news item alone.

Concurrently, the story was hitting the national and international press. Not surprisingly, the British Daily Mail, which loves juicy stories like this that provoke moral outrage was one of the first, if not the first major newspaper outlet to publish a story about it (the story up there now is very different from the original), but by early afternoon, CNN, the Fox, ABC News, and the rest had all picked it up.

I’m not sure Hillary Adams was expecting to happen, but I suspect she is somewhat astounded by the amount of coverage her video has gained, all in less than a day.

The other interesting thing is, even though Adams provided most of the information people needed to understand the context of the beating incident with the video, that didn’t stop some of the major outlets from getting a few of the more important facts wrong. In some cases she was depicted as a mentally disabled girl, and in others she was disabled. In fact, she’s neither. She suffers from ataxic cerebral palsy which can make it difficult for a sufferer to move in a coordinate fashion, but one quick look at her other uploaded videos shows her to be a bright young woman and an accomplished pianist, so any disability she has is very mild.

There were also a couple of calls for the Child Protective Services to get involved, even though she was 16 at the time the video was made, and that was seven years ago. You do the math. Fortunately for the press, the internet is a very forgiving place and you can quickly send mistakes and glaring inaccuracies down the memory hole, never to be mentioned again.

Another fascinating aspect to the story is how easily people can jump to a very specific conclusion about a family’s history from just one seven minute video. Don’t get me wrong. There is no way to sugarcoat what is shown in the video. There is absolutely no excuse for subjecting any child to the kind of beating and abuse William Adams inflicted on his daughter. I don’t know how illegal his behavior is, but any time you have to raise your hand to a child, it’s because you have failed as a parent.

After clicking on a few links, I came across an old blog that Hillary Adams had written between the age of 19 and 21, and it tells a more complicated story.

You would think that being subjected to such abusive treatment from her father (and this was not the only time) their relationship would be pretty cut and dried, but from reading some of the old entries from her blog, that is definitely not the case. For one, even though her mother tells us that she escaped her abusive marriage, Hillary continued to live with her father after the separation (she was 19 or 20 at the time), and there are several comments about her dad in her blog that any teenage daughter might make — being excited to go with him to Six Flags for the first time, going to buy a car with him, expressing her love for him, and so on. The only hint that all was not well in their relationship is when she’s about to finally moving out of the house (at the age of 20), saying that it is her father’s behavior that has forced the issue. Even then, she tells her friends that he’s been nice to her recently and that she is glad that not to be moving out on such a negative note.

Of course, it is often the case with abusive relationships that the abuser can turn on the charm and everything is sweetness and light for a time, and that might well be the case here, but given the overall content of her journal (i.e. not for parents’ eyes!) I believe Hillary when she said today that she wants her dad to get the help he needs, not to see him punished.

Finally, one does have to wonder about the mindset of a father who clearly doesn’t think he’s done anything wrong, even after all this time:

“She’s mad because I’ve ordered her to bring the car back, in a nutshell, but yeah that’s me, I lost my temper,” Adams told us. “Her mother was there, she wasn’t hurt.. it was a long time ago.. I really don’t want to get into this right now because as you can see my life’s been made very difficult over this child,” Adams continued.

When asked if he felt he was going to face any suspension or discipline from the state over the video Adams responded, “In my mind I have not done anything wrong other than discipline my child when she was caught stealing. I did lose my temper, I’ve apologized.. it looks worse than it is.”

He can bluster all he wants about discipline, but the bolded part of his comment says it all. “This child” is the cause of all his current trouble, and that’s all he cares about.

Fortunately, having had a glimpse into his daughter’s life, she seems to have grown up to be an extremely talented, musical, well-adjusted young woman, with plenty of friends and in a healthy relationship with her boyfriend. She’s definitely a little on the wild side, but she seems to be living life to the full, and that’s what really matters.

Good for her.

Update: I knew she was a smart lass. Here’s a tweet of hers from the day she posted the video on YouTube:

@shoeofallcosmos Hillary

The more I learn about theism, the more atheist I become. #fb

27 Oct via Twitter for iPhone

After enduring what was without doubt the toughest day of [...]]]> If one could sum up the place of religion in American politics in one short clip, then it would be tough to do better than show Herman Cain breaking out into song at the end of his speech at the National Press Club yesterday:

After enduring what was without doubt the toughest day of his campaign, what better way to reassure his supporters of his innocence and resoluteness in the face of the sexual harassment charges and to remind them of the deep Christian faith he shares with them, than to sing something written by Dottie Rambo, the patron saint of emotive spiritual songs in the evangelical community?

What is amazing is the contrast between that and, say, the last General Election in the UK, where the religious beliefs of the three main candidates for Prime Minister, David Cameron, Gordon Brown, and Nick Clegg, went almost completely unremarked upon by the press and by the candidates themselves, and played no factor in outcome of the election (even though Nick Clegg is a self-professed atheist).

If any of them had broken into song the way Herman Cain did, it would have been dismissed as naked pandering, at best, and a worst, it would have disqualified them as suitable material for the role as Prime Minister in the eyes of a majority of British voters.

Of course, nothing Herman Cain does comes close to naked cynical use of religion Newt Gingrich has had to employ just to get himself into a position to run for the Republican nomination (with a large assist from the Catholic Church). Ironically, it’s Newt Gingrich who likely stands to benefit the most from Herman Cain’s recent travails. It’s possible that in a couple of months we’ll be missing the time when Cain used his folksy religious shorthand to establish his conservative credentials.

There are quite a few things in this clip worthy of debate, like atheist Kate Smurthwaite implying that those who believe things [...]]]> PZ Myers just posted some comments about the a video that’s making the rounds at the moment from a British talk show which was discussing the question “Does Heaven Exist?”

There are quite a few things in this clip worthy of debate, like atheist Kate Smurthwaite implying that those who believe things on faith are idiots (I prefer to call their beliefs idiotic, not the people who believe them since we’re all prone to believing idiotic things at times), and the nonsensical arguments about “believing in money” as though that justifies belief in a specific vision of an afterlife. But I would like to focus on the very brief exchange between Smurthwaite and the (presumed) Christian minister who said that all aborted fetuses go to Heaven:

MINISTER: Heaven is real. We believe heaven is real, and by the way, we spoke about abortion, I just want to say that, theologically, I believe that every aborted child is in Heaven.

SMURTHWAITE: So we would be doing them a favor by aborting them then.

MINISTER: No I’m not saying that–

SMURTHWAITE: I mean, really, if you want to call that, then have your own argument.

MINISTER: Well that’s a very trivial response to a very serious issue.

SMURTHWAITE: No but that’s absolutely factual response to what you’re saying, if that’s what you’re saying.

MINISTER: No, I’m not saying that. No, God is a God of the defenseless. He is a God of your [indecipherable]…

At that point, rather annoyingly, the host changes the subject, so we don’t get to hear the Christian minister’s full rebuttal, but I think we’ve heard enough to know that he isn’t about to address the crux of the Smurthwaite’s argument.

Essentially, if you believe that (a) you have to be a born-again, Bible-believing Christian to get into Heaven when you die and (b) the only exception to that rule is that babies, aborted fetuses, young children, and the mentally handicapped get a free pass into Heaven (because they are not able to understand the consequences of sin), then there is absolutely no way around the fact that these beliefs turn abortion into the ultimate act of mercy.

The equation is very simple. First, just answer the following two questions:

1) What percentage of people do you believe will go to Heaven when they die?
2) What percentage of aborted fetuses do you believe go to Heaven?

Then subtract the second answer from the first answer and you end up with the percentage of people who would have been saved from an eternity of suffering in Hell, if only they had been aborted.

For example, if we restrict ourselves to talking about Americans, the typical answers a fundamentalist American Christian would give are:

1) 25% (i.e. the number of truly saved Christians, not the number of nominal Christians)
2) 100%

Thus, out of 300 million Americans alive today, approximately 225 million people are destined for an eternity of unimaginable suffering and anguish in Hell. Conversely, every single one of the estimated 55 million or so fetuses that have been aborted since the Roe vs Wade decision is supposedly enjoying the never-ending delights of a Heavenly afterlife today.

Now, tell me this. Why do so many conservative Christians want to end the greatest and most foolproof tool of salvation that humanity has ever invented?

This absolutist stance against abortion looks even worse when you factor in countries where almost nobody is a Christian. If their beliefs are true, then Christians who support the Mexico City Policy–the one that bans non-governmental organizations that receive federal funding from performing or promoting abortion services in other countries–are condemning millions of human beings to an eternity in Hell who would have otherwise have gone to Heaven. There just isn’t any other conclusion you can reach, if their beliefs are true.

The main rebuttal Christian anti-abortion activists make is that abortion, or killing a baby or small child is a sin. It is against the will of God and can never be condoned. Fair enough, but now answer these questions:

1) Would you give up your life to save that of your child?
2) Would you sacrifice your life to save your child from an eternity in Hell?
3) Would you commit a sin to absolutely guarantee your child their place in Heaven?

I suspect that the vast majority of Christian parents would answer “Yes” to the first two questions in a heartbeat and would be more reticent about the last one.

But why? What greater gift can a Christian parent bestow upon their child other than the absolute guarantee of an eternity in Heaven? Depriving them of a few decades of uncertain life here on Earth pales into insignificance when compared with the risk that they might suffer an eternity–endless billions of years–in Hell as a result.

Sure, the odds of a child born into a family of Bible-believing Americans growing up to be a born-again Christian are probably not that bad, but they are not that high either–probably not much more than 50% these days. And what if, say, you’re the wife of a Muslim Imam living in Mecca, and you’ve secretly become a born-again Christian? The odds of your children becoming Christians are all but non-existent. Their only decent chance of going to Heaven is for you to abort them or kill them before they reach the “age of accountability.”

Therefore, the most pernicious thing about the traditional doctrine of Hell is that it turns abortion into one of the most merciful and sacrificial acts a mother is capable of. There is simply no way around that fact.

Now, if you are a born-again Christian parent or prospective parent, please do not think for one moment that I am suggesting that you should kill your child, or even have an abortion, in order to guarantee your child a spot in Heaven. Rather, I want you to see the doctrine of Hell for the totally illogical and irrational concept that it is. When a person’s eternal destination is the only thing that really matters (and how can it not be so when you compare all of eternity with a mere “three score years and ten?”), it trivializes life in the extreme and turns all arguments into nonsense.

For more about the clip see Kate Smurthwaite’s blog entry, My Atheist B*tchslap and the Internet.

As an atheist, I don’t believe in all that nonsense–not Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, Nirvana, or anything like that.

When you’re dead, you’re dead, [...]]]> Several recent posts of mine have discussed various aspects of the fundamentalist Christian’s concept of Hell–that horrendous destination supposedly reserved for all but a select few lucky human beings when they die.

As an atheist, I don’t believe in all that nonsense–not Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, Nirvana, or anything like that.

When you’re dead, you’re dead, nothing more.

That viewpoint can seem pretty bleak, of course, but I can’t just believe in some fantastical afterlife because I want to believe in it. That would be indulging in wishful thinking.

But that doesn’t mean atheists never engage in speculation about the possibility of  life after death, even in a strictly material universe. Personally, I believe such a thing to be highly improbable (i.e. almost certainly not true, but not impossible) and of the ideas I have heard of, here are a couple of possibilities that sound quite intriguing:

The Omega Point

The first of these is based on the concept of the Omega Point, first developed by the French Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin in his book The Future of Man, published in 1950. He talks of the Universe constantly developing towards higher levels of material complexity and consciousness until it reaches the Omega Point–the supreme point of complexity and consciousness–and thus becomes transcendent and independent of the evolving Universe. In short, I guess, the Universe evolves its own God.

More recently, cosmologist Frank Tipler has postulated that once the Omega Point is reached, the processing capacity of the Universe will become infinite, then whatever intelligences are present at that time will be able to simulate every possible future. Wikipedia states that:

Within this environment, Tipler imagines that intelligent beings, human personalities, will be run as simulations within the system. As a result, after the Omega Point, humans will have omnipotence, able to see all of history and predict all of the future. Additionally, as all history becomes available, past personalities will be able to run as well. Within the simulation, this appears to be the dead rising. Tipler equates this state with the Christian heaven.

Now, this is all at the extreme edge of speculation, and I don’t hold out any hope that something like this could remotely happen. Even if it did happen, does recreating a simulation of me–even a perfect one–count as life after death? Maybe it does, but it’s not my life that would go on, but the life of a copy, or clone instead. Perhaps to the rest of the Universe it would make no difference, but I would be just as dead and gone as before.

Nonetheless, it’s an interesting idea, and perhaps if our distant descendants, in their new found omnipotence, had a way to reach back in time to snatch us–or at least our brain patterns–from our lives at the point of death instead of creating perfect simulations of them, that would be more like it. But there are still some serious issues to deal with. What do you do with people who suffer from brain-destroying diseases like Alzheimer’s before they die? Do you take them earlier? And are they still just copies, like the simulations?

The Ultimate Matrix

Just about everyone is familiar with The Matrix trilogy of movies, where the vast majority of the human race, after being enslaved by “the machines” live out their lives in a virtual world that is completely indistinguishable from reality.

I’m not sure where I first read about this idea, or what its proper name is (please leave a comment if you know where it comes from), but the argument for an afterlife based on virtual reality goes like this:

• Let’s assume that at least one intelligent species in the entire Universe that succeeds in evolving into a highly-advanced civilization.
• That civilization will likely develop the technology that will allow them to create a virtual reality that is indistinguishable from the real Universe.
• Give enough resources, if you can create one such virtual reality, you are likely to be able to create an unlimited number of them.
• Thus while there is only one real universe, if just one such advanced civilization exists, there could be millions–maybe even billions–of virtual universes out there that are indistinguishable from the real thing.
• Therefore, if true, the odds of us living in the one and only real universe are less than a million-to-one, making it far more likely that we are, in fact, living inside a virtual “Matrix-style” universe instead.

If all that happens to be true, then maybe we are all just advanced alien beings who have plugged ourselves into one of a limitless variety of virtual realities to experience what it is like to live out the life of a human being on a backward little planet called Earth. (Or perhaps I am the only avatar in this entire virtual universe and all of you out there reading this are merely simulations created to complete my illusion of reality…)

Thus, when you die, you simply exit the simulation and back into your real life, where you can simply enter another simulation and be “born again” into an entirely different life in a completely different Universe.

Why would anyone want to do that? Who knows? Perhaps, having conquered death and lived long enough to experience everything that life has to offer, they/we have a need to live out a series of virtual lives as the ultimate form of thrill seeking. Few people get the same excitement from their 50th sky dive, roller coaster ride, mountain climb, sexual conquest, etc. as they do from their first. Diving right into a virtual life with no memory of any previous existence would allow you to experience everything life has to offer again, for the first time.

Like the Omega Point, this scenario would seem to be very unlikely to be true (though certainly no less likely than the usual supernatural concepts of an afterlife), but I would regard the possibility of living in a virtual world as the more likely of the two. I would not be at all surprised if, one day, virtual reality becomes all but indistinguishable from real life and becomes an increasingly popular pastime for those who wish to experience not just all that life has to offer, but all that many lives have to offer.

In the end, though, it’s all just idle dreams, and it all boils down to what we believe, not what we know, since we really don’t know anything about what happens after we die, if there is anything at all.

As Shakespeare says:

But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?

Here is an excellent panel discussion from the JREF TAM event, probably one of the most vigorous, interesting and entertaining debates I have seen in quite a while.

Yes JREF is the James Randi Education Foundation, one of the country’s foremost organizations of skeptics but [...]]]> Enough about religion, let’s talk about space for a change.

Here is an excellent panel discussion from the JREF TAM event, probably one of the most vigorous, interesting and entertaining debates I have seen in quite a while.

Yes JREF is the James Randi Education Foundation, one of the country’s foremost organizations of skeptics but the panel, featuring Pamela Gay, Lawrence Krauss, Bill Nye, and Neil deGrasse Tyson and chaired by Phil Plait of the Bad Astronomy website, remains focused on the future of space flight and steers clear of any comment about religion.

Highly recommend viewing for believers and skeptics alike.

TAM Panel - Our Future in Space from JREF on Vimeo.

I spoke to a feisty Rick Perry this morning who said he agreed with his wife’s comments that his campaign has [...]]]> Apparently, Rick Perry and his wife now believe that the word “persecution” is wholly inadequate for the terrible way in which he has been roughed up by his opponents this Republican Primary season:

I spoke to a feisty Rick Perry this morning who said he agreed with his wife’s comments that his campaign has been “brutalized” because of his Christianity and Perry came out of the gates attacking Herman Cain’s now famous 9-9-9 plan.

“I’ll stand by my wife. I think she’s right on both cases. My understanding is that she said I’m the most conservative candidate in the race and ‘he’s a Christian.’ So I haven’t got anything I can add to that and she’s hit me on my mark both times there,” Perry said on “GMA.”

While campaigning for her husband in South Carolina Anita Perry said “We are being brutalized by our opponents and our own party. So much of that is, I think they look at him because of his faith. He’s the only true conservative. Well, there are some conservatives. And they’re there for good reasons.”

Seriously?

Clearly this is just sour grapes in response to Governor Goodhair’s poll numbers plunging off a cliff after a string of inept performances in the debates, but it doesn’t even make any sense given that every candidate whose name is not Mitt Romney is bending over backwards to demonstrate just how ultra-conservative and God-fearing they are.

But it certainly does fit the pattern of anointing oneself a martyr for your faith that Christian conservatives love to indulge in. Any criticism of their faith, no matter how mild, is cause for accusations of religious persecution, and we hear them so often that the p-word isn’t enough anymore, and hence the word “brutalized” is trotted out instead.

If nothing else, this type of language completely trivializes the real religious persecution that millions of Christians face elsewhere in the world, where people risk imprisonment, injury, and even death for practicing what they believe. Contrast that with American Christians–probably the wealthiest, most privileged and powerful bunch of believers on Earth outside the Vatican.

Hint: someone in the press calling your debate performances poor and unimpressive doesn’t count as religious persecution.

Pathetic, the lot of them.