Doubting Marcus

David Barton: Christian Pseudo-Historian Extraordinaire

I don’t do this often, in fact I don’t believe I’ve done this at all, but David Barton, who appeared on The Daily Show last night, represents nearly everything I stand against as a secular person. As an Evangelical Christian he constantly and falsely claims Christians are being persecuted, that the government should do more for religion and in the course promotion of his specific religious beliefs he practices pseudo-history in which, it seems, all but outright lies are acceptable.

Here is a man who has said the founding fathers of the U.S. “had the entire debate on creation/evolution” which is a statement that only doesn’t seem absurd if you don’t realize Charles Darwin was born 33 years after the U.S. was founded and wouldn’t publish On the Origin of Species until he was 50. This means if the founders did have the entire debate they weren’t just clever men who anticipated forthcoming problems, they were time travelers. Nonetheless the reason he was on The Daily Show last night was to promote his book The Jefferson Lies which purports to correct widely held myths about Thomas Jefferson.

That sounds like a noble goal until you see what he considers myths about Jefferson—that he fathered his slave Sally Hemings’ children, that Jefferson really pushed for secularizing public life, he was racist who opposed civil rights for black Americans and that he composed his own Bible by removing parts he disagreed with—which upon hearing you realize that this guy is at best a crank and at worst someone who will say whatever it takes to promote his agenda. Every one of those questions aren’t serious historical questions any longer, in fact only the Hemings question ever was, and have been settled as facts which even a minor Google search can settle.*

Read More

“The Political Climate is More Hostile Now Than Ever”

Be angry with just a hint of sadness because American political discourse is at an all-time low. Or at least that’s what many today will have you believe as if debates over slavery and the right to discriminate based on sex, race and nationality were held over tea and crumpets. While the frequency of negative ads is in fact on the rise it is often claimed that these ads, and political rhetoric in general, is more vitriolic than ever. However the reason you don’t often hear direct comparisons to the past is not only has everything from race-baiting and accusations of treason been done before it’s all been done in a much more hostile way and in more divided times.

The 19th century featured two separate instances of a sitting congressman being beaten with a cane by another sitting congressman (one on the Senate floor no less) and the deaths of at least 10 politicians due to duels with political adversaries. Even allowing for the change in the maximum amount of legally condoned violence in different eras, if it were true that the modern political climate was worse now then it was in the days of demanding satisfaction it would mean we are overdue this century for two congressman to step into an MMA cage together. Of course in reality to do so would be political suicide for both parties.

So, you may say, we are more appalled by violence now but surely the mudslinging we see today is unparalleled. In merely the second contested presidential election in 1800 Thomas Jefferson called John Adams “hideous hermaphroditical character, which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman” and not to be outdone Adams’ campaign responded by saying Jefferson was “a mean-spirited, low-lived fellow, the son of a half-breed Indian squaw, sired by a Virginia mulatto father.” I could rest my case now. If a presidential candidate today openly said anything remotely this slanderous and vile about another candidate during a campaign they’d not only lose the election but the support of their party.

It’s not just insults either. While I believe Mitt Romney’s recent accusation that if Obama is reelected that Iran will get a nuclear weapon has rightly been considered irresponsible, I recognize that American political history is filled with this type of rhetoric. Perhaps the most irresponsible example of all-time came in 1964 in the now infamous “Daisy” ad from Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson which featured a little girl picking petals off a flower in a field only to interrupt this image with a mushroom cloud and a stern warning to vote for Johnson. That’s right, a vote for his opponent Barry Goldwater would have meant little girls getting nuked!

Yes these are mere examples but anyone who thinks things are worse than ever now might do well to crack open a history book. This isn’t even to say the current climate isn’t very divisive, and it may even be true that there is less substantive talk than ever, but when the past is considered the idea we are currently in the most hostile political climate ever clearly becomes a myth.

When is One Theology Superior to Others?

Every so often, amidst political correctness and legitimate concerns about religious freedom, everyone can fail to even acknowledge what should be at the heart of the public debate. If you follow U.S. politics you have no doubt heard the public dispute over the Obama administration’s decision to make religious affiliated employers cover contraception. This has caused an uproar about Catholic charities and hospitals being forced to cover procedures that are in conflict with their religious beliefs. While I’ve thought, read and seen it covered from numerous angles what I haven’t seen is a discussion of what I believe is the fundamental issue: What is the difference in kind between religious inspired exemptions to providing blood transfusions and having to provide contraception?

Both Christian Science, opposed to basically all modern medical intervention, and Jehovah’s Witnesses, opposed to blood transfusions, have medical policies as part of their religious beliefs. Do you think these organizations or, more analogously, their affiliates have the right to refuse to cover life-saving surgery? Granted this is not a direct analogy as there is a difference between “letting someone die” and, if the Catholic worldview is adopted, what amounts to being forced to pay for treatment to “take a life.” However it seems to me that the Catholic church would not be accepting of contraceptives like the morning after pill or abortion if the proposed intervention was created in such a way as to “let the fetus die.”

If I am right and the Catholic Church wouldn’t suddenly decide that such procedures are acceptable in that scenario then the difference, if there is any, between refusing to cover a blood transfusion which would save a life and hence letting someone die and refusing to cover contraceptives can not be the substantive difference between the types of procedures disavowed. Still the difference could be framed as the difference between refusing to help someone that you could without any harm to yourself and actively helping someone cause harm but I have my doubts that everyone who so opposes this ruling would line up on the same side of that delicate ethical distinction.

This sadly seems to be another case where the relatively popular religious opinion trumps other similar opinions exclusively because it is popular. The intersection of government and religion is always messy, and should be avoided where at all possible, but if the Catholic position on contraceptives was a fringe belief and Catholicism a tiny Christian group like Christian Science would this even be a debate about religious liberty? Or would they be shunned by the vast majority of Christians for daring to corrupt god’s word to restrict access to a public good?

Close Elections: Recounts Don’t Help

The 2012 U.S. presidential race is only one official caucus in and already my skeptic sense is tingling. For any who haven’t heard the news Mitt Romney won yesterday’s Republican Iowa caucuses by a mere 8 votes over Rick Santorum which got me thinking about how we react to close elections.

—Stand back I’m going to try math—

With over 120,000 votes cast and a difference of only 8 votes deciding the victor in order for the results to be precise enough to know that we have the correct winner the margin of error would have to be less than 1 in every 15,000 votes cast or 0.05%. Considering all the votes were handwritten on pieces of paper, there are no official ballots, to achieve this amount of precision would be impressive but not impossible. Had this been a general election and not a caucus Santorum would have undoubtedly called for a recount.

The problem is the margin of error doesn’t change when there is a recount. Some votes would have still been lost, improperly accepted or rejected, miscounted, etc. Random errors do not go away simply because you decide to count again but at least in this country, it is almost guaranteed that every close election will be drawn into a recount, some state even mandate it. If a recount had been done for this race the result could have changed but we still wouldn’t know with more certainty who actually won.

There is no way to simply eliminate errors in counting so when elections are extremely close we could simply accept them as is, flip a coin or have a political version of Jeopardy. No matter which option we chose it would be just as effective as recounting the votes over and over, which doesn’t actually make the result more precise, and it would save precious taxpayer money. So if in coming elections there is an particularly close race we should just accept the fact that all election results will be somewhat imprecise.