Edited by Dave Peterson

• Announcement: "Evolution and the Science of Life According to Islam"

• Humanist Book Discussion

• In Appreciation of Roger Prevost
  Sharon Fratepietro

• SHL Website: Request for Volunteer

• Change of E-mail Address
  Dave Peterson

• Charles Darwin comes to Charleston
  Sharon Fratepietro

• Adopt-a-highway February Pickup
  Gill Krebs

• Atheist Alliance 2001

• John Ashcroft: All Plot and No Character
  Dave Peterson

• Opposition Builds Against Ashcroft AG Nomination

• Ashcroft Statements on Confederates

• Split-Brains, Paradigm Shifts, and why it is so difficult to be a skeptic
  Massimo Pigliucci, Ph.D.

• The Swineherd's Lament
  John Guthrie

• Quotes

NEXT MEETING: Sunday 21 January at 4:00 p.m.
Gage Hall, 4 Archdale St., Charleston SC

Our speaker: Minister Dennis Muhammad
Topic: "Evolution and the Science of Life According to Islam"

Minister Dennis Muhammad was born on August 13, 1970 in Conway, SC. He was reared in a disciplined and religious family structure under the parentage of Reverend Dennis Graham Sr. and Angie P. Graham. At an early age Minster Muhammad developed an inclination to the study of history and a reading of biographies. In his quest for knowledge he read over one hundred biographies during one school term as well as completing the Bible in its entirety by the time he entered high school. His enthusiasm for knowledge would eventually lead to his discovery and study of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and his mission to black people in America. Minister Muhammad graduated from Loris High School in 1988 and attended the College of Charleston where he received his Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration with a minor in History in 1992. During his tenure as a student at the College of Charleston, Minister Muhammad became a social activist negotiating with administrative officials to add more diversity to the curriculum by adding more African American classes and professors for the majority white populated campus. Highly cognizant of the lack of cultural awareness among the black students on campus, he and a handful of students initiated the African American Study Group which attracted dozens of students and community activists on a weekly basis.

Minister Muhammad has been happily married to Valerie L. Muhammad for seven years.

HUMANIST BOOK DISCUSSION...

IN APPRECIATION OF ROGER PREVOST...

By Sharon Fratepietro

You can count on him to handle a time-consuming chore like arranging to have our SHL T-shirts made. You can count on him to always be there to pick up trash when we clean up Highway 61 four times a year. You can count on him to volunteer his house and all the work that entails for our May potluck social meeting.

Roger is a contractor by profession with his own construction company on Folly Beach, where he designs and builds beautiful homes. If you attended the December potluck meeting at Katherine and Arthur Prevost's house, you have seen an example of Roger's talent, for he designed and built that beautiful house. Roger is a single parent, the father of Jacob (age 18) and Gina (age 15). He is an extraordinarily good dancer and loves riding his motorcycle. Roger's other interests include boating, protecting nesting turtles at Folly Beach, attending national Humanist conferences, and, lucky for us, being our friend in the Secular Humanists of the Lowcountry.

Thank you, Roger, for your efforts on behalf of SHL, and for your thoughtful contribution at meetings and interesting conversation at our Vickery's dinners. We appreciate, too, your serving on the Executive Committee for so long. We also thank you for introducing your mother and father, Katherine and Arthur Prevost, to the SHL.

SHL WEBSITE: Calling all hands...

The manager of our website for the last several years, Judith Bandsma, has found it necessary to resign the position. Bandsma, who manages websites professionally, took over the job from yours truly. She did this without pay because she wanted to help a humanist group in the Charleston area where she lives. Ironically, she became aware of us while netsurfing at a relative's home in Florida. I want to thank her for all the work she put into the site, work that I would not have been good at. Perhaps you remember how minimalist my page was.

In any event SHL needs a new webpage manager. This is a good opportunity for someone who wants to learn through hands-on experience how these things are done; or for someone experienced to get another item for his resume. If you have any interest in helping in this important part of SHL's activities, let me know. (See next item.)

CHANGE OF ADDRESS...

CHARLES DARWIN COMES TO CHARLESTON...

By Sharon Fratepietro

Well, not the eminent scientist, himself, but pages from his original Origin of Species and Descent of Man.

We can thank the Karpeles Manuscript Museum in Charleston for bringing this exhibit to our community. Other Darwin documents on display include correspondence with contemporaries like George Bernard Shaw and Thomas Malthus. The exhibit also contains other historically important items from the museum's permanent Charleston collection. The best thing, of course, about the Karpeles Manuscript Museum is its marvelous, rotating collection of extraordinary documents amassed by museum founder David Karpeles, owner of the world's largest private collection of historical documents. The previous exhibit, for example, on medical history, showed handwritten documents by a diverse group that included Florence Nightingale, Albert Schweitzer and Francis Crick. The next best thing about the museum is that it's always free. It does not even accept donations. The museum was given to our community (and also established in six other lucky communities across the country) by David Karpeles as a way of sharing the objects of his passion for history. You can park free right next to the museum, which is housed in the magnificent St. James Methodist Church, a place with some history of its own, dating back to 1791.

I would like to ask everyone who reads this to make time to visit the museum and thank its on-site directors for bringing the Charles Darwin exhibit to Charleston, where, as you know, Darwin's name is not always spoken with respect. The Darwin exhibit runs until the end of March. If you are the sentimental type, you might particularly want to visit during the week following Charles Darwin's birthday, February 12 (a Monday).

The Karpeles Manuscript Museum is open Tuesday through Saturday, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. It is located at the corner of Spring and Coming Streets in Charleston.

ADOPT-A-HIGHWAY FEBRUARY PICKUP

By Gill Krebs

Time again for the first 2001 Adopt-A-Highway pickup on February 3. If it rains on on that day, we'll pick up on February 10. We really need more people to invest a couple of hours on this community service. Six people (which seem to be the regulars) can't do it all, and the more people there are, the shorter the time to clean up the highway.

Our pickup area is Highway 61 starting two miles past Bees Ferry Road and ending two miles beyond that. The start is at Drayton Hall and ends a little past Magnolia Gardens. The Highway Department supplies everything we need: orange bags for the trash, orange vests and pointy sticks, but no gloves - so bring your own work or garden gloves.

The clean up shouldn't take more than a few hours, and it's a good opportunity for us to carry on our usual interesting conversations while we work. We'll meet at the small parking lot just across the street from the main Drayton Hall parking lot on Hwy 61 at 9:00 AM to pick the supplies and head out. Please call me at 763-4505 or e-mail me at [email protected] if you plan to help with the pickup. We really need more bodies, live ones, that is.

ATHEIST ALLIANCE 2001: DAWN OF A SECULAR ERA...

The convention committee has been meeting for several months, deciding on details of the convention. Ed Buckner is the Convention Chairperson, and will coordinate all speaker assignments, as well as their audio/visual and other needs. Mirza Choudhury will coordinate with the host hotel regarding all AAI 2001 Convention needs, including booking of rooms, room setup, meals, and other related items. Sue Garland is in charge of public relations: she will coordinate all publication material and will disseminate written material for the convention. Steve Yothment is the Convention Treasurer, in charge of recording all revenues and costs for the convention. Alice Leitner will assist Steve in these duties. Joe Zemel is the AAI Liaison, and will coordinate the childcare program at the convention.

The convention location will be the Crowne Plaza Atlanta Airport Hotel. The convention will be on Friday, Saturday and Sunday of "Easter weekend," April 13, 14 and 15. Confirmed speakers for the convention include Dr. Paul Kurtz, who will be the keynote speaker at the Saturday night banquet; Robert Green Ingersoll (aka Ross Sloan of Mobile AL), speaker for the Friday night banquet; Ross Sloan and Emmett Fields, speaking on the life of Robert Ingersoll; Dr. Herb Silverman, speaking on "Past Lives"; Dub Rankin, speaking on the Queen Jane's Version of the Bible (for Adults Only); Dr. Fred Whitehead, speaking on Freethought in the South; Dr. Massimo Pigliucci, speaking on Science and Religion; and Jan Loeb Eisler, speaking on Secular Humanism. Other possible speakers include Dr. Ed Buckner, Reggie Finley, Ed Kagin, and Eddie Tabash.

We also plan to have a debate on Saturday night between Dan Barker and Rubel Shelley, although this is not fully confirmed. More info will be forthcoming. If you need questions answered now, call Mirza Choudhury at 770-395-9566 or e-mail: atlantafreethought.org. I've been to two of these and they're great get-togethers.

JOHN ASHCROFT: ALL PLOT AND NO CHARACTER

An Editorial...

"We keep hearing. . . John Ashcroft is a man of honor, a stalwart when it comes to matters of principle and integrity. Former Senate colleagues are frequently quoted as saying that while they disagree with his ultra-conservative political views, they consider him to be a trustworthy, fair-minded individual.

"Spare me. The allegedly upright Mr. Ashcroft revealed himself as a shameless and deliberately destructive liar in 1999 when, as the junior senator from Missouri, he launched a malicious attack against a genuinely honorable man, Ronnie White, who had been nominated by the president to a federal district court seat.

"Justice White was a distinguished jurist and the first black member of the Missouri Supreme Court. Mr. Ashcroft, a right-wing zealot with a fondness for the old Confederacy, could not abide his elevation to the federal bench. But there were no legitimate reasons to oppose Justice White's confirmation by the Senate. So Mr. Ashcroft reached into the gutter and scooped up a few handfuls of calumny to throw at the nominee.

"He declared that Justice White was soft on crime. Worse, he was 'pro-criminal'. The judge's record, according to Mr. Ashcroft, showed 'a tremendous bent toward criminal activity.' As for the death penalty, that all-important criminal justice barometer - well, in Mr. Ashcroft's view, the nominee was beyond the pale. He said that Ronnie White was the most anti-death-penalty judge on the State Supreme Court.

"Listen closely: None of this was true. But by the time Mr. Ashcroft finished painting his false portrait of Justice White, his Republican colleagues had fallen into line and were distributing a memo that described the nominee as 'notorious among law enforcement officers in his home state of Missouri for his decisions favoring murderers, rapists, drug dealers and other heinous criminals.'

"This was a sick episode. Justice White was no friend of criminals. And a look at the record would have shown that even when it came to the death penalty he voted to uphold capital sentences in 70 percent of the cases that came before him. There were times when he voted (mostly with the majority) to reverse capital sentences because of procedural errors. But. . . judges appointed by Mr. Ashcroft when he was governor of Missouri voted as often as Justice White - in some cases, more often - to reverse capital sentences.

"But the damage was done. Mr. Ashcroft's unscrupulous, mean-spirited attack succeeded in derailing the nomination of a fine judge. The confirmation of Justice White was defeated by Republicans in a party-line vote. The Alliance for Justice, which monitors judicial selections, noted that it was the first time in almost half a century that the full Senate had voted down a district court nominee. "The Times, in an editorial, said the Republicans had reached 'a new low' in the judicial confirmation process. The headline on the editorial was 'A Sad Judicial Mugging.'

"So much for the fair-minded Mr. Ashcroft." With respect to this, it haas been suggested that Ashcroft's opposition was racially motivated. The jury is still out on that one, although it must be admitted that his record is not very black-American friendly. I think, however, that the content of his attack on White shows " in itself " Ashcroft's unsuitability for any federal job of consequence. He can not be fair.

I find it interesting that Ashcroft, for all his proclaimed religious views, would so blatantly violate the commandment: thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. The right is trying to obfuscate this by attacking only the charges of racism. Jonah Goldberg, one of the staff of National Review " and a person with a documented record of playing fast and loose with the facts " defends Ashcroft this way: "The major problem of the inquisitors is that they are talking to [senators] who knew John Ashcroft as a colleague, and [who] are not likely. . . to reject a man they know as a non-liar and non-racist [my emphasis] merely to satisfy ideological bloodlust. Virtually all of this is based on the fact that Ashcroft led the effort to block the appointment of Missouri supreme court justice Ronnie White to a federal district court seat. White, who is black, was the first judicial nominee since Robert Bork in 1987 to be rejected by a senate floor vote.

"Under Senate rules, senators are given wide latitude to block the nominations of judges from their home state. Ashcroft, who was preparing for a brutal election against the late Missouri governor Mel Carnahan, chose to block White's nomination. He argued that White was too liberal, especially on the death penalty. White was more likely to vote to overturn death sentences than any of his fellow sitting justices. He notoriously - and solely - opposed the death penalty for James R. Johnson. In 1991, Johnson killed a sheriff, two deputies, and an officer's wife, who died while her family watched in the living room."

(Note that Goldberg does not indicate the reasons for White's vote, preferring more the implication that White thought the crime insufficiently heinous to deserve the death penalty. The basis for White's vote was that Johnson had ineffective counsel, that the prosecutor made inappropriate statements and that there was prosecutorial misconduct. Ed.)

"The immediate response from the Democrats was that Ashcroft's only motivation was racism."

(I guess the dems aren't in the group that knows Ashcroft is not a liar or a racist. Ed.)

"Ashcroft's decision to block White surely had to do with state politics in what promised - and turned out to be - a very tough race." In other words, it's ok to calumnize someone if you are in a close political race. I find such arguments " given the egregiousness of Ashcroft's lies " reprehensible, and an indication that the utterer, Goldberg here, is himself lacking character. The award for the most sophistic defense of Ashcroft goes to William F. Buckley; wouldn't you know it. He gives us this:

"The hearings in the matter of John Ashcroft for attorney general will be, indeed have already been, one more immersion in the recurrent pesthole of American politics, the liberal gang bang of choice conservative figures. . . The Wall Street Journal records that representatives have met to plot the defamation [my emphasis] of Ashcroft. Among them, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, the AFL-CIO, the National Organization for Women, the American Civil Liberties Union, and, of course, People for the American Way, which is, we pause to remark, an un-American organization."

[Buckley, saying that Ashcroft has been called a "liar.", proceeds to:]

"Now the dictionary (American Heritage) qualifies you as a liar if you say something "meant to deceive or give a false impression." It could be said, under this definition that is at once latitudinarian and comprehensive, that every politician since Coriolanus is a liar. Yet the word remains near uniquely savage. If John Ashcroft is a liar in the sense that, oh, FDR was a liar (he was going to balance the budget and keep us out of war), forget it and aim your resentment at the fouling of the language by such as [NYT columnist Anthony] Lewis. If, on the other hand, Mr. Ashcroft deserves to be called a liar, then send him not to the Justice Department, but packing, back to Missouri.

"What concretely will they argue?
"1) That he opposes abortion (so did Mother Teresa). From which it follows that 2) he will call to the favorable attention of President Bush candidates for judicial positions who are anti-abortion; and, 3) cannot be relied upon to protect abortionists engaged in legal enterprises." Would some reader tell me what that last paragraph has to do with Ashcroft's lying? After some talk about everything but lying, Buckley ends up trying to defend, sort of, Ashcroft's acceptance of a degree from Bob Jones University (the ugliest corrosion pitting on the brass buckle of South Carolina's Bible belt, in your editor's opinion.) He says:

"That was a dumb thing to do, frankly. To speak under the auspices of Bob Jones is one thing (I spoke there, 1953); to accept a degree from it, in the light of its peculiar constitution, isn't seemly. But to have done so needs to be examined in context of a person's background and career. John Ashcroft has served as attorney general and then governor of Missouri and as a senator from Missouri; and as the man who, noblesse oblige, declined to contest an election loss against a dead man, yielding gracefully to a posthumous vote of sympathy for the widow." This is simply more of the spin that shameless polemicizers like Buckley will resort to in their efforts to get a demonstrably unethical, hard core conservative into the halls of justice. They should all be publicly rebuked for their immorality. I urge everyone with a Democratic senator to write him or her expressing your disgust with Ashcroft's character. It is one thing for a Republican senator to hold his nose and vote aye in the name of party unity. The Democrats have no such excuse for ignoring their consciences.

Here are a couple of further takes on Ashcroft from the people at American Atheist News.

OPPOSITION BUILDS AGAINST ASHCROFT AG NOMINATION

Religion Today news services notes that Ashcroft, 58, is "a deeply conservative Christian. He has been a lay speaker and singer in numerous churches, does not drink, smoke or dance, and asked for ritual anointings with oil before his two inaugurations as Governor of Missouri ... He opposes most abortions and favors the death penalty. In Washington, he and his wife joined about 20 other Christians in starting a new Assemblies of God congregation near their Capitol Hill home." It is Ashcroft's social and political agenda, though, that is raising concerns from cause organizations and news media. While no senator has yet publicly opposed Mr. Ashcroft's selection, groups such as People for the American Way, American Atheists and the NAACP are mobilizing to prevent the nomination. Several major newspapers are already asking tough questions. The Washington Post noted earlier this week that Ashcroft "faces rough cross-examination over his opposition to the appointment of a black judge and whether he would be willing to enforce a law guaranteeing access to abortion clinics." The New York Times mentioned questions about "considerations from privacy rights and constitutional freedoms, to whether Mr. Ashcroft's antiabortion position will interfere with his ability to enforce federal laws protecting abortion rights."

"We're going to do everything possible to raise questions about Ashcroft's support of 'charitable choice' and other efforts to direct tax money to religious groups," promised Ellen Johnson, President of American Atheists. In addition to an on-line campaign opposing the nomination, Johnson said that the organization would also be launching an effort to contact the Judiciary Committee and stop the Ashcroft appointment.

"The stakes are enormous," Johnson added. "This is the first major step in instituting a 'Religion Tax' on the American people, and compelling millions of Atheists, freethinkers and others who don't have a sectarian affiliation to open their wallets and purses to faith-based groups."

For further information: http://www.atheists.org/flash.line/bush4.htm ("Bush meets with clergy, names Ashcroft for Attorney General post," 12/23/00) http://www.atheists.org/action/ (Speak out against the Ashcroft nomination!)

ASHCROFT STATEMENTS ON CONFEDERATES COULD BE MORE AMMUNITION IN DRIVE TO STOP NOMINATION

The potential bombshell, though, is word that Ashcroft consented to an interview with Southern Partisan, a periodical which often portrays what critics charge is a distorted and whitewashed attempt to rationalize the institution of slavery. The magazine is part of a nexus of "Neo-Confederate" groups and publications which fuse Christian fundamentalism, Civil War era nostalgia and racism. In a 1998 interview, Ashcroft praised the magazine for helping to "set the record straight," and added: "You've got a heritage of defending Southern patriots like Lee, Jackson and (Confederate President Jefferson) Davis."

"We've all got to stand up and speak in this respect or else we'll be taught that these people were giving their lives, subscribing their sacred fortune and their honor to some perverted agenda." The story is still breaking, and we hope to have a full report in a subsequent AANEWS.

SPLIT-BRAINS, PARADIGM SHIFTS, AND WHY IT IS SO DIFFICULT TO BE A SKEPTIC...

By Massimo Pigliucci, Ph.D.

(Professor Pigliucci, who spoke to SHL last year--and will again this spring--writes these monthly columns for posting on secular web sites. As ours is presently under reconstruction, I have chosen to print it here. Ed.)

The human brain is a funny machine. Imperfectly designed by natural selection, it finds itself in an environment that has little resemblance with the one it evolved in. Gone is the savannah in which our ancestors had to guard themselves from fierce creatures. Instead, we live in a complex and ever expanding social milieu, our neighborhood now encompassing the whole planet. Is it any wonder that our poor brains are not doing so well in this brave new wired world?

Our brains seem to fail to grasp reality, as demonstrated by the fact that a majority of Americans don't "believe" in evolution (whatever "believing" in a scientific theory means), while a sizable percentage is ready to accept the existence of an imaginary all-powerful god, as well as of the devil, hell, and a slew of angels. Why is it so difficult to be a reasonably skeptical person? What is it that makes so many apparently intelligent people so gullible about things that their brains clearly have the power to master? And--perhaps most importantly for the skeptic--how do we get people to change their minds in an informed way on so wide an array of irrationalities?

Obviously, I am not going to present the reader with the magic bullet that can answer these questions, but a starting point is being provided by recent research in neurobiology. It turns out that lately we have learned a lot about how the brain works and why it makes mistakes while interpreting reality. Since our most powerful tool doesn't come with an owner's manual, it may pay off to spend a little time thinking about how we think.

Perhaps one of the most dramatic ways we are learning about the brain is by studying patients who literally have a split one. The brain is made of two hemispheres, joined by a structure called the corpus callosum which contains nerve fibers that continuously exchange signals between the right and left hemisphere. Some individuals have suffered more or less complete damage to the corpus callosum, either because of a stroke or because of a surgical operation. These subjects are invaluable to neurobiologists because it is possible to interrogate the right and left hemispheres separately, see how differently they think, and then piece this information together to reconstruct the thought patterns of normal individuals. The problem with attempting to "talk" to both hemispheres is that language is controlled by the left one, the only hemisphere that can articulate things. Fortunately, the right side can still "respond" to interrogations by virtue of its control over the motor functions of the left half of the body, including the arm and hand.

Perhaps the most astonishing thing neurobiologists have discovered from split-brain patients is that the left hemisphere, which normally "dominates" the right one, is literally in charge of our view of the world. And it fights hard to preserve it. In a wonderfully elegant experiment, a group of researchers led by Michael Gazzaniga at Dartmouth College showed pictures to the right and left hemispheres of a split-brain patient and then asked each hemisphere to pick another picture to accompany the one originally presented. The right side was shown (through the left half of the visual field) a house with snow and, logically enough, it picked a shovel. The left hemisphere was shown a chicken leg (through the right half of the visual field), and it picked a chicken head--also quite logically. The experimenters then verbally asked the patient to explain his choices. The left hemisphere was the only one that could articulate an answer, but remember--it did not know why his right counterpart had chosen a shovel, since the information about the house with the snow did not cross the severed corpus callosum. The patient's answer was as astounding as illuminating: "Oh, that's simple. The chicken claw goes with the chicken [which was true], and you need a shovel to clean out the chicken shed [which was coherent, but completely false]." In other words, the left hemisphere acted as an interpreter of the worldview of the individual and fabricated a just--so story to fit all the available data!

These sort of experiments have shown that the left hemisphere is in charge of our worldview, of the paradigms we currently hold about a variety of aspects of reality. In normal patients, these paradigms are constantly evaluated against external evidence, gathered by both hemispheres through a suite of sensorial inputs. The left interpreter has the all-important function of making sense of the world, and it does a reasonably good job at it. However, when the incoming data is insufficient, or when some piece of evidence contradicts the currently held view, the left hemisphere either rejects the unfit information or it distorts it so to make sense of it. This process of "rationalizing" the world goes on up to a certain point. If the degree of conflicting information is too high (i.e., there is too much dissonance between what one believes and what one perceives) then that most stupendous phenomenon suddenly occurs: we change our minds (literally)!

The problem that rational people face, then, is twofold. On the one hand, the brain has evolved a powerful mechanism to avoid to change its mind too often, which means that people will stubbornly continue to believe all sorts of nonsense because it is less painful than to radically alter their worldview. On the other hand, we know that the problem is all the more insurmountable when the data fed to the subject is poor, and unfortunately most of what modern human beings are exposed to by the media is pure garbage.

However, there is no need to despair just yet. Understanding the problem is a necessary (though by all means not sufficient) step to solve it. Realizing where people's stubbornness (and sometimes our own) comes from will help not getting unduly irritated or downright nasty when facing patent irrationality in our fellow human beings. And empathy is one important step toward connecting with anybody. The second message of modern neurobiological research is perhaps an old one, but which now comes with the weight of evidence: education is our (slow) way out. What we need to do is to keep educating people, to feed good information to the brain's interpreter. If neurobiologists are correct, most brains will come to understand reality if properly nurtured. It is ignorance which provides the necessity for just--so stories, with all the tragic consequences that follow when people defend a flawed worldview at all costs.

THE SWINEHERD'S LAMENT...

(Reference, Matthew 8:28-34)
By SHL member (and recent speaker) John Guthrie

TRUE STORY...

Answer: I would not live forever, because we should not live forever, because if we were supposed to live forever, then we would live forever, but we can not live forever, which is why I would not live forever. Miss Alabama in the 1994 Miss Universe contest

Quotes

'There is not sufficient love and goodness in the world to permit us to give some of it away to imaginary beings.'
Friedrich Nietzsche