The Humanist Association of Orange County ( HAOC) is a chapter of the American Humanist Association.
Please visit our website at http://www.ochumanists.org

HAOC Board
President: Pete Anderson
Vice President: Dave Silva
Treasurer:.Harry Becker
Secretary: Jerry Parks
Member at large: Carl Mariz
Member at large: Benito Franqui

NEXT HAOC MEETING
Sunday, December 19, 1:30 P.M.

We must keep superstition out of science!
The truth about the Columbia 'miracle' prayer study

Dr. Bruce Flamm, clinical professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of California, Irvine, will present his investigation of fraud in a Columbia University study on the effects of prayer. Specifically, it was claimed in this flawed study that Christian prayer doubled the fertility of women receiving infertility treatment. This study was published in September 2001 in the Journal of Reproductive Medicine ( JRM ).

From its beginning, this bizarre study drew questions from skeptics. First, the study's lead author, Rogerio Lobo, MD, then head of Columbia University's Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology; was investigated by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service for failing to obtain patients' informed consent. Dr. Flamm says that none of his many letters and e-mails to the three authors over the past two years was ever answered and that only recently - following the recent fraud conviction of one of the authors - did JRM's editor finally reply. On May 17, author Daniel Wirth, an attorney and parapsychologist, pleaded guilty in federal court to mail fraud conspiracy and other crimes along with his long-time partner in crime, Joseph Horvath. ( Horvath, who once pleaded guilty to posing as a physician for one of Wirth's earlier patient studies, was found dead by hanging in his prison cell on July 13. ) JRM's editor, Lawrence D. Devoe, MD, says he will address some of Dr. Flamm's questions in a future editorial and he agreed to "temporarily" take the disputed study off of the journal's Web site.

Dr. Flamm has discussed this scandal in the September/October 2004 issue of The Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine and in the September/October 2004 issue of Skeptical Inquirer.
 

We thank CFI-West and Vaughn Rees in particular for providing an LCD projector for Dr. Flamm’s presentation.

WHY BUSH WON

Appealing To Our Lizard Brains: Why Bush Is Still Standing
October 13, 2004
By Arianna Huffington
( From http://www.ariannaonline.com/columns/column.php?id=738 )

Since the president's meltdown in the first debate — followed in quick succession by Paul Bremer's confession, the CIA's no-Al-Qaeda/Saddam link report, the Duelfer no-WMD-since-'91 report, and the woeful September job numbers — I have been racking my brain trying to figure out why George W. Bush is still standing.

The answer arrived via my friend Ed Solomon, the brilliant writer and filmmaker, who explained that the conundrum could be solved by looking at the very organ I'd been racking.

Ed introduced me to the work of Dr. Daniel Siegel, a Harvard-trained psychiatrist and author of the forthcoming book "Mindsight," which explores the physiological workings of the brain.

Turns out, when it comes to Campaign 2004, it's the neuroscience, stupid!

Or, as Dr. Siegel told me: "Voters are shrouded in a 'fog of fear' that is impacting the way our brains respond to the two candidates."

Thanks to the Bush campaign's unremitting fear-mongering, millions of voters are reacting not with their linear and logical left brain but with their lizard brain and their more emotional right brain.

What's more, people in a fog of fear are more likely to respond to someone whose primary means of communication is in the nonverbal realm, neither logical nor language-based. (Sound like any presidential candidate you know?)

And that's why Bush is still standing. It's not about left wing vs. right wing; it's about left brain vs. right brain.

Deep in the brain lies the amygdala, an almond-sized region that generates fear. When this fear state is activated, the amygdala springs into action. Before you are even consciously aware that you are afraid, your lizard brain responds by clicking into survival mode. No time to assess the situation, no time to look at the facts, just: fight, flight or freeze.

And, boy, have the Bushies been giving our collective amygdala a workout. Especially Dick Cheney, who has proven himself an unmatched master of the dark art of fear-mongering. For an object lesson in how to get those lizard brains leaping, look no further than the vice-presidential debate.

"The biggest threat we face today," said Cheney in his very first answer "is the possibility of terrorists smuggling a nuclear weapon or a biological agent into one of our own cities and threatening the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans."

Just in case we didn't get the point, he repeated the ominous assertion, practically word for word, two more times — throwing in the fact that he was "absolutely convinced" that the threat "is very real." It was "be afraid, be very afraid" to the third power.

And when we are afraid, we are biologically programmed to pay less attention to left-brain signals — indeed, our logical mind actually shuts itself down. Fear paralyzes our reasoning and literally makes it impossible to think straight. Instead, we search for emotional, nonverbal cues from others that will make us feel safe and secure.

When our right brain is at Threat Level Red, we don't want to hear about a four-point plan to win the peace, or a list of damning statistics, or even a compelling, well-reasoned argument that the policies of Bush and Cheney are actually making us less safe. We want to get the feeling that everything is going to be all right.

In this state, our brains care more about tone of voice than what the voice is saying. This is why Bush can verbally stumble and sputter and make little or no sense and still leave voters feeling that he is the candidate best able to protect them. Our brains are primed to receive the kinds of communication he has to offer and discard the kinds John Kerry has to offer, even if Kerry makes more "logical sense." Which, of course, he does.

America’s Fear Factor
by Wendy Kaminer
( From Free Inquiry magazine, Volume 25, Number 1 ) 

By the time this column appears, the 2004 presidential election will be history (so long as we don’t have another prolonged post-election period of uncertainty). I’m not sufficiently foolhardy to attempt to predict the winner, but I am confident that the results will be decided by the public’s fears. “Vote your hopes, not your fears,” is a politician’s cliché, but I doubt many people expect George Bush (or any other incumbent) to be reelected or unelected in a sudden outburst of hope. These days, of course, fear is palpable and not unreasoned. 

In general, fear seems to favor incumbency. People are already frightened enough of another terrorist attack, perhaps an even more catastrophic one. How much more frightened would they be if they agreed with the president’s detractors that his administration was not protecting them, that his policies were maximizing, not minimizing, the terrorist threat? For many people, I suspect, the fear that follows not believing in the competence, toughness, or essential rightness of the president would be intolerable.

How does a challenger convince voters that the sense of security they derive from believing in an incumbent is false? First, he tries to establish himself as a reliable protector, so that voters susceptible to doubting the incumbent can acknowledge their doubts, in the belief that they have a replacement. (That’s why John Kerry spent the early months of the campaign polishing his medals.) Then he has to persuade them to acknowledge what they have been either willfully or instinctively avoiding: bad, scary news about the bloody debacle in Iraq, the increased power of the Taliban in Afghanistan, the nuclear powers of North Korea or Iran, and the failure to make significant improvements in security at home (among other threats). He has to scare voters, with precision. Scare them too much, and they’ll turn off the news and revert to watching The Bachelor and taking solace in the status quo. Scare them too little, and they’ll turn off the news and revert to watching The Bachelor and taking solace in the status quo. 

The incumbent walks a similar but wider, more forgiving tightrope: Scare people enough so that they cling without question to your promise to protect them and equate change with an increase in the threat level. Don’t scare them so much that they’ll no longer feel secure with you in charge. Scare them; but, at the same time, convince them of your progress in defusing scary things. 

Wars can be quite helpful to incumbents, especially if they don’t last too long or involve too many American casualties. (No one can reliably predict how long is too long or how many is too many.) It’s not just the reflexive nationalism that accompanies war and demonizes dissent, especially criticism of the wartime leader. It’s the heartbreak of admitting that the tragedies of war lack nobility or purpose. Consider this remark by the brother of a young American killed in Iraq shortly before he was due to return home, a Marine corporal who had the sad distinction of being the first African American from his state to perish in the war. “It’s hard, you know. It’s really hard,” his brother told a reporter on National Public Radio. “But we were glad that it was . . . for something, not something stupid like, you know, a drug deal gone bad, or, you know, some guys just wanting to act idiotic. I mean this is something that’s going to go down in history.” 

To people who believe the Iraq war resulted at least in part from “some guys just wanting to act idiotic,” that it is not so different from a drug deal gone bad (some would say, simplistically, it was an oil deal gone bad), the grief of people who’ve lost family members in the war may be particularly poignant. How do you suggest to grieving relatives that their children, brothers, sisters, or parents have been killed for no good reason, in an arguably unnecessary and badly managed war, without seeming dismissive of their grief and the solace they find in believing their deaths were “for something, not something stupid”? 

Years ago, as a young and angry Vietnam vet, John Kerry eloquently denounced the Vietnam War as a mistake. But by the time he asked his famous rhetorical question, “How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?,” the war had spawned national protests and was widely considered un-winnable. Voters are probably not yet ready to hear the same question posed about the Iraq war. And George Bush has a powerful counter-question: “How dare you tell the parents of a dead marine that their son was killed for a mistake?” 

Which question will resonate more today? What frightens voters more— the prospect of more terror or the belief that the Iraq war and other counter-terrorism policies of the Bush administration are mistakes? Personally, I’m afraid to find out.  

Wendy Kaminer is a lawyer and social critic. Her latest book is Free for ALL: Defending Liberty in America Today (Beacon Press, 2002).  

OUR OCTOBER MEETING
The Fact and Fantasy of Witches
By Adrian Novotny, Ph.D, Long Beach City College 

I. Abstract

A troubling silence overshadows the concept of the witch in the modem world. In teaching a course at Long Beach City College entitled Magic, Witchcraft, and Religion, I find many students, semester after semester, who believe the popular myth of the evil crone, the malevolent hag, who cavorts with Satan, cannibalizes newborn babies, and through curses and spells, wreaks havoc throughout society. The reality of the witch is quite different. Living by the Wiccan Reade: "Do what thou wilt, but harm none," provides a shockingly antithetical view of the witch. The Christian (largely Catholic) "invasion" of European culture, beginning in the fourteenth century, displaced old wisdom, traditional matrifocal society, and reverence for nature, setting the scene for what was to become the modem commercial urban-based world. This presentation traces the history and culture of the witch from its earliest beginnings to the present growing popularity of "the craft" today.

II. Outline

Our perception of the witch (mixed impressions; show Halloween images)
A. The Hag
B. Cute (children, animation, decoration)
C. Comedic (witch hits a tree)
D. Commercial (Pink Floyd, Blair Witch, Witches of Eastwick, etc.).
E. Evil and sinful (an Abomination to God)
F. Freaks
G. Witch Trials
H. Erotica

Definition. . . Witchcraft or "The Craft" is a form of nature religion that emphasizes the healing arts. A particular form of magic that follows several rules, such as the Wiccan Reade ("Do what thou wilt, but harm none."), and the Rule of Three (get back what you give out three times over). 

III. Early history

A. Not called witches, but healers...in Europe, the Celtic term Wicca meant "to bend" (fate) through rituals and ceremonies for curing, overcoming losses, shortcomings, interpreting dreams, etc.
B. Continuation of the prehistoric Hunting and Gathering traditions wherein women gathered, therefore were the healers (plant medicine), etc.
C. Men were envious, jealous of women's powers due to their "magic" (reproduce, nurse, menstruation... "blue" blood, etc.).
D. Christian (mainly Catholic) "revolution" in Europe beginning in the 15th century, coincided with the male takeover of a number of traditional all-female professions (midwivery, healing, counciling, etc.).
Men demonized the old women (the crone) and the associations with the witch began (the caldron), etc.
E. King James 1st of England, translated the Bible. His friend Shakespeare wrote Hamlet as a wedding gift for him (demonic witches)
F. Black Plague in Europe forces scapegoating of women and the "Witch Hunts" begin in Switzerland in 1427.
G. Some personification of evil was necessary to preserve the image of the merciful infallible goodness of the Lord. . . Satan was invented as were his minions.. . the witches. N ow the crime was raised to the level of heresy and the punishment was death!
H. 1486, Germany, publication of the Malleus Maleficarum (the Hammer of Sorceresses) a "how to" book on detecting and dealing with witches
I. Salem, Mass. Witch trials of 1692, 20 people hanged (20 years after witch trials had ended in Europe).

IV. Accusations. . . against propertied widows" unpopular solitary women (80% of those prosecuted were women), young attractive girls who refused the advances of village men, etc. A catchall excuse for the persecution of women. 

V. Demonization of women's nature and power.. .e.g. the "Fall from Grace" in the Garden of Eden; women's temptation (celibacy as a defense); and menstruation seen as "the Curse" (blood shown as blue in TV ads.. .also "Thousand Flushes"). 

VI. The Inquisitors.. . suspects' bodies were searched for "witch" marks and the loss of sensitivity thought to be caused by making a pack with Satan (the notion of Satan was new to Christianity at the time). Torture was thought to reintroduce human sensation (so it was good for the accused). The suspects were tortured to name the names of others who "attended the Sabat with the Devil. . . fornicated with demons, killed and ate the flesh of babies (such accusations drove the elder women from midwifery ) 

VII. Burned at the stake...a popular way to "cleanse the evil" of Satan worshippers. Some villages burned all their women (hundreds) in Germany, England, Switzerland, and elsewhere. 

VIII. Twentieth Century revival of "The Craft" . . . estimated to be several hundred thousand active practitioners in the U.S. today (numbers are suspect since many would not voluntarily admit their practice). Many shops and schools around southern California and elsewhere. Reinventing the craft almost from the" ground up" after the almost total annihilation caused by the Witch Hunts.

IX. My personal position on this topic.. .as an anthropologist we do "participant observation" therefore I am not a confrontational skeptic I am curious about this ancient lore and its modem variations. 

X. Summary and Conclusions 

FREEDOM OF AND FROM - AN OUTTAKE
by Harvey Fierstein
( From http://www.inthelifetv.org/1402_player.html )

I don't believe in heaven.

In fact, I don't believe in any sort of conscious afterlife.

More to the point, I don't believe in God. Or Gods. Or Goddesses.

But I pray every day. Sometimes more than once a day. And I operate under a complicated belief system pretty much of my own device which I base on scientific laws and humanistic principles. And, all in all, it works for me.

I tell you this not to seek converts or to invite any discussion of any specific religion. I just want you to know that my beliefs might seem just as silly to you as yours do to me. And that's cool.

We are lucky enough to be living in a country that not only guarantees the freedom to practice religion as we see fit, but also freedom FROM religious zealots who would persecute and prosecute and even physically harm those of us who do not believe as they do.

You say, Good, kind, God fearing people don't go around killing non-believers? I quote the immortal words of Monty Python, "No one ever expects the Spanish Inquisition!" No one ever expects it, but that's what they usually get. Look to the Middle East. Look to Ireland. Look to Brooklyn.

More wars have been fought in the name of religion than any other cause. More people have been persecuted, reputations ruined, and fortunes plundered and murders committed in the name of religion than any other enterprise. And more every day bigotry and prejudice is founded on what religion a person follows than any other factor.

A nun walks into a room and automatically cut her some slack and give her a modicum of respect. Conversely, a man tells you he thinks God is a bunch of superstitious hooey and you start looking to the sky for a lightning bolt to appear.

Now the atheist may in fact be a Nobel Prize winner who has spent his life in service of mankind. He may be the noblest being who has ever walked the earth. But if you had to leave your wallet with either this guy who says there is no God, or with the Nun who says, "Bless you, my child" with beatific smile, who you gonna trust with your hard earned cash? That my friends, is how prejudice works.

The world has learned in recent years that just because you're a priest doesn’t mean you can't be a child rapist. In fact, the Catholic Church is the only organization on record to dispense money from a slush fund set up solely for the paying off of abused children's‚ families. So always remember you cannot judge a man by his collar.

Anyway, it's supposed to be different in America, but is it?

We live in a land where to wince at the phrase "God bless America" makes you somehow suspect.

If you refuse to salute the flag and say GOD in your pledge you're actually judged un-American.

But that’s not the way America is supposed to be. That's the way Iran is. And after two hundred billion of our tax dollars that's the way Iraq is again.

Predicating patriotism on a citizen's belief in God is as anti-American as judging him on the color of his skin. It is wrong. It is useless. And it is unconstitutional. So how did we get stuck with a president who does it every day of the week?

Forget believing in God. How about thinking for yourself on any subject!! In May of this year, an American Catholic Archbishop decreed that any parishioner under his jurisdiction who votes for a pro-choice, pro-gay rights or pro-stem cell research candidate may NOT TAKE COMMUNION. In other words, you go to hell if you don't vote the way the Catholic Church wants you to vote. Are you getting my point yet? Bottom line - I don't care what you believe, or what church you attend, or how religion-oriented your private life is.
Keep it out of my government.

Keep it out of my laws.

Keep it out of my bedroom.

And keep it out of the war rooms at the Pentagon!

What you believe and how you worship is a matter between you and your higher power whatever that means to you.

So how about this: You don't tell me I'm going to hell, andI won't tell you the Emperor has no clothes. Deal? 

AM I BLUE?
by Edd Doerr

Yes, clinically, because on November 2 so many millions of my fellow Americans flunked our quadrennial national intelligence test. They voted for fantasy over fact. They voted against their own economic interests, against their own civil liberties, against protecting the environment and moving toward energy independence and keeping good jobs in this country, against this country’s and the world’s safety and security. They voted for George II’s mistaken adventure in Iraq and for sending more of their children to slaughter and be slaughtered. 

Yes, I’m blue, in the political/geographical sense that I was one of the more urban, educated, informed, and “secular” voters who supported and campaigned for John Kerry and John Edwards. 

By the time you read this column you will have seen the election analyzed, reanalyzed, picked apart, and despaired over ad nauseam. But in a column dedicated to church-state and religious liberty concerns there is still much to be said. 

Among the all too few bright spots on November 2 are these virtually unnoticed items: George Bush’s own congressional district reelected Chet Edwards, a Democrat who has been an outspoken defender of church-state separation. And South Dakotans voted 53% to 47% to defeat a proposed state constitutional amendment to allow the legislature to provide transportation and food service for “sectarian schools.” This continues the trend of voter rejection of attempts to divert public funds to faith-based schools in 26 statewide referenda between 1966 and 2004. Interestingly, South Dakotans defeated this measure most heavily in the countries that voted strongest for Bush, according to a county by county analysis by my colleague Al Menendez. 

Then, too, Californians voted to provide $3 billion for embryonic and other stem cell research. 

It is useful to recap the damage that the second Bush administration will surely try to inflict on church-state separation and religious liberty, the subjects on which this column specializes. 

The Supreme Court. George II has made it abundantly clear that his two favorite justices are Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, the most anti-separation duo ever to serve in the Court. With three or four vacancies expected on the Court in the next four years, expect Bush to nominate clones of these two. On page 4 of Ken Foskett’s new biography, Judging Thomas: The Life and Times of Clarence Thomas, we read: “Senior aides to President George W. Bush, whose father put Thomas on the Court, have consulted Thomas about succeeding William H. Rehnquist as the nation’s next chief justice.” Now there’s a helluva scary thought! Further, as the lower federal courts are traditionally stepping stones on the way to the Supreme Court, we can expect Bush to flood the Senate with nominees well to the right of the moderates nominated by Bill Clinton, many of whom were turned down by Senate Republicans. 

The only protection the country has against Bush’s remaking the federal courts in his own image is the thin blue line of Senate Democrats, hopefully augmented by a few moderate Republicans, who are not afraid to use their one remaining weapon, the filibuster. 

Congress. Bush’s congenial Congress can be expected to continue pushing for the privatization of education and social services, a drive intended to compel American taxpayers to support “faith-based” operations exempt from most anti-discrimination rules applicable to public institutions. Bush and his myrmidons are flipping the bird at Ben Franklin’s wise dictum in his Poor Richard’s Almanac exactly 250 years ago: “When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself, and God does not care to support it, so that its professors are obliged to call for the help of the civil power, ‘tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one . . . God helps them that help themselves.” Until more Americans wake up, only the courts can halt the worst violations of the spirit and letter of the First Amendment.

 Executive Branch. What Bush cannot get done by Congress he tries to do by executive order. One example is his order to allow tax-funded faith-based charities to discriminate in hiring and to promote sectarian religion. Another is his refusal in 2003 and 2004 to deliver $34 million approved by Congress to the UN Population Fund, despite his own advisers’ approval of the grants. Still another is his ideologically and religiously motivated thumbs-down on federally funded embryonic stem cell research. (R.I.P. Christopher Reeve.)

Reproductive Rights. Although Roe v. Wade may not be in immediate peril, Congress, state legislatures, and federal and state courts have slowly and in diverse ways gradually eroded reproductive rights. In December 2003 I addressed the Women’s National Democratic Club in Washington, a few days after Bush signed into law a congressional ban on so-called “partial-birth” abortions (bans ruled unconstitutional in recent months by federal courts in California, Nebraska, and New York) surrounded by a grinning, exclusively male photo-op cheering section. As I noted to the WNDC audience, if women were proportionally represented in Congress, instead of making up only about 15%, such legislation could not pass. November 2 added only five seats for women. 

Bush won on November 2 largely because religious fundamentalists – Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish – were harnessed to a political bandwagon and/or rose to great prominence in one of our historic political parties. Led by unscrupulous “pastors” (etymologically, those who herd sheep or other docile creatures), fundamentalist preachers and televangelists put their version of “faith” ahead of science, reason, common sense, and the nation’s best interests. More moderate, progressive, and liberal Protestants, Catholics, and Jews resonate to what John Kerry said about religious values that support inclusion, fairness, social justice, peace, and deeds (“faith without works is dead”).

 In the months and years ahead Humanists and moderate to progressive “people of faith” across the spectrum will need to think, rethink, and strategize to bring our country back on course toward a more egalitarian, free, humane, and progressive path. 

Edd Doerr, president of Americans for Religious Liberty and immediate past president of the American Humanist Association, is the author of three new books, Min liv som Humanist (My Life as a Humanist, a Memoir ), Somebody Has to Say It, a collection of letters and essays; and Rejoyce, Rejoyce!, a collection of poems. All are available from the author.

 

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