Humanist Association of Orange County - Newsletter for October 2005 
Issue #95 ( HTML format ) 
Editor: Benito Franqui
Associate Editor: Dave Silva

Send submissions and membership renewals to:
HAOC
2609 Fernside St.
Orange, CA 92865
benfranq@earthlink.net

Articles submitted for publication in the newsletter
must be received no later than 10 days before the
next HAOC meeting.
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

HAOC MEETINGS

Sunday, October 16, 1:30 P.M.
Stephanie Campbell, chair of the new Orange County Chapter of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
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Sunday, November 20, 1:30 P.M.
Dr. Lou Regal will talk about "A Humanistic Rational Philosophy in Psychiatry".

CFI ORANGE COUNTY OUTREACH MEETING 
Sunday, October 9, 4:30 PM
Costa Mesa Neighborhood Community Center
1845 Park Ave., Costa Mesa 

The Center for Inquiry, along with its associated organizations the Committee for the Scientific Examination for Claims of the Paranormal and the Council for Secular Humanism, is forming a network of CFI communities across North America and abroad.  

    The aim of these groups is threefold: to establish a community of like-minded individuals who are interested in socializing with fellow skeptics, humanists, science advocates and critical inquirers; to provide a forum for the free exchange of ideas; and to educate the general public about the ideals and aims of the Center for Inquiry and its organizations. Rational inquirers across the country have been joining forces at the local level. Why? Some of our members have said: 

 "I feel as though I'm surrounded by religious intolerance. It would be wonderful to associate with a group that values reason and critical thinking as opposed to supernaturalism and the paranormal." 

 "I have become increasingly alarmed by the religious extremism after the unconscionable acts of September 11, 2001. I am glad you help provide communities where reason and secular values are promoted." 

"I'd very much like to meet others who share my high regard for humanist values, reason and science, and who believe it is possible to lead a moral, upstanding life without a paranormal or supernatural foundation."

     The establishment of a Center for Inquiry Community in Orange County will be celebrated October 9th at 4:30 PM at Costa Mesa Community Center, 1845 Park Ave. Costa Mesa, CA. The featured speaker will be DJ Grothe. The topic of his address will be "Inquiry and Outreach: CFI Communities." DJ Grothe is the director of the Center for Inquiry Communities Program as well as the CFI campus outreach department. He has traveled and lectured widely throughout North America, speaking on ethics, religious-political extremism, church-state separation and science advocacy. His writings have been published in . newspapers throughout the United States, and he has spoken on numerous radio and television programs. 

     Contact Vaughn Rees at vaughn@cfiwest.com or 323-666-9797 for more information about the CFI Community of Orange County, or visit our website at www.centerforinquiry.net/oc. 

COWBOY ECONOMICS
By Jerry Parks

In a cowboy economy maximum consumption (following maximum production), as well as continuing rapid population growth, are regarded as good things. In a cowboy economy greed is good! Winner takes all! Grab all the natural resources you can before someone else gets them. Make your close friends rich, by means fair or foul, so they will support your policies and come to your defense in an emergency. The cowboy economy is exciting, but violent, and clearly depends upon more and more natural resources to exploit. But, as everyone knows, all Ponzi schemes eventually come to a catastrophic end. And the cowboy economy is clearly like a Ponzi scheme. It completely ignores the fact that many natural resources are being rapidly depleted, and we are robbing mother earth to make corporations rich and powerful. We don’t need consumption binges to have a successful economy. Supposedly a high GNP indicates a flourishing economy, but it can also be an indication of an unsustainable misuse of our capital resources. In fact, a non-growing economy and a non-growing (or diminishing) population may be required to prevent an Easter Island type of disaster for the entire world.  

The earth’s resources should be treated like a savings account in the bank that belongs to everyone. For every barrel of oil pumped out of the Gulf of Mexico, a fee should be paid by the oil company to a fund set up to do things to offset the inevitable resulting environmental damage: oil spills in the oceans by poorly maintained and overage oil tankers, the air pollution put out by refineries and the vehicles that run on the resulting fuels, etc. Deforestation should not be allowed without collecting fees to somehow correct the environmental damage that results. Ownership of the property on which the trees grow does not entitle the owners to do damage to everyone’s environment. Big corporations come in, buy up property, take out what natural resources are there, or dump contaminating wastes, and then leave without accepting any responsibility to correct their damage they have done. They have made money by misuse of the natural resources. And apparently our government wants to let them get away with it. The Bush administration, the biggest supporter of cowboy economics, actually is making laws so that companies cannot be sued to correct the pollution they cause. It also is subsidizing waste by lowering taxes on the super-wealthy who will use that extra money for luxury items which usually involve high usage and waste of natural resources and have little true utility value.

Exploiting natural resources is a necessary thing for an industrial society. It keeps production rolling and some people employed. And rising production may result, temporarily, in rising living standards. It even makes a few individuals extremely wealthy. But when it results in the degradation of the environment and the making of things that are of no intrinsic utilitarian value there should be some control. The world doesn’t need more palatial weekend homes, private planes and huge yachts to burn up more oil, all for the limited use of a few select individuals without any social conscience. Luxury consumption is simply an ego thing. And studies have shown that once basic biological needs for food, shelter, clothing, and healthcare are met, and a standard of living providing some leisure time are achieved, further consumption doesn’t provide increased satisfaction. Anything more is simply keeping up with (or outdoing) the Joneses. 

The cowboy economy worked in a world with less population and lots of open land to exploit. But it also resulted in people like Ken Lay, Dennis Kozlowski and many others in responsible corporate positions thinking that it was their right to make themselves superrich by lying and cheating all of those who had trusted them to run their corporations properly. And the federal government is full of those, who for a few more dollars under the table or for significant political contributions will make laws for the benefit of their beneficiaries while knowing that such laws are bad for the general population.

The cowboy economy in the US has resulted in the extreme difference in the monetary and physical health of the wealthy and the working poor. The wealthy now figure that they must live in gated communities in order to be separated from the general riffraff, who might get unruly when they get hungry and desperate. But actually we are all better off and are all safer if we live in a nation with a relatively equitable income distribution. It makes no sense to have a country (or world) divided between billions of excluded people living in absolute poverty and an elite with more money than they know what to do with living behind fortress walls.

Theodore Roosevelt, in spite of his cowboy-like persona, put limits on what corporations could do. Eisenhower warned against the military-industrial complex, and saw to it that corporations paid their fair share of taxes. The resurrection of fullblown cowboy economics in the 21st century is a particularly sorry development. Clearly when corporations are given free rein to control the nation’s politics, the general population suffers.

THE DARK SIDE OF FAITH
By Rosa Brooks
Los Angeles Times, October 1, 2005

IT'S OFFICIAL: Too much religion may be a dangerous thing.

    This is the implication of a study reported in the current issue of the Journal of Religion and Society, a publication of Creighton University's Center for the Study of Religion. The study, by evolutionary scientist Gregory S. Paul, looks at the correlation between levels of "popular religiosity" and various "quantifiable societal health" indicators in 18 prosperous democracies, including the United States.
     Paul ranked societies based on the percentage of their population expressing absolute belief in God, the frequency of prayer reported by their citizens and their frequency of attendance at religious services. He then correlated this with data on rates of homicide, sexually transmitted disease, teen pregnancy, abortion and child mortality. He found that the most religious democracies exhibited substantially higher degrees of social dysfunction than societies with larger percentages of atheists and agnostics. Of the nations studied, the U.S. — which has by far the largest percentage of people who take the Bible literally and express absolute belief in God (and the lowest percentage of atheists and agnostics) — also has by far the highest levels of homicide, abortion, teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. This conclusion will come as no surprise to those who have long gnashed their teeth in frustration while listening to right-wing evangelical claims that secular liberals are weak on "values." Paul's study confirms globally what is already evident in the U.S.: 
       When it comes to "values," if you look at facts rather than mere rhetoric, the substantially more secular blue states routinely leave the Bible Belt red states in the dust. Murder rates? Six of the seven states with the highest 2003 homicide rates were "red" in the 2004 elections (Louisiana, Mississippi, Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, South Carolina), while the deep blue Northeastern states had murder rates well below the national average. Infant mortality rates? Highest in the South and Southwest; lowest in New England. Divorce rates? Marriages break up far more in red states than in blue. Teen pregnancy rates? The same. Of course, the red/blue divide is only an imperfect proxy for levels of religiosity. And while Paul's study found that the correlation between high degrees of religiosity and high degrees of social dysfunction appears robust, it could be that high levels of social dysfunction fuel religiosity, rather than the other way around. Although correlation is not causation, Paul's study offers much food for thought. At a minimum, his findings suggest that contrary to popular belief, lack of religiosity does societies no particular harm. This should offer ammunition to those who maintain that religious belief is a purely private matter and that government should remain neutral, not only among religions but also between religion and lack of religion.
        It should also give a boost to critics of "faith-based" social services and abstinence-only disease and pregnancy prevention programs. We shouldn't shy away from the possibility that too much religiosity may be socially dangerous. Secular, rationalist approaches to problem-solving emphasize uncertainty, evidence and perpetual reevaluation. Religious faith is inherently nonrational. This in itself does not make religion worthless or dangerous. All humans hold nonrational beliefs, and some of these may have both individual and societal value. But historically, societies run into trouble when powerful religions become imperial and absolutist.
        The claim that religion can have a dark side should not be news. Does anyone doubt that Islamic extremism is linked to the recent rise in international terrorism? And since the history of Christianity is every bit as blood-drenched as the history of Islam, why should we doubt that extremist forms of modern American Christianity have their own pernicious and measurable effects on national health and well-being? Arguably, Paul's study invites us to conclude that the most serious threat humanity faces today is religious extremism: nonrational, absolutist belief systems that refuse to tolerate difference and dissent. My prediction is that right-wing evangelicals will do their best to discredit Paul's substantive findings.
        But when they fail, they'll just shrug: So what if highly religious societies have more murders and disease than less religious societies? Remember the trials of Job? God likes to test the faithful. To the truly nonrational, even evidence that on its face undermines your beliefs can be twisted to support them. Absolutism means never having to say you're sorry. And that, of course, is what makes it so very dangerous.

ON THE LIGHT SIDE
Bigot on a bridge wins poll for funniest religious joke ( From The Guardian )

I was walking across a bridge one day, and I saw a man standing on  the edge, about to jump. I ran over and said: "Stop. Don't do it."

"Why shouldn't I?" he asked.

"Well, there's so much to live for!"

"Like what?"

"Are you religious?"

He said: "Yes."

I said: "Me too. Are you Christian or Buddhist?"

"Christian."
"Me too. Are you Catholic or Protestant?"

"Protestant."

"Me too. Are you Episcopalian or Baptist?"

"Baptist."

"Wow. Me too. Are you Baptist Church of God or Baptist Church of the Lord?"

"Baptist Church of God."

"Me too. Are you original Baptist Church of God, or are you Reformed Baptist Church of God?"

"Reformed Baptist Church of God."

"Me too. Are you Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of  879, or Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1915?"

He said: "Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1915."

I said: "Die, heretic scum," and pushed him off.