Continuous Productivity

Benefit of Clergy

I came across a fascinating little law called the "benefit of clergy" over at the Overcoming Bias blog. The basic idea of this wonderful law was that one could be tried in an ecclesiastical court as opposed to a secular court. The benefit, of course, of the ecclesiastical court was that one could seek a sentence of penance, as opposed to hanging.

I'm most intrigued by the political relationship between the king and the clergy:

Prior to the 12th century, traditional English law courts had been jointly presided over by a bishop and a local secular magistrate. In 1166, however, Henry II promulgated the Assize of Clarendon legislation that established a new system of courts that rendered decisions wholly by royal authority. The Assizes touched off a power struggle between the king and Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury. Becket asserted that these secular courts had no jurisdiction over clergymen because it was the privilege of clergy not to be accused or tried for crime except before an ecclesiastical court. After four of Henry's knights murdered Becket in 1170, public sentiment turned against the king and he was forced to make amends with the church. As part of the Compromise of Avranches, Henry was purged of any guilt in Becket's murder but he agreed that the secular courts, with few exceptions (high treason being one of them), had no jurisdiction over the clergy.

The best part about this was that you could show your clerical status by simply reading from the Bible:

At first, in order to plead the benefit of clergy, one had to appear before the court tonsured and otherwise wearing ecclesiastical dress. Over time, this proof of clergy-hood was replaced by a literacy test: defendants demonstrated their clerical status by reading from the Bible. This opened the door to literate lay defendants' also claiming the benefit of clergy. In 1351, under Edward III, this loophole was formalised in statute, and the benefit of clergy was officially extended to all who could read.

Atheism is Grating?

One of the things I most enjoy is listening in on arguments between believers and non-believers. Furthermore, some of the best discussions are within believer and non-believer debates. Last week, Andrew Sullivan had a series of posts that concluded with reader feedback. A reader comment so perfectly encapsulates this debate, that I just had to post it here:

Something I find annoying about this atheist-believer dispute is that it all depends on what you mean by "god". If you require the talking snake, then, yeah, Dennet rules, in my opinion. But if you are some sort of mystic or pantheist and you experience that as "faith," then the the naivete of Dennet's arguments is indeed grating. The exquisitely beautiful, scientific worldview is rife with chaos, weirdness, randomness, unknowns and chance. And chance is mystery, and mystery is at the heart of religion. And that's at the heart of this dispute. To be a scientific atheist and assert scientific certainty about the world when, in fact, the scientific model is so full of uncertainty is, yes, just as irritating as the arguments of naive religious fundamentalists. Both assert that they know in a way that denies the mystery.

God and Intelligence

Scientists have explored the relationship between intelligence and religiosity, as well as between education level attained and religiosity for many decades (see the following article that summarizes some of the relevant research). Unfortunately, for religious folks, the news is not good. IQ and religiosity are negatively correlated, at both the individual as well as national levels. Religiosity and educational attainment are also negatively correlated. Amongst the educated classes, professors are the least likely to be religious, and finally within the academe, the more eminent the professor is, the less he/she is likely to be religious. The evidence could not be any clearer. Please bear in mind that providing an instance wherein your uncle Joe is a physicist who is also a devout Christian does not falsify the latter evidence (see my previous post on using singular exemplars to attempt to falsify phenomena that hold true at the population level).

Very interesting post on the Psychology Today blog about the religiosity of intelligent folks. The basic premise of the post is that the more intelligent one is, the less likely he/she is to believe in God. Read the whole thing, but in case you don't it includes a wonderful quote:

The bottom line is that God is striking the following deal with us: "If you truly believe in me, I command you to refrain from using the brain that I have given you. Accept me by rejecting your brain."

Church Business Succession Planning

Even churches have the same succession planning issues as do family-owned businesses. When the patriarch withers away, the children often foil the life's work:

The Crystal Cathedral blames the recession for its woes. But it's clear that the elder Schuller's carefully orchestrated leadership transition, planned over a decade, has stumbled badly.

It's a problem common to personality driven ministries. Most have collapsed or been greatly diminished after their founders left the pulpit or died.

Members often tie their donations to the pastor, not the institution, said Nancy Ammerman, a sociologist of religion at Boston University. Schuller, with a style that blends pop psychology and theology, has a particularly devoted following, she said.

"Viewers are probably much less likely to give when it's not their preacher they're giving to," she said. "There's something about these televised programs where people develop a certain loyalty."

Even in a religious setting, the stories are similar to many charisma-driven co-founders of the world's biggest companies:

The elder Schuller, who called his weekly show "America's Television Church," founded his ministry in a drive-in theater after moving to Southern California in 1955.

He studied marketing strategies to attract worshippers and preached a feel-good Christianity, describing himself as a "possibility thinker" and spinning his upbeat style into a 10,000-member church and a broadcast watched by millions worldwide.

The church's main sanctuary, the Crystal Cathedral, is a landmark designed by renowned architect Philip Johnson, with a spire visible from afar amid Orange County's suburban sprawl. Thousands make the pilgrimage to see where the broadcast is filmed before a live congregation.

Some More Red and Blue Light

In early September, when Sarah Palin, the Republican candidate for Vice-President, announced that her unwed seventeen-year-old daughter, Bristol, was pregnant, many liberals were shocked, not by the revelation but by the reaction to it. They expected the news to dismay the evangelical voters that John McCain was courting with his choice of Palin. Yet reports from the floor of the Republican Convention, in St. Paul, quoted dozens of delegates who seemed unfazed, or even buoyed, by the news. A delegate from Louisiana told CBS News, “Like so many other American families who are in the same situation, I think it’s great that she instilled in her daughter the values to have the child and not to sneak off someplace and have an abortion.” A Mississippi delegate claimed that “even though young children are making that decision to become pregnant, they’ve also decided to take responsibility for their actions and decided to follow up with that and get married and raise this child.” Palin’s family drama, delegates said, was similar to the experience of many socially conservative Christian families. As Marlys Popma, the head of evangelical outreach for the McCain campaign, told National Review, “There hasn’t been one evangelical family that hasn’t gone through some sort of situation.” In fact, it was Popma’s own “crisis pregnancy” that had brought her into the movement in the first place.

During the campaign, the media has largely respected calls to treat Bristol Palin’s pregnancy as a private matter. But the reactions to it have exposed a cultural rift that mirrors America’s dominant political divide. Social liberals in the country’s “blue states” tend to support sex education and are not particularly troubled by the idea that many teen-agers have sex before marriage, but would regard a teen-age daughter’s pregnancy as devastating news. And the social conservatives in “red states” generally advocate abstinence-only education and denounce sex before marriage, but are relatively unruffled if a teen-ager becomes pregnant, as long as she doesn’t choose to have an abortion.

A very good article at The New Yorker outlining the paradoxical views on sex of evangelicals.

Freedom of What?

Random House has decided to not release a novel it thought might incite Muslim violence:

The Jewel of Medina, the debut novel by journalist Sherry Jones, was due to hit shelves on 12 August.

Random House said it had been advised the book "might be offensive" to some Muslims, and "could incite acts of violence by a small, radical segment."

"We decided, after much deliberation, to postpone publication," it added.

It's a shame, but scare tactics have been working on humans since the beginning of time. Just ask President Bush.

Yes, You Can be a Hindu and a Muslim

A very interesting profile of a Rajasthani community that is, essentially, both Hindu and Muslim:

They are people with a mixed Hindu-Muslim identity. And left alone, that is how they would like to be.

Deepa, 60, has a Hindu name but he thinks he is a Muslim because he follows Muslim practices.

"In my family, we celebrate Hindu festivals such as Holi and Diwali. But we also offer namaz (prayers) at (the Muslim festival of) Eid. We worship both local gods and Allah. This has been a tradition in my family. I do not know whether my ancestors were Hindus or Muslims."

Another Mehrat member is Mahendra Singh who has a Hindu name.

"We don't care about being Hindu or Muslim. It is sheer politics," he says.

Barely, 15km (9 miles) from Byawar town, Rasool runs a tea shop. He says his great grandparents were Hindus. But somewhere along the line, they became Muslims.

"It wasn't such a big deal to be Hindu or Muslim," says Rasool. His son Shankar is named after a Hindu god but he says they consider themselves Muslims.

India, I believe, is at the forefront of these hybrid religions due to its history and general tolerance.

As an Indian-American, I have many Indian friends that are Hindu, Muslim, and Christian. It's always striking to go to weddings, or baptisms, or other events and notice the similarities in food, rituals, interactions, etc no matter the religion of the people hosting the event.

Perhaps, I'm biased, but I think it's a testament to India holding on to its culture and heritage above religious boundaries.

The Earth is Still Flat

Despite a court-ordered ban on the teaching of creationism in US schools, about one in eight high-school biology teachers still teach it as valid science, a survey reveals. And, although almost all teachers also taught evolution, those with less training in science – and especially evolutionary biology – tend to devote less class time to Darwinian principles.

Unbelievable as it seems, it does not surprise me.  It's a shame that 16% of the educators that are responsible for teaching our children scientific fact don't believe it themselves. 

Darwin on the Internet

Very cool news coming out of Cambridge University: all of Charles Darwin's papers are now available online.  I don't profess to be a Darwin scholar, but am more fascinated with the disintermediation of knowledge.  What used to require a visit to Cambridge for examination is now available instantly. 

Don't Be Cheap

According to E'temad, the woman, identified as Hengameh, decided to claim her entire dowry of 124,000 red roses after 10 years of marriage to "punish her very stingy husband".

"Shortly after marriage, I realised that Shahin was very cheap," she told the newspaper. "He even refused to pay for my coffee if we went to a cafe or restaurant."

An amusing article forwarded  by a loyal reader.  You know what they say about a woman scorned- she'll get her roses.

Religion as Excuse or Ignorance?

I referenced the story of Pervez Kambaksh in a previous post.  Well, the good news is he had a trial before he was sentenced to death.  The not-so-good news: his trial lasted four minutes.  It's very disheartening to see religion used as an excuse time and time again to extinguish free thought:

Mr Kambaksh says he merely downloaded from an Iranian website an article which questioned why polygamy was all right for men but not women.

Some days later he was told the Afghan intelligence services wanted to see him.

In the police station he was put under arrest, he said, and told it was for his own protection as otherwise he might be killed.

After a month in jail Mr Kambaksh was charged in court with blasphemy and other crimes against Islam.

In late January he expected the trial to start but instead was taken into the courtroom just before it was due to shut.

He says the judges and prosecutor repeated some details of the case and then declared him guilty and announced the sentence was death.

"The judges had made up their mind about the case without me," he told the Independent.

"The way they talked to me, looked at me, was the way they look at a condemned man.

"I wanted to say: 'This is wrong, please listen to me,' but I was given no chance to explain."

The good news is that the case is scheduled for appeal and President Karzai himself would have to approve any death sentence before it is carried out.

God Study

University of Oxford researchers will spend nearly $4 million to study why mankind embraces God.

I will be following the progress of this study.  I have always wondered if believing in God is innate or cultural.  For instance, what would a child that was never taught about God believe?

Religion Really is Interpretation

I missed this fascinating article that the WSJ ran back on January 12th, but a very loyal reader was kind enough to email it to me.  Most intelligent people realize that religious texts can be debated and interpreted for a lifetime.  Recently, photographs of the Quran that were thought to be lost were rediscovered and available for scholarly analysis.  We now have some very ancient texts to help us understand the historicity of the Quran. 

To me, though, this article also highlights the constant struggle of interpreting  texts that are, essentially, derivatives of blind faith:

Quranic scholarship often focuses on arcane questions of philology and textual analysis. Experts nonetheless tend to tread warily, mindful of fury directed in recent years at people deemed to have blasphemed Islam's founding document and the Prophet Muhammad.

One literally has to pretend to be someone else so that he can give his honest analysis:

A scholar in northern Germany writes under the pseudonym of Christoph Luxenberg because, he says, his controversial views on the Quran risk provoking Muslims. He claims that chunks of it were written not in Arabic but in another ancient language, Syriac. The "virgins" promised by the Quran to Islamic martyrs, he asserts, are in fact only "grapes."

Nevertheless, it's still fulfilling to see scholars plodding forward:

Ms. Neuwirth says it's too early to have any idea what her team's close study of the cache of early texts and other manuscripts will reveal. Their project, launched last year at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Science and Humanities, has state funding for 18 years but could take much longer. The earliest manuscripts of the Quran date from around 700 and use a skeletal version of the Arabic script that is difficult to decipher and can be open to divergent readings.

Some Things Stay the Same

A very sad ruling out of Afghanistan today.  A young journalist was arrested and sentenced to death for blasphemy.  What was he arrested for?

He was arrested in 2007 after downloading material relating to the role of women in Islamic societies.

I guess thinking freely is still a blasphemous activity.  Sad.