Dear Readers,

Some of you may have heard the news already: later this month I will leave the Center for Inquiry’s employment.  As news has begun to spread, I thought I should take this opportunity to announce my departure formally, and to thank my friends and colleagues at CFI for a richly satisfying and rewarding four years.

Several weeks ago I informed my colleagues at CFI that I would leave the organization to pursue a Ph.D. in physics at Columbia University.  Having studied physics as an undergraduate, I have long held a desire to pursue an advanced degree in the field.  After leaving CFI, I will spend the summer working with an experimental cosmology research group at Columbia and preparing for the fall semester.  (Cosmology appears to be a welcoming field for lawyers-turned scientists.)

Although I am very excited about the new challenges and opportunities before me, I will be sorry to leave behind the many dedicated and talented colleagues at an organization I continue to admire.  I cannot think of a better place to have practiced law for the past four years.  The work I have done has been challenging, highly rewarding, and personally meaningful to me.  Most of all, however, I will miss the people with whom I have worked.  I am proud to have called them my colleagues, and am honored to count them among my friends.

I have expressed to Ron Lindsay and CFI’s management team my gratitude and appreciation, as well as my intent to continue working with CFI as a volunteer as my schedule allows. So this may not be the last you will hear from me.

Thank you to all who have read and commented on my Free Thinking blog posts.  I hope to see you again soon, perhaps at an upcoming CFI conference.

Best wishes,

Derek Araujo

Last week the Florida Senate cleared the way for voters to approve a state constitutional amendment that would repeal the state constitution’s “No Aid” clause.

The “No Aid” clause expressly mandates that no revenue of the state can be provided “directly or indirectly in aid of any church, sect, or religious denomination or in aid of any sectarian institution.” More than half the states include similar “no-aid” provisions in their constitutions.

If 60% of Florida voters approve the proposed amendment at the ballot box, the “No Aid” language would be edited out of Florida’s Constitution. In addition, the amendment would add language preventing the government from denying taxpayer money to entities on the basis of religious identity.

The proposed amendment was motivated in part by the Council for Secular Humanism’s lawsuit challenging the use of Florida taxpayer dollars for faith-based substance abuse transitional housing programs in Florida prisons. The Council and co-plaintiffs Richard and Elaine Hull allege that the rehabilitation programs include illegal Christian religious indoctrination.

Right wing religious organizations, including the Christian legal activist group the Beckett Fund for Religious Liberty, are targeting “No Aid” provisions as the last bulwark preventing religious institutions from dipping their hands into state coffers.

Religious Right organizations malign “No Aid” provisions as vestiges of anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant bigotry.  They refer to state constitutional “No Aid” provisions as “Blaine amendments,” after the late-19th Century U.S. Representative, Senator and presidential candidate James G. Blaine, who advocated a failed U.S. constitutional amendment barring public funding of any religious school.  Blaine has been accused of tapping into anti-Catholic animus to further his political career.  But many state constitutional “No Aid” provisions predate Blaine’s political career, the 19th Century influx of Catholic immigrants, and the Catholic Church’s first drive to secure public funding for its religious schools.

In any case, the so-called “Blaine amendments” do not target Catholic religious schools.  They ban public funding of any religious institutions, including “mainline Protestant” institutions.  As such, they resemble the many longstanding state constitutional provisions barring the diversion of tax money to religious ministries and other sectarian institutions. (These provisions frequently fail to mention religious schools specifically because education was not seen as a government concern at the time.)

“No Aid” provisions safeguard the principle, cherished by the Founders, that citizens should not be forced to support others’ religions with their tax dollars.

It may be tempting for Religious Right organizations and their allies to gut church-state separation in their quest for public money.  They might not enjoy the results, however, if the Florida ballot initiative succeeds.  Once the public coffers have been opened to religious institutions, they must be opened to all religious institutions.  Will right wing religious conservatives balk at being forced to fund Muslim, Mormon and Scientologist institutions? Or will their craving for tax dollars silence them?

This morning the Supreme Court issued a controversial 5-to-4 ruling that imperils the ability of taxpayers to challenge potential Establishment Clause violations involving government subsidies to religious institutions.

Justice Kennedy, joined by Justices Scalia, Thomas, Alito, and Chief Justice Roberts, dismissed a challenge to an Arizona tax aid scheme that directs tax dollars to religious schools.  Under the Arizona scheme, state taxpayers may take a 100% credit for donations to “school tuition organizations” that fund religious and other private schools.  Nearly 92% of all funds under the program have gone to religious school tuition.

The Court ruled that the plaintiffs in Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization v. Winn lacked standing as taxpayers to challenge the scheme in court, endorsing the Obama administration’s argument that taxpayers have no right to bring law suits challenging the use of tax revenues to subsidize religion when the subsidy comes in the form of tax credits, as opposed to direct appropriations. 

For nearly half a century, taxpayers have been able to seek judicial review of potential Establishment Clause violations under the rule announced in Flast v. Cohen, 392 U.S. 83 (1968), under which taxpayers may initiate law suits challenging the use of tax dollars to subsidize religion.  The Court’s ruling embraces a thin view of the Establishment Clause that will allow legislatures to perform an end-run around the Flast rule by employing tax credits instead of direct appropriations to subsidize religion.

The difference between government subsidies of religion through tax credits versus appropriations is purely formalistic.  As Justice Elena Kagan noted in a dissenting opinion, joined by Justices Breyer, Ginsburg and Sotomayor:

A tax credit, the Court asserts, does not injure objecting taxpayers, because it “does not extract and spend [their] funds in service of an establishment.” . . .

This novel distinction in standing law between appropriations and tax expenditures has as little basis in principle as it has in our precedent. Cash grants and targeted tax breaks are means of accomplishing the same government objective-to provide financial support to select individuals or organizations. Taxpayers who oppose state aid of religion have equal reason to protest whether that aid flows from the one form of subsidy or the other. Either way, the government has financed the religious activity. And so either way, taxpayers should be able to challenge the subsidy.

As a result of the Court majority’s ruling, taxpayers’ rights to challenge government subsidies of religion have all but evaporated.  Because tax credits and direct appropriations may be used to achieve the same purpose, legislatures may subsidize religion by substituting a tax credit for a direct appropriation, secure in the knowledge that taxpayers may not challenge the subsidy in court.  As Justice Kagan put it:

From now on, the government need follow just one simple rule-subsidize through the tax system-to preclude taxpayer challenges to state funding of religion.

And that result-the effective demise of taxpayer standing-will diminish the Establishment Clause’s force and meaning. Sometimes, no one other than taxpayers has suffered the injury necessary to challenge government sponsorship of religion. Today’s holding therefore will prevent federal courts from determining whether some subsidies to sectarian organizations comport with our Constitution’s guarantee of religious neutrality.

Last year CFI and the Council for Secular Humanism submitted a joint friend-of-the-court brief with the American Humanist Association, the Freedom From Religion Foundation and others, urging the Supreme Court to maintain the long-held right of taxpayers to challenge religious subsidy schemes of the kind at issue in Winn.

For years, the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), a group of 56 Islamic states promoting Muslim solidarity and values, has pushed successfully for United Nations Human Rights Council resolutions urging member states to combat the so-called “defamation of religions.” 

CFI, which holds special consultative status with the UN’s Economic and Social Council, fought each year to convince the Human Rights Council and the General Assembly to reject the resolutions, as they were used to legitimate anti-blasphemy laws and the censorship and intimidation of religious dissidents, human rights activists, nonbelievers and atheists.

This year is different.   On Thursday the Human Rights Council voted unanimously to approve a new resolution, based on a draft provided by the Pakistani delegation, that makes no mention of “defamation of religions.”  Instead, it underlines the right of individuals to freedom of religion or belief.

This is an enormous step forward.  Hopefully this signals a strong move away from attempts to use the UN’s governing apparatus to subvert the guarantees of freedom of speech and belief found in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Unfortunately, the new resolution is far from perfect.  It calls for states to foster “religious tolerance . . . and respect,” which could provide cover for the condemnation of criticism or ridicule of religious ideas. The resolution does not include an explicit provision CFI has urged in past years: one barring states from restricting proselytizing, discussion, or criticism of beliefs, or expressions of antipathy, dislike, ridicule or insult of beliefs, whether secular or religious. The resolution also fails to address explicitly discrimination against, and violence targeting, non-believers.

Still, the OIC’s abandonment of “defamation of religions” is a welcome and unexpected development.  Free speech and human rights proponents are right to celebrate this turn of events. 

CFI will continue working with UN delegations and other NGOs to ensure that religious freedom resolutions are not employed to protect all individuals—believers and non-believers alike—without stifling freedom of expression.

Two months ago, my colleague Ron Lindsay wrote a Free Thinking   blog entry about a statement CFI issued with its sister organization, the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, against Wal-Mart’s sale and marketing of the homeopathic flu “remedy” Boiron Oscillococcinum. 

  CFI supporters and the public are now invited to join the leading scientists and physicians who have signed CFI and CSI’s statement (including 2009 Chemistry Nobel Laureate Venki Ramakrishnan, science author and critic Simon Singh, and many others).    Add your name today by     clicking here     .  

As Ron Lindsay noted in his blog entry, there is no credible scientific evidence to support the effectiveness of Boiron Oscillococcinum beyond what is expected from the placebo effect. The product’s alleged active ingredient consists of mere liquefied duck liver and duck heart, substances early 20th century homeopaths thought contained a nonexistent bacterium they dubbed “oscillococci.” Moreover, Boiron Oscillococcinum’s homeopathic preparation requires repeatedly diluting the “active ingredient” in water until the odds that the solution contains even a single molecule of it are effectively zero. 

In other words, Boiron is making money from customers by selling an impotent cold remedy that is diluted away to nothingness.  And Wal-Mart is helping them to do so.

Among its many claims, Wal-Mart’s web site, www.walmart.com, states that Boiron Oscillococcinum is to be used ”   for flu-like symptoms. ” The website also features an image of the product’s package, which indicates that the product “Reduces [the] Duration and Severity of Flu Symptoms,” including “Fever, Chills, Body Aches and Pains.” Wal-Mart’s website contains further assurances that the products it sells will help customers fight colds and the flu.  Wal-Mart customers are purchasing Boiron Oscillococcinum based on Wal-Mart’s assurances.

Oscillococcinum is modern-day snake oil.  Tests have shown repeatedly that homeopathic remedies have no greater effect than placebos.  Like all homeopathic remedies, Boiron Oscillococcinum is based on a set of bizarre superstitions invented by the homeopath Samuel Hahnemann in 1796.  Hahnemann taught that any substance that causes symptoms in healthy individuals can treat the same symptoms in sick patients, if administered in small amounts.  In addition, Hahnemann thought that diluting his so-called treatments in water would make them   stronger .

Diluting a homeopathic solution in water by a factor of 100 produces what homeopaths call a “1C” solution.  Diluting the already-diluted solution yet again by a factor of 100 produces a “2C” solution, which is diluted by a factor of 10,000.  According to homeopaths, the higher the C-factor, the   stronger the homeopathic remedy.

Hence Boiron Oscillococcinum’s proud claim that its preparation is “200C,” meaning that duck liver and heart has been diluted in water by a factor of 100,   200 times over . 

To put this number in perspective, consider the following: to consume even one molecule of “active ingredient” when ingesting a (far less dilute) “30C” homeopathic remedy, a patient would need to swallow a sphere of solution with a diameter equal to the distance from the Earth to the Sun.

This leads me to worry about my own health.  I am suffering from a head cold at the moment, but have not ingested single bit of Boiron Oscillococcinum to treat it.  Under the principles of homeopathy, I may be in danger of an overdose.

This week the Center for Inquiry joined the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) in opposing blasphemy laws at a meeting of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva.

CFI holds special consultative status as a non-governmental organization, or NGO, under the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). Both CFI and the IHEU have been active in recent years opposing so-called blasphemy laws, which aim to suppress criticism and free speech about religious beliefs.  Such laws have been used to persecute nonbelievers, religious minorities and religious dissidents.  In some countries, including Pakistan, the “crime” of blasphemy carries the penalty of death.

After a procedural technicality prevented the IHEU from delivering its statement before the Human Rights Council, CFI agreed to deliver a joint statement on behalf of both CFI and the IHEU condemning blasphemy laws and violence in the name of religion. The statement was jointly crafted by UN representatives from both organizations. Unfortunately, Georgina Hutchinson, CFI’s main representative in Geneva, was unable to deliver the speech when the Human Rights Council session ended early on Friday 11 March. Instead, the speech was delivered later by Jack Jeffery of IHEU.

The speech in full reads as follows:

    UN HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL: Monday 14 March 2011    
  Agenda Item 3, Promotion and Protection of all human rights  
  Speaker: Jack Jeffery for CFI Main Representative, Georgina Hutchinson

    Blasphemy, and violence in the name of religion  

  Mr President,

  We welcome the report of the Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief [A/HRC/16/53] and note that violence in the name of religion is apparently growing in many counties. For example, the recent murders in Pakistan of Governor Salman Taseer and Minorities Minister Shahbaz Bhatti have shocked us all.

  In this context, we note the excellent statement by the High Commissioner for Human Rights, released on 2 March [1] in which she condemned the assassinations and went on to call on the Pakistan Government to declare a moratorium on the application of the blasphemy laws.

  We recognise the problems faced by governments around the world, including Pakistan, in confronting extremism, but the extremists must be confronted, Mr President.

  The Pakistani assassins reportedly gave their victim’s opposition to Pakistan’s blasphemy laws as the reason for their murders, so it is incorrect to argue that the murders cannot be linked to the blasphemy laws - as the distinguished representative of Pakistan did here last Thursday.

  For many years the OIC has argued for the criminalisation of defamation of religion, thereby providing legitimacy for their infamous blasphemy laws - infamous, because it is only in Pakistan and certain other States that blasphemy carries the death penalty.

  All blasphemy laws must be reviewed, Mr President, and all States have an obligation to bring their legislation into line with international law. Religious dissidents, religious minorities and nonbelievers must not face persecution or death under blasphemy laws.

  If I were a Christian and were to say “Jesus was not merely a prophet, he was divine,” why should I be subject to the death penalty anywhere?

  Thank you.

  Notes:

  [1] http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=37659&Cr=Pakistan&Cr1

CFI welcomed the opportunity to work collaboratively with IHEU on this project, as the two organizations share many common goals. 

Today in Malawi   dozens of people have been jailed for up to six years, with hard labor, under accusations of practicing “witchcraft.”  Most are elderly women accused by children.

As incredible as it may seem, convictions for practicing “witchcraft” are common in the African country, where belief in witches is widespread among both the populace and government authorities.  Indeed, allegations of witchcraft have increased across parts of central and west Africa in recent years, with penalties including ostracism, violence and execution.  Nor are accusations limited to the elderly.  An April 2010   Unicef report found that tens of thousands of children, some as young as four, are being accused of witchcraft.

George Thindwa of Malawi’s Association for Secular Humanism has organized a   petition demanding that Malawi’s president discharge all cases for witchcraft-related offenses.  The petition reads, in part:

  Your Excellency, we the undersigned report that there are many women and the elderly who are convicted and serving sentences in our prisons. Many are also on remand or bail answering cases on practicing witchcraft.  

  Your Excellency, many of these victims are old, some have died in prison while others are sick. They cannot stand prison conditions. For example; James Mpinganjira died at Maula prison while on remand in 2010; Mr. Kalimake died at Maula prison in 2009. He was sentenced to 6 years imprisonment in 2007; F. Mkolokosa aged 70 years died at Chichiri prison in Nov. 2010 and C. Tchale aged 75 years died at Maula prison in Dec. 2010. Many other inmates who are sick include; L. Tamverankhani of Chichiri prison; Uka Ajabu at Mangochi; Namalinda Josephy at Dedza and Margaret Jackson is epileptic and suffers from frequent fits. Namakhalepo Kamphata at Maula prison is very old and unable to walk and very sick. The Central hospital has recommended home based care (home being Maula prison) for her.

  Your Excellency, we appeal to you to please bring relief to these innocent Malawians. Please consider them for pardon. They should be released. We should not be convicting our citizens in the 20th Century because of witchcraft.

Please join the Association for Secular Humanism and CFI in calling for an end to witchcraft prosecutions in Malawi.  Read and sign the petition by   clicking here .

Earlier this month the New Mexico House of Representatives introduced   House Bill 302 , the fifth piece of anti-evolution legislation to be considered in a state legislature in 2011.  HB 302 would shield teachers who inform students about “scientific information” regarding the “scientific strengths or scientific weaknesses” of “controversial” scientific topics from “reassignment, termination, discipline or other discrimination for doing so.”  The bill’s sole sponsor is Rep. Thomas A. Anderson (R-District 29).

What issues, you might ask, constitute “controversial” scientific topics?  The bill lists four examples: climate change, human cloning, and of course, “biological origins” and “biological evolution.”  The bill further specifies that the “scientific information” teachers may present to students includes “information that coincides or harmonizes with religious tenets” (although it does not include “information derived from religious writings, beliefs or doctrines”).  In other words, HB 302 invites public school biology teachers to teach “intelligent design” creationism with impunity.

The bill has been referred to the New Mexico House Education Committee.  If passed, HB 302 will almost certainly result in expensive litigation that will cost New Mexico taxpayers dearly. 

Rep. Anderson’s bill closely resembles   Senate Bill 433 from the 2009 state legislative session, which questioned the validity of “biological evolution” and “chemical evolution.”  That bill died in committee in March 2009.

On Saturday, February 5, CFI-San Francisco will join international protesters from more than 10 countries and 23 cities to take part in the weekend’s 10:23 Campaign, a protest against “homeopathy”—a bogus but popular form of alternative medicine on which misinformed consumers waste billions of dollars per year. 

The 10:23 Campaign aims to raise awareness about the reality behind homeopathic pseudoscience.  Many think of homeopathy as an effective, “natural” alternative to traditional medicine.  In reality, homeopathic “remedies” are produced by diluting questionable remedies with extraordinary amounts of water, often until the chance that even a single molecule of the alleged active ingredient remains in the final treatment is vanishingly small.

Homeopathy is based on a set of bizarre superstitions invented by its chief proponent, Samuel Hahnemann, in 1796.  Hahnemann taught that any substance that causes symptoms in healthy individuals can treat the same symptoms in sick patients, if administered in small amounts.  In addition, Hahnemann thought that diluting his so-called treatments in water would make them   stronger .

For example, if a patient is unable to sleep, homeopaths should prescribe diluted caffeine—a known stimulant—as a sleep aid.  Supposedly, the greater the dilution, the more effective the caffeine will be at putting a patient to sleep.  Today homeopaths continue to prescribe caffeine as a treatment for insomnia, under the name “coffea.”

The 10:23 Campaign derives its name from Avogadro’s constant (6.022 x 10^23 per mole), the ratio of the number of atoms or molecules in a sample to the amount of substance present (in moles).  When diluting their “remedies,” homeopaths often dilute the alleged active ingredient in so much water that they pass what is known as the Avogadro Limit, the point at which there is likely nothing of the original substance remaining.  In other words, all that remains of the homeopathic “remedy” is pure water.  (Homeopaths often drip the solution onto small balls of sugar before selling them to misinformed customers.)

Tests show that—as you might expect—homeopathic “remedies” have no effect beyond that expected from the placebo effect.  Yet the US government and many foreign governments continue to allow homeopathic solutions to be marketed as “treatments” for medical symptoms. Some producers of homeopathic remedies have been caught cheating by including real (non-homeopathic) medication, or other undisclosed ingredients, in their products. 

To call attention to the absurdity of homeopathic “medicine,” CFI-San Francisco and other participants in the 10:23 Campaign will stage a mass homeopathic remedy “overdose.”*

For more information on the 10:23 event, visit   http://www.1023.org.uk . To participate in CFI-San Francisco’s “overdose” event, you   must RSVP by e-mail to 1023 [at] reason4reason [dot] org.

For additional information about CFI’s activities combating homeopathic superstition, see my colleague Ronald Lindsay’s   blog entry regarding Walmart’s marketing of “Boiron Oscillococcinum,” a purported flu remedy.

  * Warning: CFI will offer a properly prepared homeopathic solution for consumption at the event. When properly prepared, even large doses of a homeopathic solution have no adverse or beneficial medical effects, as on average, they do not contain a single molecule of the alleged active ingredient.     Some commercially produced homeopathic remedies have been found to contain real (non-homeopathic) medication or other ingredients not disclosed on product labels. These ingredients can have adverse effects.     Anyone who consumes a homeopathic product not prepared by CFI does so at his or her own risk. 

This March the UK’s Ministry of Justice will publish a draft bill to reform the UK’s draconian libel laws.  The UK’s current libel laws, among the strictest in the world, have been criticized for stifling free speech, scientific research and evidence-based public debate.

The UK’s libel laws differ significantly from those of the US and many other countries.  First, the burden of proof in the UK is inverted.  Instead of requiring plaintiffs to prove that defendants’ statements were libelous, UK law requires defendants to prove their statements were true.  The law also lacks a public interest defense to foster debate about issues of public importance.  In addition, the UK’s 1849 publication rule counts every new purchase as a new publication date.  As a result, there is effectively no statute of limitations for lawsuits challenging materials published online.  Finally, litigation costs in the UK are shockingly punitive.  A recent   Oxford study found that the cost of defending a UK libel suit is 140 times as much as an equivalent action in 11 European countries. 

As a result, libel lawsuit plaintiffs often engage in “forum shopping”; parties with little connection to the UK choose its court system as their forum, with the knowledge that they are much more likely to prevail there. The UK’s libel laws therefore exert a spillover effect by stifling open debate in other countries.  One   well-known example of “libel tourism” involves New York City-based author Rachel Ehrenfeld, whose US-published book   Funding Evil: How Terrorism Is Financed-and How to Stop It , sold a mere 23 copies in the UK.  When a Saudi billionaire sued Ehrenfeld in the UK for defamation when the book named him as involved in funding Hamas and Al Qaeda, the  court awarded the plaintiff $225,000 in damages.  The episode led New York and several other states to pass laws protecting US citizens from the enforcement of foreign libel judgments if the statements in question would not have been libelous within the US.

The UK’s libel laws have had a chilling effect on scientific inquiry.  A   recent survey found that a third of science and medical journal editors worldwide have refrained from publishing research findings rather than risk a libel action.  Fiona Godlee, editor of the British Medical Journal, told   The Times of London that the libel laws inhibit decisions about whether medical research papers are published or withdrawn in cases of plagiarism, fraud or error.  As she noted, “Science works through the publication of evidence, which can then be reproduced or rebutted. The right approach to academic criticism is to challenge the evidence, not to go to law.   Weak science sheltered from officious laws means bad medicine.”

Most famously, science writer Simon Singh was sued by the British Chiropractic Association for publishing   an article criticizing the association for defending chiropractic treatments for which there is little or no evidence, including chiropractic treatments for conditions such as childhood colic, asthma and ear infections.  The BCA dropped the case only after it became a cause celebre among scientists, celebrities and British freedom of speech campaigners.

Nick Clegg, the UK’s Liberal Democrat leader,   has promised to push for a strong public interest defense to protect doctors and scientists from being bullied into self-censorship for fear of being sued.  In a speech before the Royal Society, Britain’s national academy of science, Clegg said the UK’s current laws were having a “chilling effect” on scientific inquiry.  “I am deeply concerned about the stifling effect English libel laws are having on scientific debate,” he told the Society. “Scientists must be allowed to question claims fearlessly, especially those that relate to medical care, environmental damage and public safety, if we are to protect ourselves against dubious research practices, phoney treatments and vested corporate interests.”

Let’s hope Mr. Clegg succeeds in his reform campaign.  For many doctors, journalists, scientists and scholars, reform can’t come soon enough.