“The mission of the Center for Inquiry is to foster a secular society based on science, reason, freedom of inquiry, and humanist values.

The Center for Inquiry, including its CEO, is dedicated to advancing the status of women and promoting women’s issues, and this was the motivation for its sponsorship of the two Women in Secularism conferences. The CFI Board wishes to express its unhappiness with the controversy surrounding the recent Women in Secularism Conference 2.

CFI believes in respectful debate and dialogue. We appreciate the many insights and varied opinions communicated to us. Going forward, we will endeavor to work with all elements of the secular movement to enhance our common values and strengthen our solidarity as we struggle together for full equality and respect for women around the world.” Source.

The first sentence is about CFI. It is its own paragraph. There are 23 words in the first sentence. Twenty-three is a number. “Twenty-three” means the same thing as “23.”

The second and third sentences make up the second paragraph. The second paragraph uses the word “women” four times. The word has a capital W twice. It is an important word in the second paragraph.

In the second paragraph, we learn that the CFI Board has a wish. A wish is a want, or a desire. Some people believe wishes come true under certain circumstances. For instance, some people believe a genie can make a wish come true. Other people believe wishing upon a star makes your wishes come true. I don’t believe in those things, but maybe the Board does.

The CFI Board’s wish is to express unhappiness. Unhappiness is a lot like sadness. This is a very sad wish. Why is the Board sad? Because of a controversy about their women’s conference. I wonder who did this to them? Whoever did controversy to them must be pretty mean, because it makes the Board wish to express unhappiness. The people who made this controversy must have a problem with women. I hope the Board’s wish comes true, so that they can express this unhappiness, and the people behind this controversy can feel ashamed! Maybe I will wish upon a star that their wish will come true.

In the third paragraph the Board says that CFI believes in respectful debate and dialogue. This is when you don’t yell at each other and call each other names, even if you disagree with someone about something. Sometimes people disagree about very important things, and they get mad. Sometimes only one person gets mad, and the other person is really calm. The calm person will remind the mad person that they should be respectful, and the mad person should apologize. If the mad person believes in respectful debate, he will say “sorry about that.”

People get mad for different reasons, though. Some people get mad because they think someone is being mean or bad. They will get mad at this person and say, “you should not be doing that, because that is wrong!”

Sometimes the person being mean or bad is really smart, and will pretend that what he is doing is no big deal. He will say, “hey, let’s be respectful about our disagreement.” This can make the mad person look like the unreasonable one. This will make the mad person even more mad, because they are not the ones being disrespectful, it is the bad or mean person! It is a mean trick that bad smart people play sometimes. You should be careful about this if you ever disagree with someone about something. If you are the bad or mean person, you should try to not be so bad and mean, and you should also apologize for being bad and mean.

Sometimes it is really hard for a person to admit that he was disrespectful. The best thing to do is to do the right thing and apologize for being disrespectful. The worst thing to do is to pretend you weren’t disrespectful, or to ignore the other person’s feelings. This will never make things better. You should keep this in mind if you ever accidentally disrespect someone and make them mad.

My friend Dave Muscato works for a group that got a billboard wrong once. Everyone yelled at them for getting it wrong. Dave and his group apologized for getting it wrong, and changed the billboard, even though it was expensive and a little bit embarrassing. Everyone was really happy that they did that. It is a good example of someone admitting that they were wrong, even though it was hard to do.

The Board says that they appreciate the varied opinions and insights communicated to them. “Appreciate” means to like something that someone does. This really confuses me, because I think a lot of the opinions and insights communicated to them were from people who were very upset. I think this was part of the controversy they talked about in paragraph two. This confuses me because the controversy makes them sad, but they also appreciate it.

In conclusion, the Board said a number of words. Some of these words were “women,” and “unhappiness,” and “controversy.” They also said, “respectful.” The statement is made of words, some short, some longer.

One of the hardest elements of transitioning from youth to adulthood is deciding what things your parents valued that you value as well. For much of your childhood, you probably didn’t do too much questioning of your parents’ values (unless you’ve had some major disagreements). My parents value hard work, therefore I value hard work. Many of these values are subconscious, even for the adults in your life. One that I know of from my life is that people around me often valued giving to others at the detriment of yourself. This is something that I have picked up on. It can be very useful to spend some time actively thinking about the things that you value, the ways that you behave, and what things you have been acting like you value without realizing it.

It can also be helpful to think about what you want to value, and how to adjust your behaviors to model those values. It can be hard to justify some of these choices to parents. I have made some different financial priorities than my parents, and I have had some anxiety about expressing to them why I’ve done what I’ve done. One thing that helps is being very aware of what value you’re choosing, and being able to express to yourself and others how you’re prioritizing things. You may still get disagreement, but you will have a strong stance and likely gain more respect. 

Another thing that can be incredibly difficult, particularly if you have a good relationship with your parents, is realizing that they aren’t always right. Now on the surface this seems like it’s really easy to accept. Duh. No one’s always right. But if you’re anything like me, if Mom gives me advice, 99% of the time I do what she says. Because she’s really smart. And it has served me well in the past. But even if you respect your parent’s advice, their priorities and tactics may not always be the best for you. Your values may not be exactly the same as theirs. And we each need to begin to find our own right path. It can be good to start taking parents’ advice with a grain of salt, or recognizing that even if they are making an intelligent, good point, it may not be the one that you want to listen to. Rarely is there one absolutely correct answer or behavior in a situation, and you may choose a different one than what your parents might suggest.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, there are those who don’t have the best relationships with their parents and are trying to decide how to navigate the waters of gaining independence and autonomy. One of the hardest things to decide when you’re in this situation is whether you want to put more time and energy into your familial relationships, particularly if your family violates your boundaries, doesn’t respect your choices, or repeatedly does things that hurt you. One of the hardest things for a lot of people to accept is that you do not necessarily have an obligation to continue giving your time and emotional energy to people who don’t treat you well, even if they are your family. It does not make you a horrible person to set boundaries and tell your parents that you will not spend time with them unless they treat you in a respectful manner. You get to decide for yourself how much distance you want and how important family is to you. The hardest balancing act of young adulthood is trying to decipher how to balance your independence against the support and love you get from your family.

A final piece to trying to find this balance has to do with how much information you want to divulge to your parents. When you’re younger, your parents know most everything about you. As you get older you can come to them for advice on things: relationships, finances, jobs. But when you do that, you give them some amount of power over the choices that you’re making. This can be an incredibly hard balance to strike. Sometimes you don’t want your parents to judge you, or you want to be able to make choices that they don’t approve of without having to explain to them (e.g. if I were to get into BDSM I would not want to have that discussion with my parents). This can be a good place to start with all of the other questions: how far do you want to let your parents see into your life. That can help you see where you feel uncomfortable with your parents, which can lead you to ask if you have differing values or if they’re not treating you appropriately or if you don’t think that they’re right about something.

So with these thoughts and questions, go forth into the world and assert yourselves, but remember that staying close to home can be great too.

(feature pic is me, my brother, and my mother)

I don't know what the context of this reply was; he very well could have been making a valid point. It was the phrase "doctrine of Islam" that  caught my eye. Islam, a religion with billions of adherents around the world, the manifests in multiple regions on the globe, each of which of which have their own unique cultures and Islam somehow manages to retain a single "doctrine"? The idea is ludicrous.

I believe I have written before about how important it is to criticize Islam, but how awful secularists in the United States and Europe are at doing so. I think it's safe to say that a fair amount of white, formerly Christian American secularists don't have a very good grasp of the nuances of Islam, its philosophies and its practices. Our lack of understanding creates problems, not only for Muslims in the west, but for the ex-Muslims that we would ideally like to welcome into our community and movement.

I am ex-Muslim. Most people are surprised to hear this from me. To quote a fellow activist at a dinner we both attended last fall: "You used to be Muslim?? But you don't look... well... wait..."

When I became friends with Hassan Khalifeh, also an ex-Muslim, I felt comfortable talking to him about the experiences I had had in my not-too-distant religious past. Before these conversations, I had kept most of feelings about that time a secret. Even though I as an Atheist activist, I have been treated differently by people in the movement who find out that I'm ex-Muslim. I have had friends who seemed sincerely frightened of my former religion and who insist on me not talking about it. I doubt that I'm the only ex-Muslim who has felt this way. My case is special because I was born and raised in the West. I can't begin to imagine how ex-Muslims from parts of the world with a Muslim majority might feel being a part of such a white-washed, Christianity-centric secular movement in the United States. When I see displays of ignorance like Sam Harris's above tweet, I am not given hope that ex-Muslims in secularism will be met with the type of understanding that they may need to come to terms with themselves as nonbelievers. I am not given hope that our movement will be able to adequately reach out to questioning Muslims and welcome them into our community.

Thankfully, there are others who also feel that ex-Muslims deserve a community of their own. Hassan recently posted on the Course of Reason blog about The Importance of Support Ex-Muslims. In his post, he writes in support of the new secular group called Muslimish. This CFI-affiliated group is geared towards questioning and former Muslims. It holds regular meetings in cities with high Muslim populations such as Detroit and New York City. While I haven't had much time to be personally involved with Muslimish, I hope to do so in the future and I wholeheartedly support their efforts.

If you are a questioning or ex-Muslim, make sure to check out their Facebook page or the contact information provided by Hassan on his blog post. If you are a nonbeliever who is not ex-Muslim, by all means criticize Islam and the actions of Islamic theocrats. However, make sure that you are doing so with the same fairness and rationality that you use to criticize Christianity or Judaism. Support your ex-Muslim allies in secularism. They aren't from another planet... and they never were.

Originally posted at The Humble Empiricist.  

First, I should lay out the computer science properties. In the discipline of formal methods, math and logic nerds create models of computer systems and reason about them. We like to reason about things like information security and the use of limited computer resources. There are two classes under which all security policies fall: 1) Safety; 2) Liveness.

The guys at the NSA we are so afraid of.

Generally speaking, a safety property is one that says "bad things don't happen." For example, "a high clearance user's actions have no effect on low clearance users." This property, called non-interference, means a low clearance user can't see anything about a high clearance user's actions, because the high clearance user's actions have no observable effect on the low clearance user's system. The bad thing, high clearance affecting low clearance, should never happen, according to the policy. It is a safety property.

A liveness property is one that says, "eventually, something good happens." For example, "the CPU will respond to a request after at most x clock cycles." We want a guarantee that each system call will get the CPU's attention after a reasonable amount of time. This liveness property says that the good thing, a CPU response, will eventually happen.

These came up in my therapy session because I struggle with depression and its associated dark thoughts. My brain recognizes that I'm experiencing problems, and it does its best to suggest possible solutions. One way to avoid unpleasant experiences is to just kill oneself, according to my brain. I agree with you, Brain, but that is like satisfying a safety property by shutting down the computer system. It is an unsatisfying solution, because it prevents unpleasant things from happening by preventing anything at all from happening. We need a better solution.

A better solution is to combine safety and liveness. We should try to stay mentally and emotionally safe by avoiding painful and unpleasant things to the best of our abilities, but not to the exclusion of happy, positive experiences, like by getting medication so that I can feel those things again. My brain's proposed solution fails to satisfy a liveness property, because it prevents anything good from ever happening. The English major within me is acutely aware of the amusing connection between the name "liveness property" and the fact that killing oneself fails to satisfy such a property.

Similarly, a liveness property on its own is not a complete solution. I can guarantee that something good happens by living recklessly and pursuing instant gratification. In fact, I used to live this way to a large extent. But this approach allows too many bad things to happen as well, and ultimately leads to more bad than good, in my experience.

The best approach is to employ a combination of safety and liveness in balance, avoiding painful and unpleasant things but also taking steps to pursue good things. This principle also applies well to the way of the skeptic.

If you hang out with skeptics, you will eventually have the conversation about "which is better: having no false beliefs, or believing all the true things?" This is related to the extremes of denialism and so-open-minded-your-brains-fall-out. One way to avoid all false beliefs is to have no beliefs. Suspend judgment about everything, and you will never believe falsely. However, this also guarantees that you have no true beliefs, and no knowledge.

Well heck, as someone who values science and discovery, I value knowledge. I think it is rare, and precious, but something to pursue nonetheless. So a complete devotion to epistemic safety, as I'll call it, is not a satisfying solution to my problem.

Similarly, I could take the other extreme and simply believe everything, thereby ensuring that I believe all the true things. But obviously this would not be a satisfying solution, because then I'd believe in Jesus' resurrection, homeopathy, and other false things that I want to avoid.

The solution is to adopt a principle that balances epistemic safety (minimizing false beliefs) and epistemic liveness (pursuing true beliefs). I'm not sure exactly what the proper balance is, but I'm quite confident that it exists.

As always, if you get a chance, send your suggestions for future Music Mondays to me at chashman@centerforinquiry.net, leave a comment below, or @tweet us at @CFIOnCampus. Your suggestions, along with future and past songs, may end up in the official Course of Reason Music Monday Spofity playlist that anyone can listen to.    

We recently got a message from Rob Carman, a student leader in Santa Cruz, CA, who noticed how most of his group members are men. He wanted ideas for how to make his group appeal to women, and wondered if I'd gotten any ideas he could use at Women in Secularism 2.

About Women in Secularism 2, Rob said:

"It was probably the one conference all year I most wish I could have attended. I'm really interested in this sort of movement-within-a-movement with feminism inside skepticism. I personally think skeptical thinking implies feminism, but as we surely both know, many people don't agree, which is why the WiS conference seems so important and necessary. I've been having somewhat of a difficult time trying to generate intelligent discussions about related topics with my SSA group."

Sometimes, I think freethought leaders focus so much on convincing each other that feminism is an important and relevant issue, that we ignore the practical steps leaders can take to make change happen. Once we recognize diversity is important-and gender diversity isn't the only thing to include here-what steps can we suggest group leaders take to make change happen in their organizations?

Rob shared a few of the strategies he's tried:

"As is probably not surprising, our group is mostly male-dominated, and a couple members figuratively and literally attempt to talk over female members during our meetings. I think it's become enough of a problem that some of the women from our group have decided it's not worth coming anymore. I have had some conversations in private with these guys, but it hasn't seemed to stick. Aside from calling them out during meetings, I'm not sure what else to do. Obviously I want to avoid this for fear of losing even more members. So I guess what I was most wondering is if there were any talks/discussions that you heard at the conference about how to remedy these kinds of situations. I'm new to this student group leadership position, but I'd really like to accomplish what our mission statement is set out to do and create a welcoming community for ALL nonbelievers on campus. If you have time to offer any advice, I'd love to hear it." (Emphasis added.)

The ideas below come from my own experiences over the years, both as a student group leader myself and from working with other organizers. I don't claim to have all the answers to this giant and difficult question, so please, if you have other ideas to share, stick ‘em in the comments!

1. Moderate group discussions.
As Rob noted in his question, women tend to be interrupted more than men in meetings. For many groups, the core of their activities is weekly discussions about philosophy, science, religion, atheism, and other topics. Selecting a moderator for these discussions, or having meeting rules, could be a good way to make sure everyone has a chance to be heard-especially if group members have a habit of interrupting or talking over each other.

2. Hold women's-only events.
Last week, blogger Robby Bensinger wrote a great article about common objections to holding women's only events in secular student groups. He responded to these objections in a well-reasoned blog post.

3. Diversify the types of events you offer.
Certain event types tend to appeal to women-community service is a good example of this. Personal experience with my own group showed me that women tend to be more likely to show up for community service than philosophy discussions. That doesn't mean discussions about philosophy aren't interesting to women, however-and it's definitely important to be sure all events are accessible to all group members.

Activism related to women's issues, like advocacy for birth control and abortion access, could also be a way of recognizing the importance of issues commonly described as "women's issues," that are actually relevant to many people. Choosing discussion topics like "feminism and secularism" or "feminism and skepticism" could also be a way to reach a demographic that you've previously had trouble connecting with.

4. Partner with women's groups or feminist groups on your campus.
It is likely unsurprising that feminist groups tend to appeal to women. Partnering with these groups will show your group is open to the unique concerns of women.

One way to partner with feminist groups could be to sponsor a talk on how the religious right often stands in opposition to women's issues. You can find speakers on topics like this in the CFI Speakers Bureau:

• Atheism and Feminism
• Women and Religion

If you do organize a public lecture like this, be sure to use it as a springboard to get women involved as members! Have an email list sign-up at the door and announce upcoming events in the introduction to the talk.

5. Offer family-friendly events, or childcare.
This may be more relevant to community groups than students, but not necessarily. College students may have families, and although society is changing, women are still more likely to be responsible for primary childcare. When secular groups make an effort to offer childcare services, events for kids, or family-friendly options, it makes the events more accessible to people with children. This can have the effect of making your group more welcoming to women. The Richard Dawkins Foundation is one organization that has provided child care grants in the past.

6. Listen.
Attend events like Women in Secularism, if you can. Watch talks (YouTube is a great place to start!) by skeptical and secular women talking about the experiences they've had. Read blog posts written by women in the movement. It's a great place to start, and to get a deeper understanding of what others' experiences are so that you can be a more inclusive, thoughtful, welcoming, and ultimately more effective leader. 

Heina Dadabhoy wrote a post on Skepchick about how not to appeal to women in 2011, but I wasn't able to find any similar articles on the same topic. If you know of any, please link us in the comments!

A University of Waterloo study is claiming that CFCs, not carbon dioxide, are causing global warming. In a press release put out by the University, Qing-Bin Lu, a professor of physics and astronomy, biology and chemistry at Waterloo states:

"Most conventional theories expect that global temperatures will continue to increase as CO2 levels continue to rise, as they have done since 1850. What’s striking is that since 2002, global temperatures have actually declined – matching a decline in CFCs in the atmosphere,” Professor Lu said. “My calculations of CFC greenhouse effect show that there was global warming by about 0.6 °C from 1950 to 2002, but the earth has actually cooled  since 2002. The cooling trend is set to continue for the next 50-70 years as the amount of CFCs in the atmosphere continues to decline.”

Unsurprisingly, this study has raised a collective, “What?” from climate change scientists as the study and Lu’s statements go against conventional and well-accepted ideas about the relationship between carbon dioxide and global temperatures.

For starters, global temperatures haven’t declined. This is a bit of a myth that is perpetuated by climate change “skeptics”. It is possible to back the claim with data, but it’s heavily dependent on the data set being used along with using short time periods to talk about a long-term issue. Andrew Glikson writes:

Warming and “heat accumulation” is measured through various different climate indicators. One of the most cited is global-mean surface temperature. The last decade has shown continued warming in global mean surface temperature, not cooling. The warming has occurred at a slower rate in the past decade compared to the 1990s, but it has still warmed. The years 2006 and 2010 were the warmest peaks since 1998.

However, this is balanced by the fact that ocean heat content (a measure of heat accumulated in the ocean depths) has dramatically increased over the same period at 0 to 700 meter depth. That draw-down of heat into the oceans has resulted in slower warming in the atmospheric temperature at the surface of the oceans, which transfers to slower warming in the global mean surface temperature.

Lu seems to be ignoring the absorption of heat by the oceans and is cherry-picking data to suit his needs.

Skeptical Science puts it bluntly: “there are numerous fundamental flaws in the paper.”   

Lu's hypothesis can be disproven very simply.  He argues that the radiative forcing (global energy imbalance) from CFCs matches global surface temperatures better than that from CO2 over the past decade. This is because as a result of the Montreal Protocol, CFC emissions (and emissions of hydrofluorocarbons, which replaced CFCs) have been flat over the past decade, and global surface air temperatures have also been essentially flat during that short timeframe, while CO2 emissions have continued to rise.

However, a global energy imbalance doesn't just impact surface temperatures. In fact, only about 2% of global warming is used in heating the atmosphere, while about 90% heats the oceans. Over the past decade, ocean and overall global heating have continued to rise rapidly, accumulating the equivalent of about 4 Hiroshima atomic bomb detonations per second

So while CFCs might match surface temperature changes better than CO2 emissions over the past decade, CO2 emissions better match the relevant metric – overall global heat accumulation. Since a global energy imbalance influences global heat content and not just surface temperatures, this by itself is sufficient to falsify Lu's hypothesis.

Lu appears to have looked at the relation between CFCs and surface temperatures while ignoring the ocean temperatures. Doing so creates a correlation between CFCs and global warming. However, it conveniently ignores a major component of the planet’s temperature: the oceans. I recommend reading the Skeptical Science article in full for a complete overview of the problems found in the study.

This is an example of how not to do science: Picking and choosing your data, and ignoring important aspects that may contradict your proposed idea. 

However, this study looked at brains of recently deceased individuals and compared those with depression to those without. Brains without depression were fairly predictable in what parts would be active at what time, whereas those without depression were not. It's incredibly useful to have solid, concrete evidence that there is some link between depression and circadian rhythms. In addition, this study might help us to move forward in identifying how our bodies regulate our rhythms, and whether depression is the cause or the effect of the changes. One of the difficulties of continuing this research is that when patients are alive, it's difficult to pinpoint which genes are active at any given point in time. Typically researchers look at the blood rather than the brain. The benefit of using brains from deceased individuals was the access. Hopefully as technology improves we can find ways around this difficulty.

As someone who suffers from depression, I am most interested in what this could mean for future treatment of depression. If we come to some understanding of the mechanisms that either cause depression or influence its symptoms, we may be able to more strategically adjust those mechanisms. Some of the best ways to fight depression are to eat, sleep, and exercise regularly, but if your body clock is off that can be nearly impossible. If we can begin to understand the mechanisms that cause differences in the body clocks of those with depression, we may be able to help their body clocks get back on schedule, and thus help them take care of their bodies to fight off depression.

If, on the other hand, these changed circadian rhythms are not just a symptom but may lead to depression, this could be hugely important for the treatment of depression. Treating the physical symptoms of the illness could become much more important in the future. All in all this is exciting research and is a brilliant illustration of the intersection between mental health and skepticism: as the research unfolds, we need to be open to all interpretations and possibilities for how to improve our mental health as a society.

We are, unfortunately, living in a country and a time that is disturbingly resistant to the idea of secularity. We see hate crimes and terrorist actions perpetrated in the name of religion, responses to these actions based on religious prejudice, and persecution of those who are non-believers. We see students who fight to keep prayer out of public schools vilified and threatened, secular and atheist bloggers in Southeast Asia threatened with death for voicing their opinions, and religious factions in the United States trying to prevent evidence based facts, such as evolution, from being taught in science classes. We see hatred against minority groups, anti-marriage equality sentiments, and distrust of non-believers, or believers of the “wrong” religion, spread on a global scale. And as young university students, we must learn to live in this world.

Everyone is part of our organization for a different reason, but we have some unifying desires and goals that bind us together. We want a community where we can voice and discuss our opinions, we want support for one another, we want a safe space, and we want to effect change on the way secularism is portrayed. The “This is what a(n) atheist, humanist, freethinker, agnostic looks like” campaign that GW Secular Society ran this past semester embodied many of those goals. We want to show those that disagree with us, those who are our friends and family and neighbors that we are humans too: that we deserve respect, consideration, and, most importantly, a voice in the society we live in. That secularism and all its connotations are not evil, but rather humanistic, thoughtful, and beneficial to our political system.

The face we present to our community has never been more important. The backlash we received even on our own campus regarding our “This is what a ________ looks like” coming out campaign showed me this. Though it was intended as a peaceful opportunity for our members to express their identities, our fellow students quickly twisted it into a bid for publicity, and an expression of arrogance. This backlash, which was distressing to many of our members, was our most immediate example of our pressing need for support networks. We need, more than ever, to continue our work building connections on our campus and in our area with both secular and non-secular groups. That’s why, this past semester, we’ve made connections with student groups across our campus and our city, friendships that have built a network of understanding and community on which to build further. We’ve reached out into our national community, attending conferences,meeting new people, and exchanging ideas. 

Our new executive board has determined a new focus for next year: building community, connections and a positive image for GW Secular Society, and for the secular movement as a whole. We can only achieve this by including new and old members alike in conversations and decisions, promoting a positive image of our group to the rest of the university, and expanding the networks we have already built to increase understanding and conversations with other groups. We need to reach outside the city blocks of our campus, out into our immediate and far-reaching communities, to build friendships and understanding that will last.

It’s a common refrain at universities – “You are the world’s future.” And in this case, it couldn’t be more true. Students who promote secular values are immeasurably important to our political and social systems, both in this country and across the globe. Our image, our interactions with the community, and the conversations we enter into, begin here. Secular Society is more than just “that atheist club.” We’re a voice of reason, an argument for change, and an inclusive, safe community for belief, non-belief, and rational freethought. The more conversations we build, and the more visible we are, the better it is both for us as human beings and community members, and for the global image of secularism as a whole. We’ve built a successful image over the past year – let’s continue from here.

Criminal investigators try to find eyewitnesses to a crime. Later on, attorneys ask these eyewitnesses if they can point to the person they saw, and they point to the defendant, or say "no". Attorneys and judges think this is powerful evidence. It's like these idiots haven't even heard of demonic possession. Any defense attorney worth his salt in silver will point out that, yes, his client's physical body was there committing the crime, but it was not him. It was a demon.

A good defense attorney should provide evidence for such a theory. That's easy. Faith.
"Your honor, the defense submits into evidence exhibit F, our collective faith in the supernatural. Why else would we swear on the Bible?" Boom. Done. Now the jury won't convict the defendant, because after all, coulda been a demon what did the crime.

Got fingerprints?

Demonic possession.

Got video evidence?

Demonic possession.

Correspondingly, the prosecutor's job is super easy. The defendant is guilty, and all the jury needs is the inner testimony of the Holy Spirit.

"Your Honor, the State submits exhibit H, the inner testimony of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit testifies that the defendant is guilty, as the jury can see by praying and fasting tonight; the Holy Spirit has assured me that He will appear to them, to Your Honor, and to the Defense. The State rests."

Jeff Ashton, Casey Anthony's prosecutor, relied on evidence, rather than the inner testimony of the Holy Spirit. Result: Not Guilty.

See, when you throw methodological naturalism out the window, as you do when you believe in supernatural entities based on faith, trials become trivial. Why don't we just rely on the inner testimony of the Holy Spirit? We know it works, because that's how Alvin Plantinga and William Lane Craig know that God exists.

Also, a detective's job becomes really easy. Instead of going out and finding clues, collective evidence, etc, the detective should just pray and ask God who did it. That's what divination is! Why haven't we been training our detectives in the art of divination?? They are wasting their time crawling around on the floor looking for hairs and fingernails and other minute pieces of physical evidence. Plus, even if you find the evidence, there's no ruling out a demon, so it's all useless anyway! Silly naturalism!

We can just as easily understand how an event happened by saying it is God's will. Saying it is God's will is a reliable explanation because Faith, and this is so much simpler than causal-mechanical mumbo jumbo. So that's parsimony.

We can easily see that methodological supernaturalism is much more powerful than methodological naturalism. Methodological naturalism hasn't explained consciousness, and maybe it can't! But methodological supernaturalism can easily explain it: souls. Humans have immaterial souls, meaning not made of matter or energy, and these souls are the seats of our consciousness.

What are souls made of? Luckily, we don't even need to ask that question, because we are methodological supernaturalists. They are made of soul stuff.

Where exactly are the souls in relation to the physical body, and how do they connect? Again, not our problem. There are two types of substances, physical, and soulish (AKA spirit), and the soulish stuff just sort of floats inside the physical stuff somewhere, and sends it instructions and receives information.

On the physical body side, we know the instructions and information move by electrical pulse through nerves and neurons. Methodological naturalism tells us that. But we don't care about step-by-step causal-mechanical procedures on the soulish side, so we consider that side to be already explained.

A diagram of how the soul and body work. Courtesy of a Bible Belt science textbook, probably. Also, the number one Google search that delivers unexpected images of naked women: "soul body".

Methodological naturalism is a big drag, and it slows down all kinds of human investigation. We could speed up criminal investigations and trials, and all of science, if we would just stick to methodological supernaturalism.

When Apollo 13 broke down, we could see these two competing methodologies at work. The engineers at NASA tried to use methodological naturalism to identify the step-by-step causal-mechanical procedure explaining the explosion, and then fix it and bring the astronauts home through an engineered step-by-step causal-mechanical procedure, which they called a solution. But the Pope and the rest of the world just prayed for the astronauts. Which do you think had more effect on bringing them home: The naturalistic tinkering of a handful of engineers, or the prayers of billions and all the power of God the Almighty Father? Easy. God is more powerful, so He had more effect.

Of course, we have a really interesting case study in Apollo 12, which was almost a tragedy. At liftoff, lightning struck the shuttle, and it lost power, but the rockets continued firing. Everyone was freaking out because there was an out of control rocket hurling over the Atlantic. But God, in His wisdom, divinely inspired NASA systems engineer John Aaron to remember one of the many simulations the team ran in which he saw similar data. Thanks to all the practice, and God's inspiration, Aaron remembered an obscure switch that would fix the problem. How could methodological naturalism explain this? It can't. That's how.

But it gets even more interesting. Apollo 1 really was a tragedy. They were doing a routine test on the launchpad, and they put too much oxygen in the cabin. Also, there was a bunch of highly flammable material in the cabin. Something sparked, and it set the cabin's oxygen and its highly flammable materials on fire. The astronauts couldn't get out because the door was forced close from all the pressure inside the cabin (it opened inwardly).

It all happened so fast that no one had enough time to pray to God, so they couldn't fix the problem and save the astronauts. For all the explanation and understanding of the tragedy that methodological naturalism has since given us, it couldn't save those astronauts while they were burning. Only God could. But since the Pope didn't know about it in time, he couldn't ask God to save them, so God didn't. If this doesn't prove that methodological supernaturalism is superior to methodological naturalism, then I just don't know what would. Faith I guess.

Well, technically, prior to the launch test the Apollo 1 crew did indeed pray to God that nothing would go wrong. But as I said, they forgot to ask the Pope to pray to God, so God didn't stop the fire from happening. Also, at the time, they meant it as sort of a tongue-in-cheek joke, thereby taking the Lord's name in vain.

Apollo 1 astronauts praying to God their capsule doesn't explode. 

After the Apollo 1 tragedy, NASA engineers built a new type of cabin hatch, removed the highly flammable material, and made the oxygen content lower during the tests. They haven't had any more tragedies related to those reasons. But I think it's really just that, after the tragedy, people, including the Pope, prayed to God and asked Him not to let that happen anymore, and He said, "Okay, I'll make sure it never happens again. By the way, if you wanted to go to the Moon, why didn't you just ask me to take you there on a winged horse or something? I would have done it."