HEATHEN OF THE CORN
I have just updated IAF’s Secular Guide to 2024 Legislation. The new layout is 1000% easier to read and I deleted several columns of irrelevant information.
When it comes to the actual legislation, I have sort of good news, and I have bad news.
President Jason Benell and Vice President Bob Cook are registered lobbyists on behalf of IAF and this session has kept us quite busy with so many bills being filed in the first 2024 session. Below is the complete list to date of filings that IAF has taken a stand FOR or AGAINST as these bills move through the legislative process. Unfortunately, IAF finds itself standing AGAINST many more bills than FOR as the current legislature is focused on restricting the rights of women, minorities, members of the LGBTQ+ community, and general unscientific solutions to problems that either do not exist,or are approached in an unhelpful way. Many of these bills are intent on tearing down the wall between church and state by using YOUR tax dollars to further subsidize exclusive and sectarian religious practices and facilities. Make sure you are registered to vote and feel free to reach out with any input you may have to ensure Iowa is a safe and secular state that is welcome to everyone!
These companion bills extend the default time frame for a state-of-emergency proclamation to 60 days and give the Legislature increased authority to rescind, extend, or amend the proclamation. The also include religious exemptions to public safety measures and vaccinations.
SSB 3006: Against
This bill creates exemptions for healthcare institutions, payors, and practitioners related to “a right of conscience, whistleblower activities, and free speech. In other words, healthcare institutions and providers would be allowed to deny care to patients on 1st Amendment grounds. The bill specifically refers to services related to abortion.
SF 2037: Against
An Act prohibiting counties and cities from regulating certain behavioral health and human services — by which they mean conversion therapy.
HF 2034: Against
This act creates an exemption to fire codes for religious school buildings which contain less than 50 students.
HF 2031: Against
The bill requires that the human growth and development curriculum provided by school districts, nonpublic schools, charter schools, include human biology related to pregnancy and human development inside the womb and must an US video at least three minutes in duration, showing the development of the brain, heart, sex organs, and other vital organs in early fetal development, and a rendering or animation, comparable to the meet baby Olivia video developed by live action, showing the process of fertilization and every stage of human development inside the uterus, noting significant markers in cell growth and organ development for every significant marker of pregnancy until birth.
SF 2039: For
This bill would require the Dept. of Health and Human Services to immediately submit a letter of intent to apply for the federal summer electronic benefits transfer for food insecure children program.
HF 2042: For
This bill would require the Iowa Dept. of Health and Human Services to immediately submit a letter of application for the summer electronic benefits transfer program for food insecure students. This bill is similar to SF 2039.
HF 2027: For
This bill would require that a titleholder's property tax statements must disclose how much less funding the local public school district had compared to last year due to students receiving payments through education savings accounts.
These companion bills provide an exception to a minor’s legal capacity to consent to the provision of medical care or services for a sexually transmitted disease or infection. Minors will no longer be able to consent for vaccinations.
SF 2060: For
This bill would require schools to serve breakfast and lunch at no charge to children whose family income is less than three times the poverty level.
SF 2058: Undecided
This bill requires that all vaccine and immunization administrations be reported to the Iowa Health Information Network along with informed consent papers. I suspect the only reason for this is to make it easier for the anti-vax crowd to cherry pick adverse events.
SF 2055: Against
This anti-trans bill would prohibit persons from entering single and multiple occupancy restrooms or changing areas and other facilities in public accommodations that do not correspond with the person’s biological sex, and including effective date provisions.
These companion bills allow for a tax exemption for buildings owned by religious institutions but are being used by a third party to educate children.
SF 2049: Against
An Act relating to trainings, examinations, surveys, and screenings provided by governmental agencies and entities, school districts, charter schools, innovation zone schools, and public postsecondary educational institutions, including racism or sexism trainings, diversity and inclusion efforts, physical examinations, student health screenings, and surveys administered to students.
SF 2048: Against
Modifies provisions related to the social studies instruction provided to students enrolled in grades one through twelve in school districts by creating celebrate freedom week.The bill prohibits such instruction from censoring any religious references in the writings of the founding fathers.
HF 2073: Against
This bill authorizes school districts, charter schools, and innovation zone schools to hire untrained chaplains or engage volunteer chaplains to provide services to students.
HF 2068: Against
Social studies curricula shall include instruction related to the purpose of state law, the affirmative argument for prohibiting transgender drugs and surgeries for minors, the affirmative argument for parental rights in education and the legal limitations of the doctrine of in loco parentis, the physical and emotional harms associated with exposure to pornography, and the use of overt sexual themes by sexual predators to groom victims.
HF 2060: Against
An Act modifying provisions related to world language instruction in grades nine through twelve by prohibiting the incorporation of gender-neutral language when the world language being taught utilizes a grammatical gender system.
SSB 3073: Against
Filed by Governor Reynolds, this is her attempt to gut the State Area Education Agencies and bring them further under her direct control.
HF 2079: Against
The bill allows public funds to be utilized by an ecclesiastical or sectarian institution for a project or program if it “benefits the public.”
SSB 3092: Against
This bill would allow school districts, charter schools, and innovation zone schools to employ chaplains, or engage volunteer chaplains, to provide services to students.
HF 2097: Against
This bill prohibits the governor from closing, placing a mandate on, or otherwise regulating a place or practice of worship for any reason, including through the proclamation of a disaster emergency or public health disaster.
SF 2084: For
An Act repealing the education savings account program.
HF 2082: Against
This bill would remove gender identity as a protected class under the Iowa Civil Rights Act.
SF 2096: Against
This bill would repeal gender balance requirements for appointive bodies.
Another RFRA. These bills prohibit a governmental entity from substantially burdening a person’s free exercise of religion.
SF 2093: For
This bill would repeal Code section 147.164 (last year's ban on gender transition procedure-related care for minors).
SF 2080: For
This bill prohibits the sale or transfer of large capacity ammunition feeding devices, provides a penalty, and includes effective date and applicability provisions.
HF 2158: For
This bill would allow students who are at least 17 years old to register to vote during school hours twice a year on March 22 and the fourth Tuesday of September of each year.
HF 2138: Against
This bill requires schools to receive informed consent from parents of students in grades 7-12 before enrolling them in any human growth and development course. Schools must also provide parents with detailed information about the course instruction materials.
HR 2139: Against
This bill would prohibit schools from taking disciplinary action against employees, contractors, or students for using legal names of students or for failure to use personal pronouns in official communications.
These companion bills would allow the More Options for Maternal Support (MOMS) Program to be administrated directly by the Dept. of Health and Human Services. MOMS provides pregnancy support services for women. It explicitly excludes abortion providers but would include crisis pregnancy centers.
HF 2130: For
This bill requires criminal history background checks on all gun sales with extremely limited exceptions.
HF2129: For
This bill appropriates $75,000 for gun violence prevention research at the U of I Injury Prevention Research Center.
HF 2122: Against
This bill creates an abortion-inducing drug certification program to provide oversight and to regulate the provision of abortion-inducing drugs in the state. It bans the sale or prescription of abortion-inducing drugs through the mail. Certified physicians must maintain hospital admitting privileges with a local hospital. Physicians must report any abortion complications or adverse effects to state and federal agencies. Allows for both civil and criminal penalties against certified providers.
Every year we are expected to observe a holiday that is both meaningless and offensive. I’m talking about Christmas. Some pushback is in order.
Christmas is both a religious and a secular holiday, the baby and the bathwater, if you will. From a religious standpoint, its a celebration of the birth of the baby Jesus. From a secular standpoint, it about spending money and, I submit, about Christian nationalism.
Let’s start with the religious — the baby — which is the easiest to dispose of. If the birth of baby Jesus were such a big deal, you would think there would be some evidence that it actually happened. We know there isn’t. The Bible, the only place the story is recorded, is neither historically nor scientifically accurate. It wasn’t meant to be. Historical and scientific accuracy were either unknown or unimportant to the the authors of the biblical texts.
We can save scientific accuracy to talk about another day — I know I’m not writing for Christians. If historical accuracy were important, you would think the authors of the Bible would have got the story straight. There are two versions of of the birth of Jesus in the Bible. One in Matthew and the other in Luke. Most likely, given the lack of independent corroboration, both were just stories that were ultimately written down, i.e. myth.
Next question is why was this baby was suppose to have been born, in a manger or elsewhere? The story is that the only way to atone for the sin of Adam and Eve was for God the Father to send God the Son to die on the cross and then rise again. Right out of the gate, however, there is a problem (Only one? No, actually quite a few, but let’s start with one). Adam and Eve never existed. Sorry, I had to throw in some science after all. Humans, like every other living thing on this planet evolved. Species don’t suddenly appear. They gradually evolve over vast amounts of time. There never was a first human just like there never was a first dog or horse or fish or anything else. “Oh, I don’t believe that!” “It doesn’t matter what you believe, evolution is a matter of fact, not a matter of belief, so don’t talk nonsense.” So if there never was a first human to commit an original sin, then the need for divine atonement goes out the window.
As long as we’re talking about problems…. What was this horrible sin anyway? Does anyone really think that eating an apple was heinous enough to require a divine crucifixion? Maybe it was the acquisition of the knowledge of good and evil? As Robert Frost wrote: “… it was by having been contrasted, good and bad so long have lasted. … we learn from the forbidden fruit, for brains there is no substitute.” We know how to use our brain. We don’t need to confuse prescientific myth with reality.
There, we’ve done it. We’ve thrown out the baby. Now let’s move on to the bathwater. I think most of our secular Christmas traditions developed around the time of World War II. George Orwell wrote that all art is propaganda. In the 1930s and 40s, it was necessary for the country to come together to fight the war. Did you ever wonder why Bing Crosby was dreaming of a white Christmas, or why Jimmy Steward was discovering a wonderful life? Norman Rockwell Christmas cards were the glue that held the nation together through tough times. A few years later, Christmas was what separated us from the godless commies in Russia. Likewise, it’s no accident that the arrival of Santa Claus is sponsored by the big New York department stores. All art is propaganda indeed and Americans swallowed it hook line and sinker.
What about the children? Sooner or - if they aren’t very bright - later, they’ll figure out the Santa Claus thing. And for those born in the 21st century, most will get a grip on reality and reject everything supernatural. Why not rescue their young minds from the burden of superstition and the whole dubious experience from the start? As secular influence continues to grow, we can expect traditional Christmas to seem less like the culture’s default holiday. When secular children view Christmas as “something that some other people do,” not as “something everybody but us gets to do,” the lure of forbidden fruit will lose much of its sting.
If those of us who have thrown out the baby, don’t also throw out the bathwater, i.e. not acquiesce in “harmless” celebrations, we acknowledge, or at least give the impression that we acknowledge, that there is some value in the underlying story. Its the old story of being an absolutist vs a cimpatatablist. If we secular humanists are committed to truth and critical thinking, how can we take part in superstitious observances. Isn’t doing so counterproductive if we wish to be taken seriously as proponents of rational living? As members of an unpopular outgroup, we should consider the message we send the larger culture if we yield to Christmas. In multicultural America outgroups get respect by highlighting their differences, not by hiding them. Accommodation earns only contempt.
We secular humanists have a stirring, even inspiring view of life. Life in an un-designed, unintended, and unmanaged universe filled with possibility. The only life we have is here and now, and the only meanings we can depend on are the ones we create for ourselves. We embody the ideals of life and love without religion. Yet who will listen to us if we appear as hypocrites because we cannot muster the courage to forgo a holiday whose history and principles we would reject in any other setting?
Many of the ideas for this piece were inspired by an article written by the late Tom Flynn who served as associate editor of Free Inquiry and coeditor of Secular Humanist Bulletin. Flynn wrote that holidays, in general are a bad idea. Our ancient holidays developed in a world of mystery and privation quite unlike the world most of us inhabit today. Consider the revolution that science, technology, and the naturalistic worldview has wrought. Today, at least in the First World, most humans die of old age. Most children live to become adults. There is usually enough to eat. Many diseases are curable. Small families are sufficient to ensure that society goes on. Men and women can view the phenomena of nature with understanding and respect, instead of with superstition and uncomprehending fear. Even when a natural disaster is unavoidable, there is often advance warning. Aid comes quickly, and the victims can confront their experience fortified by their understanding of the physical processes involved. Moderns whose homes are destroyed by a storm, earthquake, or tornado are still homeless, but at least they are not simultaneously homeless and mystified as to what hostile spirit has done this to them. Unless, that is, they are Christians or Moslems who think god will protect, or at least rescue them. Flynn wrote:
“When we confront the modern world of purpose and possibility, we cannot know for certain what is right. But we can know that almost without exception, our instinctive assumptions, our received social forms, our musty rituals and ancient traditions are wrong. They developed in response to and were superbly attuned to a world of mystery and limited expectations that no longer exists. Consequently, whatever may be the appropriate social and cultural response to the conditions of modern life, it is far more likely to be an innovation yet unthought of than to be any hand-me-down of our past.”
More atheists, freethinkers, and secular humanists need to treat Christmas as “just another day.” Skip the feasts. Sit out the exchange of gifts. Put in a normal day’s work if you can. As Tom Flynn put it, infidelity is hard for believers to take seriously when its advocates so visibly cashier their principles rather than pass up an excuse to eat, drink, and be merry.
So, there you have it. We threw out the baby long ago. It’s time now to open the window and toss the bathwater.
When I spoke to Christer Sturmark last fall about his book To Light the Flame of Reason, I asked him for a reading recommendation (the opportunity to speak with someone who is both an author and a publisher is rare indeed). He suggested a then forthcoming book written by a Swedish physicist, Ulf Danielsson entitled The World Itself. The book was published in February 2023 and I read it as soon as I finished another book I’ll write about soon.
The title of the book is very clearly it’s subject — few and far between are pages that don’t mention “the world itself.” The book is about reality. It’s about how our models of the world reflect our perceptions of the world versus the reality of the world itself. Do the laws of nature constrain nature, or do they simply describe our model?
Galileo wrote that the book of nature is written in the language of mathematics so mathematical literacy is essential for an understanding of the world itself. But is it? In the introduction Carlos Fiolhais, Professor of Physics at the University of Coimbra in Portugal, writes: “Danielsson leaves us a very important message in his book: Please do not mistake the world, which is real, with our descriptions of the world, which are only human attempts to represent it, and which, as the whole history of science has taught us, can be improved.”
Right out of the gate, in the first sentence of Chapter 1, Danielsson writes:
“I HAVE A SECRET TO TELL YOU: Living beings are not machines, there is no mathematics outside of our heads, the world exists and it is not a simulation, computers cannot think, your consciousness is not an illusion, and your will is not free.”
Danielsson writes that what we call laws of nature are simply our way of summarizing our knowledge of the universe which is what it is!
In the computer age in which we now live, most, if not all, of us have entertained the idea of translating everything we are, including our thoughts, into a series of ones and zeros which could then be loaded into a computer with the result being eternal life. “The only problem is that it’s not true.” Such misunderstandings are based on a dualistic view of existence which is a holdover of a worldview that is fundamentally religious. Cartesian dualism makes a distinction between body and soul, where the body consists of perishable matter, while the soul is spiritual and eternal. Danielsson does not believe that the self can be separated from its material basis, whether in the form of an immortal soul or information. “Both cases are wishful thinking and fairy tales.”
Chapter two is entitled Living Beings are not Machines. It begins with a brief recap of a discussion between Danielsson and Richard Dawkins. Dawkins said he believes that physics is the senior science. That biology deals with the complex, while physics takes care of the profound. Danielsson noted that since the discovery of DNA and the letters of the genetic code, we know that all life on this planet is connected. “Through the billions of years, evolution has changed what is told but not the language itself. To illustrate the remarkable role that genes play in the living world, Richard Dawkins invented a striking metaphor in the form of the selfish gene…to show was how genes form the very heart of evolution.” Nevertheless, it’s still not really clear what a gene is. “Just as an organism is only a way for a gene to express itself, perhaps the same can be said about its physical manifestation in the form of a DNA molecule. When we search for the core itself, we find that genes are nothing but intangible information.”
“The discovery of evolution and the genetic code suggests that the very essence of life is pure information, sequences of letters that describe how to put together an organism in the form of an animal or a plant whose sole purpose is to make more copies of itself.” If and when the code is fully understood could exact copies of each of us be made. Not a chance, says Danielsson. “Not only is the information pointless if you do not know how to read it but there are many indications that DNA does not actually contain all the information. The cell must also know when it is time to use the information in a piece of DNA to build the proteins it encodes. This information is not necessarily stored in the sequence itself.” The difference between created machines and evolved organisms is not fully defined. “Evolution shows how life is pragmatic and focused on results, in stark contrast to physics, which still celebrates simplicity and beauty…This also applies to the subjective inner self, which can be assumed to be represented in other forms of life, as well.”
Chapter 3 is entitled The Universe is not Mathematics. Because everything we find in the interior of matter in the form of particle physics can be successfully incorporated into a mathematics the temptation is to see mathematics as something existing independently. The philosophical terms for this concept is Platonism — matter is governed by mathematical laws that lie outside of the material universe. This is entirely consistent with, and almost assumes, a religious worldview in which God, as the great mathematician, instituted the laws. Danielsson writes: “Belief in the Platonic form of mathematics can thus be likened to a belief in God. Rational arguments against such beliefs are not always effective.” Danielsson argues that a much more reasonable assumption would be that there is no mathematics—not in the true sense of the word. Mathematics arises only in the brain of someone who tries to understand what is going on.
And, what applies to mathematics also applies to what we call natural laws. The laws of nature, like mathematics, belong to our description of the world and are not at all something that needs to have any existence independent of us. The universe is not governed by what we call the laws of nature; rather, the laws of nature are constructed by us to understand the universe. As an example, Danielsson uses the image of an apple falling from a tree. Newton told us that the force of gravity was responsible, but Einstein told us that what we perceive as gravity is the result of the coverture of space-time. “Nature does not need physics or mathematics to calculate how an apple falls. The apple just falls, while our description of what happens develops and improves over time…The mathematics we use to model the world in the form of natural laws does not exist in the world itself. The laws of nature manifest themselves and are identical with physical patterns in our brains that reflect phenomena that we observe in the world around us.”
Chapter 4 is entitled There is a Difference Between Model and Reality. In this chapter, Danielsson discusses philosophical concepts such as metaphysical realism (there is a world outside our consciousness that is completely independent of our ideas and preconceived notions. There is one and only one way in which the world really is), attitude relativism (there is no objective reality, only arbitrary constructions that are influenced by culture), and internal realism (there is an objective world, but the way you can make it comprehensible is not unique). “The advantage of internal realism is that it differentiates between the real, existing world and how it is described. The goal of science is to offer efficient and reliable models that can be used to make useful predictions about the world itself.” Other terms introduced are: ontology (about what really exists) and epistemology (about what we can really know — and is a much closer to what science is really about). Danielsson wrote:
The point is that science, when seen only as a system based on mathematical logic, has no meaning. What researchers like myself do in our theories is to manipulate symbols according to formal rules. It is only when these symbols are connected to the real world, or, more precisely, the aspects that we select and abstract, that meaning is generated. The problem is that there are crucial steps, which are mistakenly considered trivial and deliberately ignored. Between the high-flying ideas and the messy natural world, which is what science is all about, lies the embodied consciousness of the researcher himself. There is no objective, external, and independent connection between the abstract world of mathematics and logic and the universe. The connection is always made in a brain of flesh and blood.
Chapter 5 is entitled “Computers Are Not Conscious.” In this chapter Danielson explains why, no matter how sophisticated they become, will never rival the human mind. The first example pointed to are the computers that play chess which humans are no long able to defeat. Next, I learned about the Chinese game of Go, that makes chess look like a game of Parcheesi. A computer was programmed to play Go. Rather than tell you what happened, which is fascinating, I’ll let you discover it for yourself when you buy the book. Should we consider the possibility that we, ourselves, are simply a program running on a computer as in the movie Matrix? Although you can probably guess Danielsson’s answer by now, I’ll let you read it for yourself.
Chapter 6 is entitled, Not Everything Can Be Computed. Danielsson cites theoretical biologist Robert Rosen‘s book Life Itself. Danielsson wrote: “Rosen described how living organisms have an ability to take into account the future, to predict what will happen, and to act accordingly. It was in this that the secret of life was hiding.”
Danielsson tells the story of a group of colleagues who would meet once a week. It was traditional that one member of the group would propose a math problem for the others to solve. One day Douglas Hofstadter was visiting the university and was asked to join the party at which he was asked to propose a problem. He wrote on the blackboard: (A/B+C) + (B/C+A) + (C/A+B) = 4. The challenge was to solve for A,B, & C, where each were positive integers. Before you beat your head against the wall trying to solve it, I’ll just say that you’ll find the answers in the book. If I counted correctly, A has 80 or 81 integers, as does B & C.
Danielsson wrote: “If [theoretical biologist Robert Rosen] is right, it is enough to look at biological organisms to find examples where this kind of incalculable mathematics that we have discussed is relevant. But an important question remains. How can it be possible for something completely new to sneak into a mechanistic world where everything that happens can be reduced to atoms and voids?”
In this chapter there is an excellent explanation of the 2nd law of thermodynamics, which one often hears christians throwing around in debates with scientists. In a several page section, Danielsson explains that entropy can only increase over time. The greater the entropy, the messier it is. Nothing improves with time. This is the most basic law of nature, but how could the cosmos have begun in a state of order and progressed to more order rather than disorder. Danielsson explains it better than anything else I’ve read.
Chapter 7 is entitled, Man is not Unique. Danielsson writes that instead of looking for what separates us from other beings on Earth, it may be more enlightening to focus on what we have in common and thus deepen our understanding of ourselves. “It is clear that our biological nature is central to our view of the universe. Our consciousness is in our bodies, and the world we experience through our senses is created by our using organic systems that have evolved over millions of years. We are part of a living continuum that stretches back to the very simplest organisms. All of this is crucial to our understanding of the physical world—the only world that exists.”
Danielsson suggests that we get to know an octopus which he says have intelligence comparable to that of cats. As evolutionists, we know that we have common ancestors with every other living thing on our planet. Evolution found two completely different ways to solve the problem of how to make matter think. For one thing, we think mainly with our brain while an octopus thinks with its entire body. Danielsson wrote:
In addition, an octopus not only thinks with its body; it also uses its body to express its innermost thoughts in a colorful way. (Although octopuses have long been thought to be color-blind and it is not known exactly how or if they can interpret these complex signals.) *** Other animals, whether octopuses, mussels, or bats, have a disposition that is completely different in design. All their models are realistic images of the world, true in their own way, and necessary for their survival.
And while we’re at it, what about plants?
Plants are physical systems that process a large amount of information in order to survive and grow. Root tips find their way through the soil to maximize the uptake of nutrients, and the fused networks in the ground under a forest have a complexity that surpasses the brain of an animal. Try to imagine an answer to the question ‘What is it like to be a forest?’
The final sentence of this chapter is: “[R]ather than trying to define what is exclusively human and what makes us unique compared to other species, there is more to learn, I believe, by identifying what we have in common with those other species—even bats.”
Everything in the book leads to the final chapter entitled Does Free Will Exist. While Danielsson gave us the answer in Chapter 1, it would be unfair of me to deprive you of the opportunity to read his reasoning for yourself.
Throughout the book, Danielsson cites and quotes many scholars and authors. Many were familiar to me, as I’m sure they will be to you. A list of names would be too lengthy here, but I’ll mention a few. Above, I mentioned the interview with Richard Dawkins which you can watch at https://youtu.be/UWgb5azXZTA. Danielson discusses Noam Chomsky who sees the relationship between language and reality precisely the way Danielsson has criticized. A friend of mine mentioned Max Tegmark’s review. Immediately after talking about Chomsky, Danielsson wrote: “The physicist is content with the fact that mathematics works and delivers at most rather sweeping statements about how surprisingly efficient it is. If the physicist is pressured, especially a theoretical physicist, there is a risk that he or she will take a position similar to Max Tegmark’s, and identify mathematics with the world itself.” In the section of the book entitled recommended reading, Danielsson wrote: “Our Mathematical Universe (Tegmark 2014) is in many ways a counterpoint to The World Itself. I have no objections to the strictly scientific content of Tegmark’s book, but the existential conclusions are foreign to me.”
I highly recommend this book.
