can it be that it was all so simple?

e.o. wilson on bishop dawkins...,

independent |  “We just corrected a mistake made originally by Hamilton and then repeated by a number of people, myself included,” he says.

Wilson argues that multilevel selection – both at the level of individuals and groups – has led to the creation of eusociality in ants and humans. In the simplest terms, individuals who co-operate together in groups achieve more and enhance the survival of their group, while selfish individualism does not, even in terms of Hamilton’s inclusive fitness and kin selection.

“Within groups, selfish individuals beat altruistic individuals but in the selection of other traits of individuals that are interactive with other individuals – social traits – then groups of altruists defeat groups of selfish individuals,” Wilson explains. “In a nutshell, individual selection favours what we call sin and group selection favours virtue.”  But for many evolutionary biologists, this is demonstrably untrue, at least in animals. For the past 40 years or more, biology students have been taught that natural selection works on the level of genes. Richard Dawkins was the first to articulate this approach to a mass audience, arguing that individuals and their bodies are mere vehicles or “gene machines” for carrying genes through one generation to the next.

Two years after the 2010 Nature paper, Dawkins wrote a scathing review in Prospect magazine of Wilson’s support for group selection which Dawkins dismissively labelled “a bland, unfocused ecumenicalism”.

Natural selection without kin selection is like Euclid without Pythagoras, wrote Dawkins. “Wilson is, in effect, striding around with a ruler, measuring triangles to see whether Pythagoras got it right,” he said. “For Wilson not to acknowledge that he speaks for himself against the great majority of his professional colleagues is – it pains me to say this of a lifelong hero – an act of wanton arrogance.”

Although Wilson has much to be arrogant about, few who have met him would accuse him of it. But the criticism must have hurt, and Wilson was evidently still feeling stung by it when writing his latest book, in which he rather waspishly describes Dawkins, a distinguished Fellow of the Royal Society and retired Oxford professor, as an “eloquent science journalist”.

“What else is he? I mean journalism is a high and influential profession. But he’s not a scientist, he’s never done scientific research. My definition of a scientist is that you can complete the following sentence: ‘he or she has shown that…’,” Wilson says.

“I don’t want to go on about this because he and I were friends. There is no debate between us because he’s not in the arena. I’m sorry he’s so upset. He could have distinguished himself by looking at the evidence, that’s what most science journalists do. When a journalist named Dawkins wrote a review in Prospect urging people not to read my book, I thought the last time I heard something like that I think it came from an 18th-century bishop.”

it isn't only that john gray doesn't care for richard dawkins...,

newrepublic |  It is a different matter when those he sees as his intellectual underlings—religious believers and any who stray from the strictest interpretation of Darwinism—refuse to follow his lead. Recalling his years at boarding school, Dawkins winces at the memory of the bullying suffered by a sensitive boy, “a precociously brilliant scholar” who was reduced to “a state of whimpering, abject horror” when he was stripped of his clothing and forced to take cold baths. Today, Dawkins is baffled by the fact that he didn’t feel sympathy for the boy. “I don’t recall feeling even secret pity for the victim of the bullying,” he writes. Dawkins’s bafflement at his lack of empathy suggests a deficiency in self-knowledge. As anyone who reads his sermons against religion can attest, his attitude towards believers is one of bullying and contempt reminiscent of the attitude of some of the more obtuse colonial missionaries towards those they aimed to convert.

Exactly how Dawkins became the anti-religious missionary with whom we are familiar will probably never be known. From what he writes here, I doubt he knows himself. Still, there are a few clues. He began his pilgrimage to unbelief at the age of nine, when he learned from his mother “that Christianity was one of many religions and they contradicted each other. They couldn’t all be right, so why believe the one in which, by sheer accident of birth, I happened to be brought up?” But he was not yet ready to embrace atheism, and curiously his teenage passion for Elvis Presley reinforced his vestigial Christianity. Listening to Elvis sing “I Believe,” Dawkins was amazed to discover that the rock star was religious. “I worshipped Elvis,” he recalls, “and I was a strong believer in a non-denominational creator god.” Dawkins confesses to being puzzled as to why he should have been so surprised that Elvis was religious: “He came from an uneducated working-class family in the American South. How could he not have been religious?” By the time he was sixteen, Dawkins had “shed my last vestige of theistic credulity.” As one might expect, the catalyst for his final conversion from theism was Darwinism. “I became increasingly aware that Darwinian evolution was a powerfully available alternative to my creator god as an explanation of the beauty and apparent design of life. ... It wasn’t long then before I became strongly and militantly atheistic.”

What is striking is the commonplace quality of Dawkins’s rebellion against religion. In turning away from the milk-and-water Anglicanism in which he had been reared—after his conversion from theism, he “refused to kneel in chapel,” he writes proudly—he was doing what tens of thousands of Britain’s young people did at the time. Compulsory religious instruction of the kind that exists in British schools, it has often been observed, creates a fertile environment for atheism. Dawkins’s career illustrates the soundness of this truism. If there is anything remarkable in his adolescent rebellion, it is that he has remained stuck in it. At no point has Dawkins thrown off his Christian inheritance. Instead, emptying the faith he was taught of its transcendental content, he became a neo-Christian evangelist. A more inquiring mind would have noticed at some point that religion comes in a great many varieties, with belief in a creator god figuring in only a few of the world’s faiths and most having no interest in proselytizing. It is only against the background of a certain kind of monotheism that Dawkins’s evangelical atheism makes any sense.

the ecology of religious beliefs

pnas |  Here we show that the spatial prevalence of human societies that believe in moralizing high gods can be predicted with a high level of accuracy (91%) from historical, social, and ecological data. Using high-resolution datasets, we systematically estimate the relative effects of resource abundance, ecological risk, cultural diffusion, shared ancestry, and political complexity on the global distribution of beliefs in moralizing high gods. The methods presented in this paper provide a blueprint for how to leverage the increasing wealth of ecological, linguistic, and historical data to understand the forces that have shaped the behavior of our own species. 

Although ecological forces are known to shape the expression of sociality across a broad range of biological taxa, their role in shaping human behavior is currently disputed. Both comparative and experimental evidence indicate that beliefs in moralizing high gods promote cooperation among humans, a behavioral attribute known to correlate with environmental harshness in nonhuman animals. Here we combine fine-grained bioclimatic data with the latest statistical tools from ecology and the social sciences to evaluate the potential effects of environmental forces, language history, and culture on the global distribution of belief in moralizing high gods (n = 583 societies). After simultaneously accounting for potential nonindependence among societies because of shared ancestry and cultural diffusion, we find that these beliefs are more prevalent among societies that inhabit poorer environments and are more prone to ecological duress. In addition, we find that these beliefs are more likely in politically complex societies that recognize rights to movable property. Overall, our multimodel inference approach predicts the global distribution of beliefs in moralizing high gods with an accuracy of 91%, and estimates the relative importance of different potential mechanisms by which this spatial pattern may have arisen. The emerging picture is neither one of pure cultural transmission nor of simple ecological determinism, but rather a complex mixture of social, cultural, and environmental influences. Our methods and findings provide a blueprint for how the increasing wealth of ecological, linguistic, and historical data can be leveraged to understand the forces that have shaped the behavior of our own species.

pope's deratzingerization on and popping...,

NYTimes |  Change is rattling the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church, as the American bishops hold their annual fall meeting here this week. The vast majority of them were appointed by Francis’ two more conservative predecessors, and some say they do not yet understand what kind of change Pope Francis envisions and whether it is anything more than a change in tone.

The change is reflected not only in the bellwether Chicago appointment, but also in Francis’ call for the church to open discussion on sticky matters long considered settled, such as communion for the divorced and remarried, same-sex relationships, couples who live together without being married and even polygamists in Africa.

Some prelates, like Bishop Cupich, are exhilarated at the pontiff’s fresh message and the prospect of change, while others, like Cardinal George, are warier. A few have been downright resistant, including Cardinal Raymond Burke, an American in Rome who has publicly challenged Francis and was removed on Saturday from his position as head of the Vatican’s highest court.

“The pope is saying some very challenging things for people,” Bishop Cupich said in an interview Tuesday. “He’s not saying, this is the law and you follow it and you get to heaven. He’s saying we have to do something about our world today that’s suffering, people are being excluded, neglected. We have a responsibility, and he’s calling people to task.”

Bishop Cupich is seen as an able administrator with a pastoral approach, who has written and spoken on social justice for the poor and disenfranchised in tones that echo Francis. He said he had no idea how he was selected, saying, “Maybe someday over a nice glass of Chianti I’ll ask him.”

teh'geh coming to grips with the church of rome....,

religiondispatches |  Before the dust had settled from the Catholic bishops’ synod on the family, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith announced that it will be hosting an interfaith colloquium this month on the “Complementarity of Man and Woman in Marriage.” Organizers tout the interfaith aspect of the conference, which they say will feature representatives from 14 religious traditions and 23 countries. Americans attending will include Rick Warren, evangelical author and pastor; Russell Moore, head of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention; Henry Eyring, First Counselor in the Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints; and Charles Chaput, the ultraconservative Archbishop of Philadelphia. Also participating will be Nicholas Okoh, the Anglican Archbishop of Nigeria, who has called homosexuality a manifestation of the devil and praised Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan’s “courage” in signing a harsh anti-gay law last December.

Meanwhile, Catholic bishops have publicly slammed Catholic Universities that have decided to offer benefits to same-sex spouses of employees. The Advocate reports that Archbishop George Lucas of Omaha criticized Jesuit-run Creighton University and Bishop Kevin Rhoades of the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend criticized Notre Dame. Rhoades said that “Living in conformity with our Catholic teaching that marriage by its nature is between one man and one woman needs religious liberty protection so we are not forced to treat same-sex unions as equivalent to marriage.”

what will bishops and cardinals do without fear and hatred to move the crowd?

HuffPo |  America's Catholic bishops came together Monday to project an image of unity, after a Vatican meeting on the family unleashed an uproar over the direction of the church.

Last month's gathering in Rome on more compassionately ministering to families featured open debate — alarming many traditional Catholics, who argued it would undermine public understanding of church teaching. Pope Francis encouraged a free exchange of ideas at the assembly, or synod, in contrast to previous years, when such events were tightly scripted.

At a meeting Monday in Baltimore, Archbishop Joseph Kurtz, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, signaled there was no conflict between a gentler approach and upholding church orthodoxy. Kurtz cited his home visits to parishioners, where he wouldn't give them "a list of rules to follow firsthand," but would instead "spend time with them trying to appreciate the good that I saw in their hearts," before inviting them to follow Christ.

"Such an approach isn't in opposition to church teachings. It's an affirmation of them," said Kurtz, who attended the Vatican gathering.

Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington, who also participated in the Vatican gathering, emphasized that last month's meeting was only the start of a discussion before a larger gathering on the family next year, where bishops will more concretely advise the pope on developing any new church practices. New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan said the divisiveness he read in media accounts did not reflect the collegial discussion inside the event.

"It was a synod of consensus," Dolan said. The pope, he said, has a God-given gift "for attentive listening."

The bishops made the remarks at their fourth national meeting since Francis was elected. While many Catholics have praised Francis' new emphasis on mercy over the culture wars, many theological conservatives have said Francis is failing to carry out his duty as defender of the faith. Some U.S. bishops have resisted turning their focus away from gay marriage, abortion and other contentious social issues to take up Francis' focus on the poor, immigrants and those who feel unwelcome in the church.

supernatural punishment, in-group biases, and material insecurity

tandfonline |  Threat of supernatural punishment can promote prosociality in large-scale societies; however, its impact in smaller societies with less powerful deities is less understood. Also, while perceived material insecurity has been associated with increasing religious belief, the relationships between insecurity, supernatural punishment beliefs, and prosocial behavior are unclear. In this study, we explore how material insecurity moderates the supernatural punishment beliefs that promote different expectations about distant, anonymous strangers among a sample of villagers living in Yasawa, Fiji. We examined this relationship by employing an economic game designed to measure local recipient favoritism vs. egalitarian, rule-following behavior. Using indices of three different “punishing” agents – the Christian God (“Bible God”), the deified ancestors (Kalou-vu), and the police – we find that increased belief in Bible God punishment predicts less local recipient favoritism at low and moderate but not high material insecurity. Punishing Kalou-vu also predicts less favoritism at low and moderate insecurity, but more favoritism at high insecurity. Police punishment poorly predicts favoritism, suggesting that secular authority has less impact on isolated communities. We discuss implications for understanding how different kinds of supernatural and secular agent beliefs impact prosocial behavior.

priming of supernatural agent concepts and agency detection: are you a believer?

tandfonline |  In evolutionary approaches to religion it is argued that belief in supernatural agents is strongly related to a perceptual bias to over-detect the presence of agents in the environment. We report five experiments that investigate whether processing concepts about supernatural agents facilitates agency detection. Participants were presented with point-light stimuli representing unscrambled or scrambled biological motion, or with pictures of unscrambled or scrambled faces, embedded in a noise mask. Participants were required to indicate for each stimulus whether it represented a human agent or not. Each trial was preceded by a supernatural agent prime, a human agent prime, or an animal prime. Our results showed that primes referring to humans facilitated the detection of agency. More importantly, however, results did not reveal a general effect of supernatural priming on agency detection. In three experiments, a moderating effect of religiosity was observed: supernatural agent primes had a differential effect for religious compared to non-religious participants on agency detection biases and the speed of responding to agent-like stimuli. These findings qualify the relation between supernatural beliefs and agency detection and suggest that when supernatural agent concepts have been acquired through cultural learning, these concepts can modulate agency-detection biases.

reflective elaborations on intuitions - what sort of beliefs are religious beliefs?

wustl.edu |  Religious beliefs are, from a cognitive standpoint, a puzzling phenomenon. They are not empirically motivated and often contradict the believers’ own assumption that the world obeys a set of stable rules. They are also  apparently very different from one cultural group to another. Assuming that we have cognitive systems because these provide us with reliable information to navigate our environment, it would seem that being strongly committed to hugely variable, non-empirical beliefs is wasteful if not downright damaging (McKay & Dennett, 2009). While some evolutionary anthropologists and psychologists conjecture that such beliefs may actually have adaptive adavantges (Bulbulia, 2004; Irons, 2001), others see them mostly as by-products of other, adaptive cognitive functions (Boyer, 1994b, 2001). This debate is orthogonal to the question, How do such beliefs occur in human minds? One possibility is that religious representations consist in post-hoc explicit elaborations on common intuitions (Boyer, 1994a, 2001). In this perspective, beliefs about ancestors are parasitic on intuitions about persons, as notions of contagious magic are on intuitions about pathogens, and beliefs about the afterworld are on intuitions about dead people (Boyer, 2001; Pyysiainen, 2001). But, if religious beliefs are derivative, what sorts of “beliefs” are they, and how do they get triggered and sustained in cognitive systems?

pope cleaning house

USA Today | In a move that reflects the loosening posture of the Vatican on major social issues, conservative U.S. Cardinal Raymond Burke was removed by Pope Francis from yet another top post.

Burke, who has long been vocal about denying communion to Catholic politicians who support abortion, was dismissed as head of the Holy See's highest court and given the post of Patron of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, a largely ceremonial job overseeing charity to seniors.

At 66, Burke is considered young by church hierarchy standards. The dismissal is a set-back to his Vatican career as well as a clear message from Pope Francis to those not hewing to his progressive view of the Catholic Church.

supernatural monitoring and sanctioning in community-based resource management

academia.edu |  Cooperation in human societies is difficult to sustain if mechanisms are not in place to monitor behavior and sanction transgressions. Unfortunately, these mechanisms constitute second-order public goods that are vulnerable to freeriding. Religion has been proposed to solve this problem by shifting these burdens to the realm of thesupernatural. However, very little research has been done to examine the specificcontent of beliefs in supernatural monitoring and sanctions within real worldcooperative contexts. To help fill this void and to better understand the role these institutions may have played in the development of prosociality, we performed a meta-analysis of case studies (N = 48) in which religion played some role in community- based resource management (CBRM). 

Our findings suggest that beliefs in supernatural enforcement are common features of CBRM and that these duties are ascribed toentities ranging from ancestral spirits to gods. The specific sanctions believed to beimposed for violating rules are varied, but most often represent common occurrences that are readily open to interpretation as indications of supernatural efficacy. We propose that the provincial quality of the supernatural entities associated with CBRM may limit the scale at which they can promote prosociality and we discuss the implications this may have for the evolution of high gods.

true fifty years ago, and still true today - h.rap an'em cats were literally too smart to move the crowd...,

bbc |  Many religious leaders in Africa are regarded as superstars. 

Take the pastors of Nigeria's mega-churches, for example. Their meetings pack stadiums across the continent. Their books are bestsellers in a society that is frequently accused of having a poor reading culture. 

And in a country that lays claim to a huge percentage of Africa's most acclaimed moguls, entertainment personalities and intellectuals, the Facebook and Twitter pages with some of the highest number of followers are those of pastors. 

A 2010 survey by the US-based Pew Research Center shows that "the vast majority of people in many of Africa's nations are deeply committed to the practices and major tenets of Christianity and Islam". Some 87% of Nigerians surveyed said religion was very important in their lives - compared with 19% in the UK. 

Heads of State and other top government officials seek audiences with prominent clerics - referred to as "men of god" - sometimes circulating photographs of these encounters possibly as evidence of divine validation. 

Hawkers peddle pirated DVDs of their sermons alongside Hollywood blockbusters and the massively popular Nollywood films. 

Rivalling Achebe

Telecommunications companies offer ringtones in the form of prayers recorded in their voices. At one time or another, some pastors have taken steps to distance themselves from bulk text messages sent out in their names. 

Text message instructions from renowned clerics are usually taken seriously in Nigeria, often going viral. They could be anything from a call to communal prayer at a specific time, or an injunction against retaliatory violence. 

I sometimes joke that if the leaders of Nigeria's five largest churches merely hint that no-one should have anything further to do with Chinua Achebe, the author's fan base and book sales in his home country would instantly, unquestionably plunge and his works would eventually be struck off the national curriculum, regardless of how widely acclaimed he is around the world.

The pastors are sometimes accused of making themselves into gods. 

But the matter may be largely out of their hands. One might as well castigate Michael Jackson or Oprah Winfrey or The Beatles for being worshipped by their fans. 

Some observers view the power and popularity of religious leaders as a problem.

which cheek did jesus turn?

tandfonline |  In portraiture, subjects are mostly depicted with a greater portion of the left side of their face (left hemiface) facing the viewer. This bias may be induced by the right hemisphere's dominance for emotional expression and agency. Since negative emotions are particularly portrayed by the left hemiface, and since asymmetrical hemispheric activation may induce alterations of spatial attention and action-intention, we posited that paintings of the painful and cruel crucifixion of Jesus would be more likely to show his left hemiface than observed in portraits of other people. By analyzing depictions of Jesus's crucifixion from book and art gallery sources, we determined a significantly greater percent of these crucifixion pictures showed the left hemiface of Jesus facing the viewer than found in other portraits. In addition to the facial expression and hemispatial attention-intention hypotheses, there are other biblical explanations that may account for this strong bias, and these alternatives will have to be explored in future research.

In portraits, most subjects are depicted with their head rotated rightward, with more of the left than right side of the subject's face being shown. For example, in the largest study of facial portraiture, McManus and Humphrey (1973) studied 1474 portraits and found a 60% bias to portray a greater portion of the subjects’ left than right hemiface. Nicholls, Clode, Wood, and Wood (1999) found the same left hemiface bias even when accounting for the handedness of the painter.

Multiple theories have been proposed in an attempt to explain the genesis of this left hemiface bias in portraits. One hypothesis is that the right hemisphere is dominant for mediating facial emotional expressions. In an initial study, Buck and Duffy (1980) reported that patients with right hemisphere damage were less capable of facially expressing emotions than those with left hemisphere damage when viewing slides of familiar people, unpleasant scenes, and unusual pictures. These right-left hemispheric differences in facial expressiveness have been replicated in studies involving the spontaneous and voluntary expression of emotions in stroke patients with focal lesions (Borod, Kent, Koff, Martin, & Alpert, 1988; Borod, Koff, Lorch, & Nicholas, 1985; Borod, Koff, Perlman Lorch, & Nicholas, 1986; Richardson, Bowers, Bauer, Heilman, & Leonard, 2000).

Hemispheric asymmetries are even reported in more “naturalistic” settings outside the laboratory. For example, Blonder, Burns, Bowers, Moore, and Heilman (1993) videotaped interviews with patients and spouses in their homes and found that patients with right hemisphere damage were rated as less facially expressive than left hemisphere-damaged patients and normal control patients. These lesion studies suggest that the right hemisphere has a dominant role in mediating emotional facial expressions. Whereas corticobulbar fibers that innervate the forehead are bilateral, the contralateral hemisphere primarily controls the lower face. Thus, these lesion studies suggest that the left hemiface below the forehead, which is innervated by the right hemisphere, may be more emotionally expressive.

This right hemisphere-left hemiface dominance postulate has been further supported by studies of normal subjects portraying emotional facial expressions. For example, Borod et al. (1988) asked subjects to portray emotions, either by verbal command or visual imitation. The judges who rated these facial expressions ranked the left face as expressing stronger emotions. Sackeim and Gur (1978) showed normal subjects photographs of normal people facially expressing their emotions and asked participants to rate the intensity of the emotion being expressed. However, before showing these pictures of people making emotional faces, Sackeim and Gur altered the photographs. They either paired the left hemiface with a mirror image of this photograph's left hemiface to form a full face made up of two left hemifaces or formed full faces from right hemifaces. Normal participants found that the composite photographs of the left hemiface were more emotionally expressive than the right hemiface. Triggs, Ghacibeh, Springer, and Bowers (2005) administered transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to the motor cortex of 50 subjects during contraction of bilateral orbicularis oris muscles and analyzed motor evoked potentials (MEPs). They found that the MEPs elicited in the left lower face were larger than the right face, and thus the left face might appear to be more emotionally expressive because it is more richly innervated.

Another reason portraits often have the subjects rotated to the right may be related to the organization of the viewer's brain. Both lesion studies (e.g., Adolphs, Damasio, Tranel, & Damasio, 1996; Bowers, Bauer, Coslett, & Heilman, 1985; DeKosky, Heilman, Bowers, & Valenstein, 1980) and physiological and functional imaging studies (e.g., Davidson & Fox, 1982; Puce, Allison, Asgari, Gore, & McCarthy, 1996; Sergent, Ohta, & Macdonald, 1992) have revealed that the right hemisphere is dominant for the recognition of emotional facial expressions and the recognition of previously viewed faces (Hilliard, 1973; Jones, 1979). In addition, studies of facial recognition and the recognition of facial emotional expressions have demonstrated that facial pictures shown in the left visual field and left hemispace are better recognized than those viewed on the right (Conesa, Brunold-Conesa, & Miron, 1995). Since the right hemisphere is dominant for facial recognition and the perception of facial emotions when viewing faces, the normal viewer of portraits may attend more to the left than right visual hemispace and hemifield. When the head of a portrait is turned to the right and the observer focuses on the middle of the face (midsagittal plane), more of the subject's face would fall in the viewer's left visual hemispace and thus be more likely to project to the right hemisphere.

Agency is another concept that may influence the direction of facial deviation in portraiture. Chatterjee, Maher, Gonzalez Rothi, and Heilman (1995) demonstrated that when right-handed individuals view a scene with more than one figure, they are more likely to see the left figure as being the active agent and the right figure as being the recipient of action or the patient. From this perspective the artist is the agent, and perhaps he or she is more likely to paint the left hemiface of the subject, which from the artist's perspective is more to the right, the position of the patient. Support for this agency hypothesis comes from studies in which individuals rated traits of left- versus right-profiled patients, and found that those with the right cheek exposed were considered more “active” (Chatterjee, 2002).

Taking this background information into account and applying it to depictions of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ highlights the various influences on profile painting in portraiture. Specifically, we confirm the predilection to display the left hemiface in portraiture and predict the same in portraits of Jesus’ crucifixion.

The strongest artistic portrayals of a patient being subject to cruel and painful agents are images of the crucifixion of Jesus. The earliest depiction of Christ on the cross dates back to around 420 AD. As Christianity existed for several centuries before that, this seems to be a late onset for this type of art. Because of the strong focus on Christ's resurrection and the disgrace of his agony and death, art historians postulate that there was a hesitation for early followers to show Christ on the cross. The legalization of Christianity also may have lifted the stigma. Based on the artwork still in existence from that period, Jesus was often pictured alive during the crucifixion scene. Several centuries later, from the end of the seventh century to the beginning of the eighth century, Christ is more often shown dead on the cross (Harries, 2005).

vote all you want, the secret government won't change....,

bostonglobe |  The voters who put Barack Obama in office expected some big changes. From the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping to Guantanamo Bay to the Patriot Act, candidate Obama was a defender of civil liberties and privacy, promising a dramatically different approach from his predecessor.

But six years into his administration, the Obama version of national security looks almost indistinguishable from the one he inherited. Guantanamo Bay remains open. The NSA has, if anything, become more aggressive in monitoring Americans. Drone strikes have escalated. Most recently it was reported that the same president who won a Nobel Prize in part for promoting nuclear disarmament is spending up to $1 trillion modernizing and revitalizing America’s nuclear weapons.

Why did the face in the Oval Office change but the policies remain the same? Critics tend to focus on Obama himself, a leader who perhaps has shifted with politics to take a harder line. But Tufts University political scientist Michael J. Glennon has a more pessimistic answer: Obama couldn’t have changed policies much even if he tried.

Though it’s a bedrock American principle that citizens can steer their own government by electing new officials, Glennon suggests that in practice, much of our government no longer works that way. In a new book, “National Security and Double Government,” he catalogs the ways that the defense and national security apparatus is effectively self-governing, with virtually no accountability, transparency, or checks and balances of any kind. He uses the term “double government”: There’s the one we elect, and then there’s the one behind it, steering huge swaths of policy almost unchecked. Elected officials end up serving as mere cover for the real decisions made by the bureaucracy.

Glennon cites the example of Obama and his team being shocked and angry to discover upon taking office that the military gave them only two options for the war in Afghanistan: The United States could add more troops, or the United States could add a lot more troops. Hemmed in, Obama added 30,000 more troops.

Glennon’s critique sounds like an outsider’s take, even a radical one. In fact, he is the quintessential insider: He was legal counsel to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a consultant to various congressional committees, as well as to the State Department. “National Security and Double Government” comes favorably blurbed by former members of the Defense Department, State Department, White House, and even the CIA. And he’s not a conspiracy theorist: Rather, he sees the problem as one of “smart, hard-working, public-spirited people acting in good faith who are responding to systemic incentives”—without any meaningful oversight to rein them in.

How exactly has double government taken hold? And what can be done about it? Glennon spoke with Ideas from his office at Tufts’ Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. This interview has been condensed and edited.  Fist tap Arnach.

another fake bin laden story?

paulcraigroberts |  Osama bin Laden died in December 2001 of renal failure and other health problems, having denied in his last recorded video any responsibility for 9/11, instead directing Americans to look inside their own government. The FBI itself has stated that there is no evidence that Osama bin Laden is responsible for 9/11. Bin Laden’s obituary appeared in numerous foreign and Arabic press, and also on Fox News. No one can survive renal failure for a decade, and no dialysis machine was found in the alleged Abbottabad compound of bin Laden, who allegedly was murdered by SEALs a decade after his obituary notices.

Additionally, no one among the crew of the ship from which the White House reported bin Laden was buried at sea saw any such burial, and the sailors sent messages home to that effect. Somehow a burial was held onboard a ship on which there are constant watches and crew on alert at all hours, and no one witnessed it.

Additionally, the White House story of the alleged murder of bin Laden changed twice within the first 24 hours. The claim that Obama and his government watched the action transmitted live from cameras on the SEALs’ helmets was quickly abandoned, despite the release of a photo of the Obama regime intently focused on a TV set and alleged to be watching the live action. No video of the deed was ever released. To date there is no evidence whatsoever in behalf of the Obama regime’s claim. Not one tiny scrap. Just unsubstantiated self-serving claims.

Additionally, as I have made available on my website, witnesses interviewed by Pakistan TV reported that only one helicopter landed in Abbottabad and that when the occupants of the helicopter returned from the alleged bin Laden compound, the helicopter exploded on takeoff and there were no survivors. In other words, there was no bin Laden corpse to deliver to the ship that did not witness a burial and no SEAL hero to return who allegedly murdered an unarmed bin Laden. Moreover, the BBC interviewed residents in Abbottabad, including those next door to the alleged “bin Laden compound,” and all say that they knew the person who lived there and it was not bin Laden.

Any SEAL who was so totally stupid as to kill the unarmed “Terror Mastermind” would probably have been courtmartialed for incompetency. Look at the smiling face of the man Who Killed Bin Laden. He thinks that his claim that he murdered a man makes him a hero, a powerful comment on the moral degeneracy of Americans.

dissension in the ranks?

theguardian |  Robert O’Neill, a highly decorated 38-year-old veteran from Butte, Montana, now retired after 17 years in the forces, also said the al-Qaida leader died afraid and that US military leaders had not wanted him captured alive.

Once proud of their reputation as the “quiet professionals”, squabbling among the elite Seals has thrust them into the media spotlight. The men who have fuelled controversy about how much the public should know about the bin Laden raid face hostility about why they are breaking a traditional vow of silence and criticism from former comrades in arms.

“Vets need to sack up. We will bash each other for no fucking reason,” O’Neill told freelance journalist Alex Quade, in recordings broadcast on CNN. “Every marine that gets out, every Ranger that gets out, every, every army guy that writes a book, they’re lauded as heroes. You do it as a Seal and you’re a fucking villain.”

Controversy has already swirled around Matt Bissonnette, another member of the 23-man team, who under the pen name Mark Owen in 2012 published No Easy Day, a book about the raid. The manuscript was not cleared by the Pentagon and he is still under investigation for leaking classified material.

Both O’Neill and Bissonnette were apparently the targets of a fierce letter of criticism sent to all former and serving Seals by rear admiral Brian Losey and force master chief Michael Magaraci. It did not mention them by name, but there were few doubts about its target.

Any mission is successful because of teamwork by hundreds of unnamed comrades not a few shots by the men on the ground and if those men claim public recognition for their role they betray the others, the letter argued.

“Any real credit to be rendered is about the incredible focus, commitment and teamwork of this diverse network, and the years of hard work undertaken with little individual public credit,” the letter, dated October 31, said. “We do not abide wilful or selfish disregard for our core values in return for public notoriety and financial gain, which only diminishes otherwise honourable service, courage and sacrifice.”

O’Neill says he shot Bin Laden twice in the head. He had featured in an Esquire magazine piece last year named only as “The Shooter”, but was planning to unmask himself in an interview with Fox News this month. A special forces website scooped the news channel, naming O’Neill in its report on the senior officers’ letter.

It unleashed attacks and questions about the ex-Seal’s account but the veteran, in an echo of his former commanders, claimed he was not interested in fame. “The most important thing that I have learned in the last two years is, to me it doesn’t matter any more if I am ‘The Shooter,’” O’Neill said in comments recorded before his name was made public.

“The team got him. It was a successful mission. Regardless of the negativity that comes with it, I don’t give a fuck. We got him. We brought him out, and we lived. And that obviously will go down historically, but I don’t care if I’m ‘The Shooter’. And there are people who think I’m not. So whatever.”

consanguinity and reproductive health among arabs

reproductive-health journal |  Socio-cultural factors, such as maintenance of family structure and property, ease of marital arrangements, better relations with in-laws, and financial advantages relating to dowry seem to play a crucial role in the preference of consanguinity in Arab populations [3]. Consanguineous marriages are generally thought to be more stable than marriages between non-relatives, though there are no studies to compare divorce rates of consanguineous and non-consanguineous marriages among Arabs. It is generally believed that the husband's family would side with the consanguineous wife in marital disputes since she is considered part of the extended family. When there are children with disabilities, more family members share in caring for these children. Unlike what is thought, consanguinity in the Arab World is not only confined to Muslim communities. Several other communities, including the Lebanese, Jordanian, and Palestinian Christian populations, have also practiced consanguinity, but to a lesser extent than Muslims [4-7].

Consanguinity rates show wide variations among Arab countries, as well as within the same country (Table 1, Additional file 1). However, reports from Arab countries on consanguinity rates may sometimes include marriages between third cousins or far relatives within the consanguineous category. Although this discrepancy affects the total consanguinity rate, it does not markedly alter the average inbreeding coefficient. Therefore, for comparison of consanguinity rates among populations, two parameters are best used; the mean inbreeding coefficient (F) and marriages between first cousins. However, Arab societies have a long tradition of consanguinity, and the cumulative estimate of (F) may exceed the estimated value which is calculated for a single generation [8].

Secular changes in the consanguinity rates have been noticed in some Arab populations. In Jordan[9], Lebanon [5], Bahrain [10], and among Palestinians [11-13], the frequency of consanguineous marriage is decreasing. Several factors may be playing a role in decreasing the consanguinity rates in Arab countries. Amongst these factors are the increasing higher female education levels, the declining fertility resulting in lower numbers of suitable relatives to marry, more mobility from rural to urban settings, and the improving economic status of families. Moreover, genetic diseases may be feared more now that infectious diseases are on the decline as causes of severe morbidity and mortality.

Generally, the highest rates of marriages to close relatives are consistently reported in the more traditional rural areas and among the poorest and least educated in society [8]. Reports from some Arab countries have shown that consanguinity rates are lower in urban when compared to rural settings. Urban to rural first cousin rates in Algeria were 10% and 15% [14], in Egypt, 8.3% and 17.2% [15], and in Jordan, 29.8% and 37.9% [6], respectively. Likewise the mean inbreeding coefficient was lower in urban as compared to rural settings in Syria (0.0203 versus 0.0265) [16]. In Jordan, it was evident that the higher the level of education of the female partner, the lower the consanguinity rate. Only 12% of university educated females would marry their first cousins, whereas 25% of university educated males tend to marry first cousins [6]. Similar trends of lower consanguinity rates among educated women, but not educated men, were noticed in Yemen [17] and Tunisia [18].

On the other hand, social, religious, cultural, political and economic factors still play roles in favoring consanguineous marriages among the new generations just as strongly as they did among the older generations, particularly in rural areas. Consanguinity rates seem to be increasing at a higher pace in Qatar [19], Yemen [17], the United Arab Emirates (UAE) [20], and Tlemcen in Algeria [14]. In Morocco, a study indicated an increasing consanguinity rate from the previous (21.5%) to the present (25.4%) generation [21], while another study indicated a decreasing consanguinity rate [22]. Consanguinity rates are not declining in some Arab countries because it is generally accepted that the social advantages of consanguinity outweigh the disadvantages [23], and consanguinity is regarded as a deeply rooted cultural trend. It is believed that the practice of consanguinity has significant social and economic advantages. Consanguineous marriages among Arabs are respected because it is thought that they promote family stability, simplify financial premarital negotiations, offer a greater compatibility between the spouses and other family members, offer a lesser risk of hidden financial and health issues, and maintain the family land possessions [3,24,25]. Among 390 women attending reproductive health clinics in Jordan, consanguinity was protective against violence during pregnancy [26]. In all cases, reports on secular trends in consanguinity need to be treated with some caution because in countries where consanguinity is favored, major regional and ethnic differences in prevalence are commonly observed [3].

the problem of inbreeding in islam

pjmedia |  There is a dire phenomenon rising in Europe that is crippling entire societies and yet the continent sleeps, refusing not only to confront the destructive elephant in the room, but also to admit its very existence. The troubling reality being referred to is the widespread practice of Muslim inbreeding and the birth defects and social ills that it spawns.

The tragic effect of the left’s control of the boundaries of debate is that any discussion about vital issues such as these marks an individual as an “Islamophobe” and a “racist.” A person who dares to point at the pathology of inbreeding in the Muslim community is accused of whipping up hatred against Muslim people. But all of this could not be further from the truth. To fight against inbreeding anywhere is to defend humanity and to defend innocent babies from birth defects. Fighting against this Islamic practice stems from a pro-Muslim calling, since identifying destructive ideologies and practices in Islam enables the protection of the Muslim people from harm.

Massive inbreeding among Muslims has been going on since their prophet allowed first-cousin marriages more than 50 generations (1,400 years) ago. For many Muslims, therefore, intermarriage is regarded as being part of their religion. In many Muslim communities, it is a source of social status to marry one’s daughter or son to his or her cousin. Intermarriage also ensures that wealth is kept within the family. Islam’s strict authoritarianism plays a large role as well: keeping daughters and sons close gives families more power to control and decide their choices and lifestyles.

Westerners have a historical tradition of being ready to fight and die for their country. Muslims, on the other hand, are bound together less by patriotism, but mainly by family relations and religion. Intermarrying to protect the family and community from outside non-Islamic influence is much more important to Muslims living in a Western nation than integrating into that nation and supporting it.

Today, 70 percent of all Pakistanis are inbred and in Turkey the amount is between 25-30 percent (Jyllands-Posten, 27/2 2009 “More stillbirths among immigrants“). A rough estimate reveals that close to half of everybody living in the Arab world is inbred. A large percentage of the parents that are blood related come from families where intermarriage has been a tradition for generations.

A BBC investigation in Britain several years ago revealed that at least 55% of the Pakistani community in Britain was married to a first cousin. The Times of India affirmed that “this is thought to be linked to the probability that a British Pakistani family is at least 13 times more likely than the general population to have children with recessive genetic disorders.”

did inbreeding shape the course of human evolution?

newscientist |  TALK about an inauspicious beginning. For thousands of years our ancestors lived in small, isolated populations, leaving them severely inbred, according to a new genetic analysis. The inbreeding may have caused a host of health problems, and it is likely that small populations were a barrier to the development of complex technologies.

In recent years, geneticists have read the genomes of long-dead humans andextinct relatives like Neanderthals. David Reich of Harvard Medical School in Boston has now sequenced the Neanderthal genome and that of another extinct human, the Denisovan, to an unprecedented degree of accuracy. He presented his findings at a Royal Society meeting on ancient DNA in London on 18 November.

Describing the genomes as "nearly error-free", Reich says both species were severely inbred due to small populations. "Archaic populations had low genetic diversity, really extraordinarily low," he said. "It's among the lowest diversity of any organism in the animal kingdom."

One Neanderthal, whose DNA Reich obtained from a toe bone, had almost no diversity in about one-eighth of the genome: both copies of each gene were identical. That suggests the individual's parents were half-siblings.

That's in line with previous evidence of small populations, says Chris Stringerof the Natural History Museum in London. "In the distant past, human populations were probably only in the thousands or at best tens of thousands, and lived locally, exchanging mates only with their nearest neighbours."

Our genomes still carry traces of these small populations. A 2010 study concluded that our ancestors 1.2 million years ago had a population of just 18,500 individuals, spread over a vast area (PNAS, doi.org/dv75x8).

Fossils suggest the inbreeding took its toll, says Erik Trinkaus of Washington University in St Louis, Missouri. Those he has studied have a range of deformities, many of which are rare in modern humans. He thinks such deformities were once much more common (PLoS ONE, doi.org/p6r).

Despite the impact on health, it is unclear whether inbreeding could have killed off the Neanderthals and Denisovans. More likely is the effect of small populations on culture and technology, says Mark Thomas of University College London. Larger populations retain more knowledge and find ways to improve technologies. This "cumulative culture" is unique to humans, but it could only emerge in reasonably large populations. In small populations, knowledge is easily lost, which explains why skills like bone-working show up and then vanish, says Trinkaus.