Author Archives: Neil Steiner

Comments to the Virginia State Board of Elections

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The Virginia State Board of Elections is trying to water down the voter registration requirements by no longer mandating US Citizenship and freedom from felony convictions.  This is my response to them:

To the SBE:

What possible benefit could come from removing the citizenship and felony requirements from the voter registration forms other than to increase voter fraud.  The law is clear.  § 24.2-418. Application for registration:  US Citizenship is required, and felony convictions disallowed, and registrants are “subject to felony penalties for making false statements pursuant to § 24.2-1016.”

In trying to water down the voter registration requirements, you compromise the sovereignty of the Commonwealth of Virginia and the rule of law.  From Article 1, Section 7 of the Constitution of Virginia:

That all power of suspending laws, or the execution of laws, by any authority, without consent of the representatives of the people, is injurious to their rights, and ought not to be exercised.

Reject this misguided plan, or find yourself in contempt of our laws and constitution and have the decency to resign.

If you are a resident of Virginia, please make your voice heard before Monday, August 3, at 11:59pm here.

Is the Burqa Islamic?

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With the recent increase of women in full niqabs that I have been seeing, it is worth noting that Islam doesn’t require women to wear the niqab or burqa.  That practice is cultural in origin, not religious:

Nowhere in Islam’s transcendent text is there any compulsion for women to conceal their faces. Indeed, this pre-Islamic practice is non-Qur’anic and un-Muslim. It is an archaic aristocratic custom originating in ancient Persia that spread to Byzantium and was adopted by misogynistic Muslim society. For Muslims to claim that the niqab/burka is Islamic is not only deceitful but disingenuous. At best it is an outmoded cultural convention and a primitive tribal habit. Many ill-informed Muslims have, however, been conditioned to conflate culture with religion and befuddle liberal Britain that this is a principle of religious freedom and human rights when it is neither. In fact it is illegal for masked women to undertake the pilgrimage to Mecca or to perform their daily prayers. If women are prevented from hiding their identity at Islam’s holiest shrine, why do they need to do so in the UK?
For theological, political, security, social and health reasons, the UK must join France and Belgium in outlawing all public anonymity. Anything less would be tantamount to sexist discrimination against British men, who are not permitted to conceal their identity in public.

Imam Dr T. Hargey
Director, Muslim Educational Centre of Oxford

On artificial brains, part 2

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It appears that FaceBook’s AI Directory agrees with me on the implausibility of trying “to copy every detail that we know of about how neurons and synapses work, and then turn on a gigantic simulation of a large neural network inside a supercomputer, and hope that AI will emerge.”

“I’m going to get a lot of heat for this, but basically a big chunk of the Human Brain Project in Europe is based on the idea that we should build chips that reproduce the functioning of neurons as closely as possible, and then use them to build a gigantic computer, and somehow when we turn it on with some learning rule, AI will emerge. I think it’s nuts.

Now, what I just said is a caricature of the Human Brain Project, to be sure. And I don’t want to include in my criticism everyone who is involved in the project. A lot of participants are involved simply because it’s a very good source of funding that they can’t afford to pass up.”

Quotes from Yann LeCunn in Facebook’s AI Director on His Quest to Make Machines Smarter With Deep Learning in IEEE Spectrum.

Implicit somewhere in the assumption of AI spontaneously emerging from a big enough neural net is the idea that it must have happened that way in nature since evolution is presumed to be true.

The Rise of the Niqab

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I have noticed a new and troubling trend in the past month or so.  My instinct tells me this is an attempt to taunt us or to acclimate us to Islamic culture while the Muslim Brotherhood pursues their stated agenda of “eliminating and destroying Western civilization” from within and making Islam “victorious over all other religions.”  The document I’m quoting was uncovered by the FBI in Annandale, VA in 2004, an area I’m quite familiar with.

I’ll note that the niqab is not a religious requirement for Muslims but conversely that it carries strong cultural meaning.  I wouldn’t have expected to be seeing more of this at a time when the atrocities of ISIS are so prominent in the news, but historically speaking Islam does not advance subtly.  I’ll also note that Islam is not just a religion but a comprehensive way of life, and that Sharia law  can only be established at the demise of the United States Constitution.

  • 11/19/2014: Woman in black niqab walking by herself along North Fairfax Drive in Arlington, VA.
  • Week of 11/10/2014-11/16/2014: Woman in black niqab walking by herself along North Beauregard Street in Alexandria, VA.
  • Month of November 2014: Man and three women in Islamic attire, walking along North Fairfax Drive in Arlington, VA.  Cannot remember the details, but I believe the women were wearing chadors or niqabs.
  • Prior to November 2014: Never once in six years saw any woman wearing a niqab in this area.

Cleaning up the “smidgen”

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I have frequently called the government out for doing the wrong thing, so it’s only fair for me to acknowledge when they do the right thing:

The Oak Initiative, a group that I am affiliated with, applied for 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status four years ago in 2010.  As with many similar groups, their application was wrongfully delayed by the IRS, far longer than the official 15-month processing time [1, 2, 3, 4, 5].

About a week ago, the Oak Initiative received notice from the IRS that their 501(c)(3) application had been approved.  So to whoever at the IRS had the courage and leadership to do the right thing, thank you!  I hope that others will follow your example.

Philippines trip after Yolanda

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On November 8, 2013, Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda) caused catastrophic damage in the Philippines, particularly in Tacloban city.  Bodies were still being found as late as January 9, 2014.  The needs in many areas are still severe eight months after the fact.

Just one prominent and immediate need is a daily meal for 460 children in Tacloban city over the next six months.  This information comes from actual on-the-scene reports.

I will be joining a team of amazing people from August 21 through September 4, primarily working with local churches in Tacloban, and also with people caught in sex trafficking and drug addiction in Cebu.

If you would like to help contribute toward feeding the children in Tacloban, or if you just want to read more about the situation and our efforts, you can do so through our project page on Indiegogo.

The “Smidgen” grows

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If the IRS has lost all of the potentially incriminating testimony that Congress has subpoenaed, are we to believe that this is all they have lost, or do they in fact lose volumes of data right and left? If their data retention problem is so very severe, how do they even continue to function as an agency?

The IRS has not only forgotten that it answers to the People of the United States, but is now feigning a criminal level of incompetence to cover up its wrongdoing, all the while seeking to permanently establish its corrupt practices.

In the words of Becky Gerritson in her testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee:

We are patriotic Americans.  We peacefully assemble.  We petition our government.  We exercise our right to free speech and we don’t understand why our government tried to stop us.  We aren’t here as serfs or vassals.  We’re not begging our lords for mercy.  We are born free American citizens and we’re telling our government that you’ve forgotten your place.  It’s not your responsibility to look out for our well being and monitor our speech.  It’s not your right to assert an agenda.  The post that you occupy exists to preserve American liberty.  You’ve sworn to perform that duty and you have faltered.

There is bipartisan agreement that what the IRS has done is wrong.  Having a corrupt and fraudulent IRS benefits nobody and has directly harmed at least one organization with which I am personally affiliated.

Thank God, this country is still free, and I intend to shine as much light as necessary on the corruption to protect that freedom.  If you think the IRS needs to be independently audited, you can sign this petition.

Mister President, please help us out with that transparency that you promised, and please take another look to see if per chance you do detect a little smidgen of corruption in your administration.  If you take the high road, your administration won’t have to resort to underhanded tactics.

America, still beautiful

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Excerpt from President Ronald Reagan’s Radio Address to the Nation on the Observance of Easter and Passover, April 2, 1983:

My fellow Americans:

This week as American families draw together in worship, we join with millions upon millions of others around the world also celebrating the traditions of their faiths. During these days, at least, regardless of nationality, religion, or race, we are united by faith in God, and the barriers between us seem less significant.

Observing the rites of Passover and Easter, we’re linked in time to the ancient origins of our values and to the unborn generations who will still celebrate them long after we’re gone. As Paul explained in his Epistle to the Ephesians, “He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. So then you were no longer strangers and aliens, but you were fellow citizens of God’s household.”

This is a time of hope and peace, when our spirits are filled and lifted. It’s a time when we give thanks for our blessings—chief among them, freedom, peace, and the promise of eternal life.

This week Jewish families and friends have been celebrating Passover, a tradition rich in symbolism and meaning. Its observance reminds all of us that the struggle for freedom and the battle against oppression waged by Jews since ancient times is one shared by people everywhere. And Christians have been commemorating the last momentous days leading to the crucifixion of Jesus 1,950 years ago. Tomorrow, as morning spreads around the planet, we’ll celebrate the triumph of life over death, the Resurrection of Jesus. Both observances tell of sacrifice and pain but also of hope and triumph.

As we look around us today, we still find human pain and suffering, but we also see it answered with individual courage and spirit, strengthened by faith.

***

In this Easter season when so many of our young men and women in the Armed Forces are stationed so very far from their homes, I can’t resist recounting at least one example of their sacrifice and heroism. Every day I receive reports that would make you very proud, and today I’d like to share just one with you.

While the San Diego-based U.S.S. Hoel was steaming toward Melbourne, Australia, on Ash Wednesday, its crew heard of terrible brush fires sweeping two Australian States. More than 70 people were killed and the destruction was great. Well, the crew of this American ship raised $4,000 from their pockets to help, but they felt that it wasn’t enough. So, leaving only a skeleton crew aboard, the 100 American sailors gave up a day’s shore leave, rolled up their sleeves, and set to work rebuilding a ruined community on the opposite end of the Earth. Just Americans being Americans, but something for all of us to be proud of.

Stories like these—of men and women around the world who love God and freedom-bear a message of world hope and brotherhood like the rites of Passover and Easter that we celebrate this weekend.

A grade school class in Somerville, Massachusetts, recently wrote me to say, “We studied about countries and found out that each country in our world is beautiful and that we need each other. People may look a little different, but we’re still people who need the same things.” They said, “We want peace. We want to take care of one another. We want to be able to get along with one another. We want to be able to share. We want freedom and justice. We want to be friends. We want no wars. We want to be able to talk to one another. We want to be able to travel around the world without fear.”

And then they asked, “Do you think that we can have these things one day?” Well, I do. I really do. Nearly 2,000 years after the coming of the Prince of Peace, such simple wishes may still seem far from fulfillment. But we can achieve them. We must never stop trying.

The generation of Americans now growing up in schools across our country can make sure the United States will remain a force for good, the champion of peace and freedom, as their parents and grandparents before them have done. And if we live our lives and dedicate our country to truth, to love, and to God, we will be a part of something much stronger and much more enduring than any negative power here on Earth. That’s why this weekend is a celebration and why there is hope for us all.

Thanks for listening, and God bless you.

Just saying …

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I don’t like calling people idiots, so I’ve redacted this, but the substance of it is hard to deny, even if I don’t agree with all of the list.  Note also that a few of the items are unverified.  Taken from Politically True:

  • If you can get arrested for hunting or fishing without a license, but not for being in the country illegally …
  • If you have to get your parents’ permission to go on a field trip or take an aspirin in school, but not to get an abortion …
  • If the only school curriculum allowed to explain how we got here is evolution, but your government stops a $15 million construction project to keep a rare spider from evolving to extinction …
  • If you have to show identification to board an airplane, cash a check, buy liquor, or check out a library book, but not to vote for who runs your government …
  • If your government believes that using steroids or other drugs will ruin your life, but throwing you in prison for years will not …
  • If your government wants to ban stable, law-abiding citizens from owning gun magazines with more than ten rounds, but gives 20 F-16 fighter jets to the crazy new leaders in Egypt …
  • If, in the largest city, you can buy two 16-ounce sodas, but not a 24-ounce soda because 24-ounces of a sugary drink might make you fat …
  • If an 80-year-old woman can be strip-searched by the TSA but a woman in a hijab is only subject to having her neck and head searched …
  • If your government believes that the best way to eradicate trillions of dollars of debt is to spend trillions more …
  • If a seven year old boy can be thrown out of school for saying his teacher [is] “cute,” but hosting a sexual exploration or diversity class in grade school is perfectly acceptable …
  • If children are forcibly removed from parents who discipline them with spankings while children of addicts are left in filth and drug infested “homes”…
  • If hard work and success are met with higher taxes and more government intrusion, while not working is rewarded with EBT cards, WIC checks, Medicaid, subsidized housing, and free cell phones …
  • If your government’s plan for getting people back to work is to incentivize NOT working with 99 weeks of Unemployment checks and no requirement to prove they applied but can’t find work …
  • If you pay your mortgage faithfully, denying yourself the newest big screen TV while your neighbor buys iPhones, TVs and new cars, and your government forgives his debt when he defaults on his mortgage …
  • If your government believes that the way to make a school of unarmed children safe is to pass another law, this time with the illusion that three 10-round magazines in a rifle is safer than a 30-round magazine …

I want my country back from all those who are trying to manipulate it for political, financial, or ideological gain.

Courtesy of the scientific thought police

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If science is our attempt to understand nature, why do we see so much suppression of dissenting viewpoints?  Shouldn’t ideas be evaluated with an open mind, and shouldn’t they rise or fall on their merits, whether or not they are politically and ideologically conforming?

The following was stolen borrowed from and Evolution News and Views article.  Similar lists could be made concerning climate change and other topics:

  • In 2005, Smithsonian spokesman Randall Kremer objected to a private screening of the pro-ID film The Privileged Planet because it drew a “philosophical conclusion.” The Smithsonian made no complaints when Sagan’s original Cosmos in 1980 argued that “The cosmos is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be.”
  • A congressional subcommittee staff investigation found that biologist Richard Sternberg experienced retaliation by his co-workers and superiors at the Smithsonian, including transfer to a hostile supervisor, removal of his name placard from his door, deprivation of workspace, subjection to work requirements not imposed on others, restriction of specimen access, and loss of his keys, because he allowed a pro-ID article to be published in a biology journal. The Congressional staff investigation concluded that the “Smithsonian’s top officials permit[ed] the demotion and harassment of [a] scientist skeptical of Darwinian evolution” and “officials explicitly acknowledged in emails their intent to pressure Sternberg to resign because of his role in the publication of the [pro-ID] Meyer paper and his views on evolution.”
  • In 2009 the state-funded California Science Center (CSC) museum cancelled the contract of a pro-ID group, American Freedom Alliance (AFA), to show a pro-ID film. The lawsuit was settled in August 2011, with the CSC agreeing to pay AFA $110,000 to avoid a public trial. However, documents disclosed during the course of litigation showed that employees of the CSC, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, joined with other LA-area academics to suppress the expression of ID, most egregiously by pressing CSC decision-makers to hastily cancel AFA’s event.
  • In 2005, over 120 faculty members at Iowa State University (ISU) signed a petition denouncing ID and calling on “all faculty members to … reject efforts to portray Intelligent Design as science.” These efforts were significant not just because they opposed academic freedom by demanding conformity among faculty to reject ID, but because they focused on creating a hostile environment for pro-ID astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez, co-author of The Privileged Planet, who was denied tenure at ISU in 2006 due to his support for ID. Both public and private statements exposed through public records requests revealed that members of ISU’s department in physics and astronomy voted against Gonzalez’s tenure due to his support for ID.
  • In 1993, San Francisco State University biology professor Dean Kenyon was forced to stop teaching introductory biology because he was informing students that scientists had doubts about materialist theories of the origin of life.
  • In a similar case five years later, Minnesota high school teacher Rodney LeVake was removed from teaching biology after expressing skepticism about Darwin’s theory. LeVake, who holds a master’s degree in biology, agreed to teach evolution as required in the district’s curriculum, but said he wanted to “accompany that treatment of evolution with an honest look at the difficulties and inconsistencies of the theory.”
  • Rogert DeHart, a public high school biology teacher in Washington State, was denied the right to have his students read articles from mainstream science publications that made scientific criticisms of certain pieces of evidence typically offered to support Darwinian theory. One of the forbidden articles was written by noted evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould. Although DeHart complied with this ban, he was later removed from teaching biology.
  • In Mississippi, chemistry professor Nancy Bryson was asked by Mississippi University for Women to resign as head of the Division of Science and Mathematics after she gave a lecture to honors students called “Critical Thinking on Evolution.” She remarked, “Students at my college got the message very clearly[;] do not ask any questions about Darwinism.”
  • In 1999, ID theorist William Dembski founded the Polanyi Center at Baylor University to allow scientists and scholars to conduct scientific research into intelligent design. The Center was later shut down largely due to intolerance of ID among Baylor faculty.
  • In 2005, the president of the University of Idaho instituted a campus-wide classroom speech-code, where “evolution” was “the only curriculum that is appropriate” for science classes. This was done in retaliation towards a professor at the university, Scott Minnich, who at the time was testifying in favor of intelligent design as an expert witness at the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial.
  • Also in 2005, Cornell’s former interim president Hunter Rawlings devoted a State of the University Address “to denounce ‘intelligent design,’ arguing that it has no place in science classrooms and calling on faculty members in a range of disciplines” to similarly attack ID.
  • In 2005, top biology professors at Ohio State University derailed a doctoral student’s thesis defense by writing a letter claiming “there are no valid scientific data challenging macroevolution” and therefore the student’s teaching about problems with neo-Darwinism was “unethical” and “deliberate miseducation.”
  • In 2005, pro-ID adjunct biology professor Caroline Crocker lost her job at George Mason University after teaching students about both the evidence for and against evolution in the classroom, and mentioning ID as a possible alternative to Darwinism. While her former employer maintains that it simply chose not to renew her contract, she was specifically told she would be “disciplined” for teaching students about the scientific controversy over evolution.
  • In 2007, Robert Marks, Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Baylor, had established an Evolutionary Informatics Lab at Baylor University to study the ability of Darwinian processes to generate new information using computer simulations and evolutionary algorithms. However, after Dr. Marks was interviewed by ID the Future in 2007, he subsequently received a letter from his dean warning that the website was “associated” with “ID,” and he was forced to take the lab’s site down and move the lab itself off campus.
  • In 2006, a professor of biochemistry and leading biochemistry textbook author at the University of Toronto, Laurence A. Moran, stated that a major public research university “should never have admitted” students who support ID, and should “just flunk the lot of them and make room for smart students.”
  • In 2011, a biology professor at the University of Waikato stated that “If, for example, a student were to use examples such as the bacterial flagellum to advance an ID view then they should expect to be marked down”
  • Likewise, that same year Jerry Coyne, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Chicago, stated that “adherence to ID (which, after all, claims to be a nonreligious theory) should be absolute grounds for not hiring a science professor.”
  • In January 2011, the University of Kentucky (UK) paid over $100,000 to settle astronomer Martin Gaskell’s lawsuit claiming that he was wrongfully denied employment for doubting Darwinism. UK faculty admitted that Gaskell was the most qualified applicant for the position, but they hired a much less qualified candidate out of concerns about statements Gaskell had made that were critical of Darwinian evolution.
  • In June 2011, the journal Applied Mathematics Letters paid $10,000 and publicly apologized to avoid litigation after it wrongfully withdrew mathematician Granville Sewell’s paper critiquing neo-Darwinism.
  • In 2009, David Coppedge was demoted and punished for sharing pro-ID videos with co-workers at Jet Propulsion Lab. Later, his employment was terminated.
  • In 2012, Springer-Verlag illegally breached a contract to publish the proceedings of an ID-friendly research conference at Cornell University after a pressure campaign was mounted by pro-Darwin activists to have the book scuttled.
  • In 2013, Ball State University (BSU) President Jo Ann Gora issued a speech code declaring that “intelligent design is not appropriate content for science courses” at BSU, after atheist activists from the Freedom from Religion Foundation charged that a “Boundaries of Science” course taught by a well-liked physics professor (Eric Hedin) was violating the Constitution by favorably discussing intelligent design.
  • Also in 2013, atheist activists forced Amarillo College to cancel an intelligent design course after they threatened disruption if it went forward.

Weren’t our schools and universities places where we were supposed to learn to think critically, to wrestle with conflicting views, and to draw correct conclusions?  Apparently many people in high places are too afraid to tolerate dissent.  That doesn’t speak very well for their position or for their strength of character.

And for the record, Carl Sagan’s claim that “The cosmos is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be” is an unscientific statement.  Just as Gödel’s incompleteness theorems in math prove that no non-trivial system can be fully described from within, it is also impossible from within a system to make conclusive statements about what is outside that system.  This isn’t rocket science, folks.