The Volokh Conspiracy

ABC News reports:

Christian protesters traveled across the country to Dearborn, Mich., where they taunted attendees and even held a severed pig’s head for three days at the annual Arab International Festival. The protests turned violent Sunday, and by the end of the day as many as 10 people facing disorderly conduct or assault charges, according to ABC News Detroit affiliate WXYZ.

“You’re going to burn in hell,” a missionary reportedly yelled at a group of Arab-American boys, while other protesters held anti-Muslim signs that made bigoted remarks about Islam and its prophet Mohammed, including “Islam is a religion of blood and murder” and “Muhammad (Islam’s prophet) is a ... liar, false prophet, murderer, child molesting pervert.”

Young festival attendees later threw soda cans at the protesters and yelled, “Allah-U-Akbar” [God is the greatest], the Detroit Free Press reported.

Violence eventually broke out between festival goers and protesters, prompting Dearborn police to arrest a protest[er] they claim incited the violence. Some protesters say that they were attacked first.

It’s hard to tell exactly what happened, and whether the arrestee was arrested for simply stating opinions that led to retaliation, or for using constitutionally unprotected personal insults directed at a particular person (so-called “fighting words”). It’s possible the police behaved properly, for instance if the arrestee was indeed using fighting words — or attacking people first — and if the people on the other side were either just defending themselves, or couldn’t be identified. Or it’s possible that the police behaved improperly, for instance if they declined to arrest people who behaved violently, or arrested the arrestee simply for expressing his religious opinions. (Note that the other protesters weren’t arrested, even though they presumably were expressing similar religious opinions.)

But it’s hard to see how the protesters are likely to bring much goodwill or many adherents to their cause, either among their audience or among the public at large.

The L.A. Times reports:

The unrest was sparked Friday following last month’s rape and murder of a Buddhist girl, allegedly by three Muslims, and the lynching of 10 Muslims in retaliation. The weekend saw rival Muslim and Buddhist mobs burn houses. The government said about 4,100 people have lost their homes, many taking refuge in schools and Buddhist monasteries.

Analysts said that while the problem surfaced over the past week, the underlying conditions have developed over decades. A longstanding narrative of the military junta that had ruled the country for more than half a century was the preeminence of the ethnic Burman majority, which makes up about 68% of the population of Myanmar, also known as Burma.

“The rest, the non-Burmans, were pretty much persecuted,” said Jan Zalewski, a London-based South Asia analyst with IHS Global Insight, a forecasting firm....

As is common in such situations, it’s not clear to what extent the crimes reflect religious ideology and to what extent they are ethnic clashes where the ethnic groups are defined partly by religion. Thanks to Prof. Howard Friedman (Religion Clause) for the pointer.

I posted a draft of this article a few months ago, and I thank VC readers for some helpful comments in improving it. The final version has been published by the Charleston Law Review, and is available on SSRN. Here’s the abstract:

This Article chronologically reviews the British gun control which precipitated the American Revolution: the 1774 import ban on firearms and gun powder; the 1774-75 confiscations of firearms and gun powder, from individuals and from local governments; and the use of violence to effectuate the confiscations. It was these events which changed a situation of rising political tension into a shooting war. Each of these British abuses provides insights into the scope of the modern Second Amendment.

From the events of 1774-75, we can discern that import restrictions or bans on firearms or ammunition are constitutionally suspect — at least if their purpose is to disarm the public, rather than for the normal purposes of import controls (e.g., raising tax revenue, or protecting domestic industry). We can discern that broad attempts to disarm the people of a town, or to render them defenseless, are anathema to the Second Amendment; such disarmament is what the British tried to impose, and what the Americans fought a war to ensure could never again happen in America. Similarly, gun licensing laws which have the purpose or effect of only allowing a minority of the people to keep and bear arms would be unconstitutional. Finally, we see that government violence, which should always be carefully constrained and controlled, should be especially discouraged when it is used to take firearms away from peaceable citizens. Use of the military for law enforcement is particularly odious to the principles upon which the American Revolution was based.

Readers interested in more detail on the role of gun rights and gun control in period leading up to the Revolution, and in the remainder of 18th century America, are encouraged to read Stephen Halbrook’s excellent book The Founders’ Second Amendment, which is the result of decades of work by Halbrook in finding primary sources of the period, including newspapers, correspondence, and diaries.

On a related topic, some readers might also be interested in my 2005 article The Religious Roots of the American Revolution and the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, detailing the role of Congregationalist and other ministers in inciting the Revolution, by explaining collective self-defense of natural and civil rights as a moral and religious obligation.

At the Reason website, Kennedy (who apparently has only one name), argues at length that atheism should be considered a religion:

[W]hether you make sense of the world as an atheist and don’t require the God postulate to complete your understanding, or you are a theist and your feelings and experiences tell you something greater is there, biologically speaking, that big blob of gray Jell-O in our skulls is like a giant arrow pointing us in the same direction. I believe that is delicious. And religious....

I contend that if your system is about God—or about the non-existence of God—God is still at the center of the argument’s “aboutness.” In the spirit of that “off is a TV channel” comment above: God is the TV. Religions are the channels. If it is off, maybe he’s dead or disengaged, but at least you admit there’s a TV....

When atheists rail against theists (as many did on my Facebook page), they are using the same fervor the religious use when making their claims against a secular society. By calling atheism a religion, I am not trying to craft terms or apply them out of convenience. I just see theists and atheists behaving in the same manner, approaching from opposite ends of the runway.

These kinds of claims are often made, but they fall apart under close inspection. Obviously, if you define the term “religion” broadly enough, atheism can qualify. But such a redefinition obfuscates important differences between atheism and religion, and is also contrary to ordinary English usage.

Kennedy argues that atheism is like religion because both atheists and theists 1) try to understand the nature of the world, 2) have beliefs about God, and 3) are often emotional about their beliefs and intolerant of opposing views. All of these points are true, but none of them prove that atheism is a religion.

It is true that both atheists and theists try to understand the world. But only the latter are committed to a religious explanation for reality, which depends on the actions of supernatural beings. The former, by contrast, can try to explain reality by natural, scientifically verifiable causes. There is an important distinction between a naturalistic worldview and one that incorporates an important role for supernatural beings.

Moreover, atheism as such is not an explanation for the nature of the world akin to various religions who explain reality by reference to God (or multiple gods). Atheism is merely a rejection of the existence of supernatural gods, which does not preclude atheists from disagreeing among themselves about the fundamental nature of reality (e.g. – some atheists are materialists, whereas others are not; some atheists even reject the genetic theory of evolution, as the officially atheistic Soviet government did for many years).

It is also true that both atheists and theists have beliefs about God. However, if believing there is no God makes you religious, then disbelieving in ghosts makes you a believer in the existence of the afterlife and disbelief in phrenology makes you a phrenologist. Both phrenologists and anti-phrenologists have beliefs about the question of whether or not feeling the shape of a person’s skull tell you something useful about their personality. Similarly, both atheists and theists have beliefs about the existence of God. I am not suggesting that all theistic beliefs are as easily falsified as phrenology (some probably are, while others are not). But rejection of theism does not make you a religious believer, just as rejection of phrenology does not make you a phrenologist.

Finally, it is certainly true some atheists get emotional about their beliefs and are intolerant of opposing views – as is also the case with some theists. But emotionalism and intolerance are not enough to qualify a belief system as a religion. If they were, then conservatism, liberalism, Marxism, libertarianism, vegetarianism, environmentalism, and many, many other views all qualify as religions too. Many of their adherents are also emotional about their beliefs, and intolerant of opposition. The same goes for many sports fans. Some North Carolina basketball fans are very emotional about their team and famously hostile to Duke fans, and vice versa. Yet being a UNC basketball fan is not a religion, except perhaps in a metaphorical sense.

To be sure, we sometimes refer to adherents of some political or moral view as having a “religious” fervor. But this is a metaphorical use of the term “religious,” not a literal one. We don’t really mean that a person with a “religious” dedication to vegetarianism is necessarily actually religious. We just mean that he has as strong a faith in his beliefs as many religious people do in God and their theological commitments.

Perhaps these terminological battles don’t matter very much. So long as we all use terms in the same way and everyone understands what they mean, it may not matter whether we define religion broadly or narrowly. However, I do worry that efforts to define atheism as a religion may obscure the genuine and important difference between atheists and religious believers: that the one view explains reality (and often morality) by reference to supernatural beings, whereas the other does not.

The case is Hammoud v. Hammoud (Mich. Ct. App. Mar. 8, 2012). An excerpt:

Defendant next contends that the award of spousal support was excessive and improperly imposed as a sanction for defendant’s refusal to grant plaintiff an Islamic divorce.... “The object in awarding spousal support is to balance the incomes and needs of the parties so that neither will be impoverished; spousal support is to be based on what is just and reasonable under the circumstances of the case.” The factors traditionally to be considered by a trial court in awarding spousal support include:

(1) the past relations and conduct of the parties, (2) the length of the marriage, (3) the abilities of the parties to work, (4) the source and amount of property awarded to the parties, (5) the parties’ ages, (6) the abilities of the parties to pay alimony, (7) the present situation of the parties, (8) the needs of the parties, (9) the parties’ health, (10) the prior standard of living of the parties and whether either is responsible for the support of others, (11) contributions of the parties to the joint estate, (12) a party’s fault in causing the divorce, (13) the effect of cohabitation on a party’s financial status, and (14) general principles of equity.

... The trial court awarded plaintiff modifiable spousal support in the amount of $602 a month for a minimum of four years, with early termination upon the death or remarriage of plaintiff. The spousal support figure was based on the imputation of annual income of $14,616 to plaintiff. The trial court imposed the continuation of modifiable spousal support, in this amount, for an indefinite period unless terminated by plaintiff’s receipt of an Islamic divorce by defendant, her death or remarriage.

In awarding spousal support, “a judge’s role is to achieve equity, not to ‘punish’ one of the parties.” For the length of this marriage and given the disparity in the parties’ history of earning abilities, use of the spousal support prognosticator by the Friend of the Court indicated an appropriate case for short-term spousal support restricted to a period of “four and a half to five years.” Not only did the trial court exceed the recommended length of spousal support for this marriage, the implication of the trial court’s ruling is that it was indeed attempting to pressure defendant to grant plaintiff an Islamic divorce, despite the trial court’s acknowledgement that it had no authority or jurisdiction over the parties obtaining a religious divorce.

The trial court recognized that plaintiff was an intelligent and capable woman with a potential to earn monies now and into the future. Both the length of this marriage and plaintiff’s potential ability to earn an income contraindicate an award of permanent spousal support. While the award is designated as being modifiable in accordance with MCL 552.28, the implication that the ongoing award of spousal support was for an indefinite duration and was designed by the trial court to force or pressure defendant to agree to an Islamic divorce is improper....

While there is an argument for an award of rehabilitative spousal support in this matter, an award of permanent spousal support could result in defendant’s ongoing obligation to support plaintiff for more years than the marriage lasted. As structured by the trial court, plaintiff has no incentive to become self-sufficient or to vigorously pursue an Islamic divorce as she is assured an ongoing income ad infinitum. The trial court also failed to address or seek further clarification of plaintiff’s contention that she was in possession of a document that would permit others to assist or assure her the attainment of an Islamic divorce without defendant’s consent. Plaintiff indicated that an agreement existed that would permit her brother and brother-in-law to authorize the Islamic divorce, potentially rendering it within plaintiff’s control to prolong her receipt of spousal support.

This is in some respects a similar issue to the Jewish religious divorce (get) controversy, though it sounds like the Islamic rules are somewhat different from the Jewish ones. My view, for the reasons I mentioned as to the Jewish religious divorces, is that the trial court in this case was wrong and the court of appeals was right: Given the Establishment Clause, it should be no business of a secular court to try to pressure someone into performing a religious act.

As I mentioned in the earlier post, I recognize that the religious act (or the absence of the act) has important social effects among members of that religion, and that refusing to give it could be used as a bargaining chip in property settlement or child custody negotiations. But it seems to me that these social effects within the religious community, whether as a result of the performance or nonperformance of religious acts (whether divorce, excommunication, refusal to baptize, or whatever else), or for that matter as a result of practices such as shunning, must be beyond the scope of civil law.

I find it hard to get upset about “posthumous baptisms” by Mormons of Jews, whether Holocaust victims or otherwise.

Either the Mormons are right about their theology, or they’re wrong. If they’re right, then the posthumous baptism will do good. If they’re wrong (and, being not a Mormon, I by definition think they are wrong, or else I’d be a Mormon), then the baptism will have no effect whatsoever: It is just some people going through some ineffectual — by hypothesis — rituals in their own temple, and I don’t see what it should be to me that those rituals use the names of (say) my late relatives, however much I love those relatives.

I suppose if someone’s theology was that Mormon baptisms did have metaphysical effect, but a bad effect (e.g., made the subject go to Hell), then that person would understandably object to those baptisms. But as best I can tell, that’s not Jewish theology — the Jewish religious view is that those rituals have absolutely no consequence, temporal or spiritual.

Nor do I see anything particular ill-mannered about this. True, the baptisms rest on a certain form of arrogance: The Mormons think they know God’s will better than others do, and think that it’s better for a soul to be baptized Mormon rather than to remain Jewish (assuming for purposes of discussion that such a statement can make sense). But that isn’t much different from the normal view of most religious people that their religious view is right and those that disagree with it are wrong — and, again, it’s a sort of arrogance that has no practical effect on anyone, living or dead, other than the Mormons themselves.

Now apparently Mormon authorities had said they wouldn’t do this [UPDATE: though some say no such promise was made], so one could fault them simply for breaking their promise. But given that the promise [UPDATE: if there is one] is about something that’s so inconsequential, I don’t see why we should be that terribly upset about this. If the Mormons want to remotely baptize my soul or my ancestors’ souls, they can feel free to do so — I just don’t see what it could possibly mean to me or to my loved ones.

The New York Times Room for Debate Forum has an interesting symposium on the role of religion in presidential elections. In his contribution, polling expert Andrew Kohut cites a 2007 Pew survey showing that atheism is viewed more negatively by voters than virtually any other possible trait of a presidential candidate. A whopping 63% of respondents said they would be “less likely” to vote for a presidential candidate who “doesn’t believe in God” (3% said they would be more likely). This easily exceeds the percentages who say they would be less likely to vote for a candidate who never held elected office (56), a Muslim (46), a homosexual (46), a person who had “used drugs in the past” (45), or a Mormon (30). Opposition to female, black and Hispanic candidates is several times lower (ranging from 4 to 14 percent, though some racists and sexists probably hid their true attitudes from the pollster). A more recent 2011 version of the same survey gets very similar results when it comes to atheists (61%), though there is less hostility towards gays (33%).

By contrast, 39% in the 2007 survey said they would be more likely to vote for a Christian candidate, compared to only 4% who said they would be less likely. However, many voters apparently don’t want a candidate who seems too closely associated with religion. The same poll found that 25% would be less likely to vote for a candidate who has been a minister, while only 15% said they would be more likely to support him. The questions about Christians and ministers were not repeated in the 2011 study.

The data cited by Kohut reinforce other evidence showing that atheists are by far the most widely hated religious or ethnic minority in modern America. The evidence suggests that hostility to atheist candidates is primarily the result of bigotry rather than information shortcuts (e.g. – opposing an atheist candidate because one assumes that he’s probably a liberal), though the latter is certainly a factor for some voters. In this 2006 article, I explored some of the reasons for that hostility and also explained why it isn’t justified.

The President also said that he did not believe “in the literal truth of the creed as it is recited in the orthodox evangelical churches.” He did, however, believe that Jesus had set forth an outstanding system of moral precepts.

Although the general views above were shared by Thomas Jefferson, the President quoted above was William Howard Taft, who served from 1909-13, and later as a very good Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

Americans today tend to congratulate themselves for being more tolerant and open-minded than their ancestors of a century or two ago. Yet those earlier Americans elected the great Jefferson twice, and elected Taft once. Taft is not today remembered as a great President, but he at least he did much less harm to the United States than the man who succeeded him, Woodrow Wilson.

I find it disgusting that a Gallup Poll found 22% of Americans (18% of Republicans, 19% of Independents, and 27% of Democrats) say that they would not vote for a well-qualified candidate of their party who happened to be a Mormon. That’s actually an increase compared to 17% who gave the same answer in 1967.

If some Christians want to take the theological view that Unitarians, or Mormons, or, for that matter, Catholics are not true Christians, that’s their privilege, and it’s very legitimate source of religious debate. I don’t think that whether a candidate fits a voter’s definition of orthodox Christianity is a legitimate basis for voting for a public official.

Kudos to Mitt Romney, in his speech today at the Values Voters summit, for denouncing the “poisonous language” of Bryan Fischer, another invited speaker at the event, who makes the idiotic claim that the First Amendment was not intended to protect non-Christians.

Yesterday, the Supreme Court held oral arguments in Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. EEOC, a key religious freedom case that Eugene Volokh blogged about here. SCOTUSblog has a round-up of coverage of the argument. I found this exchange particularly telling, as the federal government did itself no favors by taking the extreme position that the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment isn’t even implicated when the state uses antidiscrimination law to challenge the firing of church employees – even if the latter are ministers or have religious duties:

At one point, Justice Elena Kagan asked Ms. Kruger whether she believed that a church has a right grounded in First Amendment religious protections to hire and fire employees without government interference.

Kruger answered that the government was basing its argument on the freedom of association, rather than the parts of the First Amendment that deal with religious freedom.

“We don’t see that line of church autonomy principles in the religion clause jurisprudence as such,” Kruger replied. “We see it as a question of freedom of association.”

The position surprised several justices, including Justice Kagan, the Obama administration’s former solicitor general, who said she found the comment “amazing.” After the hearing, one representative of a religious association called the government’s position a “full frontal assault on religious liberty.”

Chief Justice John Roberts first raised the issue when he asked whether the administration considered anything “special about the fact that the people involved in this case are part of a religious organization.”

Ms. Kruger said, no, that there was no difference whether the group was a religious group, a labor group, or any other association of individuals.

“That’s extraordinary. That is extraordinary,” Justice Antonin Scalia declared. “We are talking here about the free exercise clause and about the establishment clause, and you say they have no special application?”

We don’t think that the job duties of a particular religious employee are relevant to the inquiry,” she said.

Even former Obama Solicitor General Elena Kagan was “amazed” by the Administration’s position. Obviously, however, the justices could potentially rule in favor of the EEOC on narrower grounds, though I am cautiously optimistic that they won’t.

Since this issue is at the outer edge of my range of expertise, I think I will leave the real heavy lifting on this case to the law and religion experts, lest I violate my own rules about choosing blogging topics. But I did want to highlight this part of the oral argument for interested readers.

FULL DISCLOSURE: I participated in a moot session for University of Virginia Law professor Doug Laycock, who represented the Lutheran Church in this case. I thought he did a great job at both the moot and the actual oral argument itself.

From a WorldNetDaily article:

Secret U.S. experiments to prompt 2nd Coming? ...

Secret experiments now underway in the U.S. and elsewhere are sparking fears of a potential extinction-level event hastening the 2nd Coming of Jesus ....

The possibility of humans eradicating their own existence through technological advancement has some Christians cracking open their Bibles to see what Scripture has to say on the matter.

The 24th chapter of the Book of Matthew is often cited, as Jesus talked specifically about the end of the current human age, saying, “For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be. And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect’s sake those days shall be shortened.” (Matthew 24:21–22)

Britt Gillette, the Virginia-based Christian publisher of End Times Bible Prophecy, has been studying transhumanism in the light of Scripture, and says:

Continue reading ‘Upcoming 2012 Mayan Apocalypse Upcoming Transhumanism-Triggered Second Coming of Jesus?’ »

This report (Values, Dreams, Ideals: Muslim Youth in Southeast Asia, with a pointer to the questionnaire and the raw data) struck me as interesting, because Malaysia and Indonesia are often mentioned as places in which a more moderate form of Islam is generally practiced, and because Indonesia has the largest Muslim population of any country in the world. The results are pretty complicated, so let me just give a couple of reported results, based on the questionnaire and raw data document (many of these items don’t seem to be mentioned in the report, though perhaps I missed them):

1. The statement “Terrorism gives Islam a bad image” was endorsed by 55.3% to 27.2% among Indonesian youths and “Terrorism gives Islam a bad name” was endorsed by 59.3% to 39.8% among Malaysian youths.
2. The statement “Suicide bombers are needed to defend Islam” was rejected by 77.5% to 15.5% among Indonesian youths and 55.8% to 43.3% among Malaysian youths.
3. The question “Do you think the Quran should replace the 1945
   constitution?,” was answered “no” by 75.3% to 20.4% of Indonesian youths, but “In your view, should the Quran replace the constitution of your country?,” was answered “yes” by 71.6% to 25.2% among Malaysian youths.
4. The statement “It’s OK to be gay or lesbian” was rejected by 98.8% to 0.6% among Indonesian youths (though note that the question did not ask about whether such behavior should be outlawed), and 99.4% to 0.5% among Malaysian youths.
5. The statement “The cartoonist who drew the image of the Prophet Muhammad had freedom of expression” was rejected by 70.5% to 19.7% among Indonesian youths and “The cartoonist who made the Mohamed-Cartoons had freedom of expression” was rejected by 82.8% to 15.5% among Malaysian youths.
6. The statement “Osama bin Laden is an Islamic liberation fighter” was endorsed by 51.1% to 28.1% among Indonesian youths and “Osama bin Laden is a freedom fighter” was endorsed by 62.4% to 33.3% among Malaysian youths. This makes me wonder whether the endorsement of “terrorism gives Islam a bad image” tends to include the view that Bin-Laden-style terrorism gives Islam a bad image, or tends to exclude it because so many view Osama bin Laden as a “freedom fighter” and thus presumably not a “terroris[t].”
7. The statement “I like the US more since Barack Obama became president” is endorsed by 50.2% to 40.5% among Indonesian youths, but rejected by 60.8% to 35.8% among Malaysian youths.

There’s a lot more there in the questionnaire and raw data file; check it out yourself, and please let me know if I erred in any of my summaries above. Many thanks to Prof. Howard Friedman (Religion Clause) for the pointer.

Leah Libresco has now posted many of the questions and answers for the next round of her Turing Test for religion. They are available at her blog. In the previous round, her fifteen test participants (some real atheists, and some Christians) answered four questions about atheism, trying to persuade readers that they are genuine atheists. In this round, the same people answer four questions about Christianity, seeking to persuade readers that they are genuine Christians. The eight questions are available here.

Readers will be able to vote on which respondents are the real Christians and which the fakers.

Atheist blogger Leah Libresco has now begun to implement her Turing Test for religion, which I previously wrote about here. At her blog, she has recruited fifteen test participants who will first answer four questions about atheism, trying to persuade readers that they are real atheists. They will then answer four questions about Christianity, seeking to persuade readers that they are genuine Christians. The eight questions are available here. Some of the participants are actual atheists and the rest are Christians.

Readers will have the opportunity to see each test participant’s answers and then vote on which “atheists” they think are real and which ones fake. Later, they will also vote which answers to the questions about Christianity are given by real Christians and which ones are atheists pretending to be Christian. Leah plans to offer a prize to the atheist who persuades the most readers that he or she is a genuine Christian, as well as to the Christian who most successfully mimics an atheist.

The fifteen sets of answers to questions about atheism are now up at Leah’s blog, and you can vote on which ones you think are written by genuine atheists here.

Inspired by Bryan Caplan’s ideological Turing Test, atheist blogger Leah Libresco proposes a religious Turing test to measure the extent to which Christians and atheists understand the arguments of the other side [HT: Bryan Caplan]:

Just like Caplan, I’d like to put my money where my mouth is and play in an ideological Turing Test against a Christian blogger. We could both answer a selection of questions posed by Christians and atheists or we could each write an argument for and against the side we support and then briefly rebut the two arguments the other one had produced. I’m flexible and open to suggestions.

Debates over religion have many parallels to political debates. Public ignorance about religion is almost as widespread as political ignorance. And most people react in a highly biased way to evidence and arguments that go against their position on either subject.

A religious Turing test, however, poses challenges that a political one does not. Liberalism, conservatism, and libertarianism are rough equivalents of each other in as much as all of them are ideologies that try to delineate the appropriate role of political power in society. Atheism on the other hand isn’t really an equivalent of Christianity in the same sense. Atheism is just denial of the existence of God; it is not a comprehensive moral system. That’s why thinkers as divergent as Ayn Rand and Karl Marx could both be atheists. By contrast, Christianity goes far beyond merely asserting that God exists. It also incorporates many other theological doctrines (e.g. – that Jesus Christ is the son of God), and various ethical commands. The same goes for Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and many other religions. Thus, simulating a Christian who is well-informed about the arguments for his religious views is a tougher challenge than simulating an atheist who is comparably knowledgeable about atheism. Christianity covers a much wider range of issues than atheism does.

Nonetheless, last year’s Pew survey of public knowledge of religion suggests that atheists and agnostics are, on average, more knowledgeable about religious doctrine than theists. Atheists and agnostics (an average of 6.7 correct answers out of 12) even outscored Christians (6.0) on questions that specifically tested knowledge of Christianity. Though it’s also fair to note that some subsets of Christians such as Mormons (7.9) and white evangelicals (7.3) did better than the atheists and agnostics did. Mormons (20.3 correct answers out of 32) also achieved a statistical dead heat with atheists (20.9) on the overall survey, as did Jews (20.5). I speculated on the reasons for these groups’ relatively high knowledge levels here.

Knowledge of basic facts about religion is not the same thing as knowledge of more detailed arguments for and against various religious claims. I think I understand the most basic tenets of Christianity (the kind of information covered in the Pew survey). But I know very little about the arguments for them that Christian theologians have developed (with the partial exception of arguments for the existence of God). Libresco’s proposal might give us some evidence on the extent to which atheists and Christian’s understand their opponents’ more in-depth arguments; though obviously it would be a mistake to generalize too much from one small-N study. She reports that at least two Christians have expressed interest in participating in her experiment. So stay tuned.

UPDATE: Libresco describes the details of her experiment in this follow-up post.

UPDATE #2: Obviously, as in the case of political ideologies such as liberalism and libertarianism, there is a good deal of internal diversity among Christians. For example, there are significant theological differences between Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox Christians, and also between theological conservatives and liberals within each of these groups. That further complicates the the task of the Turing simulator. There is also some diversity among atheists as well, though perhaps less than among Christians because atheism, as such, covers fewer questions than Christianity does.

Before:

After:

Prof. Howard Friedman (Religion Clause) has the story, with links:

In a strict reading of Jewish laws on modesty, the Hasidic newspaper Der Tzitung, published in Brooklyn, has a policy that it will not publish photos of women. The Washington Post reported yesterday on the controversy that this has stirred when the paper altered the now-famous photo of Hillary Clinton, the President and others in the White House situation room watching the progress of the mission that killed Osama bin Laden. The paper’s version (shown by Failed Messiah blog) removed Hillary Clinton and the only other woman in the photo, Audrey Tomason. It turns out that this violates the White House terms distributed with the photo that: “The photograph may not be manipulated in any way....” Der Tszitung has issued a statement (full text from Washington Post) reading in part:

The First Amendment to the Constitution guarantees freedom of religion.... In accord with our religious beliefs, we do not publish photos of women, which in no way relegates them to a lower status. Publishing a newspaper is a big responsibility, and our policies are guided by a Rabbinical Board. Because of laws of modesty, we are not allowed to publish pictures of women, and we regret if this gives an impression of disparaging to women, which is certainly never our intention. We apologize if this was seen as offensive.

Well, yes, they do have the First Amendment right to refuse to publish photos of women. Nor do I think the White House terms are likely to preclude that, since the photograph is likely a government work and not copyright-protected, and even if it’s owned by the photographer, the use is likely to be a fair use, given the free distribution of the unaltered work. But we have the First Amendment to think that, if this policy really represents the denomination’s religious doctrine, (1) it’s a pretty zany policy, and (2) it doesn’t speak well of the opportunities that the religious denomination allows to its female members (despite the newspaper’s protestations to the contrary).