I’m not good at remembering very old days, but I do recall a picnic lunch at the country house of Brigid Balfour, a scientific colleague of my father’s in London and, yes, related to the Balfour of the Declaration. She was also related to Gladstone! It was a sunny day, and we ate out on the grass, on a very big blanket.

… all six Rapps camped through Europe in a VW camper van.

We’ve finally gotten around to updating our ancient glass slides to the twenty-first century, so here are a few images from that time. Thanks go to my sister for getting this done.

Six years ago, I filed a complaint with the New York City Department of Education (DOE) alongside 51 others because there are dozens of ultra-Orthodox Hasidic Yeshivas in our city that do not provide their students with an adequate secular education, as required by law.

As a result of the complaint, the city announced an investigation on July 28, 2015. Yet now more than six years later, despite findings from the investigation that backed up our complaint, no concrete actions have been taken. The lack of action by the city means that approximately 40,000 students today continue to experience educational neglect.

Harvard’s new chaplain di tutti chaplains, elected unanimously, is an atheist. This gesture acknowledges the super-rapid rise, in America, of the category Nones — non-church-goers, many of whom retain spiritual leanings. Some Nones are atheists, or close to it; others look like mild versions of deists. All seem to have abandoned organized religion, though all seem subject to the same existential anxiety and ontological questioning typically shared by traditional followers of God. We’re talking about a quarter of the US population – on a par with evangelicals, and with Catholics – and a segment that’s growing really, really fast.

Why is this happening? In reading about it, UD has encountered many theories, starting with the general point that increasing secularization is baked into most modern, successful countries. Even so, the US has until quite recently exhibited strikingly higher rates of belief in God and of church attendance than places like Norway, France, and England. What has changed?

Nonreligiosity is on the rise far beyond the confines of Harvard; it is the fastest growing religious preference in the country, according to the Pew Research Center. More than 20 percent of the country identifies as atheist, agnostic or nonreligious — called the “nones” — including four in 10 millennials.

The reasons that more young Americans are disaffiliating in the world’s most religious developed country are varied. The Notre Dame sociologist Christian Smith attributes the trend partly to the growing alliance between the Republican Party and the Christian right, a decline of trust in institutions, growing skepticism of religion in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and a shift away from traditional family structures that centered on churchgoing.

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The trend, [Robert] Putnam says, is borne out of rebellion of sorts.

“It begins to jump at around 1990,” he says. “These were the kids who were coming of age in the America of the culture wars, in the America in which religion publicly became associated with a particular brand of politics, and so I think the single most important reason for the rise of the nones is that combination of the younger people moving to the left on social issues and the most visible religious leaders moving to the right on that same issue.”

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Since the 1990s, the Republican Party has sought to win support by adopting conservative Christian positions on same sex marriage, abortion, and other cultural issues. But this appeal to religious voters has had the corollary effect of pushing other voters, especially young liberal ones, away from religion. The uncritical embrace of President Donald Trump by conservative evangelical leaders has accelerated this trend. And the Roman Catholic Church has lost adherents because of its own crises. A 2020 Pew Research Center survey found that an overwhelming majority US adults were aware of recent reports of sexual abuse by Catholic priests, and most of them believed that the abuses were “ongoing problems that are still happening.” Accordingly, many US Catholics said that they have scaled back attendance at mass in response to these reports.

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Note what’s not cited: The intellectual stardom of the New Atheists. You might expect this to appear as a reason, but UD didn’t expect it to. It’s rare to reject organized religion merely because of arguments people make against it. Lots of people have pointed out that Dawkins and Hitchens recycle the same anti-religion arguments people have made for centuries. It seems more likely, as the above comments suggest, that you leave organized religion because of the actual beliefs and behaviors it seems to generate in your time, in the world around you. Ol’ UD, for instance, thinks this photograph alone probably accounts for two million or so newbie Nones.

For a closer look at some of those beliefs and behaviors, read rural Texan writer Natalie Jackson:

“When my classmates were hospitalized with COVID-19, there were repeated calls for prayers and proclamations that God would provide healing. When they died, those prayer requests became comments that ‘God called [them] home.’

The belief that God controls everything that happens in the world is a core tenet of evangelicalism — 84 percent of white evangelicals agreed with this statement in PRRI polling from 2011, while far fewer nonwhite, non-evangelical Christians shared this belief. The same poll also showed that white evangelicals were more likely than any other Christian group to believe that God would punish nations for the sins of some of its citizens and that natural disasters were a sign from God. What’s more, other research from the Journal of Psychology and Theology has found that some evangelical Christians rationalize illnesses like cancer as God’s will. 

This is why I remember friends and acquaintances in Leon County when I think about how religious beliefs influence one’s attitude toward COVID-19 and vaccination. PRRI’s March survey found that 28 percent of white evangelical Republicans agreed that ‘God always rewards those who have faith with good health and will protect them from being infected with COVID-19,’ compared with 23 percent of Republicans who were not white evangelicals. And that belief correlates more closely with vaccination views among white evangelical Republicans — 44 percent of those who said God would protect them from the virus also said they would refuse to get vaccinated. That number drops to 32 percent among Republicans who are not white evangelicals.

Complicating matters further, the pandemic also fits neatly into ‘end times’ thinking — the belief that the end of the world and God’s ultimate judgment is coming soon. In fact, nearly two-thirds of white evangelical Republicans (64 percent) from our March survey agreed that the chaos in the country today meant the end times’ were near. Faced, then, with the belief that death and the end of the world are a fulfillment of God’s will, it becomes difficult to convince these believers that vaccines are necessary. Sixty-nine percent of white evangelical Republicans who said they refused to get vaccinated agreed that the end times were near.

Moreover, given how many white evangelicals identify as Republican or lean Republican — about 4 in 5 per our June survey — disentangling evangelicals’ religious and political beliefs is nearly impossible. Consider how many white evangelical leaders like former Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. downplayed the severity of the pandemic in line with Trump. Falwell was hardly the only evangelical leader to do this either. If anything, the pattern of white evangelical resistance to vaccination has reached the point where some white evangelical leaders who might otherwise urge vaccination hesitate to do so because of the political climate.”

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And Falwell Jr’s a twofer: Told people fuck-all about what pandemic; and turned out to be a flaming moral degenerate.

Hitch used to say that until people stop being afraid of death, religion will always be a winner. Point taken. But it’s just as true that as long as religions spawn large numbers of dumb and dumber fanatics (dangerous fanatics is for another post), secularity’s got a fighting chance. Ask Adelle Goldenberg.

Adelle Goldenberg, 22, grew up in the Hasidic community in Brooklyn, where she recalls being told that she could not attend college. In preschool, when asked what she wanted to be when she grew up, her answer was simple: a bride. It was the only thing she could envision for a girl like herself. When she turned 19, she applied to Harvard in secret and fled the community.

Once at Harvard, she was wary of assuming any religious label, but she still yearned to find people wrestling with issues deeper than academic achievement. She started attending meetings of the humanist group and discovered in Mr. Epstein a form of mentorship that felt almost like having a secular rabbi, she said.

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One more thing, if I may: Read Jackson again, and add to her characterization of rural evangelical Texans the fact that every one of their houses is dripping with guns. It’s hard for UD to avoid the conclusion that these people are death-lovers — passive nihilists who can’t wait for it all to be over in any one of the many ways their… arsenals (see notorious rates of suicide vs. homicide with household guns) of faith provide. And then eternal bliss.

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UPDATE: You have to admire the fervency of the evangelicals.

An evangelical pastor and senior VP for a non-profit called National Religious Broadcasters was fired on Friday for promoting COVID vaccines on MSNBC’s Morning Joe… National Religious Broadcasters, a 1,100-member organization of Christian communicators, told [Daniel] Darling his statements violated their policy of remaining neutral about COVID vaccines, Religion News Service reports. He was told he could sign a statement admitting he had been insubordinate, and admit that his pro-vaccine statements were wrong, or be fired. He chose the latter.

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Joel Rainey, who leads Covenant Church in Shepherdstown, W.Va., said several [evangelical] colleagues were forced out of their churches after promoting health and vaccination guidelines.

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We’ve reached snake-handler levels of stupidity here.

… a fraternity house. But you do have to bother to hide it.

……… an anti-vaxer.

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‘[A reporter] approached [an anti-vaxer at a rally] and queried, “Maybe you can help me out: I’m seeing signs that say, ‘Vaccine Mandates Are Fascism,’ and also signs that say, ‘Vaccine Mandates Are Communism.’ Which one is it?”

“It’s both,” she replied.

“It’s both? Those are diametrically-opposed ideologies,” he countered.

“I don’t think it’s communism—I think it’s more like a dictatorship, like we’re living in a Nazi Germany and the only thing that’s missing is the camps and the gas,” she argued.

“That’s what’s happening right now? Because you can’t go to a concert?” [the reporter] asked.

“I can’t go to a concert… I can’t go to a gym…” she reasoned.

“Do you think that’s what it was like in Nazi Germany? People were bitching about not going to a gym?”’

Beset by accusations of research fraud, Duke professor and public intellectual Dan Ariely has held his ground, admitting a bit of sloppiness but nothing like making up data. Yet an analysis of details in a 2012 paper he wrote about honesty (!) suggests that he may well be responsible for bogus numbers in one of his influential psychological experiments.

And this is not the first time questions have been raised about Ariely’s research in particular. In a famous 2008 study, he claimed that prompting people to recall the Ten Commandments before a test cuts down on cheating, but an outside team later failed to replicate the effect. An editor’s note was added to a 2004 study of his last month when other researchers raised concerns about statistical discrepancies, and Ariely did not have the original data to cross-check against. And in 2010, Ariely told NPR that dentists often disagree on whether X-rays show a cavity, citing Delta Dental insurance as his source. He later walked back that claim when the company said it could not have shared that information with him because it did not collect it.

Ariely is also up against his field’s now-notorious “replication crisis” — a nice way of saying that SCADS of psychological experimental results sure look a whole lot like bullshit. Go here for details.

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A photograph in this article features Ariely hanging with Jonah Lehrer at a 2008 science festival. Much like Ariely, Lehrer was a much-celebrated brainiac with frenetic entrepreneurial energy until he went pffff.

Jonah Lehrer’s 2012 book Imagine: How Creativity Works was pulled from shelves after it was demonstrated to contain fabricated quotes purportedly from Bob Dylan and WH Auden. He subsequently admitted to plagiarising the work of others in his blogposts, while critics noted apparent plagiarism and disregard for facts throughout his published work.

UD’s got nothing against operators. America is Land O’ Operators. He’s an operator/He’s a real player, as Fountains of Wayne puts it, and we got ’em growing on trees around here. But don’t believe anything they tell you.

A real Islamophobe, that. If she had any understanding of other cultures, she would learn, as Lily Cole has learned, that the burqa is just one more beautiful manifestation of human diversity. Maybe Cole could sit her down and have a talk with her.

Washington State’s football program has already embarrassed the university way past what the latest coach’s refusal to get vaccinated can do; but of course it’s never good to pile on, and Nick Rolovich is definitely piling on.

(And – not to pile on, but – Scathing Online Schoolmarm can’t help noting the pile-up of mixed metaphors in the sentence she quoted in her headline. Sportswriters use lots of mixed metaphors.)

Rolovich is the highest paid state employee; he’s a very high profile figure. A lot of people – like this guy – have had it with his anti-vax bullshit and want him gone. I say Rolovich should go ahead and let himself be hounded out. He will instantly become a strapping national hero, taking the place of this aged fallen god. The Voice of the Anti-Vaxxers!

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UD thanks a reader for keeping her up to date on the Rolovich mess at WSU.

Four kids, church-goers, Tea Party Patriots, the Roethles work hard to make Kansas a better place! Alana stars in a commercial attacking a Democratic congressional candidate – a commercial in which she identifies herself as just “a mom of four,” without mentioning that she’s “the secretary of Kansas’s Republican Party. She is also a member of the Kansas Lottery Commission … [and she] served as a delegate during the 2016 Republican National Convention and … attended President Trump’s inauguration.”

But that’s nothing! Scott just got indicted for health care fraud!

“[B]eginning in 2017 and continuing until at least 2020, multiple telemedicine and marketing companies paid Dr. Roethle illegal kickbacks, totaling $674,026, to sign prescriptions and orders for orthotics, genetic tests, and topical creams. Dr. Roethle was typically paid $30 for each order or prescription he signed. The marketing and telemedicine companies solicited patients through the media and cold calls and then electronically transmitted patient information to Dr. Roethle through an electronic portal. In almost all instances, Dr. Roethle had no contact with the patients and did not determine if they needed the items or services before he signed the orders.  Patients often complained to Dr. Roethle that they did not want or need the items he had ordered for them.

Roethle obtained medical licenses in 22 states and signed orders for thousands of patients residing in these states. Medicare Part B suffered a loss of over $26 million based on fraudulent prescriptions and orders signed by Dr. Roethle.”

It’s that fucking federal government, meddling in Alana’s commercial and Scott’s medical practice!

Oh – and Alana seems to run Scott’s office.

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UPDATE: Scott Roethle had apparently already piled up quite a few state disciplinary actions before the federal government took notice.

Alabam’s finest expresses sympathy with yesterday’s wanna-be Timothy McVeigh at the Library of Congress. That state, and its august federal reps, just keep getting better and better.

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Donald Trump Booed at Alabama Rally After

Encouraging Crowd to Get COVID-19 Vaccine

For instance, here’s a letter to the New York Times in response to a column urging secular Americans to try turning or returning to religious faith, because “religious ideas … provide an explanation for the most important features of reality… [T]he progress of science and the experience of modernity have strengthened the reasons to entertain the idea of God… [Our world] presents considerable evidence of an originating intelligence presiding over a law-bound world well made for our minds to understand, and at the same time a panoply of spiritual forces that seem to intervene unpredictably in our existence.”

In response, one reader, David Bonowitz, writes:

On a weekend when fundamentalist Muslims were winning a war against the United States, and as fundamentalist Christians demand the right to cause their fellow Americans to suffer and die from a preventable disease, Ross Douthat had the gall to tell me that I ought to accept the same primitive explanations that led directly to their fundamentalism. Hard pass.

Now, you can make the obvious point that Douthat wasn’t talking about fundamentalism, but on the contrary about a very tentative effort to move closer to religious faith generally; but put that aside. In response to Douthat’s rather long-winded and rather vague account of the possibility of faith, Bonowitz hits hard with a “hard pass,” pointing out in one beautifully structured sentence that the actual world – not the world of yearning, souls, and NDEs Douthat evokes, but the world of the present, the world of human history – suffers inordinately from the implications of quite a few forms of religious faith. Grounded and rational, Bonowitz’s brief brief against Douthat derives its power from the packed concision of his argument, coupled with his refusal to hide the anger (“has the gall”) that underlies his position.

Longtime readers know I never bother with these unless there are wonderful little details, like they served on the faculty senate’s Ethics and Institutional Integrity Committee… And like…

Benjamin J. Herbst, a lawyer for Mr. Ennels, said in an interview on Thursday night that Mr. Ennels did what he did “only to keep up with a gambling addiction” and was “in no way motivated” by greed. He did not live a lavish lifestyle or squirrel the money away for later, Mr. Herbst said.

“He’s a good person, he loved his job, he loved his students,” he said of Mr. Ennels. “He’ll move past this.”