Right off the bat, the title struck me as odd:

Dare you protest against God? Perspectives from a CWRU psychology study

From this atheist's perspective, it seems the question is something of a schizophrenic one. Because 'God' exists in the mind -- at least by an semi-stringent scientific standards we must conclude that -- the question is really about protesting against an imagined entity. Which is kinda crazy.

But sure, from another perspective, we can see the study as an investigation of types of belief and the cognitive response to internal dissonance between ideas.

The survey finding -

The researchers discovered if a person views God as cruel, then protest toward God is seen as more acceptable.

But when people see God as a kind and loving authority figure, then protest seems less acceptable. "In this case, protest could appear disrespectful to a good and fair leader," says Exline.

A couple things. First, isn't this a bit obvious? From a social standpoint, protesting against a loving parenting or village elder or some other authority figure certainly makes less sense than protesting against a cruel one.

Second, the description seems to reflect a focus on the individual removed from his/her social groups. My guess is that there is an integral cultural component to the issue. People don't pull their beliefs about a god out of a magic hat. They generally acquire them from others. Also, one's religious social group likely also influences beliefs about what type of relationship with this god is normative and/or expected.

Finally, as you might expect, my larger issue is reflected in the lead sentence:

Is it OK to protest God's actions—or inactions?

Ah . . . What god? Is this a precisely defined variable? Not only does the sentence assume the existence of a god, but also that this god performs actions, or at least can.

Really?!

In the least, scientists should quit perpetuating the idea that "God" is a neatly circumscribed variable. Why not "a god," "your/their god".... I know, it's more work. But science is work.

Isn't it possible that what the finding basically tells us is that whether or not a person thinks it's okay to protest against their god depends in part on what type of god a person believes? And right here we are back to my major issue. What type of god. Different types of 'god' does not equate to one GOD. Not in my book.

[recycled material - first appeared here]

Does living at home breed violence?

Say what?!

"Home" belongs in the same category as Mom, apple pie and baseball, doesn't it?

New research suggests the benevolence of living at home with parents . . . depends. It depends upon the sex and age of the individual.

The news release to the study bore this title: Young men living at home with parents are more violent. Okay, they've discovered a correlation, but is the link between variables causal or inertly predictive or something else?

Here's the data the correlation consists of -

Professor Jeremy Coid and Dr Ming Yang surveyed over 8000 men and women. Participants answered questions about violent behaviour over the past 5 years and mental health problems.

Their results showed for the first time that staying in the parental home is a stronger risk factor for young men's violence than any other factor.

A "risk factor." What's a risk factor? Good question.

Is living at home the equivalent of a young, adult male's non-religious madrasah? Here is how Coid interprets/explains his finding:

"And these [violent/antisocial behaviors] are more common among young men who do not have responsibilities of providing their own accommodation, supporting dependent children, or experiencing beneficial effects on their behaviour from living with a female partner.

"Young men who live at home are also more likely to receive financial support from their parents than in the past when the pattern was reversed. However, in this study their earnings or benefits were the same as those who had left home and taken on greater social responsibility. They therefore had more disposable income which may have partly explained why they had more problems with alcohol."

So living at home may not be a malevolent social influence as much as it provides a haven for individuals needing a more constructive social environment and role within it.

But we cannot be as confident of the explanatory layer to this finding as we can the data it is based upon. And frankly, the data itself is not all that solid.

An interesting finding; a thought provoking conjecture. I await further research.

As for the following cartoons, I find in them the theme, "It's the dogma, stupid." To me that is often the issue at stake when atheists and theists clash: Backwards dogma and a dogmatic clinging to preconceived notions. And yes, it is possible to be dogmatic without being religious.

Here's the cartoon that got me thinking about it (and a couple others that fit the theme in some way):

[cartoon thanks to atheistcartoons.com]

[cartoon thanks to jesusandmo.net]

[click to enlarge, cartoon thanks to xkcd.com]

Could Dadaism be used as an antidote for dogmatism?

"Why are my bones so small?" Ha! I think that's going to be the new Zen koan I work on.

[recycled material - first appeared here]

An issue I frequently harp on is that of language use. While precision with instruments is essential to good measurement, precision with language is crucial to defining variables, crafting hypotheses, and developing theories. Unfortunately, when it comes to educating the public about scientific findings, many writers "sexy" things up by playing fast and loose with words. Other times the problem may consist of a lack of good words to describe the phenomena in question.

When a writer lacks a good, tight-fitting word, he or she doesn't just leave a void in the sentence. They work with what they've got. "Sorry, we don't have this word in a size 9, we'll have to go with an 11 and add some fill." The more responsible and scientific thing to then do is to "add some fill," to explain how the word doesn't quite fit, and in doing so, outlining and better filling the void.

Case in point -- an article from ScienceDaily bearing this title: Scientists Show Bacteria Can 'Learn' And Plan Ahead.

Okay, we've got half-quotes around learn. So the bacteria don't learn as we customarily think of learning. What about plan ahead? Can bacterial truly do that as we do? Or is more explanation needed?

In the article we find many loose-fitting words in need of further explanation.

Bacteria can anticipate a future event and prepare for it, according to new research at the Weizmann Institute of Science.

How do they anticipate? What do they do to prepare? Explanatory paragraphs further confuse as much as they clarify:

Their findings show that these microorganisms' genetic networks are hard-wired to 'foresee' what comes next in the sequence of events and begin responding to the new state of affairs before its onset.

Foresee? Respond?

the scientists found that when the wine yeast feel the heat, they begin activating genes for dealing with the stresses of the next stage.

Feel? Activating?

After reading the article more closely a second time, I have a better understanding of the research, and the meaning of the words used to describe it. I may be wrong, for this is not my area of specialty, but the underlying science seems to be about a type of epigenetic change in bacteria.

What does epigenetic mean? Good question. The Wikipedia entry is quite clear on the matter. It fills the shoe of that term nicely.

In biology, the term epigenetics refers to changes in phenotype (appearance) or gene expression caused by mechanisms other than changes in the underlying DNA sequence, hence the name epi- (Greek: over; above) -genetics. These changes may remain through cell divisions for the remainder of the cell's life and may also last for multiple generations. However, there is no change in the underlying DNA sequence of the organism;instead, non-genetic factors cause the organism's genes to behave (or "express themselves") differently.

Notice how the loose-fitting behave was tightened parenthetically? That is good science writing. And let's end with the good.

Why not diagnose as phobic all aversive and oppositional behavior? Because the underlying reasoning is defective, and because a term as serious as phobia should not be used to categorize a person or people with reckless abandon....

Language is a powerful tool. Sure, it would be nice if we could classify all behavior and persons we didn’t like as pathological, hence undeserving a legitimate place in the world. But it just isn’t that simple. Furthermore, by doing so we undermine a better understanding.

It is my belief that anti-homosexual behavior and belief has a number of causes, most of them cultural -- ignorance/inexperience and an acquired prejudice chief among these. An aversion to "strange" behavior may be part of it as well. Observations of chimpanzees have found that the will merciless attack one of their own that becomes partially paralyzed due to illness. Children in our own species will be verbally attacked, and worse, for so much as looking and dressing 'funny.'

I also speculate that there may be a "deeper," innately psychological element involved. It has been noted that men are much averse to the idea of homosexual men than they are to homosexual women. Why? Men are attracted to women (whether or not they recognize the women may "play for the other team"). Blame our genes. It makes good sense. Two women being frisky with one another -- well, what man would be put off by women behaving sexually? There's a chance a man could join in. Or so a part of the brain hopes. Better, yet, in such a scenario, there is no competition from another male.

But two guys getting frisky?! The heterosexual man's genes 'say,' "Hey, that ain't no party you want to get involved in . . . there's absolutely no future in if for me!"

This is certainly conjecture on my part. A grain of salt is warranted.

For the same set of reasons that most men are hyper-attuned to physical signs of sexual maturity of the female variety, they are also attuned to behavioral signs of sexual receptivity, and are attracted to these.

A shapely sweater, a flirtatious smile . . . . be still thine beating heart.

But wait! What if the behavior and the body don't mix? What if a male body is giving of behavioral signs normally attributed to adult females -- individuals the male's selfish genes perceive as potentially mate-worthy? This could be disastrous, sexual-reproduction-wise.

I also speculate that the human primate, an intensely social species, is also finely attuned to detecting deceit. If you are suckered and used by others, your own prosperity will suffer.

So to me, part of the knee-jerk male aversion to homosexual males (that can be overcome by education and learning) is akin to their brain blaring out this signal: "Warning, warning! Beware, something is wrong with that individual -- it looks like a male but is not behaving as one!"

Is that the case, or part of if? I wonder. Yet until I see supporting research, I'm not going to take it too seriously.

Meanwhile, other students and teachers of psychology have attributed an aversion to male homosexuality as Freud might. The claim that these men are actually afraid of something within themselves.

Could that be? Is there any good evidence for it? Because so many Freudian ideas have been found wanting (schizophrenia being caused by detached mothering, etc.), I have never given the idea much credit. But maybe I should change my tune. New research seems to suggest there may be something to the idea. Was I wrong to dismiss is?

In the news release,Is Some Homophobia Self-Phobia? I read these words by co-author Richard Ryan, professor of psychology at the University of Rochester:

The findings provide new empirical evidence to support the psychoanalytic theory that the fear, anxiety, and aversion that some seemingly heterosexual people hold toward gays and lesbians can grow out of their own repressed same-sex desires.

Wow. Could it be? As a vigilant skeptic, I wondered what type of data the conclusion was based upon.

Here are a few brief paragraphs detailing the methods and outcome:

To explore participants' explicit and implicit sexual attraction, the researchers measured the discrepancies between what people say about their sexual orientation and how they react during a split-second timed task. Students were shown words and pictures on a computer screen and asked to put these in "gay" or "straight" categories. Before each of the 50 trials, participants were subliminally primed with either the word "me" or "others" flashed on the screen for 35 milliseconds. They were then shown the words "gay," "straight," "homosexual," and "heterosexual" as well as pictures of straight and gay couples, and the computer tracked precisely their response times. A faster association of "me" with "gay" and a slower association of "me" with "straight" indicated an implicit gay orientation.

A second experiment, in which subjects were free to browse same-sex or opposite-sex photos, provided an additional measure of implicit sexual attraction.

Through a series of questionnaires, participants also reported on the type of parenting they experienced growing up, from authoritarian to democratic. Students were asked to agree or disagree with statements like: "I felt controlled and pressured in certain ways," and "I felt free to be who I am." For gauging the level of homophobia in a household, subjects responded to items like: "It would be upsetting for my mom to find out she was alone with a lesbian" or "My dad avoids gay men whenever possible."

Finally, the researcher measured participants' level of homophobia -- both overt, as expressed in questionnaires on social policy and beliefs, and implicit, as revealed in word-completion tasks. In the latter, students wrote down the first three words that came to mind, for example for the prompt "k i _ _." The study tracked the increase in the amount of aggressive words elicited after subliminally priming subjects with the word "gay" for 35 milliseconds....

[We discovered that] participants who reported themselves to be more heterosexual than their performance on the reaction time task indicated were most likely to react with hostility to gay others, the studies showed. That incongruence between implicit and explicit measures of sexual orientation predicted a variety of homophobic behaviors, including self-reported anti-gay attitudes, implicit hostility towards gays, endorsement of anti-gay policies, and discriminatory bias such as the assignment of harsher punishments for homosexuals, the authors conclude.

Now that's interesting. But while the experiment design was fairly ingenious, and may be telling us something about human 'psychodynamics,' I'm hesitant to accept that it provides solid evidence for the hypothesis that a repressed sexuality may underlie anti-homosexual attitudes and behavior.

Why? First, I don't know what the number of subjects was and how large the effect was. Crucial information. I'm also wary of verbal self-reports, such as in "my parents did this" [when I was a child]. They are are notoriously unreliable. No person is a perfect witness, even and perhaps especially when it comes to the events of their own life.

Second, the meaning of word associations via reaction time also strikes me as a bit of a reach. Is it not possible, for example, that a person could be aroused by tabooed behavior? Studies have shown, for example, that the vast majority of adolescents that get excited by violent video games never go on to commit violent crimes Is it possible that a significant number of the most enthusiastic game players score lower than average on their self-ratings of love of these games? Would we then conclude that they are repressing a desire? Or is it more complicated than that?

My guess is that the whole matter is more complicated than we care to admit. Does a repressed homosexuality play a role in antipathy displayed toward homosexuals? It might. But until I find more and better evidence supporting the hypothesis, my belief remains that the more salient variables include ignorance coupled with an acquired prejudice (by way of family, peers, and community). In other words, the matter seems more cultural than personally psycho-pathological.