“Male passengers were pushing ahead of women and children.”

So observed retired police chief inspector Ed Gurr disapprovingly after he and his wife Liz made it successfully off the sagging Costa Concordia. They were joined by the vast majority of the vessel’s other occupants, including the captain of the ill-fated cruise liner, who is either destined to be regarded as one of the most prolific cowards of maritime history for his decision to abandon the ship before all aboard were safe, or was telling the truth to an exasperated coastguard when he claimed to have been ‘catapulted’ from the Concordia (albeit landing in a convenient rescue boat).

Allegations of cowardice are certainly stewing viciously in the wake of this disaster, which may claim up to 29 lives. But how cowardly can we judge the male passengers who boarded lifeboats ahead of women and children to have been? Does the oft-cited decree of the high seas prioritizing the female of the species and their children hold up today? Helping children to safety would seem to go without saying. Such is the proper role of the parent, guardian or nearby adult without whom many children may not survive at all. But we might pause longer to consider our consignment of women to the same category.

Perhaps to do so is an example of that sloppily transposed set of medieval military values called chivalry, which historically informs us of the ideal qualifications for knighthood. By ensuring that the women are safe, the actions of the men are seen as courageous and noble and, like a soldier who is willing to die in battle, his honor is ultimately viewed as being more valuable than was his life.

This is not, we should admit, a very easy transposition. For a start, there’s no objective reason that the life of a woman should be viewed as being of greater value than that of a man. Nor is it proper that his honor should be judged by how quickly he was able to circumvent his innate survival instincts in her favor (which, it may be argued, are themselves an expression of the highest value we know: survival, without which humanity would not exist today to argue about it).

It would appear, contrary to the ‘Women and Children First’ rule, that in the fumbling chaos aboard the foundering Costa Concordia, the men did not discriminate. That is to say, adult males treated adult females as their equals in every respect. Both men and women hurried onto lifeboats to safety without second thoughts regarding the sex of the others around them. Perhaps the men were accompanying their wives and children onto the boats so as not to be separated, which would be a luxury for modern times.

Almost hundred years ago, while a microcosm of our patriarchal society was being desultorily swallowed by the cold North Atlantic Ocean, sexism saw to it that a full three-quarters of the women survived on the surface, while over three-quarters of the men perished with the ship. While class prejudice was clearly an even greater injustice, it’s worth pondering what sex discrimination meant to the 1339 men for whom the Titanic was to become their grave. And as for the men who made it to safety, their honor having apparently been traded for their lives, allegations of cowardice followed them until they perished in a variety of other ways. (Ought we to place in this category the notorious ‘coward’ J. Bruce Ismay, said by some to have enjoined that the captain exercise the ship’s engines to the fullest, leading to the disaster? As managing director of the White Star Line, his place on a lifeboat that night helped set a record for maritime cowardice that Captain Francesco Schettino is threatening to top.)

I do find it fascinating to note the shrillness with which people insist, from the tranquility of their homes and in their cushy workplaces, that they would never act so unscrupulously in that person’s shoes. It is in this tone that survivors of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 were damned for eating their dead fellow passengers for survival (how disgusting!), and that Todd Cameron Willingham was executed for the murder of his three children by arson, largely for failing to run back into his burning house to save them; how could he not? This is not to mention the act of jumping in a lifeboat before every adult with a vagina is safe and well. That so many casual spectators can claim to be so certain – in the comfort of the absence of that rich mix of chemicals that infuses the brain with the instincts to survive at almost any cost – that they would act with nothing short of great honor and courage, never ceases to amaze me. I would never make such a claim, despite my fervent hope that I could act gallantly in their shoes.

There is, of course, a sound historical reason for the axiom that women and children should be kept safe at the expense of men, despite the fact that the concept is not – and has never been – a part of international maritime law (before the sinking of the RMS Titanic in 1912 one would not likely have heard of it). With regard to ancient cultures in which the death of every fertile woman meant a smaller generation to come, and thus fewer hands hunting and gathering (and later, farming), and an increased threat of annihilation by competing cultures, it is perhaps not surprising. But the future of our culture no longer depends upon such concerns. As Swedish gender studies lecturer Pelle Billing notes, “It seems that we are slow to change some of the patterns in society that guide gender relations, especially the ones that are to mens’ disadvantage. If the opposite were true, i.e. if the expression was ‘Men and children first’, would it not have been repeatedly challenged by feminist writers and leading politicians?”

Which leads to an interesting observation, that there now exists a second sexism involving what Warren Farrell calls ‘male disposability’, by virtue of which it is asserted that the societies that survived did so by training a core of its sons to be disposable. Men were put in harm’s way for the sake of their communities in war, and in work; the principle also extends itself to the ethics of disasters. It is ironic, therefore, that most of the women who survived the Titanic did so as widows who were financially and socially disadvantaged for the rest of their lives; not exactly the outcome one would hope for from acts of chivalry.

I certainly don’t wish to suggest the opposite, that men should come before women in disasters, or to imagine that the men who ‘pushed past women’ onto lifeboats on the Costa Concordia (if that is what happened) were acting properly. But surely one’s support and help for one’s fellow human being should be indiscriminate, or if it is to be discriminating should prioritize the weak, the helpless and the distressed, instead of assuming that ‘weak, helpless and distressed’ is synonymous with the adult female? It’s been a while, has it not, since women played the part of the frail, corset-wearing, passive damsel, for whom everything must be done lest she wallow in danger and distress. My wife would be just as capable as me of jumping in a lifeboat, thank you (not that the task is a particularly arduous one as compared with the threat of drowning in icy waters; for either sex).

Nautical history is full of standards, rules and traditions. It gives us many of our most well-worn sayings, including ones urging battening down of hatches, being taken aback, getting underway, by and large, knowing what’s in the offing and what’s at close quarters, and being so low in temperature as to render unattached the testes of metal primates on board.

But ‘Women and Children First’ seems a tad outdated, if not outright inequitable. We shouldn’t fear any lack of gallantry in its absence, either. While we may hear examples of cowardice from the Costa Concordia for a while to come, my bet is that it won’t be long until stories of bravery, nobility and courage emerge from the men – and women – on the ship, stories which do not rely on this inferior ethic for their potency, yet will be universally lauded as examples of heroism simply because they are.

After the news of a ‘Not Guilty’ verdict in the Casey Anthony case, we’ve been listening to the strong, steady drumbeat of what Thane Rosenbaum, writing in the Huffington Post, calls “an angry Greek chorus” against the verdict, and even against the justice system itself. There is a disconnect between the people and the system that has become starkly rendered after this verdict.

Casey Anthony was accused of murdering her 2 year-old daughter Caylee and then lying to cover it up. In the end, the prosecution’s case centered on the coverup rather than the actual murder, because they couldn’t prove the murder. The obviousness with which it occurs to most observers that Casey had something to do with the death of her daughter leads people to what seems like a common-sense thought: she did it.

But such evidence was not presented. Such a thing was not proven, certainly not beyond and to the exclusion of every reasonable doubt. And the system demands this highest standard of proof from the prosecutors because the consequences of being convicted of such a thing are so severe; death, in this case. If you’re going to insist on ‘killing people back’ for murder, you better be damned certain they did it (beyond every reasonable doubt, in fact). It is better to free a guilty person than to convict – and possibly execute – an innocent person, is it not?

The jury, therefore, made the right decision, in my opinion.

But most people don’t think so. An angry mob met outside to protest the verdict. At least one juror has received credible threats on their life. Chief cheerleader of the lynchings: the satanic Nancy Grace, who took to the air with impassioned outrage. Grace is a former prosecutor who couldn’t respect the law during her years practicing it, and can’t respect it now. I wonder if Nancy Grace ever thinks anybody is innocent of anything. She tried and convicted the Duke lacrosse team of rape, before those charges were debunked. She was wrong about who had kidnapped Elizabeth Smart. She’s quantifiably malicious.

Celebrities took to Twitter, saying, “The verdict is revolting” (Jessica Alba); “Disgusting” (Fred Savage); “A disgrace” (Sharon Osbourne); ”I can’t say this is the first time Florida screwed up on an important vote” (Joy Behar).

All this makes me wonder if they know something I don’t. Do they claim to have some evidence than wasn’t presented at trial? Have they the missing DNA, a witness who saw the murder, a murder weapon? Can they prove how Caylee died and what happened to her? If so, why weren’t they witnesses for the prosecution? And if not, do they think the justice system should be changed so that proof is not required to convict someone of murder? It’s a conspicuous reality that many people simply don’t understand our justice system, or why it demands more than circumstantial evidence of someone’s guilt.

There are possibilities other than murder in the Casey Anthony case that cannot logically be ruled out, based on the evidence. The defense contended that Caylee died in the family pool and that a dysfunctional, abusive family hid the fact out of fear of what the law would do about their negligence to properly care for the child. Some other accident may have been the cause of this tragedy. Perhaps Casey is covering for a third party who did do it.

We don’t know.

The only thing we do know is that the evidence doesn’t come close to showing that Casey Anthony murdered her child. That’s what the jury decided in the verdict I advocated but didn’t expect. In this case, the jury was doing something unusual for a jury: they were refusing to let their emotions overrule the law’s requirement for evidence.

Let’s think about these jurors for a second. By the time the case went to trial, this was already one of the biggest news stories in the nation. They were under an intense amount of pressure. A hoard of millions of angry people wanted Casey’s blood. Yet despite this, the jury went into that room and decided to follow strictly the words of the law and the words of the judge in the case, making the evidence itself their only standard.

(The jury instructions in the case call for the following deliberations: “To prove the crime of First Degree Premeditated Murder, the State must prove the following three elements beyond a reasonable doubt: 1. Caylee Marie Anthony is dead. 2. The death was caused by the criminal act of Casey Marie Anthony. 3. There was a premeditated killing of Caylee Marie Anthony.)

I believe we should be grateful for a jury sensible enough not to send a woman to death for anything less than absolute certainty of her guilt. Thank God it isn’t the bloodthirsty, baying mob in charge of your conviction, or mine. Thank God we demand proof, beyond and to the absolute exclusion of every single reasonable doubt. For the justice system that most people are denouncing this week, I am grateful.

‘But she was involved somehow!’ I agree. That doesn’t mean she murdered her child. Murder is the killing of another person with malice aforethought. The state didn’t prove malice (motive) or aforethought (premeditation). We can’t find her guilty of ‘Being Involved Somehow in the First Degree.’

‘But she was partying afterwards!’ Yes. I have a grief counselor on my radio show today who believes Casey’s behavior to be entirely consistent with a grieving mother. But even if you don’t think so, ‘Second degree Partying in Difficult Times’ is not a crime.

Neither is ‘Aggravated Googling of a Suspicious Keyword’ (‘chloroform’, which defense attorney Jose Baez compellingly explained as having been in response to a humorous Myspace posting from a friend). Neither is ‘Being a Slut in the First Degree.’

Perhaps you, dear reader who disagrees with the verdict, have seen some incriminating evidence not presented at this trial? Or perhaps you would like to change the standard of the law so that someone can be convicted without the actual proof of their having done it?

Rosenbaum asked the following question on behalf of the livid public: “Are jurors simply stupid, or does something happen during legal trials that temporarily disables common sense and critical thought?”

On the contrary, what happens during legal trials engages critical thought, in some people for the very first time. No longer is it acceptable to convict someone in our minds on the basis of speculation, feelings, emotions, prejudice, or instinct. No longer can we play judge, jury and executioner in the obnoxious, moralizing way of the hoards. Inside those courtroom doors, only logic, evidence, and law are permitted. And some day you or I may be glad of that.

Far from harming our faith in the justice system, this verdict is a heartening, and even surprising, sign that the system occasionally works as intended.

My wife and I have a son called Tyler who’s about to turn 8 years old. I’d like to tell you that everything about our decision to have a child in 2003 and then not to have another (at least by this time of writing) was the result of well-considered intention, but that would be too neat an untruth.

During the early days of our relationship Melissa and I had somehow settled on the idea of having three children; partly, I recall, as a compromise between her four and my two. My stated preference for a family with two kids was not, I reflect now, because I had spent years of thought on the subject of parenthood, considering arguments and chewing over statistics. Neither my social nor political philosophies had ever been deployed to weigh upon the question, and my religious ideas had nothing to say about it. I didn’t even have a paternal instinct to call upon, a fact which may to this day explain my lack of forethought on the issue.

I think the reason I said I wanted two children was because the only idea sufficiently well-developed in my mind to be capable of responding to such an urgent request was environmental. That is, I had hastily replied that I wanted two children simply because most people had children, and most who did had at least two. The name of the 1990′s British sitcom sprang to mind: “Two Point Four Children”, the UK average. (The US average, interestingly, is 3.14, which may explain my American wife’s early preference for a larger family.) It was, therefore, merely a matter of custom, from my years of marinating in social convention, that explain my ‘two-or-three-is-best’ judgment. In doing what everyone else did, we decided three was best.

Life is, of course, is messier than that. A year after Tyler was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, we moved to the United States. For a while after the move, we thought one child was enough to be dealing with. Then, we had a house-building project that took longer than we thought. Don’t they all? We were waiting until we could move into our own house, we reasoned. Then, a miscarriage. Then, we ‘tried’ for a year without pregnancy (I add punctuation only as a nod to the irony of using a word which denotes effort, as though it described something we wouldn’t have been doing anyway for its own benefit).

And before you know it, the gap between Tyler and any potential sibling is at least 8 years wide.

One thing we both agreed upon strongly in those early discussions about family planning was that we wanted to have children early, and close together. It made sense to me that having children meant starting new relationships, and that I would want those relationships, once they began, to last for as long as possible. This is a strong sense for me in general. I hate goodbyes, and endings. Thus, I reasoned at the age of 21, it would be best to have a child as young as possible and enjoy that relationship for many potential decades. Melissa agreed.

Today, with Tyler almost 8 years old and birth control in place, the three of us couldn’t be happier. This pleasant position has me re-evaluating the traditional wisdom based on those years marinating in social convention, which insists that people should have children (plural), leaving those who choose not to have children at all, and those of us who have only one, outside mainstream orthodoxy.

Should plural children be considered more desirable than their singular counterparts? What do science and economics suggest? Why do people have such strongly-constituted feelings about how other people choose to live in any case?

I believe there are a few assumptions at work here, one of which is the belief that the purpose of marriage is procreation. Although people are becoming less and less inclined to think this way, I think it’s still a significant factor. It is a common sentiment to suggest that those who choose not to have children are “selfish”, and I assume not having enough children may subject one to the same slur. I’ve always thought the argument rather self-defeating, since those who make it usually claim to love their own children, and hogging more of the world’s resources in order to have more of what you love strikes me as patently selfish itself. So who is more selfish? Aren’t we all just doing what we think best for ourselves, in the end? Why else would we ask young couples how many children they ‘want‘ – the word ‘want’ denoting self-interest – in the first place? If pursuing the life I want is selfish, I’m happy to accept the label.

Second is the idea that the only child is worse off than the child with siblings. A recent TIME magazine article by Lauren Sandler, an only child herself who has an only child of her own, takes issue with this idea, which she says is part of a “century-old public relations issue”. In the 1970s, she reports, a professor of educational psychology and sociology at the University of Texas at Austin called Toni Falbo conducted some studies on the experience of the only child:

“Generally, those studies showed that singletons aren’t measurably different from other kids — except that they, along with firstborns and people who have only one sibling, score higher in measures of intelligence and achievement. No one, Falbo says, has published research that can demonstrate any truth behind the stereotype of the only child as lonely, selfish and maladjusted.”

So it would appear that being an only child not only isn’t detrimental, but actually has some advantages!

“The argument Blake makes in Family Size and Achievement as to why onlies are higher achievers across socioeconomic lines can be stated simply: there’s no ‘dilution of resources,’ as she terms it, between siblings. No matter their income or occupation, parents of only children have more time, energy and money to invest in their kid, who gets all the dance classes, piano lessons and prep courses, as well as all their parents’ attention when it comes to helping work out an algebra problem. That attention, researchers have noticed, leads to not just higher SAT scores but also higher self-esteem.”

This certainly seems to be holding true for our son Tyler, who is consistently near or at the top of his class at school and seems confident much of the time, even among adults.

But what about the social aspect? Doesn’t Tyler miss out on the kind of close relationship a sibling can provide? Falbo found no personality defect here either. Presumably the children in the study were involved in public school and the same activities most other children are, so they have the immediate availability of others near their own age with whom to interact socially. Tyler, too, has developed close friendships both with kids in his class and out of it. They have sleep-overs and birthday parties. They play video games and spend summer afternoons in the pool. It’s very… ordinary.

It isn’t considered polite to inquire why someone has preference for a particular number of children, and – trust me – you get glares if you dare to ask (it’s received as a challenge, or an invasion of privacy, as it may well be). The upshot of this is that we never really discuss the motivations behind our choices. Do we want a certain number of children because it ‘just feels right’?, or because we love the experience of parenting but not more than that?, or because we would have as many as possible if we could but we feel that number to be our physical and mental limit?, or because we feel that number would provide the best balance between ourselves and our children? Something else entirely? How many is too many, if one is too few?

I love the parenting experience. But it’s not the only thing I love in life, or the only thing I want to do. Having an only child makes it possible to do a lot of other things with my time besides parenting. This may sound selfish. To quote Sandler’s article:

“A 2007 survey found that at a rate of 3 to 1, people believe the main purpose of marriage is the ‘mutual happiness and fulfillment’ of adults rather than the ‘bearing and raising of children.’ There must be some balance between the joy our kids give us and the sacrifices we make to care for them. Social scientists have surmised since the 1970s that singletons offer the rich experience of parenting without the consuming efforts that multiple children add: all the wonder and giggles and shampoo mohawks but with leftover energy for sex, conversation, reading and so on. The research of Hans-Peter Kohler, a population sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania, gives weight to that idea. In his analysis of a survey of 35,000 Danish twins, women with one child said they were more satisfied with their lives than women with none or more than one. As Kohler told me, ‘At face value, you should say that you’ll stop at one child to maximize your subjective well being.’”

This rings true for me. I love the way I spend my life. In the past week and a half, Melissa and I have spent as much time with our friends as we have with our son, and another third with both friends/family and Tyler at the same time. Many of our friends don’t have any children at all, and those who do sometimes provide good playmates. But, in either case, it’s quite easy to manage time for the benefit of both adult and child with just one.

I’m always glad, when I hear couples talk about their one ‘date night’ a month, to have only one child that allows us to have much more time together than that. I’m always grateful, when someone we know can’t take a trip or have dinner or go to a movie or to this function or that, to have only one child. I’m always relieved, when I buy groceries or work out the monthly budget or pay bills, to have only one. (The cost is estimated at $286,000 per child by the time they’re 18; it amazes me that people can afford any number of children they say they desire without any economic considerations.)

And it appears Melissa and I and Tyler are not alone here. Tough economies, of course, always tend to bring with them changes in how people look at the traditional family. Also, the more secular a society gets, the less religious imperative there is to have a large family (whether it’s because you don’t subscribe to the idea that birth control is evil or because you aren’t part of a more family-centric subculture). But there’s a wider trend:

“That trend is what is known as the second demographic transition, a concept Ron Lesthaeghe at the University of Michigan advanced 25 years ago. It refers to the fertility shift that occurred when the industrial world moved from high birth and death rates to low ones. Now postponement of parenthood — or refusal of it — in favor of greater focus on education and career, longer periods of searching for the ideal mate and a more flexible and pleasure-seeking life has given us the second demographic transition. Because of these ‘rich society’ tendencies, Oswald guesses that 50-odd years from now, the U.S. will be worrying about declining population, just like Europe and Japan are today.”

Thus, the idea that people should have at least two children belongs in the era of getting married by default, having 3.1 babies and a white picket fence, and a steady job with a pension until retirement. It belongs in the 1950s, before people starting kicking off the restraints of societal expectation and began enjoying the freedom to pursue lifestyles limited only by imagination. It’s not hard to see where traditional ideas of family came from: they were compelled by the drive to survive. Back when most of us were agricultural, large families were both necessary and beneficial.

Today, people have the freedom to live as married, unmarried, casual, committed, gay, straight, living with friends, living with family, long-term, short-term, family-centric, career-centric, recreation-centric, working to live, living to work, childfree, with multiple children or – like us – with one child. We might describe this surplus of options and lifestyles among Americans today as living out America’s original promise of freedom, and the embodiment of that freedom in real life.

Those of a more old-fashioned persuasion may find these changes uncomfortable. But I find in the particular case of having an only child a great balance, some real benefits for all of us, the sense that we can do a good job of raising Tyler because we can pour our resources and time and effort into him alone, and a sense of being part of a larger movement in this direction.

I won’t rule out eventually having another child, if something in our thinking changes. But nobody should think that there is any net disadvantage in having an only child; in fact, it’s just the opposite, for him and for us.

One of the last ‘blue laws’ in Arizona has been repealed, making this Sunday the first during which someone in the state may buy alcoholic drinks before ten in the morning.

A ‘blue law’ is a law designed to enforce moral standards. Typically blue laws involve what people may do on Sundays, the day Christians call the ‘Lord’s Day’. Some of them prohibit shopping on Sundays, others regulate the times during which shops may open for business, or restrict sales of alcohol, tobacco, and other patently sinful things like that. Most American states have such laws on the books, and most European countries too.

But do the blue laws make any sense? And didn’t America’s Founders build a “wall of separation between church and state” in the Constitution, forbidding any laws “respecting an establishment of religion”?

The 1950s were an important time for evangelicalism in America. Billy Graham’s first revival meetings took place at the beginning of the decade. The National Day of Prayer was established in 1952. The words “under God” were added to the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954. The motto ‘In God We Trust’ was adopted in 1956, the same year The Ten Commandments was released with Charlton Heston in his iconic role as Moses.

In 1961, the blue laws were challenged in four separate court cases, including a landmark Supreme Court case, McGowan v. Maryland, in which the Court held that laws with religious origins are not unconstitutional if they have a secular purpose. A curious decision indeed. What secular purpose, you might ask, did the state of Maryland serve by restricting what kinds of things its residents could do on Sundays?

The answer, according to the Opinion in the case, is that the provisions of the Maryland law were fashioned not for religious reasons but:

“…for the purpose of providing a Sunday atmosphere of recreation, cheerfulness, repose and enjoyment. Coupled with the general proscription against other types of work, we believe that the air of the day is one of relaxation, rather than one of religion.”

The air of the day? In other words, it was okay for the state to tell its residents what to do on Sundays because its reasons were not, as you might think, because the Christian majority believed it to be the Lord’s Day (although the Opinion admitted that that was the original intention of the law) but because they all needed time to relax and come together!

How nice of the state of Maryland to think of its hard-working citizens like that. They had laws which forced them to relax! I’m sure these laws arrived along with shorter workdays, paternity leave, plentiful vacation time and piña coladas.

One might be forgiven for being skeptical of the motive behind this decision — after all, it’s not like some states were enforcing such laws on Saturdays, the de facto day of American recreation, if that were its true purpose — no, they were in effect on the Lord’s Day, when good Christians of boom-time evangelicalism went to church.

This, I would suggest, is the reason for the continued existence of the blue laws today; they are one piece of artillery in the larger culture war going on between the religious and the secular, the conservative and the liberal, the traditional and the progressive.

One Arizona pastor, Dave Summers, told the Arizona Republic newspaper he is “saddened” to see the Arizona blue law being repealed:

“This may be one of the last stands for Sunday.”

The “Sunday” to which he refers is, of course, not merely the day after Saturday, on which good people can be doing a wide variety of things. No, Pastor Summers is lamenting the loss of the traditional, church-going, roast beef-eating Lord’s Day, a day on which Jesus is said to have risen from the dead, a day which evokes the good old-fashioned feeling that God is always there and involves the coming together of fellow Christians in worship. It makes me nostalgic for my own very traditional childhood Sundays, just talking about it. I can almost taste the Sunday lunch.

But nostalgia is a powerful drug, and doesn’t always reflect the truth.

For a start, the Lord’s Day is not the same thing as the Sabbath. Jesus got into trouble with the clergy of his church for things he did on a Saturday (the Jewish Sabbath). The early Christian tradition that he rose from the dead on a Sunday gave rise to the custom of gathering together every Sunday to break bread. As many as 200 years later, this became conflated with the Sabbath, the day of rest mandated by God in Jewish tradition.

It was merely customary, then, for Christians to meet for ‘church’ (whatever that looked like during the infancy of Christianity) on a Sunday. It would appear that, over time, as Christianity became more and more like an established religion, it thereby became more legalistic. Suddenly, a custom becomes an obligation.

This is ironic, considering the anti-legalistic theme of Jesus’ message. I defy anyone to read the Gospels and then conclude that Jesus wanted more laws regarding things people are allowed to do on the ‘Sabbath’.

The point is that there may not be a good reason for Christians to feel a duty themselves, let alone obligate others via acts of law, to hold Sunday in particular as a ‘Lord’s Day’. Nowhere in the bible are they obligated to do so. (And even if they are, a custom of the Christian religion should surely be voluntarily observed by Christians rather than enforced upon everyone else, many of whom believe very different things.)

Some Christians might respond by saying that the holy day of rest is a theme found throughout the bible from the beginning when God himself rested on the seventh day and that, whether observed by Jews on Saturdays or by Christians on Sundays, it’s the principle that counts. Okay, but why then does it matter what day it is? Couldn’t a Christian decide to sit on his bed and think about God on a Wednesday, if they’re free on that day? My father, a minister in the Presbyterian Church, takes a Monday off as a day of rest, since he is technically working on a Sunday; wouldn’t it be ironic if our friend Pastor Summers does so too? And if my dad’s choice of Sabbath is valid, along with everyone else whose schedules don’t follow the traditional weekday/weekend structure, why would it ever be necessary to enforce a uniform day at all?

Yes, it is the day upon which most Christian communities decide to meet for church services. But that makes it a matter of mere convenience, not a matter of imperative, and certainly not for the many who don’t believe in the obligation! In this increasingly diverse society — with its nightshifts and weekend shifts and travel and 24-hour shopping and internet sermons — isn’t the getting-together just another scheduled activity, between breakfast at home and lunch at the park?

In fact, people getting together may be the real point here.

Many sociologists believe that religion itself evolved because it bonded tribes of human beings together with common values, beliefs and goals; religion was simply good for our survival. (Meetings happen, rituals are performed, songs are sung, traditions are observed. There’s strength in numbers.)

But in the 21st century so deplored by Pastor Summers, people are finding this bonding and togetherness in places other than religious ones. How many Americans do you know who worship at the church of the National Football League or at the altar of NASCAR on a Sunday morning? How many Americans are regularly sleeping through the church bells after some late congregating the night before at the bar, or are busy purposing themselves with putting together the next sermon at their Rotary Club?

Jews marking the Sabbath on Saturdays and Christians marking the Lord’s Day on Sundays are only two of the countless and diverse ways that average Americans are spending their time in the 21st century. The truth is that less than a quarter of the American population actually attends church on a weekly basis, despite the fact that more than three-quarters of the population identify as Christian. What does this tell us? It tells us that about half of Americans consider themselves Christians without placing a very high value upon the Lord’s Day as cherished by Pastor Summers. Their time has been spread out to more activities than ever before, and they don’t feel bound by old observances.

Those who feel this way have begun to overhaul the system. They may not be committed to traditions, but they are connecting and bonding with others. They are spiritual, and searching. They simply don’t consider it necessary to outlaw the purchase of a Bloody Mary from the clubhouse before a round of golf on a Sunday morning under the premise that the ban will help them relax, or help them be better people.

And the same goes for all of the blue laws which still exist, from the ones banning Sunday car sales in Louisiana to the ones restricting Sunday shopping hours in Belfast, Northern Ireland. They don’t make much sense at any time theologically, and they don’t make any practical sense for the 21st century.

I recently had an on-air exchange that fascinated me. I had just replayed a portion of my interview with Dr. Nick Bostrom, an Oxford University professor and well-known transhumanist, on the subject of his Simulation Argument.

This is the paper that spurred a serious academic discussion in 2003 on the idea that there is a significant possibility that we are living in a computer simulation.

The idea sounds nutty. And in cases where an idea sounds nutty, the reaction of many people hearing it is to express skepticism about its validity. I imagine the idea of human beings landing on the moon would have fallen into that category before 1969. Sometimes nutty-sounding ideas are, upon consideration, worth taking seriously.

A caller I know well, after listening to a little of the interview, gave his opinion that Bostrom’s idea is “a crock”, and that Bostrom should “be ashamed” if he’s taken any grant money for his work. I knew this was only his first impression, since we didn’t delve into the argument itself too much on-air. I asked him if he had sufficiently considered the idea to dismiss it like this, and his reply astonished me: “I don’t have to consider it to know that it’s a crock.”

We spent the next half hour discussing my objection to his opining on something he hadn’t considered. But the truth is that I don’t think this is very unusual. Many people have opinions about things based on first impressions. There are some things that should definitely have been taken into consideration on any assessment of the Simulation Argument.

First, there’s the credentials of the man who formalized the argument. Bostrom is the Director of the Future of Humanity Institute at one of the world’s most prestigious universities. As if that weren’t enough, he’s also Founder of the World Transhumanist Association (now Humanity+) with around 5000 members worldwide. He’s also Co-Founder of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies. He is highly regarded by other academics for his work on existential risk and the anthropic principle. He is the recipient of the 2009 Eugene R. Gannon Award for the Continued Pursuit of Human Advancement. How can the work of the man with these credentials be so casually written off?

Then there’s the work itself. It is a small part of a huge, rich tradition of philosophy scrutinizing the nature of reality. Bostrom follows in the footsteps of great thinkers like Plato and Descartes. His paper argues with some persuasive reasoning about the very nature of reality. It has been discussed in academic circles since it was published. The columnist John Tierney says, “The math and the logic are inexorable.” The British philosopher David Pearce calls it “Perhaps the first interesting argument for the existence of a Creator in 2000 years.” But even if that last one is a stretch too far, surely the argument is worth considering?

Surely everything is worth considering?

Since the conversation on Friday, I’ve been trying to figure out why someone would take the position of refusing to consider an idea before rejecting it. And I’ve come up with a few possible answers.

First, ‘cognitive fluency’. This is a measure of how easy it is to think about something, and, according to contemporary psychologists, it affects human behavior more than anyone thought. A recent article in the Boston Globe titled “Easy = True” sums it up: “It turns out that people prefer things that are easy to think about to those that are hard.” Not only that, but people are more likely to believe something simple than something difficult. In other words, fluency affects the truth value people assign to a claim. ‘God created the world in 7 days’ is easier to understand than ‘Random mutations leading to non-random natural selection’, so it can be more readily accepted as the truth.

Second, fluency is closely linked to familiarity. The more familiar-sounding an idea is, the more ready we are to accept it (or consider it). But an idea as unfamiliar and surprising as ‘We may be part of a computer simulation’ sounds so unfamiliar that the mental work of considering it is quite taxing.

Third, limited mental resources. We can only do a certain amount of thinking in a day. We’re tired. Our brains are working at many things more important to our survival: making money, maintaining social connections, ordering to-do lists, managing stress levels, decision-making. Who has the energy or willpower to think about the nature of reality, or to try to make sense of an equation like the one pictured above (which summarizes the Simulation Argument)?

Fourth, comfort level. Ideas which challenge the nature of reality may be too far outside the comfortable operating zone of many people to be considered on any serious level. To take an idea like this seriously enough to give it proper consideration is to admit to oneself that the ideas one has already established about the nature of reality may not be sufficient. It is a Pandora’s Box many may not feel comfortable opening, lest something unsettling pop out.

Fifth, culture and tradition. A traditional way to approach matters of cosmological significance in our culture is to consult religion. Claims made by the major religions are taken particularly seriously while other less familiar answers to big questions are distrusted. To give in to seriously considering ideas like Bostrom’s, one would be reconsidering one’s religious beliefs (we all know how often that happens). What is it that makes the concepts of heaven and hell more worthy of consideration than the concept of reality being simulated by a technologically advanced society? Certainly nothing fundamental; only a predisposition toward religious ideas over more modern-sounding philosophical ones.

We do this with lots of the world, in chunks. If we’re not into sports, we write off all sports until we’ve been forced to consider one by exposure to it. Those who aren’t early adapters tend to find ways to ignore tech trends until they’re exposed to one significantly enough to trigger an evaluation of it. (Know anybody who resisted Facebook until you forced them to sign up for it and now they’re addicts?)

What is this really all about? It’s about books and covers. Everyone judges books by their covers at times. When we do, we are sometimes right about the book, and my co-worker may be right to dismiss the Simulation Argument. But, just as often, first impressions are dead wrong. When we judge without due consideration for any of the above reasons, we are usually looking for a way to simplify our lives; any extracurricular idea exacting a toll on our brainpower is unwelcome.

That’s okay. “Why do I have to consider Bostrom?” You don’t. As I remarked on-air during our conversation, it’s okay for us to ignore many of the ideas around us; there are far too many vying for our attention to give them all equal consideration. But a valid opinion is one based on consideration. The Simulation Argument may be sound or not, but unless I’ve considered it, I can’t tell. Unless I’ve considered it, then any opinion I give on it is the equivalent of talking about a book I haven’t read, or a car I haven’t seen.

I do happen to think the Simulation Argument is sound. (Which doesn’t necessarily mean I think we are living in a simulation, incidentally. The argument attempts to show that one of these three statements is true: (1) No civilization will reach a technological level capable of producing simulated realities; (2) No civilization reaching aforementioned technological status will produce a simulated reality, for any of a number of reasons; or (3) You are almost certainly in a simulation right now. It does this by extrapolating our understanding of current technology into the future and by using probability theory to offer premise (3) as a hypothesis, since ruling out (1) and (2) yields a statistically insignificant chance that we are the original, biological few rather than the simulated many.)

But whether I had considered the argument and wrote it off, or considered it and found it to be sound, the important thing is that I had considered it. And everyone who wants to offer a valid opinion rather than just first impressions should do the same.

I’ve lived life with both socialized and privatized health care systems. In the United Kingdom, I grew up with the ‘universal’ model: government health care, paid for by taxes and free at the point of use. And, for the past several years, I’ve been in the United States with its ‘insurance’ model, paid for by employers, government and individuals, depending on a patient’s age, employer, and many other factors.

The health care debate in the United States is characterized by a difference of opinion between liberals and conservatives as to the effectiveness of the U.S. health care system.

Liberals say it’s a bad system, leaving the poor and elderly vulnerable and many uninsured people woefully unprepared for sickness. They say it’s too expensive and lines the pockets of insurance companies. They say it discourages people from seeking care because of the cost.

Conservatives say it’s a good system, providing an excellent quality of care to everyone who wants it. They argue that the poor and elderly are already covered by government programs. They say private insurance offers the most flexibility and gives people options.

Actually, they’re both right and they’re both wrong. You see, I’ve experienced both systems, and it is my observation that they are simply good at different things.

In the U.S., the quality of health care is generally very good. Its doctors, surgeons, specialists etc. are among the best in the world. There are vast amounts of resources and technology available. Research is extensive and often well-funded. People who are diagnosed with a condition are treated quickly and usually very effectively. More of them survive than in most other countries in the world. Hospitals are comfortable and spacious. The United States has the Mercedes-Benz of health care. Unfortunately, not everyone can afford a Mercedes, so access is not very good. Yes, the poor and elderly are covered by Medicaid and Medicare and other programs. But millions of hardworking people who don’t fall under the programs and do have some form of insurance still fear their out-of-pocket costs, which can be enormous. This puts them off seeking help when they need it. Many are diagnosed too late. People with pre-existing conditions are refused by insurance companies. Health costs are the leading cause of bankruptcy, and one wonders how many people get sick from the stress of wondering how they’ll pay for the notorious costs.

The U.K. National Health Service, on the other hand, is very good at access. People don’t worry about costs, because there are none (other than the small matter of the outrageous taxes they pay all their working lives). Per capita, health care costs a lot less, despite the lack of competition in the state-owned system. Life may be less stressful without the constant worry that one can’t afford to get sick. The U.K. has the Fiat 500 of health care. It gets the job done; not as well, but at least everybody can get in. While people are taken care of, the quality isn’t as good. People wait for lengthy periods of time to get operations, to get lab results, to make an appointment. Hospitals are often overcrowded and uncomfortable. My wife’s experiences surrounding the birth of our son in a Belfast hospital are no advertisement for the ‘universal’ model.

So, different health systems are good at different things. America is lucky to have by far the most responsive system in the world (while also the most expensive). Brits are lucky to have great access while only spending 6 percent of their GDP on health care. Where the systems fail, they fail in different ways. It is, therefore, easy to do as conservatives are doing and point out only the successes of the U.S. health system while ignoring its serious shortcomings, or as liberals like Michael Moore do by pointing out only the successes of the ‘universal’ model while ignoring its woeful inadequacies.

The fact is that both systems have desirable elements. So, health care reform in the U.S. is focused on making the health care system here more affordable. That is as it should be. The system needs reform, certainly. Perhaps the measures which are currently close to a Senate vote are a step toward improving a system which is already good in some ways, so good that people flock to America to take advantage of it. We don’t need to pretend that the whole system is bad to achieve some level of reform. And neither do we need to pretend that the system is great to oppose the adoption of the ‘universal’ model.

I visited the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh today for the first time, in a building opened recently and described as “the most modern legislature in the world.” On a tour of the building, it became apparent to me that it was “modern” alright: a pertinent symbol of contemporary government abuse and disgrace.

When Catalan architect Eric Miralles stood to give his vision for the building of the new Scottish Parliament, he laid a tree branch on the table and said that that was it. The building was to spring beautifully “from the earth” around it, with “long fingers” extending into the parkland beyond. Everybody seemed to love the idea, although the project was plagued by controversy from the beginning, for various reasons.

As I surveyed the building, I realised that it was anything but natural and beautiful. It takes a postmodern approach, being composed of ugly, irregular shapes and random symbols in ghastly formations. On approach, there is no aesthetic connection with the natural landscape of Arthur’s Seat beyond; it is a heinous blemish on that terrain. It lacks elegance, and because it tries so hard to be something that it is not, it lacks any sense of pride in human accomplishment. It tries so hard to be everything that it ends up being nothing. It tries so fervently to avoid being a modern celebration of human achievement that it ends up becoming a hideous emblem of human mediocrity. It is as though Miralles was embarrassed of humanity, ashamed to build something that stood, as New York’s World Trade Center did, a monument to human excellence, pride and performance.

Contrast the architecture of the two buildings: the Scottish Parliament’s nervous ambiguousness and the Twin Towers’ confident, magnificent statement. The one which cries in desperation, ‘Who are we? What do we stand for?’, the other which declared in a booming voice across the free world, ‘We get stuff done!’ No wonder it was the target of choice for those who hate western progress.

I was told that I must use my imagination as I looked around the building to give it meaning; its diagonal lines and boat-modelled skylights and bent poles and useless beams and indistinguishable, cookie-cutter shapes stamped everywhere. My “imagination.” What does my imagination have to do with it? Surely Miralles meant to create… something, anything, in particular? Surely there was some kind of message to his art? Anytime I want to, I could go and stare at a wall and use my imagination to come up with any number of bizarre interpretations, but it would be as interesting as, well, looking at the wall.

I passed by a piece of modern art yesterday near the affluent Regent Terrace in Edinburgh which consisted of 40 empty plastic bottles from various bleaching products hanging from a ceiling. Draw your own conclusions, they say. My conclusion is that it’s meaningless. The Scottish Parliament gave me the same vibe: the sense that there really isn’t a message worth sharing, the sense of unearned, fake profundity.

I did make my own conclusions. I concluded that the creators of this mangled monstrosity didn’t really know what they wanted to say. The plethora of cretinous voices ended up making the whole thing complex and odd and obnoxious and impossible to like. Interestingly, the way in which the Scottish Parliament is ordered as a legislature is not much different: unlike Westminster, it uses the additional member system – a form of proportional representation – to ensure that there are more voices in the political process than the people actually wanted (voices like the Scottish Green Party, the Scottish Socialist Party, and the Scottish Senior Citizens Unity Party).
This centrist soup results in some stellar decision-making: one of the latest pieces of legislation to be passed by the Scottish Parliament was the smoking ban which recently came into effect, a law which purports to stop smoking in public places but which in reality tells private business owners what they can or cannot do on their own wretched property (don’t get me started).

In fact, it’s like everything about the Scottish Parliament: politically correct, socially timid, culturally insecure garbage. Like much of lawmaking activities, the dangerous pandering to liberty-crushing lobbyists, the facade of a ‘modern social democracy’ and the absolute inability of those in power to believe something in principle and say so are frustrating at best.

The fact that, in “the most modern legislature in the world”, signs are written in both English and in Gaelic, a language spoken primarily by dead leprechauns, should tell us everything we need to know about the debacle of pursuing the appeasing of everyone so thoroughly that you end up representing no-one.

Lest anyone feel this critique unfair, someone perhaps who understands the architecture and the Gaelic, let me close by saying that the most scandalous aspect of the building is not its style nor what it purports to represent; rather it is the fact that this monstrosity cost a full 400 percent more than the estimates, at a whopping £415 million ($600m). Still, for that price the construction was as sound as the ideology behind it: not long after opening, while members of parliament were debating yet another measure intended to micromanage the lives of the Scottish who were too drunk to notice, a beam – which was supposed to be holding up the roof of this ‘beautiful’ building – broke loose and swung dramatically over the heads of the politicians below, sending them scattering to the dreadful hallways. Nobody was hurt, unfortunately, and they fixed it and continued to revel in postmodernist collectivism.

It’s a fitting metaphor.

Yesterday at lunchtime, I stopped by at the office of my friend Heather, who was screaming and running when I walked in. Evidently a scorpion had gotten behind her desk and freaked her out, and some of the guys were taking it out to kill it. The thing was huge, too, at least five or six inches long.

What I didn’t get to see was this: apparently the guys took the scorpion out, made a ring of gasoline around it and lit the gasoline ring on fire, panicking the scorpion so much that it committed suicide by stinging itself with its own venom. Mouth hanging open, I said, ‘What?’ Nobody else in the room seemed surprised, and said they were familiar with the old desert wisdom that says that scorpions are one of the few creatures on earth that commit suicide when confronted with their fear of fire. I’d never heard of this! The only creature I’d ever heard commits suicide with any regularity is the lemming, which I was fairly sure could be a myth, encouraged by the old video game. A part of my daily radio show is a segment called Croaklore, verifying the truth or falsehood of folklore and urban legends, so I was instantly interested in this idea of scorpion suicides (and was only sorry to have missed the live experiment that was conducted right outside the door!).

In 1887, the Royal Society published a piece by a Professor of Biology at the Presidency College in Madras, Alfred G. Bourne, called The Reputed Suicide of Scorpions. In it, he says:

“The legend that a scorpion when placed within a ring of red-hot embers will, after making futile efforts to pass the fiery circle which surrounds it, deliberately kill itself by inflicting a wound with its sting in its own head is said to emanate from Spain, and is of considerable antiquity: it has been, morever, attested by very high authority. The phenomenon would, however, be so extraordinary that its occurrence has been much doubted. Did it happen, it would stand as Romanes says “as a unique case of an instinct detrimental alike to the individual and to the species.””

That’s for sure. A creature with a brain the size of a scorpion’s would be acting on instinct, not on thoughts. But having such instinct doesn’t make sense: there is a sound evolutionary reason that animals, by and large, don’t have the instinct to kill themselves. The creatures which have survived until the present day are those who are not so easily dissuaded from the task of living! Moreover scorpions have been around as a species for a very long time – they’re virtually a living fossil – so their instincts would have to be good.

The article goes on to list all of the scientists of the time who had observed scorpions committing suicide for themselves, giving them cause for much confusion. There have been some considerable horrors throughout the scorpion’s 430 million-year existence. Surely a creature that commits suicide when it’s afraid could not have lasted through them all? Many species which don’t possess the propensity to kill themselves have gone extinct for various reasons, yet the nervous scorpion, who pops itself at the drop of a hat, outlasts them all?

Actually, the modern scientific consensus on ‘scorpion suicide’ is that it’s impossible, due to the fact that scorpions appear to be immune to their own venom. Ten years ago, some French biologists studied the scorpion immune system and concluded:

“The muscular and nervous systems of scorpions are not affected by the molecules contained in scorpion venom. [The Journal of Experimental Biology, 1998.]”

Well, that’s that. So what’s happening, then? What did Heather’s scorpion do yesterday when it was surrounded by fire? Well, the best explanation being offered by people who have studied this behavior is that the scorpions are simply succumbing to the heat. Despite being known as ‘hot weather’ creatures, they’re very sensitive to heat and will die when subjected to high temperatures. They writhe on the ground trying to sting all around them (their defense mechanism), and die very quickly in those circumstances; to observers it can appear as though the scorpion is stinging itself.

Scorpion suicide? Busted.

(By the way, I love the final paragraph of that paper: “We thank Professor Robert H. Rochat for his constant interest and for supplying scorpions and venoms.” He was very excited.)

Los Angeles Times, September 12th, 2008

In her September 8th Op-Ed article, Catherine G. Burke, an associate professor at USC’s School of Policy, Planning and Development, touts the “podcar” system as an able replacement for cars and roads. She says that such a system would provide “on-demand, private, nonstop travel.” The electric-powered podcars would ride on infrastructure similar to a monorail or people mover.

Burke writes: “Picture the car as an elevated, driverless taxi. It’s under computer control, so there would be no accidents, thereby saving lives and lowering insurance costs. Podcars operate on demand, waiting at off-line stations; they can be summoned if one is not available when you arrive at the station. Each vehicle can hold four people, yet the system can be cost-effective even with a single rider for each trip.”

Not bad. But I’d have to share these things with other people who used them before me. Sometimes, I would have to wait for them to pick me up. I couldn’t choose which podcar I’d want and which features I’d like. Once I leave the podcar network, I’m left out in the cold when it comes to public transportation. To me, this sounds like riding a subway.

No, I don’t like this idea, and I’ve got something better: the car.

The car is brilliant! Yours is your own. If there’s a mess in it, you put it there, not some of the multitudes of strangers with whom you must share a podcar. Like a loyal steed, your car is always there for you where you left it. There’s virtually no waiting for a ride unless a valet parked your car. You can choose the exact feature set, style, entertainment system, quality and comfort levels that suit you. And your car can go anywhere, including all the way home to your garage.

But there are major problems with cars, and the podcar system would solve many of them: accidents, congestion and the fact that many of our freeways are already beyond their maximum volume capacity with no more room for growth.

Enter the Automated Highway System. It’s cheaper and quicker than the podcar system to set up and would utilize our existing highway surfaces without the need to build more roads. What’s more, we already have virtually all of the technology we’d need.

Picture this: You go into your garage, get into your (electric or hydrogen-powered?) car, turn it on and choose your destination. You drive yourself through city streets until you reach the Automated Highway System. You then take your hands off the wheel and the cruise control takes effect. You feel a surge of speed as the car accelerates safely to as fast as 150 miles per hour as it joins the other traffic, following only a few yards behind the car in front. Using sensors on the vehicle and magnetized markers on the road surface, the onboard computer is communicating with the other vehicles on the road as they coordinate themselves into tight platoons of eight to 25 cars, minimizing air resistance, improving fuel efficiency and ensuring that a vast volume of traffic is able to fit onto the road space. Your commute time is fast, reliable and effortless. As you approach your exit, your car leaves the platoon into the enter-exit lane and then out of the Automated Highway System completely, at which point you can resume driving.

Sounds far-fetched? It’s certainly less so than the podcar system, which requires us all to use a new kind of carriage on an entirely new network of monorails. And it’s already been tested with great success. In fact, several major automakers are developing autonomous cruise control systems.

Who wants a podcar? We’re done waiting for public transportation. The future is in making our existing automobiles capable of high-speed, congestion-free, emissions-free, hands-free travel. Now that’s a solution.

The Anglican church is in trouble. The church, which has 80 million members worldwide, has become increasingly liberal and thus increasingly diverse. Its members believe a wide variety of things, a fact which is ultimately spelling disaster for the denomination. I began to ponder about why the synchronizing of beliefs seems to be linked so closely with the success or failure of churches.

Last year, my friend William Crawley interviewed the prominent atheist Richard Dawkins, during which he asked him this question: “If God does exist and you do meet him in the life to come, if there is such a thing, and he asks you ‘Why didn’t you believe in me?’, what would you say?”

Dawkins has been asked this question many times in interviews, often giving the response made infamous on YouTube in which he throws the question back by asking what the asker will say when they come face to face with Thor or Zeus or Allah and that particular god asks them the same thing. In response to Crawley’s asking of the question, though, Dawkins paused after his standard answer and appended it with an even better reply, one that made me sit up and think:

“In any case, why would you suppose that God values belief above [being] a good man, [being] honest, [being] kind.’ Isn’t that more important than belief? What’s so special about belief?”

A great answer. What is so special about belief? Why do the religions say that God requires us to believe in him without evidence, that he requires us to believe a conclusion in the absence of certainty about any of its premises? Here’s the only good answer I could come up with:

Let’s suppose that there was an alternative to Jesus in the first century, like a Monty Python version of 1st Century history in which Brian is believed to be the Messiah, and he begins to teach his followers. And, rather than teaching them that belief in him will give them everlasting life, Brian teaches that belief is ultimately irrelevant (as Dawkins suggests). He tells his followers, “Whether you place your belief in me or not has no eternal consequences for you or for anyone else.” He does not connect the salvation of his followers with their faith or lack thereof. There’s no talk of how belief in him will give the believer everlasting life, or of how followers who stay faithful to the words of Brian will gain eternal favor.

Brianity has gotten a good start, and it’s an alternative to Christianity. But does it survive? The answer is… no, it doesn’t. Owing to the fact that ‘belief’ is not considered to be important, adherents to Brianity are not bound together to defend it. Adherents believe many different things, theologically (like Anglicans today). No spreading of the good news (‘gospel’) is necessary to ensure the salvation of the masses, meaning that fewer people hear about Brianity in the first place, meaning that fewer people become adherents.

What happened? Brianity became extinct, because it failed to evolve the attribute of belief necessary for its survival.
It is natural selection of the religions (or ‘memetics’, as Dawkins suggests). ‘Belief’ – an orthodox adherence to a creed – is an attribute of most major religions today precisely because it is responsible for making them the major religions of today. In other words, the successful religions are the ones which emphasize belief. In the same way that human beings exist today because they evolved a brain fit enough to help them survive, the major world religions – Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Judaism – exist today because they evolved a doctrine of belief. And that we must use fictional, hypothetical examples of religions which lack this doctrine of belief constitutes good proof of its importance in the success of religions.

“What’s so special about belief?” Do Christians hold that belief is so special because it’s true that it’s so special, or do Christians think belief is so special because Christianity wouldn’t exist unless they had believed so? After all, ‘Brianity’ is merely Christianity without the requirement to believe (or to act upon belief). There have been many such religious ideas throughout history; ideas which don’t require orthodox belief for salvation, like universalism and pluralism. None of them have been very successful on a broad level.

Brian teaches that there is a heaven (and possibly also that there is a hell), but he doesn’t chatter on about who will get there or how God will decide. He teaches that there is a God of love and of justice and of peace, but doesn’t proceed to describe God’s lifestyle or living conditions or character with great detail or with much certainty. He doesn’t assert that there are exactly three persons of the godhead or give rundowns on the hierarchy of angels. He answers many theological questions with a firm but thoughtful, “I don’t know”, and seems comfortable with doing so. He lives a life of decency, honesty, with a quest for truth and good character.

But he doesn’t tell you you must believe to be saved. And that’s why no Brianians exist today. Except me. You see, I am a Brianian, in many ways. To be more exact, I’m an un-orthodox Christian. I answer Dawkins by saying, ‘Belief is not that special.’ Like Anglicans who have come to believe different things from one another – a process which is currently demolishing their denomination – I don’t value the synchronizing of belief with fellow Christians very highly. I’d love to find a church which is content to differ on every aspect of theology, and in which preaching is the asking of good questions and the making of good arguments, rather than the dogmatism of certain answers.

And if Dawkins is one day proven wrong to be an atheist (and presumably his meeting face to face with God would constitute an experience which would change his mind), I’d say it’s reasonable to be confident that he would not be punished by any deity possessing the attributes of the Christian God for his earlier lack of belief. A God interested enough in humanity to create him and give him an afterlife would not punish him with eternal damnation merely for using his reason to pursue a quest for truth which led him elsewhere. Isn’t it God that places him in a life without certain knowledge of those things in the first place?

Religion’s need to keep followers pinned down to a certain orthodox belief may be best summed up by Monty Python’s Life of Brian itself:

Brian: Look, you’ve got it all wrong! You don’t need to follow me, you don’t need to follow anybody! You’ve got to think for yourselves! You’re all individuals!
The Crowd (in unison): Yes! We’re all individuals!
Brian: You’re all different!
The Crowd (in unison): Yes, we are all different!
Man in Crowd: I’m not…
The Crowd: Shhh!

And accordingly, religion relies on the collectively rigid belief systems of its adherents to survive.

Human beings use their free will to pursue truth, because it’s in our nature to pursue truth. Some actually find it in Christianity, some in Islam, some in Scientology, some – like Dawkins – in atheism. But in the great, eternal scheme of things, whether we find it or not may not really matter. After all, what’s so special about belief?