Transgender related medicine and government lawmaking policy is engulfed in a cesspit of misinformation and bad arguments. Unfortunately, sources of misinformation on this topic include Friendly Atheist, Science-Based Medicine, Freedom From Religion Foundation, and other fellow secularists that we generally agree with and support. Where there is misinformation there is a concomitant need to discuss and clarify.

Recently, FFRF welcomed, then erased, a reasonable post on their internet forum explaining and defending the concept of animal and vascular plant biological sex by biologist Jerry Coyne “Biology is not Bigotry” in reaction to a post that concluded the proper definition of a women is anyone who declares themself to be a women. That initial post was retained. Professor emeritus Coyne then resigned as an Honorary Board member. Richard Dawkins and Richard Pinker then also resigned in solidarity. FFRF then dismissed the entire Honorary Board, presumably to avoid the risk of such board members expressing opinions on their forum that they will opt to remove. 

Some of the content of Coyne’s post sounds questionable. In particular, I am not convinced that trans women should be disqualified from being rape counselors for women or from working in women’s shelters as he asserted. Transgender women should not be disqualified from any employment opportunities that employs men. In the U.S. about 15% of rape counselors are men and about 10% of rape victims are male. I am not aware that the male rape counselors are restricted to having only male clients. According to ChatGPT “In organizations offering rape crises services, efforts are usually made to match survivors with counselors who best meet their preferences and needs….” If FFRF had removed those claims but otherwise retained the post, or if they had disputed those claims, instead of completely removing the post, which otherwise has merit, there may have been no recriminations. Jerry Coyne has subsequently acknowledged that trans women can have female clients, the remaining issue here for him is that potential clients be told that the counselor is transgender.

Hemant Mehta labeled the three people who resigned from the FFRF Honorary Board bigots and also claimed that the Cass Review had been debunked. He is wrong on both counts. 

There is a distinction between the biological definition of sex, rooted in the empirically verified phenomena that there are two different types of gametes, one smaller (male) and the other larger (female), that merge to instantiate a new animal or vascular plant and gender. Gender identity is probably shaped by a complex interaction of genetic, hormonal and social influences. Some, but not all, transgender activists appear to be loathe to acknowledge that gender identity and biological sex sometimes conflict. They mistakenly assume if there is a conflict then the validity of transgender identity becomes suspect. They then reject, and attack, the biological definition of sex. Religiously motivated opponents of transgender medical procedures also refuse to recognize a distinction between biological sex and gender, insisting the latter must always match the former, thus denying gender is a distinct cognitive trait. The result is activism that is counter-factual, inconsistent, and counter-productive on both sides. That is a tragic mistake.

So let’s start with a few basics: That there are exactly two different gametes does not defame the biological definition of sex as being bigoted. People who defend the biological definition of sex are not thereby exhibiting or promoting bigotry. Human gender dysphoria coexists with there being exactly two different types of gametes. Transgender medical procedures as treatments for gender dysphoria are fully compatible with there being exactly two types of gametes. The three secularist former FFRF Honorary Board members who recently resigned favor granting adults the freedom to undergo transgender medical procedures. A birth certificate identifies biological sex, it does not identify gender. Biological sex is, unsurprisingly, positively correlated with gender identity, yet biology is complex and can be messy. An insistence that there must be a one to one mapping from biological sex to gender identity is primarily about defending ideology, it is not about reality, and does not merit being taken seriously.

Birth certificates identify biological sex because infants do not have an identifiable gender. For humans testes=male and ovaries=female. Ipso-facto, this is not a flip of the coin assignment that supports the circular definition of a woman as being anyone who claims to be a woman, it is an observation. The observation is not 100% guaranteed to be correct 100% of the time, there can be complications, which is why it should always be legally correctable retroactively when it was wrong due to ambiguous or misleading-appearing genitals. Replacing biological sex with gender identity in a birth certificate is a category error. That is a counter-productive mistake because it corrupts the primary, and most reliable available, record of biological sex. Biological sex is meaningful and potentially useful information, including for, and arguably especially for, trans people. A state ID and similar documents are more appropriate places to record gender.

Both biological sex and gender identity matter. For humans biological sex is about the presence of testes or ovaries prior to birth, which is fixed and unchangeable, while gender identity is a cognitive/psychological trait that could change after birth. There is some neurobiological evidence for gender identity residing in the hypothalamus and, as such, it may be somewhat immutable.  Which one should take priority when there is a conflict depends on the context and potentially on other related factors such as puberty, hormones, functional genitals, chromosomes, various physical traits that have different probability distributions (usually as a result of puberty), etc. There are privacy, time, effort, and cost/benefit tradeoffs to take into account. This complexity should not be denied or ignored. Both transgender activists who deny the reality of the role of conflicting biological sex, and religious conservatives who deny the reality of the role of conflicting gender identity, cannot be trusted to advocate for realistic and ethical transgender policies.

For example, Hemant Mehta says “if simply saying you’re trans gives you a competitive advantage, it’s downright bizarre we haven’t seen trans athletes winning every women’s sport in which they can play.” Notice how centering the “simply saying you׳re trans” disregards the underlying complexity of the conflicting biological sex component that is a common trait among transgender people, as if biological sex has no role, while also falsely asserting that it suffices to demonstrate there is no competitive advantage for men merely by observing some top tier athletic women routinely beat some lower tier athletic men, all in one sentence. Here is a list of over 100 trans women winners. The numbers of trans women medal winners are increasing every year. 

There are multiple examples of men performing within mid-range when competing against other men who promptly win a medal for the first time after declaring themselves to be a women and qualifying to compete instead in the women’s division where they invariably rank higher than they did when they competed against men. Look on the internet at the female and male results for various athletic competitions that list the rank and performance numbers. Merge the male and female lists and recalculate the rankings. Here is my prediction: At least nine times out of ten, for the combined list the male rankings as a percentage of the total population will go up and the female rankings will go down. This is an almost inevitable result of redefining a woman (or a man) as any person who declares themself to be a woman (or a man), full stop, as if biological sex has no relevance at all, which is fictional nonsense in the sports competition context. Biology, like the universe more generally, is unfortunately amoral, it does not always operate in harmony with social justice criteria and our ability to change its operation is limited.

Testosterone during puberty results in taller heights, wider shoulders and longer arm-spans, narrower hips, larger bones and hearts, greater lung capacity, muscles that are easier to build and harder to lose with more resistant connective tissues, leaner body mass and higher levels of hemoglobin, the protein that carries oxygen within the blood. Post-puberty addition of testosterone will probably have some, but not all, of the same impacts. Post-puberty suppression of testosterone is slow to reverse the impact of male puberty and such post male puberty testosterone suppression cannot reverse many of the physical changes that advantage males in sports competition. So there is an asymmetry here that is relevant for policy in the sports competition context. And for perspective, the additional testosterone arguably merits being characterized as a little “toxic” because it may bear some responsibility for the tendencies of males overall to have a shorter lifespan, to be more prone to resorting to violence, and to be more likely to engage in criminal behavior than females. 

Hemant Mehta tends towards being a one-sided, pugilistic, partisan who starts with his conclusions, searches for any information that he can cite to argue in support of those conclusions, systematically and selectively tosses out the information that contradicts his preferred conclusion, and exhibits few scruples with regard to whether his arguments represent the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. He is a propagandist for particular conclusions regardless of whether or not the overall available evidence actually favors those conclusions. Having said that, it also needs to be said that his blog is a good source of current event information. His blog is a welcome presence, I just wish the commentary on some topics, or at least this topic, was more thoughtful and more balanced.

Regarding the Cass Review supposedly being “debunked”, I recommend reading all three parts of Jessie Singal’s thorough debunking of the attempted but failed debunking of the Cass Review: “Yale’s “Integrity Project” Is Spreading Misinformation About The Cass Review And Youth Gender Medicine: Part 3”. Please keep in mind that the controversy among the experts here is confined to the treatment of minors. Here is his conclusion (which I agree with):

Maybe I spent too much time on this, but “An Evidence-Based Critique of ‘The Cass Review’ on Gender-affirming Care for Adolescent Gender Dysphoria” is a calumnious 30-car pileup of scientific misinformation. It offers an ugly, remarkably messy case study on what happens when highly credentialed, trusted experts simply stop caring about the truth, when they let the pull of political righteousness guide them instead. Legitimate  disagreement is one thing, but a paper this flawed and this dishonest should leave a mark on any institution or scientist who promotes it. It’s really that bad. Yale Law School should be exceptionally careful about promoting the work of “The Integrity Project” going forward.

It does no good to cover up, deny, and try to censor inconvenient arguments by declaring people who advance such arguments to be bigots. Ditto for accusing people who dare to try to unselectively and impartially side with the facts, regardless of who the facts favors or disfavors, as being guilty of siding with the enemy which is then somehow translated, via a leap over logic, all the way into their actually being the enemy. Nor should adults be given a veto over critical responses to their favored arguments for merely asserting that such criticism harms them, as if they are entitled to being coddled like immature children who are incapable of accepting criticism.

We should be willing to acknowledge that while religion is ideology, it does not automatically follow that all of the more secular opponents of religiously motivated social conservatism are automatically reliable advocates for best fit with the overall available relevant evidence conclusions. That can be a complex and difficult goal to achieve. It has a dependency on debate from a broad range of different perspectives. When a damaging anti-intellectual narrowness, intolerance, and reliance on censorship prevails the result is that bad arguments, ignorance, and misinformation are protected and proliferate.

My speculation is that transgender practitioners are understandably afraid of liability lawsuits. We know too little to accurately identify who will benefit and who will not benefit from transgender treatments in advance. IMO, to try to protect themselves, transgender practitioners have adopted a “gender affirming care” mantra, under which they claim their responsibility is limited to treating whoever requests treatment, in part as a way of escaping responsibility for carefully diagnosing and skeptically evaluating their patients need for the transgender treatments. Holding practitioners responsible for vetting their patients before treating them is not a “double standard”. There is a significant risk that pursuing such a policy of avoiding responsibility for what happens to their patients can eventually back-fire on some practitioners. Practitioners confront difficult choices, they can potentially also be subject to lawsuits for refusing to provide requested treatments. 

It appears to be likely that not only will some people lose out and be harmed by the gender affirming care policy, particularly when the patients include troubled minors, but also that some troubled minors have already been harmed. Individuals who identify as trans sometimes have wider confounding issues related to identity confusion. There is substantial evidence that within the cohort of minors who express gender discomfort are minors who exhibit multiple psychological symptoms and it appears some of them have been transitioned. Nevertheless, the Science Based Medicine web site withdrew and disavowed a post by one of their regular female contributors that reviewed Abigail Shrier’s controversial book “Irreversible Damage”, which focused on this important topic, presumably after overwrought complaints by transgender activists. The book’s contents may have some weaknesses and flaws that should be highlighted and criticized accordingly, see this book review. She goes too far by rejecting gender identity as being separable from biological sex, yet her book still contributes to the broader debate and should have been respected for its contribution. Instead, the book and its author were demonized and shunned. As humanists we should be concerned for the welfare of those vulnerable minors, be committed to not demonizing, slandering, and “shutting down” people we disagree with, and not be equating activism with censorship.

By Mathew Goldstein

The rate of non-medical school vaccination exemptions granted to students in Maryland on parental request, based on the Maryland census as reported by the CDC, has been increasing. Here are the numbers:

2023-24  out of 63,224 students

Any Exemption 2.2% 1,393

Medical Exemption 0.7% 451

Non-Medical Exemption  1.5% 942

2022-23 out of 59,684 students:

Any Exemption 1.9% 1,143

Medical Exemption 0.5% 307

Non-Medical Exemption  1.4% 836

2021-22 out of 53,866 students

Any Exemption 1.5% 801

Medical Exemption 0.5% 258

Non-Medical Exemption  1.0% 543

2020-21 out of 65,764  students (census plus voluntary private responses)

Any Exemption 0.9% 610

Medical Exemption 0.2% 109

Non-Medical Exemption  0.8% 501

The non-medical exemption rate in 2018 was 1.1% and in 2019 was 1.0%, so the rate dropped suddenly in 2020 before increasing again. This could be an anomalous two year side effect of the COVID vaccination campaign. Disregarding the 2020-2021 pandemic years, the non-medical exemptions have still increased significantly from the 1.1% reached in 2018 to the most recent 1.5%. Non-medical exemptions are 2-4 times more frequent than medical exemptions.

The Robert F. Kennedy Jr. independent campaign for President that relied on foolish anti-vaccination rhetoric failed. Transactional, sycophant rewarding, self-serving, Trump praised Kennedy after Kennedy endorsed him, saying he would appoint Kennedy to be chair of a commission on vaccine safety and integrity if he moves into the White House. Allowing non-medical exemptions for contagious disease vaccinations that have been carefully empirically vetted for safety and effectiveness is so obviously counterproductive that no more effort should be needed to argue for this assertion than to argue for vehicle seat belts. A recent study found positive correlations between 22 virus infections, some of which can be avoided by vaccinations, and increased risk of experiencing subsequent neurological problems [Nueron, Volume 111, Issue 7P1086-1093.E2April 05, 2023] (reminder: get your annual flu shot). “The largest effect association was between viral encephalitis exposure and Alzheimer’s disease,” the researchers write in the study. “Influenza with pneumonia was significantly associated with five of the six neurodegenerative diseases studied. We also replicated the Epstein-Barr/multiple sclerosis association. Some of these exposures were associated with an increased risk of neurodegeneration up to 15 years after infection.” Regardless of who is our next president, state laws that grant non-medical contagious disease vaccination exemptions should be retired. Maryland law should also make it mandatory for providers of the state mandated vaccinations to report all such vaccinations to the state vaccination database. 

Furthermore, insofar as state law nevertheless does permit contagious disease vaccination exemptions, or any other exemptions for anything that is by default legally mandated, both religious and non-religious individuals and families should be provided equal opportunity to qualify for that exemption. Laws which unnecessarily single out religious beliefs exclusively as the sole acceptable non-medical justification for obtaining contagious disease vaccination mandate exemptions, as is the case in Maryland (it is plausible that in practice non-religious exemption requests are being granted in Maryland, I do not know if the religious qualification restriction is actually being meaningfully enforced), are improperly biased against non-religious citizens. 

Our Supreme Court should be willing to acknowledge that laws exhibiting this bias against non-religious citizens are in conflict with the Establishment and Equal Protection Clauses of the constitution. As we know, the current Supreme Court majority is unfriendly towards those legal provisions, but we can still ask our state lawmakers to remove this bias from state laws. That these exemption laws are often restricted to religious believers may be a symptom of a desire to limit the harm by limiting the number of exemptions granted while avoiding acknowledging that granting such exemptions is bad policy, in other words it is a way for lawmakers to both have their cake and eat it.

By Mathew Goldstein

Richard Dawkins’s Facebook account was deleted after he posted on X that genetically male boxers should not fight women (he stated in a tweet on July 29, “Two men, pretending to be women, are being allowed to compete against real women in the Olympics”). The famous evolutionary biologist posted on X this morning about what he characterized to be censorship, writing that as of this morning [August 10] he was not provided with the reason for the sudden removal of his account. Dawkins’s tweet, quoted below, was reportedly viewed over 10 million times.

My entire @facebook account has been deleted, seemingly (no reason given) because I tweeted that genetically male boxers such as Imane Khalif (XY undisputed) should not fight women in Olympics. Of course my opinion is open to civilised argument. But outright censorship?

While it is possible that there is some other reason for the deletions, it is not believable that a mass deletion of his entire account, or nearly his entire account (there is a rumor that two of his Facebook posts were retained), if deliberate and not accidental, is justifiable. Update: It has now been reported that Meta concluded his account was hacked and his account has been reinstated.

It is certainly reasonable to believe, and to accordingly assert, that biological males should be blocked from competing with biological females in Olympic boxing. Why have a separate female category in boxing, and various other athletic competitions, if not for the purpose of excluding biological males? 

I am inclined to agree that the International Olympic Committee (IOC)  should be vetting athletes competing as females and disqualify those athletes who are found to have XY chromosomes, testes, and male hormones. Such athletes are biological males. A non-invasive blood test can determine both chromosomes and hormones. That is what the International Boxing Association (IBA) claims it relied on when it decided to disqualify the two boxers, Imame Khelif of Algeria and Lin Yu-ting of Taiwan. The test was conducted in labs approved by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) . It has been widely reported that IBA has a history of financial, governance, and corruption problems, but the reputation of the IBA does not explain why the IOC opts to avoids sex testing (see “Are the Olympic Boxers’ XY DNA Test Results ‘Russian Disinformation’?” by Colin Wright).  It appears that IBA disqualifies anyone with XY chromosomes. A combination of XY with a male hormone profile would arguably be better because it would allow Swyer syndrome females who have XY chromosomes to compete with other females. Maybe additional testing could be required when needed to resolve remaining ambiguities. The details of what vetting methods are the most practical and effective can be hashed out by the experts. There may not be a method that is both practical to implement and 100% effective, so some compromises may be unavoidable. Meanwhile, as a non-expert observer, I am skeptical that avoiding such sex vetting altogether, as was the case for boxing at this Olympics, is the best approach.

Unfortunately, many news organizations are reporting an overly simplistic, one-sided perspective of two winning female boxers being unfairly smeared with spurious accusations that they are cheaters. Their perspective appears to be that when an athlete was identified as female at birth and continues to self-identify as female as an adult that it is somehow uncouth to question the integrity of their self-identification as it applies to the athletic competition context. This superficial perspective is unperceptive to differences/disorders of sex development (DSD) that manifest as males (they have internal testes, not ovaries) with genitals that resemble female genitals and/or to the impact of sex on athletic performance. 

Update: Khelif’s coach, Georges Cazorla, recently confirmed that Khelif has both a male karyotype and high testosterone, a combination consistent with being a male who has a DSD that contributed to his being misidentified as female at birth.

By Mathew Goldstein

In his 2016 book “The Big Picture: On the Origin of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself”, theoretical cosmologist Sean Carroll skillfully elucidates a modern, empiricist anchored, philosophy of “poetic naturalism” that starts with, is guided by, and fully embraces, the relevant knowledge we have accumulated to date. Purely rationalistic philosophy is a subject without an object which is OK when the subject is mathematics but is otherwise mostly useless sophistry.  Sean Carroll, an empiricist who has studied philosophy in addition to physics, clearly recognizes this distinction.

A big picture philosophy starts with the Core Theory which is ekinological. The Core Theory consists of the Standard Model that describes quantum particles and fields plus the Theory of Relativity that adds non-quantum spacetime gravity. It can be operationally represented with a single equation for “the amplitude to undergo a transition from one configuration to another in the path-integral formalism of quantum mechanics”. The amplitude translates into a probability of transitioning to a particular next configuration. The causes and effects, reasons why, purposes, and goals of teleology are all absent from the ground level Core Theory. Yet causes and effects, reasons why, purposes, and goals have central roles in our day to day lives.  

Sean Carroll argues that we are rationally compelled on the available evidence to reconcile these discrepancies by adopting a pluralistic, multi-level, description of our universe. At the ground level is the Core Theory. The higher level phenomena emerge from, and can be mapped back to, the Core Theory. The emergent properties are distinct and real, their secondary status as higher level phenomena does not diminish the centrality of emergence as a substantial and important component of how the universe operates. The Core Theory does not by itself provide a complete description of reality. Higher level emergent properties are as essential to our understanding of the operation of our universe as the ground level Core Theory. 

Therefore, when we describe how our universe operates, the appropriate language to use depends on the “domain of applicability” where the topic being discussed resides. Terminology that describes the Core Theory ground level context should not be intermixed with language that describes the higher emergent level contexts. Nor, for example, is terminology that is applicable at the emergent levels of chemistry, or cellular biology, always appropriate when the context is the level of a multi-celled organism, etc. This overlaps with Daniel Dennett’s perspective “First, materialism reigns, and the major philosophical problems of consciousness, meaning, and free will all have accounts that owe more to biology than to physics. The beginning of life is the beginning of reasons and meaning and information (in one of its most important senses);” [I Have Been Thinking, p. 390].

The conventional meanings and connotations of some commonly utilized words conflict with a poetic naturalism perspective. Therefore, to communicate accurately, we will sometimes be better off either avoiding some potentially misleading words or adding clarifications. In his book Sean Carroll includes clarifications, and selects words, to avoid miscommunication. Yet he does not directly discuss this general communication complication. This is a significant and unfortunate omission.

We need to be careful to ensure that our higher level context descriptions are consistent with the lower level context descriptions in the sense that we can map what happens at the higher levels back to the lower levels. At the same time, we should avoid mistakenly insisting on a one to one, bidirectional, mapping. There can be many lower level configurations that map to the same  higher level phenomena. Emergent properties that are absent at the lowest level, such as the arrow of time, can very much impact our experiences and interactions. The difference between past and future is an example of an emergent property that is too fundamental for us to ignore even though it is absent from the ground level Core Theory. 

It also needs to be said that not everyone is onboard to the notion that time is an emergent property. Theoretical physicist Lee Smolin, while he recommends this book, disagrees with that and various other arguments found therein. It is worthwhile to read his counter-arguments in his review of this book https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/science-big-picture-mysteries-remain/. For example, Smolin argues that “We know exactly how to make a robot, but have no idea how to design or construct a human being (except the old fashioned way). How can we confidently claim that they are the same? The argument seems to be that the universe is a machine, so humans and robots — as subsystems of that universe — must be machines too. This begs the question, because different machines operate by different principles, and the principles needed to make our minds comprehensible remain unknown.” On this particular point I am inclined to agree with Smolin.

Unlike Smolin, Sean Carroll rejects David Chamber’s argument that unconscious zombies that are physically identical to conscious people and that mimic the behavior of conscious people are conceivable which Chambers then claims implies consciousness is a property of the universe. Sean Carroll says consciousness is an emergent property of particular physical systems and therefore is an inevitable property of such physical systems, so such philosophical zombies are inconceivable. I am inclined to agree with Carroll’s perspective here, along with most of what Carroll argues in his book. But to be fair, I have not read a book by Smolin, if I did then maybe he would convince me otherwise.

The central disagreement appears to be whether matter has additional, fundamental, irreducible properties beyond those described by the laws of physics as they are understood today. Smolin says yes, Carroll argues no. After reading Carroll’s book, it is my opinion that Carroll has compelling arguments that the known laws of physics are incompatible with the existence of such additional, fundamental, irreducible properties. Smolin is no doubt right to point out that our current understanding is still cloudy, giving us some reason to think we may be missing significant details which, if eventually found, could substantially revise our big picture understanding. However, citing such a possibility is not a particularly strong refutation of Carroll’s arguments.

The United States Government Publishing Office hosts Ben’s Guide, which is self-described thusly: “Ben’s Guide to the U.S. Government, a service of the Government Publishing Office (GPO), is designed to inform students, parents, and educators about the Federal Government, which issues the publications and information products disseminated by the GPO’s Federal Depository Library Program. It is our hope that Ben’s Guide to the U.S. Government fulfills that role.” They feature a web page titled Oath of Office which makes several misleading claims about presidential oath history.

Until recently they made the following statement with no qualifications: “The President-elect places the left hand on the Bible, raises the right hand, and takes the Oath as directed by the Chief Justice.“ Recognizing that this was not always true, they removed that sentence and added this short paragraph: “The Constitution does not say what the swearing-in must include. While most Presidents-elect chose a Bible, as George Washington did, John Quincy Adams used a book of law, and Teddy Roosevelt did not use any book.” While this is now arguably more accurate, it is still wrong.

First of all, George Washington’s second inauguration did not feature a Bible, so this must be referring to his first inauguration. There was no federal Chief Justice nor any applicable federal oath law (aside from the words of the presidential oath in the constitution) at that time. The oath was therefore administered in New York by the New York State chief judge, Chancellor Robert Robert Livingston, according the New York State law. Swearing on, and kissing, the Bible were state legal mandates (the only legal alternative was to uplift one hand, or both hands , and swear to the “everliving God”) that were repealed in the early 1800’s. George Washington did not choose a Bible, the Bible was imposed on him.

Secondly, John Quincy Adams did not swear his oath of office on a book of laws as an alternative to doing so on a Bible as implied. He read the oath of office from the law book. It is of historical significance that Chief Justice Marshall relied on a law book for the presidential oath recitations. He administered the oath of office nine times, more often than any other Chief Justice, starting with Thomas Jefferson in 1801. It is likely that most (maybe all) of those early inaugural oath recitations were read from a small law book (a Bible was added for Andrew Jackson’s inauguration). Therefore, it is misleading to imply that John Q. Adams’ inauguration was unique in this regard by singling him out as an exception.

The National Archives has a “Founders Online” web site that focuses on “CORRESPONDENCE AND OTHER WRITINGS OF SEVEN MAJOR SHAPERS OF THE UNITED STATES” one of whom is Thomas Jefferson. A section titled “Second Inaugural Address: Editorial Note” cites “The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 45, 11 November 1804 to 8 March 1805, ed. James P. McClure et al. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2021, pp. 625–638.” The first sentence of the eighth paragraph describes his second inauguration thusly “On finishing the address, Jefferson kissed the Bible, swore the oath of office administered by Chief Justice John Marshall, and bowed.” 

In 2010, the National Archives entered into a cooperative agreement with The University of Virginia Press to create the Founders Online site. David Sewell, Manager of Digital Initiatives and the Rotunda Imprint at the University of a Virginia Press, contacted James P. McClure, General Editor, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, to verify his source for this. It turns out that the source cited for “kissed the Bible” is private correspondence written by British diplomat Augustus Foster in a 1 July 1805 letter to Frederick Foster, his older brother. A. Foster was writing a few months after the event. The contents of the letter imply that he attended the inauguration, but the phrase he uses in his letter is “kissed the book”. This claim is not corroborated by any other witness.  

McClure acknowledges that Foster wrote “book”, not “Bible”. He explains why he changed “book” to “Bible” as follows: “… but I cannot come up with any other book that would fit the bill. It was established English (and by then American) custom to swear oaths on the Bible in such settings. Jefferson respected those traditions and did not reject the Bible. I assume that the Bible would have been used for the swearing-in by Marshall as a matter of course. As for Jefferson’s kissing of the book, the fact that no one commented on that makes me think that it may have been customary and not out of the ordinary. It is possible too that Jefferson wanted to make a point by demonstrating that he was not in fact an atheist despite opponents’ attacks on him with reference to religion.”

The Bible in American Law and Politics: A Reference Guide, 2020 – Page 389 (https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Bible_in_American_Law_and_Politics.html?id=s-nyDwAAQBAJ) contains a section titled “Presidential Inaugurations” with the following second paragraph: “In 1969, the National Cathedral displayed all known presidential inaugural Bibles. They were unable to locate inaugural Bibles from [GW’s 2nd inauguration, &] Presidents John Adams through John Tyler or from Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore, or Franklin Pierce (Presidential Inaugural Bibles 1969, 7). John Quincy Adams noted in his diary for 6 March 1821 that Chief Justice John Marshall “had brought a volume on laws on which to take the oath, and Marshall might have done so for the  previous presidents as well (Presidential Inaugural Bibles 1969, 7).” The wording “on which to take the oath” above is a little sloppy, the oath was actually read from the book, and there was no other book, thus no Bible. 

A description of J. Q. Adam’s inauguration appears in the March 12, 1825 Niles Weekly Register. John Quincy Adams said that he thought the Bible should be reserved for strictly religious purposes. Four years earlier, he attended James Monroe inauguration with Chief Justice Marshall administering the oath of office. J. Q. Adam’s diary for 6 March 1821 noted that the previous day “At this Ceremony the Chief-Justice merely held the book, the President repeating the Oath in the words prescribed by the Constitution.” The context implies there was only one book (“the book”) and that book was a law book from which the oath of office was read by President Monroe. So J.Q. Adams inauguration subsequently followed the same law book reading protocol, without a Bible, that he had previously witnessed.

A recent search of the Library of Congress newspaper databases found, unsurprisingly, no evidence that there was a Bible at Virginian Thomas Jefferson’s second inauguration. Such a no-Bible-is-evidenced result is par for the course for the first six presidents, with an exception for the first inauguration because it was conducted under New York State law that mandated a Bible. Kissing the Bible persisted among northern states after the revolution as a legal requirement that they inherited from the legal framework set in place by Royal Governor Sir Edmund Andros. Over time those states changed course and followed the lead of Virginia and the federal government in rejecting the authoritarian and discriminatory theocratic Bible mandates. The last president to kiss a Bible at their inauguration was Truman in 1949.

The Bible kiss seals the promises just made and as such occurs after the oath recitation, whereas Foster says the book was kissed before the oath recitation. One of the purposes of the British legal mandate to kiss a King James Bible was to publicly demonstrate fealty to the same British monarchy that was militarily defeated by the recent armed rebellion against its rule. The failure to repeat that British legal mandate in U.S. federal law implies somewhat less than full respect for that particular British tradition. Similarly, Thomas Jefferson’s redactions to the Bible imply a less than full acceptance of the Bible on his part. And relevant to the governmental business context of a presidential inauguration, Thomas Jefferson endorsed the phrase “separation of church and state” which links individual freedom of conscience to secular government. One of his projects was creating the University of a Virginia, the first public university in the country. He fought to retain a ban on teaching religion there against the lobbying of evangelical churches and the Federalists.

Foster was clearly aware of the nationalist perspective that favored a religion attached monarchy. In an April 19, 1802 letter to his mother, discussing “… the great ceremony celebrating the peace and establishment of Religion” in Paris the day before, Foster wrote: “Mounier, Camille Jourdan [a French writer], and most of that set consider it a deathblow to the hopes of Louis 18, who is now called Le Pretedant, as he went till now hand in hand with religion, and as religion was the principle link which linked his interests to the interests of the Honettes Gens [honest people] of France, because Atheism was encouraged and Piety laughed at. Now that the government proclaims Liberty of Conscience, … and that they see they may pray without the aid of Louis, it will weaken his interest very much in the country.”

Foster’s letter is not only silent about the type book, it is also silent about whose book it was, where the book was located, the size of the book, who was holding the book, etc. The simplest explanation for why Foster said “book” is that he did not know what type of book it was. People who are honest tend to refrain from unnecessarily adding assertions that are beyond their knowledge. The law book likely provided to the president elects by Chief Justice Marshall for them to read their oath of office from was characterized as “small” by a witness at Jackson’s second inauguration [THE SALEM GAZETTE (Mass.), Mar. 12, 1833: “ John Marshall rose, ascended the steps, was received by General Jackson standing, to whom he presented a small book with his right hand, containing the oath, and with his left, the Bible. The General took hold of each, and having read the oath, kissed the book and Mr. Van Buren did the same. Here the ceremony ended.”]. During the 1800 election campaign Thomas Jefferson was characterized by some of his opponents as a radical Jacobin who, if elected president, would unleash a lawless reign of terror on the nation similar to what recently transpired in France. Maybe Jefferson kissed a small law book, provided to him by Chief Justice Marshall, that contained a copy of the constitution, sometime prior to reading the oath from that same book, to emphasize his respect for those laws?

A conclusion regarding what type of book he kissed at his inauguration can go either way when it is based on nothing more substantial than biased cherry picking of conjectures regarding the possible motivations of the president elect and the Chief Justice with assumptions to fill in the gaps. Furthermore, people are not always self-consistent. Jefferson was critical of slavery, which fundamentally conflicted with some of his expressed values, yet he relied on slave labor. Accordingly, unless some heretofore unknown eyewitness account that there was a Bible at that inauguration is found, notwithstanding the editorial note published on the National Archives web site and The Jefferson Papers claiming he kissed a Bible, there is room for doubt that there was a Bible. The only reliable way for us to know is for someone who witnessed the event to tell us. We lack sufficient justification to declare there was a Bible as an established historical fact without a witness from the past telling us there was a Bible. Anyone, regardless of their credentials or authority, who claims otherwise is overstepping, and should be called out for doing so.

Founders Online is funded, in part, by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, a statutory body affiliated with the National Archives and Records Administration whose mission is encouraging the use of documentary sources relating to the history of the United States. The Papers of Thomas Jefferson is also partially government funded by the NHPRC and by the National Endowment for the Humanities. James Sewell averred that the “opinions and interpretations in the notes to documents in Founders Online are those of the editorial projects that created the original editions, and do not represent official views of the NHPRC or National Archives.” However, such a disclaimer does not appear on Founders Online.

Blaise Pascal’s argument for truth from faith

 By Mathew Goldstein

Vance Morgan is the author of “Freelance Christianity” on the Progressive Christianity channel of Patheos.  Patheos describes itself as “… the premier online destination to engage in the global dialogue about religion and spirituality, and to explore and experience the world’s beliefs.” His most recent post is “The Heart Has Its Reasons . . .: My Evidence Against Atheism”.  He defends Christianity as a “ first principle”, quoting Blaise Pascal.

“We know the truth, not only through reason, but also through the heart. It is through the latter that we know first principles, and reason, which has no part in it, tries in vain to challenge them. Reason must use this knowledge from the heart and instinct, and base all its arguments on it.”

He says “the problem is the atheist’s refusal to accept that there are more kinds of evidence than rational and more sources of belief than reason.”, again quoting Blaise Pascal.

“Principles are felt, propositions are proved; all with certainty, though in different ways. And it is as useless and absurd for reason to demand from the heart proofs of its first principles before accepting them, as it would be for the heart to demand from reason an intuition of all demonstrated propositions before receiving them.”

Of course, we disagree. My take is that Blaise Pascal was mistaken. This is not all that surprising surprising given that Pascal was writing in the 17th century. In the 17th century it was arguably easier to be both a top tier intellectual and be a theist, and maybe even be a self-described Christian, without obvious self-contradictions. This is because our knowledge of how the universe works has advanced since the 17th century, and what we have learned over the last three centuries favors ontological naturalism.

Mr. Pascal decided that salvation was by grace, not by human merit, and he defended overcoming uncertainty by relying on faith. Yet there is no testable evidence favoring any theological concept of salvation. So there are no reliable grounds, none!, for concluding in favor of the theological concept of grace as a path to salvation, all the more so given that grace also lacks supporting testable evidence. Once we go fishing for conclusions about how the universe works without anchoring our boat in testable evidence, the remaining constraints on which conclusions we reach are far too arbitrary and feeble to give us even a reasonable chance of landing on non-fiction. Insofar as atheists recognize this, and theists do not, it is the theists who are mistaken, not the atheists.

Mr. Vance claims that Christianity “provides the best cognitive framework for understanding myself and the world around me than I have ever encountered”. No religion comes close to qualifying as a good framework for understanding the world, let alone the ‘best framework’. This is why scientists are not hired based on their religious credentials, beliefs, or practices. They are hired based on their secular (non-religious) academic training and track record of productive output. The Bible in particular offers a mistaken, pre-scientific, perspective reflecting the ignorance of the people who wrote it. In Genesis we learn why people die (retaliation for Eve and Adam eating an apple, a.k.a. original sin), why there are rainbows (rainbows are a sign of God’s covenant), where rain comes from (the springs of the deep and the floodgates of the heavens), why snakes slither on the ground (retaliation for a serpent persuading Eve and Adam to eat an apple), why there is pain during childbirth (retaliation for Eve eating an apple), why there are thorns (retaliation for Adam eating an apple), why there are thousands of different languages (retaliation for people disobeying God). We also learn that stars are hung in the firmament above the mountains. 

Mr. Vance ends his defense of Christian theism thusly:  “Most importantly, the best evidence in support of faith (or whatever you choose to call it) is a changed life. That’s my own story.” There are many factors that go into “a changed life”. When people who were theists become atheists they sometimes say the conversion changed their life for the better. Is whether or not our life changed a valid measure, let alone “the best” measure”, of the accuracy of our ontological beliefs? Throughout history there are examples of many happy people being wrong, people who arguably could have been happy without being mistaken. It needs to be said that being mistaken, even when well-intentioned, is a potential source of misdirected, and harmful, behavior. 

Principles and ethics are applied to the factual context. Thusly “the heart”, in the sense of principles and ethics, remains intact and an active participant within a facts chronologically first approach. The sequence is first, determine the relevant facts to the best of our abilities, second, apply ethical concerns to our decisions to the best of our abilities. They are not incompatible with each other. On the contrary, we need the facts to get our ethics right, which is why getting the facts right places first chronologically. This linkage with facts is always needed for everything that needs a non-fictional basis.

This does not mean there are no conflicts or complications. Ethical considerations range from clear cut and easy to ambiguous and difficult. There can be uncertainties about the facts, uncertainties about the past, present, and future, uncertainties about the ethics, multiple competing considerations that favor different conclusions, time constraints along with a slew of other constraints, etc. My guess is that there are almost enough non-fictional books documenting human weaknesses and flaws to fill a library. Add the fictional literature and the typical library will probably be short of shelf space. 

Furthermore, facts regarding how the universe works are not in and of themselves ethical. They are two different to categories. There can be a need to actively intervene to pushback against the negative implications of the facts when it is feasible to do so to realize better outcomes. For example, global warming, malaria, plastic pollution, carcinogens, poverty, crime, etcetera are examples of facts we should be pushing back against. Blaise Pascal’s argument relies on a category error for special pleading. He is selectively transferring particular fact category claims over to ethical category claims to exempt those particular fact claims from scrutiny. When we start with a commitment to believing that an all knowing and all good God created the universe we have set the stage for conflating factual claims with ethical claims.

Any ideology, most definitely including secular ideologies, that disregard, that override, that contradict, that denigrate, the best fit with the available evidence conclusions are potential additional sources of misdirected behaviors. Selectively overlooking, or denigrating, both the available evidence and competent epistemology more generally, are distinguishing traits of ideology. Religion has no monopoly on ideology, secular ideologies are equally remiss and culpable. The difference is that all religions are ideologies. Secular humanists should not be exempting secular ideologies from critical scrutiny. Ideologies tend to do more harm than good.

Religious free exercise is one of our first amendment legal principles. There are multiple different legal principles and they sometimes conflict with each other, which is why legal principles are not absolute. Religious freedom is not a shield that protects criminal activity. Claiming that God wants you to seize someone’s property is not a sufficient argument for legalizing theft.

Government stay at home policies that restrict the size of public gatherings, or require wearing face masks, or require maintaining some distance from other people, to protect the health and economic welfare of the local community from a contagious disease, are not unconstitutional or tyrannical because they interfere with religious free exercise. Many religious worship congregations acknowledge their communal responsibilities and some have moved religious services online or outdoors with distancing. But too many of the governments within the United States have risked the health and economic welfare of their citizens by carving out exemptions for religious institutions so that those institutions can continue to operate with few restrictions while similarly situated non-religious institutions cannot.

Maryland is an example of this. Governor Hogan has declared that “Social, community, recreational, leisure, and sporting gatherings and events of more than 10 people (“large gatherings and events”) are hereby prohibited at all locations and venues”. But he then singled out religious facilities for an exemption (as of May 15), declaring that “ churches, synagogues, mosques, temples, and other similar religious facilities of any faith … may open to the general public“ with a fifty percent each capacity limit.

Both Prince George’s and Montgomery Counties, in contrast, are currently not discriminating between religious and non-religious facilities. The state and county wording are identical except that the state omits “religious” and “spiritual” from its list of gatherings that are limited to ten people. County Executives Angela Alsobrooks and Marc Elrich both declared (as of May 14 and May 15 respectively) “… social, community, spiritual, religious, recreational, leisure, and sporting gatherings and events (“large gatherings and events”) of more than 10 people are hereby prohibited at all locations and venues …”.

Laws designed to protect public health and safety are constitutional when they are applied neutrally, across the board, without favoritism between competing religions and  religious and anti-religious orientations. Thus, if plays, concerts, sporting events, lectures, etc., activities are restricted, then religious services posing similar negative risks may, and should, also be similarly restricted. A virus doesn’t discriminate between someone reciting a prayer or giving a lecture. Government officials should respond to a non-discriminatory virus with a non-discriminatory application of the same policy to all non-essential gatherings, religious and non-religious. Insofar as counties have leeway to set their own policies they should consider not following the Governor’s lead with respect to setting different standards for religious and non-religious gatherings.

We want to return as soon as possible to a normal life while minimizing disruptions and sacrifices. Our return to a normal life, however, is being made more difficult by some clergy, who are resisting bans on large gatherings, and by some elected officials, who are defining government policies to allow larger gatherings for risky religious activities than for equally risky non-religious activities.

Another weakness with these policies is that they tend to be incomplete, specifying only the conditions triggering the phase out of the precautionary policies without specifying the triggering conditions for re-applying the precautionary policies. Contagious diseases exhibit a tendency to wax and wane over time. Weakening a policy that is effective in inhibiting the spread of a disease will tend to hasten the spread of the disease. A good policy to manage a contagious disease would be a better policy if it were defined to self-adjust in both directions.

By Mathew Goldstein

The Free Speech Center at Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU) has created “The First Amendment Encyclopedia” with hundreds of articles, one of which, “So Help Me God”, was written by the dean of the Honors College at MTSU, and professor of political science, John Vile. The article begins by citing Michael Newdow’s 2008 lawsuit against Chief Justice Roberts in anticipation of his adding those four words to the presidential oath of office. 

Before discussing the contents of that article we need to discuss the lawsuit. The “causes of action” in the complaint filed with court are worth reading, see https://docs.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/district-of-columbia/dcdce/1:2008cv02248/134560/1. The first thing to note is that the complaint cites six “causes of action” counts that cover two different components of the presidential inaugurations. The first count targets the unauthorized alteration of the constitutional oath of office by the Chief Justice. The second count targets the government sponsored invocations to god and benedictions in the name of god by invited clergy. The lawsuit names two sets of defendants with the Chief Justice being the defendant for the “so help me God” component of the lawsuit while clergy are the defendants for the invocation and benedictions component of the lawsuit. Both counts argue a violation of the Establishment Clause. Counts three through five group together both sets of defendants and argue that they are also violating the Free Exercise Clause, the RFRA, and the fifth amendment Due Process Clause.

Paragraphs 106-108 of the first count of the complaint reads: Since 1933, “so help me God” has been used at every public inaugural ceremony, with that unauthorized alteration interposed each time by the Chief Justice of the United States. If President-elect Obama (as a black man fully aware of the vile effects that stem from a majority’s disregard of a minority’s rights, and as a Democrat fully aware of the efficacy his Republican predecessor’s “so help me God” oath additions) feels that the verbiage formulated by the Founders is so inadequate that he needs to interlard his oath with a purely religious phrase deemed unnecessary by the first twenty presidents, Plaintiffs have no objection at this time. The President, like all other individuals, has Free Exercise rights, which might permit such an alteration. No such Free Exercise rights, however, come into play on the part of the individual administering the oath to the President. 

Paragraph 123 of the first count of the complaint reads: An oath-administrator’s addition of “so help me God” to the constitutionally prescribed presidential oath of office violates every Establishment Clause test enunciated by the Supreme Court, including the neutrality test, the purpose prong of the Lemon the effects prong of the Lemon imprimatur test.

The MTSU article says: “There is, however, contemporary evidence that George Washington engaged in a symbolic equivalent when he kissed the Bible after taking his oath, and that this practice was contemporaneously also reported for the inaugurations of Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant and, at times, through the presidency of Harry S Truman (Jonassen 2012, 898).“ There is an explanation for the Bible kissing that is relevant yet omitted from the article. At the time of the first inauguration the only law covering government inaugurations was state law. The applicable New York State law at the time called for a Bible to be kissed. So if we are looking for the first federal presidential inauguration to establish a presidential inaugural standard in accord with federal law the proper place to look is the second inauguration. There was no bible at the second inauguration (regardless of assertions otherwise from propagandists such as Mr. Barton).

The MTSU article then says: “In a comprehensive study of the subject, law professor Frederick B. Jonassen, of Barry University, has concluded that the practice is probably justified not only under the historical usage principle articulated in the case of Marsh v. Chambers as well as the free exercise rights of individuals choosing to add these words to the oath.”

The historical usage principle functions as little more than a bad excuse for selectively upholding some constitutional violations, we would better off with no such unprincipled “principle”. In any case, the original context for the application of that principle was an uninterrupted history of the practice in dispute starting from the initial Congress. That context does not apply to the alteration of the oath of office by the Chief Justice. 

And the “as well as the free exercise rights” comment is even more misdirected. The plaintiffs clearly stated that the target of their lawsuit was the alteration of the oath by the oath administrator. They acknowledged that the same alteration to the oath by the oath taker could be legally justified on free exercise grounds. The actions of the oath taker is a distinct, separate, issue from the actions of the oath administrator, and the plaintiffs stated that they were not litigating the former. There is no viable free exercise concern at play for the oath administrators.

The MTSU article continues: “He [law professor Frederick B. Jonassen] also argues that the practice passes the three prongs of the Lemon Test and other contemporary tests that the U.S. Supreme Court has used in contemporary cases involving the establishment clause of the First Amendment.” How can it be argued that altering the constitutional oath of office to render it theistic is necessary for achieving a secular government purpose? Is the constitution itself unconstitutional because the presidential oath is secular? The authors of the constitution knowingly and deliberately specified a single sentence, non-theistic oath. How can it be deemed necessary for the oath administrator to prompt the oath taker to append a phrase that the oath taker could append without prompting? And if the oath taker wants the modification then where are the written requests from the president to the Chief Justice? What kind of legal procedure allows for oath administrators to accommodate requests made verbally with no recorded evidence that such requests were actually made on the initiatives of the oath takers? And on this flimsy basis how can professor Jonassen claim, as if it is a relevant jurisprudential fact, that such requests were so made, and made not merely for partisan electoral self-defense or advantage but for personal free exercise?

This MTSU article is misrepresenting the relevance of the first inauguration and the context behind the plaintiffs lawsuit. The article also discusses the “so help me god” phrase for Congressional witnesses without addressing how that impacts atheists. Imposing theistic oaths on people invited to give testimony to Congressional committees absolutely should not be happening and should be declared unconstitutional. The article is about government sponsored theism yet it says nothing at all about atheists. It is a biased “disregard atheists״ article.

My perspective is that while an inauguration ceremony event is optional, the inaugural swearing-in component is legally obligatory. Therefore, unlike the rest of the inauguration, where there can be some ambiguity regarding its non-government versus government status, the oath recitation is unambiguously always a government event covered by the Establishment Clause. The president elect can choose how the event is conducted. There can be an oath administrator or not, the oath can be recited in private or in public, etc. There are only a few common sense requirements.

We need good evidence that the oath was recited so the oath recitation should be recorded. When there is an oath administrator then the oath administered should be the unaltered legal oath unless the oath taker provided a proper free exercise justification for the oath being altered in writing in advance. It is unnecessary for an oath administer to append a religious codicil, so a request to do that could be, and probably should be, refused. Following the completion of the legal oath the president has an individual free exercise right to add, on his or her own initiative, a religious codicil of his or her choice. That there is an individual free exercise right in an oath of office recitation context is clearcut and in my view should not be controversial or disputed. To deny anyone a government office because of an oath of office restriction on religious content would be wrong and unfair, oaths of office are not supposed to be religious belief tests.

The primary effect of the oath administrators always appending the same monotheistic codicil while administering the oath is to mislead the public into concluding the oath is theistic. The effect implies the corresponding intent to conceal the awkward fact that the constitutional oath of office is non-theistic. Claims that the motive for the oath administrator to alter the oath is free exercise are not credible, that is a cover-up excuse. We should be publicly challenging both the president elect and the Chief Justice to administer the oath properly, without the monotheistic codicil, and every time it is not we should publicly criticize the practice. A president instructing the Chief Justice in writing to append the monotheistic codicil is a small improvement, but we can, and should, be doing better. Acknowledgements in some of the news media, prompted by the controversy, that the oath is non-theistic are a small win for non-establishment. Yet it is the oath takers, without the unnecessary prompting of the oath administrators, who should be appending a religious codicil of their choice on their own initiatives to government oaths.