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Expelled
Expelledthemovie.com

No credible challenge - Friendly atheist

Mikey Weinstein
Michael L. "Mikey" Weinstein is an attorney, businessman and former Air Force officer. He is founder and president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation and author of With God on Our Side: One Man's War Against an Evangelical Coup in America's Military (ISBN 978-0312361433) in which he describes his fight against the coercive evangelistic practices by some members of the military.

Weinstein graduated from the United States Air Force Academy in 1977 and later served as a Judge Advocate General (JAG) for ten years. He also served as an attorney in the Reagan White House.

In October 2005, Weinstein sued the United States Air Force for permitting illegal proselytization by evangelical Christian officers. U.S. District Judge James A. Parker, who presided over Weinstein v. U.S. Air Force, dismissed the case, stating, "Not a single Plaintiff has alleged any personal factual situation that has allegedly impinged on that Plaintiff’s constitutional rights since the Plaintiff left the Academy." 

in March 2006, Weinstein founded the Military Religious Freedom Foundation as a watchdog organization to protect religious freedom in the Military in accordance with Department of Defense Directive 1300.17, Accommodation of Religious Practices Within the Military Services.  

With God on Our Side
Create: Michael Weinstein Mikey Weinstein With God on Our Side (disambiguation)

With God on Our Side may refer to:
 * With God on Our Side, a song by Bob Dylan
 * With God on Our Side: One Man's War Against an Evangelical Coup in America's Military'' book by lawyer and civil rights activist Michael Weinstein
 * With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America, a book and PBS documentary

see also
 * With Oden on Our Side

update: With God on Our Side

Weinstein (disambig page)

Accommodation of Religious Practices Within the Military Services
All branches of the United States military are afforded the same rights to religious freedom as are American civilians. However, members of the Armed Forces willingly surrender on a temporary basis certain free exercise rights when it impinges on military discipline and the successful completion of a military objective. This guarantee of religious freedom is codified for the Armed Forces in Title 10, United States Code (USC), sections 3073, 3547, 5142, and 8067. Free exercise of religious freedom for military personnel is further detailed in Department of Defense Directive (DODD) 1300.17, “Accommodation of Religious Practices Within the Military Services,” which describes the commander’s responsibility to provide for religious accommodation. 

DoD Directives

Abortion
Unborn in the USA quote - 00:50:36 I had the building under surveillance for uh, months, several months before that, to make sure I wouldn't hurt like the janitor in there and to make sure that I wouldn't get caught, too. Partial birth abortion procedure was invented by Martin Haskell in Cincinnati, and I firebombed his facility in  1986, and 15 minutes before that, I  firebombed Planned Parenthood in Cincinnati.
 * John Brockhoeft article
 * Planned parenthood profile


 * use Template:Cite video

=Neil Shubin=

One of discoverers of Tiktaalik Robert R. Bensley Professor, Organismal Biology and Anatomy Associate Dean, Organismal Biology and Anatomy Professor, Committee on Evolutionary Biology Provost, The Field Museum

Interviews
Radio Times, Monday 2/18/2008

Hour One

Paleontologist and professor of anatomy NEIL SHUBIN tells us about his book "Your Inner Fish: A Journey Into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body." This is a rebroadcast, Real Audio

Neil Shubin has greatly expanded our knowledge about the origins of life. This week Shubin, a professor at the University of Chicago, unveiled an incredible discovery: the missing link between ancient sea creatures and the first creatures to walk on land.
 * Person of the Week: Neil Shubin, ABC News


 * interview, bloggingheads.tv (video)


 * Videos at U Chicago


 * NPR Interviews search

Writings

 * Your Inner Fish: A Journey Into the 3.5 Billion-Year History of the Human Body ISBN 978-0375424472.
 * Amazon page - lots of info, photos
 * Fish out of water: Your Inner Fish, richarddawkins.net
 * Review: Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin
 * worldcat search for au:Neil Shubin
 * The Great Transition at edge.org

Altruism in social sciences
If one performs an act beneficial to others with a view to gaining some personal benefit, then it isn't an altruistically motivated act. There are several different perspectives on how "benefit" (or "interest") should be defined. A material gain (for example, money, a physical reward, etc.) is clearly a form of benefit, while others identify and include both material and immaterial gains (affection, respect, happiness, satisfaction etc.) as being philosophically identical benefits.

According to one school of thought, called egoism, people can conceive and exhibit altruistic behaviors, but they cannot sustain altruistic motives. This conclusion rests most firmly on the logic that self-preservation requires possessiveness. The argument succeeds when explored situationally; for instance, as long as one's lungs are breathing in oxygen and exhaling carbon dioxide, he is increasing the toxicity of the air around him, as well as 'hoarding' breath that could have been breathed by someone else. This perspective, however, proves counterintuitive when self-preservation is eliminated from the equation. In other words, if both the good deed and its doer "end" at the same time, then the exchange must technically be considered selfless, because a non-living entity is not able to possess anything, and thus cannot receive anything in return. Some may find this logic disagreeable or counterintuitive as an ideation of altruism, because it seems to require that martyrdom--or fatal sacrifice for a greater cause--be the only actualization of altruism.

Psychological egoism can be accused of using circular logic. For instance, an egoist would not disagree with the following syllogism: "If a person has willingly performed an act, then she has manifested such intent in the form of that act. Fulfillment of one's desires is the primary requisite of satisfaction.  Ergo, a person can only willingly perform acts that result in her personal enjoyment." This logic is sometimes viewed as circular or presumptuous. Specifically, egoism leans on the assumption that satisfaction is synonymous with self-satisfaction. Such a precept automatically sidesteps counterpoint, however, and remains unfalsifiable. Thus, until empirical evidence favors one view or the other, egoism must acquiesce to uncertainty.

Humans are not exclusively altruistic towards family members, previous co-operators or potential future allies, but can be altruistic towards people they don't know and will never meet. For example, some humans donate to international charities and volunteer their time to help society's less fortunate. It can however be argued that an individual would contribute to a charity to gain respect or stature within his/her own community. Beginning with an understanding that rational human beings benefit from living in a benign universe, logically it follows that particular human beings may gain substantial emotional satisfaction from acts which they perceive to make the world a better place.

Mechanisms


Models of a causal connection between media consumption and behavior include mechanisms underlying both short-term and long-term effects of media violence exposure. In the short term, it is theorized that media violence exposure increases arousal, primes aggressive scripts and cognitions, and activates the tendency to automatically imitate. When models in the media respond violently, this activates violent cognitive scripts in the viewer's mind, primes the individual's network of aggressive concepts, and increases the individuals level of physiological arousal; all increasing the likelihood in an increase in their subsequent aggression level (meaning an increase in aggressive thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors). It is hypothesized that as arousal increases, the ability to inhibit the imitative tendency decreases (Hurley, forthcoming). The process of excitation transfer is also theorized to play a role in short-term effects.

Such theories claim that in the long term, media violence exposure leads to the acquisition and elaboration of aggressive scripts, aggressive interpretational schemas, aggressive beliefs about the world and social behavior, and desensitizes individuals to violent stimuli. However critics contend that most effects demonstrated by media violence research have been inconsistent and small (see criticisms, below).

According to McQuail’s theory (2002), violence from media, especially television is encoded in the cognitive map of viewers, and subsequent viewing of television violence helps to maintain aggressive thoughts, ideas and behaviours. Boyatzis, Matillo and Nesbit (1995, in Gunter and McAleer, 1997) investigated the children’s reaction to the popular series Mighty Morphin Power Rangers to prove that children became more aggressive in their styles of play after watching an episode from this program. The research was as follows: "Fifty-two elementary-school girls and boys, aged between 5 and 11 years were randomly assigned either to watch an episode of Power Rangers or to a control group which did not see the episode. All the children were observed both before and after the programme while playing in their classroom. The researchers reported that children who had watched the Power Rangers episode exhibited a greater number of aggressive acts the next day at play than did children who had not been shown the episode. Indeed, children who had watched the episode committed seven times as many actions classed as aggressive as did the other children." (p.104) Those children displayed aggressive acts after watching the Power Rangers and tried to act certain scenes from the television program out while being an hero and carrying a gun because it is “cool” to point it at themselves. It is worth noting however that this study, like many others did not distinguish between aggression meant to harm others, and "aggressive play" in which children mutually enjoy acting out scenes from a show. Although skeptics claim that such research does not give enough evidence to indicate a direct causal connection between media and violence, it demonstrates the creation of the aggressive social scripts that are then available for use in actual future decisions and behaviors. Although the relevance of socio-cultural contexts wasn't evaluated in this sort of study, some like Flew and Humphreys (2005) believe that it can not be easily demonstrated that media violence causes aggression.

Media violence research methods include laboratory experiments, correlational studies, and longitudinal studies. Experimental studies expose volunteers to violent media and then measure their aggression in a laboratory setting. However, some critics cite methodological flaws in these studies, leading some researchers to be skeptical of the literature which demonstrates a causal effect (e.g. Savage, 2004; Olson, 2004; Freedman, 2002). The cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker in his (2002) book, The Blank Slate criticizes this body of work for its methodological and theoretical flaws. Correlational studies measure exposure to media violence and associate these exposure levels with aggressive behavior but rarely with serious violent criminal behavior. Findings from longitudinal studies have been inconsistent in correlating early exposure to media violence with later aggressiveness beyond what is predicted from early aggressiveness alone (Huesmann & Miller, 1990; Huesmann, Moise, & Podolski, 1997; Eron, Huesmann, Lefkowitz & Walder, 1972; Johnson, et al., 2002; Huesmann & Taylor, 2002). Within these studies some measures are "statistically significant" whereas others are not (or results may vary between groups of participants) making interpretation difficult and often subject to who is interpreting the findings (people advocating a causal link versus skeptics of a causal link).

Court cases regarding media violence (most recently regarding video games) have generally not been positive regarding the convincing nature of the findings (see the summary by the Entertainment Software Association provided in external links). Most court cases find that such research does not meet standards of admissibility (e.g. Daubert standard) or fail to convincingly show harm. Similarly a recent Surgeon General's report minimized the importance of media effects in contributing to youth violence. By contrast however, most American scientific organizations such as the American Psychological Association and American Academy of Pediatrics are supportive of a link between media violence and aggression.