"We even have blacks voting against the health-care bill," said Mr. Jackson. "You can't vote against health care and call yourself a black man."

Mr. Davis is running for governor in a state that John McCain won last year, and his vote was surely influenced by the reality that Alabamans aren't the biggest fans of ObamaCare. The Congressmen, to his credit, took the high ground in response to Mr. Jackson's low blow. "One of the reasons that I like and admire Rev. Jesse Jackson is that 21 years ago he inspired the idea that a black politician would not be judged simply as a black leader," he said in a statement referencing Mr. Jackson's 1988 Presidential bid. "The best way to honor Rev. Jackson's legacy is to decline to engage in an argument with him that begins and ends with race."

Psssst! Jesse...there are a number of conservatives out there who happen to be...rather dark-skinned...Thomas Sowell, John McWhorter.

I would say the real race traitor is a guy like Jackson who expects less from black people simply because they're black (remember Jesse Jackson muttering about Obama that he wanted to "cut his nuts off," apparently in response to Obama's telling black fathers to man up). Of course, Jesse Jackson's living has always depended on divisiveness, or maintaining the idea of it, between blacks and whites. And then, as Patterico notes, it's hard for a guy to stigmatize the tragic number of out-of-wedlock births in the black community when he himself is the baby-daddy of some single mother's child.

Does anybody call white congressmen race traitors for voting the way the Black Caucus recommends on some issue? Or, are they simply congressmen voting their conscience (I know, it's, well, optimistic to say that of many politicians) or the way the voters in their district would prefer?

Of course, in the spirit of fairness, it isn't just the black people who play the race card. Here's Barbara Boxer getting reamed by Black Chamber Of Commerce CEO Harry Alford a few months back. She twitters on for a while, but he sure brings it home at the end:

Part Two:

Here's how this was reported by the LA Times' James Rainey. reason's cavanaugh writes:

Back when the still-unfolding ACORN hidden camera story started breaking, Rainey condemned the conservative media's unseemly race to the bottom. If he had been content merely to bury all signs of life under the reliably heavy snowdrifts of his prose (sample: "No legitimate news organization can claim editorial integrity if it merely regurgitates information from political activists without subjecting the material to serious scrutiny"), Rainey would have been OK. Sadly, in his zeal to exonerate ACORN, Rainey uncritically regurgitated some self-exculpatory quotes from local ACORN employee Lavelle Stewart, who asserted that she had sent Hannah Giles and James O'Keefe away after they claimed to be, respectively, a prostitute trafficking in underage sex slaves and a pimp with congressional aspirations.

Whoopsy! Film at 11!

A University of California Board of Regents committee today approved a series of controversial increases in student fees that, if passed by the full board, will raise UC undergraduate education costs by more than $2,500, or 32%, in two steps by fall 2010.

The finance committee vote is expected to be endorsed by the full Board of Regents on Thursday. The two-day meeting is being held at UCLA, where today's session has been marked by raucous protests with at least 14 arrests.

The first step of the fee hike, costing undergraduates an additional $585, will take effect in January. Next fall, students will see another $1,344 increase, bringing the UC education fees to $10,302, along with about $1,000 in campus-based charges. That does not include room, board and books, which can add another $16,000.

Times are tough. Education is already ENORMOUSLY subsidized. If you tax Californians any more the state's going to break off and fall into the ocean.

I just spoke at an inner-city high school the other day, and told them about Santa Monica College, an excellent school a really smart ex-assistant of mine attended. Annual tuition right now? $1732. That assistant went there, got great grades, and went on to a full scholarship to Northwestern.

My good friend Barb Oakley wanted to become a linguist and her parents wouldn't pay for her to go to college to do that. She went into the army, studied linguistics, and became a translator on a Russian Trawler in the Bering Sea. She later got her Ph.D. and became an engineering professor.

The thing is, not everybody should go to college. I think far too many people do. Some people would be better off going to technical school. And some people can learn without a professor cracking a whip over them. Me, for example. I study all the time -- read books and journals and go to conferences. Not for a grade or a degree, but because I'm interested, and because I need to know things to write things worth reading.

If you want a higher education, you just might have to pay for it. Maybe if you do, you'll value it, and really learn something, instead of spending four years doing jello shots off some girl's cleavage.

Harry Reid and his Democratic band of friends want to impose a 5% excise tax on all elective cosmetic surgeries (those which are not needed to repair deformaties or injuries caused by an accident or disfiguring disease). It's all in Section 9017 of Harry Reid's 2,074 page monstrosity released tonight:

There is hereby imposed on any cosmetic surgery and medical procedure a tax equal to 5 percent of the amount paid for such procedure (determined without regard to this section), whether paid by insurance or otherwise.

To where does the health care bill direct you for the definition of "cosmetic surgery"? To Section 213(d)(9)(B) of the IRS Code:

(B) Cosmetic surgery defined.-- For purposes of this paragraph, the term "cosmetic surgery" means any procedure which is directed at improving the patient's appearance and does not meaningfully promote the proper function of the body or prevent or treat illness or disease.

That's 5% which falls mostly on women, who make up the bulk of cosmetic surgeries. Add 5% to every breast enlargement, nose job, face lift, tummy tuck, and liposuction.

But, no, Obama's not going to tax anybody making less than $250K -- not unless they have an ugly nose, a flat chest, or a lot of crow's feet.

via Insty

Great science-based take on it from cancer surgeon David Gorski over at Science Based Medicine. An excerpt:

First and foremost, what matters is the woman being screened, what she values, and what her tolerance is for paying the price of screening at an earlier age, such as a high risk for overdiagnosis, excessive biopsies, and overtreatment in order to detect cancer earlier versus a relatively low probability of avoiding death from breast cancer as a result of undergoing regular screening. The next level is the public health policy level, where we as a society have to decide what tradeoffs we're willing to make to save a life that otherwise would have been lost to breast cancer. Although screening programs and recommendations should be based on the best science we currently have, deciding upon the actual cutoffs regarding who is and is not going to be recommended to undergo screening and how often women should be screened unavoidably involves value judgments by those being screened, physicians recommending screening, and society at large.

Gorski calls for better tests, better imaging technology, to more accurately assess a woman's true risk. I second that. Until then, we have what we have.

My take on it? Welcome to Obamacare! This is only a preview.

There are costs to overscreening -- unnecessary biopsies and treatment -- and then there are costs to underscreening...like death.

Hmm...needle in the boob...or being eaten for eternity by worms?

Bring on that needle!

Feel free to discuss whatever you want below until I can get something up.

Here's the sort of thing I've been doing instead of sleeping -- from the Toronto Star interview by Nancy White. Laurie Pike also posted a wonderful review on Los Angeles magazine's blog.

My Dr. Phil episode airs tomorrow. Check your local listings, as they say. Much more in the works!

Tonight, I'll be talking about my book live on NBC California digital stations on TV, plus streamed over the Internet, on NBC's Fred Roggin's "The Filter." Around 7:43 or 7:45 PST. From Jared, the producer:

From anywhere in the world, The Filter streams live at 7:30-8:00 pm Pacific.

I'm also on the Filter every week, usually debating (and remorselessly teasing) KABC host Leo Terrell, the "fair-minded civil rights attorney." Leo is very left. I joke that he thinks there's a big pot of money to pay for everything for everybody sitting on every street corner.

Really cool guys, Adam and Clay, at KUOO radio -- interview clip here...Adam really liked my book!

I also spoke yesterday morning to the kids at the inner-city school. Thanks so much for all your suggestions. The teacher told me that of the 2,000 who come into the school in a class, 40 percent will end up graduating. It's horribly tragic.

Also, regarding teen pregnancy, he told me about two 15-year-olds at the school who just became parents -- continuing the cycle.

Sickeningly, he just got eight to 15 years in prison -- the price of being fooled plus having a past criminal record for a previous sexual assault. And yes, that sounds bad, but he wasn't on trial for his prior behavior here. Meanwhile, the vengeful ex got just a year in jail for plotting and bringing off the crime. Pilger writes:

Jennifer Tomka, his attorney, said Ticnor believed at the time the girl was 18 and that what he was doing was legal. She argued for probation, saying Ticnor was "somewhat of a pawn in Crystal Hoover's game."

In July, County Judge Gale Pokorny sentenced Hoover to a year in jail -- the most he could for contributing to the delinquency of a minor -- for her part in the crime.
Pokorny said Hoover apparently devised a plan to get back at Ticnor, an old boyfriend who had lost interest in her.

Hoover planned to entice him by setting up sex with a troubled 15-year-old girl to whom she'd given prescription drugs, Pokorny said.

Investigators said she introduced the girl to Ticnor and encouraged her to send revealing pictures of herself to him.

Eventually, the three went to Bluestem Lake where, the girl told them, she felt manipulated and pressured to have sex.

Thanks, Walter Olson

PRESIDENT OBAMA was too busy to attend the celebrations in Germany this week marking the fall of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago. But he did appear by video, delivering a few brief and bloodless remarks about how the wall was "a painful barrier between family and friends" that symbolized "a system that denied people the freedoms that should be the right of every human being." He referred to "tyranny," but never identified the tyrants -- he never uttered the words "Soviet Union" or "communism," for example. He said nothing about the men and women who died trying to cross the wall. Nor did he mention Harry Truman or Ronald Reagan -- or even Mikhail Gorbachev.

He did, however, talk about Barack Obama.

"Few would have foreseen," declared the president, "that a united Germany would be led by a woman from [the former East German state of] Brandenburg or that their American ally would be led by a man of African descent.

Identity politics even at the Berlin wall? Couldn't we have some identity politics version of "alternate side of street parking rules are suspended" (a phrase I used to hear on the radio when I lived in NYC) when the president is speaking on international issues? Please? Please?

As presidential rhetoric goes, this was hardly a match for "Ich bin ein Berliner," still less another "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall." But as a specimen of presidential narcissism, it is hard to beat. Obama couldn't be troubled to visit Berlin to commemorate a momentous milestone in the history of human liberty. But he was glad to explain to those who were there why reflections on that milestone should inspire appreciation for the self-made "destiny" of his own rise to power.

Was there ever a president as deeply enamored of himself as Barack Obama?

Beyond the president, I see a lot of kids being raised as if they're the only ones who matter. Its bad enough to experience these willful brats at 8; it's for sure not going to be fun to be around them at 25 or 35.

I talked to Ron, the cool former Circuit City and Best Buy manager who now manages my local Staples, for his advice on how Black Friday can be less of a nightmare. I particularly liked his simple but right-on suggestion:

"If you aren't patient, stay home."

This both describes me and how I've spent Black Friday every year of my life. I highly recommend it.

Here, allow me to help with a few great gifts you can shop for from your easy chair:

1. I See Rude People: One woman's battle to beat some manners into impolite society

2. I See Rude People: One woman's battle to beat some manners into impolite society

3. I See Rude People: One woman's battle to beat some manners into impolite society

4. Well, you get the idea...

...and then there's the book I bought for my favorite 9-year-old boy: DK Space Encyclopedia

I've been in turbo frugality mode this year, thanks to all the newspapers falling off the face of the earth, but my neighbors' 9-year-old son and Sergeant Heather's 5-year-old son loved a simple birthday gift I got for each: A groovy-colored flashlight so they can make shadow animals.

Speaking of Sergeant Heather, she would advise you to give the gift of safety -- also available from the comfort of your home: keychain-hanging pepper spray.

And, in case anyone new around here is wondering, as I commented on Tuesday, I don't have children, and I will never have any children -- unless somebody drops one off on my porch.

Yes, I'm aware that you have mascara, liquid eyeliner, and five shades of gray eyeshadow to apply. But, see that guy in the Ford Focus behind you? He needs to turn left, too.

My book will be published November 27 (Amazon's Nov. 1/2 is incorrect), but copies are available on Amazon now. Order yours today!

GM lost $1.2 billion for the third quarter -- far less than the $6 billion it lost in the first three months of the year, before GM was transformed by a stay in bankruptcy protection. The company credited a sharp reduction in debt and sales of new models.

In what it called a sign of progress, GM also pledged to start paying back $6.7 billion in U.S. loans. But the money will come from a contingency account full of government cash, leading critics to question just how healthy the automaker really is.

Yes, my doctor called me to get me to come in. Kaiser Permanente. Had it since my early 20s, they don't kick you out once you're in, reasonable rates that stay standard if you get in and pay in when you're healthy, like I did.

Unfortunately, it doesn't look like my rates will be reasonable for long. Here's a New York Post piece by Sally Pipes on the cost of health care "reform":

Congress seems hell-bent on making life harder for ordinary New Yorkers. Several recent reports confirm this. A recent analysis done by PriceWaterhouseCoopers, the large insurer Wellpoint and consulting firm Oliver Wyman (using WellPoint's membership data) showed that an average New York family with two children covered by a basic individual-market policy would see its premiums rise 82 percent under Sen. Harry Reid's version of the bill, which includes new excise taxes on insurers, drug companies and medical-device firms, which would all be passed on to consumers.

(It'd be even worse in other states: A 25-year-old man in Kentucky, for instance, would see his monthly premium rise from $61 to $181 -- nearly a threefold jump.)

New York's small businesses would fare somewhat better. Premiums for a New York City-based firm with eight employees would rise 6 percent if the reform plan takes root.

A big part of that 6 percent hike would come from the Senate's plan to tax so-called "Cadillac" high-cost insurance plans. Because insurance in New York is already so expensive, the tax would hit many workers' policies. By 2014, New Yorkers would be forking over $33 million to the federal government in "Cadillac" taxes alone.

Democrats claim that government subsidies would help families adjust to the higher cost of insurance. But those subsidies won't offset many people's hikes. For example, premiums for a two-child family with annual income of $66,150 would still go up 24 percent under the Senate's plan -- after the subsidy is taken into account. That's an extra $80 a month.

It's easy to understand how "reform" will raise health costs -- by imposing onerous new regulations on insurance. For instance, reforms passed by the House and under consideration in the Senate would mandate that all policies cover such benefits as pediatric dental services and maternity coverage -- even if you don't want such coverage. The reform package's new minimum-benefit requirements alone would add $245 a month to the average New York family's premium.

I will never have a baby, not unless somebody drops one off on my porch. I do have to pay for maternity coverage through Kaiser, which is utterly ridiculous. (I should be able to opt out -- to not have that covered.) To have more people have more ridiculous coverage is, well, ridiculous -- and idiotic.

What about the emphasis on Hasan's supposedly knife-edge mental state? Well, even supposing it to have been precarious, it can hardly have been improved by immersion in the rantings of Anwar al-Awlaki. I do not say that all practitioners of woman-hating, anti-Semitic, sadomasochistic suicide immolations are themselves insane, but I do say that the teaching itself is demented. In the same way, I do not say that all Muslims are terrorists, but I have noticed that an alarmingly high proportion of terrorists are Muslim. A paranoid or depressive person--of whom we have many millions in our midst--does not have to end up screaming religious slogans while butchering his fellow creatures. But a paranoid or depressive person who is in regular touch with a jihadist "spiritual leader" is presented with a ready-made script that offers him paradise in exchange for homicide.

All right, then, wasn't the gallant major also subject to ill treatment and even abuse? Only up to a point, when you consider that his parents had been given refuge from Palestine and enabled to build a life here, that he himself had knowingly joined an all-volunteer army, that he had been promoted (it seems rather faster and higher than his true abilities warranted) and allowed on the job to vent extremely noxious opinions about members of other faiths, to say nothing about his adopted country. No doubt he came in for a taunt or two, but if you want to avoid that, then don't express contempt for your fellow soldiers while in uniform. Black Americans used to be segregated. Jewish recruits were mercilessly hazed, as were men or women who looked as if they might be gay. Did any of them ever come up with an act of mass murder as a response? Did any of them ever offer a black or Jewish or gay ideology in justification of it? Would they have earned sympathy and understanding if they had?

Of course, in recent years, air travel has become like flying below Greyhound -- in the baggage compartment under the bus. There are those who still find coach seats adequately roomy; mainly small-boned children under eight, and armless, legless midgets. Better hope you have one of the latter seated next to you, and not some 300-lb man who wordlessly annexes half of your seat like he's Germany and you're Poland.

Unfortunately, the Amazon page has a mistake or two -- the worst being the bit saying that my book was published Nov. 1 or 2, depending on the edition...which makes it look like it came out a few weeks ago and nobody bought it or cared.

Although it started shipping in the middle of last week, and some stores may have it already, the official pub date and in-stores date is November 27. (Somebody at my publisher entered Nov. 1/2 date in error and sent it off to Amazon -- of course, on the weekend when my book and I were mentioned in The New York Times!)

Saturday/Sunday blog item with what rudenesses make people's blood boil is here.

Wendy McElroy writes on ifeminists about how the P.C. approach to education is leading to both innumeracy and illiteracy. For example, children studying the latest version of "new math" are being primed for jobs where all they have to do is push the buttons on an electronic cash register:

"A. If math were a color, it would be __, because __. B. If it were a food, it would be __, because __. C. If it were weather, it would be __, because __."

So read three questions in a fifth grade worksheet that represents the New-New or Whole Math being taught in schools across the U.S. Children write essays about math and use artwork to portray it, yet they do not necessarily learn the basic skills, such as algebra, that open doors to careers in engineering and other hard sciences. From kindergarten, children are encouraged to use calculators and computers to solve the simplest problems -- e.g. divide 200 by 2 -- rather than learning basic skills like addition and multiplication.

In October 1999, the U.S. Department of Education released a report to 16,000 school districts endorsing the use of New-New Math. A Jan. 4 editorial in the Wall Street Journal reported, "Within weeks of the Education Department findings, 200 mathematicians and scientists, including four Nobel Prize recipients and two winners of a prestigious math prize, the Fields Medal, published a letter in the Washington Post deploring the reforms."

The Open Letter to U.S. Education Secretary Richard Riley occasioned a congressional hearing. The main concern expressed by experts and parents is that the public school system is producing children who are innumerate as well as illiterate. As Frank B. Allen, Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at Elmhurst College explains, "[S]tudents must know the mathematics before they can apply it.... To expect them to learn mathematics in the process of applying it is preposterous. It is like trying to teach people to play water polo before they know how to swim."

This is a valid concern, but my focus is a bit different. New-New Math is based on an ideological approach that is profoundly anti-individual. One of the ideas upon which this philosophy of education is based is 'constructivism' -- the notion that learning is discovered, not taught. Translated into the reality of classrooms, this means that grade school children discover the rules of multiplication and subtraction by themselves without the tyranny of "teacher-imposed rules." The emphasis is on the process rather than upon skills or accurate knowledge.

How is this anti-individual? It restricts, rather than encourages, a child's ability to rise as high as his or her merit. Studies, such as the one conducted by Wayne State University Math Professor, Gregory F. Bachelis, reveal the obstacles that New-New Math has placed in front of students who aspire to higher education. Namely, students are trying to take college placement tests without the benefit of basic math skills like algebra and geometry.

Oopsy!

This time, though, I'm talking to a tenth grade class in which a number or many of the children read...get this...at a first, second or third grade level.

Tragic, huh?

My usual talk is basically about how pulling a job or career together is a matter of small steps and hard work, and then telling girls why they need to avoid having babies as single mothers, and for boys, why they need to avoid knocking girls up.

But, this time, I guess I'll need to talk about why it's essential to improve reading skills, and how they might go about it (including resources/people to turn to). I'm guessing nobody tells them why they need to read, but maybe I'm wrong about that.

I found this story I will probably tell them, about a man who learned to read at 98, and who co-authored a book at 102. (Thanks - corrected the age!)

Here's another like that.

I'm going to talk to the teacher early in the week to find out what their job/career prospects could possibly be, and what they think about reading and more, but I wanted to ask you all for some thoughts and suggestions.

I think that quaint saying above was from Emily Post's granddaughter. She said it to Douglas Quenqua, the New York Times reporter who included me in their Sunday Styles section feature on punishing the rude after an editor there heard about my upcoming book on rudeness (link to Psychology Today serialization of it here).

Actually, I'm all for that sort of thinking -- at first. "Two rudes don't make a polite!" usually applies quite nicely to ordinary people who don't want to be rude, but who just aren't being "mindful."

If one of those people is barking into their phone, you just say, "Mind keeping it down?" and they'll probably get all sheepish, apologize, and pipe down or go outside and take their call. I say that all the time, and plenty of people are very nice and apologetic in response...and I thank them for that.

But, as Quenqua writes in the piece:

"There are people in this world who just don't care about you or anyone else," said Ms. Alkon, the author of "I See Rude People" (McGraw-Hill Companies) coming out this month. "They are going to inflict themselves on you, and the only way to stop them is to show them there's a cost."

Ms. Alkon often posts the personal information shared by loud cellphone talkers on her blog, where they will get calls from her fans.

For the flagrantly rude who refuse to stop publicly shouting into their mobile binkies, here's a question: "Why do you think our attention belongs to you?"

These people are stealing from the rest of us, but we don't recognize it because it's not something tangible like a TV or a wallet. They're stealing our attention, our time, our peace of mind, a good night's sleep, and other stuff that's valuable but hard or impossible to hold or measure. When this happens all day, every day, in lots of small ways, life can start to feel like one big wrestling smackdown...and that's not okay.

As I write in my book, the underlying problem is that we now live societies that are too big for our brains (there are details on this in the first two chapters). We have this very old psychology, one that evolved when prehistoric humans lived in small tribes, where everybody knew everybody.

People behave well around people they know -- they have to. If that's your neighbor driving behind you, you're for sure not going to flip him the bird or tomorrow morning, you're likely to find a replica of Mount Whitney in dog poo on your front stoop.

Around strangers, anything goes, because you have no continuing relationship with them. Since most of us these days live in vast strangeropolises, if we're so inclined, we can be rude as we want and get away with it. All day, every day, over and over and over again.

Cell phone shouters are just the most prevalent type of rudesters these days. Rude drivers are everywhere -- pulling up just far enough at some busy intersection so they can turn before the light turns red, but no one else can. There are parents who take their children to adult places and let them try to crack plate glass with their screams. I cover all of these in my book -- along with people I like to say are "in the business of being rude," like telemarketers.

Know why we all get telemarketing calls? Because, instead of sending a letter you can open at your leisure, telemarketers make lots more money by stealing your time and hijacking a phone line you pay for. I don't know about you, but I have a phone line to talk to my friends, family, my editor and my boyfriend -- not to ramp up profits at somebody's carpet cleaning business.

As I do with cell phone rudesters and other practitioners of social thuggery, I impose a cost on telemarketers. When I get a telemarking call, I don't toy with the person on the phone. I figure out the company whose product they're calling about, find a honcho at the company, track down his home number and call him at home and chew him out for calling me at home. And then, I invoice him for use of my time and my phone line...and get him to pay me!

If only more people would do this, we'd price these creeps right out of "the business of being rude."

(For those who aren't in up for the detective work and interventive aspects of my telemarketing deterrent above, I suggest doing what one of my regular commenters does -- send those carpet cleaners to the closest office of the Attorney General, state or federal, right down to the correct floor number.)

And finally, a question:

What sort of rudeness really makes your blood boil, and what, if anything, do you do about it?

A note: Please go on the Times site and e-mail the article to your friends you think might be interested in it. The most e-mailed articles are the ones that crawl up the most-read list!

I came here from the New York Times link, but now that I see that you're another of the right-wing nuts that abound lately, I'll take my leave.

Posted by: Ev at November 14, 2009 10:41 PM

My response:

"I came here from the New York Times link, but now that I see that you're another of the right-wing nuts that abound lately, I'll take my leave."

Actually, I'm not so easy to pigeonhole. Not a Republican, not a Democrat. No fan of Bush, no fan of Obama. Atheist. Fiscal conservative. Small "l" libertarian. "Personal responsibilitarian."

Oh, and forgot one: not popular with people who leap to conclusions about other people's politics, and who only feel comfortable in an echo chamber.

A pity you immediately turned tail. We like good debate around here. There are all stripes here in my comments section. Christians, atheists, an Orthodox Jew from Israel, men's movement guys, feminists, Democrats, Republicans, and libertarians (and Libertarians). Does debate scare you?

Posted by: Amy Alkon at November 14, 2009 11:02 PM

lujlp bats cleanup:

oh please EV

noone shows up to a weblog only to anounce they are leaving

If you were truly planing on never coming back after reading just one post about cell phones and telemarketers and divining political persuasion from that one compliant you wouldnt have written anythig at all youd have simply closed your browser

Posted by: lujlp at November 15, 2009 12:04 AM

The myth of individual faith

As a believer I was reluctant to admit that my decision to follow Christ was anyone's but my own. While studying French in Belgium prior to our mission work in Africa, I chafed at my French teacher's suggestion that Charlene and I were merely following in our parents' footsteps in choosing the evangelical Christian faith and becoming missionaries.

...Accident of birth, benefit of doubt (ABBOD)

Several years ago one of my sisters wondered aloud whether she would have been a Christian if she had grown up in a non-Christian country to non-Christian parents. This question, one that had earlier come to my mind, had occasionally given me pause during my years as a believer.

Looking back now as a nonbeliever, I am not sure why I was only mildly troubled by the likelihood that I was a Christian (rather than, for example, a Muslim or a Hindu) because my family and society had influenced me to accept Christianity (rather than Islam or Hinduism). Over time I began to realize that my tendency to give the benefit of the doubt to the religion of my parents was no different from the tendency of individuals from other lands and other faiths to give the benefit of the doubt to the religion of their parents.

I call this tendency the Accident of Birth, Benefit of Doubt (ABBOD) principle. I will have more to say concerning this factor in chapter 5. For now I note that I consider this to be one of the most important ingredients for maintaining a religion, whether or not the religion is true.

...Why I Hesitated to Examine my Faith Critically

In virtually every domain we are well served to treat unusual or outlandish claims skeptically. If we hear on the radio that a new diet pill will allow us to shed 50 pounds with no effort, we would be remiss not to investigate what studies have been done to test and approve this new miracle drug before pulling out our credit card. It might turn out that the claims are true, but until an independent scientific study has been conducted, we risk losing our money, time, and possibly health in pursuit of an ineffective or harmful product. Likewise, if a used car salesperson offers us a deal that sounds too good to be true, we had best hire an independent mechanic to inspect it before making the purchase.

As an evangelical Christian I was encouraged to think critically about my beliefs and the beliefs of others as long as I restricted my critical thinking to a biblical framework.