NOSHA Blogspot - Contemporary resources for atheists and freethinkers in Louisiana
Want to present at the AHA Conference in New Orleans, June 2012?
The AHA is proud to hold its 71st Annual Conference in the great city of New Orleans, hosted by the New Orleans Secular Humanist Association (NOSHA).
Call for Speakers Now Open
If you are interested in leading a breakout session, speaking on a panel, of if you are an entertainer, send a proposal, outline, complete text, audio, video or web link to Brian Magee at bmagee@americanhumanist.org (Please include your name and complete contact information with your material. Also indicate your audio visual needs, if any.)
We are particularly interested in sessions that cover gay rights, women’s rights, minority outreach, political issues, human rights, the right-to-die movement, the environment, community issues, humanist activism, international issues, science, and critical thinking.
All program suggestions must be received by January 27, 2012 to provide the planning committee adequate time to review submissions, allot space, and prepare a final agenda.
Conference speakers are volunteers who will receive complimentary conference registration (banquet meals not included). If, however, there are special financial requirements that come with your proposal, such as travel or lodging expenses, please indicate.
4 January 2012 | 2:11 pm Post a Comment
It's Important, So Let's Not Talk About It
Because death with dignity is a hallmark of most secular creeds that I'm familiar with, we are constantly fighting the interference of religious people who feel they have the answer about death and that all other philosophies should merely let them have their way in political policy.
Hence the hysterical and misguided information that was spewed about by conservatives during the consideration of the Affordable Health Care Act. There were patently false statements made about end of life issues and this hysteria was perpetuated by people who use religiously motivated opinions to distract and distort this important topic. Talking about the end of life and how we will deal with it is a major key to a more successfully lived life (IMHO).
This physician gives us a brief look into one perspective that is probably a majority of the attitudes held by healthcare workers in general. It's a breath of fresh air that we should embrace and discuss in detail.
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How Doctors Die
It’s Not Like the Rest of Us, But It Should Be
by Ken Murray
Years ago, Charlie, a highly respected orthopedist and a mentor of mine, found a lump in his stomach. He had a surgeon explore the area, and the diagnosis was pancreatic cancer. This surgeon was one of the best in the country. He had even invented a new procedure for this exact cancer that could triple a patient’s five-year-survival odds—from 5 percent to 15 percent—albeit with a poor quality of life. Charlie was uninterested. He went home the next day, closed his practice, and never set foot in a hospital again. He focused on spending time with family and feeling as good as possible. Several months later, he died at home.
He got no chemotherapy, radiation, or surgical treatment. Medicare didn’t spend much on him.
It’s not a frequent topic of discussion, but doctors die, too. And they don’t die like the rest of us. What’s unusual about them is not how much treatment they get compared to most Americans, but how little. For all the time they spend fending off the deaths of others, they tend to be fairly serene when faced with death themselves. They know exactly what is going to happen, they know the choices, and they generally have access to any sort of medical care they could want. But they go gently.
Of course, doctors don’t want to die; they want to live. But they know enough about modern medicine to know its limits. And they know enough about death to know what all people fear most: dying in pain, and dying alone. They’ve talked about this with their families. They want to be sure, when the time comes, that no heroic measures will happen—that they will never experience, during their last moments on earth, someone breaking their ribs in an attempt to resuscitate them with CPR (that’s what happens if CPR is done right).
Almost all medical professionals have seen what we call “futile care” being performed on people. That’s when doctors bring the cutting edge of technology to bear on a grievously ill person near the end of life. The patient will get cut open, perforated with tubes, hooked up to machines, and assaulted with drugs. All of this occurs in the Intensive Care Unit at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars a day. What it buys is misery we would not inflict on a terrorist. I cannot count the number of times fellow physicians have told me, in words that vary only slightly, “Promise me if you find me like this that you’ll kill me.” They mean it. Some medical personnel wear medallions stamped “NO CODE” to tell physicians not to perform CPR on them. I have even seen it as a tattoo.
To administer medical care that makes people suffer is anguishing. Physicians are trained to gather information without revealing any of their own feelings, but in private, among fellow doctors, they’ll vent. “How can anyone do that to their family members?” they’ll ask. I suspect it’s one reason physicians have higher rates of alcohol abuse and depression than professionals in most other fields. I know it’s one reason I stopped participating in hospital care for the last 10 years of my practice.
How has it come to this—that doctors administer so much care that they wouldn’t want for themselves? The simple, or not-so-simple, answer is this: patients, doctors, and the system.
To see how patients play a role, imagine a scenario in which someone has lost consciousness and been admitted to an emergency room. As is so often the case, no one has made a plan for this situation, and shocked and scared family members find themselves caught up in a maze of choices. They’re overwhelmed. When doctors ask if they want “everything” done, they answer yes. Then the nightmare begins. Sometimes, a family really means “do everything,” but often they just mean “do everything that’s reasonable.” The problem is that they may not know what’s reasonable, nor, in their confusion and sorrow, will they ask about it or hear what a physician may be telling them. For their part, doctors told to do “everything” will do it, whether it is reasonable or not.
The above scenario is a common one. Feeding into the problem are unrealistic expectations of what doctors can accomplish. Many people think of CPR as a reliable lifesaver when, in fact, the results are usually poor. I’ve had hundreds of people brought to me in the emergency room after getting CPR. Exactly one, a healthy man who’d had no heart troubles (for those who want specifics, he had a “tension pneumothorax”), walked out of the hospital. If a patient suffers from severe illness, old age, or a terminal disease, the odds of a good outcome from CPR are infinitesimal, while the odds of suffering are overwhelming. Poor knowledge and misguided expectations lead to a lot of bad decisions.
But of course it’s not just patients making these things happen. Doctors play an enabling role, too. The trouble is that even doctors who hate to administer futile care must find a way to address the wishes of patients and families. Imagine, once again, the emergency room with those grieving, possibly hysterical, family members. They do not know the doctor. Establishing trust and confidence under such circumstances is a very delicate thing. People are prepared to think the doctor is acting out of base motives, trying to save time, or money, or effort, especially if the doctor is advising against further treatment.
Some doctors are stronger communicators than others, and some doctors are more adamant, but the pressures they all face are similar. When I faced circumstances involving end-of-life choices, I adopted the approach of laying out only the options that I thought were reasonable (as I would in any situation) as early in the process as possible. When patients or families brought up unreasonable choices, I would discuss the issue in layman’s terms that portrayed the downsides clearly. If patients or families still insisted on treatments I considered pointless or harmful, I would offer to transfer their care to another doctor or hospital.
Should I have been more forceful at times? I know that some of those transfers still haunt me. One of the patients of whom I was most fond was an attorney from a famous political family. She had severe diabetes and terrible circulation, and, at one point, she developed a painful sore on her foot. Knowing the hazards of hospitals, I did everything I could to keep her from resorting to surgery. Still, she sought out outside experts with whom I had no relationship. Not knowing as much about her as I did, they decided to perform bypass surgery on her chronically clogged blood vessels in both legs. This didn’t restore her circulation, and the surgical wounds wouldn’t heal. Her feet became gangrenous, and she endured bilateral leg amputations. Two weeks later, in the famous medical center in which all this had occurred, she died.
It’s easy to find fault with both doctors and patients in such stories, but in many ways all the parties are simply victims of a larger system that encourages excessive treatment. In some unfortunate cases, doctors use the fee-for-service model to do everything they can, no matter how pointless, to make money. More commonly, though, doctors are fearful of litigation and do whatever they’re asked, with little feedback, to avoid getting in trouble.
Even when the right preparations have been made, the system can still swallow people up. One of my patients was a man named Jack, a 78-year-old who had been ill for years and undergone about 15 major surgical procedures. He explained to me that he never, under any circumstances, wanted to be placed on life support machines again. One Saturday, however, Jack suffered a massive stroke and got admitted to the emergency room unconscious, without his wife. Doctors did everything possible to resuscitate him and put him on life support in the ICU. This was Jack’s worst nightmare. When I arrived at the hospital and took over Jack’s care, I spoke to his wife and to hospital staff, bringing in my office notes with his care preferences. Then I turned off the life support machines and sat with him. He died two hours later.
Even with all his wishes documented, Jack hadn’t died as he’d hoped. The system had intervened. One of the nurses, I later found out, even reported my unplugging of Jack to the authorities as a possible homicide. Nothing came of it, of course; Jack’s wishes had been spelled out explicitly, and he’d left the paperwork to prove it. But the prospect of a police investigation is terrifying for any physician. I could far more easily have left Jack on life support against his stated wishes, prolonging his life, and his suffering, a few more weeks. I would even have made a little more money, and Medicare would have ended up with an additional $500,000 bill. It’s no wonder many doctors err on the side of overtreatment.
But doctors still don’t over-treat themselves. They see the consequences of this constantly. Almost anyone can find a way to die in peace at home, and pain can be managed better than ever. Hospice care, which focuses on providing terminally ill patients with comfort and dignity rather than on futile cures, provides most people with much better final days. Amazingly, studies have found that people placed in hospice care often live longer than people with the same disease who are seeking active cures. I was struck to hear on the radio recently that the famous reporter Tom Wicker had “died peacefully at home, surrounded by his family.” Such stories are, thankfully, increasingly common.
Several years ago, my older cousin Torch (born at home by the light of a flashlight—or torch) had a seizure that turned out to be the result of lung cancer that had gone to his brain. I arranged for him to see various specialists, and we learned that with aggressive treatment of his condition, including three to five hospital visits a week for chemotherapy, he would live perhaps four months. Ultimately, Torch decided against any treatment and simply took pills for brain swelling. He moved in with me.
We spent the next eight months doing a bunch of things that he enjoyed, having fun together like we hadn’t had in decades. We went to Disneyland , his first time. We’d hang out at home. Torch was a sports nut, and he was very happy to watch sports and eat my cooking. He even gained a bit of weight, eating his favorite foods rather than hospital foods. He had no serious pain, and he remained high-spirited. One day, he didn’t wake up. He spent the next three days in a coma-like sleep and then died. The cost of his medical care for those eight months, for the one drug he was taking, was about $20.
Torch was no doctor, but he knew he wanted a life of quality, not just quantity. Don’t most of us? If there is a state of the art of end-of-life care, it is this: death with dignity. As for me, my physician has my choices. They were easy to make, as they are for most physicians. There will be no heroics, and I will go gentle into that good night. Like my mentor Charlie. Like my cousin Torch. Like my fellow doctors.
Ken Murray, MD, is Clinical Assistant Professor of Family Medicine at USC.
5 December 2011 | 11:45 am Post a Comment
Fun With Words
Below is the American Family Association's Statement of Faith, which was mentioned in an article on Rick Perry's prayer rally a few months back. My friend, Will, made some changes to it which are worth passing along.
AFA STATEMENT OF FAITH
1. We believe the Bible to be the inspired, the only infallible, authoritative Word of God.
2. We believe that there is one God, eternally existent in three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
3. We believe in the deity of our Lord Jesus Christ, in His virgin birth, in His sinless life, in His miracles, in His vicarious and atoning death through His shed blood, in His bodily resurrection, in His ascension to the right hand of the Father, and in His personal return in power and glory.
4. We believe that for the salvation of lost and sinful people, regeneration by the Holy Spirit is absolutely essential.
5. We believe in the present ministry of the Holy Spirit by whose indwelling the Christian is enabled to live a godly life.
6. We believe in the resurrection of both the saved and the lost; they that are saved unto the resurrection of life and they that are lost unto the resurrection of damnation.
7. We believe in the spiritual unity of believers in our Lord Jesus Christ.
AFA STATEMENT OF FAITH (with modifications)
1. If we strain credulity and countlessly repeat it to ourselves, we can come to believe the Bible (replete with absurdities) to be the inspired, the only infallible, authoritative Word of God.
2. We believe that there is one God, eternally existent in at least three persons: The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, forever at loggerheads as they vie for top billing and adoration among their sycophants. We also unashamedly believe in the Easter Bunny, wood nymphs and wee elves. We believe such things realizing, as we do, that the more outlandish whatever we can get ourselves to believe, the more praiseworthy it makes us out to be in His eyes. For example, any schmuck can believe that 2 + 2 = 4, but it requires saintliness of the highest order to marshall
3. We believe in the deity of our Lord Jesus Christ, in His virgin birth*, in His sinless life, in His magic tricks, in His vicarious and atoning death through His slowly, thickly-oozing (but eventually coagulating) blood, in His sensational, much-talked-about expulsion from the grave with a loud POP, in His ascension to the right hand of the Father, in his iridescent acne, and in His personal return in power and glow ree.
4. We believe that for the salvation of lost and sinful people, regeneration by the Holy Spirit is absolutely essential, for we are lowly turds who can do nary a thing on our own.
5. We believe in the present ministry of the Holy Spirit by whose indwelling the Christian is enabled to live a god-like life, even to where he/she learns to transmute water into wine, although this last could require some practice.
6. We believe in the resurrection of both the saved and the lost; they that are saved unto the resurrection of life, and they that are lost unto the resurrection of damnation (wherein those unfortunates will be flame-roasted unto the point of emitting polychromatic hues--in perpetuam).
7. We believe in the spiritual unity of believers in our Lord Jesus Christ. And remember, the more we can persuade to believe these impossible things the more secure we'll feel, since there's comfort in numbers, and it's hardly likely so many people could be wrong.
___________________
* Yahweh impregnated Mary, who of course, gave birth to Jesus; however, Jesus and Yahweh are indisputably one. Therefore, in truth, Jesus impregnated his own mother. Although we regretfully realize what this logically makes him (a crude street term that will go unmentioned) we must nevertheless somehow learn to look past this unsavory conclusion and accept The Mystery. Amen.
1 November 2011 | 1:30 pm Post a Comment
Taking A Leap Of Faith
Some movies are never meant to go very far or make much of a splash, but that doesn’t mean that they won’t make you think about their message long after you leave the theatre. I have a soft spot for films that can do that in spite of any lack of critical support.
I must admit I felt some trepidation about seeing The Ledge because I didn’t want it to be a movie that I regretted seeing and sharing with friends. I’ve chosen a few of those gems in the past year (“Skyline” comes to mind and, boy, was that a stinker.) When it happens, all you can hope is that it’s so horrible that you will giggle time and again when someone reminds you of your awful pick.
“The Ledge” did seem like a gamble and, in fact, I suspect a few friends didn’t go because they anticipated it would be as bad as the reviews seemed to imply. “If it had been a great movie, wouldn’t it have been given a lot more coverage?” queried a close friend. That’s a logical assumption to make. But in my case, at least, the gamble paid off and it’s worth explaining why.
On the way to the theater, I read a very hopeful review by atheist blogger, Greta Christina, and she laid out a reasonable and decent summary that made me aware of the expected faults and how the story still offered something for non-believers and believers alike. Christina felt this would open a door for discussion of the myths that society has about atheism in general and might lead to our own cultural acceptance, much like what has happened over the years in films dealing with the LGBT movement. It’s a start no less.
What intrigued me most is how scathingly dismissive many of the reviews have been. It’s almost as if the film we saw, and really liked for the most part, is not the same one seen by the majority of reviewers. My honest experience was this movie is not nearly as dreadful as we’ve been led to believe. Yes, there were moments of clunky dialogue. Yes, there were some contrived plot points. But many movies with what I would consider to be heftier amounts of clumsiness and contrivance have gotten less withering reviews than “The Ledge.”
What resonated for me was that everything about this film felt authentic in many small ways and that was fascinating when so much of the reviews frothed at the mouth about how overly “dramatic” or overly “stale” the production was (on and on and on the negativity flowed.) I even found the sex scenes to be quite compelling, which at my age is quite an achievement for any Hollywood movie
First, the actors were sincere in their performances, and I was prepared to do a lot of eye rolling. I’m not even a lukewarm fan of any of the actors in fact, but I have seen most of them in excellent films, so I assumed they would be more than sufficient for a small film like this.
The protagonist, Gavin, portrayed by Charlie Hunnam (“Sons of Anarchy”), could pass for a younger, blonder-locked brother of Heath Ledger. He provided some of the most laughable dialogue early on, but he redeemed the character by the end, thankfully. His good looks and long hair may also not be as believable as a mid-level manager of a hotel (in Baton Rouge
Patrick Wilson was the real shocker for me. Wilson
The central idea I took from this film was that atheism wasn’t necessary for the story to challenge the audience. In fact, not being religious isn’t necessary to drive home the point in this story. The question our hero must answer is what would you do for another human being? What would you be willing to sacrifice? It is what disturbed me the most and stuck with me well into a sleepless night.
I simply can’t imagine facing that question in the way that Gavin does. And perhaps that may derail it for someone not in the mood for this film. I always do that in a movie like this: solve the problem magically in a different way than the protagonist. Then it would have been much shorter and more mundane, which may be how the reviewers saw it and that’s a real shame. So, it figures that if you don’t allow yourself to be swept up in the story, you may indeed miss the central message.
Do I think there were a few of the reviewers who may have allowed their dislike of the A-word or their religious beliefs to color their potential appreciation of the film? Possibly, because it follows that we can’t expunge our fundamental viewpoints from our personalities (and anyone who tells differently is usually the worst offender). But I don’t think it was a theistic conspiracy either. Perhaps, atheists simply find the questions in this film more gripping than a typical movie reviewer, so we had a totally different frame of reference than judging the merits alone.
Do I think some of the reviews were overly harsh? Most definitely, which is why I pushed myself to compose these thoughts so you just might give it a chance.
In the end, sometimes you have to go out on a ledge and trust yourself.
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"The Ledge" was directed by Matthew Chapman, the great, great grandson of Charles Darwin. It was filmed in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and released in the summer of 2011.
26 September 2011 | 5:27 pm Post a Comment
The Freethinker In The Mirror
"Are you a Freethinker?
A Freethinker is a person who thinks free from delusion, deception, misperception, fantasy, fiction and religious, political, cultural and even familial bias. For the sake of this discussion we will simplify it to freedom from religious philosophy.There are two primary Christian philosophical concepts:1. The obsessive and debilitating fear of Yahweh and Hell.2. The unrelenting, defensive and blind obedience to the church that created Yahweh and Hell.The church recruits and controls its members by brainwashing, lying, deception, guilt, shame, and fear. In order to maintain the loyalty of its followers in a world filled with intelligent, rational, secular minded people, the church has to instill in the believers these philosophical and behavioral mandates: arrogance, self righteousness, closed mindedness, argumentative, anger, divisiveness and unfair judgment, name calling, disregard for logic, reason and even facts over fiction and myth.There are probably several more destructive human vices that haven't come to mind that have been incorporated into social philosophy for thousands of years in service of the church and undermining the progress and development of society; and many of the so-called freethinking atheists I have come to know over the past 20 months are controlled by at least some or many of these Christian-mandated self and socially destructive philosophical beliefs.Rejecting God and religious dogma is the beginning of free thinking; recognizing this in yourself and eliminating these destructive, mind-crippling habits is the path to true freethinking, happiness and prosperity."
I even find myself falling into the habit occasionally of thinking how some things happen "for a reason." When I catch this thought welling up, I feel silly for a minute, but I try to analyze why it happened and what would make me consider it. I usually think this to console myself after something disappointing happens, so I think it is reasonable that we try to make life less rough on ourselves. If things happen for a reason that is beyond our control, then it's even better that we figured that it was "meant to happen" that way. If shit just happens, however, it can happen again. And again. And we need a reason that doesn't make us feel so damn unlucky.
So, Rusty makes a good point that we as freethinkers and non-believers need to examine our own biases and be willing to look at what we hold dear and tear it down if need be. It isn't enough that we demand this of the religious, but we should be willing to do it ourselves.
11 September 2011 | 2:22 pm Post a Comment
How Will You Cope With Being Left Behind?
That was the essay question posed by NOSHA at our "Left Behind" party in May. You know the day the world was supposed to end? We even awarded prizes for some of the best submissions written that wacky evening.1ST PLACE
How will I cope? What will I do?
In a word: very dry martinis. Wait! That's three words. How irrelevant. But then, when it's all over - everything is irrelevant. So right now, here and now, you want to Laissez Les Bon Temp Roulez!!! Yeah, baby, let the good times roll-l-l-l. (Make those very dry, Bombay Sapphire on the rocks martinis).
But while we're on the subject, why on earth (pun intended) would anyone fear a god they've never seen - much less trust to "beam 'em up, Scottie" to an unknown place, at an unknown time, in an unknown - what- spaceship?
Think about this SERIOUSLY. It makes no sense. It's (more) religious fantasy.
Be good to people, hope they'll be good to you - and - make mine a double, two Cajun olives and three cocktail onions and Sinatra on the CD player. Shit, do you really need anything more?
2ND PLACE
Thomas of New Orleans
Being left behind for a while is like being half-ass in heaven and half-ass in hell. I guess my right behind is in heaven and my left behind is stuck here until the end of days.
So as I see it, my left behind is just behind my right behind on that narrow road to heaven or hell. By being non-committal, I am actually covering my ass pretty well.
Of course, I don't want my left behind to fall behind my right behind too much as it may cause a crack in the fabric of the universe, in the neighborhood of Uranus.
Now, if I want my left behind to join my right behind, I must probably follow the Lord's way and turn the other cheek in order to be chic, worship the Lord more than my Ford, leave my neighbor's ass alone and not kill the valuable time I have left until the end of time.
3RD PLACE
Laura of Slidell
First, I would thank god for finally saving me from his followers. Afterwards, I would do the most heinous acts, since I'm doomed anyway:
Red beans and rice on TUESDAY
Mimosas on THURSDAY
Put tomatoes in gumbo and all sorts of villainy!
I would then grab a group of followers and proclaim myself the NEW messiah and force non-believers to sing karaoke. And, of course, my headquarters would be that nice yellow mansion on St. Charles Ave. I'd probably do some reading and learn to garden....just because. And practice for hell by standing in front of fires in August.
I'm very excited and hope to be in one of the upper circles of hell. The one with the celebrities.
19 July 2011 | 10:52 am Post a Comment
Just What This Town Needs....More Skeptics
Right?We do a pretty good job here at NOSHA pushing for observation and rational discourse, but goodness knows, we coud do with a touch more. And we'll have it after all of the hinting and hoping we've been doing since Katrina to get a meeting in town "put on" by one of our national organizations.
The end of October 2011, the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry in collaboration with Skeptical Inquiry Magazine and the Center for Inquiry will host CSICon 2011 in New Orleans. CSICon, the conference dedicated to scientific inquiry and critical thinking, should be a huge success and (pun intended) that shouldn't be a mystery. It's a fantastic conference town, the weather should be wonderful and there's plenty to do within walking distance if you skip a session or two (not many cities can really say that.)
So, I'm spreading the word here: (from a recent email blast)
New Orleans, October 27-30, 2011
For more information or to register, visit csiconference.org.
CSIcon 2011 will be held in the heart of the French Quarter of New Orleans. From the vintage architecture to the authentic Cajun/Creole food, there will be something for everyone in The Big Easy. With so much culture, history and entertainment, you’ll find a unique and exciting experience around every corner. Separate history from legend and science from voodoo by joining the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI) for four days of a skeptically good time full of mystery and reason.
There's plenty to do at CSIcon 2011, incorporating a schedule chock-full of speakers into four days of events. Leaders in their respective fields, from around the globe, will gather to discuss the latest in skepticism, science and news.
The lineup includes:
Bill Nye • Eugenie C. Scott • James Randi • Indre Viskontas • Phil Plait • Barbara Forrest • Joe Nickell • Rebecca Watson • Steve Novella • Harriet Hall • And many more!
14 July 2011 | 2:54 pm Post a Comment
