[Vision2020] Assessing risk in sex offender

[Nicholas Gier]

Dear Visionaries:

This the profligate philosophy professor checking in on Saturday night.  No
bar scene for me please.  I just enjoyed two hours of Miss Marple and can't
wait to see the concluding segment.  I've seen it before, but I can't
remember who "done it."  There was some mention of an orgy, but the BBC is
so discrete, so was was nothing explicit or dissolute.  I do admit that I
got a little excited about the victim's bare back.

Any female companionship, you may ask?  Yes, my 19-year old cat.  She has
severe arthritis and no kidney function (subcutaneous fluids every other
night), but is still as affectionate as ever.

Now I'm sorting slides from my recent trip to Europe, but it will be yet
another early evening. Yawn . . .

Good night gentle ladies and men,

nfg

On Sat, Oct 10, 2015 at 7:28 PM, Rosemary Huskey <donaldrose at cpcinternet.com
> wrote:

> Nick, I totally missed that ridiculous adjective “profligate” when I
> posted my last message.  I certainly don’t think of you that way.  Please
> accept my apology for being so careless.  I was so overwhelmed (and howling
> with laughter) at the notion that Doug Wilson, even at the top of his game,
> (which I doubt was much more than a sophomoric effort) could silence a
> philosophy professor that I rushed to post it.  The whole drama of a “very
> quiet and bold voice” reminded me of a stunningly stupid apocryphal story
> told by sycophant devotee.
>
> The burden of my message is not new, however.  The notion that these
> un-credentialed crackpots counsel any one on an issue more substantive than
> how many angels can dance on the head of a pin makes my blood run cold.  I
> am certain that the damage they have produced over the years is
> incalculable.
>
> Again, I am very sorry for the misunderstanding.
>
> Best,
>
> Rose
>
>
>
> *From:* Rosemary Huskey [mailto:donaldrose at cpcinternet.com]
> *Sent:* Saturday, October 10, 2015 3:53 PM
> *To:* 'Nielsen, Ralph (nielsen at uidaho.edu)'; 'vision2020 at moscow.com'
> *Subject:* RE: [Vision2020] Assessing risk in sex offender cases
>
>
>
> This is an important topic, Ralph.  The jackass, and I use the term
> deliberately, Mike Lawyer
> <http://www.cbcmoscow.com/about-cbc/meet-the-staff/> who conducts the
> Biblical Counseling arm of Christ Church is willing to share information
> gained in counseling sessions with other church officers (if the requisite
> degree of contrition is missing) and of course attendees of Greyfriars Hall
> sit in on the session as well.   Even worse than that former clients have
> read a thinly disguised story of their counseling on-line
> <http://kbotkin.com/?s=mike+lawyer&search=Go>.  How’s that for
> unbelievable breach of confidence?  The following paragraph is an example
> close to home.  Anyone care to guess the identity of the “local pastor and
> philosophy professor?  More ass kissing from the toadies: I guess that
> practice never grows old.
>
>   Relate all the Classical Loci of Theology to Counseling.
> <http://www.cbcmoscow.com/2015/09/25/relate-all-the-classical-loci-of-theology-to-counseling-2/>
>
> m.lawyer <http://www.cbcmoscow.com/author/m-lawyer/> September 25th, 2015 No
> Comments
> <http://www.cbcmoscow.com/2015/09/25/relate-all-the-classical-loci-of-theology-to-counseling-2/#respond>
>
> *God*
>
> I was in a classroom in college, listening to a debate between a local
> pastor and a profligate philosophy professor. After a particularly exciting
> exchange between them, the professor finally said, “What makes you so
> confident in what you are saying about God and the things of God?” The
> pastor slowly stood up, and in a very quiet and bold voice said, “I’m
> confident because I know him.” The professor just sat down. He had nothing
> to say. I was blown away. What an incredible answer! What a great gift.
> That is exactly what our great God has called us to. To know him, to
> worship him, to share him and his knowledge with others.
>
> Rose Huskey
>
>
>
> *From:* vision2020-bounces at moscow.com [
> mailto:vision2020-bounces at moscow.com <vision2020-bounces at moscow.com>] *On
> Behalf Of *Nielsen, Ralph (nielsen at uidaho.edu)
> *Sent:* Saturday, October 10, 2015 3:07 PM
> *To:* vision2020 at moscow.comof
> *Subject:* [Vision2020] Assessing risk in sex offender cases
>
>
>
> I don’t expect much success in this or similar cases where religious
> “therapy” is employed to fix a purely secular problem already screwed up by
> religious nonsense.
>
>
> *Has Your Therapist Tried to 'Save' You?*
>
> An interview with the Secular Therapist Project founder
>
> Posted Nov 12, 2012
>
>
>
> Most mental health <https://www.psychologytoday.com/basics/health> professionals
> would agree that their religious
> <https://www.psychologytoday.com/basics/religion> beliefs should have
> little direct relevance in their professional interactions. Yet according
> to Dr. Darrel Ray, too many professional therapists are injecting religious
> and supernatural <https://www.psychologytoday.com/basics/magical-thinking> concepts
> into the care they provide clients. This problem is only getting worse, he
> says, as fundamentalist colleges produce more graduates who see religious
> proselytizing as an acceptable means of “treating” clients. Dr. Ray, an
> author whose books address the intersection of psychology and religion, has
> responded by launching the Secular Therapist Project,(link is external)
> <http://www.seculartherapy.org/> a web site that tries to connect
> potential clients with therapists who will adhere to secular, science-based
> treatment and avoid supernatural and theistic approaches. The following is
> a recent exchange I had with Dr. Ray.
>
> *Q: What is the Secular Therapist Project and why do you say it is needed?*
>
> Darrel Ray:      After I published my books *Sex and God*(link is
> external)
> <http://www.amazon.com/Sex-God-Religion-Distorts-Sexuality/dp/0970950543>,
> and *The God Virus*(link is external) <http://www.thegodvirus.net/>, I
> was overwhelmed with requests from people asking for help finding a secular
> therapist. I began helping people and soon found that it is almost
> impossible to determine if a therapist is truly secular and uses
> evidence-based methods. A therapist may be well-trained, he or she may have
> received advanced degrees from the best schools, but that does not
> guarantee they are not influenced by belief in supernatural beings or New
> Age ideas. Many people wrote me saying they went to a therapist for months
> only to have the therapist recommend that they pray, go back to church, or
> use some New Age method.
>
> *Q: Aren’t therapists trained to keep their beliefs out of the therapy
> <https://www.psychologytoday.com/basics/therapy>sessions?  *
>
> Ray:     Not necessarily. Certainly, the best schools train therapists to
> avoid imposing their beliefs on the client, but right now there are
> hundreds of religious schools graduating thousands of Christian counselors,
> licensable in most states. Graduates from Liberty University(link is
> external) <http://www.liberty.edu/aboutliberty/>, Regent or Oral Roberts
> University(link is external)
> <http://www.oru.edu/whole_person/education.php> are taught to incorporate
> religion into their counseling. Regent University(link is external)
> <http://www.regent.edu/acad/schcou/admissions/forms/goals.htm> and others
> have Ph.D. and Psy.D. programs in clinical psychology. How is it possible
> to get solid clinical training from a university that insists on teaching
> Pat Robertson’s theology to all students? This is the guy who thinks God
> sends hurricanes to punish
> <https://www.psychologytoday.com/basics/punishment> cities for tolerating
> gays.
>
> Graduates of religious schools look like any other Ph.D. or MSW to the lay
> person, yet they are an integral part of the evangelical right’s attempt to
> usurp the field of counseling in the service of their religious agenda.
> Graduates of these universities are highly unlikely to keep their religious
> views out of the therapeutic relationship. Do you think a gay or lesbian
> person will receive effective treatment from a Regent’s University Ph.D.?
> Could an atheist get evidence-based treatment from a graduate of Liberty
> University? It is possible, but why would you risk your time, money, and
> emotional health on someone who probably prays and reads the Bible more
> than they read professional journals?
>
> Even someone who graduated from Michigan State or UCLA may not be secular.
> The school a person attends says little about their supernatural beliefs.
> Once a person is in practice, they may start using untested and
> non-evidence based methods. Methods that have not seen clinical testing and
> peer review.
>
> *Q: How prevalent is this problem?*
>
> Ray: Well, ten or twenty years ago, these religion-based programs did not
> exist. In the area of clinical psychology, most schools had clearly secular
> programs. They placed a high value on developing a non-religious
> relationship in the clinical setting. Those days are gone. While no one can
> really know how much religion influences a given counselor, we can say that
> hundreds of religious schools have developed counseling programs in the
> last twenty years, many in the marriage
> <https://www.psychologytoday.com/basics/marriage> and family counseling
> area. It is hard to say, but there could be more licensable counselors
> graduating from religious schools than are graduating from secular programs
> right now. In any event, there are thousands of counselors who think Jesus
> or other supernatural approaches are the answer. There were far fewer only
> a few years ago.
>
> *Q: So how does the Secular Therapy Project address this problem?*
>
> Ray: Han Hills and I developed a process and procedure for helping people
> find secular therapists through our website, seculartherapy.org.(link is
> external) <http://www.seculartherapy.org/> It is free and confidential
> for the therapist and the client. It is like the popular dating
> <https://www.psychologytoday.com/basics/mating> sites OKCupid.com(link is
> external) <http://www.okcupid.com/> or Plentyoffish.com(link is external)
> <http://www.pof.com/>. The therapist registers and describes his or her
> practice on the public part of their profile, along with a checklist of
> conditions they are qualified to work on. The therapist can reveal as much
> or as little as they like. No other information is available to the client;
> no email, no phone, no address, no websites. We want to protect the
> identity <https://www.psychologytoday.com/basics/identity> of the
> therapist as much as possible.
>
> *Q: Why so much emphasis on confidentiality and protecting the identity of
> the therapist?*
>
> Ray: Imagine that you are a secular psychologist or social worker in
> Oklahoma City. Most clients that come to you are religious and many of your
> referral sources are ministers or churches. If you openly advertised that
> you are secular, half your clients would leave and many of your referral
> sources would dry up. One therapist that I know in a major southern city
> gets 75% of her referrals from local ministers and churches. She used to be
> a strong Christian. She taught Sunday school for sixteen years, but is now
> an atheist. She wants to wean her practice away from religious sources, so
> she registered with us. She needs to keep under the radar or she would lose
> most of her current patients.
>
> Another therapist gets many referrals from the courts. The majority of
> judges in his county are very religious. In his state, judges are elected,
> so they often cater to the wishes of the religious community. If the
> community learned that a judge was referring people to a secular therapist,
> the judge could lose the next election. As a result, the therapist has to
> keep a low profile and cannot reveal that he is an atheist to the judges or
> to the community.
>
> Many of my therapist friends in New York, San Francisco or Washington, DC,
> often say that it is not a problem in their area. I would beg to differ.
> While San Francisco may not have ten Christian counselors per square mile,
> like Atlanta, it does have therapists who espouse New Age and other “Woo
> Woo” methods that are non-evidence based. Therapists in those areas also
> get referrals from religious judges, ministers and quasi-religious
> organizations like Catholic hospitals. Being an “out atheist” might
> endanger those referral sources.
>
> *Q: If it is often problematic for a therapist to be “out” as an atheist
> or secularist, is there any danger that a client could game the system and
> “out” a therapist in their community?*
>
> Ray:     I'm sure there is. There is no perfect system. At the same time,
> we are using a model that dating sites have used for a decade or more. Just
> like Match.com, we cannot be responsible for what happens, but we do our
> best to keep things safe for all parties. So far, we have seen no evidence
> of any “gaming of the system.”
>
> *Q: So you have a database of therapists, but how do you guarantee that
> they use evidence-based methods?*
>
> Ray:    First of all, we can’t guarantee anything, but we do have a
> process in place to screen and approve therapists. Four very experienced
> secular therapists look at each application and vote on whether they appear
> to use secular methods. We can only go on what a therapist submits to us,
> what they have on their web page and any client recommendations. We really
> like getting therapist referrals from clients in the secular community.
>
> *Q: How do clients use the system?*
>
> Ray:    The client can search our database and find a therapist close by
> and correspond through our system. The client’s information is confidential
> as well. The therapist can only know what the client tells them. Client and
> therapist correspond through the system a few times until they feel
> comfortable and think there is a good fit. Then they can reveal enough to
> make an appointment or arrange a phone call.
>
> *Q: How can mental health professionals and others help or get involved?*
>
> Ray:    If you are a secular therapist, please register with us and tell
> your colleagues. If you are a patient of a therapist who seems to use
> secular and evidence-based methods, ask them to register. Finally, if you
> are looking for a therapist, look in our database first. Registering as a
> client is simple and confidential. Within minutes, you will know if there
> are any therapists close to you. If there are none close to you, many of
> our therapists will do distance counseling by phone or Skype.
>
> You can also help by donating to the project. We run this on a shoestring
> budget and would welcome your donations. Just go to
> recoveringfromreligion.org(link is external)
> <http://recoveringfromreligion.org/> and hit the donate button. You can
> then say that you want your donation to go to the Secular Therapy project.
> Secular Therapy is an outreach program of Recovering from Religion, which I
> founded in 2009.
>
>
>
> About Dr. Darrel Ray:
>
> Darrel Ray is the author of several books, most recently Sex and God: How
> Religion Distorts Sexuality(link is external)
> <http://www.amazon.com/Sex-God-Religion-Distorts-Sexuality/dp/0970950543> (2012),
> and The God Virus(link is external) <http://www.thegodvirus.net/> (2009).
> He received an Ed.D. in counseling psychology from Peabody College of
> Vanderbilt University in 1978 and an MA in religion in 1974 from Scarritt
> College for Christian Workers. He practiced in a clinical setting for 10
> years working with children, adolescents and families. In 1986 he moved
> into organizational psychology and became a pioneer in the social
> psychology of teamwork <https://www.psychologytoday.com/basics/teamwork>
>  and leadership <https://www.psychologytoday.com/basics/leadership>development.
> In 2009 he founded Recoveringfromreligion.org (RR) with the mission of
> helping people over come the trauma
> <https://www.psychologytoday.com/basics/trauma> of leaving religion. RR
> is now a worldwide organization headed by Jerry DeWitt(link is external)
> <http://recoveringfromreligion.org/pages/JerryDeWitt>, the first graduate
> of the Clergy Project(link is external) <http://clergyproject.org/>, and
> Dr. Ray is the Chairman of the Board for RR. Seculartherapy.org is an
> outreach project of RR.
>
>
>
> Follow David Niose on Twitter(link is external)
> <https://twitter.com/ahadave>
>
> David Niose's new book, Nonbeliever Nation: The Rise of Secular Americans(link
> is external)
> <http://www.amazon.com/Nonbeliever-Nation-Rise-Secular-Americans/dp/023033895X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1352342389&sr=1-1&keywords=nonbeliever+nation>,
> is available wherever books are sold.
>



-- 

A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they
shall never sit in.

-Greek proverb

“Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity.
Immaturity is the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance
from another. This immaturity is self- imposed when its cause lies not in
lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without
guidance from another. Sapere Aude! ‘Have courage to use your own
understand-ing!—that is the motto of enlightenment.

--Immanuel Kant
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