How to Build a Well-Stuffed Straw Man

John Shook, director of education and a senior research fellow for the Center for Inquiry - an organization that is typically friendly toward skepticism, critical thinking, and atheism - has written a scathing attack on ... someone, I'm not entirely sure who, exactly ... in the good ol' HuffPo.

In his article, pithily titled "For Atheists and Believers, Ignorance Is No Excuse", Shook states:

Astonished that intellectual defenses of religion are still maintained, many prominent atheists disparage theology. They either dismiss the subject as irrelevant, or, if they do bother to acknowledge it, slim refutations of outdated arguments for a medieval God seem enough. ... Challenging religion's immunity from criticism is one thing; perpetuating contempt for religion's intellectual side is another. ... The "know-nothing" wing of the so-called New Atheism really lives up to that label. Nonbelievers reveling in their ignorance are an embarrassing betrayal of the freethought legacy.

When I read this, I blinked. Just who is he talking about, anyways? Is he making the (baseless and almost certainly false) assumption that the "new" (ugh) atheists are unfamiliar with more complex forms of theology? Is he saying that we only dismiss it because we don't understand it? Who is this "'know-nothing wing' of the so-called New Atheism"?

Yes, there are plenty of fools who claim that religion is false because they've accepted simple (and wrong) explanations such as those offered by idiocy like Zeitgeist, but... does he think that most of us are like this?

I didn't become an atheist because it was the easy answer. There's nothing easy about giving up indoctrination. I gave up my faith because I was familiar with the more 'complex' theology, and I found it just as empty and intellectually unsatisfying as its simpler cousins. Yes, theologians have become very good in the past few thousand years at ducking and weaving around good questions, but their arguments, no matter how complicated, are still centered upon assertions of knowledge about things they couldn't possibly know. Any defenses of gods they have are based on asserted attributes of gods; in essence, they've become very good at defining God into existence, in the absence of any actual evidence of said existence.

Are most of the more vocal atheists ignorant of theology? Hardly! In my experience, the people who are less familiar with theology are the atheists who go along quietly, not making a fuss out of their disbelief. They don't find the subject of god meaningful, so they don't bother talking about it. But those of us who do understand theology tend to recognize that it's a subject in which expertise can't be demonstrated! If the gods are inscrutable, no one can claim to be more knowledgeable than anyone else, and we have no reason to accept a person's authority.

If Shook wants to criticize people who dismiss theology as meaningless because they're not familiar with the more complex thoughts of theologians, he's asserting that there's some basis for assuming those theologians actually have something authoritative to say on the subject! What sort of freethinker assumes that a person who is good at disguising sophistry with flowery language actually has the inside scoop on a subject?

Shook continues:

How did know-nothing atheism and lazy theology grab the spotlight? This dead-end trap of mutually assured ignorance was not inevitable. Ironically, better educated classes of believers and freethinkers had emerged over the past 200 years.

Again... what is an educated believer? When you say that a believer is familiar with complex theology, are you actually saying that they know something about reality, or just that they've become better able to spin nonsense into gold?

Shook goes on:

Christian theology has come a long way since St. Thomas Aquinas. Under stress from modern science and Enlightenment philosophy, it has explored cosmological, ethical, emotional, and existential dimensions of religious life. Many kinds of theology have emerged, replacing a handful of traditional arguments for God with robust methods of defending religious viewpoints.

In other words: Religion has consistently ceded ground to rational thought. The gaps in which God can be shoved have consistently shrunk, until God can only be described as a mystery. Why, then, should we be concerned with theology, if it's constantly having to remold itself to fit the reality that science is revealing to us every day? Theology is a discipline in search of a field to explore.

Why is Shook spouting such silliness? Well, you shouldn't be surprised at all, really...

I expand on these observations from the front lines of the God debates in my new book, The God Debates: A 21st Century Guide for Atheists, Believers, and Everyone in Between. All of the major traditional and contemporary arguments for God are reorganized by these five categories: Theology From The Scripture (can we trust its accounts of Jesus?); Theology From The World (should we supplement science with acts of God?); Theology Beyond The World (does cosmology need supernaturalism to explain the universe?); Theology In The Know (placing religious certainties before any other knowledge); and Theology Into The Myst (letting religious experiences of God take priority over creeds). The final chapter on Faith and Reason evaluates the competition among Western worldviews struggling to balance reason and faith, including fundamentalism, liberal Christianity, panentheism, mysticism, religious humanism, and secular humanism.

Oh, so he has a book to sell! And thus, all of his nonsense can be excused as an attempt to stir up controversy and increase his sales.

If atheists are going to produce a rational worldview capable of replacing religion, they must take religion and theology more seriously.

These are the words of a man who has done very little reading and a whole lot of pontificating lately. How sad. Plenty of atheist writers have taken religion and theology seriously - as natural phenomena. Playing on the theists' own court is a surefire way to lose at their game. Deny that they have a right to make the rules, and you'll be better off. This is the Courtier's Reply writ large.

Shook's entire article is one big angry-old-man-fist-shaking at a group who supposedly exists, but for which he is apparently unable to cite a single example. Were he able to do so, it would lend quite a bit of credence to his point. As it stands, he seems to be adept only at attacking scarecrows.

------

Something else I've just realized about Dr. Shook's article: Underlying it seems to be the assumption that atheists, rather than simply being people who don't believe in a god or gods, instead somehow bear a responsibility for addressing the evidence-free claims made by religious people. Where does this come from? Why does disbelief require us to examine all the claims made by the religious? And which complex theologies should we be prepared to rebut - just those of the mainstream religions, or those of the more obscure sects as well? What if the most convincing and complicated theological position is that of a single person nobody has ever heard of - should we be embarrassed to call ourselves rationalists or freethinkers if we can't debate that one person on all her finer points and on her terms? Why do atheists need to be philosophers at all?

Regarding the 'Left Behind' prequels

For reasons I can't really explain, I've just listened to all three of the 'Left Behind' prequels in audiobook form.

These books hold a strange fascination for me. I'll freely admit that it's largely because I was reading the original series when I became a born-again Christian. These stories are deeply embedded in my memory. But when I first read them, I was just thinking about how glorious the future was going to be - as if the books were not just fictional descriptions of future events, but actual works of prophecy. The lines between fiction and prophecy were totally blurred for me.

Now, when I listen to them as a nonbeliever, I can't help but be struck by how trite and silly they seem. The characters are totally unrealistic, the plot lines are predictable and full of pointless delays, and the dialogue is stilted and utterly unlike any kind of dialogue that real people have. Everyone seems to speak the same way, eschewing contractions for the full versions of words (in what seems like an attempt to conform with the formal, Victorian English of the KJV of the Bible).

The whole thing is ridiculous, and it's packed with straw man versions of the arguments that atheists actually use. It's amazing that I was ever so drawn into something like this...

And that doesn't even begin to describe just how stereotypical the non-white characters are in this series. Jenkins and LaHaye actually portray the only explicitly African American characters as being stereotypically 'sassy' and obsessed with barbecued ribs. They could really only have been more racist if they'd gotten into a discussion of watermelon and chitlins... I mean, come on! Their straw man black people even started talking about how white people don't know how to cook ribs! What the fuck?

It's Meowhammad!

Happy Draw Muhammad Day, everybody.

What's it about? I'll let Wikipedia explain it.

Ex-Christians have it easy...

Thoughts from a Godless Heathen has been added to The Atheist Blogroll. You can see the blogroll in my sidebar. The Atheist blogroll is a community building service provided free of charge to Atheist bloggers from around the world. If you would like to join, visit Mojoey at Deep Thoughts for more information. That said, let's continue!

If you've got some time, I recommend perusing The Lens, a blog by my twitter friend Ali. Ali, a former Muslim, lends an interesting perspective on the intersection of religion and culture that I and many former Christians have likely never seen.

From what I've seen, Islam seems to be more deeply embedded in the culture of its followers than the beliefs of most Christians are embedded in theirs. This is something I'm only just coming to recognize, but it's an important point. When I tell people I'm an atheist, they tend to get a little freaked out by it, but it doesn't shake their world off of its foundations. When an ex-Muslim tells other Muslims that they're an atheist, it's not so simple. The Godless Monster related it this way over on Hemant Mehta's blog:

I get sick and tired of running into other Arabs and have them ask me if I am Muslim and then hear them respond to my declaration of non-belief by saying, “No!!! Once a Muslim, always a Muslim! You can NEVER go back! Never say that!”
I had to fake I was a believer at a cousin’s funeral when I was in southern Lebanon last month. How humiliating. It just wears you down emotionally after awhile. The entire culture and religion is obsessed with compliance and subordination and woe be to those who rock the boat or betray their own kind as I have. You former Christians and Jews have no idea how lucky you are.

I agree, and the more horror stories I read from former Muslims, the more I realize how smoothly my 'coming out' has gone.

We're Not Alone

One thing I hear a lot from my fellow nonbelievers is that it seems like Christian extremists are constantly pushing for an American theocracy. While I'm convinced that this is true - that is, that fundamentalists would love to take over the country and turn us "back to the Bible" (whatever that means to them) - I'm not sure just how successful they would be. After all, they would have to deal with all the non-Christians, not to mention the other Christians who disagree with them. That's no small number of people, either; regardless of how noisy and obnoxious the extremists are, they're still technically a fringe. And they're not without their detractors inside the faith community, either. Anomaly100, one of the few Christians I follow on Twitter, wrote (among a lot of other stuff that makes good sense):

The Family at 133 C Street, infamous for their stifling and oppression, behind closed doors, [and for] deeming who is and who isn’t moral, are the very ones showing support to Uganda for giving homosexuals the death sentence.

The protesters in Iran are determined to topple their government due to the oppressive dictatorship they’ve had to endure from a forced theocracy.

Are we becoming them? So much is done in the name of God but do you think God needs their help?

This is something I've wondered about quite often. Why do religious extremists feel that they need to enforce their God's rules? Do they honestly think that an omnipotent, omniscient being wouldn't be able to handle things on its own? That they're so ready to take action in defense of their deity seems to directly counter the idea that they are devout in their faith. After all, were they truly of the opinion that their God's will would always be done, they would see no reason to act on his behalf. And if their God were omnipotent, how could anything possibly go any way but his? The idea of something going against the will of God would be a logical impossibility.

Anomaly100 and I definitely don't agree on the basic theological argument - that is, she argues against religious extremists on the basis that they distort Christianity, while I argue against them on the basis that their actions belie doubts that their words deny (and think that their stance is more in keeping with a fundamentalist tradition). But her viewpoint is a good reminder that nonbelievers aren't the only ones who are loath to allow dangerous religious ideas to take a solid root.

Uncomfortable Gift Requests at Work

Recently, one of my coworkers lost her father after a long battle with a terminal illness. She took the last week off from work to grieve and deal with family business. Today, she came back to work, and one of my other coworkers passed around an envelope containing a sympathy card.

The catch? There was a note on the envelope asking for cash to be given in her father's name as a gift to a local church.

Being the nonconfrontational person I am, I was a little irritated at first, but not enough to raise a stink about it. I simply signed the card with my condolences and an offer to lend her an ear if she needed someone to talk to, then passed the card off to the next person on the list. I considered the idea of asking her if there was anything else I could do in her father's memory, but quickly dismissed the idea as (obviously) a little insensitive.

I'd like to make up for not chipping in on this gift, but I'm not quite sure what to do. Most of my coworkers are Catholic, and asking them for alternatives would almost certainly lead to an uncomfortable discussion about religion that I really don't need to have in the middle of my workday. I'd talk to my parents, except that they seem to be confusing "I'm an atheist" with "I'm a nontraditional Christian who is struggling with his faith." I figure my best bet is to toss the question out onto the web, and hope something comes up in the net: What could I do to honor her father's memory without offending her and bringing up subjects that aren't really appropriate for work?

I can't WAIT to read the letters to the editor about this one!

The Schenectady Daily Gazette occasionally has a column by Carl Strock called "The View From Here." It's often inflammatory and a bit mixed-up on the various flavors of Christianity, but his column from today was pretty interesting. If you're a Gazette subscriber, you can read it here, but everybody else who doesn't want to shell out a few bucks to read it is out of luck. Fortunately, I have a physical copy of the Gazette on hand, so I'll quote rather liberally from it...

Disorders are updated, but one is missing

A forthcoming new edition of my favorite book, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, has gotten publicity recently with the disclosure of some of the changes it will contain, but frankly, ladies and gentlemen, the changes are nothing to get excited about. A tweak here, a tweak there.
...
Just fine-tuning, which is quite meaningless since all the definitions are arbitrary anyway, simply made up by the American Psychiatric Association. It's not as if they are based on new scientific discoveries. [well... somewhat yes, somewhat no. but that's another issue.]
...
What really strikes me is what is NOT in this supposedly comprehensive manual of derangement, with its hundreds of "dissociative disorders," "mood disorders," and "somatoform disorders," and what I especially have in mind is the religious disorder, which is not included nor is any hint of it included.
But think about it, ladies and gentlemen: What is the main type of lunacy afflicting the world right now? Is it not the conviction that one is serving an all-powerful invisible being by using one's own body as a bomb to blow up other people who do not share one's devotion to that invisible being?
Certainly that's the type of lunacy I'm most aware of, and I'm aware of it every time I go through airport security or even courthouse security.
Then below the level of suicide bombers devoted to Allah and his Prophet, who must be the purest exemplars of the religious disorder, we have other religious fanatics - Islamic, Jewish, Christian, Hindu - who are so convinced of their mandate from higher invisible beings that they feel fully justified in hacking, burning, torturing, shooting, dispossessing or just disdaining people who swear allegiance to different invisible beings.
Now, the definition of a mental disorder ... is that it must not be merely cultural but must be associated with distress, disability, or with "a significantly increased risk of suffering death, pain, disability, or an important loss of freedom." It must be "a manifestation of a behavioral, psychological, or biological dysfunction in the individual."
Doesn't the religious disorder fit that definition? ... I think it [does]. The trouble is, too many people are afflicted with it, and they and their sympathizers have too much clout for American psychiatrists to dare call them nuts.

I could go on and on about how Carl needs to mitigate his tone and take note of the difference between religious extremism and generic religion, but I don't feel like it, and you've probably heard it all before. Besides, he's right - the people who follow the more gentle, generic religious track would be up in arms if any kind of religious belief was labeled a mental disorder.

Mainstream newspapers airing atheistic viewpoints! What is the world coming to?

What Should Atheists Evangelize?

Something I've noticed about myself since getting involved with atheist social groups is that I have an insistent desire to "spread the word." The dilemma I find myself facing is simple on its face, but leads to much bigger questions: what word should I be spreading?

Maybe it's something hanging over from when I evangelized the Christian gospel. I feel like I want to grab someone by the shoulders, shake them, and say, "Listen, have you heard this? Isn't this amazing? Don't you feel like you should do something?" The problem is that there's just so much to address; our world is in dangerously short supply of rational thinkers, especially in positions of authority, and credulity is practically being bred into us. Unreasoning, unskeptical thinking is encouraged, even promoted as a value under the guise of faith – and thus expected to receive some inherent level of respect from all and sundry.

The major problem with the idea of "atheist evangelism" is that atheism really isn't something that can be promoted, per se. It's not a product; it doesn't offer any benefits; it's not a quick and dirty solution to difficult problems. These are the sorts of things people tend to be looking for. Atheism is typically defined as either a lack of belief in gods or rejection of claims made about gods. That's basically it; it's a conclusion drawn about a single subject. Pure atheism doesn't really give us much to work with. There's also the problem that the fact that someone is an atheist doesn't necessarily mean that they've got their head on straight. Atheists aren't always rational, any more than religious people are. Rational thought goes well with atheism, but atheism certainly doesn't require it. (Just look at the Raelians, for example...)

So what should atheists evangelize, if anything? I'd put my money on critical thinking, skepticism, reason, the scientific method, and open-mindedness. From what I've seen, these things tend to lead people to become atheists more than anything else, especially when they're applied to concepts that believers take for granted. Properly applied, these tools can help us find the best solutions for just about any problems we face. If, in the process of using them, a believer becomes an atheist, so be it; in my mind, it's more important just to get them using the tools in the first place. Better to be religious and a critical thinker than an atheist and gullible.

I don't think atheists should evangelize simple doubt or disbelief in claims made by religion. Any fool can doubt religious beliefs; it takes reasoning and critical thinking to figure out why something should be doubted. Simply going around telling people that religious claims probably aren't true isn't good enough. For one thing, it's very difficult to reason people out of positions that they didn't arrive at through reason; for another, it doesn't really address the core of the problem, which is a lack of critical thinking. Let's say you manage to dissuade a devout believer of all their supernatural beliefs. Does this really accomplish anything? Instilling disbelief isn't the same as planting the seeds of analytical thinking and skepticism about faith-based claims. You can believe a lot of true things for the wrong reasons; you can also disbelieve a lot of false things for the wrong reasons as well.

The ability to critically analyze claims based on their evidential merits is one of the central strengths of freethought. By employing the contents of a basic skeptical toolbox – a better knowledge of logic and fallacies, an understanding of the scientific method, and other parts of Carl Sagan's "baloney detection kit" – we're able to figure out whether or not something is true, typically with a better likelihood of being right than if we had just gone with our gut or accepted what we were told. I believe that, if we help people build their own toolboxes, we'll stand a better chance of turning the tide in reason's favor.

Now that we've got an idea of what to promote, the big question is how we promote it. Faith and unscientific credulity are strong forces to contend with, and it's easy for a believer to block out any skepticism about their sacred cows if the skeptics come about the discussion in the wrong way. Popular culture also has a tendency to promote bad science, through TV shows that promote pseudoscience, news reports that give an undue amount of respect to fringe claims (in the name of "balance"), celebrity endorsements of new-age mysticism, and so on. The "woo" has a long head start in this race, but there are a few ways we can fight back.

First, get vocal. If you see something you think is fishy (in the news, on a TV show, etc.), do a little investigation. If you can, find out what the scientific consensus on the subject is. Write a letter to the editor in response to sketchy journalism, or pen an opinion piece critiquing the scientific or logical flaws in the rhetoric of pseudoscientists. If you think someone is using good science to promote bad ideas or bad politics, make your voice heard. If you feel it's necessary, contact your congressional representatives and speak your mind.

Second, get excited. Part of what's so fantastic about science is that there's so much awe-inspiring mystery in the natural world alone that we don't really need all the mystical supernatural stuff. Share your love of science and your fascination with science news with your friends and family. Let them know why it's important to you and why you're so hyped up about it. Promote the idea that science is open to everybody. Unlike what we see on some TV shows and in movies, science isn't some arcane, mystical process that is inaccessible to anyone who doesn't have an inborn special talent for it. Anyone can be a scientist, as long as they keep asking questions. If you've got kids, encourage their curiosity; if they keep asking "why, why, why," don't just give up when you don't know the answer – look for the answers with them, and help them learn how to find things out for themselves (rather than just accept it "because we said so"). Lighting the spark of investigative curiosity and critical thinking is essential for helping make the next generation more freethinking than the current one.

Third, get invested in the future. When it comes to science and critical thinking, much of the American educational system is in dire need of an overhaul. Kids are taught to memorize formulas and to try to get predetermined results for their science experiments. Find out what can be done locally to influence the science curriculum. Demand that kids get the education they deserve. For example, you could suggest that, rather than follow a strict plan for doing an experiment, the kids are told to design their own experiments and justify their methods by explaining why the science supports their ideas. Anything we can do to promote "teaching to understand" rather than "teaching to memorize" is worth pursuing.

Fourth, get suggestive (rather than combative). There's no better way to push away a believer in any irrational claim than to just tell them that they're wrong. Instead, get them to question their presuppositions in a way that makes it seem like it was their idea in the first place. If you hear someone talking about a pseudoscientific belief, ask loaded questions that are intended to guide them into critically examining their ideas. For example, if you're talking to someone who suddenly brings up astrology and how their horoscope said that such-and-such a thing would happen today, ask them if it doesn't sound like a pretty safe guess, or if it makes sense to think that it would happen to everyone born during the same period of time (and nobody else). In other words, rather than throwing a brick wall up in front of them, quietly slip in a roadblock that makes them pause and reflect upon what it is they've accepted as true. Passively planting seeds of doubt this way is a sort of kinder, gentler skepticism that usually doesn't come of as dismissive or disrespectful.

Finally, get skeptical! Skeptics are a major part of our front line in the battle against nonsense, no matter where it comes from. The more positive we are as skeptics, the more likely other people will be to pick it up as well. Get familiar with logical fallacies, the scientific method, and the flaws in human judgment (faulty memories, sensory misinterpretation, cognitive biases, etc). Familiarize yourself with common rhetorical techniques that the woo crowd will use to trick people into credulity, and try to figure out their potential ulterior motives. Most importantly, don't jump to conclusions. Just because you're a skeptic and a claim sounds unbelievable doesn't mean you're necessarily right; you've still got some hard work to do to find out what's most likely to be true. After all, skepticism of a claim is just the beginning of the investigation, not the conclusion. Besides, human beings are often self-deceived about their abilities or the depth and validity of their understanding of a subject (something called the Dunning-Kruger effect).

I'm sure some people will disagree with my analysis. They're welcome to do so; after all, what kind of freethinker would I be if I demanded that everyone agree with me? Regardless, I hope that at least something I've said here will inspire all freethinkers to evangelize what really matters: science, reason, critical thinking, and skepticism. Given time, I'm sure that these will do more to fight against the old dogmas than anything else.

Science may be hard to understand. It may challenge cherished beliefs. When its products are placed at the disposal of politicians or industrialists, it may lead to weapons of mass destruction and grave threats to the environment. But one thing you have to say about it: It delivers the goods.

-- Carl Sagan, from The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

The Invention of Lying

Last night I went out with some friends to see this movie. In case you haven't heard of it, it's essentially a vastly amusing thought experiment put together by Ricky Gervais. The premise: Imagine a world where humanity never evolved the ability to deceive. Not only are people incapable of telling a lie, but they can't even lie by omission - they basically say whatever's on their mind. There aren't even white lies, told to save someone's feelings. The truth is just brutal and honest. And everyone believes everything everyone else says, since they can't even conceive of the idea of "false."

Now, introduce Gervais' character, Mark Bellison, a screenwriter for Lecture Films, a hit movie company that makes... lectures about history, since fiction doesn't exist. Bellison is basically a loser on his way down to the bottom, when in a moment of desperation he suddenly develops the ability to lie. Astonished at his ability to say "things that aren't..." - never finishing this phrase, since "true" is meaningless in this world - he attempts to demonstrate his ability to his friends, but they simply accept all the lies he says as true, no matter how ridiculous, because they can't even begin to detect that they aren't true.

Eventually, Bellison uses his newfound talent to get rich and famous, after making the first fictional screenplay in the history of mankind (which everyone believes without hesitation). But when his ailing mother is close to death, he rushes to the hospital, and out of the anguish of hearing his mother speak of the eternity of nothingness to come, he invents heaven. He forgets that he's not alone with his mother, and the hospital staff overhears.

Soon, the word spreads of this amazing news that there is something more after you die, and the entire world is literally waiting for Mark to reveal more of what he knows. In due course he invents God (the "man in the sky who controls everything"), religious doctrines about morality, and the ideas of prayer and hell.

That's all I'll give away. I strongly encourage you to watch this film.

Though it's clearly fictional, this movie gives an interesting glimpse into some of the more biting criticisms of religion.

When Mark tells everyone that everything that happens, good and bad, are all because of the man in the sky, the crowd becomes enraged that he could be so callous, calling the man in the sky a prick and shouting that they should find him and stop him before it's too late. But Mark quickly pacifies them by reminding them that there's an eternity of good stuff waiting after a short life of bad stuff. I see this justification all the time from evangelical Christians; that we shouldn't question why bad things happen in this life, because there's an eternal reward afterward. Ignore the fact that any other being that did the things their god does would be considered a monster; since heaven is there waiting, God could be as much of a prick as he wants to be, and it would be inconsequential; the ends justify the means.

Two of Mark's friends also decide that they're going to spend the rest of their lives being self-destructive, since that would get them to their eternal happy place even faster. I've always thought this was odd: if Christians think that an eternity of bliss waits for them after death, why are they so eager to live as long as they possibly can? Could it be that there's a kernel of doubt hidden away inside? Like comedian Doug Stanhope said, "If you really believe that death leads to eternal bliss, then why are you wearing a seatbelt?" Eternal life makes this temporary life nothing but a speed bump.

All in all, I really liked this movie. It's equal parts sweet, funny, and thought-provoking. Needless to say, it's raised a bit of a furor among religious circles. I've seen Christian movie reviewing sites who call it "anti-Christian" regardless of the fact that it's about a generic deity (though to be fair, some of the sight gags are specifically related to aspects of Christian mythology). Many people are showing their aggravatingly typical fatwa envy: "Just imagine - if he did the same type of film regarding Islamist religion - he'd be marked for death!" (What is it about these people that makes them wish that their religion allowed for the murder of anyone who made something they find offensive?) I can understand the hurt feelings; I don't think I would've liked this movie as a believer, and I'm sure I'd have been angry if not at least uncomfortable. But as an ex-believer, I found this movie intriguing. It's not exactly Sartre or Nietzsche, but it's a nice bit of pop philosophy nonetheless, and it made me think more than most movies do nowadays.

Should the Boy Scouts be allowed to recruit in public schools?

It's always interesting to me when I run into a situation that I have to reconsider for the first time since becoming an atheist.

A mother in King, North Carolina recently wrote a letter to the editor in the Winston-Salem Journal:

On the second day of school, a representative from the Boy Scouts of America came to my son's school to recruit new members. My son came home so excited, and cried when I had to tell him no. I feel he is too young to understand BSA's homophobic and discriminatory policies, so I told him we already had too much on our plate. The BSA is prejudicial (it doesn't accept atheists or agnostics) and homophobic (no gays allowed). My son will never be a Boy Scout and I wish that I had been notified that valuable learning time was going to be spent promoting a homophobic hate group.

Recently President Obama made a 15-minute speech to children about working hard and staying in school. I got a verbal message from the teacher, a note and two calls letting me know about the speech.

Is the president's message that scary? Why does a positive message from the president require so much parental warning, while a discriminatory organization gets free rein to recruit during the school day with zero parental notification?

From now on, I expect notifications of future speakers at my son's school and the topic of discussion. I expect a verbal message from his teacher, a letter from the principal and two auto calls. I would also like the opportunity to send in a signed note to excuse him from said speaker.

The BSA, in case you didn't know, has official anti-LGBT and anti-nontheist policies, which have led to Eagle scouts being stripped of their awards and scout leaders being removed from their positions.

I'm an Eagle scout. I received my award from a scout troop where religion and sexuality were never discussed. Maybe there was an undercurrent of religion in some of the things we said (like the Scout Oath, which mentions doing duty to god and my country), but apart from the routine recitations it was never really raised as an issue. (Come to think of it, that's kind of surprising, considering that I grew up in a pretty conservative area of Michigan...)

But I know that troops do exist where just believing in the wrong god (e.g. being a Hindu) is enough to keep you out. And I've seen dozens of cases of scouts and scoutmasters having their awards and positions stripped away after publicly coming out of the closet.

So it's clearly not enough for me to apply my own personal experiences to this issue. If I say that it's okay to allow some scout troops into schools since not every scout troop discriminates on the basis of sexuality or religion, it would be equivalent to saying that since not all Christians are like Fred Phelps we should allow the more accepting groups to recruit in schools.

I can see the mother coming at this question with two different approaches:

1. She doesn't want her kids to be potentially indoctrinated into anti-LGBT, anti-nontheist beliefs.
2. She doesn't want to support an organization that discriminates the way the BSA does.

From the first viewpoint, it would seem a bit hasty to prejudge the practices of a local troop based on the policies of the national troop. The second viewpoint recognizes that things like membership dues and subscriptions to the Boy's Life magazine would be giving financial backing to a group with an official policy of hate, and I absolutely agree that such discriminatory groups shouldn't be given the platform of the classroom to seek new sources of income and new members.

Now I'm torn between turning in my Eagle badge to officially renounce the BSA and keeping it to pad my résumé...

The Friendly Atheist Under Attack

Hemant Mehta, one of the most tolerant, genial, and patient atheists I've ever seen, is currently under attack from a thinly-veiled far-right Christian hate group calling itself the Illinois Family Institute, which has a history of saying some pretty nutty stuff. And I'm not just calling them a hate group, either; for a while, the Southern Poverty Law Center had them listed as one, specifically for their strident anti-gay stance, comments, and leadership. Here's a sample:

The conference boiled down to a veritable jihad against gay rights. No fewer than 18 presenters railed against homosexuals and the "gay agenda." It seemed that the speakers, many of whom were ostensibly there to talk about the virtues of a Christian nation, just couldn't help but take repeated swipes at gays and lesbians.

...

Peter LaBarbera, head of the Illinois Family Institute and a discredited "researcher" whose work has been denounced by the American Psychological Association for producing bogus data "proving" homosexual behavior is deleterious to health and welfare, called homosexuality "disgusting." LaBarbera, who "investigates" this lifestyle by hanging out in gay chat rooms, insisted that good Christians must "stand up to homosexual aggression" and stop using "that hoary euphemism" -- "sexual orientation." He called for the repeal of all "sexual orientation laws" -- laws that ban discrimination against gays -- because they violate religious freedom. He demanded the closing down of all "homosexual establishments." And he spoke of the "need to find ways to bring back shame to those practicing homosexual behavior."

(Researching homosexual behavior by hanging out in gay chat rooms? Wow. Yeah. Not that there's anything wrong with that...)

Back to the main story. Primarily at issue is a sarcastic remark from Hemant regarding comments made by Laurie Higgins, director of the Division of School Advocacy (read: anti-church/state separation) for IFI.

The story really begins with the arrest of two gay men (for trespassing, apparently) who - GASP! - kissed each other in front of a Mormon temple in Salt Lake City, and the subsequent nationwide kiss-in protests. One of the protests took place in Chicago, and the IFI certainly wasn't happy about that. Higgins said:

An adult kissing a pre-pubescent child or a high school-age adolescent in a sexual or romantic manner is both obscene and inappropriate despite the protestations of the North American Man Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) to the contrary.

Romantic or sexual kissing between two consenting adults who are in love and who are closely related by blood is both obscene and inappropriate despite the protestations of defenders of incest to the contrary.

Romantic or sexual kissing among “multi-partner” unions, like those profiled in a recent Newsweek article, are both obscene and inappropriate despite the protests of polyamorists to the contrary.

Romantic or sexual kissing between two people of the same biological sex is both obscene and inappropriate despite the voluble, vigorous, and often vitriolic protests of homosexuals to the contrary.

To which Hemant said:

The only thing that could make this kiss-in even better is if it took place just outside Higgins’ house.

So terrible, I know! Of course, to everyone but Higgins, this is obvious sarcasm. He was not seriously endorsing the idea of holding a kiss-in protest in front of her house. Regardless, it's time to cue the Christian persecution complex:

... Mr. Mehta doesn't merely expatiate philosophically, he gets personal too.

Last week, Mr. Mehta made an unfriendly comment on his Friendly Atheist blog that I found troubling enough that I shared it with some of the District 204's administrators and the members of the school board--something I have not done on the other occasions he has written about me.

He wrote the following in response to my IFI article about the homosexual kiss-in: "The only thing that could make this kiss-in even better is if it took place just outside Higgins' house."

In my email, I expressed my disappointment that a role model for students would make such a vindictive, irresponsible, and unprofessional public statement. My hope was that someone in the administration would have a conversation with Mr. Mehta regarding his influential role in students' lives and his inappropriate comment.

That's right; she e-mailed the people who sign his paycheck. She's applying a little pressure. Heaven forbid that anyone should think she's trying to get him fired! Just because she sent the e-mail to everyone but him and specifically to the folks who could decide whether or not his employment should be terminated, that doesn't mean she wants him gone. His higher-ups have his back, anyways:

Not surprisingly, everything is fine at work. My superiors respect my right to free speech and their concern is with my professional work, not my private life. For what it’s worth, my teaching evaluations over the past couple years have been excellent, thank you very much.

Anyway, school officially begins tomorrow. And I still have my job.

But that's not enough for Ms. Higgins. She has since posted at least two other articles on the IFI's home page attacking Hemant:

District 204 parents really should spend some time perusing Neuqua Valley math teacher, Hemant Mehta's website to determine whether he is the kind of man with whom they want their children to spend a school year. He absolutely has a First Amendment right to promote any feckless, destructive, and offensive ideas he wants via his blog, but, as I mentioned in my earlier article, parents have the right not to have him as a teacher and a role model for their children.

Okay, it's time to cut the sarcasm. Combine this with another of her spewings:

... Parents have every right not to have their children in the classroom under the tutelage of someone whose publicly articulated views they find fallacious and deeply troubling.

What Higgins is really saying is that anyone with a lifestyle or viewpoint that any parent considers factually or morally wrong shouldn’t have the right to teach. Her e-mail to Hemant’s administrators proved that much. Were she simply worried about parents’ choices, she would have e-mailed the parents and left it at that. Instead, she attempted to pressure Hemant's bosses into reprimanding or firing him. She doesn’t think he should be allowed to teach.

Since there has been such a response to her comments (with several hundred comments on Hemant's blog, calls coming in from the local media, and numerous e-mails to the IFI), she attempted to clarify her "true" intentions:

I want to be very clear about what I’m suggesting: I am suggesting that parents who have serious concerns about Mr. Mehta’s potential influence on their children’s beliefs politely insist that their children be placed in another teacher’s class.

It bears repeating that this is a transparent lie. If this were all she was concerned about, she would have left the school administration out of this entirely. Her goal is to get Hemant fired, because she thinks anyone with views she disagrees with is dangerous and shouldn’t have the right to teach children. She did not contact the parents to "warn" them about Hemant. She contacted his superiors and her mailing list. The choices of the parents did not enter into it.

You fail to acknowledge a central point that I addressed in my articles, which is many teens are unduly influenced by emotion or the cult of personality and are therefore predisposed to look favorably on the ideas of teachers whom they find cool or charismatic or funny or kind or iconoclastic.

...
If students have you as their teacher, like you, and develop a relationship with you—as happens often in high school—they will be more likely to look favorably on and be influenced by your ideas than those students who have no connection with you. This is the reason that many parents care deeply about role models.

Yes, Ms. Higgins, let’s warn those parents about the terribly dangerous and potentially harmful different ideas that people have. Different ideas are inherently bad and should be quashed as subversive. Parents should be terrified that such things are allowed in schools. Through all this bluster all I can see is her continued assertion that since Hemant is an atheist, he must be actively promoting atheism in his classroom. Care to give us some proof? Something we can sink our teeth into? Something more than just scare tactics?

Of course not. Ms. Higgins isn't about reality here. She's about dogma and rhetoric. We're talking about a woman who endorsed the bullying of gay students on the basis that homosexuality is wrong and immoral and shouldn't be coddled, so no insult is too strong.

Ms. Higgins is so terrified of the idea that children might learn about different lifestyles and beliefs that normal standards of morality and decency have no bearing on what she's willing to do to stop Hemant's oh-so-dangerous actions and speech. She's not pro-censorship, oh no! She just wants parents to know what teachers do in their private lives:

Those parents are entitled to sufficient information to make informed choices about the very public activities of their children’s teachers–something that for some odd reason seems to offend you.

No, Miss Higgins, they are not entitled to know what goes on in teachers' personal time, no matter how public it is. Parents are entitled to know what teachers do in school. Outside of school is none of their damn business.

This sort of behavior is the double-edged sword to the phrase "If God be with us, who can be against us?". On the one hand, it is saying that nobody can oppress you if God is on your side. On the other hand, it is also saying that if God is on your side, nobody can possibly have any real or valid objections to anything you do, since you've got divine endorsement. Higgins thinks that anything she does, no matter how venomous or slimy, is justified in the promotion of her beliefs.

What's absolutely insane about this is that she was removed from her job at a high school because of anti-gay comments she made on her personal time on talk radio:

If students have you as their teacher, like you, and develop a relationship with you--as happens often in high school--they will be more likely to look favorably on and be influenced by your ideas than those students who have little or no personal connection to you. This is the reason that many parents care deeply about role models.
...
It's probably the same reason that three years ago a well-known homosexual blogger informed my former superintendent that I had been interviewed on Moody Radio on the topic of homosexuality. During my last three years at Deerfield High School, there were more than a few supporters of the normalization of homosexuality who wrote publicly and contacted my administration about what they believed was my unfitness as a role model for students--and I worked in the writing center where I had no classes.

So, clearly, she's an utter hypocrite. She's out for revenge. Two wrongs make a right, in her mind. She's turning the tables, rather than turning the other cheek. What a Christlike thing to do.

I'm sure the story isn't over yet. To get the full perspective straight from the source, keep up with Hemant's blog: Friendly Atheist by Hemant Mehta

His previous posts on this subject:

• Comparing Them to Nazis
• Why the Illinois Family Institute Is Angry With Me
• Illinois Family Institute Goes After Me Again
• Laurie Higgins of the Illinois Family Institute Issues an Open Letter to Me

His excellent book: I Sold My Soul on eBay: Viewing Faith through an Atheist's Eyes

So I had my first face-to-face theist/atheist discussion...

A few days ago at Starbucks I had a friendly discussion about atheism and skepticism with a barrista. She noticed that I was reading Dan Barker's Godless, which tells the story about how Barker, a former fundamentalist/evangelical Christian preacher, gradually lost his faith and became an atheist (and is now co-president of the Freedom from Religion Foundation). The book's subject prompted her to ask if I was an atheist, and when I told her that I was, her reaction was reassuringly nonchalant.

She seemed genuinely interested; I'm not sure if she had ever met someone who 'admitted' their atheism before. She asked whether I'd been raised in a religious home, what lead to me becoming an atheist, and so on. She told me that she had been raised Catholic herself, but had grown into a generic kind of theism where she was happy to let people believe what they wanted to so long as it made them happy and didn't hurt anyone else. I gave her a quick two-minute summary of my story, and interestingly, she had literally never heard of fundamentalism or evangelicalism before. She thought they were some sort of Eastern religion... that's a new one!

At one point, she asked me if I thought that billions of people could really be wrong. I said yes, and went on to mention one of my favorite facts about religion - that they can't all be right, but they could all be wrong. If there really were only one religion that was actually true, then yes, billions of people could be wrong. I just no longer see any particularly good reasons for believing in any one over the alternatives and I even see really good reasons to disbelieve some.

She asked me what I thought about people having spiritual experiences, or just generic personal experiences that they couldn't explain. I told her that I don't doubt that they have unexplained experiences; it's part of being human and not knowing everything about everything, after all. I stressed that the fact that something can't be explained right now or hasn't been explained to us doesn't mean that something supernatural has happened. I briefly touched on how our perceptions can be flawed, and how our memories of an event can get blown out of proportion over time if the event stuck out in our minds shortly after it happened.

From here, she mentioned some experiences she'd had as a kid that she was sure were the result of some kind of ghost activity. We got into a discussion about how our concepts of what ghosts are and how they would manifest come largely from our understanding of science and the cultures we grow up in; I mentioned that in some Asian cultures, ghosts manifest as physical beings that look similar to how Westerners might imagine demons to appear. She mentioned that she was once in a "haunted" cemetery, and that she took photographs that she was sure were ghosts - clouds of what appeared to be specks of light. When she told me that they had appeared in one photograph but not in another taken a few seconds later, I felt a kind of surge of skeptical excitement; I pointed out that, if she was using a flash, specks of dust hanging in the air could show up in the first photo because of the flash, but if the second photo were taken quickly enough after, the flash wouldn't have charged yet, which would result in the dust being mostly invisible. She seemed skeptical of my skepticism :) From there we talked about ghost hunter TV shows, and about how goofy they were walking around with their electronic gadgets that they were SO SURE were capable of magically detecting ghosts. She dared me to spend the night in a local cemetery that she was sure was haunted, but unfortunately they don't allow you to be in there at night... Oh well. I would've enjoyed that.

By this time the other barrista had joined us; it was kind of a slow night for Starbucks, and they didn't have anything better to do. We shifted gears into the subject of aliens and UFOs. Barrista #1 asked me if I thought that aliens exist. I said that it'd be pretty disappointing if there weren't life anywhere else in the universe, but so far as the evidence is concerned, it hasn't made any contact with us yet. Barrista #2 (who seems to be a skeptic herself, from other discussions we've had) pointed out that it was a bit silly to think that a species capable of achieving interstellar travel, surviving decades in transit, and overcoming the problems of deadly levels of ambient radiation could make it all the way to Earth - only to crash disastrously into the planet.

All in all, I really enjoyed discussing these things - finally - with someone who didn't completely agree with me. I'd like to think that I planted some seeds for critical and skeptical thinking. I was surprised to learn that there are Christians who are unaware of fundamentalism or the evangelical movement. I suppose this reflects the worldview I've developed through my experiences. Because those two flavors of Christianity featured so largely in my history, I just assume that Christians are familiar with them. Her unfamiliarity with them also makes me wonder if most mainstream Christians don't see what the fringes are doing, simply because they don't know the fringes even exist. This could help to explain why Christians respond so negatively to so-called "militant" atheism: If all they see is moderation and a quiet, peaceful religious tradition, they're oblivious to what the more outspoken, pernicious members of their community are up to. From this I think we can draw two important points to consider: First, that we should tailor our message in such a way that we're not painting the target of our complaints with a broad brush, and second, that we should make sure that people are aware of just what is going on that they might not even be aware of.

Most Christians I've met are good, decent, hard-working people who just want to provide their families with comfort, safety, and a secure future. The dialogue I had with the barrista gives me hope that the more moderate/liberal believers out there are willing to engage us politely and to allow their misconceptions to be corrected.

Video: Religious indoctrination is a poison.

Just recorded myself with a few thoughts on religious indoctrination, and the persistent effects it can have on you later in life.

How do we approach the debate?

Maybe it's just me, but it seems like most atheists, agnostics, freethinkers, etc. approach theological debate as a hobby, while theists approach it as the driving force behind their entire worldview. It's strange; when I was a believer, everything I did was influenced by what I believed. The debate was the most important thing in my life. Now that I'm not a believer, I approach the discussion as entertainment and an intellectual exercise. I could take it or leave it; it's just something to pass the time.

Am I alone in this view?

That's not to minimize the larger issues behind the influence of religion on our society; I'm talking about just the debating here.

The Insanity of the "Angry Atheist" Stereotype

[time to play theist's advocate, briefly.]

Boy, those atheists sure are angry. They're always mocking religious people, degrading their deeply-held beliefs and sniping at them with pompous, elitist remarks.

Who are they to tell us what to believe? Our beliefs give our lives hope and meaning. They help guide us to behave in the ways we should behave and stand up for what's right.

Not to mention how many smart people there are who believe what we do, and how many contributions have been made to the arts, culture, and society by the teachings of our various faiths. Where would we be without religion?

[OK, that's enough.]

When a child who believes in Santa Claus is in the company of other children who know he doesn't exist, mockery is acceptable. Expected, even. Yet somehow, when a theist's myth of choice is the subject under discussion, you'd better not dare mock it; in fact, somehow it is deserving of your respectful silence, if anything.

When we do get the courage to speak out about things we consider to be patently ridiculous, we're labeled as angry, intolerant, bigoted, and hateful. How does this make sense to people? If I think you believe in something silly, why on earth should I respect what it is that you believe? If, for example, you believed that the universe was powered by a hamster spinning in his wheel, and you called this a deeply-held and personal religious belief, should I treat this in the same fashion as I'd treat someone whose worldview was based on reason and evidence?

What is it that makes faith some unassailable target that demands respect? It's as though we're expected to consider virtuous those among us who are more willing than others to simply believe for the sake of believing. Worse still, we're supposed to give their opinions on any subject a good deal of respect if they manage to bring the subject of their faith up as part of the discussions on that subject, as though the mere fact of their having faith makes their viewpoint more respectable.

Whenever I find myself pointing out the silliness of what some people believe, they take my criticisms personally. They see an attack on their beliefs as an attack on them, and I can't help but wonder if this is because they've made their belief such a major part of their lives that they can no longer determine who they are without it.

Worse still are the people who believe in belief - those who don't hold to any particular religion themselves, but who will quickly rush to the defense of the religious whenever a religious belief is under attack, seeing the act of irrational belief as a positive aspect of character without really giving much consideration to what it is they're defending.

I would hope that responding to insipid blather with scorn and mockery would be embraced by reasonable people. When someone believes in UFOs, conspiracy theories, or anything else most people consider "kooky", we as a people tend to be quick to joke about their foolishness. But when someone believes in a mostly undefined/indescribable being who does things in ways that can't be explained or demonstrated, whoa now - step back! This is sacred territory, and if you talk badly about that belief, you're angry, bitter, a crashing bore, a whiner, and a wide litany of other such juvenile insults.

Clearly we don't disbelieve the nonsense because it's irrational and unsupported by evidence. Deep down, we must really still believe it, but because of some bad experience we had involving the church or an authority figure; or we just want to play the victim; or we justify the venomous stereotypes people have about us.

This is madness. I'm sitting here thinking of how to best phrase this, and I just can't. Basically, we're being told that we should shut up and just let people continue to believe nonsense, regardless of the fact that it is demonstrably nonsensical, and if we should dare to speak up and tell the emperor that he has no clothes, we should be ashamed of ourselves.

Let me put it bluntly: If you believe something not because it's true, but because it makes you feel better, I do think you're irrational and a bit foolish. Reality doesn't care what makes you feel better; reality works with what's real, and is more than happy to steamroll right over you while you lock yourself into your delusions.

I'm not an angry atheist. I'm frustrated that people think it's normal and right to believe things about the world that aren't justified and that lead to real harm, or at the very least detract from the capacity for real help.

This whole Daniel Hauser issue is just another example. Daniel Hauser, a young teenage boy with Hodgkin's Lymphoma, is now most likely going die despite the fact that medical treatment would've given him a 90% or higher chance of recovery in the early stages of the disease.

Why?

Because Daniel's parents are members of a sect of the Native American Church called the Nemenha Band, which advocates for "natural" and "alternative" medicine. (For those of you who are unaware, the Native American Church is one of the few groups in America legally allowed to use the hallucinogenic drug peyote, chiefly because they claim that it allows them to commune with god.)

Without actual medical treatment, Daniel's chances of survival drop to about 10%. Upon refusal to provide the treatment, a judge determined that Daniel's parents were being medically neglectful to him and ordered him to receive chemotherapy. That was within the last couple of days.

Yesterday, Daniel's mother disappeared. With him. Thus practically guaranteeing that he will die.

This is hardly the first time this has happened and it certainly won't be the last. And it's all because of religion. It's a piece of the Hausers' superstitious nonsense beliefs that are killing their son. (To his credit, Mr. Hauser now wants to seek actual medical attention.)

So when this story hit the mainstream news outlets, what did we hear? Well, Headline News had an 'audience interaction' segment where they took phone calls and e-mails about the story. Nearly all of them spoke out in support of Daniel's parents, saying that the government had no right to tell people how to treat their kids if it was against their religion.

Let me stress this one more time. People are willing to support medically neglectful parents whose decision almost certainly will kill their children as long as those decisions are based on some sort of religious belief. The type of belief and the details of the belief aren't even relevant. It's enough that they have beliefs, and that makes them special.

Am I angry? No. I'm sickened and disappointed. I'm tired of running into this kind of constant nonsense time and time again. And I'm disgusted by people who will call me an angry, vitriolic bigot for crying foul when I see this sort of insanity being perpetrated in the name of fairy tales or magic.

I Doeth Good

There are two nearly identical sections of the Bible (in the book of Psalms) that say that atheists cannot possibly do good - in fact, that we do works of abominable iniquity and that we are filthy.

Yesterday, I spent seven hours working with Habitat for Humanity, both working on a couple of new houses and helping gut an old house that's set for renovation.

By Christian doctrine, what I did was a terrible thing and is not worthy of praise. By my own judgment, I did something that helped provide a real, material benefit to real people with real needs. I did a good thing. And I'll be looking into getting my atheist group to join me next time.

So much for Psalms...

Atheism and U.S. Politics

I've been wondering lately if the problems atheists have in getting our voices heard in the political arena is less related to having the numbers and more related to having a consistent message. I think part of the problem with gaining consistency is that, as a group that's more of a common label than an actual group, we don't really have a message to get across, other than "leave your religion out of my politics".

There are a few atheist-friendly lobbying/political action groups, among them the Secular Coalition for America and Enlighten the Vote, though I can't begin to imagine how difficult it must be for them to agree on an agenda. Typically, atheists tend to lean more to the left, but I do know a few conservative atheists myself. This creates an interesting problem: atheist lobbyists and PACs wind up having to focus almost solely on issues of church-state separation and freedom of speech, limiting not only the scope of their message, but the base of talent that they draw to themselves and their chances of getting publicity.

There is also, of course, a great deal of hostility towards out atheists in this country. As a candidate for office, announcing that you're an atheist is almost guaranteed to kill your campaign. You face attacks from the hyper-religious right, not to mention the fear of atheists indoctrinated into even the more liberal Christians. We're one of the few remaining groups for whom stereotyping is still kosher in America. So not only do you have a smaller "automatic" support base, but you have to fight against lies told to defame your character - and any resistance you offer to defend yourself is usually seen as verification of the claims. (After all, if it's not true, why are you getting so defensive about it?)

I get the feeling that an increased atheist population wouldn't be enough to get us past these problems. After all, there are more women than men in the country, but we're still largely an androcentric culture. So how do we make our wishes known, despite the oppression of religious groups and the permeating fear of the 'godless heathen'? And as was noted in a comment to my previous post, how can we be public about our positions in places like the deep south, where an admission of atheism can be a social (or literal) death sentence?

I don't have any of the answers. I've got ideas, but again, I can't speak for all atheists any more than I can speak for all males. It's a conundrum...

Getting the Word Out

One thing I've heard from a lot of other atheists is that it's hard to make your views public, because you feel like you're surrounded by people who would instantly break off any social contact with you if they knew what you believed (and what you didn't). We can often feel isolated, as if there are no like-minded people around us.

This is why I think it's important for us to self-identify. With the atheist population in America growing in numbers and becoming increasingly vocal, we can be nearly guaranteed to meet another atheist every day, though the likelihood of us recognizing each other is pretty low. That's one thing the religious have on us - they have common symbols they can use to tell each other apart.

I've recently put a few bumper stickers on my car that make it quite plain what my theology is:

and
Today as I was leaving Starbucks I noticed a couple looking at the back of my car and writing something down. At first I was afraid that they were going to deface my stickers, but as I walked out they moved away from my car. I walked past them, opened my car door, and got ready to get in, when I noticed the woman coming back to me.

As it turns out, they were atheists, too. They mentioned that they liked my stickers and wondered where I got them from. They told me that they often felt like they were alone in a world full of people who disagreed with them, and it was a relief to finally see that they weren't. I told them that they'd be surprised how many atheists were in the area, and mentioned our Meetup group.

This, I think, is vital to getting the sort of recognition that atheism needs in America. People need to be exposed to us. It's not enough for us to just speak out online anymore; we need to be willing to be public with our disbelief, so that we can start to disassemble the myths that theists (especially Christians) have built up about us. The world needs to realize that a disbelief in the supernatural is a perfectly respectable and rational position, and that we shouldn't be ashamed to stand out.

I encourage anyone who reads this to seriously consider coming out of the atheist closet. The more of us that are willing to stand up and be counted, the more we'll be accepted by the mainstream of society.

Atheist survey meme

Stolen from Hemant Mehta. In boldface is the stuff I’ve done…

1. Participated in the Blasphemy Challenge.
2. Met at least one of the “Four Horsemen” (Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris) in person.
3. Created an atheist blog.
4. Used the Flying Spaghetti Monster in a religious debate with someone.
5. Gotten offended when someone called you an agnostic.
6. Been unable to watch Growing Pains reruns because of Kirk Cameron.
7. Own more Bibles than most Christians you know.
8. Have at least one Bible with your personal annotations regarding contradictions, disturbing parts, etc.
9. Have come out as an atheist to your family.
10. Attended a campus or off-campus atheist gathering.
11. Are a member of an organized atheist/Humanist/etc. organization.
12. Had a Humanist wedding ceremony.
13. Donated money to an atheist organization.
14. Have a bookshelf dedicated solely to Richard Dawkins. (not exactly, but I do have a shelf full of atheist books.)
15. Lost the friendship of someone you know because of your non-theism.
16. Tried to argue or have a discussion with someone who stopped you on the street to proselytize.
17. Had to hide your atheist beliefs on a first date because you didn’t want to scare him/her away.
18. Own a stockpile of atheist paraphernalia (bumper stickers, buttons, shirts, etc).
19. Attended a protest that involved religion.
20. Attended an atheist conference.
21. Subscribe to Pat Condell’s YouTube channel.
22. Started an atheist group in your area or school.
23. Successfully “de-converted” someone to atheism.
24. Have already made plans to donate your body to science after you die.
25. Told someone you’re an atheist only because you wanted to see the person’s reaction.
26. Had to think twice before screaming “Oh God!” during sex. Or you said something else in its place.
27. Lost a job because of your atheism.
28. Formed a bond with someone specifically because of your mutual atheism (meeting this person at a local gathering or conference doesn’t count).
29. Have crossed “In God We Trust” off of — or put a pro-church-state-separation stamp on — dollar bills.
30. Refused to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. (haven’t had the opportunity, but I would.)
31. Said “Gesundheit!” (or nothing at all) after someone sneezed because you didn’t want to say “Bless you!”
32. Have ever chosen not to clasp your hands together out of fear someone might think you’re praying.
33. Have turned on Christian TV because you needed something entertaining to watch.
34. Are a 2nd or 3rd (or more) generation atheist.
35. Have “atheism” listed on your Facebook or dating profile — and not a euphemistic variant.
36. Attended an atheist’s funeral (i.e. a non-religious service).
37. Subscribe to an freethought magazine (e.g. Free Inquiry, Skeptic)
38. Have been interviewed by a reporter because of your atheism.
39. Written a letter-to-the-editor about an issue related to your non-belief in God.
40. Gave a friend or acquaintance a New Atheist book as a gift.
41. Wear pro-atheist clothing in public.
42. Have invited Mormons/Jehovah’s Witnesses into your house specifically because you wanted to argue with them.
43. Have been physically threatened (or beaten up) because you didn’t believe in God.
44. Receive Google Alerts on “atheism” (or variants).
45. Received fewer Christmas presents than expected because people assumed you didn’t celebrate it.
46. Visited The Creation Museum or saw Ben Stein’s Expelled just so you could keep tabs on the “enemy.”
47. Refuse to tell anyone what your “sign” is… because it doesn’t matter at all.
48. Are on a mailing list for a Christian organization just so you can see what they’re up to…
49. Have kept your eyes open while you watched others around you pray.
50. Avoid even Unitarian churches because they’re too close to religion for you.

That’s 28 out of 50… which ranks me thusly:

21-30: You are an atheist, but babies aren’t running away from you. Yet.

Breaking it in

I've finally decided to put together a serious blog about atheism, skepticism, and the like. I've been blogging occasionally on another site, but it was never about any consistent theme and I tended to get a bit silly about things.

I'll start this one off by reposting an essay I posted on my other blog, which details my progress from "cafeteria" Christian to door-knocking street preaching fundamentalist Evangelical biblical literalist to skeptical generic theist to atheist.

I've also been touring local churches and taking notes about their services and their theology. Expect a few of those soon.

-- Mike

Why I Am an Atheist

Life has a tendency of throwing us curveballs. For me, the biggest was realizing that I no longer believed in God.

All my life I was raised to believe in a soft variety of the Christian god. He was an all-powerful, all-knowing being living off in some indescribably wonderful place who loved me and listened intently to even the quietest whisper of a prayer. He was a comfort when times were rough and gave me confidence when my spirit sagged.

I never gave much thought to why I believed as I did. It’s just what I was raised to be; in our family, we were Christians. We were members of the United Church of Christ, a church that tends to be liberal and open to anyone’s interpretations – basically a step away from being Unitarian. We knew there was a God. And that was enough for me, at first; just to believe. I didn’t think He needed anything from me other than that simple belief. That is, until I reached high school.

In high school, I idolized my brother. He was everything I wasn’t – strong, tall, athletic, sociable, confident. I was a shy, weird little kid with a severe lack of confidence and a tiny social circle. I looked at my brother as the perfect example of what I could be. And so when he joined Young Life, a Christian evangelist group that doubled as a sort of social club for high school kids, I had to join, too.

It was fun. I met a lot of really great, friendly people. We sang songs, had parties, played icebreaker games to get to know each other; that sort of thing. I learned a lot about what other people believed about God, about life, about the afterlife, and about Jesus. My eyes were opened to a lot of things I’d never seen before, growing up in a mild church where a sense of community and kindness seemed more common than a deep and abiding faith.

Until then, my religious beliefs hadn’t been all that important. I basically made things up as I went, and occasionally I’d read bits and pieces of the Bible to learn about what other people might think about God. My education in traditional Christian doctrine was essentially nonexistent. I could never make myself pay much attention during the church services, and Sunday school was all about the same old Bible stories kids learn about. Junior high Bible study was interesting, because we looked into more of the New Testament than I’d read before. But it was never much more than a baseline pseudo-Christian form of theism – there’s a God, he loves you, he made everything (some way or another), and he’ll heap rewards upon you when you die. Heaven was a chance to get back together with all the loved ones who went before you. There wasn’t much theology to it at all. It was just a simple, comforting, unquestioned belief.

It was in the Young Life meetings that I was presented with a kind of “soft evangelism”. Looking back on it, I can identify it as a sort of love bombing – everyone was accepting of you, regardless of your faults; they were eager to tell you what a great person you were; they sang happy songs (both religious and secular); they encouraged you to agree with what the leaders told you was right; and they really pushed for you to come to their week-long summer camp. So, of course, I went. I liked the people, I liked the atmosphere, and I liked feeling like I was accepted. I’d always been the social outcast before, and I craved that wonderful feeling of being a part of something where people accepted me despite all my quirks and insecurities.

The camp was a blast. There was a lake, a pool, a rock climbing wall – all sorts of great activities. Plenty of stuff to keep us busy and keep reinforcing the positive, warm, euphoric atmosphere. Every now and then, we’d gather in the main lodge for a series of skits or games. It was at the lodge that they hit us with the standard evangelical positions – that we all sin, that we all need redemption because God is a just and righteous judge who cannot abide with sin, and that Jesus was persecuted and slain so that we could enter into the presence of God. They told it to us gently, but in a way that still managed to impress upon us that we should feel guilty and ashamed if we rejected God’s gift after all the pain and suffering he went through just because he loved us so completely and perfectly.

During the week I discovered the Left Behind series. The camp store had all of the books in paperback, and I blazed through them one by one, fascinated by the stories and by what people believed God was going to do for his people eventually. Combining that with the “plan for salvation” that the skits drilled into us, and by the fourth or fifth day I was really hurting to be saved. I felt like the fact that I hadn’t accepted Christ into my heart as my lord and savior was no better than if I had spat in God’s face. Forget the fact that, before all this, my religious beliefs had been a comfort to me; now, I knew I had been incredibly wrong about God. Just being a good person wasn’t enough. I had to develop a stronger faith, accept Christ’s sacrifice for my sin, to repent, and follow the Bible.

I honestly don’t know what year it was when this happened. It was important to me at the time, but these things fade as time passes. In any case, I came away from Young Life camp feeling like a whole new person. I threw myself into my faith harder than ever, diving into the Bible with gusto and wondering at the glory of God’s creation. I was sure that I was saved; that my sins were forgiven and I was free of my past.

During my first year in college, I lived in what was called the Healthy Living House – a part of our dorm set off for young men and women to live away from drugs and alcohol, where some students volunteered to be counselors who would help us keep each other in check. One of our counselors was a girl named A. who lived across the hall from me. A. and I became fast friends; she was a polite, friendly, cheerful girl, who also happened to be a Christian. She and I talked about God and Jesus all the time, and eventually she introduced me to Campus Crusade for Christ.

Crusade was like a more serious form of Young Life; we met once a week to watch skits, sing, pray, etc. Being among a community of believers only reinforced my faith, and it drew me more and more toward the Biblical literalist position that so many of the other members held. After all, the more I learned about God and the plans he had for me, the more I felt like I was on the right path. I was proud to hold my head high and proclaim the gospel to everyone.

There were only two things that troubled me. The first was that many of my other friends were either atheists or members of some other religion. It worried me terribly that they were putting their immortal souls in peril by turning their backs on God and Jesus. I tried as best as I could to understand why they didn’t believe, but it all seemed so obvious to me. Of course God was real; how else could we be here?

The second was my love of science and my literal mind. As I read the Bible I of course ran into things that were problematic – why would God punish Adam and Eve if they didn’t know the difference between right and wrong? Of course, as I spent more and more time with A. and other Crusade members, I learned all the “right” answers to these and other problems. (Adam and Eve may not have had knowledge about good and evil, but after all, God put his morality in our hearts from the very beginning!)

But I still ran into things that I couldn’t so easily accept. The idea of the Earth being less than 10,000 years old, for example, or that evolution was really a lie that scientists told to lead people away from God. My mind told me that it didn’t make sense. But my fellow Christians told me not to rely so much on my mind, since I’m only a human and I’m fallible; instead, I should rely on God’s immutable, perfect word. After all, it was right about so many other things; it must be right about these, too.

So I became a believer through and through. The Bible was literally true – after all, God wouldn’t lie or try to mislead us. (Disregard the verses that say God lies; I hadn’t read those yet, of course.) Science didn’t really know anything for sure; the only way we could ever be certain about what was real was to rely on God through prayer, meditation, and proper reading of the Bible.

At some point I began to wonder if my faith was true. Not if it was correct; just if I was believing the way I was supposed to, or if somehow I hadn’t quite gotten the formula right. I felt the joy and the presence of God, the reassurance in hard times, and all the things I was told I should feel. But I never really felt like God spoke to me. I spoke to him all the time. I almost always had a prayer in my mind, if not on my lips. But I never got that strong impression that he was giving me any kind of answer – the sort of certainty I heard of people who said things like “God has put it into my heart that X” or “When Y happened, I knew that it was God telling me Z”. I never had this sort of feeling! Was I doing something wrong? It tortured me. I was in fear of my soul all over again. So I pushed even harder to learn about God and the Bible. I read The Case for Christ, Darwin On Trial, More than a Carpenter, anything I could sink my teeth into. I devoured the Bible cover to cover. I took notes. I kept a journal. I prayed more fervently than ever.

I knew I was saved. I loved Jesus more than anything. I’d throw myself on the floor, weeping, thanking him through my tears for all that he’d sacrificed for someone as unworthy of grace as myself. I begged him to take over my life and guide me in whatever ways he desired. At some point, I considered leaving school to take up the seminary. I felt like I had to tell the world about what I knew about Jesus and salvation. I had to let them know about the joy that comes with a certainty that you’ll spend eternity with the loving, mighty God who made the universe and all within it. I wanted to be a beacon to them, to guide them to the hope that dwelt within me.

It was during this time that I was credulous to essentially everything – aliens, ghosts, psychic phenomena, conspiracies, alternative medicine; you name it, I probably believed in it. It never really struck me until years later that much of what I believed contradicted my religious beliefs, but that’s primarily because I never thought too long or hard about what it would mean if they were all true. Thinking deeply about things wasn’t promoted as useful by my fellow Crusaders – it was enough to trust that things were the way God wanted them to be, and leave it at that. Nothing beyond that was really important, anyways.

I spent the first two years of my college career in the Healthy Living House. The third year, I moved into an apartment with my friend J., who I’d met through some of my classes and who I really got along with. The subject of God and religion seldom arose, and when it did he tended to change it quickly. He knew what I believed, and I could tell that he didn’t believe it. Once we moved in together, things changed somewhat. I learned that he was an atheist (or at least an agnostic, I’m not sure), which in my mind put him just a step or two up from Satan himself. I was aghast. But I was also interested. I wanted to learn why he didn’t believe what I did. After all, I thought, it was so obviously true, and it brought great peace, comfort, and reassurance. Why wouldn’t everyone want that?

And so I asked him questions. He seemed eager to answer them, and to pose questions to me in return. Often I couldn’t answer him, or when I did, he pointed out the flaws in the answers I’d been taught. I tended to brush his objections aside; after all, I was basing my beliefs on something that absolutely had to be true. It was perfect, complete, immutable, infallible, and unchanging.

The thing that finally stuck with me was his accusation that the Bible wasn’t everything that had been written about God and Jesus. What a thing to say! After all, I knew that God wanted us to know everything we could about him; why would there be anything left out? I really got upset about it. I demanded that he prove what he’d said. And, of course, he did. He introduced me to the Catholic Apocrypha, pointed out the differences between their version of the Ten Commandments and ours, and introduced me to the Gnostic texts that had been left out of the Bible.

I was staggered. How could I not have learned about all this? Surely the other Crusade members had to know about these things, too; why didn’t they ever talk about them? I told A. about what J. had showed me, and she seemed nervous. She seemed to think I’d been spending too much time with him, and that it might not be a good thing for me to be living with a nonbeliever. I was shocked that she didn’t want to learn about these things! After all, if these writings were made about God and Jesus and had survived just as long as all the Biblical texts, why didn’t we ever learn about them? How did we know they weren’t God’s word, too?

The more I read the Gnostic texts, the more I was amazed. Everything I’d learned about the origins of modern Christianity was wrong. The Bible wasn’t the complete word of God; the beliefs I held weren’t the same ones people had held over the centuries; for goodness sake, the Bible as I knew it was just the result of a vote on what was and wasn’t going to be part of the canon! What was going on here? Why wasn’t there any other Christian I knew who had read these things? Why were they so violently rejected or scoffed at by any believer I mentioned them to?

I began to do more and more research into the origins of my faith. I learned about the Gnostic ideas of God – that God manifests in the universe in several forms called “aeons”, which could be principles, physical beings, attributes, and so on. I learned that so much of what we believed to be Christianity was really just stuff tacked on centuries after Jesus died, and that there were hundreds of competing early forms that were snuffed out by that which would eventually become what we know today.

I was outraged – not at God, but by my fellow Christians who were so closed-minded about these things and what they meant about the truth of our beliefs. Why did so few of them care if what they believed was true or not? Why was it more important for them to hold onto modern teachings and to abandon the truer, ancient ones?

Eventually I began to question all the things I’d been told in Crusade. After all, they were arguments based on a distorted, limited, chopped up and shuffled version of God’s word. Why should I simply accept them? The Bible was hardly a representation of what the early church was really like – rather, it was a representation of what had dominated and eliminated other early competing sects. I thought of it in much the same way as what would happen if the Lutherans (or any other modern sect) managed to eliminate the competition and rewrite the holy text to take out the bits they don’t like and add bits that sound more appealing to them. I wanted to get back to the earliest, purest roots I could find.

Worse still was when I discovered that for all my belief, there was nothing outside the Bible to confirm that Jesus had ever done anything at all that the Bible said. The only record we had of Jesus’ words was the Bible itself, and even that wasn’t good enough, because nobody who ever met him actually wrote anything that’s in the Bible today. I just basically assumed uncritically that people wouldn’t believe all these things if there weren’t evidence somewhere to back it all up, and that this assumption was enough to justify my faith. Of course, it’s not true; seldom will you find something in the Bible that has been confirmed by archaeology, and never has anything miraculous or supernatural been reinforced by any kind of discovery.

By the time I finally learned about who had really written the gospels and just how shaky the veracity of the Bible was, I wasn’t sure what to call myself anymore. I couldn’t call myself a Christian; after all, for most people, that would mean I believed (or at least believed in) the Bible. And I didn’t. I wanted to get back to what God really was, not what man had twisted him and voted him into being, and not all the unsupported mythology. I began to resent Christian apologists, because I saw in them the sort of short-sighted ignorance I had embraced myself just a short while before. Science, reason, critical thinking, and logic became more and more important as I sifted through the evidence to try to find out the truth. And when it came to my faith, these four things would become the four horsemen of the apocalypse, uprooting everything that remained of what I’d believed.

I was out of college and living on my own now, and I was close to being a Deist. I believed that God had, at the very least, made the universe. I figured that God was the spark that ignited the Big Bang, that he had perhaps guided evolution to lead it toward where we are today, and that maybe – just maybe – he was actually still around to listen to me when I prayed. Even if he didn’t bother to respond.

After a long period of consideration I began to question God even further. Could we ever really know the difference between God not answering prayer and God not being there at all? What evidence do we have that there is a soul, let alone an afterlife? Isn’t it possible that when we see something we think is unexplainable and that it must be a miracle, that instead it’s really just something we don’t understand yet that could be entirely natural? If a purely natural explanation can solve just as many problems, why do we need to tack on the supernatural? How can we possibly claim to know anything about God at all, especially when you discard the Bible as a book of fairy tales?

And so I became an agnostic. I spent hours debating on the Internet with Christians about the bible, about god, about anything. I tried to get them to give me some sort of rational reason to believe any of it, and time after time I heard the same tired, old, and worn-out apologetics that I’d heard from my fellow Crusade members. Nobody was able to tell me why their particular flavor of mythology should be considered any different from that of the Greek, Norse, and Roman mythology I’d learned about in school. And nobody could give me a reasonable answer to the problem of evil – that is, if God is all-powerful and all-knowing, why does evil exist, unless he allows it to?

Then my uncle died. Numb from emotional pain and confusion, and hours away from anyone I loved, I went out to a bar the night I found out to try to shift my focus from mourning to just trying to cope. And after a little while at the bar, I returned to my car, where I wept like a lost child, screaming at God to come back into my life and tell me what to do. I poured my entire being into it. I wanted nothing more than for something solid and permanent to reassure me that everything would be okay. I wanted that old comforting certainty again. And for a while, I felt like I had it. I started praying again, if not quite so fervently as before. And, of course, I noticed that the prayers continued to go unanswered beyond the realm of sheer chance and coincidence. The more obvious the result I prayed for, the less likely I would get what I needed. I had re-entered the echo chamber of prayer, and this time I realized right away that the voice I heard bouncing back was mine and mine alone.

So I lapsed back into agnosticism again. I truly wanted to believe that there was a God out there somewhere. But I was unconvinced. Through a proper application of skeptical and critical reasoning, Occam’s Razor slowly sliced bit after bit off of my faith, until there was nothing left of it but “God exists.” And I’m not entirely sure when it happened, but at some point, that fell away too. Likely it disappeared around the time I realized that I was using “God” as nothing more than a catch-all term to describe the things I didn’t know, and I convinced myself that if I didn’t know the right answer to a question, that it didn’t make any sense to just make one up. It slowly became acceptable to me to say “I don’t know” in response to the biggest questions.

I was an atheist. I no longer believed that there was any sort of god. The universe was what it was; nothing was certain or guaranteed, and we were all stuck here on our own to figure things out and make things better for each other. Prayer was just a way to try to make yourself feel good about doing nothing of real value. Rather than take comfort in the delusion that some invisible, inaudible, intangible, unknowable being was watching out for me – after all, if his eye were on the sparrow, why all the strife in the world? – instead I took comfort in the realization that I didn’t have to know everything. Not having the answers to all the deepest questions didn’t make me shallow or lost; it meant that I was being intellectually honest and open to change.

Since then I’ve been seeking out guidance from people who’ve been where I am now. I meet regularly with a nice-sized local atheist/agnostic group for coffee or beer; I read books on humanist philosophy and ethics; I devour science and politics. I’ve gone to church a few times, though it feels like an alien world to me now, and I do it mainly to see it all as an outsider looking in.

I don’t resent my parents for bringing me up the way they did. How could I? They only did it because it was how they were raised themselves. The depth my faith went to was far beyond what they’d ingrained in me. To them, God is very generic. They believe Jesus’ death saved everyone, no matter what; that everyone goes to heaven; that our dead relatives watch over us as some sort of guardian angels; that God cares more about what we do in our lives than what we believe; things like that. It’s a very liberal form of Christianity, and it gives them peace and comfort and a way to socialize with politically and theologically like-minded people. I can’t fault them for it; our minds are wired to receive pleasure from hearing people say things we agree with or we already believe. It’s all a part of being a social species. I won’t say that I want them become atheists, too, because I don’t have any right to try to take away something that gives them hope (even if I think it’s false hope).

So, what now? If there’s no God, what hope can I possibly have? Well, if this is the only life I have, I have to do everything I can to enjoy it and make it useful to myself and others while I have it. I have true moral responsibility – if I wrong someone, I have to make it right myself; I can’t just ask some uninvolved third party to forgive me. I take great pride and joy in my ability to determine what is and isn’t likely to be real or correct. Reason, logic, critical thinking, and skepticism help me understand the world and what is and isn’t worth my time.

When I was a Christian, life was just a waiting room for something better when I died. I didn’t need to involve myself in anything worldly, because I knew that nothing in this life really meant anything, apart from worshiping God. Eternity cheapens a temporary life. Now, I know that there’s no guarantee. There’s no big payoff at the end of the game; it’s the game itself that has to be meaningful. Life is precious because it’s short, and because once it’s gone we can’t get it back. There’s no do-overs. We get one shot to make a difference to the world. And yes, the world itself will eventually be gone, and everything we do is ultimately meaningless. But I think that it’s enough to try to make life a little easier, a little brighter, and a little more enlightened for the people who will come after me, and that maybe someday we as a species will reach the point where we can throw off our security blankets. After all, there’s no monster in the closet or under the bed; there’s just the big, scary, wonderful, real world out there.