The Atheist’s Way: makes kids burn churches?

Sorry for the paucity of blog posts!

The other day I read on The Friendly Atheist and the news that there has been a recent rash of 11 church fires caused by arsonists.

This is, of course, very unfortunate. What I think is also unfortunate is the way some specific pieces of literature found in the home of the girlfriend of one of the arsonists has been handled.

Apparently much evidence was seized from the homes of the arsonists as well as the homes of anyone linked to the arsonists. One of the things seized was The Atheist's Way: Living Well Without Gods by Eric Maisel. This less than 200 page book has been the subject of news headlines everywhere: "Suspect in Texas Church Fires Reportedly Had Books on Atheism", Atheism books found in home of church fire suspect, "Atheist books indicated in charges of Arson."

Of course, my guess is that the main reason a headline might be written in this way is that it preys upon people's prejudices. Those prejudices being: Christians are good moral people and atheists are immoral, bad people. Christians (by the prejudicial definition) would never burn down a church, but atheists might. If you already think atheists are immoral, then headlines like these will only serve to reinforce your hatred and bigotry. Clearly, mentioning that an atheist book was found at the home of an arsonist is meant to lead the reader to believe that the books are linked to the aforementioned acts of arson. This is why we don't see headlines like, "Book on Cats found in home of church fire suspect" or, "Suspect in Texas church Fires Reportedly Had Bags of Ruffles."

What these headlines and most of the news stories associated with the arson do not mention is that 3 other books were also seized from linked homes.

If I were an investigator and I wanted to link a certain book to violence, I might read said books and see if any of the books advocate or promote violence.

I have a copy of The Atheist's Way, and can promise you that it does not advocate violence, arson, or anything other than upholding cherished values, and making your own ethics rather than parroting the ethics of someone else. The core of the book's moral philosophy is "expressing humanist values such as justice and fairness in a context of competing rights and interests, conflicting points of view, and complex circumstances." It advocates teaching moral philosophy to children by giving them the rare opportunity to think about ethics. I've also read about 20 books on atheism, and none of them advocate violence, arson, or the destruction of property. Ever. The only reason one might suspect that a book on atheism is linked to acts of arson can only be a matter of prejudice.

The other books, on the other hand, actually do advocate such violence. In these book, the main character – who is portrayed as someone readers should be as much like as possible, burns cities to the ground. He burns people to death. He explicitly commands that people be burned to death. The book also advocates praying that your enemies will burn to death.

If I were an investigator, I'd link the book that actually advocated setting buildings and people on fire to the arsonists rather than the book that advocates teaching children moral philosophy. 

So which book did these arsonists have three copies of? The Bible. In the bible, God burns cities, burns people, commands his followers to burn people, and advocates praying that your enemies be burned. This kind of thing just doesn't occur in an atheist book.

It makes me sad. Atheists are not bad people. They are not more likely to burn down a church than a theist. These headlines only serve to reinforce hatred towards people who are just people.

Does Objectification Equal Sexism?

An interesting business was recently under discussion on Atheist Nexus and by our good friend The Nerd.  That business is a small coffee shop, the Java Divas.  Seriously, check out their site.  Attractive women selling coffee in skimpy, suggestive costumes.  The coffee even comes in large/medium/small cups identified by bra sizes.  Another interesting tidbit - the owner and operator/fellow scantily-clad server is also a woman.

So . . . thoughts?  Much conversation at the above-mentioned internet places has already revolved around the idea of objectification not being morally/socially good or bad in and of itself.  Clearly, I sometimes objectify Ziztur, and she sometimes objectifies me.  This clearly has no inherent sexism, for a large number of reasons.

The principle difference, pointed out several times already, is that the suggestively-clad women at Java Divas have nothing more than a financial relationship with the customers (presumably, at least in the vast majority of cases).  There is at least a possible element of the women in question being resigned, by their financial situation, to working that job under these conditions.

My question, not to sugar-coat it too much, but:  So the hell what?

I'm reminded of this incident (among others in other firefighting departments around the world) in which a woman or women came short of physical fitness requirements for the job the were doing or applying for.  This particular case dealt with a distance run, and I've seen other cases dealing primarily with the immense upper-body strength required to be a firefighter.  Basically, in a nutshell, by any reasonable standard, you have to be an utter hardass to be a firefighter.

Now, I'm certainly not going to say that gender bias and discrimination have never been a factor in firefighting; that would just be spectacularly ignorant.  However, it's obvious to most people that these physical fitness standards are for the safety of the firefighters themselves and the safety of the public that they serve, and are not inherently gender-biased.

My question is this:  How are the women at Java Divas, or any similar establishment, being objectified for their physical appearance any more than firefighters are being objectified for their physical strength?  For that matter, why does the criteria have to be physical?  If someone happens to have knowledge and/or experience of, for example, the insurance business, or of Occupational Therapy, and are hired for a job on that criteria, how is their employment not "objectifying" them on the basis of that knowledge?

So, what does it say about someone's attitude towards women, their attitude towards sex, or their attitude towards what they think is women's attitude towards sex (try saying that ten times fast . . .) when they basically claim that women aren't capable of choosing for themselves what to do with their potential physical attractiveness?  Do these folks really worry about whether, to use just one example, firefighters (who after all are in much more physical danger on the job than baristas) are being exploited for their body strength, or are they basically, in effect, thinking, "Ah, well, they're men; of course they can make a mature decision about their own employment."?

Need I even mention that whatever "objectification" of the Java Divas employees that's occurring pales in comparison to a stripper, porn star, or prostitute?  I think it's obvious that an almost puritan or religious restriction on what women can and can't do with their bodies is the more sexist attitude, not only because of it's anti-sex overtones, but also because of it's strong implication that those mentally weak wimminfolk just don't have the emotional maturity to deal with people looking at their bodies.

What do you guys think?

Faith Infiltration: World View Community church Pt.2

This is part 2 of our Faith Infiltration of World View Community Church. Pt. 1 can be found here, and you can access all other Faith Infiltrations by clicking the "Faith Infiltration" label at the bottom of this page.

Nearly every weekend, Flimsy and I visit a church. We find a (typically St. Louis local) church in our area, drag ourselves out of bed in the morning, and do what we call "Faith Infiltration". Then, we blog about our experiences, describing what the church is like from the perspective of nonbelievers. We make no apologies: we do not mock what we see or sugarcoat our experiences, but we also don't pretend that one can truly understand what the church is like from a single visit. To date, we've been to 35 religious events, ranging from tiny Christian denominations with only 9 people in the whole building during a service, churches with a thousand people, the Church of Scientology, a Franklin Graham concert tour, and everything in-between.

After the worship service at World View Community Church, we asked to be directed to the multi-purpose room to view the video that was going to be shown.

The multi-purpose room of this church was sort of like a mini-sanctuary. My guess is that it was 20 feet wide by 30 feet long, outfitted with comfy chairs and rows of tables. Congregants milled about in this room, chatting with one-another or laying out notebooks and bibles so that they could take notes. It felt rather cavernous, given the tall, steeply sloped ceiling and comparably small floor space. At the front of the room was a projector and a clear plexiglass lectern. After a quick introduction, someone dimmed the lights and the DVD began.

We found ourselves watching section 6 (entitled: Social Capital) of "Dr." Lance Wallnau's 7 Mountain Mandate.

Allow me to first explain why I put the "Dr." part of Wallnau's name in quotes. This is not like when some people do things like put a bishops title "Bishop" in quotes because said bishop is openly gay and the individual writing about the bishop wants to show that he believes gay bishops somehow don't count. If you put "Dr." in front of your name, unless it is clearly satire then people will rightly assume that you have earned a doctoral degree from a university. To put "Dr." in front of your name when you have not earned a doctoral degree from a university is giving yourself an unearned title. As an individual who actually has earned a doctoral degree from a university, I find this as repellent as an individual using the term "officer" in front of his name to gain access to spaces in which he otherwise would not be allowed. If you're pro-life, imaging a person performing abortions as a "doctor" while never earning a medical degree.

I scoured the internet for information as to where Lance Wallnau earned his doctoral degree. I wanted to know if it was in business, politics, theology, etc. I could find no information about the university he graduated from or the degrees he had been conferred. I tried googling generally, and then tried these specific phrases in quotes: "Lance Wallnau graduated", "Lance Wallnau earned", "Lance Wallnau holds" etc, to see if I could find a byline indicated where he had graduated from. I checked his website. I can find no evidence that Wallnau has earned a doctoral degree from a university. This does not mean that he does not have one, only that I cannot find any information at all on the subject. I will offer no speculation as to why this is – you can form your own opinion.

To be fair, we did not get to see all of the segments of the DVD that were shown – the congregation was on section 6, so we missed the first parts. I also won't pretend that the information in the DVD reflects the opinions of the congregants. The 7-mountain Mandate DVD is very obviously a recording of a live conference Wallnau gave at some point. He is situated on a stage, with a wireless microphone before an audience of nodding and notewriting individuals in business casual dress in what looks to be a conference center. Luckily for me, the visuals of the conference were not particularly necessary, and all of the audio from this is available for download, so I went ahead and downloaded Section 6: Social Capital to have as a reference while I wrote this, lest I forget anything that was said or report something inaccurately.

Wallnau opened section 6 by talking about the book Church Shift, and says:

"It's unfortunate – in a way – that Christians don't have a view of history that shows the interaction of intercession and prayer with the unfolding of world events. And Because we don't have an oracle or a viewpoint or any reliable source, we tend to keep on disassociating from the world and just go into 'panic praying' – something bad happens, we all intercede. We don't realize the Berlin wall came down because of intercession, the Soviet empire came down because of intercession, and that every piece of legitimate liberation of people and nations is a result of prayer. It's never the result of the benevolence of the devil at work. So at some level, the Kingdom has been advancing and advancing and advancing."

Well, I have yet to see any evidence for "the devil" and so I will agree with Wallnau that "the devil's" benevolence is not the cause of the liberation of people and nations. I have also yet to see any evidence that intercessory prayer does anything at all to accomplish the liberation of people and nations. I could just as easily say, "I don't have a reliable source, but people need to realize that every piece of legitimate liberation of people and nations is a result of the wonderful philosophy of secular humanism". If one wants to make a claim of this magnitude, one needs to have substantial, falsifiable evidence to back it up. This statement made by Wallnau is also a false dichotomy: He sets up his point like this:

P: Either nations are liberated by prayer, or they are liberated by the devil's benevolence

P: The devil is never benevolent

C: Therefore, nations are liberated by prayer.

I could write a whole blog post on this, and I might, but let's move on. The point of course is that all good stuff comes from Christianity, and that Wallnau's god is working his magic everywhere, starting from a little church somewhere in the desert and growing from the few to the billion. But there is a problem: Christianity is at war.

Wallnau went on ask what the impact of 1.3 billion Christians would be on the world if they ever unified on shared principals. He said that Christianity would be the "largest, most dangerous bound together movement in the earth. When you consider the fact that in the United States – in spite of the exaggerated anxieties of Christians – the homosexual core is not larger than 5 to 6 percent of the adult male population or the adult population in the United States. You'd think it's 15 or 20 percent and that's just because they occupy high places of influence because Satan is strategic on where he puts influence. The Church is not."

Wow. That's pretty bigoted. Imagine if Wallnau had said blacks were occupying high places of influence because Satan is strategic in where he puts influence during the time before the abolition of slavery, when pastors and church leaders argued that slavery was ordained by their god. I don't really see a difference. People who are gay want the same civil rights as everyone else, so instead of dismissing their cry for equal rights by claiming that their influence is Satanic, how about examining their "influence" on its merits without resorting to ad hominem? Moving on, Wallnau continues:

"There are spheres of influence that god has ordained for his glory that Satan has occupied, that god is about to retake. How many of you have been hearing about a transfer of wealth? … I think I know the reason. I have the key. If you want wealth – obscene, gobs of wealth, then what you do is you give god what he wants. … Henry Blackaby talks to 150 CEO's on a Friday …and wrote the book Experiencing God… teaches is central to the transfer of wealth… I do training with 1500 CEO's and I go to Blackaby... Here's what Blackaby says: you want to experience god? You wanna have that glory, that breakout break through dimension on a sustained and progressive level? God is always at work…"

He goes on to say (in a rather disjointed way that does not lend well to quoting directly) that god is at work and that one should have a loving relationship with god so that god may reveal to him what god is up to. God is at work in your neighborhood and everywhere else and so your job is to show up wherever god is at while simultaneously being intimate in worship with god, because it is through this intimacy that god gives people an "invitation" to join him in his work. This, he says, is how we can be confident that if we enter into "warfare" we will surely win. Another way to have success at "warfare" is to not fight every cause, but focus on the causes you feel god has showed you. If you have an intimate enough relationship with Wallnau's god, then his god will show up and help you get into the "strongholds" of Satan.

Okay, this post has gotten long enough. Tomorrow, I am going to blog about a particularly timely "stronghold" that Wallnau says god called him to get into. What I have here is more than enough for lengthy discussions.

3H1P: Do I ever succumb to superstition?

Welcome to my first entry in Ziztur’s “3H1P” project. To quote her own description,

3H1P is a blogging project wherein three heathens (Ziztur, Flimsy and Petter) and one pastor (Keith) answer questions posed by readers of the blog and discuss various issues related to religion, philosophy, science, etc. If you have a question that you'd like to see answered by 3H1P, ask it in the comment box. We promise we'll probably get to it.

Some time back, EdW wrote:

I would love to hear about whether The 3 Heathens (which sounds like the best/worst Disney feature ever) find themselves succumbing to superstition in their lives. Personally, I have an assortment of "lucky" objects that I carry -- and I love to make bargains with the Universe, or my car. "I promise I'll get you premium gas next time if you just don't die on the way to the airport".

I guess the question would apply to P.Keith as well -- do you ever find yourself doing things that you consider superstitious and silly?

I think it's important on both sides to acknowledge that we all are perfectly capable of believing absurd things, and sometimes that's okay. My lucky objects are great conversation starters.

-EdW

I also seem to recall a question in some blog comment—though as I cannot find it, it may be that I misremember—asking whether we heathens ever doubt the correctness of our atheism. Whether the question was asked or not, I think it’s a good question that works well as a subquestion to the above. As is my wont, I will take these talking points and, rather than provide a succinct answer, extrapolate and wax philosophical about it.

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I can’t think of instances when I succumb to superstition, for the simple reason that if I am aware of it, I refuse to allow myself to do so. That does not, of course, mean that I don’t succumb, only that if I do, I do so when I’m unaware of the fact…and I expect that this does happen. After all, we are all human; we are all subject to the same cognitive biases, type I (false positive) errors, pareidolia, rampant teleology, confusing correlation with causation, and all the rest. On top of that, in our daily lives we have to deal with the cognitive limitations of being individual people and dealing with sample-of-one events rather than having the leisure to evaluate everything as a proper scientific experiment.

On top of this, there is the interesting idea I have heard bandied about that truly understanding an idea requires a thought process virtually identical to actually believing it—temporarily suspending disbelief. I do not know whether this is literally true or not, and for my purposes this is irrelevant. In my own, subjective experience, it certainly appears that truly understanding an idea requires adopting a point of view from which the positive arguments make sense. It is true that when I read some of the more well-written arguments for some fantastic thing or other, be it Christianity or naturopathy or ESP, there is a part of my brain that goes “Huh” and has to be reined in once I sit back and apply critical thinking.

(On an aside, this means that there are plenty of things I simply cannot understand, but dismiss nonetheless. I do not think this unjustified. If a belief clearly leads to particular predictions that do not hold, or relies on flawed assumptions, I can safely dismiss the whole edifice even if I do not know what it is like to mentally inhabit it. I cannot imagine what it is like to live in a universe where 2+2=5, but I don’t need to; I know it is untrue nonetheless.)

So on any given day, I—hard-nosed skeptic extraordinaire—may very briefly belief in Christianity, Islam, telepathy, and who knows what. I may wish I didn’t, but such is the case: Especially with Christianity; after all I grew up Christian, if not very hardcore, and I was at least ten years old by the time I realised that the painful “crisis of faith” I had suffered, complete with prayers for “a sign”, was really the anguish of cognitive dissonance as I strove to believe in something unbelievable.

Perhaps you, gentle reader, have also experienced the phenomenon of agreeing with a writer or a speaker so long as you are reading, or listening, to his or her words—only to emerge from the spell and start questioning? My tendency to do this is probably why I prefer reading to listening when it comes to (purported) fact, as I find it easier to pause and critically analyse something when I’m reading it than if I’m swept along by the pace of the spoken word (this is why I read blogs but do not listen to podcasts).

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Ironically, one of the best responses to this temporary vacillating comes from C.S. Lewis and his Mere Christianity—I generally disliked it, but I found this part inspiring:

Roughly speaking, the word Faith seems to be used by Christians in two senses or on two levels, and I will take them in turn. In the first sense it means simply Belief—accepting or regarding as true the doctrines of Christianity. That is fairly simple. But what does puzzle people-at least it used to puzzle me—is the fact that Christians regard faith in this sense as a virtue. I used to ask how on earth it can be a virtue—what is there moral or immoral about believing or not believing a set of statements? Obviously, I used to say, a sane man accepts or rejects any statement, not because he wants to or does not want to, but because the evidence seems to him good or bad. If he were mistaken about the goodness or badness of the evidence that would not mean he was a bad man, but only that he was not very clever. And if he thought the evidence bad but tried to force himself to believe in spite of it, that would be merely stupid.

Well, I think I still take that view. But what I did not see then—and a good many people do not see still—was this. I was assuming that if the human mind once accepts a thing as true it will automatically go on regarding it as true, until some real reason for reconsidering it turns up. In fact, I was assuming that the human mind is completely ruled by reason. But that is not so. For example, my reason is perfectly convinced by good evidence that anaesthetics do not smother me and that properly trained surgeons do not start operating until I am unconscious. But that does not alter the fact that when they have me down on the table and clap their horrible mask over my face, a mere childish panic begins inside me. I start thinking I am going to choke, and I am afraid they will start cutting me up before I am properly under. In other words, I lose my faith in anaesthetics. It is not reason that is taking away my faith: on the contrary, my faith is based on reason. It is my imagination and emotions. The battle is between faith and reason on one side and emotion and imagination on the other.

In this sense—and only in this specific sense—it is with faith in my convictions of the rational approach to the universe that I meet these momentary weaknesses. Faith-1 is bad; faith-2 is a good thing, and we need it to counter the non-rational vacillations of our primate brains.

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To draw on a concrete example, I went for my flu shots back in the fall. (I was lucky enough to get both the seasonal and H1N1 shot, even though I did not qualify as a member of any of the H1N1 priority groups at the time: The clinic had prepared too many doses that morning, and the doctor offered them to non-qualifying patients rather than having to throw them out at the end of the day.) I read a lot about vaccination, and about anti-vaccination shenanigans. I am among those who regard vaccinations as the second greatest medical invention or discovery of all time (right behind the medical importance of hygiene). I consider the anti-vaccination movement dangerously misguided at best, and am happy to refer you here to ponder its consequences.

And yet, actually walking into the clinic to get those shots was not psychologically trivial. In part this is no doubt because I’m not a big fan of needles, but I also had a small encyclopedia of anti-vaccination claims floating in my mind, accompanied by fears ranging from the ludicrous—think squalene, aluminium adjuvants, antifreeze, mercury causing autism—to the disproportionate, such as the (in fact extremely minute) risk of Guillain-Barré syndrome, a very rare side effect of flu vaccination. I would be lying if I said that I went in without any hesitation.

But I know better than to just listen to my fears. I have faith-2 in the safety of vaccines, in the fact that while there are a few tiny risks, the odds that it will save my life from disease (and protect people around me whom I might otherwise infect) are vastly greater than those risks; and some of the risks aren’t real at all. So I went in, got my shots, took a low-key day of reading, coffee, and puttering around with my computer as I suffered the common side effect of mild ache and fever the next day, and went back to life as usual the day after that. (I did not contract Guillain-Barré syndrome, I did not become autistic, and in general suffered no side effects.)

This is not the only example I could give. I try to apply the same sort of critical thinking whenever I am faced with a choice and feel a gut instinct that does not seem well supported by evidence. It happens that my response to a difficult choice is to look up statistics and do my best to mathematically assess statistical probabilities rather than attempt to tackle emotionally laden issues head-on. (Did you know, for instance, that some 20% of the population carries HSV-2, the virus that causes ‘genital’ herpes, but 80% of them don’t know it? This means that about 17% of everyone who is not aware of carrying HSV-2 actually does, and if you have protected sex with a person of unknown HSV-2 status, you run—very approximately—a 0.42% annual risk of contracting the virus if you are male, twice that if female. HSV-2 is not tested for in standard STI screening panels.)

I’m told I’m uncommonly rational about such things—which I take as a great compliment, even if it’s a bit disturbing to think that most people do not try their best to rationally evaluate risks and probabilities. To me, it seems irresponsible not to try. Of course, I’m sure that I often fall short—but as I said in the beginning, I don’t allow myself to fall short when I’m aware of the problem.

The disturbing question is, how often do I face a hard choice and go with my gut reaction without first questioning it? I don’t know.

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My model for dealing with gut feelings is, of course, Carl Sagan. As he memorably recounted in The Demon-Haunted World,

I’m frequently asked, Do you believe there’s extraterrestrial intelligence? I give the standard arguments—there are a lot of places out there, the molecules of life are everywhere, I use the word billions, and so on. Then I say it would be asonishing to me if there weren’t extraterrestrial intelligence, but of course there is as yet no compelling evidence for it.

Often, I’m asked next, What do you really think?

I say, I just told you what I really think.

Yes, but what’s your gut feeling?

But I try not to think with my gut. If I’m serious about understanding the world, thiniing with anything besides my brain, tempting as that might be, is likely to get me into trouble. Really, it’s okay to reserve judgment until the evidence is in.

In which the irony burns my eyes

Did you know there is such an organization as the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission?

On January 4^th, the CADC released a list of "top ten incidents of anti-Christian defamation, bigotry and discrimination in the US from last year". Over at the Ethical Hedonist, this list was quickly researched and exposed for all it was worth in such a way as to actually bring a literal tear to my eye. If these are the top ten worst examples of bigotry, defamation, and discrimination, they need to honestly get out into the world of non-Christianity, where most of us face real bigotry, discrimination and defamation.

Real quick, here are some definitions:

Defamation: the communication of a statement that makes a claim, expressly stated or implied to be factual, that may give an individual, business, product, group, government or nation a negative image.

Bigotry: Being irrationally, obstinately intolerantly devoted to one's own opinions and prejudices.

Discrimination: Negative treatment, exclusion, or rejection toward or against a person or group based on class or category.

Here's the list:

10. Pro-life Pastor Reverend Walter Hoye of Oakland, CA was jailed for exercising peaceful, pro-life speech.

As the Ethical Hedonist pointed out, Hoye was jailed for violating an ordinance that barred protesters from coming within 8 feet of anyone entering into an abortion clinic. He was not jailed for pro-life speech. Jailing someone for breaking the law is not an example of defamation, bigotry, or discrimination.Unless one wants to claim that the law is discriminatory.

9. Rev. Fred Winters was murdered while preaching in his pulpit in Maryville, Illinois.

Winters (who Flimsy and I both knew personally) was murdered, and the man responsible was mentally ill. His motivations have not been established, but we do know that he walked into a church and killed someone. This was a terrible crime, but because we do not know his motivations, it is wrong to jump to conclusions about said motivation.

Also note that the death of Pastor Fred is a mere #9 on the list. Pay close attention to the incidents that follow, remembering that these incidents are considered by the readers of the CADC to be worse than a man being killed while preaching. I wonder if the CADC would consider the murder of an atheist by his Christian roommate because he was an atheist an example of bigotry. I hope so, because the evidence of bigotry is very clear on that case.

8. HBO's program "Curb Your Enthusiasm" aired an episode where the main actor urinates on painting of Jesus. When confronted HBO would not apologize.

The main actor did not urinate on a picture of Jesus. The main actor pretended to urinate in a toilet, and a painting was pretend splashed with a (presumably pretend) drop of urine. The next few scenes played off the fact that something "terrible" happened to a depiction of a holy figure. This is hardly an example of defamation, bigotry or discrimination. Also, this is supposed to be worse than a man, a real man with a family and children, being shot and killed? Imagine for a moment that Pastor Fred is your son, your dad, your husband, your pastor, or your friend. Now imagine that a religious group thinks that a comedy sketch in which an actor pretends to get a pretend drop of urine on a picture of their holy figure is worse than the senseless death of a living, breathing human being. If anything, this is an example of CADC being bigots. This is a perfect example of one being irrationally, obstinately intolerantly devoted to one's own opinions and prejudices.

7. The overt homosexual participation in Obama's presidential inaugural events by "Bishop" Vickie Eugene Robinson, the Gay Men's Chorus of Washington D. C., and a homosexual marching band.

The irony is burning my eyes. Gene Robinson is a bishop. CADC is so bigoted toward any religious views other than their own that they think it is an attack on them when a Christian bishop who happens to be gay is INCLUDED IN AN INAUGURAL EVENT alongside other Christians like Rick Warren. Read: any example of not being exclusive to their specific type of Christianity is bigoted, defamatory and discriminatory towards Christians. CADC is so bigoted and discriminatory that they have the audacity to put Bishop in quotes, as if to say he isn't a real bishop. Also: being inclusive and having homosexuals involved in inaugural events is more discriminatory, bigoted and defamatory than a pastor being shot and killed?

6. Police called to East Jessamine Middle School in Lexington, Kentucky to stop 8th graders from praying during their lunch break for a student whose mother was tragically killed.

This is one that the Ethical Hedonist couldn't verify as true.

5. Pro-life activist Jim Pullion was murdered in front of his granddaughter's high school for showing the truth about abortion.

This is the same sort of situation as above: he was murdered by a mentally unstable individual. The individual murdered him not for being Christian, but for displaying pictures of aborted fetuses. So was he killed for being a Christian, or for displaying gory pictures to schoolchildren? Would the killer have left him alone if he was a pro-life atheist, showing pictures of aborted fetuses? I think this has much less to do with Christianity and more to do with a mentally unstable man offended by gory pictures being shown to children. I mean, could we show schoolchildren pictures of the "truth about circumcision" or "the truth about genital warts" or "the truth about Muslims killing nonbelievers" and then claim we're being discriminated against when people make us take the pictures down by lethal force?

4. An activist judge ordered a home school mom in New Hampshire to stop home schooling her daughter because the little girl "reflected too strongly" her mother's Christian faith.
When people get divorced, they often write up a legal document, underlining the contractual obligations of the divorce. In this case, as part of the custody agreement, the mother agreed to not homeschool her child, because the mother and the father disagreed over whether or not the child should be homeschooled. The mother homeschooled her child anyway, violating the custody agreement. I bet if the situation were reversed: if the mother agreed to homeschool her child per the father's wishes and then turned around and sent the kid to a public school, the CADC outcry would be identical. This is not an example of bigotry, discrimination or defamation – it is a legal battle between parents who have opposing wishes as to how their child should be cared for after divorce, with one parent going against the custody agreement who just happened to be Christian. I wonder what they would say if it were the case that dad wanted his kid to go to church every Sunday and mom decided not to take her.

…and this is worse than a pastor being killed?

3. The Federal Department of Homeland Security issued a report entitled "Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate" that labeled conservative Christians extremists and potential terrorists.

Not really. I'm just going to quote Ethical Hedonist on this one:

Oh Jesus Tapdancing Christ, not this again. The document is talking about groups like Stormfront and other white supremacist groups.  In fact, in a quick search of the document, all I found was the following sentence:

"These teachings also have been linked with the radicalization of domestic extremist individuals and groups in the past, such as violent Christian Identity organizations and extremist members of the militia movement."

Christian Identity, for those not in the know, is a loosely affiliated group of white supremacist and white nationalist organizations and has nothing to do with anything most people would consider Christian.

…and this is worse than a pastor being killed?

2. President Obama's appointment of radical anti-Christians like homosexual activist Kevin Jennings as the "safe school czar;" pro-abortion advocate Kathleen Seblius made Secretary of Human and Health Services, and Chai Feldblum, pro-homosexual and anti-religious liberty judge nominated for Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Yup. Inclusion of anyone with an opinion other than the opinion held by the CADC is apparently discrimination, bigotry and defamation of Christianity. I guess we should exclude all of these people from holding positions in the government because they have an opinion or a stance that differs, lest we defame the Christians. If you're not specifically aligned with their opinions, you're bigoted. Oh, you're gay and Christian? Well fuck you, say the CADC readers.

Sorry, but believing that the appointing of people who happen to disagree with your specific version of reality is an attack on you is textbook bigot. It's also textbook discrimination. Oh, and it's pretty defamatory to claim that someone is a bigot when they aren't.

…and this is worse than a pastor being killed?

1. The Federal Hate Crimes Bill that attack religious liberty and freedom of speech. For the first time in our history ministers are vulnerable to investigation and prosecution for telling the truth about homosexuality.

No, they're "vulnerable to investigation and prosecution" if they actually commit acts of violence toward people. You do not have the religious liberty to commit violent crimes against people!

The CADC readers have gone so far as to say the number one incident of "anti-Christian defamation, bigotry and discrimination" is that people who commit hate crimes are criminally liable for hate crimes, and that in addition to crimes against Christians because they are Christians falling under the definition of "hate crime", crimes against homosexuals because they are homosexuals also fall under that definition. Here is the actual text of the document that they find so discriminatory, bigoted and defamatory:


OFFENSES INVOLVING ACTUAL OR PERCEIVED RACE, COLOR, RELIGION, OR NATIONAL ORIGIN.— Whoever, whether or not acting under color of law, willfully causes bodily injury to any person or, through the use of fire, a firearm, a dangerous weapon, or an explosive or incendiary device, attempts to cause bodily injury to any person, because of the actual or perceived race, color, religion, or national origin of any person—

(1) IN GENERAL.— Nothing in this division shall be construed to allow a court, in any criminal trial for an offense described under this division or an amendment made by this division, in the absence of a stipulation by the parties, to admit evidence of speech, beliefs, association, group membership, or expressive conduct unless that evidence is relevant and admissible under the Federal Rules of Evidence. Nothing in this division is intended to affect the existing rules of evidence.

(2) VIOLENT ACTS.— This division applies to violent acts motivated by actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability of a victim.

(3) CONSTRUCTION AND APPLICATION.— Nothing in this division, or an amendment made by this division, shall be construed or applied in a manner that infringes any rights under the first amendment to the Constitution of the United States. Nor shall anything in this division, or an amendment made by this division, be construed or applied in a manner that substantially burdens a person's exercise of religion (regardless of whether compelled by, or central to, a system of religious belief), speech, expression, or association, unless the Government demonstrates that application of the burden to the person is in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest and is the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest, if such exercise of religion, speech, expression, or association was not intended to— (A) plan or prepare for an act of physical violence; or (B) incite an imminent act of physical violence against another.


Really. Their number one concern about the past year is that violent crimes specifically perpetuated due to hatred toward the victim's actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability carry a stronger penalty than violent crimes not perpetuated due to these factors. This is coming, let me remind you, from a group of people who claim to have the moral high ground. If they could prove that the two murders above were due to hatred toward Christians, than those people would be prosecuted for hate crimes.

The CADC of course asks: "If these are not bona fide examples of persecution, than I wonder what more it might take?"

They aren't. They are bona fide examples of Christian bigotry.

Recognize us! Now!

The process of science and the scientific method is, almost by definition, atheistic. There is a lack of god in scientific methodology and hypothesis. Hypothesis are written as: "X will have Y effect" and not, "X will have Y effect, unless god does it". Medical hypothesis are written, "Following arthroscopic knee surgery, subjects will have a measurable improvement in 6 outcome measures compared to subjects following typical knee surgery and subjects undergoing no surgery." and not, ""Following arthroscopic knee surgery, subjects will have a measurable improvement in 6 outcome measures compared to subjects following typical knee surgery and subjects undergoing no surgery – unless god decides to be a source of healing power in one of the groups.

I bring this up for a reason. Scientists do not proudly proclaim that their atheistic hypothesis was supported. When a hypothesis is refuted (and the scientist was hoping to support, rather than refute it) the scientist cannot say, "The skeptics skewed the results with their energy" or, "god just did not want my hypothesis to be supported. It's a mystery, but he will work things out in the end." We don't say, "but that's okay, people have been doing this for years and even if the statistics don't show it, I know it works. People aren't statistics". We don't have these unfalsifiable cop-outs to fall back on when we fail to support what we set out to support. We understand that science is messy, gray, nonbinary, and nuanced. Science, unless attempting to ask a specific question about god, leaves god out of the equation, out of the hypothesis, out of the methods, and out of the results.

This is a sarcastic question. It is meant to be rhetorical. Why aren't nontheists and atheists demanding that scientists give credit where credit is due? "Scientists, using atheist principals, discover new planet". "A group of scientists using atheist methodology create a new kind of superglue". "Doctors need not rely on god when practicing medicine". "Computers work because scientists did not factor god into binary language". The scientific method is one in which god does not factor in to hypothesis, methodology, and evidence – unless of course one is hypothesizing about god. One does not conduct science as if god might step in at any moment and skew the data – when the data are skewed, we assume that the skewing is not god screwing with us. Usually.

Isn't it a War on Atheism when headlines read, "Scientists explain puzzling lake asymmetry on Saturn's moon Titan" instead of, "atheistic scientists explain puzzling lake asymmetry on Saturn's moon Titan"? Even if the scientists in their personal lives aren't atheists, they didn't include the god variable in their methodology – they do research atheistically.

You're probably thinking one of three things. Either: yeah! It would be cool if scientists did that! Or: What? Ziztur, you've gone off the deep end, or: okay… Where are you going with this?

The War on Christmas (2009 or otherwise), wherein Christian groups demand that retailers specifically include the word "Christmas" at end of year holiday advertising under threat of boycott, is sort of analogous to atheists demanding that science without a god factor be recognized as atheistic. The same arguments work for either scenario. After all, science has a rich history of not including god in the scientific method. Those scientists are profiting and gaining notoriety with their work, while failing to mention that they don't add a god-factor into their equations! Why would they censor this? How dare they not include the fact that their entire methodology contains no mention of acts of god!

Needless to say, I find the whole "War on the War on Christmas" to be not only intolerant, ironic and hypocritical, but exclusionary (It's not Happy Holidays! It's Merry Christmas!), materialistic (specifically recognize our holiday by the language we choose or we will hurt your business), bigoted (how dare they mention Christmas on equal grounds with the Solstice, a holiday celebrated by witches!) and overly politically correct (minimize the offense of Christians, who are the majority, by mentioning their religious holiday by name or else).

Life does not begin at conception

One of the primary claims of the anti-abortion brigade is that “life begins at conception”, and because it is wrong to take a life, therefore it is wrong to abort a fetus (and perhaps wrong even to prevent a zygote from implanting by use of a UTI). However, this claim is not merely wrong, but ludicrously wrong.

Let me make an aside here. If you are of a religious bent, and if you believe in the existance of a soul, and if you believe that this soul is created, implanted, magicked into being, or otherwise attached to a developing human at some particular point in development, then of course that provides a logical point whereafter abortion may be seen as a crime against said soul. I think you are dead wrong about the existance of souls, but granted that premise, this objection to anti-abortionism does not apply to you. To you, all I have to say is this: Remember that your arguments are inherently non-secular and cannot carry force in a secular judicial system; and please remember that your arguments hold no force with those of us who are not religious.

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With that out of the way, let’s restate the obvoius: Life does not begin at conception. Conception, in us sexually reproducing animals, consists of the fusion of gametes—the sperm fertilises the ovum. But, and this should be painfully obvious to everyone, the gametes are alive. You are the product of a living spermatozoon and a living ovum. Fertilisation did not mark the creation of life, only the fusion of two living cells into a single living cell.

This fusion is certainly a defining moment in your life. Barring mutation so unlikely that I expect it can be discounted, and excepting rare conditions like chimerism and mosaicism, it is the last event that defines your genetic makeup, when the chromosomes you inherit from your parents merge. It is, in a very real sense, a defining moment. It is not, however, the defining moment, because there are many. Even after fusion, not every zygote goes on to successfully implant, and early pregnancies often terminate spontaneously. The biologist Lewis Wolpert famously said that “It is not birth, marriage, or death, but gastrulation which is truly the most important time in your life”.

But before conception, a startling number of things had to happen in order to make you who you are. Before the fertilisation event was to matter at all, the specifics of meiosis in the germ line of each of your parents played as big a role in determining your genetic specifics as did the fertilisation itself: Meiosis, the process where a germ line cell divides into (haploid) gametes with half the chromosomal complement of a normal cell, is when the genetic contribution of each parent is determined. And of course any number of things had to happen very specifically in order to make you who you are, on this basis: Your parents had to have sex at just the right time when the spermatozoon and ovum each carrying half of your genes were alive and active. If they’d waited until next month, things would have been different…

But this is only the beginning (or the end, depending on your view). Those haploid cells, after all, were alive, each of them a living cell from one of your parents, whence they were produced by meiosis from diploid germ line cells. Each of those cells was the unlikely product of very specific meiosis, reproductive timing, and fertilisation by the (most likely four) people who were their parents…and the same goes for all of their parents…and that lineage goes back, centuries, millennia, millions of years, hundreds of millions of years. You are the product of a lineage of living cells that stretches back to the very dawn of sexual reproduction. Looking back further, you’re still the product of living cells, though the processes are different and lateral gene transfer makes the family tree a bit harder to draw…but ultimately, you are the scion of a family of cells—living cell to living cell to living cell—reaching back some 3.6 billion years—3,600,000,000 years—at a ballpark estimate.

That is when life began, and that is, in a sense, when your life began, too: It started then, and it hasn’t died since. Every single intermediary between you and the first primordial, primitive, living cell that serves as ancestor to all life on earth was alive. It started then, and in a sense, you’re just a heavily modified offshoot—3,600,000,000 years down the living line.

I find this an awesome fact to contemplate.

What, then, is so magical about conception? Nothing, really. It’s a defining moment in making you who you are, but it’s really just one of billions upon billions of defining moments. Causing the death of a zygote does exactly as much in preventing a particular potential person from coming about as does causing the death of a spermatozoon (e.g. by masturbating, by ejaculating outside a woman, by using a condom, or by doing nothing and letting the spermatozoon die and get reabsorbed into the body); as does wasting the life of an ovum (by menstruating, in the luteal or ischemic phase). But removing the possibility of a specific human being is even more ubiquitous; after all, every human alive represents millions of potential people lost, as the ones produced by the spermatozoa who lost the race would undoubtedly have been different.

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My own opinions on abortion are not very well-defined. I am, of course, pro-choice, but since I’ve never been in a position where I’ve had to make a hard choice, I’ve never needed to figure out exactly what I think the hard lines are. What I do think, however, is that it is in no way wrong to destroy human tissue, while it is definitely wrong to destroy a moral human person.

The question, then, is what constitutes moral personhood. I will not pretend to have a clearcut answer. If I had to sit down and develop one, it would combine concepts like having thoughts, dreams, hopes, fears, and desires; taking part in emotional relationships (a reciprocal relationship); interacting (in some way) with people; acting as a moral agent, rather than merely being acted upon as a ‘moral object’.

It seems abundantly clear to me that no lump of human tissue can possibly meet my criteria unless it has a mind, which requires a working brain. After the brain works in some sense, I believe there is a window, a grey area, where I would in all likelihood agree that abortion may very well be morally acceptable—but this is beside the point I wish to make here, which is that until brain activity begins, I regard it as “no context”: Abortion prior to this is absolutely acceptable. (This may be around week 25 or so of a pregnancy; research shows that sustained EEG activity first appears in bursts around week 20, become sustained around week 22, and bilaterally synchronous around weeks 26–27.)

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Once the position is taken that an early abortion does not, in fact, destroy a moral person, we are back to the notion of destroying “potential” persons. The problem is that we destroy potential persons all the time, no matter what we do. If we have sex, we destroy lots of potential persons (since most of the potential ones will never be, even if we do have children); whenever we don’t have sex even though we could, we are passively murdering potential persons, because we aren’t making children at all.

Modern biotechnology allows us to stretch this argument to a reductio ad absurdum without leaving the realm of the possible. In recent experiments (documented in some very nice articles in Nature), scientists have induced pluripotency in mouse cells and produced viable mice (fully viable, as some of them went on to reproduce). While cloning humans is likely to be much more difficult than cloning mice even on purely technical considerations, and it may well be impossible right now, it seems obvious that the technology is if not in our grasp, then certainly close to it, to produce viable humans from induced pluripotent stem cells. Taking things just a bit further, it may become possible to extract genetic material and inject it into pluripotent cells and so produce clones from any cell with intact genetic material.

Once the technology exists for doing this, the loss of any viable genetic material is, in a sense, the destruction of a potential human life. Scratching your head, cutting your hair or your nails, losing scrapings of epithelial material from your mouth, bleeding…every such act will prevent humans from being who might otherwise have been.

Unless you are willing to condemn this as murder, then any argument that boils down to “You are destroying potential life!” loses all force.

Fallacies and lies in the gay marriage debate

Opponents of gay rights often object to gay marriage on the basis that it is “not traditional”—“traditional marriage”, they say, never included same-sex unions; therefore, to allow such would be to subvert what marriage is about.

Skipping quickly past the most obvious flaws in this argument—viz., first, that “traditional” and “non-traditional” do not necessarily correlate to “good” and “bad” at all; and second, that a non-traditional marriage is still a marriage—it is still a flimsy argument, for a series of reasons. Since I seem to repeat myself in comment threads, I will summarize my arguments here for future reference.

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The most oft-raised objection is that the tradition of marriage has changed over time, thus appeals to tradition are vague and empty. For instance, going back a few decades or centuries we will find changes in

• whether people were encouraged or even allowed to choose their own spouses
• whether marriages could be dissolved by divorce
• whether women held equal power (legally) with their husbands
• whether the spouses could have different ethnic, cultural, and/or religious backgrounds
• and so on and so forth.

Some people misunderstand this argument and object that “same-sex unions were never part of the tradition!”—which is true, but completely misses the point. The point is that the tradition has always been plastic and has evolved over the decades and centuries, and rules have been changed or dropped—generally, it seems, as a delayed reaction to humanistic improvements in our culture. It is certainly true that “the spouses must be of different sexes” has always been one of those rules, but if other rules can be dropped, why can’t that one?

You may be reaching for the reply button to tell me that, wait!, there is a good reason!—that same-sex unions cannot “naturally” produce children, for instance. However, this is a red herring. If you must resort to any such argument, you are no longer arguing that gay marriage is wrong because it is non-traditional, but rather that it is wrong and non-traditional. If you want “It’s not traditional!” to be a reason against gay marriage, then you must be consistent. However, virtually nobody actually argues in favour of other, discarded aspects of the tradition. Therefore, “It’s not traditional!” is not really a motivation at all, but a rhetorical argument disingenuously wielded for want of better arguments.

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While we are at it, let’s dismiss the motivation that same-sex marriages are invalid because they cannot result in children. First, this is simply untrue—lesbian couples can have children with the help of artificial insemination, or a male friend; gay male couples can have children with the aid of a surrogate mother; any gender configuration can raise children if they are adopted. Second, the people who argue that gay marriages should not be allowed because they do not result in children by “natural” means never seem to have the slightest urge to apply this criterion consistently, which would mean forbidding marriages

• where the woman is post-menopausal
• where the man is sterile or completely impotent
• where the woman is infertile
• where the man has had a vasectomy, or the woman a tubal ligation
• where the spouses are biologically capable of having children, but have no desire or intention to do so, and use contraceptives to ensure it will not happen.

If your criterion is that “marriage is for procreation”, then you should oppose these types of marriage every bit as firmly as you oppose same-sex marriage. If you don’t, then whatever your real reason is, it clearly isn’t the procreation angle.

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Finally, something that is often overlooked is that defenders of “traditional” marriage tend to speak as though there were only one tradition (their own, of course). But this is not so, and while we may live in a culture evolved from and dominated by Judeo-Christian tradition, it’s not the only one around. The tradition of male-male eros in ancient Greece is well-known; in modern times, it is fairly clear that so-called Boston marriages often (though far from always) were, in effect, lesbian partnerships.

Around the world, there have been many cultures and traditions that allow, encourage, or celebrate same-sex relationships. Anthropologists have found several dozen African populations with female-female marriages, as well as male-male unions; North American indigenous cultures have recognised various fluid gender identities; pre-modern China had several examples of same-sex marriages.

Thus, to say that “Same-sex marriage is not traditional!” comes with the implicit assumption of confining yourself to one or a particular set of cultures. It’s highly traditional in some parts of the world—it just so happens that these traditions are not the dominant ones in the Western world.

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On a lighter note, I recently came across one of the worst arguments I have ever heard in this debate:

To call a homosexual union a "marriage" is to equate it to "traditional marriage," which it is not. Again, this has nothing to do with discrimination, but changing the institution and definition of marriage and violating the first amendment right of freedom of religion. This includes religious expression.

This is so perversely wrong that it’s actually funny. Marriage, as it is currently defined in the United States, is constrained by the rules of the Judeo-Christian cultural background of the European settlers who invaded North America. To allow gay marriage would obviously not infringe on the right of Christians to marry people of the opposite sex. It might offend them, and they might for various absurd reasons feel that it devalues them, but it does nothing to prevent them from engaging in exactly the same religious rituals and religious ceremonies that they already do. It would not affect their rights—only the rights of the same-sex couples who would now be allowed to marry.

If anything (and this is what makes it so perverse), the current laws could be construed as a First Amendment violation! After all, by forbidding same-sex unions, the government is promoting one religion’s view of marriage (the Christian one) over the views of certain other religions (e.g. some African and indigenous North American ones). The current state of things has one religious tradition entrenched in the law—which is precisely what the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment was written to prevent. (I’m not saying that a strong case could necessarily be made that “marriage for heteros only” is an Establishment violation, but if we are to talk violation, it is clearly the case that the status quo favours Christianity, rather than that a change would infringe on anybody’s religious rights.)

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A great deal more could be said on this subject. This is not a piece of advocacy—I’m sure it’s clear that I do advocate recognising same-sex marriages every bit as much as hetero-sex marriages—but the aim here is to discuss some common fallacies and counterfactual claims that have been repeatedly issued in the course of debate. The next time these arise, I will simply provide a link to this post and say, “Here, go see why you are wrong”.

War on Christmas 2009

Time for the 4th annual War on Christmas - War on Christmas, 2009!

This year, I am going to say a lot of the same things I said last year, mostly because the argument has not changed, but the tactics of certain Christian organizations have gotten stronger. Beware – the War FOR Christmas is heating up, and the War for Christmas army is at the ready.

The War on Christmas is supposedly a "secular war" waged against Christmas. Christians all over the world don't like it when people don't recognize their holiday, so much so that they are willing to force businesses to use the word "Christmas" in their advertising. They are willing to boycott businesses that don't. The message to businesses is clear: use Christmas in your advertising, or we'll stab you in the eye with our wallets.

While secular people are minding their own business, Christians all over the USA are boycotting businesses that don't happen to have chosen to use "Christmas" in their advertising. They (the War on Christmas folks) have gone so far as to set up a website wherein one can update the "naughty" or "nice" list. The "naughty" list is those businesses that allegedly don't use Christian language in their advertisements, and the "nice" list is those that do. You can also find other
websites devoted to making sure everyone knows just how much more important Christmas is then every other holiday at the end of the year. This is mostly done in the name of "anti political-correctness" but ends up being more about intolerance - intolerance at businesses trying to include other groups of people who celebrate minority holidays during the holidays.

Why, why is it so important that people acknowledge your holiday that you will refuse to shop at businesses that don't? I'm glad atheists don't act like this. Yet secular people are the ones painted as being "Grinches".  It seems to me that the Grinches are the ones insisting once again that they are being persecuted and stamped out, organizing boycotts and to shove Christmas down the throats of everyone else. I know it hurts when a tiny slice of your monopoly on the country gets taken away or when you find out that there are people in the world who aren't exactly like you. But really, those guys who care enough to boycott businesses are acting like a child forced to share one toy out of the hundreds in his toy box with his cousin.

I don't know any atheist, Muslim, Jew, or anyone else complaining about Christmas advertising. I know of no huge organizations (such as the Catholic League) of non-Christians insisting that their flock boycott businesses that display Christmas-related schlock. There is a small movement of people dedicated to the war on the commercialization of Christmas and even that is not a war on the religious aspect, it's a war pro-the religious aspect. Really, it's nice when people recognize that not everyone is a Christian. If you say Merry Christmas to me, I don't care all that much. When you cry victim and insist with your wallets that Christmas be part of advertising, I start to care.

Here is the message I hear: everybody who is a Christian has the right to demand that retail sales clerks intuit that they are Christian and thus wish them a merry Christmas - affirming their own personal "reason for the season". Affirm that we both love baby Jesus or THIS MEANS WAR.  If you don't recognize exactly what we recognize on this day, we will hate you for being liberal atheist politically correct secular scumbags. Are people really serious when you say it's evil and suppressive to call an annual holiday party at your work a holiday party instead of a Christmas party?

I do think it's silly to call "Christmas trees" "holiday trees". That would be like calling a Menorah a "holiday candelabra". So while I do agree that political correctness can go too far, "happy holidays" doesn't cross the line. Even if I think it's silly, I am not going to wage a war on businesses that call Christmas Trees holiday trees and force them to call them Christmas trees. These are just words. It's not worth getting bent out of shape over. Also, why aren't Christians annoyed that secular businesses like Walmart use their religious holiday as a marketing ploy to get you to buy junk you and your loved ones don't need? If anything, they should be boycotting retailers for using Christmas as a way to capitalize on their religious beliefs. Supposedly Christmas is about the joy of the birth of Jesus, right?

It's not as if secular people are stopping people from celebrating the holiday they wish to celebrate. There is no ban on Christmas. As much as you love to celebrate it, it's also inescapable. We couldn't avoid it even if we wanted to unless we hid in our houses with the TV off all day - and even then. Why can't I buy stamps or milk on Christmas? Whether we like it or not, we're going to be involved in recognizing the holiday sorry, Christmas. No one is being denied their right to celebrate Christmas - though I am certainly being denied my right to have just another day. I can't ignore Christmas, because it is impossible to ignore.

Let's concoct a fun little scenario. Let's say atheism becomes so widespread that atheists get some random day designated as "Godless day". Two months before godless day, businesses all over start putting up "Merry godlessness" decorations. We devote entire radio stations to music promoting atheism, and we play atheist musak in retail stores. We organize parades that take up city streets, throw decorations up everywhere, and generally stuff our reason for the season down your throats.  On godless day, most businesses close down so that you can't get your oil changed, your laundry done, or mail any packages. Moreover, if businesses don't acknowledge Atheist Day in their advertising, we organize a boycott. If you're a war on Christmas pundit, this probably sounds incredibly crappy and offensive, doesn't it? What about the guys who don't celebrate atheism? Are they to simply fade into the background and be absorbed by our festivities? Well no. Try to think about this from another perspective – the best way to do that is to pick a religion or a worldview you don't especially agree with and pretend that they are doing the same thing you are doing.

Being civil and polite means recognizing that people are different, and not making those differences a point of conflict and contention. Yes, it's okay to say Merry Christmas: or Happy Hanukkah, or Merry Kwanza, or Happy Just Another Day. It's okay to encourage people to say Happy Holidays. It is not okay to force people to recognize your holiday. It's not okay, as a business, to insist your workers don't say Merry Christmas - thankfully, that's never actually happened.

Merry Friday!

Happy War for Christmas!

Happy Just another Day!

Happy I get to take a day off work even though I don't celebrate this holiday day!

Making fun of Catholics

I just thought I would let you guys know that attacking Catholics is not really clever, witty or funny.

So says Greg Crave, vice chancellor of the Australian Catholic University, in his opinion piece published in the Australian National Times.

This is another one of those opinion pieces that are so deliciously ironic and hypocritical that I hardly feel observant to point it out, but point it out I must.

Sir Crave's piece starts out with the bold headline: "A plague of atheists has descended, and Catholics are the target" with the subheadline, "Attacking Christians is not really clever, witty or funny" and then proceeds to write a piece that appears to be an attempt to attack atheists in a way that is clever, witty and funny.

He begins by saying:

From time immemorial, this world has been troubled by plagues. From bogong moths in Canberra to frogs in biblical Egypt, unwelcome and unlovely creatures have the awkward habit of turning up in bulk.

Just now, we are facing one of our largest and least appealing infestations. … we are beset by atheists.

Wow. Atheists – fellow human beings who lack belief in god – are one of the largest and least appealing plague infestations of unwelcome and unlovely creatures. I guess it is not clever, witty or funny to insult Christians, but it is clever, witty and funny to compare atheists to plague infestations.

Let's think about this. Atheists who are vice chancellors for universities do not write opinion pieces in national newspapers claiming that it is not witty to attack atheists (who have been attacked since the dawn of religion) and that Catholics are the largest and most unappealing plague infestation of unwelcome and unlovely creatures.

There are idiots in every camp, and if an atheist behaved this badly, I would call that atheist out on his hypocritical xenophobic, bigoted hate speech immediately.

Crave goes on to explain that "traditional" atheists "tended to be quiet blokes called Algie with ancillary interests in nudist ceremonies, who were perfectly happy as long as you pretended to accept a pamphlet in Flinders Lane.

Apparently, the good atheists are the ones who keep their godless mouths shut about their godlessness. I am not Australian so I don't know what the references to Algie and Flinders Lane are, nor do I get the reference to nudist ceremonies. Crave apparently does not mind the atheists who are quiet, but decries the "new" atheists who are

As brash, noisy and confident as an electric kettle.

That's very brash, noisy and confident of Crave to proclaim these things about atheists, isn't it? He goes on to say that the "new" atheists are targeting Catholics in particular. He thinks this is odd, given the proliferation of other religions for us to target and surmises that we attack the Catholic Church because doing so is the equivalent of "nuking the Pentagon" and "Guerilla bands of Baptists and Pentecostals can be liquidated at leisure."

Nice! Crave managed to insult non-Catholics as well as atheists by completely diminishing all that they have works for by referring to them as "Guerilla bands" as if they are meeting in huddled corners of abandoned buildings. He does this in the same paragraph that he compares atheists to terrorists.

Sir Crave, make no mistake: we have issue with parts of all religions. The Catholic Church is a very large organization and it is unique in the way in which it functions as well as its vast historical significance to the current culture. When you have an issue with certain beliefs, you tend to spend more time targeting the beliefs that are most pervasive in society. Jesus is central to Catholicism, so you spend a lot of time talking about Jesus. Sin is a big issue, so you spend lots of time talking about sin. The date of Jesus' birth is not central to your doctrines, so you spend much less time targeting that for discussion. This is perfectly logical and the way that most people manage their time or focus. Instead, he portrays us as a petty group of people attacking Catholics because it might mean someone will pay attention to us.

Crave goes on to attack other religions (not the superb hypocrisy here) proving that what he means by "Attacking Christians is not really clever, witty or funny" is "Attacking the Catholic Church is not really clever, witty or funny – but attacking everyone else IS."

Catholics have the undeniable advantage that they demonstrably believe in something. Attacking some of the more swinging Christian denominations might mean upsetting people who believe a good deal less than the average atheist

He proceeds to use lots of insulting adjectives in an apparent attempt at wit, referring to atheists as, "a diverting pastime", "designer atheism", "common or garden atheist", "tabloid atheist", "atheistic bigotry". Let's imagine for a moment that these adjectives were applied to Catholics. Catholicism is a diverting pastime. Designer Catholicism. Common or Garden Catholicism. Tabloid Catholicism. Catholic bigotry.

But Oh no! atheists are bigoted for pointing out that some Catholics are bigoted.

In an average week of atheistic bigotry in the Melbourne Media, we can expect to learn that Catholics endorse child molestation, hate all other religions, would re-introduce the crusades and the auto de fe at the slightest opportunity, despise women, wish to persecute homosexuals, greedily divert public moneys for their own religious purposes, subvert public health care, brainwash children, and are masterminding the spread of the cane toad across north Australia

Um…Here's the thing. I do not hear atheists (even Australian ones) claiming in the media that Catholics do all of those things in the above paragraph. We say things like this: "This particular Catholic demonstrably hates other religions. Here are some specific examples…" which gets strawmanned into… well… this. If atheists do say this, then I do not agree with them. Even if they do make these blanket strawman statements, Crave is the pot calling the kettle black. Of course, when he wants to point out examples of "atheist bigotry", he provides no references to the claims being made.

Apparently, Crave thinks we are supposed to ignore or politely dismiss Christians. But he is not ignoring or politely dismissing us.

The end of his piece reads: "There is nothing funny, witty of clever about hate."

You're right. Sir Crave – you are a bigoted, hateful individual, as evidenced by your writing. Please. Imagine that someone were writing a piece as scathing as yours in a national newspaper about Catholicism. If the "media" has something negative to say about Catholicism, it is usually to point out some FACT. It is a fact that there is an issue in the Catholic Church concerning child sexual abuse by priests. It is a fact that some Catholics are hateful to other religions. It is a fact that some Catholics condone treating women as inferior to men. It is a fact that the Catholic Church persecutes homosexuals. It is a fact that the Catholic Church uses public money for religious purposes. It is a fact that the Catholic Church has spoken out against public health care. It is a fact that the Catholic Church raises children to believe in the tenants of Catholicism, sometimes using psychologically subversive techniques. Can you imagine a group of schoolchildren being forced to recite passages from The God Delusion on a weekly basis and being smacked if they say "god bless you" when someone sneezes? I don't know what that reference to the cane toad is, unless Crave means that atheists are being bigoted when they compare Catholics to a plague. Yes, it is bigoted when you compare a group of people to the plague. Crave needs to take a good long look in the mirror.

I'd really recommend reading Craves whole article – it's the most ironic mishmash of hypocrisy I have read in a long time. I only included a few select quotes.

Day of silent hypocrisy

The other day I read a blog post by my friend the Friendly Atheist on the hypocrisy over the pro-life day of silent solidarity.

On October 20th, people from all over the world "gave up their voices for a day in solidarity for these children" (meaning abortions). Participants wore red armbands, remained silent for the day, and handed out pro-life fliers.

I don't have a problem with protesting, but I do have a problem with hypocrisy. The Friendly Atheist commented that he had not heard a single Christian group condemn this event:

No right-wing group said it was wrong for students to showcase their social "agenda" in the classroom.

None of them demanded that students not go to school on the day of the event because the classroom was being "hijacked" for political purposes.

Not one group asked people to call local school administrators and ask why they're allowing this event to take place.

He urged his readers to remember this when LGBT and LGBT-friendly students participate in the Day Of Silence, which occurs every April. The Day of Silence is a day in which students remain silent on behalf of people who are gay, bisexual, homosexual or transsexual. The silence brings attention to anti LGBT bullying and harassment in schools. He also urged his readers to call Christian groups out on their blatant hypocrisy if they did condemn participation in the Day of Silence for LGBT people.

DONE.

Here is a list of members of the coalition of pro-family organizations who officially want their parents to keep kids home during the Day of Silence:

Abiding Truth Ministries; AFA Michigan; AFA Pennsylvania; AFA National; Americans for Truth; Association of Maryland Families; Called2Action; Campaign for Children and Families; Citizens for Community Values of Ohio; Coalition of Conscience; Community Issues Council; Concerned Women for America National; Concerned Women for America Washington; Culture Campaign; Faith2Action; Faith, Family & Freedom Alliance; Illinois Family Institute; Indiana Voice; Liberty Alliance Action; Liberty Counsel; Maine Family Policy Council; MassResistance; Mission America; Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays (PFOX)

I looked them all up to see if any of them were supporting the Day of Silent Solidarity. Here is a list of coalition members who both oppose the Day of Silence while supporting the Day of Silent Solidarity:

Abiding Truth Ministries decried the Day of Silence for "political demonstration in the classrooms". Americans For Truth supports keeping children home on the Day of Silence because it "disrupts the learning process" and "they are not unlike other nefarious ideological movements in their utilitarian misuse of schools to sway young minds".


The American Family Association (AFA) called the "Day of Silence" a "public school classroom disruption" and said, "schools should not have to tolerate students remaining silent in class" and "You can help de-politicize the learning environment by calling your child out of school if your child's school allows students to remain silent during instructional time" while simultaneously (and hypocritically) supporting the Day of Silent Solidarity as evidenced by this message (posted 10/20/09 on their official Facebook page):

"Today is Pro-Life Day of Silent Solidarity. Students in over 3,000 schools will place duct tape over their mouths and wear red armbands with the word "LIFE" to show support for the 4,000 human lives that are silenced very day by abortion. Students ...will also distribute flyers telling people why they are silent. These students should be applauded for their silent yet very visible witness. God bless them!"

The other organizations on this list who opposed the Day of Silence for the reasons mentioned fell curiously silent with regard to the Day of Silent Solidarity. Now, I can understand supporting the Day of Silent Solidarity and opposing the Day if Silence for ideological reasons, but it is hypocritical to hate one for "hijacking the classroom for political reasons" while supporting the other, which does the exact same thing.

Faith Infiltration: Creation Museum Pt.8

This next picture of the posters at AiG continues the trend of attempting to show that "human reason" and "god's word" cause people to come to different conclusions about fossils.

Once again, the important stuff is at the bottom:

Here, we have "human reason" showing us that over a long period of time, fossils developed over a very slow period to create coal and many rock layers. On the "god's word" side, we have a "floating forest" breaking up during the great flood and coal and fossil layers being created rapidly during a worldwide flood 4,300 years ago.

The idea that this could even occur is laughable. Let me refer you to a quick explanation as to why from the Answers in Creation website, which is a Christian website. Obviously, not all Christians believe the same thing, but it is nice to see Christians debunking this nonsense.

Their best quote is this one:

If you wanted the coal beds to form over the continents, here is what must happen.  God would have to sink a forest with the turbulent water, then calm the water and make it still for a day, so the sediment would sink to the bottom, then re-start the current to bring in the next forest to sink, sink it, stop the current, etc., etc.  Sure, God could have done it, but there's no logical reason to.

I guess if you have magic on your side, you can explain away anything.

Faith Infiltration: Creation Museum Pt.6

For those of you who don't visit here every day, Flimsy and I (along with a few of our friends) visited the Creation Museum a few weeks ago. This is a series of blog posts outlining some of the interesting things I found there.

A poster near the beginning of the Creation Museum sets up the museum's version of how all of this complexity in living systems came to be. The people of Answers in Genesis actually believe in evolution in a way, while insisting through and through that they don't. A good example of this is the poster below, which shows the difference in "human reason" vs "God's Word" in explaining the complexity we see:

The important part of this poster is at the bottom:

Here, the poster makes the claim that human reason has produced this idea of the tree of life – with all of life arising from simpler and simpler organisms, something they characterize as "molecules-to-man evolution". The God version looks more like an orchard than a tree, with god creating ill-defined "kinds" and then populations of those "kinds" evolve into various species. AiG claims that it is not possible for one population of "kind" to evolve into another "kind", but fails to explain why, aside from resorting to their god.

The problem is this: what if we DID observe a "kind" evolving into another "kind"? Let's pretend for a moment that somehow, a population of dogs is documented to evolve into cats over a period of 60 years. I am confident that creationists would not abandon their position. Rather, they would claim that this instance of "kinds" evolving into other "kinds" is a miracle – not evidence of evolution. I would agree – evolution does not work like this, and so if in a period of 60 years, we documented a population of dogs changing into cats, I would seriously have to rethink my own position on evolution.

If a population of dogs evolved into some animal that is not so drastic as dogs-evolving-into-cats, the creationist could simply claim that the animal has changed a lot, but has not changed "kinds".

Creationists also like to claim that evolution is unscientific because we cannot "go back into the past" and directly observe "molecules to man" evolution. We also cannot "go back into the past" to observe creation. If you think this is adequate criteria for discounting evolution, then you must apply the same standards to your alternate idea.

No matter what we observe or what evidence we gather, the people at the creation museum will have an excuse or a goalpost to move. They have already moved the goalpost in the creation evolution debate. In the past, creationists simply asserted that speciation could not happen because it was not observed. Once we provided examples of speciation, the goalpost was moved to "kinds". Now, AiG clearly has a model in which evolution occurs – within the mechanismless ceiling of "kinds". If we directly observed that this ceiling did not exist, it would be a miracle, or a fraud, or not proof that god did not create "original" kinds, or god working in some other way. As such, it is unfalsifiable. AiG already claims that the evolution we see today is "not proof" of evolution before recorded history, but if we were able to observe "molecules-to-man" evolution over a short period of time, a creationist could still claim that this is "not proof" that "molecules-to-man" evolution is what actually happened. Really, observation does not matter, an excuse can always be made. This makes it nonscientific. In science, one must have a hypothesis, and that hypothesis must be falsifiable.

Faith Infiltration: Creation Museum Pt. 5

I've been very photographic lately on this blog after a long lull of texty blog posts. This is part 5 of a series of blog posts documenting my visit to the Creation Museum. You can find previous posts by clicking the "intelligent Design" label at the bottom of this post.


Here is another example of the "human reason" and "God's word" dichotomy that permeates the museum:

The text is a little hard to read from the picture, so here is what it says:

Starting with Human Reason	Starting with God's word
The Utahraptor lived in the Early Cretacus world about 125 million years ago – evolved through millions of years of change	The Utahraptor lived in the pre-Flood world about 4,300 years ago – God made the beasts of earth (Genesis 1:25)
Caught in a flooding river – died in the normal course of events	Caught in the Great Flood – And the Lord said, "I will destroy… man and beast…, for I repent that I have made them." (Genesis 6:7)
Dried out on a river bank – dried out in the sun	Floated on Flood waters – And all the flesh died that moved upon the earth (Genesis 7:21)
Slowly buried by river sediments – slowly buried and gradually fossilized	Suddenly buried in the Global Flood – The world that was then, being overflowed with water, perished (2 Peter 3:6)
Exposed in the present – revealed by millions of years of erosion	Exposed in the present – Speak to the earth and it shall teach you. (Job 12:8)

So, "human reason" seems to clearly be starting from the null hypothesis and moving toward a tentative conclusion based on the evidence we find. "God's word" is a starting point of the Bible, retrofitting evidence so that said evidence does not contradict what the Bible says.


Most people reading this blog will understand how ridiculous this is. In the event that I am not preaching to the choir, let me illustrate why this is an inappropriate way to approach evidence with an analogy.

Starting with Human Reason	Starting with the Lisu Holy Book
The Utahraptor lived in the Early Cretacus world about 125 million years ago – evolved through millions of years of change	The Utahraptor lived in a reef in the pre-Flood world – dinosaurs lived in reefs.
Caught in a flooding river – died in the normal course of events	Killed by an orphaned brother and sister with a golden hammer and silver tongs – given to them by a golden bird
Dried out on a river bank – dried out in the sun	Thrown onto a river bank by the children – along with fish
Slowly buried by river sediments – slowly buried and gradually fossilized	Buried quickly - by one of the 8 suns and 6 moons shot down by the children.
Exposed in the present – revealed by millions of years of erosion	Exposed in the present – by ancestors of the children

You could pretty much take any creation myth and, starting from that myth, force fossil evidence to fit it. The Lisu creation story might sound like a tale used by another culture to explain origins, but objectively it is equally fanciful as the Biblical creation myth. This is why we need to begin with the scientific method ("human reason") and then look at the evidence as objectively as possible. What the creation museum does is essentially pit the scientific method against the Bible, insisting that the scientific method is something akin to an "arbitrary guess". To a believer, "God's word" is infinitely better than some "arbitrary guess". Evidence does not matter, because it can simply be redefined, ignored or marginalized in favor of an "innerant" holy book. A believer in Lisu mythology could similarly ignore or redefine evidence in favor of their mythology. In this way, the faith of an individual or organization can become historical "fact".


To put it yet another way – a forensic investigator and his assistant are at the scene of a murder. Who is more likely to arrive at the truth: the forensic investigator, who makes no assumptions about the nature of the crime, or the assistant who "knows" before he enters the crime scene that his neighbor perpetuated the murder, and his only evidence is that his pastor told him his neighbor was an atheist sinner with no morals? The assistant can look at the crime scene and say, "it does not matter that the murder weapon was a gun and my neighbor does not own a gun. He borrowed it. It does not matter that my neighbor has an alibi because he was at a local atheist meeting – he just committed the crime before the meeting. The investigator using evidence to date the time of death is wrong, because that dating method makes too many assumptions.

We can't find his fingerprints or DNA evidence anywhere at the scene, but that's no matter because he could have worn a full body suit, the clever fox. Your standards of evidence are based on human reason, but my evidence is based on the word of my pastor and the word of God, who says nonbelievers are evil. Your human reason will lead you in the wrong direction because it's just an arbitrary guess".