Bloc Raisonneur

Robin Williams is Wanted for Questioning

2009-07-12T16:40:00.002-04:00

A family in Saudi Arabia is tired of the harassment, tired of the violence, tired of the theft of property. They're not taking it lying down, and are going to bring the perp to justice. Who is this Menace 2 Saud-ciety?

Why, a genie of course.

Per the BBC:

A family in Saudi Arabia is taking a "genie" to court, accusing it of theft and harassment, reports say.
They accuse the spirit of threatening them, throwing stones and stealing mobile phones, Al Watan newspaper said.

Here's the best part:

A local court says it is trying to verify the truthfulness of the claims "despite the difficulty" of doing so.

I'm going to be really interested in what that final police report says. What happens if they have to take the genie to court? And what if it has to serve time? Do they make penitentiary lamps?

More Equal Than Others

2009-07-12T00:12:00.005-04:00

I know this has almost nothing to do with atheism, but I thought you guys would be interested in my take on a recent news event having to do with civil injustice at my Examiner column. A taste:

The Rev. Eric P. Lee, president of the Los Angeles chapter of the seminal civil rights organization the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, is facing removal from his post because he supports civil rights. Lee came out vociferously against California's Proposition 8 banning gay marriage, which apparently did not please the folks at SCLC headquarters. They have commanded to him to appear in Atlanta to make a personal account of himself, and he has refused to do so.

Obviously, there is so much irony here that you could build a giant robot.

Go read the rest here.

Oh Crap. Obama Named the Jesus Guy to Head the NIH

2009-07-08T23:45:00.007-04:00

I know that he knows his way around a beaker and a double helix like nobody's business, but I can't help but be disappointed by President Obama's choice of Francis Collins to head the NIH. I don't expect him to be prescribing exorcisms or ordering fully-funded research into post-crucifixion resurrections, but I simply can't be satisfied with the idea that a major science institution will be headed by someone who decided that Jesus was the son of God because he was totally bowled over by the sight of a waterfall. I mean, does that not say something about his rational judgment?

And from the political perspective, I don't like that Obama seems to be sending another signal of cultural compromise. Rick Warren at the inauguration, faith-based initiatives continued, gays denied the promise of full equality, and now this. To me, it's one more public embrace of irrationality.

I know, even PZ Myers said (with huge qualifiers) he'll do "a fine job." Maybe he will, but there's something to be said about who we choose to elevate in particular spheres. The appointment of Collins is just another reason for me to dejectedly shake my head.

What if My Baby's Not a Godless Heathen Socialist Pinko Like Me?

2009-07-08T23:06:00.007-04:00

As those who subscribe to my Twitter feed undoubtedly know, I am overjoyed that my wife and I are going to be the parents of a baby boy, with a due date sometime in late November. Of course, we're brooding over names, wondering how we'll fare as role models and moral guides, and all the usual exciting pre-paternal anxieties.

Along with that wondering comes the ponderings of what might be. The "what-ifs" that might jar us if they come to be. The old cliché is "what if he's gay," which, in our case, would not only be a non-issue, but probably a plus given our artistic sensibilities and liberal guilt.

No, we found ourselves first wondering: "What if he's a Republican?" (I assume Republicans all hatch that way--there's no way that's something that can be learned. I mean, it's the opposite of learning, right?)

But after a mild shudder over that, I then wondered, "What if he's religious?"

"Well, it'd be far worse if he were a Republican," said my wife.

"No it wouldn't!" I exclaimed. She was aghast.

And of course, it's not so simple. We'll love our boy more than anything, no matter what (we already do). But it became a brief point of genuine contention for us (mainly me): Am I more frightened of my kid joining the GOP or a church? Or, so help me, both? Obviously, there are degrees of both; if he turned out to be a liberal, Northeastern style Republican, or if he were to be a mildly spiritual Unitarian. Many levels in between extremes.

He can be whatever he wants to be. My job is to help him be his best in whatever he chooses.

But. You know. If he needs a nudge in one direction or another...

Spooked into Atheism?

2009-07-06T22:49:00.001-04:00

[Originally posted at my Examiner.com column.]

At the Christian Post's Food for the Soul blog, Randal Rauser makes what I think is a good faith attempt to bridge some divisions and salve some misunderstandings between theists and nontheists. He writes:

I think here of a well known academic who avowed disbelief in the Christian God because he was told -- with a notable absence of pastoral sensitivity -- that a childhood Jewish friend who died in a car accident was burning in hell. As a result this academic came to believe that the Christian God is arbitrary, capricious, and unjust. So when he says that he disbelieves in God, he is saying he disbelieves in a god who is arbitrary, capricious and unjust. But I don't believe in such a god either.

He cites another example of a "distortion" of Christian doctrine (regarding a fundamentalist's idea of who goes to Hell), and expresses understanding as to why someone might reject faith when faced with such representations. He concludes:

The discussion boils down to this. Perhaps before we judge the disbelief of the atheist, we should judge our own household. To put it bluntly, how often does our witness in the world offer moral justification for atheism?

I was, overall, glad to read this. As Sam Harris has so urgently pointed out in his writings, religious moderates bear some responsibility for the cover they (often unwittingly) give to radicals and fundamentalists simply by advocating for belief in things that are absurd and supported by no evidence. That Rauser can see that his "own household" might benefit from some tending, I think is a good sign. These uglier faces of Christianity and religion in general are not only hateful and hurtful, but make for easy targets for we angry, militant atheists. Everyone benefits if those views are marginalized.

But, coming from someone who presumably believes in the literal truth of Jesus's divinity, and that salvation is only possible through Jesus, he comes from the perspective that atheists are somehow fallen, missing the bigger point -- if understandably misguided by these unpleasant manifestations of religion. So where I disagree with Rauser is the idea that because someone may become a nonbeliever because of a bad encounter with a harsh or heartless representation of religion, they may be 'blameless' (my words, not his), and therefore what follows is that any atheist who comes by their nonbelief honestly ought not be let off the hook so easily. One is an accident, manslaughter of the soul, if you will, while the other is premeditated murder. Rauser offers an outstretched hand for the atheist-by-mean-God, but implies an upturned nose to the atheist-by-independent-thought.

Indeed, according to his last sentence, atheism requires a moral justification, not an intellectual one.

I don't know what the statistics are, but I would imagine that most atheists arrive at their atheism by means similar to my own: Exposed to the various inconsistencies and the logical impossibilities of religious claims, our reason simply said, "no, you'll have to do better than that." I was a doubter long before I was revolted by Jerry Falwell or Osama bin Laden, or knew anything about the burning of "witches" or the Spanish Inquisition. I would not fall under the understandably-atheistic category for which Rauser shows sympathy, nor do I imagine would most atheists. But I could be wrong (please correct me if I am).

I want to be clear: This is what is implied by Rauser's blog post to my mind, not what he has said explicitly. I'll be posting my points in the comments of his post so he can respond if he wants. I do want to reemphasize that he makes an effort at conciliation that is all too rare in the discourse between believers and nonbelievers. But the effect is somewhat lessened when the sentiment is thus qualified. I hope to hear from him on this.

UPDATE: Mr. Rauser has graciously responded in the comments of my Examiner column. Check it out there.

The Weak Faith of the Unfaithful Republicans

2009-06-25T23:45:00.007-04:00

This post has been updated at my Examiner.com column. If you read it there I'll make a few cents.

Here is the part where a socially liberal, militant atheist, pajama'd blogger trumpets the blatant hypocrisy of politicians and leaders of the religious right who find their names in little black books, take wide stances in public bathrooms, use party funds to keep the kid quiet, or take long hikes through Appalachia. Ha! You see?? They all ride around on their high moral horses and then they blah, blah, blah, blah.

Joe Conason at Salon has already done the definitive smackdown of GOP moralism, and I certainly don't need to do a rehash. I'm less interested in the blatant double standard, and more interested in the role religion plays in these affairs, or rather, the role it never gets to play.

I don't see the recent GOP sex scandals as an indictment of their religion or the tenets thereof (plenty of time for that later). Christians all, and every one of them extremely noisy about it, surely. But I think their failures only go to show how little power these myths really have when competing with other irresistible supernatural forces such as the boobies of someone who isn't your wife (also known as "two magnificent parts of yourself"). You know the backdrop: Senator Ensign was a central backer of the entirely too weird Promise Keepers phenomenon, which was all about becoming a better Christian and, oh yes, keeping promises. "God's law," meanwhile, was one of Governor Sanford's many refrains at his own press-confessional. Etcetera.

All that may serve to make Sanford (etcetera) seem penitent, but I think that misses the point. "God's law" sounds pretty huge to me. If you are as devout a believer as Sanford declares himself to be, you'd think that the notion of "God's law" would be the end-all-be-all, not to be crossed any more than one would cross the particle beams of a positron collider. It's one thing to do 45 in a 25 mph zone, but this is God's law we're talking about here! But oh, those two magnificent parts! Screw God's law, right? When something so comparatively trivial can trigger the flouting of the revealed word of the creator of the universe (who is reading your thoughts and watching you touch both of that nice Argentinian lady's magnificent parts), I begin to doubt how seriously you really take this creed of yours.

And let's keep in mind: It was not the wrenching guts of a tortured soul that got Sanford, Vitter, Ensign, or Craig to fess up. They didn't fear for their timeshares in the afterlife, nor did they see a vision of a tut-tutting Jesus hovering over them while in passionate throes. They held their conferences, released their dour statements, and apologized to those unwise enough to have faith in them, because they got caught. Had there not been some intrepid journalists, law enforcement, or aggrieved parties ready to blow the whistle, those men would have gone on doing what they were doing, keeping a bag over Jesus's head, pretending he wasn't there. I know he's not there, but that's not what they're supposed to think.

This is about the saddest example of religious devotion I've ever heard.

It's not enough that these guys buy into a bronze age myth about an ultra-judgmental superdaddy in the sky, and it's not enough that they shove the made-up dictates of that fictional overlord down our throats, but they don't even have the strength to even try live up to those rules themselves -- they show no evidence of having any real intention of doing so. If they really thought they were going to suffer eternal damnation and disappoint God himself, they would have at least put the brakes on a little sooner, don't you think? If I were Yahweh, I'd be feeling pretty disregarded right about now.

So not only should you not "do as they say, not what they do," you shouldn't even believe what they say, because whether they're conscious of it or not, they don't really believe it either.

I betray you and you and you and you...

Doh!

2009-06-20T17:58:00.000-04:00

If you are a subscriber to this blog's feed, you may have just gotten hit with a ton of material from my other blog. This was an accident of my experiments with merging my blogging projects into one, which, of course, was bound to get screwed up at some point. Those posts should be gone, and my apologies for the influx of irrelevant material.

A Social Network about Nothing

2009-06-14T22:41:00.008-04:00

Speaking of 2[Y], Viktor Nagornyy's latest post reveals his unexplained expulsion from the atheist social network site ThinkAtheist. He writes:

I actually think the guy behind it created as a money-making venture, and supporting atheism is either not important or not part of the plan. [ . . . ] I highly encourage you leave ThinkAtheist. Stop filling that dude’s pockets with money, he doesn’t deserve it.

I don't know anything about the financial claims, I should say. Nagornyy goes on to praise Atheist Nexus, a similar service that predates ThinkAtheist. This got me thinking.

I have not delved seriously into either one, as time simply hasn't been available. But from my own very shallow, anecdotal experience, Atheist Nexus has provided me with more substantive interaction than ThinkAtheist, though that could be a mere accident of who I happened to interact with and when. I have made some meaningful connections on ThinkAtheist, and have found it a good place to tell my own story on a couple of occasions, but no more so than at Atheist Nexus.

Purely cosmetically, I have never liked the hipster fashion catalogue aesthetic of ThinkAtheist, but I usually chalk that up to my astounding lack of coolness.

What has your experience been? Have you had problems similar to Nagornyy's? Do you use both services, or do you prefer one over the other? I'd like to know. Tell me, and I'll report back.

Strike a Sym-pose

2009-06-14T22:34:00.002-04:00

Humanist Symposium #38 is up, very professionally and smartly done by Viktor Kagornyy at 2[Y]. Yes, of course I'm featured. Perish any other thought.

Where's Paul-do?

2009-06-05T13:30:00.003-04:00

Readers of this blog and my oft-plugged Examiner column will have noted (I hope) my absence. I apologize. I've started a new full-time job and have recently moved residences, and am still without Internet access in my new home.

Stay tuned, I hope to generate some new, compelling, rip-roaring content this weekend. Assuming I can find an on-ramp to the Information Superhighway.

Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor Thinks We're Awesome

2009-05-18T23:21:00.006-04:00

What do you mean, Paul? Surely you jest! O'Connor is the douchetruck who said that atheists were "not fully human"!

Precisely.

I am smart enough to read between the lines. Or, at least, to read far away from the lines.

Look, silly skeptics. O'Connor can plainly see that any atheist walking down the street, being arrogant and militant as usual, is in most cases a fully-formed homo sapiens. But if O'Connor knows that that atheists are not in fact "fully human," then part of us must therefor be something else.

That something else, ladies and gentlemen, is robot.

Atheists are not fully human. We are part human, part immortal-android-cybernetic-mecha-robo-awesomeness.

Thank you, Cardinal O'Connor! You will be among the fully human spared when our supra-species of techno-doubters unleashes its fury upon the fleshy world!

LA Times, So Far, Missing the Point of Bigoted Op-ed

2009-05-18T23:01:00.005-04:00

At Examiner, I shined the spotlight on a startlingly bigoted op-ed by Charlotte Allen, inexplicably found suitable for publication by the Los Angeles Times. Today, the LA Times' Opinion LA blog notes responses by the two most popular atheist bloggers, Hemant Mehta and PZ Myers.

I found the post irritating almost immediately, thanks to its opening sentence:

You couldn't say we didn't see this coming.

No, of course we couldn't say that. Your organization decides to elevate within its pages a juvenile, ham-fisted hissy fit against all nonbelievers, a group already demonized and marginalized within an inch of its life, and the best explanation you have yet to muster is, "Yeah, we knew those angry atheists would be pissed!"

I am still waiting for someone from the LA Times to admit publicly that Allen's post was shameful, and to give it amplification on the Times' editorial page was, at best, a lapse in judgment, or at worst, a profession of antipathy toward millions of good Americans.

Hemant draws an excellent analogy by asking if using "Jew" instead of "atheist" would have ever been acceptable, and I noted in my column that even treating a political or philosophical group in the same manner as Allen treats atheists would have been deemed irrational and absurd, if not outright uncivil and offensive.

What the Bloc Ought to Be

2009-05-16T21:46:00.004-04:00

Here's the problem. Readers of this blog and my column at Examiner.com will have noticed that my posting frequency has dropped to something resembling ice age cycles. Why? It will not surprise you that the answer is simple: I have a real world job now.

When I began this Great Heathen Blogging Project of Doom (TM), I was finishing up graduate school, bouncing around temp jobs, and doing theatre education gigs and the rare performance. But reality beckoned, rents demanded payment, and tables gasped for food to be placed upon it, so I had to find myself some 9-to-5-er. Of course this kind of work, that which requires use of my brain, creativity, patience, and whatnot, saps the energy, particularly the writing energy, and I have been less able to blog on this, my most passionate subject.

So what to do? I will try and adapt. I am still getting into the groove of the new job, trying to understand how to allocate my energies. I hope that once I do have a better sense of equilibrium that I will find the time and wherewithal to bring my Bloc/Examiner frequency back up.

This may require a rethinking of style. Since beginning with Examiner, I have tended to use this blog for more off-the-cuff, less formal posts, while Examiner has been the home of my more thoughtful, researched essays and columns. Perhaps I will have to ease into Bloc-style informality for Examiner, and as for Bloc -- do what? Cross-post more often? I'm not sure. I'm even considering taking my catch-all blog, Near Earth Object, and merging it with this one, which would of course blast wide open the parameters of the subject matter. I'm not at all sure that this would be wise, or that it would please any of the literally tens of readers that have been so gracious as to spend some time here.

So what do you think? What would you like to see from Bloc Raisonneur? A rehash of DC Secularism Examiner? A more wide-ranging personal blog? Bad jokes and porn? Let me know. I would genuinely like to read what you think.

Humanist Symposium #36, in Rhyme

2009-05-02T15:56:00.008-04:00

Time for weblogs of wisdom that shall not make you snooze
In a project begun by the good Ebon Muse.
(And when it comes to good writing, who else would know better
Than the nonbelieving blogger with the sun at his header?)
Hosted this time by a heathen for sure,
Mister Paul Fidalgo of Bloc Raisonneur.
So rest back in your seat (I hope it's a cozy one)
And enjoy this edition of the Humanist Symposium.

We begin our journey with a posting quite luminous
On the beauty of evolution written by the Jewmanist.
Rose Schwartz contends, hoping to school us,
"The beauty of nature and the universe flows through us."

Now you are thinking! Your head, it starts to nod
As "The Evolving Mind" ponders cruelty to arthropods!
Poor lobsters feel pain? But if morality we prize,
Can it be satisfied with a knife 'tween the eyes?

Blag Hag appears twice, and you'll want to read both, 'cause
One is on racism, the other's on in-laws.
Jen disses writers who equate atheists with Nazis,
And laments religion's creep into nice games of Yatzee.

These next posts might have you cursing like longshoremen,
For both of them feature discussion of Mormons.
"Living With..." deals with a life laid to rest -- O! --
While "Ten Year Trail" is moved by the Hum'nist Manifesto.

'Eagleton's a fool!' cries Russell Blackford,
Who trounces the Guardianist frontward and backward.
With his strong arguments, he's sure to whither all
Who wish to claim that atheism is somehow illiberal.

You Made Me Say It next knocks those into stupor
Who twist up the natural to back up the super-.
Perpetuators of woo, their arguments shrinking,
As science is separated from mere wishful thinking.

Next in our carnival, we're delighted to find
The blog filled with images all left-aligned.
Greta Christina, with myths to dislodge, she
Gives sage advice on how not to be stodgy.

Finally, Ebon Muse, in our great dialectic,
Takes the broad view of our landscape memetic.
Though reason oft seems atop Sisyphus' slope,
Muse sees the daylight, and chooses to hope.

Just a few lines more! Then I'll quit spammin' ya.
But I'd be remiss if I missed a plug for my blog at Examiner.
Day in and day out I give readers a solid mix
Of analysis and opinion on atheism in politics.

I thank you for reading, I'm glad for your clicks,
As I relish your rants and peruse your polemics.
While theists will roil at the values we're spouting,
Please never stop thinking and never stop doubting.

-- Paul

Why Are All These Scientists Fighting???

2009-04-30T15:18:00.005-04:00

(Links fixed from a previous iteration of this post.)

If you're hoping to catch up on the debate over religious appeasement in science advocacy, you've come to the right place. Who can follow all the angst between PZ Myers, Jerry Coyne, Richard Hoppe, and the NCSE and make it all understandable? I can. Who can get a shoutout from Massimo Pigliucci? Me. Who can offer up a bulleted list of self-promotional links? Right here, my friend.

...And Avian Flu is Offensive to Big Bird

2009-04-29T00:06:00.005-04:00

If this complaint is taken seriously, then we secularists have much farther to go than even I realized. Per the AP:

The outbreak of swine flu should be renamed "Mexican" influenza in deference to Muslim and Jewish sensitivities over pork, said an Israeli health official Monday.

Which assumes, I take it, that we're not concerned with offending Mexicans.

Oh, but it gets better, because in USA Today's Faith & Reason blog, Leslie Miller asks (I can only assume with a straight face):

DO YOU THINK ... scientists should defer to possible religious sensitivities, as the Israeli official suggests?

Really? So, we thought this brain-stabbingly stupid notion deserved a little extra touch of legitimization?

Now Our Pets are Becoming Angry Atheists!

2009-04-27T14:58:00.003-04:00

Either this dog is an angry, militant neo-atheist, or the power of Christ is making him speak in tongues.

Even Bono Gets It

2009-04-27T00:25:00.002-04:00

The U2 frontman and world-saver, a man of his own particular religious zeal, knows that God is not a prerequisite for compassion.

Strangely, as we file out of the small stone church into the cruel sun, I think of Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, whose now combined fortune is dedicated to the fight against extreme poverty. Agnostics both, I believe. I think of Nelson Mandela, who has spent his life upholding the rights of others. A spiritual man — no doubt. Religious? I’m told he would not describe himself that way.
Not all soul music comes from the church.

Indeed.

Respect People, Not Beliefs

2009-03-18T12:48:00.003-04:00

This video, part of the One Law For All campaign in the UK, cannot be shown and distributed enough.

With a big hat tip to Trina.

Atheism is Catching

2009-03-17T00:46:00.003-04:00

[This post originally appeared in my column at Examiner.com]

The struggle to end atheist marginalization is often compared to that of other minorities' struggles for equality, like those of African-Americans and homosexuals.

There are, of course, important differences. The first is in what form the marginalization manifests. While atheists do suffer blatant discrimination and bigotry, even some fellow nonbelievers are loathe to put our plight on par with others'. For example, as the Center for Inquiry's D.J. Grothe once pointed out to Daylight Atheism's Ebon Muse in an online exchange:

…our moral indignation, our anger, is not on par with those who marched on Washington in 1963 to end public school segregation, and for legal protection against police brutality, and to make it illegal to racially discriminate in public and private hiring, and the like. Our indignation is not about how oppressed we are in society, but about how wrong we think society is to believe destructive nonsense.

I'm not going to hash out the whole debate from both sides here (I probably will eventually!), but I want to make the point that there is no solid consensus on just how bad atheists have it and whether our plight really resembles that of blacks and gays.

Today, a piece by David Swanson in American Chronicle caught my attention by bringing up another important difference, regarding the distinction between a genetic accident or inheritance (race, gender, or sexual orientation) and a philosophy to which one subscribes:

There is a parallel in the campaign for equal rights for atheists with the campaign for equal rights for gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgendered people, but it is inexact. The more atheists can come out of the closet, the more they will be accepted, and the more they will then be willing to come out of the closet, etc. But, unlike the myth of gay proselytization, there really is a significant danger / promise that in opening society to atheism, more people will be converted to atheism who were never atheists before.

Interesting, no? While some backward folks once worried about whether their kid would marry an African-American or share a swimming pool with one, and conservatives and religionists espouse the absurd notion that "gayness" is somehow catching, there is no truth to the idea that these biological properties of a person (these benign, genetic properties) can be "spread." And so what if they could?

But atheism can be spread. One's sectarian allegiances are not embedded in one's genes any more than one's party affiliation. While we nonbelievers may scoff at theists' worries about the idea of atheism catching on, because we know it's a good idea, our opponents are fully correct to think that nonbelief can be learned, that atheism can grow as more people are exposed to it.

So what's the big deal? As far as we're concerned, this is a good thing; the less people adhere to myths and superstitions, the better off our civilization will be. But there are political implications to such a reality. For example, advocates for homosexuals' rights have the facts on their side when they tell people who are hopelessly intolerant of gays that, no, being around a gay person will not make you gay. It's "safe" to let gays adopt, it's "safe" to let them teach. If the spread of homosexuality is what these folks are worried about, the tolerant among us can at least assure them that homosexuality can't be transmitted to their poor, defenseless children.

I hate to have to clarify, but for the sake of thoroughness, this should not be read in any way to say that it would be bad if homosexuality were something that could be "learned" or "spread." That to me is irrelevant -- just as the homosexuality-as-choice versus genetic inheritance "debate" to me is irrelevant; people should be free to be born gay or just choose to be gay as far as I'm concerned. But it is a useful public relations tool to point out that it does not "spread" when we are trying to make it easier for gays to adopt, teach, and in general become full participants in a society that unfortunately contains a lot of people who will simply never come around. Okay: Liberal bona fides proved? Good. Let's move on.

Atheists don't have that tool, at least not to the same extent. We often try to use similar tactics, saying that we have no intention of de-converting folks from their precious faiths, but there can be no doubt that exposure to atheism raises the chances that people will adopt it, or at do a little more religious doubting. To religionists this is a very real threat, and one that they have every reason to fear. And it is a "threat" they can trumpet when trying to silence atheists who wish to have a voice in society that is equal to that of their theistic neighbors.

The fear is palpable. Religionists have learned that atheism is something they truly have to confront, and that the New Atheism in particular is something that they know can begin to cause their flock to wander. They write books, make videos, hold "debates," etc., all to assure the faithful that they had it right all along, and that the atheists, though clever, don't really know what they're talking about.

So it's difficult, maybe impossible, to reassure those who are afraid that by allowing atheists to hold public office or teach children, that people will not be moved to change their minds about religion. Surely, religion is often a frustratingly intractable thing, something to which people will cling no matter how many bestsellers are written by biologists and neuroscience students. But some will, in fact, have their faith punctured. And of those, some will discard it. In the broader picture, that's great news for us marginalized nonbelievers. Llike genes and memes, we really can "replicate." But evolution (even in this metaphorical sense) is very slow, and before we've built up sufficient numbers, the fact that our opponents know we have the potential to spread doubt can make things more difficult in the short term.

For more info: The magazine Free Inquiry published something of a series of pieces on the aforementioned question of atheism as a civil rights issue. Here are the links in chronological order:
* "Atheism Is Not a Civil Rights Issue" - DJ Grothe and Austin Dacey
* "Atheism is Indeed a Civil Rights Issue" - Eddie Tabash
* "Discrimination against Atheists: The Facts" - Margaret Downey
* "Atheism and Civil Rights - A Reply to Tabash and Downey" (PDF) - Grothe and Dacey (Humanist)
* Austin Cline's response on his About.com blog

The Flying "Nones"

2009-03-12T14:15:00.002-04:00

[This post originally appeared in my column at blah, blah, blah...]

Good news for nonbelievers: there seems to be more of us than we thought.

Well, sort of.

The 2008 American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) is out, and the headlines surrounding it are focusing on religion's waning role and nonbelief's ascendance. Is there reality behind the hype?

ARIS's website notes the rise in those who claim no religion:

The U. S. population continues to show signs of becoming less religious, with one out of every five Americans failing to indicate a religious identity in 2008.

The "Nones" (no stated religious preference, atheist, or agnostic) continue to grow, though at a much slower pace than in the 1990s, from 8.2% in 1990, to 14.1% in 2001, to 15.0% in 2008.

No big recent jumps, in other words, though I think still meaningful, considering the huge sample size (54,461 -- larger than Pew's) and a tiny margin of error at less than half a percent.

But, as is made clear, "Nones," as they call them (not "nuns," har-har) are not necessarily atheists, just as with Pew's "unaffiliated." ARIS clarifies a bit:

Based on their stated beliefs rather than their religious identification in 2008, 70% of Americans believe in a personal God, roughly 12% of Americans are atheist (no God) or agnostic (unknowable or unsure), and another 12% are deistic (a higher power but no personal God).

Okay, well, 12 percent is still pretty good, right? It's better than the number I came up with based on a parsing of Pew's major survey, which put people for whom God is a non-issue at about 10 percent. So this is important.

But! Again, this does not tell us how many out-and-out atheists there are. For that, we delve into the details of the survey, on the direct question of belief. There, we find that 2.3 percent of respondents said "there is no such thing" as God. 4.3 percent said there is no way to know, which might qualify as functional atheism or perhaps hard agnosticism. 5.7 percent said they weren't sure, which makes them purely agnostic.

2.3 is a big step up from Pew's 1.6, and if we lump in the "no way to knows," we get a whopping 6.6 percent of Americans as nonbelievers for all intents and purposes! That surpasses ARIS's counting of Jews (1.2 percent) and Mormons (1.4), both of whom beat out atheists in Pew. (How's that for a blip!)

But!

This is a big but. Take another look at this chart. It tallies how people identify themselves, not how they feel about God belief. According to people's own self-identification, atheists actually muster a miserable 0.7 percent, beating the margin of error by a nose. (The LA Times' writeup doesn't even mention the word "atheist.") Agnostics only come to 0.9 percent, but it is the aforementioned word "None" that seems to rack up the points for the nonreligious as 15 percent.

So what on Earth are we to make of this? Are there fewer atheists than we thought or more? I think a better question is whether the news bodes well or ill, and the answer is a resounding "both."

USA Today notes (hat tip to Hemant) that the "nones" are bigger than every other religious group other than Baptists and Catholics. That's huge. It means religion as we have come to understand it really is beginning to erode as a norm. And the fact that 6.6 percent of Americans disavow a belief in God, while another 5.7 percent haven't committed, is also a big deal. There is more doubt than most people care to admit, and that is a very good thing.

But the dark cloud pushing its way over the silver lining is that so few people wish to be known as atheists. There is a 1.6-point deficit between those who say they don't believe in God and those who are willing to use the word atheist to describe themselves. And with such small numbers, it's difficult derive any solid conclusions, and it's easier for small errors to present themselves. I can only suspect that this is a result of the social stigma attached to the word, which either means we need a better one, or more atheists need to make themselves known and reduce social discomfort with the the term.

Journal'd!

2009-03-12T01:12:00.004-04:00

[This post originally appeared in my column at Examiner.com, so why haven't you already read it?]

There can be no doubt that the profile of politically-minded nonbelievers is increasing, but it's still surprising when the mainstream media notices. This week, National Journal, bible of the political establishment, noticed in a big way by putting atheist activism right on the cover.

The story, "The Godless Rise as a Political Force" by Paul Starobin, is not the final word in political atheism. Indeed, the article is peppered with misreadings and misunderstandings of atheism's agenda(s), and is vague with its use of demographic statistics, but on the whole it is a welcome introduction for Beltway folk to their nonbelieving neighbors. I'll deal with my quibbles first, but there is a very important plus side that might outweigh any oddities or errors, which I will address at the end.

The most obvious eyebrow-archer is Starobin's choice of "Godless" as the umbrella term for his subject. As Hemant Mehta notes, the connotation of the word truly is negative, explicitly defining its adherents as "without" something that everyone else has. "Atheist" is similar in that way, of course, but at the very least is a more subtle term than "God" and "less," and its usage is common enough that it is less evocative of some kind of void. Note, too, the capitalization of "God," which connects the term specifically to monotheism, theoretically leaving room for polytheism. If nothing else, Godless is the word that was tossed around by the Dole campaign in North Carolina which clung to their opponents' alleged connections to the less-than-potent Godless Americans Political Action Committee, and the word, like its subjects, did not emerge from that imbroglio smelling very sweetly. In short, an odd choice.

Also strange, Starobin seems to have been brought under the impression that atheists are clamoring for suicide rights and lab-grown humans, as though these are centerpieces of the atheist agenda. "As the Godless would have it . . . [e]uthanasia would be generally permitted," he writes, and later adds, ". . . in a sign of the culture warfare to come, the Godless are emerging as an enthusiastic voice on behalf of scientific efforts to clone human beings." I'm fairly familiar with what nonbelievers are fighting for in the political arena, and while I can only suppose most believe in a person's right to decide their own fate, I have never read or heard of activist atheists arguing to push for human cloning specifically. That last idea seems to come from the mind of financier Louis J. Appignani, and possibly he alone. I would be shocked in Starobin spoke to more atheists who felt the same.

Unfortunately, Starobin also treads into the atheism=Stalinism canard, if only up to his ankles. He does not explicitly equate the two nor does he flatly assert (as so many do) that widespread rationalism leads to totalitarian murder, but he does hold atheism at least tangentially responsible for just such atrocities:

[Atheists'] polished debating points seldom reflect the awkward truth -- awkward, that is, to their mind-set -- that religion is not the only source of war and strife, that the worldview of a murderous atheist like Stalin can also be a wellspring of blood and tears.

It becomes tiring to repeat this, but Stalin's atheism was not the part of his worldview that inspired mass murder, but the worldview of the state as a de facto god with Stalin as the almost supernatural head of its church.

But he gets a lot right. He provides some insight into the rifts within the atheist universe, though focusing I think too much on tone (means rather than ends, which I think is what truly defines the divisions within the community), and he uncovers a little of what spurred Lori Lipman Brown to step down as executive director and lobbyist for the Secular Coalition for America.

Very importantly, he understands what was really wrong with the way the Dole-Hagan "Godless" scuffle wound up:

Still, the political fundraising efforts of the Godless tread on delicate ground, as seen last fall in an episode from Democrat Kay Hagan's successful bid to unseat Republican Sen. Elizabeth Dole in North Carolina. Hagan attended a campaign fundraiser at the Boston home of Kaplan and his wife, Wendy Kaminer, who also sits on the Secular Coalition's advisory board. Dole then came out with a television ad saying that Hagan "took Godless money" and asking, "What did Kay Hagan promise in return?" Hagan heatedly called the ad an attack on her "Christian faith." Although she went on to defeat Dole, the incident was a low moment for Godless activists, given Hagan's hasty flight to the safety of her faith and her reluctance to defend the Godless constituency as being as much a part of American politics as any other group.

This is a point I have been hammering for some time now; that if Dole was an enemy to atheists, Hagan was no friend, and her victory was not ours. It's good to see someone in the mainstream press grasp this.

And as I mentioned, there is something very significant about this article as a whole. There is no whiff of bemusement from Starobin. There is no hint that he is looking down on his subjects, casting them as oddballs right out of the gate. A serious look at atheists as a political force was written, and for once the atheists did not come out looking like gadflies and freaks, but as a group that has a real voice with a real desire to express it. He writes:

This is not the tale of a lynching, such as African-Americans can recall, or of a bruising assault by the police, such as gays remember from the notorious raid on the Stonewall bar in New York City in 1969. Still, the pain is keenly felt, and survey data suggest that the Godless indeed enjoy the unhappy status of a group against whom persecution is socially tolerated.

And that is the point, from the perspective of the movement's civil rights dimension. In all, it's important that this story was published and put on the cover of an influential journal, particularly considering the serious and respectful the tone in which it was written. It's not DC illuminati's best possible introduction to atheists, but it's a good start.

Atheism Flickering Out? Not So Much

2009-03-11T12:04:00.003-04:00

[This post originally appeared in my column at Examiner.com before this happened]

Don't blink, folks, because you might miss the extinction of atheism!

Or so believes Anthony Stevens-Arroyo, a columnist for the On Faith blog at WashingtonPost.com, where he writes on Catholicism in America. He's just seen Watchmen (which I have not, so I won't be making any claims about it), from which he extrapolates that humankind's need for "transcendence" can never be fulfilled without the supernatural. This spiritual yearning, he believes, is evident in much of science fiction. He writes:

Consider the themes of "Watchmen" and other products of popular imagination. TV shows and films like Battlestar Galactica, Heroes, and the "Stars" (Stargate, Star Wars and especially Star Trek in its various incarnations) exhibit the search for transcendence and escape. Mysticism, scriptural revelation, shamanism, miracles, prophecy and the like feature hugely in such popular entertainment.

Stevens-Arroyo thinks that traditional, organized religion needs to "watch out" because the heroes of these science fiction epics easily rival their counterparts in religion for the attention and awe of real people. No argument there. I bet Admiral Adama could totally take Moses in a brawl.

Suddenly, though, Stevens-Arroyo makes this alarming claim:

Often presented in its Enlightenment phase as the culmination of human freedom, the premise that Atheism is our human future is simply wrong. People today are moving away from Atheism, not towards it. Moreover, when screening out secularists (= tolerance for all) and agnostics (= doubt about God), Atheism is revealed to be a movement with a tiny number of members. Atheism began sometime in the 17th century and is now flickering out. When looked at through the prism of human experience that begins 40,000 years ago, Atheism is a blip on the radar screen of humanity.

Ouch! For a blip, we sure do seem to have a lot of people worried about our dangerous influence.

But his aspersion aside, the preceding paragraph is so full of factual inaccuracies and misunderstanding of history, that I'm surprised the editors at the Washington Post allowed it to be published. I mean, they've been so on the ball lately.

I don't know if "Atheism is our human future" (note the capitalization of atheism, as though it were a formal, practiced religion), since I don't have psychic powers, but I'm going to assume that Stevens-Arroyo doesn't either, so we'll call that one a draw. But let's take a look at his claim that "people are moving away from Atheism." While out-and-out atheists' numbers are indeed small (according to Pew they amount to as little as 1.6 percent of the American population), there is little indication that their numbers are dwindling. According to Gallup, which asks the question in terms of whether someone believes in God, an unnamed force to the universe, or none of the above, the percentage of "atheists" has been stable since 2000, ranging between 5 and 7 percent in Gallup's surveys. And those percentages somewhat increase the younger the respondents, though all within the margin of error. If Stevens-Arroyo has any numbers that show atheism on the decline, he has yet to provide them.

And as for the tiny-ness of atheists' numbers, they almost exactly match those of Jews and Mormons, according to Pew, and I do not think I'm going out on a limb to say that Stevens-Arroyo would not describe their influence as a "blip."

Next, let's look at the assertion that atheism began in the 17th century. There is no other way to say this: Stevens-Arroyo just made that up. He should pick up a copy of Jennifer Michael Hecht's Doubt: A History, in which he'll learn about atheists and doubters from millennia past, including a passage about Anaxagoras (p. 10), the first person we know if in history to have been indicted for atheism, in 467 BCE. That's right, not only did atheism exist almost 500 years before Jesus and 2100 years before the 17th century, but by then it was already a crime.

Finally, we have to deal with the assertion that atheism is "flickering out." I struggle to understand why he believes this to be true, considering that more atheists are coming out of the theological closet, that they are stirring a burgeoning movement in favor of rationalism and freedom from superstition, that they even have a lobbying organization that is taken seriously by the new administration! The president of that new administration has sent atheists shout-outs at two crucially important events: the inauguration and the National Prayer Breakfast. Atheists are better organized, we're heard more often in the culture (despite resistance), and more people feel free to admit their atheism. We're apparently even responsible for full-scale Wars on Christmas! Perhaps the flicker he perceives is that of a fire being ignited.

So where is this coming from? Other than his understandable bias toward his own faith, can we better understand why the broadside against atheists?

Of course, Atheists will stay with us, and they are welcomed by me as long as they don't try to impose on the rest of us their belief that God doesn't exist.

Well, that's a relief. We can feel free to crash on his couch.

I know that religion, including Catholicism, has had to learn that rule of live-and-let-live to overcome past offenses, but that is not an excuse for Atheists to continually whine about past injustices or to deny the real world of today in which the world's majority believes in God.

Uh oh. No whining? I wonder if he would feel so comfortable with that phrase were he to substitute "Atheists" with any other maligned minority group. Is there something particular about atheists that might, say, color his feelings? Let's take a look at one of his previous columns, in which his first sentence is:

I never met an atheist I could like.

Ah.

The atheists who have crossed my path are obnoxious.

Oh?

You can’t have a dialogue with dogmatic atheists.

Not like with dogmatic, say, Mormons? Or Muslims? Or Catholics?

They are mirror images of the religious fundamentalists, who -- despite their dogmatism -- at least have their enthusiasms in the right place.

There we go. It's okay to be irrationally convinced of the divine nature of the universe to the point of zealotry, as long as it's his brand of zealotry.

Actually, Austin Cline at About.com took the liberty of taking Stevens-Arroyo apart when this column first came up, and invites the reader to do some similar Mad-Libbing, replacing the name of other minorities for atheists:

This is why Anthony M. Stevens-Arroyo, professor of Puerto Rican and Latino Studies at Brooklyn College, is an anti-atheist bigot. Anti-atheist bigotry is no better than anti-Semitic or anti-Latino bigotry. Imagine if Stevens-Arroyo had written:

I never met a Jew I could like. [ . . . ]
The Jews who have crossed my path are obnoxious.
You can’t have a dialogue with dogmatic Jews.

And Cline is right. Perhaps Stevens-Arroyo is an excellent resource for perspective on Catholic America. But he knows nothing about atheism, and is grossly blinded by intolerant bias against nonbelievers. Free to hold and express opinions, he should keep his facts straight and refrain from inventing data out of whole cloth to support his prejudice. He may be an authority on his particular sect's brand of theism, but not on reality.

So, my fellow nonbelievers, flicker on.

Breaking News: Vatican Does Not Endorse Atheism

2009-03-10T18:50:00.003-04:00

[This post originally appeared in my column at Examiner.com]

According to the AP, Cardinal William Levada, head of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, said during a seminar at the Vatican commemorating the 150th anniversary of On the Origin of Species, that while the church did not reject evolution, it insisted that God was its progenitor.

"We believe that however creation has come about and evolved, ultimately God is the creator of all things," he said on the sidelines of the conference.
But while the Vatican did not exclude any area of science, it did reject as "absurd" the atheist notion of biologist and author Richard Dawkins and others that evolution proves there is no God, he said.
"Of course we think that's absurd and not at all proven," he said. "But other than that ... the Vatican has recognized that it doesn't stand in the way of scientific realities."

This is big news, folks, and it's a good thing it was picked up by the Associated Press (with almost all headlines used for this article being some form of, "Cardinal says atheist's theories 'absurd'"). Else, how would we ever know that the Catholic Church as an institution had not yet dismissed the existence of God? Here was me, just sitting here thinking that His Holiness was having pow-wows with Sam Harris and Penn Gillette, readying to dismantle the entire organization, when it is reported that in fact atheism was not a tenet of Catholic dogma. Amazing.

In related news, Republicans on the Hill think taxes are bad, a survey of American mothers finds that almost all of them love their children, and recent focus group studies show that people are wary of touching open flames because of an alleged "hotness" associated with fire.

Okay, I kid the AP. I kid 'cause I love. The whole conference sounds like it was a positive thing, with evolution being supported and intelligent design in science classes being rejected. All very good stuff, with no complaints here.

One side note to this same article, though, notice that "the atheist notion" is attributed almost exclusively to Richard Dawkins. I know he's one of, if not the most famous nonbeliever these days, and it was in the context of a kind of biology summit, but I still find it curious that right now our culture is equating atheism with Dawkins. It's not as though he just came up with atheism! We might as well call it "Dawkinsism" as far as a lot of folks are concerned.

I think that's a little hard to say, frankly. Just try it. Dawkins-ism. You see? It would never fly.

Bugs in the Belief-O-Matic

2009-03-10T18:15:00.002-04:00

[This post originally appeared in my column at Examiner.com, though not the one that no one reads.]

Unless you've just wandered onto the Web this morning for the first time, it's likely that you have already tried out Beliefnet's "Belief-O-Matic," a brief quiz that tries to align you with various faiths. Answer questions in a certain way concerning your feelings about God, morality, salvation, etc., and the Belief-O-Matic gives you a "compatibility score" with a pretty thorough list of religions. Answer a lot of questions that square with Catholic dogma, for example, you'll probably get a high compatibility score with Catholicism, and maybe some medium-high scores with other Christian sects. Think of it as eHarmony for supernatural relationships.

So imagine my surprise when I took the quiz today, for the first time in years, and found my scores as such (I'll just show the top five):

1. Secular Humanism (100%)

2. Unitarian Universalism (92%)

3. Nontheist (78%)

4. Liberal Quakers (76%)

5. Theravada Buddhism (71%)

Now wait a darned minute. I am happy to be aligned with secular humanists, and the UU's are just fine (my mom and stepfather are both Unitarians, though I certainly am not). But look at number 3. Nontheist only 78 percent???

You see, when people ask, I say I am an atheist. There's lots of consternation in the nonreligious world about what the heck we should all be calling ourselves, and as Sam Harris reminds us, we don't waste time on words like "non-astrologers" or "a-unicornists." But to make things as clear as I can, I always mean to communicate that I believe in nothing supernatural, nothing spiritual, with no deities, no benign conscious cosmic force, or anything of the like. I am an atheist. Nontheist? Fine.

So why only 78 percent? Did I miss a question? Did I accidentally imply that I think there might be elves in Icelandic smelting plants? What could have made the 'O-Matic doubt my doubt?

The keys, I think, lay in two places: The moral portions of the quiz and the available theological answers.

First, the quiz asks you a few questions about what you see as important for living a good life. Some answer choices include lots of goddy and spirity language, but there were plenty of secular options as well. Additionally, once you've chosen your answer (perhaps something akin to -- and I'm paraphrasing -- "homosexuality should not be considered a sin or a crime") you then give the answer weight, rating it from high to low in "importance." On questions about actively seeking equality among all humans, I rated my responses as "high." That might explain the results' emphasis on secular humanism and Unitarianism.

But I also rated my responses at the beginning of the quiz, those on matter-of-fact God-belief, as high. I can see why that's all well and good for numbers 1 and 2, but how could raw nontheism have dropped so low? Here's what I think.

Take a look at the actual options for questions on theistic belief:

Q1. What is the number and nature of the deity (God, gods, higher power)? Choose one.
Only one God--a corporeal spirit (has a body), supreme, personal God Almighty, the Creator.
Only one God--an incorporeal (no body) spirit, supreme, personal God Almighty, the Creator.
Multiple personal gods (or goddesses) regarded as facets of one God, and/or as separate gods.
The supreme force is the impersonal Ultimate Reality (or life force, ultimate truth, cosmic order, absolute bliss, universal soul), which resides within and/or beyond all.
The supreme existence is both the eternal, impersonal, formless Ultimate Reality, and personal God (or gods).
No God or supreme force. Or not sure. Or not important.
None of the above.

Hello! Catch the nontheist option? "No God or supreme force. Or not sure. Or not important." The quiz, while giving lots of opportunities to weigh the importance of one's responses, haphazardly lumps three very different options into one. If I were to paraphrase, the only option I had was, "Hell no, that's ridiculous, and I'm not ready to commit to that statement, and I don't even care so leave me alone."

But I am sure -- as sure as a human being can be, always allowing for new evidence. I am sure that there are no gods or supernatural forces of any kind. I am sure, and -- this is key -- I think it is important. I think whether or not I and the rest of my species decides to subjugate itself to or rely upon the whims of unsubstantiated myths and fairy tales is of existentially dire significance, and is in no way in the same ballpark -- not even the same galaxy -- as attitudes of equivocation or apathy.

The first five questions of the quiz go this same way. A supernatural proposition is offered, and the nonbeliever has nowhere to go but to the muddy no/maybe/kinda option. This, I think, probably explains why "nontheism" dropped to the 70s in my compatibility score. And I know it's all for fun, not to be taken too seriously, but I think it's indicative of how atheists are not distinguished in the minds of most Americans, whether they mix us up with Satanists and criminals, or lump us in with the "spiritual nonreligious." Sometimes we fall into that trap ourselves!

So no offense to the Unitarians, but on this eHarmony date, I don't care what the test score says. I'm going stag.