Monthly Archives: December 2009

The credulity of some so-called skeptics

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The Wall Street Journal points out the log in our own eye:

From Hollywood to the academy, nonbelievers are convinced that a decline in traditional religious belief would lead to a smarter, more scientifically literate and even more civilized populace.The reality is that the New Atheist campaign, by discouraging religion, won’t create a new group of intelligent, skeptical, enlightened beings. Far from it: It might actually encourage new levels of mass superstition. And that’s not a conclusion to take on faith — it’s what the empirical data tell us.

“What Americans Really Believe,” a comprehensive new study released by Baylor University yesterday, shows that traditional Christian religion greatly decreases belief in everything from the efficacy of palm readers to the usefulness of astrology. It also shows that the irreligious and the members of more liberal Protestant denominations, far from being resistant to superstition, tend to be much more likely to believe in the paranormal and in pseudoscience than evangelical Christians.

The WSJ article goes on to cite another, equally distressing poll:

According to the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life’s monumental “U.S. Religious Landscape Survey” that was issued in June, 21% of self-proclaimed atheists believe in either a personal God or an impersonal force. Ten percent of atheists pray at least weekly and 12% believe in heaven.

Yes, you read that right. “Atheists” who believe in god, heaven, and the power of prayer. Let’s just hope that these are the same “atheists” who in the other survey report believing in palm readings and astrology!

Ugh. Articles like these make me wonder whether my faith in human rationality is just that—faith. It just goes to show that religion is not the source of irrationality, but is rather a symptom. Many manifestations of that irrationality aren’t even religious in nature. Consider Bill Maher. While criticizing people’s unscientific religious beliefs on his HBO show and in his film Religulous, Maher himself peddles discredited anti-vaccination arguments. Famed “debunker” James Randi is also at odds with the scientific community, as he recently expressed doubts about anthropogenic global warming.

The relationship between atheism and superstition is not necessarily causal. Confounding factors abound. But if nothing else, we should take these findings as a challenge to be better skeptics and as a reminder that a more reasonable society demands more than mere secularism.

Idaho gubernatorial candidate to hold LDS-exclusive meetings

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Idaho has for many years been a hotbed of far-right and religious radicalism (must be something in those potatoes). There was the infamous 1992 Ruby Ridge confrontation. Northern Idaho has been the base of operations for the Aryan Nations and other white supremacist groups. And Idaho native Douglas Wilson is a pastor who has defended slavery and supports the deportation of gays from America; you may know him best as Christopher Hitchens’ sparring partner in the documentary Collision.

Well, we can now add another Idahoan to that list of crazy. Rex Rammell is a long-shot candidate in the 2010 Idaho gubernatorial race. A few months ago, Rammell made headlines for joking to hunt Obama. He stirred up another controversy just yesterday. Rammell announced a series of campaign meetings that will only be open to “faithful priesthood-holders of the LDS Church.” The purpose of the meetings is to discuss the White Horse prophecy. As you can glean from the flyer, the prophecy suggests that there is an imminent threat to the US Constitution and that Mormon Elders will rise up to restore it.

The prophecy is attributed to Joseph Smith, but we only have second-hand, non-contemporary accounts of his saying it. The LDS Church does not recognize this prophecy as authoritative, and some LDS leaders have even denounced parts of it. Still, I find it rather plausible given Smith’s political ambitions and plans to establish a “theodemocracy” (refer to the Council of Fifty).

But faith-promoting rumor or no, the White Horse prophecy remains a popular belief in the church. During Orrin Hatch’s and Mitt Romney’s bids for the presidency, for instance, there were whispers that the prophecy was coming to fruition. Hatch himself even alluded to it in saying that, after eight years of the Clinton administration, the “constitution is hanging by a thread.” I also suspect that Glenn Beck’s fear-mongering about the current administration has renewed interest in the prophecy among conservative Mormons.

It will be interesting to see how Mormons in Idaho (who comprise a fifth of Idaho’s population) will receive Rex Rammell’s use of the prophecy in his campaign.

Toward a sympathetic atheism

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Every group likes to play the victim. Religions are quite adept at playing the victim. Atheists, however, are not. Even when atheists are persecuted, they are often unconvincing in their role as the victim. Consider the faces of the “new atheism”: Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens, and Dennett. They’re all privileged white males!

And too often when atheists do cry foul, they are over relatively petty things like “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance. I think the phrase’s 1954 inclusion into the Pledge was brazenly unconstitutional, but that issue still ranks near the bottom of my concerns.

But yesterday, I was reminded that atheists in America do have legitimate grievances. Rachel Maddow of MSNBC reported that atheists are banned from public office in seven state constitutions:

During Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign, there was much discussion about political prejudice against Mormons. One Gallup poll found that nearly a quarter of Americans refused to vote for Romney because of his religion. What received less attention, however, is that this same poll also found that over half wouldn’t vote for an otherwise qualified atheist candidate. Another recent survey reported that atheists are America’s “most distrusted minority”–behind Muslims, gays, recent immigrants, and other minority groups. These anti-atheist sentiments are particularly disconcerting to me, as someone considering a career in government.

So how do we reverse these negative sentiments? I argued earlier that atheists are bad at playing the victim card. For that card to even be effective, people must first be sympathetic to your plight. And frankly, Americans aren’t.

What atheism needs is positive representation. And for good or ill, we are that representation–for our campus, and (individually) for our friends and family. What we do and how we comport ourselves matters.

Professor Kleiner, who frequents our SHAFT meetings and this blog, has challenged us to put greater emphasis on our humanist values–to articulate a secular ethic and act accordingly. I want to meet that challenge next semester. As important as our presentations and events have been, we have thus far neglected things like service.  We floated several service opportunities, but never developed and executed them. That’s largely my fault.

So let’s commit to doing a couple service projects next semester. A visible service project would go far in dispelling misconceptions about atheists as angry and immoral.

Don’t wait until next semester to do service, though. There’s no better time to give than this holiday season.

*Sorry for the disjointed nature of this post. This was more a stream of consciousness–just a jumble of thoughts I had today that I wanted to (but failed to) synthesize into a coherent whole.

Surviving the holiday season

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The Christmas season can be an unpleasant one for atheists.  And it’s not (just) because we’re on Santa’s naughty list or that a stocking brimful with coal awaits us. Christmas, with all its secular excesses, is still observed as a religious occasion by many people. Our atheism, then, becomes more conspicuous and less  tolerated. The reason for the season is used as a reason to give atheists grief.

Every night on Fox news, O’ Reilly and ilk bemoan the supposed “War on Christmas.” They claim that Christmas is under threat from secularists, atheists, and our politically-correct sympathizers. A video montage few your viewing pleasure:

The American Humanist Association recently launched a Christmas campaign, with billboards and bus ads that read, “”Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness’ sake” and “No God? No problem!” Rather innocuous stuff, really. Hardly befitting of a “War on Christmas.” Yet predictably, Bill O’ Reilly feigned righteous indignation over the ads, and retorted in an article last week that atheists are just jealous they don’t have their own Christmas. He wrote, in part:

[A]theists are jealous of the Yuletide season. While Christians have Jesus and Jews have the prophets, nonbelievers have Bill Maher. There are no Christmas carols for atheists, no pagan displays of largesse like Santa Claus. In fact, for the nonbeliever, Christmas is just a day off, a time to consider that Mardi Gras is fewer than two months away.

…Christmas is a joyous time for children, the big upside of celebrating the birth of Jesus. Why, then, do people who want to “be good” spend money denigrating a beautiful day? Could it be that the humanists are not really interested in good at all?

That atheists are harassed during the holidays by Fox News is not surprising. What concerns most young atheists is how their families will receive them. Many of my friends already have strained relations with their family over religious disagreements, and these disagreements are magnified at Christmas time. If things go well, there may just be an unspoken tension at the dinner table. If things go poorly, you may find yourself in this kid’s sorry situation…

I’ve had the “If you don’t believe in Jesus, why should we give you presents?” card pulled on me before. I’m sure many of you have as well. But luckily, things with my family aren’t that bad. In fact, I usually get along famously with my parents. There is one negative Christmas episode I’d like to share, however.

Last Christmas Eve, I downloaded a torrent of Bill Maher’s “Religulous.” I had been waiting for a copy for months, and it just so happened to be released online a few days before Christmas. When my mom found out what I was download (via my little brother), she was irate. She didn’t appreciate that I was planning to watch an “anti-religion” film the night before her most cherished holiday. I honestly didn’t think much of that fact that it was Christmas Eve, but my mom took my downloading “Religulous” as a sign that I don’t respect her faith. She then went off on this emotional tirade in which she told me that she hated having me home, because I as a bisexual atheist constantly remind her of how she failed as a parent. You can imagine how shitty Christmas morning was for me that year.

My mom and I often say things we regret, so I don’t hold that statement against her. She has also since apologized for it. But thinking about the incident makes me want to spare others a similar experience. Nobody wants to dread what should be a joyous time with friends and family.

So I want to this post to serve as a forum in which we share both our positive and negative Christmas stories as atheists in the hopes that we can learn from each others’ experiences. If your parents make your atheism an issue, how should you respond? Should we wait for our parents to make it an issue, or should we initiate a religious discussion ourselves? And for those who have yet to come out of the proverbial closet as atheists to their family, is the holiday season an appropriate time to do so?

Your thoughts are appreciated.

From my BIO 1610 Discussion Board

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So while browsing my discussion board in class I came across this and I thought I’d share it…

Ok I’m not a Darwinist first of I have to say that. I take bio because I think I might be interested in it. Ill admit macro evolution is an interesting theory, but I do not find much sound fact in it. #1 your evidence mostly is DNA similarity, fossils, the life experiment with the RNA assembling together out of used to be believed atmospherics conditions, the micro evolution factor, and I think that sums it up, and if it does it’s not very much. So ye why do you believe in it. With the law of enthalpy, and the very complexity of are body’s. Lets not go the cell level they are at least as complex as us. Just the odds of it happening I mean 10 to the 300,000 power just for plant life. That’s not including the earth being created or something coming form nothing. So ye for those of you out there that don’t know I think the odds of scientific improbability are 10 to the 40,000. Mostly I just think the fact evolution is around is because of peoples reluctance to admit god. As for the saying what did the bible do for us. Well it taught us about see currents no serous the person that found see currents I heard found them because he said the bible said there are path ways in the sea I shall find them. Told the Israelite common practices that we would not discover till the 1800′s like washing you hands. Isolation circumcision, and even on the day when the baby’s blood clots best allowing so the best time to do it to. Ever read 100 scientific facts of the bible it’s a short book very interesting. Just remember also everything in old testament can be dated back to the dead sea scrolls some possibly even further to be what it is today. Also the bible has never been disproved archeologically. All the evolutionary gems you have to the best of my knowledge are micro evolution something you really don’t hear specified in class. Micro evolution is stuff like the peppered moth’s change in color and the gardener snakes gradual immunity to the newts poison. So ye we don’t even know half of how the brain works I mean seriously that thing in it’s self is immensely complex the way are blood clots and even are eyes are immensely complex. Every thing is extermaly complex. If evlotion is true then why do things like fish go together and form a more complex orginisem? Just a question. I mean sure you can create a nuclues, but can you go and give it life. There arn’t even enough transitional fossils in the ground to support your theory. Then what about fossil lake how that layers could have been piled up like that from just one volcano explosion in a few hours? I don’t know to me evolutions evidence seems to dicey and I find it a lot easier to believe that an all powerfully benevolent being created us then the fact that we evolved. Besides the bible hasn’t been disproved yet. Did you know some of the lord of the rings music is actually Celtic. Sorry just listing to Celtic Myst top 100 on the mp3 player and hearing the main theme of lord of the rings. I like this saying sunset god’s way of reminding us he’s there. I guess when I lay my chips down it ultimately comes to this which theory is the most sound and looks the best. Although we can not prove god and probably will never be able to on or own it’s the one that the stuff it tells hasn’t been disproved, and sounds sound to me.

If you can read it, feel free to comment on it.