Pin-up Priests

Apparently a traditional calendar in Rome, Calendario Romano, features hunky Roman Catholic priests. Photographer Piero Pazzi shoots these sexy men of the cloth to raise money and awareness for the Vatican. Even though it’s been nicknamed the “Vatican Beefcake Calendar,” the Holy See doesn’t endorse it and pretty much turns a blind eye. Hey, money and women* lining up for church services – it’s a win-win situation!
File this in the category of “Things that make Jen both happy and sad at the same time” (with relevant facebook groups here and here).

Unfortunately the calendar is already sold out. Darn. Guess we’ll have to stick to the Skepchick and Skepdude calendars (if they ever announce when they’re coming out!).

EDIT: Apparently there are Mormon pin-up calendars too (thanks Jake). Yowza, maybe that’s why they can only wear dorky short sleeve dress shirts and ties – to cover up their six packs. Oh, and I love how the female calendar, while sexy as hell, still manages to stereotype all women as mothers who are great at baking. Who occasionally pose seductively. Mind. Exploding.

*Shhh, let’s not mention the gays, or they may stop publishing this.
(Via Carnal Nation)

Female skeptics get shout out in USA Today

USA Today ran a great piece on friendly atheism today. While it contained the typical “What’s better: Aggressive, mocking tactics, or peaceful, accomidationist tactics?” false dichotomy, there’s a new spin. Women, they claim, are bringing a softer side to the movement, and we should embrace their efforts.

Now, I don’t think this is automatically stereotyping and saying that all female skeptics are passive and afraid to offend. Ariane Sherine is behind the controversial atheist bus campaign, and female bloggers can have some piss and vinegar in their posts (of course, I would never do such things *halo*).

But the article does have a point. Much of the work done by female skeptics (check out the list at the end of the article) has a positive spin, which can be easier for the general public to digest than stuff by Dawkins or Hitchens. Don’t get me wrong – I think “aggressive atheism” is just as important – but that a good cop/bad cop sort of technique will work the best.

Should female skeptics forever be the diplomats? No, but it’s an open niche we can fill for now. If this is the best way to start getting more integrated into the atheist movement, the ultimate goal being a 50/50 sex ratio and females whose names are as well known as Dawkins and Hitchens, I’ll take it. Appreciation will continue to grow.

So congrats, ladies! Let’s keep up the atheist girl power. (And Hemant. You go…guy?)

And no, I didn’t make their list of awesome female atheists ;) Not yet, at least! Maybe the project I have planned for winter break will launch me out of the blogosphere (and yes, I included that vague hint because I’m evil).

Discussion on atheism ironically demonstrates why we need discussions on atheism

On Tuesday there was an event held at Purdue University titled “A Day in the Life of: students who identify as secular or non-theist.” It was organized by various diversity offices on campus, not the Society of Non-theists, though our members were asked to sit on the panel. As stated by the event information, the purpose of the panel was “to provide an opportunity to students who identify as secular, agnostic, atheist, or non-theist to discuss campus life and experiences. The audience will be primarily composed of student services staff members with an interest in developing their understanding of all types of diversity, including (non-)religious identity.”

I can’t express how happy I am that Purdue is recognizing the needs of non-theists and including us in discussions of diversity. The more people realize that we exist, we are good people, and we face discrimination because of our lack of belief, the more we’ll be able to fight that discrimination. I unfortunately wasn’t at the panel for a certain reason, but everyone said that it was great and that they thoroughly enjoyed it.

Well, maybe not one person.

I’ll leave it to two of the panelists to describe what went down (very minor editing/splicing on my part).

Amanda:
We were probably just at the beginning of our hour and a half discussion when one audience member asked if the Non-Theists at Purdue get any hate mail. Since Jen wasn’t there, and we weren’t really sure about the hate mail specifics we answered yes, and bunny-trailed into discussing some of the letters to the editor in the exponent. A woman raised her hand to ask if the “hate mail” specifically said “I hate you”, then added that if the word “hate” wasn’t in it we shouldn’t be calling it “hate mail”. Erm…ok. At this point I had a feeling this woman was going to be belligerent and was just hoping that would be the last thing she would say…but unfortunately it wasn’t.

Alicia:
We kindly told her that it was certainly possible to express the feeling of hatred without using the word ‘hate.’ This also brought up the topic of the Society fliers being torn down or having Jesus-messages written on them. The Christian lady proceeded to tell us a random story about a church bake sale she did (she went into excruciating detail about this damn bake sale), where someone apparently approached her and really liked the brownies so he said he’d bring back some pals. He asked what it was for, and when she said it was for church, he said “Oh” very shortly and walked away, never to return. Shawn explained that every group has its radicals, including atheists, and we couldn’t really speak for this person because we didn’t know who he was or what his issues were. Kind of funny that she just assumed he was someone we could answer for.

Amanda:
More questions were asked and the discussion got moving forward again, but the woman began to monopolize the discussion, talking when other audience members clearly had questions to ask.

Alicia:
The Christian lady piped up again eventually with something along the lines of: “I think everyone in here is wondering”—(I’m pretty sure no one else in the room was wondering this)—“where you believe life comes from? Do you believe we evolved from monkeys?”

I pounced on this immediately. I am a biologist and a strong believer in evolution, and the whole “humans came from monkeys” thing is a personal pet peeve of mine. I immediately explained that no where in evolution does it state that man evolved from apes or monkeys, and this was a common and very unfortunate misunderstanding. However, I certainly believe that life evolved on Earth and that’s where humans come from. Then Tom added further explanation to that by explaining the difference between evolution, abiogenesis, and cosmology.

Amanda:
The other panelists, biologists and sciencey people in general, looked like they were holding back scoffs and I knew the question was going to take the discussion into the wrong direction; we were there to discuss the secular student experience at Purdue, not to debate evolution with someone who obviously didn’t get it at all. So, I tried to diffuse the situation by giving an answer that had nothing to do with monkeys. I said although I think evolution is the answer that makes the most sense, I feel like the specifics of how life on Earth happened don’t really matter to me. Even if someday, we knew the answer 100% for sure, it wouldn’t change my life so I don’t really care about where we came from.

This had exactly the opposite effect that I was hoping for. The woman started to look visibly upset and teary eyed when she again started talking and said “You said you don’t care about where you came from, but how can you say that? If you don’t care about where you came from, then you don’t care about yourself, and you can’t care about others. I feel sorry for you.” This was basically when shit hit the fan, and some of the other panelists and I started to get really fed up with the lady.

Alicia:
Well, Tom leapt on that immediately, and said, “That’s the kind of patronizing crap that really gets on our tits“—or something like that. I got really defensive as well, and I started to try and ask her why we need to believe in God to care about people, and she quickly claimed that she never brought God into the equation. Well, no, she didn’t say anything about God, but it was very obviously implied. I took Amanda’s statement to mean she didn’t care to understand science or evolution—not all people are interested in science, big deal. She took it to mean something way more spiritual, obviously, and was bringing God into it whether she intended to or not.

This fiasco was cut short by the moderator who said, “Not caring about the origin of life does not mean she can’t care about other people. Now, next question…”

Amanda:
Then we got to talking about the Porn and Popcorn event and I said I found the speakers at the event particularly offensive when they starting making unnecessary comments (insults) about nonbelievers. At this point we were near the very end of the discussion, and the woman just totally lost it. She started to cry again, this time she was blubbering, and said something like (it was difficult to understand, she was having trouble talking at this point)…”You said you were offended, well you offended me when you said you didn’t believe god exists.” Then she broke into more sobbing and sniffling and the other audience members started to snicker at her, or at least she thought they were snickering at her, and she yelled at them about how it wasn’t funny. At this point the moderators stepped in and ended the event early. The woman basically ran out crying, and that was the end of the discussion.

The last thing the woman said, about us offending her because we don’t believe god exists is what really got me. First of all, she voluntarily came to the discussion knowing it was called “A Day in the Life of: students who identify as secular or non-theist”. What did she expect? It seemed like with all her baiting, she just came there for an argument, and got upset when she realized the other audience members weren’t agreeing with her awesome words of wisdom. Secondly, what I supposed to do if the fact that I don’t “believe” in god, my very existence offends her? Am I supposed to crawl in a cave and let the people who believe evolution means “we came from monkeys” run the planet? I’m just disappointed that someone had to come piss in my cereal during an event that’s purpose was to promote diversity and a better understanding of atheists.

Alicia:
We stuck around for a little while afterward and spoke with the coordinators and apologized for what happened. They said we handled it well, and that they had been expecting something much worse than what they got. They also asked us if there was any way they could have handled it better, and we told them that moving the subject along was the best option. We don’t mind the questions about our beliefs or lack of religion, but letting things escalate is probably not a good idea.

Though this summary focuses on the major incident that occurred, the event as a whole went well. There were many great questions asked, such as What were your expectations as atheists when you came to Purdue?, What experiences have you had in classrooms or anywhere on campus in regards to your beliefs?, What has it been like coming out to your families?, What can Purdue do to make non-theists feel more welcome?, and Does being a female have any affect on your interactions amongst atheists? This one lady was the only audience member who reacted negatively to the panel.

I think this really demonstrates why we need to keep having discussions and panels like this and bringing our atheism out into the open. This individual, probably like many others, is so offended at the mere existence of atheists that she broke down into tears in a room full of her coworkers. As Tom mentioned to me after the event, would any of us now feel comfortable approaching her for the services of her position at Purdue? I know I’d have my reservations. But keep in mind that all the other people in the room, probably many (if not all) theists, reacted positively to the event and learned something that day. Maybe this lady did too, even though she didn’t handle it well at first. If just a fraction of the room now looks at non-theists in a new light, that’s a victory.

Thanks to all of the panelists for representing the Society, and to Amanda and Alicia for writing up their summaries.

Bigotry is okay if you have a religious excuse

As most of you probably know, equal rights took another blow after the gay marriage bill was shot down in New York. I wasn’t going to say much about it since this is becoming a sad trend in the US, and I’m running out of witty things to say. But last time people accused me of hating on Maine and no other state (apparently some people had their Sarcasm Sensors turned off – seriously, read some of those crazy comments), so I figured I needed to mention it.

New York Senators, you suck.

I’m not really sure what more I can say without repeating myself. This is sad, but I honestly think the best way to get gay marriage to pass isn’t to change minds, but to wait 10 years. Old bigots will die off, young people (who are significantly more accepting of gays) will become voters, and the tides will turn. It may be a while, but do we seriously think we can reason with people like Senator Ruben Diaz?

Diaz, the second speaker during the debate, set the tone early for the discussion about religion. “Gay marriage,” he said, “is not only opposed by us evangelicals.

“All the major religions in the world also oppose it,” Diaz, who grew up in Puerto Rico, said. “The Jewish religion opposes it. The Muslim religion opposes it. The Catholic religion opposes it.”

You know, when I hear that, the first thing I think is that there’s a problem with religion, not gays. Bah, crazy talk.

(Hat tip to Bryan)

New Merch: Evolution of Christmas

There’s new a new design up at Blag Hag Swag, titled the Evolution of Christmas (click for larger image):Who can deny the resemblance between Darwin and Santa Claus? Except his sleigh is a bit different. I need to include stuff like this in my grad school apps to show how passionate/geeky I am about evolutionary biology.

You can buy it on t-shirts, mousepads, coffee mugs, greeting cards, and postcards. I think the coffee mugs look especially nice, since the design wraps around the whole mug:And this is a bit late, but you can get 50% off if you buy 10+ greeting cards or post cards if you enter the code 12DEALSCARDS at checkout before 11:59 pm PT tonight! Even better, you can customize the text of the cards however you want. Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Happy Monkey, witty evolution pun – whatever your heart desires. Go spread some nerdy love for the holidays!

If you’d like this available on any other sort of merchandise over at Zazzle, let me know and it shall be done.

My mind is blown

Last night we had a pizza party and game night for the Society of Non-Theists’ last meeting of the semester. I brought my Wii along, and being foolish, didn’t bring the sensor bar. My logic at the time was that all the games I brought didn’t require the sensor bar, so why waste time untangling it from the jungle of wires behind me TV? As I turned the Wii on in the classroom, I remembered that you need to use the sensor bar to click the button on the Wii menu that actually starts the game. You’re unable to do this any other way – d-pad, joystick, and other random button mashing didn’t work.

My first thought was “Well, fuck.” My second thought was, “Wow Nintendo, I hate you. Way to make completely user-unfriendly controls just so people require your sensor bar.” My third and most intelligent thought was, “The internet must have a solution.”

I skimmed through a couple of pages of Google before I found something. It seemed so simple that I didn’t believe it. I yelled over the din of pizza eating heathens, “Does anyone have a lighter?”

Oh my God. AMAZING.

The way a Wiimote works is by detecting infrared light. You can also produce infrared light with fire. Members and I looked on in awe as I controlled the Wiimote by pointing it at a flame. It seemed like freaking magic, but no – it was SCIENCE.

Science wins again, allowing a bunch of atheists to beat each other up in Brawl and die hilariously in Super Mario Brothers (cooperation is hard!).

Two mommies are better than one

Japanese researchers have found that female mice made from the DNA of two egg cells (bi-maternal or BM) have significantly longer lifespans than female mice made the “normal” way – from the DNA of an egg and a sperm. They think this is due to Rasgrf1, a imprinted gene on chromosome 9 of the father. BM females were also significantly smaller and lighter, which makes sense when you think of sex-specific selection. Males have increased fitness if they spend more energy growing bigger quickly because that will increase their number of mates. Females, however, get no benefit in growing bigger, since they’ll probably have the same number of mates no matter what. Losing paternally inherited genes dealing with this growth means they conserve energy and can live longer.

… *ahem*

SCIENCE IS SO FREAKING COOL!

Seriously, can you believe that we’re doing research like this? I actually remember asking a biology teacher in high school why we can’t just combine DNA from two eggs or two sperm and get a viable organism. They said it was impossible because of genetic imprinting – you need a set genes imprinted from mom, and a set imprinted from dad. But now we have the power to manipulate imprinted genes and do what we thought to be impossible just a few years ago. How cool is that?

And on top of that, I have to wonder what this means for gay couples. Obviously there’s a huge step between animal research and human research, but wouldn’t this be awesome for lesbian couples who could afford it? Not only do you actually get a daughter who is a genetic blend of both of her parents, just like any other child, but they may even have an extended lifetime? Awesome! I guess that would take away one of the ridiculous arguments fundies like to use – that you shouldn’t allow gay marriage because they can’t produce children. Ha, TAKE THAT FUNDIES! SCIENCE!

Free shipping at Zazzle today!

Thought I’d let you all in on a little secret. You can get free shipping over at Zazzle.com (where I have my store) until midnight tonight! All you have to do is enter the code “HOLIDAYSHIPS” at checkout. For all of you international people, sorry – it’s only within the US.

So go buy some Blag Hag Swag! Not only will it make a great gift for a scientific loved one, but it’ll make a great gift for me when I get my check ;)

Dodads and insanity

Hey everyone! Sorry for my absence lately. ‘Tis the season of final projects, papers, exams, and graduate school applications. As you can imagine, I’m a bit out of my mind and not sleeping much, so blog posts may not be as frequent. Don’t worry – once winter break* hits, I’ll be bored out of my mind! My blogging then will probably make up for my disappearance now.

What, this post wasn’t atheisty enough? Well, here, look what came in the mail the other day**:If you follow Hemant over at Friendly Atheist, you’ll remember he had a little contest to win this heatheny Memo Maid for your computer. And yep, I was one of the winners! What was the contest?

We all know that Ray Comfort is giving away copies of The Origin of Species to college students… with his own 50-page introduction “debunking” the book.

What’s the next book Comfort will write an introduction to, and what already-airtight theory will he attempt to debunk in the process?

And what did I say that was so brilliant?

He’ll add a special intro to The Joy of Sex, reminding people that it only applies to married heterosexual couples and that all the sections except for the missionary position should be ignored.

I almost feel like I’m cheating. Every time I make a sex joke in one of Hemant’s contests, I win a prize (got a Friendly Atheist wristband last time!). Hemant, you’re just too easy***.

*Am I going to be banned by some Christian group because I didn’t say Christmas break?
**No, Hemant didn’t come included. I was just too busy/lazy to take my own photo. Though now that I think of it, a mail-order Hemant would be pretty cool…
***Double entundre obviously intended.****
****Alright, must stop innuendo about internet personas before I upset the boyfriend ;P

Tim Tebow: Football and Christian Privilege

One consequence of my being home for the holidays is watching a lot of football with my dad. I’m currently watching Florida destroy Florida State, but the conversation at the McCreight house isn’t focused on football – it’s on Tim Tebow.

Tebow is the senior quarterback for Florida. He’s well known not only for his great football skills, but for his evangelical Christianity. He was home schooled by missionary parents and noticeably writes Bible verses across his face while playing. For example:Personally, I have no idea why he’s allowed to do this (and neither does my dad – yay ranting about religion with your family). I have a really hard time imagining a football player being able to write “Allahu akbar” across his face in Arabic, or even worse, “There is no God.” Even if the NCAA would legally allow these other sayings, the fallback from fellow players, coaches, and fans would be so great that a Muslim or atheist player probably wouldn’t even consider it. I don’t know about you, but I feel uneasy enough labeling myself as an atheist on the internet – I’m not going to do it when 300 pound men are actually supposed to come tackling me.

But it’s not just because of its religious. By writing anything distinctive on his face, he’s drawing attention to himself. Showboating after touch downs is explicitly forbidden in college football, yet drawing attention to yourself with Bible verses is okay? I guess the news network is partially to blame for this. CBS is currently using every chance to zoom in on Tebow’s face and use that as TV filler – would they be doing this without the Bible verse? No, at least no where near to this extent.

If that’s not enough, the CBS announcers took the time to read the actual verse that Tebow was referencing today. It was Heb 12: 1-2, though they only read the first line:

1Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. 2Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

Good call leaving off all the Jesus heavy part, at least. They claimed they should read it since it was obviously important enough for him to select and write on his face. So do I get to select passages I find meaningful and have them read on national television? Yes, if it’s a Bible verse.

This isn’t about censoring Christians so that they can never talk about their faith. There is a time and place for such discussions, and representing a public university in college football is not it. This is about illustrating that you’re rewarded for expressing your Christianity, but everyone who disagrees better keep it to themselves. Christians are a privileged group, and crying “Oppression!” as loudly as they can doesn’t change the facts.