Secularists in Indiana wanted to run a simple message on buses in Bloomington: “You can be good without god”. The transit authority refused their money because the message was “too controversial”. Too controversial? Is it their position that it is controversial that atheists can be good? I would love to see a debate on that issue: let’s line up everyone in the transit authority who thinks atheists are always going to be evil, get their names and faces and opinions on record, and see if this really is controversial.
Since it is unlikely that anyone will ‘fess up to that, we’re going to have to settle for asserting ourselves on a poll.
I agree with the advertisement and I think it should be allowed. 37%
I don’t agree with the advertisement, but I think it should be allowed. 11%
I don’t agree with the advertisement and I don’t think it should be allowed. 48%
I agree with the advertisement, but I don’t think it should be allowed. 3%
I don’t know. 1%
Click click click!
Done !
It’s odd the things that can be deemed controversial. It’s an easy way to try and avoid doing something you don’t want to do.
Clicked!
You can also be good without Feagletosh. Really, really exceptional.
You can also be GREAT without god. Just ask Alexander.
yeah, Indiana with their “In God We Trust” licenses plates wouldn’t want to put anything controversial out there
Wanna see something neat?
Leave the result window open and reload it every minute or so.
Power in numbers!
Clicked with each of the three browsers. Now over for choice 1.
WTF?! On the first scan I thought you were talking about India. It wasn’t until I clicked and looked at the article that I realized this is happening in the U.S. Ridiculous!
1115 votes
469, 42% agree/allow
117, 10% disagree/allow
491, 44% disagree/disallow
27, 2% agree/disallow
11, 1% thicko
Perhaps Indiana should take a leaf from Gerald “Condoms cause AIDS” Ratslinger’s latest witterings about the misuse of religion for political purposes: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8041421.stm
The Pope, yes the fucking Pope, has the audacity to warn against the dangers of misusing religion for political purposes? Well, I suppose he’s well qualified to speak about the subject, probably better qualified than anyone else, but all the same, talk about a brass neck!
Cheers.
ZK
*headdesk* deleted the 50% for post #8. Augh.
49% agree and should be allowed. :-)
Thanks so much for posting this, PZ! And if you guys want some real entertainment, read the comments on that article. Ugh, are they stupid. Makes me (even more) sad to be from Indiana.
Poll Pharyngulized !!
I like this whole “atheist bus” movement around the
world, a spotlight for us in good terms for a change.
I wonder how much time is gonna take to see it on my country too.
Why do people take time to answer a poll just to say “I don’t know”?
Wow, I think that’s a phenomenally non-controversial message. I like it quite a lot better than ‘There is no God, now stop worrying…’ – however much I agree with them both, I think ‘You can be good without God’ is a more useful advertisement.
Now Indiana wants your opinion
Sorry, couldn’t resist.
Don’t forget to go to the Indiana Atheists Bus Campaign website as well, and give them some money. They’re planning on running these ads in several Indiana cities, so the money will go to good use regardless of the lawsuit.
As of now twenty seven people have clicked “I agree with the advertisement, but I don’t think it should be allowed.”
While I admire and practice self censorship in those situations that are facilitated by such, I really have to wonder about this.
What possess someone to agree with an idea and in the same breath decree that nobody should be reminded of that idea?
Reminds me of old prohibitions of mentioning certain things concerning personal hygiene. Do these uncertain twenty seven consider some ideas just too ‘nasty’ to be allowed public expression?
59 to 32 as of . . . Now.
After living in Indiana for two years for school, this kind of thing doesn’t surprise me in the least. I mostly kept my mouth shut until I was about to leave, and still got a lot of patronizing nonsense from nearly everyone.
Check Focus on the Family’s new poll:
What will you do on Mother’s Day to honor your mother?
Call her 13%
Send a card 4%
Give a gift 16%
Honor her memory 8%
Nothing 62%
I imagine the same thing would’ve happened where I live, a place where it’s not unusual to see a billboard depicting a crucified man, blood, agony, crown of thorns, and all, above a completely incongruous headline (Jesus is Love, or somesuch). Once again, gruesome sectarian imagery = super, the mere suggestion of atheism = worst. thing. ever.
#4 must be the Nisbet choice.
Over a thousand votes for option #1 now. It has been properly Pharyngulaed! The thing about the poll that disappoints me is that option #2 started out with so few votes. It makes me ashamed to be from Indiana. I’m surrounded by intolerant rednecks!!!
Maybe the difficulty lies with “you”. Maybe they’re like, “sure, an ATHEIST might have something like the figured out, but I’d go stab a baby right now if *I* didn’t have God!”
…probably not.
Well, “You can’t be good without God. You can’t” is obviously true if one considers following the ten commandments (or whatever the bible says, actually) entails believing in god. So in its own circular logic, “You can be good without god” actually IS controversial. But how narrow-minded do you have to be to be stuck there, especially as a public institution – or is it private? Anyway, bah.
Pretty disheartening. I spent 4 years in Bloomington for law/graduate school. In general a (comparatively, at least) pretty progressive little blue dot surrounded by deep red, religion-fueled craziness. But even in Bloomington, the churches per square inch quotient was abominably high. Moving there from “godless” Seattle was quite the exercise in culture shock.
That’s like asking “Can your dog be good without bacon?”
While I agree with the statement and would like to see that sign all over the place, I wonder how many people here would have raised hell if someone put up a lot of money for getting the sign “You can NOT be good without God” on busses!
And this is not about statements being true or false, it’s about being allowed to buy ads in order to express your opinion.
For that matter, a tip to the hat to the people who voted for “DON’T agree, but should be allowed anyway!”
Decision makers would probably pay more attention to the second option. A large number of people who disagree with the message but still think it should be allowed reflect better on freedom of speech than those who either agree or disagree and want to force the issue their own way.
BTW, is there a consensus on whether it’s Pharyngulized, Pharyngulaed, or Pharyngulated? And should we write it with a capital P (or ?, whatever)? I associate the latter, “Pharyngulated”, with “regulated”, not too bad an association for setting a poll in the right light. “Pharyngulaed” sound’s nicely Latin-style… anyway, has this ever been discussed, especially considering the rising number of questionable polls coming up recently?
Decision makers would probably pay more attention to the second option. A large number of people who disagree with the message but still think it should be allowed reflect better on freedom of speech than those who either agree or disagree and want to force the issue their own way.
Something even more helpful everyone could do would be to donate to the campaign! http://inatheistbus.org
A reminder for Pharyngulators everywhere… if we want to elevate the art of Pharyngulation into the stratosphere, learn to use some kind of browser automation package. The one I’m fond of is called “iMacros” and runs most efficiently as a Firefox plugin, but also runs well in IE and has its own browser (and is trialware, but works indefinitely for free for small problems like this).
So I think this applies for Windows users, Linux users running Mozilla/Firefox browsers. Not sure about Mac users, but maybe someone could help me out.
I couldn’t find a more-specific link to the survey, but found that if I turn off automatic loading of images, then web-page loading became much more efficient. The following iMacro macro seems to work fine for me, casting a vote every five seconds. Going shopping? To a movie? You can set up your machine to vote up to 99,999 times while you’re away.
VERSION BUILD=6210326 RECORDER=FX
TAB T=1
TAB CLOSEALLOTHERS
URL GOTO=http://www.theindychannel.com/news/19409895/detail.html
TAG POS=1 TYPE=INPUT:RADIO FORM=NAME:SurveyQuestions19409260 ATTR=ID:q1ans1
TAG POS=1 TYPE=INPUT:BUTTON FORM=NAME:SurveyQuestions19409260 ATTR=VALUE:Vote
My steps to create this macro:
1) download the iMacros plug-in for Firefox, and re-run Firefox
2) navigate to the survey of choice
3) Hit the “record” tab, “record” button
4) select “Yes” to the “close all tabs” question, so macro works correctly
5) click on desired answer, and the “vote” button
6) Hit the “Stop” button to stop recording the macro
7) your macro is now stored as “#Current.iim” in the list
8) go to the “Play” tab, and with “#Current.iim” selected at top, change the Max repeat counter to 99,999 or something other huge number no greater than that.
9) hit “Play (Loop)”
10) snicker
11) go somewhere nice and have some fun.
The above process, once you get used to the software, takes about 5-10 seconds to set up your own Pharyngulatobot. If more Pharyngulators did this, we’d witness something truly beautiful: poll numbers taking off even more explosively than they do now (by a few orders of magnitude in some cases). No poll… even the ones with millions of votes in them… would be safe. Dumping cookies can also be automated for polls that require this (not sure if this poll is one of those).
Happy crashing.
Up to 65%. I’m stuck in Indiana, too, and I’m sick of those damn God We Trust license plates.
#1 is now at 70%, Jefe.
Also, here is a link to yesterday’s TV coverage of the lawsuit:
@Dutchdoc (#29), as a quick thought, this seems like a false analogy:
“You can NOT be good without God” is a logically absolute, negative statement (stating NO atheist can be good), so it is not equal to the positive “You CAN be good without God” which only allows the possibility of an atheist being good (even one)…
I sneakily clicked:
“I don’t agree with the advertisement, but I think it should be allowed.”
A sizeable percentage in this choice would marginalize intolerant Christians that much more for being a minority.
The argument I think I find more abhorrent among the Christians is the majoritarian argument. “We’re in the majority so why shouldn’t we be able to decide what’s allowed and not allowed?” It’s usually utterly with that incredulous air of “How can what I’m saying possibly be disputed?” If only they could be transported briefly back to times of Romans and lions to see exactly why their argument is not quite so strong as they allege.
Re #34.
I don’t want to strike a nerve here and stir up an unintentional hornets nest (but I am willing to accept the onus if I in fact do).
Isn’t there some basic notion along the lines of ‘one person, one vote?’
Yeah, I know the innertubes give us all a marvelous power to know and to do, but how is it acceptable for one person to vote as a legion?
Just askin’
@39 is right, and I did the same. Politically, the best result is for #2, “I disagree but it should be allowed” to be neck-and-neck with #1.
It’s interesting that Christian assholes want to suppress freedom of speech.
My little autovoter gotem down to the teens and now it’s tired. They put up a little 5 vote forray when they dropped below 25% but then they tired. 19/73 wheeeeeee.
Done. When I voted, the tally was 87% in agreement with both the sign and its publication. Nice work.
And this time, I didn’t feel like a gatecrasher. I used to live in Indiana.
I tend to agree to Crudely Wrott (#40), but in the end, what all this poll-crashing boils down to is the factual pointlessness of internet polls, never amounting to a representative survey of opinion. So one might justify sasqwatchs approach by just twisting the particular nonsensical poll in a direction one prefers. Besides, are there not ways to prevent these exploits, technically? If so, this method constitutes a selection pressure towards more effective programming.
#38 @Gorogh:
That’s why I added to my comment:
“… this is not about statements being true or false, it’s about being allowed to buy ads in order to express your opinion.”
@40 “how is it acceptable for one person to vote as a legion?”
These sort of polls ‘pon the interwebby are wide open to abuse and religous freaks everywhere would happily use any result that backed their particular ignorant prejudice. So it doesn’t do any harm to crash these stupid polls and make the results meaningless. Go ahead: vote early, vote often, as long as the poll lets you do so then you may as well vote as often as you can (have to admit that I only ever vote once, but only because that’s all I can be bothered to do, I do not refrain from additional voting for any moral reasons).
Just don’t then go waving the results around as any sort of support for your own opinion, cos that’ll make you as stupid as the god squadders.
This is an online straw-poll, not an election.
In order for poll results to be valid, they have to be constructed, administered, and analysed according to the correct protocol. This results of this poll, in common with all web polls, are not valid whether or not the poll is skewed by a horde of Pharyngulites, Freepers, or an individual with an auto-voter.
The point of poll-crashing is to make it obvious that the poll is invalid, not to misrepresent public opinion — such polls do that without any help from us.
#48: s/This/The/
@Dutchdoc (#46), thinking about it, I get your point better. Even though I guess I expressed myself poorly, wanting to emphasize the consideration of the volatility (and coincidentally, correctness) of the opinion advertised, it seems problematic on who is to decide this. There’s free speech, of course, but the public appearance as ads placed on public transportation puts it close to the separation of state and religion in a way. Then again, atheism is no religion. Hrrmlm…
*mumbling to himself*
We should insist that everyone who claims that no one can be good without god give us a list of the bad things they personally would do if there was no god.
No letting them off the hook. Insist.
I hear you, KZ. Because such unregulated polls are suspect from the get go (like the Sturgeon Principle) it really doesn’t matter if they get fucked with. Auto-voting bots or an itchy left-click finger do not harm or enhance the reliability of the final count. Agreed.
The problem for me is that once a practice becomes popular, it becomes common.
Voting, in general and across the full spectrum of tapping the will of the population, is currently a flustercluck due to the foolish notion that the state of memory in a computer circuit is somehow more authoritative than a pencil mark on a piece of paper.
You can show a pencil mark. You can only report a latent charge on a chip. (Yes, I know that the state of computer memory can be shown on the test bench but that is hardly useful when voting for town councilman or president.)
In any case one person one vote seems to satisfy the purpose of any poll. To vote repeatedly is, well, dishonest. I’m sure that most of the readers of this blog value honesty above, say, political expediency.
Imagine the wild uproar from Christians if a bus ad stating “You Can’t Be Good Without God” was deemed too controversial.
Crudely Wrott (#40) — folks here may disagree, but it seems to me the underlying premise of Pharyngulation is that these polls are intrinsically stupid and deserve to be blown out of the water.
Perhaps a poll with a reasonable well-defined denominator (like subscribed readers of a particular magazine) would make some kind of limited sense (even though such a group would usually suffer from biases out the wazoo, it could represent the sampled cohort well).
As I ponder the question of fairness… “one man, one vote”, it seems to me this doctrine has already been overturned merely by the fact that PZ brings it to our attention as a group… his “vote” to do so brings on a Pharyngulation, which carries a particularly devastating weight. So participating in a Pharyngulation while holding some kind of higher-ground one-man-one-vote principle seems like a dissonant position to me.
The question comes down to whether it makes sense for a given online poll, one without controls to prevent/minimize all kinds of tricks, deserves to exist unmolested. PZ seems to think not, and I agree with the position that these surveys are crap.
For matters of import (scientific surveys and polls), especially voting on civil matters, I am all for being true to the one-“person”-one-vote maxim. (and truth-telling on surveys). For meaningless polls, the question seems moot.
A tool like this also would work wonders for PZ getting his iPod thingy, BTW… making the fundies eat crow.
It’d be interesting to hear what PZ has to say on the matter, as a Pharyngulation is, in a way, His vote (note the reverent capital H). I have little doubt though, that the cat is out of the bag regarding the technology allowing few people to influence these meaningless polls, one way or another. So using a cold war analogy, if the good guys don’t use this strategy, we could allow for the existence of a macro gap. Then what would the world come to?
Concerning a somewhat negligible aspect of political exercise, this seems like too much like a slippery slope fallacy than justified consequentialism. And yet, of course you do have a point: Since it is not necessary to cheat (for the poll being pointless anyway), it would be a bad thing to do so. I am not decided on this, but your view does have its merits.
whoops… forgot to sign in. #54 was me.
This poll isn’t getting pharyngulated. When I voted #1 (agree with the message and it should be on the bus) was at 73%. Usually by the time I read PZ’s posting and vote, my vote has already been overwhelmed by the rest of you here. It’s not working this time. Maybe the anti-PZ is out there using these methods?
Thanks for putting the idea in a clear context, Anonymous. It really is a no brainer.
Because these pop-up polls are usually rigged to reveal a desired trend and because the majority of respondents are those who are on the far sides of the bell curve and because they are so easily Pharyngulated, their value is essentially nil in terms of reflecting the pulse of the people. (Pulse of the people? Whoa!)
Then again, you could easily assign a cause for my concern about multi-voting. See, I got my ass kicked royally when I told lies as a child. Not physically, but effectively punished. That instruction resulted in my giving a high priority to speaking and acting truthfully. It grates just a bit when people take an unearned advantage, without regard to the situation because it carries the scent of dishonesty.
This all seems to be based on a quirk of my upbringing and resultant world view. Still, honesty is the best policy. Just ask any scientist.
All that said, I heartily agree with poll crashing. As is my custom, I vote once. Y’all will take care of the rest.
Hey PZ, you should have mentioned that Jen alerted you to this…disappointed.
‘Preciate the props, Gorogh.
The slipperiest part about a slippery slope is that you usually don’t know it’s there until you are, in fact, sliding.
@Crudely Wrott (#60), I feel like spamming, but I am unacquainted with the “‘preciate the props”-expression. Does it mean that you appreciate my propositions, or I should appreciate yours? Does it even mean proposition?
Apart from that, of course you are right, it’s all about expectancy and plausibility thereof. I only we could quantify abstract matters better.
What’s depressing to me is that over 600 people here in the land of 1st Ammendment protections feel that certain opinions should not be ‘allowed’ to be advertised – when the group wishing to post those opinions is wiling to pay for the advert.
I agree with the advertisement and I think it should be allowed. 3905 82%
I don’t agree with the advertisement, but I think it should be allowed. 247 5%
I don’t agree with the advertisement and I don’t think it should be allowed. 576 12%
I agree with the advertisement, but I don’t think it should be allowed. 40 1%
I don’t know. 15 0%
You want to speak about Bush or about Obama?
I watched the TV news report on this. It was “balanced” in the way that journalists think is fair, i.e., giving each side equal time and presenting each side as equally valid.
Journalists, of all people, ought to understand the First Amendment. A more objective and useful report would have pointed out that the city’s “no controversy” rule is very likely (read 99%) to be found unconstitutional.
(Unfotunately, the atheist group’s lawyer didn’t take up the slack as well on this point as he might have.)
The two religiotards who said the ads shouldn’t be allowed should have been challenged on how they reconcile their opinion with the First Amendment. They would have been left spluttering incoherently or had to admit that they don’t give a damn about their country’s constitution – either of which would have been educational for viewers.
Totally off topic, but I’m watching qualifying for the Indy 500 and they did a bit on the different superstitions that the drivers have. One driver said he prayed for safety for the drivers, and I just had to laugh at his being sandwiched in between drivers who got dressed in a certain order and the one with the lucky underwear.
Gorogh, the sentiment was, “I appreciate your support of my idea.”
As in, “I’m glad you see my point and have given it some thought.”
The Pope is an Indy 500 driver?
I donated to this campaign, it’s nice to see that a business is doing so well they can do without the advertising income.
Gee, I thought I was the first to post an alert about this, yesterday afternoon, when I saw a tweet from Richard Dawkins. Oh well, I guess Jen beat me to it. :)
I agree with the advertisement, but I don’t think it should be allowed. Who would actually choose this option it seems absurd.
Heh. I saw this over at friendlyatheist.com and went to vote, and when I saw the results I knew that PZ had already put out the word. :-) 86% for the first option.
Since it is unlikely that anyone will ‘fess up to that . . . What makes you think it’s so unlikely, Dr. Meyers? I’ve heard plenty of religious people assert that atheists are always bad.
By the way, I tend to think that everyone who is good is good without god. His not existing, and all. ;)
it’s not even all religions that think that human morality is contingent on god. some religions happen to think you don’t need a miracle for people to be good.
judaism, for example.
yes, “THE LAW” is given by god, but man is more than capable of justifying himself, sometimes in spite of the law. just not if you ask those crazy christians. didn’t lewis black have something to say about this?
Done aaaand… done. Pharyngulated for your living pleasure!
current stats!
for the record, even as a (somewhat) religious person, i voted with the masses, because i do agree with the statement, and it should be allowed. if we needed (a) god to be moral human beings, we’d be in pretty sad shape. i think the last time god was subpoenaed he failed to show…
Read my blog at on this at:
http://www.centerforinquiry.net
Of course, you can be good without god and I’ve tried to set out the arguments here.
Having lived in Indiana for many years and being about to return to it (sadly), I just want to applaud everyone who voted on this poll and killed it but good. It probably won’t make a difference, but thanks everyone.
I live in Bloomington and would love to see them!
There should have been an option for “Whether or not I agree with the statement is irrelevant. It should be allowed.”