Why I am an atheist – Beth

I went to Baptist church and Baptist school until fifth grade. One day during religious class, after the teacher said that people who don’t take the lord as their savior go to hell, I asked what happens to all the people who never have the chance to hear about God. “Everyone has heard about God,” she said. That just can’t be true, I pointed out— there are still remote tribes being discovered in the Amazon, for example, and that was even more true 200, 300, and 500 years ago. There have been literally billions of people who never had the chance to hear the Bible version of God, did they all go to hell? She just stubbornly maintained that EVERYONE has had the chance. It was so completely and obviously wrong that whatever child-like faith I’d had broke and drained away in an instant.

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What kind of atheist are you?

I am accustomed to annoying people. A year and a half ago, I made this post about Dictionary Atheists that sent almost as much hate mail winging my way as desecrating a cracker did, and because I just love to poke people, I’m going to revisit it now.

I’ll admit that I took a rhetorically wrong approach that led many people to come away with the wrong impression. I was saying that dictionary atheists, those people who say they’re just atheists because they don’t believe in god, were simply reciting an equivalence and not addressing any of the interesting reasons why they were atheists, the stuff that we need to communicate to get other people to recognize our values and appreciate them. Somehow, in some people’s minds, this got turned into Tyrant PZ telling all the atheists what they have to believe, I think because they interpreted my criticisms of superficial explanations and a request to acknowledge deeper cognitive mechanisms to be a demand that there is only one good way to think, which is not true at all.

So I’m going to try something different. I’ve been reading all these “Why I am an atheist” stories, as well as various atheist blogs, and what I see is a couple of major strands of atheist thought. Let’s put together a brief and preliminary taxonomy of atheists! Maybe it will help clarify things, because I consider all of these ways of being an atheist as being perfectly valid, so it should be clear I’m not being judgmental or trying to shoehorn everyone into my flawless mold. But I do think we should all try to be aware of the underpinnings of our ideas.

I see four major categories of thoughtful atheists: scientific atheists, philosophical atheists, political atheists, and humanists. I’m going to describe what I think are the major strengths and weaknesses of each; you can tell me whether you think we need more divisions and better defining characteristics, but be warned, taxonomically I’m more of a lumper than a splitter.

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Why I am an atheist – Melody Wainscott

I could waste time being disappointed in myself that it took 50 plus years for me to realize I am an Atheist; a much better use of my time is to realize that I now know the full extent of work required to rewire the hardwiring of a thorough brainwashing. I know the value of this knowledge in helping me to understand the tactics of my enemy who did this to me when I was a small child.

My enemy is religion, specifically Christianity.

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The conference scene

I’ve noticed that the same group of whining jerks can be found congregating at any post anywhere on the net that barks madly at freethoughtblogs, no matter how stupid the argument being made might be. No, I take that back: the more stupid it is, the more they aggregate. It’s as if stupid were cyclic AMP, and they were slime molds…

Anyway, the latest fracas is at Debunking Christianity, where John Loftus seems to be a high density secretor of that substance. He writes,

Some high profile secular women have undressed for a Nude Photo Revolutionary Calendar, which is promoted by some of the women at Freethought Blogs and includes Greta Christina and Maryam Namazie in solidarity with blogger Aliaa Magda Elmahdy, who posted a nude photo of herself as a scream “against a society of violence, racism, sexism, sexual harassment and hypocrisy.” Others participated in Boobquake. Skepchick regularly posts something called “Skepchick Quickies” (*ahem*). The message is clear to me, that women can use their bodies as they see fit. I understand that completely. Men do not own the bodies of women. (No, I’m not interested at all thank you very much).

But this sends a mixed message to some ignorant young men now doesn’t it? It’s not surprising to me that some of them may think some secular women are “available.” It can create an environment at Freethought conventions where some men may look to hook up. Thunderf00t is asking what’s wrong with that in the bars afterward? Hooking up is what some people want to do (men and women). Knowing which ones want to do so is another question. How are some of these men supposed to know?

A “mixed message”? How? Does Loftus really think that a woman posing nude means she is sending the message that she is available for sex anytime with anyone? Madness. This is one of the things we’re fighting against: this binary attitude and possessiveness about women’s bodies. Fortunately, we’ve got Greta Christina on our side, and she has just blown Loftus and his cluster of toadies away. Go read that. Maybe it will help some people realize that the inconsistencies they’re projecting on everyone else are entirely the product of their own scrambled heads. Also, it’s a great smackdown.

This seems to be a tricky concept for some people. So I’ll spell it out again: If you are interested in having sex with someone, the person you need to consult about it is the person you’re interested in.

You do not, however, consult the question of whether some atheist bloggers posed nude for a calendar. Or whether they participated in a mock scientific experiment designed to make fun of the hypothesis that female immodesty causes earthquakes. Or whether they title their quick-summary-of-interesting-links blog posts with the mildly double-entendre title of “quickies.”

I do want to mention one little tangent in the comments at Loftus’ blog, since it addresses an event I’ll be participating in this weekend, and because it makes the commenter look awesomely stupid.

And ThunderfOOt was right again… they are in danger of being a fringe group. So far Skepchickcon has 28 attendees— 24 of which are speakers

Uh, no…talk about not understanding the culture at all.

Skepchickcon is the science/skepticism track at a medium-sized SF/Fantasy convention, Convergence. It is also one of the more popular tracks there — the talks this year have been moved into the largest available room in the conference center. Last I heard, there will be 5500 attendees, with the possibility of it breaking the 6000 mark with drop-in registration. Not all will be going to the science/skepticism track — there will be many parallel sessions going on — but most will probably drop by a few of the sessions. The 28 attendees listed above are people who will be actually staffing panel sessions.

We atheists should think about that. We were thrilled to have the largest meeting ever this year, the Global Atheist Convention in Melbourne, which had about 4000 people there. That was impressive to us — but it’s the equivalent of an average sized regional science fiction convention, which go on all the time, year after year. You want to do outreach? Our atheist conventions are good places for like-minded people to get together and organize and plan, but they aren’t outreach.

Some of us actually know what outreach looks like.

Furthermore, the format of these meetings is completely different from what you may be used to at atheist conventions. There’s relatively little of the routine speaker-standing-behind-lectern-lecturing stuff; this is a participatory experience. Those 28 attendees will be sitting on multiple group panels and tossing out ideas and encouraging the audience to throw ideas back. It’s much more like a good interactive classroom than a lecture. So what we’ll be doing is getting people to talk about science and skepticism, which is powerful stuff.

There are other events going on, too. There are events called sandbox sessions where kids will get to have fun. My wife Mary is volunteering for a couple of those, and she’ll be guiding kids through owl pellet dissections and discussions of evolution. This is outreach, too.

And then there are the parties. Freethoughtblogs and Skepchick are both hosting party rooms, where people can talk and socialize informally. We’ve been warned that, as a rough guideline, you can expect about 10% of the convention attendance to show up at your party room each night — we’ll be basically managing a 500+-person party, where yes, we’ll be talking about science and skepticism, and drinking, and laughing, and having a good time. Outreach, outreach, outreach.

Anyone who thinks that having 28 of us at a conference means we’re a “fringe group” really is babbling out of their ass.

Why I am an atheist – anonymous

Because religions are just stories.

And bad stories at that. I was brought up as a Buddhist, and the canon was full of old, tired tropes. Reincarnation, supernatural powers, heaven and hell, the whole gamut. The story of other religions are no different. The heroes just have different powers and the miracles come in many varieties. To be honest, I fell for the Buddhist stories until I entered university, and this fact still embarrasses me to this day.

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No more mangled wee-wees!

Mano Singham has discovered a good analysis of the claim that circumcision has health benefits. I agree with it entirely, because I looked at those same papers and came to the same conclusion a year ago! So they must be right.

The analysis points out a few new things I hadn’t noticed, in addition to the bad experimental design and the inflated statistics: the results were confounded by the fact that the newly circumcised individuals also got additional counseling about safe sex, and were restricted in their sexual practices by their surgical wounds. It’s bad research coming to impractical and unrealistic conclusions, and they suggest that there are better answers than promoting this shaky idea that circumcision reduces the risk of AIDS.

Rather than wasting resources on circumcision, which is less effective, more expensive, and more invasive, focusing on iatrogenic sources and secondary prevention should be the priority, since it provides the most impact for the resources expended.

Exactly — the defense of circumcision is ludicrous, it’s an unnecessary cosmetic surgery promoted entirely for historically religious reasons, and it’s time to stop.