The late John A Davison

As regulars here may know, I’ve been getting crank email from John A. Davison for many years now. Until recently, he was sending me his tirades almost every day — and they were just piling up in my spam folder. He was remarkably persistent.

Here is his very last email to me, fished up out of that spam folder, from 26 March.

Stuart “mad dog” Campbell

So the heir apparent to Pee Zee Myers has finally joined that degenerate pig by pretending that WE do not exist. You are in great company. The question you should be asking yourself is – why am I the only one treating Davison with naked contempt? Now, finally, all six of you are doing what all your predecessors have always done, fervently praying that your silence will somehow prevail. It sure took you long enough to join with the others and you still have not shared your monumental ignorance, bigotry and vicious personality with another Natural Selectionist (NSist) You are all pathetic, but you Stuart Campbell are the worst of the lot by far.
—– Original Message —–
From: john a davison
To: Staurt Campbell
Sent: Monday, March 26, 2012 9:40 AM

Check my weblog again you cowardly, snotty little worm.
John A. Davison, Professor of Biology Emeritus, University of Vermont. L4 Grandview Drive, South Burlington, VT 05403

webpage jadavison.wordpress.com

There are about 50 others in there (I really need to flush out that folder), and they’re all this same incoherent angry ranting, the same attitude that got him banned for his obsessive commenting all over the net.

That was definitely the last message I’ll ever be getting from him. Shortly after sending that, he was diagnosed with metastatic prostate cancer, and succumbed rapidly: John A Davison died last week.

His favorite catch phrase, typically used in all kinds of weirdly inappropriate situations, was “I love it so”. I can’t use it here — I’m just sorry he wasted so much of his life flailing wildly for his failed cause, creationism. At least it sounds like he refocused his life on his family in his last weeks.

Why I am an atheist – Laura Stokes

I was raised in a Southern Baptist church, in Tennessee in the 1980s and 1990s. Although I was only dimly aware of it at the time, this was a period when the virulently fundamentalist wing of that church slowly began to take over from the more moderate members, systematically driving them out of the Southern Baptist convention altogether. What this meant in terms of my religious upbringing is that I was exposed to more liberal and rational people – like my parents and some of their friends – and I was exposed to more conservative, dogmatic people – like a Sunday School teacher who once read us a “story” about how we would all have to march to heaven with all our sins visibly marked on our bodies, making us repulsive, until we got to the gates of Heaven, where Jesus would wash us clean. (You can only imagine the effect this had on ten pre-teen girls, already insecure about our bodies and our appearance.)

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Who is going to be our spokesperson on Capitol Hill?

The Secular Coalition for America, a lobbying group for secular causes that I generally support, has appointed a new Executive Director: Edwina Rogers, a Republican strategist and lobbyist.

Let that sink in for a moment.

I reeled a bit when I heard that, but you know, I mostly trust those people at the SCA, and I thought, well, maybe it’s a smart move…to appoint someone who could actually get a toe in the door of the offices of our most intransigent foes. Maybe it’s a good idea to bring in someone from the other side who’d be willing to work with us on advancing the cause in a government dominated by conservatism. I also thought that I should treat this as a practical, political decision, one that I find intellectually uncomfortable, but would get results going in the right direction.

And I talked on the phone with someone at the SCA who sorta gently nudged me in the direction of giving Rogers a chance. I was drifting on currents that felt obliging if I would just go along.

And then I read Hemant Mehta’s interview with Edwina Rogers, and rebellion suddenly seemed a heck of a lot more attractive.

I’m sorry, Hemant, you’re a good guy, but apparently you’re taking interviewing lessons from the Jon Stewart School of Broadcasting. Right from the first answer, I wanted to scream, “STOP RIGHT THERE! That is not an acceptable or even believable response!” He asked why we should trust someone who’s been working for the party opposed to secularism (a good question), and here’s the answer that set off great clanging alarm bells.

I think it’s a misconception that the majority of Republicans are lined up against the secular movement. As someone who has been an insider within the Republican Party, I’m certain it’s not the consensus of the majority of Republicans to have an [overt] influence of religion on our laws. Having said that, no one agrees with everyone they work with on every single issue. In these roles I never worked on anything having to do with issues of religion — I worked primarily on economic issues.

Wait, wait, wait. I think the number one value for atheists is truth and honesty — are we seriously supposed to believe that answer? Are we supposed to trust the competence of someone so deluded they can say with a straight face that a majority of Republicans want religion out of government?

She’s also said something similar to the right-wing press:

“The majority of Republicans just haven’t thought about” secularism, said Rogers. “They were probably a little like me, a little laissez-faire, that they didn’t see it as a problem because the country is pretty secular.… There are still areas that need improvement, of course.”

Holy shit…we now have a lobbyist for secularism who thinks the country is already pretty secular, and just has a few areas that need improvement. Does she think this job is some kind of sinecure? She hasn’t thought much about it, and she thinks all her Republican buddies are similarly casual about religion?

This is where I’m really getting worried. She doesn’t see a problem.

She worked in the god-soaked Bush administration, for a president who thought his office was a divine gift.

I feel like God wants me to run for President. I can’t explain it, but I sense my country is going to need me. Something is going to happen… I know it won’t be easy on me or my family, but God wants me to do it.

She worked for Trent Lott, the racist opponent of gay marriage.

I want to say this about my state. When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years either.

gay liberation “makes a mockery of other legitimate civil rights that people have worked at for years.”

Lott was also an opponent of secularism.

I have consistently advocated strong legislative action in support of the rights of students who wish to participate in voluntary prayer in their schools.

That sounds mild…except that there has never been any effort to squelch the right of students to voluntarily pray on their own.

She made political contributions to Rick Perry… you know, the presidential candidate wanna-be who launched his campaign with a prayer meeting.

It[America]’s in jeopardy because of taxes; it’s in jeopardy because of regulation; it’s in jeopardy because of a legal system that’s run amok. And I think it’s time for us to just hand it over to God and say, “God, You’re going to have to fix this.”

I think it’s time for us to use our wisdom and our influence and really put it in God’s hands. That’s what I’m going to do, and I hope you’ll join me.

Why would someone who claims to be a “strong secularist and a firm believer in the separation of religion and government” give one penny to that clown? You’d think that if she were sincere in that long term interest, she would have been working to promote the more moderate conservatives…but no, she’s standing right there with the worst of the Rethuglicans.

That’s a lot to answer for. How do you throw a thousand dollars at the guy who makes this video:

…and then tell us you believe that most Republicans are secularists at heart who don’t even think much about religion?

Also, it doesn’t salvage her reputation to announce that she didn’t work on religious issues under Bush — just economics and health issues. Economics. And health. Under George W. Bush. Yeah, that fills me with confidence.

SCA, your executive director has a serious credibility problem. If she can’t even be forthright and honest in a friendly interview with a sympathetic interviewer, what is she going to do in the shark tank of the atheist movement?

See also Daniel and Stephanie and Greg and Jen. No one is enthusiastic. Everyone is wary. The only thing keeping us from blowing up and flinging fireballs right now is that we like and respect the SCA. Do they realize that their reputation is on the line, and is the only thing keeping us from angry rebellion? They better not blow this.

Celebrate the National Day of Reason with resistance and rebellion

Obama is getting everything wrong lately. First he declares 1 May to be Loyalty Day, in which we are to pledge allegiance to the flag; what a horror. To me, May Day will always be International Workers’ Day. It is not a day to pledge blind obedience to authority, but the exact opposite. But of course, Barack Obama, corporate tool, would want to subvert that.

And he also wants us to kowtow to nonexistent deities today, by going along with this horrible right-wing notion of a national Day of Prayer. Fuck that noise. Today is the National Day of Reason, and I will bend no knee to ghostly vapors, nor will I beg any gods for favors, ever.

No Gods, No Masters!

That should be the theme for this time of year, our Atheist Spring. It’s also fitting that that slogan was the product of the International Workers of the World, and was adopted by early feminists.

If we do not strike the fetters off ourselves we shall be knocked about until we forget the fetters. To our society apologists, and to their plausible excuses for modern impression, the only adequate answer is — we have done with your civilization and your gods. We will organize society in such a way as to make it certain for all to live in comfort and leisure without bartering their affections or their convictions. Let us turn a deaf ear to the trumpet-tongued liars clamoring for Protection, Patriotism, Prisons, Police, Workhouses, and Large Families. Leave them to vomit their own filth and let us take the good things mother earth daily offers unheeded, to us her children.

Things haven’t changed much since Sanger wrote that in 1914.

Why I am an atheist – Christie

My parents lied to me incessantly as a child: about the Easter bunny, Santa Claus, that they were happy in their marriage, that my mother got along with her mother and sisters, that I was an intended pregnancy. I learned that I would eventually discover or be told the truth about everything they told me. I learned the tooth fairy was a lie. I learned that cigarettes didn’t turn you into a psychopathic crackhead junkie murderer. I waited for someone to come clean to me about god. They never did. As a high school freshman, my twenty-something brother asked me why I hadn’t been confirmed. I told him I didn’t believe in god. (After reading the bible I was more sure than ever I didn’t want that.) He still tells people I’m devout.

Christie

Why I Am An Atheist – JD Benefield

I grew up in a Christian household, but my parents were, thankfully, not zealots about it. We went to church multiple times a week, did all the usual Protestant and Southern Baptist stuff that they do, and let me tell you, I didn’t like going to any of it. I was more than willing to say I was a believer (out of fear of being punished) when I was young, but I lived my life as if God was irrelevant. I didn’t like going to school either; for me it was all about drawing and art in general and I would do it during church and classes, get in trouble, and then be more surreptitious about it later. Math? Science? God? What need did I have of them?

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God moves in malicious ways

Cholera is an ugly little beast loaded with all kinds of nasty optimizations to kill human beings. Read this post for a nice summary of all the gory details, and then after explaining all the specific elements of the cholera toxin, asks this plangent question:

How would a Creationist or I.D. advocate explain all of this? They don’t believe that bacteria can develop significant new adaptations, so they’d have to attribute all these changes to recent surreptitious tinkering by an Intelligent Designer (who is presumably still tinkering with cholera bacteria to make it look like they’re evolving, of course). For the sake of argument, let’s assume for a minute that this unlikely explanation is true. If so, we could deduce at least three things about the Intelligent Designer (possibly more):

1) The Intelligent Designer does not like humans. (Why else would s/he/it design lethal pathogens?)

2) The Intelligent Designer is tricking us by surreptitiously intervening in a way that makes it look like bacteria are evolving in order to fool us.

3) The Intelligent Designer is not very smart. If you were an all-powerful Intelligent Designer that wanted to make bacteria that would kill lots of humans, you could do a much better job, because cholera bacteria don’t survive very well in highly acidic conditions. The vast majority of the cholera bacteria you ingest when you drink contaminated water will perish in your stomach acid. From an evolutionary perspective this makes perfect sense, because we know that cholera became a killer through a blind process of evolution by natural selection. From a Creationist or I.D. perspective, however, it makes no sense at all. Indeed, the only way a Creationist or I.D. advocate can explain cholera is to shrug and say that “God moves in mysterious ways”, which is just dodging the question altogether.

Some recognize the problem. I’ll recommend (!) Michael Behe’s book, The Edge of Evolution, which isn’t very good science but at least he comes right up to this problem of the parasites and nasty-man killing nature of Nature, and comes right out and says it: his Intelligent Designer had to have gone in to specifically engineer every brutal feature of every hostile microbe and protist. Further, his Designer is pursuing an ongoing project, and is intentionally introducing almost every significant set of mutations to make pathogens more lethal right now.

I’ve been amused to see the stunned and embarrassed silence of the creationist community to that book. They laud Behe still for Darwin’s Black Box, but The Edge of Evolution? Nah, let’s pretend that one didn’t happen.

Truth will sometimes make you cry

Dan Savage upset some Christian students who walked out on one of his talks when he pointed out the hypocrisy of Christians who cherry-pick which rules to follow…and often seem to pick the worst rules, like “keep slaves” or “beat up gay people”. I thought it was very mild stuff — wait until those craven wimps get a load of me — but it has the right wing in a tizzy, and several of my fellow freethoughtbloggers have commented on it (here, here, here, and here, for instance.)

I just wanted to add one more link to your reading list. Zinnia Jones says Savage is right about the Bible, and she’s exactly right. Fox News can whine that Savage made girls cry (and isn’t that a weird complaint?), but when it gets right down to it, what matters is that what Dan Savage said was true.

Why I am an atheist – Anonymous

It would be fanciful self-flattery to assume that coming to atheism was all my own doing, based solely upon some youthful intellectual shrewdness and critical thinking abilities. Of course, we all can lay claim to unconsciously filing away in our brain any signals and inconsistencies we encounter over time. But of course there were outside influences as well that helped me along the way. I have appreciated this process of reflection upon the more significant causal factors in my youth that helped me clear my mind of a childhood of supernatural nonsense.

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