Why should you go to the Reason Rally? Here’s a video that makes the case for you.
Rise up. We can do better. But first we have to stand against superstitious nonsense.
I am an atheist probably since I was 10. I guess it was an inevitable gradual process that comes to be by learning about science and plain old common sense.
A few events I remember that shaped my skeptic mind went on like this:
While learning about the origin of the Universe in the 4th grade, a teacher made the ridiculous mistake of putting in the same level the Big Bang, the Steady State, and none other than the “God done it” hypothesis. I was 9 but even then I knew one definitely didn’t belong there. And while there already was definitive evidence for the Big Bang and the Steady State was long gone, the teacher didn’t seem to know this – nor did she know the answer to my sincere but apparently unconfortable question – If God made it, then who made God?. She was religious as most people in Colombia are (we used to be officially catholic until 1991) and she brought her ideas into the classroom despite them not being on the textbook. Unfortunately I was the only one taken aback by this.
Anyway, she didn’t like me very much and was constantly bothering me about my long hair.
Another thing that happened was realising how much in common the local indigenous myths and other folk tales had with this other story everyone- including myself – seemed to take more seriously. Everybody was just obviously making stuff up to explain what they didn’t or couldn’t know. Once I learned about this and about the other myths and legends from everywhere around the world I asked myself “What if we were colonised by the chinese or some other culture?.
It became evident that any people will create and postulate what they need in order to make sense of what they can’t undestand. In that moment I knew that religions must all be man made.
Finally, I learned about Evolution and really understood what it meant for our supposed “special place in the cosmos”. My biology teacher insisted that while it’s true that we’ve evolved, we are somehow appart from the rest of all species. I knew this was rubbish, I’m an ape and so are you – deal with it.
Somehow feeling at the same level than a snake, a gorilla, a fish, or all those bugs that creeped the hell out of me back then, made me realise how incredibly fortunate I was to exist along them, and have the joy of sharing this precious time in this incredible world with the company of my family and friends, and to not waste my time with superstitious nonsense.
This, among many other things, is what lead me to the conclusion that reality is all there is and matters, so learn and appreciate all you can about it. And that’s why I’m an Atheist.
…and also not an astrologer, not a witchcraftist, a vicious antihomeopath, also not a ufologist, well… you get the point.
Thinking Shogun
Colombia
There is a church in New Zealand that has a genuinely repulsive billboard: it boldly claims that “JESUS HEALS CANCER“. It’s a lie, of course: they have no evidence of such a power. In an interview with the smiling, cheerful, blithely fuckwitted pastor, he openly admits that the congregants who were “healed” were receiving modern cancer therapy, and that he tells them to stay on it while receiving their magical pretend healing, and not to get off it until the doctors actually verify that they are in remission — so it’s another case of doctors doing the real work, while Jesus just steals the credit.
Do watch the whole video. The television announcer is actually good and critical, which is such a surprise to see for those of us accustomed to the glib gladhanders of American TV. He brings on someone from an organization called Consumer NZ, though, who is a bit slimy and evasive and keeps making excuses for the church.
Oh, man, and at the end of the video, the idjit pastor is doubling down and adding a tally of cures to his billboard.
At 5pm Central time, I’ll be doing a live radio discussion on KLAY 1180 AM in Lakewood, WA on their Ask an Atheist program. It’ll be me vs. Greg Epstein in a DUEL TO THE DEATH!
Actually, I expect a civil discussion. He’s an atheist, just a rather wimpy one.
If you missed it, here’s an mp3 of the discussion.
I have had this conversation so many times.
Read the whole thing. It’s only failing is that the atheist side of the argument is presented so politely.
It’s been a while since I said this, so it’s time for a booster shot: I really hate “framing”. It’s a sell-out that leads to people making their opponents’ arguments for them, as they try to bend over backwards to see it through the oppositions’ eyes. It’s far, far better to see your own position clearly and try to explain it well to others.
I was reminded of that by this excellent point made by Amanda: that in the process of trying to reach a subsidiary goal, making contraception available to all, many liberals are conceding a larger, more important point to the conservatives and buying into their dogma that sex is evil.
All that said, I want to be clear that it’s not enough to be outraged at the anti-contraception shit and take it as a given that it’s way out of bounds. I mean, it seems obvious that it is, but without an aggressive counterattack from the left, right wingers may gain ground in their attempts to redefine the over 99% of women in the country who have sex for fun and not just for procreation as sluts. We need to frame our arguments as a full-throated, unapologetic belief that sex is good, women are good, and women’s right to enjoy sexual pleasure without shaming or government interference is good. Unfortunately, I’m not seeing enough of that. Instead, the most important argument—that a woman has a right to be a sexual creature and that sex is good—being abandoned by all sorts of liberals and feminists. The most common form this concession takes is well-meaning, and often person conceding the argument that women who have sex for pleasure are somehow less-than don’t intend to concede it. But that’s nonetheless what they’re doing. That concession looks like this:
"Some women aren’t even taking the birth control pill for contraception! They need it for cramps/endometriosis/etc."
Every time you say this, a right winger wanting to imply that women who have sex for pleasure are sluts gets his wings. This statement and all variations on it feeds into the right wing claim that a) contraception is not health care and b) that women who have sex for pleasure are so indefensible that you have to lean on off-label uses for a contraceptive drug to justify its existence. It also does absolutely nothing to defend the non-pill contraception that’s covered by the health care act, such as IUDs or sterilization. Plus, that gives them an easy out, which is to say that they’re fine with insurance covering pills that are prescribed for non-contraception use, but just object to prescriptions for women who use them to prevent pregnancy.
It’s a very political argument to make, very short-sighted and damaging in the long run, but I can understand why people do it. You’ve got an immediate political battle to win, the defeat of a bill that strangles access to contraception. So you take the typical approach of your everyday social primate with a theory of mind: you imagine the world through your opponent’s eyes, and then you try to frame your arguments to take into account his or her values, to find reasons that they would find compelling. Unfortunately, what it accomplishes more than anything is to make particularly odious attitudes commonplace…and it makes the next fight harder.
Our problem isn’t a few bills in state legislatures. It’s the whole deeply imbedded, constantly reinforced notion that good women are sexless and chaste, while bad girls are the ones who enjoy sex and actually have sex with more partners than just the one man who owns her. That’s why those right-wingers are getting their wings: because every time we implicitly accept that premise, we dig our progressive goals a slightly deeper grave.
And oh, how deeply this poison is infiltrating our culture! The other night, I was watching Much Ado About Nothing, the Branagh version. I very much like part of the story — the banter between Benedick and Beatrice is wonderful — but another part, the relationship between Claudio, a dashing soldier, and Hero, the beautiful young bride-to-be, is horrifying. Claudio is tricked by the villain (played by Keanu Reeves, unbelievably) into thinking that Hero was playing around with another man on the side…and then he waits until the hour of the wedding to publicly shame and humiliate this woman he supposedly loves with all of his heart.
CLAUDIO
Sweet prince, you learn me noble thankfulness.
There, Leonato, take her back again:
Give not this rotten orange to your friend;
She’s but the sign and semblance of her honour.
Behold how like a maid she blushes here!
O, what authority and show of truth
Can cunning sin cover itself withal!
Comes not that blood as modest evidence
To witness simple virtue? Would you not swear,
All you that see her, that she were a maid,
By these exterior shows? But she is none:
She knows the heat of a luxurious bed;
Her blush is guiltiness, not modesty.LEONATO
What do you mean, my lord?
CLAUDIO
Not to be married,
Not to knit my soul to an approved wanton.
It’s a terrible scene, full of Shakespearean viciousness, and all of the contempt and hatred falls on poor Hero for her supposed licentiousness. And then, of course, the true villains are exposed and her true and good chastity vindicated. The resolution was just as appalling as the accusation, because it simply endorses Claudio’s behavior, that it’s perfectly reasonable to scorn and despise a woman if she’d ever shown passion for another human being.
Just once, it would be nice if the heroine turned out to be a lusty, experienced sexual partner and the moment of revelation, in which the horrible accusations are shown to be base and dishonest, didn’t involve showing she was innocent of the crime of sex, but instead involved the man realizing that he loved her anyway, and that there was nothing wrong with a woman enjoying sex…and realizing that the wedding night was going to be phenomenal (for him, if not for her; in the play, Claudio also brags about his abstinence, so I suspect he’s going to be a bit of a disappointment.)
But no, we keep perpetuating this view. We keep supporting the men and women and religions and other institutions that make sure young people are ignorant and ashamed — we look the other way or don’t even see it as a problem ourselves, but it’s really just another kind of child abuse. Let’s keep the children terrified of hell, ashamed of their bodies, and disgusted by their sexual feelings…because, by god, that’s how our parents raised us, and no way are those little brats going to grow up to find joy in what has been denied us!
I favor making contraception available to all because I think everyone should be able to have happy, safe, consensual sex. It’s also a nice bonus that some forms of contraception alleviate menstrual problems or side-effects like migraines, but it’s dishonest and bad framing to pretend that those are the real reasons we should encourage sex education, or insist that health insurance cover prophylaxis, and every time we sweep the most important issue of happy sexy time under the rug, we are pandering to the prudish conservatives.
And don’t get me started on that abortion slogan of “safe, legal, and rare”: I want abortion to be safe, legal, and available as often as women need or want it.
I rumbled Santa and religion before I was 6 and I really thought until I got to high school that everyone knew both were tosh but just Yes, Virginia pretended for kids.
I thank my parents for *never* mentioning *anything* to do with religion. I think they had faith of some sort but they were determined that I should make up my own mind.
I have no idea if *any* of my teachers were religious and I thank them for their profound professionalism. It honestly never occurred to me that people really believed any of that stuff when the things in my school and local library books were so much cooler.
I am atheist because I was allowed to make up my own mind. This was one of the many advantages of growing up during the 70’s in New Zealand.
Doug Mackie
New Zealand
Humanity, despite existing in discrete units (which we call people), is really one grander entity which breathes and behaves in peculiar manners. The casual modern anthropologist can easily witness the human machine’s idiosyncrasies, though often these details go unnoticed for being too ingrained into the quotidian lifestyle. Why most subway-car riders, for instance, deign not to speak nor make eye contact, or why these creatures by the thousands prolong internal discomfort by withholding offensive gaseous emissions can be understood as an adaptive response to living in close, interactive proximity with one another and living to certain established social standards which evolve over time. Without consciously considering why or how these responses came to be as they are, many millions passively act them out on autopilot.
The human autopilot transcends actions and delves into thoughts and beliefs. I have wanted to perform an experiment whereby a handful of assorted passers-by would be propositioned to agree or disagree on the statement that consumption of sugar causes hyperactivity. Without a doubt the response would be a staggering ‘yes’, and my experiment would demonstrate a general understanding of this concept in the populace. The interesting quirk of this exercise is that in truth, this understanding is unfounded, and is instead the result of many generations of hearsay and anecdotal evidence. Why, then, is this non-truth so prevalent?
How does the singular human machine operate? It has up-time and down-time, ill days and well days, nutritional needs, waste removal systems, mood swings, shaving needs, clipping needs, washing needs, and dirty deeds. On the molecular level, its nuance surpasses anything Steve Jobs could have dreamed of, and it always hangs in a tenuous balance between health and death. Naturally, the ways of sustaining the singular human machine must be conservative; that is, whatever worked the day before could and should work again today. One foot in front of the other, and so on, leads man to his mate and home, and puts bread in his mouth, and allows him to breathe through the night to see the next day. He cannot afford to dramatically alter his schedule lest he neglect his body’s urgent requirements for refreshment.
By understanding that the autopilot which guides man through his living-chores also guides his assumptions and understandings, one can see the main reason for why I am an atheist. The gods are the giddiness of children after they eat too many cookies; the gods are understanding that illness is due to humour imbalance; the gods are knowing that the left-handed are evil. Without evidence to sustain it, the god-concept is the co-pilot to the autopilot of the human machine – it was there yesterday, and is therefore true today, all things coming from god, post hoc ergo procter hoc. I do not believe in gods because the concept is a human response to a lack of information about our bodies.
What I suspect sustains the non-truth concept of god or gods is a shared quasi- understanding of similar yet distinct psychosomatic phenomena. Another way, it can be understood as such: two parties who can at least minimally agree on having experienced some similar conscious feeling can more easily misappropriate the cause of that feeling to an external agent than can either of them alone. A thousand parties who can at least minimally agree on having experienced the same phenomena increases the apparent truth even more. Through generations of snowballing, the assumptions which underlie the god-concept have been taken as granted without warrant, and the result is the rainbow of devotions that exist today. They are the product of (and targeted at) mens’ minds, in order to make sense of shared sensations and feelings. Cognitive psychology and an emerging neuroscience will expose nuances of the human condition that gods once were so useful to explain.
Steven Ahern
United States
A better poll question would be, “Is the Telegraph always this horribly and incompetently written?” We could also ask, “Are Christians always this stupid?”
There was recently a public discussion between Richard Dawkins and the Archbishop of Canterbury. Look what surprised the audience and the article’s author:
There was surprise when Prof Dawkins acknowledged that he was less than 100 per cent certain of his conviction that there is no creator.
The philosopher Sir Anthony Kenny, who chaired the discussion, interjected: “Why don’t you call yourself an agnostic?” Prof Dawkins answered that he did.
An incredulous Sir Anthony replied: “You are described as the world’s most famous atheist.”
He’s a scientist. We’re never absolutely certain of anything, and one thing you’ll hear over and over from any competent scientist is that all knowledge is provisional, subject to revision if better evidence is brought to bear on it. What Dawkins said was not novel — and if anyone had actually read The God Delusion, they’d know that this explanation was right in there.
And what kind of philosopher is unaware that you can be both agnostic and atheist at the same time? I don’t have knowledge of any gods, but my knowledge of the universe and the absence of evidence from proponents of god-belief, as well as their inability to provide an adequate epistemology of belief, has convinced me that the existence of such beings is so vanishingly unlikely that I reject all gods. I will continue to do so until the believers bring out reasonable, compelling evidence for a clearly stated hypothesis. What’s so hard about that?
Unfortunately, here’s the flamingly stupid question the Telegraph chose to run instead.
Does God “clutter up” explanations of how the universe began?
Yes, there is no place for religion in science 26.69%
No, a theory of creation is compatible with the Big Bang 73.31%
I don’t give a flying fart whether a fairy tale is “compatible” with a scientific theory; that usually just means the fairy tale says nothing about the phenomenon. What matters is whether the story provides any testable evidence, and no, the Bible does not, therefore it is irrelevant.
You may have noticed that all the choices in the Readers’ Choice Awards for favorite atheist blog are white, so it’s not very diverse (two women out of five candidates, though, is pretty good — a few years ago it was a struggle to even get women noticed in this movement). A few people have been criticizing the awards for that, and I noted that this is a problem that plagues online popularity contests — they tend to be ruled by the majority and exclude all minorities.
To his credit, Austin Cline has responded to the criticisms, and he didn’t dig in his heels. Instead, he’s looking for suggestions to improve the breadth of the sample next time around. That’s the way to do it!
I’m still insisting that you go vote for the old white guy every day anyway.
