What #HumanistCommunity?

I wasted too much time in the #humanistcommunity debate on twitter, so I’ll briefly summarize: because I detest the church-like model of Epstein’s humanist chaplain concept, I must dislike organization, leadership, and community. It quickly became obvious that many people are incapable of recognizing anything other than chaplains and churches as a reasonable model for community.

This is annoying because we have quite a few models for godless organizations that avoid that pitfall. CFI. American Atheists. SSA. They don’t have “chaplains”! I wonder how they manage without collapsing?

This is particularly galling because what Epstein claims to be doing is gathering empirical data on how best to run a secular movement. As I pointed out, we’re doing this already by having diverse secular groups springing up all over the place, not by having Greg Epstein defining what a secular meeting is supposed to be. He managed to diss one such incredibly successful group in his interview:

That’s not to say there aren’t homes for atheists on campus. Jesse Galef, communications director for the Secular Student Alliance, said his organization now has 306 chapters nationwide, up from 195 two years ago.

But those groups are loose-knit. They have no official format for meetings; some do service projects while others are as likely to hold an “atheist prom.” Most are led by students, not chaplains, and they have no institutional memory, since their membership turns over every four years.

Epstein wants to create something more permanent with a carefully thought out infrastructure.

Here’s one of the fastest growing secular organizations in the country…so what’s wrong with being “loose-knit”? It seems to work. What’s wrong with an “atheist prom”, or whatever idea provokes and entices the group? Maybe a “carefully thought out infrastructure” would be exactly the thing to crush the spirit of the movement.

Anyway, the argument will never end. Some people will follow this strangely pseudo-religious pattern, some of us will be more anarchic and let the organization bubble up from the bottom. But if we’re looking for empirical examples that work, it seems to me that the secular organizations that are succeeding all seem to have a shortage of chaplains.

Just call me a Quaker, I guess

My post yesterday declining to support churchiness for atheists seems to have irritated a few people, including Greg Epstein himself, and there was a bit of to-and-fro on twitter trying to convince me of the folly of my rejection. It didn’t take.

(There is apparently going to be more twitter chatter about it today, at 5pm (time zone unspecified), under the tag #humanistcommunity. I can’t join in — I’m doing an interview with Michael Slate around that time. I think.)

Now Hemant has joined in with a deeply flawed argument. He criticizes my complaint with a little sarcasm:

Right… who wants to bond with other people, perform community service, have fruitful discussions, find a secular way to celebrate rites of passage, and have someone they can talk to when they’re going through rough times who isn’t going to spit religion in their face?

Who’s disagreeing with any of that? Regular meetings, bonding, service, etc., all sans religion is great! Nowhere in any of my criticisms have I objected to any of those goals.

I also had people claiming my objection was to having weekly meetings. Again, I have no idea where that came from. Minnesota Atheists has weekly meetings, too, and I’d be going to them regularly if I didn’t live a three hour drive away.

Secular parenting, service, discussion, etc fine but if done weekly they’re a cheat & a waste?

So that’s just bizarre. I don’t have a clue what’s running through Epstein’s head. Have weekly meetings; have bi-weekly meetings. Have ’em every day. Organize for community service, have discussions about science and religion, socialize, all that good stuff. Have secular celebrants come in to celebrate milestones in people’s lives. That’s all good.

Just don’t turn it into church. Don’t develop a structure. Don’t have it led by chaplains. I’ve heard Epstein speak; a lot of what he talks about seems to be fond recollections of the way familiar old churches and synagogues were run, and I’m seeing that echoing in the way he’s setting up this “chaplain” nonsense. It’s un-egalitarian, it’s non-secular, it implies a special knowledge possessed by a Head Bozo. Epstein is a product of a theology program and a divinity school, and he’s still trapped in archaic patterns of thought, just trying to stuff atheism into a familiar model. We have lots of atheist groups out there that function perfectly well with things like elections and committees without granting special privilege to people who go through Epstein’s Magic Course. I stated my opinion of chaplains:

And chaplains? I suppose their entrails are just as good for strangling kings as a priest’s, but that’s their only use.

I also asked why the heck we needed them, what they were good for, etc. This is Epstein’s reply.

Humanist chaplains are trained in freethought history & philosophy, ceremony & meeting facilitation, counseling, etc.

People who do counseling and get specific training in it are called “counselors” or “psychiatrists” or “therapists”. They have specific and valuable roles in any community, and it’s not as a generic leader of a group. I’m suspicious of any organization that churns out “chaplains” and calls them “counselors”. The other examples of knowledge…why do I need to be a chaplain to practice them? How do all those other atheist groups out there survive without chaplains?

My objection is simple. No priests. I don’t care what label you call them, creating a hierarchy of privilege is not acceptable to me. As I’ve also said, though, the Epstein approach will definitely appeal to people who are looking for a church substitute — you just won’t find me among them. I don’t want another church, I want them all gone.

I’m living in a small town with 15 petty little sects, each with their building, from humble to historically impressive, and I can encourage nothing that might add yet another sinkhole to the mess we’ve already got. In my perfect atheist future, each of them would shut down, one after the other, and be replaced by secular institutions that actually contributed to the community economically and socially. Replacing them with little Epsteins leading their flock through ceremonies and doing such productive work as lighting candles and playing group therapist and singing godless hymns…<shudder>…no, I wouldn’t be going. I’d be saying nothing has changed but the names.

I will be disappointed that humanity just can’t seem to break free of bad ideas.

Why I am an atheist – James Grimes

It’s not all of the terrible things that happen on Earth that make me think god isn’t real. We’ve all heard the argument that god wouldn’t help quarterbacks win football games while letting children in Africa starve to death, but this doesn’t make me think he’s not real; it just makes me think he’s an asshole. It’s not that bad things happen to good people or good things happen to bad people, it’s that anything happens to anybody. The cause of my atheism isn’t tragedy, but the arbitrary nature of human existence.

Perhaps I expect too much from god, but if he is real, why isn’t everything beautiful? Why isn’t everything perfect? People mention sunsets and that special feeling you get when you are with someone you love as evidence of god’s existence. Even things like death and heartbreak stir up emotions just as profound, if not as pleasant. But they seem to forget that god created everything, that everything is a part of his plan. Love is all well and good, but I can’t believe that a perfect being thought it would be best to include shitting as an unavoidable biological function of human beings.

I can’t believe that a perfect being would create anything less than perfect. Call me crazy, but it seems like a contradiction. Forget the elephant man; pimply faced teens are enough to convince me that god doesn’t exist. If god is real, why isn’t every man an Adonis and every woman his Aphrodite? Why do people have unibrows? Why is my moustache thicker on one side than it is on the other? These may seem like petty questions, but when it comes to the existence of god I truly think they are just as important as questions like why do people feel pain or why is there so much suffering in the world. I can believe that god makes hurricanes; maybe he really is trying to punish those queers. But what intelligent reason could there be for creating say, asparagus?

I must conclude that there is no god, no plan for existence. There is too much imperfection, too much asymmetry in the world we live in. This is of course not to mention the fact that the bible is completely full of shit. On the principles of solipsism and critical thinking I must admit that it is possible that god exists. But if he does, mankind’s reverence for him is matched only by his indifference toward us.


James Grimes
Kansas, United States

Suffer, Earthlings!

Creationists have this idea that history can be nothing but an unremitting decline — their version of the second law of thermodynamics is a weird thing that has everything ratcheting down into chaos equally, with no possibility of local decreases in entropy at the expense of an overall greater increase. They have almost convinced me. I once would have said no one could be dumber than Kent Hovind, but I have seen the works of his son Eric, and it’s a forthright demonstration of creationist thermodynamics.

Eric Hovind has disproven the K-T meteor theory of dinosaur extinction.

It’s impossible for a couple of reasons for an asteroid to kill them [dinosaurs], because the asteroid, they say, was millions of years ago. The earth isn’t millions of years old. And second, they’ve lived with man, as is very very evident.

I’m so sorry. I’m looking at that quote, and realizing that as soon as I press the “publish” button, it will sweep out in a wave of electrons all around the world, and trillions and trillions of innocent neurons will die in agony as they try to parse it. And I think, I have the power to do that, but do I have the right? Is it ethical to inflict such cognitive pain on so many people?

Eh. Atheist, scientist, slightly mad.

I press the button. Bwahahaha!

(Also on Sb)

Anderson Cooper posts a stupid poll

Why Anderson Cooper gave any airtime to that fraud John Edward is a mystery (oh, wait: gullibility sells!), but the poll is even further insult. Send him a message.

Do You Believe in Mediums?

Anderson, unlike his mother Gloria Vanderbilt, admits that he is a “skeptic” of John Edward’s abilities as a medium.

Our cameraman, George, admits that he, too, was a skeptic of channeling spirits. John Edward changed his mind, however, after a spontaneous — and surprisingly accurate — reading during a taping.

How about you? Do you believe mediums have the power to channel those who have passed?

No 72.9%

Yes 27.1%

Atheist church? NO THANK YOU.

Grrr. Epstein. I guess he’ll play his games, but I just find them so irrelevant. He’s exploring ways to structure atheist meetings modeled after religion.

“People get a lot of benefits from their religious communities including profound ways of filling existential needs, like commemorating significant events in their lives,’’ said James Croft, a doctoral student at Harvard Graduate School of Education who is heavily involved with the Humanist Community Project. “Just because they leave behind their religious beliefs doesn’t mean they stop having those needs.

“But secular society has not yet come up with a way to give them moments of significance with the same level of beauty and care that goes into religious ceremonies. That is a big gap.’’

I think it is entirely true that that weekly church ritual has deep appeal to people, and that there’s something there that can grab people and draw them in. But it’s a cheat and a waste. Tapping into our psychology to get us to sit and get sucked into pointless ritual is not how I want to see the atheist movement evolve. I want us to think and act, not reassure ourselves by going through repetitive motions, through superstitious behavior.

Ceremonies to mark major events in our lives, sure; that’s a celebration or a remembrance and entirely appropriate. But freethinkers ought not to be shackled by rote and rites. And they especially should not be led by “chaplains” or whatever the hell they’re going to call them. No gods, no masters, no dogma, and no goddamned priests…not even atheist priests.

Why I am an atheist – Sheila Galliart

My background: I will be 49 years old next week; I am a white heterosexual married woman with two almost-grown children (one girl, a sophomore at university majoring in computer engineering; the other a boy, high school sophomore). I live in Edmond, Oklahoma; a suburb of Oklahoma City. I was raised as a member of the Church of Christ; fundamentalist xtianity at it’s strongest here in the bible belt. The Church of Christ (COC) claims to be the only original, direct descendant church of the New Testament; members are right and everybody else on the planet is WRONG, including the local popular by numbers Southern Baptists.

Why are they wrong? Because they believe that being baptized is just something extra one does to demonstrate faith; whereas members of the COC count baptism, being physically buried in water (dunked not sprinkled) as a KEY, necessary action required for entrance into Heaven. Those that aren’t members of the COC? Why, they shall burn forever in the Lake of Fire aka Hayull.

Please understand that the following constitutes embarrassment to me, NOW:

I graduated from a COC university, Oklahoma Christian University, with a BS degree in Medical Technology, in 1984. I made a 30 on the ACT; I have always been interested in science. Since that time, I have been employed as a Medical Technologist/Clinical Laboratory Scientist (two terms meaning the same thing). My current position is as a US Government Employee (drone), as the Supervisor of Transfusion Services (aka ‘blood bank) at the Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Oklahoma City, OK.

Unfortunately, I was a product of my environment and was a bible believing church-every-Sunday xtian until approximately five years ago; more or less, I cannot exactly recall. At any rate, I have not been ‘to church’ in over five years, for certain.

Okay, I hear the wheels of your mind turning, and you are thinking to yourself: GHEEZ LOUISE HERE IS A CLASSICAL MEMBER OF THE SLOW READING GROUP! A SCIENCE major who believes in the absolute truth of the Bible? Right?

Well, I can’t argue with that! Yes, I am a victim of my upbringing; in no small part which meant that as a person lacking a penis, I was to follow; not to lead. Please understand, I don’t BLAME anybody for my behavior but I am trying to explain how an intelligent human being can believe in total and complete BS until she is 45 years old. I was always a ‘good girl’; and ‘good girls’ made good grades; good girls studied. Good girls also married a fellow xtian; good girls submitted to their fathers and their husbands, good girls did not question.

In my case, I had the fortune of meeting a man with ‘no religion’ at all. Unfortunately, for HIM, I ‘converted’ him to my religion. And, his brother. And, his parents. OOO, look at me; I have converted four persons to the true gospel of keereyst! So many jewels, in my crown of the hereafter! Awesome; I am; and awesome is my jeeebus/gayd! NOT.

Let us Fast Forward, please, to absolve me of at least some embarrassment in your eyes. I began to read a lot of books. CORRECTION: I have always read a lot of books. I keep lists of every book I have read for the past 20 years. More and more, my reading lists consisted of non-fiction books (still overwhelmingly a favorite by at least a 4-1 margin).

The books I read that began to convince me that I and my religion were full of kerap? I know you are thinking I read ‘The God Delusion’. Well, Yes I did! But not right away. The books I read that began to convince me that I was; shall we say politely, in ‘error’?

The major one was, Ghosts of Vesuvius, by Charles Pellegrino. I bought this book just because I was interested in science, and archeology, and how ancient societies functioned. After that? I read a cople of his other books. Here is another mainstream media production that convinced me, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0384766/, ROME, the HBO series. It explains so exquisitely the way the Roman gods affected the common societal norms. I began to see, that my beliefs were not unique at all, but just like the ancient Romans. In other words? Ridiculous.

After that? Laugh if you wish, but the comment threads on religion stories on www.fark.com; convinced me. I was furious, at first! Those heathen godless hellions commenting on the religion threads! But as I read, I assimilated, and I learned. Those horrible liberals! I need not mention that I was a dyed-in-the-wool Republican, and the first presidential vote I ever made? Was for Ronald Reagan.

Eventually I made my way to Pharangula, likely through a Fark thread although I cannot recall for certain. At any rate, for the past five years I have been a ‘gnu atheist.’. I trust and believe in the beauty of the cosmos, and it is more than enough for me. Interestingly, long before I was an admitted atheist, I made sure my grade school children were exposed to Bill Nye The Science Guy. I have the VCR tapes to prove it. So I would have to credit Bill Nye as well as Charles Pellegrino, as ‘de-converting’ me.

Today, I visit scienceblogs.com daily, as well as The Friendly Atheist (Hemant deserves some credit too in my anti-xtian-conversion), and FARK, and am a member of Freedom From Religion Foundation.

Sorry, PZ, for the length of this. I realize you are a busy important person, and I want to extend my kudos to you and everything you do, everyday. PLEASE know that there are those ‘on the bubble’ out there, as I was at one time, who count on you and your blog to convince them of the truth.

In conclusion, if you have read this far, thank you so much! I hope to meet you at Skepticon in November.

Sheila Galliart
United States

The destruction of ignorance is goal enough

I am so tired of the fatalist atheists. Julian Baggini is a perfect example: on the one hand he is incapable of seeing the progress atheism has made in the last decade, declaring us at an “impasse”, and on the other, he announces that he, as a philosopher, is going to come up with the productive, powerful Answer. I’m not interested. We’re long past the point where long-winded rationalizations by gooey apologists are at all useful. We must be aggressive and loud and keep the momentum going.

Ophelia takes him on in detail, I just have to mention a few things.

I do not blame the quagmire on the intransigence of any of the three sides in the debate – believers, atheists and agnostics – but on all of them. Broadly speaking, the problem is that the religious mainstream establishment maintains a Janus-faced commitment to both medieval doctrines and public pronouncements about inclusivity and moderation; agnostics and more liberal believers promote an intellectualised version of religion, which both reduces faith to a thin gruel and fails to reflect the reality of faith on the ground; while the new atheists are spiritually tone-deaf, fixated on the superstitious side of religion to the exclusion of its more interesting and valuable aspects.

LIKE WHAT? I guarantee you that every single “valuable aspect” he could mention (which he doesn’t) don’t need religion and are fully achievable by secular institutions…except the lies and promises of magic afterlives. Just for once I’d like these guys to lay it on the line and tell me what, exactly, humanity can’t accomplish without religion.

And then there’s this:

As a querulous member of the atheist camp, one of my aims is to end up with a richer, more constructive vision for what should follow the “new atheism”, which may well have been needed, but does not appear capable of taking us much further. To use another military analogy, the new atheism seems designed for effective invasion, but not long-term occupation.

I’ve often heard this assertion that we have to come up with something positive to replace the religion we eradicate. That would be nice, but it’s not essential: when a doctor purges a person of parasites, they’re not going to moan and fret about what they’re going to replace the worms with — getting rid of them is sufficient benefit.

Even that analogy is flawed, however. We’re getting rid of ignorance. We don’t need to replace it with a different kind of ignorance. It’s enough to learn the truth about reality.

I just got back from Cincinnati, right next door to Answers in Genesis and the Creation “Museum”. I do not feel at all charitable to religion, and my mood was not lifted by the latest insanity from Ken Ham. This is not the Omphalos argument — it’s worse.

As I have spoken at conferences over the years, people have often come up to me and said:

“When I am talking to someone who believes in an old earth, one of the things I say to them, as a young-earth creationist, is that God didn’t make Adam a baby—He made him an adult. And when He created the universe, He created it fully functional, with the appearance of age—even though it wasn’t old.”

My response often shocks these speakers: “By saying the universe looks old, you are trusting that dating methods can give us an apparent old age for the universe—but they can’t.”

Let me explain. When people say the universe has “apparent age,” usually they are assuming, for whatever reason, that the universe “looks old.” I have often found that, unconsciously, such people have already accepted that the fallible dating methods of scientists can give great ages for the earth. So if they believe what the Scripture says about a young universe, they have to explain away this apparent great age.

Ham is denying all of science and all of the evidence. The science does say the universe is very, very old, there’s no getting around it. Ham’s argument is a simple claim that all of science is completely wrong.

Why does he do this? Religion. I have no reason to believe it provides a positive benefit, nor do I need to replace it with some pretentious philosophy. These clowns are wrong.

I’m also not at an impasse. We’re going to crush them.

Seems like a good goal to me.

Why I am an atheist – Nick Martin

Part of me wants to give a smart-assed answer to this question, because at my core, I am a smart-ass. Something like “because religion is evil” (which it is) or “because the Flying Spaghetti Monster told me to be one” (which may also be true). But, when I look at my core, the only answer I have to give is “because it’s the only position a skeptic can have”.

It’s something relatively recent in my life. I was raised in a conservative Christian household. I had to go to church every week, it was a requirement that I go to at least one service. But at the same time, my parents encouraged my love of astronomy specifically and science in general. And in retrospect, that is where it all started. That love taught me to question everything (which I most certainly did).

But getting out of the other side of my upbringing took time. I went off to college, Missouri State University (then Southwest Missouri State), and hooked up with Chi Alpha (XA) Campus Ministries. This was before they had Skepticon, a FSM church, or really any skeptical movement at all. Again, in hindsight, I feel a bit of shame, because I understand now that prosthelytizing my beliefs had to have done some real harm to people, something I can’t change. I only hope that by speaking out against religion now can undo some of that.

I was a skeptic with most everything else growing up. I didn’t believe in ghosts, ESP, aliens, or anything else in the pseudo-scientific range, but like so many other “skeptic believers,” I was not willing to turn that same scrutiny on my beliefs. Of course, like a college student, and to be fair, most human beings, it turns out I was also a fairly bad Christian, and a fairly normal college student, in liking loud music, drinking, sex, and skipping classes.

That all started to change after some a series of bad events pushed me more into that “good Christian” category again. I went to church, went to small groups, and, dangerously enough, started to read my bible. And for some reason, one I still cannot explain, I started to question why I believed what I did. I looked back at myself, and what I had been crediting god for getting me through, and realized that he hadn’t done shit.

It wasn’t a slow process. I wouldn’t even call myself an atheist until, reading Phil Plaitt’s blog, he mentioned, off-hand, someone named “PZ.” It was some inside joke I wasn’t part of, so I dug. I found out who this “PZ” was… and read enough to understand that, as a skeptic, there is only one position to be had. You cannot dismiss all fairies except the one you like any more than you can deny a color you don’t care for doesn’t exist (otherwise, the world would be rid of mauve by now). I didn’t like facing it at first, but I couldn’t dodge the questions. And when you look at belief the same way you look at ghosts, there is no way you can’t see it for what it is.

In the end, it was my own skepticism that forced me to realize the only thing I could be is an atheist.

Nick Martin
United States

Why I am an atheist – J

I am not a theist because I was born that way. I am fortunate enough not to have been indoctrinated into any cults, brainwashed, or subjugated as a child. I am not a theist because I was born in this time, in this country, and with this brain.

I am not a theist because the idea that I was created by someone who owns me forever is repugnant. I am not superstitious, I am a lover of science and nature, I like things that are logical, and I like to be in control. I have never longed for an inherent purpose to my life; I am here because I was born. I don’t want to worship anything, I don’t want to live forever, I don’t want to be told I’m a sinner, and I don’t find comfort in having all the answers, especially when the answers must be taken on faith and don’t answer anything. I am atheist because I am one of the most fortunate beings ever to have lived on this earth. I am one of the most fortunate beings ever to have lived because I am atheist.

J
, United States

(I put out a simple call for your explanations for why you’re an atheist, and I’m still inundated with submissions. This will be a daily feature on Pharyngula.)