It’s not too late to sign up: Project 42 is this weekend in lovely downtown Fargo, North Dakota. I’ll be there, so will Michael Shermer and Richard Carrier and Richard Haynes.
You might want to skip it if you’re a theist. There might be woodchippers around.
That Anglican archbishop, Rowan Williams, is complaining about the atheists again.
I’m not avoiding the point that the coolness of atheism is very much in evidence. The problem is it’s become a bit of a vicious circle. Atheism is cool, so books about atheism are cool.
They get a high profile, and books that say Richard Dawkins is wrong don’t get the same kind of publicity because atheism is the new cool thing.
It’s difficult to break into that, but plenty of people are trying.
He’s making a very common error of perspective. I hate to break the news to all of you, but atheism is not cool. It’s not cool at all. It’s the domain of nerds and geeks and sciencey weirdos with beards and snarky women who are way smarter than the guys chasing them. We are not rock stars. We are not fabulously sexy (well, except for Brian Cox). We tend not to have loud movie star personalities (well, except for Neil deGrasse Tyson). Nothing personal, but if you put together a line-up of one of the Kardashians, Miley Cyrus, Justin Bieber, Daniel Radcliffe, and Richard Dawkins, and showed them to the average person on the American street, most of our citizens’ eyes would light up in recognition at the first four, and look quizzically at the guy on the end. And no, it wouldn’t help much to swap in Brian Cox for Richard Dawkins.
But that’s the point: cool is a relative thing. Coolness depends on what you contrast it with. And that’s really Rowan Williams’ problem.
It’s not the coolness of atheism. It’s the lameness of religion.
Look at me. I’m moderately popular, and I’m a schlubby college professor at a small college. I’ve got a beard and I wear nerdy ties. I’m nobody. But stand me next to a priest, or a creationist, and the contrast makes me look white-hot and super-cool, even though I’m not. It’s been my cunning trick for years.
So the problem for Williams isn’t that atheism is cool at all — it’s that our cool/lame quotient rockets to stratospheric heights whenever we’re in opposition to old geezy wankers who are chanting antique gobbledygook about magic rabbis and dead people. And those apologists trying break into our schtick? All they are doing is making us look cooler.
There’s only one solution. If the priests just fade away and stop looking like such gomers next to us, then atheism will look much, much less cool. We’ll have to compete with Michael Bay and video games and porn for attention, and then there won’t be anyone chattering about how cool we are any more.
OH NO! I just revealed the secret to making atheism irrelevent — for all the religious folk to disappear into the woodwork. Now we’re dooooomed!
Both Russell Blackford and Ophelia Benson have expressed some surprise at this statement from the JREF.
we at the JREF do take diversity seriously, and it’s something we strive to achieve at our events. If the skeptics community is going to thrive and grow, it’s essential that no one feel unwelcome or excluded due to race, gender, religion, or sexual orientation.
It’s weird, but what it really is is a historical relic and an issue of scope. The JREF piece makes that clear a little further down.
One other point Christian raises is that atheism and skepticism are often conflated, making religious people feel uncomfortable at TAM and other skeptical events. This is a controversial issue within the skeptical community, and there are many facets to the discussion that are beyond the scope of this post. But one fact is certain: the JREF is not an atheist organization. To be sure, we count many atheists among our allies, but our focus is on science advocacy and education. We regularly work with religious believers of many different stripes to further that cause as well.
There have been some fierce battles fought in the skeptical community over this: people’s feelings have been hurt, they’ve marched out in a snit, they still occasionally snipe and protest. It’s a tricky balancing act, and for many years they could get away with it: you could debunk UFOs and chupacabras and ESP without pissing off the Catholics in the audience, so the community could grow and encompass a wider audience that included some religious people, because their sacred cow wasn’t the one getting gored.
There really are people in the movement who want religion treated with kid gloves. This is an even sharper example of someone who actively wants religion represented positively in skepticism, which is rather wacky.
The irony of an atheist-only panel on “diversity” did not escape me, but I expected it to pass without comment. The sentiment that skepticism is an atheist club is recent, but it has taken root very quickly. As with other sorts of “do-fish-know-they’re-wet?” privilege in other, larger communities, the assumption of default atheism is rarely questioned in the skeptical subculture. Indeed, the panel set out to discuss diversity in gender, sexual orientation, age, race, class, education, and physical ability—but not religion.
This is especially strange when we consider that scientific skepticism was to a large extent founded by people of faith, including Harry Houdini (still arguably the greatest skeptical investigator of all time, and the model for the investigative tradition embodied today by James Randi and Joe Nickell) and Martin Gardner (the model for the modern skeptical literature). At least one speaker at TAM9 was herself religious (Pamela Gay) and there were, as always, members of multiple religious groups and spiritual traditions in the audience. These skeptics often express that anti-theism is a barrier to participation in our science-based events. Whatever your own feelings about religion, this is obviously a topic which fits under the heading of “diversity.”
So you can well imagine that I was surprised into applause when D.J. Grothe raised exactly that topic: religious diversity in the skeptical community. Nor was I the only one clapping. In any given year, the crowd at TAM includes not only pro-science people of faith (despite the chill) and secularists who will go to the wall for them, but also a great many traditional scientific skeptics who see untestable claims as simply off topic.
That’s changing. Skepticism should and must embrace a wider range of socially relevant issues, and I think the leaders in the movement are recognizing that — showing that dowsing doesn’t work is a useful exercise in training critical thinking, but it’s not a big sociopolitical issue, you know? There was a huge fuss raised when Richard Dawkins was invited to speak at TAM a while back, precisely because he wasn’t going to give religion the exemption from criticism it has always demanded and usually gotten.
My position is partial agreement: JREF is not an atheist organization. It’s primary purpose is not overt criticism of religion, and it does not and should not demand perfect ideological purity of all of its members: if somebody wants to believe in UFOs, but is happy to critically analyze Bigfoot claims, they should have a place…it’s just that if they get on the podium to babble about flying saucers, we get to point and laugh and express our disrespect for that credulous foolishness, just as we can maybe show respect for a serious dissection of cryptozoological claims.
Same with religion. Maybe you’re a religious astronomer; you have a place in the skeptical community telling us about the wonders of the cosmos, but the god stuff is not going to play well. And that you think Jesus is real (or that the aliens are visiting us from Beta Reticuli) does not mean you get to demand that no one dare dispute your delusions.
If we had to blacklist every weird belief that someone in the audience at TAM had, nobody would ever be able to talk about anything. Not even dowsing.
Eden Prairie, one of the Minneapolis suburbs, is getting a visit from that piglet-lovin’ fella, Ken Ham on 29-30 April, at Grace Church. My calendar is actually free that weekend, so far. I’m tempted to crash the event and witness the lies firsthand, unless something more entertaining comes up, like a prostate exam or a tax audit.
Creationism is not quite as pervasive a problem in the UK as it is in the US, but it’s still rising…so it’s good to see that British scientists are being aggressive in confronting bad educational policies. A number of prominent scientists, including Richard Dawkins and David Attenborough, have stepped forward to demand that evolution, not creationism, be taught in the classroom. Here is their position statement, with the signatories and organizations backing it:
Creationism and ‘intelligent design’
Creationism and ‘intelligent design’ are not scientific theories, but they are portrayed as scientific theories by some religious fundamentalists who attempt to have their views promoted in publicly-funded schools. There should be enforceable statutory guidance that they may not be presented as scientific theories in any publicly-funded school of whatever type.
Organisations like ‘Truth in Science’ are encouraging teachers to incorporate ‘intelligent design’ into their science teaching. ‘Truth in Science’ has sent free resources to all Secondary Heads of Science and to school librarians around the country that seek to undermine the theory of evolution and have ‘intelligent design’ ideas portrayed as credible scientific viewpoints. Speakers from Creation Ministries International are touring the UK, presenting themselves as scientists and their creationist views as science at a number of schools.
The current government guidance that creationism and ‘intelligent design’ should not be taught in school science should be made statutory and enforceable. It also needs to be made comprehensive so that it is clear that any portrayal of creationism and ‘intelligent design’ as science (whether it takes place in science lessons or not) is unacceptable.
Evolution
An understanding of evolution is central to understanding all aspects of biology. The teaching of evolution should be included at both primary and secondary levels in the National Curriculum and in all schools.
Currently, the study of evolution does not feature explicitly in the National Curriculum until year 10 (ages 14-15), but the government is overseeing a review of the whole curriculum with the revised National Curriculum for science being introduced in September 2012 to be made compulsory from 2013. Free Schools and Academies are not obliged to teach the National Curriculum and so are under no obligation to teach about evolution at all.
Excellent! When creationists underhandedly try to smuggle lies and nonsense into the classroom, it calls for a firm and uncompromising response.
Can we steal this and get a similar initiative going here in the US?
(Also on Sb)
And deeply regrets it.
It’s very sad. I remember when cable TV was new, and had such promise — there would be channels dedicated to specialty disciplines, that would pursue a niche doggedly for a slice of the audience. The History Channel would be about history, not von Daniken and Nazi UFOs; Discovery would be about science, not motorcycle enthusiasts and bargain hunters; the Learning Channel would be about learning, not octuplets and hoarding; the SciFi channel would actually present decent science-fiction, instead of schlock horror, ghost-hunters, and fake wrestling. Garbage conquered all, didn’t it?
(Also on Sb)
Tell me if you’ve heard this excuse for religion before. Religion isn’t really about what people believe — all that stuff about salvation and an afterlife and heaven and hell and holy books isn’t that important, it’s instead all about comforting rituals and emotion and feelings. It’s like art, like poetry — nobody really believes in that stuff literally, except crazy people, so all those rabid atheists are barking up the wrong tree.
That is so tired, so old, so familiar that anyone who tries to advance such a stupid argument ought to be ashamed at how out of touch they are. John Gray, that favored religious apologist for the British press, drags out the old fleabag and tries to coax it around the track once more. That horse is dead, though, and all the flogging is doing nothing but making the bones and hide bounce about.
Richard Dawkins’ new book, The Magic of Reality: How We Know What’s Really True will be available on 4 October (lucky folk in the UK have it right now), and you know what that means? Book tour. Poor Richard will be dragged hither and yon in a frantic schedule that would leave me exhausted — I have no idea how he does it. You can find his UK tour schedule online; the US gets him for about two weeks in early October, and you can look that schedule up in a pdf. Miami, New York, Charlottesville,
Lynchburg, Richmond, Houston, Rochester, and Detroit win the lottery this time around.
Did he miss you? He missed me, too, although I will catch up with him in Houston.
Also, James Randi is touring, but he’s only going to Canada. I choose to interpret all this as a tacit acknowledgment that the western half of the United States is so much more enlightened than the places the luminaries are visiting, that we don’t need them.
…says the guy in the small town with 15+ churches.
I made an error, too, because I can’t read Swedish. The blog listed below is someone else explaining Khalid’s situation; Khalid’s blog is here, and it’s in English!
Your country is about to make a major mistake! They are preparing to deport Khalid and his family — his wife and three children — back to Pakistan, their native country. One problem: he’s one of those noisy blogging atheists, and while I can appreciate that they’re an annoying, obnoxious lot, kicking him out of Sweden means he’ll be sent to Pakistan. Sweden is refusing his request for asylum, which basically means that he’s being given a death sentence. It doesn’t mean that the Pakistani government will have him directly executed; they have a subtler plan. Under the laws there, any good Muslim who kills an apostate faces no punishment.
I don’t know who to contact, and the information I was sent provided no recommendations for how to address this looming problem (we only have a few days to act). If anyone has any idea about who we should be howling at, let me know in comments or email, and I’ll add it to this post.
