And she sounded so nice on the phone

The story Barbara Bradley Hagerty cobbled together from interviews with atheists is now up. It’s called “A Bitter Rift Divides Atheists“, and it’s very strange. Her emphasis is on the differences within the atheist community, and she makes it sound like atheism is about to blow apart into a collection of warring sects, just like religion, and offers scornful quotes about how the New Atheism offers nothing.

That’s not the message I gave when she interviewed me, but maybe she got it from the others. Or maybe it’s what she wanted to hear.

I told her a number of things. I said that atheism doesn’t have a central dogma or doctrine, so of course we have a variety of different views under the catch-all category of atheism; and that is a strength of our ideas, that we can freely argue among ourselves. I also explained that we need a variety of approaches to appeal to a wide range of people, and that my personal belief was that we should encourage a thousand flowers of godlessness to bloom, all different.

As to the charge that atheism is a purely negative philosophy, I also said that wasn’t so: that it’s a rejection of old dogmas and superstitions, sure, but that it’s built on the positive value of rationalism and materialism, and scientific thinking. We adopt moral values from humanistic ideas that are centered on stuff that actually exists, like other human beings, rather than imaginary commands from an invisible man in the sky.

She also asked about Paul Kurtz, who does sound rather bitter in the sound bites used in the interview. I think Kurtz is a smart guy, and he has made and is making significant contributions to atheism, and I told Hagerty that I respected him…but that he’s only part of the atheist mosaic, not the totality of it. And the same goes for people like Dawkins and Hitchens and Harris and Dennett.

None of that mattered, I guess. She had the goal of making a story that put atheism in a bad light, so she picked a version that made us look like schismatics on the verge of a Thirty Years War. If there’d been some kind of alien unity among us, she probably would have made a story about our intent to crown Richard Dawkins pope. Oh, well. She’s wrong.

Uh-oh. Atheists will have trouble refuting this

This is a video by an apostate: an atheist who has left the flock and become a believer. I was all ready to point a gnarled bony finger at him and screech to my minions that he must be rent limb from limb, but then I made the mistake of listening further…and he actually makes a good case.

I’m thinking, though, that if I get sick this year and don’t recover, then I’ll be able to mock and laugh at him again. Briefly. From my deathbed.

A telling silence

The atheism conference in Australia is going to be huge (note the logo in the left sidebar here), with attendance in the thousands, a swarm of speakers, etc. It’s fairly typical for regions to support that kind of influx of tourist dollars into their economies; they want to encourage more visitors. Strangely, though, while the conference leadership has applied for government support in this project, there has been no word yet.

Hmmmm.

Now you might be thinking that this sort of enterprise should be entirely self-supporting, which is true. But then again, consider similar sorts of events with a religious goal, like the Parliament of World Religions or Catholic Youth Day, to which the Australian government has cheerfully provided assistance. There seems to be something unfair going on here.

It seems to me that there are only two consistent positions to take here. Either there will be an equitable distribution of government support to all such conventions, or there will be no support for any of them. If there is to be no assistance to the Global Atheist Convention, then I should hope that the Australian government will also immediately withdraw all funds that would have gone to the religious conventions they’ve been propping up.

I haven’t even touched this poll yet!

Lately, all the polls people have been sending me are already going in the right direction — have I become superfluous? Are atheists everywhere already gleefully clicking buttons in polls without my prompting?

Oh, well, here’s another one. An ambitious priest gets assigned to Brighton, which he calls “the most Godless city in Britain”. He has declared that it is now his intention to transform the place into a sanctuary for unctuous old farts with their brains scrambled by nonsense (uh, those are my words, not his, if you couldn’t tell.) So the local newspaper ran a poll to see what people thought of that.

Is Reverend Archie Coates right to repeat the description of Brighton as “Godless”?

yes, and it’s good he intends to help change this:
14%

no, it has its troubles but it is generally a good place:
14%

being described as Godless is a compliment:
72%

Those secularists in Britain are just having a good time giving Archie the raspberry, aren’t they?

One more quote from Rev Archie:

Rev Coates last night said: “Since I moved to Brighton six weeks ago I have realised that it is a lot more godly than I imagined. If you look around you see the creativity, the vibrancy and the life of the city.”

Twit. Those are symptoms of godlessness, not godliness.

Nine Lessons and Carols for Godless People

All right, England, enough is enough. Every Christmas, those people over there get some fabulous secular midwinter celebration, and what do we godless Americans get? Another war on Christmas waged by an indignant Bill O’Reilly, and maybe some pathetic civic spectacle as some state capitol has various sects jostling for display space. Boring!

Now look at what you can see in London: Nine Lessons and Carols for Godless People, with Robin Ince, Richard Dawkins, Barry Cryer and Ronnie Golden, Simon Singh, Richard Herring, Robyn Hitchcock, Ben Goldacre, Chris Addison, Brian Cox, Martin White’s Mystery Fax Machine Chamber Orchestra, the BHA Choir, and some mysterious Very Special Guests. And it’s popular! It’s already sold out, so they had to open an extra show! You better snatch up tickets soon.

i-bfbaf33446f267afa852b549f076c5af-nine_lessons.jpeg

We should have a similar godless Christmas celebration here in Morris, Minnesota, except that the local talent pool is a little thin. I think it would just be the local village atheist, PZ Myers, slumped in a chair, blogging. Maybe if I put on a pointy party hat and were draped with tinsel, it would be bit more festive?

The Grandma Gambit meets its match

Atheists are familiar with the Grandma Gambit — it’s a common tactic used to shut us up. We’re told to keep quiet because our dear sweet devout Grandma couldn’t possibly deal with the news; it would break her heart and you wouldn’t want to do that, would you? What kind of callous rat would hurt a gentle little old lady!

It’s a rather patronizing suggestion that belittles Grandmas everywhere. Both of my grandmothers were feisty types who would have relished a good argument (and one of my grandmothers, who died when I was 12, would probably have just said, “good for you”). Go ahead, break the news to Grandma — it’s much more respectful than treating her like a delicate flower that would wilt at the thought of you not going to church.

Here’s a more realistic reaction from a Christian grandmother who hears that you’ve left the faith: an argument, in the form of a 33 page handwritten letter which is almost entirely a creationist screed. It’s interesting, too, because I see this a lot, that nowadays the response to apostasy is often built around arguments against evolution. There is an expectation that faith is not enough, and that calling the faithful back to the fold is a matter of reasoned argument with ‘science’ on their side. Unfortunately for them, they don’t have any science at all, and Grandma’s letter is a series of creationist canards, from the “just a theory” error to the absence of transitional fossils, all wrapped up with bible verses.

So Grandma wants to talk; what does the grandson do? He writes back with a 17 page letter, neatly typed, with charts and figures! Bravo! This is how loving families should deal with faith, by simply caring enough to wrestle with the ideas between them.

Double your investment!

The Secular Student Alliance is growing faster than their income, but that could change. They just got a generous offer from a donor to provide matching funds, up to $50,000, so you can guess what they’re up to now: funding drive! They’re looking for more people willing to cough up a few bucks, because every donation between now and December will be doubled.

Help them out, if you can. This is the best time to get a good return on your investment.

Nice psalm

Here are the lyrics:

Don’t need no god.
Don’t need no eternal paternal god.
Don’t need no reassuringly protective
good and evil in perspective god.
Don’t need no imported distorted,
inflated updated,
holy roller, save your soul, or
anaesthetisingly opiate gods.
Don’t need no “all creatures that on Earth do dwell”
be good or you go to Hell god.
Don’t need no Hare Krishna Hare Krishna,
Hail Mary, Hail Mary god.
Got no yen for zen, Baghavad-Gita or Gurdjieff.
No Mormon, Methodist, Seventh Day Adventist god,
no absolutes beyond refute,
no reverential preferential Judaic Messianic god.
No Bibles, no Mahayanas, Delai Lhama
instant dharma gods.
Don’t need no spiritual suicide or
prefrontal lobotomising god.
Don’t need no stoic sexless
anticeptic god.
Don’t need no neon crucifix,
no jade Buddhas, no Vedas or Upanishads,
no camels or needles or Papal decrees,
no mail-order ikons, Koran’s or Mandala’s,
no Sri Chimnoys, Meha Baba’s, or Ayatollah’s,
no Guatama’s, no Manitou, Ouspensky or Marx,
no yin/yang, no tao, no tarot or incense,
no sacred mushrooms
no dianetics,
no Tibetan prayer mats
no “Immortal invisible gods only wise”.
Don’t need no televised circumcised
incessant incandescent god.
Don’t need no god.
I need human beings.
I need some kind
of love.
I need
you.

Nice letter, but is it worth £170,000?

Yeah, probably. It’s a letter from Einstein that we’ll have to brandish next time some faitheist claims Einstein for their cause.

The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weakness, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still purely primitive, legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this.

Wow. He’s so strident.