I almost forgot! We started off the day with a panel discussion for the Dogma Free America podcast. It was me, Sunsara Taylor, and William B. Davis (the ‘cigarette man’ on the X-Files, skeptics!), which made for an interestingly diverse group. Check out the podcast when it is available.

I walked into this talk a little late, and was initially unimpressed. Richert was an atheist who fought in Viet Nam, and a lot of the talk was a rather rambling reminiscence with photos of the war; I didn’t quite see the point. At the end, though, it was very affecting. He talked about incidents that made an impression on him: a friend who survived a harrowing firefight, and attributed his survival to a beneficent god; and a few days later, an innocent Vietnamese baby who was killed by shrapnel from a grenade. He made the point that there was no loving god who could have so cruelly thrown away the life of a child, while granting survival to a soldier fighting in the country. Sad stuff with some real emotional punch.

Yes, there are atheists in foxholes. And they seem to be a little more appreciative of the tragedy of war than the blithe Christians.

As soon as you walk into the conference hall, you can’t miss the big posters of a semi-nude Toni Marano. She’s selling videos to help with pilates training, and also does “lifestyle intervention”. I just have to say…good for her. It’s an unfortunate fact that atheist conventions are sometimes a little too gray and stodgy, and she’s bringing a little life to the meeting.

Along similar lines, I’m seeing more young people and more women in attendance; not enough of either, but still a good sign of a healthy, growing movement.

So what do you think? Should I buy one of her dvds?

I’ve been very, very busy today, so I’m bringing you a few belated comments about the Atheist Alliance International convention. I have to be brief, unfortunately; tomorrow is another busy day, which will be starting with a session with Mr Deity, so I need to get some sleep sometime.

I met Russell Blackford! He’s a very nice fellow, especially since he gave a talk I could agree with 100%. He was discussing the virtues of blasphemy; he actually made an argument that we have a kind of moral responsibility to blaspheme. He addressed a couple of ideas, actually; one was the issue of how we know whether religious beliefs aren’t true (quickly dismissed; religion is incompatible with the results of rational inquiry), and spent more time with the question of why we atheists should regard it as urgent to loudly say that religious beliefs aren’t true. He discussed the recent attempts by the UN to add special protections to religious belief, which actually contradict personal liberties, and also showed that existing UN guidelines already compromise free speech.

You people should be reading his blog, you know. Good stuff.

But there is a group, Alabama Atheists and Agnostics, which they can join, and I’m sure there are others around. Unfortunately, they seem to be limited in how they can advertise. When they tried to do the common campus practice of chalking — putting messages on the sidewalks to let students know what they were up to — they got an unfortunate response.

“While we were chalking somebody dumped water on what we were chalking, somebody spat at us,” Sloan said. “But really, overall, most people were polite.”

At approximately 6 p.m., AAA finished their chalking, Sloan said. By midnight, all the chalking had been erased and scrubbed clean by what appeared to be an organization’s effort.

Note that there were other groups, Christian groups, that were chalking at the same time, and that the atheists were writing inoffensive messages like “You can be good without god” and suggestions to look them up on facebook.

I guess they’ll have to settle for advertising on the internet.

So, all you University of Alabama students, join Alabama Atheists and Agnostics. Heck, all Alabamians should join. It’s accessible to the whole of the internet, so people all around the world can sign up.

Any other atheist groups in Alabama want a plug? Send me a note, and I’ll add them here.

---

Whoa. There are lots of atheists in Alabama. Try these organizations out:

The Birmingham Athiests Meetup Group
North Alabama Freethought Association
Alabama Freethought Association
West Alabama Freethought Association
Etowah County Rational Alliance
Southeast Alabama Freethought Association
Montgomery Area Freethought Association

It’s that day when you’re supposed to express your irreverence (hey, wait a minute, isn’t that every day and every minute?), and if you think there is something you should do that’s better than just wandering around uttering foul imprecations against gods and their priests, try supporting the Irish campaign to get their blasphemy law off the books.

But whatever is done in the spirit of weakening religious dogma is fine with me. I had some plans, but I may have to do a belated blasphemy…it’s another day of travel for me.

Premanand is a notable rationalist and publisher of Indian Skeptic magazine, and he is in a hospital dying of cancer as I write this. He is alert and fully aware of his condition, and he knows his death is imminent. He also knows that when he is dead, the contemptible ghouls of spiritualism and faith and desperate dogma will descend on his corpse to try and steal some of his dignity and integrity for their superstitions, and he has responded accordingly by composing a deathbed testimonial.

I, B. Premanand s/o late Sri Basava Prabhu, 80 years of age resident Chettipalayam Road, Podanur, sound of mind though suffering from physical complications caused by metastases in many organs caused by carcinoma of the stomach herein solemnly wish to place on record the following:

1. I have been closely associated with the rationalist movement from 1975 onwards and have been a rationalist of full conviction since then and continue to be so.
2. It is common for the purveyors of superstitions and such anti rational forces to start spreading rumors about rationalists turning to god and other supernatural forces at the end of their lives and becoming devotees of gods and god men of various types.
3. It is also claimed that at times of crises that we staunch rationalists through the major part of our lives, turn to spiritualism and religion.
4. I wish to clarify that as on today the twentieth of September,2009 I remain a staunch rationalist and wish to place on record the following:

• a. I continue to be a rationalist of full conviction.
• b. I do not believe in any supernatural power. All the powers that we encounter are in the realm of nature and nothing exists beyond that.
• c. I do not believe in the existence of the soul or rebirth.
• d. I have not turned to any religion, god or any sort of spiritual pursuits.
• e. When I pass away I shall be leaving only my body which is to be donated to a medical college and no spirit or soul to cause problems for the living.

I want to convey to all that the struggle against the exploitation by god men and so called supernatural forces is a long and hard one but the ultimate victory will be ours.
My very survival has been a challenge to astrologers and their so called “science” of astrology, as they had all predicted that I would die soon after birth and refused to cast a horoscope for me.
I wish to convey to my colleagues of the rationalist movement to continue the work that I have been doing with renewed vigor and that will be the best of tributes for me.

Abhirami Hospital

Podanur (B. Premanand)

Witnessed by: Dr. Maya Prabhu and Suneera

I wish I’d known the man. He’s leaving us one small story from what must have been a life of reason, and is dying as a free man, free in thought.

The tiff between Jerry Coyne and Robert Wright is getting even more hilarious. Wright is accusing Coyne of misrepresenting and misunderstanding his book, and is bringing up all these quotes from The Evolution of God to refute Coyne’s claims. If you just read Wright, you’ll have to agree — Coyne does say things that are directly contradicted by the text.

But then you miss the point. Coyne has a short reply in TNR and a longer reply on his blog where he quotes Wright several times saying exactly what Wright says he didn’t say. Wright’s true name seems to be Legion, and he contains multitudes. One of the problems with his book is that it hares off in all kinds of directions, and you can find pieces that say one thing, and others that say something very different.

It’s a lot like the Bible.

Note to fans of Wright: that’s not a compliment.

And there’s more! The few comments are from Wright fans whose response is to demand that “the Editors … step in on this one and review the original essay by Jerry Coyne. The author provides some strong evidence that his book was either misunderstood or not actually read by the reviewer.” Quite the contrary. The evidence shows to me that the reviewer seems to have read the book more carefully and perceptively than the author.

We’re getting advice from Christians now! Look and laugh at this list: Five things that would make atheists seem nicer. It’s gone awry even with the title. I especially appreciate the word “seem,” because Lord knows there’s nothing that could make us actually nice, and obviously we need the suggestions of a Christian, since we’re all such not-nice people. I should make a counter-list of “five things that would make Christians seem intelligent” — maybe then one of them would notice the nasty implications of this clown’s title.

But I’m the wrong guy to do it. You see, I’m not nice, and proud of it. I have no interest in being nice, and I think it’s rather pathetic to start an argument by baring your throat to my teeth and begging for mercy before you’ve even started. It just makes me smirk and snap. It doesn’t help, either, that his list is so snide and feeble…so sneebly.

1. Stop being so smug.

Make me.

Look, you start an argument, you don’t get to whine at your opponent to be humble about his ideas before you’ve even taken a stab at criticizing them. Show me a reason not to be smug about atheism, and reason, and science, and the superiority of our beliefs over that pile of superstitious dogma you call faith. Don’t simply instruct me to stop regarding atheism as possibly not superior to your cultish apologetics.

Christians also don’t get to play the humility card, anyway. People who believe they have privileged access to mysterious information direct from the brain of a cosmos-spanning super-intelligence, and who believe everyone else is damned to eternal torment, aren’t exactly poster-children for modesty.

2. Don’t assume every piece of Christian evangelism is directed at you – we want the undecideds, not the decided-uns.

Oh, my, no. You think we see the inane dreck Christians propose as an argument, and you think we assume it’s directed at us? We’re “smug,” remember — we figure there’s no way you can really be so stupid as to think we’re going to be swayed by Pascal’s Wager or handwaving at vague quotes from the Bible or threats of an imaginary Hell or promises of an imaginary paradise. We’re after the undecideds, too. We love tearing up your stupidity in public for that reason.

For instance, I know that the Christian who wrote this list wasn’t directing it at me, and probably never even heard of me. That doesn’t stop me from pissing on it.

3. Admit that the debate about God’s existence is complex – and that it can, depending on your presuppositions, be quite possible for intelligent and rational people to intelligently believe in an intervening deity who communicates through a book.

The debate is complex because a lot of intelligent, educated people buy into those ridiculous presuppositions and then toss a lot of noisy chaff in the air. There is a simplicity at the core that is not in Christian interests to expose: is there a god or gods, and is there any reasonable evidence for him, it, her, or them? And further, is there a reason to believe in your specific god over Thor or Xenu or Moroni or whatever other fiction some cunning con artist chose to peddle to the gullible?

And your ‘intervening deity’ (the existence of which is an assertion not supported by any evidence) ‘communicates’ (you are using that word in some strange fashion that is not reasonable) ‘through a book’ (that was cobbled together from scattered scraps of theological rants, old poetry, and self-serving pseudo-history over 1500 years ago)? That’s crazy talk right there.

4. Admit that the scientific method – which by its nature relies on induction rather than deduction (starting with a hypothesis and testing it rather than observing facts and forming a hypothesis) – is as open to abuse as any religious belief, and is neither objective nor infallible.

No. Wrong, wrong, wrong. We are not going to get anywhere if you expect your opponents to simply fall over and accept a bogus mischaracterization of science.

Science uses both inductive and deductive logic. Induction is the idea generator, the process that spins out tentative hypotheses that can be evaluated by observation, experiment, and deductive logic. Science is not infallible, and no one ever claims that it is, but it has something that religion lacks: a process of testing claims against real-world observations. To claim that science is as open to abuse as religion is ignorant nonsense. You can claim virtually anything about gods in religion, and all that matters is how many rubes you can persuade to believe it. Scientific claims are constrained by evidence.

Of course individuals can abuse both religion and science. The difference is that science provides objective criteria to assess the viability of truth-claims.

5. Try to deal with the actual notions of God seriously believed in by millions of people rather than inventing strawmen (or spaghetti monsters) to dismiss the concepts of God – and deal with the Bible paying attention to context and the broader Christological narrative rather than quoting obscure Old Testament laws. By all means quote the laws when they are applied incorrectly by “Christians” – but understand how they’re meant to work before dealing with the Christians described in point 3.

OK, explain Ganesh to me. Explain the prosperity gospel. Explain why Christians reject the prophecies of Mohammed, while millions of Muslims think they’re just peachy. Explain premillennial dispensationalism. Explain whether Episcopalians or Baptists are right. Explain how Spong is wrong. Or right. Who would win a cage match between Karen Armstrong and Pat Robertson?

What is “the” Christological narrative? There is none, or rather, there’s a thousand of them. We know the context, too — that the Bible is an evolving mess of over-interpreted poetry and tribal stories and crackpot history. Why you guys choose to selectively declare one interpretation of one subset of the conglomeration to be the absolute truth as dictated by anthropomorphic vapor, while another arbitrary subset is archaic and doesn’t apply anymore, is completely incomprehensible…not just to us, but to you, too.

We atheists actually do address the claims fervently held by millions of people. The sneaky trick the theological wankers pull, though, is that once we’ve smacked them down, they announce, “Oh, no — we didn’t mean those millions of believers. They’re stupid. We meant these other millions of believers.” It’s a big game of whack-a-mole. What you call “obscure Old Testament laws,” someone else will call the core of their faith. What you value as the “Christological narrative,” a member of yet another sect will call pretentious confabulations.

Atheists just cut through all the noise and call it all sewage.

And some of us see no reason to be nice to sewage, and get really cranky at demands to respect your steaming pile of ordure.