Happy news!

Look at what’s happening to the opinion on religion in our country:

Historically, the percentage of Americans who said they had no religious affiliation (pollsters refer to this group as the “nones”) has been very small — hovering between 5 percent and 10 percent.

However, Putnam says the percentage of “nones” has now skyrocketed to between 30 percent and 40 percent among younger Americans.

Putnam calls this a “stunning development.” He gave reporters a first glimpse of his data Tuesday at a conference on religion organized by the Pew Forum on Faith in Public Life.

It’s a poll, so it doesn’t say much about causes, but I can guess that two factors have been at work: that religion has become associated with the spectacular failure of reactionary conservative politics, and that at the same time, atheists have become more vocal and made the option of avoiding religion altogether viable. I suspect the former is more directly causal, but don’t discount the latter — young people aren’t leaving their obnoxious old church to find a new church, they are leaving the whole rotten shebang altogether.

Roger Ebert, humanist

Best read of the day: Roger Ebert muses on mortality.

I don’t expect to die anytime soon. But it could happen this moment, while I am writing. I was talking the other day with Jim Toback, a friend of 35 years, and the conversation turned to our deaths, as it always does. “Ask someone how they feel about death,” he said, “and they’ll tell you everyone’s gonna die. Ask them, In the next 30 seconds? No, no, no, that’s not gonna happen. How about this afternoon? No. What you’re really asking them to admit is, Oh my God, I don’t really exist and I might be gone at any given second.”

Me too, but I hope not. I have plans. Still, this blog has led me resolutely toward the contemplation of death. In the beginning I found myself drawn toward writing about my life. Everyone’s life story is awaiting only the final page. Then I began writing on the subject of evolution, that most consoling of all the sciences, and was engulfed in an unforeseen discussion about God, the afterlife, and religion.

I like that bit about the consolation of evolution — I feel it too, that having a connection to both our long history and our future is really the province of evolution, and that this is where we can find deeper meaning.

The thought of dying any time is real, too. In my case, it’s the awareness that I’m only about 4 years away from having outlived my father (although he also suffered over a dozen long years of heart disease, a history I’ve avoided so far). We could any of us go at any time, and as godless folk, our only relief from melancholy has to be in the taking of joy in reality.

The Eagleton Delusion

The other day, I read this fawning review by Andrew O’Hehir of Terry Eagleton’s new book, Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate, and was a little surprised. I’ve read a smattering of Eagleton before, and the words “brisk, funny and challenging” or “witty” never came to mind, and the review actually gave no evidence that these adjectives were applicable in this case. I felt like ripping into O’Hehir, but was held up by one awkward lack: I hadn’t read Eagleton’s book. Who knows? Maybe he had found some grain of sense and some literary imperative to write cleanly and plainly.

So I was in New York the other day, and was offered a copy of Eagleton’s book, and took the first step in my imminent doom by accepting it. Then I tried to fly home on Saturday, one of those flights that was plagued with mechanical errors that caused delays and long stretches locked in a tin can, and also flights that were packed tightly with travelers…so crammed with people that they actually took my computer and book bag away from me to pack in the cargo hold, and I had to quickly snatch something to read before the baggage handlers took it away. I grabbed the Eagleton book. Thus was my fate sealed.

I was trapped in a plane for 8 hours with nothing to read but Eagleton and the Sky Mall catalog.

This is an account of my day of misery.

[Read more…]

Radio reminder

It could be a very interesting morning on Sunday at 9am on Atheists Talk radio. Eugenie Scott will be on, and she’s always interesting…and Greg Laden will be interviewing her, and he threatens to bring up the recent accusations of truckling to the theistic evolutionists. I will be looking forward to hearing Genie’s take on the subject. Call in! (I’m still going to be on the road, so I won’t be able to…but I will definitely catch the podcast later.)

Our own Jonas Brothers?

There’s a funny Cat and Girl comic that makes fun of our success as atheists, saying that we’ve gone mainstream. Read it, I got a chuckle…but one of the panels listing factors in our loss of indie cred says, “We have our own Jonas Brothers.” Now I’m stuck. I can’t figure out who our equivalent would be.

In case you don’t know, the Jonas Brothers are a band that plays a kind of Christian pop — they’re on the Disney Channel and appeal to prepubescent girls like David Cassidy did to my generation, only they are even more wholesome and extremely overt in their religiosity.

I’m pondering this, and can’t even imagine a proudly atheist band that plays bubblegum for kiddies, or has a show that sucks in adolescent eyeballs quite like the Jonas Brothers do. Maybe the cartoon is wrong. Maybe we aren’t quite that mainstream yet. Or maybe I’m just so out of it I’ve missed the latest godless sensation.

Weekend update

Allow me to recap. Jerry Coyne set a few people on fire with a post arguing that national science organizations have gone to far in blithely conceding the compatibility of science and religion. He strongly suggests that they stick to complete neutrality on the topic, something they all promise to do, but then ignore what they say to tout a philosophical accommodation that doesn’t really exist. He does not argue that they should go the other way and advance an atheistic position (even though we know that that is the only correct stance), but wants them to back off on the misleading happy religion stuff.

Richard Hoppe fired back with a claim that nuh-uh, they aren’t pushing a particular religious view, and besides, we need concessions to religion in order to get along politically…and then he threw in a lot of tactless and politically self-destructive accusations about how ivory tower atheists don’t know a thing about politics or tact.

Of course I responded to that, pointing out in the NCSE’s defense that they are an indispensable element in protecting our classrooms, but that the US is currently deadlocked in the evolution/creationism struggle, and has been for a long time…and that central to the stalemate is our constant abasement to religion. It’s time to stop, and the atheists are the ones who are working to break that logjam. At the same time, I agree that the NCSE, to be politically useful, needs to be neutral on the issue of religion. The problem is that they are not.

Then there was lots of piling on. Check out Russell Blackford’s take, or Wilkins’ mild disagreement. Taner Edis takes a strange position: the incompatiblists are completely right, but we can’t say so. You can guess that Larry Moran didn’t waffle. Unfortunately, Chris Mooney gets it all completely wrong, accusing Coyne of claiming that the national organizations are “too moderate on the extremely divisive subject of religion”, when what he and I are actually saying is the exact opposite — that they aren’t moderate enough, and have drifted too far towards appeasing religious views. I shall repeat myself: no one is demanding that the NCSE and NAS go all rabidly atheist, and we can even agree that a neutral position is more productive towards achieving their goals. The problems arise when they get so entangled with the people they should be arguing with that they start adopting some of their views, and suddenly the science is being compromised to achieve a political end.

Now to make it even more interesting, Richard Hoppe has put up a partial retraction. He concedes that in some cases the NCSE has drifted too far into promoting a particular religious view.

In its Faith Project, then, I think that NCSE has gone beyond its remit and past where it can be effective. I now think — in agreement with Coyne, PZ, and others — that it should back off from describing particular ways of reconciling science and religion. Pointing to religious people and organizations who have made their peace with science and evolution is appropriate, but going past that to describing particular ways of making that peace is a mistake. NCSE ought not wade into theological swamps.

It’s good to see some progress in the argument (and Jerry Coyne sends his regards, too). The ultimate point, I think, is that we all think the NCSE is a marvelous organization — you should join if you haven’t already — but that does not mean it is above criticism, and some of us are seeing signs of the incipient Templetonization of the group, something we’d rather not see happen. If it is to be useful to both the religious and the infidels, it can’t wander too far to one side or the other.

British Humanists schedule their meeting to avoid me, too

Ah, well. If only I could be in two places at once, and could also afford to fly to Europe on a whim. I’m going to be in Arizona in early June, and the British Humanists are meeting at the same time in London, with what looks like a very interesting schedule bracketed by talks by Dawkins and Grayling. It will be a fine event, and you should all go…if you can’t make the one in Arizona, anyway.

The NY Times saying positive things about atheists?

See, this is the problem with the godless liberal media: they can sometimes treat the rise of atheism as something newsworthy, and in a good way, instead of simply slapping us down. The NYT actually has a reassuring story, More Atheists Shout It From the Rooftops, that talks about the sudden surge of assertive atheism all over the country, from rural and traditionally conservative regions of the country to college campuses.

This is the kind of article that should cause the religious to worry. It’s not their common hysteria about the vicious atheists coming to eat their puppies…it’s about the reality of atheism, which is that it is made up of mostly good people who want to live their lives well.

How to distort atheist goals

The Telegraph has a lovely article on how The National Federation of Atheist, Humanist and Secular Student Societies is going to brainwash children. Here’s the kind of mud they’re slinging:

Simon Calvert of the Christian Institute said: “Atheists are becoming increasingly militant in their desperate attempts to stamp out faith. It is deeply worrying that they now want to use children to attack the Christian ethos of their schools.

“Many parents will also be anxious at the thought of militant atheists targeting their children.”

Oh, lordy, lordy. “Attack the Christian ethos”? He says that like it would be a bad thing.

But don’t trust the Telegraph, which is openly lying about the program planned. Go straight to the source to find out what they’re actually up to.

What the AHS actually wants to do is encourage interfaith discussion through a variety of events, focusing on both scientific and religious education, as well as supporting charity work. The aims of the current initiative are outlined in brief here:

  • To teach students how to debate and create dialogue between school faith groups.
  • Provide the school with fun and educational events and activities, including two student-led courses: ‘Perspectives’ in which a speaker from a faith group gives a talk followed by Q&A, and our ‘One Life’ course, which considers moral and ethical issues without god. Many events will also support the scientific curriculum.
  • Encourage charity volunteering.
  • Give students the experience of running a group and managing events.
  • Show students that it’s ok not to believe in god and encourage critical thinking.
  • Bring out issues concerning religious privilege in schools such as collective worship and incomplete or biased religious education.

All of those things, of course, are horribly objectionable to certain Christians.