Sunday morning, 9am Central time: Atheists Talk radio asks whether atheists can now relax, since Obama will soon be in office. I think you know the answer to that one: no. We’ll have to tune in to see what Lori Lipman Brown has to say!

This one is for the godless among us: a survey on Coming Out as an Atheist. It’s a little longer than the previous one, I’m afraid.

There was an atheist sign among the holiday displays at the Illinois capitol — and it was stolen! How strange — I guess the Ten Commandments are only a set of rough guidelines that Christians can throw out when confronted with uppity atheists. They’ve got the ethics of convenience, I guess.

All the smart people in the 56267 zip code will be tuned in to Atheists Talk radio this morning at 9am, to hear about the winter solstice and godless bus signage. You can too!

Oh, and at noon we’re all going to tune in to Nic McPhee’s and Susan Gilbert’s radio show on KUMM for an eclectic mix of interesting music. We’re all planning on bunkering down today, since we’re supposed to get slammed with a major blizzard…which I can see is gearing up outside my window right now.

Australia has taken an interesting step forward: they’re going to allow instruction in humanism in their schools, apparently in place of traditional religion classes.

Victorian state primary school students will soon have an alternative — religious education lessons taught by people who do not believe in God and say there is “no evidence of any supernatural power”.

The Humanist Society of Victoria has developed a curriculum, which the State Government accreditation body says it intends to approve, to deliver 30-minute lessons each week of “humanist applied ethics” to primary pupils.

Accredited volunteers will be able to teach their philosophy in the class time designated for religious instruction. As with lessons delivered by faith groups, parents will be able to request that their children do not participate.

Now the fun part. The religious are complaining, of course. The fundies are saying this opens the door to all kinds of wacko religions to get equal time in the schools.

Fundamentalist Christian group the Salt Shakers panned the idea of humanists being given religious education class time.

Research director Jenny Stokes said: “If you go there, where do you stop? What about witchcraft or Satanism?

“If you accredit humanism, then those things would have an equal claim to be taught in schools.”

To me, witchcraft and satanism are no crazier than Christianity, so I don’t see the point of the argument. What’s even funnier, though, is that the groups with a vested interest in supporting the mainstream religions have a completely different argument.

But the body that accredits Victoria’s 3500 Christian religious instruction volunteers, Access Ministries, says humanism is not a religion and so should not be taught in religious education time.
Access Ministries now teaches in about two-thirds of state primary schools. Other accredited instructors teach Judaism, Buddhism and Baha’i.

The Humanist Society does not consider itself to be a religious organisation and believes ethics have “no necessary connection with religion”. Humanists believe people are responsible for their own destiny and reject the notion of a supernatural force or God.

So they can’t let a secular ethics taught because it’s a religion, and we can’t let it be taught because it is not a religion. I say let those two groups fight it out while the secular humanists just do their good ol’ rational thing.

Richard Dawkins’ spring tour of the United States is bringing him to Minneapolis — he’ll be speaking in Northrup Auditorium (the huge auditorium on the UMTC campus, so there should be lots of room for everyone) on 4 March 2009. Be there!

In other Dawkins news, he has posted an unused and unedited interview with Father George Coyne on his site. It’s long and it’s very aggravating, so not many of you will make it through the whole thing, but you’ll understand why it wasn’t used in any documentary. Coyne is personable, intelligent, and pleasant without fault. He’s the kind of avuncular and educated fellow anyone could find wonderful in conversation … except on religion.

Dawkins politely asks him how he reconciles the peculiar details of his religious belief to reason, and Coyne can’t quite address the problem. He’s willing to admit that if he’d been brought up in an Islamic household, he almost certainly wouldn’t be Catholic, but that that should inform him that the specifics of his belief are not founded in evidence and reason evades him totally. He falls back on “tradition” and “faith” as excuses. It’s tragic — I’m certain he’s a very smart man, but on religion he is simply blind and stupid.

Another tangent came to me while watching the video. I’ve been doing a lot of traveling lately, which means I spend all this time with strangers in airports. It’s interesting; most people are just people, and you can’t pigeonhole them into narrower roles without talking to them, except for people in uniforms. And who wears uniforms? Soldiers returning or going back to duty, police and security guards who are on duty, and priests. The police I can understand; they have an official job to do, and the uniform is useful in announcing their authority and making them obvious people to turn to when you need help.

But priests? Nope. That is an utterly useless profession. No one is worried about needing an emergency exorcism, or handling a drive-by spiritual crisis, or requiring rapid cracker delivery. Wearing the clerical collar is simply a demand for deference and respect, a token flaunted in expectation that the bearer will be regarded as especially virtuous and important. It’s annoying and unwarranted. I’m afraid that when I see priests wandering about in the airport, I’m not thinking, “there goes a good man,” I’m thinking, “there goes a sad gomer who wasted his life on the nonexistent.” I suppose it’s fair warning, but it’s still pretentious.

So in the Dawkins/Coyne interview, I’m noticing that Coyne has the magic collar on (I suppose if he’d been raised in an Islamic culture, he’d have a beard and black robes; if Buddhist, he’d be shaved bald and wearing orange; same difference), and Dawkins is dressed like any academic, nothing particularly distinctive. It bugged me. There is a status game being played here, and clerics demand it and get it, while scientists shrug off the superficialities and don’t try to push it. If you just ignore the words they’re saying (trust me, Coyne’s words aren’t at all enlightening) and look at the image, the message is that Coyne has special status, while Dawkins is simply one of the hoi polloi.

I don’t quite know what to do about it. We’re certainly not going to propose a uniform for scientists, which would be just as pompous as priests making sure to announce their delusions visually even while they’re standing around the luggage carousel. I guess I’m just going to have to put it on my to-do list of things to accomplish while we’re destroying religion: diminish the credibility of the clerical uniform. We’re just going to have to start regarding it in the same way we view clown costumes, I think.

Last spring, I mentioned that Americans United was suing to block South Carolina from promoting religion via an “I Believe” license plate. Good news today: a judge has issued a preliminary injunction against the state. Christmas is doomed!

At one of my talks this weekend, I was asked if there was a list of secular charities somewhere…and alas, I didn’t have one off the top of my head. Now I have one: Techskeptic’s Data Daily: Atheist Charities. Give!

For the first time ever, my talk at UCF actually had protestors. Here’s photographic evidence:

They were just lining the sidewalk at the entrance to the hall where I spoke, silently playing with their rosary beads. We invited them in, but none bothered — they quietly disappeared sometime around the time it started. We also had a couple of security guards sitting in the back of the room, whether to make sure the rowdy atheists didn’t do something evil or to protect us from the fierce horde of prayerful Catholics, I don’t know.

I’m flattered. Thank you, devout true believers of Florida — you made me feel so special.