The religious life

Every so often you hear about one of these "right to life" bills or "personhood amendments" being proposed in some state or other.  Every so often I write about it.  They are something that really annoys me.  Basically, these folks believe for some twisted reason that a human is a human from the moment that the sperm penetrates the egg.  You know conception.  It is a silly notion for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that many eggs never implant.  They believe this because they think that this moment is when the soul is ever so gently inserted by god.  Anyhow, I would like to look today at another reason why I think that these bills based on the teachings of a certain religion are a bad idea.

Let's imagine I have decided to form a new religion.  There are many mysteries that we could delve into.  We could talk about how it has been know to make grown men weep and yada yada yada.  But the core of the religion, I shall call it Identificationalism or IDism for short, is that your soul comes from your name.  In fact, you don't just have one soul.  You have many souls.  For instance, if you are a computer programmer, the title "head computer programmer" would be one of your souls.  If you are a gamer, your gamer tags and what not would be other souls.  All the titles and names and nicknames that you receive become souls, and all of these souls add up to one bigger soul that is your given name.  But there is more!  Your family also shares one, let's say, oversoul that is your family name.  This is the soul that is immortal.  There is an even bigger soul/name as well that belongs to and is shared by the church as a whole.  That soul is god.  You can imagine that apostasy would not be very smiled upon, as removing a name from the church rolls would have a direct negative effect on god (assuming there is only one in IDism).

In IDism, let's imagine that there is a strict rule about naming children before they are born.  They believe that if a child is named before it is born and for some reason it does not make it to term, then that soul will be damned forever.  The tradition is that the child is named exactly one month after it is born.  They see this as a way to make sure that the body fully enters the world before the soul is implanted, just to avoid any accidental damnation (incidentally, Google spell check has just informed me that damnation is uncountable.  The things you learn!).  Thus, on the day of the child's, we'll say, monthday there is a big ceremony with the family and the priests and the church members.  It is considered a very happy occasion.

You can probably see where I am going with this.  Basically, the believers of IDism would believe that life begins at monthday.  They are taught from early childhood that until babies are given a name, they are only hollow shells made to look like people.  In short, they are not human until given a name.  If IDists were in the majority and laws were based on their religion, not only would all abortions be legal, but infanticide as well.

This is a pretty extreme example, but I see no reason that, if IDists existed, we should not give any less consideration to their idea that souls are implanted when children are named, than we do to Christians who believe that souls are implanted at conception.  This is trouble with souls.  They are are 100% undetectable.  The truth is, even if souls existed, and I would be very surprised to learn that they did, we would have no idea when they enter a body.  The Christians could be right, the IDists could be right, or some other religion that believes souls enter a person before conception could be right.  This is yet another reason why I think that this subject should be determined outside the authority of any religion.

All your uterus are belong to us II.

Whenever I hear about personhood amendments I feel like I am going crazy. How little do you value human life to consider a single set of 46 chromosomes to be the same as a real live person who has feelings, desires and dreams. A person who can hear and smell and taste the world. A person who has fears and worries and pain. Someone like, say, the woman this lucky set of nucleic acids find themselves in...

All your uterus are belong to us

I wanted to write a blog entry about how invasive these "small government" conservative types are.  But Stephen Andrew at Freethoughtblogs.com preempted and outdid me with this wonderful piece.  Well said, sir.  Well said.

Angry

Atheists have a bad reputation for being angry.  Just the other day I was talking to a friend and the subject of religious fundamentalism came up.  About ten seconds in, my friend brings up that he can't stand atheists, they are so angry and always trying to force their views on other people.  I listened patiently for a while before revealing that I was an atheist.  That was fun to watch.

Truthfully, I have not met any "angry" atheists.  I am sure there are some people out there who are angry most of the time and also happen to be atheists, but the great majority of atheists I have met have been fun and genuinely caring people.

All that aside, today I am an atheist who is angry (correlation only).  The source of my anger is Susan G. Komen for the Cure.  The pink ribbon people.

Before I go further, I would like to say that I have nothing but respect for the foundations efforts in the battle against breast cancer.  What I can't respect is there decision to cut their funding for breast exams to Planned Parenthood, an organization that always seems to be at the forefront of women's health issues.

I also don't buy their reasoning.  According to a statement on Komen's website in response to the furious reaction of so many to this decision:

To support this new granting strategy, Komen has also implemented more stringent eligibility standards to safeguard donor dollars.  Consequently, some organizations are no longer eligible to receive Komen grants.

...

We regret that these new policies have impacted some longstanding grantees, such as Planned Parenthood, but want to be absolutely clear that our grant-making decisions are not about politics.

So why is it that Planned Parenthood no longer meets Komen's eligibility standards?  Apparently, Komen's board decided last year that they wouldn't support any organization that was under official investigation.  As it would happen, Planned Parenthood is under investigation by Representative Cliff Stearns of Florida.  He is an anti-choice Republican, and as you know, Republicans hate Planned Parenthood (my irony meter flipped out when I read that he is also trying to increase privacy protection for Americans).  According to this article, the president of Komen, Elizabeth Thompson, didn't know of any organizations other than Planned Parenthood that would be affected.  So it seems that to act surprised and say that they are just following their standards that they hold everyone to is a load of crap.  It seems far more likely that this restriction was put in place specifically to distance themselves from Planned Parenthood.

The faux-surprise expressed in that statement is also irritating in that if it were genuine it would mean that Komen, a $400 million charity, lacked any sort of PR savvy.  How could they not expect a backlash to cutting funding for breast cancer screenings from someplace like Planned Parenthood that is constantly under attack from forces that are virulently (and inexplicably) against proper women's healthcare.  How are people to believe that this was not Komen caving to bullying from these anti-choice groups.


Anyhow, that is my little rant for today.  Planned Parenthood is accepting donations directly for breast cancer screening.  There are also some nice petitions to sign.

How is your state doing?

I was perusing through some articles (as usual over at NPR) and I came across this article, which did not make me happy at all.  I read through it and it looks like last year was a great year to be anti-choice.  The thing about the heartbeat really went off the deep end.  I mean, what does the heart have to do with personhood (and I don't even want to talk about personhood amendments now)?  Why not elbows?  Or nostrils?  But none of this is new, and most of it wasn't even news to me.  What did catch my eye was the American's United for Life Life List.  It is a list ranking states in how much they restrict women's reproductive freedom.  Those that restrict it the most, as you can see, are labeled: Best States.  Those that restrict it least: Worst States.  No qualification to that at all, just best and worst.  Screw that.  My home state of Indiana sadly scored a "Most Improved Over 2011".  *Sigh*

War on religion

I just read this article over at NPR.  The irony burns.  It burns!  Just check out this line:

"I believe the greatest threat to religious liberty is the clash between religious liberty and LGBT rights," [Mathew Staver] says.

Staver says as rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people make gains, religious conservatives are having to set aside their convictions. A Christian counselor was penalized for refusing to advise gay couples. A court clerk in New York was told to issue same-sex marriage licenses, despite religious reservations. A wedding photographer was sued for refusing to shoot a same-sex wedding. Staver says these people aren't trying to impose their religious views on others.

"What people of faith don't want to do, however, is be forced to participate in something that literally cuts to the very core of their belief."

What a crock of shit.  I'm sorry, this is not a zero sum game.  There is no law impugning the right to not get abortions, and there is no law impugning the right to not get gay-married.  Grow up people.  

Kick-off

Hello and welcome to Atheist Apartment.  This is my first attempt in several years at blogging so please bear with me as I get warmed up.  As opposed to my previous blogs, which were more like awkward online diaries about things I thought were funny, this blog is about something that I feel strongly about.  That is to say reality.  I have recently (about a year ago) given up any belief in anything supernatural, and since then I have been gobbling up books, articles, online university lectures, debates, and probably some other media outlets I am forgetting about on the subjects of a) secular ideas and b) science.  Now then, I would like to take this moment to be perfectly clear that I am not a scientist.  So in the future (if anyone reads this) if you see something wrong with something that I have said, please alert me via the comment thread.  I want to be as accurate and honest with myself and with you as I possibly can.  That said, I majored in history when I was in college and as a historian (ha!) I do have a skeptical vein running through me.  Therefore, if you correct a mistake of mine, please, please do not say something like "I read somewhere that...".  This will not do.  Now that I have finished sounding like a professor (which I am not) on the first day of a lecture (which it is not), lets get down to the meat.

I was going to kick things off by boring you with some details about myself and a heartfelt journey through my becoming an atheist and maybe even conclude with a short anecdote about how I chose the title "Atheist Apartment".  However, something else has caught my eye and I have decided to spare you the personal details and journey, except to say that, I am from Indiana and I am indeed an atheist.  Both of these details have bearing on what I would like to talk about:  Politics.  Ah!  What a dirty word it is.  It is often mentioned with religion when discussing things about which one should not talk on a date.  And, seemingly, it is almost always peppered with religion when it is in the United States.  A few weeks ago I read an article on NPR's webpage about Indiana passing a bill to cut funding to Planned Parenthood.  I was horrified at the time and am even more horrified now that the thing (and I do mean thing) has been passed and signed into law.  Being a big fan of science, I am also a big fan of things like reason.  Now, here we have a group of legislators who, for religious reasons, are cutting funding to an institution which primarily provides reproductive health care to low income women who have no other options.  Real tough guys.  But let's not beat around the bush, there is no question about what this is about: abortion.  Nevermind the fact that the vast majority of what planned parenthood does is NOT abortion.  Now, let's look at what really casts this bill in the crazy bin: the fact that the money that is getting cut cannot be used for abortions anyway.  So basically, in the midst of high unemployment many poor folks are going to be left with no where to get things like birth control, cancer screenings, and STD tests.  Congrats, assholes.

Anyhow I saw this cartoon over at NPR as well.  There are actually two cartoons on the page, I like the one on top, not so much the one on the bottom.  I don't mean to trivialize the seriousness of this issue, but doesn't it seem like the baby looks sad to be in heaven.