Fascinating

I read today about an atheist blogger that has just converted to Catholicism.  Twisted, I know.  I first came across it at Blag Hag on Freethought Blogs.  I then went to the blog itself and read through her post and the comments and her responses.  I recommend checking it out here.  It is very interesting.  This is the first I have heard of an atheist converting (reverting?) to a religion.  I mean, I am sure it happens, I just haven't seen it before myself outside of the occasional guy who says he was an atheist demon summoner.   Anyhow, looking at it, I think I agree with her atheist friends that her problems started when she decided to be a virtue ethicist.  Looking for absolute morality will get you every time.  I actually think that believing in absolute morality is a dangerous thing in a very real sense.

If you go, check out the comments; the ones she has replied to anyhow.  Reading their arguments, I really feel like the "mysteries" of religion, the things that make the religious go, "whoa!", really are what you get when a rational person seriously attempts to wrap their brain around a concept that makes no sense.

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.

90 degrees.

I have heard only a little of the debate over the 9/11 cross, so I won't go to far into it.  I think perhaps both sides have blown this one out of proportion.  On the atheist side, I think a lawsuit might be a bit much.  I agree that a set of cross beams (get it? cross beams?) set at a 90 degree angle found in the debris of a collapsed commercial building being seen as a sign from god in the wake of the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history is more than a bit of a stretch.  I am not sure what it is meant to be a sign of or a message about.  It just seems a bit weak.  That said, I kind of have a live and let live taste in my mouth about this one.  On the other side, however, things get a bit freaky.  Please see here, and here (or for just some general, if mostly unrelated, crazy, here).  A twelve gauge to the head?  Really, Joe Martinez?

Atheism the religion?

Whenever I read any comment threads in which non-religious folks and religious folks are debating (to put it very nicely), it seems that eventually a religious person will come right out and declare atheism a religion.  I am not sure where this confusion comes from.  It may be that people who come from religious backgrounds do not have the experience required to understand a life without religion of some sort.  It maybe that some religious group out there is pushing this idea in order to frighten, confuse, or otherwise influence people. Or maybe some group is pushing this idea because it is what they really believe.

But none of that is important.  It is not important for one important reason.  Atheism is not a religion.  I repeat, atheism is not a religion.  Look, I didn't even capitalize it.  To illustrate this point, I have prepared a simple analogy.  Theism is a belief in a god or gods.  Atheism is the belief that there are no gods.  If you have a house, and I do not have a house, we are not different kinds of homeowners.  If you play baseball and I do not, we are not different kinds of baseball players.  But wait it gets better!  Not only is atheism not a religion, theism isn't a religion either!  Now a theist is probably a million time more likely to be religious, but that does mean that every person that believes in at least one god also belongs to a religion.

So, not only are people who claim atheism to be a religion confusing two very different things, but are by accident creating not one, but two religions (theism and atheism) where none exist.  Please say it with me now: atheism is not a religion.

Conversion Stories

Every so often as I am slumming around the web, I come across a conversion story.  Occasionally, the conversion is from a position of non-belief to one of faith.  These confuse me.  Don't get me wrong, people convert to religions all the time, the fact that I think that they are mistaken to do so doesn't really matter.  They have nothing to prove to me.  The stories disturb me though, because there is something that is always just a little off about them. Take this one for example.  The guy starts out not believing in god, then gets into witchcraft and freaks out after he summons a demon.  A demon.  I am not joking.  Atheists, so far as I know, are not into witchcraft.  I mean, we are a pretty difficult group to classify, but nature gods seem to go out the same window as sky gods when it comes to not believing in any gods. This is an extreme (and I think silly) example, but there are quite a few stories out there that are similar.    The person starts out a "real hardcore atheist".  In this case he also killed his pet rabbit as a child (have you read the article yet?  I am not making this up).  I don't know.  I believe that people have religious experiences, or rather what they interpret as religious experiences.  But the way these always come across like "and then one day: Jesus." or "I came upon a bible passage and just kept repeating it."  On the one hand it sounds like they were in a rough spot and pulled themselves up, then giving the credit to the mystery.  On the other hand it sounds like they have drunk the Kool-Aid and they have learned afterwards what their conversion was about.  Of course, I can't say for sure.  It would be very presumptuous for me to walk up to someone and tell them what they feel.  And hey, maybe it is God talking to them through vague metaphor and random Bible passages, but I doubt it.  I mean I really doubt it.  Then, I am very skeptical.  If Jesus was descending from the sky on a golden chariot flanked by choirs of angels and whisking people away to paradise left and right, part of me would still say, "this is some sort of trick, right?"

The non-believer's story.

I was going to write a piece to bore you with the details of how I became an atheist (I seem to be putting this off), but I found this article by Paula Kirby, which expresses how I am sure many of us feel, and more eloquently than I am capable.  Please read it.  It is a lovely piece.

The Onion strikes again

I do so love the Onion.  And when they post articles like this, it reaffirms that love.

Intelligent De-Fail

Having just written a post yesterday on civility in discussions of religion and non-belief, I was interested when I came across this article attacking biologist, and popular atheist blogger P.Z. Myers via Project Reason.  Now I understand that Professor Myers is not afraid to say how he feels, so to speak, and therefore it is not so surprising that some people might, from time to time, get upset with him.  I quite enjoy his writings, which I recommend you read if by some tiny chance you made it here before seeing his vastly more popular and established blog. 

Anyhow, back to the article in question.  I read through the piece which was one part ad hominem attack and one part tutorial in the inanities of intelligent design.  I felt the need to say...something.  But when I got to the comments thread it seems that someone had beaten me to the punch.  More like someones.  At last check there were 218 comments with the majority by far defending Professor Myers.  I think there were only one or two that were in support of the article.  Myers also replied on his blog.

Seriously, P.Z. Myers doesn't need me to publicize this.  I just wanted to say that, even though I tend to be less vocal, I do so enjoy seeing an ID pusher get shredded whenever I can.  Thank you secular internet.

Should we play nice?

It seems that right now the question of how aggressively atheist we should be is floating around in many media outlets.  The Guardian published this interview with Martin Rees (which incidentally ticked me off bad enough to start this blog, but that is a topic for another day).  Perhaps it has something to do with the recent failed predictions of Harold Camping.  That is the suggestion over at Skepticblog.  Indeed, I myself have been pretty hard on Mr. Camping and his followers.  They were pretty easy targets, and I still believe that they behaved in a foolhardy manner, but it is important to remember that they are people and that this whole experience has probably been a difficult and painful one for them.  At the same time, how do you react to people who behave or believe so irrationally.

I tend to fall somewhere in the middle on the confrontation scale.  I don't think it is necessary to go out of our way to poke fun at people with strange or unsubstantiated beliefs.  People are allowed to think whatever they want.  However, if someone challenges me on my non-belief or tries proselytizing to me, they should be prepared to defend their beliefs, because they voluntarily crossed that line.  In cases like that I think that it is important for us to be quite vocal about why we are non-believers, and show that we are also normal human beings.  Basically, we shouldn't hide who we are because we are afraid of a) being socially outcast or b) offending the overtly religious.  I think that that is pretty straight forward.  We are who we are, and we believe what we believe (or don't believe) and we shouldn't be ashamed of it.

It becomes a more difficult question, however, when we are dealing with someone who is not directly challenging us or trying to convert us, but is still speaking with an air of religious authority.  It is like when someone at a party says something that is just blatantly wrong like "cockroaches are smarter than dogs" or "potato chips are really healthy" or "I think I am a little psychic" or "the Secret is such an awesome book".  You feel bad correcting them, because you don't want to be that person, but you also feel the need to correct an obvious factual error.  One that I encountered recently when talking about the economy was "Christ said, 'there will be poor always'."  Do you let that go?  Incidentally, rather than challenge the religious aspects of it, I challenged the statement on its own.  Of course this conversation was with a family member whom I have a great deal of respect for.  Would I have reacted differently if it had been someone whom I did not respect so much?  I don't know.  I can say though that I believe that we should pick our battles.  Sometimes the offense is too great to let slide and we should challenge it, even at the risk of appearing rude.  Other times, we should just let it slide. 

How about mockery?  I quite liked the attitude of Daniel Loxton's blog entry from Skepticblog (linked above).  Really, how effective is mockery?  Even if it works, it is kind of going over to the dark side, in that it is coercive and doesn't make people think critically.  One exception that I could possibly see is when we are actually publicly debating someone or dealing with a powerful organization.  In a debate if you can make your opponent look obviously foolish, without making yourself look like a bully or a jerk, it could help you win the debate.  When dealing with powerful organizations that promote wrong ideas I am not really concerned about their feelings, and would like to be a part of decreasing the quality of their public images.  Some examples include:  Answers in Genesis (people living with dinosaurs), The Discovery Institute (intelligent design), the Thomas More Law Center (have a look), and many others.  Still, I think belittling a person you are having a friendly conversation with, in almost all cases is a lose-lose idea.