Atheist Revolution

Humanist Funerals in Ireland

2013-05-22T04:54:00.002-05:00

Political map of Ireland. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Religion News Service had an interesting story out of Ireland yesterday. As you probably remember, the Catholic Church in Ireland was finally exposed for "decades of rapes, humiliation and beatings at Catholic Church-run reform schools for Ireland's castaway children." As evidence emerged that the Vatican knew about the child rapists among them at least as far back as the 1930s, I suppose you could say the church faced a bit of a PR nightmare in Ireland.

As often seems to be the case, the manner in which Church officials responded to the news made it worse. These scandals and the response to them, appear to have done exactly what one would think they should: drive growing numbers of Irish away from the church.

According to the Religion News Service, non-religious funerals have become popular in Ireland after one too many Catholic abuse scandals.

Although many observers have noted the impact of secularization and child abuse scandals on church membership and finances, only now are the Irish seeing the cultural and socioeconomic reverberations. These include a class of people willing to observe life’s most significant milestones outside the church.

The article describes "civil celebrants," which sound like humanists who preside over ceremonies like weddings and funerals.

I certainly understand the desire to have a secular wedding outside of any church structure. I would have loved to be able to do this. I'm a bit less clear on the desire for secular funerals, but I think this is because I've never seen much point in having a funeral for atheists. I understand why an atheist might want to have a secular funeral for a departed loved one; I'm just not sure why an atheist would want a funeral for himself or herself. How about you? Would you want those you leave behind to have a funeral for you?

In any case, it is great to see that Catholicism is on the decline in Ireland. I certainly hope to see a similar trend here in the U.S. Of course, I'd like to see a general decline in religiosity, but the crimes of this particular church make me hope to see it fade away first.

Subscribe to Atheist Revolution

Help Oklahoma City

2013-05-21T10:51:00.000-05:00

English: Downtown Oklahoma City from the northwest. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

You can file this one under things that piss me off about politics. But it would probably be more accurate to file it under things that piss me off about what happens when we buy into ideologies that lead us to view the world as if we are competing against an opponent in a zero-sum sort of contest. As you know, Oklahoma City was hit by a major tornado yesterday in which at least 24 people lost their lives. As encouraging as it was to see the public outpouring of support and many people advocating for donations to the Red Cross, I observed a few things that made me feel more than a little disgusted with my fellow humans:

Many Christians took to social media (especially Twitter) to use this as an excuse to promote prayer as if that accomplished any good at all. How about doing something to actually help those who just experienced a tornado?
Some people took to social media in what looked primarily like an effort to scold anybody living in tornado-prone areas (e.g., much of the midwest and south). As someone who lives in a tornado prone area, I realize I may be overly sensitive to this, but again, I found the timing of such comments disgusting. Besides, there are not many regions of the U.S. where one can be free from every type of natural disaster.
Last and perhaps least of all, some of my fellow progressives decided to use the disaster as an opportunity to bash political opponents. Yes, I agree completely that Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) and Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) are monstrous hypocrites, but can we at least wait on pointing this out until the situation on the ground is not quite so dire?

Am I just being a big whiner here? Probably. I'm in a foul mood, and this is likely the result. Still, I can't help wonder about our priorities when I see this sort of thing. Here is where you can join me in donating to the Red Cross if you are so inclined.

Subscribe to Atheist Revolution

Supreme Court to Hear Public Prayer Case

2013-05-21T06:20:00.001-05:00

US Supreme Court building, front elevation, steps and portico. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The U.S. Supreme Court will hear a case out of New York involving public prayer at governmental meetings. The case, Town of Greece v. Galloway, may have important implications for efforts to preserve the separation of church and state.

Of particular interest in this case is that the town has adopted what sounds like an inclusive policy in which many different types of prayers or invocations are acceptable. Instead of the usual sectarian prayers in Jesus' name which are so common where I live, Greece's policy permits atheists and Wiccans to give invocations too.

Policy aside, Americans United for Separation of Church and State has noted that only two of the prayers given at these meetings during the past 10 years have been non-Christian. Moreover, most of the prayers given have not been nonsectarian but explicitly Christian.

The problem I have with this sort of thing is that while an inclusive policy is better than an exclusive one, it still amounts to the government promoting religion. Governmental meetings should not include prayer of any kind.

Subscribe to Atheist Revolution

My Letter to the CFI in Support of Ron Lindsay

2013-05-20T10:40:00.000-05:00

A number of people have taken to Twitter to call for the resignation or ouster of Ron Lindsay from the Center for Inquiry (CFI). He has even been labeled a misogynist for his remarks at Women in Secularism 2. I am concerned that he may be forced out, and so I wrote to the CFI to express my support. If you feel similarly, please consider contacting the CFI to express your support too.

To: info@centerforinquiry.net, tflynn@centerforinquiry.net
Cc: rlindsay@centerforinquiry.net
Subject: In Support of Ron Lindsay

Dear Secretary Flynn and CFI Board of Directors:

I am writing to express my support for Ron Lindsay and my agreement with the comments he made at Women in Secularism 2.

The Center for Inquiry is almost certainly receiving a high volume of angry complaints about remarks made by Dr. Lindsay at Women in Secularism 2. I fear that some complainants may even be demanding his resignation or removal. I believe these complaints are based on a serious and willful misinterpretation of what Dr. Lindsay said, fueled by an ideologically-driven perspective which is at odds with CFI's core mission. Unfortunately, there are some people in the secular community who have made a name for themselves by attacking others with outrageous accusations. Dr. Lindsay mentioned a couple of them by name in a follow-up post, and so they and their supporters are now trying to remove him.

I want to make sure you are aware that there are many of us in the secular community who support Dr. Lindsay and appreciate his willingness to address some important issues regarding the use of privilege to silence others. I sincerely hope that the CFI continues to support him as he weathers this unfortunate storm. Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

vjack
Atheist Revolution (http://www.atheistrev.com/)

Evil

2013-05-20T06:03:00.000-05:00

All About Evil (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I have known Christians who insist that evil is not merely a morally-relevant adjective but something that actually exists. Some talk of Satan and make it sound like evil is a force or entity that can infect people, taking control of their actions. Others seem to view evil as the natural state in which humans exist without "salvation" by their preferred god. Not surprisingly, these views do not appear to be held by most atheists. Atheists, it seems, are more likely to use "evil" as a descriptive term and apply it to people who act immorally or to immoral actions.

One of the most common questions asked about evil acts concerns how a person comes to commit them. That is, what leads an otherwise decent person to engage in acts we describe as evil? We ask such a question of school shooters, mass murderers, serial killers, sex offenders, and so on. We typically recognize that there are no easy answers because there is almost never a single cause. Biological factors interact with the individual's learning history and environmental influences, and so on. We also recognize that "god (or Satan) did it" is not a reasonable answer. And so we are left to confront the age-old question: what leads a good person to do bad things.

One of the things that has always fascinated be about evil is how labeling an act as evil depends so much on the perspective of the person doing the labeling. When we ask how a particular person could have committed such an evil act, we rarely realize that part of the answer may lie in the unpleasant truth that he or she probably did not perceive the act as evil.

How could the killer have taken his time with the victim, inflicting brutal torture and eventually dismembering the body? The killer's mind may not function in quite the same way as ours does. He was probably far less disturbed by his crimes than we would have been. He might have even enjoyed it.

How could a U.S. president have authorized the torture of enemy combatants in clear violation of U.S. and international law? Perhaps he managed to convince himself that it was a viable option, that it wasn't really illegal, or even that it wasn't really torture. And how could this president's successor order drone strikes that kill civilians or fail to honor a promise as vital as closing Guantanamo Bay? Maybe he has managed to convince himself that these policies are necessary and that the cost isn't that high. Or maybe he figures that a CIA director who goes to church should be blindly trusted.

We atheists do not have the luxury of begging some sort of god for forgiveness at the end of our lives. We must live with our own conscience. None of this means that we cannot be led astray or delude ourselves; it just means we do not have this particularly toxic way of trying to absolve ourselves for whatever evil we might commit. I can't help feeling that this is as it should be.

Subscribe to Atheist Revolution

Ron Lindsay Stands His Ground

2013-05-19T10:07:00.001-05:00

The Women in Secularism 2 conference wraps up in Washington DC today, but I have a feeling that many in the secular community will be talking and writing about it for some time. While I hope to move on after this post, there is no telling what might happen today.

The controversy that erupted on Friday in response to Ron Lindsay's opening remarks at the Women in Secularism 2 conference intensified yesterday. From what I saw, Lindsay received quite a bit of criticism on Twitter in response to what he said about the concept of privilege sometimes being used to silence people (i.e., "shut up and listen").

After some complained that he did not provide any specific examples of what he was talking about during his remarks at the conference, Lindsay wrote a post in which he provided some clear examples, including a quote from PZ Myers that seems to illustrate the manner in which the "shut up and listen" approach to privilege can interfere with productive discourse:

When a member of a marginalized group tells a member of a privileged group that their efforts, no matter how well-meaning, are wrong, there is one reasonable response: Shut up and listen. You might learn something. There is also a terrible response: arguing back. It always makes it worse. It’s not that they are infallible and we are totally stupid. It’s that THEY are the experts and the subject of the discussion.

Not surprisingly, this post did not help. Those of us who have been following the Freethought Blogs/Skepchick/Atheism+ group for some time could see what was coming a mile away. It has taken some of us awhile, but we are learning how this game is played:

Someone provides a fair and reasoned criticism of - or expresses respectful disagreement with - some aspect of something one of them has put forth.
This individual is met with angry criticism, including gross distortions of what he or she said, snark and dismissal, and plenty of ad hominem attacks.
Some Freethought Blogs/Skepchick/Atheism+ supporter, temporarily donning the guise of a reasonable person, requests examples of something the critic said. The trap is set.
The critic, incorrectly assuming he or she has received a good faith request, provides examples.
The trap is sprung. The examples the critic has provided now become the main issue, masking the initial criticism or disagreement. The critic is accused of harassment and abuse, as the act of providing the requested examples is interpreted through the threat narrative.
At this point, one of two things will happen: (1) either the critic will back down and grovel before the Freethought Blogs/Skepchick/Atheism+ mob, or (2) the critic stands his or her ground and becomes the next "witch of the week."

It seems to me that a trap was set for Ron Lindsay, and he walked right into it. Based on the second post he wrote yesterday, one I strongly encourage you to read, it does not look as though he is planning on backing down.

Rebecca Watson inhabits an alternate universe. At least that is the most charitable explanation I can provide for her recent smear…It may be the most intellectually dishonest piece of writing since the last communique issued by North Korea.

If there was any doubt that Lindsay would be the next "witch of the week," I believe this post erased it. And I thought it would be Justin Vacula!

Subscribe to Atheist Revolution

Women in Secularism 2 Opens With Controversy

2013-05-18T06:06:00.003-05:00

As you can see in the following Twitter exchange, captured by Elevatorgate, it sounds like the Women in Secularism 2 conference got off to an interesting start yesterday. Dr. Ron Lindsay, president and CEO of the Center for Inquiry, opened the conference. From what I observed on Twitter (#wiscfi), the reactions to Dr. Lindsay's opening comments were quite negative. Some felt that he minimized the role of privilege. Others accused him of "mansplaining." And many seemed to be upset primarily because Dr. Lindsay, a man, opened the conference.

View the story "Conversation with @rebeccawatson, @RALindsay, @MistressOfFrog and @bluharmony" on Storify

Dr. Lindsay said that he will post his comments online so they can be read by anyone who is interested. He was true to his word, and you can find the text of his talk here. I think this is a wise move, and I look forward to reading it.

Subscribe to Atheist Revolution

Atheist Blogging: Would I Do It Again?

2013-05-17T07:16:00.001-05:00

Email Icon (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In spite of my chronic disorganization when it comes to email and not checking it nearly as often as I should, it has inspired a great many posts and continues to do so today.

I was recently asked an interesting question via email by an atheist who indicated that she is feeling disillusioned with the online secular community due to what she described as the "irrationality" and "intolerance of dissent" she attributed to some prominent bloggers and many of their more vocal fans. I can certainly understand that sentiment. After telling me that she is thinking of having nothing further to do with online atheism because of this, she posed a question I wasn't expecting:

If you were just starting out today and had seen all this shit, would you even bother starting an atheist blog?

This question caught me off guard, and I was not initially sure how best to respond. I knew where she was coming from. I have heard this sentiment from others, and I'd be lying if I were to say that I'd never had similar thoughts. Yes, I think I would start an atheist blog today. I do not think I would be deterred by the toxic elements in the atheist blogosphere. There are plenty of things happening in the online secular community today that might give me pause in considering whether I would want to start a new atheist blog, but I do not believe this would be one of them.

When I look around the atheist blogosphere today, it is far more crowded than it was in 2005 when I started Atheist Revolution. The upside of this is that there are many great atheist bloggers who have not divorced skepticism, embraced dogmatic ideology, or made their careers by promoting paranoia and an irrational threat narrative. Consider blogs like Friendly Atheist, Deity Schmeity, and Reason Being that manage to produce informative and thought-provoking content for the secular community. Notice how Freethoughtify, Bitchspot, and God is a Myth are breaking down boundaries and introducing the secular community to diverse viewpoints. We have science blogs like Epiphenom, blogs on teaching like Teach Not Preach, and satirists like Laughing in Purgatory. This is the atheist blogosphere of which I am happy to be a part.

I understand why someone might be discouraged by some of the behavior of a few atheists. But instead of letting the bad behavior of some discourage a new voice from entering the atheist blogosphere, I'd say this bad behavior is why we need new rational voices. Much like we encourage moderate Christians and moderate Muslims to speak out against the extremists among them, we should be empowered to address the consequences of dogma and bad behavior in our community and to push for change.

Subscribe to Atheist Revolution

On the Relationship Between Atheism and Feminism

2013-05-16T09:26:00.000-05:00

Userpage icon for pro-choice (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Women in Secularism 2 will be held in Washington DC this weekend, and many in the secular community are using it as an occasion to reflect on the relationship between atheism and feminism. Some of the resulting discussion has been thought-provoking and productive; some has not.

Feminism continues to be a controversial topic for many atheists. Some in our community have had difficulty separating feminism from the bad behavior of a small minority of prominent atheist bloggers who identify themselves as feminists; others have found it tough to separate disagreement from misogyny. And so the atheist world turns.

The controversy received a recent jump-start in the form of a recent article on Women in Secularism 2 in The Houston Chronicle. The author, intentionally or otherwise, seemed to pit Justin Vacula against Amanda Marcotte on the subject of whether atheism is consistent with feminism and/or pro-choice positions. Justin has been getting some heat for one part of the article in particular:

As Justin Vacula of Skeptic Ink Network said in response to another piece from conference speaker Amanda Marcotte, “I fail to see how refusing to believe in God leads to the ‘logical conclusion’ of abandoning the belief that women exist to serve men.”

I come to this as someone previously unfamiliar with Marcotte's work and as someone who has the impression that some of the parties involved in discussing atheism and feminism seem to be talking past each other. This may be amplifying disagreement unnecessarily. Frankly, I think that both feminism and atheism are important enough that we should be able to have meaningful discussions of them.

Opinions Formed By Personal Experience

In Amanda Marcotte's 2012 article for RH Reality Check she explained,

Feminism and atheism are intertwined for me both on a philosophical and pragmatic level.

She's talking about herself and how feminism and atheism have been related in her experience. This makes perfect sense to me. Even though I have experienced atheism and feminism as being fairly distinct domains, I can certainly understand how they could be connected for others. After reading her description of her experiences with feminism and atheism, I see why they would be intertwined for her.

She says something similar about pro-choice positions. This time, I have an even easier time understanding where she is coming from because I share her experience of the two (i.e., atheism and being pro-choice) as being at least somewhat linked. In her experience and in mine, the two have been at least somewhat connected. After all, most of the anti-choice arguments I have heard have been religious in nature.

I enjoyed Marcotte's article, and I appreciated how she allowed the reader to walk in her shoes and understand how her experience has informed her opinions. I found myself in agreement with much of the article right up until I read the final paragraph:

Of course, all these arguments depended on an atheist movement comprised of people who saw the way that religion and patriarchy are intertwined, and saw that refusing to believe in God, if followed to its logical conclusion, means abandoning the belief that women exist to serve men. In my interactions with the atheist movement, I would say most activist atheists do see these things and have logically come around to feminism because of it. But as Natalie Reed and others have discovered, a not-insubstantial percentage of atheist men have convinced themselves they can both not believe in a god and somehow still conclude that women were put (by who?) here on Earth for the purpose of pleasing and catering to men. And that therefore women who rebel against that by, say, demanding the right not to be sexually harassed just because some guy feels like it, are evil witches who need to be fiercely attacked. All these years, irrational sexists have thought they needed a God to rely on to tell women that our bodies belong to men and not to us. But it turns out that plenty of men feel that they themselves are the only authority needed to take away this basic right of women’s.

The first sentence of this paragraph struck me as being inconsistent with the rest of the article. What arguments is she referring to? Up until this point, she's been talking about herself and her experience. She's provided great explanations of how her experience led to her beliefs. She repeatedly referred to herself and the conclusions she has reached on the basis of her experience. She did not seem to be stating conclusions that would apply to others. With this sentence, she makes an abrupt shift to suggesting that others in the atheist movement ought to see things as she does ("that religion and patriarchy are intertwined"). Just because her experience supports a particular perspective for her (one which makes good sense based on her description of her experience) does not mean that this is applicable to anyone else. I'm not sure what happened here.

Atheism and Feminism

To understand the relationship between atheism and feminism, I think there are three relevant questions we need to ask and answer:

Is atheism consistent with feminism and/or pro-choice positions?
Is atheism intertwined with feminism and/or pro-choice positions?
Does atheism logically lead to feminism and/or pro-choice positions?

Is atheism consistent with feminism and/or pro-choice positions? Yes! Of course it is. Atheism is consistent with everything besides god belief. There is nothing about the definition of atheism that precludes feminism, pro-choice positions, or anything else except for god belief. So yes, atheism is consistent with feminism and pro-choice positions. Of course, if we understand the meaning of atheism, we realize that this isn't a particularly useful question.

Is atheism intertwined with feminism and/or pro-choice positions? This is where things become more interesting and far more useful. The answer to this question depends on the person. For some people, atheism is absolutely intertwined with feminism and pro-choice positions. For Amanda Marcotte, it appears to be intertwined with both. Based on her descriptions of her experience, this is understandable. For me personally on the basis of my experience, atheism is intertwined with pro-choice positions but not with feminism. For Justin Vacula, it might not be intertwined with either. We've had different experiences, and as Marcotte so clearly illustrates up until that puzzling last paragraph, experience matters.

Do feminism and/or pro-choice positions logically follow from atheism? That is, should we expect all atheists to be feminists and to hold pro-choice positions because such views are a logical consequence of atheism? No. This does not seem to be the case. Marcotte notes that there are atheist men who reject feminism. I'm not sure why she neglects to mention that there are also plenty of atheist women who reject feminism, but they do exist. Moreover, there are atheists who are not pro-choice. One does not follow from the other. If Marcotte wants to suggest that one should follow from the other, she'd going to need to do much more than provide a good summary of why they have been connected in her life.

It was this last question that Justin Vacula was addressing when he wrote:

I fail to see how refusing to believe in God leads to ‘the logical conclusion’ of abandoning the belief that women exist to serve men.

He is saying here that Marcotte did not provide an argument for feminism being a logical conclusion of atheism in her post, and he's correct on this point. She did not provide any such argument.

I'd like to end with something that should be encouraging. There are plenty of atheists who accept many aspects of feminist ideology and who are pro-choice. I am one of them, and I know I am not alone. There are those of us who see no need to try to force atheism and feminism together; we find value in both even if we are not convinced that one logically follows from the other. There are those of us who are happy to see the discussion occurring around such important topics. And yes, there are those of us who think that both Amanda Marcotte and Justin Vacula make worthwhile contributions.

Subscribe to Atheist Revolution

The Public Forum

2013-05-16T04:34:00.000-05:00

The "free speech zone" at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I've always operated from the perspective that we all benefit from a public forum where free speech is protected. In such a forum, the assumption is that good ideas will rise to the surface while bad ideas will sink to the bottom. The problem with this is that it doesn't always work. That is, some truly bad ideas never seem to sink into obscurity and some good ones never gain traction.

Take Fox "News" as an example of what I'm talking about. It seems to have been created, at least in part, to preserve bad ideas by insulating them from criticism. This keeps discredited ideas (e.g., "trickle-down" economics) relevant long after they should have disappeared.

Organized religion is perhaps the best example of all, as it has managed to convince many people that their claims should be exempt from criticism. Those who dare to criticize religious claims are viewed as insensitive or intolerant, and the discussion quickly shifts from the content of the criticism to the act of criticizing. Far too many bad ideas have been preserved in this manner.

As we have all observed, my quaint idea of the public forum may not reflect the modern reality of "he who yells the loudest wins." Perhaps the public forum only works when all parties are willing to participate "in good faith." If not, the process can be manipulated to the point where it ceases to function for the public good. Maybe the public forum is merely a convenient fiction, one that must be maintained because we lack a viable alternative.

Subscribe to Atheist Revolution

Game of Thrones and Pascal's Wager

2013-05-15T06:08:00.000-05:00

Fire and Blood (Game of Thrones) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

We do not hear much about polytheism in the West these days. This is surprising when one considers that some contemporary religions have polytheistic components (e.g., Buddhism, Shinto, Hinduism, Serer, and trinitarian forms of Christianity) or that pagan religions have seen something of a revival in recent years (e.g., Wicca, Odinism). I suppose many Christians must continue to feel threatened by other religions. Better we don't hear about the alternatives.

At the repeated urging of a friend, I watched a few episodes from a previous season of Game of Thrones. One of the things that struck me was how some of the characters on the show swore loyalty oaths in which they mentioned both "the old gods and the new gods." I thought this was a brilliant illustration of the absurdity of the Pascal's wager argument of which many Christians are so fond.

As I have noted previously, Pascal's wager need not lead someone to the Christian god any more than it lead them to any other sort of god(s). The characters in Game of Thrones seemed to be hedging the bets by trying to acknowledge all the various gods in which their group had believed. And why not? It isn't like there is more evidence for one god over another. If one really bought into Pascal's wager, wouldn't it be wise to worship as many gods as possible to maximize one's chances of being correct?

I realize that Game of Thrones is fictional; however, I found myself wondering if there was a historical precedent for people feeling trapped between the old gods of their ancestors and whichever new one(s) they are expected to worship. It seems like there would have been many ancient societies in which that could have been the case. During the Christianization of Norway, for example, I wonder if there were Norwegians who tried to split their allegiance both the the pagan gods of their ancestors and to the new Christian faith. It seems likely.

Subscribe to Atheist Revolution

Before You Accuse Someone of Being a Troll

2013-05-14T08:14:00.005-05:00

Internet troll (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

You know what an Internet troll is, right? Of course you do! You might not be able to define the term, but you know it when you see it. If you visit atheist blogs regularly, you are probably used to seeing Christian trolls from time-to-time. They tend to be easy to spot because they seem to appear from nowhere, spout nonsense, and disappear before anyone realizes what happened.

Just one little problem - without any sort of definition, we may be labeling different people as trolls for very different reasons. And yes, some of those we are calling trolls may not in fact be trolls.

Before you accuse someone of being a troll, you may be interested to know that there is a reasonable definition of the term available. From the Wikipedia page:

In Internet slang, a troll…is someone who posts inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as a forum, chat room, or blog, with the primary intent of provoking readers into an emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion.

There are two important parts of this definition to highlight if we want to make sure we are being accurate in who we label as trolls:

The behavior itself (i.e., a troll "posts inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages"), and
The intent behind the behavior (i.e., "with the primary intent of provoking readers into an emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion").

Note that #1 refers to a particular kind of behavior and not simply to any behavior that you might find objectionable. Disagreeing with you is not necessarily trolling. The disagreement would need to be off-topic, extraneous, or inflammatory.

Now take a look at #2. This component of the definition requires us to consider the intent of the person making the comment. A troll is not merely someone who engages in the behavior described above; he or she is someone who does so with a particular intent. The troll says what he or she says primarily to provoke you or disrupt the discussion.

There are two things that can make it challenging to accurately identify a troll. First, individuals differ in what they find inflammatory or extraneous. With this in mind, it can be helpful to note the opinions of others. If I think someone is a troll but nobody else seems to, I may need to consider the possibility that I am wrong. Second, intent must be inferred, and we do not always do a good job of inferring it. When we are upset with someone, we tend to attribute ill intent to them. This may or may not be the case. Again, it can be helpful to examine the opinions of others before labeling someone a troll.

Subscribe to Atheist Revolution

Dear Muslima Revisited

2013-05-13T05:40:00.000-05:00

English: Richard Dawkins at New York City's Cooper Union to discuss his book The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I'm going to go back a couple years for this one. I'm not sure what made me think of this recently, but I'd like to revisit this incident to see if we might learn something from it with the benefit of hindsight.

We've all had the experience of being sick with a bad cold, so it is something we should each be able to relate to quite well. Imagine you have had a really nasty cold over a weekend. You barely slept on Sunday night because you kept coughing yourself awake. Still, you manage to drag yourself into work on Monday because staying home sick is not a realistic option. A co-worker who does not know that you have a cold asks how you are doing, so you tell her. You complain about your cough and how you were up most of the night because of it. You tell her how you are just trying to get through the day so you can go home and have a nap.

As you finish, you see tears in her eyes and catch an odd tone in her voice. Caught off guard, you ask what is wrong. She breaks down and tells you her husband was recently diagnosed with a terminal illness. Something about your description of symptoms brought her recent experience back. She tells you that she hasn't slept a full night ever since they got the news about his health.

Her husband is dying, and here you are complaining about your cold. You would very much like to crawl under a rock at this point. It is not that your cold is irrelevant; your cold does matter. Nobody is saying that you should deprive yourself of medical treatment aimed at relieving your symptoms. What you have been going through is not somehow invalidated by the tragedy with which your co-worker has been dealing. But doesn't hearing what she has been going through give you a somewhat different perspective about your complaints?

Dear Muslima

I don't know if Richard Dawkins was trying to encourage perspective-taking along these lines when he left his now infamous Dear Muslima comment on Pharyngula. I've never met him, cannot read his mind, and can only speculate about what his intent might have been when he wrote the following:

Dear Muslima

Stop whining, will you. Yes, yes, I know you had your genitals mutilated with a razor blade, and . . . yawn . . . don't tell me yet again, I know you aren't allowed to drive a car, and you can't leave the house without a male relative, and your husband is allowed to beat you, and you'll be stoned to death if you commit adultery. But stop whining, will you. Think of the suffering your poor American sisters have to put up with.

Only this week I heard of one, she calls herself 'Skepchick', and do you know what happened to her? A man in a hotel elevator invited her back to his room for coffee. I am not exaggerating. He really did. He invited her back to his room for coffee. Of course she said no, and of course he didn't lay a finger on her, but even so . . .

And you, Muslima, think you have misogyny to complain about! For goodness sake grow up, or at least grow a thicker skin

When I read these words now and recall the context in which he wrote them (see Elevatorgate), I understand why they provoked outrage and why Dawkins was raked over the coals by the Freethought Blogs/Skepchick/Atheism+ contingent. They interpreted his comment as dismissive, and they had a point to do so. If he had really been trying to encourage perspective-taking, being more direct about his intent might have helped.

One of the most popular interpretations of Dawkins' comment at the time was that he was suggesting that because worse things were happening elsewhere (i.e., in some Muslim countries) that privileged White women in the U.S. had no right to complain or to try to fix problems closer to home. Just as I am not sure if Dawkins was trying to encourage perspective taking, I am not sure if this particular interpretation was the most accurate one.

When I read Dawkins' words today, I think it is at least possible that he was not claiming that the sexism experienced by women in Western nations is irrelevant or that the women experiencing it should just put up with it. I suspect that Dawkins would agree that sexism is relevant and that none of us should put up with it. The fact that women in other parts of the world have it far worse does not invalidate the experience of Western women. Why should it? Even if awareness of what women in other parts of the world (or those less privileged) are enduring leads to some perspective-taking, that does not mean that the concerns of relatively privileged women are unimportant.

I do not know what was in Dawkins' mind when he wrote his comment, but I think it is at least possible that he sought to encourage some of the relatively privileged atheist women in the U.S. to engage in some perspective-taking.

Adjusting Our Perspectives

The person with the cold who encounters the co-worker struggling with a recent diagnosis of cancer almost certainly experiences a shift in perspective. One would hope that a relatively privileged feminist blogger living in the U.S. would have a similar experience upon learning about what some less privileged women experience. None of this means that her concerns are unimportant, invalid, or undeserving of attention. All it means is that she may gain some perspective by learning from others. And this is true for all of us.

I think that it is important for atheists and skeptics, people who often pride ourselves in critical thinking, to realize what this sort of infighting looks like to those outside our community. But even more than that, I believe that we should all strive to consider multiple viewpoints and possible interpretations before we come unhinged and attribute ill intent to others. I may be completely wrong about the intent behind the Dear Muslima comment. I accept that possibility and welcome the opportunity to learn from it. I would hope that others in our community would be willing to accept the possibility that their interpretation could also be wrong.

Dawkins is Not Infallible

Experience teaches me that someone will inevitably respond to this post - probably without having bothered to read it - by suggesting that I "worship" Richard Dawkins and that I cannot accept the fact that he could have made a mistake. It will not matter that I've said nothing of the kind here. Nobody is infallible, and this certainly includes Dawkins.

Subscribe to Atheist Revolution

A Humanist Couple in Colorado Springs

2013-05-12T09:18:00.000-05:00

Garden of the Gods, Colorado Springs (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

If you know nothing else about Colorado Springs, you probably know that it is the home of the Air Force Academy and Focus on the Family (the Christian extremist organization). I have visited Colorado Springs a few times and known a few people who have lived there. Rumors of its conservative Christian influence seem to be well placed.

Hemant Mehta (Friendly Atheist) shared a great article from The Colorado Springs Gazette about Becky Hale and Gary Betchan. They founded the Freethinkers of Colorado Springs and run EvolveFISH together. Hale is also the President of the American Humanist Association. The article, written by Steve Rabey, does an excellent job of describing what Hale and Betchan have had to endure in the evangelical Christian epicenter that is Colorado Springs.

As Betchan and Hale sit in their comfortable, north-side home talking about the past quarter century, a picture emerges of two reluctant radicals who only enlisted in their hometown culture wars after being forced to defend their deeply held values.

"Reluctant radicals" does seem to be an apt description. The couple describes how their humanist values have repeatedly come under assault from the evangelical fundamentalist Christians who are so prevalent in Colorado Springs.

Hale said she was fired without cause after being 'outed ' as an atheist at a mandatory employee sensitivity training session. Betchan said that employees who attended one manager's 'voluntary ' Bible study meetings at his former job got the best assignments.

Employment discrimination like this is not terribly uncommon in places where evangelical fundamentalist Christians form an overwhelming majority. I hear about similar things happening here in Mississippi fairly often. That it would happen in Colorado Springs where Focus on the Family is based is not surprising.

Hale and Betchan noted that they have also faced blatant bigotry right in their neighborhood.

One day, they say, a neighbor knocked and asked to meet the couple after other neighbors had showed her a petition seeking to oust 'freethinkers ' and 'blacks ' from the neighborhood.

Wow! It really is amazing to think about atheists having to contend with the possibility of being run out of a neighborhood in 2013.

What is really neat about Hale and Betchan is that they refused to cave in to all of this pressure and instead became activists. And yet, it certainly does not sound like they are out to change the world. In fact, here's how Hale expressed what they would like:

We would like to live in a place where my daughter is not afraid to have people find out she does not believe in God. We would like to work in workplaces where promotions are based on performance, not attending the right church. We would like atheists to be able to run for political office without persecution or being treated like second-class citizens.

That certainly does not seem like too much to ask, does it?

Subscribe to Atheist Revolution

Pew Data Paint Grim Picture of Muslim World

2013-05-11T07:21:00.001-05:00

English: The Muslim population of the world map by percentage of each country, according to the Pew Forum 2009 report on world Muslim populations. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

If you want to learn what people think, just ask them. This is part of why public opinion polls are so widely used. They do have their flaws when it comes to predicting behavior (e.g., voting), but they can be quite useful in assessing public perspectives. The Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life recently produced a report, The World's Muslims: Religion, Politics and Society, based on face-to-face interviews of over 38,000 people in 39 countries with large Muslim populations. The results of this ambitious project are in, and they are not particularly encouraging for those who want to claim that Islam is a "religion of peace" and that extreme views are only held by a tiny fraction of Muslims. In fact, it appears that some what we in the West are fond of labeling extremism may be too common to warrant such a description.

In combing through the results, one must acknowledge the variability one finds from country to country. Only nations with at least 10 million Muslims were polled, but there is still considerable variability on many questions. For example, 96% of Muslims living in Bosnia-Herzegovina said that suicide bombing is rarely or never justified, while this number dropped to 74% in Malaysia, 71% in Bangladesh, and 58% in Afghanistan.

When asked whether sharia should be the law of the land, the numbers were so high in many countries that it is impossible to dismiss this as reflecting fringe elements. Pew noted that majorities in most of the countries in North Africa, the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia wanted sharia. This is clearly not a position held by only a handful of extremists.

Among those Muslims who supported sharia, the percentage favoring stoning as punishment for adultery was staggering. It seems that no fewer than 21% believes that stoning isa an appropriate punishment for adultery, with numbers much higher in some nations (e.g., 89% in Pakistan, 81% in Egypt). Again, this makes it difficult to dismiss something as brutal as stoning as an act reserved for extremists.

The question in which I was most interested concerned the perceived appropriateness of the death penalty for leaving Islam. This issue has been getting some attention in Bangladesh, so I was interested to see whether they were an outlier. No such luck. In Bangladesh, 44% of Muslims who want Sharia thought that those leaving Islam should be put to death. While that will undoubtedly strike us as far too high, the numbers were much higher in many other countries, including Malaysia (62%), Palestine (66%), Pakistan (76%), Afghanistan (79%), Jordan (82%), and Egypt (86%). Again, this does not seem to be a sentiment reserved for extremists.

Plenty of atheists have already recognized that Islam is a problem and that we have plenty of good reasons for being worried about it. Perhaps Pew's findings will lead more of us to address Islam and work against the attempts to prohibit criticism of it and other religions.

H/Ts to Why Evolution is True and The Freethinker

Subscribe to Atheist Revolution

Adventures in Education: Reducing Bias in Grading

2013-05-10T07:26:00.001-05:00

Students taking a test at the University of Vienna at the end of the summer term 2005 (Saturday, June 25, 2005). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

My final exam started at 8:00 am and took the full two and a half hours allotted by the university exam schedule. Most of the class finished after about two hours, but a few needed every minute they had. I suppose this is to be expected. After all, this was a comprehensive final exam in a graduate course, and it included no multiple-choice questions.

After sitting in the room for two and a half hours to answer questions that came up during the exam and deter cheating, grading would require the next four hours. I have a very particular method I use when grading these exams. It starts with preparing a detailed key in the weeks before the exam so that I know exactly what I am looking for when I evaluate students' responses to each question. Next, I place removable opaque tape over the students' name on each exam to prevent me from knowing whose exam I am grading. My colleagues make fun of me for insisting on doing my grading only after I am blind to the identity of the students, but I am convinced that it helps guard against unintentional bias.

With the necessary preparation out of the way, I grade question-by-question. That is, I read question 1, my response to question 1 from the key, and each students' response to question 1 before I do any actual grading. I grade those responses that clearly got the content I wanted first and progress to the responses containing significant errors or omissions. I take great care to make sure that each error or omission is treated the same way with regard to how many points it costs the student. And I repeat this process question-by-question until I am finished.

The process does take awhile, but it strikes me as worthwhile. I want to make sure I am grading in the fairest manner possible. I believe my students deserve that, even if they might not always appreciate the final outcome. We all make mistakes, and we are all subject to bias. Because the bias to which we fall victim is rarely intentional - or even conscious - taking steps to guard against it makes good sense.

A Lesson for the Secular Community?

Perhaps there is a lesson for those of us in the secular community in here somewhere. When our decisions are biased in some manner, we are often the last to know. It might behoove us to take active measures to guard against bias. What might this look like? Here are a few ideas:

Slow down and ask where someone is coming from before launching accusations based on inferences about someone's meaning or intent that may or may not be correct. Assuming we know what is in someone's mind often reveals more about us than it does about them.
Wait until the initial flood of emotion has passed and we are thinking clearly before we write that post, make that video, or send that tweet. It is difficult to think clearly when we are angry.
Recognize the possibility that we may be wrong and be willing to change course if this seems likely to be the case.
Extend to others the courtesy we would hope they would extend to us, including the assumption that they are communicating in good faith. If they are not, it will be evident soon enough.

If nothing else, we would be modeling the sort of calm, rational behavior in which most of us claim to be interested.

Subscribe to Atheist Revolution

Problems With Jesus: Lack of Contemporaneous Evidence

2013-05-09T19:04:00.000-05:00

The Temptation of Christ, 1854 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Of all the problems with the Jesus narrative contained in the Christian bible, I find the lack of contemporaneous evidence to be one of the most interesting. While most Jesus scholars appear to agree that he existed and that he was crucified, disagreement remains as to how closely his life resembled the biblical accounts. Without non-Christian contemporaneous historical writing from the time in which Jesus is supposed to have lived, died, and returned (as a zombie), many questions remain unanswered.

Critics of the Jesus narrative have pointed out that the nature of the contemporaneous historical writing we do have from the time period is such that it seems highly likely that Jesus would have received considerable attention if the events described in the Christian bible had taken place as described. Where are the alleged miracles and the resurrection itself? Without this sort of record, it is difficult to determine which - if any - portions of the biblical narrative should be regarded as historical vs. mythical.

To be clear, the problem is not simply the lack of written records of Jesus at this time. It is even worse than that. The problem is that the evidence we have leads us to expect that if the Jesus story contained in the Christian bible was accurate, portions of it would have been present in the written records (e.g., the miracles attributed to Jesus). Because these events are nowhere to be found, it seems unlikely that it happened much like what was described in the Christian bible.

What we know from the contemporaneous non-Christian records is that someone named Jesus probably lived around the time of the biblical Jesus, that he was crucified, and that some of his contemporaries may have considered him to be a messiah of sorts. Beyond that, we seem to have lots of speculation and little else.

Subscribe to Atheist Revolution

Defend Dissent in Bangladesh

2013-05-08T11:14:00.001-05:00

English: Bangledesh orthographic projection (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The predominately Muslim nation of Bangladesh has been getting a great deal of attention in the atheist blogosphere lately and for good reason. Outraged Muslims have taken to the streets to demand that apostates and blasphemers, including atheist bloggers, be put to death for criticizing Islam. They want a new anti-blasphemy law, and as of this report from The New York Times two days ago, at least 19 people have already died in their riots.

While some mainstream news media outlets in the U.S. have acknowledged that the riots are related to blasphemy, the plight of atheists in Bangladesh and other Muslim nations has largely been ignored (see here for a notable exception). Most of the coverage I have seen has also not been particularly clear about what the rioters are seeking. This is not random violence; the rioters have demands. Their demands include more extreme penalties for anyone who dares to criticize Islam. Some are even calling for the death penalty to be used against anyone who criticized Islam. Clearly, the riots are about Islam.

Watching this situation unfold from afar has been difficult. The idea of atheist bloggers being imprisoned or killed simply for criticizing Islam is incomprehensible. I struggle even to find a reference point to understand what that would be like. Many of us feel a mixture of revulsion and powerlessness. We know that silencing people for voicing criticism is anathema to a free society, and we want to bring about a hasty end to the horrors experienced by those whose only "crime" is expressing dissent with Islam. I suppose one thing we can do is keep writing and talking about this situation so that it becomes impossible to ignore.

I have heard some atheists in the U.S. say that what is happening in Bangladesh would happen here if Christian extremists had their way. I understand their point, but I'm not sure that is completely fair. There are undoubtedly Christians here who would like to imprison or kill those of us who criticize their religion, but they are relatively few in number and lack the social structures to bring it about. In Bangladesh and other Muslim nations, this appears to be a clear and present danger that must haunt the daily thoughts of many atheists.

Imagine having to contend with the very real possibility that your next sentence could get you killed. Imagine not knowing when the angry mob would descend on your residence or place of work. This appears to be the reality for atheists in some Muslim countries.

If you have not already done so, please consider signing this petition to the government of Bangladesh.

Subscribe to Atheist Revolution

I Owe Matt Dillahunty an Apology

2013-05-08T06:29:00.001-05:00

I recently explained that I was going to repost some old content from my Posterous account that I had salvaged as they were discounting their service. Unfortunately, my first such post was a disaster, and I owe Matt Dillahunty an apology for it.

Nearly a year ago, Matt had commented on his Facebook page that he was going to block anyone who regarded the Elevatorgate incident as an overreaction. A screenshot of this comment was picked up and shared on Twitpic. I posted this screenshot and a snarky comment about litmus tests on Posterous. Again, this all happened nearly a year ago.

Because I was planning to revisit the issue of litmus tests to determine membership in the secular community in the future, I selected this old Posterous post as the first to repost here. I reposted it yesterday with a poorly-worded introduction which I thought explained that this was a repost from my now defunct Posterous account.

Based on the comments I received on this post, nearly all of which were critical, it was apparent that I had not been sufficiently clear that this was an old post or why I was bothering to repost it at all. In other words, I screwed up. What Matt pointed out was that he had changed his mind about the mass blocking soon after leaving the Facebook comment in question. Because I had not been following him then, I was unaware of this reversal. So when I reposted this old post, it had the effect of making it look like Matt was doing something he wasn't.

After hearing from Matt, I wrote an addendum to the post where I attempted to clarify this. But I'm not sure that is really adequate. Therefore, I am deleting the post because I worry that it is misleading and issuing the apology that follows to Matt.

Matt, I am sorry. I really screwed up here, and I see now how reposting an old post along these lines looked like nothing more than an attempt to stir up drama unnecessarily. While that was not my intent, I understand that it must have looked that way. My decision to post this without first attempting to learn what might have changed since the original post was a poor one, and I regret it. I have deleted the offending post, and I am clear that I should not have reposted it at all. We can and will disagree on a number of issues relevant to the secular community, but this was truly below-the-belt, and I am ashamed for having done it.

Those Who Do Not Believe We Will Have a Future Should Not Be Placed in Charge of It

2013-05-08T05:18:00.000-05:00

The Earth seen from Apollo 17. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Natural resources and the environment. Debt and the economy. The long-term costs of war on a nation's standing in the world and future diplomatic efforts. The food and water supply. The sort of the world we are leaving to future generations. There just a few of the things about which most sane people are at least somewhat concerned. But what if absolutely none of it mattered because the world was going to end soon? What if there was no point in being future-oriented because the entire show was about to come to an end?

Among the many things I find toxic about evangelical fundamentalist Christianity, one that consistently rises to the top of the list is the manner in which the belief that we are living in the "end times" undermines the efforts of those who are trying to improve our world. Ask yourself what you would do differently if you truly believed that the world was going to end in your lifetime. You sure as hell wouldn't worry about the environment, saving for your children's future, your legacy, or much of anything else, would you?

Hemant Mehta (Friendly Atheist) brings us the personification of this sort of nonsense in the form of evangelical Christian pastor Mark Driscoll. Regardless of whether Driscoll was joking, the fact is that many evangelical fundamentalist Christians do believe this sort of thing. And best of all, we in the U.S. are fairly notorious for electing them to Congress and giving them the task of making policy decisions on our behalf.

I am willing to accept that reasonable people can differ in their vision of an ideal future. Your vision of the sort of world you want for your children and grandchildren may be quite different from mine, and that is fine. What is not fine are those who turn their backs on the future because they do not believe there will be one. Keeping them out of power so they cannot implement their destructive policies may just be the closest thing we in the reality-based community have to a "sacred" duty in the sense that it ought to transcend politics. After all, it is our future that is at stake.

I have never been one to suggest something like a litmus test for evaluating politicians. I know many on the left use a candidate's position on reproductive freedom as their litmus test and many on the right use a candidate's position on the Second Amendment as theirs. I suppose if I had one it would have to involve the amount of time the candidate thought our world had left before the apocalypse described in whatever "holy" text he or she accepted. I can think of no circumstances under which someone who did not believe we had a future should be placed in charge of it.

Subscribe to Atheist Revolution

Atheism Before the Internet

2013-05-06T05:21:00.000-05:00

"Doubts", Henrietta Rae, 1886 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Can religion survive the Internet? The Internet has been referred to as "where religions come to die" (video) and as the single greatest boost atheism has ever received. I'd have to agree. I am old enough to remember life before the Internet quite well, and I have little doubt that atheism is far easier to discover now than it used to be. The impact of the ease with which the Internet allows today's youth to learn about atheism cannot be overstated. I thought it might be fun to take a brief stroll down memory lane to explore how different things used to be for those who were questioning the religious beliefs in which they had been indoctrinated.

In the days before the Internet, one had to expend considerable effort to obtain information. As a child around the age of 12-13, I really only had three viable options:

Asking questions of someone I knew (e.g., a parent, friend, or teacher),
Consulting an outdated set of encyclopedias my parents had bought several years earlier, or
Hoping I could get a ride to the public library on the other side of town.

When I asked my friends, family members, and teachers about my growing doubts about gods, I was met with denial, refusals to discuss the matter, and threats of hell. I made the mistake of asking a minister at the church I was forced to attend, and this resulted in little more than being told "we're worried about your soul." A few people attempted to provide answers aimed at erasing my doubts, but they were unsuccessful. The doubts continued to grow.

The encyclopedias provided some information about world religions, showing me that there were certainly alternatives to the Christian tradition in which I had been raised. However, none of them made any more sense to me. The encyclopedias might have been more helpful if I knows what I was looking for, but I had no idea at this age that atheism was even what I was looking for.

The public library to which I had access was small, located on the other side of town, and not terribly easy to use. In the days before the Internet, card catalogs were a vast collection of index cards arranged in alphabetical order. Unless one knew what one was looking for, finding books this way was tricky. When I looked up religion and Christianity, I found pro-religion and pro-Christianity material and little else. I read some of this but did not find it helpful. I had no idea that I might have better luck looking in the philosophy section, small as it was.

Turning 14 and entering high school would be a turning point. This was what would finally bring me in contact with a teacher who exposed me to Western philosophy and referred to some of the classic philosophers in class, prompting me to look for their works in the public library. It would take me a couple years, but philosophy ended up being the means through which I would discover atheism.

This was also the time in my life when I discovered a local used bookstore that was to be the place where I first learned about atheism. The store was small, dark, musty, and packed from floor to ceiling with wonderful books that were cheap enough that I could actually afford to buy some of them. Unlike the public library, they had an excellent philosophy section. I could get there by bicycle, and the owners were happy to let me browse for hours even though I never had more than $5 to spend. I still have the copy of Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects I bought there for $2.00 around the age of 16. This book, more than anything I had read up to that time, showed me that my doubts were normal, appropriate, and even justified. I realized I was not alone.

As I recall the effort and time, measured in years, required for me to move from doubting the faith in which I was raised to realizing that there were others out there called atheists who shared my doubts, the power of the Internet is evident. If I was 12 or 13 today, a few seconds on Google might bring me to blogs like this one where I'd quickly learn I was not alone. I'd like to think that I'm writing, at least in part, for that 13 or 13 year-old me.

Subscribe to Atheist Revolution

Conservative Atheists Who Enjoy Discussing Religion

2013-05-05T13:21:00.000-05:00

The Conservative Club, Wisbech. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

As the secular community grows, it is reasonable to predict that individuals who are new to atheism will go online in an effort to find information and resources. Being partial to blogs myself, I am excited about the prospect of new atheist blogs emerging to cater to smaller segments of the secular community. I imagine that we will see blogs written by atheists with somewhat different perspectives to reflect the growing diversity of our community.

Cephus (Bitchspot) has an interesting post in which he wrestles with the difficulties he has encountered in writing an atheist blog from a conservative political orientation. While atheists do seem to lean left-of-center, there are certainly conservative atheists out there. What Cephus notes, however, is how few of them seem interested in atheism and the issues typically addressed on atheist blogs (e.g., religion, separation of church and state). To be sure, there are a few conservative atheist blogs. What I am not sure about is what sort of traffic they get.

Cephus is seeking an audience of conservative atheists who are interested in discussing matters of religion. Does such an audience exist? If this sounds like something of interest to you, check out Bitchspot. The poor guy has to be getting tired of liberals like me stopping by.

Subscribe to Atheist Revolution

U.S. Tortured Detainees After 9/11

2013-05-05T07:46:00.001-05:00

English: Torture device used by SAVAK (U.S.-backed Iranian secret police) to pull out fingernails of detainees (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It has been quite awhile since I wrote anything with an explicitly political focus, and I can't say I've missed it too much. However, there was one huge story that came out recently that the corporate-owned media in the U.S. effectively buried that deserves mention.

The Constitution Project, a highly regarded nonpartisan think tank, released a report on how the U.S. treated detainees following 9/11. The report, described by ProPublica as "the most comprehensive public review to date," concluded that the U.S. did in fact torture detainees.

I realize that we have known this for some time, but this report is noteworthy for being both thorough and nonpartisan in nature.

“Perhaps the most important or notable finding of this panel is that it is indisputable that the United States engaged in the practice of torture,” the report concludes. The task force says that despite overwhelming evidence of torture, both government officials and many in the media have continued to present the issue as a two-sided debate.

The ProPublica post provides a great summary of the report's highlights, and I encourage you to give it a read.

Following the bombing in Boston, one Republican politician after another has come out advocating torture. Each time, they roll out the tired ticking time-bomb scenario. And each time, they are effectively rebutted by those who do interrogation for a living. Torture doesn't work. No far-fetched scenarios can change that simple fact.

I heard a great interview recently on NPR with a high-level FBI interrogator explaining this yet again. The Republicans love to pose the question of whether one wouldn't torture in order to stop terrorist attacks, but this is a false scenario because it assumes that torture will produce reliable information. It does not. Under torture, the suspect will say anything to make the pain stop. The information is not reliable. The interrogator wants cooperation - not compliance.

Watching Republicans fall all over themselves to see who can be the strongest advocate for torture is sickening. They actually seem eager to trade their humanity for votes. The whole spectacle reminds me of the "get tough on crime" nonsense that raged throughout the Reagan and Bush I administrations that led to the U.S. having the highest rate of incarceration in the world. We are locking up more of our citizens than any other country, and yet, we continue to live in fear.

Subscribe to Atheist Revolution

How to Set Up a Facebook Fan Page to Promote Your Blog

2013-05-04T05:44:00.001-05:00

Profile shown on Thefacebook in 2005 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I detest Facebook, but I cannot argue with its utility in helping to drive traffic to one's blog. There are simply too many people using it to ignore it as part of a comprehensive social media strategy. In this post, I am going to give you some tips on how to set up a fan page in Facebook to promote your blog. Fan pages can be used to promote all sorts of things - even people - but I am focusing on their use to promote your blog.

Some bloggers use Facebook effectively to interact with readers, get ideas for blog posts, and all sorts of other things. That's fine, but I am not going to address any of that here. As I said, I am focusing solely on the goal of driving traffic to your blog. I am assuming that this is the main thing you are hoping to accomplish. To the degree that you have other goals for Facebook, you will want to adapt some of what I will suggest.

How Facebook Fits Into Your Social Media Strategy

Picture a large funnel. Your blog sits at the narrow end. Social media services (e.g., Twitter, Pinterest, Tumblr, Google+, Facebook) sit around the rim of the large end. Their primary utility lies in their ability to send visitors to your blog. A good tweet, pin, or post brings visitors to your blog. A great one is shared by your followers/fans to bring even more visitors to your blog. Facebook is merely one more point along the rim of that funnel.

If you are not crazy about the funnel metaphor, you can think of Facebook as a means by which persons who are interested in your blog can keep up with your work. Some people will subscribe via email or RSS; others will prefer to do so with Facebook. Your goal is to make it easy for them to do so. This is why you need a presence on the big social media platforms (i.e., to give the people who use those platforms an opportunity to connect with your blog).

Setting Up a Facebook Fan Page For Your Blog

Because Facebook is constantly changing their design (and almost always for the worse), I can only describe how this works at present. The following instructions will assume that you have a personal Facebook account and that you are logged into it.

You should see a small downward pointing arrow on the far right of the Facebook menu at the top of your screen. Pulling down this menu will reveal "Create Page." Facebook will then present you with six options about the kind of page you want to create. Which one you select for your blog does not matter much, but I'd recommend "Brand or Product." You will then need to choose a category. You will find "Website" toward the bottom of the list, and this is what you want.

Now here is the really important part. In setting up your page, give it the same name as your blog. My blog is named Atheist Revolution, and my Facebook fan page is named Atheist Revolution. Why is this so important? Branding. You are promoting your brand with this page. In selecting your profile picture and cover image, use something that will be instantly recognizable to readers of your blog (e.g., your logo, your color scheme, your avatar). Again, this is about consistent branding. You want this page to be associated with your blog and not mistaken for anything else.

Using Your Facebook Fan Page

Once your new Facebook fan page is set up, you want to make sure that buttons or at least a link to it are added to your blog so that visitors can see how to find it on Facebook. I suggest that you also write a blog post announcing your new Facebook fan page. It gives your current readers another way to get your content (and hopefully share it with their Facebook friends).

As for what you actually do on your Facebook fan page, that's easy. You post links to your blog posts. You can do this manually by copying and pasting the URL of your blog post into the status field of your Facebook page. There are also a few ways of making this automatic so that every time you publish a new post on your blog it appears on your Facebook page without you having to do anything.

What you are hoping for now are two outcomes:

People who see your post summaries on Facebook (when you post a URL, Facebook only shows the meta description of the post) will click on the link to read the full post on your blog, and
People who have read your post will click the "Like" button in Facebook and/or share your post with their friends on Facebook.

The One Big Problem With Using Facebook to Promote Your Blog

There is plenty to hate about Facebook, but when we are talking about driving traffic to your blog, one stands out from the rest. Most of your Facebook fans will never see most of the content (including your blog posts) that you post you your fan page. Facebook has not been able to come up with an effective business model for how to make money with their service, and their current effort involves trying to trick you into paying to promote your posts. I believe they are now calling this "Boost Post," but I am sure they will try something else when that continues to fail miserably.

The idea is that only a small fraction of your fans will see your content unless you pay exorbitant fees to push it to them. I have seen several reviews of the service aimed and businesses that would have the sort of money to do this on a regular basis, and the verdict seems to be that it is not even remotely cost effective.

There are three partial solutions, none of which actually resolves the problem but which might make you feel better:

Persuade as many of your Facebook fans as possible to add your fan page to their "Interests List" rather than just liking your page. For those who do so, your content will be more visible, but good luck getting more than a few people to do this.
Hope that lots of people click "Like" on your posts. This seems to make them somewhat more visible, but is something else you have little control over.
Hope that lots of people share your post with their friends. Again, this can help, but you don't have any control over it.

Limitations aside, a Facebook fan page can be an effective way to drive traffic to your blog and requires little effort to set up and maintain.

Subscribe to Atheist Revolution

Genuine Misunderstanding vs. Axe-Grinding

2013-05-03T15:52:00.001-05:00

Communication (Photo credit: krossbow)

One of the problems faced by anyone who writes something others read is that one's words may be misunderstood or misinterpreted. It is a frustrating experience but also an inevitable one. After all, people vary in intellect, reading comprehension, personality, and all sorts of other variables that may have something to do with their likelihood of misconstruing what someone else has written. And of course, we also vary in our ability to communicate clearly in writing. It can be helpful to remember that most cases of misunderstanding can be cleared up quite easily (e.g., "That is not at all what I said. You are reading something into my words that simply isn't there.").

Of course, there is at least one case where no amount of clarification or correction will fix the sort of misinterpretation I am referring to: intentional twisting of one's words to further some axe-grinding. When the misunderstanding is not a misunderstanding at all but a dishonest attempt to make it look like someone said something different from what they actually said, clarification is likely to be a waste of time.

The dilemma for the blogger - or any other sort of writer - is that is can be almost impossible to tell whether what appears to be a misunderstanding is a case of genuine misunderstanding or something a bit more sinister. As you can imagine, assuming one when it is the other is something we'd all like to avoid.

I know I am being way too abstract here, and you are wondering what the hell I'm talking about. Time for a specific example. I wrote a post not terribly long ago about Secular Woman's new About Theocracy campaign. In the post, I reviewed some of the criticism I had heard from other atheist bloggers about the campaign, said that I kind of liked it myself, and noted that I would not be supporting Secular Woman even though I liked this campaign because I did not care for how they decided that feminism is "a given, and not a topic for debate." I said:

Far too often, I have observed how this sentiment closes down healthy, rational discussions about gender and feminism. I do not believe this is how the atheist/freethought/secular community is supposed to operate, and I find that it actually does more harm than good to feminism.

What did I mean here? I meant that the position that a particular subject could not be debated often seems to shut down rational discussion. After a commenter, Doug, seemed to misunderstand my point and decided that I was somehow suggesting that the equality of women was open for debate, I attempted to clarify what I was saying. I referred to asking questions and having open discussions; he kept referring to debates. It was clear that there was a communication breakdown taking place, so I wrote a follow-up post in which I spelled out that my broader belief that we should question everything, accept no dogma, and honor no sacred cows.

Now I see that Doug has written an entire blog post that continues the same line of apparent misunderstanding. He has chosen to equate my statements that we should question everything and that no subject should be considered off limits to free inquiry with that of a creationist arguing that we should teach that nonsense along with evolution in schools. He does not seem interested in distinguishing between critical inquiry (which I am advocating) and arguing that all claims are equally valid (which I am most certainly not advocating).

I’m fairly certain that Vjack wouldn’t want Evolution to be debated alongside creationism like that in the public schools.

Glad to hear it. This suggests that we may have a genuine case of misunderstanding rather than something more malicious.

So I guess he does accept restrictions on what can and cannot be discussed or questioned as long it doesn’t affect him? Those Christians who want to teach Creationism just want a debate and for kids to ask questions. What is wrong with that?

Again, Doug is confusing the process of critical inquiry and an odd form of debate that seems to assume that all arguments are equally valid. I do NOT accept any restrictions on what can and cannot be discussed or questioned. I most certainly DO accept the notion that some questions have answers and that some evidence is better than others.

We should all be free to question every aspect of science, including evolution. As someone who does scientific research for a living, you better believe I engage in critical inquiry and rational discussion! How could science exist without us being encouraged to ask questions and discuss our world?

I support asking questions and engaging in rational discussion about feminism and other social issues just as I do about science. Moreover, I believe that refusing to think critically about feminism undermines the goal of equality much like refusing to think critically about science undermines the scientific enterprise. I'm not sure why this is so difficult to grasp or how I can be any clearer.

Subscribe to Atheist Revolution