5.30.2013

Is the Secular Movement Hostile to Women?

Hostile Ambient Takeover
Hostile Ambient Takeover (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Blogger Sarah Moglia (RantaSarah Rex) recently stated on Twitter that the secular movement is hostile to women. While I question the merits of depicting the whole of the secular movement in this manner, I am interested in hearing what she has to say. After all, there do appear to be pockets of hostility toward women within the secular movement, as well as in the broader culture surrounding us.

Sexism occurs in the atheist community, as does sexual harassment, and other non-sexual forms of harassment. It is great that there are plenty of women active in the atheist community who have not experienced any of this in our community and who feel perfectly safe and welcome. At the same time, it is important to acknowledge that there are also plenty of women who have had far less positive experiences and who have come forward to talk about it.

5.23.2013

Feminism is More Than Equality

Woman-power symbol (clenched fist in Venus sig...
Woman-power symbol (clenched fist in Venus sign). עברית: כוח נשים (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I believe that some - but not all - of the difficulty the secular community is having with feminism is due to (1) the inherent complexity and dynamic nature of the feminist movement, (2) widespread misconceptions about the nature and meaning of feminism, and (3) the behavior of a small group of atheists who identify themselves as feminists yet behave in ways that seem markedly inconsistent with many forms of feminism. I've already addressed #3 and will not repeat myself here. Instead, I'd like to take a look at some of the challenges involved in one popular way of defining feminism.

One of the most popular lay definitions of feminism is that it is simply the belief in the equality of women and nothing more. By this definition, we would say that anyone who believes that women are equal to men is a feminist. This would mean that the overwhelming majority of us are feminists, regardless of how we choose to label ourselves.

There are at least two problems with this narrow definition of feminism that I will examine in this post. The good news is that both are fairly easy to fix. In fact, all that is required is some added precision in our language and a willingness to explain the terms we are using in conversations with others.

5.20.2013

Labeling Something as Evil Depends on Our Perspective

All About Evil
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(s). 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.

5.16.2013

On the Relationship Between Atheism and Feminism

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.

5.15.2013

Game of Thrones and Pascal's Wager

Game of Thrones. Xbox One. 1080.P. 😁 Gameplay Part.04.-06. On my YouTube Channel 😁 https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwsjII0MclEGZnmdii3LZb9FZLby_iP4Q 😁
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.

5.14.2013

Before You Accuse Someone of Being a Troll

blue-haired troll doll
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.

5.13.2013

Dear Muslima Revisited

English: Richard Dawkins at New York City's Co...
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.

5.12.2013

A Humanist Couple in Colorado Springs

Garden of the Gods, Colorado Springs
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.

5.11.2013

Pew Data Paint Grim Picture of Muslim World

The Muslim population of the world ma...
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.

5.09.2013

Problems With Jesus: Lack of Contemporaneous Evidence

The Temptation of Christ, 1854
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 think that he existed and that he was crucified, disagreement remains as to how closely his life resembled the various biblical accounts (some of which conflict with one another). Without non-Christian contemporaneous historical writing (i.e., documents from the time in which Jesus is supposed to have lived, died, and returned to roam the Earth as a zombie devouring the brains of his followers), 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 from 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 almost certainly 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 very unlikely that they happened much like what was described in the Christian bible.

What we know from the contemporaneous non-Christian records is that someone named Jesus (or something similar) 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 do not seem to have much more than speculation.

Personally, I do not find the question of whether there might have been a historical figure on which the Jesus character was loosely based to be all that interesting. Unless this person closely resembled the one described in the bible, I am not sure this is worth our time.

5.08.2013

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

The Earth seen from Apollo 17.
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?

5.06.2013

Atheism Before the Internet

Doubts, Henrietta Rae, 1886
"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:
  1. Asking questions of someone I knew (e.g., a parent, friend, or teacher),
  2. Consulting an outdated set of encyclopedias my parents had bought several years earlier, or
  3. Hoping I could get a ride to the public library on the other side of town.

5.03.2013

Jeff Hanneman Will Be Missed

Jeff Hanneman of Slayer
Jeff Hanneman of Slayer (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Jeff Hanneman, guitarist and one of the founding members of Slayer, died yesterday of liver failure following a spider bite. He was only 49. His death is a major loss to metal fans everywhere, including this one. Hanneman was more than a great guitar player; he was responsible for writing some Slayer's best songs.

I'm not usually one to go on about the loss of public figures I have never met personally, but this one is different. I vividly remember exactly where I was and who I was with the first time I heard Slayer's classic Reign in Blood album in 1986. I had never heard anything like it, and I bought one for myself the next day. I have loved thrash metal ever since. I have every album Slayer has released, and I still listen to them all regularly. I have seen Slayer in concert a few times and never been disappointed. I suppose it will sound silly to some for me to say that Slayer's music had a significant impact on my life, but that is exactly what I am saying.

My thoughts are with Jeff's family, friends, bandmates, and the legions of other Slayer fans around the world. He will be missed.

5.01.2013

Prayer in School: It Is About More Than Separation of Church and State

Time for Prayer in School Yard
Time for Prayer in School Yard (Photo credit: peretzp)

In my previous post about prayer in school, I focused on the question of why some religious believers are not satisfied with the right of students, staff, teachers, and administrators to engage in silent prayer at school. In this one, I'd like to take a look at why the subject of prayer in school is something about which we should all be concerned.

Separation of Church and State

If you ask some atheists why they object to prayer in school, they will explain that it represents a violation of separation of church and state. Assuming that we are talking about teacher-led prayer in public schools, they are right to point this out. One reason why it makes sense to object to school prayer is that it is constitutionally prohibited. When religious believers push school prayer, they are asking school personnel to do something they cannot legally do. We generally expect the schools to which we entrust our children to obey the law.

And yet, the fact that teacher-led prayer in public schools is legally prohibited does not always resonate with others, including some atheists. While separation of church and state is certainly one reason why we should care about school prayer, it might be valuable to examine a few others.