12.29.2015

Atheists' Words Have Consequences Too

Light bulb icon tips

You know how many atheists (including this one) are fond of taking something a Christian (or Muslim) said and using it as an example of what some Christians (or Muslims) believe? As long as we're careful to limit ourselves to making statements about what some Christians or some Muslims believe and do not attempt to use it to characterize what all Christians or all Muslims believe, this is probably okay. We don't want to unfairly overgeneralize, at least not if we want to maintain any pretense of being rational and avoiding bigotry.

What I'd like to point out in this brief post is that Christians, Muslims, and other religious believers do this too. In fact, they do it with comments atheists make online. To the degree that we are worried about this, it might be a good idea for us to think before we post our thoughts in public online forums.

To be clear, I'm not calling for some sort of self-censorship; I'm suggesting some awareness that this sort of thing happens. Religious believers do sometimes read what we write online and do sometimes use our statements as a way of showing what at least some atheists believe. If we are bothered by this, we might give a bit more thought to what we write than we sometimes do.

12.25.2015

The Atheist Revolution Christmas Collection

xmas tree in lights

The first version of this post was written in 2015. It has been updated every year since then to include additional content.

I have written quite a bit on the subject of Christmas (and the war on Christmas) over the years. I suppose one of the effects of writing a blog for over 10 years is that one is bound to write quite a bit on almost any topic one covers. But why so much on these particular topics? I think there are two primary reasons.

First, I live in a culture where Christmas is almost inescapable. It is not just the music or the decorations; it is that virtually everybody I encounter seems to want to talk about it. And that means I am bound to end up thinking about it at least some of the time. If I really wanted to prevent myself from being exposed to Christmas themes this time of year, the only way to do so would be to not leave my home and cut myself off from TV and the Internet. At most, I could probably manage to do that for a week. So one of the reasons I write about Christmas is that it is hard to avoid each December.

Second, Christmas and all it entails is frequently connected to the separation of church and state, a topic in which I am greatly interested. The conservatives on Fox "News" seem to start howling about the so-called war on Christmas earlier each year. Christian extremist groups come out with their lists of which retailers should be boycotted for daring to wish their customers "Happy holidays" instead of "Merry Jesus Day!" Nativity scenes spring up on government property. You get the idea.

12.23.2015

Privacy, Anonymity, Surveillance, and Atheism

surveillance cameras

Ask any of us whether we value our privacy, and we will almost certainly reply that we do. Take a look at how we behave, and you may have reason to question our claim to value privacy. At the very least, you might discover that we do not value the privacy of others quite as much as we value our own. But you might also discover that we are quite willing to trade away our own privacy, give up our anonymity, and subject ourselves to surveillance in exchange for empty promises of safety.

If you complain about the many threats to online privacy, including the suggestions from many Republican presidential candidates that we expand NSA surveillance or the calls from some on the authoritarian left that we end Internet anonymity to prevent "harassment," there is at least one response you can count on receiving. Someone will say, "If you aren't doing anything illegal or inappropriate, you don't have anything to fear." This response seems to enter virtually any discussion of privacy, anonymity, or surveillance.

12.22.2015

Losing Belief in Santa, Magic, and Gods

magic
magic (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I do not remember the point when I stopped believing in Santa Claus as being particularly difficult. Nobody yelled at me, threatened me with eternal torture, told me I was just "going through a phase," or anything of the sort. Nobody seemed surprised that I stopped believing in Santa. It was almost as if they expected it to happen sooner or later.

The same goes for my belief in magic. There was a time during early childhood when I believed that magicians were doing actual magic rather than just illusions and trickery. When I stopped believing this, I experienced no adverse consequences for doing so. Nobody repeatedly informed me how much I had disappointed them. Nobody angrily proclaimed, "In this house, we believe in magic!" I do not even recall anyone trying to persuade me that magic was real.

So why did it have to be so different when I stopped believing in gods? Why were all the negative reactions I described above as being absent in those cases reserved for when I began to question the existence of gods?

12.20.2015

Lying About Santa: Facilitating Indoctrination or Training Future Skeptics

Santa Worshiping Baby Jesus

You have probably heard some atheists suggest that belief in Santa is sort of like a gateway drug for belief in gods. Santa belief may be much easier for a young child to swallow. Perhaps teaching a child to believe absurd things (e.g., Santa) without evidence could help to prepare him or her to believe even more absurd things (e.g., Jesus). The hypothesis that Santa belief facilitates religious indoctrination seems plausible.

At the same time, many atheists will tell you that learning the truth about Santa led them to question some of the religious beliefs they had been taught. Finding out the truth about Santa may have sparked some skepticism, critical thinking, and a desire to learn the truth about other things. With so many similar reports, it seems reasonable to speculate that one's experience with Santa belief could facilitate skepticism.

Of course, it does not have to be one or the other. Maybe belief in Santa facilitates religious indoctrination and paves the way for the early stages of questioning one's religious indoctrination. Wouldn't that be something?

12.13.2015

An Evangelical Christian Struggles With the Lunatic Fringe

Long Branch Baptist Church, Cairo Christian blogger Roger E. Olson wrote a fascinating post: A Call for American Evangelical Leaders to Confront Evangelicalism's Lunatic Fringe. The title gives away the point of Mr. Olson's contribution. He notes how every movement that grows large enough inevitably seems to attract "a lunatic fringe." He describes the lunatics as seeking to attach themselves to the movement in order to "gain respectability and a 'voice' - to influence the movement and others through it." As I read these words, I cannot help being reminded of certain elements who have attached themselves to the secular and/or skeptic movements with similar goals.

Why should we care about the "lunatic fringe" of our group or movement? As Olson points out, "...critics of the movement accuse it of fostering lunatics and identify the latter with the center of the movement itself." So one reason we might care is that the fringe can make the rest of us look bad to those on the outside even if we all recognize that it is not fair to judge the entire group by their fringe. That seems like a valid point.

Some of you may object to portions of Olson's post, as he is clearly seeking to distance evangelical Christianity from its extremists. Admittedly, there are parts of his post where he comes dangerously close to suggesting that the extremists many of us have come to identify with evangelical Christianity in the U.S. are not real Christians. He even refers to them as "neo-fundamentalists" in an apparent effort to separate himself from them. Still, I think it is important to credit Olson for doing exactly what so many atheists continue to ask Christians to do: distance themselves from their own extremists.

12.10.2015

Trump is Not Hitler, But That Doesn't Mean We Have to Like Him

Obama Hitler political sign

Donald Trump has been in the news lately for his plan to temporarily bar Muslims from entering the U.S. While this idea is not new and has even been implemented at various times in our history, it is certainly appalling to encounter it from a leading presidential candidate in 2015. It might be even worse to realize that someone can express this sentiment today and not lose most of their support overnight.

Trump's comments have understandably sparked widespread outrage. What is a bit more difficult to understand is how many atheists in my Twitter timeline I have observed making hyperbolic comparisons between Trump and Hitler.

I hope it is fairly obvious to most rational people that Trump is not Hitler. It isn't like he's calling for us the extermination of Muslims or even suggesting that we put people he doesn't like behind an electrified fence and let them "die out." And there is at least one distinction that seems to be getting lost amidst the outrage: Hitler was a dictator; the U.S. is not a dictatorship, and a President Trump would not have the power of a dictator. This raises an important question surprisingly few seem to be asking.

Suppose that Trump is our next president. Does this office give him the power to unilaterally bar Muslims (or any other group of people) from entering the U.S.?

12.09.2015

Winning the War of Ideas Against Radical Islam

Supplicating Pilgrim at Masjid Al Har...
Supplicating Pilgrim at Masjid Al Haram. Mecca, Saudi Arabia. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
In the war of ideas between radical Islam (including Islamism) and democratic societies, some U.S. Christians have suggested that the only way we will prevail is through Christianity. Do they have a point, or is this merely self-serving on their part?

For some of these Christians, the only way to win a war of ideas against Islamic extremism is through Christian extremism. We atheists have dismissed this argument repeatedly. If the problem is religious extremism, hoping to solve it through more religious extremism seems ludicrous. Even though we have set aside this argument, we must keep an eye on those continuing to make it. Some of these Christian extremists pose a real threat when they find themselves in positions of power in our government.

There's another group of Christians making a very different argument in favor of Christianity as the preferred method for dealing with radical Islam, and this is what I'd like to address in this post. This second group of Christians tends to be more moderate in their preferred form of Christianity. They are not advocating Christian extremism, and most of them are not fundamentalist Christians. Their argument, at least as I have encountered it, seems to be that contemporary mainstream Christianity as it is currently practiced in the U.S. provides both a valuable model for ordinary (i.e., non-radicalized) Muslims and an opportunity to foster productive relationships with Muslims that might prevent radicalization.

12.07.2015

Has Hateful Rhetoric Led to an Epidemic of Violence Against Abortion Providers?

Planned Parenthood volunteers help bring the f...
Planned Parenthood volunteers help bring the fight for health insurance reform to the Ohio Statehouse in Columbus. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
We are all familiar with the hateful anti-abortion rhetoric that comes from many Christian extremists. We have been hearing it from them for at least a few decades now, and it is a source of concern. It makes sense that persons who truly believe that abortion is genocide, for example, might support a variety of extreme acts, including violence, to end the perceived genocide.

Fortunately, the overwhelming majority of U.S. Christians, including Christian extremists, who consider abortion to be a form of genocide or murder do not commit acts of violence against abortion providers (or anyone else). If exposure to anti-abortion rhetoric led to violence against abortion providers, wouldn't we have to expect that there would be far more of it than there is?

Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, recently wrote a post at Freethought Now in which she asserted,
The anti-abortionists and politicians who’ve repeatedly defamed Planned Parenthood for years, ratcheting up the attack in recent months, have blood on their hands. There’s no question their incendiary rhetoric has escalated the threats and attacks against abortion clinics.
As a liberal who supports Planned Parenthood, I am naturally sympathetic to her viewpoint. As a freethinker and a skeptic, this tells me that I must be particularly careful. I need to critically evaluate her claim and the evidence for and against it rather than just blindly accepting it because it feels true or is consistent with my views.

12.06.2015

I Am the First Atheist in My Family

child playing with bubbles

I was not the first person in my family to graduate from college. Far from it. I was not even the first to earn a graduate degree. Both of my parents and at least one aunt beat me to that. I was not the first person in my family to move across the country, leaving the town where I grew up for the unknown. My mother did it, one of my uncles did it, and even my paternal grandparents did it back when that sort of thing was much less common than it is today. I was not the first person in my family to decide not to bring children into the world. An uncle did that before me, although I suppose the fact that he died so young may have been a factor.

I do have at least one distinction worth mentioning though: I am the first atheist in my family, immediate or extended. At least, I am the first to admit to anyone else that I am an atheist. If there were any atheists in the family before me, they kept it extremely well-hidden.

12.03.2015

Hope and False Hope

Faith, Hope and Charity
Faith, Hope and Charity (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Today's "sermon" deals with the important and often neglected topic of hope. It strikes me as one of many topics about which one hears a great deal from religious believers and not nearly enough from atheists. I'm not sure why that is. After all, many atheists are quite optimistic and hopeful. Perhaps hope is something we should address more often.

When a Christian tells me that he or she has found a sense of hope in Jesus, I'm inclined to believe it. No, I'm not saying I'm inclined to believe in Jesus. What I'm saying is that I am usually content to take the Christian's word for it when I am told that he or she has derived a sense of hope from his or her belief in Jesus. Just because I never found any sort of enduring hope in Jesus or any other aspects of the Christian faith does not mean that others cannot do so.

The version of Christian heaven about which I was taught all those years ago in Sunday school sounded pretty damn good. I can easily see how it would instill a sense of hope among those who could maintain a belief in it. Who wouldn't find the prospect of a better existence appealing? Grief sucks, and the idea of being reunited with all of one's lost loved ones is one I found appealing as a child. I find it even more appealing now that I have lost some people I would love to see again. If the version of Christian heaven I was told about was real, my long-deceased grandparents would probably be there. It would be great to see them again.

As long as one does not think too deeply about sin and salvation (e.g., why is it necessary for this god to kill itself to save us from its divine punishment?), the Jesus character can be seen as a positive thing. He cares for us, hears our prayers, guides our actions when we seek guidance, and so on. In times of turmoil, we pray and are somehow strengthened in the process. Again, I'm not saying I believe any of this. I'm saying that it does not take much of a stretch for me to see how those who do believe it could find a measure of hope through such beliefs.