An awesome video by Jared Scheib and one of the finalists in the Richard Dawkins Foundation’s Ten Point Vision of a Secular America contest.You can see the rest at that link and vote for your favorite one.

I’m always amused when Christians ask me why I celebrate Christmas. Given how much of it has nothing to do with Christ the real question is why they celebrate it.

Why do atheists in general seem to jump at the chance to argue? I’m an atheist and I just find it tiring. I really, truly, believe in NOTHING except for the fact that I . . . → Read More: SEB Mailbag: “Why does it matter?” edition.]]> The old mailbag has been less confrontational as of late. And the trend continues with Brandon Postler asking a good question:

Why do atheists in general seem to jump at the chance to argue? I’m an atheist and I just find it tiring. I really, truly, believe in NOTHING except for the fact that I don’t know everything.

I’m finally starting to get up there in scientific courses at my college for personal reasons, and all I’m discovering is that after all the lectures I’ve sat through and books I’ve read, science still cannot quite explain everything. That is alright by me, but why do so many atheists take it to the extreme in arguments?

You have two questions here so I’ll address them individually.

First, the reasons why so many atheists seem eager to argue with theists are as varied as the reasons for why they are atheist. Given that, it should go without saying that I can’t speak to anyone’s reasons but my own, but if you wanted me to speculate then I’d say, in a very broad generality, the willingness to argue with theists is because atheists feel they offer a valid and worthy counterpoint to the claims being made. Many outspoken theists make a lot of extraordinary claims that should be challenged lest they take on an air of credibility they don’t really deserve. As for myself, in the early days of this blog I did it because I enjoyed the challenge and it helped me to refine my beliefs and justify holding them. These days I’m not quite a quick at jumping in mainly because it’s all too often a fruitless exercise.

As for your second question, well, I’m not quite sure what you mean by taking it to an extreme or why the fact that science doesn’t know everything would be a reason not to argue with theists. Science not knowing everything doesn’t mean the theists claims are true by default. For all we don’t know, we still know quite a lot. Enough to judge extraordinary claims from theists at the least. I’d be very surprised if mankind ever reaches a point where, collectively speaking, we will know all there is to know. That shouldn’t stop us from using science as the tool it is for determining what reality is and how it works. Or, for that matter, as a means of judging supernatural claims.

What about the rest of you SEB regulars? What are your reasons, if any, for arguing with theists?

Hmmm... God looks kinda familiar...

The Catholic church has been having a rough time of it lately. What with the pedophile priest scandals around the world and the increasing number of Catholics leaving the faith in the U.S. and Europe. Now they have more bad news coming out of Brazil which was once considered . . . → Read More: Catholic church shrinking in Brazil as more become non-religious and secular.]]>

Hmmm... God looks kinda familiar...

The Catholic church has been having a rough time of it lately. What with the pedophile priest scandals around the world and the increasing number of Catholics leaving the faith in the U.S. and Europe. Now they have more bad news coming out of Brazil which was once considered a bulwark of Catholic faith:

Brazil’s Roman Catholics shrink as secular rise – Yahoo! News.

At the start of the last decade, millions of Brazilian Catholics joined flashy Pentecostal congregations expanding in the world’s biggest Catholic country. Now, Brazil’s Getulio Vargas Foundation finds, the country’s Catholics are still leaving the church and at a higher rate than ever, but many younger parishioners, like Maragato, are simply becoming nonreligious.

Experts say this new twist poses a more potent threat to Catholic leaders than earlier losses. Now, the church isn’t just competing against the Pentecostals, but courting people who have decided organized religion has no part in their lives.

“It’s the most important phenomenon in this study, the abandonment of religion and the Catholics,” said Fernando Altemeyer, a theologian at the Catholic University of Sao Paulo. “A considerable part of the Brazilian youth today are agnostic.”

Such news does warm my old atheist heart. I can think of no Christian denomination — with the possible exception of the Westboro Baptists — more deserving of having its membership numbers collapse than the Catholics.

The number of people under the age of 20 in Brazil who say they follow no religion is growing three times more quickly than those 50 and older, with 9 percent of young Brazilians saying they belong to no religion, according to the study. That mirrors a similar trend in the number of people leaving the Catholic Church.

This seems to be a growing trend everywhere. More and more of the younger generations are becoming non-religious. Some of them are seeking out their own personal version of spirituality, but more and more are becoming atheist and agnostic and it’s got the Catholics running scared. Just 30 years ago the Catholic church was embraced by 90% of Brazilians, today that number is down to 67.4%. Still a majority, but probably not for much longer the way things are going.

So what’s the primary cause of this decline? The study’s authors think it’s the improving quality of life in Brazil:

“As the economy has improved, people have more access to cinema, theater, to just take a trip,” said Silvia Fernandes, a sociologist at the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro who focuses on those who switch religions. “So we’re seeing that people no longer need to go to church for social reasons if they have these other options.”

Altemeyer said the ability of the previously impoverished to acquire goods like TVs and computers means even more distraction.

“The improvement of people’s life conditions is adding to this phenomenon of secularization and the rejection of religious institutions,” Altemeyer said.

Having access to computers and the Internet is probably a big part of it. When you’ve got instant access to the knowledge of the world you don’t have to rely so much on church leaders to tell you about reality. Plus you can find out about all the other people who manage to live good lives without relying on belief in a higher power to do so. Plus it doesn’t help when you cling to dogma that is detrimental to people’s quality of life:

Experts say the changes have accelerated as many women turn away from the Vatican’s prohibitive views on contraception and abortion, which remains illegal in nearly all cases in Brazil.

“The Catholic Church is literally losing its future, and the loss of women and young people is the most important driver of the fall,” Neri said.

The situation is so bad for the church in Brazil that the Vatican has announced their next World Youth Day will be held in Rio de Janeiro in hopes of slowing or reversing the trend of young people leaving the church. They’re already doing everything they can think of to stop the losses, but so far it’s not having much impact.

With any luck this trend will continue around the world and it won’t be too long before the Catholic church fades into irrelevancy. Now, if we can just get the same trend going with Evangelicals.

If you’re . . . → Read More: There’s finally a group that’s hated more than Atheists: The Tea Party.]]> Being an atheist brings with it a certain amount of… disapproval… by the general public. It’s something that I, and many other atheists, have mentioned on more than one occasion. Polls regularly show that atheists are less electable to public office than Muslims and are often ranked as having the lowest approval ratings.

If you’re an atheist who’s been bummed that our popularity is in the toilet, here’s a bit of news that should help cheer you up: The Tea Party has a worse approval rating than Atheists.

Polls show that disapproval of the Tea Party is climbing. In April 2010, a New York Times/CBS News survey found that 18 percent of Americans had an unfavorable opinion of it, 21 percent had a favorable opinion and 46 percent had not heard enough. Now, 14 months later, Tea Party supporters have slipped to 20 percent, while their opponents have more than doubled, to 40 percent.

Of course, politicians of all stripes are not faring well among the public these days. But in data we have recently collected, the Tea Party ranks lower than any of the 23 other groups we asked about — lower than both Republicans and Democrats. It is even less popular than much maligned groups like “atheists” and “Muslims.” Interestingly, one group that approaches it in unpopularity is the Christian Right.

Which is really weird when you think about it. The Tea Party seems to hold an inordinate amount of sway in the Republican party right now so why is it so unpopular with the general public ranking right down there with the Christian Right?

Probably because it’s more or less the Christian Right with new branding:

So what do Tea Partiers have in common? They are overwhelmingly white, but even compared to other white Republicans, they had a low regard for immigrants and blacks long before Barack Obama was president, and they still do.

More important, they were disproportionately social conservatives in 2006 — opposing abortion, for example — and still are today. Next to being a Republican, the strongest predictor of being a Tea Party supporter today was a desire, back in 2006, to see religion play a prominent role in politics. And Tea Partiers continue to hold these views: they seek “deeply religious” elected officials, approve of religious leaders’ engaging in politics and want religion brought into political debates. The Tea Party’s generals may say their overriding concern is a smaller government, but not their rank and file, who are more concerned about putting God in government.

Scratch the average Tea Party member and you’ll find a far-right Christian fundamentalist working hard to move America towards a theocracy. Given this is it any surprise that the likes of Michelle Bachmann and Rick Perry are doing so well in their bids to be the next President. At least among Republicans.

The silver lining in the cloud of the Tea Party’s dominance of the Republicans is that it may very well keep them out of the White House:

Yet it is precisely this infusion of religion into politics that most Americans increasingly oppose. While over the last five years Americans have become slightly more conservative economically, they have swung even further in opposition to mingling religion and politics. It thus makes sense that the Tea Party ranks alongside the Christian Right in unpopularity.

On everything but the size of government, Tea Party supporters are increasingly out of step with most Americans, even many Republicans. Indeed, at the opposite end of the ideological spectrum, today’s Tea Party parallels the anti-Vietnam War movement which rallied behind George S. McGovern in 1972. The McGovernite activists brought energy, but also stridency, to the Democratic Party — repelling moderate voters and damaging the Democratic brand for a generation. By embracing the Tea Party, Republicans risk repeating history.

Many in the Tea Party have ties to Christian Dominionism and are looking at both Bachmann and Perry as a means to their ends of converting our secular government into a theocratic one. If you thought George W. Bush’s reign was bad, try to imagine what a Bachmann or Perry administration would be like. Hopefully the disapproval of the general public for the Tea Party and it’s policies continues to remain high.

“What has changed everything?” asked the apologist from Campus Crusade for Christ International as he spoke on “Unshakable Truth, Relevant Faith” at the Billy Graham Center in Asheville, N.C., Friday evening. His answer was, the Internet.

“The Internet has given atheists, agnostics, skeptics, . . . → Read More: What’s the greatest threat to Christians today?]]> According to Christian apologist Josh McDowell it’s… THE INTERNET! Duhn duhn duhhnnnnn!

“What has changed everything?” asked the apologist from Campus Crusade for Christ International as he spoke on “Unshakable Truth, Relevant Faith” at the Billy Graham Center in Asheville, N.C., Friday evening. His answer was, the Internet.

“The Internet has given atheists, agnostics, skeptics, the people who like to destroy everything that you and I believe, the almost equal access to your kids as your youth pastor and you have… whether you like it or not,” said McDowell

[...] “Now here is the problem,” said McDowell, “going all the way back, when Al Gore invented the Internet [he said jokingly], I made the statement off and on for 10-11 years that the abundance of knowledge, the abundance of information, will not lead to certainty; it will lead to pervasive skepticism. And, folks, that’s exactly what has happened. It’s like this. How do you really know, there is so much out there… This abundance [of information] has led to skepticism. And then the Internet has leveled the playing field [giving equal access to skeptics].”

via Apologist Josh McDowell: Internet the Greatest Threat to Christians – The Christian Post.

You know what? He’s right. Faith largely thrives on ignorance. If you don’t know what caused something to happen or how something came to be then it’s pretty easy to accept “Goddidit” as a viable answer. The more you know the smaller the gaps that are left for God to hide in. With knowledge there is little need for faith. Which is a good reason why the Church (as a general thing) has so often over the history of mankind worked so hard to suppress scientific advances in knowledge if it has even a remote chance of contradicting official religious teachings. Can’t have some uppity scientist with his facts and evidence saying that the holy literature has got it all wrong! That stuff comes straight from God, dammit!

McDowell, who lives in southern California with his wife Dottie and four children, said atheists, agnostics and skeptics didn’t have access to kids earlier. “If they wrote books, not many people read it. If they gave a talk, not many people went. They would normally get to kids maybe in the last couple of years of the university.” But that has changed now.

Around 15 years ago, the apologist added, when Christian youth ministries were raising money for youth projects, the big phrase was, “If you don’t reach your child by their 18th birthday, you probably won’t reach them.” What is it now? “If you do not reach your child by their 12th birthday, you probably won’t reach them.”

Again, he’s right. Which is part of why there is so much focus on getting ‘em when they’re young. You gotta start fillin’ those empty heads up with nonsense as soon as you can before they’re exposed to all those facts and theories and shit. Indoctrinate them early enough and teach them to disrupt their classes with stupid questions about the curriculum and chances are good you’ll have an True Believer™ for life! But if you let those poor little bastards onto the Internet where all those nasty skeptics and atheists are just laying in wait to pounce on them with science and facts before you’ve inculcated them they’ll stand little chance in ignoring reality. Worse, they might grow up to be Liberals!

Fortunately, Mr. McDowell says there are things you can do to combat this great menace of our time:

“First, we have to model the truth. If you don’t model what you teach your kids, forget it. If they don’t see it, they won’t believe it… Second, we have to build relationships.” Just as truth without relationship leads to rejection, rules without relationship lead to rebellion, he said. “Kids don’t respond to rules. They respond to rules in the context of a loving, intimate relationship.” And third, he said, we have to use knowledge. “You better arm yourselves to answer your children’s and grandchildren’s questions…no matter what the question is…without being judgmental.” Kids’ greatest defense, he said, was the knowledge of truth.

Surprisingly enough, I again agree with him. In fact, I think his first point is very important. It’s one thing to talk the talk and another to walk the walk and I think a lot of Christians fail to practice what they preach. If more of them followed the teachings of Christ found in the Bible then Christians probably wouldn’t have as bad of an image among everyone else. Christ had some decent ideas that started with the old standby of leading by example. Having a good relationship with your kids is good advice regardless of your belief system and it definitely helps when trying to install your values in them.

The last one is amusingly ironic to me, but I do agree with it. Granted, what he considers to be proper knowledge and what I consider it to be are probably vastly different things, but it’s still good advice. And it’s not like there aren’t plenty of Christians who wouldn’t benefit from reading their Bible a little more closely. At least if they’re serious about actually doing what Christ said to do.

So, yeah, the Internet has made all sorts of knowledge — good and bad — available at the click of a mouse and it can and does lead to an undermining of faith. It’s also allowed us atheists and skeptics a much broader platform to present our views and arguments in direct competition with the theists. Without the Internet I’d never have the reach that I do when I decide it’s time to blow some hot air around and I’m only a modest blogger compared to many out there on the Net. It’s a good time to be a member of the loyal opposition. Not only is our message getting out to more than ever, but it’s being listened to.

This time out it’s not about a web comic, but a shit-storm in the skeptical/atheist community . . . → Read More: A comment on the latest drama in the atheist/skeptical community.]]> Considering how badly I got raked over the coals by various feminists for my last attempt at discussing issues involving male privilege, it’s probably a sign of diminished intelligence that I would step into that lion pit again, but here I go.

This time out it’s not about a web comic, but a shit-storm in the skeptical/atheist community that is commonly being referred to as “Elevatorgate.” It all started with Rebecca Watson of Skepchick fame when she did a video blog about an uncomfortable encounter in an elevator she had at a recent atheist conference. Here’s a transcript of the small portion of the video blog where she describes what happened:

“So I walk to the elevator, and a man got on the elevator with me and said, ‘Don’t take this the wrong way, but I find you very interesting, and I would like to talk more. Would you like to come to my hotel room for coffee?’

Um, just a word to wise here, guys, uh, don’t do that. You know, I don’t really know how else to explain how this makes me incredibly uncomfortable, but I’ll just sort of lay it out that I was a single woman, you know, in a foreign country, at 4:00 am, in a hotel elevator, with you, just you, and–don’t invite me back to your hotel room right after I finish talking about how it creeps me out and makes me uncomfortable when men sexualize me in that manner…”

Apparently Rebecca had mentioned, either in discussion panels or in small group conversations, several times throughout the day how she often feels unwelcome at skeptical conferences like the one she was attending because invariably someone tries to hit on her. Given that, it’s understandable how she would find the actions of the unnamed male on the elevator to be creepy. Especially given the time of day it was, the location in which it took place, and her announcement just prior to getting on the elevator that she was going to bed. As is often the case when things like this are posted to the net, someone stood up to defend Creepy Elevator Guy (CEG from now on), and the beginnings of a shit-storm appeared on the horizon.

Now let me say this right up front: Sure, it’s entirely possible CEG had purely innocent intentions and wasn’t actually looking to get laid, but even with as clueless as I can be about issues of feminism I can still understand why the assumption would be that he was looking to get his dick wet. Perhaps it’s because I have a daughter and I’ve hung around with enough creepy guys in my time to know what sort of stupid ideas they get in their heads, but even I was thinking it was a little skeevy. Still, it appears Rebecca declined the offer and the fellow didn’t push it any further than that.

Anyway, so some folks stood up to defend CEG and it wasn’t long before the battle lines were drawn and the growing shit-storm started to pick up speed. Reading through the comments back and forth on a couple of different blogs can be very dispiriting because there doesn’t seem to be any room for an honest discussion. Sexual harassment and the threat of rape are, understandably, emotionally upsetting topics so it’s probably no surprise that so many were outraged that anyone would think to suggest that CEG hadn’t done anything wrong. Meanwhile the CEG defenders were flabbergasted that so many people in the “skeptical” movement would make such blatant assumptions about CEG’s intentions based on how little info Rebecca had given anyone to go on. There are a lot of blanket statements being thrown back and forth that I don’t think accurately describe the stances or either side and with that comes the inevitable name calling.

This is dispiriting because the topic of sexism in the atheist/skeptical “movement” is probably a good discussion to have, but the topic is so emotionally charged that it’s almost pointless to engage in it because both sides end up talking past each other instead of to each other. Despite the apparent blindness my white male privilege gives me to the injustices of the non-white-male population (as was repeatedly pointed out to me in comments on my aforementioned entry) I do see and acknowledge that sexism and, yes, even misogyny are a problem in the atheist/skeptical community. There’s definitely room for improvement that’ll never happen so long as shit-storms flare up every time we try to talk about it.

This one has gotten so big that even well-known “leaders” (I use the term lightly) such as Richard Dawkins and Hemant Mehta (The Friendly Atheist) have gotten caught up in it and have apparently disappointed legions of fans by saying things that others felt were illustrative of their acute male privilege problem. It doesn’t help that when a female blogger by the name of Stef McGraw wrote an entry critical of Rebecca Watson’s vlog the latter turned around and used her status as a keynote speaker at an event where the former was present to criticize the criticism, which turned the shit-storm into a fecal hurricane.

Here’s where I stick my foot in it and say, well, I can see valid points on both sides. Yeah, at best Creepy Elevator Guy didn’t think his proposition (innocent or otherwise) through very well and, at worst, he made someone feel uncomfortable and threatened, intentionally or not, and that’s not a good thing. At the same time, the feminists in the audience did some amazing knee-jerk assumption making that is probably out of place in a skeptical community. Understandable as it may be from an emotional standpoint, it’s still going to rub some people the wrong way. When you stamp your feet and demand that your position is the only correct one to have and anyone who disagrees is a misogynistic fuckwad, well, you’re not going to win a lot of converts to your cause. It comes across as ideological as any Fundie and that’ll hit a brick wall with a lot of people right from the get-go.

More importantly, these sorts of shit-storms make people reluctant to even discuss the issue because it always blows up into a shit-storm. I like to think I’m a decent guy who respects and appreciates women for more than their physical assets, but by some accounts I’m more of a problem than the openly misogynistic assholes because I can’t see how anti-woman I really am due to male privilege. It’s only through sheer stupidity on my part that I even attempt to comment on these issues because the smarter side of me says I should just stick to less potentially explosive issues such as clubbing baby seals. (For the record, I’m against it, but I’m probably still part of the problem due to my Privileged Human Species status blinding me to the true horrors of being a baby seal.)

So what am I trying to say here? I’m saying that I don’t think either side has handled the conversation particularly well and that’s probably not going to change anytime soon. Until we stop yelling past each other and twisting what the other side said to suit our arguments, well, this will just keep happening again and again with no real gains to be made. A lot of folks keep saying they want to have a conversation, but that involves some give and take and most folks seem only interested in the giving part.

I now await being told how clueless I am and how I just don’t get it.

It would’ve been nice, but it was not meant to be.