The Process of Morality?

A question that is often in the social consciousness recently is the Question being asked of Atheists: 

“How do you know what is right or wrong if you don’t believe in God?”

Of course, the “pat” answer is the one always pushed by theistic overlords, which says that atheists don’t know, so they feel free to act immorally.  Thus, to be an atheist is to be immoral and evil.  Naturally, atheists disagree, as we all do actually have morals, and many of us feel our morals are superior to those of religious people, in the main because we actually have to go through a process of decision making to get there, while theists don’t. (Theoretically.  As I will note later, people are complicated, and none of us are usually that dogmatic about this.)

But just HOW do we get there?  How to explain to theists who do not know (and to new atheists as well) what that process is?  What are the issues, and how does one make up one’s mind?  Let’s step through the process, talking about those issues as we go.  Be aware, this is a complicated issue, and to do this in any manageable manner, I’m going to have to simplify things a bit.

First, I am NOT a philosopher.  I am not trained in any professional sense in either the field of philosophy nor logic.  I was exposed at one time (high school) to both in my studies in Latin (because I had an awesome Latin teacher), but I can in no wise claim any expertise in either field.  So, the following is just me.  If you have such training, and see any obvious errors as a result of that lack, feel free to jump in.  I won’t be insulted, unless you intend to insult me, and it’s obvious.  Otherwise, I’ll be glad to discuss that problem.

To simply this a bit, I’m going to look at four subgroups of people.

Theists who make a decision that something is good.

Theists who make a decision that something is bad.

Atheists who make a decision that something is good.

Atheists who make a decision that something is bad.

Obviously, the category of “theists” is a very broad one.  Their morals are often different in particular ways.  But, mostly, their beliefs are bound by some sort of Scripture.  It may be something dictated by a deity, it may be something dictated by past masters (or clerics) in that particular religious practice.  The commonality is broadly the idea that morals are dictated by some authority.  It may be centralized, it may not.  But generally, people are guided by that authority, and not primarily by their own thought processes.

Also, with Atheism, naturally, that definition is one that encompasses mainly the belief that there are no deities.  Note here that atheists may have a widely differing spectrum of political thought and practices, and come from virtually every culture in the world.  Thus, the cultural influences will be broadly different.  We’ll get to that later.  But, the fact that atheists may have differing POLITICAL ideals certainly shows that other influences on their morals are as widely varied as the cultural influences.  So, keep these in mind as we examine these processes.

One last thing.  This is examining a process.  I’m not saying that any of these four subcategories are about a lifestyle of good or bad, either as theists or atheists.  People are complicated, and any or all of us are capable of making a decision about what to do in a particular instance that may, objectively, seem good or bad at any one time.  The NEXT time we are in a position to make such a decision, we might make the completely opposite one.  So, be aware that I am not making any value judgements here about lifestyles.  This is about how people determine morality - the decision PROCESS, and how that determines our actions.  On THAT, I reserve the right to make value judgements.

-  Theists who make a decision that something is good.

Now, in the popular paradigm of the Question, “How do you know what is right or wrong if you don’t believe in God?”, obviously, the implication is that people who believe in God are guided by His hand as revealed in the Bible. (Or, possibly, in a wider context, by a holy Scripture not Christian). This presupposes that all such believers take their morals from that Scripture, and ONLY from that Scripture.  I would contend that this is false, at least in general.  Everybody lives in the cultural environment in which they live.  (For the purposes of this essay, I’ll assume that is where they were born, and that as theists, their upbringing raised them in the most popular religion of their birthplace.)

As an example, let us look at Female Genital Mutilation.  FGM, as it is known, is a horrible practice that involves the mutilation of the female outer genitals - the Vulva, with terrible results.  (You can look this up, as the details are not relevant to this essay). It is practiced across Northern Africa and into parts of the Middle East.  It is NOT a religious requirement at all, as it is practiced by both Christians and Muslims in the countries where it is generally allowed, and neither religion addresses the practice at all.

But, it is considered not only common, but REQUIRED by the cultures in which it is practiced, in order to make women obey the sexual restrictions of those cultures.  It is considered “good”.  And not at all by Scripture, although some clerics in those areas may fall back on that excuse.  It is a strong influence, not from Scripture, but by culture.

Other cultures consider that practice anathema and forbid it, but, again, not as a religious practice, but as a cultural one.  In both cases, the resulting practice, either to do it or to forbid it, is very strong.  But, in actual practice, religious scripture is irrelevant to those decisions.

So, we see that even theists make decisions about morality based on things that are not “revealed” by their deity, but also on cultural traditions.  This is ignored by those who ask the above Question.  One can reinforce this point when one sees how Scripture often condones practices once considered “good” in ancient societies but “bad” in modern ones, such as slavery, or even genocide.  These formerly condoned practices are today illegal in virtually every society in the world, yet, at least in Christian Scripture, neither one has been removed or noted as currently discouraged.  Thus the waters are muddied considerably when asking people to use Holy Scripture as a guide.  Cultural influences in modern societies rarely coincide well with ancient writings.

- Theists who make a decision that something is bad.

Making a decision about what is bad is equally fraught with a minefield of such problems, if one is trying to use Holy Scripture as a guide.  Taking the Bible as an example (mainly because I am writing this in the context of a largely Christian controlled culture), there are some hard restrictions that do not match modern cultural influences, in which those modern cultural influences overshadow the biblical pronouncements of “badness”.

The most popular ones are the biblical restrictions on eating shellfish or wearing mixed fabrics.  Not being a Biblical scholar any more than I am a philosopher, I can’t tell you what the purposes of those restrictions may have been when the Hebrew priests wrote down those verses over two thousand years ago.  There may have been some very good reasons, perhaps having to do with either keeping shellfish fresh or with class restrictions on who could wear different fabrics.  Who knows today?  Biblical scholars or historians, perhaps.  Not me.

But the point is that in today’s Western societies, neither of these things are considered “bad”.  One is perfectly free to wear mixed fabrics, as much as one is free to eat shellfish or not, in spite of the very firm restrictions on them in holy scripture.  Oh, some clerics will tell you that the “laws” in the “Old” Testament are no longer valid, because of some verses in the “New” Testament.  But, those same clerics will turn the other cheek and tell you out of the OTHER side of their mouths that the Old Testament prohibition against homosexuality is still perfectly valid!

Which also muddies the water when good and well intentioned people try to use Holy Scripture to decide what to do or not to do.

- Atheists who make a decision that something is good.

One cannot pretend that atheists live free of religious influences.  All across the globe, in all cultures and in all religious places, there are those who do not believe the offerings of those who tout invisible magical beings for moral guides.  Unfortunately, in most places, those religions are the major influences on the legal and moral sets of values that the cultures they exist in require their people to live by.  In the US, it is relatively easy to camouflage one’s lack of religious belief and appear to conform to the common cultural practices of the locality in which one lives, at least in general.

In many places around the world, that is infinitely more difficult, as in some places being an atheist will get you seriously dead.  So, let’s just pretend for a moment that we are talking about those who, publicly, have the ability to choose their own moral values with which to guide one’s actions.  After all, having to camouflage one’s existence by copying the actions of one’s neighbors and family as they obey the strictures of their holy works isn’t having the freedom to choose one’s morals, is it?  Thus, for these poor atheists, the Question above is irrelevant.

But, in general, as one is free to choose, there are many ways in which one can reach out for information to guide one’s decisions.  One can look at history to get an idea of how one’s actions can work out in the context of one’s culture.  What works?  What generally turns out well?  What are, for example, the results of common practice on, say, marriage?  What is legal, what isn’t?  How do other people deal with a cheating spouse?  If it is legal, can I justify an affair?  What may that affair do to the welfare of my kids?  Or to the attitudes of my parents, or in-laws?  My boss?

One is free to look at all the data and decide that a course of action is perfectly fine - one may have married with an agreement together that an open marriage allows for sexual freedom, as long as certain rules are followed.  This may not conform with traditional ideas of marriage, but then American culture decided several decades ago that the government has no business poking its nose into people’s private lives, thus laws restricting sexual activity outside of marriage were done away with.  The same generally true in most Western societies.

Of course, cultural influences don’t always allow an atheist to perfectly follow their own ideals, as living in a more religious locality can restrict one’s ability to take free action similar to more restrictive countries in which religion is a major reflector of the law.  Social constraints are often harsh.  Just because the law says you can do something and the government cannot stop you doesn’t mean you don’t have social consequences to deal with if you violate social restrictions.  Of course, inside the US, those consequences rarely involve death.  For many, however, they can be severe on a personal level.

But even if mild, they are something atheists will probably take into account in some ways.  Generally, however, other considerations are paramount.  Who does this hurt?  Does this benefit me without hurting someone else, or will it come back to bite me on the ass someday? (Or perhaps someone close to me?)  Is this something that could help others while being good for me?  Or, how can I do this and mitigate the possible negative consequences for someone else?

The questions one asks will be consistent with one’s life philosophy.  Or, one’s political beliefs, alternatively.  There are atheists who are decidedly Libertarian in belief, and the questions they will ask are fundamentally different from the questions a Liberal atheist will ask.  Which will also be different from the questions a Conservative atheist might consider.

Believe it or not, it is entirely possible that an atheist could conform quite closely to the values of his/her community if their political philosophy is similar to the religious folks living in that locality.  In many US cities and States, one can see social values that are probably more due to political values than religious ones, and often, those values are diametrically opposed to “traditional” conservative Christian values.  The rapid rise of the acceptance of marriage equality around the US is an excellent example of this.

- Atheists who make a decision that something is bad.

Again, political values are often more important to this process than pure cultural values.  After all, in many families, that political culture is more important than religion in a growing segment of the public.  As the sheer numbers of people to whom religion is not relevant enough to matter to their lives (even if they nominally identify as theist) grows to an even greater percentage of the American public, one has seen a growing divide in relative values in political discourse.

At one time, one could count fairly well on the proposition that Christian values would be politically important to a wide segment of the public.  Religious leaders of Christian denominations enjoyed (and in some cases still do) wide acclaim and respect, and often influence a significant percentage of the voters.

In what I think is a significant development, the Conservative movement in the US has been reduced in percentage considerably in recent decades, to the point that the Republican Party has collectively decided that it is necessary for them to begin to depend on subterfuge such as gerrymandering and denial of voting rights to minorities likely to vote Democratic to remain in power.  More and more Americans seem to have decided that the dependency of the conservatives on the Religious Right is not a good thing, and this seems to have had a remarkable affect on the numbers of Americans abandoning religion and/or religious organizations in recent decades.  It is generally agreed that the majority of the category of “nones” have tended to move towards a liberal political set of values.

As with atheists who decide that something is good, those who decide something is bad are also using those influences of culture and politics to come to their conclusions.  Nobody lives in a vacuum, and atheists are no exception.  In fact, I believe atheists are increasingly becoming more influential in the body politic.  Not publicly, of course. It is still politically wise to mimic a Christian while running for office, but that doesn’t mean that closely held secular values aren’t beginning to be felt.   It is remarkable that even after the Republican Party has successfully managed to gain control of all three Branches of government, their failure to enact more than a handful of Conservatively leaning policies is so obvious.  The failure of the Republicans to repeal “ObamaCare” is only the tip of that iceberg, but is the poster child of their failure to force their values into policy.

It is my opinion that this is due to secular people in disguise acting secretly to confound and frustrate the right wing religious fanatics.  In other words, atheists (or nones) deciding that Conservatism is bad, combined with weaker believing theists using modern cultural influences to counter traditional Christian values in the public sphere.

In Conclusion

Life is complicated.  Nothing is ever simple, and the emotions, opinions, values, and actions of people are no exception.  While every person has something outside of themselves they hold to be most important in its influence on them (whether they know it or not), there are still multiple influences which combine to water down that larger element.

Yes, even religious people.  In fact, I would argue that there really isn’t a lot of difference between the religious folks and unbelievers in how they set the values they hold closest in influencing their actions.  One set of folks may hold one source more important, the existence of the others are often more important than they might realize.

However, the existence of those who are adamantly holding to written scriptures to make those decisions (and want to force ALL of us to do the same) is hugely influential in the world, and is a major threat to the ability of future generations to make better decisions about life, death, and how to live moving forward.  Any source of values that does not change and react logically to a changing population and cultural environments is a continuing threat to the future of mankind and its development.

So, “How DO you know what is right or wrong if you don’t believe in God?”

Think.

Question.

Get answers.

Decide for YOURSELF.

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life.  Don't be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of someone else's thinking." (Steve Jobs, at Stanford University, June, 2005) 

Everybody has an ideology, right?

I think by now, anyone who has spent any time reading my timeline and stuff I post on Facebook (much less my blog “The Cybernetic Atheist”) is aware that I am an unapologetic, out-and-out atheist.  No surprise there.  As I’ve explained before, I’m an atheist because of what I’ve learned about the Bible, and from the lack of any real evidence of the existence of God.  (From which I surmise that Christ cannot exist - no Father, no Son, right?  So, Christianity is man-made.)

But, as so many people have noted, and I myself have also said, atheism is not a belief, it is the LACK of a belief.  Over 8,000 gods/goddesses which mankind has invented over the millennia, and I don’t believe in any of them.  For much the same reasons, in fact.

But, isn’t it true that everybody has to have something which guides them?  Some moral compass?  Some (for lack of a better term) ideology?  I think that’s true, and mankind has come up with literally hundreds of such ideologies, if not thousands, in the course of our becoming humankind designing all of the myriads of civilizations (and accompanying gods) which have come and gone since.

Oh, what was that?  What do I believe?

Funny you should ask, I was just about to get to that.

For starters, it also isn’t a surprise to my Facebook friends to note that I seem to be a liberal.  I used to call myself an Independent, but the Republicans have managed to push me much further to the left over the last ten years (though mostly over the last six for obvious reasons).

But there’s more than that, a political ideology isn’t a moral one, as moral as it may be possible for political ideologies to be.

Morally, I like to identify myself with Secular Humanism.  The basic ideals of that group of people resonate with me closely.  Just to make it easier, here is one example of their beliefs:

* A conviction that dogmas, ideologies and traditions, whether religious, political or social, must be weighed and tested by each individual and not simply accepted on faith.
* Commitment to the use of critical reason, factual evidence, and scientific methods of inquiry, rather than faith and mysticism, in seeking solutions to human problems and answers to important human questions.
* A primary concern with fulfillment, growth, and creativity for both the individual and humankind in general.
* A constant search for objective truth, with the understanding that new knowledge and experience constantly alter our imperfect perception of it.
* A concern for this life and a commitment to making it meaningful through better understanding of ourselves, our history, our intellectual and artistic achievements, and the outlooks of those who differ from us.
* A search for viable individual, social and political principles of ethical conduct, judging them on their ability to enhance human well-being and individual responsibility.
* A conviction that with reason, an open marketplace of ideas, good will, and tolerance, progress can be made in building a better world for ourselves and our children.

Obviously, there are other interpretations and versions of these, Secular Humanism is not a religion and has no universally recognized tenets or principles, though these are a good example of the general direction most Humanists tend to go.

Another principle I admire is one contained in the Hippocratic Oath, “First, do no harm”.  If there is one overriding idea which intertwines itself into virtually all of the above principles, that would be it.  As a human being, into whose DNA the very urge of being a socialist animal is cooked, that seems to be the best guide to living one’s life, if one had to boil it all down to its basic elements.

That, I think, is one of the major differences between Humanism and religion - Christianity being my focus because of where I live.  Why?  Well, just look at the Ten Commandments, which Christians tend to look at (at least the Fundies here do) as the basic guidance provided by their God.

Without belaboring the point, look at the second commandment:

“You shall not make for yourself a carved image—any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.”

Look at the passage I underlined.  That is the very opposite of “do no harm”.  To punish the innocent?  For the neglect and disobedience of their ancestors?  (I always kind of thought the jealousy was a sin.)

On the other hand, There is no example of jealousy or hatred in the Humanist principles above.  Quite the opposite, in fact.

Another reason why I think Humanism is better than Christianity (as well as others) is because of longevity.

Yeah, yeah, I know, Secular humanism is merely a couple of hundred years old at the most.  So, what gives?

As a movement, that’s true.  But the principles above are based on literally hundreds of thousands of years of human experience.   While our intellectual experience giving us the ability to express them well is fairly recent comparatively speaking, the basic experiences themselves derive from the totality of human experience going back over two hundred thousand years, fading back into our evolutionary past.  These principles are so well understood that they were expressed, discussed and argued over in various ways even as far back as the ancient Greek philosophers, who debated many of these very ideas well over two thousand years ago, predating christianity!

Yet, Christianity is only around two thousand years old, its Jewish antecedents go back perhaps another two thousand or so, and the developmental periods for both religions are rife with violence, tribalism, slavery and misogyny.  Hardly an atmosphere to encourage humanistic principles!  Granted, the Greeks weren’t a prime example of being a hotbed of modern liberal ideals either, but their philosophers fought for the idea of trying to make humanity better than we were, at least some of them did, and their example resonated with the fathers of the Enlightenment thousands of years later!

I firmly believe that religion is, to a general degree, concerned with one thing:  Its own survival.  For an excellent example, look at the first five of the Ten Commandments.  Every one of them are devoted to the preservation of the authority of God and his earthly representatives.  Keeping people in the fold, under the pain of death.  (Perhaps not an earthly one, but if hell isn’t a kind of eternal death, I don’t know what is.)

Certainly the fact that most if not all of His other dozens of commandments/laws in Leviticus command death as a punishment qualify as antithetical to Humanist principles.

Yet, Humanism is not.  Not a single principle above is devoted to ensuring the survival of a “Humanist religion”, mainly because there isn’t one!  The closest one can come is where it says, “A conviction that with reason, an open marketplace of ideas, good will, and tolerance, progress can be made in building a better world for ourselves and our children.”  Which does not at all entail a self serving principle of survival.

As you might have guessed by now, another focus of mine is that of anti-theism.  I am, admittedly, an anti-theist.  I believe strongly that religion, as a belief system(s) which encourages people to believe things which are false and contrary to reality, is harmful to not only individual humans, but humanity as a whole.  Much of my writing is focused on struggling to spread the truth about false beliefs and their harmful affects.

But even that is an outgrowth of my Humanist principles - see the next to last one above.  Religion is not a good introduction to ethical conduct - quite the opposite, in fact, as it encourages a plethora of unethical conduct, mainly by example, which precisely undermines its attempts at ethics through the Ten Commandments and the teachings of Jesus.  There may be millions of Christians who defy this, by being good - but that happens because they adhere to the Enlightenment principles expressed by our Founding Fathers, ignoring the more harmful and violent examples and verses of the Old Testament.  (One can see that, because of the various examples of Christians who do the opposite - adhere to the Old Testament’s more intolerant and violent prescriptions of conduct, and do all they can to undermine and violate the egalitarian principles contained in our Constitution.)

So, to make a long story shorter, while my focus may be on the harmfulness of religion and my attempts to explain how I arrive at those conclusions, my very positive beliefs are what informs that fight, wishing with all my heart that more people could see how much better America and the world would be without the falsehoods of faith.

I hope this helps to make my efforts more understandable.

No True Christian

How many times have you heard he claim that "no true" Christian would claim X Y Z?

People from almost very denomination of Christianity have their own special little list of stuff that, according to them, no "true" christian would EVER say.

Some folks claim Jesus is all about love.

Others point to special favorite verses in the Old Testament that prove people who are members of their most feared group of "others" are going straight to hell.  Oddly enough, that group probably would include the people who say Jesus is all about love!

The folks from Westboro Baptist probably wish both groups would drop straight into Hell from where ever they're standing...

This kind of thinking is called the No True Scotsman fallacy, and this is what Wikipedia has to say about it:

No true Scotsman is an informal fallacy, an ad hoc attempt to retain an unreasoned assertion.[1] When faced with a counterexample to a universal claim ("no Scotsman would do such a thing"), rather than denying the counterexample or rejecting the original universal claim, this fallacy modifies the subject of the assertion to exclude the specific case or others like it by rhetoric, without reference to any specific objective rule ("no true Scotsman would do such a thing").

 The use of this fallacy is the result of the universal requirement in most religions that faith is required to believe whatever dogma that specific religion pushes.  Because faith is basically the belief of something without proof or evidence, a debate or argument between two or more people about matters of faithful belief is unending and pointless.

Virtually any holy book of scripture is written so ambiguously that nailing down a specific meaning is often hard to do, and many people do (and have) interpreted them so differently that history is littered (literally) with the remains of the wars and struggles resulting from those differences.

This makes it impossible for anyone to truly nail down a meaning that would actually hold up to the "No True Christian" statements.  Mainly because each of 40,000 differing denominations of Christianity each have their own private definition of what a "true" Christian should be!

As a result, any outsider, like me as an atheist, cannot possibly trust anything that comes after the words "No True Christian..." as pertaining to that statement, one man's truth is another man's belly laugh.

Or howl of outrage.

As an atheist, are you a hard core extremist, or are you an accomodationist?

Hey, I'm back!  (Sorry, but I was visiting Grandkids - not much time to write with CyberTwins to keep up with!)

Anyway, I was perusing FaceBook this morning briefly, and ran into an argument about how Atheism should act as a movement.  There were two sides - those who argued that the Extremists were too harsh and intolerant and those who were defending the position, with the argument centered around Dawkins.  As in, Dawkins is either a Grade A Number One Dick, or he's the best thing to come along since sliced bread, at least for the Atheist Movement.

While I agree that Dawkins can be acerbic at times (especially when confronting Theist idiots), but in general, he is pretty British in arguing his positions.  Meaning that he can be very polite while tearing you a new asshole.

But he isn't counted as one of the Four Horsemen of Atheism for nothing.  All four - Dawkins, Denning, Harris and Hitchens (may he long be remembered for his cutting wit...) are known as such because they performed a singular function.  They are responsible for awakening the world to the growing number of atheists in this country (and indeed world-wide) by being, in a word, Assholes.

They served the same function as the Gay Pride movement, namely, attracting media attention to our existence and our growing numbers.

High profile, indeed!  They wrote books, gave interviews, went on TV, established web sites, then blogs and have, in general, made themselves into tremendous pains in the ass for influential theist leaders everywhere.  By telling the world that we are here, we are growing in numbers and influence and will NOT go away.  (and by ripping their theology into very small, very insignificant pieces...but that's another discussion.)

And we've got opinions about religion that are in the process of upsetting the balance of power in, especially, the First World.

As for the argument, there is a contingent that argues that being an asshole and intolerant of the beliefs of theists isn't changing minds.  That it is counter-productive because it turns them off and makes them ultra-defensive.

Of course it does.  So did the in-your-face Gay Pride movement.  They paraded around the country in big cities where they had the numbers to defend themselves and got people talking.  They allowed others like themselves in less gay-populated areas to realize that THEY WERE NOT ALONE!  They made the media pay attention.

As time has gone on, the methods used by the Gay Movement have mellowed.  They do still have Gay Pride parades, but you don't see the radical dressed-up outrageously decked out folks in those parades like you used to.  These days, you can hardly (even if you squint) tell them from the regular folks who also march with them in support!

Which is kinda the point - gays are just like us.  They have lives, loves, jobs, dreams and debts.  Just like straights.

So do atheists.

We, too have lives, loves, jobs, dreams and debts.  Heck, walking down the street, one can hardly tell an atheist from a god-lover these days!  Ahem!  Sorry, I digress...

Which is why the Four Horsemen were and are needed - to wake people up.  To show them that we ARE HERE, and we are NOT going away.  We live alongside you, we are in your schools, your grocery stores, your parks, even in your churches!

And the more people see atheists as normal people, who do not eat babies nor worship Satan, the more they will see that we have common interests - like the Separation of Church and State.

Those who are derisively called "accomodationists" ARE needed.  Yes, it is Ok to be tolerant of others' religious beliefs.  Yes, we need to work with theists to bring together this society to push out the extremists of all kinds so we can learn to live together.  So we can build a country (and a world) that is neutral at the governmental level so everybody can hold and discuss opinions different from others.  So we can have political disagreements and discussions that will not result in violence and hatred.

In short, this is a big world, with a lot of different people in it.  Just as there are as many religious opinions as there are people, there is room in our movement for many differing techniques for approaching the theist audience, depending on who they are, and what interests we may have in common.

Instead of bad-mouthing other atheists who don't approach the subject like you do, try to understand who they are trying to reach, and discuss how to make them more effective in that effort.  Discuss how YOU can be more effective in reaching YOUR audience, too.  Try to see how the different approaches can be used effectively together, instead of accusing each other of being hurtful.

We've got billions of people to reach, and we can't reach them all using just one technique.

Cooperation works better than infighting.

This Week's Rant.

Ok, it's been a busy last week and weekend.  Lots of meatspace stuff going on, so I didn't get much chance to write much, but I'm back!  (Hey!  Stop that!  That tomato was rotten!  Make it fresher next time...)

Ahem...

One of the things online this weekend that caught my attention was a couple of posts on Facebook.  I am not going to put names out there on this, I don't want to start a flame war or be seen as calling someone out.

But the posts were links to copies of tweets that a female atheist figure put out there - a fair amount of time ago, from what I saw.  The tweets had to do with members of the military who were harassing her online.  The poster was accusing her of (and one of the tweets mentioned this) contacting the Commanding Officer of a service member she said was harassing her.

I got involved because I just HATE seeing comment threads in posts like that (and this one was rife with some really nasty stuff) calling the female atheists involved some pretty bad names, telling them that they deserved to be raped, anally and elsewhere, and other pretty terrible things.

Shades, in other words, of Elevatorgate.

You remember Elevatorgate, where Rebecca Watson mentioned in passing (five minutes worth of mention) in a speech she was giving at a major atheism convention that guys shouldn't corner women in elevators in the wee hours of the morning, asking if they want to come up to their rooms.  That such situations (where a woman has no retreat) make them uncomfortable and isn't likely to get you laid for that reason.  A pretty minor aside, really.

Shortly thereafter, Dawkins made a reference belittling her comments, and the blogosphere exploded with some of the nastiest, vilest and most disgusting comments about Rebecca along the lines of what I mentioned above - only worse.

She has been followed around the web ever since by some of those dogs ... er ...trolls, and the abuse just doesn't stop.

The worse part of it is that the campaign has spread to include just about any other major atheist figure that dares to speak up about it in support of those being abused.

This weekend was a continuation of that, and to illustrate how bad it is, the woman involved (diagnosed with PTSD as a result of online bullying and harassment) has signed up with a group who is fundraising for the treatment of civilian victims of PTSD, and the harassment has followed her to her fundraising page!

Let me make my position clear.

In any situation where a person finds him/herself stopping on a webpage of any kind and disagreeing with the positions, attitudes or conclusions expressed by the writer of that page/post, it is incumbent upon the commenter to keep the comments he/she makes on point, germane to the issue, and civil.  At no time is it proper (or productive) to engage in an ad hominem attack on the writer based on his/her sex, perceived sexual orientation, race, age, nationality, religious belief, or for that matter, any other personal characteristic that isn't involved in or part of the written subject being commented on.

In particular, it is reprehensible, inhumane, disgusting, improper, anti-social, despicable, heinous, repellent, (ain't thesauruses wonderful?) unacceptable, and just plain mean to use threats, declarations of a person's "needing" to be raped, or any other violently descriptive comment in an effort to harass or bully that person into shutting up.

If you can't successfully argue your point, and the other person has brought your argument to a halt due to a lack of enough evidence to prove your point - you lose.  At this point, go home.  Quit, give up.  You don't have to do it gracefully (although that IS something that shows better character), but you should at least stop at that point.

Continuing on to a personal attack because you cannot bring the discussion to a personally satisfying conclusion is not the way to win an argument.

Beyond that, commenting on a page for the SOLE PURPOSE of harassing, attacking, and bullying is just anti-social behavior that sucks big time.  It is wrong, bad and just plain mean.

It means that you are a troll, and the worst kind at that.

Go away.

To the rest of you out there who are not such trolls, don't look away.  Don't shudder at the profanity and click on by.  Stop, read and comment, even if it is only to tell the trolls to shut up.  The more of us do that, the fewer trolls will exhibit this behavior.  They do it because it is rewarding, and it is rewarding because they are encouraged by others who either join in or encourage it by REPOSTING comment threads containing that kind of harassment!

Let's all work together to help make as many online places as we can unfriendly to harassment and bullying.  Call it out!  Make them see that it is a disgusting and disliked behavior.

Then, maybe we can all have a better online experience.   Plus, the trolls won't be making the rest of the atheist movement look like a bunch of hypocrites.  If we are going to criticize religions for misogynistic attitudes and practices, we should not tolerate such behavior among those we call allies.

...and I don't!

Looking ahead at 2016.

I generally hate the tendency of the press to obsess about Presidential elections, especially as early as before the mid-term election even gets going good.  It just seems so... overeager?  Too anticipatory?  Crass?

Generally, it bothers me.

But today, Alternet had an article by Thom Hartmann, entitled, "A Rand Paul Presidential Campaign Would Teach Americans Just How Vicious and Anti-Social the Libertarian Agenda Is", and it perfectly illustrates my thoughts on how much in a pickle the Republican Party truly is.

I won't rehash the Hartmann article, because I linked to it and you should go read it.  You should, because he's right.

Oh, yeah, the GOP survived the debacle with Goldwater.  But, in the process, it had to remake itself.  In remaking itself, it bought into a partnership that has seemed to give it new life, but has brought this country to its knees in the process.   I speak, of course, of the partnership the GOP has with the Religious Right.

Oh, one can't really blame them for it.  From their perspective, they needed to restructure the party and bring it back from the extremism Goldwater had represented to many Americans.  The Religious Right (RR from now on) had what they needed, respectability and a high number of voters, especially in the South, where they badly needed to make inroads.  It was, to their point of view, a marriage made in heaven!  Literally!

And for decades, it has worked beautifully, bringing them back to power repeatedly and helping them to convert a lot of Southern Democrats to the GOP when the conservative points of view of the RR began to make itself felt at a time when the Democrats were moving decidedly to the left with such initiatives as the Voting Rights Act and so forth.  Today, the South is a stronghold of the GOP, allied with the RR, all the way from the Federal level to the locals.  A Conservative heaven, hostile to abortion, hippies, gays, libruls, and furriners.

A huge problem of the GOP and the RR is the immense echo chamber they've erected for themselves.  With the help of Fox News as a propaganda arm, modern Conservatives can sit back and revel in the wonderfulness that is their worldview of total domination of the American Dream where a majority of Americans are both Conservative and Religious!  Rarely does the outside world impinge itself into that well armored chamber to send uncomfortable vibrations tickling the foundations.

An uncomfortable truth that they have labored to ignore for decades is the fact that a Presidential nominee with impeccable Conservative creds cannot win a national election to gain the White House.  The only acknowledgement they've made to this is to work hard to ensure that a Presidential  nominee from the left has the same handicap.  So neither major party can gain enough votes to win  without enticing the inhabitants of the political center.  This has mollified the GOP and kept them from seeing what is becoming more and more obvious to the rest of us:

Their restructuring that was intended to eject the extremists has allowed a new generation of extremists to come to the fore.

A generation whose danger to the US is even greater than Goldwater ever dreamed of being.  Heck, and Goldwater really was a patriot.  He may have seemed extreme at the time, but he was a piker compared to the Dominionists.  These new guys are NOT patriots, they dream of overturning our Democracy.

And the GOP is, at least publicly, blissfully unaware of the danger, safely ensconced in that beautifully appointed echo chamber, armored from the leftist sounding vibrations of reality.

Repeatedly, in the last election, I posted predictions that if the GOP ignores the extremist positions of the RR, that they will suffer ignominious defeat, and should they continue to persist even after that defeat, the next one will be virtually permanent.

The sad truth for Conservatives is that this country is slowly becoming more liberal.  Witness the rapid acceptance of marriage equality and the slower acceptance of the legalization of pot.  I would add in here the evidence of more and more polls showing a rapid rise of the number of Americans who are either unchurched, identify as "none" regarding religion, or simply call themselves atheists or agnostic.  There is evidence that organized Christianity is becoming less and less popular and is, in fact, liable to disappear altogether before the end of this century, at least as an organized force.

A tremendous part of the restructuring of the American political environment is a rapid growth of traditional immigrant ethnic groups.  Asians and Hispanics especially are on the rise as a percentage of the American population, and have already surpassed White Americans as the majority of live births here.  By mid century, whites will simply fade into history as just another ethnic group among many, instead of being a majority.

This will blow the GOP out of the water unless they come to their senses and completely dump the old Conservative ideals of misogyny and racism - and soon!  Already, those groups, especially the Hispanics, threaten to turn Texas back into a reliably Blue State, which is why the GOP has enacted draconian laws restricting the ability of women and minorities' access to the polls there.

The growing popularity of Wendy Davis is further throwing the GOP in that State into a panicked frenzy.

But, still, one hears members of the GOP making such absurd statements as the one recently made by Mike Huckaby regarding what he claims is the inability of women to control their libido!  I won't bother to link to it, surely you've already read about it.  Or, perhaps the recent statement by another GOPer that if he were over 50, he wouldn't need the services of an obstetrician!

Continuing to insult one half of the voting public has never been a winning strategy, and I'll bet it won't begin to be in 2014.

In short, without an immediate and complete structuring of the ideals and principles of the GOP, it will soon begin the slide into obscurity, if hasn't already.

Rand Paul, as a Presidential Nominee, will not arrest that slide, he will grease the skids!

Hooray for Ireland!

There is a Constitutional Convention in Ireland this year, and they are considering the removal of a clause from the Irish Constitution allowing blasphemy laws.

Dated July 13, 2013, the advocacy group Atheist Ireland has submitted their reasons for removing Irish blasphemy laws from the Atheist constitution.

This is good news, for more reasons than just helping to make Ireland a more tolerant and friendly society.  You see, one of the things that make blasphemy laws in Western countries a bad thing isn't just the Bad Things that can happen because of those laws, it is also because Islamic countries are using the existence of such laws as political fodder to push for International laws against blasphemy.

Religion is always trying its best to use the power of government to protect itself.  This is an international extension of that effort, because it is obvious that even globally, Atheists are the fastest growing demographic in the world, even outstripping the growth of Islam.

Just as obviously, this worries the Imams who have the most to lose in that race.  This is why this news is the best news on the legal front I think we'll hear this year!  Certainly on the international scene.

I commend our Irish brothers and sisters for their wisdom in pushing this agenda.  Our best wishes for a successful conclusion to the effort.

Let's talk, Ok?

I want to tell you a few things, just you and me.  (and, yeah anybody else who tunes in, but let's pretend, ok?)

I get frustrated when people misconstrue what I write.  I have to rewrite it to try to make it clearer.  That keeps me from writing something new.  Whatever.  If ya gotta, ya gotta.

I've written a lot about the harm religion causes.  A majority of that has been about the Roman Catholic Church. (RCC)  Not to pick on the RCC, but, well, low hanging fruit, right?  Like anyone who writes about current events and how they impact our society, you take what the times offer you.   I'll go into that in a bit, but first, I want to acknowledge what some have noted, and I have also noted in the past - other religions and other christian denominations have these issues too.

To give you an idea of the scope of the problem, here is a web site that keeps an eye out on these issues, worldwide!  It is called Religious Watch, and I recommend it if you have a strong stomach but want to see what other places are dealing with.  Some of it is disgusting, especially the one about the young 15 year old girl abused by her local imam, who got her pregnant and is not only facing a difficult pregnancy, but was sentenced to 101 lashes (the same number as her abuser) and is being forced to marry the bastard!

The list is long and sometimes difficult to read.  But, it will give you an idea of what the scope of the problem is, and that the RCC isn't the only bad apple in the barrel.  The barrel is literally full to the brim with bad apples.

It has been commented on, over and over again, that these things are due to a small number of bad or evil people.  Alluding to the excuse that no fault accrues to the religion that person belongs to.  Well, I won't argue that these people can be described as bad or evil, but I will not agree that no fault accrues to the religion of the bad guy.

Look.  Pedophilia isn't new.  It's description by the mental health industry as a mental problem may be a 20th century thing, but even that isn't new any more.  We are learning more and more about it all the time.  And one of the things we have known for a while is that organizations and occupations which offer contact with vulnerable populations of the underage attract pedophiles.  This isn't rocket science.

There have been a number of decades since the US (and I presume Europe) have come around to looking at pedophilia as a twisted bad thing as societies in general.  Yet, over and over again, we see these cases where men and occasionally women abuse their young charges.  The authorities of whatever organization employs that person express shock, fire the accused and try to smother the scandal as quickly as possible.  Sometimes, they will cooperate with authorities in the prosecution of the accused, but not always.

What I do not understand is why an organization which employs presumably adult managers cannot see  their way to establishing common sense procedures to protect the children they help or educate or work with in whatever their business may be from the very real possibility of abuse.  It isn't hard, but it takes dedication and attention to detail.  The results of having a safe environment for your young charges to seek your services in is well worth it.

Besides that, in most US States, taking those common sense precautions is the law.  Protecting the children you service is required and notifying the authorities if a violation of that protection occurs is mandatory.  Not notifying the authorities of abuse is in most States a felony.

Everybody knows this.  TV shows examine these issues in detail, news programs talk about it in news broadcasts where abuse is discovered and any business with a lawyer has access to the kind of legal advice that makes failing in that duty hard to excuse.  Yet, time and time again, many different organizations do fail.  Abuse occurs.  Most organizations do report that abuse to the cops, but some do not.

Two recent examples include of course, the RCC, but what hit the news big was the Penn State scandal.  A high profile coach resigned over the issue, because he failed to report that abuse, even though he knew about it.  For over a decade he knew about it! And yet, he kept his mouth shut.

Why, we'll never know, because he died.  Beyond the reach of the courts, his family is now trying to resurrect his reputation, now resting in shattered pieces after the revelations that he knew and kept quiet.

Others, on the board, have resigned also.  Who knows where the investigation will lead now?

Now, a word about the Roman Catholic Church.

I know that this is a sore subject for some.  Painful for them and others too.  Why, I am asked, do I "bash" the RCC?  Why do I pick on them?

Well, again, low hanging fruit.  When these things hit the news, they hit big, and everybody knows about them.  The RCC is not your neighborhood Solid Rock Evangelical Snake Wrestling Pentecostal Church.  When they screw up, it's news, and yes, other religions have these same issues.  But christianity is here, in the US, and it is that religion that affects my life the most, so I am more concerned with it.

But, in reality, that isn't it.

From the perspective of the christian religion, the RCC is the original organized church.  Historians know that it wasn't really the first church per se, since it was just one among dozens of small sects vying for the attention of the Roman public towards the end of the first century.  But it was the one Constantine picked as the winner of the great public "Who's Going to be the Next Official Roman Religion" lottery.  Thus, for our purposes, the RCC is IT.  There are no opposing messages from the period before 324 AD, and the Council of Nicea.  There are no surviving records of what those other competing sects believed or thought, or at least none written by them. What we know about them is what the surviving sect wrote about them and chose to keep.  Which is not much.

As the originator of the bible, the RCC picked and chose what to put in it, and what to leave out.  Much of what survived got altered from the originals, we know that too.

But without going into painful, "too long; didn't read" length, the upshot is that everything we know about the christian religion comes from one source.  The bible.

Every thesis, every theological treatise, every essay written in the 1700-1800 some odd years since the canon was established comes essentially from that one source.  There are no other authoritative sources.  Scholars will tell you that lots of other"gospels" did survive, many of them in hidden caches of documents discovered in the last two hundred years.  They do give us a window into the Christian and Jewish religious worlds of thought at the time, but they are not authoritative representations of what christianity is today, as we know it, and as it is taught in churches around the world.

What concerns me, and what led me to decide in the end to stop identifying myself as christian, is at the very foundation of my thought, credibility.

Religion deals with what we are told is our immortal soul.  Something, a part of us, that never dies.  To me, that has always been something one should look at as important.  I mean, forever is a very long time, no?  So what happens during that very long time has to be vital to our very existence.

I'm not going to trust that soul to just any Tom, Dick or Harry that comes down the Pike.  As a matter of fact, I'm not going to trust whether I've even got one to just any Tom, Dick or Harry.  I want something better than just the words "trust me"!

So, hey, they've got this book, right?  It's old too!  Real old!  But, immediately, we've got a problem.  They tell me its two thousand years old, but every bible I've ever held has a copyright date less than a hundred and fifteen years ago.  It is a lot more complicated than that!

So, I begin to look into it and find out all sorts of things about translations, copies, mistakes, transpositions, interpolations and out and out forgeries.  A lot of that I had to study up on to even figure out what they were!  What I found wasn't reassuring.

But the kicker is the who, not just the what.  As I look into the history of religion in the western world, I am not reassured either.  It just doesn't look much different from the shenanigans of the reigning monarchs of Europe.  The doings of the popes themselves alone is enough to curl your hair.  Murder, bribery, war, hedonism, adultery.  It's all there, and more besides.

It got so bad their own priests couldn't take it any more and the Reformation was born.  It didn't take long for those men to become as corrupt as their Catholic counterparts.

Today, we've heard from the Irish how the church there molested young boys in monasteries and sometimes murdered them and buried them in hidden graveyards.  We've heard about the Magdalene Laundries where young girls were kept as virtual slaves for sometimes decades, and often abused as well.

Now the abuse scandals, and the word that the church hierarchy itself condoned that abuse by moving the priests from place to place to avoid criminal prosecution, by order of the now current Pope.  There is word now that there is a documentary in the works on HBO that will publish more documents that may expose Ratzinger's further, closer involvement in those scandals.

And let's not even get into the scandals involved with the Church of England and its wars against the RCC and Catholic monarchs, and the monasteries and convents on the European continent (both Protestant and Catholic) that sport tunnels between them with handy little hidden graveyards of children, babies and fetuses.

Oh, did I mention the word "credibility"?  sorry, but just that word alone, much less the concept, has failed to survive through all that stuff above.

No matter how well intentioned the modern pastors, preachers and priests may be in this enlightened age of progressive ideals and values, the foundation of what they teach today is rotten to the core.  After having been copied so many times even the most senior and enlightened biblical scholars don't know how many generations of copies there may have been since the beginning, there is no way we can ever know what the original documents may have said.  Or, for that matter, if there even were single originals to any of the biblical documents.  Bart Ehrman has written a lot of books about these subjects, and here is what he says about the credibility of the bible:

Teaching in Christian seminaries, or to largely Christian undergraduate populations, who wants to denigrate the cherished texts of Scripture by calling them forgeries built on lies? And so scholars use a different term for this phenomenon and call such books "pseudepigrapha." 

You will find this antiseptic term throughout the writings of modern scholars of the Bible. It's the term used in university classes on the New Testament, and in seminary courses, and in Ph.D. seminars. What the people who use the term do not tell you is that it literally means "writing that is inscribed with a lie." 

And that's what such writings are. Whoever wrote the New Testament book of 2 Peter claimed to be Peter. But scholars everywhere -- except for our friends among the fundamentalists -- will tell you that there is no way on God's green earth that Peter wrote the book. Someone else wrote it claiming to be Peter. Scholars may also tell you that it was an acceptable practice in the ancient world for someone to write a book in the name of someone else. But that is where they are wrong. If you look at what ancient people actually said about the practice, you'll see that they invariably called it lying and condemned it as a deceitful practice, even in Christian circles. 2 Peter was finally accepted into the New Testament because the church fathers, centuries later, were convinced that Peter wrote it. But he didn't. Someone else did. And that someone else lied about his identity.

So, you ask, how does that matter if the teachings were christian teachings?  They well could have still been guided by god's hand!  Well, look at this next passage:

Whoever wrote the book of 1 Timothy claimed to be Paul. But he was lying about that -- he was someone else living after Paul had died. In his book, the author of 1 Timothy used Paul's name and authority to address a problem that he saw in the church. Women were speaking out, exercising authority and teaching men. That had to stop. The author told women to be silent and submissive, and reminded his readers about what happened the first time a woman was allowed to exercise authority over a man, in that little incident in the garden of Eden. No, the author argued, if women wanted to be saved, they were to have babies (1 Tim. 2:11-15).

Largely on the basis of this passage, the apostle Paul has been branded, by more liberation minded people of recent generations, as one of history's great misogynists. The problem, of course, is that Paul never said any such thing. And why does it matter? Because the passage is still used by church leaders today to oppress and silence women. Why are there no women priests in the Catholic Church? Why are women not allowed to preach in conservative evangelical churches? Why are there churches today that do not allow women even to speak? In no small measure it is because Paul allegedly taught that women had to be silent, submissive and pregnant. Except that the person who taught this was not Paul, but someone lying about his identity so that his readers would think he was Paul. 

Credibility.  It goes to the heart of what we can or should believe.  Do we believe the weatherman is credible?  That determines whether we will or won't evacuate when he tells us that a big storm is going to hit our hometown.

For me, I cannot believe what I am told by people who have the history that the western churches have going all the way back to the earliest times.  I cannot because the book they tell me is the word of god has been so altered and riddled with out and out lies and forgeries, included for the purpose of their  own goals and ends that I cannot determine what the original authors meant us to know.  A growing number of scholars are now even questioning whether Jesus himself may have been a mythical figure and not historical.  (the jury is still out on that one, and isn't likely to be settled any time soon.)

So, take this one as my own opinion, and what led me out of religion.  A complete lack of credibility, a book of errors and lies and a history of violence, greed and sexual abuse ruined anything good or positive I may have been able to glean from the religion of my fathers.

Your opinion may and probably will, differ.  You may not even believe what I am saying here.  If not, I urge you, indeed, I challenge you, to study for yourself.  Stay away from the apologists, they will mislead you with comforting tales of twisted theology, meant to make you feel good about your faith.  The ones to read are the ones that question the mainstream, the guys and gals who have studied and aren't afraid to tell a different story.   That story is out there.  You just have to be willing to go find it and be brave enough to actually read it.

A final note.

I do not and will not dispute that many religious people have done a tremendous amount of good.  Religious charities abound.  Millions are helped by them after disasters and storms.  They take care of widows and orphans and care for the sick and hospitals have long been a favorite activity of religious institutions.

None of what I wrote above is meant to denigrate any of that good, and I hope you can understand my journey to where I am today.

Winter Celebrations - What if you’re an Atheist?

I’ve had several people on Facebook recently ask me a question.  Gently, carefully, and making certain they weren’t being somehow insulting or hurtful, they’ve asked me in several different ways either how I celebrated Christmas or wanted to wish me “Merry Christmas”, but were uncertain of how to approach it, knowing I am an atheist and don’t celebrate the birth of Jesus.

I am extremely appreciative of the manner in which these folks, some of them very religious, have chosen to show their concern about my beliefs and their desire to wish me well and a happy holiday without being somehow clueless about it.  It is a welcome counterpoint to the public “defense” against the so-called “war on christmas” by right wing pundits.

It shows that to private citizens, the attempts of the modern atheist movement to become better understood has had some affect, in short, a victory of sorts.  Yay!

And, frankly, thank you.  To those of you showing this concern, please know that I appreciate it and hope I can return that personal consideration, while still moving forward with my own poor attempts at communicating my beliefs.

Speaking of which, let me explain a bit about just what I do believe and how I celebrate this holiday season.

Friday night was the third Friday of the month, and nicely coincided with both the date for my monthly discussion group of atheist and humanist friends and this year’s winter solstice.  This was a fantastic confluence between two things closely related, and allowed us to begin what we hope will be an annual tradition.

A frequent question from religious folks is, “Just what do you believe in, since you reject god?”   A good question, the answer to which is often either misunderstood or just made up.

To reject the theology of a heaven is to reject the idea of an afterlife, as I noted in my last post.  This life is all you get, and as such, we believe you’ve got to make the best of it you can.  This makes life itself much more important, since there’s no encore, no curtain call and no cast party afterwards!  One shot is all you got.  (I could go on, but you get the picture!)

Therefor, life becomes very important, and the things on this earth which support and nurture it are paramount, if we want to sustain not only our own, but the future as well.  There are many things which fit that description, but at the very most basic level is the earth itself, which is the environment life must adapt to fit.

One of the most basic things about the earth and its environment is its orbit and the angle of its rotation.  Put those together, and you’ve got climate and most importantly, seasons!  Now, there are countless species to whom the seasons and the ebb and flow of temperature differences are the essence of their life cycles and ability to procreate.  The Earth has a defined seasonal progression which is the defining fact that determines the life cycle of the entire ecology.

It is, therefor, worthy of attention!  Our ancestors paid that attention by celebrating the four equinoxes, which together define the Earth’s orbit and thus, the life cycle we depend on for life itself.

The Winter equinox is the more celebrated, because it is the one which heralds the lengthening days and the return of life to the earth’s surface.   The celebration of the return of the sun is an ancient one, and while today, we don’t fear that the sun won’t come back, the shortening of the long nights and the lengthening of the daylight hours is a welcoming thing!

The cycle of life is what sustains us.  It provides us with all that keeps us alive, it gives us the endless fascinating parade of life forms around us and is the one thing we can surely pass on to our children which we can be sure to last.

We don’t really have any set or “traditional” ways to celebrate.  The methods and ideas are so new and our ability to openly celebrate is still dependent on our location - some parts of the world, and the US, are not safe yet.

 So, we are still feeling our way, and many of us just have a party.  Others have candlelight vigils at what they feel are appropriate places.  The music, of course, is quite basic and not at all attuned to the atheist way of thinking.

But we’re working on it!

So, as we’ve been starting to say lately,  Happy Solstice - or maybe Merry Solstice!  The jury’s still out on that one...

No, I will not sit down and shut up!

Last night, a religious commenter on a thread on Facebook made the following statement in response to my comments about the Pledge of Allegiance:

“You know what, get over it. If you don't like the way something looks, don't look at it, if you don't like what someone is saying, don't listen. Just because a handful of people "may" get offended, don't ruin it for everyone else.“

In other words, sit down and shut up.

You know what?  No.  I will not shut up. Atheists have been shutting up for centuries just to save their lives, their jobs and often the lives of their families as well.  Christians have burned us at the stake, thrown us out of our jobs, refused to rent to us, and so badly demonized us that most Americans still won’t vote for an atheist running for public office.

Today, the latest polls showed us (the non-religious) as being as many as 15% of the population.  That is in an atmosphere of intolerance and intimidation, where most atheists won’t admit it, still in fear of losing jobs, friends and family.  I’d bet that the official figures are half the reality.  But even if they aren’t, we are, in numbers, greater than the muslim, jewish, hindu or buddhists - combined!

In recent years, we’ve gotten tired of sitting down and shutting up.  With these numbers, we are beginning to stand up and be counted, and that is what scares people like the commenter last night.  So, I’ve got news for her:

“Once social change begins it cannot be reversed.  You cannot un-educate the person who has learned to read.  You can not humiliate the person who feels pride.  You can not oppress the people who are not afraid any more.”  Cesar Chávez

Atheists are not as afraid as we used to be.  We are learning to support one another.  We are getting the word out that there are others like us who can and will help and support other atheists to stand up for their rights.

Those rights are all we want.  The right to be ourselves without having to pretend to be something we aren’t, just to keep our jobs.  The right to get involved in the political process and have our views listened to and discussed, even if not completely accepted.  We want the rest of the country to begin following the law and stop pushing their religion on us with our own tax money.

We are not trying to prevent you from having the same rights.  You’ve just been abusing those rights and laws by doing things which are blatantly illegal and unconstitutional.  All we want you to do is to stop the illegal stuff and accept that your rights aren’t above and superior to the rest of us.

So, read this comment again:

“You know what, get over it. If you don't like the way something looks, don't look at it, if you don't like what someone is saying, don't listen.”

Lady, listen to your own words, and pay heed to them, or in other words, “physician, heal thyself”.  You are living in a multi-cultural world.   

They used to call the US a melting pot, but it is really more like a vegetable soup.  While each ingredient adds its own unique flavor to the soup, it still retains its own character while absorbing some of the flavors of the other ingredients.  Tolerance is a necessary and useful skill in a multi-cultural society.

So, get used to it, we atheists are here to stay (we’re finally coming out of the closet), and we are not going to be quiet anymore.  

I am not sorry to change the flavor of our soup.

Atheism +

This post has been coming for a while.  I’ve had to think about it and see how it shook out elsewhere.

That elsewhere is at Freethought Blogs, where a number of bloggers have been working out a new idea - Atheism+.

I think I’ll let Jen McCreight of Blag Hag say it first:

It’s time for a new wave of atheism, just like there were different waves of feminism. I’d argue that it’s already happened before. The “first wave” of atheism were the traditional philosophers, freethinkers, and academics. Then came the second wave of “New Atheists” like Dawkins and Hitchens, whose trademark was their unabashed public criticism of religion. Now it’s time for a third wave – a wave that isn’t just a bunch of “middle-class, white, cisgender, heterosexual, able-bodied men” patting themselves on the back for debunking homeopathy for the 983258th time or thinking up yet another great zinger to use against Young Earth Creationists. It’s time for a wave that cares about how religion affects everyone and that applies skepticism to everything, including social issues like sexism, racism, politics, poverty, and crime. We can criticize religion and irrational thinking just as unabashedly and just as publicly, but we need to stop exempting ourselves from that criticism.

This says perfectly what has been bothering me about our movement for a while.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a white, middle-aged+ cis-gendered male of the middle class - exactly what the atheist movement has been aiming at for a while, and yeah, I’m comfortable with that.  But then again, I’m not comfortable with that in that I can see the missing people.  White, middle aged, cis-gendered males can’t do it alone.  I’d love to think we could, but that’s a pipe dream.  We need others, we need everybody who doesn’t believe to pitch in and show the population of this country that atheists aren’t boogy men coming to steal your children.  There have been, and this is more than adequately illustrated on Freethought Blogs, elements of our movement who have shown themselves to be bigoted, blind and hateful when it comes to women’s issues, LBGT issues and other issues of social justice.

It’s as if their male privilege is somehow being threatened if others join us in expanding this movement in defeating the dark side.

I don’t get that.  My citizenship isn’t threatened by powerful women.  It isn’t threatened by my wife having equal privileges to mine, and my “maleness” isn’t diminished by either that or gay marriage.  My own marriage is just fine, thank-you-very-much and wasn’t bothered in the least when Maryland legalized gays getting married to each other.

I am not bothered by Trans folks living their lives as they wish, and living as the sex they think is the right one.  It doesn’t diminish my own sexual life nor my picture of myself or my relationship with my wife.  Same with Bi folk.
I am not bothered by people of other ethnicities as they live their lives, and in fact, I feel my life has been enriched by the contact I have had with people of all these different types in the last 25 years since I moved here from Texas.  My outlook on life has been enlarged considerably and I have learned much of value from that contact.

I believe I am a better citizen and a smarter voter because of the contact I have had with all of the people of different kinds, types and persuasions both in the meat world and online.

Which is why I want the atheist movement to begin to move beyond simple opposition to religion.  I have written a fair amount on the harm religion does to society, and I still believe that such opposition is necessary and as important as ever.

But we also need to directly oppose that harm, and work towards social justice for all people, because as an atheist, I not only oppose religion, but I oppose the attitudes religion brings to social issues that cause that harm.

I want to bring a better educational system to everybody, regardless of social strata and geography, because education is the linchpin to a better society.  I want to make the justice system better, because that directly affects the minority groups most negatively affected by a dysfunctional system.  I want to push for social equality for all, regardless of ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identification or biological dysfunction.

I want this because such social equality brings with it economic success and with economic success for the individual comes economic success for the entire country!  The more we can afford as individuals, the more our economy can afford to take care of the disadvantaged, and the fewer of them there will be.

Much has been made over at FreeThought Blogs about the “divisiveness” of the “+” part of Atheism+.  I don’t see it that way, I see it more as an addition that can attract more people than it may repel.

In other words, if this idea attracts you, then welcome!  If not, that’s ok too, go find a group that does, and we both can go on opposing the harm religions are doing to our society.  Each in our own way.

I urge you to go read Jen’s post, and her followup post Atheism+.

There are others who have pitched in and added their own thoughts, and you should read them, too.  In the meantime, think about this:

We are…

Atheists plus we care about social justice,
Atheists plus we support women’s rights,
Atheists plus we protest racism,
Atheists plus we fight homophobia and transphobia,
Atheists plus we use critical thinking and skepticism.

Plus, a cool logo!