Atheists Send a Message, on 800 British Buses

By SARAH LYALL

Published: January 6, 2009

LONDON — The advertisement on the bus was fairly mild, just a passage from the Bible and the address of a Christian Web site. But when Ariane Sherine, a comedy writer, looked on the Web site in June, she was startled to learn that she and her nonbelieving friends were headed straight to hell, to “spend all eternity in torment.”

Akira Suemori/Associated Press

This message — except the “probably” — has been approved by Richard Dawkins, scientist and author of “The God Delusion.”

That’s a bit extreme, she thought, as well as hard to prove. “If I wanted to run a bus ad saying ‘Beware — there is a giant lion from London Zoo on the loose!’ or ‘The “bits” in orange juice aren’t orange but plastic — don’t drink them or you’ll die!’ I think I might be asked to show my working and back up my claims,” Ms. Sherine wrote in a commentary on the Web site of The Guardian.

And then she thought, how about putting some atheist messages on the bus, as a corrective to the religious ones?

And so were planted the seeds of the Atheist Bus Campaign, an effort to disseminate a godless message to the greater public. When the organizers announced the effort in October, they said they hoped to raise a modest $8,000 or so.

But something seized people’s imagination. Supported by the scientist and author Richard Dawkins, the philosopher A. C. Grayling and the British Humanist Association, among others, the campaign raised nearly $150,000 in four days. Now it has more than $200,000, and on Tuesday it unveiled its advertisements on 800 buses across Britain.

“There’s probably no God,” the advertisements say. “Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.”

Spotting one of the buses on display at a news conference in Kensington, passers-by were struck by the unusual message.

Not always positively. “I think it’s dreadful,” said Sandra Lafaire, 76, a tourist from Los Angeles, who said she believed in God and still enjoyed her life, thank you very much. “Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but I don’t like it in my face.”

But Sarah Hall, 28, a visitor from Australia, said she was happy to see such a robust example of freedom of speech. “Whatever floats your boat,” she said.

Inspired by the London campaign, the American Humanist Association started running bus advertisements in Washington in November, with a more muted message. “Why believe in a god?” the ads read, over a picture of a man in a Santa suit. “Just be good for goodness’ sake.”

Although Australian atheists were refused permission to place advertisements on buses saying, “Atheism: Sleep in on Sunday mornings,” the British effort has been striking in the lack of outrage it has generated. The Methodist Church, for instance, said it welcomed the campaign as a way to get people to talk about God.

Although Queen Elizabeth is the head of the Church of England, Britain is a deeply secular country with a dwindling number of regular churchgoers, and with politicians who seem to go out of their way to play down their religious beliefs.

In 2003, when an interviewer asked Tony Blair, then the prime minister, about religion, his spokesman, Alastair Campbell, interjected, snapping, “We don’t do God.” After leaving office, Mr. Blair became a Roman Catholic.

More recently, Nick Clegg, a member of Parliament and the leader of the Liberal Democrats, announced that he was an atheist. (He later downgraded himself to agnostic.)

David Cameron, leader of the Conservative Party, alluded to a popular radio station when he joked that his religious belief was like “the reception for Magic FM in the Chilterns: it sort of comes and goes.”

Still, since Sept. 11, 2001, religion has played an ever more important role in public discussions, said Mr. Dawkins, the best-selling author of “The God Delusion,” with the government increasingly seeking religious viewpoints and Anglican bishops still having the automatic right to sit in the House of Lords.

“Across Britain, we are used to being bombarded by religious interests,” he said, “not just Christians, but other religions as well, who seem to think that they have got a God-given right to propagandize.”

Next week, the Atheist Bus Campaign plans to place 1,000 advertisements in the subway system, featuring enthusiastic quotations from Emily Dickinson, Albert Einstein, Douglas Adams and Katharine Hepburn.

An interesting element of the bus slogan is the word “probably,” which would seem to be more suited to an Agnostic Bus Campaign than to an atheist one. Mr. Dawkins, for one, argued that the word should not be there at all.

But the element of doubt was necessary to meet British advertising guidelines, said Tim Bleakley, managing director for sales and marketing at CBS Outdoor in London, which handles advertising for the bus system.

For religious people, advertisements saying there is no God “would have been misleading,” Mr. Bleakley said.

“So as not to fall foul of the code, you have to acknowledge that there is a gray area,” he said.

He said that potential ads were rejected all the time. “We wouldn’t, for example, run an ad for an action movie where the gun was pointing toward the commuter,” he said.

But Mr. Bleakley said he had no problem with the atheist bus ads. “We do have religious organizations that promote themselves,” he said. “If somebody doesn’t believe in religion, why wouldn’t we carry an ad that promotes the opposite view? To coin a phrase, it’s not for us to play God.”

Face, Meet Palm

Apparently, Senator Obama used a well-known phrase––"lipstick on a pig"––to describe John McCain's sudden claim that he's the candidate of change.

The Republicans decided it was a sexist attack on Sarah Palin.

...

Um, what?

Look, I would describe myself as hyper-aware to incidents of sexism in media, popular culture, and the world at large. This blog's subtitle, after all, is "Fighting Misogyny and Religious Dogmas."

But this wasn't sexism. The phrase, itself, might be a little questionable, but it's also well-known and widely-used. So widely-used, in fact, that as the article points out, McCain used it himself last year.

It would be funny if it weren't so depressing. I saw a clip of Senator Obama speaking on the news the other night––he said, "They [the Republicans] think you're stupid." I'm starting to think he's right. Because how anyone could claim that the Republican Party actually cares about the lives of women is beyond me. The party that wants to claim sexism in every criticism of Governor Palin, that wants to blame the Obama campaign for even a mention of Bristol Palin's pregnancy in the news is the same party who spent eight years making jokes about a teenaged Chelsea Clinton being ugly.

They think it's fine for health insurance companies to cover Viagra but not birth control.

They want to demonize desperate women and label them baby-killers while simultaneously limiting access to social programs that might actually help raise those children they're so intent on seeing born.

They choose whole segments of the American population and make them second-class citizens through their racist, homophobic, and sexist laws and policies.

I'm going to stop now, because this is going to turn into something kind of seething––or maybe it already has.

When McCain announced Sarah Palin as his VP pick, she said:

...Hillary left 18 million cracks in the highest, hardest glass ceiling in America. But it turns out the women of America aren't finished yet, and we can shatter that glass ceiling once and for all.

I would humbly suggest that, with an anti-woman candidate like Sarah Palin, I'm more than happy for that glass ceiling to stay intact another 4-8 years.

The Origin of Love

So, this song (excellent as it is) is also a faithful retelling of Aristophanes' speech in Plato's Symposium. Now, I'm not much of a believer in Zeus, and Aristophanes spouts a fair bit of anti-woman rhetoric, but I still find this story kind of enchanting, all by itself, and the video's illustration of it is really lovely.

It helps that the song's so damn catchy.

I am OUT of the beauty game!

This post is probably going to make me sound like a very crunchy hippie, but here goes...

So, I was thinking yesterday about how my hair's been looking very nice of late (at least the last few months). This is owing, in part, to the FIERCE haircuts I get from a good friend of mine. But I've also noticed that my hair usually looks really healthy and shiny, and even has a hint of volume (which never used to happen with my very fine hair). I was thinking about all this, and trying to figure out what the cause might be. And then, quite by chance, I stumbled across a feminist blog where the conversation had turned to the effect of heat damage on hair. Aha!

Ready for this? I haven't so much as blow-dried my hair in nearly a year. The only product I use is shampoo about every other day. Hell, I don't even brush my hair all that much (just finger-comb it occasionally).

There was a time (mostly in high school) when I put all sorts of goops and serums in my hair, not to mention shampooing with a revolving variety of "volumizing" shampoos, all in an effort to give some "oomph" to what I thought was unattractive, limp hair. I used round brushes, hairspray, flipped my head upside down for blow-drying––you name it. At some point, I just stopped. I realized that my hair (which really doesn't hold a style, even now) was going to look the same, no matter what I did. But I still blow-dried my hair pretty regularly.

Soon, even that stopped. I valued my sleep too much to spend an extra 10 minutes every morning blow-drying my hair. I realized that, by and large, I really don't care anymore how my hair looks. I make sure it's clean when I go out and about, and I keep it tidy (basically, finger-combing it). Aside from that––eh. I've got more important things to do than obsess about something that's not really under my control anyway.

And, really, the same goes for my face. I've never really used makeup, except for certain, special occasions (I find this to be kind of common with us Pacific Northwest women). But there was a time when I got sucked into buying product after product for my skin. Acne skin cleansers (even though I haven't had acne since I was 12), pads and toners, scrubs, pore strips, etc. I have sensitive skin, so all this did was torture my face. Around a year ago, though, I got really crunchy, and ditched a lot of the chemical products I'd been using. Now, I use Cetaphil cleanser once a day, (real) witch hazel on occasion, and a fragrance-free moisturizer. And that's it. I always get a pimple or two right before my period, but I usually let them ride their course, and they go away pretty quickly. (Note: I do realize I am very, very lucky to have the blemish-free skin I do.)

Another aspect of this is a skin condition I've had since I was very young, keratosis pilaris. It took me a long time to not feel self-conscious about my always-rosy cheeks, or the bumps on my arms and thighs. In middle school, I went through a period where I wore thick foundation to cover up the redness on my face. I tried the doctor-prescribed Retin A and lac-hydrin creams to get rid of it, but realized that going through prolonged bouts of twice-daily ointment application was not how I wanted to spend my life. So I made peace. As I've gotten older, the skin on my face has gotten less red (I think stopping the constant irritation from harsh products has helped, too), though the skin on my arms and legs is the same, and might be for the rest of my life. Frankly, I just decided to be cool with it, to accept myself as-is. Actually, 'accept' isn't the right word––it's more like 'love.' Loving my inner self led me to learn to love my outer self. Occasional glances in the mirror no longer provoke a critical "Ugh, I look terrible", but a "Wow, my hair looks really nice," or, "My skin's looking good."

Whew. This is really long. I'll just say this, in closing:

I am by no means saying that everyone and their mother should adopt my (lack of a) beauty routine. I'm merely saying that, in my opinion, I think we'd all be better off if we ignored the advertising and social pressures about what products we should use and what we should look like, and find something that makes us happy. For me, it was realizing that no amount of primping, grooming, creams, makeup, or products were going to make me into the "ideal" I was striving for. I chose to change my ideal to fit myself, and it's made me pretty happy. I'm not some bastion of self-esteem, mind you, but I can honestly say that most of the time, I'm happy with the outer me.

Sometimes, Books Make Me Cry

...but usually in a good way. I'm reading Daniel Radosh's Rapture Ready!, which is a pretty entertaining, in-depth, and remarkably unbiased look at Christian pop culture. The author approaches it from an "outsider's perspective", although I often find myself rolling my eyes or snickering at some of the kookier people he interviews. But then I just read this:

I nodded, and Jon went on. "Some things we just have to struggle with, you know? Look at gay marriage. I know what the Bible says, but I have gay friends who adopted a child, and now this little girl that nobody else wanted has a loving..." He shrugged.

That's what made me cry. When you start taking a long, hard look at the conservative, evangelical brand of Christianity, it's easy to get bogged down in the hate speech that seems front and center to modern American Christianity (Pat Robertson, I'm looking at you). And, truth be told, gay rights were a major influence on me turning away from religion. The more I thought about it, the more I thought about the gay people I knew, the more I realized that to say they were sinning just by loving who they loved made no sense, that to be a moral person, I actually had to reject many of the beliefs I'd been taught made up Christian 'morality'.

Things like the simple little quote above actually give me an eensy bit of hope for humanity. That one Christian can look at people he knows and respects, and realize that maybe the Bible doesn't always apply tells me that maybe there's more common ground out there than I thought.

Plus, I'm glad that a little girl nobody else wanted has a loving family.

No evidence of evolution, you say?

This should give you something to think about!

Overheard...

"Mom!" the little girl said, "Can we stop and look at the makeup?"

"No," her mother replied, "You're too young to wear makeup."

"But, Mom," came the small voice again, "Barbie is sooo beautiful."

At this point, I turned to look at the pair heading towards me up the aisle. The little girl was, I'm guessing, about 4 or 5 years old. I smiled politely at her mom, who smiled back.

"Honey," the mom said, "You're beautiful just the way you are."

"But not like Barbie, Mom," I heard the little girl say, just before they were out of earshot.

***

As I drove home from the store earlier this week, thinking about the little mother-daughter exchange I'd just witnessed, I became a bit depressed at the influence of the media. Here's a little girl whose mother says, "You're beautiful just the way you are," a little girl who is getting all the right messages from people who love her.

And she doesn't believe them, because in her world, Barbie's prettier.

I'm at the stage in my life where I think about what kind of parent I'll be, about how I'll handle all the challenges and difficulties that come with raising a person. So I'm left with this question: how do we raise girls who are secure enough in themselves to resist when society tells them they should use a frickin' doll as their standard of beauty?

This kind of thing is why it makes me crazy when people try and suggest that sexism doesn't exist, or that the standard of beauty applied to women (and young girls) isn't unreasonable, unfair (and ultimately) unattainable.

After all, I can't imagine a 5-year-old boy begging his dad for a can of protein powder so he can have muscles like G.I. Joe.

Being Poor is a GOOD thing!

While searching for what Jesus says about helping the poor, I came across this:

Monika Hellwig lists several advantages to being poor:

as quoted in The Jesus I Never Knew by Philip Yancey, p. 115

1. The poor know they are in urgent need of redemption.
2. The poor know not only their dependence on God and on powerful people, but also their interdependence with one another.
3. The poor rest their security not on things but on people.
4. The poor have no exaggerated sense of their own importance, and no exaggerated need of privacy.
5. The poor expect little from competition and much from cooperation.
6. The poor can distinguish between necessities and luxuries.
7. The poor can wait, because they have acquired a kind of dogged patience born of acknowledged dependence.
8. The fears of the poor are more realistic and less exaggerated, because they already know that one can survive great suffering and want.
9. When the poor have the Gospel preached to them, it sounds like good news and not like a threat or a scolding.
10. The poor can respond to the call of the Gospel with a certain abandonment and uncomplicated totality because they have so little to lose and are ready for anything.

Right. I can just see a poor person saying, 'Yeah, I'm poor, but HEY! I can distinguish between necessities and luxuries, so I'm way better off than you rich people... who have necessities and luxuries...'

This is truly disturbing, and telling.

The Bible: a txt msg from God?

I agreed to go to church with my Dad last weekend, and thankfully Cody agreed to endure it with me. Here is a summary of the sermon, and quotes with commentary.

The pre-sermon began with a series of video-interviews. The interviewer asked people on the street, “Do you read the Bible?” Most of the people said they did not, and the interviewer asked, “Why not?” and most of the people replied by admitting, “I don’t know.” The point here was, apparently, that the people who do not read the Bible don’t have a good reason for why they don’t read it. Not sure what the point of this was, unless maybe it was to make the people who don't read the Bible for no apparent reason seem a little... stupid?

After the interviews came a skit. General cynicism aside, the skit was extremely obnoxious. Three people sat in a row on stools, a man in the middle and a woman on either side of him, and they quoted this verse (each saying a couple of words at a time):

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness. 2 Timothy 3:16

One of the women began asking how ALL parts of the Bible could be considered useful to modern people. She told the man to open his Bible to Leviticus 7, which reads:

The guilt offering is to be slaughtered in the place where the burnt offering is slaughtered, and its blood is to be sprinkled against the altar on all sides. All its fat shall be offered: the fat tail and the fat that covers the inner parts, both kidneys with the fat on them near the loins, and the covering of the liver, which is to be removed with the kidneys.

The woman asked how this could be useful to her, and… I’m sorry to say… the question was never answered. The other man and woman went on in their excited speech about something else, and it was only moments later that I realised no answer was given to the question. (Cody thinks they said something about covering it next week)

So finally Pastor Bob came up and began the sermon. Here is how it went (anything in quotes is what Pastor Bob actually said):

The BIG question: Can the Bible be trusted?

The answer, of course, is YES, and here are the reasons:


Part I:

The Bible says about itself that it is trustworthy.
We did not follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. 2 Peter 1:16
This made me think of a Sam Harris quote: How do we know that our holy books are free from error? Because our books themselves say so.

“The Bible is the most influential book ever written.”
This is, simply, a totally subjective statement, and subjectivity is exempt from being considered valid.

“No other book comes close [to the] magnitude [and the] mystery [of the Bible].”
Again, this is entirely subjective.

The Bible is a collection of 66 books -
It took 1500 years to write, was written by 40 authors, and is a single story.
I'm not sure what the point here is...

The Bible has been in circulation for a long time and has lasted for a long time.
Yes it has, along with many other texts of different religions...


Part II:

There are 24000 manuscripts of the New Testament and these were written within 25-85 years of the events they discuss.
The point here was that there are many many more copies of New Testament manuscripts than of many other documents, such as writings by Plato, Homer, etc. and we don't question the validity of those. Of course, what was glossed over entirely was that the Bible makes huge claims about the nature of the Universe which are inaccurate and unreasonable. It doesn't matter if what Plato or Homer wrote was altered because people are not basing their lives off of their writings.

After 2000 years, the Dead Sea Scrolls were found.
Sweet! And this discovery somehow proves the Bible can be trusted?

“Make sure you know the manuscripts have been mistranslated [before assuming they have been].”
Shouldn’t we also request that those who assume the Bible has been translated correctly go find out for themselves that it has?

“The Hebrews memorized the words [before they were written down] and quizzed each other.”
I don’t even know what to say about this one. Anna, I hope you have something…


Part III:

“The Bible is totally consistent with archaeological findings.”
It may be stated categorically that no archaeological discovery has ever controverted a biblical reference. – Archaeologist Nelson Gluek
I’m afraid that I’m missing something important here, because this just screams Bullshit! to me. What about the theory of evolution? Or the age of the Earth? I'm not sure why he said this.

Archaeology has, in fact, backed up stories from the Bible:
Ex. 1: The walls of Jericho – God told the people who blew the walls down not to take any of the food. When the site was discovered, it was evident that a lot of food had been left, which was unheard of when people ransacked a city.
Ex 2: For a long time there was no evidence that the Hittites ever really existed, but then a site was discovered that proved their existence.


Ending:

“What if this book really is God-written?”
What if the Koran is really God-written? What if the Bhagavad-Gita is really God-written? I don’t think this is a valid point unless we’re going to ask it about all other religious texts.

He ended the sermon with two similar questions:
1) Why would the Bible continue to exist if people had been persecuted for believing in and advocating it?
2) Why would people believe it if it’s not true?

Well, the answer to #1 could only be, Because it’s true!
And I’m not sure what the point with #2 is.
People are always believing things that may or may not be true, usually for comfort: My boyfriend cheats on me, but he loves me. The weather channel says it will be sunny on Thursday. I believe my pets have souls and go to Heaven.

I assume the point is to leave the *audience* concluding something like, Well, people never continue to believe things if they’re being persecuted, and, People never believe in things that aren’t true, so the Bible must be true (and all the other people in the world who have totally different beliefs… well, this doesn’t apply to them, they’re just deluded).

I was thinking I would return next week to hear more, but now I see on the handout thing that it says,

"Next week join us as we continue in part two of our series txt msg… It could change
your life.
(Changing your mind verse) “For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than
any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and
marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.” Hebrews 4:12"

which looks to me like the first sermon of the series is all that is being offered in terms of evidence for Bible's trustworthiness. I am very disappointed, and will certainly not return if the focus is now going to be changing your mind. I haven't even been convinced of the Bible's accuracy! What would convince me to change my mind about accepting it as truth?

I'm also curious why he is giving this convincing type of sermon to people who already believe...

I kind of sort of love this...

Is Barack Obama Muslim?

Boys Learn to Abuse (excerpts from The Macho Paradox)

(the title is a link to the book for purchase on Amazon)

I feel kind of lame always quoting stuff instead of writing my own ideas, but I feel like I'm still learning and forming my own opinions, and it helps to quote what really catches my attention, and will hopefully catch the attention of others. For now, I am gathering information in order to secure my own stance on specific issues.


"Everywhere you turn, you see manhood equated with power and control... They learn it on Saturday morning cartoons and trips to the toys store, where 'action heroes' with rippled muscles convey the powerful lesson that might makes right; on the playground, where recent research shows that bullies are not social misfits, but often the most popular kids; in the sports culture, where dominating one's opponent is seen as the height of athletic achievement; in NASCAR racing, whose most popular icon was nicknamed 'The Intimidator'; in hip-hop, where rich and famous rappers denigrate women and gays; in professional wrestling, where ritualized bullying, humiliation, and sexual harassment is normal behavior, and caricatured portrayals of brutish manhood are celebrated; in video games, where mastery of the joystick and the ability to 'kill' at will - and sometimes beat up prostitutes - is equated to manly competence; and in the larger adult world, where they see abuses of power by men in business and government.

At the same time that impressionable boys absorb these lessons about how to earn respect in the world of men, they get the complementary message that what is considered 'feminine' has less value than what is considered 'masculine.' It is a short step from there to the belief that women are supposed to be subordinate to men - and sexually available to them. ...our culture is saturated with stark visual evidence of women's continued subservience to men, especially in the sexual realm. The stylistic conventions of pornography have become decidedly mainstream. From advertising billboards to magazine covers, scantily-clad female bodies are ubiquitously on display as objects for men to use and discard. Pornography itself – the vast majority of which eroticizes male dominance and control – is a $10 billion-a-year industry. Major recording artists glamorize pimps, and radio shock jocks openly humiliate women – with little or no public outcry. In the context of this cultural environment, can we credibly profess to be surprised when boys and men verbally, physically, and sexually harass and abuse girls and women?"

This is why I'm an English major...

I keep up with a few different fundie blogs, and with Fundies Say the Darnedest Things!; through these sources, and my own investigation, I've learned quite a bit about the King-James-Only Movement. Basically, the KJVers believe that the original King James Version of the Bible is the only 'true' and 'perfect' version of God's Word. Yeah, I know. It makes me laugh, too.

But! Today, in my Shakespeare class, I learned that King James I, the guy who gets the credit for sparking this 'perfect' translation, whose very name is essentially the subtitle for their holy book, had a habit of falling in love with (and probably sexing up) men. Lots of men.

from Fun with Feminism

Creationism and Evolution

I was going to see a speaker tonight who is addressing the question of how Creationism and Evolution are compatible, but am unable to after all. The reason I wanted to go was not to hear how the two are compatible - of course they are if one doesn't take the Bible literally - but to see if the following issue is addressed:

How can a Christian decide to take the parts of the Bible that conflict with science NOT literally, but maintain that other parts (maybe that science has not yet contradicted) should still be taken literally? Of course it's fine to accept evolution if you think the creation account in Genesis shouldn't be taken literally, but WHY shouldn't it be taken literally? How do Christians determine what parts of the Bible are literal and which are not? As far as I'm aware, there is not guide at the beginning that says, Here, here, and here - these stories are not LITERAL, but here, here, and here - these stories really did happen exactly this way.
It's like people go through the Bible and say, Okay, obviously Jonah didn't actually live inside of a whale, so we're going to take that metaphorically. And the story of the ark? Millions of species couldn't have fit on a boat 450 feet long, so we'll take that metaphorically also. And that the world was created in six days, and the moon gives off its own light, and Adam actually NAMED all the species that have ever existed on the planet... But at what point are we obligated to question the literal interpretation of the plagues on Pharaoh, or the wall of Jericho, or the virgin birth? How do we determine which stories we take literally and which stories we don't?

I think my Dad is still going, so we'll see if this question gets addressed...

I'd Like My Standard Doubled, Please

This post is not about a particularly new topic, but at some point, a girl just can't take it anymore and has to rant a bit. So:

How is it, in the 21st century, that it can still be considered acceptable to critique a presidential candidate on their LOOKS?

Now, you were probably thinking that that was a rhetorical question, but because it's free gift with purchase day at Anna's House of Whatever, I'm going to answer that rhetorical question: Well, it's acceptable because she's a woman, of course! We can't have a bitch in the White House, can we?! My god! What if her female hormones go cuh-RAZY and she starts a war with some random country that doesn't even have WMD???

[crickets]

Okay, snark over, I promise. Here are some more rhetorical questions that I won't be answering, though:

1. Do you know how many pictures I've seen of Hillary Clinton making a strange face (like when the camera catches you unaware/off-guard) where something was said about her looks? Ha ha ha, Hillary Clinton's so ugly! Ha ha ha, aren't we funny!

2. Do I really have to care what color shirt a presidential candidate is wearing? And, what does that even have to do with how they'll do as president? "Ah, I see the President's wearing the blue shirt; important things will be done today!"

3. Why is it that no one's questioned whether Barack Obama, John McCain, or any other candidate in this election is 'too emotional' to lead a country? If one's gonads are on the outside, rather than the inside of one's body, does that bestow some sort of magical, country-leading power?

I haven't done a very good job of turning off the snark, have I? Alright.

I guess I get so worked up because I'm not even a Clinton supporter. There's a number of reasons why (after Dennis Kucinich dropped out, and I embarked on a rather long session of fence-sitting) I finally decided to support Barack Obama. I won't get into those reasons here, because this isn't a political blog, but I continue to find myself annoyed by the level of sexism present in much of the criticism leveled against Senator Clinton. I'm not saying she should be immune from criticism, just that her laugh or that blouse she was wearing that one time, or how 'old' she looks are not acceptable (nor are they particularly mature, for that matter). I'd love to see/hear/participate in dialogue about:

1. Whether a presidential candidate is intelligent (and willing to admit they're wrong, or to educate themselves on issues beyond the sound-byte level).

2. Whether they truly care about people who are poor, abused, enslaved, victimized by inequality, etc, throughout the whole world, and what they plan to do about it.

That question, the one everyone keeps asking, about if the United States is 'ready for a woman president'? It's offensive, and not just because of this. Every time I hear that question asked, or see it in print, I know that what it's really asking is, "Is a woman good enough to be President?", and we shouldn't need to ask that at all, not anymore. Maybe we should be asking, "What the hell is wrong with all these people who think only a white, straight male is capable of holding our nation's highest office?"

It's true, there are indeed...

On the presidential elections

"Like every candidate, Obama must appeal to millions of voters who believe that without religion, most of us would spend our days raping and killing our neighbors and stealing their pornography. Examples of well-behaved and comparatively atheistic societies like Sweden, Finland, Norway, and Denmark--which surpass us in terrestrial virtues like education, health, public generosity, per capita aid to the developing world, and low rates of violent crime and infant mortality--are of no interest to our electorate whatsoever.
Can we care for one another without believing that Jesus Christ rose from the dead and is now listening to our thoughts?

Yes we can. "

Sam Harris, 21 March 2008

My Feminist Affirmation

I refuse to submit to the stereotype that women are less carnal than men, that women's needs are not as intense as men's, and that men can satisfy their sexual needs – and are excused from social criticism – while women must be modest by not acknowledging or acting on their own, equally potent, desires.

That's all. I just refuse.

I Love This!

More hilarious comics at Married to the Sea.

Doesn't make sense to me...

Deuteronomy 5:17 – Thou shalt not kill
Deuteronomy 20:10 - And when the LORD thy God hath delivered it into thine hands, thou shalt smite every male thereof with the edge of the sword

More evidence that God is a monster

from Mark Twain's Letters from the Earth:

"For that had always been his [God's] idea of fair dealing. If he had had a motto, it would have read, "Let no innocent person escape." You remember what he did in the time of the flood. There were multitudes and multitudes of tiny little children, and he knew they had never done him any harm; but their relations had, and that was enough for him; he saw the waters rise toward their screaming lips, he saw the wild terror in their eyes, he saw that agony of appeal in the mothers' faces which would have touched any heart but his, but he was after the guiltless particularly, and he drowned those poor little chaps."

"Their naked privacies were probed, to make sure that they still possessed the hymen unruptured; after this humiliation they were sent away from the land that had been their home, to be sold into slavery; the worst of slaveries and the shamefulest, the slavery of prostitution; bed-slavery, to excite lust, and satisfy it with their bodies; slavery to any buyer, be he gentleman or be he a coarse and filthy ruffian.
It was the Father that inflicted this ferocious and undeserved punishment upon those bereaved and friendless virgins, whose parents and kindred he had slaughtered before their eyes. And were they praying to him for pity and rescue, meantime? Without a doubt of it."

This is sick.

I read about this on Feministing yesterday. I've watched it a couple of times now, and I just want to cry. Now, I'm pro-choice; in case anyone needs clarification on this, though, hitting a woman in the stomach to force her to miscarry is not an abortion. It's assault.

This happens to women. In real life. In case you don't want to watch the video (and I don't blame you if you don't), AbortionMan is called in to "save the day" by the woman's boyfriend (without her knowledge). He punches, then knees her in the stomach, then stomps on her once she's on the ground (though this last part happens off-screen). The video's creators posted the following comment today:

This video is not pro- or anti- abortion, and it's not supporting violence, especially against women. What it is doing is finding humor in a dark situation. Would you rather see a woman dumping a baby in a trashcan? No. We understand there are limits, however, we don't let limits scare us from providing something that the world needs more of- humor. So we invite you to experience our comedy, but don't force you to participate in it.

Live. Love. Laugh.

I appreciate dark humor. I appreciate satire.

This is not funny.

response to "A Thought"

First, I will say that my opinion of Jesus differs from Anna's in that, when I think of his messages, loving others is not what first comes to mind. I realise that many moderate Christians like to focus on this one, but if we were to rate the messages from great religious leaders throughout history, I don't think Jesus would win in the 'loving others' category.

However, given that we are are surrounded by Christians who like to focus on this particular message, I, too, will focus on the message of love when giving my opinion of Christian behaviour.

Like Anna, I am also astonished at how people, who claim to model their lives after Jesus, actually behave. The WWJD fad was a fantastic idea, and I wish it was as popular now as it was a few years ago. I enjoy asking questions about what Jesus would do in certain situations: Who would Jesus bomb? - probably no one. Would Jesus support the death penalty? - probably not. Would Jesus buy a big house and a boat and a new car and go on vacation to Hawaii? - I doubt it.

Also, just to be clear, I am not expressing an opinion about people buying new things or taking vacations. My point is that, if we are to look at how Jesus suggested people live if they really want to follow him, I don't think we would find that buying new things and taking vacations were part of Jesus's instruction.

Here are a couple of verses that come to mind - and I will admit that I am purposely picking out the weird/negative ones - and these are chosen simply because they are (to me) just as valid as the good ones that Christians really like to quote (and they are all from Matthew because I am too lazy to look up more in other books):

"Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me;" (Matthew 10:37)

"Then Jesus said to his disciples, "I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven." (Matthew 19:23)

"And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life." (Matthew 19:29)

So I guess I'm wondering what makes these less valid than the other commandments?


I would now like to comment on this quote of Anna's:

"There's no kindness, no attempt at understanding, not even a hint of that 'grace' they're always going on about."

This is another thing that I find very interesting. I would think that if God was such a magnificent thing in Christians' lives, we would notice it more. Wouldn't we be able to tell that they 'have God' by simply observing how they behave in normal situations? Wouldn't the miraculous grace and compassion given to them by their saviour be evident in every waking moment of their lives? Christians talk about how finding God saved them, how they were so lost and miserable and wicked, and now they are free and happy and good people. The problem I have with this is simply that (among the ordinary Christians I am with every day) there is no difference to behold between Christian and non-Christian behaviour.

I don't feel the need to explain this any further as I'm sure we are all aware that, aside from praying before a meal or going to church, there are not too many ways to tell a Christian from an Atheist.

A Bit of Hope...

When I get some time, I'll try and work on a longer post detailing my thoughts about the raid on the YFZ compound (associated with the FLDS Church). For now, I will simply say that I am relieved that these women and girls are safe. I first became aware of the FLDS Church when I read Jon Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven. Further research presented me with haunting stories of teenage girls forcibly married to (and then raped by) old men, of children having children, and of nobody being allowed to speak up for their own rights as a human being. The stories of the so-called "lost boys" of polygamy are equally depressing. At the risk of this turning into a long, not well-thought-out rant when I really should be going to bed, I'll stop for now.

Except to say this: That girl, the 16-year-old who blew the whistle? She's my hero.

A Thought

So tonight, I was checking up with one of the "fundie blogs" I read (semi)regularly. I really don't understand fundamentalists; even when I thought I was a Christian, I was a liberal Christian, so these people's beliefs are very foreign to me. Still, I find it interesting to see what they have to say. (Not 'good' interesting, mind you. More like 'facepalm' interesting.) Anyway. I was reading the comments of an entry, and sort of shocked, once again, at the viciousness with which these purported 'Christ-followers' treat one another. There's no kindness, no attempt at understanding, not even a hint of that 'grace' they're always going on about. They read something they disagree with, and their first reaction is to launch personal attacks against the person they disagree with.

Chelsea and I have had many phone conversations about this sort of thing, and hopefully she'll post her own take on it at some point (hint hint!). I will say, however, that tonight it sort of dawned on me that this sort of behavior, this rush to be petty and mean, is rather childish. And I think that a lot of Christianity is about returning people to a child-like state, inasmuch as they are discouraged from thinking for themselves. I wonder, then, if this irrationality when it comes to disagreements stems from the fact that they simply can't confront that which threatens their beliefs without becoming childish.

I don't know. Mostly, I'm just astonished that people who say they model their lives after Jesus can exhibit behavior that is so antithetical to the Jesus of the Bible. Too long ago, I promised Chelsea I would work on a post about the fact that, by and large, I rather like Jesus. His divinity isn't something I'd say I believe in, but then, I'm wary of the concept of divinity in general. Still, the idea of Jesus as a man advocating that simple idea that to be a good person is to love others like yourself and treat them accordingly is something that holds enormous appeal to me. At the risk of sounding a bit wide-eyed, I've often thought that the world would be much better off if we all just put this idea into practice.

To love someone like you love yourself is to love without judgment. It makes their issues and their well-being just as important (if not more so) than your own. And it brings with it a certain amount of peace. I've been going through a rough time for the past few weeks––too much stress, too much drama, not enough sleep. But the thing is, no matter how bad things get, or how anxious I feel, my outlook on life is generally positive. I start each day with the idea that 'life is good,' even when it's hard, and that the bad things that crop up are only temporary.

I don't get this outlook from the belief that one day I'll die and go to Heaven, because I don't believe in an afterlife. Instead, I get this outlook from the simple idea that it's not all about me. I can have a bad day now and again, sure, but my job as a member of the human race is to love others, and to love myself. When you fill a day with love and good intentions, the petty annoyances tend to fall away. I think we find what we seek: if I'm determined to have a bad day, I will. Approaching life as an opportunity to help and love others brings peace and satisfaction.

This is sounding terribly philosophical, I know, and I'm not sure it's really a good fit for this blog, but it's something that's been on my mind lately. I guess what I would say, is that approaching my life from a positive, peaceful mindset has liberated me from the stress and worry that used to plague my life, and that obtaining that mindset, I've found, becomes relatively easy when you focus on loving others. That's why, in general, I like Jesus.

This is Lovely...

...and I don't mean that in any sort of facetious way. I was going to excerpt a bit here, but I think the whole thing is worth reading, and it's not very long:

What if I behaved towards Christians like they behave towards me?

I discovered de-conversion a few months ago, and I'm always so amazed at the quality of the posts I find there (both in caliber of writing and choice of subject). It always manages to be thought-provoking, intelligent, and civil, which I love, and I often find myself checking back with certain posts even days later to read the ongoing discussion. Anyway, it's definitely a "highly recommend" from me, and this post, in particular, I greatly identified with.

"Ugh" of the Day

Because racism and violence are just hysterical

I think this one is particularly classy:

Cowboys vs Muslims:

Three strangers at the Great Falls airport are awaiting their flights.

One is a Native American on his way to Helena for a statewide Indian Pow-Wow.

Another a ranch hand on his way to Billings Montana for a stock show.

The third passenger is a fundamentalist Arab student, newly arrived, and on his way to study engineering at Montana Tech.

To pass the time they strike up a conversation on recent events, and the discussion drifts to their diverse cultures.

Soon the westerners learn that the Arab is a devout radical Muslim, and believes his people are justified in their 'holy' war.

The conversation falls into an uneasy lull. The cowpoke leans back in his chair, crosses his boots on a magazine table and tips his big sweat-stained hat forward over his face.

The wind outside blows and blows and the old windsock flaps but no plane comes.

Finally, the Native American clears his throat and softly he speaks: "Once, my people were many, now we are few."

The radical Muslim raises an eyebrow and leans forward, "Once my people were few," he sneers, "and now we are many. Why do you suppose that is?"

The Cowboy shifts the toothpick to one side of his mouth and from the darkness beneath his Stetson Cowboy Hat says, "That's 'cause we ain't played Cowboys and Muslims yet boy."

Ha. Ha ha ha. I know that jokes about genocide always tickle my funny bone. Bonus if they're filled with bullshit, racist stereotypes. Maybe the fundies should replace their "WWJD?" (What Would Jesus Do?) mantra with "Who Would Jesus Hate?" Apparently, that's the message their faith seems intent on presenting. What's that saying? Feel the Christian love?

Right.

Albert Einstein says it well...

When I first read this, I thought, 'YES! That's it exactly!'

“I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own--a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty.
Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotism.
It is enough for me to contemplate the mystery of conscious life perpetuating itself through all eternity, to reflect upon the marvelous structure of the universe which we can dimly perceive, and to try humbly to comprehend even an infinitesimal part of the intelligence manifested in nature.”

No Excuses

"... people can interpret the Bible however they want, but a strict literal reading of 'God's Word' plainly advocates things like racism, lack of family values, fear, judgment, violence, misogyny... a rational, objective, compassionate person could not reasonably judge that the Bible is a good guide to morality, nor that it supports/promotes intellectual honesty and inquiry into nature."

Edit: Cody teases me about being infatuated with Sam Harris... and after re-reading the above quote, I can't say it doesn't reek a little of infatuation... though I think it's more infatuation with his ideas than with him.

I emailed the above quote to a Christian friend of mine, in an attempt to explain why I am baffled when I learn that a highly educated, logical person is a 'bible believer'. She never responded. I also mentioned this position to my Dad last night, and he didn't really know what to say. I don't understand how people can ignore this stuff.

Also I think that it's strange that critical thinkers are expected to, when picking up the Bible, have someone nearby to 'explain' the bad parts. If the Bible is the word of God, it shouldn't need explaining, we should take it as-is and not need to interpret or excuse passages.

Awkward Turtle at the Oscars

So, posting this is going to reveal my rather embarrassing addiction to TMZ.com, but I'm a little too fired up not to post on it, so...

On the red carpet last night, Gary Busey greeted Jennifer Garner by kissing her on the neck.

In general, as a woman, this bothered me because it's all-too-familiar for us. Most women I know have had at least one experience where a man made them feel uncomfortable––it's the overly-friendly attitude, or the inappropriate touch, or the unwanted proposition (subtle or otherwise). It happened to me a few years ago. I remember going home to my mom and telling her about it; she, wise woman that she is, told me to stand up for myself, and I did. It made me feel empowered to take that action, to put a stop to the aggressive behavior that was making me feel so uncomfortable. Still, it made me feel uncomfortable, and violated, and intensely aware that, as a woman, I will always have to be on the look-out for predatory men. Understand, I am by no means bashing men in general (just the assholes) but this is something that is a reality for women. We deal with it all the time, most of the time barely registering the fact that we are in a constant state of watchfulness.

So, in watching the video of Jennifer Garner's reaction to the violation of her personal space, I felt for her. It made me angry, but it was a weary angry. It's that low-level anger that comes when you're really not surprised, but still aware that things like this are... well, they're just wrong. There's a strange split there: it upsets me, but I also accept that it's a part of the world we live in. I don't like it or condone it, but it seems to be one of those problems that will only be solved through the gradual changing of hearts and minds of individual people.

I was weary angry. And then, I read the comments, and got fired up. An alarmingly high number of them were somewhere along the lines of, "She should get over herself," or, "He was just being friendly," or, "He's got more talent than she does."

Fuck that. Sorry for the f-bomb droppage, but seriously. He kissed her neck. He kissed her neck, and she didn't want him to; that is all that matters. There is no excuse. It doesn't matter how famous he is. Kissing the neck of someone you've never met before isn't friendly, it's creepy. And the "she should get over herself" thing is... don't even get me started. It's cavalier, it's dismissive, and it implies that women shouldn't care when a man violates their bodily integrity.

If someone kisses my neck and I don't want them to, I will not 'get over myself'. I will not 'let it go'. I will say something. I will stand up for myself. From where I stand, that's what Jennifer Garner did last night, and that, at least, is heartening.

The ignorant commenters still piss me off, though.

Do You Know the History?

This may be old news to some, but I think it important to post for those who may not know:

The phrase 'under God' was added to the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954.

'In God We Trust' was added to our currency in 1957.



"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..."

Quotations from "Letter to a Christian Nation"

Questions of morality are about happiness and suffering.

The idea that the Bible is a perfect guide to morality is simply astounding given the content of the book.

Jesus can be read to endorse the entirety of the Old Testament law.

The Golden Rule really is a wonderful moral precept but numerous teachers offered the same instruction centuries before Jesus.

If we take Jesus in half his moods, we can easily justify the actions of St. Francis of Assisi or Martin Luther King Jr. Taking the other half, we can justify the Inquisition.

Consider the question of slavery. Consult the Bible and you will discover that the creator of the universe clearly expects us to keep slaves. The fact that abolitionists used parts of scripture to repudiate other parts does not indicate that the Bible is a good guide to morality.

[Of the Ten Commandments] Commandments 5 through 9 are found in virtually every culture. There are obvious biological reasons why people tend to treat their parents well, and to think badly of murderers, adulterers, thieves, and liars.

God never gives us the freedom to follow the commandments we like best and neglect the rest.

If you think it would be impossible to improve upon the Ten Commandments as a statement of morality, you really owe it to yourself to read some other scriptures.

Christians have abused, oppressed, enslaved, insulted, tormented, tortured, and killed people in the name of God for centuries, on the basis of a theological defensible reading of the Bible.

It is clearly possible to say that someone like Hitler was wrong in moral terms without reference to scripture.

Religion allows people to imagine that their concerns are moral when they have nothing to do with suffering or its alleviation. Religion allows people to imagine that their concerns are moral when they are highly immoral... Your efforts to constrain the sexual behavior of consenting adults are almost never geared toward the relief of human suffering.

If compassion were really dependent upon religious dogmatism, how could we explain the work of secular doctors in the most war-ravaged regions of the developing world?

While missionaries do many noble things at great risk to themselves, their dogmatism still spreads ignorance and death.

We might wonder, which is more moral: helping people purely out of concern for their suffering, or helping them because you think the creator of the universe will reward you for it?

One can reasonably wonder whether most aborted fetuses suffer their destruction... One cannot reasonably wonder this about the millions of men, women, and children who must endure the torments of war, famine, political torture, or mental illness.

The compassion of human beings is often hobbled by preposterous ideas about sin and salvation. If you are worried about human suffering, abortion should rank very low on your list of concerns.

50 percent of all human conceptions end in spontaneous abortion, usually without a woman even realizing that she was pregnant. In fact, 20 percent of all recognized pregnancies end in miscarriage... If God exists, He is the most prolific abortionist of all.

If religious faith offers the only real basis for morality, then atheists should be less moral than believers...they should be utterly immoral.

Hitler, Stalin, Mao Zedong... The problem with such tyrants is not that they reject the dogma of religion, but that they embrace other life-destroying myths.

No society in human history ever suffered because its people became too desirous of evidence in support of their core beliefs.

If there were a strong correlation between Christian conservatism and societal health, we might expect to see some sign of it in red-state America. We don’t.

Widespread belief in God does not ensure a society’s health.

You feel that you are in a position to judge that the Golden Rule is the height of moral wisdom...and then you assert that we human beings cannot possibly rely upon our own intuitions to rightly guide us in the world...we must depend on the Bible.We read the Golden Rule and judge it to be a brilliant distillation of many of our ethical impulses. And then we come across another of God’s teachings on morality: if a man discovers on his wedding night that his bride is not a virgin, he must stone her to death on her father’s doorstep. If we are civilized, we will reject this as the vilest lunacy imaginable. Doing so requires that we exercise our own moral intuitions.

We can either have a twenty-first-century conversation about morality and human well-being, or we can confine ourselves to a first-century conversation as it is preserved in the Bible.

An atheist is simply a person who believes that the 260 million American claiming to ‘never doubt the existence of God’ should be obliged to present evidence for his existence—and, indeed, for his benevolence.

An atheist is a person who believes that the murder of a little girl—even once in a million years—casts doubt upon the idea of a benevolent God.

It is time we recognized the boundless narcissism and self-deceit of the saved. It is time we acknowledged how disgraceful it is for the survivor of a catastrophe to believe themselves spared by a loving God, while the same God drowned infants in their cribs.

People of all faiths regularly assure one another that God is not responsible for human suffering... If God exists, either He can do nothing to stop calamities, or He does not care to.

So much suffering can be directly attributed to religion—to religious hatreds, religious wars, religious taboos, and religious diversions of scarce resources.

Imagine how breathtakingly specific a work of prophecy would be, if it were actually the product of omniscience. If the Bible were such a book, it would make perfectly accurate predictions about human events. The Bible does not contain a single sentence that could not have been written by a man or woman living in the first century.

Why doesn’t the Bible say anything about electricity, or about DNA, or about the actual age and size of the universe? What about a cure for cancer? God had room to instruct us in great detail about how to keep slaves and sacrifice a wide variety of animals.

The success of science often comes at the expense of religious dogma: the maintenance of religious dogma always comes at the expense of science.

Every religion makes specific claims about the way the world is... Such claims conflict with the claims of science, because they are claims made on terrible evidence.

When considering the truth of a proposition, one is either engaged in an honest appraisal of the evidence and logical arguments, or one isn’t.

The core of science is controlled by intellectual honesty.

Faith is nothing more than the license religious people give one another to keep believing when reasons fail.

Religion is the one area of our discourse where it is considered noble to pretend to be certain about things no human being could possibly be certain about.

Evolution is a theory. In science, facts must be explained with reference to other facts. These larger explanatory models are ‘theories’. Theories make predictions and can be tested. The phrase ‘the theory of evolution’ does not in the least suggest that evolution is not a fact. One can speak about ‘the theory of gravitation’ without casting doubt upon gravity as a fact of nature.

[Christians] are simply not engaged in an honest inquiry into the nature of the universe.

An honest reading of the biblical account of creation suggests that God created all animals and plants as we now see them.

Even if we accepted that our universe simply had to be designed by a designer, this would not suggest that this designer is the biblical God, or that He approves of Christianity.

Any intellectually honest person will admit that he does not know why the universe exists.

One of the monumental ironies of religious discourse can be appreciated in the frequency with which people of faith praise themselves for their humility, while condemning scientists and other non-believers for their intellectual arrogance.

When we look at the natural world, we do not see optimal design... We see flightless birds and snakes with pelvises. We see species of fish, salamanders, and crustaceans that have non-functional eyes. We see whales that produce teeth during fetal development, only to reabsorb them as adults. As embryos, we produce tales, gill sacs, and a full coat of apelike hair. The human respiratory and digestive tracts share a little plumbing at the pharynx.

There are now around three hundred and fifty thousand known species of beetles.

Our fear of provoking religious hatred has rendered us unwilling to criticize ideas that are increasingly maladaptive and patently ridiculous.

Our competing religious certainties are impeding the emergence of a viable, global civilization.

Religion is the only form of in-group/out-group thinking that casts the difference between people in terms of eternal rewards and punishments.

The bigotry and hatred that divide one community from another are often the products of their religious identities.

We do not all worship the same God, and nothing attests to this fact more eloquently than our history of religious bloodshed.

Devout Muslims are as convinced as you are that their religion is perfect and that any deviation leads directly to hell... A person’s religious beliefs uniquely determine what he thinks peace is good for, as well as what he means by a term like ‘compassion.’ There are millions of Muslims who would be willing to die before they would allow your version of compassion to gain a foothold on the Arabian Peninsula.

How can interfaith dialogue reconcile worldviews that are fundamentally incompatible and immune to revision?

We desperately need a public discourse that encourages critical thinking and intellectual honesty.

It is time we learned to meet our emotional needs without embracing the preposterous.

There is no question that it is possible for people to have profoundly transformative experiences... But this does not make unjustified (and unjustifiable) claims any more respectable.

Any genuine exploration of ethics or the contemplative life demands the same standards of reasonableness and self-criticism that animate all intellectual discourse.

That religion may have served some necessary function for us in the past does not preclude the possibility that it is now the greatest impediment to our building a global civilization.



SamHarris.org

Religious Fluidity

A Christian friend of mine admitted today that had she been brought up in a Muslim family, she would be a Muslim today, instead of a Christian. What I can not understand is how the next logical conclusion can not be made by her. If your religious identity is based purely on what your parents taught you, how can you continue to believe that your faith is the only correct one, when you know there are other religions out there that you might belong to, had you been born into a different family?

BLOWS MY MIND.

"The Problem with Atheism" by Sam Harris

Here are some excerpts that state the main tone of the article:

“Attaching a label to something carries real liabilities, especially if the thing you are naming isn’t really a thing at all. And atheism, I would argue, is not a thing. It is not a philosophy, just as “non-racism” is not one. Atheism is not a worldview—and yet most people imagine it to be one and attack it as such. We who do not believe in God are collaborating in this misunderstanding by consenting to be named and by even naming ourselves.

So, let me make my somewhat seditious proposal explicit: We should not call ourselves “atheists.” We should not call ourselves “secularists.” We should not call ourselves “humanists,” or “secular humanists,” or “naturalists,” or “skeptics,” or “anti-theists,” or “rationalists,” or “freethinkers,” or “brights.” We should not call ourselves anything. We should go under the radar—for the rest of our lives. And while there, we should be decent, responsible people who destroy bad ideas wherever we find them.

Well, rather than declare ourselves “atheists” in opposition to all religion, I think we should do nothing more than advocate reason and intellectual honesty—and where this advocacy causes us to collide with religion, as it inevitably will, we should observe that the points of impact are always with specific religious beliefs—not with religion in general. There is no religion in general.

Another problem with calling ourselves “atheists” is that every religious person thinks he has a knockdown argument against atheism.

…consider what would happen if we simply used words like “reason” and “evidence.” What is the argument against reason? …there are very few people, even among religious fundamentalists, who will happily admit to being enemies of reason. In fact, fundamentalists tend to think they are champions of reason and that they have very good reasons for believing in God. Nobody wants to believe things on bad evidence. The desire to know what is actually going on in our world is very difficult to argue with. In so far as we represent that desire, we become difficult to argue with. And this desire is not reducible to an interest group. It’s not a club or an affiliation, and I think trying to make it one diminishes its power.

As “atheists” we give others, and even ourselves, the sense that we are well on our way toward purging the universe of mystery. As advocates of reason, we know that mystery is going to be with us for a very long time.

We are faced, however, with the challenge of communicating this view to others. We are faced with the monumental task of persuading a myth-infatuated world that love and curiosity are sufficient, and that we need not console or frighten ourselves or our children with Iron Age fairy tales. I don’t think there is a more important intellectual struggle to win; it has to be fought from a hundred sides, all at once, and continuously; but it seems to me that there is no reason for us to fight in well-ordered ranks, like the red coats of Atheism.

What will victory against racism look like, should that happy day ever dawn? It certainly won’t be a world in which a majority of people profess that they are “nonracist.” Most likely, it will be a world in which the very concept of separate races has lost its meaning.

It seems to me that intellectual honesty is now, and will always be, deeper and more durable, and more easily spread, than “atheism.””


I listened to an interview with Sam Harris on the FFRF podcast today, and he went over parts of this speech, which I found very interesting because I'd never thought about what effects the title 'Atheist' might have on this fight.
One thing he mentioned in the interview, that is not in the article, is that there may be a purpose, now, in people labeling themselves as Atheists.

So, between the article, his interview, and my own experience of 'coming out' to people as an Atheist, I came to the conclusion that, for now, I will continue to label myself as such, if only for the purpose of making it known to those around me that there are people who absolutely do not believe in any gods, and that we are not wicked or hateful because we lack this belief. I think it is important that people are made aware of this, and the best way I can see of doing that, now, (probably the most dramatic, as well) is to bluntly state my position, and I think that 'Atheist' (though it comes with all its misinterpretations) is the simplest way of showing my opposition to religion.