Taking one for the team

One of the biggest problems we face is misunderstanding. I can't even remember how many times in high school I had to clear up the fact that being an atheist does not mean that I worship the devil. I am particularly fond of reading of reading stories from atheists who deconverted from being very religious. One of my favorites is Primordial Blog, especially Brian's "What the Bible Really Says" posts, and his four part series on being an evangelical faith healer. Lynn's Daughter also has some excellent tips coming from a "recovering evangelical."

Hearing about the lives of Christians (and followers of other religions as well, I just don't hear from as many of them) is interesting, albeit sad, but I like to think I have a better understanding because of it. Hearing about these lives from the perspective of atheists that have deconverted is one method of gaining this perspective, but obviously one must also discuss things with real theists! The is a sisyphean task, though, because of the amount of material. Some people, though, have committed the time and energy to really "take one for the team" and delve into the theist psyche. Or... at least their message boards!

Lya at Escapee from the Meme Machine has done this very thing, and we should all benefit from it. She visited 35 boards over a two month period, and generated some very good data. Her entire post is a must read, but the sections covered are:

• The 11 most common misconceptions about atheists
• The 5 most common excuses for having no evidence of the existence of god
• The 14 most commonly used fallacies
• The 4 most commonly used bits of known hoaxes/forgeries
• Some notable outcomes

The most interesting section for me was the 14 most commonly used fallacies. I have been trying to brush up on my logic skills here and there over the last few months, and am especially trying to learn the common fallacies. This is a great list of what to start with. What I was most surprised with were omissions -- the lack of the "atheists worship the devil" misconception that I've personally come across, and the lack of a misunderstood "piltdown man" reference in the most commonly used hoaxes. Of course that's more about evolution but evolution is always a popular topic for theist/atheist debates. (I saw a post from a theist just a few days ago that confused Lucy with the piltdown man, and claiming that Lucy had been determined to be a hoax, and that therefore evolution was false and creationism is true. Of course, anyone that even uses the piltdown man itself against evolution has fallen into a trap -- it was the application of our knowledge of evolution that brought the piltdown man hoax to light, making it a triumph for evolution, instead of a disgrace.)

Thank you Lya for taking the time to do this. I know this must have tried your patience, but you have helped us all.

"that was from the devil"

Ok, a short post for once. I just wanted to relate a story I found amusing and to present a challenge!

Background: this was the first time all five us (me, wife, sister-in-law, kiddo#1, kiddo#2) had been able to have a meal at the table together in several nights, due to food poisoning and much subsequent nastiness afflicting my wife and both kiddos. The other four sing (or mumble, or coo -- depending on age) a little blessing at the table most nights, that begins and ends with "the Lord's been good to us"

Others: [singing] ... and the Lord's been good to us!
Me: Except for that food poisoning thing.
Sister-in-law: That was from the devil.

Not roll-on-the-floor funny I know, but I have always found the Christian ability to invoke the devil as the antagonist in any situation fairly amusing. I don't know if anybody has named this phenomenon yet, but if not then I propose naming it the Dichotomy of Attribution.

I did not react to this statement at the time, thereby resuming our taboo against discussing religion at the table. (as evidenced by my wife furiously ignoring my comment) Although in other circumstances, this would be my answer:

So, either God was powerless to stop the devil, God is not omniscient and didn't know, or God allowed it through inaction. Which is it?

My challenge to you is to come up to a short response in 25 words or less. (Be civil. No name-calling.) I'm looking forward to hearing other responses!

Atheists Win High-Profile Debate? - Part II

A recent debate, held in the Methodist Central Hall in London, covered the motion "We'd be better off without religion." The arguments were presented by Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Professor A. C. Grayling vs. Nigel Spivey, Rabbi Julia Neuberger, and Professor Roger Scruton. It had originally been given positive coverage by the atheist crowd because of a 'winning' vote taken after the debate -- 1,205 for, and 778 against. My opinion on the matter was that the numbers were meaningless without comparitive statistics.

Now, another article covering the debate has been released by the Telegraph, and has offered more insight into these numbers. Specifically, it provides votes from the audience from before the debate. Before: 826 for, 681 against, and 364 don't knows. After: 1,205 for, 778 against, and 103 don't knows. Time to analyze!

The first thing that stood out is that the totals don't match. There were 1,871 votes before the debate, and 2,086 after. This might mean that there were more than 200 walk-ins, leading to a larger audience at the end. Or it might mean that the passionate debate had stirred more of the audience to vote afterware. Or something else entirely, or all of the above. So let's look at these as percentages. Before: 44.1% for, 36.3% against, 19.5% don't know. After: 57.7% for, 37.3% against, and 4.9% don't know.

Both for and against votes gained ground! The theistic point of view by 1%, the atheistic point of view by 13.6%. The "don't knows" dropped by 14.6%. This means that both sides were being very persuasive. The fact that the theistic view netted a gain (ignoring any side-switchers we don't know about) means that this isn't the big atheist victory we were hoping for. Because in my opinion a big victory would be theistic converts.

But since the atheistic point of view gained more ground, I will say that it's a small victory for atheists. Convincing those corresponding to the agnostic viewpoint still means putting more numbers into the atheist crowd.

Einstein & Faith

Time.com has a new article up that investigates Einstein's position in regards to religious faith. It is an issue that requires investigation, because Einstein frequently used God metaphorically, such as in the famouse phrase, "God does not play dice." Many people take this literally, and will argue with atheists by pointing out that Einstein believed in God.

He didn't -- at least not Abraham's God. He believed in Spinoza's God -- a style of pantheism. Einstein wasn't shy about invoking the word "God" to represent his beliefs, though. It's caused no end of confusion -- to the point where Dawkins has to spend time in The God Delusion to define what he called the Einsteinian God.

The Time article doesn't take the same position that Dawkins does -- at least to my reading. It describes Einstein as angry at being called an atheist.

But throughout his life, Einstein was consistent in rejecting the charge that he was an atheist. "There are people who say there is no God," he told a friend. "But what makes me really angry is that they quote me for support of such views." And unlike Sigmund Freud or Bertrand Russell or George Bernard Shaw, Einstein never felt the urge to denigrate those who believed in God; instead, he tended to denigrate atheists. "What separates me from most so-called atheists is a feeling of utter humility toward the unattainable secrets of the harmony of the cosmos," he explained.

That is not how I read those quotes at all. Just because he didn't denigrate those who believed in God doesn't mean he didn't have atheist views. It seems to me that Einstein only wanted to distance himself from a certain type of atheist. In the same way that I want to distance myself from certain types of atheists. It's true, some of them are just offensive and I don't like them representing me. I don't like it when atheists try to give religious labels to 'our' things -- like saying that Darwin is our saint, Dawkins and Harris are our prophets, and The Origin of Species is our bible. I hate that. And I just think it sounds like Einstein has the same feelings towards atheists that think they know all of the answers to the universe.

I find the whole article seemed to have been written in a religious slant, as if it were defending Einstein as a religious person. Instead the article mostly just tried to explain what he did believe, as if to emphasize the fact that he believed something. It even omitted (innocently or otherwise) what many atheists consider to be the defining quote about Einstein's religious views:

It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.

If the article had mentioned that quote, it would have had a harder time coming to these wishy-washy conclusions on Einstein:

Around the time he turned 50, he began to articulate more clearly--in various essays, interviews and letters--his deepening appreciation of his belief in God, although a rather impersonal version of one.

For some people, miracles serve as evidence of God's existence. For Einstein it was the absence of miracles that reflected divine providence.

It feels like the article is trying to paint Einstein's beliefs as an interpretation of God, not as an atheist that is fascinated by the mysteries of the universe. The author is about to publish a biography of Einstein. I think I'll pass.

Misleading Polls: Nearly half of all atheists believe in God!

I've recently looked at my views on what atheists are and what we aren't. I was specifically speaking about three labels: Religion, Belief, and Fundamentalism. (atheist "fundamentalism," by the way, is a concept that is stirring some internal debate recently) I concluded that "fundamentalism" could not be applied to atheism because it implied a spectrum of adherence to our defining principle: that we do not believe in God.

According to Newsweek, nearly half (or more) of atheists and agnostics do believe there is a spectrum. (Or maybe -- just maybe -- it's a shoddy poll that we take with a grain of salt.)

Question #12 in the poll asks what people belief when it comes to human creation/evolution. Here are the responses given by those that defined themselves as agnostic or atheist:

God had no part in the evolution of humans from lower life forms: 45%
God guided the process of evolution of humans from lower life forms: 27%
God created humans pretty much in the present form sometime in the last 10,000 years: 13%
Other/Don't know: 15%

Well, this is a little surprising. According to this poll, 40% of all agnostics and atheists believe that God created humans in one way or another. Would you be surprised if you found out that 40% of all members of the Democratic Party were Republicans? Me too. Would you be surprised in you found out that 40% of the population of Maine lived outside of Maine? Sure. Would you be surprised if 40% of photographers had never used a camera before? Yup. I think if the pollers had actually looked at this information, they would have begun to question the accuracy of their poll.

But the problems don't stop there. Can you see the problem with the phrasing of the question? I paraphrased it above, but here is the exact 'atheist answer':

Humans developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God had no part in this process.

The question doesn't even allow for the possible non-existance of God. It states that there is a God, but he just didn't happen to guide evolution. I suppose that makes this the 'deist answer.' Atheism simply isn't represented here. Does this remind anyone else of the Paula Zahn lets-talk-about-atheists-while-they're-not-here-to-defend-themselves episode? How are we supposed to answer that in a way that doesn't make it sound like we just don't know?

This is like presenting followers of Judaism with the question, "Which represents your point of view: when Jesus the son of God was resurrected and joined his Father in heaved he was: a) dead for exactly three days, and was lifted upwards through the clouds; b) dead for exactly three days, and disappeared in a flash of light; c) dead for an unknown period of time, and either flew upwards or disappeared wholly; or d) other/don't know." It's a loaded question. None of the answers match our point of view.

Fortunately there are plenty of other polls to look at. ARIS data from 2001 (with a data set 50 times larger than the Newsweek poll, I might add) used the term "no religion" to group atheists, agnostics, humanists, secularists, and "no religion" respondants. This group came in with an impressive 14.1%! Even better, it nearly doubled from 8.2% in 1990 -- just 11 years!

ARIS also showed that some US states had as many as 25% of its population declare "no religion." Washington state was in the lead with the 25% number -- imagine living in a state with 1 out of every 4 people an atheist! USA Today has an interactive flash map of this data that shows the religious breakdown state-by-state. I never would have realized that "no religion" (me) outnumbered Baptist (my wife) in Kansas! In fact, in many states, "no religion" comes in second.

Another interesting tidbit in the ARIS data shows some validation to my observation that more people are switching to atheism that away from it. In the 2001 data, it shows that "no religion" had the highest of 22 groups of people that Switched In (in sheer number), and was the third highest in net gain (percentage). In sheer numbers, it's gaining members about six times as fast as it's losing them. (p. 25 in the PDF, p. 24 in the report)

The Pew Research Center, in a recent study, showed 12% of Americans as secular (which they define as atheist, agnostic, or no religion). This is up 4% in just the last 20 years. The same poll also shows slight downward trends over the last five years to the statement "I never doubt the existence of God."

Religious Tolerance summarizes the results of a USA Today/Gallup poll in Jan. 2002:

Almost half of American adults appear to be alienated from organized religion. If current trends continue, most adults will not call themselves religious within a few years.

I think we can safely and happily ignore the Newsweek poll.

Jolt with my Java: Revised

Mojoey reported on a disturbing message at Starbucks -- on one of their coffee cups! The Starbucks the way i see it program, which prints messages submitted from their customers on the sides of their coffee cups, is now accepting messages from religious groups, and Mojoey happened upon message #224, from Dr. Jonathan Wells, a Discovery Institute supporter:

Darwinism's impact on traditional social values has not been as benign as its advocates would like us to believe. Despite the efforts of its modern defenders to distance themselves from its baleful social consequences, Darwinism's connection with eugenics, abortion and racism is a matter of historical record. And the record is not pretty.
-- Dr. Jonathan Wells
Biologist and author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design.

Reading that, I realized how easy it would be to swap out a few words and arrive at the following statement: (the modified words are italicized)

Christianity's impact on traditional social values has not been as benign as its advocates would like us to believe. Despite the efforts of its modern defenders to distance themselves from its baleful social consequences, Christianity's connection with wars, witch-hunts and discrimination is a matter of historical record. And the record is not pretty.

Anybody else want to make a version?

What Atheism Is and Isn't

The term "fundamentalist atheist" is starting to irk me. Says the pot to the kettle: you're black. But I've heard this enough that I wanted to write out what I think atheism/atheists can and can not be described as. This is all my opinion of course, and everyone is entitled to their own. There is no Southern Atheist Convention that requires atheists to follow a certain doctrine or they get kicked out. (and still, some theists call us "closed-minded")

Is Atheism a Religion?
Atheism does not hold any religious beliefs, and does not adhere to any religious doctrines. So no, atheism is not a Religion (capital 'r') in the classic sense. Atheism isn't a set of beliefs, it's a lack of beliefs. It's the default state. All infants are atheists because they haven't learned otherwise. It's only after introducing beliefs to the child that it will become a member of a religion. If the child is never taught religious beliefs, they would remain an atheist.

Still, I think that atheism is a religion (lowercase 'r') as a demographic set. If there was a survey that asked me "What is your religion?" I would answer "atheism." It is a valid label for the demographic group I belong to. As a label, atheism is a religion in the same way that zero is a number. Zero has no value, but it is still a number.

Is Atheism a Belief?
No. Atheism is the position of having no beliefs. While an atheist could declare their position to be "I believe there is no God" (sometimes referred to as strong atheism), describing the lack of something should not be confused with an actual belief. This is simply because there is nothing there to believe. Imagine two explorers charting a never-before-seen, uninhabited island. One says to the other, "What race do the people belong to?" The second explorer says, "There are no people. It's uninhabited." The first one nods and replies, "They must be indigenous, then." This is ridiculous because the lack of people can not be described as a type of people.

Is there such a thing as a Fundamentalist Atheist?
No. The vast majority of definitions available for the term Fundamentalism reveal its overwhelming connection to religion and the bible. These definitions use phrases like "movement in American Protestantism," "infallibility of the bible," "religious movement," "opposition to secularism," "adherence to the theology of..." The only secular definition I could find was strict adherence to any set of basic ideas or principles.

Now, atheists do have a basic principle: we do not believe in a divine being. But it is not something that can be adhered to, strictly or otherwise, because it is a defining principle. There is no spectrum of adherence to this principle among atheists. (thought when applied to people in general, of course, you get the theist/agnostic/atheist spectrum) It is the equivalent of a theist's belief in a god as their defining principle. You can't call every Christian that believes in God a fundamentalist, because that belief is one of their defining principles.

Want more? Atheist Revolution recently had a great post (one of the inspirations for this one) where he has tried to investigate Atheist Extremism. Two of the terms he (? I think vjack is a he....) looks at are "fundamentalist atheist" and "militant atheist."

In a nutshell, religious fundamentalism is about adherence to a particular doctrine, atheism has no doctrine, and therefore, there can be no fundamentalist atheism.

The Uncredible Hallq looked at fundamentalist atheism and militant atheism fairly recently as well. He decides that it is used by theists who either want to slam atheists, or are using the term to mean "hard core."

But outside slamming atheists, fundamentalism has always mainly applied to people who believe their given holy book is infallible. Sometimes, this is taken to the point of people becoming convinced that "God exists because the Bible says so" is a good argument.

And finally, I will direct you to The One With Aldacron, who agrees with The Uncredible Hallq that the term is used as a replacement for "hard core" or, as The One phrases it, "hardline."

The term “atheist fundamentalist” is an oxymoron. Fundamentalism arises from faith. Atheists have no faith. So there is no such thing as an atheist fundamentalist. There are some militant atheists out there who love to provoke confrontations with the religious. But I think they are rare. Hardline atheists are those who stand up for atheism and denounce religion for what it is.

Reinforced Ignorance

I grew up in a very small factory town in southwest Virginia. It is a very poor area, and for the first half of the 20th century most of the population worked for one of the several large furniture factories in town. In the way that some towns revolve around mining, this town revolved around the factories. As such, the factories had a great deal of local political power.

Add to this the fact that this town is an independent city -- not part of a larger county -- and you can imagine how small and poor the school system was. The story I heard growing up is that the factory owners, who were also the city politicians, intentionally maintained low standards and poor funds to the school system. The idea was that if a student was not educated, they would be more likely to work for the factory themselves after finishing school -- if not even earlier, after dropping out.

They were breeding ignorance for their own advantage.

This was every bit as cruel as it sounds, but many religious powers in the world continue to do the exact same thing. The Creationism / Creation Science / Intelligent Design / Whatever-it-will-be-called-next movement has been trying to paint evolution as a controversial "just-a-theory" for decades. They want warning stickers placed on textbooks, creationist malarky to be given equal treatment, and have even gone so far as to glue textbook pages together to hide offending material.

But these religious zombie masters go even further than just stripping people of their educational potential. They are actively pumping their sheep full of misinformation. I discussed the Creation Museum disaster yesterday, but it certainly doesn't end there. We've all heard about Conservapedia, too. We've also heard about the child abuse recorded in the documentary Jesus Camp, whose own website proudly makes it sound like a bile-inducing horror film:

Jesus Camp follows a group of young children to Pastor Becky Fisher's "Kids on Fire Summer Camp," where kids are taught to become dedicated Christian soldiers in God's army and are schooled in how to take back America for Christ. The film is a first-ever look into an intense training ground that recruits born-again Christian children to become an active part of America's political future.

"army" ... "training ground" ... "recruits" ... In other words, it's the Christian version of a radical Madrasah school!

There are a couple of YouTube videos that were referenced on Dawkins' site earlier today that really horrified me. The level of ignorance these videos are trying to spread makes my head spin.

The first one really drives home an opinion I've long had -- Creationists just don't understand long periods of time. This guy thinks that a jar of peanut butter will -- according to his straw-man version of evolution -- occassionally spawn new life? Let's ignore the fact that the chemical composition of peanut butter is far different than the chemical environment of early earth. He is saying the equivalent of, just because none of the lottery tickets I've bought ever won anything, winning lottery tickets must not exist. How many times do you buy peanut butter in your lifetime? 100 times? 200 times? How does that possibly compare to a billion billion billion molecules interacting with each other every second for a billion years?

The second one is labelled "The atheist's nightmare" and that's true. Except the banana isn't the nightmare, it's the guy holding it that scares me. I'd like to hear what this guy has to say about brazil nuts. Or coconuts. Or pineapples.

Stark, New Atheism, and Religion on the Defense

Pete Stark, as many of us now know, is the highest elected official to acknowledge a non-theistic view. I wrote a post when I first heard the news of the coming-out, when it was still an unknown Congressperson, but I haven't written anything about it since. I was waiting to see what the reaction would be....

Which was almost disappointing! The biggest fuss I heard was from the Christian Seniors organization, who went on to talk about child-strangling liberals. But for the most part, it was all neutral and positive reactions. Voters (in his district) seem unfazed. Some news articles praised Stark. Most were neutral. I even read news articles from Christian news organizations. The Christian Broadcasting network had two mentions -- a news report titled Atheist Congressman Honored, and a snippet in the Christian World News Religion Roundup -- both were straight unbiased reporting, with no opinions or inserted response at all. BeliefNet also had a completely unbiased report. I did find an opinion piece on GetReligion.com, but it turned the story against the $1,000 payout (by the Secular Coalition for America for the nomination), and not the coming out!

I can't believe it. I never thought we'd get away with an atheist Congressperson without some serious backlash. Maybe we really will be seeing more atheists coming out.

The part of Congressman Stark's announcement that I found most interesting was his connection with Unitarianism. I have written in the past that a nontheist politician would suffer from not having religious group to back them. Unitarianism is a clever loophole in my theory! Stark has found a way to be atheist and be part of a group.

Hemant at FriendlyAtheist had a good article last week on the isolation that most atheists face -- or impose on themselves. He points out that well-known Christians are usually associated with their organizations. There aren't single lonely voices in big Christian names. Charismatic leaders and large followings are a symbiotic relationship. The leaders' charisma brings in followers, which makes the leader more powerful and able to reach more would-be followers.

The big atheists, though -- like Dawkins, and Harris -- are isolated voices, and lack a similar mutually-beneficial environment.

Hemant points out that there are a growing number of secular groups, but even the biggest are tiny compared to any religious organizations, and their leaders are relatively obscure. Definitely not household names. The problem, while it does involve the relative sizes of the religious vs. secular populations, also lies with the way atheists are organized. Or... aren't organized.

But despite our nebulous lack of organization, I think we're really starting to be seen as a growing threat. Think back a few months in US politics. Barak Obama was first being seen as a possible presidential candidate, which of course was the cue for all of the slimeball political groups out there to start hurling their slime. At one point, Obama was accused of attending a radical Madrassa school as a child. This was not true, but it did reveal that the Republicans considered Obama to be a real threat, which made me quite happy.

Do theists see atheism as a threat? Maybe not on the streetcorner, but I think theists are starting to realize that atheism is growing strong in the online arena. Online, theists are starting to get on the defensive. Unable to come up with anything truly innovative, they are instead flattering us with imitation.

They think Wikipedia is too liberal? They make Conservapedia.

Too many atheists on YouTube? They make GodTube.

Heathens are laughing at their MySpace pages? They make HisHolySpace.

I'm waiting for HolyDigg next. Scratch that, I just found Gospelshout.

I find this encouraging! Disgusting, but encouraging.