Vindication

Well, this is interesting. I can't believe I missed it.

Richard Dawkins Gets into a Comments War with Feminists (from Atlantic Monthly July 2011)

Oh, yeah - I CAN believe I missed it. At the time this silliness was going on I was busy giving stargazes for ecocamp kids and the general public and gearing up to teach a pre-college course on solar system astronomy at my local university. In other words, I was spreading science while my "fellow atheists" were venting hatred and stupidity, and against each other, no less. Guys, here's your sign.

And Dawkins and Watson: I'm laughing at the "superior intellect."

Off to better things...

Well, since no one is really listening anyway, and there's so little in the way of rationality or civility to be found, I am off to better things. Things like educating the public in science and promoting peaceful dialogue between the religious and nonreligious instead of hatred and ridicule in the vein of Hitchens. I'll leave this blog up, if for no other reason than to let others who may believe as I do know that they are not alone in their frustration with the way we are handling our worldview.

I leave our community with the following short snippet from Sagan's Demon Haunted World in the hope that it will one day see reason and pursue the course that it has talked about, yet abandoned, for the past decade.

The candle flame gutters. Its little pool of light trembles. Darkness gathers. The demons begin to stir.

No amount of your hate will save this candle. Only Reason - a positive Reason - will prevail in the end.

It's getting darker. It's almost too late.

CFI and secular hatred

Got a letter from the Center for Inquiry yesterday. I read through it just for fun, and ended up not having any fun at all.

They bemoaned their financial status (typical fare for CFI), and then followed up with an appeal for a donation. After seeing mention of their sponsorship of "International Blasphemy Day," an unnecessary insult cast toward religion ("that most sacred of sacred cows, namely the taboo against criticizing religious beliefs"), and talk of a "struggle for a secular society," I threw up in my mouth a little and then wasted a stamp to ask them to take me off their mailing list.

Hey - doesn't the definition of Islamic jihad include mention of a "struggle" as well? Interesting...

A McKown recommendation that could use some modification

Suggestion #2 from Delos B. McKown for "replacing religion with science," 1984:

Seek ways, including the possible use of professional sanctions, to help safeguard the integrity of science instruction in public schools and to shield science teachers against uninformed public opinion or other political pressures.

Okay, I totally get the ‘political pressures’ thing, but there’s a question I have to ask about that other part:

Out of just whose loins are squirting all of these young people who are eventually showing up in our godless, mass production public school systems?


(wait for it…)


OMG, could it be?


The uninformed public!!!

Suddenly this suggestion of "safeguard[ing] against uninformed public opinion" has gone from being an uphill battle to a vertical cliff scaling. How does one "protect" a kid against the worldview of his or her own parents if no laws are being overtly violated? Could you imagine the litigation resulting from an effort to regulate how parents talk to their children in their own homes? Gaaak!

Here I’d put forward a simple counter-suggestion: let’s make more of a concerted effort to turn the uninformed public into the informed public! Revolutionary! Ingenious! Ground-breaking! Reachable! Innovative!

Nah. Let’s just insult Christians some more. That’s so much more fun, after all, and in the deluded minds of so many of my fellow non-believers, it’s massively productive. We’re SO winning the battle against evil religion, yes?

But, I still see that church just down the street from me. People still go there on Sundays. Thought the building would have been deserted by now, what with all the atheist converts we’re getting.

Maybe we’re not winning?

An interesting quote from Carl Sagan

"In Italy, the Inquisition was condemning people to death until the end of the eighteenth century, and inquisitional torture was not abolished in the Catholic Church until 1816. The last bastion of support for the reality of witchcraft and the necessity of punishment has been the Christian churches."

--Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World (1996)

Great minds think alike. At least Carl Sagan had the presence of mind to be able to narrow down the scope of this particular (and quite horrifying, I would add) problem. I would certainly agree that it is within the realm of Christianity that we can find "the last bastion of support for the reality of witchcraft." But, could we then say with 100% certainty that each and every Christian on Earth today believes this reality? My bet is on "no." I will hold out for the probability that there are more progressive believers, and it is here that we may find excellent allies.

Of course, my expectation is that many of my fellow nonbelievers would rather pour derision on quotes like this, just as they did on Stephen Jay Gould for advancing his NOMA (non-overlapping magisteria) ideas.

Once again, so much for claims of "rationality" among the nonreligious.

I'm not the only one, thank Goodness

Saw this last month on NPR:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113889251

I am relieved to hear that I'm not the only one who sees sense over all of this. Have to admit I was pleasantly surprised to hear that Paul Kurtz, icon of the so-called "skeptic" movement, also sees these atheist extremists for what they are. The term "fundamentalist" describes them quite accurately, in spite of their lame denials.

In response to a commenter's (most welcome) suggestion that I develop a more positive and productive focus regarding my worldview, I am working on some things now. Some time ago I posted on my bedroom wall an excerpt from a 1984 article by Delos B. McKown that had some suggestions for "replacing" religion with science. I scoff at the idea of trying to actively nudge religion out of existence, but if I ignore that premise some of the ideas look pretty good for 1) taking on Christian extremists and 2) increasing scientific literacy and appreciation.

Oh, and that painting mentioned in the NPR article, Jesus Paints His Nails? Not funny, but I appreciate having that visual proof of the absolute abandonment of rationality (as well as humanity) by atheist fundamentalists.

So THAT'S the reason for all of this!

Been thinking about a news item I saw on MSNBC.com the other night.

You've likely heard about the recent controversy in Gainesville, Florida over students being sent home from school because they were wearing shirts that said Islam is of the Devil. There's a great deal I could address on this issue, but instead I'm going to invite my readers to pay a visit to the following page, which I eventually found after moving from the MSNBC article to the web site of the Dove World Outreach Center:

http://www.gainesville.com/article/20090826/ARTICLES/908261007/1002?Title=-Devil-shirts-send-kids-home

On the page is a short video, Students wear anti-Islam T-shirts, in which members of the Sapp family are being interviewed about the shirts. The part that caught my attention was near the end, when the father, Wayne Sapp, was speaking about the effectiveness of the shirts' message:

How many churches put out a message...God will do it, God is in control...uh...Jesus loves you...uh...those kind of messages, and how much does that actually grab your attention? How many churches can...the name of a church or to make you think, 'I need to look that up, I need to find out about that'? How many churches have you seen their marquee, their billboard, something they've said, something they've done, to really make you go and search to say, 'Is that true?' That's one of the reasons for being this...uh...bold, this out there...

Out of the mouth of this ignorant, ignorant man comes what is perhaps the precise answer to so many of my questions about the New Jerkism. The method of drawing attention to a cause through sensationalist tactics is, I must sadly concede, a far more effective one than the peaceful, rational means that I would personally advocate. But is that what all of this jumping up and down and calling religion names is, just a way to sending up some kind of flare regarding the plight of the nonreligious? And while both religious and nonreligious people are playing these useless games, does there not exist any better way for us as human beings to have a more positive impact on the world? In case no one has noticed, all of the bad things that make this world hard to live in go on unimpeded while the two sides of this so-called debate occupy themselves with all of this childish vying for attention. People are still dying. Check your local paper, or the nightly newscast on TV.

I am starting to think that Dr. Tyson really did know what he was doing when he disavowed association with any movement, secular or otherwise. For myself, I am embarrassed and ashamed that I ever began associating with the carnival of attention-getters who call themselves atheists, most of whom being no more mature or rational than their extremist Christian opposition. I am starting to think that the very best way for me to deal with all of this madness is to simply return to the state I took on between mid-2007 and the present time: when asked, I will state that I am a nonreligious person and then I will move the hell on. I figure that, in doing this, I will likely be joining millions of fellow secular Americans who are just as frustrated and embarrassed at the cartoony antics of staged religion bashing as I am.

I truly have something better to do than trying to somehow reason with those of my fellow secularists who have chosen the paths of extremism and disengenuous sensationalism. I suppose it's about time I stopped wasting time here and started doing it. I will think about this.