atheism

The Amaz!ng Meeting

Ashley F. Miller, , 9 Comments

I’m going.  I gave in — what are credit cards for, right?  I’ve been obsessing over it for 2 months, I figured I must actually want to go if I still care.  I spent a lot of time debating if I wanted to go to TAM or get an iphone.  Now the trick is to resist the temptation to get an iphone too.

I’m gonna go down after work Thursday (7/8), and stay for Friday, Saturday, and hopefully enough of Sunday to see Jen McCreight from BlagHag.  I haven’t had a vacation since February.  Weirdly, I stayed at the same hotel.  Anyway, it’s been a rough six months, getting away from LA is an incredibly necessary thing.

So, if you’re also going to TAM, let me know!

The Amaz!ng Meeting
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Your Friendly Next Door Atheist, Please Don’t Evict Me

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My apartment building has new project managers, who also happen to live next door to me. They are a very young, blonde couple with two very young blonde children. They are incredibly polite, though I do hear their baby crying all the time.

They are, of course, god-botherers, having moved in here while he goes to seminary. I feel both good and bad that my radar skills are so honed that I knew he was a seminarian long before he told me (and the rest of the apartment building) through a letter to everyone. I suppose it must be difficult being a priest because you can’t say what you do without saying what you believe, and therefore implying what you think about people who believe differently.

Perhaps it’s overly paranoid of me, but I worry that there’ll be some prejudice against me should he find out I am not into the Jeezy Creezy, and as he is in a position of authority it’s one of those :/ things. Plus his kids are cute, I’d hate for him to be like, “Stay away from the evil monster lady next door.” On the other hand, priest types are usually more interested in conversations with the non-believer than the average Christianist, I think they think it hones their skills.

Slightly related to this is something that came out about Elena Kagan recently — she supported a landlady’s right to refuse to rent to an unwed couple on religious grounds, despite the Fair Housing Act. This is one of those ideals versus real life problems — ideally people would be free to discriminate and the free market would prove that they don’t do well and no one would want to discriminate anyway, but in the real world, you have to balance rights — which is more important the right to housing or the right to discriminate? Maslow has some thoughts on this, but basically my right to resources offered to the public trumps your right to refuse me those services because you don’t like me.

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Also today, the guy at the 7/11 near where I work let me get $10 in quarters. Maybe he’d have done this for anyone, but I’m going to say it’s because I’ve made a real effort to talk World Cup with the people in the 7/11, even though they can be somewhat difficult to understand, and I’m always very nice to them. I have a weird psychological need to get along well with all the people who do jobs I would hate to do.

I’m thinking about going to TAM for just one day, which would be 175 instead of 450. Have to figure out work situation first, but it could be cool. Penn&Teller have cancelled and I’d miss Adam Savage, but I would see Randi and Dawkins. And I’d get to, you know, be there.

Your Friendly Next Door Atheist, Please Don’t Evict Me

No Atheists in Foxholes

Ashley F. Miller, 2 Comments

I wrote this a few weeks ago with the intention of polishing it up and posting then.  Since I’d bothered to write it, I’m just going to post it as is.

Recently, Leonard Pitts wrote about Jindal embracing big government when it was convenient. In doing so, he casually threw out the old canard that there are “no atheists in foxholes.” When contacted by atheists, who explained that that was both untrue and offensive, he offered a non-apology saying he was just using an old saying and that wasn’t even the point of the article.

Saying that there are no atheists in foxholes is no better than saying that all black people like fried chicken and watermelon, jews are greedy, or muslims are all terrorists. I don’t understand how he can fail to see how offensive that is. Not only does he insult the thousands of men and woman who have in fact been atheists in foxholes, serving in the military and dying for his country, he’s also insulting people’s whole approach to life by flippantly charging them with being either wishy-washy or cowardly.

It’s exactly the same as if he’d said “Jindal loves other people’s money but hates spending his own, just like a Jew.” Oh sure, the point isn’t about the Jews, but does relying on a terrible stereotype to make his point do anything but undermine his legitimacy? That he can’t even see the bigotry in the statement and refuses to apologize or correct it makes it so much worse.

No Atheists in Foxholes

Jesus on Fire

Ashley F. Miller, , , , , , 1 Comment

Not normally one to repost things I find on the interwebs without having something to add, but this is just… hilarious.

The large Jesus statue iconic to Interstate 75 in Monroe was destroyed following an apparent lightning strike during a thunderstorm.

Motorists were stopped along the highway and around the Monroe area to watch the 62-foot King of Kings statue burn.

Before you protest, I’m allowed to say it’s hilarious for three reasons.

1. It was hideous
2. It was a waste of a lot of money ($500k!)
3. No one was hurt

Hideous

Pretty

So we’ve learned that either there is no godly protection for “holy” sites and 60 foot statues made of steel and flammable materials are a bad idea or that god has taste and is willing to use his magic finger pointing powers for some exterior decorating.

P.S. If he comes back in three days, I’m going to be pissed if that means I miss the rest of the World Cup.

Jesus on Fire

The Internet is Amaz!ng

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There is a really cool convention in Las Vegas every year hosted by James Randi, The Amaz!ng Meeting aka TAM.  It is not, however, the cheapest thing in the world.  Registration costs $450 and a room for three nights would be $250 (not really that bad), which brings it to $700 upfront costs.  Also, two days of lost work, gas, and eating out of town.  And if I had an extra $1000 I could eat dinner with James Randi and Richard Dawkins.

Obviously, I don’t have an extra thousand.  I don’t even have the first thousand to go to TAM in the first place.  Suddenly, $50 to eat dinner with PZ Myers makes him seem like kind of a cheap date.

Anyway, I was bemoaning this yesterday, being in a particularly bad mood thanks to a migraine, and Jen “inventor of Boobquake” McCreight over at Blag Hag ended up bemoaning her own inability to pay for it.  Made even worse in her case in that she was invited to speak, but JREF doesn’t cover speaker’s registration, travel, or hotel expenses.  In 8 hours, she raised $1500 dollars.  That’s insane!

Suffice to say I am jealous and astounded, probably in that order.  Because, in addition to Dawkins and Randi, who are both pretty much 10s on the awesome scale, there will also be Penn&Teller and Adam Savage, all of whom are probably 11s.

The Internet is Amaz!ng

50 Book Challenge: 21-25

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21. Godless – Dan Barker
I thought his personal journey from being an Evangelical preacher to being an atheist was really interesting and compelling, but the second half of the book focused on arguments for why he was atheist that were very familiar to me. I think this would be a great book to give to someone who was interested and knew nothing about atheism, particularly because Barker is very sensitive to the Christian mindset.

22. Men at Arms – Terry Pratchett, read by Nigel Planer
I like the Guards a fair amount, so I enjoyed this story. Not as much as the witch stories, but I love Carrot and Vimes and the Patrician, and they all featured pretty heavily. I was less interested in the parts that were about the impact of a gun on the society. I also love Detritus the Troll. And how British people say Troll.

23. The Beekeeper’s Apprentice – Laurie R. King
I had listened the BBC Radio adaptation of this and was really interested in reading the whole book. It’s about a girl who becomes Sherlock Holmes apprentice, but it’s a fairly adult sort of story. I’ve only ever read one or two of the Holmes tales, so I don’t know how faithful it is, but I enjoyed it enough to finish in a night and start the next one the next day.

24. A Monstrous Regiment of Women – Laurie R. King
I think the first one is a little more compelling than this tale was, but then I’m not really interested in Christian Feminist movements and find them weird. The developing relationship between Russell and Holmes was handled very deftly and quite enjoyable.

25. The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ – Philip Pullman
This book was a very quick read and I can’t say I honestly recommend it. Maybe it’d be more interesting to people who aren’t familiar with any biblical scholarship. The premise being that Jesus and Christ were twins, Jesus being the radical and Christ being the realist. It’s no Dark Materials.

It’s week 22, so I’m ahead of the game. So maybe I’ll actually finish the Asimov book. Or I’ll do what I did yesterday, and buy another 12 books because now I’m interested in Sherlock Holmes…

Oh, and also halfway there.

50 Book Challenge: 21-25

New draft; Weblebrities

Ashley F. Miller, , , , , 2 Comments

Not a totally new draft, just a tweaked one.  I have a hard time doing rewrites immediately, I need time for things to gestate.  I think I’m different from most writers in that I’d rather spend a lot of time thinking and write in a mad dash than to write a little each day.  I think a little most days, and then write 10-20 pages a day for a week.  I think this is absolutely not the way they recommend doing it.

I think about 30% of it is a procrastination thing*, it’s hard to write without deadlines, but most of it is about the fact that in the rewrite stage I need to get away from the previous draft enough that changing it doesn’t feel like I’m betraying the truth of the story.  Because when you write something down it becomes sort of solid; while it’s floating around in your head, changes are easy, but once it’s on the page it’s just a little bit harder to change.

*Writing is tough when you’re at work 50hrs/wk and you have other stuff you’ve got to do.  And there’s the internet.

In other, unrelated news, I met Mr. Deity on Friday!  So in one week, I’ve met Michael Shermer, PZ Myers, and Mr. Deity.  Only slightly related, UPS was supposed to have delivered my new business cards on Thursday, but even though I left them the signed thing saying they could just leave it, they didn’t.  So I don’t have them and I am frustrated because I spent hours (maybe like an hour) designing new ones and I could have had those on me at the time.  Oh well.

In other other news, I spent all of Saturday (14 hours) ACing on a spinoff series of Gold.  They’re shooting for four days, but 28 hour weekends is a lot when you’re not getting money or an above the line credit, so I did yesterday and probably will help out a little next weekend.  It was an interesting day, they’ve got different directors working on the project, but two different people were directing different bits, so it was interesting to see how differently it went with the two of them.

And, we were shooting in the garage, and the garage door fell off.  And I thought that was hysterical, which I think is allowed because they fixed it.

So, go watch Mr. Deity or Gold

New draft; Weblebrities

On the wtf is up with Damon Linker?

Ashley F. Miller, , , , 3 Comments

This is the article: http://www.tnr.com/blog/damon-linker/another-kind-atheism

A) I’m not sure why one wouldn’t conflate truth and goodness

B) Atheism is a neutral, it’s morality that is positive or negative, and atheism doesn’t create a set of moral values

C) I still haven’t heard a cogent definition for what a “New Atheist” is as compared to a plain old normal atheist

D) What exactly is there to be sad about not being religious, what do you lose that you’d want to keep?

E) I’m not sure why someone needs to deeply try to understand Christianity in order to reject it outright.  I don’t need to understand Greek mythology all that well to ignore it

F) Why is it the atheist’s job to disprove a religion and not their job to prove it?

G) There are many examples of the struggle to get out of their faith by so-called new atheists.  They all address how difficult it is to leave, they just all think it is better to not be religious

H) Do they think that someone born and raised atheist feels a profound lack in their life?

I) There is a difference between allowing people to be free and allowing people to take advantage of, abuse, mislead, lie and steal from people.  Simply exposing ideas for what they are and providing information isn’t illiberal it’s common decency

On the wtf is up with Damon Linker?

5 random things I’ve been thinking about

Ashley F. Miller, , , , , , , , , , , 4 Comments

1. Toilet seat sheets.  If you’re too grossed out to sit on the toilet, is a sheet really going to make it better?

The show I’m working on, these two women who were otherwise not like high maintenance said they would never use a toilet that wasn’t their own without a toilet sheet.  What?  Seriously?  Was I raised by weirdos because they never said don’t put your butt on the toilet?

2. Ableism and online dating.  Particularly in the mental health department, but also in general.

Now I appreciate that online dating attracts a somewhat skewed group that has the semi-anonymity of the internet to make unusual demands, but I have seen so so many guys profiles where they say they don’t want to date “anyone who’s ever been on anti-depressants” or “I don’t want to date anyone who has had any health problems”.  These are not necessarily guys who, in my opinion, have girls knocking down their door and they’re just trying to filter out some people by being picky.  And I realize we’ve all got things where we aren’t able to have a nuanced viewpoint, but here are guys lumping in people with asthma with people with cancer, or people with well-treated depression with untreated schizophrenics.  I get how taking on a significant other with terminal cancer or an untreated illness might be difficult, but are we going to scratch out every one with a health quirk?

At first I thought, oh it’s just this one guy who had a bad experience, but I’ve seen it so many times I just don’t know what to think.  Is it really that awful to date someone who at some point in their life was depressed or has some other chronic illness that’s well under control?

3. Also related to online dating, why do guys who are super Christian message me advertising their good Christian morals when I state that I am an atheist?  I mean, I know why, they don’t read, but I mean really.

4. Equating religion with race.  There’s a super long thread over at Pharyngula where people are accusing PZ of being a Nazi for posting a picture that a cartoonist drew of Muhammed because there are people in Europe who are racist against Muslim immigrants.  I’m just not sure “racist” is the right word.  “Religionist” maybe?  Anyway, critiquing a religion isn’t a violent act, no matter how crudely done, and I don’t understand how blasphemy is racist.

5. How difficult or impossible it is for the religious to understand that there is value and meaning to life regardless of whether there is an afterlife.

Useful Links:

Dirty Toilets

PZ

Sully on Tragic Atheism

The most horrifying thing ever:

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5 random things I’ve been thinking about