Secular Coalition for America Summit: Day 2

May 27, 2011 Ashley F. Milleramanda knief, atheist, capitol hill, christian values, civil rights, coalition of reason, david niose, david silverman, establishment clause, food stamps, fred edwords, godless horde, hans gruber, hr 1135 2011, humanist military chaplains, jennifer michael hecht, jesse galef, lindsey graham, madalyn murray o'hair, mark dunn, sally quinn, sca, sca summit, sean faircloth, secular coalition for america, secular voter, sheriff of nottingham, strike, summit, tim scott, washington dcLeave a comment

Day one here

Friday, in the wee hours of the morning, right after I’d gotten to sleep, there was some sort of major commotion on the 8th floor of the Hyatt, very near to my room. I’m not sure what it was, but I was told hotel security was called and I definitely heard a man who’d been woken up scream, “Shut the Fuck Up!” I would have applauded, but I wasn’t so much for moving.

So, I was very tired when 7:30AM came around. And then breakfast was disappointing. How hard is it to have toast or oatmeal or something other than a very sketchy bready fruity thing? Everything was cooked fruit. How gross. (Note: I’m far too picky for people to take my food opinions seriously.)

We, the godless horde, strode over to the Capitol to meet with some staffers. Herb, Sharon and I first met with Tara O’Neill, who is a Legislative Aide (or LA in Hill Parlance) for Tim Scott. Tara, a Clemson grad, was very nice and polite and listened to all we had to say about HR 1179 2011 (patient rights) and Humanist Military Chaplains. But I’d like to give you some background on Tim Scott, so that you can understand exactly the lion’s den we three atheists were stepping into.

Tim Scott is one of the mythological Black Republicans, and he’s Southern, so he’s about as common as a unicorn. When he was on City Council he erected the 10 Commandments in the Council Office and the AU and ACLU proceeded to sue him to take them down. He campaigned on bringing Christian Values to Washington, and was endorsed by Mike Huckabee and Sarah Palin. He opposes gay marriage, and probably doesn’t believe in atheists in foxholes.

He took $117,000 in campaign ads from an anti-union group and then proceeded to sponsor legislation that would deny FOOD STAMPS to anyone who had a family member on strike. HR 1135 2011. It’s very clever, Sheriff of Nottingham level villainy going on. “I want this brigand found. Starve them out, slaughter their… No, take their live stock. I want Locksley’s own people fighting to bring his head in.”

But enough about the life and legislation of Tim Scott, the staff was very nice — Tara and the UCSD student who greeted us and the gentleman in charge, who understood immediately what the SCA was doing. We were done there by 9:30 and then headed over to meet with Lindsey Graham’s staffer Jason Brown, who is now my favorite person in DC. On the way we walked past an armed guard who had an AK-47 — it didn’t look real, they should really make them look less like toys.

Our appointment wasn’t until 11, so we went down into the cool/creepy tunnels that run under the capitol, and went to a little coffee shop below ground. Then we went back up to meet with Jason Brown. The Senate offices are much, much nicer than the House offices. Graham’s office was decorated with a bunch of pictures and paintings of and by South Carolinians.

Jason Brown is a lawyer working as a Legislative Aide for Lindsey Graham and he took us to a relatively swank conference room and we talked primarily about the issue of Humanist Military Chaplains. He asked us some questions that implied an interest and definite understanding of why it was important to us. That was reassuring. Graham is an interesting character in terms of willingness to not toe the Republican Party Line at all times, and as someone on the Committee on Armed Services, he’s a good person to have on your side in this issue.

After that meeting, I went to Union Station, which is apparently just a large mall without a candy store, and met some others for lunch at Pizzeria Uno. At 2, the panel discussion were set to begin. Fred Edwords, who shall be Fredwords henceforth, the head of COR was the first to arrive. He is working with some people in Columbia to get some buildboards here as well as some media training for locals, so it was nice to see a face I’ve seen a lot of e-mails from of late.

The panel was filled out by David Silverman (American Atheists), Jesse Galef (SSA), and Sally Quinn (editor of On Faith, Washington Post). They spent some time talking about the rapture, which was supposed to happen Saturday, and how good it has been for the cause of Atheism. David Silverman had been on CNN several times, and Herb Silverman was fielding media phone calls all day.

Sally Quinn then spoke for a while, and she was interesting, though I’m not sure I agree with her or where she’s coming from — it could be a generational thing. She had some good zingers though.

You all look like you’re going to hell to me. Tomorrow.

The world is not going to end tomorrow, keep on flossing.

Not one person in this room will be elected president of the United States. There will be a woman, gay, and muslim president before there is an atheist president.

Effective media strategy is based on knowing more about faith than the other guy. This is what makes Hitchens so good, he makes them just give up. PEW says atheists are more knowledgeable about religion than the faithful.

Now, I have a little bit of a problem with the defeatist attitude towards the possibility of an atheist president. There are, of course, quite a few who argue that we currently have one. But an openly atheist president within my lifetime doesn’t seem like an impossibility to me. Maybe I’ll run in however many years til I’m 35.

Then they got into a discussion of when anger was appropriate, and the consensus was it was good when other people also got angry, like when children died of neglect because their family refused medical care because of their religious beliefs. Atheists should try to get in the news for doing community service and nice things, to help dispel the myth that Atheists are immoral or unfeeling. Fredwords echoed things I’ve heard PZ say, which is that you need the firebrands to get attention and the nice people to negotiate change.

And then this is where Sally Quinn really went off the rails for me (and Jennifer Michael Hecht), when she started talking about what the stereotypical view of an atheist is. Apparently Quinn thinks that the image people have in mind when they hear “atheist” is Madalyn Murray O’Hair who was fat, ugly, crazy and had a mustache and that what atheism really lacks is an ATTRACTIVE public representative. Now, I don’t think that our current representatives like Dawkins, Faircloth, Harris, and Hitch are unattractive, I’d be more likely to put them in the generally attractive categories, so I’m just not sure if she means there are no attractive female public personalities or that no one has overcome the O’Hair legacy.

The first doesn’t resonate with me because I’ve seen plenty of attractive women at atheist events. The second doesn’t resonate with me because neither I nor Omar knew what O’Hair looked like. So maybe this is an old-people-who-think-atheism-is-communism-because-they’re-old-and-stupid problem, because no one I know, and we’re people who are like into atheism so we know stuff about atheism, has any idea why anyone would care about O’Hair. Everything I knew about her before Quinn’s comment is that she was killed before I was old enough to know anything and she was also an atheist.

Basically what I’m saying is that I don’t think we’re going to change the hearts and minds of Glenn Beck’s 70 year old audience, we just have to let them die. Does anyone under the age of forty think that all atheist ladies have mustaches? If so, I would like to disabuse you of this notion. Many of us also have horns.

Then there was a lot more discussion about tone and tactics, which basically covered all the same ground over and over again, with various protests of various sorts from the panelist and audience members. The most interesting discussion was about whether to participate in interfaith groups, which were exclusive of atheists by name and nature.

The next panel was a team of legal experts, David Niose, Amanda Knief, and Mark Dunn. Their discussion really reflected the rest of the thrust of the meeting in that it was calling for more personal stories rather than more theoretical problems. To this end, they wanted to bring cases based on civil rights and equal protection, not on the Establishment Clause.

What it boils down to is this: when we make Tim Scott take down the 10 Commandments, we are absolutely right, but it makes us seem like assholes, but when we call someone out for violating civil liberties, like firing someone for being an atheist or refusing to allow them to form school groups or parents are denied custody because they aren’t religious, we seem like people who are just fighting to be treated equally. And we get to tell personal stories of how the religious bias has hurt us, and people respond more to that.

And then we got a two-hour break, which I filled with caffeine, and then it was time for the reception/dinner that evening.

Paul Provenza opened with a comedic talk which was very similar to his talk at TAM. He did have a good line, “Today we lobbied, or as I like to call it, fucked shit up.” After dinner, JMH introduced Sean Faircloth, and she reiterated the broad theme (poetic atheism) of needing to tell human stories, we may be rational, but people need emotional connection.

And then Sean Faircloth spoke, and it was very State of the Union. Lots of clapping, lots of broad, hear-hear sort of statements. Spontaneous standing O at the end. He thinks that Secular Americans are the next moral majority, a sleeping giant waiting to be motivated. Then he gave a list of ten goals:

Our military will serve all Americans, with no fundamentalism or religious bias or conversion
Any federal/state funded program will be based on science, not belief
Healthcare providers have a responsibility to their medical duties over their religious beliefs
The legislature will represent the non religious
There will be one consistent health standard for children, no religious exception
Medical and scientific progress shall not be impeded by religious bias ever
Discrimination based on religion will not happen
Marriage can be defined by an individual religion however it wants, but the government cannot use religion for its definition
Government zoning laws will respect all faiths and non-faiths equally
Youth won’t be subjected to religious bias in schools.

Then, we were kicked out of the room because it was 9 and that was as late as they’d booked it. I proceeded to join JMH and her husband and a few others at the bar, where she ordered a margarita, but couldn’t remember the word for salt. This was immensely amusing. Then there was a party in a room, and we went there. There were all sorts of illicit activities going on (clothes all remained on) and I shan’t be more specific, but it was really fun.
JMH then did a poetry reading for the party, which was quite entertaining. Because her poems are good, people were drinking, and it was so weird that someone would read poetry at a party in the first place. I felt like a Beatnik, but cleaner.

And then, 2000 words later, I went to bed.

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Secular Coalition for America Summit: Day 1

May 26, 2011 Ashley F. Milleramanda knief, capitol hill, congress, dc, george hrab, herb silverman, house, hr 1179, hr 1179 2011, humanist chaplains, jennifer michael hecht, liz gaston, military chaplains, omar rashid, patients rights, poetic atheism, scotus, sean faircloth, secular coalition for america, senate, South Carolina, trivia, washington dc, woody kaplanLeave a comment

What a crazy weekend that was. So crazy that I’m writing about it what, on Thursday? Yeah, I was tweeting, hello, busy! In fact, nothing I’m going to say here wasn’t said with worse grammar and lack of access to spell check earlier.

I landed at Ronald Reagan airport (DCA) and took a cab to the Hyatt on Capitol Hill, which has a view of the Capital, assuming you can stand in exactly the right place and lean as far to your left as possible. My cab driver asked me what I was doing in town, and I was a little hesitant to say “CONQUERING THE WORLD WITH ATHEISM” because cab drivers have the power to not drive you anymore, and that would be unfun. So I started in easy, and then discovered that my self-proclaimed religious cabbie was totally on board with secular values and gay rights! Huzzah!

I hadn’t eaten yet, and the conference started at 1:00, which was exactly when I arrived. In the elevator I met Liz Gaston and Omar Rashid, who would become my companions over the course of the event. Because they were also awesome.

The event opened with Sean Faircloth, Woody Kaplan and Amanda Knief taking the podium in turns. I learned a lot of stats that I will now list for you, because you’re apparently reading this:

Avg # of Staffers per House/Senate member: 18, split between home and DC
Percent of staffer time spent with constituents: 75%
Percent of staffers who think constituent visits are VERY persuasive: 97%

We broke down into groups after being given a rather lengthy guide to ~~sales~~ lobbying for people who don’t know anything about ~~sales~~ lobbying. Being from SC, I got to work with Herb Silverman, who invented the SCA, and Sharon.

The issues we were planning on discussing the following day were the need for Humanist Military Chaplains and HR 1179 2011, a bill which allows medical service providers refuse to provide service if their religion demands it. The first is an easier sell, because everyone likes to help the military, the second is one that requires reframing the debate.

The reason we need Humanist Military Chaplains is not necessarily intuitive for people on the edges of the debate: who needs an atheist chaplain? Well, if the army is going to institutionalize having counselors on the ground and then NOT train them in how to deal with the 20%+ of armed service members with no religious preference, then that’s a problem. Humanism is a life philosophy and not actually synonymous with atheist, there’s just a large overlap. There aren’t any, despite the fact that there are people graduated from places like Harvard with divinity degrees focusing on Humanism.

HR 1179 2011 is more of an issue of patients rights. Doctors, Insurance, Nurses, Pharmacists, Hospitals and so on can not only refuse care that they don’t approve of, they can not tell you that they won’t do those services and not inform you that such services exist. This includes obvious things like abortions and birth control, but also things like living wills and DNRs. A Catholic Hospital can say it offers comprehensive female care and then not tell you most of what’s involved with comprehensive care.

I mean, it just seems to me that if you’re a Scientologist, you don’t become a Psychiatrist; if you’re a Jehovah’s Witness, you don’t become a Doctor; and if you’re someone with a political agenda that puts church in front of saving lives, you stay the hell away from medicine. But what do I know?

Sorry, shaking it off. I got to walk around DC, I wanted to see if maybe I could get into SCOTUS, but I couldn’t. Omar took this very cool picture of me at the Supreme Court. And then it was time for dinner.

Jennifer Michael Hecht, who has been my Facebook friend for a long time, but whose books I’ve never read and who I’ve never hung out with as such but is now my new favorite person, gave a speech at the dinner. She is a proponent of Poetic Atheism, which is like Atheism, but it rhymes. I’ll give you some quotes, grossly paraphrased:

When you know your history, you are powerful. More people in the history of humanity have not believed in God than have. (Atheism began around 600BC)

If I enjoy every day of my life I don’t worry so much about death. I mean, we barely use the life we’ve got — I dunno about you but I walk back and forth between the fridge and the computer a lot, what, I need a thousand years of it?

We were the first country founded as a secular rationalist country but we were also the first country to give the uneducated poor the vote. They worried that the uneducated poor would elect a poor man who would redistribute all the wealth. The uneducated poor won’t vote in a poor man, they’ll elect a stupid rich man. This is why we need free mandatory secular education!

Nothing in science fiction, in religion, in myths is as weird as this: (points to her head) the meat thinks. Nothing is as weird as love.

jmh — A real actual photo of JMH and a Margarita (w/salt)

George Hrab, who is Spider Jerusalem, then performed some of his atheisty songs.

George Hrab is of the belief that James Randi is a garden gnome. This is undeniable.

My favorite zinger was aimed at Hitchens, when Hrab was talking about an event that Hitchens was going to be at but then wasn’t actually there.

Christopher Hitchens was supposed to be there, but I guess he had to go to a scotch festival… But at least that worked out for him.

OH SNAP! Basically what I’m saying is that George Hrab was pretty good, but he talked about his balls a lot.

After Hrab, Sean led trivia. I had talked a rather big game before the conference, so there was some pressure to win. Which I did quite handily, thank you very much. With the help of Omar for “Mumford and Sons” when all I could remember was “Little Lion Man”. We won an extra drink ticket, which I used to buy other people’s love, because people are irrationally in love with drink tickets.

After that, I went to meet George Hrab because I have a friend, Jarrett, who is a big fan. There are all these people who really dig on podcasts and I don’t get it. It’s like NPR but less focused, I know, I’ve been on a podcast. He wrote a note and let me take photos and then I ended up going down and hanging out with him and Liz and some random other people in the bar downstairs. There was an origami velociraptor involved.

Derren Brown vs Faith Healing

April 20, 2011 Ashley F. Millerbullshit, bunk, christian, debunk, derren brown, faith healers, leap of faith, magic, marjoe, mentalism, nonsense, oral roberts, prosperity gospel, Religion, scam3 Comments

There are few things more difficult for the skeptic to let go of than their faith in their own intelligence. After all, recognizing the untruth of something lots of people believe in (gods, psychics, bigfoots) does give one a sense of intellectual superiority. I've certainly been guilty of a sort of mental vanity that is borderline absurd — not because I'm not smart but because no one is smart enough to overcome the inherent fallibility of the human mind. Smart people are often just better at tricking themselves into believing whatever it is they wish to be true.

And this is why I so appreciate the work of Derren Brown, a mentalist and magician who captivated me last year when I read his book "Tricks of the Mind". He reminds me of Stephen Fry — brilliant, funny, atheist, gay and charming — like something from an Oscar Wilde play, not of this time. Derren's schtick is to do magic tricks while explaining why the mind falls for them — he's sort of like a psychologist of magic. It's similar to Penn & Teller, but his tricks are less sleight of hand and more sleight of mind. He has gotten some flak in skeptic circles because he usually has a trick or two he doesn't explain, retaining some of that appeal to mysticism that he's otherwise debunking, but it's all part of the show.

If you share with me a love of the horrifically compelling documentary "Marjoe" or the delightful Steve Martin film "Leap of Faith", or if you just hate swindlers, especially those abusing religion to take advantage of people, then you'll be interested in Derren's latest TV Special, slated to air in the UK on C4 Monday night at 9. It is called "Miracles for Sale" which is a rather tame title considering the subject matter.

The special will follow Derren's attempt, which one assumes was successful since it's airing, to turn an average Joe from the streets into a faith healer, using only tricks of the mentalist trade. Basically, he's going to see if people fall for obvious fraud. Derren claims that this is not about God, but about exposing fraud, though it can't help but paint religion and the entire idea of faith healing in an intensely negative light.

Although I don't hide my own lack of religious belief, my repulsion at this scam comes as much from my days as a Christian as it does from simply being a human being observing ego- and money-driven fraud.

As a former Evangelical, Derren manages to have street cred with Christians, although many others see his de-conversion as some sort of personal insult or, typically, a sign that he was never really a Christian in the first place. And of course he's already getting the kind of braindead responses you'd expect from the faith healing crowds. "U say there's no proof of genuine miracle? Where have u been looking?? I've personally SEEN the blind SEE the Deaf hear and many other miracles…" "Jesus heals people all the time. It is not faith healing though. When Jesus speaks to someone they get healed. Everything he does works."

So much for helping those in need.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-O9aNl2Xrk&feature=related

Skepticism: Tits or GTFO*?

April 7, 2011 Ashley F. Millerdj grothe, feminism, jeffrey epstein, lawrence krauss, power, privilege, prostitution, rape, sex trafficking, sexual harassment, skepticism, statutory7 Comments

Originally posted at SheThought.

I hate writing about feminist issues, because every time I do I get accused of being a feminazi or caring more about women than men, or of buying into victim culture, or any number of accusations that come with the territory. Feminism isn’t generally my main issue, and so I’m always hesitant to distract from all the other things I care about by getting into knock down, drag out fights about why should I care about how women are treated or how they’re portrayed in the media.

Occasionally, of course, I do write something about feminism, because I’m upset enough to ignore the warning lights in my head that say I’m going to have to deal with a lot of BS because of it. As you might imagine, this post is me ignoring those warning bells.

Skepticism has a woman problem. It’s been said more than once, it’s been pointed out countless times, and it’s being addressed in a lot of positive ways that should absolutely count in its favor. I don’t want to dismiss or underplay the fact that there are a lot of men in the movement who care a lot about this issue and are actively working to fix it.

That said, the amount of privilege and harassment I see coming from a number of the powerful men in the movement is really distressing. The assumption that young women are taking advantage of older men or that men have the automatic right to presume sexual interest and the right to sexually harass young women is a problem, and it’s a problem within this movement, not just outside of it.

This problem came up today, because Lawrence Krauss, a respected scientist and one of the featured speakers at TAM9, defended his buddy Jeffrey Epstein, a man who plead guilty to hiring underage girls, some as young as 13, to have sex with him. Krauss is skeptical of the claims because he always thought the girls around Epstein were 19-23 and apparently thinks it’s ok to have sex with a 13 year old so long as you think she’s 18. He also doesn’t seem to understand that a 13 year old having sex with a powerful, rich man has been coerced into it, no matter what. Ignorance is no excuse there, it’s rape and it’s taking advantage of a child.

He is also skeptical of the claims made by the prosecution, despite the fact that Epstein plead guilty and they did an 11-month sting operation documenting his activity. And they have his, apparently horrific, diary.

It gets worse.

DJ Grothe, on the Skepchick article about this, comments , saying basically that he doesn’t know anything about the situation, but he lied about his age when he was under 18 so that he could get laid, so maybe underage prostitution isn’t that bad. I appreciate that he’s not saying that sex with a 13 year old is OK, he specifically says it isn’t, but since that’s what actually happened, I’m really not sure why he felt the need to defend Krauss. Nor do I understand how he is also missing the power play aspect of this. Epstein took underage women who were not prostitutes and coerced them into sexual acts, using money and power. This is not acceptable behavior, even if you’re OK with prostitution and 16-year-olds having sex.

This isn’t a question of the legality of prostitution or what the age of consent should be. This is a question about abuse of power, non-consensual sex and sex trafficking of minors.

I wish I could tell you that this blindness to abuse of privilege and power existed only in response to this one issue, but it permeates the skeptic movement. Many of the men in this movement are guilty of abusing their power to take advantage of the women in the movement or to hurt them when they won’t agree to sex, or turning a blind eye to the behavior or other men who are guilty of similar behavior.

If I could tell you all the horror stories I’ve heard, all the individuals who have been mistreated, insulted, taken advantage of by men in this movement, you’d be shocked. If I told you the number of men I’ve been told that I need to be careful around because they have a “problem with young women”, you might not believe me. Unless you’re a woman, and then you’ve probably heard some of it yourself.

I believe these stories because I’ve been at the receiving end of some egregious behavior and I’ve seen a lot of it with my own eyes. The women in the movement ignore it because it’s less important to us than our desire to be part of a community that matters to us. Hell, I don’t even feel comfortable talking about it because I know it’s going to make me unpopular, I don’t want to list anyone’s name because I just don’t feel comfortable with the backlash that would come with it. I can’t bring myself to do it and I feel absolutely ashamed for that.

When a powerful scientist asks a young women who is trying to be taken seriously in the sciences if she’d like to be his next mistress after meeting her once, that’s an abuse of power. When a powerful man implies he’ll help a woman out if he sleeps with her, that’s an abuse of power. When a powerful man implies he will blackball a woman if she doesn’t sleep with him, that’s an abuse of power. When a powerful man dismisses or insults a woman because she doesn’t want to sleep with him, that’s an abuse of power. There’s a word for coercing women into having sex.

I doubt this will be read by powerful men in the movement, but if it is, I just want to say that you have a responsibility to set an example as to how women should be treated and where their value should come from. If you think women are only sex objects and you only care about the young, pretty ones who don’t seem too frigid, how on earth are we going to be taken seriously by everyone else?

Why is it that when I go to conferences I have to be hyper-vigilent to the behavior of men whose opinions I respect?

*http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=tits+of+gtfo

EDIT: I would like to say a special thanks to the men who have reached out to me, male support on these issues helps make sure we know it’s everyone’s problem, not just a woman problem, and also reminds women that there are a lot of guys who’ve got our backs.

Busy!

March 20, 2011 Ashley F. Millerallergies, conference, freelance, freethought, I need a drink, march madness, ncaa, nicholl, sca, secular coalition of america, social axcess, social media, tam, the west wing, tutoring, washington, WritingLeave a comment

Have you ever had one of those weeks where there was just too much going on? That’s the sort of week I’ve been having. It’s been good, great even, I’ve just had a lot on my plate. I love the freelance writing I’m doing but, between working full-time and tutoring and trying to attend local freethought events, my weeks are already too full. Then I got a special assignment from Social Axcess to cover NCAA Social Media for March Madness — so that required a lot of research, because I don’t know much about American sports, and I know even less about college sports. This is because I resented being forced to go to prep rallies when I was in high school — I have a block when it comes to school sports.

Then I was learning a courier route at work, meaning I spent all day in a car driving, so I was working overtime and not in front of a computer. And I had a 1500 word piece due. And I got laryngitis. And it’s spring, so my allergies are in full bloom. And someone wanted to consult with me about an editing project, which I just can’t take on right now, but it’s interesting.

Exciting news! I’m going to the SCA Conference in Washington, DC right before my birthday. Which reminds me that I need to put together some information on Social Media Strategy for them in the next day or two. I hope I get the chance to see a little of DC, I went when I was in 8th grade and that was before I’d seen The West Wing and thought that there was something worth seeing in Washington.

And the world is apparently falling apart, but I haven’t really had time to absorb that. CNN has just had one too many “Where is God in Japan” headlines for me to stomach trying to follow the daily news cycle. And the Nicholl opened, and TAM registration opened.

So it’s Sunday and I still feel on edge, like I should be working, and there’s still plenty on my plate, but I’m taking a day off. Of course, my brain is still going a million miles a minute — I don’t really drink, but maybe I just need a drink.

Nothing to do with the rest of this post

Hitchens on 60 Minutes

March 7, 2011 Ashley F. Miller60 minutes, assange, atheism, beard, hitchens, kindle, kroft, library, monarchy1 Comment

I'm a member of a cancer elite. I rather look down on people with lesser cancers.

I went to my mom's house for dinner last night and, as luck would have it, Hitch was on 60 minutes. My adoration of Mr. Hitchens is well covered on this blog, but suffice to say that while I don't agree with all of his opinions, I have a not insignificant admiration for his incredible intellect and his willingness to be wrong and correct himself. He has never sought perfection, except perhaps in being a scoundrel, and I respect that. People who are willing to look human in front of others are rare, people who can do that and still be a towering intellectual asshole, well… what's not to love?

The piece was pretty good, even though I have some issues with Mr. Kroft from the way he handled the interview with Assange. I don't mind biased reporting, but hostile reporting is a bit much. It was ultimately probably good for Assange, because Assange stayed calm in the face of some obnoxious questions, but it still rankled. Kroft seems to be madly in love with Hitchens, though, so there was less of that.

They mentioned a book by Hitchens called "Monarchy" which was released in 1990. It is apparently out of print because to buy it online I can only find prices from $122-$270. I'm trying to convince my library to get a copy. I've got to call them in a minute to see if there's any library they can get it on loan from. Why aren't all books available digitally yet? Isn't it the future already. My library will lend books digitally, but mostly just really bad ones and not on the kindle, which I'd be upset about if the book quality was more convincing.

Also, Christopher Hitchens has grown a sweet beard, it makes him look 90% healthier than he did 6 months ago.

Emotions Are Not The Enemy

February 28, 2011 Ashley F. Milleremotional health, emotions, friendly atheist, hemant mehta, illogical, logic, rational, Religion, religious trauma, spock10 Comments

When I was an adolescent, I really wanted to be Mr. Spock. I thought that being hyper-logical and unemotional would be far better than being hyper-logical and hyper-emotional. I think there is a particular kind of self-loathing that kids develop when they’re far more intellectually developed than they are emotionally developed, like I was, and it can result in an extreme distrust of emotions and things that are not strictly logical. It took me going through and coming out of an extreme depression to realize that treating emotions as the enemy wasn’t only kind of stupid, but it was also really unhealthy.

I think that there is a lot of this in the atheist/skeptic community. I don’t want to fall into the fallacy that women are more compassionate than men, but I do think that the lack of large numbers of women doesn’t help. The association of emotions with women is so strong that it seems many people are uncomfortable with thinking of emotions as important empirically, or important in comparison with logic. It’s not just men who don’t want to be seen as weak, women are also afraid of being seen as stereotypically female and not as rational as men.

Today, Hemant at The Friendly Atheist posted about a woman who, at the hands of her religious upbringing, was taught to be so ashamed of her body that she was unable to breastfeed because she was so uncomfortable with her breasts. Hemant made a real effort to give a feminist response – women have the right to choose what to do with their bodies and it’s not his place to make those decisions for someone else – but he also said “It’s ultimately her choice, but I think I’d feel more comfortable about her decision (as if it matters what I think) if there was a more scientific rationale behind it.”

I recognize in blogging you often say things off the cuff that, given a little more thought, you probably would have worded differently, but I have to say I was a bit flabbergasted that Hemant would dismiss dealing with trauma as lacking in “scientific rationale”, as though any decision made based on emotion is necessarily irrational and therefore bad. And I should say I’ve no reason to think that he wants to change the language, but I’m trying to give him the benefit of the doubt. I love Hemant, I love his blog, I can only assume the best of him, so I hope that the way he worded it wasn’t the way he meant it.

I feel like the atheist/skeptic community does a lot of dismissing of people’s feelings. It happens whenever a woman brings up feeling uncomfortable, underrepresented, or underserved by the community. It happens whenever people point out the small number of minorities, or being uncomfortable by perceived racism. There’s something about emotions that seems to really bother people. If nothing else, I think it isn’t useful to dismiss someone’s feelings as invalid, no matter how wrong you’re sure they are. Perhaps it’s too difficult a line to walk, but treating people’s emotions as something they should be embarrassed by isn’t only cruel, it doesn’t serve any useful purpose. Ideas and behavior are things worth critiquing, but someone’s emotions cannot be invalid, you cannot argue with someone that they can’t feel something, that’s not how it works. How they respond to their feelings? Yes, that’s fair game, but that they have feelings at all isn’t something you get to say is bad.

I can’t help but look at the traditional associations of emotion with women and children and logic with men and be a bit bothered by all this from a feminist perspective. I don’t think it’s conscious, but it seems like because emotions are seen as girly they are also seen as unimportant and weak. And if something is logical or rational, it is manly and strong and important. It’s not limited to this community, but also a lot of my friends who are interested in film, a group that is dominated by men as well. When a movie is technically impressive, it is important, but if a movie relies on emotions, it is not. The King’s Speech shouldn’t have won the Oscar because it’s just a story about emotions, not a technical feat like Inception or The Social Network, because emotions aren’t important. That’s why some movies go to Lifetime and some go to Spike TV.

I ultimately decided that Spock was more irrational than people because he treated the emotional experience as invalid. Although dedicated to logic, Spock never took the extra step and accepted that human emotion was rational, and existed for rational reasons, and that to dismiss it was very limiting. Ignoring the importance of emotion and emotional health isn’t actually a rational way to deal with people. To pretend that human emotions don’t matter or aren’t important, to dismiss mental health as a non-scientific reason for pursuing a course of action… it is most illogical.

I don’t understand religion part 923

February 26, 2011 Ashley F. Milleratheism, belief, christianity, creation, creationism, god, logic, Religion9 Comments

How can a person hold these two thoughts in their head?

1. The universe is too complex to simply exist, it must have been created

2. God, something so complex it can create and control universes, doesn’t require a creator

It seems to me that you can have two viewpoints that are internally consistent. You can believe either:

1. Complicated things can exist without a creator, allowing the possibility of a universe without a creator and the possibility of God or

2. Everything complicated requires a creator, demanding a creator of the universe but denying the possibility of God at the same time

I just had this question with someone who is not a stupid person. I know that atheist readers sometimes have difficulty grasping that not stupid people can believe in God, I myself have that difficulty at times, but I just cannot understand the complete lack of logic there. Not only that, but the inability of the person in question to grasp the logic fail of saying that “everything must have a cause, except God” which means that not everything must have a cause, which means there’s no need for God.

Here is a place where it is laid out in much fuller detail, but if anyone can explain to me how those two thoughts exist inside the head of a not stupid person, please do, because he sure couldn’t.

Response to a ‘Correction’

February 16, 2011 Ashley F. Millerapps, catholic, confessions, iphone, priesthood, social axcess, social media4 Comments

As you all know, I’ve been reporting on Social Media for a website called Social Axcess. I reported on the iPhone confession app, which allows you to figure out which sins you need to confess, and I got a somewhat heated reply from one of the founders of GSMI, the company that owns the blog. His name is Luke Vince and he felt the need to ‘correct’ my article, call me myopic, and spell my name without my middle initial. Perhaps it is madness to argue with company higher ups, but I’m afraid I’m terrible at resisting the temptation to get into a good online discussion.

Usually when I see the word correction, I must confess, I think that there has been some sort of editorial or factual error in another article, but it seems that what this actually is is simply a difference of perspective.

His first ‘correction’, in response to my claim that it’s been a rough couple of years for the church, is that the current assaults (really?) by the “new atheist” (his quotes) movement are nothing new, the church is growing in some places, and always emerges stronger from strife. These are non-sequiturs, he is arguing against a point I never made. Regardless of the history of the church or its ability to bounce back, it has been a rough couple of years for it.

The church is shrinking in the West where the majority of its funds come from, and growing in the East, South America and Africa. It is losing members of the priesthood and interest in joining the priesthood, facing a major shortage of priests. It is facing constant negative media pressure because of the sex scandals. I nowhere claimed that the current problems it’s facing are the worst in its history or impossible to recover from, but it would be myopic indeed to pretend that they didn’t exist.

He also says, in response to my claim that the church is slow to respond to things like changing moral opinions and the AIDS crisis, that it is because the church doesn’t succumb to whims or move quickly and that this has served them well. Obviously, we also disagree on whether slowness to respond to current problems is an admirable devotion to tradition or a dangerous resolution to keep its head in the sand. But we don’t disagree on the actual fact, which is that the church is slow to change. The glacial response time in condemning nazis, condemning the inquisition, and addressing the complaints of Martin Luther seem to me to show a devotion to slowness that is neither good for the church nor moral.

His final complaint, excuse me, ‘correction’, is that the confession app doesn’t replace any sacraments but rather is an aide to helping Catholics figure out how they’ve sinned. Nowhere did I say the confession app replaced anything and we agree on the fact that it is a good move for the church, we simply disagree on how laughable it is. I can’t imagine belonging to an organization that has so many silly rules that I need assistance in figuring out if I’ve broken them or not.

Perhaps I am most disappointed, however, that the writer felt the need to personalize his defense as an attack on me but proceeded not to make one point in response to anything I actually wrote.

How Atheism helps Skepticism

November 22, 2010 Ashley F. Milleratheism, skepticism3 Comments

I have heard from many people, and have been told what’s truly at the heart of the debate between Atheism and Skepticism is that talking about religion at skeptic conventions drives people away. It drives religious people away, people who might otherwise have stayed, learned about skepticism, and then gone on to become non-believers. The general point here is that if atheism will just back off of skepticism a little, skepticism will help fill the ranks of the atheist movement.

It’s a compelling argument, and I do think there should be skeptic forums for people who are religious. I certainly know people who didn’t start skepticism as atheists and ended up there. But they aren’t the majority of people that I know, by any stretch.

The other fear is that, not only do you drive away the religious, but you also marginalize the skeptic movement by letting it be too atheist. The point here being, I guess, that atheism is such a toxic subject that no one wants to be associated with it.

I don’t think that skepticism marginalizes itself by associating with atheism, for a couple reasons. One, I think that skepticism and non-belief are too closely intertwined for skepticism to not be associated with atheism regardless. Two, I think that the recent increase in interest in skepticism and the swelling of numbers at places like TAM and Skepticon comes from a new interest from “new” atheists.

I, for example, would never have heard of skepticism as a movement or known about things like homeopathy if I hadn’t first been an atheist. Dawkins (and others) involvement on both fronts has, in my opinion, meant that a lot of people who just didn’t like religion have discovered this entire community centered around rational thought. I wonder how many droves of people have found skepticism because they were confronting their religious beliefs. And I wonder why welcoming these people into the skepticism fold is less important than making the religious comfortable.

Maybe atheism isn’t as popular as religion, but I think that there’s a huge groundswell of atheism and backlash against the religious right that skepticism would be well-served to be a part of.