atheism

Adventures with a Christian Desk Mate

jacob4 Comments

Mellowness has overcome me. I’m thoroughly baked, the breeze is blowing and the frogs are singing, the fountain serenades and – well, I should clean the damned cat box, and this room needs a thorough scrub, but life is still beautiful.

The California Supremes issued a spectacular ruling that put gay marriage ahead by decades and is causing the right-wing radio hosts to blow vessels. FSM has put in an appearance in Tennessee. I’ve read some damned fine submissions to the Carnival of the Elitist Bastards, and, well, it’s hard to work up a good head of steam in these circumstances.

So instead of bashing the stupid, I want to tell you all an amusing story from my callow youth.

I worked at one of the best call centers in the Universe. We offered one of the best paying jobs in Flagstaff, so we had a – dare I say it? – elite workforce. Many of my best friends to this day are the ones I met there: wonderful, wise, witty and wicked folks one could have wide-ranging, intelligent conversations with. The corporate office liked our numbers, so they let us have free reign to do as we willed. That meant that creativity, innovation, and near-autonomy were ours. We used and abused the privilege. Odd people like myself thrived.

One could feel free to stamp their personality upon their desk, and I had done with mine. I’d printed out nice little posters for myself. One was a quote from the Tao Te Ching:

Look, it cannot be seen – it is beyond form.
Listen, it cannot be heard – it is beyond sound.
Grasp, it cannot be held – it is intangible.
From above it is not bright:
From below it is not dark:
An unbroken thread beyond description…

-14

Under heaven all can see beauty as beauty only because there is ugliness.
All can known good as good only because there is evil.
Therefore having and not having arise together.
Difficult and easy compliment each other.

-9

I had a quote from the Qu’ran:

When the sun shall be darkened,
When the stars shall be thrown down,
When the mountains shall be set moving,
When the pregnant camels shall be neglected,
When the savage beasts shall be mustered,
When the seas shall be set alight,
When the infant girl buried alive shall be asked
for what crime she has been slain,
When the records of men’s deeds shall be laid open,
When the heavens shall be stripped bare,
When Hell shall be set blazing,
When paradise shall be brought near,
Then each soul shall know what it has done.

I had a poem from Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman: The Kindly Ones:

All around me darkness gathers,
Fading is the sun that shone;
We must speak of other matters:
You can be me when I’m gone.

And I had this delightful ancient poem Gaiman quoted in The Sandman: The Sound of Her Wings:

Death is before me today
Like the recovery of a sick man,
Like going forth into a garden
after sickness.

Death is before me today:
Like the odor of myrrh,
Like sitting under a sail in a good wind.

Death is before me today:
Like the course of a stream,
Like the return of a man from the
war-galley to his house.

Death is before me today:
Like the home that a man longs to see,
After years spent as a captive.

I didn’t yet have George the Gargoyle with his red flashing eyes. He came later, and it’s probably a good thing for his sake, considering what my desk mate did to the little 8 1/2 x 11 homemade posters.

The bane of working the night shift in a crowded call center is that you get to desk share with the early morning folk. It wasn’t generally a problem, unless you ended up matched with Gail “OMG You Got a Pencil Mark on the Desk!!1!111!” T. I wasn’t paired with Gail, and so didn’t have to worry about her ever-encroaching collection of kitschy ceramic angels and her penchant for leaving severely obsessive-compulsive notes. But I started to notice a pattern: I’d come in, and my little posters on my half of the cubicle would be crooked. Odd, that. I didn’t think much of it until I noticed the growing collection of tack holes where someone hadn’t been paying attention staking them back to the wall.

Well, I couldn’t well have tattered corners, could I? I left a kindly little note saying to leave the posters alone. The holes continued to accumulate. Dishevelment continued. I left a rather more annoyed and sternly-worded note saying that if I found one more extraneous tack hole, we’d have to have a chat about respecting others’ property.

A few days later, I get called in to an Inquisition.

My desk mate, it turns out, was a rabid Christian, and quotes from the Tao Te Ching and the Qu’ran gave her blessed little heart palpitations. And instead of simply saying so, she decided she needed to bring in the heavy artillery: two managers and the HR supervisor.

She was seriously terrified that if she confronted the evil heathen with her discomfort, I’d do something horrible. Seriously.

The supervisors let her speak. They couldn’t say anything themselves. They were trying too hard not to laugh. They knew me, you see, and they thought the whole thing ridiculous beyond words.

The quivering Christian launched into a speech you could tell had taken days for her to gather the courage for, about how Christian she was, and how it disturbed her to look at my little posters, and on and on. She was pale, sweating, and shaky, with a distinct quaver in her voice, and there I was, sitting there listening to a whole lotta “I’m terrified to even glance at a world view that’s different than mine” schlock with rapidly growing disbelief. I’d never thought anyone could be that fucking terrified of a few poetic words.

As I said, I was young and naive.

She finally wound down. Silence fell. And then I said, “Look, there’s a simple solution here. Get a big poster and put it up over mine every day. I’ll just set it aside so I can have my own stuff when I get in. And I’ll be sure to put the tacks through their original holes when I replace it.”

The supervisors nearly clapped. The Christian looked pole-axed. She’d never expected a heathen to come up with a reasonable compromise. I don’t know exactly what her church told her about people of other faiths, but it must have been richly detailed and completely bass-ackwards.

The next day, when I come in, there’s this ginormous poster up over my wall with the most insipid fucking poem in the universe on
it. You know, the kind of touchy-feely plebeian poem that makes real poets want to vomit. The kind of thing that only offends people with taste, because it’s meant to be as bland and ecumenical and inspirational as possible. Someday, someone needs to explain to me why it is that devout Christians have no fucking taste.

After that day, peace and goodwill descended upon all, except when I’d catch a glimpse of that crime against poetry upon taking it down for the day. Everyone in the call center agreed: my quotes kicked her poem’s ass. And I’d won all the brownie points. My supervisors saw me as the mature one, the peacemaker, while my Christian desk mate had proven herself an immature little git. There’s a certain contempt well-adjusted Christians have for their brethren when the brethren’s acting like whiny little brats that’s worse than any contempt an atheist can show.

That episode was my first introduction to the world of grown-ups who were too God-blind to grow up. It started me on the never-ending quest to answer the “What the fuck are they so afraid of if their God kicks so much ass?” question.

And I pass the story down to you, my darlings, because it’s always useful to know that a good copy of the Qu’ran or the Tao Te Ching will make all but the most determined evangelicals flee upon contact.

Adventures with a Christian Desk Mate
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Would It Help If I Prayed?

jacob

Evangelical Christian: Oh, dear, how awful! I’ll pray for you!

Me: You’re going to get through this. Here’s what to expect, and here’s what you can do. You’re strong. You can make it.

That was my day, sans evangelical.

I work in a call center. There are times when I’m not taking orders or troubleshooting service: I’m playing therapist. It’s been that way for years. Most reps I know avoid that kind of talk, aside from “Wow, that sucks. Anything else?”

Not me.

I take some action, and I really have no idea why. After all, I’m an atheist, which means I have no love for my fellow human beings, no morals, and no desire to help anybody else, right? I mean, you have to be religious to be anything more than a selfish animal.

Funny, but it’s the atheists and other assorted heathens I’ve met who leap fastest when it comes to responding to need. There’s no agenda, just one human being caring for another, doing their best to help, because of empathy. They don’t need a sky daddy telling them they’d better do this or else. They don’t spend their time thinking of how they can use this person’s awful situation to bring them to God. They just jump in and assist, no strings.

And it’s hard.

Hard to sit there on the phone, listening while a person’s pain spills out.

Several years ago, I took a call from a man who needed to order business forms. His voice was dead, flat monotone. After a bit, I couldn’t stand it. Part of me was worried I’d done something inadvertantly awful, another part that my company had really pissed him off, and other bits suspected something worse.

The can of worms had to be opened. This couldn’t go on. Look, I’m a showman on the phone. I once had a woman call her husband to pick up the phone so he could hear how funny I was. If I can’t leave a person with a smile, I’ve failed. So I asked, “What’s wrong?”

Silence. A sigh. Finally, “You don’t want to hear my problems.”

Oh, well, when you put it like that: “Will it make you feel better to talk about it?”

Silence. Then, in a small voice, “Yes.”

“Then tell me.”

He proceeded to spill out the story of his life, which I won’t share here. Suffice it to say a country-western song couldn’t have gotten more morose. The man had suffered tragedy after tragedy after tragedy, and here he was, having to soldier on, ordering business forms.

As I sat there trying not to sniffle too loudly, he said, “Actually, I do feel better.” His voice took on life, and maybe a little hope. We completed his order. At least for that moment, I’d let him put the burden down, provided the sympathetic ear, and let him know about programs our company had to help out. Total strangers, but he’s stayed with me all these years.

There’s power in being there for someone, the unattached stranger, the listening ear, who has no agenda other than to try to make things a little better. I always justified it to my supervisors by saying there’s a good business reason: those people will never forget that our company provided a sympathetic listener when they needed to pour out their soul. They’ll never forget that someone was there for them. That’s how I get away with doing my little bit. It’s not the reason I do it. I truly do care for people. I want to give them the strength or release they need to carry on. Leave burden here. I may be a skinny little atheist, but I can help you carry it.

I did a lot of carrying this evening. And it wasn’t just a simple matter of letting someone speak, with a few sympathetic noises thrown in. This time, it was personal.

Again, no details, just a sketch: I spoke to a woman who had been assaulted over the weekend. She was asking me questions about her service, and the reason for that came tumbling out almost inadvertantly. Evidence needed. Fine. We deal with things like stolen phones. Have the police contact us, and we’ll take it from there.

Could have left it at that, but I whipped out the can opener, because I recognized the tone in her voice. I’d spoken like that once before. So traumatized, so shocked, that everything was unreal. A part of you is conducting business as if this is a normal transaction, and another part of you is screaming, How can this be real? How can the world still be this ordinary? Everything’s different. Doesn’t everything change?

I told her I’d been there. She clutched me like a life raft. We talked about what she was going through. I told her what steps to take, who to contact, what to expect. It gets better, I said, but first, you are going to go through these emotions, these fears. You’ve already done a lot of the right things. Here’s what else you can do. Never doubt yourself. Never blame yourself. You are strong – you’ve already proven that. You survived. You’ll come back from this, and things will never be the same, but they’ll get better. You have the strength to get through. And you have people you can rely on, reach out to, to make this easier.

I listened to what she’d been through, how her life had changed, and cheered her on. Every step she was taking was the right one. She needed to hear someone, a stranger who had walked that path, say these things to her, because she’d started getting crushed by doubt. Never doubt yourself, I said to her. You’ve already done all of the right things. Never let anyone tell you otherwise. You’re doing everything exactly right.

She left me nearly crying. I’ve spent most of tonight thinking about her, and wishing I could have done more, but I know I’ve provided her with the information she needs to get by. She’s not alone anymore. Someone who’s already been there has told her to have faith in herself. Someone who’s been there praised her strength and courage. Having been there, I can tell you that she is incredibly courageous, and that she needed to hear someone say that. No punches pulled: it’s horrible. It will be worse before it’s better. But she’s prepared for the hurdles now. And she knows that this is something she can come back from. She knows there’s a nearly normal life to look forward to.

I could have prayed for her. I would have done it if she’d asked. This atheist has, at times, prayed to a god she doesn’t believe in because the recipient of said prayers needed them. It tickles them: an atheist, praying on their behalf. The prayer goes like this: “God, I don’t believe in you, and I don’t believe you even exist. But this person does, and they needed me to talk to you for them, so here we are. God, I feel like a fool, but if it makes them feel better…”

She didn’t ask. She didn’t need prayers tonight: she needed assurance. She needed options. She needed a map to this horrorscape she’d been dumped in. All of these things, I could provide.

I know too many people who pray as if that’s all that needs to be done. Prayer can be a good thing. It can be a gesture of solidarity, an affirmation of purpose. It can steel you for action and it can help you find the strength you need to take that action. But I see too many people stop at prayer. They’re the kind who would have cut her off after the initial revelation by saying, “How awful! I’ll be praying for you.” And they would have expected that to be enough.

It wouldn’t.

Don’t leave it at a prayer. Take some action. Even if all you’re doing is listening actively, it’s still more than you would have done by just yammering at God.

Would It Help If I Prayed?

National Day of God-Bothering

jacob1 Comment

I’m likely to offend some of you here. A few may think that an atheist has no right to opine on prayer. So let me just start by saying: I held many of these views when I was a Bible basher. They haven’t changed much since I became an atheist. Besides, in my cantina, I will speak my mind on the subjects of the day. It being the National Day of Prayer, the subject of the day is prayer.

Prayer annoys the bugfuck out of me and always has.

I remember praying once as a child. My father was late getting home. He had a long commute, the roads had iced up, snow was pouring down, and I was terrified he’d gotten in an accident. My mom was frantically calling people, trying to find out: had his plane taken off? Landed? Had he left the airport? I couldn’t do those things. All I could do was run to my room, beg God to spare my Daddy, and go tearing back into the living room to try to figure out what was going on from my mom’s side of the conversation.

Christians would say it worked. Daddy came home that night. Considering how many other daddies don’t come home despite their daughters’ fervent prayers, though, I don’t think praying did anything more than give me the illusion of doing something constructive.

We started each school day with a moment of silence. I can’t remember how old I was when I found out it was for prayer, but I remember having my head down on the desk and thinking, “But I don’t want to pray.” I never did. Prayer seemed too noisy. I liked just sitting there with my head on my arms in that warm moment of quiet before learning. A minute wasn’t enough, really. I could’ve done with a good hour. If I’d known about zazen back then, I’d probably have taken that moment to meditate. I never saw much point in bothering God daily.

Never saw much point in the Pledge of Allegiance, comes to that, but that’s a story for another day.

So.

I went through a brief period in high school where I fell under the sway of a charismatic church, and I prayed. But it bothered me. What was I praying for? Didn’t God have enough to do without listening to me whine? And why the hell were these other people so proud of themselves – “I prayed for a red car, and God gave it to me!!” I’d think, No, He fucking well didn’t. You wanted a red car, you shopped, you financed, and lo! you have a red car. Good for you, you fuckwit. I’m sure God was happy to grant that prayer while kids starved to death in Africa.

The longer I stayed in the church, the more annoyed I got. It seemed that trivial prayers far outnumbered the weighty. We’d pray for people to find God (He’s right there, dumbass. It’s not like He’s hard to find), pray for this or that gotta-have-it thing of the week, pray for rain, pray for sun, pray pray pray for more more more. Prayer, in fact, was reduced to something like this: “God, please gimme this. You’re awesome if you do. Thanks!” We all sounded like teenagers, wheedling the latest in prestige items from a parent with a mixture of pleading, promises, and provisional praise.

Didn’t God get a bit tired of all this shit?

Time passed. I soon broke with the church over their shallow obsessions, discovered that the vast majority of American churches were no better, struck off on my own, and for reasons that will someday become clear, turned agnostic. I didn’t pray anymore, unless you count the idiom of “Oh, God, please make it stop” counts. As I hadn’t addressed the envelope, I doubted those pseudo-prayers ever landed in God’s mailbox. I sincerely hoped not, anyway. I was certain He got enough junk mail as it was.

It was during my agnostic phase that I had a dream:

In the dream, it was night, and I was on a train travelling up the Pacific coast. I’d wandered into the empty dining car to watch the trees go by in the full moonlight. And I was just starting to wax really lyrical on the sight when a man who looked a bit like Danny Glover walked into the dining car. At three in the morning.

Here he is, in a suit, carrying a briefcase and a cup of coffee, and there I am, standing there in jeans and a heavy metal t-shirt.

I turned and looked at him. He set his coffee down on one of the tables and sat beside it, one hand on the briefcase, the other over the top of the cup to keep its contents from splashing out while the train jigged its way down the tracks. He smiled at me. And it was a smile of such serenity, such love and contentment and peace, that I knew instantly that all of those folks who worshipped God as the Great White Father were in for a shock.

And yes, I did think, “Oh, my God, it’s God.”

And I felt like a runny-nosed little kid. And I wondered if my sneakers were untied. And I started to feel ashamed, but he kept smiling, and I knew I was just fine exactly as I was. Oh, the relief! I sat down in the booth opposite, and wondered what a heavy-metal agnostic chick and God talked about in a dining car at three a.m.

I never did find out. Right at that moment, I felt a breathtaking rage rise right up through me. It came from below. It surged up through my shoes and thighs and bottom and roared its way through my body like an andesitic eruption. I’d never felt so much vicious hate, such incandescent anger, in my entire existence. And it was all focused on God, who was still sitting there with one hand over his coffee cup and the other over his briefcase, smiling at me.

A few very important things struck me at that instant. I realized that God was bumming around in mortal guise, very vulnerable. That alien animosity I felt was Satan, getting ready to use me to kill God. And I didn’t think I could stop it.

I fought to keep it contained. Begged God with my eyes and my mind to please do something, don’t let this happen, don’t let me be the instrument of your destruction. You know what the fucker did? Sat there smiling. He wasn’t going to do jack shit to save himself. It was up to me.

So I got pissed. Maybe the lazy bastard deserved a good smiting, if He wasn’t going to help this poor helpless mortal, but it wasn’t going to happen through me. The rage and the hate nearly scoured me away, but fraction by fraction, I fought it down. Pushed it out. Get thee behind me, Satan, because God may not be lending a hand but my will is more than enough here. And slowly, sweating, shaking, I won that battle.

I sat there glowering at God. God sat there smiling at me. I was about to open my mouth to ream Him for a lazy, useless bastard when His smile changed. Pride and love poured over me like premium tequila. He gave me this satisfied little nod. Of course. He hadn’t lifted a hand to help me because He’d known I could do it all by myself. He’d had complete confidence in me all along.

That felt amazing.

Needless to say, I woke up a little bemused, and maybe a wee bit more agnostic than usual. I’ve often thought of that dream over the years, when people have bragged about the results of their prayers, how God had helped them. Bullshit, I’ve wanted to say. God won’t lift a finger to help you. Why should He? If you believe He created us, it shouldn’t be much of a stretch to understand that He gave us the power to help ourselves. It’s up to us to use it.

We’re not children anymore, utterly helpless to do anything but pray. There comes a time when you can’t go running to Big Daddy for every little thing.

I can’t understand that mentality. I truly can’t. The religious sorts talk
about their omnipotent, omniscient God, they pray for things, and they expect results. How self-absorbed is that? How petty, how weak.

I see people who ignore the gifts they’ve been given. If you’re a believer, you believe God created the universe and all that’s in it. Then why not believe that God expects you to use all of those things you’ve been given to make your own way? Is He really such a control freak that He can’t let you stand or fall on your own?

Does He really give two shits if you get that promotion or not? When Jones is praying for God to smite Smith, and Smith is praying for same, how is God supposed to answer? Why the hell pester Him over the petty bullshit?

I thought it when I was a Christian. I thought so as an agnostic. I think that even more so as an atheist: why should God help you when you’re perfectly capable of helping yourself?

And doesn’t it mean more when you accomplish it yourself?

The devout pray-ers don’t seem to think so. “Let go and let God!” they say. Willful helplessness. Determined to stay a child forever. And I don’t think that serves God or human beings.

I don’t pray anymore, of course. But if I did, I wouldn’t be praying for the petty things. I wouldn’t be praying for handouts. I’d be praying, “God, I’m about to try this. I hope it works. Wish me luck.”

Because He’s not going to do it for us. It’s up to us. Prayer is not a good substitute for action. Ask those parents whose kids have died because they won’t summon medical help, but prayed for a miracle instead. Look, God gave you the miracle. It’s called a hospital. How stupid of you to reject it.

Praying for world peace is a nice sentiment. It’s not going to create it. People going out and working themselves to exhaustion might.

Praying for an end to hunger, to disease, to pollution, won’t do half as much as engaging in the science and the activities that can solve those things.

I’m an atheist. I don’t pray. That doesn’t mean I believe prayer has no place. It’s a great and useful thing for the faithful, if put to good use. It’s a mission statement. It’s a focus. But it’s just empty words if you don’t follow up, right?

On this National Day of Prayer, you can pray for handouts. Or you can pray, “God, we’re about to try something big here. Wish us luck.”

And then join up with us atheists, and let’s get stuff done.

Update: PZ Myers has less kind things to say, and the Minnesota Atheists have declared this the National Day of Reason. I likes! I celebrates! The National Day of Reason it is!

National Day of God-Bothering

Expelled Brings the Kooks A-Runnin'

jacob

Over at Pharyngula, PZ’s thrown some creationist chum in the water. It’s really not pretty: theists don’t hold up well against science advocates, rational thinkers, and atheists who can quote the Bible chapter and verse.

But before you feel sympathy, remember that the dumbfucks brought it on themselves:

A fair number of creationists must be leaving a certain propaganda movie and getting on to the internet to find targets of their ire, because I’m getting a little surge in hate mail — mostly short, petty whines and
accusations.

[snip]

Creationists, much as I’d love to smack down every one of your silly arguments, I can’t possibly do it one by one. Hang around, ask questions in the comments, and take your turn: we’ll eventually get around to dismantling your ludicrous claims.


The fools took him up on that offer. They found out there’s no “eventually” when it comes to Pharyngula readers: the dismemberment is immediate, vicious and complete.

Some other deluded fuckwit sent Michael Shermer a love note that showed just how wide he’d opened his mouth when the Expelled crew ejaculated into it:

Now I truly understand who you atheists and darwinists really are! You people believe that it was okay for my great-grandparents to die in the Holocaust! How disgusting. Your past article about the Holocaust was just window dressing. We Jews will fight to keep people like you out of the United States!

Richard Dawkins was kindly enough to post an open letter to him and to all others who might have swallowed such excretions:

Dear Mr J

Michael Shermer forwarded me a letter from you which suggests that you have unfortunately been taken in by Ben Stein’s mendacious and/or ignorant suggestion that Darwin is somehow to blame for Hitler. I hope you will not mind if I write to you and try to undo this grievous error.

It’s worth reading in full. Unless, of course, you’re one of those who can’t stand any sign of sympathy and human kindness in an atheist.

These people have a definite victim complex, and I think I’m beginning to see where it comes from. They truly are victims: they’re victimized every day by their rabid pastors, by rapacious propaganda pushers, and by their own desperate need to believe they’re special. They’re lied to constantly, and expected to be stupid enough never to question the lie. It must be horrible for them to be faced with any evidence that they’ve been played for suckers.

Instead of confronting that sad reality, they strike out at Dawkins and PZ as the enemy. I’m just vastly amused by the fact that some of them, in trying to destroy those they see as enemies, are going to get exposed to the truth. Some of them will even be strong enough to get royally pissed off at being duped.

The terminally deluded will just get their asses handed to them in a baggie. Fun times.

Expelled Brings the Kooks A-Runnin'

Fuck Your Framing

jacob5 Comments

I’m remarkably pissed right now.

I generally enjoy Dispatches from the Culture Wars. Ed Brayton’s got a sharp wit and a sharper pen. He calls bullshit with concision. And he’s merciless with a variety of right-wing hate merchants. So I went over there tonight expecting the usual incisive posts, not a flame war over framing and an incredible degree of bullshit from… Ed.

But this isn’t about Ed. This is about the smarmy little fuckers who want us atheists to shut up and play nice with the pious.

For those of you coming late to the party, a bit of history, as I understand it. A bloke named Matt Nisbet has decided that science needs to bow and scrape to religious sentiment. It needs to defang itself in the interest of not scaring away all the godly folk. He calls it “framing.” Another bloke named Chris Mooney, who used to be well-respected, has turned into a toadying worshipper of this framing. And they both like to beat up on people like PZ Myers and Richard Dawkins because they’re vocal atheists and that might scare the timid religious folks away.

I haven’t been keeping up on that drama. I read a few posts by both of the gents in question and found them smarmy suck-ups with no balls and fewer morals. I’ve heard Mooney’s not that kind of man, that he’s actually a grand defender of science who’s done great things. I have no idea if that’s true, simply because his recent work has been pure fucking swill and I can’t stomach it.

Right? Now that you’re up to date, let me ‘splain what’s got me steaming like a pan of water on the sun.

Ed put up a post saying that Expelled wasn’t much of a success. Mr. Mooney dropped by to say this:

Hi Ed,

If you compare Stein to the single most successful political documentarian ever, Michael Moore, then no, Ben Stein hasn’t beaten
him after one week.

In other words, if you define success as something virtually impossible to attain, then no, Ben Stein did not succeed.

He got his ass soundly handed to him by many of the commenters, as well he should. If ever a man deserved to take his balls home in a baggy, it was him. You do not preach to a bunch of independent-minded scientists to shut the fuck up and let the big boys do the framing, and then fail to frame. You don’t post a defeatist claim that Expelled succeeded wildly and then come by to belabor the point on the blogs of people who believe otherwise. He seems to have developed the same desire for martyrdom that the IDiots have. I dropped by his blog to make sure I wasn’t treating him unfairly, and got a blast of “oh, poor me, I’m fearfully mistreated!” whining worthy of the Republicans. Chris – here’s some pearls, and I’m sure the neocons will be happy to budge over on the fainting couch so you’ve got room, dear. Have a good lie-down and stop fucking bawling.

Jesus H. Christ.

But that wasn’t what got me outraged. That’s tangenital. What’s really gotten up my nose here is the little fuckers who’ve taken it upon themselves who decide who speaks and who doesn’t. Commenters and bloggers who like to tell folks like PZ that they should engage in some enlightened self-censorship:

Now PZ is probably getting a lot of negative newbies at his blog this weekend, and this was on the front page for a good portion of it. Now imagine what some of the moderate Christians who are new to his site think when they see that post.

So I throw out this question to every one. Could PZ have framed this post better? I think if he had said “Parents – don’t send your children to THIS Christian school”, that the moderate Christians new to his blog would have agreed with him entirely.

You know what, Doctorgoo? No, he fucking well couldn’t. It’s not PZ Myers’s fucking job to muzzle himself. He has not been annointed the Supreme High Science Ambassador. He is a vocal atheist who couldn’t give two shits about framing. He’s one of the loudest and clearest voices speaking against religion’s hypocrisy and evil. It’s beyond ridiculous to expect him to switch to a fruit-basket offering, smiling, conciliatory atheist just because you think that maybe if he did that the fundies would start thinking of him as actually a pretty nice guy. I have news for you, all of you, who want us to “frame” things in a nice and inoffensive manner: you don’t know fuck about fundies. An atheist who whispers sweet nothings into religion’s ear is just as demonic to them as one who blasts them at every opportunity.

Don’t hand me this bullshit about framing. Do not stand around wringing your fucking hands talking about how we should all be nice to each other, even to the bastards who are doing their level best to destroy science and impose their fucked-up fundamentalism on the rest of the country.

We got to the state we’re in because we were nice and conciliatory and tried desperately hard not to offend people.

It’s time to go on the fucking offensive.

And if you think that’s not so, why is PZ hands-down the most popular blogger on ScienceBlogs?

It’s time for the non-believers to start screaming. It’s time to come out with fist and fang. These people see moderation as weakness. And the folks on the sidelines, they hear the loudest side. The sweet voice of reason doesn’t rise above the din. But people come out swinging for science, and suddenly there’s more than the religious freaks to watch. There’s something fascinating going on.

And you know what? They learn a little science.

I’m so fucking through with treating religion with kid gloves. My ideas and philosophies get trampled and spat upon and derided, and you want to tell me and people like me that we should be nice? Bull fucking shit. I’m not pummeling the moderates. You know my stance. But this bullshit about atheists needing to step aside for religious folk, that stops now.

If religion’s too fucking delicate to take it, that’s its problem. The Christians I know, they’re not afraid of contentious atheists, and you know what? I respect them a fuck of a lot more than those fainting violets who think they’re teh awesome in God but need to hide behind snivelling “no fair” arguments the second someone says the least little thing not nice about it.

It’s not fucking fair. It’s not supposed to be fair. You go into a lion’s den, you’d better fucking expect teeth. You’d better enjoy danger. PZ’s not going to moderate himself for a few folks with delicate sensibilities and a “can’t-touch-this” attitude toward religion, and it is beyond insane for his fellow free-thinkers to expect him to. Maybe, just maybe, instead of asking PZ, Dawkins et all to don muzzles, the more religiously inclined scientists could take theirs off and join the brawl.

Oh, and Ed? No hard feelings. I still respect you. But you’re making an ass of yourself running around demanding apologies for poor Mr. Mooney. He’s a big boy. He can wipe his own tears and maybe earn back some of the respect he lost when he became a pandering whiner.

For a more level-headed view of the need for a good fight, see Greg Laden, Nullifidian, and Blue Collar Scientist. You’ll get a more reasoned opinion from me later. This was the initial eruption. This volcano has not yet begun to explode.

Fuck Your Framing

Gone Splat

jacob3 Comments

I’ve gone splat against the wall, my darlings. Today’s been so full of outrageous political bullshit that I’m overwhelmed, and I’m too tired to digest it. Feels like that closet you’ve been chucking stuff into for decades, and you’ve just watched some program on freeing yourself of clutter. You troop off to that closet, fired with zeal, yank open the door, go “Oh my fucking god, where do I even begin?” and slam the door again. Only in my case, the stuff came out like a tsunami and smashed me into the drywall. Owies.

So I’m going to sit here, eat cheesecake, and ‘splain why that big red A is hanging about the place. You’ve been duly warned. If you’d rather indulge in some meatier fare, you could try Carpetbagger’s “Senator Hothead,” wherein the question is asked, “In the event of a crisis, do we want a leader known for his rage-induced tirades and unstable temperament?” Or skip over to the New York Times, which has finally noticed that Bush authorized “The Torture Sessions.” Glenn Greenwald has a “Major revelation: U.S. media deceitfully disseminates government propaganda,” which I skimmed for Happy Hour. He’s not as nice as I was. Secher Nbiw asks the “10 Debate Questions John McCain Will Never Be Asked.” And I can always recommend Digby’s Hullaballoo as a smorgasboard of outragey goodness. In fact, while I was pulling the link for that one, I saw Tristero’s taken to telling the young ‘uns that “Torture Is Always Immoral.” I couldn’t agree more.

Can’t get enough of Expelled-bashing? Try Thoughts in a Haystack. There’s a plethora of great stuff up just since yesterday. It’s the go-to place for a good, hearty laugh at IDiot’s expense. And Evolving Thoughts has a wonderful little fable that meshes beautifully with my own views, so of course I adore it.

Right, then. Don’t say I didn’t give you alternatives.

I’ve recently reconnected with some cherished friends from long ago. We haven’t talked in years. Last they knew of me, I was headed down to the Valley of Death the Sun to get myself a degree. I was officially agnostic, I talked a lot about the voices in my head (yes, my characters do chatter at me), I didn’t give two tugs on a dead dog’s dick for politics, I’d been leaning toward a strange amalgamation of Zen Buddhism/Taoism with a smattering of Odin, and I was officially agnostic.

Next thing they know, I’m up in Seattle with a big red atheist A splashed in the sidebar of my blog, bitching about politics and creationists.

My, how things have changed.

I am, indeed, officially an atheist now. It was a little hard to deny after I calculated my God Delusion Index and came up with a 5. I answered exactly one (1) (uno) question Yes:

5. Do you believe that a deeply contemplative act such as prayer or meditation can result in knowledge or understanding not attainable through ordinary thought?


I don’t believe, I know. Read too much about altered states of consciousness, I have. Studied Zen Buddhism and actually sort of understood some of it, didn’t I? Get into that “zone” where I’m not writing a story, I’m taking dictation, right? Even heard stories of scientists struggling with thorny physics problems and not getting the answer until they stop thinking and fall into a reverie. I’d go look up the particular story I have in mind, but I’m sitting here with some cheesecake, yammering at you lot, and I can’t remember the book it’s in, so it’ll have to wait.

But all of that’s human. And that’s what I realized. For all of my love for mythology, fairy tales, bizarre (to Westerners) philosophies, I’m not a believer in anything but the human imagination.

Somewhere along the line, I stopped looking for the divine. Stopped caring so much whether it existed out there or in here. I’ve become an odd creature, able to believe six impossible things before breakfast, but simultaneously knowing they’re nothing more than imagination. That doesn’t make it any less delightful. That doesn’t mean I love the stories less.

If anything, it’s more incredible. Actual existing supernatural beings would be a yawn. No more fantastic than the chair I’m sitting in. Bo-ring. Rather diminishes humanity in the bargain, if you ask me.

But imagination, now. That’s really something. That’s huge. That’s us. We did that. Incredible.

Let me just tell you a little story. There’s a point to it, I promise.

Many years ago, in Flagstaff, I took a smoke break and walked outside. I was busy lighting up and looking at the pine trees in the lot next to our building, soaking up the sun and thinking of absolutely nothing. And something caused me to turn around. Some sense of being watched. I look over, and I see the gray cinderblock walls through a mist of rain. And they’re shading into stone. And there’s a very young man with longish black hair sitting there, against the side of the building, huddled with his arms wrapped around his knees. The rain is dripping from his hair, and I’m still standing in brilliant, dry sunlight.

I just stand, and stare, shocked. I think I recognize him. I haven’t thought of him in years. “Nikki?” I finally say, and my voice is thin, full of the same sort of disbelief you’d feel upon turning around and seeing your travel-phobic friend somehow behind you right in the middle of Rome.

He looks up, slowly, and nods. Just once.

“I guess it’s time to write you, then.” It never matters how shocked I am. Snark is second nature.

He smiles at me, the rain streaming down his face, and then a squirrel dropped from one of the trees and gave me a jolt. I looked back, and he was gone. But the image never faded, and a character I thought had no place or purpose in my world was suddenly central.

Crazy, isn’t it? But things like that happen to authors. Other people see Jesus in their toast, we see our characters in random places, so real and immediate we could touch them, feel living flesh beneath our hand. It doesn’t matter that they come from so deep in our imaginations we’re not conscious of their residence there. To us, they’re real. And that’s why I understand people clinging to gods. To them, their god is real. To each our own.

That still does not give them the right to try to convert me. Doesn’t give them the right to pass judgement. Let’s be clear, there. I’m not going around preaching the advent of Nikki, the autistic wunderkind and trying to force him into the classroom, so I’d appreciate the same courtesy in return. People have a choice in what fiction they read, and it’s a very personal choice what fiction they choose to believe.

People may get the impression, reading the rants on this blog, that I have no patience for religion. And often, I don’t, because religion gets pretty obnoxious. It’s not the faith itself, so much, but the way people react to it. They push, I push back. It’s the way of things. That shouldn’t give the impression that I’m out to end religion. I don’t want to end it any more than I’d want some complete bastard to come take my characters away from me. Unless, of course, I start forcing their literal truth on folks.

Faith ha
s done some incredible good as well as incredible evil. I’d like to see less of the evil and more of the good, actually. We’ll talk more about that sometime, but for now, I just want to give you two words: Mother Theresa. Yes, I honor those whose faith leads them into a life of sacrifice and service for the poor and sick. I appreciate them, and I wouldn’t want to see them go, any more than I want to see biology crippled by misguided notions of piety.

I understand how comforting faith is. Another story, brief: on September 11th, 2001, when I’d just seen the video of the Towers crashing down, I remember standing with my hand on a cubicle wall feeling as if the entire world was ending. The future fell away in a gaping, black chasm. Some people reach for gods in those moments. I just heard the voice of one of my main characters, saying with calm conviction, “We survived. Dana. We survived this. Don’t worry.”

I know she’s not a voice from the heavens. I know she’s a voice from deep within me. And that doesn’t reduce the power of that moment one iota. It still resonates. I wouldn’t have made it through that day without the certainty her voice gave me. And she was right. We did survive.

Do you see what I’m saying, you religious folks? Science doesn’t threaten God. As long as you don’t cling to the need for your gods to be objectively real, science can’t touch them at all. Science hasn’t done shit to kick my characters out of my head. They’re still in there, taking up space, saying outrageous things at inopportune moments and making people who’ve never encountered a writer before reach for the nice white jacket with the long sleeves and fashionable buckles.

Science can never minimize the power of the human imagination. The only thing that can do that is insisting that everything in our imagination has to be really real. We place such severe limits on its power and scope when we do that. I did my characters the same discourtesy, once. I nearly smothered them. Then I became an atheist, and they can breathe again. I can feed them with all sorts of new ideas, because they’re not limited to the idea I had ten years ago. Heh, look at that, they’re evolving, and they’re better than ever.

So that’s it, in a not-so-tiny nutshell. The whole reason for that A. It’s there because I have a God Delusion Index of 5 and a universe in my head. It’s there because I refuse to limit my very human and extremely entertaining imagination. It’s there because I don’t need to be anything more than a human being evolved by chance, in a cosmos that’s revealed by science to be more awesome than anything I ever imagined.

It’s there because it sets me free to experience it all.

*Update: Really did go splat, there. Forgot the title. My, oh my.

Gone Splat

Pomp and Pope

jacob2 Comments

I’ve been to a Catholic church exactly once. It was embarrassing. Stand, kneel, confusedly try to follow everybody’s lead, fuck up royally by trying to follow them up for Communion (a grubby non-Catholic such as myself doesn’t get to participate in cannibalism). It seemed like a lot of work. And people I knew as total bastards five days a week at school suddenly transformed into altar boys? Puh-leeze. But at least that last bit was fun. It’s always cute when your classmates are mortally embarrassed in white dresses.

So that’s it. The sum of my direct experience with Catholicism. I’ve known Catholics, of course. Read up on Church history. Seen the art. Heard about the scandals. I remember seeing Pope John Paul II on television, and liked him. He seemed decent enough, not batshit insane per se, remarkably down-to-earth for a dude in a funny hat and a robe. And at least he didn’t wear bright red shoes. He wore brown ones.

Needless to say, I’ve not been keeping close tabs on the current Pope’s visit. But it’s been nibbling at the edges of my consciousness. Hard to avoid, especially when PZ Myers bends him over a knee for a sound spanking.

And I’m catching up on the week’s Daily Show and Colbert Report, and there’s quite a bit of bright white robe shining out from my television. So I started doing some digging.

Here’s the first thing I came across:

“Official merchandiser of the 2008 U.S. Papal Visit.”

You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.

And this man is going to come lecture us on materialism? This is rich.

The man who’s said this:

VATICAN CITY – Pope Benedict XVI on Sunday criticized “materialistic” ways of celebrating Christmas, pressing the Vatican’s campaign against unbridled consumerism.

and this:

“People continue to die of hunger and thirst, disease and poverty, in this age of plenty and of unbridled consumerism.”

has an official merchandizer. And has a personal cobbler. And a fucking papal helicopter that he flies between the Vatican and his summer residence. Summer residence? Oh, yes, he’s got a summer house, too, did I forget to mention that?

But this is the man who wants us to believe. He wants us to believe that “reason without faith leads to materialism and selfishness.” Somehow, it’s okay for him to preach to us about the evils of our culture and our belief – and most particularly the non-believers among us. He speaks of living a life in Christ. What was it he said to our Catholic leaders? Oh, yes:

“Indeed a clearer focus upon the imitation of Christ in holiness of life is exactly what is needed in order for us to move forward. We need to rediscover the joy of living a Christ-centred life, cultivating the virtues, and immersing ourselves in prayer. When the faithful know that their pastor is a man who prays and who dedicates his life to serving them, they respond with warmth and affection which nourishes and sustains the life of the whole community.”

And I’m sure that Christ would agree that expensive red shoes, clothes with plenty of gold embellishments, a helicopter, and a summer house are all vital accessories to a life in Him. What better way to preach peace, love and charity, to convincingly argue for a life in faith instead of materialism and consumerism, than to do it while imitating Christ’s love for the trappings of power and glory?

Let’s see what Jesus has to say:

Heh heh heh whoops.

“Democracy can only flourish, as your founding fathers realized, when political leaders and those whom they represent are guided by truth,” you said. Well, you’ll forgive me if I take your meaning of “truth” with a huge block of salt, and turn to truth guided by evidence instead. I prefer my truth without hypocrisy, as did the man you claim to serve.

Pomp and Pope

Monique Davis: Crusader for… Atheists…?

jacob1 Comment

Via Decrepit Old Fool (who has fast become one of my favorite bloggers), I came across a pure gem of a post from Half-Hearted Fanatic. He’s got a strange-but-true take on the whole Monique Davis drama:

However, Davis may just be the kind of crackpot that atheism needs.

This is a life lesson I learned two years ago: Ranting lunatics can be a blessing.

Funny, but I was thinking the same thing. I’ve seen more than one person pull themselves up short when they realize the company they’re keeping. It’s like a bucket of icewater down the old collar.

Half-Hearted Fanatic does a perfect job showing this. Go read. Find out for yourselves how skate parks, stubborn old ladies, and Monique Davis all relate.

And remember that this extends beyond Davis. I get the same sense from Bush’s spectacular fuck-up as president. I think that once this long slog of a nightmare is over, a lot of people are going to wake up and take a quick shuffle toward the left. Not many folks want to be too close to the rabid monkey.

Monique Davis: Crusader for… Atheists…?

"God Bless the Idiots"

jacob

A while back, I pondered why Christians are so afraid of atheists, and threw out some ideas. I couldn’t really answer that question. During that brief period I was a Christian, I wasn’t afraid of atheists. My Christian friends aren’t afraid of them (obviously). I don’t go out of my way to collar Christians, announce my atheism, and ask the ones who start trembling in terror why they’re deathly scared of me. It’s hard to hang onto their collars, for one thing – I don’t weigh 100 lbs soaking wet, and they’ve got the power of adrenaline lending them super-strength and speed.

So it’s a good thing I have best friends like N.P., who are not only wonderful writers, but totally non-fearing Christians who have observed the timid ones and can report back. She very kindly gave me permission to bung her email up here.

I think she’s dead-on here. I believe it’s important to highlight this, because the first step in reaching an accord is to understand each other. And I’m adding emphasis to the part that resonated most:

Here’s the thing, lovey. Some Christians are, in fact, insecure in their faith, and they’ve been raised to believe it so wholeheartedly, that in the back of their minds, they’re afraid that if they discover a bitty hole in their logic, the whole damned (pardon the expression) thing would unravel before them, and then what have they got to cling to?

Others have been taught to believe wholeheartedly that it’s risky to expose themselves to that which is “of the world.”

There was an anecdote in a Bible study I had in high school. It’s about a mother and daughter in conversation as the mother prepares dinner for the family. The daughter wants to go to a concert with her friends, and the mother doesn’t want her to go because of the nature of the music. The daughter objects, trying to assure her mother that it’s just music, and she’ll still have her faith if she goes to the concert. At this comment, the mother tosses the carrot peelings from the sink into the salad bowl. When the daughter asks her why she did it, the mother answers, “Well, you don’t seem to mind garbage in your heart and mind, so I thought you wouldn’t mind a little in your salad, either.”

While a mildly amusing story that makes a larger point within the spectrum of the Scriptures, this anecdote makes an interesting point from an exterior point of view: Christians avoid that which may invite sin into their hearts, and pretty much anything outside of the teachings of the church invites sin into hearts.

I was raised in a church that shunned me for wearing a cap-sleeved shirt that showed too much of my shoulders or a skirt that didn’t cover my knees when I sat in the pews. The idea was that if I dressed “immodestly” (anyone who knows me knows I’m anything but immodest), I would tempt the men of the church with my womanly wiles I guess, which would lead to all kinds of sinful whatever and eventually would lead to “backsliding” from the church, and eternal damnation.

So Christians guard themselves from all things that could potentially corrupt them so as not to become corrupted.

I think they’ve got it backwards, though. Jesus knew it wasn’t the faithful who needed His Love. Jesus dined with tax collectors and prostitutes. He sat among the lepers. Jesus knew it was those who were “sick” that needed Him. He didn’t shy away from the opportunity to spread His message of Love, no matter who was there to listen. It’s the people who get their hands dirty that get the most work done. Mother Teresa, for example, didn’t spend all her time with the Pope or the local bishops. She went where she believed she was needed, as all Christians should.

I consider myself one of your friends who isn’t scared of anything. I am a Christian, yes, and I try to love people the way Jesus demonstrated through His ministry on earth. I admire the beauty in Wiccan rituals. I practice yoga. I read anything and everything I can get my hands on. I have friends who are Catholic, Protestant, Wiccan, atheist, agnostic, liberal, conservative, straight, gay, bisexual, American, German, Hispanic, Irish, Polish, and animal. If God doesn’t discriminate in His powerful and unconditional love, who am I to turn someone away from my imperfect, human love?

Christians who are scared have already taken those first steps away from God’s love because they’re letting the worldly, sinful emotion of fear overshadow the love they claim to have for everyone.

God bless the idiots.

I cannot even begin to tell you how much I wish more Christians understood this. And I think you see now why N.P is one of the most remarkable human beings I’ve ever known, and why I cherish her so.

"God Bless the Idiots"

Michael Medved: Assclown Extraordinaire

jacob

I was going to write a blazing post beating Michael Medved down for his fuckery regarding why an atheist could never be President, but others have done the job for me. To them, I am grateful. It means I can turn my attention to other assclowns.

Carpetbagger highlighted the dumbassitude in “This Week in God:”

First up from the God machine this week is an eyebrow-raising column about why Americans couldn’t possibly vote for a non-believer as president.

The very idea is remarkably remote. Gallup did a poll last year and found that Americans would sooner vote for anyone other than an atheist. But far-right commentator Michael Medved devoted his weekly column to explaining why Americans are right about this, and should only consider monotheists for the presidency. To elect a non-believer to a secular office to lead a secular executive branch, Medved said, would be “bad for the country.”

[snip]

This is probably the dumbest thing I’ve seen in print in quite some time.


Considering the stupidity CB runs in to on a daily basis, that’s saying something.

Daylight Atheism gives Medved the pounding he deserves, saving me the trouble:

This is the old canard that atheism is somehow intrinsically disrespectful of the religious in the way that other religions are not. It’s hard to see how this claim can be sustained, though, because Mormonism and Judaism both deny fundamental tenets of Christianity: one rejects Jesus’ claim to be the messiah, while the other asserts that he was just one in a potentially infinite line of deified humans. These faiths already deny so many of each other’s major tenets: why does the one additional tenet denied by atheism make all the difference?


If you want to know what I was going to say, go there. I might have a few potshots to take later, but honestly, I can’t muster up the energy. Not for a wingnut radio host who believes in Bigfoot and is a Discovery Institute fellow.

No, I’m off to find more challenging game. Spanking someone who’s already removed their pants is just not the same.

Michael Medved: Assclown Extraordinaire