My best friend from North Carolina is here, PZ wuz here, I met a group of absolutely delightful skeptics, and I’ve got a packed week, so posting is going to be light and probably of inferior quality, alas. I’ve got some posts in the kitty to keep you entertained, and I’ll still be doing Discurso for the political junkies among you.
I’ll be writing up PZ’s talk at the Pacific Science Center in the next day or two – Garrett will allow me to steal that much time away.
To all the people I met tonight: you’re awesome, I’m thrilled to meet you in the flesh, and there will be much more awesome fun!
En Tequila Es Verdad will resume its regularly scheduled intense snark in just a few days, with added PZ. Until then, thanks for suffering through the thin fare!
You, my readers, all deserve the very best snark I can give. I shall deliver.
And for those eagerly awaiting a new installment of the Carnival of the Elitist Bastards, folks are already putting together fantastic contributions, and we’re less than a month away from another voyage. Details to follow. Prepare to board!
I’d like to turn the floor over to Rowan Atkinson for A Warm Welcome:
Your response has been overwhelming, and overwhelmingly encouraging. When the HMS Elitist Bastard sails once more, it seems we’ll be going forward with a fleet. I can’t wait to have you aboard! My swarthy crew and I will be honored to have you all as shipmates.
Thank you for supporting us in this endeavor. I’m sure you know by the entries, but each and every one of my crew members deserves all the recognition they can get. I’m stealing this opportunity to say, publically and as profoundly as I can, how much I appreciate them.
They made this happen. Without their enthusiasm, their effort, and their encouragement, there never would have been a Carnival of the Elitist Bastards. From graphics to random quote generators to excellent elitist entries, from plugging the Carnival to putting their backs into hoisting the sails, they’ve done an amazing amount of work. And they believed.
Even the atheists. After all, while we don’t believe in gods, we sure as hell believe in each other.
They believed in the purpose behind this Carnival: to take back the word “elite,” to glory in brainpower, to celebrate intellect and resist ignorance. And I do believe we’re going to be victorious, even if the battle is a long and bitter one.
I believe this because I believe in them.
The best thing about writing this blog isn’t the chance to pull the Smack-o-Matic off the wall and let myself go. That’s fun, don’t get me wrong. But it’s nothing compared to what’s ultimately happened because of it: it’s the people who come here, who comment, who help me create carnivals and have so much fun running with ideas, who make this so rewarding.
I’ve met some of the best people in the world doing this.
I know I’ll meet many more.
Hello, you. Mi casa es su casa. Come on in, pour yourself a drink, and join us when we set sail again next month.
Special thanks and a tip o’ the premium tequila (or drink of their choice!) to PZ Myers and Coturnix for their spectacular shout-outs!
This post could turn into a wankfest, and you should feel free to skip it.
Still here, eh? Well, pour yourself a drink. Pour me one, too. Make mine a double. Thankee kindly.
I’m enjoying this blog immensely. I love my burgeoning community of freethinkers, iconoclasts, Elitist Bastards, and philosophers. Putting together the Carnival of Elitist Bastards has been more exciting, fun, and deeply rewarding than I had any right to expect. The response has been immense. One day, I’ll have to have someone shoot a video of me jumping up and down in glee when another blogger signs on. Each and every one of you are precious to me. You’ve been my rope: before you, I was sinking fast. Won’t go into it. Just one of those crises we all experience from time to time, when another year passes and everything you’ve thought you’d accomplish has failed to get accomplished, and the niggling doubts start to chafe.
I blame Bush. Before his tragicomedy of a presidency, I was perfectly happy to live in an apolitical bubble. Had my writing to do, didn’t I, and no time for political bullshit. Didn’t know a damn thing about the Wedge Document and other such appalling assaults on intellect in this country. Before Bush, I had no idea just how far the neocons and the frothing rabid religious freaks had gone in their mighty efforts to destroy everything that was good about this country.
Bush brought that all to light by being so bloody outrageous that even an apolitical SF writer had to sit up, take notice, and sputter, “What the fuck?”
Eventually, the outrage spilled over, and ended up creating a blog, because I would have exploded if I didn’t do something. It’s not like I’m thinking that this blog will change the world. I know that I’m not a cool voice of reason logically and carefully deconstructing the arguments of irrational fools. Plenty of others do that better than I. No, I needed to voice my outrage, and I know that some of the people who battle this bullshit every day need that catharsis. They don’t have to worry about being accommodating or politically correct or understanding or civil here. It’s a cantina. You can let it all out, and use whatever language you like in doing so.
No problem with that.
And we have to get up a good head of anger, because we won’t defeat the voice of unreason with appeasement. One thing I’ve always known about dogmatic sorts: they’ll take your kindness, courtesy and accommodation and use it to brutalize you. You can’t compromise with the uncompromising.
This cantina reserves the right to refuse courtesy to those people who are so divorced from reality that they’ll see courtesy as capitulation.
I think the regulars understand that. When the opponent has completely disregarded all evidence disproving their reality-challenged views, refuses to even agree to disagree, and doesn’t understand the meaning of “live and let live,” there comes a time, after all of the civil discourse, when you find yourself with no other recourse but profanity, insults, and disgust. But none of that is aimed at the good, reasonable folk who disagree with some fundamental conclusions but have no trouble reaching an accord. In other words, folks who can say, “I’ve got my Bible, and you’ve got your Dawkins, and we’re all good here” have nothing to fear.
Thankfully, there’s still plenty of those folks out there. Some of them even fight shoulder-to-shoulder with us against the assaults of narrow-minded, anti-science, anti-anything-that-doesn’t-fit-their-absurdly-limited-understanding fuckers. They can see the dangers as clearly as we do. When you let power be taken by those who are so convinced they’re right that there’s no room other ways of thinking, other ways of believing, and other ways of life, you might as well bring the wood to your own burning.
And this all drives me crazy, because I am, at heart and despite the impression this blog may give, one of those people who would prefer to think the best of other people and would love to give them plenty of room to do whatever makes them happy.
That only works if the other bugger doesn’t decide that your scoodging aside on the bench means they get to take the whole damned bench. And the ground you’re standing on.
It’s gotten so much worse. It used to be you could just brush the buggers off the bench and get on with the sunbathing, but that ended when the far right got its grubby hands firmly on the reins of power and dug in the spurs.
Hence the anger. Hence the disrespect. How the fuck can I respect a ruling party that thinks torture is fine as long as it’s them doing the torture? How the fuck can I live and let live when the get-God-in-the-classroom-by-hook-or-by-crook crowd decides that their morality dictates the science my future doctors and researchers learn, not to mention which cures can and cannot be pursued? How the fuck can anyone expect moderation and fairness when our media’s idea of “fair and balanced” is to present he-said-she-said fights in the sandbox, without taking the very grown-up step of determining who’s lying through their teeth?
I wanted to be apolitical. I wanted to be kind, gentle, compassionate, and all sorts of other soft and fluffy things. Wanted to be reasonable and fair and erudite. And profane. Damn it, I love the word fuck and always have.
I wanted so many things, you see. And then Bush came along and let all of the lunatics out of the asylum, and I found myself drowning in this sea of insanity, and all I could do to keep from going under was scream out.
Imagine my surprise when so many of you heard me.
Imagine my delight when so many of you answered the call for Elitist Bastards and set themselves no less a goal than making the world safe for reason and intellect again.
You’re my hope and my inspiration. You make me believe that there will come a day when I won’t need to write so many diatribes and can pen a few more odes instead. We’ll be able to push the lunatics back to the fringes where they belong and give ourselves time for being and dreaming and enjoying the finer things in life.
You give me hope that we’ll create a world where religious strife, political bellicosity, and rampant ignorance hold a lot less sway than they do just now. You may never know how much that means.
Many years ago, I read The Authorityby Warren Ellis and fell in love with Jenny Sparks. I live by her words: “Bugger this, I want a better world.”
We can make it happen.
We Elitist Bastards can help lift the whole world.
I was hanging about on The Coffee-Stained Writer this evening, soaking up another wonderful treatise on the writing of poetry. She used an e e cummings poem as an example, which immediately reminded me of my all-time favorite poem of his – Buffalo Bill’s. That prompted me to do a search, which led to this:
I lived there most of my life. These peaks were framed in my back door at home. My mother and I used to lay on lawn chairs, snuggled down in sleeping bags, on those glorious clear nights, watching stars fall. My neighbor was an astronomer with a 10″ telescope in his back yard. In 1986, we neighborhood kids used to troop over to his place to go gawk at Halley’s Comet. My love of science was born there. Those peaks were the center of my universe for over 20 years.
Times like this, I’m reminded I’m a stranger in a strange land. Seattle and I, we love each other, but we don’t have history. I ooo and aaah at the beauty up here. Love having the ocean so close, love the Cascades and Rainier and all that, but it’s not my roots. It’s not the seat of my soul. Flagstaff is. I spent the best years of my life there. Most of the best friends I’ve ever had, that’s where they hail from. I found my place and my purpose right there in the shadow of those peaks, under those spectacular skies, where the universe seems to go on forever. That’s powerful stuff.
You don’t have to be holy to feel that sort of awe and wonder. Just human. And I’m damned grateful that folks like Dan & Cindi Duriscoe and Michael Smith-Sardior have captured the immensity of it.
Brian Switek over at Laelaps is having a bad moment. My fellow writers, and interested readers, we need to troop over there and give him some love:
Given all the false-starts and struggles I’ve had as the concept of this book has evolved in my own head, it’s not unreasonable to ask why anyone needs another book about evolution. There’s presently a glut of books talking about evolution and why it is important, so what can I really hope to achieve? I have no idea if the finished product will be popular at all, but I think it’s important to try and express why I find evolution so fascinating.
I think so, too. Let’s all tell him so. There’s always room for one more, and Brian has the potential to be one of those science writers who fires up the next generation of evolutionary biologists. Don’t let him forget that.
This blog is beginning to develop a healthy community of readers. I just want to take this opportunity to tell you something: each and every one of you is precious to me. You give me hope. You give me strength. I read your blogs, and I see you making a difference, and that keeps me from giving up. You make me realize that we can and will make a difference. We can and will make this a finer world.
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.
My darlings, break out the bubbly! Dana’s been given the nod by another blog! Here’s George at Decepit Old Fool, explaining why he didn’t write a long post about Rep. Monique Davis:
So, let’s sum up: En Tequila Es Verdad has earned PSA’s seal of approval; been saluted by Cobalt; attracted learned commentary by Nicole, Kaden, Sassy, Cobalt and PSA; and is now linked by Decrepit Old Fool.
You know what? That’s not bad for a baby blog that’s still shitting its diapers and bawling at people all night.
The hardest thing about embracing my atheism and deciding to do my part in calling creationists out on their bullshit is the wall it’s put up between my best friend and I.
Take tonight. There we were, having a fairly decent conversation about life, the universe and everything. I can’t even remember how we got to this point – it was that innocuous a conversation – but his church’s views on evolution had come up, probably due to my crowing over PZ’s pranking the Expelled crew, and without any warning, a creationist talking point comes tumbling from the mouth of my usually rational best friend:
“Well, it’s the theory of evolution, you know – it’s not like it’s the law of evolution.”
Said in that somewhat indulgent, somewhat admonishing tone I dread, that gentle voice of correction the churches use when you’re going astray.
I didn’t react well. I tried to keep a civil tone as I explained that a theory in science isn’t the same thing as a theory in layman’s terms, but I know I was nearly shouting. And no, I’m not angry at him. I’m outraged at the pompous assclowns who love pulling blindfolds over people’s eyes and drill these fuckwit phrases into folks who only want to live good Christian lives. As if accepting evolution means spitting on God. As if God couldn’t have come up with such an elegant and simple idea for the creation of higher life forms.
We got past the bad moment. That’s why he’s my best friend: these things are nothing compared to the love we share. The walls are going up, but they’ll never get so high we can’t talk over them.
But it’s made me understand how pervasive the lies are. The only good news is that his church isn’t pushing Expelled as a must-see. They have better taste than that, a fact for which I’m forever grateful.
Let me just state something clearly: I have no problem with faith in God. Some people need God. They can have Him (take my God – please! hur hur hur – sorry). I understand the need for something greater in our lives. Some of us fill that need with secular things, some with spiritual, and it’s all good. I wouldn’t mind seeing less religion in public in this country, and I despise a lot of the things supposedly “religious” people do, but that doesn’t equate to wanting it eradicated like a mental illness. Fanaticism needs to be fought lest we end up living in a theocracy, true, but let’s don’t get stupid.
But I have an enormous problem with people lying for Jesus, and good people getting taken in by those lies. I cannot let that stand.
So that’s right, creationist cretins: I’m coming for you, you lying sacks of shit.
I’m going to linktositesthatdebunkyou. I’m going to join that chorus spankingyouallupanddowntheinternet. I’m going to vote your asses down, and I’m going to counter your pathetic lies, and I’m not going to let you impose your narrow, rabid, fanatic, ugly, distorted view of religion on me and mine. I won’t let you do it to kids, and I won’t let you do it in my community, and I will try my damnedest to take my country back from you, and I am not alone.
Some scientific explanations are so well established that no new evidence is likely to alter them. The explanation becomes a scientific theory. In everyday language a theory means a hunch or speculation. Not so in science. In science, the word theory refers to a comprehensive explanation of an important feature of nature that is supported by many facts gathered over time. Theories also allow scientists to make predictions about as yet unobserved phenomena. [emphasis added]
And don’t you start blowing smoke up our asses with “the Theory of Intelligent Design.” That so-called “theory” falls under the vulgar definition of theory. It has nothing to do with science. It’s the fucking fantasy of Intelligent Design. It’s a euphemism for creationism, and if that weren’t true, you all wouldn’t be fighting the battle in the political arena: you’d be too busy in the lab to mess about in politics, trying to force your fantasies on the rest of us by fiat.
You want the truth? Science doesn’t lead to atheism. You do. You’re the ones presenting it as the choice between science or God, and considering the company I would have been keeping as a church-going Christian, I chose science. Evolutionary theory didn’t shake my faith in God: you did. Your lies and your frothing and your intolerance and your self-righteousness shoved me right out the door. There are atheists who got there through science, true, but there are a hell of a lot more who ended up happily God-free because we couldn’t stand the fanatical fuckheads that were destroying faith. So don’t try to spew that “science will turn our children into atheists!” crap. Tell it to Ken Miller. Let him tell you how much science destroyed his faith.
Oh, wait. You can’t. He’s Catholic, and he’s an evolutionary biologist. Whoops.
Here’s the deal. Stay the fuck out of my government, and the fuck out of science classrooms, and stay the fuck away from my friends. ¿Comprende?
No. I know you don’t. And that’s why we’ll be having this little talk again.
