Remember that “Imagine No Religion” billboard that I mentioned a while back? It caused a furore in Birmingham, Alabama, where it was posted briefly. People called it “ugly” and “hateful”, apparently.
Well, Dan J has set them straight. He put together one that actually IS ugly and hateful and (short of the swear word) nearly as horrendous as some of the anti-atheist billboards we’ve seen lately. To me, it’s frankly amazing that people could classify the mere suggestion that people could live without religion as “hateful”, especially given what’s being said about us heathens. Is the Overton Window on what constitutes hateful speech about religion really pulled that far to the right, that far such that hate speech against atheists is acceptable but mild rebukes of religion is hateful? Reminds me of, well, every time atheists who are unafraid to speak their minds freely are called “militant” or “New Atheists” (as though there’s been anything new or novel in atheism for hundreds of years).
I’m late to jump on this as I haven’t been watching Keith Olbermann much lately (preferring Rachel Maddow generally, since she got her own teevee show, hooray for Rachel!), but Greta Christina didn’t let this one slip by.
I’ve clipped this video to only the relevant section, being the Bronze.
The Bronze: To the person who donated the scratch for ten thousand dollars worth of ads on the sides of buses in New York City, promoting atheism. They read, “You don’t have to believe in God to be a moral or ethical person.” The hope, from president Ken Bronstein of the group NYC Atheists, is to get people to stop hiding their non-belief — to stop hiding it. No complaint about the message — however, while Bronstein says, “We want to get atheists to come join us, to get out of the closet,” unfortunately the donor who made the ads possible is keeping his identity anonymous.
This presumes hypocrisy on the part of the anonymous donor. And if it’s hypocrisy, then fine, maybe they deserve a mild rebuke, and the Bronze is usually reserved for the “mild rebuke” spot unless the asshattery overflows the top two spots that day. But still. There are a number of reasons why an atheist might want to stay anonymous; e.g. they are in a public position where their declaration of atheism would earn them a good deal of animus. Like, say, a politician. Or a TV talking head. Or they could perhaps simply be “good samaritans” (heh) who don’t care about building some kind of reputation for themselves; the act itself is a good deed, and they obviously had the money to spare.
And then there’s the fact that atheists in America are actually, presently, the most reviled minority group there is, probably due to successful indoctrination into religion (whether or not the person has since escaped). Imagine that the person who gave up $10,000 of their own money is in a public position and surrounded by religious folks. Being around religious folks in and of itself is not uncommon — I’m sure a significant percentage of everyone you work with and interact with on a daily basis has some sort of faith, whether or not they’re lapsed as far as worshipping. And part of that faith involves being told by the people that believe, that if you don’t believe, you’re a sinner or stupid or evil. So a significant fraction of people would suddenly forget everything they’ve known about you in the past — much like my father did with my sister when she came out to him — and start assuming that they are broken or evil or whatnot.
Scarily, more people in America would vote a gay person into office than an atheist. And the terrorism threat from right-wingers is at an all-time high there at the moment. So that, coupled with the vast number of people that were brought up to believe that walking the skeptic’s path is to be outright evil, and fear suddenly becomes a real and significant motivator.
While I would love for the person who came up with that much money for the atheist bus campaign to come forward, to set an example to those out there who are too scared to self-identify as atheists, I’m not going to pretend that there aren’t very real and valid reasons not to do so. Nor should Keith Olbermann. Good on him for not having a problem with the message, but those of us on this side of the argument see much less hypocrisy than he did.
On the internet, you’re free to speak your mind, no matter how unquestionably and empirically retarded your opinion happens to be. However, because you’re putting your opinion out on the internet where everyone can see it, everything you say is going to be scrutinized, measured, and appraised for its content, on its own merits, and when what you say is found lacking, people are going to tell you so. Then make fun of you mercilessly for it. The whole internet gravitated toward this model, and for an excellent reason — it is a meritocracy on a global scale.
There’s one major problem with this setup, as illustrated on Pharyngula, and in the case of presenting religious arguments, it is codified in the concept of “Poe’s Law”: it is impossible to write a parody of a creationist trope that will not convince at least one reader that it’s a legitimate belief held by a real religious person. A corollary to this is that it’s impossible to distinguish parody from legitimate beliefs held by these god-bots, specifically because no matter how wacky or ridiculous the belief or illogical the behaviour, someone has done it, seriously and earnestly. Continue reading “Poe’s Law”→
There are awesome people and idiots in every social group or subculture in the world. This includes ninjas, and it also includes ones where there’s a correlation between education and likelihood of joining the subculture, e.g. atheism. Just like those poser kids and trend whores in high school, or confused college students trying out bisexuality based solely on getting laid more often and/or because it’s popular, and not out of any real attraction to both genders, atheism, and specifically the “New Atheist movement” is being invaded by people who come to the decision to be atheist not because it’s the most rational one — they join up to be “counterculture”, to piss their parents off, or to build an identity for themselves during their formative years. Let’s call these douchebags “trend-atheists“.
This is very annoying to people like me, who came to atheism after being indoctrinated into Catholicism and who was “confirmed” before he even realized what was going on, finally learning that the universe is a vast and mysterious place, but that it could be comprehended through rational study and scientific endeavour. In all seriousness, I had no idea what was going on with the whole confirmation thing. I remember being incredibly anxious to get home and play Megaman, and honestly didn’t know why everyone was making such a big deal out of me going to church and standing in front of everyone, then eating a cracker handed to me by the old guy in a funny costume who smelled like liniment and maybe a hint of Vaseline and was sooooo boring when he read from that book he always had on his podium, that I thought maybe I could replace with my latest Hardy Boys book one day so we could find out what evildoers Joe and Frank discovered when they entered Pirates’ Cave!
Another thing that bothers me is the lack of understanding of the terms being bandied about. There’s a huge difference between a gnostic atheist and an agnostic atheist. Again, as with trend-atheism vs rational-atheism, reality favours the latter. First, definitions. Theist obviously means, “believes in God”. Prefix “a-” in Latin means “not”, so atheist therefore means “does not believe in God”. Likewise for gnostic — to be gnostic means you think the existence of God is knowable, e.g. that it’s possible to discover with 100% certainty that God exists. To be agnostic thus means you believe it’s NOT possible to know with 100% certainty that God exists.
This is shamelessly ripped off from this site, which is great. You should read it. No, finish my blog first. Yes, the whole thing. Then finish your peas.
As you probably have figured out from my previous rants introspections, I consider the concept of God to be inherently, by its very nature, by necessity, outside of our universe. Since we cannot know with any certainty what’s going on outside of our universe, since our existence is an abstraction of only three dimensions of it, then God is inherently unknowable. Even Richard Dawkins, one of the most vocal atheists out there, says he cannot know with 100% certainty that God doesn’t exist, but that he believes that God does not exist, and that the burden of proof is on those making the extraordinary claim that they can know that God exists with any degree of certainty whatsoever. Anyway, the only way to prove God exists is for God to do something that tells us he does. For instance, appear to us humans by making the moon into his head, and talking to all of us in all our languages simultaneously and telling us that he exists. And do it once a generation, to prove to every generation that he exists, lest we start thinking all our parents and grandparents were just delusional or were making unverifiable stuff up (you know, like with the Bible and the fish thing, or the walking on water thing, or the wine thing…). And also explain why it is that he must be worshipped or else he’ll damn you to an eternity of torture. And explain why what might seem like self-serving vanity in any other creature is perfectly acceptable and Supreme Good in him, because torture for eternity just for not believing in a magical universe-creating invisible guy is a pretty douchy thing to do.
So, the only sane, justifiable position to hold in the face of the deafening silence regarding direct evidence of God is simply to act like there isn’t one. Go ahead and enjoy life, better your fellow human’s lot, and do whatever you can to be a good, moral, and happy person, without worrying about what comes after you shuffle off this mortal coil, because there is no reward or punishment after death, no floating on a cloud, no eternal hellfire, no seventy-two virgins, and no cosmic High Score list on which you get to write your initials in as “FUK”.
tl;dr: I was atheist when atheism was underground, and people who use words wrong should be cock-punched. Or uterus-punched. (Don’t wanna be sexist.)
