I met Ray Comfort tonight

He asked to interview me for a documentary he’s doing. I agreed because I knew exactly what he was going to ask me…and I was right, there were no surprises at all.

He started by asking me for evidence of evolution. I tried to explain the evidence for speciation in sticklebacks, but he asked if they were still fish, and when I said they were, he said that didn’t count because they didn’t become a different “kind”, like a dog becoming a cat. So I told him that doesn’t happen in a single lifetime, and that carnivores diverged over 60 million years ago. I suggested he look at fossils, but he rejected that, because he wanted “observable” evidence, and anything that happened millions of years ago isn’t observable. So I said it was, too — fossils and molecular evidence are observable.

So the usual creationist run-around, where he defines what evidence he’d find acceptable by rejecting historical evidence as nonexistent, and contemporary evidence as too trivial.

Then he tried the usual stunt: “Are you a good person?” “Yes.” “Have you ever told a lie?” “Yes, but that a person has flaws doesn’t make them a bad person. The overall estimation of an individual’s character is not determined by one mistake.” And then he dropped the whole line of discussion.

It was as pointless as I expected. I think I managed to frustrate his usual line of patter, which was the best I could hope for anyway.

Hey, lots of people were taking pictures of the two of us. Send them to me, so I have a memento!

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That’s Jessica Ahlquist dueling Margaret Downey with a banana in the foreground; the far less interesting event in the background is Ray Comfort asking me about evolution. (Photo by Kent Martin.)

Also, some of you in the comments are psychic. Yes, I mentioned Lenski’s experiment to him: “they’re still just bacteria”. I also explained to him that “just a fish” is meaningless, that we humans are derived fish. He thought that was all weird.

Another photo!

pz-ray

A terrible, terrible confession

I’m flying off to the Texas Freethought Convention in Austin tomorrow night. I see on the schedule that I’m delivering the Saturday night keynote, and that I’m in the company of Richard Dawkins and Aron Ra and Matt Dillahunty and Jessica Ahlquist.

My personal schedule lately has been raging chaos with obligations piled on top of responsibilities teetering on a foundation of work, and…

and…

Jeez, I haven’t even had a moment to think about what I’m going to say! In two days I have to give an hour talk that will make it worthwhile to hang about in an auditorium rather than going drinking. I am a bad, bad person.

But I’m really good at throwing a talk together on short notice. So I thought that what I would do is put it out to the Pharyngula commentariat: if you were in Austin on a Saturday night, and you had to listen to me talk, what would you want me to talk about? What subjects in freethought and/or science get you wound up, and would have you either pumping your fist or throwing beer bottles at the speaker (either extreme works)?

Leave suggestions. I’ll make up my mind so I can get the talk assembled on the plane.

Women in Secularism conference: a summary, part 1

Daughter-spawn here. I recently got back from CFI’s Women in Secularism conference in Washington, D.C. I’m just going to do some brief summaries/impressions of the talks/panels for those who were not one of the lucky 200-some people in attendance.

The first talk was by Susan Jacoby (author of The Age of American Unreason and Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism), entitled “The Dearth of Women in the Secular Movement: Let’s Look in the Mirror”

I unfortunately missed the first half of Jacoby’s talk, but she seemed all over the place. Jumping from discussing the history of secularism and feminism to the difference between the atheism and skepticism movements (the skeptic movement tending to be more conservative and male-oriented) to the recent case of an Arizona Catholic high school softball team forfeiting because the other team had a girl on it. I was having a hard time finding a cohesive theme in her talk. Rocky start to the conference, IMO.

This was made up for by the next session, a panel moderated by Annie Laurie Gaylor, with Ophelia Benson, Sikivu Hutchinson, Jennifer McCreight, and Rebecca Watson: “The Intersection of Non-theism and Feminism”.

Hutchinson provided a welcome racial minority perspective here. She talked about how disproportionately affected by sexism minority women were and are; how historically black women’s reproduction was strictly controlled by slave owners, how black and Hispanic women are seen as “dangerous breeders” and the recent laws regarding “chemical endangerment” and such are targeting them. I don’t think she really established a link between what she was talking about and secularism, but it was interesting nonetheless.

Hutchinson also criticised the secular movement for promoting scientism, saying that scientism generally excludes racial minorities and women, even throwing out the accusation of white supremacy.

Watson and McCreight discussed their experiences with introducing feminism into atheism/skepticism, and the backlash that results. The complaint when they do so is basically “this is not science/atheism, so it doesn’t belong here”. McCreight made the case that the goals are similar. Religious belief is irrational and not fact-based, and so is sexist belief. If your goal is to promote rational thinking, feminism is an inevitable part of that. But unfortunately, the difference between the two is that giving up religion feels freeing, whereas giving up sexist beliefs often feels more restricting.

Benson talked about how at some point, some of the feminist movement stopped pushing for equality, and embraced a “Okay, we’re not equal, but we’re different in good ways” attitude, which created the common stereotypes of women being more caring, better at emotions, more family-oriented, and so on. This attitude, perpetuated by a lot of women’s studies academics, has been harmful to women in secularism since none of these supposedly “good” stereotypes are advantageous for secular activism, so women are passed over.

The next talk was by the new head of the Secular Coalition for America, Edwina Rogers: “Religiously Motivated Legislation Particularly Harms Women”. Turns out the title was misleading. This 15-minute talk served more as an advertisement for the SCA. Most of it was discussing plans to expand to more states, the staff structure of the organisation, affiliated organisations, and so on. Then she whizzed through lists of the issues that SCA is focused on lobbying about — contraceptive access, violence against women, pharmacist and employer exemptions, and so on. She had to be somewhere else, so she couldn’t do a longer talk, but I’m not convinced that was a bad thing.

Next up was Annie Laurie Gaylor, “The History of Women in Freethought”. Great talk. I had no idea the extent to which women had been involved in the past. It’s sad how many of these women have been forgotten, and it wasn’t due to lack of contribution.

She talked about how the women’s rights movement was founded by female freethinkers. Since the lack of legal rights and lower social standing that women had were of biblical origin, it was the women who left religion who were the first to speak up.

She gave brief bios of a large number of female freethinkers: Anne Hutchinson (the first female heretic in North America, excluding Native Americans), Mary Wollstonecraft (who wrote the first book talking about women’s rights), Frances Wright (“Turn your churches into halls of science, exchange your teachers of faith for expounders of nature”), Ernestine L. Rose (who had a large hand in the Married Women’s Property Act), Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Matilda Joslyn Gage (who founded the first feminist organisation to advocate separation of church and state).

Josephine K. Henry, Clara Colby, Lillie Devereux Blake, Mathilde Amneke, Ella Elvira Gibson, Helen H. Gardener, Harriet Marineau, Lydia Maria Child, Margaret Fuller, George Eliot (Marian Evans), Ouida (Marie Louise de la Ramée), Sharlot Hall, Elmina D. Slenker, Zona Gale, Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Lucy N. Coleman, Etta Semple, Susan H. Wixon, Marilla M. Ricker, Annie Besant, Hypatia Bradlaugh Bonner, Voltairine de Cleyre, Emma Goldman, Lucy Parsons, Margret Sanger, Marian Noel Sherman, Dora Russell, Meridel le Sueur, Queen Silver, Margaret Knight, Butterfly McQueen, Vashti Cromwell McCollum, Ruth Hurmence Green, Catherine Fahringer, Barbara Smoker, Meg Bowman, Barbara G. Walker, Madalyn O’Hair, Kay Nolte Smith, Anne Nicol Gaylor, Sherry Matulis, Sonia Johnson, Barbara Ehrenreich, Katha Pollitt, Taslima Nasrin, Alice Walker, Ursula K. LeGuin, Wendy Kaminer, Ann Dryuan, Natalie Angier, Sara Paretsky, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Robin Morgan, Julia Sweeney, Jamila Bey, Susan Jacoby, Jennifer Michael Hecht, Sikivu Hutchinson, Jessica Ahlquist.

So much for the “there haven’t been very many female atheist activists” excuse for not being able to name five. For more on the subject, Gaylor has a book called Women Without Superstition.

So I’ll conclude part 1 here, and have part 2 up shortly, but there was something else I wanted to talk about. During the previously mentioned panel, Jen mentioned getting emails from women warning her about which male speakers at secular conferences that women should avoid. And from my talking with other people at the conference, it sounds like there are quite a few stories of well-known speakers being misogynistic or sleazy.

That’s a problem. It’s a problem that anyone is behaving that way, and it’s a problem that they’re not being called out on it. Several times the importance of calling people out on their actions was discussed at this conference, but this just isn’t being done.

If the issue is that individuals who’ve had these experiences are worried about backlash, or career suicide, I’m sure we could work out a way of anonymously publishing at least some of this information. If the issue is a fear of hurting the secular movement at large, I just don’t think that’s something to be greatly concerned about. So a speaker is called out for his comments or actions — they have the option to admit wrong and apologise, or to defend themselves, or to deny it. But at least there will be some amount of accountability. It might deter future misconduct, and conference organisers and attendees can make an informed choice about who to invite or support. There’s no shortage of good speakers to replace them.

Seriously, we need to do something about this.

The President is running a poll

The White House is asking you to nominate candidates for the Presidential Citizens Medal, an honor awarded for ‘exemplary deeds of service’.

I can think of a few dozen people in the godless/scientific community I’d nominate, but looking at your contrary performance in that last poll I brought up, you’d probably just pick the one who looked most like a cat. Or owned the most cats. Or likes cats the most. So you’re just on your own here.

I guess that means Jerry Coyne is a shoo-in…

First recommendation: Jessica Ahlquist. She probably likes cats. But despite that, she’s an excellent choice to push.

I don’t even understand the connections

Jessica Ahlquist got a nasty, threatening letter. Here’s what really bugs me about it: threats are common, and Jessica clearly pissed off a lot of Christians by insisting that a public school not promote religion … but this letter is full of sexual slander and rape threats. WHY? This is not a sexual issue. She’s a minor; the last thing you should be talking about is having sex with her.

So I’m just curious, misogynist scumbags of the world. When a woman cuts you off in traffic, or annoys you by taking too long at the grocery check out line, or any of a multitude of other trivial offenses, does that somehow immediately convert the offender into a prostitute, does it justify rape, and do you think any man would similarly be transformed into a sex worker who can be violently attacked?

I’m just trying to wrap my mind around how those people think.

Why I am an atheist – Stu

I was born to a liberal Jewish family, and grew up with all the cultural trappings of Judaism…Bar Mitzvah, religious school, and holidays.

During the 60s, which is when I grew out of childhood (I was 12 in 1960) the Temple I belonged to began to deal with the social issues of the time (or, more likely, I became aware of that), most notably the Civil Rights movement and later the Vietnam War. The theme running through the discussions focused around the rights of other people to freedom…freedom to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and freedom to say and think what they believed.

This is what I grew up with…this is what my parents and the religious tradition to which I belonged taught me. Yet even this open attitude engendered hypocrisy when combined with theism as I learned later.

This social attitude gave me very good feelings about my family, friends, and religious tradition…so much so that I went on to study “religion” in college. In 1970 I graduated with a B.A. in (secular) Religious Studies. However, by the time I got my degree I had learned that theistic religions were all based on varying degress of superstition.

As with so many others who have written on this topic here, one incident stands out in my mind as the point at which I realized that god is a myth…no more valid than Greek or Norse (or any other) myths.

I was home from college and was attending some sort of service at my Temple. At one point a prayer was read, which I had heard all my life. One passage from the prayer jumped out at me. It was a prayer for peace on earth and understanding between governments and people of different cultures and beliefs. The passage prayed for a time when “superstition shall no longer enslave the mind, nor idolatry blind the eye.”

At that moment I realized the hypocrisy of it all…here we were, praying to a “supernatural” being to end superstition. I don’t think I laughed out loud, but this insight — which now seems so obvious that I’m embarrassed I didn’t see it years before — set me on the road to non-theism.

Other things have added to my understanding…

• I fell in love and married someone who was raised as a Christian and the response from the Rabbi of the Temple I attended was so hurtful that I realized his words throughout my life about openmindedness were just that…words. Nothing else. When faced with the results of what he, himself taught me, he reverted to bigotry.

• I took two science classes in graduate school — botany (which had a very strong genetics focus) and geology. This provided me with information about common anscestors and the age of the earth and piqued my interest in evolution. From there I did a lot of reading on my own.

• My wife was, and still is, a theist. She is very liberal, doesn’t believe in the divinity of Jesus (though she was raised as a Presbyterian) or in heaven and hell. She wanted to have some sort of religious “base” for our family so we went around trying to find a place where we would both fit. We chose the local Unitarian-Universalist congregation in our city. The members of the congregation were a mix of religious and non-religious liberals…theists and non-theists whose philosophy was “the search is the answer.” I did more reading and learning there. One important thing I remember was that we rarely discussed whether “God” existed or not. This was because we were busy discussing things which mattered — social issues such as war, medical ethics, and political rights.

I don’t identify myself as an “atheist.” I spent my professional career as an elementary school teacher in rural Indiana and if I had admitted that I was an atheist I would have been run out of my small town. I still identify culturally with Judaism, so that was my “cover.”

Spending all those years (I’m retired now) as a closet atheist hasn’t always been easy, but there are others here with me. I have a small group of friends who are in the same position. We “share” the closet.

Maybe someday, I’ll find the courage — like Jessica Ahlquist — to “come out” and face the ignorance of family and friends who are still myth-believers. That, I think, is why I’m here…reading this blog every day (and others…Jerry Coyne, Ed Brayton, for example).

I know I didn’t actually explain WHY I’m an atheist…instead I wrote about how I realized I was an atheist…and how I grew into my atheism. The “why” to my atheism is fairly simple: I don’t believe in supernatural myths.

Stu
United States

A poll to smoke out the bigots

After this incredibly petty story of blatant bigotry — florists in Cranston, RI, refuse to deliver flowers to an atheist girl’s house — the local journalists are so ethically compromised that they think they need to run a poll to determine whether discrimination is popular or not. Even if you disagree with Ahlquist, why would you think that open injustice is a commendable practice?

Which florist would you patronize?

Florists who refuse to deliver to Ahlquist: 30.1%

Florist who delivers to Ahlquist: 64.2%

Makes no difference: 5.7%

Rhode Island synonymous with bigotry?

I had not realized how stupidly bigoted the people of Cranston, Rhode Island were becoming. After losing a fight against the Constitution, being slapped down for demanding the right to maintain a blatantly sectarian, religious prayer in a public school, they’ve been threatening and persecuting Jessica Ahlquist, the atheist who was brave enough to bring the law to bear on the promotion of religious views in a school.

Now a new development: the Freedom From Religion Foundation wanted to send flowers to Ahlquist: none of the florists in Cranston would do it. They had to find a florist in a more distant town to do the deed.

It’s all shockingly petty and discriminatory.

Here’s the list of cowards and bigots, four florists who would not deliver a bouquet to a teenage girl because she’s an atheist.

Twins Florist

Floral Express

Flowers by Santilli

Greenwood Flower

If you want to contact them and express your displeasure, please remember to be civil.

Haven’t they learned yet that a poll can’t rescue you from the ungodly internet?

The same station that ran the interview with Peter Palumbo calling Jessica Ahlquist an “evil little thing” and has also called her a “trained seal”* is now trying to salvage some vindication from the ugly affair with an internet poll. It isn’t working. JT and Twitter and Reddit have been pounding on it for a while, but I think we can take a moment to splatter it a little more.

Do you support the Judge’s decision to remove the Cranston Prayer Banner?

Yes 91%
No 9%

*The person who made that comment was the author of the prayer…who, ironically, also claimed that at her age Ahlquist could not possibly be mature enough at 15 to have independently opposed the prayer. He wrote it when he was a 7th grader, about 13 years old.