Harry Potter is an atheist – hooray!

Okay, okay – it’s just Daniel Radcliffe who plays Harry Potter – not the fictional boy wizard himself. But still pretty cool. Daniel has always mentioned that he’s not particularly religious, but in his latest interview with Esquire he officially “comes out” as an atheist.

“In an interview with Esquire magazine, Radcliffe risked the US box office prospects of the new Harry Potter film by declaring himself to be an atheist.

In a pronouncement that will dismay America’s religious Right, which has long voiced suspicions about Potter’s “anti-Christian” message, the 19-year-old actor said he did not believe in God.

He also expressed his admiration for Professor Richard Dawkins, the prominent atheist and bete noir of Evangelical Christians.

Radcliffe has been reticent on the subject of religion in the past, but in an interview to promote the latest instalment in the film franchise, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, released on July 15, he said: “I’m an atheist, but I’m very relaxed about it. I don’t preach my atheism, but I have a huge amount of respect for people like Richard Dawkins who do. Anything he does on television, I will watch.”

He joked: “There we go, Dan, that’s half of America that’s not going to see the next Harry Potter film on the back of that comment.”

JK Rowling’s stories of the schoolboy wizard are taken very seriously by some Evangelical Christians in the United States. One of the largest Christian groups in the country, Focus on the Family, denounced the books as “witchcraft”.”

I wasn’t one of those fangirls who immediately thought Daniel Radcliffe was some sort of hottie. I was way too preoccupied oggling Alan Rickman (and I still am). But I have to admit, Dan has really grown on me. He’s getting cute now that he’s not jail bait anymore, and every time I hear him in an interview he’s witty, intelligent, and nice. But now he’s an out atheist and a fan of Richard Dawkins? Definitely going up on my list of cute famous atheist guys I have no chance with!

Q&A – Atheism & Sex

My two favorite topics!

“You describe yourself, presumably tongue in cheek, as a “perverted atheist”. I do think there is a special relationship between naturalistic thinking (inc. atheism) and sex positivity: how do you see the relationship? Have you encountered much sex-negativity in atheists that’s an underlying hangup from their religious days (or the religious tone society is drenched with anyways)? What’s your best counter to the related fundie claim that we’re all atheists to just “satisfy our sinful lusts”?

– Michael”

First, I do not describe myself as a “perverted atheist” as a joke. Nope, I’m really just a giant perv. I’m pretty sure I have the mind of a 16 year old boy, and if I was male, I would be destined to be a dirty old man. I’m constantly thinking about sex one way or another, and it takes a lot of self control to not always speak what dirty ways my mind is interpreting something. Unfortunately for you guys (or fortunately), typing things up is the ultimate filter, so my perviness doesn’t really come out on this blog. But give me a beer or two and you’ll see the dark side of Jen.

As for the relationship between sex and atheism, I do think naturalistic thinking leads to sex positivity. The vast majority of the weird social rules about sex are based on religion, superstition, misconception, or bad science. Why should you wait until marriage for sex? ‘Cause God told you to. Why is a girl a skank for sleeping with five guys, but a guy who sleeps with five girls still hasn’t gotten around enough? ‘Cause girls are supposed to be pure as snow…cause God told you to. Why are people too stupid to use birth control the first time they have sex? ‘Cause our sex education and scientific thinking sucks in the US. I could go on forever with this list.

But that’s not to say all atheists are going to be automatically sex positive. I think religious hang ups and society have a big part in it. While I was raised secular, I know people with religious upbringings who have certain things they’re weird about. Sometimes they feel guilty that they didn’t wait until marriage, or they’re not comfortable discussing the topic with people. Some still feel it’s wrong to occasionally have homosexual fantasies even though they’re basically straight (come on, who doesn’t do this?). But I also know formerly religious people who are even more sex positive than I am. So yes, religion influences it, but your personality has a lot to do with how you handle it.

Even without religious brainwashing, I think the way religion permeates culture still can affect us. I know I’ll still occasionally feel a twinge of guilt because I’ve slept with more than one guy. I mean, I’m not (EDIT: Whoops, left out a key word there) near the double digits yet, but there’s still this pressure for girls to keep guys out of their pants. But I deal with this guilt by taking a step back and dealing with it in a rational manner. One, it shouldn’t even matter if I do go into the double digits, because me making an arbitrary cut off for girls is an irrational thing to do. Two, if I find a guy who’s so backwards to care about how many men I’ve slept with, then I don’t want to date him anyway.

But that’s not just to say I go around constantly having sex with any stranger in some giant atheistic saturnalia. I have standards and rules, and some of them I guess were influenced by my parents. I’ll probably leave something out, but here are my general safety rules for sex:

1. Don’t be stupid. A general rule for life, thanks Dad.
2. You don’t have to wait until marriage, but you should wait until you’re mature enough to deal with sex and any of the consequences. Think how much better the world would be (and how many less teen pregnancies we’d have) if people followed this simple rule. I did wait until I was ready (well, at least for the Clinton definition of sex, which to me had the worst consequences…aka babies). There were times in high school where I was so tempted to “go all the way,” but I knew I would probably regret it. I’m glad I waited until I was more mature and had access to the pill. That’s not saying everyone should wait until college, but as a general rule, I think most high schoolers are too stupid to know if they’re mature enough to have sex.
3. For the love of FSM, use protection and birth control. It’s just irresponsible not to, for yourself and your partner.
4. If you’re not comfortable doing something, don’t do it. If your partner isn’t comfortable doing something, don’t make them do this. Within reason, of course. I agree with Dan Savage here. If someone doesn’t want to do something considered fairly normal (ie oral) and doesn’t have a good reason for it (ie rape memories) then you have the right to dump them for sexual incompatibility. But if someone wants you to wear a Ronald Reagan mask while pooping on your chest and you’re not into that, and then they badger you about it constantly, then they’re just an ass.
5. Don’t do anything that could potentially harm you or your partner. Knife play and autoerotic asphyxiation are probably bad ideas. For me, sleeping with strangers also falls in this category. As a girl (and a generally paranoid person) I’m way too nervous to go home with a random stranger, so I guess I’m just stuck doing all my friends. Poor them.
6. Numbers don’t really matter as long as you’re safe, and as long as you’re emotionally secure or dealing with emotionally secure people. What do I mean by that? If a guy has slept with 200 chicks because he’s picking up low self esteem 16 year olds behind the football field, that’s probably violating rule #4. If a guy has slept with 200 chicks because of some deep rooted psychological problems with commitment, his own self esteem, and his need for physical contact in order to be happy, that’s probably not healthy either. But if a guy has slept with 200 chicks who all happily and knowledgeably consented just because he likes sex, then go ahead.

You may see a trend, that my “rules” are very humanistic. Don’t hurt others and don’t hurt yourself. They’re also humanistic because they’re for me. I might suggest that they’re good ideas for others – I mean, if they were bad, why would I be following them? – but I won’t judge a person for not. Had a one night stand with a stranger? I don’t really care; that’s your own business. Now, will fundies still think I’m just coming up with excuses to satisfy my sinful lusts? Probably. But, like every other aspect of my life, until they prove that there is an invisible angry skydaddy, his rules won’t be touching my vagina. Nor will any body parts of fundies.

Q&A – Defeating Creationism

“Jen,

Hey, I’m a big fan of your blog. I just thought of an interesting Q&A for when you are taking your week off: How best can we defeat Creationism? Creationism was completely defeated in the scientific community more than a hundred years ago and in the US court system numerous times in the last 50 years. However, Creationism still has a very strong grip among everyday US Americans. The polls have consistently shown that roughly 50% of all Americans believe that humans were created in their present form less than 10,000 years ago. What can we do to reverse this trend?

thanks,

Jason

http://chaoskeptic.blogspot.com“

Wow, you know, you guys could have thrown me a couple gimme questions. Nope, right onto solving the creationism problem! Haha, well, I’m just an undegrad with some odd ideas floating around in my head, so I’m unlikely to have the best solution, but I’ll at least ramble about what I think for a bit.

I honestly don’t think acceptance of evolution will increase in the US until religious belief decreases. We already see this trend among young people, which gives me hope that it will continue with time. I know a lot of scientists will argue that acceptance of evolution (and science in general, for that matter) is compatible with religious belief – but I’m going to have to side with the likes of PZ and Coyne and Dawkins and say this isn’t true. Scientific thinking is inherently opposed to religious thinking. Science is based on facts and experimentation and tweaking our idea of what is true so it becomes more and more accurate. Religion is based on belief and faith, where even facts that prove you wrong can be brushed away with some nonsensical mental acrobatics.

So how do we defeat creationism and intelligent design? Defeat religious and supernatural belief. We need to promote skeptical, critical, scientific thinking, and that’s incredibly hard to do when people still believe in miracles and ghosts and heaven and all other sorts of nonsense. Thankfully as people become less and less religious, they’ll probably accept evolution more and more. I think there will always be the extreme evangelical creationists, but the best we can do it make it so they’re a crazy little minority. Once we get to that stage we can start bugging the liberal Christians (since we’re talking about the US) to really understand evolution.

What do I mean by that? There are plenty of Christians who do believe in evolution. While I’m glad they exist, they either don’t fully understand the implications of evolution, they interpret the Bible so liberally that what it says doesn’t even matter anymore, or they’re doing some impressive doublethink (which I think most liberal Christians get particularly adept at). Religious people who attempt to reconcile their beliefs by saying God “guided” evolution do not really believe in evolution by natural selection. They believe in evolution by some omnipotent being fiddling with mutations, which is not scientific thinking. At least they won’t get in the way of evolution being taught in schools, but they still don’t really understand it. I think the only religious people who can really accept evolution are the ones who take a deistic view of God – that he decided to let evolution be the mechanism of how all the variety of life came to be. But that still doesn’t make any sense. The whole beauty of evolution is that it is a natural process. It didn’t need some god to create it, because it works based on chemistry and physics and probability etc etc.

And now I’m just rambling. Let me summarize: It’s going to be freaking hard.

Where are our future atheist politicians?

It’s pretty well known (at least among heathen circles) that atheist are fairly underrepresented minority in the US Congress. Pete Stark is the only out non-theist, and there are five people who chose not to answer the religious affiliation question – which of course doesn’t mean they’re necessarily unbelievers. There certainly may be closeted atheists in Congress, but one reason we want out atheists is so we know there will be at least some people in our government promoting a secular viewpoint.

A lot of atheists tell us not to despair; that as atheism spreads and becomes more and more accepted, we’ll start seeing more and more atheist politicians. But as of right now, coming out as an atheist is a gamble that you’d be committing political suicide.

So what’s the problem? you ask. Yeah, right now it’s bad, but in the future it’ll be better. Well, the problem is our future politicians are growing up in the present, where they see being religious as a requirement for getting into public office. I was talking to my friend who’s one of those wishy-washy deists (mentioned in my post “Wanting to Believe”) who is starting law school with the hopes of becoming involved in politics. He was raised Christian, lost his faith, but then desperately tried to regain it (settling at deism, I suppose) because you “Have to believe in something to be a politician.” So not only is he lying about his faith with the hopes of being elected 15 or 20 years from now (he still tells people he’s the Christian his parents raised him as), but he basically convinced himself to actually have more religious beliefs. He jokes that if in the future it comes out that he had something going on (said the relationship was complicated) with an atheist activist chick, there would be a scandal. The sad thing is, I can’t tell if he’s really joking or if there’s a hint of worry there.

Now, this is just my own experience with one person out of the many current and future law school students in the United States. But it does make me worry a bit. Is it going to take longer than we thought to see out atheists elected? Should I not care if they’re closeted or not? Maybe it would be best that they sneak in this way – even though young people are becoming less religious and more accepting as atheists, we’ll still have to deal with the old peoples’ vote. I guess my personal code of conduct wouldn’t allow me to lie about such a big part of my life, and we know politicians never lie or manipulate…

So what do you guys think? When are we going to see out atheists elected? Does it even matter if we do?

Alaska!

I still can’t believe that I’m actually in Fairbanks right now. I guess I’ve been really busy all day with the meeting that it hasn’t quite sunk in yet – I’m sure once I see a moose wandering around it’ll hit me. It’s absolutely gorgeous here though. I’m used to pancake-flat Indiana, with Purdue being void of nature and full of brick monstrosities…but here it’s just hills and green everywhere. Seeing the mountains in the sort of pastel dusk colors from the plane was so awesome. I just wish I could have gotten a photo, but alas, I didn’t have a window seat.

Speaking of plane rides, mine were a bit interesting. My flight to Seattle I was sitting next to two frat guys, wearing their letters and talking about a frat conference they were just at. They were nice, but I found it mildly hilarious that they were both watching the in flight movie of Confessions of a Shopaholic and seemingly enjoying it. This also made my day:

Guy1: *headbanging as if to a hard rock song*
Guy 2: Dude, what are you listening to? *touches iPod so it lights up*
Me: *looks and sees “Clocks – Coldplay”*
Guy 2: Bro, awesome.
Me: …

When we were landing in Seattle there was a rainbow! That was neat.

My flight to Fairbanks was also interesting. I was wearing my non-theist shirt again (I just can’t get enough drama, I guess) and the middle aged guy next to me started talking to me. First he tells me he’s from Utah. Hmmm. Then he says he has 8 siblings. Alarm bells start going off in my head. Then he says he spent a 2 year mission trip in Boston for the LDS church. Yep. Thankfully he either didn’t read my shirt, didn’t understand it, or didn’t care because he never mentioned anything. It was still a little awkward. Mainly I just didn’t want to get into any sort of religious discussion, especially since it was about 3 am my time and I just wanted to go to bed.

Alright, off to the social at the campus pub. Seriously, why don’t we have an official campus pub? Lucky!

Atheist Shirt & Airports

I mentioned before I left that I may wear my atheistic club t-shirt for my return trip home as a sort of social experiment. I’m not sure what I really expected – maybe some funny looks or the occasional glare. The front of the shirt isn’t too in-your-face just because the font is sort of small, but the back is kind of provocative: it has Robert Ingersoll’s quote “The history of intellectual progress is written in the lives of infidels.”
Well, I wore it. Caught the bus to the Pullman, Washington airport (tiny place, only conference people leaving) then left for Seattle. Then Seattle to Chicago, then desperately running to my plane to go to Indianapolis (made it!). I hadn’t noticed any reactions, really. This could be for a couple reasons. One, I was working on four hours of sleep, so maybe I wasn’t as perceptive as usual. Two, the back of the shirt is the more controversial side and I don’t have eyes in the back of my head, so maybe I missed all of the glares. Or three, people in airports are too busy worrying about their own flights to care about some chick’s atheist shirt.

As I was getting off of my plane in Indianapolis, a guy probably in his late 30s or early 40s moved in front of me, turned to me looking at my shirt, and mumbled something. All I heard was “*mumble* shirt.” For all I knew, it could have been “nice shirt” or “fucking shirt” or who knows what. I just sort of smiled awkwardly, but then he kept talking.

“Non-theist, eh? So is that not quite an atheist?” he asked. When I’m talking to people where I don’t know their views on issues, I tend to give very dictionary-like answers. “Well, non-theist is an umbrella term for atheists, agnostic, or other nonreligious people. It includes all of them.” “Hmm, what’s that other one?” he asked. “Secular…secular something.” “Secular humanist?” “Yeah, that’s it! Well, cool shirt, I like it.” I felt really relieved at that point. “You don’t know how good it is to hear someone say they like it. I get the opposite response more often.” He laughed and we walked to the baggage claim together. It only took about a minute for me to be sure that he was some sort of non-theist. We ended up discussing Dawkins, Dennett, various atheist philosophy, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and my work with the club. Apparently his dad was a philosophy of religion professor, so he actually knew more than your average non-activist atheist might. We ended up talking for nearly 20 minutes (baggage took forever) and it was pretty awesome.

I’ll probably never see this guy ever again, but it was really fulfilling to randomly meet another nonreligious person who you could have a civil conversation with. I guess that’s why I like wearing the shirt to begin with. I don’t want to get the glares and dirty looks, which I have certainly gotten. I still remember the mother with three small children who was staring at me like I had horns growing out of my head. No, I put up with the dirty looks for the rare friendly one. Those make it totally worth it.

Social experiment a success =)

(Also, related post by Hemant on reactions to atheist shirts)

Heathen Mecca

Conference is going well so far. Saw talks by Eugenie Scott, David Sloan Wilson, and some professors I’m interested in for grad school who were really nice. Also saw an awesome professor from Canada who gave his whole talk (titled Origins & maintenance of sex: The evolutionary joy of self sex) not wearing shoes (yay hippie evolutionists). Though the best thing by far is how often people giggle about creationism and Intelligent Design, how people joke about us all being heathens and atheists, how when people refer to religion or religious people they’re doing so as outsiders like religion is this weird cultural phenomena (instead of actually believing it)… For the first time, I am somewhere where I am an atheist and I am a part of the majority. I can’t explain how awesome that feels. Thank you, Evolution 2009.

Maybe one day I’ll feel this way all the time. Maybe I just need to move to England.

Pirate Jen!

Ok, those photos of me modeling our club shirt I posted yesterday were absolutely horrible. So horrible I feel like I need to redeem myself. Here, have some photos of me from our Pastafarian preaching from Talk Like a Pirate Day 2008. Like always, click for larger images.

Drawing the posters was fun <3Notice my developing sunburn. Wasn’t fun.I love my club members so much.

Leavin on a jet plane, etc etc

Well tomorrow I’ll leave my apartment at 7:30 am and won’t be back until 7 pm on Wednesday the 17th for Evolution 2009, wooo! Because I care about you guys so much, I’ve set up autoposts for every day I’m gone to show you some random fun videos I like. Don’t want to leave you without updates for a week! I’ll have limited internet access through my phone and some public computers at the conference, but don’t expect too much. Even though my phone has a keyboard, I don’t think I could tolerate typing more than a paragraph, haha. I’ll make sure to tweet a sadface when I’m standing outside the Discovery Institute. Don’t worry, the lack of updates will be made up with the billion stories and photos I’ll probably have when I get back.

Somewhat related, should I wear my club t-shirt on my various plane rides home? Photos of the atheistic beauty here… I mean the shirt, not the model. I look like I’m on uppers in the first photo and downers in the second one, wtf. Anyway, might make a neat social experiment. Where do I get the most dirty/confused looks: Pullman, Seattle, Chicago, or Indianapolis? …I think I know the answer to that one already.

Edit: Here, have a photo of where I’m going. Pretty, isn’t it?

Wanting to believe

People have a lot of different reasons for being religious or believing in God. Since I was raised in a secular household, I have to admit I don’t really understand most of them – I’ve never had the experience of being religious. But there’s one argument that I always have conflicting thoughts about: “Wanting to believe.”

I was hanging out/on a pseudo-date with a friend/guy/whatever you want to call him (it’s complicated, take that however you wish). He was raised religious, but now is one of those wishy washy deist/Buddhist/spiritual types. He’s totally cool with my atheism, but he was telling me a story about a priest he saw give a talk. The priest said he witnessed an exorcism where the girl was floating a foot above the ground. I gave him one of my Uh Huh, Sure looks.

Guy: But the way he told the story with such conviction…it made me want to believe, you know?
Me: Wanting to believe in something and that something being true are two entirely different things.
Guy: Does it matter if it’s true if it gives you something good to believe in?
Me: *gives him the I Don’t Want to Debate Religion While Snuggling look*
Guy: *shuts up*

That’s the argument that always gets me. Does it matter? My mom is the same way. I’d call her an agnostic theist/deist – she doesn’t believe in the more supernatural stuff like virgin birth and walking on water and all that, but she wants to believe in something. “What does it hurt?” she’ll say, and I know it’s true that it comforts her. When her friend passed away unexpectedly a couple years ago, she took comfort in the idea that she was in “a better place.”

She’s also pretty superstitious, which she gets from my Greek grandparents. She told me how a couple months after said friend’s passing, she was watching the news and the pick three lotto numbers were her friend’s birthday. “It’s a sign!” she said. I paused, wondering if I should say anything and risk upsetting her. “It’s not that unlikely that those three numbers would come up together. This looks special, but you don’t remember the hundreds of other lottos where the numbers meant nothing to you.” She rolled her eyes. “Whatever, let me believe what I want to believe. I think it’s a sign!” I left it at that.

Don’t get me wrong, I think we’d have a lot less worries if the religious population was dominated by deists and agnostic theists. Most of them seem benign enough that I’m not inclined to debate them – I mean, they’re not the ones flying planes into buildings and trying to pass religious laws, right? But at the same time, the idea of believing in something just to comfort yourself, even if you have no reason to believe it’s true, bothers me. I like being a scientific thinker. I need evidence for what I believe to be true, and when better evidence comes along, I’m willing to admit that I was wrong and adjust my views. So do you let people go on believing in something you see as a delusion, just so they can be happier? If your friend was convinced their beat up clunker was actually a red hot Porsche and that made them the happiest guy alive, would you point out that he’s wrong? Or do you just bite your tongue? Is it okay if he keeps it to himself, but once he starts bragging you should tell him what you think?