Another religious resolution wasting our congressmen's time

Via Friendly Atheist:

Rep. Randy Forbes (R-VA) sponsored House Resolution 397 yesterday, titled “Affirming the rich spiritual and religious history of our Nation’s founding and subsequent history and expressing support for designation of the first week in May as “America’s Spiritual Heritage Week” for the appreciation of and education on America’s history of religious faith.”

Oh, you know it’s going to be good. Most of the quotes are either misinformed, scary, or just plain stupid (go to Friendly Atheist for examples), but let’s look at my favorite one in particular:

“Whereas in 1853, the United States Senate declared that the Founding Fathers ‘had no fear or jealousy of religion itself, nor did they wish to see us an irreligious people . . . they did not intend to spread over all the public authorities and the whole public action of the nation the dead and revolting spectacle of atheistical apathy’”

…Wow, just wow. Can a congressman seriously not see the problem with this statement? Maybe if we reword it a bit he can take a hint:

“revolting spectacle of Jewish greed”
“revolting spectacle of Islamic violence”
“revolting spectacle of Christian intolerance”
“revolting spectacle of Hindu cow worship” (okay, I kind of got nothing here)

Since when is it okay to single out a group of American citizens and call them revolting with a stereotype? If any of these other groups had been mentioned, you can be sure as hell people would be all over his ass about it. This is why we need atheist activism – not because we’re on a crusade to convert people, but because we don’t want to be the punching bag for religious people.

EDIT: Ok, apparently I can’t read and I missed the fact that that awful phrase was written in 1853, not as a new part of the resolution. Still, it shows a lack of judgment to include it in the resolution, so I stand by my snarky comments.

Another religious resolution wasting our congressmen’s time

Via Friendly Atheist:

Rep. Randy Forbes (R-VA) sponsored House Resolution 397 yesterday, titled “Affirming the rich spiritual and religious history of our Nation’s founding and subsequent history and expressing support for designation of the first week in May as “America’s Spiritual Heritage Week” for the appreciation of and education on America’s history of religious faith.”

Oh, you know it’s going to be good. Most of the quotes are either misinformed, scary, or just plain stupid (go to Friendly Atheist for examples), but let’s look at my favorite one in particular:

“Whereas in 1853, the United States Senate declared that the Founding Fathers ‘had no fear or jealousy of religion itself, nor did they wish to see us an irreligious people . . . they did not intend to spread over all the public authorities and the whole public action of the nation the dead and revolting spectacle of atheistical apathy’”

…Wow, just wow. Can a congressman seriously not see the problem with this statement? Maybe if we reword it a bit he can take a hint:

“revolting spectacle of Jewish greed”
“revolting spectacle of Islamic violence”
“revolting spectacle of Christian intolerance”
“revolting spectacle of Hindu cow worship” (okay, I kind of got nothing here)

Since when is it okay to single out a group of American citizens and call them revolting with a stereotype? If any of these other groups had been mentioned, you can be sure as hell people would be all over his ass about it. This is why we need atheist activism – not because we’re on a crusade to convert people, but because we don’t want to be the punching bag for religious people.

EDIT: Ok, apparently I can’t read and I missed the fact that that awful phrase was written in 1853, not as a new part of the resolution. Still, it shows a lack of judgment to include it in the resolution, so I stand by my snarky comments.

Swine flu? Kill the piggies!

Whenever you have outbreaks of mysterious, potentially deadly diseases, it’s extremely important to stay rational and not overreact. For example, you can see Egypt’s extremely logical decision to slaughter all 300,000 of its pigs.

Aside from the obvious point that we have human to human transmission now, so new infection from pigs isn’t exactly the problem…but how do they think actively slaughtering all of their pigs is actually going to reduce contact with pigs? Doesn’t the act of slaughtering actually increase contact with pigs? Since you kind of need to touch them in order to chop them up and all?

I feel bad that so many animals are going to die because a government decides to overreact about a situation. Yes, they would have eventually been killed for food anyway. And the government is still allowing the farmers to sell the pork meat…but is anyone going to actually buy it? Look at the economics of the issue – it’s all about supply and demand (the one thing I remember from AP Econ!). Suddenly there’s going to be insane amount of pork in the market, with very low demand. 90% of Egypt is Muslim and can’t eat pork anyway, the other 10% are probably silly enough to think you can get swine flu from eating pork or will probably just be sick of eating pork for every meal of the day. These farmers are going to have to give the stuff away. Not only is it a waste of piggie life, but it’s a waste of money to the farmers.

I wonder if the decision has any direct ties to religion. Maybe an extremely Muslim nation doesn’t care as much about killing a dirty animal they can’t eat and that’s only raised by the non-Muslim minority.

I also wonder if this means bacon will be on sale. That would be about the only perk of this whole swine flu scare. Mmmm bacon.

Breaking News: Right Wing Religious Nut Jobs believe whatever they want to believe

Shocking, I know.

So, most of you have probably seen the disturbing and stupid anti-gay marriage video released a little while ago by NOM. If not, crawl out from whatever rock you’ve been living under, explore the internet a bit, and watch it. Stephen Colbert, in his infinite genius, created a parody…er, I mean, very serious follow up video, which is hilarious and will make you feel a little better after watching the original.

The funniest part? NOM thanked Stephen Colbert for making the parody. Not only do they think he’s a conservative pretending to be a liberal pretending to be a conservative (wrap your head around that wishful thinking), but they’re glad he gave them the attention. Even though, you know, he was basically calling them all either ignoramuses or hypocritical closet cases. But it’s cool, because there’s no such thing as bad publicity, right?

Oh doublethink, you are an amazing and frightening thing.

PS: I hate all of you who want me to suffer through the Ken Ham book, but I’ll probably do it. What are friends for if they don’t encourage us to do horrible things? Maybe I’ll read a good book first to offset the nonsense.

Is "New Atheism" White Supremacist?

Apparently someone thinks so. Since my initial response of “WTF” isn’t too educated, I’m going to break down my reply.

But I’m no longer okay with atheist evangelizing. Firstly, I’m not okay with evangelizing, period. I don’t care if you’re a fundamentalist Christian, an agnostic Buddhist, or Richard Dawkins, I want you to leave me the fuck alone. You do it your way and I’ll do it mine.

You know what, once atheists start knocking on doors, trying to get schools to teach that there is no god, and threatening people with suffering and harm if they don’t convert, then I’ll agree with you. But atheist “evangelizing” in no where near the same as Christian (for example) evangelizing. What horrible things has Richard Dawkins done? Wrote a book that no one is forced to buy or read? Give talks that no one if forced to attend? I don’t think I’ve seen him on a college campus with a microphone shouting “There is no god, you bloody twits!” And you know, even if he did, he has the right to do that. Just like any other person you don’t agree with, you can just stop listening to them.

I’m happy to talk to politics with you, but my religious practice — which harms no one and in no way impinges on any other person’s rights — is really, really none of your business. I don’t care if the origin myth you’re peddling comes from science or from mythology. I don’t care how much history or evidence is on your side. I just want to be left in peace; I will do the same for you.

Again, once religious practices DO stop harming people and impinging on others rights, maybe we’ll shut up a bit. My goal as an atheist isn’t to convert people – if it doesn’t affect others and it makes them happy, so be it. But while planes are still being flown into buildings, while people are being fired at work for being atheists, while myths are being taught over science to our children, while gay marriage is having a hell of a time being legalized, your beliefs become my business because you’re not keeping them to yourself.

And as I said before, religious beliefs are no different than political beliefs. They don’t deserve any sort of special treatment, and should receive criticism like anything else.

The big reason, though, is that atheist advocates a la Dawkins and the rest are ethnocentric, colonialist cultural supremacists. When Dawkins says that sending a kid to Sunday school is child abuse, or that reasonable, tolerant, law-abiding people who happen to be religious are enablers of violent fundamentalists, he is not merely saying that religious people should stop believing in God/gods. He is saying that they should forfeit their culture.

Um, no. First of, do you know anything about Richard Dawkins? He, like many atheists, still joyfully celebrates Christmas complete with tree and religious songs and all the same traditions and culture that he had before he was an atheist. This past Easter many people commented on all the egg finding and bunny eating and family gathering that was going on. What’s the difference? We can still enjoy the culture we were raised in without cheapening it with supernatural nonsense.

The implicit claim here is that wealthy, white, Western secularism culturally neutral, the norm. And that’s bullshit. White, Western secularism is as much a subjective human culture as any other. There is no neutral. You can give up your ancestral culture, but it will be replaced. It will be replaced by white Western capitalism. This is what the atheist evangelists are advocating (or, if you prefer, advocating implicitly and spectacularly failing to disavow): assimilation.

Well, I disagree with you, but apparently since I’ve been implicitly advocating this all along, let me take a moment to disavow it: assimilation sucks. Culture and tradition are important. But, I have one caveat. Just because something is a tradition doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s good or that we have to keep doing it. For example, prayer at public high school and college graduations. If the school’s principal or President argues “tradition” for keeping it, that is a giant cop-out and unwillingness to deal with separation of church and state (and not just for the sake of nonbelievers, but for minority religions as well).

Now that that’s out of the way (probably not), I’m not quite sure how atheism = capitalism. I openly admit that I am woefully uneducated about anything economic, so if I’m off base here, let me know. But I know from our club, a good chunk of our members are socialists or anarchists, aka, Very Much So Not Capitalists. Our current treasurer has a hernia if anyone says anything remotely pro-capitalist. But really, I have no idea what rejecting supernatural belief has to do with economic practices anyway, so this just seems like a random stretch to me.

And I refuse. I refuse to replace Judaism with capitalism. I refuse to replace my traditional foods with McDonalds. I refuse to replace my history with the vulgar lie of pilgrims and pioneers sweeping across an empty continent. I refuse to believe the claim that wealthy white men are the most evolved, the most enlightened; I refuse to believe the claim that white culture is superior.

Good for you! Keeping your culture is great! My Jewish atheist friends still call themselves Jewish. I’d pick yuvetsaki or pastichio or tiropita or anything delicious food from my Greek heritage over a greasy burger. I’m pretty sure most atheists don’t advocate rewriting history with lies either, since we’re kind of concerned…um…with truth.

And pigs will fly to the moon and back before you hear Richard Dawkins say anything along the lines of wealthy white men being the most evolved. That’s just…there are so many things wrong with that statement, I don’t know where to begin. Do you know anything about evolution? The vast majority of evolutionary biologists would never make such a claim because it’s undeniably false – and when some idiot does try to insinuate something racist by using biology (Watson, I’m looking at you), they get torn apart and shunned by their fellow biologists and atheists.

And I’m still not getting where this “white culture is superior” thing is coming from. Can I get a quote of Dawkins saying that, please? Because until then, I can’t help but think of Christian slave owners making their slaves leave their tribal religions, or Christian missionaries today going to Africa and changing their culture, or our Christian-motivated government under Bush “freeing” Iraqis…and then all the atheists who have stood up and said This Is Bad.

If you think my attachment to my culture is a problem (even though I agree with you about every important political issue!), you’re a white supremacist.

Well, thankfully I don’t think your attachment to your culture is a problem. Culture can be good! But I just hope you don’t really mean that anyone who disagrees with you about the rest of your comments is a white supremacist, because that’s just silly and unproductive.

Lastly, it’s another lie that religion is the problem. Yes, religious fundamentalism (like all fundamentalism) is extremely destructive, and many innocent people have been killed in the name of religion. But secular, capitalist Western “democracy” is, today, just as destructive a force. This system is literally destroying the world as we know it — just ask a polar bear.

Me: Hey Mr. Pol
ar Bear, those shrinking ice
caps sure do suck, huh?
Mr. P. Bear: Why yes, Jennifer, they do. They make me a sad panda-I mean, polar bear.
Me: But has anyone tried to help you out?
Mr. P. Bear: Well, yes! Most of the people who are trying to help are scientists, many of which are atheists. And even non-scientist atheists realize this is a huge problem because this is the only life they have!
Me: But what about the religious people?
Mr. P. Bear: Well, a lot of them think that God gave man dominion over all the plants and animals on earth, so they feel they can do whatever they want to us. And they think any sort of catastrophic end is God’s plan through Armageddon, so they don’t want to stop it!
Me: Well golly gee! I guess it’s all the atheists faults for magically promoting capitalist democracy somehow!
Mr. P. Bear: Logically.

Ahem.

Now, does atheism have a hard time attracting and keeping minorities? Yes, I would say so. The movement is disproportionately white males. I know in our own club it’s only about 10% female, and probably 99% white. But is this because atheists are inherently racist and sexists? I’d argue no (though there are always a couple bad seeds in any sort of group). And if I had to give my best guess why this is (which is just a guess, I admit I’m not an expert) it’s that religion is such an important aspect of culture for these groups. So yes, culture is an issue to an extent…but that’s because people assume (like the person above) that atheism means abandoning your culture. No! You don’t have to. And even if you don’t want to keep your same old traditions but you need something, more and more atheist groups are forming to fill that void.

So do I think militant atheism is white supremacist? No. But of course, I guess that makes me a white supremacist. Darn.

A Community of Churches?

So during my drive to my brother’s for Easter (I wasn’t driving, so no murderous road rage, promise!) we passed by the town for South Holland, IL. As I was peering out the window, I noticed their slogan on their water tower and cursed myself for not getting a photograph. But thankfully the powers of the internet have saved me once again:
In case you can’t read that, it says “South Holland: Faith, Family Future.” The other side of the water tower, which I couldn’t find a photo of, said “A community of churches” and showed two hands clasped in prayer.

…So, separation of church and state, eh? Are towns seriously allowed to do that? Maybe the word “Faith” alone isn’t too bad – while the connotation is definitely religious, you could argue the town supports faith in their children, their neighbors, their basketball team…whatever. I’ll let it slide. But “A community of churches” with stereotypical Christian imagery is certainly promoting not just religion over nonreligion, but specifically Christianity. It doesn’t say “A community of churches, mosques, temples, mandirs, atheistic coffee houses, etc.”

Is it okay for a town to label itself like this? I’m not sure I’d feel comfortable if I lived there, being constantly reminded by a giant water tower that I’m not a part of my town’s supposed virtues. What do you think?

EDIT: Here’s a link to their website, which also uses the slogan.

Sperm Bank Sued for Supplying Bad Sperm

I don’t have any professional training in ethics or law, but I can tell this is sure going to open up a can of worms. A 13 year old girl with Fragile X syndrome, which can lead to varying degrees of learning disability, is suing a sperm bank under product liability law. The sperm she was conceived with, which her mother bought from the bank in question, carried the genetic disorder (genetically, it’s fairly easy to show it didn’t come from mom).

“Donovan does not have to show that Idant was negligent, only that the sperm it provided was unsafe and caused injury. “It doesn’t matter how much care was taken,” says Daniel Thistle, the lawyer representing Donovan, based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.”

According to Wikipedia (which we know is infallible), sperm donors may be subjected to various levels of genetic testing. Does anyone know if there are laws requiring them to test for certain disorders? I’d imagine some would be a good idea to test for, especially if they’re dominantly inherited and late-onset like Huntington’s*. Most recessive alleles are rare enough that there’s not as much reason to test – that is, the odds of two random people carrying the same allele is incredibly low. At first glance you may think it’s a good idea to hold sperm banks responsible for testing. I mean, you’re selling a product, and you don’t want to give someone a horrible disease, right?

Well, things aren’t as simple as they seem. No two sperm are identical, and errors do occur. A single point mutation that occurs at extremely high rates is the cause of the most common form of dwarfism. A one in a million occurrence isn’t going to show up in any sort of genetic testing you may do on a semen sample. The same holds true for any sort of disorder that results from aberrant chromosome number (Down Syndrome, Klinefelter’s Syndrome, etc).

Even family history can’t always alert us to a problem. This girl’s situation is the perfect example. Fragile-X is a dominant X-linked disorder, so you should be able to see it in males, right? Well, not exactly. Fragile-X is caused by having too many trinucleotide repeats, much like Huntington’s. Trinucleotide repeats like to do this thing called genetic anticipation, where in every generation they expand and make more and more copies. So while daddy’s repeat number (and all of his family members’) may be in the “normal” range, after expansion, there may be enough repeats to cause the syndrome. The number can also vary from sperm to sperm, so there’s no good way to test this.

So you can see why if she wins, this is going to set a scary precedent. Sperm banks can screen like crazy, but there’s always the possibility of getting some bad sperm. It’s ridiculous to think you can sue them because something turns out wrong. Anyone who’s ever reproduced is taking that same risk. In fact, it’s probably lower because most people don’t do genetic screening unless there’s reason to be afraid. Sperm bank sperm is probably a safer bet than your man. So, should you be able to sue your spouse for providing bad genetic material? I certainly don’t think so, but who knows…maybe the ensuing paranoia over reproducing would help fight our overpopulation problem.

Let’s hope the judge on this case has some basic understanding of genetics.

*Of course, then you get into the whole ethical debate about whether or not to notify the donor or his children if he does have Huntington’s…but that’s a whole other issue.

Texas legislator asks Asians to change their names…

…so that they are “easier for Americans to deal with.” Um, what? I think these quotations speak for themselves:

Brown suggested that Asian-Americans should find a way to make their names more accessible.

“Rather than everyone here having to learn Chinese — I understand it’s a rather difficult language — do you think that it would behoove you and your citizens to adopt a name that we could deal with more readily here?” Brown said.

I may be wrong, but I thought the way we used to make immigrants change their names to calm our xenophobic fears was now viewed as Not A Very Cool Idea. I think Brown might have missed the memo somewhere. But really, do you need to be fluent in a language to say someone’s name? How would she feel if she lived in China and was forced to change her name to something more Chinese? I’m no mind reader, but I’m going to guess she wouldn’t be thrilled.

You know, I’m sure this was just some dumb thing she said. She’s probably apologized already.

Brown spokesman Jordan Berry said Brown was not making a racially motivated comment but was trying to resolve an identification problem. Berry said Democrats are trying to blow Brown’s comments out of proportion because polls show most voters support requiring identification for voting. Berry said the Democrats are using racial rhetoric to inflame partisan feelings against the bill.

“They want this to just be about race,” Berry said.

Orrrr she can just refuse to admit she said anything wrong. That’s cool. What the hell?

How does she not think singling out Asians is a problem? There are plenty of European names that are hard to pronounce. Are we going to put a limit on how many consonants can appear in a row without a vowel? Watch out, Polish people! Or how about silent letters? I guess I’ll be deleting half of my last name, damn those Irish! Thank you, Betty Brown, for coming up with standards over what’s an acceptable American name and what isn’t.

Yay Vermont!

Vermont is the next state to legalize gay marriage, and the first do to so through the legislature instead of the courts. It was a big win too. “The vote was 23-5 to override in the state Senate and 100-49 to override in the House. Under Vermont law, two-thirds of each chamber had to vote for override.” Vermont’s not quite as much of a shock as Iowa, but still great nonetheless!

I really hope we see a snowball effect, with more and more states allowing gay marriage. I wonder if we can thank Prop 8 for getting the rest of the nation worked up enough to do something about it. Would be an ironic, lovely twist.

Can you spot the differences?

Look closely:

Still can’t tell? Israel’s two female ministers were photoshopped out and replaced with men. Wow, just wow. Apparently this ran in an extremely Orthodox paper, but still. I think the cynical (or realistic) among us expect the media to twist/bend/distort the facts, but rewriting history? That’s sort of a big no-no.

I guess when you’re upset that your country is progressing in terms of gender equality and there’s nothing you can do about it, all you have left to do is pretend it’s not happening.

(via Feministe)