Update: Google’s religious “censorship” spreads?

About a week ago I made a post about Google’s apparent concealment of suggestions for search terms about certain popular religions. A couple of people who work for Google (but not on Google’s suggest feature) postulated that it may merely be an odd artifact the coding, some software bug, an algorithm error, etc. The last commenter said he spread the word around Google to get some answers…and now look at this new development:I hate to jump to conclusions, but it seems mighty suspicious that “Buddhists are” and “atheists are,” the two terms I pointed out did have suggestions, now no longer do. Coincidence of another bug? Or has someone at Google been reading my blog post?

Would someone at Google like to explain what’s going on? If Google is choosing to hide these search suggestions, I don’t necessarily think it’s a bad thing. They’re not censoring the search results themselves, and as a private company they can do whatever they wish. I’m more curious behind Google’s rationale on deciding what doesn’t return a suggestion. Or if this does turn out to be some odd bug, why the heck is it acting so suspiciously?

EDIT: A reader makes an interesting comment that searching for many nationalities also fails to return suggestions. Try “Italians are” or “Mexicans are.” Seems this may by a wider attempt not to offend. Though “Greeks are” does return stuff; blatant discrimination against me!!!*

*Joking. Obviously.

Google’s religious censorship: the double standard

Anyone who has used Google before knows that when you start typing a phrase, Google will start suggesting searches for you based on common searches of other people. This can be useful, and it can also lead to some pretty wacky stuff popping up sometimes. But what happens when you combine religion and Google’s search suggestions? Let’s take a look at some major world religions:Wow, a lot of negative and critical stuff being searched, huh? Because I’m an equal opportunity offender, let’s throw in atheism too, even though it’s technically not a religion (though apparently most searchers don’t understand that).
But wait, what about Islam? Did I just forget about them? Nope – there’s just nothing to show.
Yep. Google censors the search “Islam is,” presumably so negative phrases don’t pop up. Apparently it’s okay to criticize other religions – but Islam? Oh ho ho, nooooo, we’re not opening that can of worms.

But maybe no one is searching for “Islam is,” and that’s why we don’t see it. Let’s take a look at the number of search results per term:

“Christianity is” – 2,600,000
“Judaism is” – 486,000
“Hinduism is” – 270,000
“Buddhism is” – 550,000
“Atheism is” – 548,000
“Islam is” – 14,400,000

Yes, even though “Islam is” has the most search results, it offers no search suggestion.

Maybe this is an isolated case. What happens if we look at a similar type of search term?
Huh, looking pretty empty around here. I guess this goes with the old “Respect the person, not the idea” mantra that I support. As long as Google does that for all of the groups…
Well…okay, I guess none of those things are really bad things…
Aaanndd never mind. Guess it’s still okay to pick on the ickle atheists, but not anyone else.

Let’s look at the search results:

“Christians are” – 2,600,000
“Jews are” – 7,880,000
“Muslims are” – 1,890,000
“Hindus are” – 268,000
“Buddhists are” – 95,300
“Atheists are” – 390,000

Again, an odd little correlation. Two of the terms with the lowest amount of search results are the ones that actually show search suggestions. It’s obvious Google is covering its ass and trying not to offend religious users – and you know what, as a company they have that right. And as long as they’re not censoring the actual results (which seems true, looking at the number of search results), that’s okay with me. But I think this really illustrates the attitude that surrounds criticizing religion.

We’ve gotten to the point where it’s okay to criticize everything but Islam – which is a better than not being able to criticize religion at all – but we shouldn’t be putting Islam on a special pedestal. We can’t be bullied into silence through threats and incidents like the Muhammad cartoons, because that only gives them even more power. Even something as simple as Google being afraid to highlight the searches of others (not their own personal views) shows how strongly people can fear criticizing Muslims.

And as for the search terms about individuals? I personally don’t think Google should censor anything, as it leaves silly loop holes like this. It shows which groups scare them the most – the ones with the most power – rather than any sort of logical, uniform censoring system. I don’t think Google hates atheists, but rather that they realize we won’t flip our shit at a couple of nasty search terms. It just all seems a bit ridiculous, really.

(Hat tip to Reddit for finding this)

The History of Christmas: The Case of the Missing Jesus

I know, you all are probably sick of reading Christmas related posts by now. It seems like nearly half of the posts from atheist blogs I read are about Christmas in some way or another, and it’s starting to get old. But I just read this great summary of the history of Christmas, and I wanted to pass it along. I think the author does an excellent job documenting Christmas’s pagan history, how various traditions came about, and how only recently it became a holiday about Jesus’s birth. Hearing “put the Christ back in Christmas” is driving me crazy, and this is a nice post to forward to anyone who needs a history lesson. Just a snippet:

Christmas spent the best part of 800 years as a holiday of misrule. It was the time of year to subvert natural order. Servants were crowned and lords played fools. You were allowed to kiss and cavort and roll in the hay. Drunkenness, promiscuity, and gambling weren’t just permitted, they were encouraged. You went wassailing — what we would call caroling — where the objective was to get someone to give you ale and bread in exchange for your song. If you got ale at every house, I imagine this tradition looking something like a medieval pub crawl.

Hmmm…I think we need to preserve Christmas’s true roots!

Sometimes leaving my atheist bubble unnerves me

Yesterday I went to the Purdue Christmas Show with Bryan and a couple of our friends. I really wasn’t dying to go, as I’m already starting to get Christmassed-out… but it’s a 75 year old Purdue tradition, and I felt like I should go see it once before I graduate. I have to say, I was very impressed. The student singers were fabulous, especially when they were dancing around stage in unison, and I loved the bit where they played some songs just with bells. I’m a mediocre singer and never learned how to play a instrument, so musical things always impress me.

But then came Act II, and they dialed the Jesus Factor up to 11.

Instead of everyone being dressed in comfy sweaters or sparkly dresses, all of the students wore matching church choir robes. The background changed from a wintry landscape with snowflakes to stain glass windows and crosses. Instead of dancing around stage and impressing us with their coordinated jazz hands, they stood somberly and didn’t move for the entire act. And of course, instead of songs about winter and Santa and friendship and family, it was about Jesus and God and Creation and being saved.

Oh, religion. Why must you ruin everything?

Santa apparently loves Baby Jesus too.

I know what you must be thinking: “Jen, it’s the Purdue Christmas Show. You can go on and on about how it’s just a pagan holiday co-opted by Christians and is now losing its religious meaning, but some people do associate it with the birth of Jesus. You’re going to have some religious songs.” And you’re totally right. A lot of Christmas songs that I enjoy have religious imagery, and they’re quite beautiful. I went to this show totally expecting some.

However, I think sixteen highly religious songs* in a row is kind of overkill. By the time the fourth song came on, I literally started to feel trapped. It was like I had been tricked into going to church – the hall had been made to look like a Cathedral, and all the music turned into gospel worship songs. It was definitely uncomfortable, and that’s not how I expect to feel going to a music show from a secular public University**.

Baby behind us: *wails*
Me: *turns to Bryan* That’s about how I feel right now

But as I sat there, I realized it wasn’t the context of the songs that unnerved me – it was that the vast majority of the 5,000+ people there literally believed every word of it. We could all listen to songs about Santa and enjoy them without believing that he really did come down chimneys on Christmas Eve. But when they started singing about God creating the world and sending his only son (who was himself) to save all of us, all I could think was “I’m surrounded by people who believe this nonsense.” I would have the same feeling if you told me I was in a room full of people who all thought they had been abducted by aliens, or that the world was going to end in 2012.

That’s why leaving my atheist bubble sometimes scares me. Nearly all of my friends are atheists, the one club I have time for is the Non-Theists, I read atheist blogs…so I get deluded that everybody is an atheist. Then I go to something like this and I realize I am in the minority. It’s quite a wake up call.

*Here are the songs, in case you want to judge for yourself: Angels We Have Heard on High, The First Noel, Silent Night (these first three the audience was supposed to sing along), Hark the Herald Angels Sing, Can You Hear It?, Some Children See Him, Ring the Bells, Lux Arumque, Anthem for Christmas, Emmanuel, O Come All Ye Faithful, Go Tell It On the Mountain, Joy to the World, Little Drummer Boy, Each Single Day, Silent Night (needed to hear it again, apparently)

**On that note, how does a public University get away with having a religious Christmas show? I can understand a “Holiday” show were they throw in the dradle song for good measure, but something so explicitly about Jesus? I don’t see Purdue putting on giant shows for other religions. Where’s my Happy Monkey dance number?

Local newspaper highlights atheists who celebrate Christmas

Well, this was a pleasant surprise today! The Exponent, Purdue’s student newspaper, ran a piece today on atheists and agnostics who still celebrate Christmas. As a heathen who has pretty much been listening to nothing but Christmas music for the last week, I definitely fit into that group.

“It seems that Santa Claus, rather than Jesus Christ, is the mythical figure around which Christmas is centered,” Stolyarov said.

Chris Komlos, a junior in the College of Engineering, said even though his family is agnostic they still celebrate like everyone else.

“I tend to think of it as more of a second Thanksgiving. It’s more of a family holiday than a religious one,” Komlos said. “The commercialization of Christmas is good for those who are not so religious and want a feel-good family holiday.”

Remington Roberts, a junior in the College of Technology, said Christmas is lost in the commercial aspect and is hardly religious anymore.

Roberts is atheist but his family still puts up a tree, has dinner with relatives, opens presents and hangs up stockings.

“When I was younger I questioned the meaning behind Christmas, but after I found out I just started celebrating it to be with my family,” Roberts said. “There is never any conflict between my relatives who are religious and me; I just go with the flow.”

Success! Though the one downside is the Exponent is no longer taking letters to the Editor for this semester, so no watching those “Keep Christ is CHRISTmas” people spluttering.

I’m a bit bemused, however, that the Society of Non-Theists and it’s members weren’t contacted for this story. You’d think you’d want to use your resources on campus, right? Maybe I should take this as a sign that non-theism is becoming more accepted that they don’t need to go find a local group. Or more likely (since I’ve known people who worked at the Exponent), this reporter had some heathen friends she could call up, and that was good enough research for her. Oh well, good article nonetheless!

Pin-up Priests

Apparently a traditional calendar in Rome, Calendario Romano, features hunky Roman Catholic priests. Photographer Piero Pazzi shoots these sexy men of the cloth to raise money and awareness for the Vatican. Even though it’s been nicknamed the “Vatican Beefcake Calendar,” the Holy See doesn’t endorse it and pretty much turns a blind eye. Hey, money and women* lining up for church services – it’s a win-win situation!
File this in the category of “Things that make Jen both happy and sad at the same time” (with relevant facebook groups here and here).

Unfortunately the calendar is already sold out. Darn. Guess we’ll have to stick to the Skepchick and Skepdude calendars (if they ever announce when they’re coming out!).

EDIT: Apparently there are Mormon pin-up calendars too (thanks Jake). Yowza, maybe that’s why they can only wear dorky short sleeve dress shirts and ties – to cover up their six packs. Oh, and I love how the female calendar, while sexy as hell, still manages to stereotype all women as mothers who are great at baking. Who occasionally pose seductively. Mind. Exploding.

*Shhh, let’s not mention the gays, or they may stop publishing this.
(Via Carnal Nation)

Discussion on atheism ironically demonstrates why we need discussions on atheism

On Tuesday there was an event held at Purdue University titled “A Day in the Life of: students who identify as secular or non-theist.” It was organized by various diversity offices on campus, not the Society of Non-theists, though our members were asked to sit on the panel. As stated by the event information, the purpose of the panel was “to provide an opportunity to students who identify as secular, agnostic, atheist, or non-theist to discuss campus life and experiences. The audience will be primarily composed of student services staff members with an interest in developing their understanding of all types of diversity, including (non-)religious identity.”

I can’t express how happy I am that Purdue is recognizing the needs of non-theists and including us in discussions of diversity. The more people realize that we exist, we are good people, and we face discrimination because of our lack of belief, the more we’ll be able to fight that discrimination. I unfortunately wasn’t at the panel for a certain reason, but everyone said that it was great and that they thoroughly enjoyed it.

Well, maybe not one person.

I’ll leave it to two of the panelists to describe what went down (very minor editing/splicing on my part).

Amanda:
We were probably just at the beginning of our hour and a half discussion when one audience member asked if the Non-Theists at Purdue get any hate mail. Since Jen wasn’t there, and we weren’t really sure about the hate mail specifics we answered yes, and bunny-trailed into discussing some of the letters to the editor in the exponent. A woman raised her hand to ask if the “hate mail” specifically said “I hate you”, then added that if the word “hate” wasn’t in it we shouldn’t be calling it “hate mail”. Erm…ok. At this point I had a feeling this woman was going to be belligerent and was just hoping that would be the last thing she would say…but unfortunately it wasn’t.

Alicia:
We kindly told her that it was certainly possible to express the feeling of hatred without using the word ‘hate.’ This also brought up the topic of the Society fliers being torn down or having Jesus-messages written on them. The Christian lady proceeded to tell us a random story about a church bake sale she did (she went into excruciating detail about this damn bake sale), where someone apparently approached her and really liked the brownies so he said he’d bring back some pals. He asked what it was for, and when she said it was for church, he said “Oh” very shortly and walked away, never to return. Shawn explained that every group has its radicals, including atheists, and we couldn’t really speak for this person because we didn’t know who he was or what his issues were. Kind of funny that she just assumed he was someone we could answer for.

Amanda:
More questions were asked and the discussion got moving forward again, but the woman began to monopolize the discussion, talking when other audience members clearly had questions to ask.

Alicia:
The Christian lady piped up again eventually with something along the lines of: “I think everyone in here is wondering”—(I’m pretty sure no one else in the room was wondering this)—“where you believe life comes from? Do you believe we evolved from monkeys?”

I pounced on this immediately. I am a biologist and a strong believer in evolution, and the whole “humans came from monkeys” thing is a personal pet peeve of mine. I immediately explained that no where in evolution does it state that man evolved from apes or monkeys, and this was a common and very unfortunate misunderstanding. However, I certainly believe that life evolved on Earth and that’s where humans come from. Then Tom added further explanation to that by explaining the difference between evolution, abiogenesis, and cosmology.

Amanda:
The other panelists, biologists and sciencey people in general, looked like they were holding back scoffs and I knew the question was going to take the discussion into the wrong direction; we were there to discuss the secular student experience at Purdue, not to debate evolution with someone who obviously didn’t get it at all. So, I tried to diffuse the situation by giving an answer that had nothing to do with monkeys. I said although I think evolution is the answer that makes the most sense, I feel like the specifics of how life on Earth happened don’t really matter to me. Even if someday, we knew the answer 100% for sure, it wouldn’t change my life so I don’t really care about where we came from.

This had exactly the opposite effect that I was hoping for. The woman started to look visibly upset and teary eyed when she again started talking and said “You said you don’t care about where you came from, but how can you say that? If you don’t care about where you came from, then you don’t care about yourself, and you can’t care about others. I feel sorry for you.” This was basically when shit hit the fan, and some of the other panelists and I started to get really fed up with the lady.

Alicia:
Well, Tom leapt on that immediately, and said, “That’s the kind of patronizing crap that really gets on our tits“—or something like that. I got really defensive as well, and I started to try and ask her why we need to believe in God to care about people, and she quickly claimed that she never brought God into the equation. Well, no, she didn’t say anything about God, but it was very obviously implied. I took Amanda’s statement to mean she didn’t care to understand science or evolution—not all people are interested in science, big deal. She took it to mean something way more spiritual, obviously, and was bringing God into it whether she intended to or not.

This fiasco was cut short by the moderator who said, “Not caring about the origin of life does not mean she can’t care about other people. Now, next question…”

Amanda:
Then we got to talking about the Porn and Popcorn event and I said I found the speakers at the event particularly offensive when they starting making unnecessary comments (insults) about nonbelievers. At this point we were near the very end of the discussion, and the woman just totally lost it. She started to cry again, this time she was blubbering, and said something like (it was difficult to understand, she was having trouble talking at this point)…”You said you were offended, well you offended me when you said you didn’t believe god exists.” Then she broke into more sobbing and sniffling and the other audience members started to snicker at her, or at least she thought they were snickering at her, and she yelled at them about how it wasn’t funny. At this point the moderators stepped in and ended the event early. The woman basically ran out crying, and that was the end of the discussion.

The last thing the woman said, about us offending her because we don’t believe god exists is what really got me. First of all, she voluntarily came to the discussion knowing it was called “A Day in the Life of: students who identify as secular or non-theist”. What did she expect? It seemed like with all her baiting, she just came there for an argument, and got upset when she realized the other audience members weren’t agreeing with her awesome words of wisdom. Secondly, what I supposed to do if the fact that I don’t “believe” in god, my very existence offends her? Am I supposed to crawl in a cave and let the people who believe evolution means “we came from monkeys” run the planet? I’m just disappointed that someone had to come piss in my cereal during an event that’s purpose was to promote diversity and a better understanding of atheists.

Alicia:
We stuck around for a little while afterward and spoke with the coordinators and apologized for what happened. They said we handled it well, and that they had been expecting something much worse than what they got. They also asked us if there was any way they could have handled it better, and we told them that moving the subject along was the best option. We don’t mind the questions about our beliefs or lack of religion, but letting things escalate is probably not a good idea.

Though this summary focuses on the major incident that occurred, the event as a whole went well. There were many great questions asked, such as What were your expectations as atheists when you came to Purdue?, What experiences have you had in classrooms or anywhere on campus in regards to your beliefs?, What has it been like coming out to your families?, What can Purdue do to make non-theists feel more welcome?, and Does being a female have any affect on your interactions amongst atheists? This one lady was the only audience member who reacted negatively to the panel.

I think this really demonstrates why we need to keep having discussions and panels like this and bringing our atheism out into the open. This individual, probably like many others, is so offended at the mere existence of atheists that she broke down into tears in a room full of her coworkers. As Tom mentioned to me after the event, would any of us now feel comfortable approaching her for the services of her position at Purdue? I know I’d have my reservations. But keep in mind that all the other people in the room, probably many (if not all) theists, reacted positively to the event and learned something that day. Maybe this lady did too, even though she didn’t handle it well at first. If just a fraction of the room now looks at non-theists in a new light, that’s a victory.

Thanks to all of the panelists for representing the Society, and to Amanda and Alicia for writing up their summaries.

Bigotry is okay if you have a religious excuse

As most of you probably know, equal rights took another blow after the gay marriage bill was shot down in New York. I wasn’t going to say much about it since this is becoming a sad trend in the US, and I’m running out of witty things to say. But last time people accused me of hating on Maine and no other state (apparently some people had their Sarcasm Sensors turned off – seriously, read some of those crazy comments), so I figured I needed to mention it.

New York Senators, you suck.

I’m not really sure what more I can say without repeating myself. This is sad, but I honestly think the best way to get gay marriage to pass isn’t to change minds, but to wait 10 years. Old bigots will die off, young people (who are significantly more accepting of gays) will become voters, and the tides will turn. It may be a while, but do we seriously think we can reason with people like Senator Ruben Diaz?

Diaz, the second speaker during the debate, set the tone early for the discussion about religion. “Gay marriage,” he said, “is not only opposed by us evangelicals.

“All the major religions in the world also oppose it,” Diaz, who grew up in Puerto Rico, said. “The Jewish religion opposes it. The Muslim religion opposes it. The Catholic religion opposes it.”

You know, when I hear that, the first thing I think is that there’s a problem with religion, not gays. Bah, crazy talk.

(Hat tip to Bryan)