Chapman developments: letters, protests, and interviews, oh my!

You’ll remember that a little over a week ago I talked about a Bert Chapman, a Purdue Professor who blamed homosexuals spreading AIDS for our bad economy, amongst other ignorant and hateful drivel. There have been a lot of developments at Purdue since then, but sadly I’ve been a bit behind in the coverage because I’ve been busy (you know, classes, grad school, PZ Myers coming – those minor things). Here’s a quick run down of what’s been going on:

1. Lots of letters have been written about the incident to our local student newspaper, the Exponent. The first wave of letters called Chapman out, the next wave said we were trying to censor him, and the third wave demonstrated how little people understand sarcasm, and the most recent letter from many Purdue librarians (not Chapman) note they support equal rights. The Exponent itself also weighed in, and I pretty much agree with them (free speech is free speech, we can criticize him all we want, but we shouldn’t be calling for him to be fired).

2. Today there was a protest in the Stewart Center, outside the library where Chapman works. I was unable to stop by because I had class all day, but another Purdue student wrote a good review of what happened.

3. A reporter from the IndyStar newspaper emailed me, saying he read my blog post on the matter (woo!) and wanted to interview me. I said sure, and did a little phone interview about the whole incident. Of course right after I hung up, I thought of all the things I wanted to say – oh well! If it gets covered, I’ll let all of you know.

Graduate School Tips?

If you follow me on twitter, you probably know that I’ve been freaking out about grad school lately because I’m applying to get my PhD…somewhere. It’s not so much change that scares me – I just really, really, really hate the unknown. It drives me insane not knowing where I’ll be living or what I’ll be studying in less than a year. Once I’m accepted and have made my decision, I know I’ll be incredibly excited. I’m contacting professors now, but it’s still driving me nuts. My current professor suggested I send snail mail, since emails either go to junk mail or get accidentally ignored most of the time. Hopefully I’ll get some responses.

For those of you who are in grad school or successfully made it through, do you have any advice? How to pick a professor/lab group/school? Red flags to look out for? How to survive without going insane? Awesome people studying the genetics and evolution of human sexual behavior (such a broad topic, I know)?

An interesting run-in

Last night the Hot Date* and I were wasting time around Borders before The Men Who Stare At Goats began (which was excellent and skeptic-y, by the way). I pointed out all the different biology books that I’ve been meaning to read (“…Why are there so many biology books about sex?” “…Do you need a reason?”), we flipped through the Book of Genesis illustrated by R. Crumb, and then of course we ended up in the sex section giggling like preteens. That’s where I found a much better version of the Bible, complete with old and new testaments!

After we were standing there for a while, a female student came up to me. “Jennifer?” she asks. “Yes?” “Jennifer McCreight?” “Er, yes?” I didn’t recognize her, but a lot of times random people I don’t know very well from the club say hi to me, so I thought maybe that was the case. She smiled and introduced herself very politely, then added “I’m from the Stewart Cooperative.”

I’ll be honest that my first thought was “Oh shit.” If you don’t remember why, the Stewart Cooperative was the group that put on the infamous Porn and Popcorn event that I tore to shreds on my blog a while back. In person I’m pretty non-confrontational, so I was kind of afraid that I was about to get drawn into a debate (though Hot Date probably would have found it amusing).

But then she surprised me. She apologized for the event and agreed that the message of Porn and Popcorn was bad. She thanked me for writing the review, and said that after reading it she realized how stupid some of the things were that were said. Apparently it was passed around the women of the cooperative, and many agreed with my opinions (though I still have my enemies, which is totally understandable). I commented that part of it was out of their hands – they don’t know exactly what a speaker is going to say when they get up there. She said that the event was suggested and coordinated mainly by alumni, and that many of the current Stewart women didn’t entirely realize what it was about, and that in the future they don’t want such things to happen. She also mentioned she still reads my blog – so hello, and thank you for being so nice!

I’m always incredibly pleased when a run-in like this happens. I have to say, I have significantly more positive run-ins than negative ones, even with people who I think are about to go off on me. It makes me feel that even when I think I’m just ranting, it can actually do some good.

Oh, and as a side note, of course she found me when I was tittering at some sex book. Way to confirm stereotypes about myself, haha.

*Yes, I find it incredibly fun to keep him secret from all of you guys Wilson-style. I’m weird.

PZ Myers to Speak at Purdue University

Big atheist news for anyone within driving distance of West Lafayette, Indiana:

Dr. PZ Myers will be giving a talk titled “A Few Things I’ve Learned from Creationists,” which will be a biting and entertaining survey of bad ideas from those who oppose evolution.

Thursday, Nov 12
6:00 – 7:45 PM
Class of 1950 Lecture Hall Room 224 (main lecture room)
Oval Drive, West Lafayette, IN
Free, open to public
Free parking available at 3rd St and Grant St Parking Garages after 5pm

PZ Myers is a biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota, Morris. He writes about science and atheism at an extremely popular blog, Pharyngula. PZ is known for unabashedly dealing with religion and creationism, and has ruffled more than a few feathers by speaking out against the Creation Museum, mocking the movie Expelled, and desecrating a Eucharist (just to name a few things).

Sponsored by the Society of Non-Theists at Purdue University

Hooray! Yours truly is President of the club, so you’ll get the added benefit of meeting me (though I’ll know who you’re really coming for, it’s okay).

Facebook event for the lecture is here; RSVPing isn’t necessary, but it’ll give me a nice head count and make me happy.

I also get the added bonus of picking up PZ at the airport, huzzah! And if his flight is delayed at all (it’ll be cutting it close), I get the other added bonus of frantically driving PZ while praying to the Flying Spaghetti Monster that I don’t crash and kill a famous and beloved atheist/blogger.* No pressure.

*I should note that I’m joking and I’m seriously a good driver. Really. …

Purdue Professor: Gays wasting our money on AIDS research

Multiple Purdue students have alerted me to a blog post by Bert Chapman, Government Information & Political Science Librarian and Professor of Library Science at Purdue University. He’s caused quite a stir amongst progressive students at Purdue after making a blog post claiming homosexuals are hurting the economy by making us fund AIDS research and making insurance companies and businesses acknowledge their partnerships. To fully appreciate his woeful ignorance, let’s go through his post with some commentary by yours truly:

An Economic Case Against Homosexuality

As a Christian, I agree with the biblical condemnation of the homosexual lifestyle. However, we are living in a nation and world that increasingly rejects biblical norms. To defend traditional sexual morality against the encroaching threat of homosexuality and other aberrant forms of sexual expression, we need to be able to do more than cite Bible verses. Fortunately, there are plenty of economic reasons for being against sodomite degeneracy and I think as conservatives we need to be able to articulate why our nation cannot afford the extremely high financial costs of this lifestyle at a time when we are confronting dangerously high budget deficits, national debt, and personal debt.

First, I want all you gay-rights supporting Christians out there to hang your head in shame for being associated with this man. Done? Okay, good. Hurray for a world that is increasingly rejecting biblical norms – that’s a good thing when people wake up and see these ancient, bigoted ideas as immoral and unfounded. At least Professor Chapman recognizes that Bible verses aren’t going to fly when it comes to public policy – especially public policy that is trying to remove rights from minorities groups. This may just be me…but using money as a guide to what rights to give what people seems pretty fucking morally bankrupt. Oh, that’s right, I’m a hippie liberal. Sorry, forgot.

Let’s start with AIDS. U.S. Government expenditures on this disease have risen from $200,000 in Fiscal Year 1980-1981 to $23.3 billion for Fiscal Year 2008. These figures have increased steadily over nearly three decades and probably exceed $100 billion. When you factor in what countries all over the world have spent on seeking to diminish this disease, without recognizing the morally aberrant sexual behavior causing its spread, we are probably looking at expenditures of over $1 trillion dollars. Think of how much constructively such money could have been spent on public health issues such as improved sanitation, immunizations, and other more worthwhile programs instead of promoting immoral and self-destructive behavior through needle exchanges and widespread condom distribution. The money wasted on AIDS research could be returned to taxpayers or transferred to more worthwhile areas of public health research such as cancer, heart disease, and combating pandemic conditions like H1N1 flu. Our ongoing U.S. political debate over health care reform also needs to factor in the economic costs of homosexual and other sexually deviant behaviors on our health care system in terms of pharmaceutical drugs, tainted blood supplies, and requiring doctors and nurses to treat sexually transmitted diseases which would not occur if people practiced chastity outside of heterosexual marriage and monogamy within such marriage.

…I’m just take this one step at a time.

1. “Probably” exceeds a $100 billion? “Probably” over $1 trillion? I understand this was probably just some spontaneous blog post, but it doesn’t really help your argument when you’re just making up numbers.

2. AIDS IS NOT A GAY DISEASE. Sorry for the caps lock, but this is so ignorant that it makes me scream. AIDS infects all people regardless of sexual preference – heterosexual, bisexual, homosexual. Of course, he thinks anything outside of monogamy within a heterosexual marriage is deviant, so I’m not sure he would care. Just don’t go blaming the gays for AIDs and make that your major point.

3. Condom distribution decreases the spread of AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections. Study after study has shown that abstinence only education simply does not work.

4. It pretty much terrifies me that this man is fairly obviously suggesting that anyone with AIDS or any other type of STD should just suffer or die. We shouldn’t research these diseases, we shouldn’t pay doctors to treat these diseases, we shouldn’t develop drugs for these diseases. Unfortunately, this horrifying world view isn’t new, especially among the religious right (Remember when Jerry Fallwel said, “AIDS is not just God’s punishment for homosexuals, it is God’s punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals”?). I guess it doesn’t matter if a quarter or more of our population (people with STDs) suffer or die, since they’re all the heathen liberals that deserve it.

Anyone who studies prison conditions knows that AIDS is a reality in many correctional facilities due to the occurrence of rape. I’m not sure if the Justice Dept’s Bureau of Justice Statistics keeps track of prison rape statistics or other instances of same sex sexual assault, but that also has economic implications not to mention the psychological trauma experienced by all rape victims.

I’m honestly not quite sure what this has to do with gays. Shouldn’t we be worried about, oh I don’t know, stopping rape?

The sad practice of so many companies and universities adopting domestic partner benefits in a misguided effort to attract employees drives up insurance costs for these companies and prevents them from providing additional coverage to those of us adhering to traditional sexual moral standards. It also requires these companies to pass on the costs of their goods and services beyond normal inflationary trends. Additionally, it also probably makes it more difficult for them to expand their businesses and create additional jobs in an economy coping with near double digit unemployment rates.

Yes, how dare companies give all of their employees equal rights instead of giving special privileges to the group you happen to be in. I have an idea: Why don’t we just make it so only Christian employees can receive partner benefits? According to your traditional morals, only those marriages are seen as valid in the eyes of God, so we can ignore everyone else. Yes, that seems like a lovely place to derive our reasoning. Definitely shouldn’t give benefits that promote monogamy and stable relationships.

The homosexual lifestyle also affects areas such as life insurance, estate planning, real estate, and investments as firms providing these services have to factor in how to treat same sex domestic partner issues into their cost calculations. Guess who has to pay for these increased costs and potentially lower investment returns? We do, regardless of whether or not we approve of the homosexual lifestyle. The next time some one tells you how wonderful is the “progress” gays have made in recent decades ask them if they have ever thought about the multiple economic consequences of this “progress” as described in this posting. I welcome suggestions from readers as to other possible economic costs of the homosexual lifestyle which I have forgotten.

Again, heaven forbid that everyone has equal rights. I’m not up on my fiscal policy so I don’t know if what he’s saying about rising costs is true or not, but who cares? Do we really take away the rights of a minority because it’s cheaper for the majority? Well then, better go back and institute slavery. It’ll be so much cheaper if we don’t have to pay black people wages!

I’m seriously disappointed that such a ignorant and homophobic piece could be written by a professor here at Purdue. It makes me ashamed to also call myself a Boilermaker. Much of the controversy is where his rights lie as a Purdue employee to publish such a thing. I support everyone’s freedom of speech, regardless if I agree with what they’re saying or not. However, I also believe one must be accountable for what they have said – he deserves criticism and messages of outrage. Purdue stresses tolerance and diversity, but to have a Purdue professor (a fact made available in his Bio) saying such hateful things… how would a gay student feel in one of his classes? Would gay students want to come to Purdue with such bigotry being represented?

What do you think? Should Professor Chapman just face the negative opinions of the public, or should Purdue reprimand him? Should what a professor say on his private blog have any connection to what he does at work?

Other Purdue students have also voiced their opinions on the matter:
Boilercrat Junction
The Dark Matter Effect
NEW: Politics and Pucks

Halloween!

Sorry that I’ve been somewhat absent lately, guys. I’ve been partaking in this thing called a “social life.” Yes, it’s a bit foreign to me as well. I had a Halloween party at my place last night, and I had a pretty famous date:No American Flag pin!!! Proof that Obama is a Muslim communist Anti-Christ.

You can tell my friends are pretty darn nerdy when you look at the types of costumes that were there. For example, Picard:A Scout from Team Fortress and a mad scientist:Sweeney Todd and the Penguin (sans umbrella at the time of this picture because he’s apparently double fisting drinks…):And my favorite…a lolcat:
My friends are kind of awesome.

Who Killed Jesus?

Purdue has been full of events dealing with religion lately. Yesterday I ran into this group:
Some of my club members mentioned they were on Memorial Mall on Wednesday, so when I saw they were still there, I dropped by. One of my friends blogged about his reaction, which was different than mine since he grew up Jewish. He initially thought the event was going to be something anti-Semetic since Jews are often persecuted with the explanation that they’re the ones who killed Jesus.

I ended up talking to some of the people there for about an hour. They were very nice and thoughtful, definitely not extremists or anything. I was kind of amused because a couple recognized me – they’ve read my blog (hello!). I assume this is because the pastor that’s leading their Q&A session tonight (which is what this was advertising) is Brent Aucoin, who you might remember as the pastor who visited my presentation on the Creation Museum.

That being said, I still fundamentally disagreed with what they believed (big surprise, right?). Most of the stuff we discussed has been gone over a ton by other people already, so I’ll just touch on what I thought were some of the more interesting points.

1. I really need to brush up on my philosophy/theology. Everyone has their area of expertise, and mine is definitely the evolution/creationism debate. I don’t think someone should be expected to be an expert on everything, but I feel kind of stupid when I can’t coherently discuss religion on the spot. I definitely feel more comfortable when I have a moment to reflect, which is why I like blogging. Not signing up for a debate any time soon.

2. One of their main points was that they don’t believe that salvation is works based. The most important thing is to accept Jesus and believe in God, and once you do that you will live your life accordingly. Even if you’re a good person, you would go to hell because everyone in a sinner and rejecting God is pretty much the worst thing you can do. Obviously I don’t believe God even exists or that Jesus had any supernatural abilities (I doubt if Biblical Jesus even existed), which kind of makes the point moot, but let’s just say they’re right.

On one point, I agreed with them. You don’t want people doing good acts just to be rewarded, or avoiding bad acts just so they won’t be punished. You want people acting good for goodness’s sake. But that’s where the agreement stopped. I just can’t imagine a God so full of himself that the most important thing in the universe – punishable by eternal suffering – is not worshiping him. In their point of view, God is awesome so that is awful if you don’t see his beauty – but if it’s so important, why does he even give you the ability not to believe in him? God gave us free will and the ability to do evil things, or to reason and come to the conclusion that he doesn’t exist. He also knows everything that will happen in the universe, so he knows people will end up doing things that will damn them. So didn’t God therefore do the damning?

tl;dr, free will and omnipotence makes absolutely no sense.

3. Another point they made was about how Jesus sacrificed himself to us. A member brought up an interesting point at our meeting on Wednesday, so I asked them. Is it really a sacrifice if there are no consequences for Jesus? Jesus is God and knows that when he dies, he’s going to come back from the dead and ascend to heaven, so dying really doesn’t matter. It’s like this: if a policeman pushes someone out of the way of a bus and dies, that’s a sacrifice. He saved someone else’s life at the expense of his own. But if Superman pushes someone out of the way of a bus, there’s no sacrifice because he knows he’ll be totally fine.

Their answer was that the sacrifice wasn’t death, but being pulled away from God. Jesus took on all of our past and future sins, and that brought him as far away from God as possible, which was agonizing to him. …This still doesn’t make any sense to me. Jesus is God, so how can he be brought away from himself? Even if that was somehow possible, he still knows it’s all going to be okay, since he’s God and all and knows the plan, so any agony is only temporary and not really a sacrifice. They then admitted the holy trinity doesn’t really make sense to them, which was yet something else we could agree on.

While I don’t agree with their beliefs or their reasoning, I was happy that they could intelligently talk about things. I’ve run into far too many people who belief something just because that’s what their parents told them, and they’ve never given it any thought. These people are definitely thinking, even though I think they haven’t reached the correct conclusions. They’re promoting discussion rather than just talking at you, which is always a good thing.

I’m interested to see what they say at tonight’s Q&A session – I’m guessing it’ll be similar to the discussion I had with them. Unfortunately for you guys, I’m not going to be masochistic and sit through it for your reading pleasure because I’m going on a date (amazing, I know). Sorry – unlike Jesus, I only make so many sacrifices.

Purdue’s National Secular Service Day makes local TV news

The Society of Non-Theists at Purdue University have yet again made it to the local TV news, this time for their participation in National Secular Service Day!

1. They managed to say Non-Theists correctly this time, huzzah! No more non-thesises.
2. I give up on getting people to pronounce my last name correctly (though I find it amusing that she also almost messed up “Jennifer”). Remember: McCreight is always right. It rhymes.
3. Props to my fellow members for standing awkwardly in the background while I was talking, hehe.
4. Speaking of me talking, jeez my voice sounds low. I had a cold, shut up!

The comments WLFI’s website are positive so far, too!

Awesome, we need more people like him! (Jen’s Note: Uhhh, him?)

Some of the fraternity brats should do this too.

You will never get these frat pigs sobered up long enough to pick up after their own drunken orgies, good luck getting them to clean up someone Else’s mess. Thank you, society of Non-Theists, the world would be a better place with more good people such as yourselves!

Uhhh… okay, maybe not too positive towards the fraternities, but good for us!WLFI summarized what we were doing pretty well. Eighteen members from the Society of Non-Theists went around the Chauncey Village neighborhood from 9am to 12pm picking up trash from sidewalks and business area. We weren’t allowed on the lawns of private property, unlike what the news cast said, which was kind of unfortunate. After Purdue’s awesome defeat of Ohio State Saturday afternoon and the insane partying that followed, so many places were completely trashed with beer cans and red solo cups strewn all over the grass. We tried to clean up what we could without trespassing.

Yeah, it was kind of gross sometimes. We had gloves though!

Walking back from class today, I was surprised by what a notable difference we made. Usually the remnants of a weekend remain for a while, but instead it was surprisingly clean. I was able to enjoy the beautiful fall colors without seeing Keystone Light cans mixed in with the leaves on the ground. Yes, we got positive news coverage for non-theists, but we also cleaned up the community. That’s what it’s really about. National Secular Service Day isn’t a publicity stunt – non-theists are always participating in some sort of community service, but no one ever hears about it and then they claim we don’t volunteer. By all participating on the same day, we show that you do not need religion to be an ethical person.

Purdue's National Secular Service Day makes local TV news

The Society of Non-Theists at Purdue University have yet again made it to the local TV news, this time for their participation in National Secular Service Day!

1. They managed to say Non-Theists correctly this time, huzzah! No more non-thesises.
2. I give up on getting people to pronounce my last name correctly (though I find it amusing that she also almost messed up “Jennifer”). Remember: McCreight is always right. It rhymes.
3. Props to my fellow members for standing awkwardly in the background while I was talking, hehe.
4. Speaking of me talking, jeez my voice sounds low. I had a cold, shut up!

The comments WLFI’s website are positive so far, too!

Awesome, we need more people like him! (Jen’s Note: Uhhh, him?)

Some of the fraternity brats should do this too.

You will never get these frat pigs sobered up long enough to pick up after their own drunken orgies, good luck getting them to clean up someone Else’s mess. Thank you, society of Non-Theists, the world would be a better place with more good people such as yourselves!

Uhhh… okay, maybe not too positive towards the fraternities, but good for us!WLFI summarized what we were doing pretty well. Eighteen members from the Society of Non-Theists went around the Chauncey Village neighborhood from 9am to 12pm picking up trash from sidewalks and business area. We weren’t allowed on the lawns of private property, unlike what the news cast said, which was kind of unfortunate. After Purdue’s awesome defeat of Ohio State Saturday afternoon and the insane partying that followed, so many places were completely trashed with beer cans and red solo cups strewn all over the grass. We tried to clean up what we could without trespassing.

Yeah, it was kind of gross sometimes. We had gloves though!

Walking back from class today, I was surprised by what a notable difference we made. Usually the remnants of a weekend remain for a while, but instead it was surprisingly clean. I was able to enjoy the beautiful fall colors without seeing Keystone Light cans mixed in with the leaves on the ground. Yes, we got positive news coverage for non-theists, but we also cleaned up the community. That’s what it’s really about. National Secular Service Day isn’t a publicity stunt – non-theists are always participating in some sort of community service, but no one ever hears about it and then they claim we don’t volunteer. By all participating on the same day, we show that you do not need religion to be an ethical person.

Christian group: I hate religion because…

No, this isn’t some religious rant from me. A religious student group at Purdue, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, invited me and other members of the Non-Theists to an event they were holding today on Memorial Mall. They had a black board with “I HATE RELIGION BECAUSE…” written in large red letters, and invited students to write their opinions on the board.I ended up talking to some of them for a while (even though it was really cold outside, boo Indiana weather), especially the pastor who works with the group. He explained that they wanted to generate discussion about religion so they could learn from the different viewpoints and think about why some people dislike religion. Much like our Blasphemy Day event, they wanted to let people know it was okay to criticize religion – in fact, they encourage it. They don’t want people to blindly accept what they may have grown up with, be it Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, atheism. College is a place to question things and learn about different beliefs, and that applies to religion as well.

While they said no one was disrespectful, they were sad about some of the things written on the boards…not because they were mean, but because they were true about far too many religious people. Hatred of gays, lack of acceptance of science, judging others, being hypocritical…these are all things they concede that some Christians do in fact do. This group was more of the “Christianity is about a personal relationship with God, not organized religion, just love everyone and be a good person” thing. While I still don’t agree with the supernatural aspects (we had a long discussion about my atheism*), I really don’t mind these types of theists. They’re all about being moral people and loving others, and recognize you don’t need their brand of Christianity to be moral (and eagerly agreed that atheists can be moral).

Though, this one (temporary) counter protester amused me…
Why temporary?

Him: I actually came out because I thought they were those Non-Theists saying bad stuff about religion.
Me: I’m the President of the Non-Theists.
Him: …Oh.

After his initial embarrassment, he was actually pretty nice to talk to. I tried to make a point that we can dislike some aspects of religion but still like religious people – that we’re not just a bunch of cranky rabid anti-theists. I think I made my point, since he was friendly when I left.

EDIT: See that part that’s scribbled out? Apparently a friend of mine wrote “It’s okay to be gay” there, and the guy didn’t like it so much. Yeah, great Christian tolerance there.

I made one comment that I think the event’s organizers hadn’t thought of, and they were intrigued by. When the Non-Theists do a practically identical event – actually, more innocuous because we didn’t have “I hate religion because…” as the prompt, we just let people write whatever we want – people see us as hateful. “Why are those cranky, meany-head atheists going around criticizing religion? Can’t they just leave us alone?” But when a Christian group does the same exact thing, they’re praised for it. “Yes, we should definitely be critical of hateful, ridiculous things in religion! Speak up, question things!” It’s a double standard that really shows people’s biases.

If you’d like to see what people wrote, click the close ups of the signs below. Can you guess which one is mine?
*It always amuses me when I introduce myself as an atheist to religious people. 90% of the time there’s a look of awe/confusion, then they ask me why I’m an atheist. I really need to come up with a concise reply, but there isn’t one. My atheism, like most others, developed over decades and took a lot more thought than can be summarized in a short conversation. I generally try to explain my atheism as a null hypothesis, but non-scientists don’t really appreciate that. I also had to explain how my atheism is not a faith, what purpose there is to life (none, more shocked looks), and the other general things you hear over and over again… At least they were very thoughtful about my replies.