The worst thing in the world (Tuesday edition)

Trigger warning: graphic violence and extreme racism. Also, Republicans.

There was a subtle visual gag in an episode of The Simpsons where a Fox News chopper flies by the camera with a “new” slogan emblazoned on the side:

The chopper says "Fox News: Not racist, but #1 with racists"

This is more or less how I feel about political conservatism. I don’t believe that racism and political liberalism are antithetical – indeed, the racism one hears from liberals is often the most frustrating in that it is subtle and well-meaning, but no less damaging. That being said, there is a special relationship between conservatism and racism – a relationship we are beginning to understand. Conservatives will complain until they are blue in the face* that they are not racist, that liberals are the “real racists”, that calling someone “a racist” is just as bad as being racist… there are any number of weasel phrases. The fact is, however, that insofar as contemporary conservative ideology when followed to its natural conclusion will result in the continued (or exacerbated) disadvantage of non-white folks. The policies are racist, without necessarily meaning to.

And whether or not you fully accept the idea that non-human things (ideas, institutions, behaviours) can be racist in the absence of conscious hatred, you simply cannot ignore that when you scratch the surface of a racist extremist, you find a conservative. Sometimes you don’t even have to scratch: [Read more…]

Because I am an atheist: Greg Laden

I am privileged and honoured to have a friend and colleague contribute the inaugural post in this series. Greg Laden writes for The X Blog on FTB. He submits this:

Because I am an atheist…

I “believe” in everything tangible and natural rather than stuff that is made up, and as a minor side effect of that there are probably things that are made up that I enjoy a bit more than I otherwise might (that stuff called “fiction” and “entertainment”).   I’m also an anthropologist (the good kind, don’t worry) so the word “belief” means something to me quite different than for other atheists and skeptics. I “believe in” belief in the sense that it is a human process of inference and knowledge tracking.  Rational, Boolean, deductive, whathaveyouistic thinking is far more ex post than most people “believe” it is, which is not a bad thing.  We use rational thinking to verify or reject what we are thinking.  Belief is a creative process that is inherently unrelated to religion and distinct from faith. While faith comes in handy in certain video games involving Indiana Jones (it’s a strategy for crossing abysses on foot) it is what I reject most completely…

… because I am an atheist.

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Manufacturing a martyr

One of the valuable lessons that the atheist community has learned in the last little while is that it is possible to provoke a controversy where one didn’t exist before. The formula is pretty simple – make some largely innocuous public statement about atheism, wait for the predictable overreaction from a group of religious folks who just can’t seem to help themselves, and then enjoy as people fall all over themselves to try to shut the atheists up without violating the law. Every time an atheist bus campaign or billboard goes up, we see the same cycle of provocation, backlash, and blowup. It is an extremely useful method of sparking conversation in circles that weren’t talking before.

Now, to be sure, there are often completely non-exploitative motives behind these campaigns as well. Considering the number of atheists out there in the wold who feel completely alone – as though they are a solitary island of sanity in a sea of faith. Letting them know that they more closely resemble an archipelago with other atheists is both comforting and liberating. There is value in bucking the status quo and forcing the majority to contend with the fact that not everyone shares their myths, and that not everyone thinks of their delusion as worthy of praise and deep, abiding respect. That being said, nobody is so strategy-blind as to think that there is no ulterior motive behind the pronouncement that belief is silly (despite occasional protestations to the contrary).

Well it turns out that we are not the only people capable of exploiting such human frailty: [Read more…]

Because I am an atheist…

Those who wish to demonize or denigrate atheists are rather fond of telling us what we believe as a consequence of our atheism. You’ve undoubtedly heard the shrieking refrain of “you’re an atheist? That means you believe in nothing!” Who can argue with that kind of airtight logic? Or the similarly bulletproof “atheists just say they don’t believe so they can be sinful!” Thanks, Mr. Comfort – any other gems you want to lay on us? “Atheists have no moral centre – if there are no gods, any depraved act is permitted!”

The accusations are as tedious as they are false. There is no evidence whatsoever to suggest that people who lack a god belief are less moral than those who have one. Indeed, one could make the argument that the association between the most vile behaviours humankind struggles with – anti-gay hatred, suicide bombing, tribalist racism – and fervent religious expression suggests the exact opposite: that god-belief provides a convenient excuse for those who wish to do evil. Whatever the truth is, theist apologists are perhaps the least qualified to tell the world what atheists do as a consequence of their atheism.

Many of you have undoubtedly seen PZ Myers’ “why I am an atheist” series on Pharyngula. His purpose is to provide a variety of answers to the question “why are you an atheist” that go beyond the simplistic tautology of “because I lack a god belief”. In a similar vein, I thought I would share some of the specific ways that acknowledging my atheism has changed my life: [Read more…]

Rock me sexy Jesus

So maybe I’m disclosing more about myself than anyone really wants to know, but I’ve never understood our society’s pre-occupation with sex. I think of sex in much the same terms as I think of a game of pickup beach volleyball – a lot of fun if you have the opportunity, but if it doesn’t happen I’ll find something else to do with my time. My casual attitude about the whole venture stands, at least to my eye, in sharp contrast with piously intoned truisms that come from all corners of society – that sex is a deep and profound part of the human experience, that expressing your sexuality is a fundamental human right, that a person’s sexual identity is an intrinsic part of who they are. Maybe it’s a facet of hetero/cis privilege, but I just can’t get that fired up about the subject.

That being said, there are fewer people who obsess over sex more than religious folks. To be sure, most religious people are just as laissez fucke about other people’s sex lives as I am, but if you want to find people with a level of obsession that borders on the psychotic, you need look no further than religious hardliners. The scriptures are replete with proscriptions about where, when, how, how often, with whom, and exactly how terrible you should feel about yourself afterward. Some folks think that this is an issue of population control – that by controlling this oh-so-crucial component of human life, religious authority can tighten their grip on every aspect of human life. As you might conclude from my first paragraph, I am less than convinced. [Read more…]

Edwina Rogers: the unanswered questions

Like many of you, I was a bit stunned to learn that the Secular Coalition for America had hired a former Republican operative as their new executive director. Considering the extent to which the Republican party is and has been decidedly anti-secular, the appointment of a party insider to this position struck me as strange. However, I decided to keep an open mind and extend the benefit of the doubt. After all, her political savvy and connections could be useful, and an unorthodox choice like Ms. Rogers would certainly shake things up. So she used to work for the wrong people, so what? People change, right?

Yeah… then I read this:

People are going to do a double-take when they hear a Republican strategist is now the leader of an organization working on behalf of atheists… what do you hope the public reaction will be?

I hope it will be a positive reaction and one that gets everyone thinking about the right direction for the secular movement. Often times, problems are arising from the conservative side and that’s one reason why it’s important to include both sides. The majority of the gubernatorial positions and state legislatures are controlled by Republicans. The Religious Right is a segment of the Republican Party — but it’s not a majority within the party and it certainly does not represent a majority of Americans. It’s a very active, vocal part of the Republican base, but it’s a minority.

I do think that for the vast majority of conservatives and Republicans, they are true believers of secularism — the majority of Republicans believe in the separation of church and state. Many of them are simply laissez faire about the issues, which gives us an opening to recruit them to the movement. Just within the last few months, talking to all my Republican conservative friends, the majority of them are in line with our thinking. They can be recruited, they just haven’t been active.

Hoooo boy. [Read more…]

Movie Friday: Jay Smooth on Trayvon

Because I will never NOT share something by radio host and vlogger Jay Smooth, here’s his take on an aspect of the Trayvon Martin case that hasn’t been fully explored:

It’s weird for me to hear my beliefs coming out of someone else’s mouth, but there you go.

Jay is making the same point that I tried to make with my posts about Occupy – that we have to be active participants in our system, whether that be political or judicial. No, we may not be the ones running for office or sitting on the bench, but we have to be actively engaged. Should we fail to remain vigilant, the system is allowed to run on its laurels, which inevitably serves only those at the top. In the case of Trayvon Martin, no justice was even pursued until people stood up and started paying attention. A man murdered a 17 year-old kid, and the police let him walk free, right up to the point where the cries of a small number of people who were acquainted with the case were heard by other people who believed that a just solution must be, and could be pursued.

This week I’ve been throwing examples at you in support of the basic tenet that we have to keep our brains switched on and our eyes open, because the system we live in is seriously flawed and unjust. We can and should expect more, and in order to achieve it we have to be asking the tough questions and demanding more than pat answers.

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What constitutes moral courage?

That is the question posed by The Mark contributor Zachary Kuehner:

Professor Manji is the founder of the “Moral Courage Project at NYU’s Wagner School of Public Service, which aspires to “teach young leaders to break silences for the greater good.” She has gained significant notoriety for speaking out against radical Islam and for encouraging citizens, both within and outside the Muslim community, to confront and oppose extremist elements that conflict with the basic values that western democracies hold dear. It is, I admit, rather easy to agree with her. Many of her arguments – judging cultural traditions by their impact on a community’s most vulnerable members instead of simply taking the word of self-appointed “community leaders”, for instance – are both practical and compelling. But despite her commendable efforts and passionate rhetoric, something didn’t sit quite right.

For one, the definition of “moral courage,” according to the project’s official website, is: “…the willingness to be original, unique, and different from everyone else in your group.” Perhaps I’m dwelling on a distinction without a difference, but I would submit that contrarian or oppositional views are not in themselves necessarily courageous or moral – to say nothing of originality, uniqueness, or different-ness. Of course opposition to one’s “group” can be dangerous (in the social sense and, often, in the physical sense) and thus require a certain amount of “chutzpah.” But neither of these conditions is sufficient to call something morally courageous. David Irving’s historical revision of the Holocaust certainly goes against his “group” and could therefore be considered a courageous position, but who would claim that this makes it morally so?

It’s a worthy and thought-provoking piece that you should go check out (The Mark is actually a great source of opinion-based journalism). I will respond below the fold: [Read more…]

Does being an atheist make you more charitable?

So it’s entirely possible that you’ve heard the latest ‘groundbreaking’ finding in the religious/atheist culture war, suggesting that religion is negatively associated with compassionate prosocial behaviour:

“Love thy neighbor” is preached from many a pulpit. But new research from the University of California, Berkeley, suggests that the highly religious are less motivated by compassion when helping a stranger than are atheists, agnostics and less religious people.

In three experiments, social scientists found that compassion consistently drove less religious people to be more generous. For highly religious people, however, compassion was largely unrelated to how generous they were, according to the findings which are published in the most recent online issue of the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science.

I don’t think anyone who’s been reading this blog for longer than, say, two weeks would have any trouble pinning down where I am on the believer/non-believer scale: I am doing pull-ups from the far side of the non-believer scale, encouraging others to jump off as I dangle over the edge. I am, in fact, an unapologetic anti-theist – I think that religious faith is an inherently harmful byproduct of bad brains and lack of intellectual curiosity. That being said, I am reflexively skeptical of any scientific finding that seems too good to be true. This is definitely one of them.

So, as I have before, I am taking my super skepty powers to the paper (frustratingly behind a paywall) to see if I can spot any errors. [Read more…]

Okay so this is just awesome

This morning I decried the culture of police abuse that allows individual officers to flaunt their authority at the expense of civilians. I also warned, in soothsayer-like tones, of what happens when you lose the trust of the people you were ostensibly sworn to serve and protect. I didn’t really think I’d find such an awesomely direct example:

An elderly woman got the last word after locking a police officer in her basement, and later suing the police.  Venus Green, who was 87 when she was handcuffed, roughed up and injured by police, will receive $95,000 as part of a settlement with Baltimore City. The city chose to settle the case instead of taking a chance in front of a jury.

In July 2009, Green’s grandson, Tallie, was shot and wounded. Tallie said he was shot at a convenience store, but police insisted it happened inside Green’s house and that the shooter was either Tallie or Green. “Police kept questioning him. They wouldn’t let the ambulance attendant treat him,” Green said. “So, I got up and said, ‘Sir, would you please let the attendants treat him? He’s in pain,'” Green said.

Green said the officer said to her, “Oh, you did it, come on, let’s go inside. I’ll prove where that blood is. You did it.” Police wanted to go the basement, where Tallie lived, but Green refused on the basis that the police did not have a warrant. “I said, ‘No, you don’t have a warrant. You don’t go down in my house like that. He wasn’t shot in here.'” Green said the officer replied, “I’m going to find that gun. I’m going to prove that you did it.”

A struggle ensued between a male officer and Green. “He dragged me, threw me across the chair, put handcuffs on me and just started calling me the ‘b’ name. He ridiculed me,” Green said. An officer went into the basement and Green locked him inside.

Stewart and Colbert approve

So let this be a lesson to police everywhere: don’t fuck with old ladies from Baltimore. They’ll fuck with you right back.

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