The most positive, optimistic development I know of is the way many young people are coming out in defense of atheism—and the ones who do are often wonderfully eloquent. I’ve mentioned my daughter’s testimonial before; now Brent Rasmussen finds another young lady’s essay that will make you feel good about the future.
Unfortunately, in the comments to that post you’ll also discover why many of us find evangelical Christianity contemptible. There are more discussions of the subject where the loathsome Christians are out in force — something that also happened with Skatje’s post — and I really don’t know how the less verminous Christians can stand to share a label with these creatures.
“and I really don’t know how the less verminous Christians can stand to share a label with these creatures.”
Eh. It’s like sharing the “liberal” label with loathsome creatures like Christopher Hitchens – or sharing the “American” label with truly depraved maniacs like Richard Cheney or GWB. You can’t choose what people call themselves, even if you don’t feel that they’re living up to what you think the liberal, American or even Christian “standard” should be.
Frankly I’m more embarrassed to share the “human” label with some of these folks – if they want to call themselves Christian – whatever.
I thought this was a nice video. http://youtube.com/watch?v=fdVucvo-kDU
I am a 23 year old atheist biomedical engineering graduate student. I agree that more individuals from my generation are “coming out in defense of atheism,” especially when compared to previous generations. But a large amount, around 85% of the people I discuss the topic with, are still biased towards atheism.
Too many of of Generation Next, as we seem to have been labeled, still do not think or question any foundational belief. I believe this is because we have been educated in a manner where everything is considered to be a fact and is not open for discussion.
@ JHP: It may be more likely that they are unwilling, unready, or unfortunately unable to express their disbelief, in public or even to themselves, because of the reason you stated in your last sentence. And that has gotta go.
I found Possum #1’s essay via another blog and another blog before that before submitting it to Reddit.com and apparently was the first one to do so. Any members should go here and leave a comment, and mark it up.
How can they share a label? By professing not to have one. 3 words, PZ. “Not Every Christian…” IMO, as long as they feel like they can say that, they use it as a justification for doing nothing. I see it all the time. Bible Camp? Not all Christians are like that. Bush? Not all Christians are like that. Pat Robertson, Ted Haggard, etc? Not all Christians… you get the point.
Why this is, I’ve never known, and it’s always disturbed me.
I wish I sounded that intelligent at her age. Kudos to the teacher for giving full credit; Points deducted from her credibility for calling the child misguided.
The two idiots in the comments that are blasting Atheist In A Mini Van for raising his daughter that way are probably hit-n-run types, trying to play the numbers by putting up guilt-trip postings at all their favorite “sinner grounds”. Everyone else seems pretty darn supportive.
Wow. William is a disgusting person. I feel dirty knowing that there’s anyone in the world who actually thinks like that. Also the possum is a smart kid and a hell of a writer — colour me impressed.
(checking self for vermin) Well, PZ, the free-thinking mom and her kid were within their rights and the teacher in question was out of bounds.
And the ‘minister’ was, at a bare minimum, vulgar. Unfortunately, a lot of Christians *are* like that. I thank you for acknowledging some of us are less verminous and (no irony intended here) I’ll try to do my part.
SH
Kudos to the girls for expressing their opinions so well! It must take a lot of courage to express such viewpoints when so much hostility exists.
OK nevermind, they didn’t go away.
After reading more of William’s self-indulgent BS, I must say it’s so far in outer space, it’s actually almost funny to read. I can picture this satirical, condescending voice with every word he types. It’s perverse and yet funny at the same time.
I know I shouldn’t be laughing at what is likely a real person that believes in that crap, and feels confident enough to spout it without thinking he’s sounding like an ass, but I can’t help but hear this whiny, sore voice (any former Phil Hendrie fans here?) treating everyone else like they’re goats ready for the god-slaughter.
After class, possum#1 said that her teacher told her she couldn’t be an atheist because her “ability to care for others feelings isn’t an atheist trait.” and that her “attitude was very Christian.” WTF?!
Not an atheist trait!?
Clearly a variation on the “no true Scotsman fallacy”. The christian teacher misappropriates a clever atheist for his/ her own ends.
Instead of Christianity making an effort to do something for the world, they just turn it around and define those who care for others as Christian or at least non-atheist.
I find it funny that the pre-teen is more intelligent than her teacher. I think the roles need to be reversed. The teacher could certainly use some lessons concerning what it actually means to be an atheist, for one, because she seems to think it entails being a bad person, or sacrificing goats to Baal.
“The most positive, optimistic development I know of is the way many young people are coming out in defense of atheism–and the ones who do are often wonderfully eloquent. I’ve mentioned my daughter’s testimonial before; now Brent Rasmussen finds another young lady’s essay that will make you feel good about the future.”
Whaye, PeeZee, yuh sound parzitively burstin’ with unfaith!
Testify, brother! Witness, sister! Let me hear how Jaaaaaaysus has not ENTERED your LIFE!
coming from germany I’m not very familiar with american namegiving customs so maybe my question may seem odd, but can and may it really be true that “Possum#1” is the real name of that poor kid? Or is it just a common pet name for children (which I do not know) or a “variable” (in that case born from a cranky and bizarre humor) to not have to give out her real name?
I mean: isn’t a possum some mindless rodent? Who on this blasted earth would name his child “possum”??!?! And the numbering even makes it much worse, if not slightly inhuman by reification.
In germany people are not allowed to give their children denigrating or degrading names. This is to protect the children from a life long being derided and scoffed at, therefore I’m so stunned right now.
I usually lurk on Skatje’s blog, and I’m consistently impressed by her posts (and consistently disgusted by some of the comments that she always seems to get). She does a really commendable job of keeping cool and mature in the face of childish personal attacks, which only shows that an atheist can indeed be a well-behaved and thoughtful person. Skatje is an amazing girl.
I’m a 22-year old female atheist myself and, in my experience, when some people hear the word ‘atheist’ they just close their ears. I’m in science, so many of my friends and colleagues are atheists, and it’s nice to have their support. My pre-university friends, though, are generally a lot less receptive to what I have to say whenever religion comes up, even though they’ll gladly listen to the opinions of religions other than their own. It’s a frustrating situation.
Corn: don’t stress, I’m pretty sure it’s just a nickname. Some people, especially younger people who have been taught never to reveal personal details on the internet, refer to themselves as their internet nickname when telling stories about themselves, even though, in real life, they were being called by their real name. ;)
Corn:
It’s just a convention for keeping the anonymity of a person while online. You’ll note the web address includes “possummomma”, probably meaning that the owner refers to herself online as “possum momma”. Rather than assign a new name or refer to her children by their real name (thus removing some level of anonymity), they are simply referred to as “possum 1”, “possum 2”, etc. I know someone that does the same with her online name of “Kitty”– her children are referred to as “Kitten” and “Kitten2”.
There are some crazy folk who name their kids weird things, though. “Moxie Crimefighter Jilette” comes to mind.
ok, thanks ranson and Linda!
What I did know is that there are some pretty sick names around in USA.
As e.g. Mr. Zappa named his daughter “Moon Unit” I did not a priori exclude the possibility of someone having to “possums” as children…
:-)
i’m 34, and i wish i could sound that intelligent at my age. serious kudos to possum #1!
Corn, Frank Zappa is not a representative sample. He was a pretty weird guy.
Corn: Yes, it’s just a nickname. I didn’t really name my daughter “Koboldling,” either. ^.^
Also, opossums aren’t rodents.
you’ll like it:
http://atheistempire.com/entertainment/images/imaginary_friend.gif
“I find it funny that the pre-teen is more intelligent than her teacher.”
Why? It’s neither humorous nor unusual. I remember being painfully aware that my 4th-8th grade teachers were idiots. I’ve always assumed that the same was true of my 1st-3rd grade teachers, but that I was just too inexperienced to be aware of it at the time. I always assumed stupidity and viciousness were necessary prerequisites for being a gradeschool teacher until, decades later, I met a very nice and quite intelligent woman who turned out (shockingly!) to be a 2nd grade teacher.
It’s just a convention for keeping the anonymity of a person while online. You’ll note the web address includes “possummomma”, probably meaning that the owner refers to herself online as “possum momma”. Rather than assign a new name or refer to her children by their real name (thus removing some level of anonymity), they are simply referred to as “possum 1”, “possum 2”, etc.
Further, although I don’t know if it applies in this case, “possum” is a mild term of endearment occasionally used by elders towards youngers in Australian and New Zealand families. Dame Edna Everage (aka Barry Humphries) uses it often in referring to her audience.
At first I thought “William” might be a parody – he’d fit right in at Landover. Sadly, no. He’s just a miserable, loathsome, contemptible excuse for a human being. Ignorant and hateful and proud of it. (Which is at least two deadly sins by his own belief system…) He as much as admits to terrorizing his children into submission and proclaims his intention to interfere with other parents’ raising their own children if they don’t push *his* (not their) beliefs on them hard enough.
I would indeed like to see religion disappear from the world (to be remembered only as an interesting form of fiction, like fairy tales or the Iliad and Odyssey). But not by force or by brainwashing children, because both of those things are wrong and evil. I would like religion to disappear as more and more children grow up to be like “possum#1” or Skatje: able to see it for what it is and reject it by their own decision. Free the child, and the adult will remain free.
PZ, thanks for these links! After my recent outing-of-self, I’m still looking for connections with others of my age and point in life (young adult, with youngish kids) who share my belief in freedom of thought.
Skatje had already been inspirational to me, and now I’m beyong impressed with Possom #1’s reasoning skills. Oh, how I wish it hadn’t taken me until my mid-20s to start the process of deprogramming from my fundie upbringing!
Hey, Andre 3000 goes by “Possum Allawishes Jenkins” sometimes. But then, Andre 3000 isn’t precisely his birth name either.
Instead of Christianity making an effort to do something for the world, they just turn it around and define those who care for others as Christian or at least non-atheist.
It came off to me as a variation of “That’s mighty white of you”… if such were addressed to a black person.
Freud, in his later years, had a friend who was a Christian minister. That minister used to argue that because of Freud’s greatness of spirit, he was in a certain sense really a Christian. Since Freud was an atheistic Jew who wrote a long hatchet-job explaining how religion was the product of human pathology, that always struck me as the reductio of that particular line of reasoning.
‘Moon’ is actually a normal woman’s name in America. And middle names are usually ignored by Americans. If Americans had wanted to believe Frank Zappa’s daughter had a normal name, the near-universal practice of referring to her as ‘Moon’ or ‘Moon Zappa’ would have sufficed. (And as can been seen in Zappa’s writing, it suffices for her friends and family.)
But her parents selected ‘Unit’ as her middle name, and the media, entranced with the alien-from-the-169th-brane weirdness of Frank Zappa’s image, chose to adopt the peculiar practice of never referring to Moon without her middle name.
I read some of the comments, going down to about the Baptist minister. After that, I shut down the page. It’s people like that that really piss me off — all about “God loves you” and similiar bullcrap. It’s so bad that I have now labeled all Christians “trolls” because that’s what you get when they come on to the computer.
William, sadly, is standard issue pastor for many fundamentalist faiths. There are exceptions–I have a couple of cousins who are–but the exceptions only prove the rule. Most fundamentalists of any persuasion–Christian, Muslim, take your pick–believe that they know the only truth there is and that anyone who fails to share their view has to live an unsatisfying life and is doomed to hell. Of course, they also preach that tired cliché that the only reason to behave morally is to fear God and an unpleasant afterlife–those proverbial lakes of fire! Believe it or not, I encountered such narrow-mindedness from some of my college classmates–at Harvard of all places. But then Harvard provided the undergraduate educations of Phillip Johnson, Bruce Chapman and George Gilder, only proving the point that there is more to an educated person than a college degree.
Professor Myers, you’re right on with this one. Much of the the commentary in response to Possum #1’s essay is truly despicable. Sometimes the best arguments for becoming irreligious are the religious.
Mony, I agree that Hitchens is a prickly character, but he hasn’t been a Liberal for quite a few years now. He has distanced himself from the Left without really embracing the Right. That doesn’t make him a Moderate, of course. He’s more of an Independent Curmudgeon, Iconoclast, Contrarian. He’s not hard to pin down, but he’s hard to classify. I think he likes it that way.
(catching up)
Corn: Possums are marsupials, not rodents. Not mindless, but not too bright. Smart enough to play dead in the face of danger. Dumb enough to do it when the danger is an oncoming car. Ooops!
“William” should be a parody, but he’s not. He’s just one of those dreadful people who think they represent their faith and everyone who shares it. Ick!
Frank Zappa may have been weird, but he was a brilliant (if irreverent) musician and an outspoken, clear-headed free-thinker. Count him amongst the good guys. RIP FZ.
That seems a little unfair to the possums. Cars, oncoming or otherwise, are a recent hazard. Evolution isn’t usually THAT fast (except in organisms with really short generation times).
In a few more centuries, deer, possums and other animals noted for their lack of car-avoiding behaviors may evolve them, but with cars being such a newcomer, I wouldn’t expect to see car resistance in large animals so quickly.
I believe some species of insects have already evolved to reflexively fall to the ground when they’re hit by headlights.
Source?
I’m thrilled by the sudden explosion of atheists “coming out”. It brings me even greater comfort being an active duty Marine, and having served a year in Iraq. There are atheists in foxholes, and it’s good to see there are many, many more of us everywhere else. Cheers to my fellow atheists, freethinkers, agnostics, and non-religious children of the world…
So PZ thinks the liberal Christians are less “verminous”.
He is a dangerous man. If you call him a “man”. Because what to you do with vermin? As Dr. Goebbels explained, you don’t reason with them or negotiate with them, you exterminate them.
So, first dehumanize your opposition, call them vermin, subhuman, whatever.
Then, eliminate them.
I realize now you people really want to destroy us; PZ has really let the cat out of the bag.
What a fool….
Mr. Concerned, if it is treatment of individuals in a Goebbels-like manner you are “concerned” about, why don’t you read the blog that is the subject of this posting (the link is available to you) on Pharyngula, and find out who is the real Dr. Goebbels in all this. In this case, it was a “God-fearing” baptist minister that supposedly worships God and Jesus, and openly condemned people and their young children to the fires of hell.
Basically, the Baptist minister is the one who started this in the first place. Why do’t you look him up and ask him why he went there?
Additionally, the republican party has instituted Goebbels-like rhetoric for decades now, with inreasing verocity and vitriol, and now that the Democrats are in power, the republicans want them to “lay off” (Frank Luntz’s plea in so many words). I think the Democrats will be much more gracious with the opposition (as they have always been) than the republicans have seen fit to ever be toward Democrats. Such are the actions of the conservative party that claims as one of its cornerstones adherence to and safe harbor for religion. Save your Goebbels hallucinations for the people who have spoken and acted much more in that vein than just about any liberal ever has: hard-right wingers in the republican party.
Repubicans have not practiced what they have preached in either religion or policy. If it is social darwinism you are concerned about, check your party affiliation on your voter reg card. If it says “R” on it, you’ve got some soul searching to do.
lk t cnvnc grls thr s n gd nd t lv fr tdy.
Thy fck s mch mr wllngly tht wy. nd thy d mr: blw my dck, my ss, y nm t.
[I guess the good christians have weighed in with their opinion now –pzm]
Ds sknky fck?
[same dignified Christian…ignore, please]
Concerned apparently doesn’t know the difference between “vermin” and “verminous”.
Why am I not suprised that “speaking English” isn’t on the short list of intellectual skills required to be a creationist.
Yes, I expect
a small band of college professorsThe Soulless Atheist Majority to storm the ghetto any day now and finish off the wretched and impotent minority of True Believers as they cower in theircathedralsrat holes, protected only by theirFundamentalist Christian President and the most powerful military establishment on the planettattered Bibles.Thanks for the links, I agree with the earlier comments – that “William” character is a truly loathsome individual. People like him make me proud to be an Atheist.
If he treated some one like that in any other guise than religion people would be shocked and legal action would be considered. Because he can call on his invisible friend is is all different.
To a small extent, I kind of hope (a) god exists and people like William are punished for eternity….
(And when I become God, I will ban all religion :-))
“I really don’t know how the less verminous Christians can stand to share a label with these creatures.”
personally i dont know whats worse, the dangerous imposition of ignorance or the dangerous outright lying that creationists do..especially the YEC
i think creationists (AKA the anti-science crowd)are a danger to faith because of their constant lying
theyre a danger to scientific knowledge because of their ignorant ranting
theyre a danger to the lives of all organisms on this planet because of what medical and environmental advances theyll halt(a la GWB)
and as far as vermin …well, no one says that you have to like ALL of your relatives;)
Heh, I would predict that atheist “girls” (“young women” really works better) would indeed be better in bed than conservative religious girls, since all other things being equal they have one less source (arguably the biggest and most influential source by an order of magnitude) of stupid hangups and guilt about enjoying themselves too much or having sex in a way that’s “wrong.” However, I would predict that they’re also much less likely (%willing asymptotically approaching 0, in fact) to be willing to being treated merely as a means to the end of someone else’s sexual gratification in general–and to any kind of sexual arrangement with misogynistic god-bothering scumbags whatsoever. Catch-22 for the misogynistic god-bothering scumbag above. *eyeroll*