The Canberra Cabal

Everyone knows already why I was off in Melbourne this past week — it was the Global Atheist Conference — but why did I hare off to Canberra for the weekend? It was another conspiracy.

Many years ago, the locus of all things evolutionist on the interwebs was found on Usenet, in a group called talk.origins, where a motley mob of ruthless science proponents regularly mocked and crushed creationists and honed their skills at rhetorical combat. I came out of that particular culture (and, by the way, the commenting rules here, with a policy of limited interference with the substance of people’s comments, grew straight out of talk.origins). Talk.Origins still exists as a discussion group, and evolved into a very useful web site, as well, and many of the regulars who haunted Usenet have since branched out into blogs, suchs as The Panda’s Thumb.

Oddly enough, quite a few of the illustrious and honored masters of talk.origins are Australian. So, as long as I was there in Australia, we had to meet up and share our plans for world domination. It was kind of like a meeting of the Illuminati, only we’re mostly poor academics and civil servants, and our only magic power is our obsession with flooding the internet. Here’s one photo of the group:

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They are, from left to right in the back: Cartman (respect our authoritah),
John Wilkins (master of sowing confusion with philosophy),
Chris Ho-Stuart (the milquetoast atheist),
Jim Foley (most definitely a hominid),
PZ Myers (biggest mouth), and
Chris Nedin (biggest Dick (seriously, he showed us the award) (and photos of the real thing) (it’s over a meter long!)). In front is Ian Musgrave (best beard). You should be reading their blogs! Especially if our plans for world domination come to fruition, since you will want a leg up in flattering your masters.

Also, while I was in Canberra, I spoke at a Skeptics in the Pub meeting, which was held in a very classy pub, King O’Malley’s. It was rather interesting in that more people showed up than was convenient (several hundred), and they were sort of draped into all kinds of nooks and crannies. It was also one of those talks where I gave a short introduction (literally, I read the intro to the book I’m working on), and then didn’t get to the rest because we just ended up doing a long Q&A for the rest of our time.

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I am not in that picture. I’m somewhere way off screen, hiding from the mob, I think.

Mary’s Monday Metazoan: Next time…

I’m home at last, after about 48 hours of airports and airplanes and long drives. I haven’t slept at all except for these peculiar intermittent blackouts, I’m flat-out exhausted, I’ve got this +5 Flaming Rod of Lancing Agony in place of a spine, and the Trophy Wife™ (who is at work, so I haven’t even seen her yet) sends me an email with this picture, suggesting that it hints where I ought to go next.

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I guess she didn’t mind my absence that much.

But you should be!

Answers in Genesis has begun a goofy little campaign called I AM NOT ASHAMED — they’re apparently collecting videos of people declaring their shameless adoration of Jesus. Ho hum. All I can say is that they should be deeply embarrassed to endorse something so absurd.

They use a little unfortunate language, though.

WE WANTED A MESSAGE THAT WOULD OFFER A CLEAR CALL TO CHRISTIANS AROUND THE WORLD TO STAND UNASHAMEDLY AND UNCOMPROMISINGLY ON THE BIBLE.

Happy Jihad’s House of Pancakes is willing to oblige. You too can send in photos of yourself standing unashamedly on a Bible — you don’t even have to wipe your feet.

Episode XLI: Aloft and offline and still babbling

Oh, save me. I’m trying to escape Australia, but apparently a nation of convicts knows how to keep a fella locked up. I’m sitting in an airport in Melbourne, waiting and waiting and waiting for my flight, so that I can sit trapped in a can for hours and hours, with the prospect of a 6 hour layover in the most wretched airport in America, LAX.

I may not emerge from this sane.

Anyway, here’s a terrifying video of me, speaking to a bunch of students at the Freethought University Alliance earlier this week. It may be my last words, since after this trip I may just be reduced to speaking in tongues from the safety of my straitjacket.


Parts 2 3 4 5

Now continue as you were, talk as if I weren’t there.

Oh, right. I’m not.

Priests who don’t believe

Dan Dennett has been studying the phenomenon of preachers who don’t believe what they preach, and the paper and commentary are available at the Washington post. Strangely, the newspaper has headlined it as “Skeptical clergy a silent majority?”, which is odd — the work doesn’t attempt to quantify how many unbelievers there are in the ministry, but is more of a case study of those they’ve found…and since they are only describing the in-depth interviews of five people, it’s absurd to try and draw conclusions about proportions.

It’s interesting stuff, but utterly unsurprising to atheists. These are people who entered the ministry out of a sincere desire to do good in the world, and as they delved into religious scholarship, they discovered they couldn’t believe anymore…but hey, they were still humane and concerned about their fellow human beings. They’re also concerned about what will happen to their income if they leave the church, and what will happen to the opinion others have of them. And they engage in some difficult and twisty rationalizations for their situations.

One other interesting point is that several of them came to their atheism by way of reading books by Ehrman and Spong, and also Harris and Hitchens. These works do make a difference. Unfortunately, we also learn that while they have received enlightenment, they’re very, very reluctant to share that shameful knowledge with their congregations, and continue to reassure them about belief in god.

Unfortunately, the WaPo couldn’t just put up Dennett’s bombshell on its own: they’ve surrounded it with a confusing cloud of commissioned articles to answer the question, “What should pastors do if they no longer hold the defining beliefs of their denomination?”. Most of them are believers, except for Rebecca Goldstein and Tom Flynn and Herb Silverman, and most of them are making excuses. You just knew that someone would make the inane argument that “doubt is part of faith.” No, it’s not. Faith is the blunt instrument used to crush doubt.

The comments on Dennett’s article are also fascinating. There are people who are quite upset about his revelation. And there is even a Cracker Catholic there, claiming that an atheist priest at communion turned a wafer into a hunk of bloody meat — therefore, god, apparently.

Just watch. This is news that will provoke protests and complaints and lots of excuses. I hope it also encourages more ministers to come out of the closet and face reality, instead of making it their profession to obscure the truth.