I get email

These people do exist.

I am a fellow atheist from Germany. I have to say I enjoy reading your blog Pharyngula. I study molecular biology and strongly believe in evolution.

I am, however, rather conservative in my views. That’s what troubles me with atheism lately, it seems that atheists are generally on the left side of the political spectrum. Esp. your last post about how atheists should have progressive views in terms of “racism”, “gender equality” and “disability rights” made me thinking.

I feel like I agree with Conservative Chirstians on most political and social issues. For example, I think that abortion is wrong, that homosexuality is wrong and that feminism is one of the biggest threats to society. I furthermore believe that reverese racism (things like affirmative action) against Whites is actually worse than White-on-Black racism. I think that the state has no right to impose taxes on citizens. I think that everything should be privatized in order to increase individual freedom.

In recent times I considered the question if it’s not better for me to just start believing in God and the bible since I have so much in common with Conservative christians. On the other hand, evolution is a pretty strong argument against the literal interpretation of the bible and I already understand to much about this stuff.

Now my question to you is: Can one be a conservative and atheist at the same time? It seems to me that atheism goes hand in hand with progressivism, which is not my thing…

Oh. Well.

It is entirely true that one can be an atheist, in the very narrowest sense of the word as someone who does not believe in gods, and a conservative.

However, one cannot be a rational, intelligent human being and contributing member of society and hold the conservative views you do. When you say you favor increasing individual freedom, you actually mean increasing the individual freedom of healthy white male heterosexuals who have skills that corporate interests find profitable, which, I’m sorry to say, is an extremely narrow slice of our culture, and not necessarily the best element of our society. Whatever shall we do with diabetic black lesbian poets in your world?

I also note that the maximum freedom for a molecular biologist and advocate for evolution will not be found in private industry, so your ideals don’t even match up with your profession. Unless you define freedom as “making the most money.” I have a sneaking suspicion that you probably do.

But, since you seem to find it so easy to switch on god-belief (how, I do not understand), I suggest that you do so…and there are many Christian sects that do not insist on Biblical literalism, including the Catholic and Lutheran churches. You’ll fit right in, as long as you avoid those radical subgroups, the progressive Christians. They’re easy to spot, though: they tend to be infested with women and gays.

Oh, History Channel, how much can you suck?

It’s an annoyance that the History Channel is part of the basic cable package I get — I haven’t watched the acceleratingly awful channel in years, but they still get by on their slice of the cable pie. Now they have announced that they will be turning the Bible into a “five-part, 10-hour scripted docu-drama with live-action and state-of-the-art CG”. There is no part of that description that doesn’t make me cringe.

An honest survey of the Bible wouldn’t be a bad thing — as we often say, it’s a great tool for making atheists. I don’t think that will be the case here, though.

The idea for the project came from Burnett and his wife, “Touched By An Angel” star Roma Downey, and will tell biblical stories from the old and new testaments.

Oh, man. Could this possibly get worse?

Burnett is the man behind such successful reality show franchises as “Survivor” and “The Apprentice.”

<Runs screaming from the room>

Wait…maybe this could be salvaged if they cast Donald Trump as God.

Trigger happy

As a young man, I often walked the streets of Seattle — it’s a great city, and wonderful to explore. But then, I never walked the streets while brown. That experience would be completely different.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? This country is well on the way to becoming a petty tyranny, run by small-minded bullies. There is a crime caught in that video, but the culprit isn’t John T. Williams, native American woodcarver — it’s the abuse of power by Officer Ian Birk.

Another cause

After saying that the atheist movement ought to be politically progressive and inclusive, I got a letter saying I left some people out. I’ll rectify that by simply posting the letter!

I’m a long-time reader and admirer of Pharyngula, and I’ve been especially impressed with your call for atheists and skeptics to take up the banner on progressive causes, including women’s rights and being more inclusive to people of colour. As a progressive woman skeptic, I was overjoyed by your support.

There’s another issue though, that I think has been overlooked by the majority of the skeptical community, and I would be honoured if you would also consider giving it some space on Pharyngula: Disability Rights. As a disabled woman, I have to tell you that skepticism, atheism, and disability rights go together perfectly. Obviously, the most prominent example of this is the way skeptics have tackled the “vaccines cause autism” issue, which has led to a plethora of damaging practices being used to torture autistic people, such as chelation, homeopathic garbage, and other “purification” woo. But there are other examples of the damage religion and lack of scientific literacy can do to disabled people: We’re often the most highly represented victims of practices like faith healing and exorcisms. As someone who works on a pilot project to address violence against disabled people, I can tell you hair-raising stories of the parents, spouses, and caretakers of disabled people using the Bible to justify abuse, humiliation, and deprivation of essential needs and equipment for disabled people, in the name of a “Loving and Merciful God”. And of course, the venomous hatred spewed by the most rotten Christian commentators whenever Stephen Hawking discusses the ridiculous claims of Heaven and Creationism offer a peek into just how little the religious truly respect disabled people.

I think that the skeptical/atheist community would be the perfect allies for disability rights activists, if more is done to include them in the discussion, such as courting disabled speakers to talk about their experiences with religious abuse, discussing what can be done to improve their quality of life when so many social services fail and they have to depend on churches and religious-based charities for handouts in exchange for brianwashing, and other issues.

I hope you’ll consider it. As a disabled skeptic, it would make my day.

I agree. We’re about good minds, and we should accept them no matter what the bodies that house them look like.

Next week in St Paul

I’ll be on Minnesota Public Radio on 31 May, on a program called Bright Ideas, in front of a live studio audience, which will probably pepper me with obnoxious questions. Or fun questions. We’ll find out.

This event may have already been ‘sold’ out (tickets are free) — but you locals can try to get in here (Never mind, it is already sold out).

You mean it wasn’t the hippies’ fault?

Last week, the news was full of stories about this report that supposedly explained the Catholic church’s history of pedophilia: the major surprising conclusion that was reported is that the problem wasn’t gay priests, it was all those dirty rotten hippies who were miseducated in the free-love Sixties. Until now I’ve seen one substantial ‘analysis’ of the report, but unfortunately, it was by Crazy Bill Donohue, who is frothingly angry that it didn’t blame the homosexuals. He also blames the hippies, but it’s all the fault of all those gay hippies who infiltrated the church, with their weird ideas about being nonjudgmental. Catholics are supposed to be angrily judgmental about any deviance from whitebread procreation, and Bill is the world’s expert on angry denunciation of any variation from his narrow version of Catholicism.

Now, though, Miranda Hale has read the whole ugly thing, and it doesn’t sound good…but for very different reasons than Donohue’s. She points out that the study was entirely funded and approved by Catholic organizations — if it hadn’t arrived at pre-approved conclusions, it would not have been permitted to have been released. They also fudged the data in unconscionable ways: by changing the definition of pedophilia in an entirely arbitrary way, they changed the frequency of pedophilic abuse in the church from 73% down to 22%. Tsk, tsk. Not only were they dishonest, they were stupidly dishonest.

And what about those hippies?

In other words, the researchers believe that the vast majority of priest-abusers, whether they attended seminary in 1930 or in the early 1970s (or any time in-between), committed their crimes during the 1960s and 1970s (the time they refer to as the “peak”), and that this is primarily due to the fact that their seminaries failed to provide these priest-abusers with a proper “human formation” curriculum.

All of this begs the question (one that the researchers completely ignore): why would any priest have to be taught (in a “human formation” curriculum or otherwise) that it’s never acceptable, ethically or legally, to sexually abuse a child? According to the researchers, we should unquestioningly accept their baseless assertion because, without a proper training in “human formation”, these priest-abusers were unable to understand “appropriate forms of closeness to others” (121) and that certain behaviors are not “appropriate to a life of celibacy” (120).

That argument never did ring true. I’m old enough to have known hippies, although also young enough that I just missed most of the fun, despite at least living in Eugene, Oregon for 9 years, where the hippie subculture still lingers. And never did I encounter a hippie who endorsed the idea that child-raping is OK.

I guess you had to be brought up in the amoral atmosphere of a Catholic seminary to absorb that message.

Already compromised

Ken Ham is currently hawking his new book, Already Compromised, in which he whines about the way universities — even many bible colleges — don’t take the Old Testament absolutely literally. This leads, of course, to students actually examining evidence and arguments outside the Bible, which inevitably leads to…atheism.

He preaches no compromise and accepting every single gosh-darned letter of the Bible in the plainest possible sense. This leads to logic like this at the Creation “Museum”.

In Genesis 6:19-20, the Bible says that two of every sort of land vertebrate (seven of the “clean” animals) were brought by God to the Ark. Therefore, dinosaurs (land vertebrates) were represented on the Ark.

Well now, suddenly, the creationist gang behind the Ark Park have seen the virtues of compromise. They’ve done a few studies and have found, oh horrors, that wingnut craziness might scare away a few suckers customers for their giant Kentucky boondoggle, so they’re thinking about leaving the dinosaurs off the ark.

So if Ark Encounter is in danger of straying from Answers and Genesis’ literal interpretation of the Bible, a burning question must be asked: Will there still be dinosaurs on the Ark?

“(We’re) not positive,” Zovath explains. “The fact that it gets so much publicity is probably a good reason to consider having (dinosaurs) on the Ark, because people write about it. Just like in the Creation Museum, we get so much press and so much publicity and so much interest in the lobby where the dinosaurs and the kids are playing together. People get interested in it, and they want to know more about it, so that could be a strong reason to include that in the Ark itself. Again, we’ve got an awful lot of exhibits, and it’s a pretty complex project, really large, as you can imagine, so we’re kind of concentrating on the big chunks and then working our way down to the specific details of each exhibit.”

I am shocked, shocked I tell you, that Answers in Genesis is all about sucking maximum moolah out of the believers’ pockets. I am also shocked that Ken Ham will be joining the rest of us heathens in Hell. I’m a nice guy, though, so I’ll let him come to our orgies of the damned as long as he promises not to be a debbie downer.

Got your towel?

It’s Towel Day. I’ve got mine right here next to the computer. Incredibly useful things, towels.

Just in case you are unaware of the importance of your towel, take it away, Douglas Adams and the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy:

A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapors; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-bogglingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.

More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitch hiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have “lost”. What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

Hence a phrase that has passed into hitchhiking slang, as in “Hey, you sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? There’s a frood who really knows where his towel is.” (Sass: know, be aware of, meet, have sex with; hoopy: really together guy; frood: really amazingly together guy.)

While we’re talking about advocating equality…

…let’s not forget that other gigantic issue, racism. The secular movement ought to be clearly on the side of the angels on that one, too, and we need to listen more to people of color. I know well the phenomenon of speaking at secular events and looking out to see that sea of paleness — I swear, I could work on a tan off the reflected light from those audiences. And the only way to put more black and native American and Asian faces in the seats is to put more of them on the podium.

We do have a problem with the white assumption of privilege. And the scary thing is that some people think giving a minority a seat at the table excludes a white person.

The study, called ‘Whites see racism as a zero-sum game that they are now losing’, by Michael Norton and Samuel Sommers, suggests that white Americans surveyed think that they are now more widely discriminated against than black people, and that this supposed ‘anti-white bias’ is a bigger societal problem than the real anti-black bias.

Would you believe that the average white person in this study rated anti-white bias as more prevalent than anti-black bias in the current decade? I was flabbergasted on reading that — that’s insane. “Reverse discrimination” is an imaginary problem — white people get all the advantages by default in our society. I know. I’m one of the lucky melanin-deficient individuals.

That link had a perfect image that I had to steal, simply because it illustrates the situation so well.

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Right now, I get more requests to come speak than I can possibly manage; you know that bigger names like Dawkins or Harris or Dennett are impossibly swamped. We aren’t going to be at all discomfited if a meeting organizer asks a brown woman of wit and intelligence to speak — in fact, a more diverse roster of speakers is more likely to make your meeting interesting. A community of ideas is not going to blossom if we keep recycling the same few communicators of the same limited backgrounds.

Women! It’s your job to prepare for your rape!

Kansas representative Pete DeGraaf is fighting for a bill that would exclude abortion coverage in cases of rape. He thinks the state should stay out of that problem, and it should just be something that women “plan ahead for”:

Bollier asked him, “And so women need to plan ahead for issues that they have no control over with pregnancy?”

DeGraaf drew groans of protest from some House members when he responded, “I have a spare tire on my car.”

“I also have life insurance,” he added. “I have a lot of things that I plan ahead for.”

You heard the man, ladies. You should all just get organized and make plans now for the aftermath of your rape. Maybe set up a cookie jar in the kitchen and tuck a dollar bill in it now and then, as your rainy day rape abortion fund. Your supportive boy friends and spouses can cheerfully contribute, too, and if you’re a member of a lesbian couple, you could have a matching pair (for cute!). Get one for your daughters, too, and start them on saving a little bit every year — after all, young girls get raped, too, so you might as well make it a regular feature of their lives.

By the way, the compassionate Pete DeGraaf is also an associate pastor. I am not surprised.