Poll on the bigotry of revealing Mormon theology

Ted Cox is giving a talk at UC Davis titled “How to Get into Heaven (According to Mormons)” — he’s an ex-Mormon, and is going to summarize Mormon theology. This has apparently annoyed some people. People are pre-emptively protesting that an unbeliever would actually dare to reveal the silly things a Mormon might actually believe. They’re calling it bigotry.

It is one thing for someone to talk about how he came to leave the faith but it is quite another to attack the sacred things that people hold dear. There is no point to this man’s decisions to reveal things that go on in LDS temples and that has nothing to do with his journey. I do not support people desecrating the Koran, the Torah, Rosaries, Crucifixes, or anything associated with the sacredness of the LDS temple. There is a fine line between education and disrespectful gestures done for the sake of shock value.

So there’s a poll. Have fun.

Is this event informative or offensive?

Purely informative. 54%

Purely offensive. 29%

A combination of the two. 16%

The Midwest Science of Origins Conference!

It’s on! Students here at UMM got together and have organized their very own Midwest Science of Origins Conference, to be held in Morris on 30 March-1 April. As the big name speaker, they’ve got Neil Shubin to tell us all about Tiktaalik, and some other regional folk to talk about physics, biology, anthropology, and philosophy…and also Chris Stedmaaaaaan (you can tell right away that this isn’t a case of me dictating to them what to do — this is entirely student-organized and run). Come on out and learn!

What, you say, you can’t come all the way out to itty-bitty Morris on the edge of nowhere? Then send your money, instead. The conference is free, but they are looking for donations to cover costs.

For every hundred dollars donated, I promise to growl angrily at Stedman. See? That’s how he can contribute to freethought!

(Also on Sb)

Oh. It’s Valentine’s Day.

I don’t believe in it. When you’re happily married, every day is Valentine’s Day.

But I did stoop to explaining where the heart is located in an arthropod, with diagrams, to my intro biology course, just in case they wanted to make a card for their favorite invertebrate. That’s my only concession to this manufactured event.

Also, the Morris Freethinkers are tabling at our student center today, celebrating a belated Darwin Day. Stop by and get your picture taken with Charles Darwin!

Looking for Mac troubleshooting advice

OK, I’ve got a problem on my laptop, equipped with the very latest Mac OS, plenty of memory, and no shortage of storage. Every once in a while, it turns into a total slug: the worst symptom is that the Mac Mail program takes ten minutes or more just to display the contents of a folder (admittedly, I really strain that program). In addition, when I look in the activity monitor, a process called “printtool” has turned into a colossal resource hog, consuming 40-60% of the CPU and 500mb or more of real memory. I can kill it, it comes right back with maybe 1 or 2mb of real memory, and then it steadily grows and grows. Is it just a memory leak (bad enough) or a virus? Anyone encountered this before, and how can I fix it?

This is extraordinarily annoying. Most of the time, everything is working smoothly, and then this parasitic monster takes over and I have to shut down and restart, and then I’m good for a few more hours to days until it comes back.

Ugh. This may be a problem with the Samsung printer driver — which is precisely the model printer I have at home.

The anti-Ecklund

Ecklund, you may recall, is the sociologist with a fondness for counting anyone who expresses awe at the universe as belonging to the religious camp, artificially inflating the number of Christians around. Now the RDF has commissioned an analysis of the population of the UK to see how many people are really Christian in their beliefs, vs. nominally Christian by heritage. The results probably won’t surprise you.

Not only has the number of UK adults calling themselves Christian dropped dramatically since the 2001 Census – our research suggests that it is now only 54% – even those who still think of themselves as Christian show very low levels of religious commitment:

• Only about a third of what we shall call ‘Census-Christians’ cited religious beliefs as the reason they had ticked the Christian box in the 2011 Census

• 37% of them have never or almost never prayed outside a church service

• Asked where they seek most guidance in questions of right and wrong, only 10% of Census-Christians said it was from religious teachings or beliefs

• Just a third (32%) believe Jesus was physically resurrected; half (49%) do not think of him as the Son of God

• And when given 4 books of the Bible to select from and asked which was the first book of the New Testament, only 35% could identify Matthew as the correct answer.

Also, even self-identified UK Christians do not think religion should have a special influence on public policy.

I think the issue is settled. The UK is a diverse and largely secular nation. All the fanatics who whimper about Europe being Christian need to adjust to reality: they are a minority.

Now I just wish the demographics of the United States had a similar arrangement…but I suspect that a majority here aren’t just Christian, but pig-ignorant evangelical/fundamentalist-leaning Christian. We need a few more years to catch up with European enlightenment.

Poll harder, so religion can reassure itself of its relevance

The Baroness Warsi is visiting the Vatican. Why, is not clear: it seems to be an occasion for two devout believers to get together and congratulate each other on the fervency with which each holds their dogma. And there’s just something weird and wrong about it all.

We will be celebrating the decision Margaret Thatcher took 30 years ago to restore full diplomatic relations between our countries. The relationship between the UK and the Holy See is our oldest diplomatic relationship, first established in 1479.

Right there…Catholicism is a country? Am I the only one who finds that disturbing and weird? It’s not something to envy or aspire to: it means that it’s a theocracy.

It’s also dishonest to blithely announce that the UK and Vatican have a long relationship: it hasn’t always been smooth. People of the country of England killed each other for belonging to the country of Catholicism, and vice versa, and much of that history of a relationship has been driven by the tension between an imperialist Vatican and an independent Britain.

I will be arguing for Europe to become more confident and more comfortable in its Christianity. The point is this: the societies we live in, the cultures we have created, the values we hold and the things we fight for all stem from centuries of discussion, dissent and belief in Christianity.

Also, disbelief in Christianity…although expressing that openly could have got you burnt at the stake, once upon a time. It’s not right to insist that the history of Europe is entirely Christian, when dissent from such views was rigidly suppressed. I’d also argue that the great virtues of European culture arose more from a humanist tradition than any dogma. Art and science, engineering and industry are not religious fiefdoms.

Religion is the diaper of humanity’s childhood; it’s OK to grow out of it.

My fear today is that a militant secularisation is taking hold of our societies. We see it in any number of things: when signs of religion cannot be displayed or worn in government buildings; when states won’t fund faith schools; and where religion is sidelined, marginalised and downgraded in the public sphere.

It seems astonishing to me that those who wrote the European Constitution made no mention of God or Christianity. When I denounced this tendency two days before the Holy Father’s State Visit in September 2010, saying that government should “do God”, I received countless messages of support. The overwhelming message was: “At last someone has said it”.

Yeah, it’s always easy to suck up to the teat of comfortable superstitions, and people will always applaud you for it. It doesn’t mean you’re right.

It’s good that the European Constitution ignores gods; the American Constitution does likewise. These are concepts that are totally irrelevant and often destructive to real world understanding. And it is not militant to suggest that a government of all should avoid endorsing sectarian religion, because we know exactly where that support of specific, untestable, and nonsensical myths leads: to pointless conflict over arbitrary bits of belief. It is also telling that she wants government to fund “faith schools”—what the hell can they teach, if it’s based on faith? Reason and evidence are universal values that everyone, believer and unbeliever, should learn and can use. Teach the core of truth and reality…and yes, push superstitious dogma off to the fringes and marginalize it.

Of course there is a poll, because foolishness loves company to reassure itself that it isn’t quite as dumb as it seems. Maybe you should go over there and marginalize religion some more.

Are you worried by the threat of militant secularism in Britain?

Marginalising religion is a form of intolerance seen in totalitarian regimes 22.04%
People should worship in private and not display religious symbols in public 15.97%
People should feel proud to worship in public and display their faith 15.84%
Secularisation is not a threat to this country 46.15%

Why I am an atheist – Snorre Rubin

I guess I never really believed in anything like like a god. Growing up my dad was an agnostic hippie, and many of my moral values derive from that. Being agnostic he told me and my younger sister what he believed, but at the same time he was always careful to this was his personal belief, and not any objective truth.

My older half-sisters mom, who would often babysit us during our childhood, on the other hand, was a full blown reborn christian nutcase. Because of her, I was always a bit sensitive to religious dogma.

But this only explains why I don’t believe in god, but not why I am an atheist. That final step came a couple of years after starting university, while living in a dorm. One night me and a couple of my dormmates were discussing belief, and they asked me how come I didn’t believe in anything? The were polite about it (in Denmark it isn’t really controversial in any way to be an atheist), and they were not in any way strongly religious any of them, so it was not a case of me having to defend my views.

But anyway, I had to think about it, but arrived at a long argument (which I wish I had written down, as it was a really good argument), which in short amounts to this: My basic values, and the foundations of my world view were incompatible, incommensurable even, with the concept of a higher power. That was it, I cannot believe i god, a god, any god, because that would require that I give up the most important parts of whatever else I believe in.

Snorre Rubin
Denmark