Goddamned racist America

A few years ago, at TAM, Blake Stacey and I took Ben Goldacre to a shooting range — we wanted to introduce him to the real America. Once we got there, though, we discovered an unexpected challenge: we had to choose a paper target to shoot at, and most of them were horribly racist. It turns out you can’t choose a picture of a redneck picketing an abortion clinic to blow holes in, but you’ve got a wide range of photos of black people looking snarly and vicious and threatening to “kill”. We ended up choosing the most abstract target we could find, a mere black outline, which we discovered on closer inspection had all the major organ locations market out in grey. It was all a bit squicky.

This was several years ago, though, so we didn’t have the option of choosing this target, which is apparently quite popular right now.

Nothing scarier than a figure in a hoody, armed with iced tea and skittles, I guess.

There is a petition. You can sign it to try and make yourself feel a little better. I don’t think there’s a single thing that can be done to reconcile me to the fact that our country is populated with racist thugs and morons, though. It just is.

The bottom of the barrel

Some of the sleaziest people I know are creationists (not all of them, of course). There’s something about holding an irrational, unsupportable belief that makes them desperate to find vindication by any means possible, and that justifies lying, cheating, and thoroughly reprehensible behavior. “By any means possible” is their motto.

I got a long email from some people who had tried to deal with Eric Hovind and Sye ten Bruggencate — I know, all I have to do is mention those names and already everyone knows the story that follows will be slimy — and rather than try to paraphrase it, I’ve just posted the whole thing below the fold. The Hovind/ten Bruggencate pair are really the very worst of the creationists I’ve encountered — Ray Comfort is dumber, Ken Ham is more conniving, but these two…they truly inspire deep fountains of disgust.

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No One Is Good but One?

Ken Ham is chortling over those silly atheists and their National Day of Reason. No One Is Good but One, he says. It’s the standard Christian anti-human self-loathing crapola that insists we need a tyrant in the sky to tell us what is good.

There is only one absolute standard by which anyone can determine what is “good,” and that is from the absolute authority who is all “good”—God! Outside of such an absolute standard, “good” is whatever you want to make it to be (if you can get away with it)—it is totally subjective. Some people think it is “good” to steal, for instance. When a culture abandons the absolute standard for what is “good” (as this culture is progressively doing in throwing out God’s Word), then we will see people doing what is right in their own eyes—as we are increasingly experiencing. The recent announcement by the president of the USA in support of “gay” marriage is just one such example—he abandoned the absolute standard for what is “good” and now is wanting to impose his subjective opinion on the nation.

Unfortunately, this God-thing doesn’t seem to be able to tell us all about this goodness: it all seems to be filtered through a cacophony of self-styled prophets and mutually contradictory holy books. It’s pointless to tell me there’s an absolute standard, but that I don’t get to see it.

Also, atheist morality is not totally subjective. We can ask ourselves what works for the majority of people: what rules and behaviors minimize conflict, maximize productivity and happiness, and produce stable, long-lasting societies that get along well with others. We do have a standard — a human standard, one that is real and measurable.

I think it is entirely rational to see that about 10% of our nation is discriminated against and treated unfairly, and to make changes in our policies that promote equality and make that 10% happier. Especially since those changes do no harm at all to the other 90%.

And then I look at the absolute morality that Ham proposes should rule our nation, and see that its solution to those 10% is to stone them to death, and I think, “I think I can objectively determine that making people happy is good, and killing them is evil, because I value humans, not voices in hateful people’s heads.” And I conclude that Ken Ham is a wicked cretin.

Also, coincidentally, I notice that NonStampCollector has a new video on a similar point.

Ken Ham says we must obey the Bible literally, in every word. In Exodus 21, the Bible clearly and unambiguously says “Whoever does any work on the Sabbath day is to be put to death.” So, I want to know: in his ideal world based entirely on Biblical morality, when his neighbor mows the lawn on Sunday afternoon, would Ken Ham kill him? Or just gather a group of his friends and kill him in a communal exercise? And would they wait until Monday to do it?

Would that be moral?

Meetup in DC

I know, I’m going to be in Kamloops next weekend (it will be a great meeting, by the way), but there’s another great meeting going on at the same time in Washington DC, the Women in Secularism conference, and a lot of readers are going to that one, or are just living in that east coast region. So there’s going to be a Pharyngula meetup in DC! It’s a secret gathering of the feminist cabal, though, so I can’t tell you where or when (I don’t even know myself), and if you want to attend you need to write to oniongirlsays@gmail.com to get all the top-secret details.

Will there be passwords? Secret handshakes? Ritual scarification? I don’t know. Attend and find out.

Why I am an atheist – Modulous

My parents were Church Of England, mildly practicing (more my mother than my father). My grandparents were strongly practicing C of E (as strong as that gets anyway – that is they went to church every week and all that).

However – my father works in oil and his job took him around a lot of places including the Middle East, the Caribbean and now, Louisiana. So there were lots of ideas flying around when I was a kid. My first school was a ‘Gospel School’ (I was the only white boy in the whole school!), and my leaving present was the Good News Bible with a picture of the island the school was on.

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My day in Flagstaff

I flit out to Flagstaff today to participate in a BBC documentary. It’s part of a series with an interesting approach: they take True Believers on a road trip to confront them with evidence against their obsessions. Some of you Brits out there might have seen an earlier episode, the 9/11 Conspiracy Road Trip, in which 5 9/11 Truthers were taken on a bus tour of relevant sites in the United States. It apparently got good reviews (except from 9/11 Truthers themselves). You can watch the whole program yourself!

There will be some new episodes of the show coming out. The one I participated in today was a group of 5 believers in aliens and UFOs who are on a grand bus tour of the Southwest — they’d talked to SETI people in LA, a NASA scientist at Meteor Crater, a biologist who tried to set them straight on evolution and aliens, and they’re on their way to, of course, Area 51.

All I had to do was have a conversation with these 5 believers in alien abductions. It was…interesting. They were all very nice people, but they ranged in rationality from people who’d experienced unexplained events and were trying to figure out what happened, to a real loon who was utterly convinced that Jews were alien hybrids, reptoids had hybridized with humans, and the stone blocks of the pyramids had been cut with lasers. We argued for an hour or two, all of it was recorded, and I’m sure it will all be cut to the 5 juiciest minutes for the final show.

Keep an eye open for it next year all you British-type people, and let me know how it turns out.

Why I am an Atheist – Alex Manuel

I believe two varieties of atheists exist, which I call “small-A” and “big-A.” Small-A atheists comprise more or less ALL atheists; small-A atheism is simply the fact of not believing in any gods or practicing any theistic religion (at least, not with the understanding that any of it is real in any sense but cultural).

All big-A Atheists are small-A atheists, but only some small-A atheists are big-A Atheists. To be a big-A Atheist is to embrace the counter-culture surrounding atheism, to recognize it as a part of who you are, and to be as outspoken about it as is comfortable for each. The big, red A that so many of us display in our various corners of the social network, on our cars or cubicle walls (for those living in states where such wouldn’t get you lynched) – that’s one good example of what represents big-A Atheism. It is not only a lack of belief, but a form of expression for the sparse few of us dotted like lighthouses around seas of theists, cranks, crackpots and the terminally incurious.

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Episode CCCXXVII: My current favorite poem

Don’t tell anyone, but I might occasionally read poetry for fun…and right now, this would be my favorite, “The Mask of Anarchy”, by Shelley.

Yeah, it’s long, but I love the ending.

And if then the tyrants dare
Let them ride among you there,
Slash, and stab, and maim, and hew, –
What they like, that let them do.

With folded arms and steady eyes,
And little fear, and less surprise,
Look upon them as they slay
Till their rage has died away.

Then they will return with shame
To the place from which they came,
And the blood thus shed will speak
In hot blushes on their cheek.

Every woman in the land
Will point at them as they stand –
They will hardly dare to greet
Their acquaintance in the street.

And the bold, true warriors
Who have hugged Danger in wars
Will turn to those who would be free,
Ashamed of such base company.

And that slaughter to the Nation
Shall steam up like inspiration,
Eloquent, oracular;
A volcano heard afar.

And these words shall then become
Like Oppression’s thundered doom
Ringing through each heart and brain,
Heard again – again – again –

Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number –
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you –
Ye are many – they are few.

If you’re wondering, it’s about the Peterloo Massacre in 1819 — with which all you fans of popular labor movements are well acquainted, I’m sure.

(Episode CCCXXVI: Singing scientists, sorta.)