Since you’ve all already made your travel arrangements (or wished longingly that you could make those arrangements), you all know that Skepticon is less than a month away. I’ll be there, taking it easy and just enjoying other people’s efforts…although Lauren made some noises about drafting me to do a workshop. But no! I shall be lazy!

One thing I wanted to mention, though, because it’s important, is that Skepticon is totally transparent about their financials. When you donate to Skepticon, you can see where every dollar goes — and it’s all plowed right back into the conference. It’s not a profitable fundraiser for an organization or an individual who’s up to something else, it’s entirely for the purpose of educating the public at a yearly event.

It’s a good cause, and if you can’t go this year, you should drop them a few dollars (only if you can afford it!) and try to go next year. It’s always worth it.

Even skeptics do them. Brian Dunning is out of prison, and he’s written a lengthy rationalization to explain that he wasn’t really a criminal. His excuses: he’d been suspicious, his partner in the scheme was the shady one, he hadn’t been scamming eBay at all, he was just a scapegoat, he was only sentenced to 29 months, not 20 years. He just explains that all he did was imbed 1×1 invisible pixels in his site that got eBay to willingly plant cookies on visitor’s sites, that allowed him then to reap rewards every time that visitor bought something through eBay. Not his fault!

Of course he also reveals that the 1×1 invisible pixel publishing business was astonishingly lucrative, bringing him an income of $1.1 million. But hey, that’s just about what a good corporate job would pay. So it must have been all right!

I make nowhere near that amount at the education business, and even less at the blogging game. Maybe my mistake is that I need to make my efforts very tiny and invisible, and then I’d get rich?

YouTube is generally a blighted mess for atheism — but I’m seeing more people pushing back (but the comments there are still full of fulminating argle-bargle from the usual noisemakers). Here’s an example:

I do want to mention one thing I see a lot. You’ve heard it: tell a self-labeled proud atheist that they should value equality and other progressive ideals, and the immediate rebuttal is “Atheism just means I don’t believe in god. Go be a humanist if social justice is your thing.”

Humanism is not your get-out-of-jail-free card. The existence of humanism does not mean that calling yourself an atheist exempts you from all responsibilities to normal human concerns — you don’t get to foist off all the obligations involved in being a functional member of a healthy society on those humanists over there.

It’s as if they’ve carried the negativity of the minimal definition one step further: atheism means disbelief in god, and disbelief in any concept of social justice. We’ve been making some great strides in improving the cultural perception of atheism over the last decade, but there are still way too many atheists who are committed to associating atheism with sociopathy.

And they all seem to be hanging out on YouTube.

It’s nice to be able to sit back and let Mano take on Sam Harris. He’s laid out all the flaws in the standard Harris formula.

• Invent incredibly contrived scenario in which all that you love and hold dear is imperiled.

• Make the villain Muslim, especially a “Muslim jihadi”, who are especially dangerous because they look like all other Muslims, except that they are amoral fanatics who will die to kill you.

• Resolve the scenario with an otherwise morally reprehensible solution that we would not accept in any real-world situation.

• Sit back, preen a bit about how he is the only person brave enough to contemplate the unthinkable so coolly and objectively.

• When people point out the absurdity of his excuses and his perniciously vile efforts to justify amoral acts, fall back on accusations that his critics didn’t actually understand what he wrote. He didn’t mean “Muslims”, he really meant “People other than Jerry Seinfeld,” for instance.

• PROFIT.

He isn’t using reason at all. He’s making appeals to strong emotion (They’re going to murder your daughter!) and bigotry (They’re Muslims, so deranged by their evil religion that they will die for their wicked cause!). His fans accept those premises, and then fall all over themselves to condemn anyone who disagrees with the Harris Formula of wanting to help Muslims kill little girls.

It seems Mano shares my opinion of Sam Harris.

Notice: I didn’t ask whether you’d like to get paid to work there — just whether you’d like to work totally for free. All you have to do is fill out the application!

This is a non-trivial exercise. It’s a long form, and you also have to be prepared to give your church references. Well, I’m out!

You also need to answer 12 questions, in detail. I’ve filled it out with my answers.

To be considered you must provide answers to the following questions. After those questions you need to utilize the blank space below to provide two detailed statements. The first statement is your Christian salvation testimony. The second statement is your belief about creation. Applicants that do not answer all questions and do not submit both statements will not be considered.

1. How does one get to heaven when they die? (One doesn’t.)

2. Why do you believe YOU will go to heaven when you die? (Nope.)

3. What would cause anyone to go to hell? (There is no hell.)

4. Do you believe suffering in hell is eternal? (No. See #3.)

5. What do you believe to be the main difference between Christianity and other religions? (Irrelevant and silly differences in doctrine.)

6. Do you believe the earth is thousands of years old or millions of years or does it matter? Explain your thoughts. (Billions. The evidence says so.)

7. “I believe that the ONLY legitimate marriage sanctioned by God and given in Scripture is the joining of one natural born man and one natural born woman. All other unions are contrary to clear Biblical teaching.” Do you agree with this statement or disagree? (I don’t really care what the Bible says.)

8. Please provide a brief statement regarding your Christian Testimony of Salvation. (I don’t believe in salvation. Brief enough?)

9. Please provide a brief statement of your position regarding Creation. (It’s nonsense.)

10. Please provide a brief statement about your position as relates to the inspiration, inerrancy (100% accuracy) of the Bible as the ONLY true Word of God. (It is neither inspired nor inerrant.)

11. How would you respond to someone who said “The Koran or the Book of Mormon are equally the Word of God.”? (I agree!)

12. Please confirm that you have a valid email address with regular access and confirm that you will periodically check email for forms and information from AiG. (Eh. Probably not.)

I wonder what the people who apply for paying jobs there have to do?