Deepak Chopra, of all people, sent me a link to an account by a professional skeptic of an Anomalous Event That Can Shook His Skepticism to the Core, published in Scientific American. It’s embarrassingly bad, a story that would have scarcely passed muster at the old Fate magazine.
Atheists have been fighting stereotypes for as long as I’ve been one, and longer: that we’re all Communists, that we’re Vulcan robots, that we’re amoral and likely to rape small children (no, ma’am, you’ve confused us with Catholic priests), that we all think we’re so much better than everyone else. Thanks to the behavior of our Great Atheist Thinky Bigbrain Leaders, though, another one is taking currency fast: that we are all MRA-style anti-woman freaks.
Lindsay Beyerstein, who is always great, interviews Mark Oppenheimer about his misogyny piece on Point of Inquiry. It’s a good listen. I was especially amused by his comments about the slymepit — not even worth bothering with — and the faint praise for Penn Jillette — nowhere near as bad as the slymepit.
This is what I like: atheism doesn’t need Global Thinky Leaders, in which the same ol’ faces get elevated — it needs more people, deeper roots, wider distribution. Check out the Openly Secular project. Maybe you should contribute a video, too!
Stephen King has chosen to believe in God, which is fine. You can believe whatever you want, especially if you’re worth billions of dollars. But I find myself annoyed when he tries to stake his beliefs on bad evidence and stereotypes about atheists.
The story going around right now is that, in order to install iOS 8, the latest version of the operating system for iGadgets, you need to delete the Bible app.
I noticed that Ophelia referenced a paper on “institutional betrayal”. I sat up at something else: it’s from the University of Oregon, my ol’ grad school! And then…it’s out of the department of psychology, where my wife got her degree! Even before I read it, I was curious…and I discovered that it was an amazing act of prophecy, or, I guess, insight into human behavior.
Isn’t that what psychologists do?
Read the traits of institutions that feel like betrayals to their members. You’ll feel a familiar sense of deja vu.
Stephen Law has a very good list of general humanist traits. I can go with this:
1. Secular humanists place particular emphasis on the role of science and reason.
2. Humanists are atheists. They do not sign up to belief in a god or gods.
3. Humanists suppose that this is very probably the only life we have.
4. Humanists usually believe in the existence and importance of moral value.
5. Humanists emphasize our individual moral autonomy and responsibility.
6. Humanists are secularists in the sense that they favour an open, democratic society and believe the State should take neutral stance on religion.
7. Humanists believe that we can enjoy significant, meaningful lives even if there is no is a God, and whether or not we happen to be religious.
But then he raises an objection I wouldn’t have even considered:
Now some readers may be thinking, ‘But hang on, you haven’t mentioned naturalism. Surely secular humanists also sign up to naturalism, right? They reject belief in the supernatural. So why no mention of naturalism here?
She does! It’s called Bread & Roses TV, and you can watch it on YouTube. I’ll start you out: here’s the episode in which she interviewed me at Oxford.
I haven’t watched it myself, because I’m viscerally incapable of viewing videos of me — I don’t know how you people do it. I’ll read your reviews, though.
Read Amanda Marcotte on Sam Harris and Penn Jillette. And Adam Lee doesn’t love Richard Dawkins anymore. You know, I’m getting a little bit tired of hearing self-appointed Leaders of Science, Skepticism, and Atheism repeatedly saying sexist bullshit, and then getting indignant and rather than retracting the sexism, getting loud and defensive and macho and insisting that declaring women to be intrinsically less critical is just rational, or that calling them ‘cunts’ is necessary for little girls to be able to appreciate great literature someday. It makes me uncomfortable. I think it does real harm to the advancement of critical thought and atheism.
