Cats, skepticism and MRAs

It struck me this weekend as I was arguing with my cat that the conversation was remarkably like some I’ve had over the last years online with so-called Men’s Rights Activists. I say “so-called” for a few reasons. First because the word “Men” implies “adult,” and part of being an adult is taking pains to see others’ points of view; second because what they advocate for  are actually ossified privileges and not “Rights,” and third because “Activists” implies something other than being on the Internet all day.

But my typical exchange with an MRA, at least when I’m in an optimistic frame of mind and don’t engage in mockery, generally runs like:

MRA: [unsupported assertions stated as bald facts, often with an unwarranted tone of assumed superiority]

Me: “Well, now, the problem with that is that [data] and thus [logical inference], especially seeing as [more data].”

MRA: “Yes, but what you fail to realize is [word-for-word repetition of the statement I just argued against, as if I hadn’t said anything at all]

Which for some reason came to mind this weekend as I walked into the kitchen to get some water. The cat came racing into the kitchen, nudged at the cupboard door where we keep the treats, and the following conversation ensued:

Cat: “MEOW.”

Me: “I just fed you your lunch. You have perfectly good food in your bowl you haven’t touched. And when I gave you treats this morning you barfed them up in twenty minutes. I’m not giving you more until you eat some real food.”

Cat, looking at cupboard and  then glaring at me: “MEOW.”

Thus engaging in a typical example of argumentum ad NOMiNOM.

It’s probably unfair to compare online arguments with MRAs to me aimlessly talking to a house pet. It may also be needlessly insulting. I mean, one of the two conversations involves a pointless attempt to communicate with a not-precisely sentient being with a brain the size of a walnut, who is mainly motivated by base, unthinking desires which he is unable to cover with a veneer of rationality. And the other involves me talking to my cat.

But the similarity is there: one person trying, in however flawed and ineffective a fashion, to communicate some data and nuance and logic, to actually move the discussion in one way or the other, and the other there only to convey his opinion without listening.

I can’t say as I really blame them. If you’re not used to it, thinking is hard work.

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Secular charities are almost there

It takes something really important to get me to burrow up out of my sickbed, especially when I was so enjoying the dark coolth nestled in a web of soft fungal mycelia and was busily contemplating the various flavors of soil. But this issue matters. It’s the final two days of the Chase Giving campaign, with multiple tiers of donations depending on the ranking. Last time I listed the three secular candidates, you all dutifully put the first two in a solid position…because each of you had two votes.

so Foundation Beyond Belief is securely on a high tier. Poor Camp Quest has the lowest number of votes. If you didn’t see the original posting and didn’t vote before, click on that link and give them a little love. Well, cash. Even better — it mulches.

The Secular Student Alliance is doing OK, but they’re teetering right on the edge of a tier. If you’ve got a second vote, make sure they don’t fall off the edge by clicking on that link!

I also want you to think about how hard it was to type this post with only a pair of tiny paired anterior ganglia and no arms. I had to do it by writhing elaborately. And now my keyboard is a slimy mess, just like the rest of me. If I can make this sacrifice, you should be ashamed for not bothering to click, you with your endoskeletons and your digits and your image forming eyes.

Why I am an atheist – Mitchell Hayden

I consider myself lucky that I never really had a faith to lose. I was raised in a Christian family, but I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t questioning the things I heard in church. I made the firm decision to reject any organized religion in third grade when the leaders at my first and only Awana meeting told me (and most of the other children) that we would burn in hell for eternity if we continued to read Harry Potter. Luckily my family is not so ridiculous that they’d keep me in such an environment, and I was free to never have to go back. From that point until late into my high school career I considered myself a Deist. Just because organized religion was awful didn’t mean there wasn’t a kind loving god right? I was happy to think this until I began identifying as a skeptic. Even after my mother also rejected organized Christianity there were still a multitude of woo filled beliefs to contend with. The more educated I became the more I began to doubt all the things I had grown up with. “The Secret,” “Angel Therapy,” tarot cards. It didn’t take long for the idea of a god to follow the other foolishness down the drain. I’m now a proud and active atheist. There was a time when I thought leaving all the comforting ideas behind would be hard, that their absence would bother me. The exact opposite is true. The more I see how harmful those ideas are, the more sure I am I’m right. I could never go back to supporting beliefs that would keep people miserable because they think that their actions will lead them to a salvation that doesn’t exist.

Mitchell Hayden

Godlessness gives strength

Ain’t this the truth?

So that’s my story in a nutshell. I highly doubt you’ll be seeing it on your current affairs television show as they tend not to like defiant, questioning, atheist cripple stories. They’re not very inspiring for the viewers.

But at least you can read Holly Warland’s story online. She was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy when she was 12, and realized it wasn’t her fault, it wasn’t god-given, it wasn’t there for a purpose: she was the unlucky loser in a cosmic lottery. And she found strength in herself. Now that’s inspiring!

Arrest everyone who disagrees with me! Show trials for all!

R. Joseph Hoffman is a flaming authoritarian, about as illiberal as you can get without joining the Tea Party. He’s very, very upset at Terry Jones and that gang of blithering idiots who assembled that terrible movie slandering Muslims, provoking riots in Egypt and Libya. Oh, and also his comrades-in-arms, Jerry Coyne, Eric MacDonald, and me.

I have just one question for PZ: What are you thinking now? God save the First Amendment?

Actually, I suppose he could bothered to read what I wrote on the “work of a group of incompetent fundamentalist Christian assholes pissing on entire cultures”, but that would be too much too ask — R. Joseph Hoffman is very busy raging at the voices in his head. I don’t even know why he bothers to ask what I’m thinking, since it won’t matter what I say, what with his fantasies informing his perceptions. I mean, we went around on this before, and he interprets what I wrote as “Hoffman coddles Muslims”. Go ahead, read what I wrote; you’ll have a very tough time pulling that interpretation out of what I said.

But what do I think of this situation? May reason save the rule of law.

Terry Jones and his compatriots are idiots, but they have a right to say hateful, awful, evil things. I’d say the same is true of the Rev. Phelps, the KKK, the Catholic Church, the Mormons, and R. Joseph Hoffman. I should have the right to say how much I despise them all, and I should also have the right to tune them out and ignore them. I’d actually rather they spoke up and made their positions clear; the threats I get in email don’t trouble me so much as the worry that the ones who’ll actually do something dangerous aren’t so stupid as to open their mouths and announce their intent.

Terry Jones is an intolerant ignoramus, but I don’t worry about him. What bothers me more are the intolerant ignoramuses who riot and murder when they’re offended; I’d rather they went out and made an incompetent propaganda film, for instance. I worry that our president might actually listen when Egypt calls for world-wide censorship, as when the White House explored the idea of having an offensive video removed from youtube (Google said no, fortunately — but they do assist in local censorship efforts).

Decide that a Terry Jones must be silenced, and who is next? I can tell you: atheists. Egypt has arrested Alber Saber for the crime of atheism.

On Wednesday, September 12th, a Muslim friend and neighbor using Saber’s computer reportedly discovered that he was the admin for the Egyptian Athiests Facebook page, which is the largest of several such groups online with over a thousand “likes”. On September 10 the notorious “Innocence of Muslims” had been posted on the site. Over the next two days crowds began to gather outside his house, threatening Saber and his mother.

On Thursday night Saber’s mother called the police, hoping for protection. When the police arrived however, rather than fending the threatening mob outside, they arrested her son.

The charge according to his lawyer and supporters, focuses on videos in which Saber discusses his own Coptic faith or lack thereof. This makes sense as to charge anyone for posting the “Innocence of Muslims” video would set an impossible precedent. Even conservative broadcasters have also shown the video, or sections of it on their shows. It is not yet clear however, which materials will be included in the case against him, which is currently in the hands of the General Prosecutor. The next hearing is expected in four days.

After talking with Saber’s friends it seems likely to me that Egypt’s Islamist leaders are hoping to create a local issue where they can be seen as the tough guys, to distract Egyptians from how the furor in the international arena, in the context of which they seem impotent.

There is no difference between what the Egyptian government has done to this man, and what R. Joseph Hoffman asks the American government to do to Terry Jones:

Arrest him without delay. Deploy the National Guard. Surround the Church.

No. That’s totalitarianism. Free speech isn’t free if you’re only allowed to speak government- and church-approved opinions. It’s surprising how many people cannot comprehend that.

(via Why Evolution Is True)

Why I am an atheist – JB

I’m an anti-theist.  I used to be an atheist but I realized that it did not describe my true feelings.  And let’s face it somewhere between theist, atheist, and anti-theist it’s all about your belief system.  I grew up Mormon in the deep south.  My family are multi-generational Mormons active in both their faith and church leadership.  I left my religion at the age of 18 as I watched friends of mine coming back off their missions.  Young men and women who had been brainwashed and inculcated into the hyperbolic microcosm that is the mormon religion.

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Speak louder, Catherine Deveny!

That Deveny…she’s always causing trouble. And good for her.

She recently appeared on a panel debate show on Australian TV, Q&A, with Peter Jensen, an Anglican bishop. Jensen is smug, smarmy ass: when he wasn’t whining that we need a respectful discussion about the issues, he was announcing that women should submit to men in marriage, that same-sex marriage is unbiblical, that homosexuality is a disease, and no, the homophobia of the church can’t possibly contribute to gay teen suicide rates. He’s one of those guys who puts on his politeness with his clerical collar, and thinks both make him absolutely right, and able to say the most vile lies with smooth confidence.

Catherine Deveny was brash, smart, and assertive, and openly atheist. She is also a woman. She spoke the truth — that the church is a medieval institution promoting homophobia and misogyny, and that the facts and an unbiased morality of equality do not support Jensen’s claims.

Guess which one got all the negative press?

…I should not have been surprised at the fall-out from Catherine Deveny’s appearance on ABC’s Q&A this week. Deveny’s opposition to Anglican Archbishop, Peter Jensen, resulted in an onslaught of vitriolic criticism and abuse – even from those who claim to support her positions on asylum seekers, same-sex marriage and women’s equality.

Even the Australian weighed in with an editorial reprimanding Deveny and the ABC for failing to show the Anglican Archbishop of Sydney ‘proper regard’ and ‘respect’.

While the Australian characterises (or more accurately, caricatures) Deveny as mocking, crude, crass and intolerant, Jensen is ‘frank, concerned and conciliatory on homosexual health issues’. Deveny, we are told, was guilty of ‘shouting down’ the Archbishop.

Don’t they realize that the proper regard and respect to show a leader of institutionalized dogma is to turn him away at the door, and to spit in his eye every time he demands a respect to his position that he won’t show to women, gays, the poor, the disabled, the disenfranchised? Catherine Deveny, rather than being excesively rude, showed remarkable restraint at having to sit next to the poisonous old fraud.

But no, Chrys Stevenson documents the insults flung at Deveny — she was a crazy bitch who should shut up and brought down the whole tone of the event by dominating the conversation. What about that?

Curiously, as this was one of the rare Q&A’s where the women (Catherine Deveny, Concetta Fierravanti-Wells and Anna Krien) outnumbered the men, the male guests (Peter Jensen and Chris Evans) still managed to dominate the conversation 55 per cent to 45 per cent.

To the contrary of her critics, I think the other panelists were all dreary bores who said a range of things (some sensible, some odious) and Deveny was the only person who made the event interesting. But this attention that the public pays to mouthy women (even when she clearly gave everyone else a chance to speak their piece) ought to be recognized for what it is: being nice is a tool of the status quo; complaining about tone is an attempt to silence the passion and outrage of the oppressed; privilege perpetuates itself by labeling difference as deviancy.

Keep on speaking up, Catherine Deveny!

Why I am an atheist – James Yakura

Because of Santa Claus.

Yes, this is going to take a bit of explaining. I was raised by parents who encouraged creativity and curiosity, who had shelves upon shelves of books on all walls of the house. And I had access to books as well: science fiction, fantasy, nonfiction. I remember quite clearly reading and rereading a science encyclopedia aimed at young children. I remember regular trips to the museum in Denver. I remember learning about how science worked by observing the world, and rejecting a belief if what was observed did not match the belief.

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