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.

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

Why I am an atheist – Icaarus

Two words, Star Trek.

I know, the perfect definition of geeky, but hear me out. I grew up on it. The Next Generation launched when I was two, and the next year without new Star Trek on TV was my second year of University so yea, it was always kinda there.

Now lets expand this with a little backstory. My mother is Jewish, and my father is a Wasp. Both of whom suffered through far too much of the bad aspects of religion during their teenage years. Because of this and previous bad blood between both and their respective churches, they left the church out of our lives. We still light a candle for Zadie (something I will probably do for my mother when the time comes) and yes I have sat through (and at various points enjoyed 7th heaven and Touched by an Angel) but with the sole exception of weddings we never went to church. This of course lead to a few “kids say the darndest things” moments, but all in all it just was something that existed outside not inside the home. So back to Star Trek. My first few years were spent in a small town with me living too far out of town to have many opportunities for “play dates” outside of school. This combined with the whole “outsider” aspect my family experienced from moving to said small town meant that I was always an outcast, even before the geekiness showed. Being an only child meant that I also never learned to stop asking questions. Well these factors pushed me towards Star Trek.

The idea that there is always an answer, and it is always different, and it is logically consistent with the universe surrounding it were interesting. This is the big point. Gene Roddenberry is better at creating a self consistent universe than any author of any religious text that has come before. The Futurama joke about the Star Trek religion may be closer to the truth then we would care to believe. So when most people were “praising jesus” I was thinking up trouble with Data. Fast forward a little; the summer that Next Generation ended, was the same summer we moved to a slightly larger town, this time living within the city limits. This meant that my pre-teen mind finally understood what neighbours were, and walking home from school was now a thing I could do. The damage was already done, I was already hooked on science. It made sense, it worked, and it was understandable. At this point I was reading at least 2-3 adult books a month, mostly those cheesy Star Trek books, but still, easily grade 10 reading level. So when the local bible thumpers started showing me the ‘bible’ I couldn’t get through it. There are only a handful of books I have seriously tried to read and failed (including Crime and Punishment, the Four Agreements, and the King James Version). Because I couldn’t talk about the bible, I was pushed to outsider status. I was already comfortable always being the outsider, so I didn’t see a need to conform. This meant that my dating life suffered, but now the more mature me has found real friends. One loyal friend is worth a thousand friendly people. I have 3 of the best friends anyone could ask for. I have a community that even with all the anonymity, is still closer than any church group. I can argue and fight and vehemently oppose someone’s opinion and still enjoy their company. I can look at myself in the mirror. If I had conformed all those years ago none of that would be true

Well that’s my story. To all of those who have posted before me, thank you. Gene Roddenberry, thank you. PZ, thank you. Freethought Blogs, thank you. I will attempt to answer all asked questions, but no guarantee on timeliness.

Icaarus

Why I am an atheist – Michelle Rochon

I was never raised religious. For most of my youth, the concept of A Big Daddy In the Sky ™ never even existed to me. At my public primary school I was in a class called “morals”, the alternative to catholic teaching class. There was 4-5 kids in there… We were taken out of the classroom and put in another to talk about inane things I don’t remember to this day. Mostly topics about general public behaviour. The big line they would tell us though is that we are learning everything they’re learning in catholic class without the jesus part. That would make me laugh later in my life, but as a child I just didn’t think about it. Jesus was some naked dude on a cross. I had a vague idea that he was something about Christmas time… But since that it has the vague name of “Noël” in french, I didn’t see the connection. Noël’s mascot was Santa, and was about turkey dinner, a pretty tree and new Nintendo games. Especially new Nintendo games.

There was only a couple events in my young times that I remember coming into contact with the religious, besides a boring as hell wedding and christening. One time was in 5th grade, when a substitute teacher asked us to pray before class. I gave her a blank stare and said “But I’m in morals class! I don’t pray, it’s not on my school curriculum!” and the teacher answered “But you don’t have to be in catholic class to pray. Just do it and you’ll see God will be happy.” I don’t think she realized that the concept completely escaped my mind. So I closed my eyes really hard realized I had no idea what I was supposed to do. I opened my eyes and saw the other kids where mumbling over their folded hands. It didn’t look like a healthy practice so my mind started wandering off. After a couple minutes or so the teacher said prayer time was over and smiled at me. I smiled back. I was a couple minutes closer to going back home to play Zelda on SNES and I was not scolded for daydreaming in class. Excellent.

The next one was on the last days of class before Christmas vacation. I think it was on the same school year or the next. The school decided to take us to church. Yet again I objected, saying I was no supposed to go to church. Every other year, I stayed behind and did christmas time artcraft instead. Teacher said I was going. So I went. It was some sort of christmas time play with the priest dressed up as some dude called Saint Nicholas. He sternly spoke down to us saying that in his time children were not getting video games at christmas and instead were getting fruits an- oh wait, I stopped listening there. Screw that guy. I never told my parents. It looked trivial and I didn’t wanna scare them off into buying me fruits.

Up until that point I never considered myself an atheist. I was just nothing. Religion was not a care in my brain. Later on I would think about all that happened to me and I would be aghast at this happening in a public school but that wasn’t here nor now. Highschool went on with nothing happening besides me getting beat up like any other nerd.

The day I started calling myself an atheist was sometime in the year I turned 18. It was rather silly, but it was thanks to a person I met online, a girl my age who was running a Mega Man X fansite I was helping with. Then one day I started wondering she put God before everyone else in the site credits. It didn’t make sense to me that one would put God before her parents, sibblings and friends. She started explaining to me that God was a jealous but loving God and that he went before everyone else… Even those you love. I genuinely started wondering about that. What do I know about God? I don’t know anything, never bothered to learn. Am I wasting my life? What if I die tomorrow, was I going to the great barbecue? So I asked her to teach me what she knew. She gladly spoke to me about praying, the ten commandments and most interestingly that accepting Jesus as your personal savior would automatically wash away all the wrongs you did in your life… It didn’t make much sense to me. But it looked convenient, considering I fucking cuss a lot. I also pointed out that the Adam and Eve thing looked a bit silly and that, as an amateur astronomer, I sorta knew the Earth was pretty old. She denied it all, speaking about the young earth, Noah and that Darwin didn’t know jack according to the Bible. I knew the Noah story of course, I wasn’t that much of an idiot and I knew it came from the Bible, but it was just that… A story. Therefore I asked her “What proves that your God is the One True God? Why aren’t you a buddhist?” she meekly told me to read the Bible, and that all would be made Holy Clear and I would see the Light…

So I went to the library and borrowed a Bible. I then proceeded to read the full thing from cover to cover over a couple weeks…

And today I’m an atheist! Thank you, Bible!

Michelle Rochon

Ken Ham is such a pig

There’s this thing called Darwin Sunday where churches are encouraged to have sermons endorsing good science and evolution. I am not a fan, because what I see are priests babbling badly about science and using it as a hook to promote Jesus. Ken Ham has rather different reasons for disliking Darwin Sunday, though: he detests those liberal churches that compromise on “millions of years”, and also something a little surprising. Or not so surprising, given his fundamentalism.

I did tell the reporter that the list of churches that have signed up for Evolution Weekend are mainly theologically liberal churches, and I added, with an inordinate number of women clergy. The particular Sacramento-area church the writer reported on has a woman pastor—who obviously doesn’t understand the difference between operational (observational) science and historical science.

These churches allow women to speak? Oh, horrors.

Ken Ham is not one who should be lecturing those ignorant wimmenfolk on not understanding the nature of science, either, since he has made up a set of criteria for science that make no sense at all. That “Were you there?” bullshit, for example.

Reactions on the Palouse

We all had a good time at the Darwin on the Palouse event, but for one thing: Jen got all the batty creationists, and I didn’t. My blood lust was not sated.

It was primarily two people who were especially obnoxious last night. One was a guy in the back of the room who got the microphone, pulled out a notebook, and started reading a long, rambling, incoherent statement, the gist of which was “There are creation scientists, and they really are too scientists, and evolution is not a science”. He was allowed to babble on far too long; Jen and Fred Edwords answered his question, dismissively and honestly, and then he reiterated the same nonsense. The audience was geting exasperated and fidgety, and people were telling him to sit down and give other people a chance to ask questions…flipped to another page in his notebook and started stammering out more longwinded creationist cliches. He was an inconsiderate and arrogant moron who was only parrotting stupid creationist tropes. He finally got his microphone taken away.

And now he has a supporter expressing his dismay on Facebook!

The presentations this evening at the U of I campus were well presented, thought provoking and alarming. Unfortunately, the question and answer period was cantankerous, disrespectful and all together unproductive. Surprisingly this behavior appeared to be initiated and sustained by members of the host organization. If this is how Palouse Coalition of Reason intends to treat their guests, I fear that future attempts to promote ideas centered around critical thinking and scientific understanding will be limited to a narrow group of like minded participants. Or perhaps this is the intent?

Sorry, Mr Warwell: not only was the creationist not expressing ideas, not only was he treated with excessive courtesy when he insisted on presenting an ill-thought out, ignorant manifesto, but he was an asshole, too. Please do not bother to “contribute” to other discussions on this issue: his performance was embarrassing and really deserved far harsher ridicule than he got.

The second creationist started his babble with noise about Mt St Helens and amazing whale fossils in Peru that are supposed to support the claims of the Genesis Flood. I already knew this story: it’s a classic example of a creationist quotemining the scientific literature, and it’s actually something I dealt with in a recent comment, prompted by that inane twit, David Buckna. The Peruvian whale fossils were the result of multiple deposition events, not at all compatible with a single great flood, and were produced in a sheltered harbor where whale carcasses drifted and were swiftly buried by diatom blooms. I got a bit irate and shouted him down; I told him it was not evidence for his myth, and that he was simply cherry-picking the data.

Someone else wrote in complaining about the event.

Actually, I Dislike this page now after seeing the embarrassing performance last night. I believe in evolution certainly, and I also know that since none of us can say for sure what the history of the Earth is, my reality is just that–a belief. I expect campus groups to have respect for everyone, and a respect for differences amongst us, and what went on last night was an outrageous disrespect to anyone with a religious faith, or anyone who questions the conclusions of scientists. This is the way to turn people away from one another and against each other, and an excellent way to turn religious students and community members away from the idea of evolution. You guys did no one any favors last night.

NO. This is po-mo shallow bullshit. We do not have to have respect for discredited, disconfirmed, dishonestly presented nonsense, like those creationists were doing. In a discussion of matters of empirical reality, strong skepticism is essential and useful…a meeting in which we were expected to show deference to liars and frauds and ignoramuses like those two creationists would not be a productive event.

There’s a place for more conciliatory, compromising tactics, but there’s also a place to take the muzzles off the wild dogs and turn them loose on the misleading crackpots of the young earth creationist movement.

Maybe that’s why these guys didn’t appear at my talk: they didn’t want to get shredded.