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.

Why I am an atheist – Anonymous

I cannot remember a time when I didn’t suffer from what was later diagnosed as Bipolar Disorder. Imagine being a child (even under the age of 5) and being so depressed that suicide seemed the only option. I was raised as a practicing Christian. My mother took me to church every Sunday and I took in what was said. I believed that the way I felt was a punishment or moral failing from God for some failure on my part. I tried very hard to be “good.” When I reached middle school the illness reached its height. During my years in the fifth and sixth grade I was suicidal daily. Everything felt dark and unchangeable. I carried a piece of broken glass with me at all times so if the pain became too much I could slit my wrists at any moment. This was when the bipolar aspect really kicked in and I had psychotic symptoms. I thought people met and planned on ways to get me to kill myself; the blood couldn’t be on their hands. If people were talking and laughing as I went by, it must be about me. I redoubled my efforts to be good, even though the whole religion thing had begun to seem suspect. I clearly remember sitting in pew somewhere between the ages of 5 and 8 and thinking, “this just doesn’t make any sense.” Luckily for me, I was born with a very scientific mind. I always had questions and logic and science seemed to me to be the best paths to a clear answer. Initially these took the form of me questioning what was wrong with me, why was I a suffering? Between 5th and 8th grade I researched mental illness and determined I was suffering from either schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. I still believed, even with my scientific views, that my illness was my fault. The religion in which I was raised seemed to imply I simply needed to try harder and become a better Christian. I tried to reach out for help from adults, but my fear that my illness was brought on by myself precluded me from doing so. As I grew up, I began to question even more. I was always interested in astronomy and physics and they focused my mind on science and the scientific method. Despite my illness, I excelled in school. I moved on through high school and began college. I finally was able to ask my parents to send me to a psychiatrist. After trying several drugs, I found one that keeps the demons mostly a bay. I married a wonderful man. I continued schooling and received my AA, BS and recently my MS.

There is simply no way there is a god. Why would a god allow a child to suffer in the way that I did? Why would a god allow any child to suffer from disease, neglect or abuse? These were the initial questions that started my atheism. I always found the basic Christian tenets iffy at best, even when I was very young; but I thought it must be because I was not trying hard enough. As an adult, I now easily state my atheism when asked. I am surprised at how many people ask me, “but what happens when you die?” I find their fear of the unknown a poor basis for believing in a deity. I have experienced fear in my life, but I still look out at our amazing universe and am at peace with the idea that I may never know all the answers. And that’s ok.

Anonymous
United States

Why I am an atheist – Will

I was raised in a house with a large property far from any city, where the night sky alone provides you with all you need in order to begin dealing with the fact that the universe is….. really freaking complicated. I would play outside on a regular basis, digging in the ground, taking apart plant life, searching for new creatures in my pond, and almost every time I’d learn something new. When I was first really introduced to religion by one of my best friends I was about 9. I went home and told my parents about this idea that my friend’s family had about this guy who hangs around behind the scenes and takes care of all the stuff we can’t understand. They as usual kept their own beliefs out of my way and encouraged me to explore this new concept and build my own opinion. When I approached my friend about it he said that I could attend church with him and his family one day. When I asked what church is all about he told me, you get up early Sunday morning, go to a building with a bunch of other people and listen to a man talk about a book for an hour or two. I declined without a moments hesitation, Sunday was one of my only two days off from school where I could play at home where I felt comfortable. I was fine with not knowing the supposed secrets of the universe, as long as I could explore it on my own.

My interest in religion disappeared for years, I never felt that it effected me. I saw it maybe as a fine and easy to understand placeholder for reality through the ages until science came along. My aforementioned friend and I were perfectly fine without speaking about religion, going on around 17 years now and he’s never once pushed anything on me. Him being my only window to religion for many years I thought that was the case for all of the religious community, they had a belief as a family, it made them feel good, but they didn’t literally believe every word and didn’t try to change my life with it.

It wasn’t until later on that I started to get a bigger picture, that there’s plenty of people who do take everything in their bible literally and without evidence, something I cannot even imagine doing. In my opinion if you want to get a deep feeling from a book, pick up a science text, read about the solar system, evolution, quantum mechanics, it all seems like fiction or even magic, the deep feeling comes when you realize that it has real evidence in it’s favor. If I read something new it almost takes me back to when I was a kid and I’d find something I’d never seen before on my property. When I hear of those from the religious community, for instance teaching children to ask dead end questions like “were you there?” when in the presence of a moon rock and told it’s age, I almost get personally offended. Asking creative questions is how we move forward, if everything is already explained as magic, we stall. I became an atheist from a previously apathetic standpoint because of miseducation, a reason quite benign in comparison to the atrocities I now realize are carried out in the names of gods all over the world on a daily basis. I am an atheist because I fear for our future and refuse to be associated with those who would see those fears come to realization, whether unconsciously, or with the best of intentions.

Will
Canada

What are colleges good for then?

I wish I’d had these data yesterday. I gave a creationist-bashing talk, and my introductory slides were intended to show the generally deplorable state of science education in this country. I used some national data, but what would have been more dramatic would have been to use something local and even more extreme. Walla Walla University, a Seventh Day Adventist college, did a survey of student views on origins. There is lots and lots of data in chart form on that page, and all of it is depressing and disgraceful.

Perhaps you wonder how many students think a magic man in the sky did it:

Or how many students stopped learning about science when they stopped watching the Flintstones:

Or whether these devout kids find the clergy sufficient, or have deluded themselves into believing their wacky ideas are supported by science?

I thought about raging about how WWU wasn’t doing their job as a university (but clearly, they’re doing great as a church), but then I was stopped short — what would a similar survey at other American colleges look like? What does the student body at my university think? I dread finding out.

But I want to find out. Hey, student freethought groups out there, here’s a project suggestion for you all: do a similar survey. Put together a questionnaire, table at your student union and gather respondents, and post the results somewhere. The reward is that you’ll almost certainly make your science professors cry.

Why I am an atheist – Annabel

As a child, it never occurred to me to doubt the existence of god. I’m not sure I even realised it was optional. When I was ten, after my mother’s remarriage, we started to attend my stepfather’s church, in which he was (and is) a very active member. This church is well known in Edinburgh for being ‘charismatic’ and ‘evangelical’, by which I mean that the organ had been dispensed with in favour of guitars and there was a lot of swaying and clapping of hands. They were very into the alpha course.

Every summer, the church would organise a retreat at a large house somewhere in the country for a week of prayer and bible study, and my older sisters and I were always taken along. The worst of these was when I was 12; that was the memorable year when the ‘Holy Spirit’ was sweeping through the land (or at least through the evangelical churches). For a week I was stuck in a remote house in the highlands of Scotland while everyone around me was filled with the holy spirit and started swaying, shaking, falling down and speaking in tongues. I spent most of the week hiding.

Around this time, I started to read a lot of old myths – Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Celtic and so on. It occurred to me that those people who had worshiped Isis thought they were right just as sincerely as I did about Jesus. And once I’d acknowledged that question, what about Muslims or Hindus? I asked my stepfather – how did we know that we were right? He told me that it was just a matter of faith (which was honest of him), and I accepted that answer. And I believed in god – but not unquestioningly. I had doubts. I saw so many contradictions in the world, so many things that didn’t make sense thought the lens of faith. But I ignored the contradictions and assumed I just didn’t understand. Perhaps we needed god to set off the big bang, I wondered. And perhaps he nudged evolution along.

Ultimately, what saved me was science. It never occurred to me to doubt that evolution is true and I never really believed that creationists existed until the horrifying day when I discovered that my mother and eldest sister (both highly educated, otherwise intelligent women) are creationists.

And one day, I finally caved to my doubts and actually considered a question that had been hanging around at the edge of my consciousness for years. It’s accepted among most Christians that humans are the only human beings to have souls. Dogs, cats, horses, goldfish – nothing. Chimps, nothing. We assume the Australopithecines had no soul. So what about Homo habilis? Or Homo erectus? No. So when had the soul appeared? Which individual was the first Homo sapiens and had the first soul? Of course, I knew that was a ridiculous question. But it had to be asked, because if there was no soul, there could be no afterlife. No heaven, or hell. And if there was no afterlife, there was no god, and it was all an invention of people who were afraid of death, and so convinced themselves that they would live forever.

Of course, that wasn’t all, and it look me a while to completely let go of my faith, but it’s gone now. I miss it sometimes. The idea that there is an omnipotent being out there who loves you and will do anything for you is incredibly comforting. But I’ll take what I have now – the ability to see and appreciate the world as it actually is and nothing more – over a lie any day.

Annabel
United Kingdom

The not-so-Amazing Atheist self-immolates

There’s a youtuber who goes by the name “the amazing atheist” who I’ve never cared much for — he’s a raving MRA who ought to change his name to “the asinine atheist” — who has just flamed out on reddit in a revealing long angry thread. I don’t recommend it. It’s very ugly. The only virtue is that this already marginal hater on the fringes of atheism just made himself even less relevant, and we can all wash our hands of him now.

I’ll put a few highlights from his rants below the fold; these aren’t really surprising, since this kind of thing has always been part of his youtube schtick, but you might want to brace yourself for the virulence. He really, really hates uppity feminist women, and he finds threats of rape to be an appropriate response to them. This whole affair was prompted by a poster on reddit going by the nickname “ICumWhenIKillMen”, which I find reprehensible too, but it in no way justifies the eruption of even greater hatred that this “amazing” atheist (going by the name terroja or TJ) spouts.

[Read more…]

Why I am an atheist – Julia Brandon

I am seventeen years old. I have been an atheist for about a year now. I don’t wish to sound overdramatic, but it’s been hard. I’ve never been on the receiving end of mistrust or had to hide myself before, and it’s been difficult to get used to.

I grew up very religious. My mother is a devout Catholic, and she had the most influence over my religious beliefs until I gave up my faith. My father is an agnostic with a healthy disdain for organized religion, though he never talked about this with us (I guessed, and finally got the truth out of him two years ago). Nearly every night, my mother would read to my brother and I from our children’s bible. She taught us, however, that the church and the bible weren’t always right-her way of coping, I guess, with the contraception ban and the thinly veiled hatred of gays. Later on, I went to Sunday school and then to Catholic school, which I still attend now. I believed in and loved God and Jesus with all the fervor of a young child.

As I grew older, however, things started not making sense. The whole notion of a “loving God”, for one thing. I went on a mission trip to El Salvador and saw for myself human suffering of a magnitude I had never known before. When I asked how God could let these people live that way, I was told that God was just as upset as I was, but he couldn’t do a thing about it. But how did they know? Was that something they were just telling themselves to reconcile all of the pain in the world with a God who loves us like his own children? A religious trip ended up sowing the first seeds of doubt in my mind.

I started thinking of Moses, who had supposedly met with God on Mt. Sinai to make the Ten Commandments. If those events had actually happened, couldn’t Moses had just carved the tablets himself to cement his control over the Hebrews? Could all the prophetic dreams that happen in the Bible just have been that-dreams? Could people have just been hearing voices? Mental illness had to exist back then, after all. I was very worried about the direction my thoughts were taking me. I didn’t want to burn in hell for eternity, and I didn’t want to have to admit to myself that death was the absolute end. But my thoughts consumed me until I had to admit to myself that the Bible had no authority to me anymore, and concede my atheism. And though the lack of an afterlife disturbed me at first, I realized that I would not feel anything, since I had not felt anything before I was born, and therefore I would be unaware of nonexistence.

I was at peace with my new identity when my mother forced the truth out of me. I had originally planned on not letting her know until I went away to college, because I had had a feeling she would be upset. It was during a fight we were having because I’d told her to the truth about not going to Confession that day at school. She gave me the third degree and finally, I cracked. Her reaction was worse than I’d thought it would be. She accused me of “dropping a bomb” on her, and that someone had obviously influenced me to believe what I believed now, and that this was just a phase that teenagers went through. As I pride myself on being a free thinker and that I’d come to this conclusion on my own, that irritated me. But then she told me that if I continued down this road that I would lose all my morals, and that I would end up as a criminal or worse. I think as a result of that day there’s a rift between us, and I honestly believe she has less respect for me than she did before.

I don’t plan on keeping my atheism a secret forever, but I’m “closeted” for now until I meet people who are more open minded. At my Catholic school, most of the people I know are very religious. One of my best friends teaches religion at her church. I don’t want to alienate them; when they think of atheists, they think of Christian-hating nihilists who want to kill all believers-not an exaggeration. I’m not one of those people at all, but indoctrination tends to get the best of people, and I don’t want to end up without friends. I’m also dating a guy who is great in every way except that he’s a Baptist religious conservative, and I wouldn’t want to alienate him either. My mom is trying to get me back to believing. This year for Christmas she got me a book about “miracles” that happened during the Holocaust. I really wanted to say that if God had managed to prevent the Holocaust, that would’ve been the greatest miracle of all, but I held my tongue. And it’s even worse that slandering atheists is acceptable everywhere, from the media to the highest levels of government.

Despite all of this, I am very happy in my unbelief and I don’t see myself having faith again. I like the new integrity and peace this identity brings me. When I do good things for people, I’m not doing them to score brownie points with a deity. I don’t have to rationalize and justify the Bible-“oh, God can’t think that about gay people. It was just Leviticus’ own prejudices coming through”-in order to believe in it. I don’t have to angst over why a benevolent God would allow such evil to go on in our world, I can just accept that no higher power exists and that people cause the world’s woes, with no supernatural entity that can stop them but won’t. I can just live my life knowing that this is the only one I’ll get, so I should live it well.

Something that is said a lot at my school is that faith sets you free. I don’t understand that. Faith had only chained me with doubt, confusion, and guilt over so-called sin. Lack of faith has set me free-free from dogma, free from hatred, and most of all, free from a petty, malicious, overgrown Santa Claus spying on me in the sky.

Julia Brandon

Pharangula is on the short-list for the Skeptic Magazine Awards 2011

It’s quite an honor to share the stage with The 21st Floor , Men Make a Tiger , Pharangula , Science, Reason & Critical Thinking , Skepchick, but something bothers me about that list. I’m misspelled! I’m doomed, I tell you, doooomed.

It’s my family curse. My father gave me a name everyone gets wrong, and then a create a blog with a name no one can pronounce and few can spell. I knew I should have taken my wife’s name when I got married. No one would have ever mangled “Gjerness”.

Also, normally I’d be able to tell my minions to take wing and conquer the voting, but Skeptic Magazine is not making this an internet popularity contest — they actually have a panel of distinguished judges who will evaluate the contributions of the nominees. Doooooomed.

Unless, of course, you run into Chris Franch, Wendy Grassman, Jon Ranson, Simon Sangh, or Richard Waseman on the street, in which case you should grip them in your taloned feet and fly immediately to my castle, where we can shackle them in the oubliette and…convince them…on how to place their vote.