That wretched excuse to bash atheists on the Paula Zahn program that I criticized must have generated some intense and voluminous correspondence, because right now they’re scrambling to do damage control. I just got word from Richard Dawkins that they are going to repeat the lead segment (the part with the ostracized atheist family), and then instead of showing the bumbling bigot panel, they’re planning to replace that debacle with a new interview with Richard Dawkins. That’s tonight, Thursday, at 8PM EST.

For symmetry, it would have been better to have a panel with Dawkins, Dennett, and Harris to talk about those darned obnoxious Christians…the asymmetry would have reemerged, though, when they discussed the issue with more class and thoughtfulness than Debbie Schlussel and Karen Hunter.

Take a look at this promising poll at Daily Kos. This informal and unscientific survey of the netroots seems to be showing that a third of the readers are utterly godless, and that if you toss in the agnostics, freethinkers have got a clear majority. I anxiously await the hysterics from the wingnuts, who will be horrified at all the heretics and apostates and damned infidels lurking on the Left, with their forked tails twitching and their horns filed to sharp, pointy tips.

Maybe we need to start agitating for a godless caucus at Yearly Kos—or even a panel on standing up for secularism, and how this is a good result.

I mentioned that ghastly CNN hit piece on atheists the other day; I just saw it myself, and it’s far, far worse than I had imagined. You can see the whole thing with a transcript, too, and you should be appalled.

It starts off reasonably enough with a segment on a family of atheists who were ostracized in a small town; then it closes with some young Republican-looking talking head who babbles about how atheists bring it on themselves, and we should blame all the militant atheists for the fact that people feel compelled to shun those who don’t believe as they do. It was a weird blame-the-victim moment.

Then there’s the panel afterwards. Others have mentioned the odd omission of any atheists from the discussion, but I was also flabbergasted at the question they were debating, which was displayed in big letters on a board behind them:

Why do atheists inspire such hatred?

Whoa. Hey, Debbie Schlussel, how would you feel if a panel of Christians and Muslims met to discuss “Why do Jews inspire such hatred?”, and they decided that the problem is that Jews need to shut up and quit mentioning their beliefs in public? It’s probably silly to ask that of Schlussel who seems to be vapidity personified, but that’s really what the panel was about, with two (one was not sympathetic, but at least realized that atheists have the same rights he does) Christian twits telling us that atheists ought to shut up (literally) and that we ought to have prayers in school to restore morality.

It convinced me of a couple of things. I apparently have not been militant enough, and am going to have to work harder at aggressively promoting godlessness. And I’m adding CNN to my list of news agencies to ignore, along with Fox.

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Update: I might just watch it tonight. They’re repeating the episode, this time with Richard Dawkins afterwards.

Scienceblogs are a hotbed of irreligiosity today. Besides my usual, expected, reflexive contumely (illegal in at least one state!), Aardvarchaeology is hosting the 59th Carnival of the Godless, and Revere rips into CNN’s anti-atheist bias. Sample stupid quote:

Listen, we are a Christian nation. I’m not a Christian. I’m Jewish, but I recognize we’re a Christian country and freedom of religion doesn’t mean freedom from religion.

Got that? We are not free to be atheists if we choose, according to Constitutional scholar and moderate voice of reason Debbie Schlussel.

For this ridiculous religion thing. Let’s hear it for the smart young people who are starting to wake up:

Brent exposes an interesting Massachusetts law:

Whoever wilfully blasphemes the holy name of God by denying, cursing or contumeliously reproaching God, his creation, government or final judging of the world, or by cursing or contumeliously reproaching Jesus Christ or the Holy Ghost, or by cursing or contumeliously reproaching or exposing to contempt and ridicule, the holy word of God contained in the holy scriptures shall be punished by imprisonment in jail for not more than one year or by a fine of not more than three hundred dollars, and may also be bound to good behavior.

Uh-oh. I think I’m a … criminal. And oh, yeah—I’m contumelious. Contumelious like the dickens.

Watch the Fox News announcer get all pissy about Brian Flemming’s Blasphemy Challenge.

The funny thing is watching Kasich declare himself just “sick” about it and accusing Flemming of “preying on children” and getting upset because the people on youtube are not attacking Mohammed enough…and then ask a calm and smiling Flemming why he’s so angry. If people choose to deny gods, what right does a sanctimonious slug like Kasich have to tell them they can’t?

The most positive, optimistic development I know of is the way many young people are coming out in defense of atheism—and the ones who do are often wonderfully eloquent. I’ve mentioned my daughter’s testimonial before; now Brent Rasmussen finds another young lady’s essay that will make you feel good about the future.

Unfortunately, in the comments to that post you’ll also discover why many of us find evangelical Christianity contemptible. There are more discussions of the subject where the loathsome Christians are out in force — something that also happened with Skatje’s post — and I really don’t know how the less verminous Christians can stand to share a label with these creatures.

Somebody gets it.

Now what are we to think of a scientist who seems competent inside the laboratory, but who, outside the laboratory, believes in a spirit world?  We ask why, and the scientist says something along the lines of:  "Well, no one really knows, and I admit that I don’t have any evidence – it’s a religious belief, it can’t be disproven one way or another by observation."  I cannot but conclude that this person literally doesn’t know why you have to look at things.  They may have been taught a certain ritual of experimentation, but they don’t understand the reason for it – that to map a territory, you have to look at it – that to gain information about the environment, you have to undergo a causal process whereby you interact with the environment and end up correlated to it.  This applies just as much to a double-blind experimental design that gathers information about the efficacy of a new medical device, as it does to your eyes gathering information about your shoelaces.

Maybe our spiritual scientist says:  "But it’s not a matter for experiment.  The spirits spoke to me in my heart."  Well, if we really suppose that spirits are speaking in any fashion whatsoever, that is a causal interaction and it counts as an observation.  Probability theory still applies.  If you propose that some personal experience of "spirit voices" is evidence for actual spirits, you must propose that there is a favorable likelihood ratio for spirits causing "spirit voices", as compared to other explanations for "spirit voices", which is sufficient to overcome the prior improbability of a complex belief with many parts.  Failing to realize that "the spirits spoke to me in my heart" is an instance of "causal interaction", is analogous to a physics student not realizing that a "medium with an index" means a material such as water.

It’s like asking someone if they understand science, and they can recite a string of facts at you … but they haven’t absorbed the concept.