But it’s the only good song on the whole CD!

It’s almost Thanksgiving, and you know what that means: the deluge of Christmas carols is about to commence. This is the time of year when I dread turning the radio on, because I know I’ll hear the same sets of songs over and over again, and the kind of uniform anti-eclecticism characteristic of Top 40 AM radio gets amplified and expanded and starts to spread everywhere. I’m always pleased to see something new, especially since it doesn’t happen very often…Lennon’s Happy Christmas (War is Over), Minchin’s White Wine in the Sun?

Some people get cranky about anything that isn’t sufficiently antiquated or sufficiently reverent, though. Now some people are freaking out over the inclusion of a song they don’t like.

A Christmas CD aiming to raise funds for a Christian charity has been slammed for featuring an anti-Christian song.

Faith and family groups have labelled the song, which includes the lyrics “I get freaked out by churches,” and “I’m not expecting a visit from Jesus”, as “disrespectful” and a “sick joke”.

But the executive producer of Myer’s annual star-studded Spirit of Christmas CD has defended his decision to include the song, White Wine in the Sun.

The song, written by atheist entertainer Tim Minchin, features alongside traditional Christmas carols such as Joy to the World and Little Drummer Boy.

I don’t know. I’m offended by both of those traditional Christmas carols — should I scream at WalMart and demand they be pulled from the store? Or, maybe, I should just look at the CDs and buy the ones with music I like, and understand that other people might want to buy Elmo & Patsy’s Grandma Got RunOver by a Reindeer on the Country Christmas CD.

Minchin’s song is quite nice. Here it is, if you hadn’t heard it before:

There is one thing in this story I find objectionable.

Profits from CD sales go to The Salvation Army.

Uh, what? Tim Minchin’s work is now being used to prop up a notoriously anti-gay organization? That sounds wrong.

I had no idea I was stepping into a controversy

It’s such a petty and trivial one, though, I can’t be too concerned. I’m at Skepticon 3, and I just learned tonight that the convention has been a source of dissent…and when I read the argument, I was stunned at how stupid it was. Apparently, Skepticon has too many atheists in it, and is — wait for it — “harming the cause”.

I’m not joking. Jeff Wagg, formerly of the JREF, has a long lament deploring that 3 of the 15 talks are explicitly atheistic, and that JT Eberhard, the organizer, emphasizes the problem of religion too much for it to be True Skeptic™ conference. It’s utterly batty. Some people have this grandiose notion that they have the only acceptable definition of skepticism, and somehow, in some way, religion is excluded from skeptical criticism.

As Reed points out in his IndieSkeptics article, atheists (and free thinkers and secularists and scientific naturalists, etc.) are fighting a cultural war in this country. It’s a very important war, and I’m a combatant as well. Atheists have been bashed and had religion forced on them forever, and it’s shameful to allow it to continue in a country purporting to be “free.” But to conflate atheism with skepticism dilutes atheism and destroys skepticism.

And I fear the damage has already been done. I see a lot of good people leaving the skeptical community because they’re uncomfortable with the tone and disappointed with, frankly, the lack of skepticism presented by many people.

And I say good riddance to those people. If these so-called good skeptics are going to abandon the movement because they’re uncomfortable with people who openly question their superstitious beliefs, then they don’t seem very committed and their departure will be no loss. I also think that the only hypothetical destruction of skepticism going on here is this bizarre insistence that we privilege certain weird notions as being outside the scope of skepticism. Wagg also throws up a strawman or two.

I’m convinced that a litmus test over who’s a skeptic and who isn’t based on religious belief is harmful to both movements.

Absolutely no one has proposed such a litmus test. Even I, loud and obnoxious hard core atheist, have specifically stated there should be no such restriction. Does Wagg really think Randi or DJ Grothe are going to be more snide about religion than I am?

Skepticon does have a strong anti-religion emphasis. So? This is a subject open to criticism, and it’s perfectly fair to apply skepticism to religion as much as we would to dowsing or Bigfoot. If someone had organized a skeptics’ conference with an emphasis on, for instance, quack medicine, I doubt that anyone would have squawked that “it’s harming the cause!”, “it’ll make skeptics who believe in homeopathy uncomfortable”, or “it’s diluting medicine and destroying skepticism”. And if Wagg really feels strongly about reinforcing his narrow vision of what skepticism should be, he’s welcome to organize his own conference. Complaining that someone else has put in the hard work of creating a successful conference because it isn’t the conference Wagg would assemble smacks of pettiness and sour grapes.

The closest thing to a reasonable attempt to describe a boundary putting atheism outside skepticism is this:

I believe that if you equate skepticism with anything other than science, you’ve missed the point. As for Christianity, skepticism has nothing to say except about testable claims associated therein. Bleeding statues? Yes, skepticism comes into play. Jesus rose and is in heaven? Seems unlikely, but there’s not a lot more to say.

This is a common and entirely unbelievable rationalization that I most often hear from theists, and I don’t buy it for a moment. A claim that a magic man rose from the dead and flew up into the sky is certainly something we should be skeptical about! And further, the argument that because it is untestable, it is a statement that skeptics must be neutral about is thoroughly bogus, and opens the door to exempting the most ludicrous, poorly justified, crazy claims from skeptical scrutiny. It’s also dishonest about Christianity; it certainly does make specific historical claims that are subject to assessment (and several of the talks today did just that), it proposes phenomena that violate our knowledge of how the world works, and it lacks credible evidential justification for its central ideas.

It also takes an awesome amount of arrogance to declare certain subjects off-limits to inquiry, and that even considering them damages the skeptical movement. That also requires a truly astonishing lack of self-awareness.

JT has also responded to this nonsense. I think we can tell where the future of skepticism lies.

Hello from Mexico City!

I have arrived after a long, long series of flights, and have already experienced wonderful Mexican hospitality and Negro Modelo, many thanks to the gang from Masa Critica, so all is right in the world. It’s not too late to show up, you can register at the door, just come on out to the Hotel Fiesta Inn Centro Histórico and join us at 8 tomorrow morning for Primer Coloquio Mexicano de Ateísmo. There will be live internet streaming of some of the talks, so let’s hope more of the Spanish-speaking world takes advantage of this event, too.

La fe NO mueve montañas, la ciencia sí!

Mexico has atheists!

And I’ll be meeting some of them tomorrow. I’m sure I’ll see a few people from Ateísmo desde México at Coloquio Mexicano de Ateísmo, and more…I actually get to spend a few days in Mexico City. I hope they’ll forgive the fact that I don’t have a lick of Spanish, which is a bit embarrassing nowadays…I should probably sign up for a few classes here at UMM sometime.

It’s not too late to get yourself to the big city for a great meeting.

Oh, and look: there’s a poll! I can guess what it’s saying.

Vas a asistir al Coloquio: ¿Cómo te identificas?

Librepensador(a)
17%
Creyente
4%
Deista
2%
Panteista
1%
Raeliano(a), Cientólogo(a), New Age…
6%
Agnóstico(a)
13%
Ateo(a)
58%

The question of hell

From the depths of the endless thread, Owlmirror asks an interesting and provocative question, so I thought I’d toss it up top for everyone to take a stab at it.

At what age were you taught about Hell? Was it described as a place of eternal torture, or just being apart from God? Was it taught in a way that you thought was serious, or might there have been some skepticism in the teacher? Were you specifically told that you yourself were in danger of going there unless you met the exacting standards of your religion? Were you told that everyone who did not believe as you were taught was doomed to hell?

Richard Dawkins describes a young girl who was traumatized by the thought that all her friends who were not of the same religion as herself were doomed to hell. I was just wondering about the sequence of when young children are taught about the “stick” of Hell, to go with the corresponding “carrot” of Heaven, in different religions and religious subcultures, and in what contexts.

I’ve known people who had Hell drilled into their heads from an early age, and I know of many sects that preach hellfire, and I know the concept has deep historical resonance (Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, and all that), but it was never brought up that I recall in the church I attended, and definitely never threatened by anyone in my family. It was a generic cussword, and I had the general idea from popular culture of what it was all supposed to be about — flames, pitchforks, devils — but really, my image of it was mostly the product of Hot Stuff the Little Devil and such frivolities.

The first time I learned anyone took it seriously was probably in my early teens, when I vividly recall being accosted by a wild-haired screechy old lady who intercepted me as I was walking down the street and ranted at me about the Lake of Fire and an eternity of torment unless I got down on my knees and accepted Jesus into my heart right now. It was scary, all right, but it wasn’t the idea of hell that had me worried — it was that this deranged woman was unbalanced enough to be threatening kids with it.

So no, I never in my life took the threat of hell at all seriously. How about you?

Consider Humanism

The American Humanist Association is starting a new campaign to increase awareness of reasonable values: Consider Humanism. They have adds that contrast Christian sentiments with humanist ideals, like this one:

Consider Humanism – Richard Dawkins from American Humanist Association on Vimeo.

Probably too shrill and militant, huh? I swear, I heard the horses whinny and stampede at that voice, and I don’t know how I’m going to clean up all the saliva and blood splattered all over the inside of my video display after playing that.

Actually, I think it strikes a nice balance of calmly pointing out the ugliness of religious dogma, while also presenting the positive ideas that drive freethought. They are looking for donations — this is not cheap — to get the ads on TV stations, and they also have some nice printable versions.