The Stedman paradox

Ah, Chris Stedman. He visited Morris today, and gave a presentation at the Federated Church before sending people off to community activities. He was a very nice guy, and he told some very nice stories, and he was just generally nice. Nice. Lots of niceness. A whole afternoon of nice. So I will restrict myself to entirely constructive criticisms.

  • Why in a church? This was an event organized by Morris Freethinkers, representing their interest in promoting positive community interactions. I would have been more impressed if it were held in a secular venue, if it were made clear that these were atheists doing good, and challenging community Christians to join us. Instead, by putting it immediately under the umbrella of religion, the impression was made that we are following, not leading.

  • I’ve been in churches before, and this talk was indistinguishable from anything that might be said in a liberal Christian church anywhere: be kind, charity is rewarding, it’s good to help your fellow human beings. Aside from saying that he was an atheist a few times, there was nothing to make this talk stand out…absolutely nothing to explain why atheists also find virtue in kindness and charity and goodness. It does not make a case for atheism if you blend into the religious woodwork so thoroughly.

  • It didn’t help that, when describing his background, Stedman talked about being a religious studies major, a seminarian, doing interfaith work, hammering on his associations with the faithful. Oh, and by the way, he’s an atheist. Yeah? This is a guy who’s been neck-deep in Christianity his entire life, hasn’t removed himself from it at all but has made a career of immersing himself ever deeper in Jesus’ pisswater, and occasionally waves a tiny little flag that says “atheist” on it. I’d like to see Stedman actually challenge his audiences and make a real case for rejecting faith, while supporting good works, but I don’t think he could do it.

  • I was entirely sympathetic to the planned community activities (assisting in the art gallery in town, visiting the elderly, doing a highway cleanup), but I couldn’t do them as part of a church group, as a matter of principle. Who was going to get credit for this work? The church, of course. I will not and can not do that; it’s providing support for beliefs I consider contemptible. What would have been better is something to inspire freethinkers to do these works without the framework of a church. We are free of that bogus crap, let’s not promote the illusion that charity is part of religion.

  • Please don’t ask me to participate in anything held in a church again. It felt icky. I really don’t like temples to ignorance, even liberal ignorance.

I know the students mean well. I know the students want to do good for entirely secular reasons. What we need, though, are tools and ideas and inspiration to do so that don’t fall back on the trappings of religion, which simply reinforce the entirely false notion that morality is a function of the church. That’s how we got into this cultural trap in the first place, by perpetually promoting the belief that goodness equals godliness, and Stedman’s approach provides no escape hatch.

Hey, Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio!

What the hell is wrong with you, stupid hospital?

I just got an email from the parent of one of your patients. He reports that there are four bibles in the hospital room, and further, as an organization with a mind so open that the contradictions and conflicts blow breezily by with no actual interference with the substance of your brains, patients can also request copies of the Qur’an, Jewish holy books, or any other religious text they can imagine; further, the wireless internet available in the room allows patients and visitors to visit the Vatican website, or browse Pat Robertson’s pit of misinformation, or watch Kent Hovind’s videos, or cruise on over to Answers in Genesis or the ICR. How nice.

However, you’ve also put nanny filters on the web, and block access to anything in the category “Alternative Spirituality/Belief”, which, apparently, you get to define. The above listed loathsome lairs of liars are OK, but guess who gets blocked? American Atheists, and the entirety of Freethoughtblogs.

I suspect you’ve got some pious goon in your IT department. You might want to slap them around a bit and tell them that they don’t get to impose their religious bigotry on every patient in the hospital. Who are you to tell the patients in your hospital what religious beliefs, or in this case absence thereof, they are allowed to practice?

If you don’t watch out, I’ll have to sic JT or some of the other nearby SSA staff on you. Then you’ll be sorry. They’ll gnaw on you just for fun.

Parasitism pays, as long as the parasite smiles

This is a little bit like confessing to kicking puppies, or thinking flowers stink, or hating rainbows. But I have to be me.

I don’t like the Dalai Lama.

Not one bit. I’ll go further: I find him repulsive and creepy. Sure, he smiles a lot, and he acts like a nice guy…but the same is true of all kinds of con men and used car salesmen and televangelists. They’ll smile and laugh while they pick your pocket and knife your grandmother; just playing the role of the apparent nice guy wins no points with me. What has he actually done?

The Dalai Lama is founder of the Mind & Life institute for research on science and Buddhism. A series of talks he gave at Stanford University led to the creation of the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education, which brings together scientists and religious scholars.

Not impressive at all. I looked them up: the Mind & Life Institute is full of babble about “the contemplative sciences”. They do things like fund retreats that “advance collaborative research among scientists based on dialogue and collaboration with contemplatives.” They hang out with guys going “ommmm”, in other words. It sounds extremely silly.

What really creeps me out, though, is that everywhere on that site they refer to this old guy as “His Holiness”. With capitalization. It’s very religious, and I don’t say that in a good way.

Then there’s the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research Education. I’m sorry, Stanford, you’ve been snookered; you’re promoting goofy dipsy-doodle New Age nonsense.

What makes it all particularly grating is that this mask of compassion and altruism and sweetness and light is draped over a smiling medieval theocrat, who believes he acquired his position by the magic of reincarnation, and who wants independence for Tibet (good so far), so that it can be re-saddled with patriarchal religious rule that condescends to women and treats homosexuality as an abomination. Ah, but he has great PR for yet another sex-hating celibate priest with delusions of grandeur.

And now he has won the Templeton Prize. They claim this wacky old priest promotes “serious scientific investigative reviews”. Bleh. No he doesn’t. He promotes himself and his bizarre religious views by pretending to be science-friendly.

Guess what? I don’t like the Templetons at all, either. It’s a perfect match of the odious with the devious.

How much worse could it be? The Discovery Institute thinks the Dalai Lama is just ducky, because his grasp of the fundamentals of evolution are about as pathetically bad as theirs. They quote a whole bunch of creationist gibberish from the Tibetan Twit approvingly.

Guess what? I also don’t like the Discovery Institute.

Cuttlefish and Ophelia have more.

I have a new favorite insult!

I shouldn’t be this petty, given the ghastliness of these recently disclosed documents from the National Organization for Marriage. NOM is openly linking up with the Catholic Church, which is providing millions of dollars for campaigns to poison people into hating gays. They’re talking about fomenting hatred: they want to “interrupt the process of assimilation” of Hispanics into the wider culture by making gay marriage a sticking point; they say “The strategic goal of this project is to drive a wedge between gays and blacks – two key Democratic constituencies.”

This is despicable. They’re targeting minorities to train them to find a new reason to hate, an artificial reason that widens the gulf without addressing the real problems of discrimination.

That isn’t funny. Their methods aren’t funny, either: they have lots of money, and they’re throwing it into hate-mongering ads, just like the Mormon church did with Proposition 8. But one of their proposed tactics did tickle my warped sense of humor:

"Hollywood with its cultural biases is far bigger than we can hope to be. We recognize this. But we also recognize the opportunity – the disproportionate potential impact of proactively seeking to gather and connect a community of artists, athletes, writers, beauty queens and other glamorous non-cognitive elites across national boundaries."

Yeah, they’re going to recruit famous dumbasses who can fall for their lies and toxic message…because don’t you know how effective Victoria Jackson has been as a spokesperson for tea-party insanity? But I do love how they openly admit that they have to recruit stupid people…ahem, I mean “non-cognitive” people… to their cause.

Let’s help NOM out and make a list of non-cognitive elites they can recruit. I’ll start.

Victoria Jackson
Pat Boone
Chuck Norris
…

Yes! Glamor and inanity go so well together!

Wait, faking kidnaping is better than doing it for real, right?

We should congratulate them on the improvement in their tactics. Rather than molesting children for real, a church group cleverly thought they’d pretend to kidnap children.

Adults, including an off-duty cop, brandished weapons and put bags over the heads of the children, ages 13 through 18, and forced them into a church van. The group was driven to the home of an assistant pastor, who was presented before the group with a seemingly bloodied and bruised face, according to Dauphin County District Attorney Fran Chardo.

One of the adults used a real AK-47, though the gun was unloaded, Chardo said.

PHOTO: Members of a youth group were tied up and blindfolded as part of a lesson in religious persecution at a church function in Middletown, Penn., and now an investigation is being launched to see if the teens were aware of what was going to happen.

The church leaders who organized the fake hostage situation later told law enforcement that the event was meant to be a lesson to the children on how Christians are persecuted in places around the world, but the "educational" event may actually constitute a crime, Chardo said.

Terrifying children is a fantastic way to gain converts. They claim they were ‘training’ kids in what they might experience for real, because Christians are persecuted…in America? Really?

I’m sure the Christians behind this were certain that any indoctrination tool is fair game.

1.5 million children stolen

If you kidnap one child, there’s an APB and a massive police response and if you’re caught, you’ll be spending a good long while in jail. If you kidnap a million children over decades, you’re a source of morality and goodness. So think big!


Just needs a clerical collar…

In some cases, mothers in Australia were drugged and forced to sign papers relinquishing custody. In others, women were told their children had died. Single mothers also did not have access to the financial support given to widows or abandoned wives, and many were told by doctors, nurses, and social workers that they were unfit to raise a child. Siewert says, “We heard practices that were either illegal or unethical and downright cruel.”

“It wouldn’t surprise me to hear the same thing happened elsewhere,” continues Siewert, “…the U.K., the U.S., Canada and Ireland. So you could, I think, expect that those countries also had these sorts of practices.”

I suspect you can guess who’s behind such contemptible acts: it’s the Catholic Church, of course, arbiter of morality, who have long held that a woman has no autonomy at all and must be supported by a good strong manly man…so single mothers are obviously unfit to care for a child.

Ironically, Bill Donohue has issued a press release whining about how the Reason Rally singled out Catholicism for venom (it didn’t). He takes vindication in our contempt for his religion.

Catholics take note: The fact that the atheists always attack us more than any other religious group is a backhanded compliment. They know who the real enemy of hate is, and who they must defeat. They don’t have a prayer.

Sorry, Bill. The record is clear. Your church is not an enemy of hate at all; it’s a sinkhole of depravity and oppression. The church is attacked because it’s a monstrous institution. And if it is attacked more than other religions, it’s only because it commits more crimes than others.

Foolish Fulwiler fantasizes

Jennifer Fulwiler is a treasure. She’s a former atheist who doesn’t have a clue about atheism, a naive Catholic convert, and someone who pities us atheists because “we’re trapped in a prison of reason“. She never makes sense, so she never disappoints.

And now she’s done it again. Fulwiler is babbling about the Global Atheist Conference. She’s not making sense again.

She lists a number of ‘first impressions’.

Hemant Mehta ought to worry. She likes him a lot, and is mystified that he’s not going to be at the GAC.

Where’s Hemant Mehta? He must have been busy that weekend. The blogger/author is a major up-and-coming voice in the modern atheist movement. Given the perspective he’s gained from the discussion on his blog, I would think that he would add a lot of value to a conference like this.

Yes, I agree. But you know, there are a lot atheists out there, and we can’t all go to every conference. It’s just weird to pick out one random atheist among many and wonder why they aren’t at one particular conference among many. So? Would you like me to list a few dozen other prominent atheist speakers who weren’t invited or couldn’t make it?

Just look at these headshots! With that number of speakers you’d expect at least a couple unflattering, obviously-take-with-an-iPhone shots, but they’re all gorgeous. Lookin’ good, atheists.

That’s just weird. It’s like she’s baffled that we look human.

Since I’m sure he doesn’t want to say it himself, I’ll say it for him: PZ Myers should have gotten top billing in the ads, and it’s crazy that he wasn’t mentioned at all in the audio spots. When he saw that, he had to be all like, “Do millions of blog pageviews per month count for nothing?!”

Not for nothing, but why would anyone in their right mind think that’s the most important characteristic to promote? The audience either reads my blog and knows who I am and don’t need to advertise me, or they don’t read it and I’m effectively a nobody to them. I have a realistic perspective here; my number one job is as a teacher at UMM, and that’s generally not a huge selling point, sad to say. And Dawkins/Dennett/Harris are a much bigger draw, and to an Australian audience, the local atheist celebrities are going to be much more interesting.

And then Fulwiler gets “clever”, I think…at least clever for someone gullible enough to fall for Catholic bullshit, which isn’t very. Look at this clumsy setup:

I like the part about basing laws on rational thought and evidence. It echoes a sentiment that is a driving force in the atheist community right now, namely the idea that society must develop a set of moral values that is not rooted in any kind of supernatural belief system. I think it could end up being a really good thing that the leaders of modern atheism are coming together to discuss this, because this is an idea that needs a lot more exploration.

She doesn’t believe a word of this. I think it’s quite right that not only do we need to develop a fully secular morality, but that it’s the only kind of morality there is, because her supernatural tyrant doesn’t exist. Catholic morality is not built on the supernatural, but on lies and fear, tools of priests for all time, and a secular morality is built on truth, as near as we can get to it.

How do I know Fulwiler doesn’t believe this? Because she next brings out a great big strawman on strings and dances it around on the stage of the convention.

I imagine that one day someone will get on the stage at one of these conferences, and propose a new moral code in which the the strong exterminate the weak and take all their possessions for themselves, thus ushering in a glorious age where only the most superior genes remain in the gene pool. Everyone in the crowd will gasp and fidget uncomfortably…and then realize that they cannot argue against it without stepping outside of their own atheist-materialist worldview. They’ll find themselves tempted to appeal to the transcendent to make their case, wanting to have blind faith in the fact that love should be prized above all else, believing that self-sacrifice is always better than selfishness, regardless of what the latest scientific studies say.

Riiiight. You all know what would happen if a speaker started promoting a totalitarian tyranny and demanding that we start persecuting the “weak” — they would be ripped apart rhetorically. These are the kinds of arguments that are advanced for a theocratic monarchy, you know, and we’re entirely familiar with them. At the GAC, Sam Harris would rise up and argue for an egalitarian morality without bringing in anything transcendent. Richard Dawkins would dismantle that ridiculous argument for social Darwinism with ease, and it wouldn’t be by claiming that self-sacrifice always trumps altruism.

Morality is an attribute that is only relevant in interactions between individuals. A group of interacting individuals is a community. Morality is defined within that community; the desires of a hypothetical invisible entity have no relevance to the rules that regulate that community…except when parasitic individuals use the carrot and stick of supernatural rewards and punishments to mislead the members of that group.

Fulwiler has written a bizarre fantasy that is exceeded in crudity by Chick tracts like Big Daddy. Sure, imagine some absurd caricature of an atheist getting trounced by some clever religious person — but it simply doesn’t have any relationship to reality.

Speaking of fantasy, here’s how she imagines an atheist convention ending…with all the atheists flocking to the church afterwards.

I hope that these events really will provide a forum for questioning assumptions and asking tough questions as much as they claim they will. Because when they do, the nearby churches will be flooded with post-convention crowds.

I don’t think so. Dream on, deluded lady.

Oh, if you all want a real treat, read the comments on that article. I think Fulwiler might just be the intellectual among the Catholic community that reads her drivel.

Whoa! Catholic women are much prettier than atheist women. I feel bad for all the atheist men. =(

I feel unclean now.

Carrier cold-cocks Ehrman

This is great: Richard Carrier Blogs totally destroys Bart Ehrman’s argument for the reality of a historical Jesus.

Jesus is a legend, like King Arthur or Robin Hood or Paul Bunyan. There may have been some individual in the past who inspired the stories, but he’s not part of the historical record, and the tall tales built around him almost certainly bear little resemblance to the long-lost reality. It’s simply bad history to invent rationalizations for an undocumented mystery figure from the distant past.