Unclench those sphincters, Alabama

Hemant Mehta is going to be speaking at the University of South Alabama in Mobile next week, and it turns out that the local newspapers won’t mention it! So I’ve been asked to post something about the talk so more people will know to show up. Here’s their ad:

i-831a181a4be361ba4c9285fe00fffb8c-Mehta_usa.jpeg

Hmmm. They left out the horns and the flames and the profanity and the naked backup singers. He must be doing something horrendous to frighten the local media, after all.

Anyway, go if you’re nearby. I suspect there are many more open-minded interested people in the region than the newspaper reaction would imply.

The Jehovah’s Witnesses redefine irony

You can now download the latest issue of Awake, the Jehovah’s Witness’s strange little magazine. The theme of this issue is those marching militant atheists, so it’s a little bit personal.

i-cdbb98f5930a3b416d9878ae1347169a-onthemarch.jpeg

Unfortunately, I was only able to read as far as the second sentence before I was blinded by the irony.

A new group of atheists has arisen in society. Called the new atheists, they are not content to keep their views to themselves.

That’s right. The door-knockin’, rabidly proselytizing cult is rebuking atheists for not keeping their views to themselves.

I guess that’s fair. Twice now I’ve watched in anticipation as the local JWs do their thing, working their way up the street, only to see them look at my house, check a piece of paper they carried with them, and turn around to leave. There was also a third time when a couple actually knocked on my door, started their little spiel, and I interrupted them to tell them I was an atheist, would they like to come in and talk about freedom from religion? And they ran away.

So it’s true, I suppose, that they do have limits on the expression of their views.

Free Gregory Koger

Gregory Koger is an ex-con and a revolutionary communist…and none of that should matter in the slightest. He’s also a person who was beat up, handcuffed, maced, arrested, and now faces the prospect of a three year jail sentence for the crime of holding up his iPhone to take pictures of police harrassment. Koger is the young man who was documenting Sunsara Taylor’s protest of the behavior of the Ethical Humanist Society of Chicago (which, by the way, ought to change their name to drop the first word), and who, oddly, was manhandled and arrested for taking videos of the event, while Taylor herself, who was doing all the talking, got away relatively unhassled.

Koger has now been convicted of trespassing, and will be sentenced on Wednesday. The whole thing has been Kafkaesque — it’s the most hysterical, overblown response to a guy taking a picture of a public event that I’ve ever heard of, and it’s a slap against everyone’s personal freedoms.

Here is the statement from Sunsara Taylor:

There is no justice in the outrageous conviction of Gregory Koger on charges of trespass, resisting arrest, and battery for the “crime” of videotaping a statement I gave at the “Ethical” Humanist Society of Chicago after they dis-invited me from a long scheduled presentation I was to give on November 1st, 2009. Gregory Koger is not only innocent of all charges he has now been convicted of, he is a righteous and beautiful human being who all people seeking to live an ethical life should support as well as learn deeply from.

How is it that Gregory Koger came to be my videographer last November at the “Ethical” Humanist Society of Chicago?

Gregory’s struggle to understand the source of his own long and bitter experiences of injustice and dehumanization as a young man led him to conclusions that were about much more than himself.

How many young men these days put their bodies on the line to defend the doctors who provide the right to abortion women need to even have a chance at a decent and equal life?

Gregory traveled to Kansas to defend Dr. Leroy Carhart when Carhart was declared “Enemy #1” by the same forces who had long-persecuted the recently murdered Dr. George Tiller.

How many Americans these days take responsibility for stopping the torture committed by the U.S. government in our names, not only under Bush, but also under Obama? How many who claim to oppose the wars and occupations by the U.S. government of Iraq and Afghanistan do more than complain under their breath and then change the channel or turn the page?

Gregory donned the orange jumpsuit of Guantanamo detainees in public protests and he marched against these wars, determined to make his opposition felt by people everywhere, including our sisters and brothers across the globe.

How many white people even notice, let alone stand up against, the systematic police terror and brutality that is a fact of life for youth, especially Black and Latino youth, in the inner cities everywhere?

Gregory went to the Southside of Chicago to speak out against a spate of police shootings of young Black men. He has consistently exposed the disproportionate incarceration and violence experienced by Black people in the criminal justice system.

It is through his activity in these realms, as well as his work with the Prisoners Revolutionary Literature Fund to get revolutionary literature into the U.S. prison system that now holds more than 2.3 million human beings, that I came to know Gregory. It was his interest in morality and ethics, in philosophy and revolution, as well as his passion for film that led him to volunteer for me the weekend I was scheduled to give a talk titled, “Morality Without Gods,” at the “Ethical” Humanist Society of Chicago.

The themes of my talk, which drew on the theoretical framework developed by Bob Avakian in his book, AWAY WITH ALL GODS! Unchaining the Mind and Radically Changing the World, examined the basis for a morality that is rooted neither in the brutality and ignorance of Biblical times nor the narrow-minded individualism and relativism of modern U.S. capitalism. I posed the need for a morality that both reflects and serves the struggle to bring into being a world free of all forms of exploitation and oppression, a communist world, a world where everyone contributes whatever they can to society and gets back what they need to live a life worthy of human beings.

The irony is bitter; when it comes to “morality without gods,” it is difficult to think of a starker living contrast than that between Gregory Koger and the conduct of the “Ethical” Humanist Society of Chicago.

I recount all this not only to demonstrate how deeply immoral it is that the “Ethical” Humanist Society of Chicago, spearheaded by their president Matt Cole, has viciously and vengefully persecuted Gregory Koger. I recount this to make clear that it is not only Gregory who will suffer due to this outrageous and unjust verdict, but that all those who are victims of the many injustices and oppression that Gregory fought against will also suffer.

It is incumbent upon all who care about the truth, who care about justice and the human spirit, who care about freedom and rights of the most oppressed and exploited in this country and worldwide, to not only join in insisting that Gregory be immediately released on bail and his conviction overturned, but to learn from Gregory’s example and step up their own involvement in the struggle for human emancipation.

WHAT YOU CAN DO:

  • Immediately send statements of support for Gregory to the defense committee AdHoc4Reason@gmail.com

  • Donate money for the appeal. Go to the defense committee website for more information

  • Show your support at the sentencing hearing on September 8.

  • More information will be coming; keep in touch with the Ad Hoc Committee at AdHoc4Reason@gmail.com

The conviction was insane to begin with, but imprisoning a social activist for the crime of photography is simply beyond the pale.

Drop the charges and free Gregory Koger.

Sharks don’t get cancer?

It’s a ridiculous myth that sharks have magical properties that prevent cancer, but it’s not true: sharks do get cancer. Furthermore, even if they did have low rates of cancer, grinding them up and powdering them and tossing them into your gut for chemical breakdown would no more cure your cancer than it would turn you into an unstoppable ferocious eating machine with gills.

Add them to the long list of species being exterminated on the altar of sympathetic magic.

Amateurs!

No, no, no. This is doing it all wrong. A young man in Valencia received a communion wafer at Mass, took it out of his mouth, and broke it in front of the priest (google translation), and then a scene from the Three Stooges erupted, with slapping and kicking and random cartoon violence in which no one was hurt, except for their dignity.

While I applaud the young man’s irreverence, by making it a scene in a church he was making a serious error, for two reasons.

  • People have a right to do whatever silly, harmless rituals they want. Start disrupting church services, and next thing you know, people will be shouting out of dialect at Renaissance Fairs or hiding your bag of Dungeons & Dragons dice or tossing stink bombs into the Halloween costume store. Don’t disturb the seance.

  • As we can see from this and other incidents, Christianity is a violent and vindictive faith. While it may be just a cracker, fanatics will respond with totally inappropriate physical viciousness, and it’s simply not worth getting hurt over a ‘magic’ cookie.

Get it? You may express yourselves freely, but you ought not interfere with other people’s right to also indulge their own silly beliefs.

I get email

It’s an unfortunate fact of google life that links to my criticisms of Kent Hovind pop up quite high in google listings, so I’m always getting these letters from pissed-off creationists who are shocked, shocked, shocked that there they are, innocently searching for information on their hero, when Pharyngula rises up and dares to criticize the great bible-thumping convicted tax cheat.

In addition to the usual incoherence and refusal to offer any scientific support for their position, these letters are usually marked by a rather sniffy attitude of offended sensibilities and surprise that web pages criticizing creationism actually exist. It must be scary to step outside the church.

Here’s the latest. I’ve put my impressions in red.

To whom this may concern; [this was sent to my personal email account; does he think a committee lives here?]

I had a look at your web site today and frankly can’t figure out [count me unsurprised] just what all

the uproar is concerning “scientists” such as yourself feeling that you have to
spend so much effort [it’s easy, I assure you] trying [trying?] to discredit Kent Hovind [he’s a convicted felon and phony with an unaccredited degree] and/or others in his field
the way that you do! If indeed he is the ignorant individual [yep] that you attempt to

[don’t ask me why he inserted these odd random line breaks]

portray him as, “writing like a fourth grader” [excuse me, that would be “second grader“] as you say, then why should you
waste such valuable research time slandering him? [it takes very little time to dismantle Hovind; why are you wasting your valuable time writing to me?]

My guess is, as I have watched this whole rairoading [he was convicted, and his own testimony and behavior indicted him] of him and his
organization

[mystery line breaks!]

come about, that individuals and groups for that matter with your particular
mind-set are either scared to death [he’s a worm, not a snake] of the debate [there is no debate] between creationism [bullshit] and
Darwinian evolution [science. We win!], or that you simply do not have the intellectual cahonas [??? Do you mean “cojones”?] to
engage creationists such as Mr. Hovind in any real truth [he has none to share]– revealing discourse
concerning the subject.

What are you afraid of? [ebola, senility, and bad clams]

I find it quite revealing indeed that when the “non-believers” in the world
bash Christians as a bunch of prudish [QFT], bible thumping [QFT], homophobic [QFT], hate
mongering [QFT] flat earthers [QFT] that nobody really seems to care [it’s the banality of a pedestrian truth]; in fact it has become
something of a national pass-time [???] it would seem. But!!!!! [are you wearing your underpants on your head?], suggest for a moment
that the so-called [what other scientific community is there?] scientific community has at the very least bought into a
theory that has been highly questionable at best since it’s inception [nope—enthusiastically embraced by the scientifically literate at its inception, and become more and more strungly supported since], and the
mobs are ready to light torches and take up their pitchforks! [personally, I prefer a cyber-pistol]

With all due respect [dishonest again], I find your tactic of attacking Mr. Hovind [I think it’s entirely appropriate to criticize tax cheats and creationists—why should he be exempt?], and on such
ridiculous grounds as his doctoral dissertation no less [it’s true, his dissertation was rather ridiculous], quite an immature
stretch to say the least [given that “Dr” Dino calls himself a degreed scientist on the basis of that thesis, examining its quality is entirely reasonable]. This is exactly the kind of thing [what? that we examine scholarly claims?] that tells me that
not all scientists are anywhere near to being the “rational thinkers” [I question the ability of Hovind fans to recognize such] that we’re

[another line break interlude]

always being reminded of in this God hating society [I wish] that we are living in.

Get some backbone about yourself sir and take a look at ALL the evidence [curious fact: these cranks are always telling me I missed some key evidence, but they never quite get to the point of telling me what it is], not
just the convenient parts as you and yours are so quick to accuse creationists
of doing. [instead of whining, you could have actually cited some evidence…but I think these jokers know I’ll joyfully tear their ‘facts’ apart]

Sincerely, W.C. Revere [email says “William McKinney”, but signs it “W.C. Revere”. Don’t play games, please.]

I get these fairly regularly. There’s some odd combination of oblivious hero-worship and total cluelessness about the internet in Kent Hovind fans that sparks a need to rage at me. I don’t reply, but I do feel like sending them links to Fark or /b/ just to wake them up a little more to the medium they’re using.

I get to start teaching again this week!

Oh, boy, it’s been a while. I was out for the first few lectures (which I am grateful to my colleagues for covering), so in my introductory biology class I get to plunge straight in to Darwin, Darwin’s finches, and Sean Carroll’s The Making of the Fittest. No preludes, baby, I’m diving right in.

And then I stumble across CreationConversations, which is kind of like the Ask A Biologist website, if it were staffed by idiots. People write in, and the gang there, which seems to be mostly junior league suck-ups to Ken Ham and Answers in Genesis, tries to answer from the Biblical perspective. It’s simply sad and pitiful. Here’s an example of the kinds of questions they get:

I am starting ninth grade biology. I know that we will be learning about evolution. I’ve been doing a lot of reading and have a very solid belief in creation. I was wondering how I should go about talking to my friends and other students about creation and the lie of evolution in and out of the classroom. I’ve tried talking a few times about it with my closest friends and it is sad to see that their beliefs are so firmly rooted in evolution that they have never questioned it. I fear not only for my friends but for my generation seeing as they have been taught nothing but evolution for their entire life. Many of them don’t even believe in God. How can I show not only my friends, but other students, that evolution is wrong?

First of all, I’d have to tell this student he’s living in the paranoid fantasy land of most Christians: it’s highly unlikely, unless he’s at a very good school, that he will be confronted with much evolutionary theory, and the odds that his faith will be challenged at all is vanishingly small. In fact, if he’s perturbed at all, all he has to do is squeak something about Jesus and the teacher will probably run away as fast as possible — not because they’re afraid of your stupid questions, but because obnoxious evangelical parents can make the teacher’s professional life a seething hell.

Also, most of his peers will not have been exposed to much evolution at all, but if they go to church, they’ve probably gotten mega-doses of creationism. There will be no persecution. His biggest disappointment will be that he won’t get to be a martyr.

College, of course, will be an entirely different matter.

The answers he gets at the site are amazing for their semi-delusional thinking: most are entirely confident that they’ve got buckets of apologetics and evidence, and they’re mainly warning the poor kid to go easy on the defenseless evolutionists. They so rarely face serious opposition in the schools that they fantasize that the pile of crap on their site actually has some weight to it; but really, creationists rely completely on cultural intimidation to cow their opposition.

Here’s one representative answer they give:

‘

My counsel is to check your attitude when you decide to confront an issue in class. Be sure that you are humble and respectful of others’ feelings. No one, especially a teacher, likes to look the fool in front of their peers or their students. Since the science controversy is firmly rooted in worldviews, when you begin to deconstruct their presuppositions, they can get defensive. It is far better to sow seeds of doubt and let an issue go, than to argue your point to a crushing conclusion. You may win battles that way, but lose the war, so to speak.

As Justin suggested, be the best possible student you can be. Learn the expected answers, but continually analyze the fallacies and presuppositions purveyed in class. A ninth grade biology course is a survey course, so you will be given a lot of generalizations. Don’t be arrogant or belittling when you decide to question one of these ideas. Look for the underlying truths in what you are learning. You will discover that, unless your teacher or the textbook author(s) are on a mission to convert students to evolution, you probably won’t even discuss it except tangentially in most of the topics.

Awww, how sweet. What this fellow is unaware of is that this poor student has nothing to be arrogant about — if he actually met a teacher who was able and willing to confront his misconceptions, he’d be hung out to dry. The answer also reflects a common creationist myth: the Big Daddy fable, in which the gentle, polite Christian boy humiliates the hysterical, dishonest Evilutionist professor by calmly refuting every piece of evidence brought up in the classroom.

It never happens.

In my experience, the reverse is true. The poor kid gets flustered and his story falls apart in a few moments’ conversation, and he looks like a total dork — I don’t enjoy these situations at all, because then I have to struggle to keep him from abject humiliation while explaining how thoroughly wrong he is. That’s the nasty part of these pro-creation sites that they don’t talk about: they are cheerfully encouraging students to have a false sense of competence, and then shooing them off into the lion’s den to be publicly mauled, while the cowards back at CreationConversations, who are the ones I really would enjoy eviscerating in the classroom, are taking it easy with their back-patting congregations of equally ignorant kooks, lying their asses off to children.

Oh, well. The good news is that students come out of our biology classes here at UMM well-prepared to shred the frauds of creationism.

I think Wayne Laugesen believes he’s my nemesis — but his only superpower is bad polls

I hate to break the news to him, but he’s just so Johnny Snow. I’ve grated against ol’ Wayne a few times before to mock his awful polls, and now I think he has finally snapped, babbling out incoherent mush about how atheists are just like believers, only worse…and he really doesn’t like me. I don’t think. Hard to tell with mixed messages like this one.

Just as James Dobson and other evangelists cultivate audiences in order to spread their beliefs, so do atheist evangelizers. The bigs are Britons Christopher Hitchens, who is battling cancer, and Richard Dawkins, who turns 70 in March. Myers, who grabbed attention by vandalizing sacred religious property, is a young and energetic American evangelist on track to become the James Dobson of atheism.

Excellent whiplash there — my eyebrows were pressing up against my hairline with that “young and energetic” remark, but then I had to do a major eyeroll at the comparison to Dobson. He’s giving my face quite a workout.

Anyway, yeah, he’s got another terrible little online poll, and it’s already going the wrong way for him. I think he’s got a reputation as the noisy little freak of Colorado Springs, so people all over already gawk at his train-wreck editorials. Here is this week’s, which really out to be answered with data, not opinion polling:

Per capita, do athiests provide as much charity as members of traditional religions?

Yes, atheists are at least as charitable as members of traditional religions
68%
No, atheists are less charitable than members of traditional religions
16%
I don’t know
5%
I don’t care
10%

According to the statistics, religious people do donate more time and money to charity, but it’s also complicated: atheists aren’t organized and even when they are, typically aren’t associating as community service organizations. It’s like asking who gives more, TV repairmen or members of Habitat for Humanity? It’s biasing the sample of TV repairmen (or atheists) by selecting from a more diverse pool, while Habitat for Humanity (or many religions) are preselected to contain more volunteers. Then of course there’s also the confusion of needing only one godless Bill Gates to skew the data.

I like to skew it another way, and say that giving for religious purposes shouldn’t really count, any more than flushing money down a toilet should count as charitable outreach. Instead, let’s only consider productive charities, like hospitals.

Promoting a comment of general interest

Since it will be otherwise buried in the endless thread, I thought it might be a good idea to put this plea for help from someone calling themselves “EvolutionSkeptic” up top.

Hey, so some of you may remember me (one can hope). I found this thread that some people told me last time to find when I wanted to ask a question. Since I have one, I thought I’d check in. Hope everyone is doing well.

All right. I read “Why Evolution is True” and “The Greatest Show on Earth,” as recommended by several of you. After that, I also started reading some of the stuff on Dawkins’ site, because I really liked his calm approach to the subject.

After reading there and a good bit here, I’m actually getting a little afraid, and this is where my question comes in … I can recognize the validity of evolution and that it’s true. This began to make an impact on my belief in God, but I still felt like he could have set the whole thing in motion.

But the more I read there and here, the more I’m questioning that, the more I worry that my faith may be in danger. Since you guys were so helpful the first time, I thought maybe I could come to you to ask a couple of questions again …

  1. I truly don’t mean this to be insulting, so please don’t take it that way, but what is your motivation to live a moral, upstanding life without the guidance of the rules of God and the Bible? I know you guys do this, but I’m not sure I understand how it works without concrete guidance.

  2. For those of you who were once Christians (I’m guessing there are some), how did you reconcile your atheism/agnosticism with your relationship with your Christian family/friends? How do you tell them? Do you still go to church for the fellowship but just don’t pray/participate? Did you lose friends/family in your process of change?

I hope I’m not interrupting a conversation here, but any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for reading, if you actually got this far.

I’ll give a quickie version of my answers, but this is one probably better answered by the diverse views of the hivemind.

The first question is backwards. There’s nothing especially moral about the guidance of priests; you might as well put all your trust in the guidance of boy scout troop leaders and Republican congressmen, that is, don’t. We should aways be skeptical of authority. At least most boy scout leaders don’t start out by claiming the imaginary mantle of divine will. But otherwise, I live a moral life for the simple reason that I empathize with my fellow human beings and have a desire to avoid doing them harm that’s almost as strong as my desire that they avoid harming me.

Answers to the second question will vary a lot. I grew up in a very casual religious tradition, and leaving was completely painless, and no, I have no interest in going back to church ever. Other people will have far more stressful stories to tell. I was one of the lucky ones.