10 Commandments vs. Bill of Rights

The man-made, extensively debated, committee assembled, legislatively enacted Bill of Rights contains more useful morality in its first adopted amendment than we find in all 10 commandments combined. — Steve Shives

See more here.

On Atheism+ and humanism

Jen McCreight over at Free Thought Blogs has created quite a stir in the atheist/freethinking community with a post titled, How I Unwittingly Infiltrated the Boy’s Club & Why It’s Time for a New Wave of Atheism, which has garnered in the neighborhood of 500 responses thus far.

In the post, McCreight laments her experiences with some of the more brutish individuals within the movement and said she was “welcomed with open arms” into the atheist and skeptic community until she started discussing feminism. Perhaps her first mistake was to create “Boobquake,” which was a day (April 26, 2010) for feminist supporters to protest Hojatoleslam Kazem Seddiqi‘s odious comment that women who dressed immodestly were the cause of earthquakes.

As if that weren’t a silly enough suggestion, McCreight’s response was to create a one-day protest that, by itself, seemed to objectify women. On April 19 of that year, she offered a post titled, “In the name of science, I offer my boobs,” and then asked supporters to follow suit on April 26:

On Monday, April 26th, I will wear the most cleavage-showing shirt I own. Yes, the one usually reserved for a night on the town. I encourage other female skeptics to join me and embrace the supposed supernatural power of their breasts. Or short shorts, if that’s your preferred form of immodesty. With the power of our scandalous bodies combined, we should surely produce an earthquake. If not, I’m sure Sedighi can come up with a rational explanation for why the ground didn’t rumble. And if we really get through to him, maybe it’ll be one involving plate tectonics.

So, who’s with me? I may be a D cup, but that will probably only produce a slight tremor on its own.

Since that time, she has seemed stunned by the immaturity and brashness of some within the community. At least she admits she was naive:

Boobquake made me wake up. What I originally envisioned as an empowering event about supporting women’s freedoms and calling out dangerous superstitious thinking devolved into “Show us your tits!” I received sexual invitations from strangers around the country. When I appeared or spoke at atheist events, there was always a flood of comments about my chest and appearance. I’ve been repeatedly told I can never speak out against people objectifying or sexually harassing me because a joke about my boobs was eternal “consent.”

So I started speaking up about dirty issues like feminism and diversity and social justice because I thought messages like “please stop sexually harassing me” would be simple for skeptics and rationalists. But I was naive. Like clockwork, every post on feminism devolved into hundreds of comments accusing me being a man-hating, castrating, humorless, ugly, overreacting harpy.

Adding (in bold):

don’t feel safe as a woman in this community – and I feel less safe than I do as a woman in science, or a woman in gaming, or hell, as a woman walking down the fucking sidewalk.

Of course, as a frequent Counter-Strike player, she damn sure shouldn’t feel safe in many online gaming communities. Pockets of those communities are filled with homophobic, sexist and racist deviants. Thankfully, the more civilized communities among them have numerous administrators online 24/7 that are diligent about banning people who display such crude behavior.

In any case, amid the unsuspected backlash of “Boobquake” — seriously, what did she expect with a name like that? — she is in the creating business again with something she has called Atheism+, dubbing this a “third wave” in the wake of traditional atheist scholarship that has been around for hundreds of years and the “new atheist” movement of Dawkins and Hitchens lore:

It’s time for a wave that cares about how religion affects everyone and that applies skepticism to everything, including social issues like sexism, racism, politics, poverty, and crime. We can criticize religion and irrational thinking just as unabashedly and just as publicly, but we need to stop exempting ourselves from that criticism.

She also seems to criticize modern atheism for being a “Boys Club,” for some reason, presumably forgetting the likes Susan Jacoby, Annie Laurie Gaylor, Julia SweeneyAyaan Hirsi AliJaneane GarafaloPaula Poundstone, Ann Druyan, Margaret Downey and scores of others who came before them:

The Boy’s Club may have historically ruled the movement, but they don’t own it. We can.

One can argue, but I won’t, that this last statement is kind of a reverse sexism. Is McCreight now suggesting that females can and should “own” the movement? I’ll chalk that up to hyperbole on her part.

In her most recent post on the topic, McCreight addresses 10 “misconceptions” about Atheism+, none of which touched on my concerns, which I posited as a comment to her original:

… I didn’t see any evidence to suggest that non-believers are any more or less sexist or potentially offensive than any other group. It’s a little pie in the sky, don’t you think, to expect all atheists to be good people, just like calling yourself a believer doesn’t make you a good person. Quite the opposite in many cases. While working toward equality is commendable — as it always has been — you aren’t going to get it by proclaiming that you have invented a new movement and requesting that these offensive atheists play nice. If you want a perfect society, or even a movement, free of offensive people, you are on the wrong planet.

Adding further:

Feminists, who also happen to be atheists, and their supporters are certainly free to fight it and also fight to reduce the influence of bad apples from the atheist movement (and I fully support that) without inventing new movements when “New Atheism,” if we take Jen’s timescale here, is still in its infancy, while the “first wave” of atheism has thousands of years of scholarship behind it. Seems too soon to be conjuring up new movements based on some anecdotal evidence about some bad experiences with unbalanced individuals who could just as well exist in any movement.

To take the cake, McCreight’s first listed misconception was the similarities between Atheism+ and humanism:

I don’t give a diddly what label you want. Atheist, atheist+, humanist, pastafarian, Supreme Crusher of God-Belief. Whatever. I care more about getting stuff done, and I see the humanists as our natural allies. I just don’t understand why some of them are so cranky that we…what, are saying we agree with their ideals and values? Let’s not let progress get derailed by discussions about labels.

But she did label it and even presented a logo for it. So which is it? Do you want to create a name for a new movement that addresses ills like racism and sexism from an atheistic standpoint or do you want to stick with tried and true humanism? The former seems rather redundant to me.

As Twitter user @AdrianBriggs said:

Fans of #atheismplus, we’ve already got #humanism. If you’re sexist, racist, or homophobic then you’re not much of a humanist.

In the most basic definition of the word, humanism at its core does address racism, sexism, homophobia or anything else that degrades the dignity of humanity in general or individually. It’s not just a rejection of the belief in god:

hu·man·ism

noun

1.
any system or mode of thought or action in which human interests, values, and dignity predominate.

EDIT: “Reverse sexism” above should just be “sexism.”

The god drug

Here is an article on the what makes the contemporary church “experience” so attractive to many people, at least the ones who can get past the ugly doctrines of original sin, blood sacrifice and the well, looming separation of the wheat from the chaff.

The pop and/or rock music, combined with sensory stimulation on projectors, uplifted hands and closed eyes all contribute to the impression that something more than just a meeting of like-minded individuals is taking place. To many, of course, the “feelings” or perceptions or thoughts that one gets while participating in these services comes from none other than the Holy Spirit, who, quite conveniently, is much less conspicuous on every other day of the week … ahh … until the believer gets into his car and once again turns on Steven Curtis Chapman, Chris Tomlin or some other contemporary singer. I, of course, was witness to this phenomenon for years and couldn’t grasp as a believer why, whenever I left church, I could never quite capture the same experience on my own until I learned that there was a very good reason for that.

Read more: God as a drug: The rise of American megachurches

PZ Myers, Thunderf00t and Sam Harris

So, while I visit Free Thought Blogs on occasion, I’m not a daily reader. Thus, I wasn’t familiar with the whole squabble that took place this summer between P.Z. Myers and the blogger who calls himself Thunderf00t. Here is Myers’ side of the story, and here is Thunderf00t’s. Apparently when things really got nasty between the parties involved, Thunderf00t allegedly disseminated confidential information about other bloggers on FTB. I have no idea whether that’s true or not neither do I care.

The crux of the problem, as I understand it, was that Thunderf00t went too far in his criticism of Myers — the one atheist on the Internet you don’t dare criticize — regarding a discussion on feminism and even criticized the site itself by saying that FTB is headed toward becoming “more of a fringe group that is intolerant of non-conformity …”

Here’s an explanation for those interested:

Of course, all this is way too much drama for me, and while I did approach FTB at one time about possibly having my blog included in the line up, mostly because I saw it as a way to increase readership, I’m glad that this site has maintained its independence. The takeaway lesson: any forum, even one run by “freethinkers” usually has a filter. I still think it’s stunning that a writer on a relatively obscure blogging community such as FTB can get the boot for criticizing the person Sam Harris has called that “shepherd of Internet trolls.” Some people take themselves way too seriously. Seriously.

Here is a post about FTB’s new “policies” after the dispute with Thunderf00t.

Speaking of Harris, Myers agreed with a list that named the neuroscientist one of the five most “awful” atheists, whatever “awful” means. Along with Harris on the list are Bill Maher, Penn Jillette, Ayaan Hirsi Ali and S.E. Cupp.

Harris made the list for his supposed view of racial profiling, which is a misunderstanding at best. Harris, in this response, addresses both his critics and, perhaps, the very political correctness that got Thunderf00t booted from FTB:

I suspect that it will surprise neither my fans nor my critics that I view the furor over this article to be symptomatic of the very political correctness that I decry in it. However, it seems that when one speaks candidly about the problem of Islam misunderstandings easily multiply. So I’d like to clarify a couple of points here:

1. When I speak of profiling “Muslims, or anyone who looks like he or she could conceivably be Muslim,” I am not narrowly focused on people with dark skin. In fact, I included myself in the description of the type of person I think should be profiled (twice). To say that ethnicity, gender, age, nationality, dress, traveling companions, behavior in the terminal, and other outward appearances offer no indication of a person’s beliefs or terrorist potential is either quite crazy or totally dishonest. It is the charm of political correctness that it blends these sins against reasonableness so seamlessly. We are paying a very high price for this obscurantism—and the price could grow much higher in an instant. We have limited resources, and every moment spent searching a woman like the one pictured above, or the children seen in the linked videos, is a moment in which someone or something else goes unobserved.

2. There is no conflict between what I have written here and “behavioral profiling” or other forms of threat detection. And if we can catch terrorists before they reach the airport, I am all for it. But the methods we use to do this tend to be even more focused and invasive (and, therefore, offensive) than profiling done by the TSA. Many readers who were horrified by my article seem to believe that there is nothing wrong with “gathering intelligence.” One wonders just how they think that is done.

And on Myers directly, Harris had this to say:

A couple of months ago, I wrote an article on profiling at airport security checkpoints. Given that I suggested (twice) that white men like myself also fit the profile of a possible terrorist, I would have thought that charges of “racism” would be off the table. Not so. In fact, people like PZ Myers continue to malign me as an advocate of “racial profiling.” I have written to Myers personally about this and answered his charges publicly. His only response has been to attack me further and to endorse the false charges of others.

I have read three of Harris’ books now and have watched many of his debates. To suggest that Harris is attempting to do anything other than move humanity toward a better society is deeply, devilishly misguided, so much so that I sometimes think that folks like Myers criticize him just to have something to write about or to stir the trolls.

Don’t like gay marriage?

Via Reddit:

An atheist examines ‘The Case for Christ’

I think this YouTuber, Steve Shives, does an excellent job in looking at “The Case for Christ” and C.S. Lewis’s “Mere Christianity:”

Check out Steve’s website here.

Satan and/or God’s wrath behind [insert tragedy here]

Another tragedy, more crazy talk to boot. Former Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee recently said America’s “sin problem” was behind the Aurora movie theater shooting, while Rep. Louie Gohmert has said the nation was no longer under God’s “protective hand.”

Dwight Longenecker, a Catholic priest in my native South Carolina said recently on his blog that Satan could be behind James Holmes’ recent rampage in the Aurora movie theater shooting. Longenecker wrote:

… Was he demon possessed? Maybe. It happens.

Medieval engraving of holy men casting out demons.

Demonic infestation is a rare, strange and terrible psycho-spiritual affliction. In simple terms, a malevolent, separate intelligence infests the mind and spirit of a person. It takes over the rational faculties and dominates the personality. The phenomenon is real, but anyone who has ever dealt with the problem realizes that the demonic realm is complex. The human person is an intricate organism in which the physical, mental and spiritual aspects are totally interwoven. Therefore, in most cases, trying to diagnose the possibility of demonic influence is extremely difficult.

This is because, in theory, demonic influence in a personality can exist on several different levels. Experts disagree about the terminology and extent of the diabolical influence, and in this arcane discipline, for reasons that will become clear, there are few set rules or guidelines. However, some levels of demonic involvement can be observed.

Longenecker goes on to identify four “levels” of demonic influence, which begin at temptation and then devolve into obsession with a certain “sin.” The third level is “infestation.” At this level, the demon becomes entangled — or whatever —  inside the spirit of the host:

When the signs of preternatural strength are seen, horrible alien voices come from the person, vile blasphemies are heard and perverted and violent actions are witnessed, one can be fairly sure that a demonic infestation is happening. However, many of these symptoms may also be signs of a deep mental or spiritual illness which is not demonic in origin.

Of course, we aren’t told how we are to determine the difference between “demonic infestation” and mere mental illness. The final level is possession, in which the spirit “hides within the personality rather like a parasite.” The actual exorcist at this point is in a kind of no-man’s-land between reality and the spiritual knife edge, as Longenecker describes it:

In analyzing these levels of demonic influence, one must remember that each level builds on the former and there may be no sequence, predictability or diagnostic tests. In dealing with the interface between the paranormal realm and the complexities of the human person, the exorcist often feels like he is walking blindfolded through a minefield set in quicksand. He is wrestling with a pool of oily octopuses. He is on the edge of chaos where there is no foothold.

Here, Longenecker, possibly realizing that not even he believes his own hot garbage, softens his tone and begins using the more typical and blanket term, “evil,” to describe what Holmes may or may not have experienced:

Is James Holmes demon possessed? It is impossible to say without a detailed diagnosis. Even then, it is a slippery question. We are dealing with a reality that is rubbery. In many ways this is the wrong question. Better to ask, “Was James Holmes taken over by Evil?”

“Evil” is capitalized here, of course, because Longenecker wants people think that he is still talking about the concept as the personification of the devil or demonic spirits, and again, we are given no explanation as to what this “detailed diagnosis” involves, other than to reference a friend whom he said was an exorcist:

A friend of mine who is an exorcist says this is why the ministry of exorcism is so exhausting and grueling—because the demons constantly lie. Whenever evil is manifested, it wears a mask. The evil ones squirm and hide. They flatter one moment and hiss with rage the next. They are one moment obsequious and aggressive the next. Because they are liars, reason and trust can find no grasp. Pure Evil is random, violent and unpredictable.

Longenecker then notes that “Evil” is “mindless” and that all we helpless humans can do is gaze on it with “fascinated horror.”  Now, if “evil” is mindless, then how is there a demon behind this dark cloak? I thought Satan was a cagey, intelligent creature, as presumably are his minions as well if they have been smart enough to somehow outfox Yahweh all these thousands of years. Further, for all the “horror” that the Aurora shooting does represent, I find it hard to view the deaths of 12 people as anything but fascinating, no matter if some “spiritual” force was behind it or not.

Longenecker ends with some rather lame truisms about love (He capitalizes it, again personifying a wholly secular feeling) conquers darkness and that love (“Love”) was the force that drove three people to shield their loves ones in the shooting, saying nothing of selflessness or courage. Well, I hate to break it to Longenecker, but if God is “Love,” as Christianity teaches, then God himself failed where those three heroic humans did not.