godlessness
pharyngula | February 2, 2011Good news! The Secular Student Alliance is now working to promote godless organizations in high schools. They're going to be everywhere! There is resistance, of course, but the law is on our side, and the schools have to allow students to organize for meetings with a secular purpose.
Are you a high school student? Are you interested in gathering your fellow atheists together to promote critical thinking? Then you need to email JT Eberhard right now and ask for his help. He'll get you started, and you, of course, will make him work very hard to earn the massive salary he probably receives in…
pharyngula | February 1, 2011Once again, I have proven my ability to drive people into a frothing rage against me. Only this time it isn't a mob of religious fanatics and anti-choicers who have called me pond scum who will go to hell, an insect souled vile man, a black-souled amoral monster, pure evil, morally depraved, with a depraved mind, descend[ing] down the various stages into madness, and so forth…but I have this time managed to antagonize a bunch of atheists. Feel my pain.
All right, to be honest, it really doesn't sting that much.
The godless raged at me on youtube and twitter, thanks to the recent broadcast of…
pharyngula | January 30, 2011After a brief career as one of Richard Dawkins' fleas, author of some book or another complaining about atheism, Alister McGrath faded away into irrelevance again. Not that he was missed; he always reminded me of the Impressive Clergyman played by Peter Cook in The Princess Bride, that affected pontificator with nothing really to say. I guess he's trying for a comeback now, but his only tactic is to try and ride the coattails of the New Atheists again, this time by triumphantly pointing out that there is dissent in the ranks, that the New Atheists are all loud and enthusiastic while other…
pharyngula | January 28, 2011A reader responded to my article where I said I found no solace in lies by sending me a poem by Edna St Vincent Millay. This could be part of the godless liturgy for coping with funerals; it's so true to the spirit of our thinking, and so antagonistic to Christian attitudes. So I'll share it with you, too.
Dirge without music
I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and laurel they go: but I am not resigned.
Lovers…
pharyngula | January 27, 2011Here's a great opportunity for a paid summer internship with the SCA. Apply!
SCA Summer 2011 Internship Program
The Secular Coalition for America (SCA) is pleased to offer one paid internship position for summer 2011. SCA is seeking a highly motivated undergraduate junior- or senior-level student with a demonstrated interest in being active in the nontheistic movement. The student must live and attend school more than 50 miles outside of the District of Columbia.
SCA is a 501(c)4 advocacy organization whose purpose is to amplify the diverse and growing voice of the nontheistic community in…
pharyngula | January 27, 2011He has sent me a response to my criticisms of his criticisms of the New Atheism. Look below the fold for what he sent me.
A lot of online feedback is remarkably angry, hostile, and generally melodramatic. Every time I write an online piece I get an army of people calling me a "moron," or telling me I'm too smart for my own good, or I'm too stupid for my own good. People vent spleen and project all kinds of things onto the article and the writer. I find all this amusing and don't take it personally.
As a regular contributor to publications like SKEPTIC magazine, the SKEPTICAL INQUIRER and…
pharyngula | January 26, 2011Another of those common, erroneous strategies used to criticize those danged Gnu Atheists is to first invent a definition for New Atheism that the Gnu Atheists themselves would find foreign, and then to jump all over it for a prolonged period of time until they've convinced themselves they've finally defeated their nemesis. It's the cardboard cutout tactic — it turns out that cardboard versions of us put up much less of a fight than the real thing.
I'm afraid Stephen Asma has committed the same error. He has written a long, meandering essay that accuses the New Atheists of having a narrow…
pharyngula | January 24, 2011All you godless folk: some busybody wants to know about your sex life. Go ahead and tell them in this survey:
This is a short survey about how your sexuality has developed over time and how it has changed in relation to your lack of belief in a god. The research is being conducted by Dr. Darrel Ray, author of The God Virus and Amanda Brown at the University of Kansas.
This survey is for ATHEISTS, AGNOSTICS, SPIRITUALISTS, HUMANISTS, and SECULARISTS. We need to have people who do not believe in a deity, or organized religion, of any sort.
I went ahead and filled it out, but I'm afraid mine…
pharyngula | January 22, 2011Do you remember those ridiculous childhood arguments, "My big brother can beat up your big brother"? They were pathetic then, and no grown-up with any self-respect would think that that kind of fantasy boxing by proxy is any kind of way to settle a disagreement…but we atheists have to remember that we aren't dealing with self-respecting grownups. Scott Stephens, some guy at ABC news, has taken that tactic and made it even more feeble and irrelevant: his argument against the New Atheists is basically "Your big brother can beat you up, ha ha, I win." This is such a dreary and dishonest approach…
pharyngula | January 18, 2011The next Australian census is coming up in August, and the Atheist Foundation of Australia has begun an awareness campaign to clarify one issue. When you're asked about your religion, don't simply answer by default with what faith you were brought up in; answer accurately about your current views. There are a lot of people who just blandly answer with whatever church they attended as a child, which tends to inflate the perception of the importance of religion.
For instance, I was brought up as a Lutheran of Scandinavian descent, and of course that has affected my cultural attitudes, but it…
pharyngula | January 17, 2011It sounds like Ricky Gervais was wonderfully caustic in his turn hosting the Golden Globes awards last night — so brutally acerbic that I wouldn't be surprised if there aren't many celebrities lined up to complain about their treatment to the organizers. I wonder if he'll ever host an award show ever again?
Among the amusements, though, was his closing thank yous. God finally gets the credit he deserves.
pharyngula | January 13, 2011Since I just mentioned I'll be in Portland at the end of March, I should also let you know I'll be in Kamloops, BC in early May. More time in the great Pacific Northwest! I should see about doing something this summer in Seattle, too, so I can pop in and visit the family.
I'm sure they'll fix my name by May.
pharyngula | January 13, 2011A little advance warning for the Oregonians: I'll be at the Northwest Freethought Regional Conference in Portland on 25-27 March. I hope it rains the whole weekend, I really need to get some normal, healthy, earth-like weather for a change.
pharyngula | January 13, 2011I've been privy to some of the behind-the-scenes arguments among atheists about this episode of the Bill O'Reilly show, in which they discuss (if anything is ever discussed with O'Reilly) an aggressive billboard sponsored by American Atheists.
Most of the complaining I've heard has been about David Silverman's performance, and I think that's misplaced. Silverman was good: he's confident and a bit flippant, which is exactly what you need when dealing with a pompous blowhard like O'Reilly. Silverman isn't the problem, it's the sign, and he was stuck defending an awful message.
That is one…
pharyngula | January 6, 2011I just got a request to advertise a conference, and here's the flyer they sent to me.
O Bitter Cruelty! It's like they're taunting me with their weather! And notice…I'm not one of the invited speakers. I get to just stay here in the frozen Northland and watch the icicles grow on my mustache while I fight off the savage penguins and starving polar bears.
Just for that, I'm not going to mention the Southern California Humanist Conference in San Diego on 5 February. I hope they all sweat and get sunburns and that their bikinis and speedos are all just a little bit too tight.
pharyngula | January 4, 2011Jerry Coyne has just heard that Chris Mooney has an article in Playboy — I knew about this a while back, and have a copy of the text. I didn't mention it before because it isn't online, and it's dreadfully dreary stuff. The entire article is a case of false equivalence: he cites scientists like Einstein and Darwin writing about a sense of awe and wonder at the natural world, and then tries to slide a fast one by…the idea that this means science and religion really are compatible. Well, science and spirituality. Well, spirituality is all about the believers. It's a slimy game relying on the…
pharyngula | January 3, 2011A few people have noted in the comments that Conservapædia's hot new front page topic is "Atheism and Obesity" — we're all supposed to be humongous wobbling lardasses, as if that is some kind of rational argument against an intellectual position ("you're fat!" kind of shot its bolt in grade school, and really doesn't weigh heavily in a debate beyond that). The poster boy for stupid atheist fatsos, unfortunately, is me.
Poor, poor pitiful me. I'm crying tears of self-pity right now.
Rebecca Watson has a reply to that nonsense, and she noticed that I've lost a few pounds lately (so…Rebecca was…
pharyngula | January 2, 2011Have you noticed how religion is always telling you how simple the answers are, yet at the same time claims that the universe is too complex for science to explain?
Look at religion's explanations. How was the universe created? A big man in the sky just poofed it into existence. Where did humans come from? Same big man created two people — just like a mommy and daddy — and everyone arose from them. What about our history? One chosen people, a remarkable population bottleneck (humanity was reduced to 8 people, all from the same tribe, four of whom were closely related!), all languages…
pharyngula | December 31, 2010Jen McCreight is running an online poll to determine the most influential female atheist of the year.
Uh-oh. You'd think she'd learn.
But given that the results will be utterly meaningless, it's still useful — there's quite a long list of good XX godless folk, and commenters keep mentioning more that were left out. Go there to see the depth and diversity of atheism, even if you don't vote.
pharyngula | December 29, 2010S.E. Cupp is a peculiar creature: she insists that she is an atheist, but I've never actually seen her defend or promote or even accept the idea of atheism. Instead, all she ever does is carp at atheists for being arrogant or smug or militant or whatever the current term of opprobrium might be. I don't really understand her game, but then, I also don't really care — she never says anything interesting, either.
But reading her latest column, I suddenly realized what she is: she's the Good Atheist the believers want us all to be like. Good Atheists don't criticize religion; they praise it and…