An Atheistic Examination of the Culture of Death
Phorum Phun Phor Pharyngula - Fri, Sep 21, 2007
Professor PZ Myers of Pharyngula submitted himself to a live text interview at the renegade Raving Atheists (with an "s") Forums last night. I got in a few questions (here, here and here). I was somewhat surprised, from an empirical standpoint, at his response regarding what he considered to be the most dangerous religion. More feedback at the comments section of the Professor's blog. Thanks to Eva and Professor Chaos for their organizing and moderating efforts.
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An Atheistic Examination of the Culture of Death
Mad Men - Fri, Sep 7, 2007
"You're born alone, and you die alone, and this world just drops a bunch of rules on top of you to make you forget those facts. But I never forget." Such is the philosophy of Don Draper of AMC's Mad Men, a "whore-child" raised during the Depression by an evangelical Christian stepmother who rises to power as an advertising executive at The Sterling Cooper Agency in 1960 New York. On last night's episode he feigns piety with a lipstick magnate to clinch the account ("I'm not here to tell you about Jesus. You know about Jesus . . . either He lives in your heart or He doesn't") while being proselytized himself by one of the senior partners who has just rewarded him with a then-generous $2,500 bonus:
Cooper: Have you read her? Rand. Atlas Shrugged. That's the one.Draper: [Hesitantly] Yes . . . it is.
Cooper: See, I know you haven't read it. When you hit 40, you realize you've met or seen every kind of person there is. And I know what kind you are, because I believe we are alike.
Draper: I assume that's flattering.
Cooper: By that I mean you are a productive and reasonable man, and in the end, completely self-interested. It's strength. We are different. Unsentimental about all the people who depend on our hard work. Take $1.99 out of that $2,500 and buy yourself a copy.
What's apparently shaping up is a battle of the atheists. (The show seems to be sponsored in part by atheists, with the Cast and Crew page intermittently sporting an ad for The God Who Wasn't There DVD). The factions seem to be Cooper's cult of Ayn Rand, whose adherents believe that in the absence of God pure reason dictates an ethic of capitalistic selfishness, and Draper's nihilism, which holds that godlessness implies nothing. Insofar as Draper has nonetheless adopted capitalist selfishness as his ethic, the battle may fizzle quickly -- with little to fight over save his refusal to attend Objectivist seminars and his disinterest in discussing the necessity of his chosen ethic over martinis.
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An Atheistic Examination of the Culture of Death
D.A.P.P.E.R. - Tue, Sep 4, 2007
Bradley Thomas Horton, Founder and President of D.A.P.P.E.R., a new advocacy for the differently abled, has given me permission to post the e-mail he sent me this morning:
Hello, I am Bradley and I am disabled. This is from the brain tumor I had at 13 years of age. I have been fighting my health problems, most of my life. I am about to have my 40th birthday. I am trying to speak out, like never before and get people to realize that god is a myth and we need to work to help each other, in real ways, now.
All of my readers, atheist, theist and in between, are encouraged to leave comments offering Mr. Horton their insights and advice regarding his mission.
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An Atheistic Examination of the Culture of Death
Are You Lying? - Fri, Aug 31, 2007
Karl Rove is an agnostic who manipulated the Christian Right for political gain, charges PBS commentator Bill Moyers. Rove, a self-described observant Episcopalian, labels the charge a "drive-by slander." In a defense of Rove, Fox News' Chris Wallace asserts that Moyers is guilty of lazy journalism:
If you want to find out about someone's religious beliefs, a good first step might be to ask him. If you had talked to Rove as I did, you would have found out he reads a devotional every day, and the biggest charitable contribution he ever made was to his church.
The video clip has been widely touted as a "smackdown" but I think its demonstrates naivete more than anything else. The criticism makes little sense in view of the very issue in dispute. Rove was accused of misrepresenting his religious beliefs. If he would be willing to do that, he'd also be willing misrepresent every fact relevant to his beliefs. He could be lying about the devotionals and the contributions. Or he could be praying and paying to maintain a façade of faith in pursuit of another agenda. I suppose one could ask him as him if he were lying about his faith, and if he denied it further inquire if he were lying about lying – and so on and on. But that is not the sort of infinite regress that generally comes to rest upon a foundation of truth. It's lies all the way down. It's puzzling that Wallace would rely on anything Rove said to prove his point, given that in the missive to which he was replying, Moyers clearly announced that he did not "take [Rove's] every word as gospel."
There is a tendency to take people's accounts of their religion at face value. To "question" a person's faith is often met with the same indignation as questioning their patriotism. But faith, patriotism and indignation can all be feigned. And while it may be true that people who might lie about lesser things are truthful when it comes discussing what they hold sacred, that presumption only applies to people who do in fact hold something sacred. If they don't, they might have no compunction at all about saying they do.
But if Wallace is naive, Moyers is just ridiculous. He's a self-described agnostic who has built a career on doing exactly what he condemns Rove for. He promotes the liberal Christianity of the Democratic party, a faith so cynical as to be self-mocking. It was epitomized by Howard Dean's embrace of Jesus in the last election cycle, and you can expect a group hug in the months to come.
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An Atheistic Examination of the Culture of Death
Lip Service - Tue, Jul 24, 2007
CNN selected an atheist as one of the YouTubers permitted to question the Democratic candidates last night. Should he fear that a Democratic administration would snub secular voters but "pay lip service to the extremely religious?" Literally understood, of course, the question asks whether the candidates intend to ignore believers as much as non-believers. CNN, regrettably, did not pick up on the misuse of "lip service," aggravating matters by emblazoning the question across screen as if it made perfect sense. They even put "lip service" in quotes, seemingly to emphasize the audicity of favoring anybody with it. As you can see from the link, WashingtonPost.com also thinks it's something closer to kissing than kissing off.
John Edwards and Barack Obama, who answered, probably knew better. (I know Hillary does, as she used the phrase correctly in this 2005 speech which coincidentally criticized the devout and the godless for giving lip service to religious liberty). But they didn't correct the atheist, instead choosing to pay lip service to the question. I think it's clear enough from their responses, though, that they'll treat all faiths to the same lip service they pay their own.
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An Atheistic Examination of the Culture of Death
Beyond Expectations - Wed, Jun 6, 2007
"You are a stupid duped deluded idiot." It was my custom to speak to religious people bluntly, and so three years ago I e-mailed that observation to a woman named Ashli after our paths had crossed on another blog. She might have taken more offense than she did but for various distractions, which, as I learned once our discussions veered away from religion and politics, included the fact that her emaciated, jaundiced, bedridden body was vomiting forth, up to 40 times a day, whatever nutrients could be pumped into it with an industrial-strength IV line.
She was suffering from hyperemesis gravidarum (HG), a debilitating pregnancy-related disease which effectively makes the mother allergic to the fetus. Eight years earlier she had lost her first child to it by way of abortion. She devoted a blog to that tragedy. At the time we first corresponded she was running a second site to track her latest and most difficult battle with HG. Some of her posts were pro-life, although she confessed that the same fingers that typed them had only months earlier leafed through the yellow pages in search of another clinic to end the misery.
That pregnancy was ultimately terminated but with the live, healthy birth of a beautiful little baby girl. What made the difference was a book, a book that she was writing about coping with the disease. In the years I had spent extolling the virtues of reason, this devout homeschooling Christian had produced a 489-page work of cold, hard science. It combines a decade of painstaking medical research with the testimony of her own body and that of the numerous HG patients whose stories are set forth within.
Although Ashli is a talented writer, the market for self-published works combining vomiting, crying and aborting with medical information is limited to those who most desperately need them. But last week Ashli's story was featured on Paula Zahn Now on CNN and it nearly cracked Amazon's top 1,000 list. By this year's end she hopes to place one, free of charge, in the hands of every ob/gyn whose address she can find. She is also distributing copies to needy expectant mothers their and caregivers through charity events and various internet channels. The book will never be a bestseller like those atheist manifestos by Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens, but the good it will do shall by far surpass them.
We are heartened by the publicity and reception this unpalatable but livesaving text has thusfar received. I am proud of the extraordinarily professional work my webmistress, Chris Michaud, in creating and maintaining the book's promotion and distribution website. An enormous debt of gratitude is also owed to Dawn Eden, who has worked quietly but tirelessly behind the scenes to promote the book for many months -- even while on tour for her own book -- and whose selfless efforts are largely responsible for bringing the book the attention it deserves.
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An Atheistic Examination of the Culture of Death
Hoax? - Tue, May 29, 2007
The January 2007 atheist-bashing letter to the editor by "Alice Shannon" was a hoax, according to TRA commenter Crosius. The paper in which it appeared, the Kenai Peninsula Clarion, printed a mea culpa stating that Ms. Shannon had admitted it was a "complete joke."
But was it? The Clarion also disclosed that "we received a letter from a person telling us the same letter was found in a blog from a woman from South Carolina, and he sent us the Web address." While the Clarion doesn't provide the blog name or the link, I assume they're referring to this. It's not a blog, but a letter to the editor from one Gloria "Wendy" Ray of Aiken, South Carolina which appeared in the Augusta Chronicle on October 22, 2001. Ms. Ray was responding to this article earlier that month about atheists, including Chicago-area nurse Gail Pepin, who were mourning the then-recent 9/11 attacks but felt excluded because the nation was unifying "under God." Given how high emotions were running at the time, there's no reason to believe that Ms. Ray wasn't being perfectly serious. According to a contemporaneous post at Positive Atheism Forum the Chronicle editors also received a lot of flak from atheists but nobody questioned the writer's sincerity.
Circumstantial evidence suggests that Shannon saw the Ray letter when it resurfaced on this quote site in mid-January and decided to submit it under her own name a few days later. Does that qualify as a "hoax"? It might if it were submitted under a celebrity's name, but no one cares who "Alice Shannon" is and the name appears to be a pseudonym anyway. As it stands every word of the letter itself was sincerely meant by the person who actually composed it -- all that has changed is the time of its publication and the newspaper in which it appeared.