Greta Christina's Blog

Supporting Camp Quest and Crushing PZ Myers -- The Last Ditch

UPDATE: Jen McCreight at Blag Hag is throwing her hat into the "make a public spectacle of one's self for this cause" ring. If Team Awesome wins this contest, she will attempt to learn how to ride a bicycle, and, in her words, "videotape the whole inevitably hilarious experience." Come on, folks. There is no way you can pass this up.

*

I am prepared to publicly humiliate myself for atheism.

And so are Matt Dillahunty, Adam Lee, and JT Eberhard.

One-time offer. Take it or leave it.

Here's the deal. There's the blogger contest I've been gassing on about, a competition to see who can raise more money for Camp Quest, the kids' camp for children of atheists, freethinkers, humanists, and other non-supernaturalists. The contest is between Team Awesome on one side -- a bunch of scrappy underdog atheist bloggers, with me, Hemant Mehta of Friendly Atheist, Jen McCreight of Blag Hag, JT Eberhard of WWJTD?, Digital Cuttlefish at The Digital Cuttlefish, Sikivu Hutchinson at Black Skeptics Group, Adam Lee at Daylight Atheism, The Chaplain at An Apostate's Chapel, C.L. Hanson at Letters From a Broad, and Matt Dillahunty at The Atheist Experience -- and on the opposing team, PZ Myers, evil cephalopod overlord at Pharyngula, all by his lonesome on the other side.

You may have noticed that there are more players on Team Awesome than had been originally announced. That's because we are amoral atheists.We took a page from the religious apologists' handbook, moved the goalposts, and frantically rounded up a bunch of other atheist bloggers to battle for our side.

And yet, as of this writing, PZ is... what's that word?... winning. Not by much -- we're closing in, and have narrowed the gap to less than $2,000 -- but we only have a few days to finish the job. If we don't raise more money for Camp Quest by June 1, PZ will officially pwn each and every one of us.

We can't let that happen. Well, okay, we can... but we really, really don't want to.

So a few of us have agreed to make fools of ourselves in public for the cause. If Team Awesome wins, the following bloggers will make the following absurd public gestures:

* Since PZ Myers has offered to shave his beard into a hideous '80s mustache if he wins -- and really, you should donate to our side for that reason alone -- Adam Lee at Daylight Atheism has agreed to grow a beard if Team Awesome wins. Thus preserving Atheist Blogger Beard Homeostasis, and preventing the world as we know it from collapsing into some sort of hideous beardly space-time nexus.

* Matt Dillahunty at The Atheist Experience TV program will do one episode of the show in drag.

* JT Eberhard of WWJTD? will shave his head... and wax his legs.

And what will Greta Christina do? I hear you cry.

* Greta Christina -- she said, with a quiver of dread in her voice -- will do karaoke.

Let me be very clear about this: I have never done karaoke. I have never wanted to do karaoke. I am a karaoke virgin.

But if Team Awesome wins the Camp Quest fundraising challenge, I will pop my karaoke cherry.

And I will get it on video, and post the video to this blog and to my Facebook page.

You can't pass that up, can you?

You have until June 1. Here's the ChipIn widget. Make it so!

Oh, right. The actual cause we're raising money for. You probably want to know a little more about that, don't you?

If you're not familiar with them, Camp Quest is the first residential summer camp in the history of the United States aimed at the children of Atheists, Freethinkers, Humanists, Brights, or whatever other terms might be applied to those who hold to a naturalistic, not supernatural world view. The purpose of Camp Quest is to provide children of freethinking parents a residential summer camp dedicated to improving the human condition through rational inquiry, critical and creative thinking, scientific method, self-respect, ethics, competency, democracy, free speech, and the separation of religion and government.

The nontheist community offers many programs for adults, but very few for children. To provide a future for our values we need to provide freethinking families with a place for their kids to find community, develop critical thinking skills, and learn ethics and values. Fortunately, that is what Camp Quest is all about. Well, that, and all of the summer camp fun that you can pack into a week.

Camp Quest builds a community for children and teenagers from atheist, agnostic, humanist and other freethinking families. They provide campers a place to explore their developing worldviews, ask questions, and make friends in an environment supportive of critical thinking and skepticism. Camp Quest is open to campers from all backgrounds. They encourage campers to think for themselves, be comfortable with who they are, and engage respectfully with people who have different views.

And yes, Camp Quest is a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation, and donations are tax deductible.

You can help support this awesome cause, strengthen the future of the atheist community... and help stave off the crushing arms of PZ's cephalopod army! Just click on the handy Chipin widget. That number again:



How can you pass this up? Get that jolt of good altruism chemicals in your brain... and get the entertainment value of seeing your favorite atheist bloggers make public spectacles of themselves! It's win-win!

High School Student Stands Up Against Prayer at Public School and Is Ostracized, Demeaned and Threatened

When a high school atheist tried to stop prayer at his graduation, he was harassed and kicked out of his house. But the atheist community stepped in.

Whatever you think about atheists -- good, bad, mixed, indifferent -- this story should seriously trouble you.

Damon Fowler, an atheist student at Bastrop High School in Louisiana, was about to graduate. His public school was planning to have a prayer as part of the graduation ceremony: as they traditionally did, as so many public schools around the country do every year. But Fowler -- knowing that government- sponsored prayer in the public schools are unconstitutional and legally forbidden -- contacted the school superintendent to let him know that he opposed the prayer, and would be contacting the ACLU if it happened. The school -- at first, anyway -- agreed, and cancelled the prayer.

Then Fowler's name, and his role in this incident, was leaked. And, as a direct result:

1) Fowler has been hounded, pilloried, and ostracized by his community.

2) One of Fowler's teachers has publicly demeaned him.

3) Fowler has been physically threatened. Students have threatened to "jump him" at graduation practice, and he has received multiple threats of bodily harm, and even death threats.

4) Fowler's parents have cut off his financial support, kicked him out of the house, and thrown his belongings onto the front porch.

Oh, and by the way? They went ahead and had the graduation prayer anyway.

Before we get into the details of all this, let's be very, very clear about the facts and the law here: Nobody -- not Fowler, not the ACLU, nobody -- is telling anybody at Bastrop High School that they can't pray. People can pray at graduations and other school events all they want. The sole issue here is whether a public school can have a prayer at a graduation or other school event as an official, school- sponsored part of the program. Individual prayer? Hunky dory. Off-campus prayers at churches or private events? Knock yourself out. Government promotion of a religious agenda? Not so much. What with the First Amendment and the "establishment of religion" bit and all.

It's a law and a Constitution that protects everybody, not just atheists. If you wouldn't want to be subjected to a government- sponsored Buddhist prayer, you ought not to be subjecting others to a government- sponsored Christian prayer.

Okay. I hope that's clear.

So here's a little more detail about what exactly happened with Damon Fowler.

*

Thus begins my latest piece for AlterNet, High School Student Stands Up Against Prayer at Public School and Is Ostracized, Demeaned and Threatened. To find out more about how exactly the ostracization of Damon Fowler has unfolded -- and how the atheist community has stepped up to the plate -- read the rest of the piece. Enjoy!

Atheism, Sexism, Etc.: An Update

Important update on yesterday's post about sexist comments made by David Eller at the Oakland Rapture RAM:

David Eller has offered an apology. A genuine one this time. It's posted on Jen's blog: Eller offers an apology. Good for him. This sort of situation can go south and get ugly very quickly: good for Eller for not going there, and for acknowledging his error. That's exactly the kind of behavior atheists should be modeling, and he's done a good job of it here. I posted this update as an addendum to the original post, but thought I should also post it separately, in case anyone missed it.

Atheism, Sexism, and Pretty Blonde Videobloggers: or, What Jen Said

UPDATE: Eller has offered an apology. A genuine one this time. It's posted on Jen's blog: Eller offers an apology. Good for him. This sort of situation can go south and get ugly very quickly: good for Eller for not going there, and for acknowledging his error. That's exactly the kind of behavior atheists should be modeling, and he's done a good job of it here.

So I'm going to start by saying: What Jen McCreight said. The American Atheists Regional Atheist Meetup/ Rapture party in Oakland was neat. I heard many excellent speakers (including Jen herself); I met some wonderful new people, and got better acquainted with some wonderful folks I'd already met; I feel more connected now with my local atheist community. The stuff I'm going to talk about here was not the responsibility of the organizers, who did a fine job putting this event together.

So. The stuff I'm going to talk about here. Specifically, David Eller's talk on Sunday at the conference, about how atheists needs to work more on creating an appealing culture/ community that's an alternative to religion. At which he said and did the following (paraphrasing here, sorry -- as far as I know there's no video or audio record of any of this):

a) Gave, as examples of how we're offering an attractive atheist alternative to religious culture, popular videobloggers Laci Green and Cristina Rad (ZOMGitsCriss), with photos of them on his PowerPoint screen -- and made a point of saying how great it was that these videobloggers were so pretty, and how it was helpful to have a pretty blonde Romanian videoblogging to make atheism more appealing. Without any mention of any other qualities these women had that made them popular and appealing, other than their prettiness and blondeness. (And, I guess, their Romanian-ness.)

b) Provided a list of positive atheist role models we could promote -- all but one of whom were male, and every single freaking one of whom was white.

c) Suggested that we should keep doing Boobquake every year, since it was exactly the sort of fun event that made atheism seem appealing. At which point, someone in the audience shouted out, "Boobs are great!"

d) When called on the videoblogger thing by Jen McCreight during the Q&A, semi-apologized for having offended anyone -- and then went to on say that of course he thought these female videobloggers were smart and thoughtful and witty and insightful and inspiring and so on, and of course we should have understood that he'd meant all that (even though he didn't say it). And then went on to say that it was still a good thing that these women were pretty, because that made atheism more appealing to men.

So again, I pretty much want to say, "What Jen said." (Or, to be more accurate, "What Jen said... and another thing...")

Okay. Deep breath. Let's take these one at a time. And then let's look at the big picture.

a) Do we really have to explain -- again -- that women in the atheist movement, or anywhere for that matter, have value other than as ornaments? Do we really have to explain -- again -- that women in our culture routinely get treated as if we don't matter except to be sexually and aesthetically enjoyed by men, and that this is demeaning and belittling, and that men (and women, for that matter) need to be very careful not to go there? Do we really have to explain -- again -- what women feel like when this happens? What it feels like to be a pretty young blonde woman in that audience who is smart and talented and hard-working, and who suddenly gets her smarts and talent and hard work dismissed as secondary to her looks? What it feels like to be a non-pretty, non-young, non-blonde woman in that audience who is smart and talented and hard-working, and who suddenly gets her smarts and talent and hard work eradicated, because her looks apparently aren't tempting enough to get anyone to listen to her ideas? Do we really have to explain -- again -- that there is a time and place for everything, and that while we're not trying to squelch sexuality or flirtatiousness, and while there are appropriate times and places for commenting favorably on women's attractiveness, a serious talk about strategy in the atheist movement is not one of them?

And do we really have to explain -- again -- that this isn't just insulting to women? That it's insulting to men as well? Do we have to explain -- as was pointed out in the comment thread on Jen's post -- how insulting it is to men to tell them that the main reason they'll be drawn to atheism is the pretty girls, and that they'll only care about female atheists because of their looks? Do we have to explain that this attitude is heterosexist as well as sexist: that it assumes all atheist men want to look at pretty girls... and no atheist women do?

Do we really have to explain all this again?

Yes. I guess we do.

Okay. Consider it explained. Again.

b) When we're discussing leaders, icons, and other role models in the atheist movement, there is no excuse for our lists to be dominated by white men. And there is not even a shred of an excuse for those lists to be overwhelmingly dominated by men, to the point where women get relegated to the status of a single token... and people of color are rendered entirely invisible.

We've been over this. And over it, and over it, and over it. (Here are my own rants about it.) This one is a no-brainer. This one is easy and painless. When you want to talk about atheist role models, in history or alive and active today, you need to spend ten minutes looking at lists of prominent female atheists and atheists of color, and put a few of them on your list. (If they're not just popping into your mind automatically, that is.) It's an easy and painless way to make atheism not look like a Whites Only, Men Only club. It's an easy and painless way to make it clear that you recognize that women and people of color, you know, exist, and are part of this movement, and have always been part of this movement, and are welcomed and appreciated as equal participants and contributors. It's not rocket science. Why is this still not happening?

As Jen said, better than I could ever say it myself, "Yep, someone giving a talk on how to improve our community was horrendously out of touch with one of the most important and commonly discussed issues in said community. The irony has not escaped me."

c) Boobquake. Okay. First of all: Should we keep doing Boobquake every year? Oh, I don't know. Maybe we should ask the woman who instigated it? The woman who has made it clear, repeatedly, that the answer is a clear, resounding "NO!"?

Jen McCreight has made it clear that Boobquake was a one-time event. She's explained her reasons. She even explained her reasons during her talk at this event. (Given that multiple people at this conference made inappropriate comments about her chest, I can't blame her.) Perhaps, when considering whether we should continue doing Boobquake every year, we first ought to consult the woman who created it.

And second of all: Do we really have to explain -- again -- that Boobquake was not just about boobs? Boobquake was about the demonization and suppression of women's bodies and women's sexuality. It was a fun, sexy, "the Emperor has no clothes" mockery of this demonization and suppression -- but it was ultimately about the demonization and suppression. The idea that we should keep doing Boobquake because boobs are cool... that is missing the whole freaking point.

Now, I'll be honest: This one probably wouldn't have bugged me that much if it hadn't been for the other stuff that happened during this talk. Boobquake was a complicated event, and a big part of its point was a celebration of women's bodies and women's sexuality, and if people treat it solely as such without what I consider to be a properly nuanced perspective... well, whatever. I don't like it, but it's not the crime of the century. In any other context, I would have let this one slide. But given all the other stuff that happened during this talk... it was part of the vibe, part of the bigger picture. And the bigger picture was seriously not okay.

d) The semi-apology.

I have to take a big, deep breath for this one.

Okay. First of all. If you want your audience to understand that of course you recognize that female videobloggers are smart and thoughtful and witty and insightful and inspiring and so on and don't have value simply for their appearance... then you should say that the first time around. You shouldn't assume that this is a given, that of course we understand that. Again: We live in a culture that routinely treats women as ornaments, as having worth only for the sexual and aesthetic pleasure we give men and for our ability to produce children. When you point to women who are icons in the movement, and only mention how pretty they are, without saying anything about their other qualities? It plays right into that trope.

Eller is an anthropologist. He is also, clearly, a smart guy. He should know all this.

And second: When you say that having pretty women as atheist icons is good because it will make atheism more appealing to men? You aren't just playing into the "women have value only as ornaments" trope. You are actively perpetuating it. You are directly feeding it. You are essentially saying that the male atheists are the ones who count, the ones we need to worry about. You are essentially saying that female atheists have value only as bait, to draw the important atheists, the male atheists, into the community. You are essentially saying -- to use a cliche of old-school feminism, but in this case it's a cliche because it's true -- that men are the subjects of our community, and women are the objects of it.

That. Is. Not. Okay.

I get that, when we're put on the spot about a screw-up , we don't always handle it well. We get defensive, we get our backs up, we find it hard to admit that we screwed up. We are rationalizing creatures, and when someone tells us that we made a mistake or hurt someone, our brains are wired to defend our image of ourselves as good, smart people. I get that. I've done it myself. I don't always handle criticism well. Especially public criticism. It's how our brains are wired.

But if you're a public figure, you need to find a way to re-wire your brain. You need to suck it up and deal.

Here's a sentence to memorize: "I need to think about this." If you have your back up and you're getting defensive and you don't have it in you at that moment to simply say, "I'm sorry, you're right, that was screwed up, full stop"... say, "I'm sorry, I didn't realize the effect that would have, I need to think about this." It gives you time to absorb the cognitive dissonance. It gives you a way to apologize and still save face. (Especially in the atheist/ skeptical movement, where we value the ability to admit mistakes and change one's mind.) And it gives you time to seriously reflect on whether you did, in fact, screw up, and what you might do differently in the future.

When you get called on your shit in public? Your apology should not make it clear that you don't, in fact, get why it is that people are criticizing you. Your apology should not be a repetition of the same mistakes you're being called on. Your apology should not make things worse.

*

Okay. Now. Some big picture stuff.

This isn't about "David Eller is a bad bad man." David Eller is clearly a smart guy, and while I disagree with him on some strategy stuff, I think he has some good ideas that are worth listening to. I don't think this was conscious, mean-spirited sexism; I think it was unconscious, unintentional sexism. And I hope he can take this post in the spirit in which it's intended. This isn't about "David Eller is a bad bad man": this is about "This is an all-too-common pattern in the atheist community: it happens far too often, and it happened again at this event, and we need to point it out when it happens so hopefully it doesn't happen again."

Because this is not an isolated incident. Far from it. This kind of stuff keeps happening. It's a pattern. Women in the atheist movement commonly feel trivialized, invisible-ized, and inappropriately sexualized. (The wide applause and cries of "Thank you!" that met Jen's comment at this event should make that clear.) And many women stay away from the atheist movement as a result of this. I see some signs that this is getting better, and I have hopes that it will continue to get better -- but it's still a common problem, and it's still a serious problem.

And it's not going to get better unless we talk about it. And keep talking about it.

I've explained before why we should care about this. I'm not going to explain that again in detail here. The quick and dirty summary: We should care because sexism hurts people, and we're good people who don't want to hurt other people. And we should care because it's creating real problems in the community and the movement, and our movement will be stronger in ten or twenty or fifty years if we deal with this stuff now.

Like Jen, I don't love making a stink about this. I really wanted my conference report to be, "I heard many excellent speakers; I met some wonderful new people, and got better acquainted with some wonderful folks I'd already met; I feel more connected now with my local atheist community." I don't want to start the next firestorm that eats the atheosphere for a week, and I sincerely hope that doesn't happen here.

But as Jen said, "The more we let crap like this slide, the more it's going to get perpetuated. And I don't want the atheist movement of 2021 to be a room full of white men scratching their heads, wondering what went wrong."

So yeah.

What Jen said.

Live-blogging the Rapture

Well, if the end of the world really is nigh, there ought to be some documentation of it for future generations. Oh, wait. There won't be any future generations. Still. It stand to reason. I mean, if hundreds of years from now, space aliens or something visit the charred remains of our post-Apocalyptic planet and wonder, "What the heck happened here?", perhaps there ought to be a record. It seems like the sensible thing to do.

So JT Eberhard (WWJTD?), Jen McCreight (BlagHag), and I are going to be live-blogging the Rapture.

Because where will be the first place that visiting space aliens will search for a record of the last days of human life on Earth? Snarky atheist blogs, of course!

Supposedly, the Rapture will be happening at 6pm, in each time zone around the globe. Because God cares so very much about the international date line. (As Ingrid said when we were talking about this on Facebook, "It's almost scientific, except for the part where it has no basis in reality.") Okay, yes, it has been pointed out that this lends an unfair advantage to those of us living in the more Westerly time zones -- if we see news reports of people being raptured in Australia and Tokyo, we'll have a chance to repent that they didn't get. (Let's hear it for the argument for locality!) And I don't know what's supposed to happen to the people on the space station. But who are we to question God's wisdom and might? Well, his might, anyway.

So I'll be keeping an eye on world events as they unfold at 6pm in each time zone, from New Zealand to Hawaii. And just to be fair, in case they got the 6pm thing wrong, I'll also keep an eye on world events as they unfold at midnight in each time zone, from New Zealand to Hawaii. I won't be making a point of being awake for each of these time zone changes -- I'm not going to stay up around the clock for this damn dumb thing, especially since I'm giving a talk on Sunday the 22nd -- but I'll take a peek at the New York Times at occasional intervals, and report on how we're doing.

If we make it to midnight of May 22 everywhere around the world, I think we can assume we're in the clear.

***

Okay. We're starting. 5:11 pm in San Francisco; just past midnight in New Zealand. No rapture-type events reported as of this writing. Most recent New Zealand headline on the New York Times: "Air New Zealand Videos Get Tailwind From Social Media." To quote Peter Cook, "Not exactly the conflagration we'd been looking for." But heck -- it's not 6pm yet. It still could happen. And monkeys could fly out of my butt. There is a vanishingly small but non-zero chance of butt monkeys.

***

Damn. It's been pointed out to me that it's actually just past noon in New Zealand, not just past midnight. Boy, do I have egg on my face. How am I supposed to document the beginning of the eradication of humanity if I can't even read my World Clock right? Some Rapture reporter I am.

Anyway. It's now 5/21 in New Zealand, Tokyo, Moscow, and London. Not 6pm yet, though. So we could still be on the hook for this thing. Stay tuned to this station for further developments.

***

It's past 6pm in the first time zone where it could be past 6pm; an island in the Pacific called Kiribati. No earthquakes, apparently. CNN is discussing "Celebrity Apprentice." They are clearly covering up the the real truth.

***

Well past 6pm in New Zealand: 7:54 pm, in fact. Top headline of the New Zealand Herald as of this writing: "Labour proposes dedicated 'Ministry for Children.'" Lacking a bit in that "earthquakes/ conflagrations/ sea of blood" quality, but I suppose it could be a sign of God's wrath in some way. Other headlines from New Zealand: "Hubbard asset freeze to be reviewed," "MasterChef's backer drops support for school breakfasts," and, "MPs love property and petanque." Well, I guess that word "petanque" could be code for something...

A few other updates on the news coverage of this literally earth-shattering event. Top headline of the New York Times as of this writing: "Divisions Are Clear as Obama and Netanyahu Discuss Peace." On TV, Headline News has Donny and Marie on the Joy Behar Show. CNBC has a "get rich now" infomercial. MSNBC has "Lockup: Indiana." CSPAN has the Asia Society & U.S. Institute of Peace on the Future of Pakistan. The NASA channel -- and you'd think if anyone would be covering the global conflagration cascading across the globe time zone by time zone, it'd be the NASA channel -- has still photos of the space station. And CNN is talking to Dick Van Dyke about his new book. I didn't know Dick Van Dyke was still alive. I suppose that could be a supernatural event of some kind...

Oh, and the in the Los Angeles Times? New Zealand region yet to suffer destruction forecast by Oakland-based doomsday predictor. They are reporting no earthquakes in the region. I freaking love that the L.A. Times is live-blogging the Rapture.

***

7:30am California time. Tokyo and Moscow should be dust by now. Hm. Apparently not. CNN has the Doomsday story right now, but it's a jokey, "Gee, some people think the world is ending today" piece -- not a "Tokyo, Moscow collapse into the earth, repent now before it's too late" story. Google search for "Moscow news" gets "IDF attaché sought intel. on Russia-Arab arms trade," and "Tokyo news" gets "Wen, Lee Show Support for Japan Recovery Effort." No, no, no! Recovery effort? That's not apocalyptic at all! That's, like, the opposite of apocalyptic! Harumph.

***

9:15 am California time. Family Radio (Harold Camping's station) was on in the car ride over to the conference. Strangely non-apocalyptic. Music, light chatter, and some kid's story about inviting people to meet Jesus. You'd think it'd be a little late for that now.

***

BTW, if you want to track earthquake activity for the day, you can do it on the U.S. Geological Survey website.

(checking)

Sheesh, dude. Is that all you got?

***

Just past 6pm in London. Main headline in the London Times as of this writing: "Twitter fury as footballer takes legal action." Well, Twitter fury is sort of like the wrath of God... right?

***

Update in London: Guardian U.K. DOES have a story about the Rapture!

Oh, wait. It's about how the Rapture isn't happening. Never mind.

You know, I really do love how many news outlets are covering the "Rapture Not Happening" story. It's as if the worldwide news media was covering the story, "Suspension Bridges Around the World Not Turning Into Fish."

***

Well, Jesus did make an appearance in Oakland.



A little ahead of schedule, but mysterious ways, who are we to question, yada yada yada. Here at the atheist convention, oddly enough. Told a few jokes, took a few questions. Nice guy. Has some sort of beef with Ed Hardy, but pretty easy-going overall. Didn't say anything about the world ending today, though. Hm. Wonder if they got that wrong. Naaaaah.

(Photo by Jen McCreight at BlagHag, shamelessly swiped from her own live-blogging of the Rapture.)

***

Okay. It should be hitting New York right about now.

***

OOO! Is that it? The New York Times is doing live updates!

***

Nope. False alarm. The New York Times is doing live updates of the Preakness Stakes.

***

Hm. 6:10 pm in New York City. Headlines on the New York Times website as of this reading: "Promise of Arab Uprisings Is Threatened by Divisions." Okay: uprisings, divisions.. that's sort of apocalyptic, right? How about, "In the Golan Heights, Anxious Eyes Look East to Syria." Okay, anxious eyes on Syria... because of the people being raptured there, right? No? Okay, how about, "Guard Dog to the Stars (Legally Speaking)."

Oh, piffle. This is just sad.

***

Just talked to my brother in Chicago. All seems to be normal there. Or normal for Chicago. Rapture-free, at any rate. No earthquakes, no brimstone, no flocks of the faithful ascending through the skies. He says the weather was grey and drizzly earlier in the morning, but the sun came out later in the day, which may be a sign of some sort.

***

6pm in Oakland!

***

Aaaaaaaaaand...

***

Well, my soul might have been raptured up to Heaven. But Greta without a soul is indistinguishable from Greta with a soul. So I'm not sure how anybody would know.

***

Ingrid says Hi, by the way. And she says, "Cheer up. It's not the end of the world."

***

Oh, wait. Something's happening...

***

***

This is me, Mr. Deity, Jen McCreight, Matt Dillahunty, Ashley Paramore, and several other atheists being raptured. We bounced off the ceiling, though, and came back. Damn acoustic tile.

***

Apparently there was just a little earthquake in Oakland. I didn't feel it, but other people at the atheist conference did. Ripple of derisive, slightly nervous laughter. The world seems to be continuing on, though. Maybe the apocalypse is waiting until Mr. Deity finishes his talk.

***

Earthquake was a 3.6. Yeah, that's Armageddon all right. [facepalm]

***

Well, fine. It's past 6pm on May 21, everywhere in the world. According to Reuters, Harold Camping has gone entirely silent; the shades are drawn on his house, nobody is answering the door, and he has yet to issue any sort of comment on the complete lack of anything interesting or unusual happening today. (Well... anything other than Rapture parties, anyway...)

Headlines on the New York Times: Many of the same ones as my last update, but a few new ones. "Ivory Coast’s New President Urges Unity." "Daniels Decides Against G.O.P. Presidential Bid." "Blogger With 'Man Crush' Wins Putin Scoop." Oh, for goodness' sake. It's like they're trying to make the news as bland and non-apocalyptic as possible. (I especially love that last one.)

I'm going to give this way more of the benefit of the doubt than it deserves, and wait 'til it's May 22 everywhere in the world before I absolutely officially call it. But I wouldn't hold my breath. Sleep tight, everybody!

***

That's it. It's today, everywhere in the world, except in the places where it's tomorrow. May 21, 2011 has 100% come and gone, and no Rapture. The world continues to turn, more or less as usual.

And now, a quick, slightly serious word.

Lots of us have been making fun of the Rapture in recent days and weeks. And we should: it was a ridiculous idea, and ridiculous ideas should be ridiculed. But real harm was done during this hysteria. People depleted their life's savings, their childrens' college funds, ran up their credit cards, to fund this stupid billboard campaign -- which whipped up more people into more hysteria so they could deplete their life's savings. Religion does real harm in the world. I am entirely in favor of making fun of it... partly because it's fun to do so, but mostly because religion does real harm, and making fun of it is one of the most effective tools we have for dismantling it. Religion depends on social consent to survive and perpetuate itself. We have to deny that consent. We have to keep pointing out, at every available opportunity, that the Emperor has no clothes.

And we have to keep pointing out, at every available opportunity, that this world -- this beautiful, terrible, ordinary, spectacular, fascinating, sad, hard, funny, and entirely small-R rapturous world -- is enough.

Thank you for your patience. We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

Rapture Fear: What If The End Really Is Nigh?

So I have something embarrassing to admit.

With all the talk about the Rapture that's supposedly coming on May 21? With all the Rapture parties, the snarky jokes, the atheist conferences around the country specifically scheduled on Rapture Weekend for the purpose of making fun of it?

There is a tiny, tiny part of me that's scared.

There is a tiny, tiny part of me that's been wondering, for occasional intermittent nanoseconds, "What if they're right?"

And I'm wondering if that's happening with anyone else.

Now, let me make this very clear, very quickly: There is no part of me that seriously thinks this Rapture thing is going to happen. It's beyond absurd. The number of times that people have predicted the exact date of the Rapture, or some other supernatural end of the world, is off the charts. Even if the hypothesis of any sort of God or supernatural world were plausible -- which I don't think it is -- this particular hypothesis? The hypothesis that if you take a demonstrably inaccurate book written by Bronze Age goatherders and crunch the numbers in it in a special way like it was the Da Vinci Code or something, you'll know the exact date and hour that God is coming to pour suckitude on his beloved creation while he carries a handful of his bestest friends to a permanent party in the sky? It's laughable on the face of it. It's the equivalent of a hand-scrawled sign held up by a raving street-corner preacher saying, "The End Is Nigh"... except it's a really big sign, being held up on street corners around the country, by a preacher who happens to have a radio show and a budget instead of a soapbox on the corner. I am appalled at how many people are taking this thing so seriously, to the point where they're quitting their jobs and spending their life savings on this stupid ad campaign. And I'm tickled pink at the degree to which the defiant, mocking, festively scornful response to it has caught on... not just among atheist activists, but in the public at large.

And yet, when I see the Rapture billboards or hear the news stories about them, there is this tiny part of me that -- just for a nanosecond -- gets scared. There's a tiny part of me that wonders, just for a nanosecond, "Could this Rapture thing really happen?"

It's embarrassing to admit this. I feel like it makes me a failure as an atheist, a failure as a skeptic. I haven't wanted to say anything about it... even to myself. I had to screw up my courage even to mention it to Ingrid. Acknowledging it in public feels seriously uncomfortable.

But I've built my career on saying things that people don't want to talk about; things that people are embarrassed and uncomfortable about; things that people keep secret. And almost every time I have, I've been glad. I've felt like a weight had been lifted from my shoulders. And almost always every time, I've gotten a grateful and relieved response from other people saying, "Oh, thank goodness you said something -- I thought I was the only one!"

I'm not going to stop now.

I want to talk about this -- and I want to look at what's going on.

*

Here's what I think is going on. Part of my mammalian hindbrain reflexively assumes that, if a whole lot of other people believe something, it's probably true. Or at least, that it's plausible. Or at the very least, that it can't be completely ruled out, and isn't just flatly stupid on the face of it, and ought to be given a moment of serious consideration. There is a part of my mammalian hindbrain that, when it sees a whole bunch of people freaking out over what they see as an imminent terrible danger, gets a little jolt of alarmed adrenaline.

And it's not just my own mammalian hindbrain. It's all our mammalian hindbrains. (Even if you're not scared about the Rapture.) The human brain is wired with a number of cognitive biases and errors in thinking: biases and errors that have good evolutionary reasons to be there, that have helped our ancestors survive and reproduce, but that do get in the way when we're trying to carefully figure out what is and isn't true in the world. And of all these biases, one of the trickiest is communal reinforcement -- otherwise known as the argument from popularity. "If lots of other people think this," our mammalian hindbrain tells us, "it must be true!"

It's a bias that does have real evolutionary value. If everyone in your tribe is screaming "Tiger!", and you don't see one, it still makes sense to run. And I would argue that this bias has some genuine philosophical value as well. Other people can, in fact, be a useful reality check. After all, it's not like I'm always right about everything. If everyone I know is telling me I'm wrong about something... well, that's not automatically a reason to change my mind, but it is a reason to stop and think for a moment about whether I might want to.

So the more I thought about this, the more I realized that these fleeting moments of Rapture fear don't actually make me a bad skeptic. In a sense, they make me a good skeptic. They show that I recognize my own limitations, and that I'm willing to consider the possibility that I might be mistaken.

And more to the point: They just make me human.

Being a good skeptic doesn't mean that I don't have cognitive biases. Skeptics still have human brains. Skeptics are still subject to confirmation bias, rationalization, wishful thinking, the perception of pattern where there is none, the perception of intention where there is none, yada yada yada... and yes, the argument from popularity.

Being good skeptics doesn't mean we don't have these cognitive biases. It means we're aware of them. It means we can say, "My computer sure has been crashing a lot lately... but that could just be a pseudo-pattern." It means we can say, "It seems like I've been getting sick less often since I started taking Vitamin C... but that could just be selective memory." It means we can say, "I think cardamom is becoming the newest food trend... but that could be confirmation bias, and I'm just seeing the stuff everywhere because I'm looking for it." Being good skeptics means we can see these cognitive biases, in ourselves as well as others. And that means we can compensate for them. It means that, when we're trying to figure out what's true in the world, we can set up systems specifically designed to filter them out, as much as we humanly can. It means we don't have to let our lives be controlled by them.

So yes. When I see the Rapture billboards, for a flashing nanosecond, I get scared. I hear a bunch of other people in the tribe screaming, "Tiger!", and I flinch and glance around reflexively for a nanosecond... before I remember that these are the same people who have been screaming "Tiger!" for years and decades and generations, and they have never once been right about the tiger or anything else, and it is entirely reasonable and safe to ignore them.

And then I come back to my senses, and rejoin the party.

*



P.S. Speaking of Rapture parties, just a quick reminder: I'm going to be speaking at one! The Regional Atheists Meeting in Oakland, hosted by American Atheists, is happening on Rapture weekend, May 21-22, at at the Oakland Masonic Center at 3903 Broadway. Other speakers will include Mr. Deity, Jen McCreight (Blag Hag), Matt Dillahunty (The Atheist Experience), Rebecca Watson (Skepchick), and many more. There'll be stand-up comedy from Troy Conrad and Keith Lowell Jensen, as well as the fun, inspiring talks and an after- conference party. Advance tickets are no longer available, alas; tickets at the door are $59 for the whole weekend. The conference per se starts at 9:00 each morning, but registration takes some time, so they're recommending that people arrive at 8:15.

My topic for the conference: "Why Are Atheists So Angry?" Summary: The atheist movement is often accused of being driven by anger. What are so many atheists so angry about? Is this anger legitimate? And can anger be an effective force behind a movement for social change? My talk is on Sunday, May 22. Assuming we're not drowning in a sea of blood by then.

There's also a special, pre-conference fundraising breakfast for Camp Quest West on Sunday 5/22 at 7:30 am. You'll get to eat and schmooze with many of the featured speakers: me, Jen McCreight, Matt Dillahunty, Brian Dalton (Mr. Deity), Rebecca Watson, David Byars, Mark Calladus and Lewis Marshall. Menu options include blood pudding, steak a la brimstone (a Bay Area specialty!), honey-roasted locusts, and lamb. (Kidding. I wish. It's been way too long since I've had a good locust.) Tickets are $50 each. Come join us! I'll be as chatty and sparkly as I can be at 7:30 in the morning after a bath of sulfur and frogs.

Atheists Do It Better: Why Leaving Religion Leads to Better Sex

A new study shows that religious people have as much sex as atheists, but with less sexual satisfaction and more guilt.

Do atheists have better sex? Yes. According to science, that is -- and more specifically, according to the recently released "Sex and Secularism" study.

In January 2011, organizational psychologist Darrel Ray, Ed.D. (psychologist for 30 years and author of The God Virus as well as two books on psychology) and Amanda Brown (undergraduate at Kansas University, focused on sexuality and sex therapy) conducted a sex survey of over 14,500 people -- atheists, agnostics, and other people in the secular community. The survey was looking at religion, atheism, and sex: how religion affects sex, how leaving religion affects sex, whether lifelong atheists feel differently about sex than people who have recently deconverted, and so on. The report -- "Sex and Secularism: What Happens When You Leave Religion?" -- is on the Internet, and if you want all 46 pages of the naughty details, including the charts and graphs and personal stories, you can download it free (you just need to register on the site).

But if you just want to know the gist?

Leaving religion improves people's sex lives.

A lot.

Atheists and other non-believers, as a whole, experience a lot more satisfaction in their sex lives than they did when they were believers. They feel much less guilt about their sex lives and their sexuality. The sexual guilt instilled by so many religions tends to fade, and indeed disappear, when people leave religion -- much more thoroughly than you might expect. And according to the respondents of this study, non-believers give significantly better sex education to their kids than believers do.

Now, when it comes to people's actual sexual behavior, religion doesn't have nearly as much impact as you might think. Religious and non-religious people have pretty much the same kinds of sex, at pretty much the same age of onset, and at pretty much the same rate. Believers are just as likely to masturbate, watch porn, have oral sex, have sex outside marriage, and so on, as non-believers are, and they start at about the same ages. So it's not like religious sexual guilt is actually making people abstain from forbidden sexual activity. All it's doing is making people feel crummy about it. And when people leave religion, this crumminess decreases -- at a dramatic rate. Believers and atheists are having pretty much the same kinds of sex... but when it comes to the pleasure and satisfaction experienced during this sex, it's like night and day.

*

Thus begins my latest piece for AlterNet, Atheists Do It Better: Why Leaving Religion Leads to Better Sex. To find out more about the new "Sex and Secularism" report on the sexual effects of religion and the lack thereof -- and to find out my analysis of the report and its implications, both for believers and for atheists -- read the rest of the piece. Enjoy!

The Case of the Missing Bisexual

This piece was originally published on the Blowfish Blog. I never reprinted it here, for reasons that now escape me. But the Blowfish Blog archives are apparently no longer on the Internets, and the original piece is no longer available. So in the interest of completism and making all my published works accessible, I'm going ahead and posting it here.

Harebrained speculation time:

Why aren't there more "true" bisexuals? ("True" in quotation marks -- so please don't all start yelling at me.)

One of the interesting puzzles about sexual orientation is the way it's distributed in the population. It's very far from a neat bell curve, with a few heterosexuals and homosexuals at either end, and a big peak in the bisexual middle. It's not even a slanty bell curve, peaking sharply at "more or less heterosexual" and sloping down gradually towards "more or less homosexual."

Instead, it's a double bell curve -- with one peak near "leaning towards straight," and another, smaller peak near "leaning towards gay." (The height and shape and location of these peaks vary depending on who's doing the study... but the basic "double bell curve with one high peak and one low" pattern seems to hold pretty steady.)

Translation: Very few people are strictly straight or strictly gay... but most people do have something of a preference for one gender or the other. Quote unquote "true" bisexuals, people who are attracted to women and men equally, are fairly rare. Even if we take self-identification out of the picture -- even if we define orientation purely on the basis of desire or behavior -- we still see this tendency.

Why would this be?

If sexual orientation were entirely genetic -- if there were some evolutionary reason for humans to be more heterosexual than not but to have some fluidity around that -- why would we have the double peaks? Wouldn't we just have the slanty bell curve, peaking around 1 or 1.5 on the 0-to-6 Kinsey scale, and gradually curving down towards 6? Why would we have a small second peak at around 4.5 or 5?

I freely acknowledge that there might be some good genetic reason for this "double bell curve" phenomenon, one that we just don't know yet. I'll even acknowledge that there might be some good genetic reason for this phenomenon, one that somebody else knows but that I don't. I'm definitely not a sexual orientation constructionist (translation: person who thinks orientation is entirely constructed by society). The science is still shaking out, but it does seem to be pointing to genetics as at least a significant factor in determining which gender or genders we like to boff. And it might well turn out that genetics play an important role in this "double peak" pattern.

But I'll also say this:

I think it's quite plausible that the double peak is entirely cultural.

And there are two specific cultural trends that I think may be skewing our orientations towards the two peaks.

The first is homophobia... and the way it's sorted our culture into Straight and Gay. The two mix and overlap, of course -- straight people have gay friends, and vice versa -- but they're still distinct social categories. Especially in parts of the country and the world that are more homophobic. Because of homophobia, people who lean towards being queer have a strong need to create a gay culture, a community shaped around sexual and romantic desire towards people of the same sex. And of course, because of homophobia, straight people have historically shunned queers -- and have denied any queer tendencies in themselves. This has improved dramatically, but it's only improved fairly recently, and it does still go on today.

So because society has sorted itself into two intermingling but distinct groups -- Gay and Straight -- people somewhere in the middle often feel a need to pick one. There is a bisexual community, but it's nowhere near as visible, or as well-organized, as either the straight or gay worlds. And it can be very hard to drift back and forth between those two worlds. People whose natural orientations lie close to the middle of the scale -- say, a 2.5 or 3.5 on the scale of 0 to 6 -- often wind up picking a side, and more or less sticking to it.

And that tendency can be self-perpetuating. A cultural preference for straight society or the gay community can slant your sexual preference towards women over men, or vice versa. I know that I tend to get more interested in women when I'm spending more time in dyke culture, and I get more interested in men when I'm hanging around straight people more. It's a simple matter of who's on my mind. Not to mention who's available. Love the one you're with, and all that. Or lust after the one you're with, anyway.

So that's Harebrained Speculation Number One for the double peak.

Harebrained Speculation Number Two: Biphobia.

There's a strong bias against bisexuals in both straight and gay cultures. Gay culture tends to see bisexuals as traitors, fence-sitters, kinky thrill-seekers, people who can't commit either politically or personally. Straight society tends to see bisexuals as fickle, unreliable, secretly gay people who just can't admit it. Plus straights often see us as promiscuous... and, of course, in the age of AIDS, they see us as vectors of disease. And both gays and straights tend to see us as confused, experimenting, "going through a phase."

All of which exacerbates people's tendency to sort into gay or straight culture. The strong biases against bisexuality -- from both gays and straights -- push many people to pick one camp or the other... people who might not otherwise need or want to. People who might have identified as bisexual can internalize this biphobia, and decline to call themselves bi. And people who privately identify as bi are often reluctant to do so publicly.

So largely because of homophobia from the straight world, we have a tendency to sort ourselves into straight society and the gay community. Because of biphobia from both straight and gay cultures, this tendency gets exaggerated. And this cultural tendency gets transformed into personal sex behavior and desire... which then turns into a self-perpetuating feedback loop. Hence, the "double peak" pattern in our sexual orientations -- a pattern that might be much less pronounced, and might not even be there at all, if these social trends weren't there.

I'm not sure how you'd test this hypothesis. But here's what I'd expect to see if it were true:

If it were true, then in parts of the world that were less homophobic -- and less biphobic -- I'd expect to see a less vividly pronounced double peak. (If the less-homophobic, less-biphobic trend had been happening for long enough, anyway.)

And if it were true, then if society continues to become less homophobic -- and less biphobic -- over the coming decades, I'd also expect to see the strong double peaks soften and flatten towards a more standard slanty bell curve.

It might not flatten out entirely. Again, there may be some genetic reasons for the double peak in the bell curve, ones that we don't know about. And even in an entirely non-homophobic, non-biphobic society, we still might have something of a cultural tendency to sort into gay and straight cultures. For dating/ cruising purposes if nothing else. But I think without these cultural factors, this double peak would very likely flatten out significantly.

I'm not saying "everyone is basically bisexual." I think that's bullshit. Some people are clearly not bisexual. Some people are clearly gay or straight. And even though most people do have at least some capacity to be attracted to both/all genders, that still doesn't make them "basically bisexual." Sexual identity is complicated -- it's about political identity, cultural identity, sexual history, romantic and relationship preferences, etc., as well as basic sexual attraction. And when people are deciding which identity (if any) works best for them, they get to decide for themselves which of these factors gets priority. I don't want someone insisting that I'm "basically lesbian" because I'm currently hovering around 5 on the Kinsey scale -- so I'm not going to insist that someone else is "basically bisexual" because they're currently hovering around 4.

So I'm not saying "everyone is basically bisexual." I'm saying that, at least for those of us in the wide sloppy middle of the Kinsey scale, sexual orientation is at least somewhat malleable. Like I wrote in my piece, The Learned Fetish, the finer points of our sexual desires can be shaped by our experiences as adults -- even if the basic outlines are set early on.

I'm not sure why I think this is important. I'm not sure the answer would have any effect in figuring out social policy or political strategy or dating strategy, or any other practical decisions we might make about sex. I'm even not sure that it is important, except that figuring out what is and isn't true about reality is always important.

But I sure do think it's interesting.

So what do you think? If you lean more towards one end of the Kinsey scale, do you think you might lean more towards the middle if society weren't so divided into Gay and Straight? And if you're already pretty squarely in the middle, do you think you'd have had an easier time getting there if it weren't for the two camps?

Are All Religions Equally Crazy?

Are less established religions really crazier than older mainstream ones? Or are mainstream religions just more familiar?

Does any religion make more sense than any other?

Atheists, by definition, don't think any religion has any reasonable likelihood of being true. And yet, for some weird reason, we're often asked to choose between them. Believers often accuse us of ignoring more moderate and progressive religions while we trash the low-hanging fruit of hard-line fundamentalism. We're accused of disregarding sophisticated modern theology so we can zero in on the simplistic faiths held by the hoi polloi. (Neither accusation is fair; many atheists, including myself, have taken aim at both modern theology and progressive religion, and in any case fundamentalism and other widely-held religions are valid targets for critique -- but that's another rant.) Yet at the same time, many believers seek our approval for their particular beliefs. "Sure," they'll say, "a lot of those other religions are silly -- but my religion makes sense! Don't you agree? Don't you? Huh?"

For the most part, it's a game I don't like to play. I think all religions are equally implausible, equally based on cognitive biases, equally unsupported by any good evidence whatsoever. But sometimes, the battiness of a particular religion is powerfully borne in on me, to the point where it becomes impossible to ignore. And it forces me to consider the question: Is this religion really any more batty than any other? Or is it just less popular? Less familiar? Is it simply newer, and thus has had less time for the more wildly ragged edges of its wackiness to smooth out? Is this religion really as crazy as it seems -- or are all religions equally crazy?

*

Thus begins my latest piece for AlterNet, Are All Religions Equally Crazy? To read my thoughts on whether some newer, less-established religions ([cough] Mormonism [cough]) really are much battier than more conventional religions, or whether all religions are equally out to lunch, read the rest of the piece. Enjoy!

How Religion Contorts Morality: Respected Theologian Defends Genocide and Infanticide

This piece was originally published on AlterNet.

"Respected Theologian Defends Infanticide."

Why did this story not make headlines?

In a recent post on his Reasonable Faith site, famed Christian apologist and debater William Lane Craig published an explanation for why the genocide and infanticide ordered by God against the Canaanites in the Old Testament was morally defensible. For God, at any rate -- and for people following God's orders. Short version: When guilty people got killed, they deserved it because they were guilty and bad... and when innocent people got killed, even when innocent babies were killed, they went to Heaven, and it was all hunky dory in the end.

No, really.

Here are some choice excerpts:

God had morally sufficient reasons for His judgement upon Canaan, and Israel was merely the instrument of His justice, just as centuries later God would use the pagan nations of Assyria and Babylon to judge Israel.

and:

Moreover, if we believe, as I do, that God's grace is extended to those who die in infancy or as small children, the death of these children was actually their salvation. We are so wedded to an earthly, naturalistic perspective that we forget that those who die are happy to quit this earth for heaven's incomparable joy. Therefore, God does these children no wrong in taking their lives.

and:

So whom does God wrong in commanding the destruction of the Canaanites? Not the Canaanite adults, for they were corrupt and deserving of judgement. Not the children, for they inherit eternal life.

I want to make something very clear before I go on: William Lane Craig is not some drooling wingnut. He's not some extremist Fred Phelps type, ranting about how God's hateful vengeance is upon us for tolerating homosexuality. He's not some itinerant street preacher, railing on college campuses about premarital holding hands. He's an extensively- educated, widely-published, widely-read theological scholar and debater. When believers accuse atheists of ignoring sophisticated modern theology, Craig is one of the people they're talking about.

And he said that as long as God gives the thumbs-up, it's okay to kill pretty much anybody. It's okay to kill bad people, because they're bad and they deserve it... and it's okay to kill good people, because they wind up in Heaven. As long as God gives the thumbs-up, it's okay to systematically wipe out entire races. As long as God gives the thumbs-up, it's okay to slaughter babies and children. Craig said -- not essentially, not as a paraphrase, but literally, in quotable words -- "the death of these children was actually their salvation."

So why did this story not make headlines? Why was there not an appalled outcry from the Christian world? Why didn't Christian leaders from all sects take to the pulpits to disavow Craig, and to express their utter repugnance with his views, and to explain in no uncertain terms that their religion does not, and will not, defend the extermination of races or the slaughter of children?

Because the things he said are not that unusual.

Because lots of people share his views.

Because these kinds of contortions are far too common in religious morality. Because all too often, religion twists even the most fundamental human morality into positions that, in any other circumstance, most people would see as repulsive, monstrous, and entirely indefensible.

Step One: Admit Your Mistakes

See, here's the thing. When faced with horrors in our past -- our personal history, or our human history -- non-believers don't have any need to defend them. When non-believers look at a human history full of genocide, infanticide, slavery, forced marriage, etc. etc. etc., we're entirely free to say, "Damn. That was terrible. That was some seriously screwed-up shit we did. We were wrong to do that. Let's not ever do that again."

But for people who believe in a holy book, it's not that simple. When faced with horrors in their religion's history -- horrors that their holy book defends, and even praises -- believers have to do one of two things. They have to either (a) cherry-pick the bits they like and ignore the bits they don't, or (b) come up with contorted rationalizations for why the most blatant, grotesque, black- and- white evil really isn't all that bad.

Now, progressive and moderate believers usually go the cherry-picking route. But that requires its own contortions. Once you acknowledge that your holy books really aren't that holy, once you admit that they have moral as well as factual errors, then you have to start asking why any of it is special, why any of it should be treated any differently from any other flawed books of history or philosophy. You have to start asking why -- since your religion's holy books are just as screwed-up as every other religion's -- your religion is still somehow the right one, and all other religions are mistaken. You have to start asking how you know which parts of your holy book are right and which parts are wrong -- and how you know that people who disagree with you, who've picked the exact opposite cherries from the ones you've picked, who feel their faith in their hearts exactly as much as you do, have somehow gotten it terribly wrong. You have to start asking how you know the things you know. And to do that, and still maintain religious faith, requires its own contorted thinking, its own denial of reality, its own sticking of one's fingers in one's ears and chanting, "I can't hear you! I can't hear you!"

And when you don't go the cherry-picking route? When you insist -- as Craig apparently does -- that your holy book is special and perfect, that the events and motivations in the text all took place exactly as described, and that the actions of God described in it are right and good by their very definition?

You put yourself in the position of defending the indefensible.

When your holy book says that God ordered his chosen people to slaughter an entire race, down to the babies and children -- and you insist that this book is special and perfect -- you put yourself in the position of defending genocide. You put yourself in the position of defending infanticide. You put yourself in the position of defending slavery, rape, forced marriage, ethnic hatred, the systematic subjugation of women, human sacrifice, and any number of moral grotesqueries that your holy book not only defends, but praises to the skies and offers as models of exemplary behavior.

And you can't cut the Gordian knot. You can't simply say, "This is wrong. This is vile and indefensible. This kind of behavior comes from a tribal morality that humanity has evolved beyond, and we should repudiate it without reservation."

Not without relinquishing your faith.

And if you refuse to relinquish your faith? If you cling to the assumption that your faith, by definition, is the highest good there is, and that by definition it trumps all other moral considerations?

Then you cut yourself off from your own moral compass.

I've made this point before, and I'm sure I'll make it again: Religion, by its very nature as an untestable belief in undetectable beings and an unknowable afterlife, disables our reality checks. It ends the conversation. It cuts off inquiry: not only factual inquiry, but moral inquiry. Because God's law trumps human law, people who think they're obeying God can easily get cut off from their own moral instincts. And these moral contortions don't always lie in the realm of theological game-playing. They can have real-world consequences: from genocide to infanticide, from honor killings to abandoned gay children, from burned witches to battered wives to blown-up buildings.

As just one example among so very many: Look at the Lafferty brothers, Mormon fundamentalists who murdered an innocent woman and her fifteen- month-old daughter because they thought God had commanded them to do it. At many points in their journey across the continent on their way to the killings, they questioned whether brutally slaughtering their brother's wife and her infant child was really the right thing to do. But they always came to the same answer: Yes. It was right. They thought God had commanded it -- and that settled the question. It ended the conversation. It stopped their moral query dead in its tracks.

But don't just look at sociopathic murderers from a bonkers religious cult. That's too easy. Look at Mr. Theological Scholar himself, William Lane Craig. In this piece, Craig says that the Canaanites were evil, and deserving of genocide, because (among other things) they practiced infanticide. The very crime that God ordered the Israelites to commit. I shit you not. Quote: "By the time of their destruction, Canaanite culture was, in fact, debauched and cruel, embracing such practices as ritual prostitution and even child sacrifice." (Emphasis -- and dumbstruck bafflement -- mine.) And he says the infanticide of the Canaanite children was defensible and necessary because the Israelites needed to keep their tribal identity pure, and keep their God-given morality untainted by the Canaanite wickedness. Again, I shit you not. Again, quote: "By setting such strong, harsh dichotomies God taught Israel that any assimilation to pagan idolatry is intolerable." As if an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good god couldn't come up with a better way to teach a lesson about assimilation to pagan idolatry than murdering children.

I could sit here all day and pick apart everything that's intellectually wrong with Craig's arguments. But it seems that a far more appropriate response would be, "Are you fucking kidding me? Do you hear what you're saying? Can you really not hear how grotesque, repulsive, flatly evil, totally batshit insane that sounds? Yeah, sure, if you start with your assumptions, then genocide and infanticide are morally defensible. Doesn't that tell you that there is something monstrously, ludicrously wrong with your assumptions?"

If I were trying to make up a more blatant example of ethical contortionism, of morality so twisted by its need to defend the indefensible that it has blinded itself to its own contradictions and grotesqueries, I couldn't have done a better job. Craig, like so many believers before him, has made my best arguments for me.

What's Sauce for the Creation is Sauce for the Creator

Now. Some people might argue that the rules of morality aren't the same for God as they are for people. They might argue that, while it would certainly be wrong for people to kill babies and eradicate entire races on their own initiative, it's not wrong for God to do it. Craig himself makes that argument in this piece. Quote:

According to the version of divine command ethics which I’ve defended, our moral duties are constituted by the commands of a holy and loving God. Since God doesn't issue commands to Himself, He has no moral duties to fulfill. (emphasis mine) He is certainly not subject to the same moral obligations and prohibitions that we are. For example, I have no right to take an innocent life. For me to do so would be murder. But God has no such prohibition. He can give and take life as He chooses. We all recognize this when we accuse some authority who presumes to take life as "playing God." Human authorities arrogate to themselves rights which belong only to God. God is under no obligation whatsoever to extend my life for another second. If He wanted to strike me dead right now, that's His prerogative.

Yeah. See, here's the problem with that. If the moral rules for God are different from the moral rules for people? If the very definitions of good and evil are different for God than they are for us?

Then what does it even mean to say that God is good?

If you say that what "good" means for God is totally different from what "good" means for people -- if you say that murdering infants and systematically eradicating entire races is evil for people but good for God -- then you're pretty much saying that what it means for God to be "good," and what it means for us to be "good," are such radically different concepts that the one has virtually nothing to do with the other. You have rendered the entire concept of "good and evil" meaningless.

And I, for one, don't want the entire concept of good and evil to be rendered meaningless.

Of course, if you're a progressive/ moderate/ non-literalist believer, you're not stuck with defending every tenet of your holy book. You can say, "No, no, God didn't command these horrors. He couldn't have. The Bible is an inspired but flawed document, and it must be mistaken here when it says this command came from God. The Israelites wanted to slaughter the Canaanites, so they went ahead with it and told themselves the order came from God. But my God is good, and my God would never tell anyone to do any such a thing."

But then we're back to the cherry-picking problem: How do you know? How do you know which parts of your holy book are the ones that God meant? The Bible, and indeed most other religious texts, is loaded with instances of God commanding his followers to commit murder or worse. How do you know that God really wasn't giving those orders... but he really was giving the orders to love our neighbors and give to the poor? No two Christian sects agree on which bits of the Bible are God's true word and which bits are the "Just kidding" bits. And every sect has just as much "feeling in their heart" about their interpretation as you do.

So in order to pick those cherries, you have to twist yourself into just as many contortions as the fundies do.

Irony Meter Goes Off the Scale

It's funny. One of the most common pieces of bigotry aimed at atheism is that it doesn't provide any basis for morality. It's widely assumed that without religion -- without moral teachings from religious traditions, and without fear of eternal punishment and desire for eternal reward -- people would behave entirely selfishly, with no concern for others. And atheists are commonly accused of moral relativism: of thinking that there are no fundamental moral principles, and that all morality can be adapted to suit the needs of the moment.

But it isn't atheists who are saying, "Well, sure, genocide seems wrong... but under some circumstances, it actually makes a certain amount of sense." It isn't atheists who are saying, "Well, sure, infanticide seems wrong... but looked at in a certain light, it really isn't all that bad." It isn't atheists who are prioritizing an attachment to an ancient ideology over the clearest moral principles one can imagine: the principle that entire races ought not to be systematically exterminated, and the principle that children ought not to be slaughtered.

Human beings have intrinsic compassion. We have a sense of justice. We have feelings of revulsion and rage when we see others harmed. We have a desire to help create a livable world. We have a willingness to make personal sacrifices -- sometimes great sacrifices -- to help others in need. And contrary to what Craig and many other Christians think, these moral emotions don't derive from the Bible, and don't require belief in God. They're taught by virtually every religion and every society, and atheists feel them every bit as much as believers. Humans are a social species, and these emotions and principles evolved because they help members of a social species survive and reproduce. (Other social species seem to have some or all of these moral emotions as well.)

But our compassion and justice, our altruism and moral revulsion, can be twisted. They can be stunted. They can be denied, ignored, shoved to the back burner, rationalized away. They can be contorted to the point where we're saying that black is white, war is peace, and the most blatant evil is actually goodness if you squint your eyes just right. They can be contorted to the point where we're saying that genocide is okay because everyone gets what they deserve in the afterlife, and that infanticide is morally necessary to teach a lesson about the evils of murdering children.

And religion is Exhibit A in how this can happen.

"Let me know if there are flaws in my reasoning": From the Mailbag

"Functionally there is no difference whether we live on this earth for hours, like some babies that die at birth, or live to see our twilight years."

I get a fair amount of mail from religious believers, wanting to debate with me about things I've written. Back in the days when I didn't have ten hours worth of work for every hour of spare time I had, I used to engage with these people in private email. I sometimes miss being able to do that. But I simply don't have time anymore. And in any case, it seems like a waste of time. Why waste my efforts on just one person, when I could be sharing them with thousands? And why waste the eloquence and intellectual powers of my regular readers and commenters? (Which are, quite frequently, prodigious. I love having an army of bulldogs who can make my arguments for me, and often make better ones than I would have, at the times when I just don't have the time and energy to get into the fray myself.)

So from now on, when I get these emails, I've decided to start throwing them to the wolves opening them up to vigorous public debate. I now ask my querants if it's okay to publish their letters on my blog, and debate them publicly instead of privately. If they say yes, it's game on. (Names will only ever be published with permission of the authors.)

Our first contestant is Aaron deOliveira, responding to my April 27 piece on AlterNet, One More Reason Religion Is So Messed Up: Respected Theologian Defends Genocide and Infanticide. Here is his letter, published in its entirety, with no edits, and no illustrations until my reply.

*

sorry it's taken me this long to say anything about your post. i've been a lurker on your blog for a little while. the post gave me a lot to reflect on before i felt i had a suitable answer to your post. also, i'm emailing you rather than posting in the comments because the conversation there has already snaked in several directions.

i myself am LDS. i particularly enjoy talking with atheists and reading their blogs. on the whole, atheists ask very profound questions. i think it's because they are able to be 100% critical and skeptical of religious actions whether by god or man.

so back to your post. first, lets call a stone a stone. what the Israelites did to the various people's of Canaan was genocide. it's functionally no different than the genocides that happened in Sudan, Bosnia/Croatia, etc. one group of people finds a reason to exterminate another group of people. anyone that argues that it was something else is being disingenuous.

so this leads us to the morality of the action. i picture god as a gardener and this earth as a garden. all the peoples of the earth are plants in this garden. by comparison, in the gardens that we till here on earth, the gardener exercises judgement over life and death frequently. he decides which plants to prune, which weeds to pull, which bugs to attracted for pollination and which to kill as pests. the garden is just as valuable to the weed's continued existence as the flowers and the aphid is just as hungry as the bee. so why does the gardener get to decide what lives and what dies in his garden? shouldn't he preserve all life unmolested in his garden?

the morality of the gardeners actions are usually judged by measuring against his purpose. the gardeners purpose is to raise up the best plants he can. so he naturally removes things detrimental to their development. because the gardener has designated this particular plot of land as a garden, when he exercises authority over the life and death of what is there, his actions are seen as moral because they fulfill his purpose.

if the gardener were to exercise the same authority over life and death in the wild, his actions would no longer be seen as moral. if he went into the wilderness and killed trees or destroyed animals because they didn't please him, most people would censure the gardener for his actions even though they are functionally the same as what he does in his garden.

so coming full circle with my god as a gardener analogy. there are times where god as the creator and owner of both the earth and its inhabitants (ie. the garden) exercises authority over the life and death of those that dwell there. god's purpose of making every inhabitant, both the committer of the genocide and the and the victim of it, into their best selves is fulfilled the same way as the gardener in the analogy.

leaving the analogy, i want to touch on something that you probably don't accept, but is necessary in discussing god and man's actions as they pertain to life and death. we are eternal beings. we existed before we came to this earth. we will exist long after we pass through death. functionally there is no difference whether we live on this earth for hours, like some babies that die at birth, or live to see our twilight years. life on earth is just one part of the entire spectrum of our existence.

another quick analogy to explain how god killing someone or directing that someone be killed isn't immoral. picture every person passing through life as being on a highway. when god exercises his authority and pulls someone over, ie killing them, he does not prevent them from their destination. because of the resurrection, every person will live again and have full exercise of their life and all of its potentials. it is a generally acknowledged maxim that 'life isn't fair'. and yet, although it is intrinsically unfair, people don't impute evil to life not being fair which gives rise to another maxim, 'you play the hand your dealt'. so from these maxims we see that the length of each life and the manner in which it ends is not intrinsically immoral. because god provided the resurrection, all men, women and children will see the full potential of their lives, just in different orders. some die young and in the resurrection will live out their days. some die old and in the resurrection will receive renewed bodies to continue to become their best selves.

so does my 'god as a gardener' analogy hold water? let me know if there are flaws in my reasoning.

great blog.

regards,

Aaron deOliveira

*

Okay. I don't really have time and energy to take this apart line by line. But I can get the ball rolling.

Yes, Aaron, I think there are flaws in your reasoning.

First, and maybe most importantly: Are you really arguing that human life has no more value than plant life? That killing an infant, or wiping out an entire race, has no more moral impact than pulling a weed?

2: Do you think that God the gardener is all-powerful? If so, why did he create weeds in the first place? Why did he create people in such a way that, in order to reach their "potential," many of them had to suffer terribly and/or die prematurely, either by natural causes or at the hands of their fellow human beings? (Which leads back to #1: Are you really arguing that human life has no more value than plant life?)

3: If we hear voices in our heads telling us to kill people, how are we to know whether they come from God, and are therefore okay -- or whether they came from from hatred/ fear/ selfishness/ desire for conquest/ psychosis, and therefore ought to be resisted? How are we to know that the Israelites really were listening to God, and therefore the command to commit genocide against the Canaanites was okay... but that Osama Bin Laden was not listening to God, and therefore the command to fly airplanes into the World Trade Center was grotesquely evil?

4: You are absolutely correct: I don't accept the premise that life is eternal. Why do you think that premise is correct? You are coming to a moral conclusion based on this premise -- namely, that mortal human life is pretty much irrelevant, and that what happens to us in the afterlife is all that really matters. If your premise is mistaken, then your conclusion is questionable at best, profoundly disturbing and morally grotesque at worst. Given that, I assume you want to be very certain indeed that your premise is correct. Do you have any good evidence to suggest that it is? Or do you simply feel it in your heart? And if the latter, again I ask: How do you know that the feelings in your heart are correct, but the feelings in the hearts of people with radically different religious beliefs from yours are mistaken? I can tell you why I don't believe in God or an afterlife, and can even tell you what evidence would persuade me that I was mistaken. Can you do the same?

Summary: You are basically making the "mysterious ways" argument. God has a plan, and it's not up to us to judge his plan. You say that "his [God's] actions are seen as moral because they fulfill his purpose"... while completely punting the question of whether his purpose is moral. It's a terrible argument for many reasons. When used as a response to truth claims and the lack of good evidence for them, it's an evasion of the question, pure and simple. When used as a response to questions of morality, it is negating the entire concept of "good" and "evil." (Your argument that "his [God's] actions are seen as moral because they fulfill his purpose" is a tautology: God's actions are moral because they fulfill God's purpose, and God's purpose must, by definition, be moral, because he's God.) As I said in the piece we're discussing: If you say that what "good" means for God is totally different from what "good" means for people -- if you say that murdering infants and systematically eradicating entire races is evil for people but good for God -- then you're pretty much saying that what it means for God to be "good," and what it means for us to be "good," are such radically different concepts that the one has virtually nothing to do with the other. You have rendered the entire concept of "good and evil" meaningless. And I, for one, don't want the entire concept of good and evil to be rendered meaningless.

But if you're going to make the "mysterious ways" argument, then at least I hope you're consistent. I hope that you never, ever, ever try to claim that anything at all happened in life because God willed it. I hope you never claim that good things happened because God made them happen. You don't get to have it both ways: you don't get to sometimes say that you clearly see God's plan in your life and the lives of others, and at other times say that God moves in mysterious ways that elude us puny mortals, and we're not competent to judge him or even understand him.

And if you are being consistent, and see God as entirely mysterious and incomprehensible, with both practical plans and moral guidelines that mean nothing to us... then what meaning does he have in your life? Are you motivated to obey him purely from fear of punishment and desire for reward? Do you see him as an unpredictable abusive parent, who hits or hugs for no reason you can discern, and whose patterns of behavior you're desperately trying to understand so you can avoid the worst of it?

Is that really how you want to live?

So that's my quick- and- dirty response. Readers, what have I missed here? Aaron, what do you think? Everybody, please remember the ground rules: Stay civil. Critique ideas as harshly as you like, but don't engage in personal insults. And please don't critique grammar, spelling, tone patrolling, or other irrelevancies: please stay focused on content. Go for it!

Greta Speaking at American Atheists' Rapture Party in Oakland, May 21-22

In case you haven't heard, the end of the world is nigh. The Rapture is supposedly coming on May 21 of this year, and if you haven't made things right with the Lord by then, it'll be too late. (Look, he's been very patient with us, but he has things to do, and a deadline is a deadline...)

To mark this momentous occasion, American Atheists is holding a party/ RAM (Regional Atheists Meeting) in Oakland on Rapture Weekend, May 21 - 22. And I'm going to be speaking!



If you're in the Bay Area, you may have seen this billboard on the approach to the Bay Bridge. "The Rapture: You KNOW it's nonsense. 2000 Years of 'Any Day Now.' Learn the truth at our Rapture Party, May 21-22. atheists.org/oakland ." You may have even seen/ heard/ read the news coverage about the billboard. This is the thing the billboard is advertising! I'll be speaking there, on the entertaining and enlivening topic, "Why Are Atheists So Angry?" Summary:

The atheist movement is often accused of being driven by anger. What are so many atheists so angry about? Is this anger legitimate? And can anger be an effective force behind a movement for social change?

Other awesome speakers will include Mr. Deity, Jen McCreight (Blag Hag), Matt Dillahunty (The Atheist Experience), Rebecca Watson (Skepchick), and many more. There'll be stand-up comedy from Troy Conrad and Keith Lowell Jensen, as well as the fun, inspiring talks and an after- conference party. It should be a hootenanny! And it's pretty cheap -- just $49 for the entire weekend, $39 for American Atheists members (you can join when you register), and $20 for students (for advance purchases).

The party/ conference will be held at the Oakland Masonic Center at 3903 Broadway: it's near MacArthur BART, and is wheelchair accessible. It goes from 9am to 9pm on Saturday, May 21, including lunch, dinner, and the party, and -- assuming we're all still alive by then -- from 9m to 1pm on Sunday, May 22. (Lunch and dinner cost extra, but not much -- just $25 for both. It's strongly recommended that you get the meal package, since dining options in the area are limited.) It'll be a great opportunity for community building, activism, networking and just plain fun. There'll be planning being done for the Reason Rally, the godless march on Washington, D.C. in 2012... and more immediately, for the godless contingent at the San Francisco LGBT Pride Parade this year. There'll also be a special breakfast on Sunday morning (again, assuming Armageddon hasn't begun), fundraising for Camp Quest West, and you'll get to eat and schmooze with the speakers -- including me! Not that I promise to be very coherent at 7:30 in the morning on a Sunday, but you'll have the privilege of watching me fall asleep into my French toast. (Tickets for the breakfast are limited, so if you want to attend, register now.)

Sounds like a good time? It will be! So register for the conference. party now! Hope to see you there!

No-Strings Sex, Disappointing Love, and Asking the Wrong Questions

This piece was originally published on the Blowfish Blog. I never reprinted it here, for reasons that now escape me. But the Blowfish Blog archives are apparently no longer on the Internets, and the original piece is no longer available. So in the interest of completism and making all my published works accessible, I'm going ahead and posting it here.

If you've given up on romantic love, is no-strings sex a viable option?

I don't usually write this column as an advice column. But I make occasional exceptions. And last week, someone wrote a comment in this blog asking for advice... a comment that I (a) felt compelled to answer, and (b) couldn't answer in just a few words. (Link to original comment no longer available, since the Blowfish Blog archives have gone missing.)

The commenter had responded to a call for sexually-themed New Year's resolutions by saying that she'd had a terrible experience with someone she met on the Internet, someone she'd traveled across the world to be worth who turned out to be, shall we say, unworthy of her affections. She had vowed to never get emotionally attached to a man again. And she asked this:

So this puts me in a quandary: how "palatable" to a potential male partner would I be if I told him I just wanted some awesome sex without a relationship or any bullshit "I love you's" that we both know he probably doesn't mean anyway, and if he does, he only means it when it's convenient for him to truly love me?

For the moment, I'm going to set aside the question of whether it was wise for this commenter to uproot her life for the sake of an Internet romance with someone in another country thousands of miles away. (Actually... no, I'm not. I'm going to address that question right now; it's a moot point for this particular questioner, but it may not be for someone else reading this. No, this is not a wise move. Internet romances can be great and do sometimes lead to successful physical-world romances; but they have to be treated with great skepticism, serious caution, and very careful timing. And the farther you have to travel for them, the more true that is. As Dan Savage has said: If you fly across the country or across the world to meet the virtual love of your life, don't treat it as romantic destiny -- treat it as an adventure, and frame it so you'll have a good time on your trip even if your lover turns out to be a loser. If you uproot your entire life for someone in another country you've never met... well, it sucks if they turn out to be a jerk, but you're the one who uprooted your life for someone you didn't really know, so yes, you do bear some responsibility. Also, play it every bit as safely as you would if you were meeting an Internet date in your home town: meet in public for the first time, and make sure someone you know knows where you are and how to reach you.)

Anyway. Back to the question at hand. If the question were simply, "Are there men who want casual, non-romantic sex with no strings attached?" the answer would have to be a vigorous, "Yes! Of course! What planet have you been living on that you even have to ask that question? The world is loaded with men who would treat this offer as a gift from every god they'd ever imagined. And while some of these men are selfish game-players, others are decent, ethical men who'll be as honest with you as they can about what they do and don't have to give. Be careful -- but go for it."

But I don't think that's the right question here.

I don't think that's the question I should be answering.

The question I think I should be answering is one that this commenter didn't ask. It's one that she assumed she knew the answer to. And I think the answer she's come up with is wrong -- seriously wrong.

The question I think I should be answering is, "Since I got my heart broken by a lying jerk, should I assume that love is always a lie, give up on romantic love forever, and just get my sexual needs met with no-strings sex?"

The answer to that question is a vigorous "No."

First of all, this assumption is just flatly not true. Not every man who says "I love you" is lying, and not every man pursues love purely for their own convenience. Not even most men do that. It sucks that this happened to you; but as they say in the sciences, you can't draw a general conclusion from just one data point. It probably makes sense for you to hold off on an LTR right now, while you're still feeling raw and demoralized -- but vowing to never again get emotionally attached to a man because of one crummy experience is a recipe for unhappiness. (If nothing else, you'll get hosed by confirmation bias -- your assumptions will lead you to ignore decent men who treat women well, and focus your attention on selfish, deceitful schmucks.)

But more pertinently to the question at hand:

This assumption is going to seriously interfere with a satisfying no-strings sex life.

For no-strings sex to work, you need to feel happy about sex. You need to feel happy -- at least potentially happy, willing and able to be happy --- about the people you're having sex with. And you need to feel happy about yourself. You need to see no-strings sex as something positive you're pursuing for its own benefits, and for your own reasons. You can't treat no-strings sex as second-rate, something you're settling for because you've given up on what you really want. Not if you want to have a good time doing it.

Let me put it this way. Back in my late twenties and early thirties, I did some serious catting around. I was happily single, and I made it clear to everyone I dated that, while I was interested in sex and even friendship, a serious romantic relationship was out of the question. I wasn't just happy to meet women who wanted no-strings sex -- I only wanted women who wanted no-strings sex.

And yet, if I'd dated a woman who was looking for no-strings sex because she'd been so badly burned by love that she'd vowed never to try that again? If I'd dated a woman who only wanted no-strings sex because she knew that love was bullshit, and that if I said "I love you" I'd only be lying anyway, so she didn't want to hear it?

Every single one of my red flags would have gone up.

That doesn't sound like any fun at all.

I am entirely in favor of no-strings sex for people who genuinely want it. I think there are lots of excellent reasons to want no-strings sex. I even think that "I recently got out of a relationship, and I want sex but I'm not ready for another big commitment right now" is a pretty okay reason. And while I am a great lover of love, I don't think serious romantic relationships are right for everybody all the time. I think there are people who would be happier being single -- some temporarily, some permanently. We don't all have to do relationships the same way.

But if you're pursuing no-strings sex out of bitterness, cynicism, anger, hurt feelings, and a generally bleak view of romance, sex, and the gender(s) you're attracted to... the chances of it resulting in "awesome sex" are very slim indeed.

At best, you're going to have some sad, disconnected, unsatisfying sex. You'll probably get a lot of rejection, too: from guys who are insulted at the assumption that they're probably liars, and/or who find the prospect of sex with disappointed, pessimistic women to be less than alluring. And at worst, you're going to make yourself vulnerable to some serious assholes. (Think of the kind of guy who'll meet you and think, "Hey, she's bitter and unhappy about men and has given up on love -- I bet she'll put out." Is that the kind of guy you want to be sleeping with? Forget whether they'd be safe or trustworthy -- do you think they're going to be any fun in the sack?)

In a lot of ways, no-strings sex can be emotionally harder than long-term relationship sex. At least, it's a different kind of hard. You have to date more people, put yourself out into the world more. You have to date a lot of frogs... and you have to date a lot of people who are going to think you're a frog. You have to be willing to suffer a lot of rejection -- and to do a lot of rejecting yourself. You have to be in a pretty strong, self-confident place for that to work.

And it doesn't sound like you're in that place right now.

I don't think you need no-strings sex.

I think you need a therapist, a vibrator, and time.

Not necessarily in that order.

Supporting Camp Quest and Crushing PZ Myers -- Round Two

Well, well, well. So PZ Myers thinks he has us licked, eh?

As I mentioned here a few days ago, we've started a blogging contest to see who can raise more money for Camp Quest, the kids' camp for children of atheists, freethinkers, humanists, and other non-supernaturalists. On Team Awesome, we have me, Hemant Mehta of Friendly Atheist, Jen McCreight of Blag Hag, and JT Eberhard of WWJTD?.

On Team Evil Cephalopod Overlord: PZ Myers at Pharyngula, all by his lonesome self.

And so okay, fine, PZ kicked our ass. For Round One, anyway. In the rules of the initial contest, whichever team raised more money by June 1, or raised $5,000 first, would be the winner. But PZ cheated. He cheated by getting up early in the morning, and gaining the unfair advantage of many hours of valuable fundraising time before the more civilized late risers among us could get started. He cheated by being in the Central time zone and getting the jump on us West Coast folks. And he cheated by using the patently unfair advantage of having more readers than the rest of us combined. His "team" reached $5,000 just as Team Awesome was closing the gap.

But Team Awesome will not admit defeat. We don't know when we've been beaten. We don't know when we're winning, either. We don't have any sort of sensory apparatus known to man.

So we are doing what any amoral atheists with no reason to care about right and wrong would do: We are moving the goalposts. We are changing the rules in the middle of the game. We are -- grudgingly -- conceding that PZ has won Round One... and have unilaterally decided that the real winner will be whichever team has raised more money for Camp Quest by June 1, 2011. (The race is not always to the swift, my tentacled friend...) And we're proving ourselves to be clever and devious beyond PZ's wildest imaginings -- and are adding new members to our fundraising team! Already, Adam Lee of Daylight Atheism has thrown his hat into the ring. And still more reinforcements and secret weapons are being worked on, even as we speak. (Any other bloggers who want to join Team Awesome, drop me an email, at greta at gretachristina dot com.)

So help support Camp Quest... and support Team Awesome when you do! Click on the Chipin widget below, and spend the rest of your day basking in the knowledge that you have not only helped support an eminently worthy and fun cause, but that you have struck a blow for the underdogs. Cute, fluffy, tail-wagging underdogs who want to be your friend.

Oh, right. The actual cause we're raising money for. You probably want to know a little more about that, don't you?

If you're not familiar with them, Camp Quest is the first residential summer camp in the history of the United States aimed at the children of Atheists, Freethinkers, Humanists, Brights, or whatever other terms might be applied to those who hold to a naturalistic, not supernatural world view. The purpose of Camp Quest is to provide children of freethinking parents a residential summer camp dedicated to improving the human condition through rational inquiry, critical and creative thinking, scientific method, self-respect, ethics, competency, democracy, free speech, and the separation of religion and government.

The nontheist community offers many programs for adults, but very few for children. To provide a future for our values we need to provide freethinking families with a place for their kids to find community, develop critical thinking skills, and learn ethics and values. Fortunately, that is what Camp Quest is all about. Well, that, and all of the summer camp fun that you can pack into a week.

Camp Quest builds a community for children and teenagers from atheist, agnostic, humanist and other freethinking families. They provide campers a place to explore their developing worldviews, ask questions, and make friends in an environment supportive of critical thinking and skepticism. Camp Quest is open to campers from all backgrounds. They encourage campers to think for themselves, be comfortable with who they are, and engage respectfully with people who have different views.

And yes, Camp Quest is a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation, and donations are tax deductible.

You can help support this awesome cause, strengthen the future of the atheist community... and help stave off the crushing arms of PZ's cephalopod army! Just click on the handy Chipin widget. That number again:

Diversity in the Atheist Movement: Video of AHA Panel with Me, Jen McCreight, and Debbie Goddard

About a month ago, I was part of a panel discussion on "Diversity in the Atheist Movement," along with Jen McCreight and Debbie Goddard, at the American Humanist Association conference. (It was part of the Secular Student Alliance's leadership track at the conference.) For those of you who've been asking about it, there's now video of the event!

The three of us each give short talks -- Jen on women in the atheist movement, Debbie on people of color, and me on LGBT folks -- and then there's Q&A afterward. I got a lot out of the conversation -- Jen and Debbie both had stuff to say that I hadn't thought about before, and all three of us are fun and interesting to listen to -- and I hope you will, too. (Video below the jump, since putting it above the jump mucks up my archives.) Enjoy!

A Crisis of Faithlessness

So I had this miniature crisis of faith a few weeks ago -- "crisis of faithlessness" would maybe be more accurate -- and I'm wondering if any other atheist activists have experienced anything like this, and if so, how you've dealt with it.

It wasn't about the atheism per se. It wasn't about thinking atheism wasn't correct and maybe God was real. Not even a little. I haven't had a serious moment of doubt about my atheism in quite a while. In my last four years as an atheist activist, I've engaged more with religious believers, and have thought more about religious belief, than I have in the forty-five years before... and it's done nothing to make me change my mind about my atheism. Quite the opposite. Years of seeing the same terrible arguments for God again and again and again; years of seeing religious believers slip and dodge and evade when asked what exactly they believe and why; years of seeing believers try to shut atheists up and stop our arguments before we've even begun them; years of seeing believers get hostile and combative at the mere fact of atheists saying out loud, "We're atheists"; years of seeing believers say, out loud, in actual words, that it doesn't matter whether the things they believe are true as long as it makes them feel good... these years have made me more certain about my atheism than ever. They have given me a vivid image of religion as a massive fortress protecting a house of cards: the ideas themselves weak and flimsy to the point of being pathetic, all the power of it lying in protecting the ideas from any sort of careful attention.

The crisis wasn't about my atheism. It was about my atheist activism.

My crisis of faithlessness happened during that awful, awful week. You know. The one with the earthquake in Japan, and the union-busting in Wisconsin, and the war in Libya, and absolutely everything stupid and horrible in Congress.

I was reeling under that week like everyone else... and part of me was thinking, "With all this horrible shit going on in the world, why do I care whether people believe in God? So much so that I'm devoting the bulk of my professional life to trying to talk them out of it?" I spent that terrible week reading about war, and tsunamis, and possible nuclear meltdowns, and Planned Parenthood maybe getting defunded, and the erosion of one of the last remaining weapons working people have against the increasingly powerful and corrupt plutocracy, and on and on and on and on and on... and it made it kind of hard to get seriously worked up about Pascal's Wager.

I don't want to alarm you. It's not like I was seriously contemplating an immediate change of career, or even an eventual one. I was just having a momentary moment of being overwhelmed by the suckage of the world, and feeling helpless about it, and wondering if I was putting my limited energy where it could do the most good.

Now.

I realize, of course, that no matter what cause I devoted my life to, there would still be eighty thousand other causes demanding my attention, and making my one little cause feel trivial. If I devoted my life to, say, unionizing and labor rights instead of atheism, I still might have been spending that terrible week wondering, "Shouldn't I be fighting to save birth control? Fighting against aggressive imperialist wars in volatile regions? Fighting against unsafe nuclear power plants being built on, for fuck's sake, earthquake fault lines?" No matter what path we take, it means not taking eighty thousand other paths... and sometimes one of those eighty thousand paths can suddenly seem extremely important, or even just really interesting. That doesn't mean we should suddenly switch gears. Of course we should be willing to re-think our choices in life -- but if we keep hopping from path to path depending on the flare-up of the moment, we'll never get anywhere.

When it comes to picking our battles, I think that, to some extent, we have to do what we're inspired to do, and what we're good at, and what we think is fun. I mean, it's not like I think that people in the labor movement are dilettantes for not working on reproductive rights, or that people in the reproductive rights movement are dilettantes for not working on poverty in Africa, or that people in the anti-poverty movement are dilettantes for not working on global climate change. And I don't think I'm a dilettante for working on atheism. Atheism has caught my imagination. I'm not sure I entirely understand why (although I have some ideas), but it has. I'm inspired to work in this movement; I'm good at it; I think it's so far beyond fun that I sometimes just burst with excitement about it and have to get up from my computer to do a little happy-dance. I don't entirely understand why... but I don't feel that way about other political movements. Awesomely important though they are. And getting involved in a movement that isn't fun and exciting for you is a sure recipe for burnout.

What's more, atheism is a fight where I can make a difference. In a way that I can't do nearly as much in other fights. If for no other reason: I'm already in this movement, and I already have a respected voice in it. And the fact that I care so much about this movement, the fact that I find it so inspiring and fun, is of course a huge part of why I'm good at it... and the fact that I'm good at it is a huge part of why I can make an impact in it.

And maybe most importantly? This is a fight that, in the long run, I think has potential -- maybe a seriously large potential -- to help with these other fights.

I mean -- if we win? If in a hundred years, even half the world population has stopped believing in religion? If in two hundred years, almost nobody does? If in three or four or five hundred years, historians are writing about religion as a fascinating relic of human history, the way we now write about geocentrism or the theory of the four bodily humours?

How much of a game-changer would that be?

How different would the world be... not just about religion, but about sexism and science education and same-sex marriage and reproductive rights and eighty thousand other areas of life that religion fucks up?

It's not like I think the spread of atheism will bring the dawn of a Utopia, a new age of reason in which critical thinking is king and humanist values are treasured by all. Human nature is what it is, and even if religion completely disappeared from the human mindset and became a historical relic, people will still be wired with cognitive errors we evolved a hundred thousand years ago to help us find food and escape from predators, and we'll still believe silly things for no good reason. Atheism isn't going to make that go away. (There are way too many atheists who believe silly things for me to convince myself of that.)

But I do think that a huge number of the world's greatest ills are made far worse, and in some cases are directly caused, by religion. I think religious belief, by its very nature, is a bad influence on humanity, one that does significantly more harm than good. I don't think the world would be perfect without religion... but I do think it would be better.

And to get back to my specific point: I think that, without religion in the world, or even with less religion in the world, a lot of these other fights I'm talking about would be a whole lot easier. In some cases, they might not need to be happening at all. Without religion, homophobia would be a lot less rampant. Without religion, sexism would be a lot less rampant. Without religion, the U.S. wouldn't be freaking out over government funding of birth control. Without religion, the Middle East wouldn't be such a freaking mess. Without religion, we might even be less vulnerable to manipulation of irrational fears and false hopes by disgustingly rich fuckers trying to get even richer. I think the atheist movement has the potential, in the long run and maybe even the medium run, to make a serious dent in all these other issues I care about, and to be a positive force for the human race.

So no. I'm not going anywhere. I just need to question these things now and then, is all. After all, when I do this work, I'm asking other people to question some of their most fundamental ideas and assumptions about their lives and the world. I'd be a pretty big hypocrite if I wasn't willing to periodically question my own.

And Pascal's Wager still sucks.