godlessness
pharyngula | June 14, 2011I'm home! I even got a good night's sleep! And just to fire me up, Jeff Sparrow replies to my criticism of his article claiming that the New Atheists are a gang of neo-fascists. Bracing!
It's especially fun since he begins the piece by disavowing one of my criticisms: "I do not think that the New Atheists are fascists, and nowhere did I say that they are." No, he's cleverer than that. He argued instead that the New Atheists were replacing anti-semitism with anti-Muslim racism, that they were converging with the populist right (does this mean we can invite Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, and Rush…
pharyngula | June 12, 2011I got into a brief exchange with a crazy Irish Catholic yesterday, and it actually got reported on broadsheet.ie, which was odd — and also unsatisfying, since they only reported the first half of the discussion. Just for the sense of completion, I append here the last few comments before he turned up his nose and refused to discuss it further.
There. That's better.
pharyngula | June 11, 2011Jeff Sparrow is very worried about the Global Atheist Convention coming to Melbourne, Australia next April. Why? Because we're all goose-stepping fascists come to destroy liberal and progressive dreams with our "very, very right wing" atheistical fanaticism. Which leaves me baffled and confused. Don't I count? I'm a guy who finds Barack Obama to be far too conservative (I know, that's setting the bar low), surrounded by wanna-be theocrats in a land straining to escape the Enlightenment, with the giant heads of O'Reilly, Beck, and Hannity howling at me from the television, and somehow, I am…
pharyngula | June 11, 2011This week, that godless radio program has Greg Laden interviewing Ed Brayton at 9am Sunday morning, which will be 3pm out here in the UK, and I'll be on a train to Heathrow, probably napping. But you can listen to it. Yes, you. If you use the zip code of 56267 you can even pretend to be me for an hour. Except you wouldn't want to, because me is dragging and feeling a bit like a limp rag after a long weeeeek of bouncing about these strange northern isles.
pharyngula | June 4, 2011The Dublin conference, with quotes from yours truly, appears in the Christian Science Monitor. I might appear on BBC1 tomorrow morning. I was interviewed, but I was introduced to the interviewer by Rebecca Watson as the truly most ferocious atheist around, and while I tried to sound terrifying and cruel, she kept on cracking up during the interview. So it may get cut.
The cracker does rear it's terrifying head again in a wingnut Catholic complaint. That thing will haunt me to the grave.
I got sent this picture. It's perfect for my Thursday conversation with Richard Dawkins.
pharyngula | June 4, 2011I've been bad. I've been busy. I'm at this conference, and the combination of bad wifi (I can't get connected in my room at all) and constant distractions means I haven't been keeping you updated here. Fortunately, Rorschach is here and has been blogging away while I can't, so I can just cheat and link to him.
The Muslims have invaded. They don't have much stamina. They were there for Richard Dawkins' session yesterday, asked a stupid question, and since have retired to a table outside, where they peddle bad literature that looks like clones of Christian creationist nonsense.
I gave a talk…
pharyngula | June 1, 2011Donations are closed. Here are the final numbers:
Team Awful: $13,550.06
Lord PZ, Unique and Majestic: $12,996.01
Matched amounts:
Team Awful: $1,868.73
Lord PZ, Diabolically Alone: $1,620.00
Total Match: $3,488.73
Team Totals (with matches included):
Team Awful: $15,418.79
Lord PZ, Cunning and Charismatic: $14,616.01
Grand Total Raised: $30,034.80
Goodness was accomplished. Team Awful was punted about unmercifully at my whim, and were completely outclassed and outmaneuvered at every point. My Xanatos Gambit succeeded perfectly, not only manipulating the bewildered, undisciplined mob…
pharyngula | June 1, 2011This is a video of Ayn Rand on a talk show in, I think, the 1970s. Don't run away yet! The interesting part isn't Ayn Rand, who merely says the same thing all we atheists say nowadays, but the audience and also the host: they seem horrified that someone has so boldly stated that they don't believe in god. And that liberal host, Phil Donahue, "tsk, tsk, tsk"s her, and you can tell he's just unable to comprehend someone denying the deity.
We have come a long way. I don't think a modern audience would be much less annoyed, but at least they wouldn't be as surprised.
OK, just to correct your…
pharyngula | June 1, 2011The competition between myself and the eleventeen dwarfs to raise money for Camp Quest isn't over yet: somehow, the chipin widget gives us until 2:00 (what time zone? I don't know) this afternoon to get donations in.
To complicate matters further, the Todd Stiefel Freethought Foundation has just popped up with an offer to double every donation, up to $5000 for each side, in these last few hours. This is the moment to jump in and kick in a few bucks, to assure my final victory.>
You can donate to either side, too. Either one gives me a triumph.
pharyngula | May 31, 2011In the last episode of our competition to raise money for Camp Quest, I had elegantly and cunningly turned the tables on Team Beat PZ: after trouncing them thoroughly in all fundraising efforts, I had maneuvered them into desperately offering all kinds of humiliating forfeits if they should win the competition, so I reversed course and urged all of my minions to donate to them. I am now in the enviable position of "pwning" the other team, in Greta Christina's words, if I raise more money than they do, or of humiliating them, in my words, if they have to carry through with their promised…
pharyngula | May 31, 2011John Loftus criticizes the Courtier's Reply. How dare he? I thought it was Holy Atheist Writ by now.
But the Courtier's Reply as an answer for theology needs to be discussed critically. First off, I do not expect anyone to understand any particular theology in order to reject it. We all do this easily. I doubt very much anyone understands all of the religions they reject. I don't. No one does. We reject them all for the same reasons, because they have not met their own burden of proof. So I agree very much that neither PZ Myers nor Richard Dawkins needs to fully understand the various forms…
pharyngula | May 29, 2011I'll be brief. I'm sure you all find these things as tiresome as I do. Once again, we've got a couple of indignant wanna-be bureaucrats of atheism complaining about those cranky, rough-hewn gnu atheists. Chris Stedman and Karla McLaren are shocked that people don't realize their hectoring is good for the movement. So they whine about how everyone is mean to them.
In this past year, a sociologically fascinating "many approaches" meme has permeated the atheist and skeptical movements. Increasingly, anyone who questions the fiercely uncivil and polemical discourse style will be upbraided with…
pharyngula | May 29, 2011Believers and I have a fundamentally different view of history.
There are these words that religious people throw about with abandon — prophecy, fate, destiny, God's plan — that I don't believe in at all. We've recently witnessed an extreme example of this, as certain fundamentalist Christians paraded their eschatology before us, but it was only one narrow and specific version of a more commonly held dispensationalism that maps the history and the future of the world to a series of predicted events that typically include a period of tribulation, followed by a millennium of peace under the…
pharyngula | May 28, 2011Minnesota Atheists is trying to raise money to keep their radio program on the air — they have to, because it looks like rich Republican think tanks or gold-sellers aren't paying for ads, and the woo-infested shows that surround its time slot are selling air time to quack medicine companies, another option not open to an organization of rationalists. Help them out if you can.
They've been putting on great programs, too. Tomorrow at 9am central time, they'll be interviewing Eric MacDonald of Choice in Dying, one of the rising stars of the atheist movement. If you can't listen to the radio show…
pharyngula | May 27, 2011As you know, we're having a little contest to raise money for Camp Quest, and we've been competing to see who can raise the most money for a good cause. It's me standing alone against the team of Hemant Mehta, Jen McCreight, JT Eberhard , Digital Cuttlefish, Sikivu Hutchinson, Adam Lee, The Chaplain, C.L. Hanson, Matt Dillahunty, William Bell, and Greta Christina, which, as you can see, is grossly unfair — they needed at least twice as many bloggers more to stand a chance.
Now, though, they're gambling desperately to triumph in the home stretch — the contest ends on 1 June — and they're…
pharyngula | May 26, 2011Hasn't Sean Carroll learned from Stephen Hawking's experience? Nothing stirs up the public like a physicist explaining how silly their cherished myths are. Now Carroll gives the physicists' perspective on life after death.
Very roughly speaking, when most people think about an immaterial soul that persists after death, they have in mind some sort of blob of spirit energy that takes up residence near our brain, and drives around our body like a soccer mom driving an SUV. The questions are these: what form does that spirit energy take, and how does it interact with our ordinary atoms? Not only…
pharyngula | May 26, 2011These people do exist.
I am a fellow atheist from Germany. I have to say I enjoy reading your blog Pharyngula. I study molecular biology and strongly believe in evolution.
I am, however, rather conservative in my views. That's what troubles me with atheism lately, it seems that atheists are generally on the left side of the political spectrum. Esp. your last post about how atheists should have progressive views in terms of "racism", "gender equality" and "disability rights" made me thinking.
I feel like I agree with Conservative Chirstians on most political and social issues. For example…
pharyngula | May 25, 2011After saying that the atheist movement ought to be politically progressive and inclusive, I got a letter saying I left some people out. I'll rectify that by simply posting the letter!
I'm a long-time reader and admirer of Pharyngula, and I've been especially impressed with your call for atheists and skeptics to take up the banner on progressive causes, including women's rights and being more inclusive to people of colour. As a progressive woman skeptic, I was overjoyed by your support.
There's another issue though, that I think has been overlooked by the majority of the skeptical community…
pharyngula | May 25, 2011…let's not forget that other gigantic issue, racism. The secular movement ought to be clearly on the side of the angels on that one, too, and we need to listen more to people of color. I know well the phenomenon of speaking at secular events and looking out to see that sea of paleness — I swear, I could work on a tan off the reflected light from those audiences. And the only way to put more black and native American and Asian faces in the seats is to put more of them on the podium.
We do have a problem with the white assumption of privilege. And the scary thing is that some people think…