[Weekly Recap] Atheism in the news, Atheist Ethicist, exoplanets, more blasphemy cases, and trolling!

I'm probably not going to have a lot of time to devote to blogging until December, so posting will be sparse until then.  I have to remind myself that I write on here for fun, so I shouldn't feel like I have to balance it with my responsibilities IRL.  These Weekly Recap posts will be on hiatus for the time being, replaced by me posting whenever the heck I feel like it.  An exciting new development, to be sure.

Don't worry, loyal readers: I've still got a handful of posts in draft that will be going up as soon as they're presentable, and I'll still occasionally be struck by inspiration for a spontaneous rant about something or other.

I might still have a few nights like this. (comic from xkcd)

Without further ado, here's the last Weekly Recap you'll ever see until I decide to start doing them again.

Atheism in the news

Journalists are talking about atheists more and more as time goes on, and it isn't always about lawsuits anymore.  Christians are freaking out that godlessness is becoming so popular in America.  We're being blamed (or credited?) for the rise of polarizing Religious Right political candidates like Perry and Bachmann.  The Houston Chronicle spotlighted local atheists in the Texas city for the good they do in the community.

It gives me hope that American culture is approaching a tipping point, after which being an "out" atheist will no longer be anything new, exciting, or scary in this country.

Hipster Hubble: "I was detecting exoplanets before you even knew how to look for them."

"HR 8799 c, d, and b? You've probably never heard of them."

It appears that the Hubble Space Telescope took some shots in 1998 which, processed using modern techniques, revealed planets orbiting other stars.  Have a look at Phil Plait's post about it at Bad Astronomy.

Each new planet we detect is another chance of finding one in its star's "Goldilocks Zone" capable of supporting life as we know it.

Saturday Spotlight: Atheist Ethicist

I link to Alonzo Fyfe's posts often enough that he really deserves a mention in this section.  Theists and atheists alike might benefit from his perspectives on controversial issues, which he addresses using facts and logic rather than ideology and emotional appeals.  He'll sometimes spice it up with a bit of sarcasm.

If you're looking for convenient answers, you might be disappointed; more often, you're left with inconvenient questions that you should have been asking yourself all along

Go read his blog, Atheist Ethicist, and see why I've become a persistent lurker there.  You might learn something, or your head might explode.

Trolling for Billboards

The infamous Blonde Nonbeliever gave me a good laugh this evening.  Ever get tired of those "You're going to hell!" billboards on the sides of Midwestern highways?  Her friend decided to prank call the phone number on one such billboard spotted on a road trip.  Hilarity ensues.

Godless Quote of the Week

"Arguing about religion strips religion of its special privileged status as the one idea that can never be questioned. And that helps all the goals we're working towards -- ending anti-atheist bigotry, separation of church and state, [ending] special legal exemptions for religious organizations.  Arguing about religion helps re-frame religion as an idea rather than an identity -- which makes believers more open to listening to our ideas."

- Greta Christina, in her talk at the Secular Student Alliance conference earlier this year.

Weekly Absurdity: Blasphemous cartoonist arrested in Turkey

Turkish cartoonist Bahadir Baruter might spend a year in prison for drawing this:

The area circled in red apparently contains a hidden message, proclaiming something to the effect of "There is no God and religion is a sham."  It might offend people, sure.  But is it a crime?

In Turkey it is.  As I said last week, don't take freedom of speech for granted.

Pastor Mike's "Atheist Registry" is apparently old news... or is it?

*** Update 9/1/11: Pastor Mike has now made his blog private.  It's a shame that we won't be able to read the good news from him anymore.  Also, apparently I am bad about checking dates.***

So it seems that we self-righteous atheist bloggers aren't so careful about checking dates when we respond to fundamentalists' rants.


Oh, wait.  We are!  Pastor Mike just made a little slip-up when he scheduled his post to publish a year later than he meant to.  Now he's wondering why his suggestion for a National Atheist Registry is just now getting attention - it's because it only appeared to the public this past Sunday!

Pastor Mike is also apparently upset that people have the audacity to comment on his public blog criticizing him for promoting harassing proselytization of atheists and boycotting atheist-owned businesses.  He apparently doesn't see the irony in this.  As he so eloquently points out in his latest rant,

"They'll hide behind the security blanket of their keyboards , boasting how "proud" they are of being atheists in their PUBLIC blogs , yet , let someone like me mention putting their names on a PUBLIC registry , and they whine like little school girls and begin having their juvenile emotional outbursts."

It goes both ways, Pastor Mike. When you post something on your public blog and make your email address public, don't be surprised when you get a large quantity of email from people who disagree with you.

Now, it's fun to snicker at the ignorance of people like Pastor Mike, but I don't support any trolling of his blog or harassing him by email.  That won't solve anything and will only serve to fulfill his confirmation bias and convince him and his followers that they're right to fear and despise us.  I know that scalawags like Ginx are just going to do it anyway, though, so maybe I shouldn't bother with the disclaimer.

Weeky Recap: We Are Atheism, Godless Quote of the Week, Sunday Subscription Suggestion, and the Thought Offender Registry?

I've decided to make these Weekly Recaps a regular feature on this blog.  If anything, it'll give you all something to read every Sunday if I happen to be out of material for a week.  It'll also motivate me to work past my writer's block in at least some way on a regular basis.

Each such post is going to feature the following:

• The Godless Quote of the Week: something profound and/or snarky uttered or written by a fellow atheist, with a link to the source for context.
• Sunday Subscription Suggestion: inspired by Twitter's Follow Friday meme, I will link to a blog or other site I've recently discovered and would recommend to my readers.  Not necessarily atheism-related.
• Weekly Absurdity: something absolutely ridiculous that I've discovered within the week.  It might be a facepalm, or it might be a LOL.
• Whatever the hell else I want to post.

That's it in a nutshell.  Buckle up.

We Are Atheism campaign launched!

The push for atheists to step out and assert their presence has yet another organized form of support.  With the tagline "Stand up.  Speak Out.  Be Counted.", We Are Atheism provides atheists with a platform to tell the world who they are and what they do believe in.

I plan on submitting a video myself in the near future.  Speaking of which, are there any readers in Central Ohio who own a decent video camera?

Godless Quote of the Week

(via Friendly Atheist)

"[T]hey said, 'So you think you’re the biggest, most important thing in the universe?'
On the contrary. I think I am among the smallest. Cosmically speaking, I barely exist."

This was said by author Marya Hornbacher, an atheist who writes about mental illness, addiction, and recovery without a higher power to call upon.

Sunday Subscription Suggestion

I'd like to spotlight the blog Fallen From Grace by Bruce Gerencser.  Bruce is a former evangelical pastor who spent half of his life as a church leader before coming to the conclusion that he's an atheist.

His blog tells the tale of his journey "from Eternity to Here" and offers a unique perspective on life, religion, and apostasy.  He'll often point out the hypocrisy of those who once considered him their brother in Christ.

Weekly Absurdity: Thought Offender Registry?

(via Pharyngula)

Pastor Mike of the Living Water Church in southern Florida has a suggestion for keeping tabs on us nasty atheists.  He proposes a national registry of all those who publicly deny his god's existence, modeled after the Sex Offender Registry.  After all, don't good Christians have a right to know if there are any godless monsters living in their communities?  Think of the children!

He highlights some of the benefits of such a registry:

. . . we could begin to witness to them and warn them of the dangers of atheism . Or perhaps they are radical atheists , whose hearts are as hard as Pharaoh's , in that case , if they are business owners , we would encourage all our Christian friends , as well as the various churches and their congregations NOT to patronize them as we would only be "feeding" Satan.

Were I a business owner, I'd have mixed feelings on this.  I'd be happy to have fewer bigoted fundamentalists hanging around in my shop, but I'd sure miss taking their money. I'd also be quite perturbed that this Satan character was embezzling my profits, as I'd have a strict policy against hiring mythological beings.

It's all too tempting to scoff and snicker at this sort of nonsense, but as PZ correctly points out it poses a real threat of harassment and intimidation against outspoken atheists by self-righteous Christians with nothing better to do with their time.

Well, the only defense against something like this is threat dilution. I say that atheists start contacting Pastor Mike and ask where we can sign up!

Is the slogan "Good Without God" controversial?

The series of billboards around Columbus showing the smiling faces of friendly neighborhood atheists doesn't seem to have generated any notable controversy until just now.  It turns out that one of the billboards happened to go up on a church's property on the East side; it appears that the church was leasing the land to the billboard company, and must not have been aware of the new content being displayed there this month.

The church didn't take kindly to a billboard on their premises proclaiming that people don't need what they're selling, so they complained to the billboard company and the ad was moved to another site.

To be fair, a steakhouse probably wouldn't want an "I'm good
without beef" billboard displayed in their parking lot either.

So, a billboard got moved.  Not censored, not stolen, not vandalized, just moved.  I have to say that it's an improvement over what's befallen similar ads in other places (and I must give thanks to Hemant Mehta for diligently calling out such acts of sabotage).  If this is the worst thing that happens, then I'd say this was a pretty successful campaign.  People know that we're here and they seem to be wising up to the fact that we're not evil.  I sincerely hope that one day atheism will be such a non-issue in public life that we won't need to announce our presence like this; perhaps these billboards and even atheist-themed blogs will one day be a thing of the past because they've served their historical purpose.

On a related note, I decided that I'm not sure how well I like the "Out of the Closet" banner that I made previously on the FFRF website, so I made a new one:

I'm still not a big fan of the font they use for these, but eh. ~shrug~

I think that I like the new one better, but the old one has its merits too.  Any thoughts, my tiny band of loyal casually interested readers?

I'm materialist, call me a humanist

I finally stopped procrastinating about it and went to a Humanist Community of Central Ohio (HCCO) event - a Sunday brunch, quite appropriate for a demographic not otherwise engaged that day of the week.

I'm glad I went. They're a group of amiable, approachable people, they're all at least a little bit nerdy, and I felt welcomed among them as a fellow nontheist. I'll be going to more HCCO events for sure - next up is a "Bleed & Feed" at the local Red Cross Donation Center.

One of the humanists at the brunch was showing a printout of images of a very familiar design - billboards for the Freedom From Religion Foundation's "Out of the Closet" campaign, featuring the smiling faces of atheists from right here in Columbus!  The billboards are going up around town this week; I'll be sure to look for them and cheer silently to myself when I see them. Atheists cease to be a scary bogeyman or a scorned fringe group when we stand up and make ourselves known as friends, family, neighbors, and colleagues among the religious majority.

It's obviously a little late to be selected as one of the few faces going on the billboards, but I did make my own mini-banner on the FFRF website:

I'm excited to see the atheist community gaining visibility in Columbus, and I'm excited to be involved with a group like the HCCO that unites the nonreligious to go out and do good.

Service, sacrifice, and atheists in foxholes

Today is Memorial Day in the United States, designated for the remembrance of Americans who lost their lives while serving in the military.  I may not always agree with the decision to go to war, but I recognize the fundamental necessity for a free society to maintain a strong, committed military to defend itself and its interests.  Essential to such a military are individual human beings willing to risk life and limb in defense of their society, a sacrifice requiring an extraordinary amount of bravery.

There are atheists in foxholes!

One group within the military that seems underrepresented are the atheists, agnostics, and secular humanists who serve fully aware that no Valhalla awaits them if they are killed in action.  Military service in general takes guts; I personally think it takes a great deal more for godless soldiers to knowingly risk the only life they have to fight for the things they do believe in.

The foxhole atheists don't go entirely without recognition. The Freedom From Religion Foundation put up a monument (pictured) to nontheistic servicemen and servicewomen, and the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers keeps a roster of open atheists in the military.  People like Sgt. Justin Griffith stand up for other nonbelievers in the military amid the heavily religious culture our country perpetuates.  I hope that the atheists in our military continue to gain recognition for their service.

Why don't I join up, then?

Last month, writer and atheist soldier K. Syrah posted a thought-provoking entry on her blog about the hypocrisy of able-bodied people thanking soldiers for their service while being reluctant to serve themselves.  As I think today about what this holiday represents, I can't help but have K's post come back to mind.  What kept (and still keeps) me from serving in the military?


I wasn't deluded by any notion that I'm somehow "too good" for it; I know servicemen/women who were better students than I was in high school.  It wasn't even my opposition to the invasion of Iraq; I still supported the fight against the Taliban in Afghanistan and supported the military in general.  Was it simple cowardice?  Is it still cowardice today?


I would like to think that there's more to it than that; perhaps I never felt the military was my calling in life, though I have yet to figure out what my calling is.  Maybe it's not so much my fear of dying on the battlefield that has kept me out, but rather the fear that I'd be out of my element and thus a weak link in the chain.  Maybe I'm making excuses.  I'm still young, and I shouldn't rule out military service while I figure out what I want to do with my life; someone has to do it, after all.

So, why "atheist" and not some other label?

I decided to both self-identify and "come out" as an atheist back in the autumn of 2009, though those close to me knew I was a practicing agnostic for many years before.  I stated my reasons for it in a lengthy Facebook note, and even set my "religious views" (uh oh, it's official now!) on my profile to "atheist" instead of something clever like "none, thanks" or just leaving the thing blank because oversharing on Facebook is stupid anyway.


My reasoning at the time still stands today, though my views are ever-evolving.


Why "atheist" as opposed to "agnostic" about something inherently unknowable?  It's not because I "know" there is no higher being, but because I find myself utterly unable to believe any account I've heard of a higher being's existence.  To say I'm "agnostic" in regards to the various religions would be like saying I'm agnostic about werewolves or faeries or unicorns.  If I can truthfully say I'm agnostic about any viewpoint of the sort, it's deism, because the idea of a non-interfering Creator behind the very laws of physics that guided the formation of the universe is so abstract that it's really not a belief at all as I see it. 


Why "atheist" as opposed to "naturalist" or "materialist" or any other term denoting belief in only the visible as opposed to disbelief in the invisible?  It's not because my worldview is defined solely by what I don't believe; I do, however, wear the label for the pragmatic reason that it sets me apart politically from the theists.  As an American, I live in one of the most religious nations in the western world, whose motto reads "In God We Trust" and to whose flag we are told to pledge allegiance as "one nation under God."  I'm personally opposed to the idea that believing in God is a prerequisite to being American, and I would feel like I was silently helping perpetuate that notion by not standing up and saying, "Atheists exist in America, and I'm one of them!"


Why "atheist" as opposed to "none" when prompted for my religious affiliation?  Ditto the reasons in the last paragraph, plus the fact that I've decided I want the visibility.  Many people are afraid to draw attention to themselves when they don't fall in line with the crowd, and I honestly can't blame them.  It makes a person a target for all manner of flak, and while I've been lucky to have tolerant, understanding people in my life, other people in other situations have a strong incentive to not rock the boat.  Just as secular humanist organizations are putting up billboards across the country saying "Don't believe in God?  You're not alone," I want to try to send a simple, reassuring message to anyone in my social sphere who feels isolated by their disbelief.


The word "atheist" still has a negative connotation in popular culture, evoking images of bitter, angry, acerbic people with a vendetta against all things religious.  And yes, I sometimes even feel that way, and sometimes lash out with unkind words against religion as a whole when I see people do amoral or unethical things in the name of their faith.  The atheist community has no shortage of voices who make that sort of vitriol their calling card - but there are also many of us who want to have dialogue instead of debate with the religious majority that surrounds us.


I'm not so naïve that I think the word "atheist" will ever be completely free of any negative connotation.  I simply want to help spread the idea that atheism is not a monolithic mindset, but rather a broad term encompassing a variety of philosophies connected only by the fact that they don't include a deity.  Right now, in the minds of many, it is a label meant to divide "us" from "them" across a clear-cut boundary.  My hope is that more people will realize that the statement "I don't believe in any god" tells you as much about a person as does the vague statement "I believe in some god or other."  Honestly, I hate using labels to categorize human beings, and the more nebulous a label's connotations become, the more it forces us human beings to get to know one another before passing judgment.

Now Entering the Blogosphere

Here's hoping I don't burn up like an insignificant meteor.  I'm starting this blog primarily to spare my Facebook friends from rants most of them don't care to read.  It'll give me the freedom to speak my mind without offending anyone in the voluntarily captive audience of the news feed, and I just might find an appropriate audience here for what I have to say.


For what it's worth, I'll give prospective readers and commenters a few basic caveats about myself and what I intend to write about.


First, I don't believe in any gods or supernatural forces, and it would take some considerably compelling evidence to change that fact.  I haven't found any such evidence so far, and I've spent a lot of time considering what I believe and why I believe it.  Unless you're truly bringing something new to the table that I can't possibly have heard before, trying to "convert" or "save" me is going to be a waste of time and energy.


Second, speaking my mind is bound to offend somebody out there.  I really try to keep my criticisms of others as constructive as possible, but some things people do make me so angry that I really don't have anything nice to say.  If you think I'm being unfair to a person or group, say so and say why, and I'll take it into consideration and correct myself if I was wrong.


Third, I'm not an expert in anything and don't profess to be one.  That doesn't mean I can't understand a subject well enough to form an opinion of it, but I'm not going to argue with anyone on here about topics like evolution or the Big Bang (no matter how much I may want to) because I'm not a biologist or physicist.  There are plenty of educational resources out there (including actual experts!) for you to consult for that sort of thing.


And with that, I launch my new blog.  Time will tell what happens next.