Petition the White House: Pressure Indonesia to free Aan!

I recently posted about the infuriating case of Alexander Aan, an Indonesian atheist who was thrown in prison and slapped with a $10,000 fine for blasphemous postings on Facebook.  He's also received numerous death threats, and some fundamentalist Muslims are calling for him to be executed.

Now there's a petition out on the White House's We the People service to pressure Obama to take a stand and call out Indonesia on this injustice.  If it gets 25,000 signatures, it will end up on his desk in the Oval Office.  It's currently at about 3100, so there's a long way to go.  Go. Sign. It.

In my opinion, any person who values freedom of expression, be they atheist or not, should be signing this.

As I said in my post on Skeptic Freethought about this issue: If you are an atheist and have ever expressed your views online, you would be a criminal in Indonesia.  Atheism should not be a crime anywhere.

I don't always agree with JT Eberhard, but...

... he occasionally says something that absolutely knocks it out of the park:

“The good news is that this life you lucked into is your own, and the only rewards or punishments, the only real heaven and the only true hell, are the results of your own actions between now and when you die. You have an opportunity to live in a way so that when your time is up you will have discovered heaven long before you found death.”

Drawing by Jen McCreight

If that isn't a positive message that atheists can rally around, I don't know what is.

The different flavors of atheism, revisited

(Cross-posted to Skeptic Freethought)

Despite what The Oatmeal may think, this isn't every atheist's idea of a good time.

For better or for worse, some people like to categorize. I can be one of those people at times.


PZ Myers recently posted a list of taxa that he believes describe different personalities within the atheist movement; I did something similar on my blog last fall, though with a slightly different focus. PZ focused on patterns of thought, while I looked at patterns of behavior (I also marked each of mine with a card suit for symbolism). Here’s an executive summary of both of our lists:

PZ’s Taxa:

• Scientific Atheist: Knows that there is no god due to total lack of empirical evidence for one. Sometimes a little too arrogant.
• Philosophical Atheist: Doesn't believe in god because believing in one requires making unfounded assumptions. Sometimes overly long-winded.
• Political Atheist: Motivated to fight the political and legal battles to make the world a better place for atheists. Sometimes makes compromises that other atheists don’t like.
• Humanist: Altruistic do-gooder who wants to help people in the name of godlessness. Sometimes “pragmatically fickle” and may join up with liberal churches instead of expressly atheist organizations.

My Taxa:

• Agitating Anti-theist (spade): Sees religion as an enemy to be vanquished, and fights its advances tooth and claw.
• Incredulous Inquirer (club): Skeptical toward religion, but wants to discuss rather than fight.
• Mainstream Materialist (diamond): Doesn't believe in god, stops worrying, and enjoys life.
• Diplomatic Disbeliever (heart): Strives to form friendly alliances with open-minded religious people.

Many people who read either or both of these posts may find themselves identifying with more than one category. They’re archetypes, and very few people strictly belong to any one of them. Each one of us has a different story behind how we realized we were atheists, how we came to join up with other atheists in this ever-evolving movement, and where we’d like to see the movement go.


And yet I unfortunately continually see bickering among these different “kinds” of atheists, the most vitriolic of which occurs on the internet. Atheists call one another “bullies” and “accommodationists” and accuse one another of dogmatism and “Tinkerbellism” over different approaches toward the movement. We see nasty exchanges of ad-hominems and passive-aggressive head shaking on Twitter because one party is either too critical or not critical enough of religion for the other party’s tastes.


Don’t get me wrong; I think that atheists who speak out in the name of atheism should be willing to defend why they say, and if an atheist says or does something reprehensible then others can and should call him or her out on it. But let’s try to keep it civil.


A diversity of perspectives and approaches toward living without religion is, in my opinion, healthy for the movement. We need people who uncompromisingly fight for the truth, we need people who make nice with theists, and we need average citizens who aren’t full-time activists to show the general public that we do walk among them. This movement isn’t one-size-fits-all.

Idiots vandalize church with "athiest" graffiti

I don't often use foul language on this blog, but: you fucking dumbasses.

Nice "use" of unnecessary "quotes" there.

Apparently someone thought it was a good idea to tag a church with spraypainted messages promoting atheism.  Well, except that these brilliant vandals couldn't even spell "atheism" right.

Creative spelling, eh?

At this point, no one knows whether the people who did this were really atheists or just anti-authority trolls looking to have some fun at someone else's expense.

Yeah, that'll convince 'em.

I really hope that whoever did this didn't honestly think they were helping the atheist movement at all.

(via Friendly Atheist)

Mid-June Rehash: Dolphin/cephalopod copulation, divine search warrants, and criminalizing atheism!

I'm hopefully getting back in the swing of this blogging thing again.  This time I'm shooting for making mid-month rehashes of stories from around the internet a regular feature.  Let's do this.

Is that an octopus on your genitals, or are you just ha... wait, what?

So, in case any of you haven't seen it yet, this image started going viral yesterday:

Photo credit: Joan Gonzalvo

Best comment I've seen so far: "That's gotta suck."

(via Ed Yong)

Mid-month absurdity: Divine revelation is now probable cause?

Last year, a self-proclaimed psychic told the Sheriff's Office of Liberty County, Texas, that a local couple had 25 to 30 dismembered children buried on their property.  This prompted a raid on their home by deputies and put the couple in the media spotlight internationally (largely because the Sheriff's Office tipped off the media before executing the search warrant).

As it turns out, the couple weren't really serial killers and didn't even have one dismembered child buried in their yard, let alone 25 to 30 of them.  Now they're (rightfully) suing the Liberty County Sheriff's Office for defaming them and ransacking their home on the word of a charlatan.

The charlatan in question had this to say for herself:

“They up front asked me how I got the information, and I am a reverend. I am a prophet and I get my information from Jesus and the angels, and I told them that I had 32 angels with me and they were giving me the information and then it went from there,” she said.

Jesus and 32 angels told her about it? Must be legit.

(via Ken at Popehat)

Atheism gets you 2 1/2 years in prison in Indonesia

I hope by now that all of you who love freedom have heard of what's happening to Alexander Aan of Indonesia.  If not, go read up on it.

He's going to prison and will spend the next 2 and a half years locked up with dangerous criminals for asserting God's non-existence on an atheist group page on Facebook.  He also has to pay a fine of roughly $10,600 US.

Islamic extremists, however, seem to think that the sentence is too lenient; some of them feel that he's committed a capital crime.

“These atheists should be beheaded, that’s what they deserve,” wrote a man who identified himself as Putra Tama, a Muslim from neighboring Jambi province.

The Islamic Society Forum (FUI), an umbrella group for several hard-line groups, said that a five-year jail term for Aan would not suffice.

“He deserves the death penalty, even if he decides to repent. What he has done cannot be tolerated,” said Muhammad al-Khaththath, FUI’s secretary-general.

“It is important to prevent this group from spreading atheism in this country,” he added.

That doesn't bode well for him; how many Islamic extremists are going to be sharing a cell block with him?  It's morbid, but I wouldn't be surprised some righteous zealot sticks him with a shiv in the name of God.


At any rate, it isn't even legal to be an atheist in Indonesia.  You can choose from a laundry list of state-approved religions, but "none of the above" isn't an option.

Note to self: don't go to Indonesia.

If you're interested, the Atheist Alliance International is collecting donations for a legal fund to help Aan fight this ridiculous conviction.  If you want to contribute to that specific fund, make sure you tick the appropriate box before donating.

(via Friendly Atheist)

Atheism gets you jail time in the UK, too?

Indonesia doesn't exactly have the world's most permissive religious freedom laws, but surely nothing like that would happen in a bastion of liberty like a Western nation, right?

Yeah.  Wrong.

John Richards, an elderly man living in Boston (a small town on the eastern coast of England), has a sign hanging in his window proclaiming religion as fairy tales for adults.

Recently, the local police informed him that he could be arrested for it if it offends anybody and he refuses to take it down.

Unlike in Indonesia, I highly doubt an arrest in this case would result in any kind of conviction.  I hope.

(also via Friendly Atheist)

Recommended Reading: The Merely Real

I may have linked to her old blog as recommended reading last year, but Chana Messinger has a new blog that she updates frequently, writing about all sorts of interesting topics like feminism, skepticism, and occasionally food.  Go check it out.

Atheists: let Leah Libresco be whatever she wants to be

Recent news has caused quite a stir in the atheist blogosphere: Leah of Unequally Yoked has decided that she's no longer an atheist, but a Catholic now.

Hemant of Friendly Atheist is taking this at face value without passing judgment, but others such as Jen McCreight and PZ Myers are calling it a shame:

Jen outlines her reasons for feeling this way, and PZ cautions his readers to at least be intellectually honest:

We are, after all, supposed to be the logical ones.  It would be ironic for atheists to resort to fallacy when a voice in our community converts to Christianity.  But we're all human and prone to that sort of groupthink when someone defects from our group.

My two cents: I'm going to just take the news of her conversion at face value and assume that she's neither trolling nor doing this as an experiment. Given that, then I'll say what I'd say to any friend, family member, or acquaintance who decided to convert to a religion: while I don't support your conversion, I support you wholeheartedly in your freedom to do so without harassment.

We've read too many horror stories of the crap people have to take from their friends and family when they come out as atheists; none of us should aspire to be like that when one of us decides to go the other way.

I haven't talked to Leah in person or read very many of her blog posts, but she seems smart.  She'll figure her beliefs out on her own.  And if she decides that she needs to believe in the Christian god in order for the universe to make sense to her, then so be it.  As Thomas Jefferson once said, "it neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."

Dusting off the old journal

It's been about five months since I've posted anything on here.  Chalk it up to how busy I've been, a sudden lack of confidence in my writing, or just a general shift of priorities in my life as of late.  Or perhaps all of the above.

Updates on my life, the short version:


I had some depression issues back in the winter, and my doctor prescribed regular exercise (as well as a low-dose mood elevator) as treatment.  Hence, a great deal of my free time has been spent at the gym.  She also prescribed more sleep, which means I haven't been staying up 'til 1 or 2 in the morning on work nights writing blog posts.

My wife and I bought a house last month, and since then most of my free time is now spent doing various projects to make said house comfortably habitable.  Painting, wiring, caulking, braving the fiberglass jungle that is our attic to install ceiling fan brackets, et cetera.  It's as though I've started a second full-time job.

I've still been following the goings-on in the skeptic/atheist movements, but that's really moved to the back burner in my life as of late.  I am going to start posting more, though.  Sometimes I just need to rant.