PZ finally does what many of us have been dying to do

Reading this post felt great .

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PZ gets death threats

Lest you think tolerance of stupidity and fanaticism is a good thing, read this blog post and some of the comments beneath it (luckily most of the comments are sensible).

I mean, srsly, death threats? The fuck?

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Support PZ!

Here.

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Uppity delicate religious idiots on MY campus?

Most frightening things I've read all week.

Via The Friendly Atheist and the NYT courtesy of Chris.

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Blogging is one of many steps we need to take to spread atheism

Two more months and a week or so until I make a 16-hour long drive with my stuff, which my folks are looking after right now while I'm visiting them this summer, back to Madison. I'm visiting my folks right now, and it is nothing short of a pain in the ass (mostly because of where they live).

It occurs to me that much of my sentiments about atheism and about the stupidity of religion have been expressed elsewhere. I am not sure that repeating the same true things - which are true; at the same time, repeating them does not contribute much to the conversation or the movement - will make much of an impact in helping us atheists to at least be recognized as a group which deserves as much equality as anyone else and helping people to realize that religious conservatives are killing the world. In the end, it will be about writing letters to Congressmen, staging protests, educating people, and donating money to those who will help us.

Blogging certainly helps, but we cannot keep saying the same things - we have to keep explaining them further and make sure people are aware of where we have said these things, and we have to show by our actions that we are a group that needs to be listened to.

Ultimately, we will make religion meet its demise if we do it in a way that destroys it by bringing people to atheism. Religion was originally designed as a way to fill gaps in the human knowledge of the day before we figured out the scientific method - and it is important to make the point to people that atheism is a characteristic of we educated and we knowledgeable masses and has been for millennia. We are atheist because we know better. I am an atheist because I see no evidence for any deities; any evidence anyone has posited has incontrovertibly and always eventually been shown to be explained by purely scientific processes. Atheism is logical.

Karl Marx was astute when he said:

Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man—state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d'honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion. Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.

Let me explain the quote: Marx makes the inference, quite correctly, that the vast majority of people - the unwashed, idiotic, poor, resourceless, uneducated masses - do not have the ability to understand and/or access the resources we have. What are they to assume, until they learn what a thunderstorm really is, what a thunderstorm is? Do they think it is the physically-manifested anger of, perhaps, an entity swinging a big invisible hammer or an angry sky god, which we know is nonexistent and completely impossible, but which they think is real? The part where he says 'Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d'honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification' is an indication of the times which he lived in, a time where, quite frankly, many people were idiotic and/or uneducated.

Establishing rationality, reason, and ultimately atheism in society may be dependent on establishing an environment where every single person on the earth has access to all information and lives under a government where they are free, justly-protected citizens with all the rights and responsibilities inherent therein and has both an adequate support system to support them when they fall and the discipline to pull themselves up and get to wherever they want to be in society.

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The stupidity of dignity

Via EvolutionBlog, an article on the stupidity of dignity, which is a much-needed topic to discuss.

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Beating down the fundamentalist jihad

I have no more tolerance for the creationists - especially the way they behave toward me and my fellow atheists.

I say we start protesting.

They want to wage wars? Let's wage our own war of reason.

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PZ Myers is coming to Madison

PZ Myers, proprietor of Pharyngula and the most awesome evolutionary biology professor in the United States (tied with Sean Carroll), is coming to Madison in September, provided I can set stuff up properly.

Maybe we can get in touch with his younger son and see if there's anything else we might need to know.

Also - pimping his daughter Skatje's blog, Lacrimae Rerum - it's some good shit. The Myerses may just be my favorite atheist family.

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Everyone, go to http://expelledexposed.com .

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From Pharyngula .

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A thought

Atheists: If it looks like a duck, smells like a duck, and acts like a duck, then it's probably a duck.

Fundies: If it looks like a duck, smells like a duck, and acts like a duck, it's God.

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Atheist Statistics 2008

This warms my heart.

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Dick to the Dawk to the PhD

UPDATE: This apparently features an equal amount of ID as evolution. Ergo, video = fail.

UPDATE 2: This movie was apparently made by the producers of Expelled. I refuse to disseminate creationist bullshit.

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Carnival of the Godless

Carnival of the Godless #88 is up at Atheist FAQ.

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On deception in religion

PZ Myers wins the internet today for being ejected from a screening of the creationist propaganda film Expelled while Richard Dawkins was let in.

Speaking of propaganda, let me talk about deception.

Several months ago, there was a website called everybadger.com, which seemed to be an innocuous secular website until you visited it and found out there was GOD GOD GOD GOD plastered all over it.

A lot of conservative Christian groups employ such tactics - there is a group at Wisconsin called Primetime which does not bill itself as Christian, but is very obviously, if you read more about it, a worship service. Chi Alpha, in addition (and I actually visited one of their stupid things before learning they were Christian and politely getting the fuck out of the room), does not bill itself as Christian until you notice the fine print and see that they are affiliated with Campus Crusade.

Notably, our favorite cult-we-love-to-hate, Scientology, also does this by way of their 'free stress tests', which are nothing more than their opportunity to push Dianetics on you and use one of their 'e-meters', which are nothing more than multimeters. You can fuck with these by coating your hands in silicone!

Oddly enough, I have never seen any of this from another religious group.

Why, then, are groups such as these employing deceptive tactics?

They both know well that they're incredibly despised, perhaps, but hoodwinking someone into getting affiliated is not the way to go and not the way to get someone who's going to actually come to your cause. The best organizations I know - here I'm talking about secular organizations - don't employ misinformation.

Incidentally, this is a characteristic of cults - refer to these characteristics from religioustolerance.org:

Various groups within the ACM have differing concepts about what defines a cult. They often list a group of factors that a cult exhibits. In their list of "Characteristics of a Destructive Cult," reFOCUS lists five. ₃ They do not say how many of the 5 must be present in order for a faith group to be called a cult:

1. An authoritarian power structure, with control concentrated at the top.
2. Charismatic or messianic leader(s) (They define Messianic as meaning that the leaders identify themselves as God or state that they are the only persons capable of interpreting the Bible properly.)
3. The use of deceitful methods in recruitment of new members and/or raising of money.
4. Isolation of their membership from society; filtering of information.
5. The use of mind control methods on the membership.

Certainly, a number of these groups - I can think of a few Christian ones offhand - fit 1, 2, and 3 - not so much 4 and 5, those are reserved for the most damaging groups. Certainly, a number of fundamentalist groups do not fit these criteria. Certainly, a number of fundamentalist groups do, some of which are in the mainstream.

It defies logic to recruit members via knowingly - the key word is knowingly - feeding them falsehoods and hiding information; that implies something is VERY wrong with the organization - corruption, power structure, damaging beliefs, et cetera. I wonder if the fundies have actually thought about these things.

This scares me not only as an atheist but as a human being who cares for the well-being of her classmates.

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The Atheist Apocalypse !

I have never seen anything this full of win.

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On sanity

My friend Chris has a great post on sanity. My take on his post is that sanity is an entirely subjective thing and that what is really needed is maturity, which a great many adults do not have.

Most of you who read this have probably gathered by now that I think about 99% of people are insane, and in this particular little post I'm going to talk about it.

Insanity, that is.

What seems to pass for insanity these days is a number of things: limited perspective, bias, mob mentality, and any number of other stupid things which make people idiots but are unfortunately part of humanity.

For example, the Scientologists - make no mistake, they are a cult, and I think Anonymous is the best thing that has ever happened to the poor people they abuse - have fooled a whole lot of people into joining them. Most low-level Scientologists, what the Scientologists would call 'non-OT' or 'OT-I' or 'OT-II', don't know anything about the organization and simply say what the organization tells them to say. They are labeled insane frequently, and indeed, they act kooky, but one has to consider the fact that they're under a very complex form of control and that their problem is one of ignorance and being belittled and hoodwinked by Midget Miscavige and his cabal.

By the way, folks, go to the sites www.enturbulation.org, www.xenu.net, www.whyaretheydead.net, and www.youfoundthecard.com - I absolutely implore you, educate yourselves about the abuse that these people perpetrate. They're worse than the fundies, in many respects, and I didn't even think that was possible until I learned about what THESE assholes do. This atheist blogger says 'Go Anonymous!'

Also, politicians tend to be full of it. Chris's post has a lot on this.

Evolutionarily, humans are social animals. Our brains, particularly our limbic systems, are wired for certain behaviors. Mob mentality arises from this, since it is evolutionarily advantageous for a group to act the same way in certain situations, and so is a child listening unconditionally to its parents, since more often than not, parents have their child's best interest in mind. Religion arose out of humanity's discomfort with the unknown; atheism is the provenance of we who are more comfortable with it and prefer accuracy. I do not know about whether there are neural correlates to being susceptible or not susceptible to herd behavior, but the differences are usually extremely pronounced.

I wonder if we could postulate about the 'evolvedness' of human brains - are the more logical brains more advanced on the evolutionary spectrum? Greta Christina made a post about atheist morality vs. theist morality that makes a good point - our morality is largely hard-wired by evolution.

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Dr. Dawkins comes to Madison

RICHARD DAWKINS CAME TO MADISON

There were two lectures - a private lecture and a public lecture.

I went to both. AHA turned up about half an hour early for the lecture, and I nearly giggled when I saw Dr. Dawkins, who is a rather short man but possibly the most cantankerous person you will ever meet, and he signed my book.

Chris and I, notably, showed up in Scarlet Letter t-shirts and we got in the first two questions:

I asked a question about neurotheology. Dr. Dawkins didn't seem to be familiar at all with the terms and explained to the audience what the God helmet experiment was, but he didn't answer the question. (Chris, Karl, please correct me if I'm wrong - I probably didn't hear the tail end of the question, as I can get slightly ADD sometimes if someone rambles on for more than a couple minutes.)

Chris asked a question about a Kantian characteristic in Dawkins' book The God Delusion, which sad to say I have not read yet partially because I think I've heard all the arguments and, frankly, I agree with Dawkins on virtually everything he says. I am not familiar with Kant, so go to Chris's blog if you want to know more about this.

Ally asked a question about the His Dark Materials series of books by Philip Pullman, which is notable for its anti-religion, particularly anti-Catholic, motif. Dawkins said he did not, in fact, think the book was atheist, but rather anti-religion, and apparently has read the whole series. (The movie was apparently more explicitly anti-religion than the book.)

Someone asked a question about the Catholics' new set of deadly sins, which include such apparent vagaries as pollution, genetic engineering, and contraception. (Ratzinger is a fucking joke!) Dr. Dawkins said something along the lines of the fact that human genetics is certainly something to pay attention to ethical stuff about, but that Ratzinger is in fact a dogmatic asshole.

Someone asked a question about the fallacy from human imagination. Obviously, not enough people understand that people are idiots and cannot perceive everything.

I also pissed off Dawkins (which mortified me, as I didn't know whether his response was humorous or serious) when asking him about his appearance in South Park and his erstwhile marriage to Janet Garrison, who he labeled a 'bald transvestite'. (I was a little bit concerned about the fact that he used the term 'bugger' to describe the act of anal sex, but he isn't homophobic, to my knowledge. Dawkins is an obstinate old Englishman.) The point of the question was to ask him about whether he thought anything might trigger a schism in atheists down the road.

"Define satire!"
"[South Park] is a poorly animated, poorly drawn, poorly written, no-good two-bit excuse for a show!"
"You want good satire? Do you know about Monty Python's Life of Brian?"
Parker, Stone, you have been warned.

Karl wishes he had a tape recorder. Damn you, Karl. (I just about died.)

The public lecture was awesome. AHA made an amazing 85 bucks. Dawkins talked about the fact that you can't put a label on a child, about the fact that there are many fallacies which religious people use to attempt to back up their notions, and that religion is destructive. I am sure anyone sitting around me saw me cringe when the picture of female genital mutilation was up on screen.

Marcus Brigstocke's rant about the Abrahamic religions was awesome:

"I'd like to start this week with a request, and this one goes out to the followers of the three Abrahamic religions: the Muslims, Christians, and Jews. It's just a little thing, really, but do you think that when you've finished smashing up the world and blowing each other to bits and demanding special privileges while you do it, do you think that maybe the rest of us could sort of have our planet back? I wouldn't ask, but I'm starting to think that there must be something written in the special books that each of you so enjoy referring to that it's okay to behave like special, petulant, pugnacious pricks.

Forgive the alliteration, but your persistent, power-mad punch-ups are pissing me off. It's mainly the extremists obviously, but not exclusively. It's a lot of 'main-streamers' as well. Let me give you an example of what I'm talking about.

Muslims: listen up my bearded and veily friends! Calm down, okay? Stop blowing stuff up. Not everything that said about you is an attack on the prophet Mohammed and Allah that needs to end in the infidel being destroyed. Have a cup of tea, put on a Cat Stevens record, sit down and chill out. I mean seriously, what's wrong with a strongly-worded letter to The Times?

Christians: you and your churches don't get to be millionaires while other people have nothing at all. They're your bloody rules; either stick to them or abandon the faith. And stop persecuting and killing people you judge to be immoral. Oh, and stop pretending you're celibate -- it's a cover-up for being a gay or a nonce. Right, that's two ticked off.

Jews! I know you're god's 'Chosen People' and the rest of us are just whatever, but when Israel behaves like a violent, psychopathic bully and someone mentions it that doesn't make them anti-semitic. And for the record, your troubled history is not a license to act with impunity now.

Please don't kill us, seriously. As far as I'm concerned this is the only chance we get. When we die it's all over - there's no virgins and pearly gates waiting for us, no big, beardy man saying: [in deep, echoing voice and upper class accent] "Right, so how do you think that went, then? Killed a lot of people in my name I see. Not really what I had in mind. Um, tell you what, have another go as a worm."

I am going to be more brutally honest and be less 'respectful' of other people's views and stop caring about how they feel about their deeply-held religious beliefs being attacked - they attack my atheism all the time; I have the right to attack their Christianity or their Judaism or their Islam or their Hinduism or their Buddhism (I know they're full of shit anyway). Religion should be examined as thoroughly as scientific hypotheses are. People can have their perspectives, but I like to rip perspectives apart.

Bugger what everyone else thinks.

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Richard Dawkins

Richard Dawkins is coming to Wisconsin next week! I bought a ticket and will be showing up in the scarlet letter A t-shirt from his website. Also, AHA is doing a table there. I am excited, and will be bringing my The God Delusion book in the hope of getting it signed by Richard Dawkins, who is one of my heroes.

I encourage all of you to visit the OUT Campaign website, where there is a bunch of good merchandise for purchase.

We watched a documentary on the Dover trial last night, and it provided a glimpse into how ignorant people can be - even Michael Behe, a surprisingly credentialed biochemist (surprisingly credentialed as in 'how the fuck did he get his credentials?'.), who apparently thinks the bacterial flagellum did not evolve from the poison spine on Yersinia pestis when the author of the only article he cited to make his statement says the flagellum DID evolve from the poison spine.

I have an idea. It is a radical one, but one that I think needs to be implemented.

Require that every college student takes a full year of biology, chemistry, and physics. Require everyone who teaches anything, from the university level down to the elementary level, to have a PhD. Abolish religious schools (it is abominable to brainwash young people). Require that every citizen get a college education, and support them when they have familial or financial hardship. (This includes the Amish - I don't give a shit what they think about education and their imaginary friend, we do not need uneducated people running around the country.)

If we can make our university system anything similar to the Irish university system in this respect, where anyone who has the ability can go to college there, that would be a big step.

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First post.

This is a blog about neuroscience, atheism, philosophy, neurotheology, transhumanism, and lots of things.

I am currently studying neuroscience at the University of Wisconsin - Madison.

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