Good Reason

It's okay to be wrong. It's not okay to stay wrong.

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Like the bus ad? Get the shirt.

7 January 2009 / / 1 Comment

The atheist buses are out!

An atheist advertising campaign has been launched on buses across Britain.

A fund-raising drive for the promotion, carrying the slogan “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life”, raised more than £140,000.

The campaign, which will also feature on the Tube, is backed by the British Humanist Association and prominent atheist, Professor Richard Dawkins.

And there’s a t-shirt to match. Perth will soon see me rocking the “Probably No God” t-shirt,


but I don’t think I’ll carry it off as well as Ariane Sherine.

Interestingly, the C of E felt a desire to comment.

The Church of England said Christian faith allowed people to put their life into a “proper perspective”.

A spokesman said: “We would defend the right of any group representing a religious or philosophical position to be able to promote that view through appropriate channels.

“However, Christian belief is not about worrying or not enjoying life.”

Well, I can tell you that spending Sunday mornings lounging about with Ms Perfect is much more conducive to enjoying life than spending 3 hours in church hearing stuff like this:

2:25 And now I ask, can ye say aught of yourselves? I answer you, Nay. Ye cannot say that ye are even as much as the dust of the earth…

2:33 For behold, there is a wo pronounced upon him who listeth to obey that [evil] spirit; for if he listeth to obey him, and remaineth and dieth in his sins, the same drinketh damnation to his own soul; for he receiveth for his wages an everlasting punishment, having transgressed the law of God contrary to his own knowledge.

or

12:17 Then is the time when their torments shall be as a lake of fire and brimstone, whose flame ascendeth up forever and ever; and then is the time that they shall be chained down to an everlasting destruction, according to the power and captivity of Satan, he having subjected them according to his will.

If this were true, wouldn’t the idea of getting tormented for eternity cause you some worry? Wouldn’t it mitigate your enjoyment of life just a tad if you were occasionally told that you were worse than dirt?

Time to spread the Good News, which is that the punishment forewarned by religions is most likely fictional. You are free. Now enjoy your life.

Quick links

5 January 2009 / / Comments Off on Quick links

Blind people use facial expressions in the same way as sighted people do, including those strained smiles you use when you’re not really happy. This provides more evidence that facial expressions are innate and not learned.

Where do you think love comes from, Mr Atheist? Can’t see love in your microscope, can you? Actually, you can, if you’re doing brain scans. And what they find is that some people still feel twittery about each other after 20 years, instead of the 18 months most of us get. They call these couples ‘swans’, but that’s not a good name. Swans are cranky critters. But I think Ms Perfect and I will still be swanning about, still coursing with dopamine in each other’s presence, even after 20 blissful years.

Fear the hammer of Thor! A man dressed as the God of War after a costume party frightened off a burglar. Maybe the burglar was a philosophical theist who realised that you can’t discriminate between two supernatural claims — it doesn’t matter whether the god is Christian or Norse, you’d better book. Personally, I’d be much more frightened of Thor than of Jesus. People in sandals are easier to outrun. On the other hand, if Jesus has come as that psychopathic Old Testament god, then all bets are off. Best to run first and ask theological questions later.

Toplessness threatened on Australian beaches

1 January 2009 / / 1 Comment

Christian lawmaker and serial pest Fred Nile is at it again, doing his best to turn Australia into a nation of prudes. Apparently, women’s breasts make him feel funny, so he wants to ban them on beaches.

Arguing that the sight of women without bikini tops is offensive, Reverend Fred Nile, a conservative lawmaker of the Christian Democrats, has won backing from key politicians in the state of New South Wales to tighten existing laws covering nude sunbathing.

Nile has drafted a bill to be introduced in the legislature to ban topless sunbathing in the eastern Australian state.

“The law should be clear. It must say exposure of women’s breasts on beaches will be prohibited,” he was quoted as saying by the Daily Telegraph.

What’s the compelling reason here?

“If we don’t, we could have people saying ‘I’m not nude. I can walk (topless) down (Sydney’s main street),” he said.

One lawmaker has considered the possibilities, perhaps a bit too much.

“If you’re on the beach do you want somebody with big knockers next to you when you’re there with the kids?” asked Labour government MP Paul Gibson.

Well, um, exactly how big are we talking about here?

It’s difficult to imagine just how disconnected someone like Nile is. These are our bodies. Babies see breasts every day. Any normal person would just look away if they didn’t like them, but Nile wants to get the law involved because of his sense of disgust for the body and his desire to control others — not an atypical mix in Christianity. Has he not considered that restricting mammary visualisation will just drive kids to porn?

For those interested in preserving the cause of liberty, certain forms of protest spring easily to the imagination.

Official atheism? Not hardly.

31 December 2008 / / 2 Comments

Michael Newdow is trying to get “so help me God” out of the Presidential swearing-in ceremony. Do I think it will succeed? No. Do I think it’s kind of annoying and crazy? Yes. But I’m happy to see him try. He’s doing the work for us, pushing the Overton Window, and making all us other atheists look nice and sensible. Good on him. The state shouldn’t be taking sides — promoting either religion or atheism — in this debate, and references to a god counts as ‘taking sides’.

But there’s a bit of confusion about what promoting atheism looks like. The confusion is coming from the Peter Sprig, of the Family Research Council. Given the source, I have to assume that this is manufactured confusion, which we also call ‘dishonesty’. Anyhow, here’s part of a back-and-forth, starting with Dan Barker, one of the plaintiffs and co-president of the Freedom from Religion Foundation.

And we’re also challenging Chief Justice Roberts for overstepping his authority in inserting the phrase, “So help me God” into the presidential oath which is in the Constitution. That is un-American. It is unfair. It marginalizes. It makes those of us good Americans who don’t believe in God second-class citizens. It’s unfair.

Good so far. Now the other side from Sprig.

But ironically, if a lawsuit like this were to succeed, we would be in effect establishing atheism as the national religion by barring any mention of God or any allusion to religion in any public ceremony.

No, this is wrong. And it’s not just because atheism is not a religion.

I hear this all the time from Christians, who say, “They’re trying to make our [ schools | government | restaurants ] atheistic by removing all references to God.” The problem here is that having no particular mention of religion or god does not constitute de facto atheism. It’s just a normal, default position.

Let me show you what ‘promoting atheism’ looks like. If Mr Obama were to invite me to give a speech at his inauguration in which I would explain to everyone why there’s probably no god, talk about the damage that religion can do on a societal and personal level, and encourage everyone to leave their religions — then that would be promoting atheism. If, on the other hand, Mr Obama invites some religious loon to give a speech exhorting some god to favour the nation with blessings (oh, wait, that did happen), then that would be promoting religion. Either one would be taking sides, and would be inappropriate.

Having neither of us give a speech or a prayer would not be promoting religion or atheism. It would just be normal.

I present this as a public service to my over-anxious religious readers. Now you know what ‘promotion of atheism’ looks like, so you can recognise it in case you ever see it for once in your life.

UPDATE: Noticed this article, in which Barker says it better than I:

Asked if prayer is excluded, wouldn’t that mean government is choosing atheists as the winner, Barker replied, “There is a difference between neutrality and hostility.

“If the government were to invite me as a national atheist leader to get up and give an invocation that curses the name of God and that encourages people to stop believing and stop being so childish and divisive then that would be wrong because the government would be taking a pro-atheist position,” he said.

Why abstinence doesn’t work

30 December 2008 / / 4 Comments

We already knew that abstinence doesn’t work, and virginity pledges are particularly ineffective. There’s a new study that bears out this result, but it highlights a new problem: kids who take virginity pledges are even less likely to use birth control and condoms. So abstinence education is not just useless, it’s worse than useless.

Why might this be? One idea going around:

Virginity pledgers may be less likely to use condoms and contraception because many abstinence programs cause participants to develop negative attitudes about their effectiveness.

Maybe program leaders are saying this, but I don’t think we need to resort to this idea to explain what’s going on. My experience as a horny teen in the Mormon Church has provided me with a hypothesis.

When you do something wrong, you need to pray for forgiveness from your sin, right? And Mormons regard sexual sin as particularly grievous. Consider:

• Mormons think that doing the horizontal mambo with anyone other than your husband or wife (or wives) is the worst thing you can do, second only to “the shedding of innocent blood or denying the Holy Ghost“.

Oh, wait. I knew there was something I forgot to do today.

I deny the Holy Ghost.

That’s better.

• An LDS General Authority (can’t find which one — someone help me here) told a story of his father seeing him off at the train station for a mission, and telling him that he’d rather the boy come back in a coffin than having had sex. And get this — my own father told me that story approvingly when I went off to BYU. He’d have preferred me dead than to have made a mistake. Then again, maybe I could have come home at the end of the year on a Greyhound Bus — alive — but in an actual coffin. It’d be a fun way to break the news.

But seriously, folks: this is a fact worth repeating. As with all authoritarian movements, Mormons hate sex. No, they don’t. They are willing to put up with sex, as long as it makes more little Mormons. Let’s just say that Mormons love sex, but they don’t like anyone else having any. Which makes perfect evolutionary sense. If you have sex, but repress everyone else from having any, there’s less competition for your genes.

Anyway, the main point here: Mormons regard unhallowed bonking as Very Serious. It involves prayer and contrition, as well as confession to The Bishop, which is very embarrassing because he’s just another guy in the community.

So Mormon youth, when faced with temptation, are unlikely to buy condoms or use birth control. That’s premeditated! That’s like planning to sin! How are you going to be forgiven from a sin you’ve been planning to do? What they do, since they’re Good Kids, is try to Be Good and abstain. But hormones being what they are, it frequently fails, and then you get pregnant teenagers.

(I don’t know if this line of thinking holds outside of Mormondom, but I bet it does. Non-Mormons: does this match your experience?)

The take-away here is that having stupid starting assumptions (a god wants you to abstain) leads to unwanted outcomes (riskier sex than normal). A better starting assumption would be: some kids are going to do it, and you can’t watch your kids 24 hours a day. Parents can encourage them to have sexual relations responsibly, if they must. Better to be immoral than to be immoral and pregnant.

The whistling orangutan

29 December 2008 / / Comments Off on The whistling orangutan

Bonnie is an orangutan who has learned how to whistle from humans. Article plus video here.

The 140-pound (63.5-kilometer) orangutan at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., has been whistling for about two decades.

Now a new study suggests that the sounds she makes could hold clues about the origins of human language.

“The assumption is that someone was whistling and she probably picked it up from them,” said animal keeper and study co-auther Erin Stromberg.

Lisa Stevens, the zoo’s curator for great apes and giant pandas, said the key point is that the orangutan was not trained to whistle.

While orangutans can be taught new sounds with extensive training, Bonnie is the first indication that the animals can independently pick up the sounds from other species.

“It’s something she spontaneously developed,” Stevens said. “It wasn’t a trick.”

How does this relate to human language? Some linguists are interested in how language might have arisen in primates. In particular, Michael Arbib’s ‘Mirror Hypothesis‘ suggests that the ability to recognise and imitate the actions of others (both gestures and vocalisation) may have played a key role. Communication prepared the evolving brain for more complex cognition, and more complex cognition led to more involved communication.

With that in mind, it’s interesting that an ape would be able to imitate such an oral (if not vocal) behaviour. I was kind of surprised, however, that an orangutan was doing the imitating. As I remember, orangutans are rather solitary, and communication is social behaviour. Evidently the wiring for this kind of imitation goes pretty deep.

Meeting one of my converts

26 December 2008 / / 6 Comments

I was an LDS missionary in the late 80s, spending two years of my life to promote superstition, magical thinking, and (worst of all) faith. The whole thing embarrasses me acutely now. I sometimes try and excuse myself; I was under the influence of well-meaning family and friends, born into a religious system that valued its own perpetuation. However, I’m pleased to say that out of all the people I taught and baptised, none is active.

Except one family. I remember them especially because of the numerous discussions we had. As a missionary, I always felt a bit paternal toward people I taught. I tried to explain things to them, convince them of church doctrine, and persuade them to accept, one by one, an ever-increasing cycle of commitments. The trick of this, I realise now, was that, once the investigator is more and more heavily invested in the Mormon Church with time, effort, and money, the more the sunk cost fallacy takes over and the harder it is for investigators to extricate themselves. You don’t believe in the Church? Then why are you doing all these things? And if they don’t get out, on the cycle goes.

I’d seen this family around church over the years, but just the other day I ran into the mom at the shopping centre. We chatted, and she asked how I was going with church. So I explained that I was no longer a member, and that I didn’t do religion anymore.

Some people have taken this with some equanimity, but not her. She was shaken. “Why not?” she asked.

Ordinarily, I’d tell someone the usual: I’d thought the whole thing was true, but eventually I realised the evidence for God wasn’t there; that science does a much better job of getting at reality; that if you have faith in something it makes you less able to think critically about it, et cetera, et cetera. But I realised that I couldn’t give my usual spiel in this situation. The roles we’d played for each other were too different. See, her main memory of me was the guy who sat in her house representing the LDS Church, convincing her to spend hours of her life in the service of this group. Now I was bailing, and she was still there. And something in her tone suggested to me that she was not too happy about that. Some people really seem to enjoy being Mormons; somehow she gave the opposite impression. But how would she ever pull the ejector seat? Could I now be the anti-missionary, or would that make me seem completely evil? The whole Mormon image-conscious bullshit thing was doing a number on my head once again.

A funny thing: I didn’t sugar-coat the facts about the Church being wrong, but I didn’t argue tooth and nail either. I wonder why I held back. Maybe I’m sick of being The Evangelist. Evangelism’s for fools. And she hadn’t asked for me to change her religion that day, just as she hadn’t asked me to change it all those years ago. Had I interfered enough? On the other hand, I cared about this person as we argued about religion there in the shopping centre. I regretted the monstrous waste of her time that I was directly responsible for. If I could start her on a process of fact-hunting, maybe she could eventually get free of an organisation that she didn’t enjoy promulgating. Or would that just put her at loggerheads with her Mormon (and in some cases RM) family? Was I proffering freedom, or conflict? What do you do?

What I did was this: I told her about my experience of leaving the LDS Church, and how worthwhile it’s been. I gave my reasons plainly. And when she tried turning the tables and invited me to a church activity, I did what she should have done all those years ago: I politely declined.

There was one thing I didn’t say that I wish I had. All those years ago, when she looked up to me as a spiritual example, it was because I said what I believed, and told the truth insofar as I knew it. And that’s what I’m still doing now. There was no reason for her to think less of me, or me of myself. Quite the contrary.

But ever since that chance meeting in the shopping centre, I have had this inescapable impression: that out of all the rotten, evil, terrible actions in my life (not that there are all that many), serving a mission for the Mormon Church was by far the worst thing I have ever done. Not only did I waste part of my life in furthering ignorance, I wasted other people’s lives too.

Only one set of footprints in the snow

23 December 2008 / / 2 Comments

Another foolish mortal mistakes the Divine Will.

The husband of an Ontario woman who went missing for three days after a blizzard and was found alive outside in frigid temperatures is calling her survival a divine miracle.

Donna Molnar, 55, disappeared Friday after going out to buy groceries. She was found Monday in a clearing near Ancaster, Ont., buried under 60 centimetres of snow.

She was in hospital Tuesday in critical condition and could lose some extremities, but is expected to survive.
…
“You know what I think, in all honesty?” David Molnar [her husband] said in a telephone interview Tuesday. “My sort of take on it is that God reached down and cradled her in His arms until they found her.”

In his freezing cold arms.

No, this is another act of malevolence from a perfectly Evil God. He tried to kill her, but her snow-burrowing and the rescue efforts of humans thwarted his evil intentions. He extracted his revenge though — it looks like she’ll lose some fingers and toes and have pain and discomfort the rest of her life. If a good god had been looking after her, he’d have found a way to keep her limbs intact. Thank goodness people were able to find her, no thanks to Evil God.

Music vs lyrics

20 December 2008 / / 5 Comments

I’ve been doing lots of Christmas music with my two choirs this week. Last week it was “An Australian Bush Christmas”, with lots of Wheeler and James. You non-Australians have probably never heard of such Christmas classics as “The Three Drovers”, “The Silver Stars Are in the Sky”, and “Sing Gloria”, which is a shame because they really are lovely carols, and very Australian. And tomorrow it’s Handel’s Messiah, which I’ve decided to perform from memory, partly because this is my 7th year and it’s about time, and partly because I don’t know which box my score is in.

Christmas music is one of my favourite things about the season, but have you noticed that the songs are very frequently about Jebus? Funny that. And it’s giving this atheist a case of the screaming jeebies. I want to enjoy it for the music, but it’s hard to do when it means you’re affirming the existence of angels, resurrection, and salvation from non-existent punishment. It’s enough to drive you to reindeer.

I mean, the Messiah is gorgeous and so fun to perform. But I kind of grit my teeth during “I Know That My Redeemer Liveth”, and I feel the incongruity especially keenly during “Since By Man Came Death”, where the choir sings “E’en so, in Christ shall all be made alive.” And I realise that I’m somehow reifying a view I think is false.

I still love Christmas, and I hope that by celebrating it, I can contribute to its secularisation. But the religious nature of it is so entrenched in all that lovely musical tradition. I suppose I’ll eventually either relax about it and capitulate, or else stop performing it.

Conversations with the Witnesses, part 1

16 December 2008 / / 2 Comments

A couple of Jehovah’s Witnesses came by today, elder gentlemen. Here’s how it went, as close as I can remember.

Stage 1: Door Approach

ME: Hi, guys! Come on in.

JW: Oh, we won’t come in. We’re with a group. But we wanted to ask you some questions about Christmas.

ME: Okay.

JW: Do you know when Jesus was born?

ME: Well, it sure wasn’t December 25th.

JW: That’s right. And do you know where Christmas traditions came from?

ME: Christians mostly just stole it from pagan rituals.

JW: Right again!

ME: W00t!

JW: Jesus never said to celebrate his birthday. We’d like to share a message about Jesus with you.

Stage 2: Hostage Negotiation

ME: Well, guys, here’s the problem. You try and stay away from pagan rituals, which is fine, but you’ve essentially traded one Bronze Age mythology for another. I prefer to stay away from mythologies altogether and stick with something more empirical, like science. Why would we want to get information about the world and the universe from people who didn’t even have telescopes?

JW: Well, in 2 Timothy 2:16, it says “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness”

(Sorry, that’s not exactly what it said. I couldn’t be bothered to find the NWT online.)

ME: So… the Bible is true because the Bible says that it’s true?

JW: (Pause.) No, it’s also true because the Bible contains predictions that have been fulfilled in every detail.

ME: Oh. Like what?

JW: It contains prophecies about the Messiah, which Jesus fulfilled.

ME: You’re serious.

JW:

ME: That’s part of the same story. You can’t use the story as evidence for the story! ‘Oh, look! A prophecy in the first part of the book… was fulfilled later on in the same book!’

I used to be a Mormon. They claim that the Book of Mormon fulfills prophecies in the Bible. But in both cases, someone could have just written down a story that tied up some loose ends. Why would you reject the Book of Mormon and accept the Bible?

Stage 3: Disengage

JW: You don’t have faith in the Bible, then?

ME: No, I’d say not.

JW: We’ll just be on our way then. But we’ll leave you this publication.

ME: Thank you very much, and enjoy the… next couple of weeks.

JW: Goodbye.

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