Melvyn Bragg doesn’t like the way A C Grayling and Richard Dawkins talk about religion.

He said: ‘The intellectual slackness and terrorism of these atheists, people who I otherwise respected – Richard Dawkins as an explainer of zoology is peerless, and AC Grayling is a great explainer of philosophy. ‘But when they start discussing religion, it’s disgraceful. Religion is basically a great body of knowledge, and we don’t have many bodies of knowledge.’

No it isn’t. That’s just what it isn’t. It’s anti-knowledge. It’s un-knowledge. It’s a huge body of claims to know things that no one knows. It’s an insult to the very idea of knowledge.

Granted it is certainly possible to know a lot about religion…but it’s possible to know a lot about bears, too; that doesn’t make bears a great body of knowledge.

But he said “basically.” Maybe by “basically” he actually meant “not at all.”

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

I watched quite a good show on the Discovery Channel last night, about grizzly bears. A crew got (we were told) closer than anyone ever before had gotten for an extended period to a bunch of grizzlies at a bay in Alaska where more grizzlies gather than anywhere else. They gather for the salmon.

I confide this bit of gossip to you for a reason. I noticed an interesting thing – not at all surprising, but interesting. It’s a hard life being a bear. You have to pack in the food in order to survive the winter. You can’t decide oh well it’s ok I’ll just keep hunting all winter, because you’ll be hibernating instead.

It’s a hard life, so naturally it’s a competitive life. The males grab food away from the females.

One unfortunate seal got into shallow water and was surrounded by bears so couldn’t get out again, and a female killed it and carried it off. The biggest male followed her, she tried to outrun him for a bit but when that didn’t work she just gave up. The male buried the seal on the beach…at low tide. (The tv crew wryly noted that he had more brawn than brains.) The tide came in, and next morning the seal was gone. The male bear sniffed around the burial spot, and considered killing the tv crew in case they’d done it, and then wandered off and went fishing. Then the seal carcass washed up and a different female, with a cub, found it. A different male came ambling up to take it away from her, and she fought him. The tv crew advised against this, and after he knocked her around a bit she did give up.

That’s life with the bears.

All those big tough males who take all the food off the females – they’re there because their mothers managed to get enough food for both of them to survive. The whole thing depends on the females and their cubs surviving, but the males simply grab the food when they can. It’s a wonder any of them survive to grow up.

(Then again because of the salmon it’s a crowded spot. Bears usually don’t crowd together. The salmon is abundant but the crowding means that females don’t get to keep big carcasses. It would be interesting to know if it all balances out for the females or if they would do better elsewhere.)

It reminded me of Haiti after the earthquake, when men simply pushed and shoved in the food lines and women and children couldn’t get any food.

Pitiless Nature.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

The Minnesota Senate approved the same-sex marriage bill which the governor has already said he will sign.

12!

Twelve and counting.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

The Audacity of being public post was mostly about this, but I was being cryptic for the time being. I’ll stop being cryptic now: it was about Justicar doing a video to call Jen a fucking nitwit for not totally concealing her location from creeping stalking peering thugs like Justicar – who takes very good care to keep his particulars secret, so that he can creep and stalk and peer and call names with impunity.

I watched it and it made me fucking furious, for the reasons mentioned in The Audacity of being public. I was disgusted by his fake rage at Jen for daring to tweet a picture that included a street sign, and by his starting with announcing that he doesn’t believe claims about threats from me or Rebecca, and by his boasting of his own carefully concealed identity, and by his pretending to be giving Jen advice while vomiting all this out in a VIDEO – I was disgusted by the whole venomous thuggish mess. As I said – I never thought about threats at all until people like him – very much including him – started fixating on me. I’m not some neurotic imbecile who thinks the streetlamp is about to kick her – and neither is Jen, or Rebecca, or Amy.

The only reason we think about such things is because Justicar and people like Justicar have been vomiting bile about us in public for two years.

That’s it. There is no other reason. They’re obsessed, and obsessed people are weird and disturbing and worrying. We do not know why they are so obsessed. It’s an amusement and game for them, it’s a social life, but why it revolves around us remains a mystery. But it is not a mystery that the objects of that kind of obsession should find it threatening. No it’s not. Fucking Justicar is just pretending it is, while he carries right on with the obsession and stalking and production of venomous stalkerish videos.

Hooray for Out Atheists, right?! Speak up! Walk tall! Come out of the closet! Be loud be proud be here. Of course if you do, and you have the bad sense to be a feminist or a mouthy woman at the same time, you will be persecuted. But come on out anyway!

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

This thing about feminism and skepticism, and the idea that they make a natural pair…

I don’t think they do, really. I think they can be compatible, but I don’t think they’re made for each other.

You can be skeptical about any given social arrangement, but since feminism can be a social arrangement, that means you can be skeptical about feminism too. Or to put it another way, you can be skeptical about social arrangements and about proposed alternatives to those social arrangements.

Of course most of the justifications for social arrangements in which men as a group are above women as a group are stupid and don’t stand up to interrogation, and in that sense skepticism and critical thinking perhaps are allied with feminism. But that doesn’t mean there are no possible arguments for such arrangements. Some people like hierarchical arrangements, even if they’re not at the top of them.

Here’s one thing about equality as a social arrangement: it puts all the onus on individuals, and strips them of the excuse of their place in the hierarchy. That can be a burden.

In a way I think atheism is more aligned to feminism than skepticism is. Maybe that’s why I answer to the name ”atheist” but not so much to “skeptic.” Monotheism is the ultimate in hierarchical arrangements, after all, with “god” perched on the point of the pyramid, looking down on everyone. “God” is male, so with him sitting at the top it seems as if men get the next layer and women are underneath god and men. But if you yank god off the top then there’s no particular reason to let men have the next layer, and in fact there’s less reason to think humans are sorted into layers at all.

But skepticism isn’t like that. Plenty of skeptics have been skeptical of equality – you know, equality is for losers, because winners don’t want equality because they are winners. Winning is the opposite of equality, isn’t it.

Michael DeDora has an interesting post about atheism, skepticism and social justice.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

There’s a weird trope out there – it’s been out there for awhile but it’s getting more and more so (more weird and more out there). One form of it is to complain of “threat narratives” and in the next breath to assert that we are the most vile awful loathsome abominable people ever. In other words, to pour scorn on the idea that there is any whiff of threat at all, while at the same time working hard to create the very threat that is the object of scorn.

Another form of it is to call us fucking morons for not hiding our names and locations, when in fact it never crossed my mind to hide my name and location, until a bunch of people started spending hours of every day calling me a fucking cunt and all the rest of it.*

See what I mean? It’s so circular. Endless ranting and smearing and mocking, accompanied by

• incredulity about “threat narratives”
• rebukes for not hiding our names and other personal information

Having it both ways, in short.

*It hasn’t seriously crossed my mind to hide my name and location now either, and anyway it’s obviously far too late, but the point is that there wasn’t a trace of a reason even to think about it until a couple of years ago. One day I was just some blogger, the next day I was a punching bag.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Back, I tell you, back!

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

The greetings committee has certainly wasted no time making our new colleague Yemi welcome. She wrote a post on What are Anti-Atheists+ afraid of? and along came Damion Reinhardt and “pitchguest” and john greg to respond.

john greg is as shy and sweet as ever.

Yemisi, you are indeed a perfect fit with FfTB. Dogmatic; poor English skills; poor reading comprehension; vigourous defensive posture; misrepresentation of commentor’s comments.

Yes, you will do well on this dying network of mad ideologues.

Thank you so much, and do you want the casserole dish back?

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Guest post by Bruce Gorton, originally a comment on Then the community can embrace

Jamy Ian Swiss is precisely what is wrong with society, if the reaction to his last talk on Skepticism and ‘identity politics’ is anything to be believed.

I haven’t watched the talk, so recognise what I am talking about is how other people perceive what he said.

Now I had watched his previous talk at TAM and figured that Swiss isn’t a skeptic’s backside – mainly because he took one of his measures of being a skeptic as knowing who James Randi is.

Randi is awesome, and you really should look up his stuff, but it isn’t like he brought down two tablets from mount Sinai bearing the rules of what defines a true skeptic.

Skepticism is not simply about not buying into bigfoot, it is about questioning all claims. This is not only claims that are testable, but also claims which at first appear not to be.

When we think of claims which are genuinely untestable what we actually mean is that they have precisely zero implications for being true. An untestable god is an irrelevant god and the principle of economy demands one get rid of it.

And besides, how do we know something isn’t testable? In the 1960s the Higgs Boson was an untestable claim, then we tested and found it a year ago.

Skepticism isn’t a big tent movement. It is a movement that demands certain standards be applied to one’s beliefs. It demands that we question things in a genuine manner.

That supports feminism – because when push comes to shove the best data on gender inequality we have in society is furnished by feminists.

Feminists can point to the net benefit greater equality has had for societies that are more feminist, they can genuinely point to data detailing how gender inequality harms women and as a consequence harms all.

Heck feminists are even the ones who supply the best data on how patriarchy is harmful to men – with concepts such as toxic masculinity arising out of feminist gender theory.

When we turn to the Men’s Rights Activist side of the debate, we tend to find claims which are often outright lies, or that feminists had pointed out the same things forty years ago.

Genuine skepticism  sides with feminists because when you actually listen to the arguments and assess them ignoring that cancerous urge to shut down the complainer, the feminists have the facts on their side.

It is not because MRAs tend to disagree with feminists that makes them objectionable to skepticsm; while despising women and thinking of them as another inferior species makes them bad human beings, what makes them bad skeptics is their tendency to lie their asses off.

The same goes for anti-racism, the same goes for environmentalism. While one may bemoan the “greenies” who are less than scientific about it, global warming is a fact and so are the dangers of heavy metals in your water supply.

It is not about liking nature, it is about one side presenting facts mixed in with a little bit of bullshit, and the other side simply presenting bullshit.

One of the great slogans of the last decade or so was Stephen Colbert saying “Facts have a liberal bias.” Skepticism is about weighing up facts, trying to figure out what is true and considering the data set before us.

One cannot exclude social and identity issues from skepticism, one cannot proclaim that ‘politics’ is ‘divisive’ to unity within the skeptical movement.  Skepticism is by its nature discordant, it is the voice asking for evidence as everyone else cries their assent and it is the voice that demands basic honesty.

Silencing that voice  because it seems divisive is killing skepticism in the name of the skeptical movement. It is groupthink by definition, it is putting unity ahead of the goals of the skeptical movement.

And that is the cancer that eats at society’s core, the idea that it is better to be unified than correct. The idea that one shouldn’t “switch horses mid-stream” or that reality is by its nature democratic and that even if they are technically right the complainer is always wrong.

We see this in every single debate, whether it be something as trivial as video games or as large as civil rights. If you are demanding somebody leave identity politics at the entrance to the tent, then you what you are saying is in essence “stop thinking about it because thinking is hard.”

And that is precisely what the skeptical movement should oppose.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Via Ron Lindsay at CFI blogs, Leah Libresco posts about “A new forum for Catholic/atheist dialogue.” 

Brandon Vogt, author of The Church and New Media has opened a new site called Strange Notions, that’s meant to be a forum for debate and discussion between Catholics and atheists.  For some reason, it seemed like the readers of this blog might be interested.  Here’s how Brandon describes the site (and explains the name):

StrangeNotions.com is designed to be the central place of dialogue between Catholics and atheists. The implicit goal is to bring non-Catholics to faith, especially followers of the so-called New Atheism. As a ‘digital Areopagus’, the site includes intelligent articles, compelling video, and rich discussion throughout its comment boxes.

Ahhh no. As Ron points out, that’s not dialogue. “Dialogue” is very much the wrong word for that. If you have a goal, and the goal is to “bring” people to something, and that something is “faith” – then what you’re engaging in is not dialogue but a mission.

But calling it a mission would make the goal too explicit, wouldn’t it, and Vogt says the goal is implicit. (It’s nice of him to make it explicit by putting it in writing though.)

Libresco gives a sample of an article of hers at Strange Notions.

What will happen after I convert?
I would say that the terrifying and wonderful thing is that you’re in direct, personal contact with the True, the Good, and the Beautiful. Every moment of wonder you’ve experienced as the resolution chord booms in a symphony, every moment of humble awe as a stranger or friend went out of their way to show you love (or every moment of surprise as you discovered the depths of love you were capable of giving), and every moment you felt the sudden relief of pieces falling into place (whether doing a puzzle, writing a math proof, or reaching the denouement of a mystery novel) were all shadows and images that were trying to point you toward God, the Person they resembled.

Were they? Or was it the other way around? Was it a matter of taking those moments of wonder and awe and so on, and telling yourself “those only a million times more so” and that that’s a Person and that Person is named (what a coincidence) “God”? I, of course, think that is what it was, combined with the pre-existing idea of “God” and a desire to make it into something to fit the expected idea of what “God” is.

It’s decorative, but not convincing.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Katherine Stewart takes a look at homeschooling. (I met Katherine at the American Atheists conference; she was one of the speakers.)

When he was growing up in California, Ryan Lee Stollar was a stellar home schooling student. His oratory skills at got him invited to home schooling conferences around the country, where he debated public policy and spread the word about the “virtues” of an authentically Christian home school education.

Now 28, looking back on his childhood, it all seems like a delusion. As Stollar explains:

“The Christian home school subculture isn’t a children-first movement. It is, for all intents and purposes, an ideology-first movement. There is a massive, well-oiled machine of ideology that is churning out soldiers for the culture war. Home schooling is both the breeding ground – literally, when you consider the Quiverfull concept – and the training ground for this machinery. I say this as someone who was raised in that world.”

Soldiers for the culture war – just what we need. A Christian Taliban in the making.

Many parents start off home schooling with the intention of inculcating their children in a mainstream form of Christianity. However, as many HA bloggers report, it is easy to get sucked into the vortex of fundamentalist home schooling because extremists have cornered the market – running the conventions, publishing the curricula, setting up the blogs.

As HA blogger Julie Ann Smith, a Washington state mother of seven, says:

“If you are the average Christian home schooler with no agenda, and you have the choice between attending a secular home schooling convention and a Christian one, chances are you’ll choose the Christian convention. But they only allow certain speakers who follow their agenda. So you have no clue. What you don’t realize is that they are being run by Christian Reconstructionists.”

Smith is referring to the Calvinist movement, founded by Rousas John Rushdoony, that advocates a Christian takeover of the political system in order to “purify” the nation and cleanse it of the sin of secularism.

We know from Vyckie and Libby Anne and others what that means.

Much of fundamentalist home schooling is driven by deeply sexist and patriarchal ideology. The Quiverfull movement teaches that women need to submit to their husbands and have as many babies as they possibly can. The effects of these ideas on children are devastating, as a glance at HA’s blogs show.

“The story of being home schooled was a story of being told to sit down and shut up. ‘An ideal woman is quiet and submissive,’ I was told time and time again,” writes Phoebe. “The silence and submission I was pushed into was ultimately a place of loneliness, bitterness and almost crippling insecurity.”

The fundamentalist home schooling world also advocates an extraordinarily authoritarian view of the parental role. Corporal punishment is frequently encouraged. The effects are, again, often quite devastating.

Like children beaten to death by parents who paid too much attention to Michael Pearl.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)