Why My Activism Goes Up to 11

You may have noticed that I am an atheist and that I talk about it a lot. My vocal nature about it has led family to call me "anti-church" and friends to make remarks, in jest, along the lines of, "Has he reminded us he's an atheist in the past minute?"

First off, to clear the air: I'm not anti-church, in that I do not actively work for the dismantling of religion. While I think that religion is ultimately unnecessary (if I didn't, I'd be religious) and think that, if we continue in a trend of growing skepticism and reason, religion will ultimately disappear, I have no objection to people who use religion to be genuinely good people (such as the ever-awesome Gerald Palmer).

The next point: why am I so active and vocal about being an atheist, a secularist, and an LGBT ally? Why do I have my activism "turned up to 11"? It's because I'm working for a world when I don't have to be so vocal about it.

As far as Christians go, Gerald is in a minority - not just because he preaches a loving and inclusive form of Christianity, but because he is vocal about it. What struck me about him was that I first met him when he was organizing a protest of the Canaan Worship Center's hosting of an anti-LGBT pastor - a Christian, organizing a protest of another Christian church. We (atheists, Christians, Muslims, Hindus) need people like Gerald Palmer - someone willing to look inward at their religion or movement, identify the harmful elements of it, and work to excise or repair it, both for the good of the religion/movement and the good of society as a whole.

But, as I said, Gerald is in a minority. Many Christians - perhaps, dare I say, a majority of them in the first world - share his views on homosexuality, secularism, and women's rights, but so few are willing to speak out about it like Gerald does. Never do I see Catholics organizing protests against the Vatican telling nuns to stop helping people and hate gay people more; overwhelmingly, the counter-protests of the Phelps family are atheists or non-religious; Catholic priests will compare Obama to Hitler and Stalin, but never criticize Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, or the Discovery Institute for promoting hate and ignorance.

We live in a problem of a very religious conservative political movement, represented largely by the Republican party, and social movement, spearheaded by organizations such as the Discovery Institute, Child Evangelism Fellowship, and the Good News Club, that would seek to put society under their religious rule, and these people overwhelmingly get a pass by some of the most powerful religious institutions in our world. Until we get more Gerald Palmers in the Vatican telling nuns to focus more on social justice and concern themselves less with what gay people do in the bedroom and publicly rebuking celebrity religious people like Joel Osteen, I'm going to firmly and proudly keep my activism turned up to 11.

My Life: Defined by My Inevitable Death

I subscribe to /r/godlesswomen, if just to gain insight to a side of the atheist movement that I may (and, unfortunately, probably won't) see on /r/atheism. As a result, I came across this self post, in which a member of the subreddit posted about how accepting her eventual death made her realize how valuable the people are in her life.

I, myself, have come to the same conclusion: our time truly is limited. When I die, the electrical signals in my brain will fade and my brain will eventually decompose to such a state as to make the revival of me impossible (pending some kind of miracle technology, anyway). This is inevitable, unavoidable, and impending, no matter how much I may want for otherwise (point in fact, I had an epiphany as a teen that one of my biggest reasons for believing in religion was the comfort of the idea of life beyond corporeal death).

As a result of this, I find this to be a constant reminder and motivator to do things. For example, more than once, I find myself just feeling bummed and crappy. Now, I could stay in with my dogs (who I love to death - no pun intended), maybe have a drink, watch some TV, and call it a night (and, if I did this, maybe I'd eat through my book backlog at a faster pace). However, I mentally fast-forward to my deathbed (assuming I'm so lucky as to have the time to reflect on my life before I die): looking back, do I want to have missed time with people simply because I didn't feel like going out? Which is something I can enjoy more - the memory of a TV episode while on my couch, or the stories, jokes, and ideas exchanged with friends over drinks and food? The answer, of course, should be obvious.

Furthermore, it's affected how I deal with my personal relationships. When my theocratic uncle decided to unfriend me over a spat about the value of prayer versus a USO care package, I didn't pay it any real concern. Why not?

The short answer is: he's a bit of an asshole. The long answer is: I only have a limited amount of time before I cease to exist. This means my time and energy are bound by my eventual death. Yes, I could spend time and effort trying to heal the rift between us (though to what good, I cannot say - he and I are so ideologically opposed that we'd be at constant odds on issues of secularism, LGBT rights, and exclusion of Biblical science from schools), but that same time and effort that are bounded would be so much better-invested in helping a friend deal with family problems, or helping a friend with relationship troubles, or just spending time with a friend for socialization. When I look back on my life on my deathbed, would I rather have spent time working on a relationship with someone that I, quite honestly, probably couldn't tolerate their presence beyond discussion of the latest blockbuster movie, or spent time helping and developing friends who I trust intimately?

Acknowledgement of my death has also given me purpose in life. After I die, given enough time, eventually no one will remember me (I definitely don't have any kind of soul to linger around and remember myself). The only things that truly have a chance to survive me are my contributions to society, however small: promotion of LGBT equality, promotion of freedom of religion as well as freedom from religion, charitable donations in terms of time and money to help those in need, working to protect education from those who would seek to dumb down children in the interest of preservation of their religion, and other issues. Some call me loud-mouthed, obnoxious, and dramatic, but I simply call it trying to leave the world in a better shape than I found it.

All in all, life without death would still have meaning, but life with death leaves me with at least a sense of urgency to do shit.

"The Good News Club" and the Bad News About Religion in Schools

I first heard of Katherine Stewart on the Richard Dawkins Foundation's site, in which they promoted this very book in question. What I took away from the article was that the book would go in-depth on the techniques used by Christian evangelical organizations to circumvent Establishment Clause rulings to prosthelytize to children (the concrete example given was teaching children to preach to their fellow schoolmates, which doesn't violate secular laws of the U.S.).

What I got was so much more.

Katherine Stewart has obviously put a lot of effort into this book - she gives several first-hand accounts of her experiences, be they at the recent uproar in Texas over the conservative "rewrite" of textbooks, to the after-effects of the divisive and polarizing nature of the Good News Club, or even in the lion's den itself - an evangelical conference teaching people how to infiltrate the public school system.

Beyond that, though, Katherine does a superb job of going over the fight for secularism throughout the U.S. history - even I, myself, an activist among atheists, was surprised to learn that the same fight we have today between the Republican and other conservative theocrats and secularists of today was fought just the same in the mid-1800's, the theocrats using the same arguments as they do today.

Furthermore, Katherine goes over how key decisions by conservative and religious Supreme Court justices such as Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas casting religious groups in schools as protected by the first amendment (categorizing it as "freedom of speech" rather than "freedom of religion") has drastically altered the tactics and efficacy of evangelical groups' targeting of children.

These are but a few of the topics Katherine Stewart discusses in her book, and I've only touched on the surface of the topics present in this article. Bottom line: this book will open your eyes to the problem of encroaching evangelicals on the public school system (and the children in those schools) and create a sense of urgency within you to do something and get involved - which is definitely something atheists (and non-atheist secularists) can definitely stand to do.

On a related note, I've scheduled Katherine Stewart to come to Kansas City and give a talk about her book. It's not something to be missed! Find out more in the Facebook event post:

https://www.facebook.com/events/172864019499966/

"Sex and God: How Religion Distorts Sexuality": A Book Review

I first found out about Darrel Ray at Skepticon IV in November:

My friends from Kansas City gushed about his book, The God Virus, and the quality of his character. I found his talk both entertaining and informative - I have a layman's interest in human sexuality (beyond just the interest in sex most humans have, whether they acknowledge it or not) and the survey describing sexual satisfaction before and after deconversion was something that hit home.

When the book was finally released, my friends and I decided to start a book club, featuring his book as our charter book; as such, I didn't actually get around to reading it until my flight to Washington D.C. for Reason Rally and the 2012 American Atheists Convention. Three days later, on my flight home, I closed the book, having finished it, and I'm here to tell you: this is an intensely interesting and relatable depiction of sexuality in humanity.

I've seen most, if not all, of Darrel's presentations on this book - the duck sexual physiology, the "rubber band" theory (which I find to be a fantastic metaphor for the dynamics between religious sexual upbringing and natural sexuality), the "50-0-50" theory - and, for those who share my situation, I can tell you that there's still more to be found in this book. Darrel does a good job, in my opinion, of answering how, despite the fact that sexually-restrictive individuals (monogamy, no sex before or outside of marriage) will tend to reproduce less, such sexual ideas came to be the dominant sexual ideology in major world religions, and he gives great information on the sexual practices of existing human societies, demonstrating the value of accepting and working with, rather than against, harmless sexual urges (as well as much more).

What made this book the most significant to me, however, were the personal stories. Coming from a religious background myself, and having dated a girl from a very conservative and religious background, the stories of sexual frustrations and guilt told by stories submitted to Darrel and reprinted in his book struck a very personal note, and I found it to be extremely cathartic to know that I was not the only one (in fact, such an experience was the source of my "A Healthy Fear of Hell" blog post a week or so back).

Bottom line: great book, and you'll know more about sex (assuming you're not a clinical psychologist specializing in human sexuality, of course) coming out than you did going in. Pick up a copy today.

Your Credulity Annoys Me

This video recently came across my news feed on Facebook. To summarize it: a woman had accidentally driven into the lake. Rescuers were unable to break the windows out to save her. As the van finally sunk beneath the water, one of the rescuers felt the woman grab his arm beneath the water, and he pulled her out to safety. When they pulled the van out of the water, though, none of the windows were open or broken. The previously-linked site, and all others I found of the video, proclaim about how this was obviously a miracle by their god.

This is a prime example of credulity. The truth of the matter is, I don't know how she was able to get out of the van, and neither do these people. This exposes their ignorance and their simplicity: instead of trying to figure out a rational, likely explanation for the situation, they simply cry, "God dunnit!" and claim it as a miracle. They never stop to think that - maybe - she was able to open the door and pass through that. While such a hypothesis struggles with the fact that it would require significant force to open the door against the pressure applied by the water around the car, it's still more likely to be the cause than divine magic - at least for this explanation, we have the additional substantiation of amazing feats of strength when someone's pumped with adrenaline, and nothing gets adrenaline pumping like imminent death by suffocation or drowning.

What's more annoying is that sites and people like this don't like to tell the stories of when their god sends tornadoes to kill people, ignores prayers by his followers to save them, and brutally murders and scatters them. No, these people, in their annoying credulity, only look to credit their god when it makes them or their religion look good.

This isn't intended as an argument against the existence of a god (another place, another time), but an argument against falling into a state of giving up intellectual pursuits simply because it might be too hard and simply easier to credit your god with a miracle. Isaac Newton made the same mistake when he couldn't explain the stationary orbits of the planets, instead crediting his god with keeping them in place. Imagine where we would be if, every time we came upon something we didn't understand, we simply threw up our hands, declared that a god must be responsible, and stopped there.

If you'll excuse me, I'm feeling quite ill right now, and I must rush to a doctor's appointment where he'll proceed to drill holes in my head to let out the evil spirits that afflict me so with this illness.