Burning Korans, drawing Mohammed, avoiding hypocrisy, creative vs. destructive protests — religion just makes the whole frickin' world crazy!

There's a truth about the upcoming Koran cookout planned by Dove World Church and its grandstanding (and light-fingered) pastor Terry Jones: they have every right under the Constitution to do this thing. Are they a bunch of dicks who don't care about the potential devastating backlash of their actions as long as they get the publicity they crave? Yeah, I suppose they are.

Recently, atheists proudly participated in an online event called Everybody Draw Mohammed Day, which was as deliberate a middle finger to Islam as we could have thought up. Before that, PZ Myers famously threw a cracker in the trash, making him the bête noire of Catholics worldwide. (Though they conveniently forget that he also trashed a copy of The God Delusion at the same time.) As people who are not above acts of deliberate provocation ourselves — indeed, as people who are currently arguing amongst ourselves about the merits of "being a dick" in our encounters with religionists — it would hardly be honest of us to join the chorus of chest-beating outrage against Jones' church for the horrible offense of burning somebody's holy book. While most of us, I'm sure, take Fahrenheit 451 to heart and deplore book-burning on general principles as a disgraceful act of intellectual cowardice and the suppression of ideas, we should also acknowledge the legitimacy of the act as a form of protest speech. After all, I can't very well defend the rights of flag-burners while condemning a Koran-burner. Don't work dat way!

I suppose where the conversation ought to go from here for atheists is in whether or not Jones is motivated by a desire to conduct a legitimate form of protest, or if he's simply a crass political opportunist, playing into a rising tide of anti-Muslim bigotry in order to increase his profile from "obscure pastor of an outcast hick church" to "internationally famous martyr and warrior for Christ". Well, what is legitimate protest in this context? Yes, radical Islamists brought down the World Trade Center. But all Muslims are not radical Islamists, and all Muslims did not partake in, let alone condone, the 9/11 attacks. So if Jones's idea is that he's protesting Islam for 9/11, he's clearly throwing his net way too wide. The thing is, I suppose he knows it, but doesn't care. He's getting the publicity he wants.

The potential for hypocrisy in criticizing the upcoming burning has been much on my mind, and I've been forced to think about the similarities and differences between what Jones is about to do, and, say, Everybody Draw Mohammed Day. And then I've been forced to question whether or not any of my ideas are simply bullshit justifications I've been making up to feel better. I don't think they are. But I do think it's a positive thing, overall, that I'm willing to be self-critical. This is an advantage the godless life offers, I think, over the brazen certainties of God-botherers like Jones, who confidently assert that God (i.e., their projection of themselves upon the universe) truly wants them to do what they're planning.

Everybody Draw Mohammed Day, for one thing, was on the whole a creative rather than destructive act of protest. It was a response, not only to the real Islamist violence and threats of violence that erupted in the wake of the publication of a few innocuous (and not especially good, when you think about it) cartoons, but to the arrogant assumption on the part of Islamists that non-Muslims were somehow obligated to follow Islam's rules. Also, at the end of the day, what you had were a bunch of silly cartoons. While there was a little huffing and puffing about EDMD, in the end, the message I think got across (to the general public, if not to radicals) that taking someone's life over a lame doodle was both insane and pitiful in equal measure. Lame doodles themselves can't possibly hurt a fly. EDMD might have offended some Muslims. But in the end, no one killed anyone.

Now, piling up a couple hundred copies of the Koran and torching them — that would be a destructive form of protest. Furthermore, it's hypocritical of Jones to justify it by condemning Islam as a hateful, intolerant religion, when he has a history of hate speech (against gays, the usual suspects) and intolerance. While I think Jones has the right to go through with his speech, I don't think his motives are honest. He's exactly what he condemns, except that his religious radicalism wears a cross rather than a crescent moon and star. (The atheists who took part in EDMD might condemn Islam and Islamist violence, but we'd never want to deprive Muslims of their right to worship, as many right-wingers do right now.)

Could this event trigger more terrorist attacks and counter-strikes against our troops overseas? Yeah, I suppose it could, though it isn't as if they needed more reasons to do that. But if Jones ends up giving them one, the first such attack will be all the vindication he needs. "See, we were right about how violent Islam is!" Not caring that, in this instance, he threw the first punch. Yeah, it's entirely valid to condemn radical Islamists for doing what they actually do, which is kill people who aren't sufficiently "respectful" to their beliefs. But you limit your condemnation to those individuals and groups who do the violence. As has been pointed out to an indifferent Jones, it's absurd and dishonest as hell for him to suggest that he's only protesting the violent Islamists, and that "moderate Muslims" ought to support him, when it's their holy book he's burning too.

In the end, I think what we as atheists should take away from all this insanity is a sobering realization that this is the kind of world you get when religion runs the show. Belief pits us against our fellow man for the most absurd of reasons: failure to worship the correct invisible magic man in the correct way. And for all that defenders bleat about the alleged benefits of religion — that sense of charity, well-being, love and community we are told believers enjoy better than any of the rest of us — they always leave out the part about religion's innate tribalism. Whatever benefits religious beliefs confer are only enjoyed by those within that particular belief community. If you're an outsider...run.

We rationalists can only hope humanity outgrows its penchant for religious tribalism one day, and that all these vile superstitions are eradicated from our cultural landscape completely. (Not through violence, of course, but through intellectual and moral awakening.) There really ought to only be one tribe — humanity.

But until then...yeah, go ahead, burn that Koran. Whatever. I'll be at home that day. Let me know when the smoke clears and it's safe to breathe free again.

An Inspiration!

We received a letter this week from a woman who had an upbeat story worth sharing. I don’t think I would ever have thought to try this, but what a great idea:

I have written in before about general stuff but I had a story about something that happened yesterday that I would love some opinions on. Near where I work, on nice days there are usually a lot of people out proselytizing. Now, I have dealt with street and door-to-door proselytizing before, usually women; and they have usually not been too bad. However, I find the idea of going up to people on the street to push religion kind of appalling, and though I personally don't mind, because it offers the opportunity for discussion, I still find it to be incredibly rude. I understand the reason they go around in pairs, or sometimes even groups of 3 or 4, so they are able to corner people. And it just bothers me.

So I was walking home from work, and I spotted two young men with Bibles talking to some young lady sitting on a park bench. I decided to go up to them, and instead of addressing the two young men I turned to the girl and said something along the lines of “You are a good person, you have your own morals and can make your own decisions and don't need them or their book to tell you that you are weak, because you are not.”

Then I told them all to have a nice day and started on my way again. But then the two boys started shouting after me. I say “boys,” they were probably in their early twenties. So, as they started to shout things like "yeah get out of here! No one cares what you have to say!" I decided that I couldn't just leave it at that.

Maybe I should have left it, but I decided to go back. Maybe I shouldn't have said this, but addressing the first boy I said "Well why don't you tell her about the part where Lot gets drunk and has sex with his daughters, or the part in Judges where Jephtha sets his daughter on fire."

After looks of confusion from the two young men, and a quirky smile from the girl, the first boy just kept repeating "Who are you? Get out of here! You're Satan!" in a robotic tone, as the other one holding the Bible said I was “crazy.” I asked if I could borrow their Bible to show her either passage, to which the first asked "Well where's your Bible?"

I pulled out my digital reader on which I had a copy of the King James Bible, and I informed him that I read it often. He replied that I didn't know what was in the Bible, and that I must be Satan. They asked me if I knew the girl or something, to which I said that they didn't know her, either, and were probably bothering her while she was trying to relax in the park. It was at this point that the one young man said that I "must be retarded".

I wish I had had time to, instead, draw these two away from this poor girl, but I didn't, so I addressed her with another vote of confidence and went on my way.

She seemed to be responsive to what I had said, but one can't be entirely sure. As I walked away they continued to shout after me, continuing to call me “Satan” and such.

Now I never mentioned to any of them that I was an atheist or even what my particular beliefs might be. I even acknowledged in my last words to the girl that I didn't know if she was a Christian herself, or what her beliefs might be, but only that she didn't need these two young men to figure those things out—basically, to believe in herself and not them. I have a Youtube channel, and as soon as I got home I did a big long video telling the story exactly as I have told it here.

I recall an open-air preacher who used to shout at passers-by at my university. He would handle questions and hecklers alike; but this is something different. She proselytized to proseltyzers, showed them up in front of their mark, and absolutely gave them as good as they were giving to other people that day. I bet she totally knocked them off their script!

She asked what we thought about what she did—if it was rude. I told her it was inspirational!

Here is her YouTube account of her adventure...

Draw Muhammad Day...

I support the efforts of Draw Muhammad Day. I took a few minutes and made a quick drawing and posted it to Facebook...and that was going to be the extent of my participation.

Fortunately, our local religion reporter made a blog post and she couldn't have managed to misrepresent the subject more, if she'd tried.

I took the opportunity to correct her...and I was sufficiently irritated that I thought I'd copy that correction here. As next Sunday's show is cancelled, consider it a replacement rant.

"Again, I thought this would fizzle out, but apparently it’s become all the rage to make a spectacle out of demeaning Muslims."

How does this demean Muslims? Be careful you don't break your back while trying to twist this issue to portray the Muslims as the victims...

The fact is that some Muslims have repeatedly demonstrated remarkable and violent hypocrisy when it comes to free speech. They demand that their views be respected by everyone else in society - and anyone who offends them may well suffer a violent response.

"If it’s true that the Prophet Muhammad is not drawn or depicted by Muslim artists based on Islamic beliefs, why revel in ignorance? In other words, if it were considered heathen-like behavior to draw Jesus, would that be tolerated with the same level of revelry - or is there something else at work?"

Of course it would be tolerated. What sort of journalist doesn't grasp the basics of free speech and expression?

There is no right to not be offended. There is no right to impose your ignorance, fears and superstitions on the rest of society.

Why do you think this is happening? If there had never been a gross over-reaction to cartoons, do you think anyone would have organized people to draw Muhammad?

Do you really suspect that the individuals drawing and encouraging others to draw Muhammad are simply cruel-minded bigots poking a stick at the poor Muslims?

This is not only about free speech, it's valid social commentary and a serious issue. There are people who travel with bodyguards and live under constant threat of violence or death for exercising basic freedoms that we should all support. People like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Salman Rushdie and Lars Vilks.

What a staggeringly myopic perspective one must have to shrug this off as someone else demeaning Muslims.

Muslims, on this subject, have demeaned themselves.

Philip Pullman's newest isn't likely to end up a fundie favorite

If Christians had a rough time with Nikos Kazantzakis' The Last Temptation of Christ, I don't quite see them lining up to buy the latest from Golden Compass author and staunch heathen Philip Pullman. The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, releasing May 20 in the US, is described thus:

...the remarkable new piece of fiction from best-selling and famously atheistic author Philip Pullman. By challenging the events of the gospels, Pullman puts forward his own compelling and plausible version of the life of Jesus, and in so doing, does what all great books do: makes the reader ask questions.

In Pullman’s own words, “The story I tell comes out of the tension within the dual nature of Jesus Christ, but what I do with it is my responsibility alone. Parts of it read like a novel, parts like history, and parts like a fairy tale; I wanted it to be like that because it is, among other things, a story about how stories become stories.”

Written with unstinting authority, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ is a pithy, erudite, subtle, and powerful book by a controversial and beloved author. It is a text to be read and reread, studied and unpacked, much like the Good Book itself.

Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, depicting a war against God, is a modern fantasy classic, and if your only exposure to it is the well-intentioned but murkily executed Golden Compass film from a couple of years back, you owe it to yourself to check out the books themselves. They're very much the anti-Narnia. In this video clip, Pullman responds with simple honesty to a question about Christians finding his new book offensive.

I'll be putting my pre-order in.

Why we need blasphemy

Pat Condell, in one of his wonderfully cranky YouTube rants, opined that the Danes (I think it was the Danes) were probably wondering what the hell had happened to their free country since Islam showed up. The idea that freedom should surrender without a fight to religious fundamentalism of any kind, but especially that which has only fear and violence to support itself, is disgusting. And craven laws like that passed in Ireland, which naively strip away basic rights out of the fear of even a little bit of violence, merely give the fundamentalists what they want: a culture of oppression which is the only kind of culture where fundamentalism can thrive.

Now from Denmark comes word that a Somali terrorist has been shot (to which I say "Good," and the PC crowd can flame away all they like) and wounded attempting to break into the home of cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, who was responsible for some of the controversial Mohammed cartoons that caused such a stink some years ago. The man's goal was, of course, not to sit down over coffee with Westergaard to offer constructive critiques and rebuttals to his work, but to murder him, which is of course a perfectly rational response to a cartoon.

Once more with feeling: if your religion cannot stand up to a fucking cartoon, it ain't the cartoon that has the problem.

I have spoken to a number of atheists who, with the very best of intentions, have naively asserted that the best thing to do when faced with the violence of radical religious extremists is to sit down, shut up, and not get them riled, because really, we don't want anyone to get hurt, do we? That they cannot see how this cowardice and capitulation gives religious lunatics the power over us they wanted all along never ceases to amaze me. And does anyone actually think that, by appeasing them once in this way, they'll be satisfied and decide they can stop shooting and bombing and whatever else it is sky-daddy has told them to do this week, "peace" be upon him? Let's do that as a multiple choice question: A) No; B) No; C) Hell no!; D) What, are you stupid? Once they know that a tiny bit of fear is all it takes to control you, then they'll just keep demanding and threatening more and more, until you're afraid to wipe your tender bottom without their divine mandate.

People, what we need is more blasphemy, more anger and more outrage in the face of this lunacy. Religious extremists are the cockroaches in the kitchen, and only the light of reason will send them scurrying to hide. Belief systems propped up by violence are ones that have already failed. No respect should be given them. So pick up your pens, cartoonists, and blaspheme your butts off! And if they turn up at your door, well...shoot first. If they really think they're the only ones out there to be feared, they obviously haven't heard Matt Groening's dictum: "It is unwise to annoy a cartoonist!"

Happy 2010, everyone! Unless you're Irish, in which case, happy 1410!

You know, today is a really great day. Seriously. Here in Austin the weather could not be more perfect, unless it were raining money. And I'm in a terrific mood, bursting with optimism. No, really, I'm not being sarcastic. I just feel good, and it feels good to feel good, so I think I'll just go on feeling good for as long as it feels good.

You know what cannot even dampen my mood? The fact that Ireland's preposterous blasphemy law goes into effect today. That's the one that fines you €25,000 — which comes to $35,971.25 according to XE.com's currency converter — if you say or publish anything that's "grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion." So I guess "There's nae God ya fookin gormless gobshites!" probably qualifies.

This doesn't dampen my mood because I find it hilarious. It makes me think that if I could do one thing other than what I'm doing today, which is enjoying the lovely weather in my hometown with my dogs, it would be to walk boldly down the streets of downtown Dublin wearing my "Jesus Did It For The Chicks!" T-shirt. How Ireland thinks it will avoid becoming the subject of international ridicule with this stupidity is beyond me. Hell, they'll have to block a good chunk of BBC comedy programming right off the bat, unless the government plans to arrest and fine itself. And oh yes, I'm quite sure that the awesome crowd at Atheist Ireland is going to take this ball and run with it!

The spectacle of a Western nation suddenly behaving like some Christian version of Yemen and taking a bold step back towards medieval theocracy like this as we move into the second decade of Century 21, for Christ's sake (oops!), is, to me, nothing short of riotously funny. Especially when, in the last week, the international news has been full of reports of the Irish Catholic Church's own shielding-the-pedo-priests scandal.

All in all, a day to make an atheist very, very happy indeed. Happy Blasphemous New Year, everyone! And oh yes, Irish Catholics? Hint: if your religion cannot stand up to free speech, the problem is not with free speech.

---

Addendum: Well, it's hit the news big time, so we'll see how things go.

Don't fear to let bad guys talk

There are many lines that you can expect to hear on just about every episode of The Atheist Experience. One is "Tell me what you believe and why you believe it." Another is "Promoting positive atheism and the separation of church and state." However, I think one of the most important repeated lines is: "If you disagree with us, then we will try to get to your call more quickly."

To me, that's a vital component of intellectual honesty. Anyone can barricade themselves in a mental fortress of belief, deciding on what is true "in their hearts" early in life, and refusing to listen to any evidence to the contrary. However, if you want to have as many true beliefs and as few false beliefs as possible, you simply have to step out of your fortress and really listen openly to what people are saying who don't agree with you. There is no other way to expose the false beliefs you hold and the true beliefs that you lack.

That's why I generally want to make it a point in life to read the Bible, listen to Christian radio, argue with Jehovah's Witnesses, and take all the callers I can.

That's also why I'm kind of disappointed, though not really surprised, by the apparent terror that, ah, certain people seem to have these days over putting 9/11 terrorist Khalid Sheikh Mohammed on trial in a civilian court.

As I understand it, there are two major concerns at play here, both of them (not to put too fine a point on it) cretinous. One of them is that Mohammed will escape from jail and go on the most horrifying killing spree the world has ever known. The other is that if Mohammed is allowed to defend himself in court, then the dulcet tones of his voice spouting terrorist propaganda will surely incite more violence against the United States.

Ezra Klein masterfully dismantles both arguments in just a few short sentences. Regarding their escape:

These guys took down a plane with box cutters. They used crude weapons to attack a far more sophisticated and effective fighting force. The most fearsome of them was captured at home, in his pajamas. It's not like we're putting Magneto on trial and need to keep him away from metal filings.

And regarding letting him talk:

Trying these guys publicly, as well as holding them in normal prisons like common criminals, is good public relations. Being a terrorist is a more appealing prospect if the world's sole superpower appears to cower before your might than it is if you end up trapped in the American legal system, forced to submit to endless cross-examination and consultation with attorneys and other bureaucratic humiliations. Lots of people want to be super villains. But who wants to be a henchman? Being held on a fortified military island and tortured by a country that can't seem to get you to talk is a much more glorious finish than a long and dull trial that ends with you serving time in central New Jersey.

When you come right down to it, Mohammed is really just another extreme religious crackpot, and talking and listening to religious crackpots is what we on the Atheist Experience want to happen. We want it to happen because crackpottery thrives on remaining mysterious. If you can frame your crackpottery in a few pithy sentences appealing to some seemingly high minded ideals, then it sounds superficially convincing. But when you start probing their beliefs in depth, that's when you get to have conversations like this...

"Tommy Davis previously denied the Xenu story, asking CNN reporter John Roberts if it 'sounded ridiculous' and saying the story was 'unrecognisable' to him. The Xenu story has also been denied by actor Tom Cruise and other famous Scientologists."

And this...

"Wait. Mormons actually know this story and they still believe Joseph Smith was a prophet? ...No, it's a matter of logic! If you're gonna say things that have been proven wrong, like that the first man and woman lived in Missouri, and that Native Americans came from Jerusalem, then you'd better have something to back it up. All you've got are a bunch of stories about some asswipe who read plates nobody ever saw out of a hat, and then couldn't do it again when the translations were hidden!"^*

And this...

"Religion has convinced people that there’s an invisible man… living in the sky. Who watches everything you do every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a list of ten specific things he doesn’t want you to do. And if you do any of these things, he will send you to a special place, of burning and fire and smoke and torture and anguish for you to live forever, and suffer, and burn, and scream, until the end of time. But he loves you! He loves you. He loves you and he needs money!"

That's what we want to have happen with the beliefs of fuckwits like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. We want an American lawyer to stand up in front of this guy on the witness stand, and let him spout off his beliefs. And then we want our lawyer to shake his head in disbelief, and say "Mr. Mohammed, are you freaking kidding me????"

What we don't want is for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to get away with no trial at all, or a tribunal under cover of darkness. We don't want him to be executed without a chance to air out his horrific, vile sounding views. We don't want to give people an excuse to make a martyr out of him without laying his idiocy bare for the entire world to see.

I'm sure some people will object that someone will hear his words and say "Hey, ya know? This jihad business sounds pretty reasonable to me." And I'm sure that that's true; I can imagine that there are probably a (very, very, very small) number of people who were not already looking to sign up for the terrorist lifestyle, but will be persuaded by Mohammed's silver tongue to join the cause.

But you know what else? I'm willing to take that chance, because I'm seriously betting that the number of people who will be moved to sympathy for America and disgust for Mohammed and his ilk would tremendously dwarf the number of people who would fall for his recruitment speech.

I am firmly of the belief that you can't prevent bad ideas from being heard, but you can shed light on them and make them look foolish. I think it's the ideal of free speech that we should all strive for. If I didn't think that, then I would have to conclude once and for all that our little public access show is a bust, simply on the grounds that we have allowed so many more bad ideas to get air time than would have gotten it otherwise.

Call me a naive idealist for having some faith in humanity that they can be dragged to a reasonable position. The ones to really watch out for are the small-minded, pathetic people polluting the airwaves, who are afraid to hear Khalid talk. Somehow they must feel that his beliefs are so reasonable and so seductive that millions of people will become America's enemies just by listening to a defeated criminal speak on a docket. And frankly, I feel sorry for them, for the fear of the world around them that they must feel every day.



* Note: It was pointed out in the comments that the quote about Mormonism from South Park, while funny, is not an accurate representation of the Mormon story.

The usual whiny hypocrisy

Welcome to Amerika. Where this, I am told, is offensive...

...but this isn't.

Let's see. The top billboard is simply a message from a group of unbelievers reaching out to other unbelievers who may feel they're alone, isolated in a hostile religious culture. The bottom billboard, on the other hand, is making very curt and rather bullying demands on me. It asserts the existence of this being, God, then it quotes him as claiming to have some entitlement over me, because he supposedly gave his son, and so, like, aren't I just some ungrateful so-and-so if I don't acknowledge this fantastic deal (which I never asked for in the first place) and decide it's in my best interests to "have" this God guy as part of my life.

And yet...well, apparently it's the top billboard that's aggressive and militant. It really has the panties of Denver area pastor Willard Johnson in a twist. He says, "We denounce what they are doing. But we do it with love, with gentleness, with decency and with compassion." Well, that's mighty white of you, Will, the whole love and compassion thing and all. I bet only a Christian would think that denunciations are a form of love and compassion. But be that as it may, why denounce this? What's offensive about it? "Don't believe in God? You are not alone." Is that such a threatening sentiment to your fragile widdle beliefs that you have to denounce it right away? What a sad thing for you.

And here's what else is odd to me. (Well, not odd. Perfectly normal, really, for a "Christian" nation.) Christians put up billboards all the time. Everywhere. Seriously. Some of them are wonderfully silly, some are harmless, some are plain insulting. And yet, it never makes the news when they put up billboards. Only when atheists do it. Why? Why should it be newsworthy, other than as an excuse to give some bozo pastor a little bit of ink to spout his loving, compassionate intolerance.

So, Christians, when you ask why we don't respect you enough, think of this. That there is nothing atheists can say, no message so innocent and innocuous in expression of our disbelief in your invisible magic friend in the sky, that you won't take it as some sort of horrible attack. Just like the time earlier this year, when the FFRF put up their "Imagine No Religion" billboards (which basically just ask you to, you know, imagine no religion), and Christians everywhere went berserk over this "militant" atheist assault on mom and apple pie. Why, one bold and courageous Christian group vowed to fight the FFRF's "hateful" billboards with their own, asking "Why Do Atheists Hate America?" Because, you know, that's not a hateful statement at all.

So you know what? Go ahead, be offended, Christians. That's one of the things you have to deal with when living in a free, pluralistic society. There will be people who think differently than you do, who believe in different things, and who will express those differing views. I know most of you want the place all to yourselves, but you have to share it, just like you have to share it with people of different races and sexual preferences and tastes in music. And if the simplest and mildest expression of a view different from your own makes you go into red alert mode, and wail about the evil militant whomevers who obviously hate the whole country because they aren't just like you, then perhaps you need to step back a bit, take a big fat chill pill, and think quite seriously about who's really got the problem here.

Now...ACA...how about getting a billboard up in Austin? It's time we had one, don't you think? Something like the AHA's bus ad campaign.

Human Race to Islam: Please F.O. and die

Much as I find right-wing jargon to be mindlessly jingoistic and childishly reactionary, they were onto something when they coined the term "Islamofascism." Here are two reports of the oppressive, totalitarian practices of this depraved religion in action.

1. Dog walking banned in Riyadh on the grounds it leads to flirting and, possibly, cooties. Here's something boggling to contemplate about Islamist states. Most totalitarian regimes are run by angry, lonely little pricks who spend their working days in offices thinking up ways to keep people from being happy, ever. But bring Islam into the picture, and your list of "harmless fun activities magically morphed into arrestable offenses" suddenly includes having a pet and meeting girls. And I suppose I would find the concept of an actual division of law enforcement named The Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice more laughable — let alone the idea that walking your dog could possibly be something anyone would be demented enough to consider a vice of any kind — if it weren't for the very eerie likelihood that there are Dominionist Christians in this country who are smacking their foreheads and saying, "D'oh! Why didn't we think of that?"

2. White Europeans continue to prove themselves complete pussies when confronted with the spectre of pissed-off guys with beards. (And allow me to forestall enraged replies from white Europeans who aren't afraid to stand up to Islamist incursions upon your rights, and are embarrassed by those in your cultures, official or unofficial, who let fear conquer them: by all means, feel welcome to sound off in the comments.)

   The thing that radical, Great-Satan-hating Islamofascists have learned all too effectively is that nothing scares citizens of (what said citizens like to think are) free Western democracies than the idea that a Muslim is primed to go batshit bombthrowing crazy at the drop of a hat. Confession time: when I was a younger and callow chap, I was in a psychologically abusive relationship with a woman whose tool of control was her temper. I never knew what I might say to cause her to go off like a fragmentation grenade, and so I said very little, even on days which seemed perfectly normal and on which no argument had yet ensued. Everything could be perfectly pleasant, then I could make some innocuous statement about nothing in particular, and within seconds I'd find myself being screamed at, at window rattling volumes. It was, shall we say, an unpleasant period of my life.

   Islamists like to use a similar tool of control to stifle freedom — free speech, criticism of their beliefs or their politics, artistic expression — in countries that, remarkably, aren't Islamist theocracies and in which they're even minorities in the population. Ever since 9/11, the new normal has been that anything could drive a Muslim into a homicidal rage at any moment, and you don't have any clue what it is, so it's better not to take chances. Okay, so that may be a stereotype that the vast majority of non-batshit-bombthrowing-crazy Muslims resent, but it's certainly proven useful to the real agitators among them.

   The latest victim is a novel, The Jewel of the Medina, by debut writer Sherry Jones, which was slated for publication in the UK weeks from now, only to be pulled at the eleventh hour due to fears that the subject matter — the protagonist is one of Mohammed's child brides — would lead to a Satanic Verses fatwa redux. Isn't it convenient for Islamists that they no longer even have to fight the "War on Terror" any more? The West just hands it to them.

   Remarkably, the person who sounded the klaxon of fear regarding Jones's book was not only a Westerner, but a college professor from UT-Austin, Denise Spellberg. Professor, you're a disgrace to our town. Just like that, all that was needed was the teeniest, tiniest fear that the book might "incite acts of violence by a small radical segment," and presto, bye bye freedom of expression and speech!

   Okay, so Jones's novel does sound like lurid crap, in the few excerpts that have appeared online. But if it's going to be denied publication, at least do so for the right reasons.

I'm with Pat Condell on this one. I see no reason to be respectful or tolerant towards a religion that condones "honor killings" and thinks walking your fuckmothering dog is some kind of threat to civilization itself. This kind of barbarism earns no respect, none, not even a smidgen. And I also stand with old Ben Franklin, whose famous line about how folks who are willing to surrender a little freedom in exchange for a little security don't deserve either resonates today more than it ever has in history. So, in the spirit of fair play, and as a sop to all those whiny Christians who like to throw the "you only attack us because you're too scared to go after Muslims" line at us, allow me proudly to strike this blow for freedom!

Now if you'll pardon me, my dogs want their walkies.

Aggressive Atheist Extremists

Maybe you’ve seen the PhillyCOR billboard recently? Floaty clouds on a blue sky, with the text “Don’t believe in god?” on top, and “You are not alone,” on the bottom. It’s an invitation to disenfranchised atheists to get in touch with local humanist, atheist, free-thought or secular organizations in their areas. And it’s as inoffensive a message as I’ve ever seen from any atheist group. No attack on religion. No invitation to anyone to reconsider their beliefs. Just a note to those who already don’t believe, who think they’re on their own, to encourage them and let them know there are like-minded people “out there” who would like to get to know them and offer them camaraderie and community involvement. PhillyCOR actually even works alongside religious organizations to support charitable endeavors.

So, here again we have the age-old question: Is there any way—at all—that an atheist can express his opinion that won’t be considered an attack on or offense to believers?

The answer, PhillyCOR has now made clear, is “no.”

In an interview with Fox News, Family Research Council’s own Peter Sprigg had this to say about the board:

“This billboard in Philadelphia seems to represent a trend—a new assertiveness, even aggressiveness on the part of atheists.”

You heard right. Putting up a billboard to let like-minded people know you exist—people who often think they are utterly alone—is “aggressive.” The billboard represents—is part of—a trend of “aggressiveness.” Am I to assume that Sprigg has never seen a Christian billboard before? He should come to Austin, where he would be able to see several in a five mile stretch in any direction. And they don’t just appeal to other Christians—they appeal to everyone to come to church, accept Jesus, believe in god, convert to Christianity. Would Sprigg label Christians as a “hyper aggressive” group, then? I’m guessing not—but to be consistent, he actually would have to. If atheists today are “aggressive,” I can’t see how Sprigg doesn’t consider Christians to be hovering over the edge of “dangerous.”

Further, this man who claims atheists are being “aggressive” has the following to add:

“Atheists are very vigorous in promoting the separation of church and state, but with the extreme way that they interpret that concept, you would basically eliminate every mention of god from the public square, and that would amount to the establishment of atheism.”

First of all, it’s not about eliminating the mention of anything from any “public square.” People in the public square, speaking as private citizens, can say whatever they like. It’s people and institutions that are in any way representatives of government that cannot, and should not, promote any religious perspective—including the existence or nonexistence of any god or gods. That’s a little different, and perhaps a subtlety that is lost on people like Sprigg—although, if I am to speak frankly, I don’t believe it’s lost on him at all. I believe it to be an intentional misrepresentation—a strawman—intended to rile religious masses, because Sprigg knows that an accurate representation would not be nearly as compelling and effective in attaining that goal.

Free advice: When someone misrepresents their case, always, always, always ask “why?”

And while I am on misrepresentations, another interesting fact that Sprigg seems to conveniently have misplaced, is that one of the most active entities promoting separation of church and state is a group headed by the Reverend Barry Lynn, who often speaks on behalf of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Since Sprigg’s group is so very interested in separation issues, I can’t imagine he is unaware of this. And yet, he promotes separation as an “atheist vs. theist” issue, in order to launch an unfounded attack on atheists and rally undeserved support to his own agenda to use the government, openly and unapologetically, to promote a worldview that just happens to align with conservative Christian religious ideologies.

Asking Sprigg to not use our government as a vehicle to push his religion onto others is somehow an “establishment of atheism.” I have pointed out before, but perhaps not at this blog, that asking that the government remove “under god” is in no way the equivalent of asking them to add “without a god” to the Pledge. Ensuring everyone, theists and atheists alike, is free from government sanctioned, promoted, or imposed religious ideology allows everyone, theists and atheists alike, the freedom to exercise their religion, or no religion, as they wish, by putting all religious ideologies on the same playing field—a field that is, and ever should be, found exclusively in the court of private practice.

The level of projection Sprigg employs is at least as bad as anything I have seen from any theist so far. He effortlessly scales the heights of hypocrisy as he accuses others of stepping out of line who are not, while he is guilty of absolutely all that he accuses. Ironically, even if atheists were guilty of all he accuses, they would be doing no more or less than their Sprigg-encouraged Christian counterparts, in so far as pushing their agenda via government and posting and promoting their ideology as far and wide as possible. So, how could Sprigg possibly criticize, even if atheists were guilty, without showing himself up as a raging hypocrite?

The real issue here is that Sprigg wants Christianity to enjoy special privilege and treatment from society, as well as from the government, without being able to actually explain why special status is merited. I would never advocate promoting atheism using the government. And yet, if I did, any criticism from Sprigg could be nothing less than stunning, as I’d be doing no more than he and his organization and religion are doing already (and have been doing for quite a long time).

It’s actually competition Sprigg fears—not competition from others asking government to endorse their religious views, too, but the competition that would exist if his own religious view was no longer allowed to use the government as a prop—if it had to exist, horror of horrors, on the same level upon which all other religious views and ideas are now safely relegated—far beneath his own. It isn’t that he thinks it’s wrong to empower and utilize the government to promote religious views at all. His actions illustrate that he very much supports using government to promote religious views and policies. They also illustrate, in no uncertain terms, that his real beef is that he wants his particular brand of religion to be the only one that gets to do it.

Judge lifts injunction against Expelled

In an interesting development, U.S. District Judge Sidney Stein (no relation to "Evolution Doesn't Explain Gravity!" Ben) has ruled that Expelled can use the 15-second clip of John Lennon's "Imagine" under the fair use doctrine. Over at PT, commenters are pointing out that this isn't an end to the lawsuit, but it may be moot at this point. I disagree with the decision — I think it could open the gates to all manner of dodgy copyright infringement — but at this point it really has no impact either way for Expelled, which is already out of theaters in the US after tanking with a pitiful $7.5 million haul after six weeks. The movie simply wasn't the takedown of science its producers were hoping for. But since they've created a nice little insulated world to live in, only exposing themselves to tightly controlled pre-release screenings to which the scientifically-illiterate choir were exclusively admitted, they'll never know that. So it's on to the church-basement DVD circuit, where it was going to end up anyway — while, off in the real world, science marches on and people with brains are actually learning new things.

I did find this part of the MSNBC article enlightening.

At a hearing last month, Falzone had argued that the segment of the song in the film — "nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too" — was central to the movie because "it represents the most popular and persuasive embodiment of this viewpoint that the world is better off without religion."

The film, he said, is "asking if John Lennon was right and it's concluding he was wrong."

It's a nice admission that religionists wouldn't think the world a happy place unless they had absurd ideologies and irrational beliefs to kill and die for.

The ICR gets even more sleazy and desperate

Following in the morally bankrupt footsteps of Ben Stein and Expelled, the ICR is responding to its snub by the state with a PR campaign designed (and not intelligently) to paint themselves as heroic champions and martyrs to "free inquiry" whose work is being "stifled" by a hostile scientific mainstream. Those of you who opened the Austin paper today to page A16 were probably aghast to see the full-page, four-color ad they bought pushing this very fantasy.

This is how far creationism has fallen. Having never produced any actual scientific research to support their position, thwarted time and again by courts and school boards to push their openly religious position in classrooms, they have run out of ways to rebrand creationism with terms like "intelligent design" to slip past the lemon test, and are now reduced simply to pounding their widdle fists on their high-chair tables and bleating "It's not faaaair!"

Their bogus "academic freedom" bills in Florida got stalled and died in committee, their movie flopped, the courts are eating their lunch, newspaper and media editorials are ridiculing them mercilessly. (Even arch-conservative John Darbyshire, a man so despicable he mocked the victims of the Virginia Tech shooting for not being brave enough to rush the shooter while he was spraying them with lead, derided Expelled and the whole ID movement as "shifty" and "morally corrupted...irredeemably.") What are poor creationists to do? Well, certainly not science. That's a hell of a lot more work than just placing newspaper ads. And besides, if you actually did scientific research, there's that distressing risk your results would not back up your "doctrinal statement" you force your members to sign, that "All things in the universe were created and made by God in the six literal days of the creation week described in Genesis 1:1-2:3, and confirmed in Exodus 20:8-11. The creation record is factual, historical and perspicuous; thus all theories of origins or development which involve evolution in any form are false." Yes, I know the ICR claims to do actual scientific research. But curiously, they do not submit this work to peer-reviewed scientific journals. All the better to sell their conspiracy theory and martyr fantasies, of course. But as Texas Citizens for Science points out:

Real scientists use the scientific method and possess the scientific attitude, which means that they work within a framework of methodological naturalism no matter what their religious beliefs may be. About 40% of real scientists believe in a supernatural, personal deity, but they don't conduct their scientific inquiries within a framework of supernaturalism as do the ICR Creation "scientists." ICR claims that its staff members keep their Biblical beliefs separate from their scientific beliefs, but that's nonsense. All of their classes and literature are Bible-based and stress their Literalist doctrine of Young Earth Creationism. Real scientists propose hypotheses that can be tested using empirical and logical methods — that's the basis of methodological naturalism — and Creationism by a supernatural Deity ultimately cannot be tested in this fashion. Of course, many proximate claims of the Creationists can be tested, such as the 10,000 years age of the Earth, a universal global flood, the lack of transitional fossils, macroevolution does not occur, etc. Fortunately for us, these claims have all been tested and they have all failed, since the claims were all based on specious reasoning and misinterpreted evidence, which has been amply documented in the anti-Creationist literature.

So the ship of fools sails on, low in the water, undaunted by the fact it's been hulled beneath the waterline and the pumps are failing. My letter to the Statesman has been sent, and I sure hope it pisses off some ICRbot if it appears. I suppose one could admire the tenacity of creationists like them, were it not for the fact it's the same tenacity of, say, some kook who's taken to stalking a woman. There's a time to get the message, and to realize no means no, and you've been out of the running for a long long time. Creationism is well past that point, and I think they're going to find further efforts at pursuing their pseudoscience and pseudomartyrdom received by even more disdain and ridicule than they're already getting.

Blasphemy is, as they say, a victimless crime

Over in the UK, the population may be predominately non-religious, or at least indifferent to religion, in stark opposition to the way Americans can't seem to get enough of the stuff. But it's only been this week that the House of Lords* voted to strike down the nation's laws against blasphemy. Nice of them to recognize it isn't 1437 any more. Unless you've got a fascistic, Talibanoid theocracy going on, having blasphemy laws in a modern enlightened culture is like attaching a carburetor to your pyjamas: pointless and utterly silly.

Of course, some people are upset at learning the Middle Ages ended long ago.

Prominent Christian activist Baroness O’Cathain launched a blistering attack on the amendment, with particular fury aimed at Evan Harris. Lady O’Cathain maintained that abolition of blasphemy would unleash a torrent of abuse towards Christians.

Huh. I thought blasphemy was defined as making insulting or disrespectful remarks critical of gods, not their followers. As far as hate crimes against the religious are concerned, the UK has its Racial and Religious Hatred Act, a piece of legislation that makes it an offense to incite deliberate violence and hatred towards a person or group of people based on their race or creed. (I know it's a law that feels problematic from a free speech standpoint, but the wording of it does try to make it clear that it's only an offense when there's clear intent to incite harm. I imagine it's only a matter of time before it's actually put to the test in the courts. After all, where's the line between saying something like "Somebody ought to do something about those damn [insert minority here]," and "Kill the [minority]!"?)

One gets the impression that Baroness O'Cathain is merely troubled by the idea of anyone's criticizing belief at all. As Tracie pointed out a couple of posts ago, it can be awfully hard for atheists to engage Christians in conversation about belief, simply because the minute you make one statement that's even the tiniest bit snarky (like comparing their god belief to unicorn belief), many of them are so thin-skinned they'll storm off in a huff right there. Not surprisingly, Dawkins and The God Delusion came up quite a bit in the House debates. The simple fact that atheist books exist, and are actually finding an audience, is enough for some Christians to think they're suffering "a torrent of abuse."

Well, let's talk abuse. What about the people in the past who were actually the targets of the blasphemy laws in question? Ol' Wikipedia tells me that the last guy to be prosecuted under the laws was John William Gott in 1921, who was sentenced to nine months' hard labor simply for publishing pamphlets making fun of Christianity and Jesus. So Christians got their knickers in a twist because Gott snarked on their imaginary friend, and he got nine months breaking rocks. Call me crazy, but I consider that pretty damn torrential abuse. "Hey," you might say, "that was 87 years ago." Yeah, but I'm sure it still sucked for him.

Anyway, it was clearly time to get rid of the laws, because they were irrelevant and never used anyway. And as for Christian fears of persecution, again, I never cease to be amazed at these. Check your Yellow Pages and see how many pages it takes to list the churches in your city. Go to any bookstore in the US, and see how many shelves are swallowed up by the Religion category. Only Borders that I know of delineates a section to "Atheism and Agnosticism" within that category, and that section usually only amounts to about two or three shelves, as opposed to the fifty or so shelves devoted to Bibles, apologetics, and the usual twaddle from fundies like LaHaye and Strobel and Colson and their camp. But to many Christians, those two shelves for atheism are two too many, and amount to a horrifying all-out assault on their precious faith.

Cry me a river.

---

* I had to note my favorite comment about this on Richard Dawkins' site:

Dear Britain, what the hell is a "house of lords"?? Signed, the 21st century.

You don't take me seriously, but I'm disrespecting YOU?

I found an odd irony in an exchange recently.

On another blog someone asked if atheists can expect fair treatment from presidential candidates who state their religious beliefs are very important to them in their own lives. While I do think it’s possible for a person to value X, but still understand and respect others who don’t value X, I also understand the reason for the question. Some religious people see their views as simply being their own personal choice, and they don’t really extend that outward to consider what other people might choose. Maybe they don’t care what other people choose so long as we’re all getting along OK. But some religious people express real difficulty even understanding how a person could be moral, trustworthy, or honest (with themselves or others) if they aren’t also religious.

Without asking each person, it’s not possible to know how an individual views their beliefs or how they judge others based on the beliefs others may hold. But it made me recollect an online exchange I had, a very brief one, with a theist recently. And here’s why: I was accused of not being objective when I questioned an inference he made. I asked, “…are you claiming [your argument] is a rational justification for belief in the existence of god (any more than it constitutes rational justification for belief in the existence of fairies)?”

The person was pretty obviously offended by my equating his god to fairies. He became defensive. So, I I responded that I wasn’t trying to be funny, that my question was in all seriousness. He never wrote back.

I have no doubt that this person truly felt I was only trying to get a rise. But I can honestly say I never was. He wrote to an atheist list. He knew in advance that atheists do not believe gods exist. Why it would surprise him that I would equate gods to fairies, in that case, and in all seriousness, I cannot fathom. Apparently, I’m supposed to pretend to grant his belief in god a special status over belief in fairies—even when he knows, before he addresses, me that I don’t. And if his arguments support the existence of fairies as much as the existence of gods, I’m not supposed to notice that or ask about it.

In other words, by expressing my perspective of god’s existence, and by not accepting his view as a given, I’m being offensive. If I say that I—honestly—can’t see how fairies wouldn’t be proven just as much as gods by the arguments he’s providing, I’m not being serious, and I’m just being a jerk. But what’s really happening is that this theist isn’t taking MY position seriously. I REALLY do not see the difference between his belief in god and a belief in fairies. And he refuses to accept that as a serious assertion on my part—even though it is asserted in 100 percent seriousness. Am I offended by that? No. After all, I didn’t go to a theist forum to push my view on anyone. What do I care what he thinks? I was just responding and asking what I thought was a fair question about claims he was making.

But, how does this tie into respect? Well, I respected his belief by treating it like any other. He didn’t care too much for that. But if he’d have come to me saying he could prove fairies, and given me the same arguments he provided for gods, I would just as well have asked, “How would this not also prove leprechauns?” And so on. Would it be offensive to compare fairies to leprechauns in that case—just because someone actually believes in them?

If I can’t even ask a question without being considered an ass; if I can’t give my view without being considered an offensive jerk; If my perspective is automatically interpreted as sarcasm and cruel joking, even though it’s not. How is THAT respect for MY belief (or in this case, lack of it)? What if, instead of asking him how his claim for god did any less to prove fairies exist, I had written back and said, “Well, if you’re just going to write to us with ludicrous claims, trying to be funny about ‘god exists’—I mean, what sort of idiots do you take us for? You can go send your joke e-mails about gods existing to someone else’s list you arrogant prick!”

THAT'S respect? I asked a serious question. He blanketly refused to take me seriously. And it appears to me that he is totally incapable of taking my view seriously on any level. Yet, somehow, that makes ME disrespectful of HIS beliefs.

While I'm not concerned about one online theist, I have to wonder how many others feel this way, or how many politicians share this view? That is a concern. Not an offense (to me, at least), but a real concern.

The MySpace kerfuffle

The atheist blogosphere erupted with indignation earlier this week, and quite justifiably, when it was revealed that the massive social networking site MySpace had summarily deleted the 35,000-member-strong Atheist and Agnostic Group without so much as a by-your-leave, even though the group had violated none of the site's terms of service. This is seen as rampant religious bigotry and it probably is, although two groups I belong to, "Atheists" (4,828 members) and "SkepticSpace" (989 members) are still alive.

So I'm not sure what's going on here, but it does seem as if the big group was targeted by angry Christians who complained loudly enough to force the deletion. If so, it just makes the fact that Christians still whine about being the ones censored and persecuted and "expelled" all the more egregiously self-serving and dishonest.

A lot of atheists are deleting their profiles, which I can't imagine will hurt MySpace in the tiniest. After a lot of thought on the matter I've decided to keep mine up, but add the complete text of the Secular Students press release along with a comment voicing my own condemnation of MySpace's apparent religious bigotry in a nice large font. Two days later they haven't deleted me, which leads me to think there was some personal targeting going on and there isn't (so far) some wholesale campaign to rid MySpace of the godless.

Lots of people slag MySpace, and I can see why, but I've actually found it quite useful. Mainly I'm using it to promote the documentary I'm working on (and working on and working on), and have so far "networked," as it were, with lots of folks in indie film. I've also discovered a buttload of good bands I'd never have heard of otherwise. When my friend Hollye ran her cat shelter, she raised about $300 in Paypal donations through her MySpace page. So yeah, for all that it's cheesy — no matter how big MySpace gets, it will probably never live down the rep it's gotten in the media as "that teen site" where all the pedo stalkers hang out — I have no reason to think it sucks. Like anything else, it's all in how you use it. (And to everyone who's likely to raid the comments with glowing endorsements of Facebook, I must say I find that site completely boring and useless. I have a profile there but have almost never had a reason to log onto it.)

I'd suggest that if you've still got a MySpace page, then deck it out with proud proclamations of your atheism and your disapproval of the Atheist and Agnostic group's unwarranted deletion. As MySpace is a privately owned (by Rupert Murdoch, surprise surprise) enterprise, I don't see that anyone involved with the deleted group could have recourse to legal action or anything, but IANAL on that score. Just use your freedom of speech and use it loudly. We're here, we're godless, get used to it. If they delete you, well, it's not like you've lost an investment or anything. And it will just prove that the site is run by reactionary, stupid religious bigots after all.

Shalini in some kind of trouble?

Shalini Sehkar, whose blog Scientia Natura is full of hilariously foul-mouthed rants against "theistards" (she certainly embraces the "bad cop" role in atheist blogging with gusto), has been locked out — see for yourself — and some commenters over at Larry Moran's Sandwalk are indicating that some theists have allegedly gone off the deep end at last and are doing things to make her life miserable. As always, the lack of details being offered means the rumor mill is going to be churning overtime, and it would be nice to nip that in the bud if possible. So if anyone knows any real details (of the kind that can actually be spoken of, in the likelihood there are legal issues in play here), and how we can help her out if possible, please let us know.

"Those who know what's best for us...."

"...must rise and save us from ourselves." So sang Canadian prog-rockers Rush in their 1981 track "Witch Hunt". A quarter century later, the modern-day torch-bearing hysterics haven't gone away.

I'm a little behind-hand on this, as I took a week's blog break and don't regularly read the local Austin paper. So it wasn't until today that I saw the full-page ad that ran on page A14 of the November 9 issue of the Austin American-Statesman. In screamingly huge type it grabbed your attention with the button-mashing headline "The Most Despicable Crime Ever Committed Against America's Children"!

The Catholic pedophilia scandal, you might ask? No, it's all them evil liberals pushing violence and smut in our entertainment, poisoning, in the paranoiac words of Dr. Strangelove's General Jack D. Ripper, our precious bodily fluids. The ad is exactly the same kind of reactionary drivel I thought was a relic of the Reagan years. (And as you read on, you'll find that's exactly its provenance.) To take its claims at face value, you'd think America was a real life version of a Halo 3 deathmatch, with maddened gun-packin' teenagers running around wantonly blasting away at everyone and everything in sight (that is, when they aren't gang-raping each other silly). It's a lunatic Heironymous Bosch view of reality that, more than anything, reflects the utter, paralyzing fear under which religious conservatives live their lives. Or...is it just cynical manipulation run by dishonest, sleazy, exploitive hucksters to raise cash from those among the public susceptible to such easy manipulation?

The ad is a veritable smorgasbord of fallacies and irrationalism. It purports to offer evidence of the alleged brainwashing effects of violent and explicit media in sidebars with the header "The Truth". Whenever wingnuts use the word "truth," and especially when they capitalize it, just remember that immortal line from The Princess Bride: "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." The "Truth" presented here takes the form of sensationalist headlines. "Police say 13-year-old molested girl after seeing sex on TV." Egad. Well, what police? Where? Which 13-year-old? When? Oh, you want these claims backed up? Sorry. They don't do that here. None of these headlines is sourced, which one would think would be a bottom-rung criterion for credibility. It'd sure help persuade me to the cause if, say, "Judge says film influenced boy to kill 2-year-old" was followed by "Such-and-Such Gazette, Month, Day, Year." Otherwise, how do I know this is the truth? Oh, I see. It says so in the header.

The ad was placed by some outfit calling itself the Parents and Grandparents Alliance. There is no website URL printed in the ad, which immediately struck me as curious, especially in a day and age when everybody and his hamster and his hamster's mice has, at the very least, a fucking MySpace if not blog or full-on website. Quick Googlage revealed a webpage at outragedcitizens.org, which is little more than an anemic version of the kind of hysteria featured in the newspaper ad. I say anemic because the ad actually featured denser content. But the format, particularly the use of unsourced alleged headlines as "evidence," is no different. The web page, however, does feature a photo of has-been fundie crooner Pat Boone. You know, for street cred.

To find out what the Parents and Grandparents Alliance actually is, I had to check out this page at Sourcewatch, which reveals it's an offshoot of Accuracy in Media, the right-wing media watchdog group run by Reed Irvine until his death in 2004. AIM began running these ads as far back as 2001 in the New York Times. Apparently it's taken them six years to climb down the newspaper food chain to the Austin American-Statesman. Accuracy in Media has been doing its thing since 1969.

Since Google is fun, I thought I'd do a little more digging. But first, it's interesting to note the difference in presentation between the outragedcitizens.org website and AIM's own. The latter looks stately, journalistic and professional, while the former employs bright primary colors and blazing, 48-point headlines full of emotionally overwrought language. (Content-wise, they're equally full of shit.) And while outragedcitizens.org says it's not a fund-raising ad, the newspaper ad itself most definitely is, with a clip-out donations coupon at the bottom extolling all the parents and grandparents they hope they've terrified to "send in the 'Outraged Citizens Petition'... You don't need to send in any money to have your Petition added to the number we report. But we beg you to help. These ads cost up to $20,000 and more each. This is a grass roots campaign."

Horseshit. It's an establishment campaign. AIM's corporate donors include Mobil Oil and Union Carbide, which no doubt reflects the organization's global warming denialism. Neocon gazillionaire Richard Mellon Scaife gave AIM $2 million over a 20 year period, until he was embarrassed by the right's failed attempt to concoct a bogus murder allegation against Bill Clinton in the case of Vince Foster's suicide (a situation in which Irvine and AIM were major players). AIM has been responsible for a number of other vicious and wholly false wingnut smears, such as vilifying Walter Cronkite as a "Soviet dupe," falsely accusing a Philadelphia Inquirer reporter of fabricating a story on a massacre in Kosovo (another source here), and getting another NYT reporter fired for reporting on the El Mozote massacre in El Salvador in 1981.

So far from being a "grass roots" anything, AIM and its bogus sockpuppets like the "Parents and Grandparents Alliance" are really tools of the entrenched neocon plutocracy. (Hey, how's that for agitprop language!?) Since violent and sexy entertainment continues to be released and continues to meet with public approval (this ad hit the Statesman the same week that American Gangster was the #1 movie, with $80 million in ticket sales so far), it seems to me that Irvine's successors at his "watchdog" group aren't really lying awake nights over the thousands upon thousands of imaginary children who are running rampant, raping and pillaging after an all-night World of Warcraft marathon. It's only when they need to get those donations rolling in, the ones they claim amount to 75% of their operating budget, that they sprinkle these fearmongering ads out among Bible Belt newspapers.

Thus it's on the meager, hard-earned paychecks of the great unwashed — cowering in terror over the thought of a meth-hopped, FPS-addicted sk8er off his ritalin crashing through their front doors to chainsaw them into hamburger in an orgy of liberal-media-feuled lust and carnage — that AIM can pay to libel and defame their ideological and political opponents in their own neocon-friendly press.

Now who are the outraged citizens?

(For another detailed AIM critique, go here.)

Westboro scum slapped with $11 million judgment

Filthpig Fred Phelps and his gang of funeral-picketing ghouls have been ordered to pay the family of Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder, killed in Iraq, nearly $11 million in damages as a result of a lawsuit brought by the slain veteran's father.

Naturally, they will appeal, as the judge in the case fully (and, one assumes, cheerfully) admits that the award "far exceeds the net worth of the defendants." Hell, that would be the case if Snyder's family had been awarded a sack full of cat turds. Still, there are two ways to deal with Phelps and his disciples, it seems. Either walk up to them when they're at their next picket and shoot each of them in the head (which, I suspect, would be frowned upon as overdoing it even by everyone who doesn't like them), or keep bleeding them white with these suits until they can't even afford to keep a vehicle to drive them all to their latest hate rally. Yeah yeah, free speech, whatever. If it's their free speech to be dispicable swine, then I say it's everyone else's to counter them however they see fit. Remember, this kind of thing — hate speech, I mean — doesn't so much take place in a "marketplace" of ideas as in a boxing ring. Phelps is free to don his gloves and jump in for a few rounds. But he shouldn't snivel and whine if he gets TKO'd.

Let's hope the appellate court has the decency to uphold the award, and isn't swayed by the "but it's our religion!" argument to rationalize antisocial behavior intentionally designed to inflict pain and suffering.

An ig-Nobel fellow, but one to be censured, not censored

By now many of you have heard or read about how the distressingly-zombielike Nobel laureate/DNA co-discoverer James Watson made an ass of himself by publicly opining on the supposed intellectual inferiority of black Africans. This led to worldwide condemnation, the cancellation of at least one sold-out speaking engagement, and now the termination of his chancellorship at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.

Now, Watson has actually gone and made things worse by trying to apologize, but doing so in the most intelligence-insulting way possible. (Perhaps he thought the hundreds of millions of black people he offended would be too dumb to notice.)

"To all those who have drawn the inference from my words that Africa, as a continent, is somehow genetically inferior, I can only apologize unreservedly. That is not what I meant. More importantly from my point of view, there is no scientific basis for such a belief," he said.

Watson has just one little problem here. His original remark is on record and still very fresh, and so it's going to be a little hard for him to sell the whole "I didn't mean to say black people were stupid when I said they were stupid" pitch.

The question which will arise now is: Is the inevitable piling-on going to go too far? PZ Myers has already weighed in on Watson's getting the heave-ho from Cold Spring, pointing out that "it's a declaration that their director must be an inoffensive, mealy-mouthed mumbler who never challenges (even stupidly)." The case is similar to the Don Imus firing, back when he made racist jokes about that African-American girls' sports team. That speech can and will be offensive is a fact of life, but should those who engage in offensive speech be automatically stamped with "pariah" on their foreheads and sent to the bleachers for good, no longer to participate in public discourse? Or should their asinine views be aired openly, the better to thus engage them?

Goodness knows, I've inveighed here against neocons and Christian conservatives who say stupid things, and have not been shy about being inflammatory myself in castigating them. Most recently, Ann Coulter's anti-Semitic ravings. But as loathsome as I find Coulter or Rush or Falwell (well, okay, we don't have him to kick around any more) or Robertson, I'd never want to see them barred from public speaking. Free speech, like free anything, is a two-edged sword. You cannot have a culture that nurtures and develops the highest and most noble ideas without the freedom that also allows for the most pathetic ignorance and arrogance. And as Watson's case reminds us, it's not always necessarily the religious fanatics, or the Coulters of the world, who lose their marbles (not to mention their fundamental human decency) and shoot off their mouths without first loading their brains.

So yes, we have to put up with racism, and anti-science, and religious fanaticism and intolerance, because that's the price we pay for the privilege of living in a freethinking society where we can openly critique those ideas and, with luck, educate people away from them. Yes, Watson has become a senile old asshat. But even in his intellectual decline, maybe he can still teach people something.

The messy world of free speech

From Florida comes this report of a Christian evangelist who's had his TV show yanked off a local station because he can't resist talking smack about Islam.

Earlier this month, officials from the Council on American Islamic Relations wrote a letter to the TV station's owners asking for an investigation of the show it broadcasts, "Live Prayer with Bill Keller."

In a May 2 broadcast, the televangelist said Islam was a "1,400-year-old lie from the pits of hell" and called the Prophet Mohammed a "murdering pedophile." He also called the Koran a "book of fables and a book of lies."

Well, I for one utterly agree with the last statement, though I would add that Keller's Bible also qualifies. I'd have to reserve judgment on the second statement and would agree with the first half of the first statement, too. Someone else who I'm sure would largely agree with Keller would be atheist bestseller Sam Harris, who's written that Islam is nothing less than the "enemy of civilization". It's sweet when we can all see eye to eye on something, isn't it?

So, were local Muslims understandably offended? Sure they were. Should they have been allowed to protest the show, even to the point of having it taken off the air? Yes again. But did Keller have a Constitutionally protected right to voice his opinions of Islam, however offensive they were? Why, we're back to yes. Welcome to the conflicted and messy world of free speech.

There are actually many layers to a situation such as this. One valid criticism one might make of Keller is that while he has a Constitutional right to spew invective about a competing religion, he does not (nor does anyone else) have a Constitutional right to a TV show, and members of any community as well as a television station itself have every right to drop something that they find appalling. Readers will note a similarity here to the recent firing of celebrity radio clod Don Imus for making racist wisecracks. It's a tossup as to which situation is more offensive: Imus made a joke, though an egregiously juvenile and thoughtless one, while Keller was really being deliberately confrontational and insulting.

Should Imus have been fired? I'd have to waffle and say definitely maybe (a long suspension would have served fine; after all, the man's been offending people on the air for 30 years now, so it's not as if he hasn't got a rep). Imus's bad joke served no purpose but to insult a group of people who'd done nothing to deserve it (quite the opposite, in fact), and was in fact not an insult over anything they'd done at all, but over who they were and the color of their skin. There wasn't, nor could there have been, any valid programming context to justify its utterance.

Should Keller have been similarly canned, though? I don't think so. In this case, there's no bones made about who the man is and what kind of program he's got. The station which carried him had to have known he was an evangelical Christian, and thus he'd be spouting barbarian opinions on any number of subjects. And since when should anyone be taken aback that a program promoting one religion would, every now and again, knock the competition?

When people express strong opinions, someone will be offended. Period. The Atheist Experience offends a lot of Christians simply by existing at all. Dawkins criticizes faith and is labeled a bully and an "atheist fundamentalist" and a thought-cop and a bigot, though everything I've read of his is delivered in a tone that, while certainly confrontational and blunt, never merely seeks to insult people on a personal level. Christians, on their TV networks, say personally insulting things about atheists, liberals, homosexuals, and basically anyone who isn't in their club with such reliability that you can practically set your watch by the frequency of Pat Robertson's latest idiotic remark.

In a culture that supports free speech, offensive statements should be allowed, but expressly so they can be aired and then subject to criticism and debate. This is why I think the bad guys in this scenario here are neither Keller nor the Islamic group who got his show pulled, but the TV station itself, for not allowing the Islamic group a chance to counter Keller's remarks. We all cringe with disgust when filth like Fred Phelps or the KKK announce they're coming to town. But the value there is that when they do come, hundreds of people whose minds are not poisoned by religious bigotry and ignorance find themselves rallying together in counter-protest.

So I say yeah, Keller should be allowed to have a show if he can find a station that'll take him on. And the Islamic citizens whom he offends should be able to rebut him publicly and encourage viewers not to watch his show and boycott his sponsors. And there should also be a nice, family atheist show on Florida TV as well, pointing out that both these folks are full of shit and offering rationalism as a better alternative to both. If anything in this modern world is aggressively Darwinian, it's the marketplace of ideas. Let the bad ideas have free rein, if only so that better ideas can be aired to challenge and ultimately conquer them.

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Okay, having said all that, I will anticipate and respond to a criticism I can already see some of our Christian readers making. Isn't it hypocritical of me, they might say, as an atheist, for you to support free speech and the exchange of ideas when it comes to something like religious broadcasting, but not when it comes to giving equal time to intelligent design alongside evolution in science classrooms?

In short, no. Religious television shows and similar entertainment venues are forums in which people express opinions, even when they're deluded people who think their opinions are facts. Science classrooms are different, because they are educational (not entertainment) venues in which facts, and not opinions, are to be discussed. If certain facts in science are controversial, then that itself is a fact and is free to be taught there. The reason right now for opposition to ID in classrooms is that the side promoting it hasn't shored up sufficient facts for their challenge to evolution to be accepted as legit. If the ID camp devoted a fraction of the attention they devote to media dog-and-pony-shows and indignant press releases to actual scientific research programs, then they wouldn't be currently denied the respect of academia that they seem to feel is their birthright. There's no appropriate comparison between censoring opinions in the media and refusing to teach students things that aren't supported by facts in our schools.