Dishonesty and Hypocrisy

Because the full exchange was very long, and my breakdowns are also long, I’ve done my best to pare down the following content to the vital bits. It’s possible I will later regret not including particular parts, but that’s the price I pay in order to avoid making an over-long post even longer. While the exchange was between Russell and a theist viewer, I wanted to provide my thoughts about this particular theist and what I observed in his responses that I found particularly unbearable. Kudos to Russell for keeping it civil to the end. I'd have been fed up with this very early on.

The two things I loathe most in a correspondence are dishonesty and hypocrisy. Recently Russell engaged a theist, Caleb, who wrote to us to assert the following:

“I am a christian and believe the Bible is the inspired word of God.”

He then went on to cherry pick verses in order to claim that there is no hell and there is no afterlife according to the Bible. Clearly Caleb is in the minority with regard to Christian orthodox reading of the text. In his own words:

“Another truth about the Bible is the teaching of the immortality of the soul, the bible clearly teaches that when we die we simply die.”

Russell replied by pointing out that atheists aren’t particularly concerned about what the Bible teaches, because, to the atheist, it’s just another book.

Caleb replied with “No True Scotsman,” that the majority of Christians don’t understand the Bible correctly—"correctly" being how Caleb understands it.

“I don't assume that you care about the Bible. However I truly feel that a lot of your assumptions and conclusions have been based solely on stories out of the bible that have been twisted and defaced by false religion.”

And he then accused us of of using twisted interpretations of the Bible to make it say horrible things that it doesn’t. In reality, we’re simply going with an orthodox Christian view that has been orthodox for centuries.

“…when you have a story such as hellfire and eternal torment that makes your side of the argument appear to lean to your side, you use the bible against itself and it sounds credible”

He seems less interested in the reality that it’s Christians—Bible defenders—who promote hell fire and afterlife, not detractors. Like so many others, Caleb has written to us to complain, when, in fact, his real issue is with other Christians. If he thinks the orthodox Christian view is maligning the real Bible message, an atheist program isn’t going to be able to help him out with that problem. We respond to what Christians actually believe and promote, we don’t dictate it.

And Caleb understands that we’re presenting orthodoxy, he just doesn't understand that Christian orthodox views aren't under our control:

“What the Bible really teaches is credible, but it will never be credible as long as you have the twisted stories that are presented to you on your show by these traditional Christians.”

All I can say is that while this is the traditional Christian view, it’s the view we’re going to critique when we talk about Christianity. If we presented Christianity using minority views, such as Caleb’s, we’d surely (and rightly) be accused of misrepresenting Christianity. Caleb has taken his “fight” to the wrong arena. If he wants us to address his views when we discuss what Christianity is about, then he’ll need to work to make his view the orthodox view with his fellow Christians.

Caleb then stated something we need to pay special attention to:

“Also there are many Bible prophesies in the Bible that Show its credibility.”

What do you think is meant by Caleb when he says that the content demonstrates the Bible's “credibility”? I don’t think it is very confusing. He means that it’s credible evidence of divine authorship—as he indicated previously (quoted above) as his view. What other sort of “credibility” would Caleb think ancient prophecies in the Bible demonstrate?

Then he says something we’re all used to, the Bible is supported by, and does not conflict with, science. Note especially the spherical Earth claim, as this is going to come back as well.

“In Isaiah 40:22 we see the Bible writer refers to the Earth as being circle, globe, or round, so the Bible has referred to the Earth being round more than 2000 years before those voyages. Was the writer a great guesser? Also the Bible goes hand in hand with science as far as science goes take for instance the Genesis account, and this goes back to what I was talking about earlier most Christians believe the Earth was created in 6 literal days about 6-10,000 years ago. Again this is crazy that simply does not match up with science. However a further examination will reveal that the Bible does not specify the amount of time it took to create the Earth.”

Russell’s reply was quite brief but hit several points:

1. That Russell has read the Bible himself and isn’t just assuming what’s in it based on stories he’s been told.

2. That some of what is in the Bible is correct, and some is not, and that he disagrees with the claim a god exists.

3. A link to an article talking about Flat Earth ideology and how it was understood by ancient Greeks, and that the word Caleb is translating as “sphere” can mean “circle”—which can still be flat. And also that the Bible contains passages that indicate you can stand on sufficiently high points to see every location on Earth—something impossible on a globe.

4. Russell points out Genesis indicates plants existed prior to the sun, which does conflict with science.

Of all the points above the ONLY point Caleb responded to was the question of the “sphere” vs. the “circle”:

“OK I have done some research on the Hebrew word at Is 40:22, the Hebrew word chugh, translated circle, can also mean sphere…”

And he didn’t touch Russell’s point that other passages clearly indicate a flat Earth. Again, if the word means either “sphere” or “circle,” and we have several other verses indicating you can see all areas of the Earth from a sufficiently high point, what is most likely the model of the Earth to ancient Hebrews? In fact, the idea of seeing all points on Earth from a single, sufficiently high area, isn’t even restricted to Old Testament texts. Such descriptions are also found within the New Testament books (see the link further below for further examples). But Caleb ignores this, and upon realizing the word means either "circle" or "sphere," he then just ignores “circle” (the predominant usage) from that point onward and sticks with “sphere”—the position that supports his view of miraculous knowledge. We know he’s not interested in honestly examining what the word most likely meant to the people writing at that time—otherwise he’d have addressed the larger context, the question of the “high vantage point” problem, that he, instead, chose to completely ignore.

But what we see is Russell agreeing it can mean “circle” or “sphere,” but simply saying (to paraphrase) “based on who is writing and what else they say about their model of the Earth, what is most likely meant here?” Russell takes the full range of meaning, looks at the most likely scenario, and concludes it’s likely intended to be a flat circle. Caleb ignores the larger context, sees that it can mean either a “sphere” or a “circle” and then latches onto the meaning that suits him, while dismissing the definition that does not.

Then Caleb says something else interesting. And this reminds me of the apologist Josh McDowell. McDowell specializes in presenting data that supports his view, and holding back any data that conflicts or would undermine his assertions. McDowell does what is normally called “a lie of omission.” In other words, you say only what needs to be said to make you sound credible, and you don’t provide the information that calls your claims into question, and you hope the party you’re talking to is none the wiser, so you can “win” even if you’re “win” is based on dishonest survey of the evidence and data, rather than an honest one. So, here is what we have:

“The point is the book of Isaiah was penned in the 8th century B.C.E(778-732 B.C.E) which was centuries before Greek philosophers theorized that the Earth likely was spherical, and thousands of years before humans saw the earth as a globe from space.”

And again, Russell comes back to point out to Caleb that he’s not considering all data, just data that suits him:

“Initially you were claiming that the Bible absolutely makes some kind of scientific claim that could only be interpreted as imparting knowledge which was not in any way available to people of the time it was written. Now you're clinging to this explanation that if you take an alternative meaning of a word which primarily means ‘circle,’ as filtered through modern translators who are trying to prove the Bible correct, then the authors might conceivably have been obliquely referring to knowledge which already existed in other cultures around the same time.

"(Incidentally, your note about the authorship of Isaiah is incomplete. Parts of it were written in the 8th century BCE, but parts of the book, including chapter 40 onward, are dated to the 6th.”

Moving the date to the 6th century means that the idea of a spherical Earth would have been broadly understood. And it undermines the idea that the Hebrews—even if they used the term to mean "sphere"—were working from divine knowledge. Although figuring out something before someone else, really isn’t evidence of divine knowledge anyway—someone is always the first to figure a thing out.

Russell then shared a link to an article full of Bible support for Flat Earth ideology. It’s written by a skeptic who is examining what the Flat Earth society believes, what they promote, and upon what Bible verses they base their Biblical interpretation:

http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/febible.htm

Again, this is the doctrine of other Christians. Other believers. Others who hold the Bible to be the true and unerring word of the divine creator. And they don’t agree with Caleb. What is their ulterior motive to misrepresent the god and the book they are devoted to? Who could be more honestly devoted to a religion than a group that could deny the tremendous body of evidence for a spherical Earth? That’s actually quite a commitment to your holy book, in my view. As Caleb demonstrates, most people, even most believers, couldn’t hold to that level of devotion to the concepts promoted within the Bible. Most Christians, like Caleb, are willing to cherry pick in order to make the Bible fit better into reality as we learn more and more about the universe around us. It’s ironic that Caleb will try to make a text from several thousand years back fit into the paradigms of today, while claiming those who do not do this are the ones “twisting” the meaning. But here we are, right?

True to form, Caleb writes back with his myopic view of evidence. Sure, parts of Isaiah could have been written in the 6th century—but that doesn’t mean they were…therefore Caleb concludes, against the obvious, they weren’t. He then goes on to do some wild thrashing to quickly change the subject and get out of the frying pan:

“The fact that that Isaiah was incomplete can be refuted, but the fact remains that there are plenty of holes in the evidence that points to life being traced to previous organisms, the bible is not a science book but what is in there is in line with the scientific discoveries today. The bible does not contradict itself…”

Caleb is confusing “refute” with the idea that there is often a range of scholarly opinions concerning dating something from thousands of years ago. The idea that parts of Isaiah were produced in later centuries isn’t “refuted.” The fact there are a range of opinions is not “refutation.” What Caleb really means is that since the scholarship asserting that parts of Isaiah were written at a later date can only be expert opinion—even if that’s a majority opinion—he has all he needs to assert (as he absolutely did earlier, above) that it was, in fact, written in the 8th century BCE. This is dishonest. Caleb didn’t say earlier that it could have been written anywhere between the 8th and 6th century BCE, he said, “the book of Isaiah was penned in the 8th century B.C.E”—and that’s “Josh McDowell”-level dishonesty right there.

Russell’s reply was short and concise—and fair:

“Way to change the subject. Can you please acknowledge that your first argument didn't work as a proof of god before trying to sneak into another one?

“After you've done that, then you'll be free to explain why you're trying to claim simultaneously that the Bible agrees completely with modern science, and the Bible is completely incompatible with the core principles of modern biology.”

Caleb’s final response drove me to this blog post. My desire, if I’m honest, was to reply directly to Caleb. However, there were four things that made me hold back:

1. It was Russell's dialog.

2. Caleb dismisses anything that conflicts with his ideology.

3. Caleb ignores any points he can’t address, as though they were never made (and bear in mind, although I didn't include Russell’s full replies, they were quite brief. This wasn’t a case of pages of rebuttal where it was only human to choose which areas to respond. Ignoring points in a note that only contains three or four clear points is simply dodging.

4. Caleb takes things that require interpretation (sphere/circle, 6th/8th century origins) and lays them out as fact. He doesn't get that it’s not sufficient to say “it can mean this,” to demonstrate your point. You actually have to show it does mean it. Russell actually pointed this out using an illustration to make it crystal clear:

“This kind of reminds me of how James ‘The Amazing’ Randi speaks about Uri Geller, a parlor magician who claims to be able to bend spoons with the power of his mind. After proving that this can easily be done through sleight of hand, Randi said ‘He might be doing it through telekinesis, but if so, he's doing it the hard way.’”

Caleb is “doing it the hard way.” We have a book that presents a pervasive theme of a flat Earth, but Caleb will do all he can to just ignore context and alternate (common) meanings, in order to cling to the “sphere” ideology. He does this as a means to try and bolster his original claim that it must have been a god that produced this book. And even if Isaiah does present a sphere, and we have a range of possible dates for the text from 8th to 6th century (and it would have been mundane to know this in the 6th century), trying to cling to the 8th century in order to bolster your divine authorship claim, is, at best irrational, and at worst, dishonest. The most likely scenario, if it was a sphere described, is that this, along with the other points that make scholarship lean toward 6th century authorship, would probably be a result of the later chapters having been written or revised in later centuries. Revisions, updates, and additions to Bible manuscripts are commonly recorded. Would it be more likely that a later update referenced a then-common model of a spherical Earth, or that a spirit being imparted magical knowledge to ancient herders to prove to people, thousands of years later, that it was a god that wrote it—especially considering that the methods to discern a spherical Earth existed as much in the 8th century as the 6th. Again, even if some clever Hebrew had figured it out 200 years earlier, is that evidence of the divine?

So, upon weighing the odds of my success in getting Caleb to grasp the level of his own hypocrisy and dishonesty, I ultimately concluded that contacting him directly would be nothing short of an exercise in futility. So, this seemed like one of those times when my ideas would do more good shared publicly than privately with a correspondent who would not likely be able to actually internalize them. At any rate, here is the final response from Caleb, that left me incredulous:

“No I will not acknowledge that, that was not an argument of proof of god.”

Caleb started out asserting that god wrote the Bible, and then tried to claim it had valid prophecies and also that it had miraculous scientific knowledge. This statement, above, is simply less than honest.

“I was trying to convey that the bible does not contradict science or itself, I was conveying the authenticity of the bible.”

Why is it important the Bible doesn't contradict itself? The Bible is “authentically” what, Caleb? If it’s authentically the product of goat herders and not a god, what is your goal in trying to claim internal consistency and valid prophecies and miraculous scientific knowledge? Remember where you asked if the Hebrews knew the world was spherical due to a “lucky guess”? What do you mean to imply in this quote below?

“In Isaiah 40:22 we see the Bible writer refers to the Earth as being circle, globe, or round, so the Bible has referred to the Earth being round more than 2000 years before those voyages. Was the writer a great guesser?”

And now we're supposed to believe none of this is about using the Bible to demonstrate a god exists?

You then audaciously put forward this bit of clear projection:

“But you have made it clear that you have no vested interest in even understanding what the bible really teaches. Therefore if you are only willing to look at one side of the evidence then you are making a conclusion that is incomplete and unjust.”

Russell pointed out repeatedly we have a range of data we must consider in making assessments. If part of that range offers a reasonable and mundane explanation, reason dictates we should go with the most likely answer—not try to force-fit "the hard way." Caleb, however, insists on "the hard way,” and denies the existence of any reasonable and easy way. He works quite hard to make the data seem miraculous and incredible, ignoring every piece of evidence that points to far more rational and simple explanations. And for asking Caleb to stop ignoring the data that doesn’t suit his ideology, Russell is accused of being myopic.

Then we have what I can only label a real bit of insanity from Caleb:

“I have to ask, have you never wandered why there is so much suffering? Why there is so much injustice? Why isn't there a human government that can solve even the little problems? Such as the national debt, the greed that prevails in politics, or corruption. None of these things have never touched your heart?”

For the record, the Problem of Evil is not a problem at all in a realm where the beings at the helm are not all-knowing, all-powerful and all-loving. There is nothing miraculous about organically evolved beings in a realm being unable to produce a Utopia. I’m amazed that Caleb sees the Problem of Evil as a problem for nonbelievers rather than for believers. What, one has to ask, is Caleb’s model of god? Is it malevolent, ignorant, ineffective—or all three? What sort of god is Caleb promoting that has produced such a mucked up world and allowed it to continue on with all the “problems” Caleb is crying about? This is a problem that has plagued believers for centuries—not nonbelievers.

“Do you feel you have a purpose? Why do we grow old and die?”

Again, this is really a problem for believers, not nonbelievers. When a believer tells me the universe is designed, one of my first questions is “what exactly do you see as a purpose of the universe when you look at cosmic events? What exactly have you demonstrated this universe is doing?” And as far as why do organisms die, it’s a natural progression. Matter and energy are extremely durable, but the organized set of chemical reactions we fuzzily label “life,” don’t maintain that organization forever. They wear down, the same as all chemical reactions. How, again, is this evidence of a god? It appears to be a natural occurrence that aligns quite well with natural laws that govern the universe. I surely don’t see any miracle evident in this process. How does “people die” demonstrate the existence of a spirit realm? We might as well ask "Why do ants die?" Is that evidence of The Great Ant God? How do we verify that if a god created people he would create people that die? How did Caleb come to that conclusion?

“I hope in our discussions I have not offended you or anyone else on your program.”

Caleb’s presentation was polite enough. But his dishonesty and hypocrisy is what galled me. I wouldn’t say it offended me, though. I’d say it more disgusted me. And while Caleb surely wouldn't see any of this in his own dialog, I'm hoping that, just like callers on the show, others who see this might learn from Caleb's mistakes here, and recognize that if they're doing it the hard way, they're not being reasonable nor are they being honest.

Don't Be a Dick redux — now with Real Life Adventure!

Had an absolutely insane personal encounter today that I'm still having difficulty processing, because it was the sort of display of flagrantly irrational, histrionic and emotional behavior that we as atheists and rationalists criticize, but which you in fact rarely get to experience right in your face. It reminded me of a great many basic axioms though. For one thing, being an atheist is no guarantee you'll come with rationality pre-installed. For another, it never fails that people who have fanatical views that they refuse to see challenged will be the first to praise themselves as beacons of reason. It's a human flaw I suppose we must all watch out for.

So I'm at a nearby mall today, when I pass by a fellow — who Shall Remain Unnamed — who, many years ago, used to be an ACA member. He left a while back, to the disappointment of few, it must be said, and I recall not liking him much personally for some prima donna behavior he exhibited in regards to the TV show at the time. But anyway, I caught his eye and decided it never hurts to be friendly, so I waved and said hi. I soon had cause to regret my sociability.

We spoke for a moment, and everything was gas and gators. Then he demonstrated that, since leaving the ACA, he's travelled to a much weirder place, by turning the conversation towards — are you ready? — 9/11 conspiracy theories. Basically, he buys them.

Now, before I continue, I'm sure this is futile but the point of this post is not to start a sprawling endless comment thread debating such theories. (Just go here if you want to have that discussion.) It's to talk about, well, behavior. And I think it dovetails with a lot of current kerfuffle that's playing itself out among the online godless community right now — like Rebecca Watson and the Elevator Incident. In other words, part of living the rational life is having a sense of self-awareness. How you interact with others has much to do with how your message will be received. This is basic common sense and socialization, not an advocacy of tone trolling. Indeed, there are times in-your-face rudeness is the way to respond. But in most cases — and certainly in public — how you behave reveals more about you than you might wish people knew. Not only does it reveal what your beliefs are, but it reveals how those beliefs inform whether you're a normal, cool person that others want to interact with. In short, if you cannot control yourself, expect to be an embittered loner, whose sense of victimhood is shored up by righteousness. Which brings me back to the person at hand.

So the guy shows me the new issue of Skeptical Inquirer, and indignantly denounces its cover story debunking 9/11 conspiracy mongering as "propaganda." He then goes on to speculate that the Center for Inquiry has been infiltrated by the CIA, who planted the story in the magazine. (He did not, in his genius, consider that if the CIA was doing this sort of thing, they certainly have the wherewithal to plant such a story in bigger and better-selling publications than Skeptical Inquirer, whose global circulation is around 50,000, compared to, say, Time's 3.3 million.) Anyway, it was a farrago of absurdity, and I could tell he was passionate about it.

Now, you know me from the show. I'm snarky. So when he mentioned that the airplanes that crashed into the towers had "nothing whatsoever to do" with their collapsing, despite destroying support columns and causing fires in excess of 1000 degrees, I replied, "So what, was it just special effects on TV, when we witnessed the planes actually hit the buildings?"

Rule #1 when dealing with the fundamentalist mindset (which is something one sees displayed often in non-religious environments, you know): Mock them, or even make them think you're mocking them, and they will completely lose their shit. Which this guy did. Right there, in public, in the middle of a shopping mall.

So he leans in, and starts shouting at me. No really...shouting. And it has now become a "violating personal space" issue, in addition to the plain inappropriate public display of temper. So, not being one to take this kind of crap, let alone from someone whom I approached for a friendly social chat despite not especially liking him in the first place, I put up both hands and said, "No! Wrong! I'm not doing this in public. Goodbye." And I walked off.

Naturally, he followed me, keeping up his harangue. How could anyone believe that "gravity could make buildings fall"? Etc etc. Now I am seriously pissed, and begin making my way towards a nearby jewelry store, where they usually employ a cop. Really. I am not making any of this up.

Finally, I stop, in the hopes of just convincing him to fuck off before I have to go and make things really ugly, like pressing public nuisance charges. After another few seconds of heated exchange, he wailed that he has "lost all respect for every atheist blah blah blah." I say, "Good, so goodbye! Stop following me!" And he leaves.

Gang, this happened. I mean, this happened.

What is it that turns a person into something like this? I understand ideologies, I understand being someone who gets too emotionally involved in what you believe, and I understand a lack of self-awareness and poor social skills. But outside of street riots — where the environment seems to be conducive — you don't tend to encounter someone whose complete lack of anything resembling basic respect for others and common sense is so proudly on display.

At the core of it all, I think, is irrationality married to poor social skills. Irrationality is not necessarily about what you believe (though yeah, it often is), but how you believe it, why you believe it, and how your beliefs inform your personal interactions and behaviors. After all, why would a rational person choose to take a friendly greeting in a shopping mall as an invitation to start a shouting match about whatever political thing you have up your ass today? And if you expect the person you're trying to pick this fight with to disagree with you anyway (he began by saying that he expected I, like "most atheists," to have "swallowed the official 9/11 story"), then what other than arrogant stupidity would provoke you to go ballistic at them when they give you the expected disagreement? If he really hoped to persuade me I'm wrong for not believing in a conspiracy, did he really think totally jumping my shit in the middle of a fucking shopping mall was the way I'd have my mind changed?

I reiterate that this fellow is an atheist, and that his reason for leaving ACA was that we weren't the group of political agitators he wanted us to be, plus the part he doesn't mention, which was that he also didn't like the way we reacted negatively to his being a douche to everyone. But his behavior today was entirely in keeping with his behavior of the past. When in the group, he angered the entire TV crew — of which he was not a part — by turning up at the studio one Sunday holding a bunch of signs he'd had printed, pronouncing himself "art director," and proceeding to redecorate the backdrop (which took 45 minutes longer than it usually did) with these signs, which had type so small they couldn't be read onscreen. When repeatedly told this, he flounced off in a huff, making a misogynist insult against one of our women crew and deriding our "amateurishness." I followed him into the parking lot and chewed him about six new assholes, and never saw him again, until today. Guess I shouldn't have been shocked.

So, why am I belaboring you all with this? Well, in part, it's cathartic. In other part, it was a healthy reminder of the dangers of irrationality — the unwillingness to have your views challenged or to entertain that you may be wrong, the blindness to how your behavior affects others, the inability to what what behavior is appropriate and when, the failure of letting temper control you rather than vice versa. We all talk about crazy fundies and how they impose themselves where they aren't wanted. But if we wish to consider ourselves on the side of the "angels" of reason, if you'll pardon my phrasing, then we should be vigilant and self-aware, strictly applying our own standards to ourselves before we demand them from others. I guess what I'm saying is — "Don't Be a Dick!" I don't, like Phil, think we all do it, and I certainly don't agree that challenging anyone in any way is dickish. But with a little too much ego and self-absorption, and too little sense and rational thought, anyone can be a dick if they don't watch out. An encounter like today's is upsetting, sure. But you can take it as a cautionary tale, and get the positive from it.

And that's your drama for today. And I bet you thought Matt got all the wackos. Now, I'm going to go hang with my dogs.

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.

Kcuf the muthakcufas!

So. We have artificial life. Kickass. But wait, what's this? Why, right on cue, if it isn't a bunch of showboating, pious old cretins in dresses wagging their fingers at the presumptuousness of scientists, and insisting that the creation of life is the sole purview of some invisible magic man in the sky they seem to believe in.

"We look at science with great interest. But we think above all about the meaning that must be given to life," said Fisichella, who heads Vatican's Pontifical Academy for Life. "We can only reach the conclusion that we need God, the origin of life."

Now, one could respond to that in the usual way, by pointing out that before they can make claims like that about their God, they should prove the old spectre exists in the first frickin' place.

But of course, we don't even need to go there. Because the very idea of an organized crime syndicate responsible for enabling and protecting the largest and most appalling epidemic of child rape in the history of civilization having the audacity to lecture anyone, let alone scientists, on "the ethical dimension" of anyfuckingthing, is quite simply gobsmacking. Now, at least, you know why those guys wear those huge flowing robes. They need them to contain their colossal solid brass balls!

So all that's left is to give this little ditty another airing, I do believe. Take it away, Timbo.

PS: The comments on that Yahoo news article are gold. The RCC has a serious public image crisis. I wonder why...

George Rekers is a bigger whore than his own rentboy

Whenever one of these secretly-gay fundamentalist homophobes manages unintentionally to out himself with the usual Keystone Kops subtlety, one thing can be counted on always to happen. Folks like us will be passing around yummy slices of schadenfreude pie, and at some point during the party, amidst all the gloating and off-color jokes about a man's "luggage," someone will sincerely wonder why the secretly-gayest of all Christians are the most virulently, vocally homophobic.

There's a complex psychological answer to this, of course, having much to do with the cognitive trauma endured by a lifetime of Christian indoctrination that is often and repeatedly at odds with reality, and the way such indoctrination is designed expressly to tear down the believer's self-esteem so as to rebuild it with Christianity at the center of it. But in some cases, there's also a painfully simple answer as well. Take old George Rekers. In a very meaningful way, what prompted his homophobic crusade was the crassest of all human motives. It paid big bucks. Your big bucks, if you happen to be a Floridian.

Turns out that Rekers banked a handsome $120,000 of taxpayers' money when the state of Florida paid for his services as an "expert witness" against a gay man trying to adopt a child. Money, as the writer of the linked article points out bitterly, which could have gone to some needy school district or something. And he's done it before, once in Arkansas where his input was dismissed as "worthless" by a judge. But Rekers still got to keep his fee. That kind of money will certainly pay for a lot of high-end designer-label cock luggage.

Rekers has made his living as a homophobe-for-hire, spewing worthless, unscientific opinions in courtrooms with the goal of destroying peoples' dreams of a family of their own. And he did it for money. All the while living the life he condemned, smugly convincing himself, I have no doubt, that by punishing others for his own "sins" he was balancing the moral books. Congrats, George, you just leveled up your "Scum" attributes as high as they can go. At least your hunky "Lucien" never pretended to be something he was not!

But...but...it makes no SENSE!

Welcome to Florida, where they hate teh gayz, but are apparently pretty open-minded about furries. The Sunshine State goes out of its way to prevent gays and lesbians from marrying or even adopting (though their adoption ban has been ruled unconstitutional), and yet they just can't seem to muster up the energy to ban bestiality.

But here's what I find confusing, even by the standards of wingnut tomfoolery. Aren't these folks the ones who believe that homosexuality leads to bestiality? Aren't they the ones telling us that buttsecks and being fabulous is just a gateway drug to boning Fido? I mean, Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum, and our ol' buddy Pat seem to think so, and many others in the I'm-Not-Repressing-Anything-No-I-Mean-It Brigade agree. So is it Florida's position, then, that while The Gay is a threat to the very fabric of our society that must be eradicated at all costs, the presumably-ickier kinks it apparently leads to aren't really much to be worried about? Wouldn't it follow that if homosexuality really corrupts society, then bestiality would be a total apocalyptic leghump for the whole planet? But if they're now saying bestiality is a "rare crime" that it would be a waste of time dealing with legislatively, then aren't they admitting that Huck and Pat and Rick and those guys are (gasp!) wrong!? But how could they be lying to us? They're good Christians! Gah! Dealing with these people makes my poor head* throb. I need a cookie.

---

*I mean the one on my shoulders. Geez, you people...

Yes, I know, this is just begging for a joke about teabagging...

...But even I won't go near it, gang. Wait, I just did. Oh well! And yet, a headline like "Christian Right leader takes vacation with 'rent boy'" is still funny no matter how many times stuff like that happens. Gee, it's almost like "Christian Right leaders" are all a bunch of repressed moral hypocrites or something.

Sick and Tired of Christian Manipulation

The headline reads, “Oklahoma Senate Passes Five Controversial Abortion Bills.” It should read, “Christian Theocrats Make Strides in the Promotion of Sadism, Manipulation, and Hypocrisy.” Let’s face it: if there’s a group in the U.S. that wants to harness the reproductive capacities of others, it’s Christians. In this case, the Christians elected by Christians in the Oklahoma State Senate has thought of various creative ways to screw with women who are convinced they’re not able to raise a child that they have in their womb. The Senators feel it’s their duty to demand potentially invasive medical tests to take “baby pictures” for the sole purpose of emotional manipulation. They feel it’d be a good idea to invade the personal lives of these women. And to add insult to injury, they’re making the patently false claim that they’re trying to help these women.

If Christians would really like to help women seeking an abortion, I have some suggestions. First, I have yet to see a Christian group put up the money (up front in escrow) that is necessary to raise a child to adulthood as a trade for a woman not to have an abortion. Why not? Christians want to have the power over a woman’s womb, but they run away like squealing vermin when the slightest mention of responsibility is mentioned. Their propaganda says that “God will provide.” Christians, why don’t you pony up the money and let your invisible friend reimburse you? We all know that will never happen. If you want to reduce abortions without being sadistic and manipulative bastards, try actually putting your money where your mouth is. If you don’t believe your bullshit propaganda, why should anyone?

Other suggestions:

• Quit sabotaging contraceptive use, sex ed, and family planning. These things actually reduce unwanted pregnancies and abortions. It’s obvious that reducing abortions is not the motivation of Christians. And please quit pretending to want to reduce abortions. Your obvious intent is to increase the number of believers in the world without having to pay for them.
• Quit meddling in the lives and medical business of people you don’t even know. Nobody appreciates being fucked with. Duh.
• Please understand that what you are doing is religious persecution. If you can’t show a bit of empathy for your victims, don’t expect anyone to give a shit about your religious rights when that glorious day comes when the shoe is on the other foot.
• Learn a little empathy and humility. Just because you’ve sucked up to the invisible Big Thug in the sky doesn’t give you the right to be a little thugling. Anyone who has taken an objective look at your religion is aware is a load of crap. Keep it to yourself.
• Concentrate first on fixing your festering boy fucking problem that shows how astoundingly incompetent your God is, and how amazingly gullible your fellow believers are for believing the amazing bullshit rationalizations used to excuse the problem.
  

Christians claim to follow an all-powerful God who has the ability to create people. If that’s true, why doesn’t your God make more gullible toadies if he really wants them? Seriously, aren’t there already enough in the world? The actions of Christians make it obvious that they know it’s a complete lie. They know they have to harness reproduction to make the next generation of sycophants. Unfortunately, with all it’s claimed power, Christendom plus God don’t have the power to control their own flock’s reproduction. Instead, they are hijacking the reproductive capacities of others via government control—and then foisting the expense onto them. This policy actually creates poverty and ignorance, which make it easier to instill religious belief in the next generation. If Christians want to run a breeding program, at least do it with your own people and your own money. And start paying your taxes. What you’re doing is not charity and deserves no public support.

In the spirit of Jesus’ saying of “Doing Unto Others,” I would like to suggest new law to be applied to Christians. Under the law, Christians would enjoy their Constitutional Right to free exercise, but upon entering their church, they would need to submit to a head x-ray (at their expense). The test would help them determine whether they had a brain and it would be purely for the benefit of the congregant. I would also suggest that any Christian in a leadership role, such as clergy or in government, submit to a weekly anal exam with the results published on the Internet. We want to make sure those assholes are working properly, don’t we?

Irony meter explosion in 3...2...1...

Okay, so that preposterous, demented d-bag Mike Adams has noticed all the ridicule he's been getting online, and has, like most deluded narcissists, taken it for validation of his awesomeness. In a new post, he offers the following observation, which deserves an Oscar for Lifetime Achievement in Clueless Projection. Now, remember this is the guy who wrote a trillion-word attack on skeptics that led Orac to call him "a pyromaniac in a straw man factory"... Salient hypocrisy boldfaced.

[Skeptics] also tend to jump to false conclusions about what people are really saying. In my previous article, for example, I never stated whether I believed in God, or whether I was an athiest [sic], or whether I followed organized religion and yet people read the article and they leaped to conclusions, assuming I was promoting organized religion, for example, or that I was condemning atheism.

Actually I never stated my position on those matters in the article at all, but the skeptics leaped to the conclusion that I did. This speaks to their tendency to warp all incoming information and restructure it to conform to the beliefs they already carry about the subject at hand.

ROTFL! You silly little bitch.

Cal-irony-fication

The California Supreme US District Court is currently hearing a case over whether 2008 Proposition 8 (which bans same-sex marriage in the California State Constitution) is itself constitutional. If the court rules that it is not constitutional (by the state's US constitution), then same-sex marriage would revert to being allowed in the state. This is a pretty important case as many people feel that California is a cultural leader for the entire US--not to mention its sheer size.

There has been a recent side-show as to whether the hearing would be (video) broadcast to the public. One can make an argument that public interest is served by transparency, especially in such an important case. This little debate went all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States that decided today that there should be no such coverage. The 5-4 decision (with the conservative Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, Kennedy, and Alito in the majority) was ostensibly decided on a technicality. Not too interesting so far; but let's look under the hood, shall we?

The very fact that SCOTUS even heard the case and issued a decision was based on an urgent claim of "irreparable harm" to someone. According to one source, "The Court also found that the high-profile nature of the trial might intimidate witnesses and cause irreparable harm if the rule were not stayed." However, the dissenting justice wrote (page 24-25): "I can find no basis for the Court’s conclusion that, were the transmissions to other courtrooms to take place, the applicants would suffer irreparable harm. Certainly there is no evidence that such harm could arise in this nonjury civil case from the simple fact of transmission itself." (This article has a good analysis.) Perhaps a broadcast on YouTube would cause irreparable harm to their cause.

So what's going on? The religious supporters of Proposition 8 are wanting have their free speech rights to make false and emotionally manipulative claims, but they are crying persecution when it comes to taking responsibility for them. Consider defendant Hak-Shing William Tam, who wrote, "On their agenda list is: legalize having sex with children," and that, "other states would fall into Satan's hands," if gays weren't stopped from marrying in California. A successful advertising campaign during the Proposition 8 election claimed that homosexuality would be taught in public schools. They want to perpetrate thuggery on gays, but they're playing the persecution card when it comes to taking responsibility for their lies--and the conservatives on the Supreme Court are backing them up. Apparently, taking responsibility is irreparably harmful to the religious.

The irony is so thick here you could build a church with it. Some supporters of Proposition 8 have gotten harassing phone calls and e-mail messages. I can't say I feel any pity for these people. They are being subject to much milder versions of the same tactics they have done to gays and others over the years. (Religious readers are referred to Exodus 21:22-25 and Matthew 7:12 for a little morality lesson and some tasty just desserts. I long for the day when the majority of gays vote on the Christians' right to marriage, just as the Christians have done to gays.) Christian death threats are a common intimidation tactic and the religion has plenty of people who are willing to carry them out. Gays have been subject to (real) hate crimes for years, most of which have been religiously motivated. Christians have made a big business out of persecuting gays. Proposition 8 itself is just part of that business. If same-sex marriage becomes normalized, they will have a much harder time vilifying gays and their red-meat lovin' constituency will turn to other pursuits and take their tithes with them.

Same-sex marriage in the US will happen eventually, but we can count on the religious fighting unfairly every step of the way.

Thugs without Borders

Christians are having a big impact in Africa, it seems--especially those from the US.

In recent memory, we have:

• US Evangelicals James Dobson and Franklin Graham (son of Billy) easily inserted themselves in AIDS relief efforts in Africa under the Bush administration. While marketing their "charity" to the home base to get more donations, they sabotaged relief programs and used their power to evangelize a desperate captive audience. Embrace Christianity to get medicine or die.
• In response to the successful Ugandan AIDS policy based on ABC: abstinence, be faithful, and use condoms, the US simultaneously swooped in to take credit for the success and worked to gut it. The policy, controlled by US Christian evangelicals, focused on abstinence-only. This policy has been a failure everywhere it has has been tried. This includes setting back Uganda's education efforts.
  
• Pope Ratzinger falsely asserted that condoms don't prevent the spread of AIDS, just as he makes his first visit to the continent devastated by the virus. Sadly, many people still listen to this irresponsible institution and its former Nazi in the pointy hat.
  

Now, we have Christians spreading their bullshit theories on homosexuality in Uganda. Selling hatred of gays has been a big moneymaker for the religious right. They have lost quite a bit of momentum, in the US though. They have having more and more trouble painting gays as evil child molesters, given that so many real child molesters are religious leaders. (Can you say "projection"? I knew you could!) People just aren't afraid anymore of same-sex couples that keep their yards a bit too neat and just want to get married. Perhaps the religious thugs thought they'd get more mileage out of their campaign in another country.

Apparently, their campaign was a bit too successful. Uganda is considering implementing what Christians here in the US have always wanted: laws that punish homosexuality with death--just like the BUYBULL sayz (Lev. 2o:13). We all know conservative Christians want to inflict Leviticus on their enemies, but ignore it otherwise.

But wait. Now US Christian groups are saying that they don't think Uganda is doing a good thing by following the US Christians' advice. Even some of the hard core homo haters like Rick Warren have had to backpedal. Apparently, God's universal and absolute morality changes minute by minute depending on the financial needs of Christian groups and their ability to spin to the morons that fund them. We supposedly immoral atheists can see through your con and call you on it.

The constant in this equation is the religious exploitation of the poor and ignorant in whatever continent. ...Just as they've always done. We could make the world a better place by separating the US government from these exploitative efforts. Let the Vatican and US Christian groups stand alone without sullying the US's reputation on these efforts. Let's call the exploitation of Africa a Christian initiative when it is, as in these cases. Let's stop giving government subsidies and tax breaks to religious groups that promote hate and exploit people--even if that's all of them. Finally, let's put some of these people on trial for their crimes against humanity.

Christianity and the allure of "cheap grace"

One aspect of religion that has often come under atheists' critical fire is the way in which it enables the most egregious hypocrisies amongst its most devout adherents. Considering how important Christians will tell you Scripture is to their lives, it's remarkable how selective they are in their reading of that Big Book of Multiple Choice. The warnings against hypocrisy among believers that comprise most of Matthew 6 would be sufficient to shut up almost the entirety of the American Christian Right, if they were the kinds of people who practiced what they preached.

But I think there is something about religion that's even more insidious than hypocrisy, and that's the way it puffs up believers' hubris, allowing them to think they're more special and entitled and deserving, even (and especially) without having done anything to earn it. Religion tells people they're part of a select group, favored over others by God. And yet these are the same people who routinely like to attack unbelievers — and the intelligentsia many unbelievers are part of — as "elitists." What could be more elitist than believing everybody but you deserves eternity of torture in hell, simply because you belong to the Jesus Fan Club and they don't?

I've been thinking about this over the last couple of days since my attention was drawn to something that hasn't really turned up on atheists' radar: the Manhattan Declaration. This is a kind of manifesto that has recently been put together by several prominent conservative Christian figures — among them arch-bigot Tony Perkins and Kazim's old pal Chuck Colson — as something of an ideological purity test. It begins as follows:

We are Orthodox, Catholic, and evangelical Christians who have united at this hour to reaffirm fundamental truths about justice and the common good, and to call upon our fellow citizens, believers and non-believers alike, to join us in defending them. These truths are:

1. the sanctity of human life
2. the dignity of marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife
3. the rights of conscience and religious liberty.

Some quick Googlage has revealed that this Declaration has already ruffled the feathers of liberal, progressive Christians, who have quickly called the whole thing out as an effort to enshrine conservative prejudices as "fundamental truths about justice and the common good." Only the most smug and arrogant bigots could claim with a straight face that a Declaration that openly repudiates GLBT marriage equality is one that favors "justice" in any form. I think that word, to quote The Princess Bride for the 80 billionth time, doesn't mean what they think it means.

Basically, the highfalutin language of the thing does little to disguise the fact that it's a huge anti-gay-rights and anti-abortion petition, and it takes a Bushian "with us or against us" attitude that is nothing less than a gauntlet thrown down to all those liberal Christians who haven't toed the Hate Line to the satisfaction of their conservative betters.

Surfing the blogosphere, I come upon this post by blogger Hugo Schwyzer — who, as an avowed pro-GLBT liberal feminist Christian, is about as far from the fundies' notion of ideological purity as a guy can get — where he takes the Manhattan Declaration to task for being little more than a reactionary pushback against the tendency among the younger generation of modern Christians to reject right-wing fundie obsessions with "pelvic morality" (basing culture war talking points on sexual and reproductive issues to the near exclusion of everything else) in favor of broader moral concerns — saving the planet, helping the needy — that are generally of interest only to those damn latté sipping libs. Schwyzer makes an astute point about the "cheap grace" enjoyed by fundies whenever they beat their chests and pontificate over such narrow-minded issues: that these are fights they love precisely because they have nothing at stake.

Here’s the thing: fighting against abortion and gay rights is, in the end, cheap. It requires no particular personal sacrifice or reflection on the part of those who claim these are the top issues. Men who will never get pregnant; heterosexuals who have the privilege to marry those whom they love — they surrender nothing precious to them by fighting tooth and nail against reproductive and glbtq rights. The struggle against global poverty and the struggle to save the planet from environmental degradation, on the other hand, make radical claims on all of us — particularly on the affluent in the West, whose unsustainable consumption patterns are directly linked to human and animal suffering. Fighting against climate change and poverty require that the wealthy transform their lifestyles; fighting against gay rights requires nothing more than censorious and self-righteous indignation.

Bam! — direct hit, below the waterline. But I'd caution Schwyzer not to forget that, in a very real way, "cheap grace" is at the heart of all Christianity, not just the version practiced by wingnutty Sarah Palin and Carrie Prejean fans. Christianity presents believers with this odd notion about morality, sin, and fate: that, merely by virtue of being alive, a person is a worthless sinner damned to eternal agony because of the Fall; but hey, not to worry, because Jesus took all of that punishment upon himself, poor chap, and now by virtue of his sacrifice, you're good to go, and all you need to do is make sure (at some point before you die) you publicly high-five Jesus for taking one for the team, accepting him as your savior. So, we're damned, but we're not, and eternal salvation is ours simply by the rough spiritual equivalent of clicking a confirmation email.

So right from the outset, Christians are more or less raised in the extremely confident belief that all the heavy lifting for their own personal redemption was already done 2000 years ago. Their own efforts require no personal sacrifice at all. If this is not cheap grace, what is?

The very thing that Christianity tries to sell as its most morally and spiritually profound element — salvation by proxy — in fact cheapens the entire notion that in life, self-respect, the respect of others, and an enduring reputation as the kind of good person whom the rest of us should want to emulate, must be earned. The whole notion of salvation by faith and not works (which, admittedly, might be more favored by conservative Christians than liberal ones, though I think God, if he's up there, ought to do his job right and clarify matters) gives Christians the ability to think pleasingly of themselves as among the saved elect, regardless of how they might actually behave in their lives. The popular Christian bumper sticker "Christians aren't perfect, just forgiven" conveys egotism, not humility, as it's basically saying, "Yippie! I'm a Christian, and I never have to change, never have to better myself, never have to take responsibility at all." The very hypocrisy Matthew 6 rails against is enabled by Christianity's entire salvation mechanism. How else could so many arch-scumbags (insert names here, but off the bat I think of Kenneth Lay and Jim Bakker) preen with such pride while living the sleaziest, most immoral lives they could manage?

So, while I'm always pleased to see liberal Christians who aren't afraid to take on the Right Wing Noise Machine (a thing we have pointedly challenged them to do for a decade on AETV), I'd caution Schwyzer and his liberal Christian brethren not to overlook the cheap grace at Christianity's very foundation. But to be fair, perhaps the fact that guys like him, at the very least, do try to live decent lives of higher personal responsibility, supportive of the real meaning of terms like "justice" and "equality" that the wingnuts simply treat as pious catchphrases, means they're more aware of it than they might like to admit.

What Is an Atheist?

Someone contacted the list with the following claims:

Assertion 1: An agnostic is someone who is neither a theist (someone who believes a god exists) nor an atheist (someone who does not believe a god exists OR someone who denies a god exists).

While I agree with this, I soon found out I have different reasons for doing so. I go by the theologically classical definition of agnostic as someone who addresses knowledge regarding god, and finds it lacking, versus the Gnostic, who believes that knowledge about god is accessible and perhaps even that he has such knowledge. The person making claim 1 above, however, asserts that an agnostic is someone who neither believes nor disbelieves that a god exists. They wished to use that definition alone because it is what their friends agreed was right, and it was listed as a "colloquially" acceptable definition in his dictionary, some version of Merriam-Webster.

I already knew the dilemma this person was creating for himself. To define the agnostic off the bat as not being a person who believes a god exists leaves little room for then trying to defend that the agnostic is someone who does not believe a god exists. I think most people would see the problem with the position even before it unfolds:

If a "senior" is defined as one who is at or over 65 years old, and you assert that I am "not a senior," there is no escaping that you have just indicated I am not at or over 65. And the writer does agree that a theist is a person who does believe a god exists. Thankfully he understands at least one significant definition in theological terminology.

I knew he was going to encounter difficulty, then, in defending his claim that this agnostic is no atheist. Literally, anyone who is not a theist (someone who does believe a god exists) is an atheist (someone who does not believe a god exists). And this person who contacted us, let's call him "J," for brevity, agreed that the atheist is correctly defined as "someone who does not believe a god exists." In fact, he agreed to this during a call to the show--on the air--recorded for posterity, before he wrote to us.

So then, his argument begins with this:

The agnostic does not believe a god exists (or else he'd be a theist), but he also does not, not believe a god exists (or else he'd be an atheist). So that this magical being, the agnostic, both does "not believe" and also does not "not believe"--which is a logical impossibility. I can no more accomplish this as a human being than I can both be a senior and not be a senior.

I accepted the writer as merely a person who is ignorant regarding where the term "agnostic" originated and how it is used in actual theological discussion of these issues. The Gnostic movement is one that concerned itself with knowledge about god. Certainly knowledge is a subset of belief, but one that was the focus of the Gnostics that separated their ideology from broader definitions of belief. And I do not claim this distinction is without problems.

The term that defines the response to Gnosticism, "agnosticism," was coined by Thomas Huxley, in the mid-1800s, to describe his rejection of Gnosticism, and subsequently all claims to knowledge regarding gods. He was not claiming that no one has belief in gods and that belief in gods is unavailable to people. He was making a statement about a subset of belief, knowledge--which is usually far more narrowly (and problematically) defined.

The idea that an agnostic is simply someone who is wishy-washy about their belief in god is a misconception that has grown as discussion of "atheist issues" has become more common. And the reason it grows is that people love to talk about religion, but they don't seem to like to actually research it or inform their opinions before they open their mouths.

In short, it's like the word "founder," which means to have trouble staying afloat. The word fell out of common usage and began to be "replaced" with "flounder"--a type of fish. One suggestion is that people equated it to "flopping around" and being unable to move well, and that's why they began to describe something that doesn't progress well as "floundering," more and more often. Today, when you look up the word "flounder," it actually does generally have a secondary definition that makes it synonymous with "founder."

Dictionaries are wonderful tools. They inform us both of classically correct usage, but also must reflect common usage--which can become correct usage over time. With "agnostic," we have a common misconception that may one day find its way into a secondary form of correct usage. But it carries with it the problem of making all such defined agnostics atheists. And there was a moment when J began to realize this as a necessary conclusion, when he accused me of trying to say that all agnostics were, in fact, atheists. I honestly replied that I do not use his definition of "agnostic," and that I know many agnostic theists; but that if I am compelled to use the term "agnostic" by defining it off the top as a person who is not a theist, and, by necessity, then, a person who does not believe a god exists, then I cannot agree to the second half of the definition--which is logically impossible--that he also is not an atheist and not someone who does not believe a god exists. A human cannot be both someone who does "not believe" a claim and someone who does not "not believe" a claim.

So, this, I chalked up to ignorance and misconception on J's part. I did so, at least, until it went on for more than a few exchanges and I began to suspect there was more here than just simple correction of a misconception required. J was defending, not honestly communicating. A person honestly communicating would have, at or before this point, pretty well have said, "Maybe I hadn't thought this through, and it appears I might be working under some misconceptions." But not J. J has something to prove, which leads to his next assertion:

Assertion 2. The atheist is making a positive claim and we can extrapolate other atheist beliefs from the position "I do not believe a god exists."

Specifically, when J first called us, J wanted to be able to say that we can know what atheists do believe, by knowing what they do not believe. And that is simply not the case. And I should add that it's no more the case than me claiming I can know what someone believes when they claim they do believe a god exists. I have no idea what they mean by "god" nor what impact their god has on anything, including on themselves. But, more specifically, he thinks he knows what an atheist thinks of universal origins, according to his call. His argument is along the lines of this: Either a god created the universe or a god did not. If you don't believe in a god, then you must believe in naturalistic origins (and I assume that would lead to the common misconception that all atheists believe big bang, which I know to be false).

The idea here goes something like this: "I assert that fairies created the universe. If you do not believe in fairies, then I know how you think the universe was created."

Obviously that would be ludicrous. But as is so often the case, the theist can't see how absurd it is when you use "god" instead of "fairies." But using fairies, anyone should be able to see how ludicrous this claim becomes. Of course you could assert you know that however I believe the universe came to be, it is a non-fairy model. That much is fair--but as far as asserting that you have some insight into what I do think pumped out the universe (if I'm not obstinately holding to steady-state theory, and asserting that the idea it was "produced" at all is nonsensical to me)--what I do believe about it--is unjustified.

Here I should note that J does not dispute the broad definition of atheist on the surface. If you show him a dictionary that indicates that the atheist either does not believe in the existence of gods OR believes no gods exist, J will say "OK." However, I don't think J really comprehends what he's agreeing to here--or at least he didn't at first.

The idea that I say you can be "one or the other" means that the "one" is not the "other." And while I think anyone could understand that, J is, apparently, not just anyone. I happened to pull a definition that read "disbelieve" rather than "does not believe," and J decided to fly with this. In fact, he tried to fly this to the moon. "Disbelieving," he asserted, is not at all the same as "not believing" something. I kid you not. This was his response.

Bear in mind that if I knew "disbelieve" would trip him up so badly, I'd have pulled a valid authoritative dictionary from the start that said "does not believe"--because they are out there. But since J had agreed during our call that an atheist is one who does "not believe" a god exists, it did not occur to me he'd now try to claim "does not believe" isn't valid since this one dictionary I pulled had "disbelieve." So, back-peddle number one is that he tried to duck out of his initial agreement that it's fair to label someone who does "not believe" a god exists is an "atheist."

And here we have a lesson in definitions. And by that I don't mean that there are not myriad dictionaries that will support than an atheist "does not believe" (if it's "disbelieve" that is all that is freaking you out) or that there are not myriad dictionaries that assert that "disbelieve" does include "not believe," but we need to see something here about broad and narrow definitions, in general, and how they must be understood by any fair and honest person:

If I assert that Word-X means "A" and you assert you are using it as "B," and I say you are wrong to claim it means "B," and we look it up in 6 dictionaries, and some say "A" and some say "B" and some say "A or B" or "A, B and sometimes C," then I am wrong even though "A" is not incorrect. I did not assert I use it as "A" and you use it as "B." I asserted it is incorrect to use it as "B." And I am wrong. And in our discussion about agnosticism, despite my knowledge that he was abusing the term by using a definition that represents a common misconception, I still agreed to accept it and roll with it. That's what people do when they are trying to have a fair and honest dialogue to understand what you think and why.

It is possible to find dictionaries to support that "disbelieve" means to reject belief in a way that condemns the claim (in this case, "a god exists") as false. But to claim that "disbelieve" does not mean "not believe" is to ignore all of the other dictionaries that assert that "not believe" is an acceptable usage of the word disbelieve. It is to tell me I am wrong to use "B", while "B" is supported by myriad authoritative sources. In order to stop me from rightly using a valid definition, the burden would be on you to demonstrate why those definitions are incorrect and the sources are faulty, or to demonstrate why those definitions might not apply in the context of our particular discussion. In this particular case, however, I even used J's own dictionary--Merriam Webster--to demonstrate "disbelieving" as "not believing." And he was still unwilling to to admit the words can validly be said to carry the same meaning.

At this point I could not give the benefit of the doubt--that this was ignorance rather than pride-- any longer, so I asserted rather that dishonesty might be involved in some way as a motive. But it would be more true to say the motive for his unwillingness to accept what was in front of him was defensiveness. This, in my book, includes being willing to make ridiculous assertions in the face of rock-solid, contrary evidence, by way of lying to oneself and/or others. I think J was insulted by the "dishonest" comment--but it was that or "stupid," and of the two, I would think "dishonest" would be the more complimentary. However, admittedly, I might have gone for duplicitous, hypocritical or disingenuous.

Hypocrisy 1:
Eventually J stated that the agnostic does not believe god exists "on the face of it"--and I have no idea what difference it makes. If he does "not believe" a god exists, he is an atheist. If he does "not believe" because he's uncertain what to believe, because he's investigated and found it to be unjustified to believe, because he's drunk and it's Wednesday--it really doesn't matter. As long as we can honestly say this person does "not believe" a god exists (and if we agree, as J and I did, he's no theist, then we can), and as long as we can say that an atheist does "not believe" a god exists (and J agreed to this initially, and a dictionary survey and history would support this), then we cannot deny that this person is an atheist, while he is not a theist.

It no more matters why I don't believe in god than it matters why I do believe in god. And here is where we get into the sort of hypocrisy that could stir me to righteous indignation if I were to allow it.

Can you imagine how ridiculous and presumptuous it would be, if I went to a theist e-list and began asserting that only theists who believe a god exists because god has personally spoken to them are theists--and that anyone else doesn't really "believe" and is an "agnostic"? What if I asserted that those at the e-list who believe only because of what they've read in their Bibles can't be labeled "theists"?

Where do I sign up to cherry pick for theists which reasons for "belief" are valid reasons under the theist definition, "someone who believes a god exists"? Would J think that was rational of me, to go and tell theists that if their belief is based on "A," then it counts, but if they believe for reason "B," then their belief isn't really "belief" under the theist definition? The reason they believe is not relevant. All that matters is that they believe. The definition of "theist" doesn't have an asterisk leading to a note indicating that "if you believe for the following reasons, then 'theist' is not what you are." You can believe for any reason. And a you can not believe for any reason. You still believe or you still disbelieve. And whether you believe or disbelieve is all that matters to these definitions--not "why."

Hypocrisy 2:
In a context of a particular field, it is possible for definitions to have agreed upon meanings. For example, the term "stripper" in publishing used to mean a person who worked in preparing materials for pre-press. This is very different than what the general population thinks of when they think of "strippers." And I think we understand this pretty well. In theology, where theists equate "belief" with things like "faith," we are often confronted with models of the martyrs--those who exhibited such deep conviction to their views that they would suffer and die for them. Theists make quite a verbal dog and pony show, often becoming offended at any slight to their "deeply held beliefs" or their "god," in which they believe and whom they "revere." This "belief" they speak of is important, sometimes life-altering, something they teach their children, something to spread to the far corners of the world, something that brings them great "joy" and "peace" and "happiness." Theists make it known that "belief" is no small thing. In fact, in the Bible it says that if a person "believes," they can be saved--receiving eternal bliss with god.

This is how the theist frames theistic "belief."

Further, during our call with J, Matt said belief was "acceptance of a claim as true," and J agreed. Later, the e-list exchange, we used a definition of "conviction of the truth of a claim," and J did not take issue--at first. The definition went along, accepted by both parties for a few exchanges. Then, suddenly, out of the blue, J decided that the sort of "belief" we were discussing, the belief in god that distinguishes a theist, was this sort of "belief":

Me: "Where is Tammy?"
You: "I'm not sure. I believe she said she was going to the store--but I might have not heard her correctly."

His point was that you can have varying degrees of belief in god--that not having conviction doesn't mean not "believing." So, the agnostic is like this--he is unsure and sort of "believes."

Beyond back-peddling--literally going back and saying that a definition he accepted twice isn't working out as well as he'd hoped, so he's now going to just reject it and claim I'm the one being unfair--there are two huge problems with J's assertion:

First of all, if this truly is "belief," then we have a problem with J's Assertion 1: If I believe a god exists, I'm a theist by definition--using any source you want to pick. And that means that, according to J, this person is no longer an agnostic, because he has belief in god, and, therefore, must be a theist (which J asserted his agnostic is absolutely not). If there can be "little" belief--then his agnostic would be correctly labeled a "theist"--and J must say there is no such thing as an agnostic. He would actually be saying that anyone who has doubts about the existence of gods has some small "belief"--and those who have no doubts and think a god does not exist, are atheists. So, rather than defend his agnostic, he has successfully defined his agnostic right out of existence.

But secondly, and even more pathetically and dishonestly, J is now taking his belief in god (he is a theist) and throwing it under the bus, in order to salvage his sorry position. No longer is "belief" a conviction or accepting a claim as true. No longer does god require deep faith and the courage to live and die by that conviction that He exists and came to save the world from sin. No longer does god demand worship and reverence and commitment. It seems that when the Bible talks about believing and being saved--it only means not being sure god doesn't exist. If that's the case, many atheists will be thrilled to learn they're saved according to the Bible--for they believe. And that's apparently what theists mean by "belief"--according to J.

Why is this surprising though? Why should it be a shock that when it supports a theist's argument for how wonderful it is to be a theist, belief is a conviction that can fulfill your life, but the moment you want to say that without that conviction, a person can't be said to "believe," then belief becomes nothing more than the thinnest shred of a doubt about the false nature of the any claim? In other words, I should say I "believe" fairies exist, according to J, because I have to admit that, logically speaking, I cannot "know" they do not exist, even though I really, really, really, really doubt they exist, and feel fair saying "I do not believe in fairies." I still "believe fairies exist" according to J, because I have to acknowledge that it would be logically unsupportable for me to assert that I know they absolutely do not.

And J keeps asking me why this is so hard?

From where J stands, it isn't possible that he's twisting in the wind. I sometimes have pity on him because it's hard to see a person humiliate himself repeatedly on this level; but then he acts like this is a debate or honest disagreement we're having, rather than me trying to educate an ignorant, defensive individual, and I get my perspective back.

This brings us back to "one OR the other." If these doubts constitute "belief," then we have a problem with the definition of atheist, with which J took no issue. J agrees that the atheist is either someone who disbelieves/does not believe a god exists OR someone who believes no god exists (denies a god exists). And here's the rub: If "disbelieve" means to accept a claim is false, and if "believe" means to be anything but 100 percent sure the claim is false--then what is the difference between "disbelieve/not believe" and "believing no god exists/denying god exists"?

J, who does not claim to take issue with the definition of "atheist" that reads, someone who disbleieves a god exists OR someone who believes no god exists (denies a god exists), is now trying to say that "disbelieving" and "believing the opposite" represent the same condition, thus rendering the "OR," and the definition of "atheist," nonsensical. In other words, while he claims to take no issue with the definition, J is actually trying to assert that an atheist is only someone who denies a god exists, and that a person who disbelieves a god exists is actually no different. In my last communication, I asked him what he imagines the dictionary (his Merriam Webster) is trying to demonstrate as the difference between "disbelieve" and "believe the opposite"? I just sent it this morning, so I can't report on the answer to that head-scratcher.

But I must say that I reject any claim that it is honest to assert that I "believe" fairies exist. I am unable to logically defend that it is impossible for a small race of magical woodland winged creatures to exist. Do I believe fairies exist? If you think it's reasonable to say I do, I know this guy, J, you really need to meet, because I suspect the two of you will really get along. But I do not expect anyone will ever find a fairy. I do not accept that all the writings about fairies are a compelling reason to think they exists. And if someone presented me with one, I would have to admit I have been "wrong" regarding the existence of fairies. But why? If J is correct, I always believed in them, since I always was willing to admit that I could not be 100 percent certain they do not exist.

Also, J rejected that agnosticism had anything to do with knowledge. And I submitted that theism and atheism addressed belief, not knowledge. And he never took issue with this. Meanwhile, he seems to be saying the atheist has to assert knowledge (certainty), and I don't see that in the definition. Surely an atheist could feel certain there is no god. But I simply note it is not necessary to be an atheist.

I sent J, several e-mails back, a link to a wonderful series of articles written by Austin Cline, who has been for many years the host of about.com's Agnosticism/Atheism section. I don't think J read the articles. That's too bad. If this is an issue that interests any of you, I encourage you to do some further reading at Cline's site. Here are a few links you might enjoy:

At his main page is a link to "Atheism 101," a series that talks about these same misconceptions.

Dictionary Definitions of Atheism"

"Definition of Atheism in Reference Books"

Here are a few quotes I thought were very appropriate to this discussion:

“Atheists are simply those who do not accept the truth of this claim — they may deny it out right, they may find it too vague or incomprehensible to evaluate properly, they may be waiting to hear support for the claim, or they may simply not have heard about it yet. This is a broad and diverse category and there is no particular counter-claim made by all atheists.”

“Many have trouble comprehending that "not believing X" (not believe gods exist) doesn't mean the same as "believing not X" (believe gods do not exist). The placement of the negative is key: the first means not having the mental attitude that proposition X (gods exist) is true, the second means having the mental attitude that proposition X (gods exist) is false. The difference here is between disbelief and denial: the first is disbelief in the broad or narrow sense whereas the second is denial.”

“A belief is the mental attitude that some proposition is true. For every given proposition, every person either has or lacks the mental attitude that it is true — there is no middle ground between the presence of absence of a belief. In the case of gods, everyone either has a belief that at least one god of some sort exists or they lack any such belief.”

“A person who is an agnostic, who does not claim to know for sure if any gods exist, still either has some sort of belief in the existence of some sort of god (believing without knowing for sure is common in many subjects) or lacks a belief in the existence of any gods (not believing without knowing for sure may be more common). Confusing the definitions of atheism and agnosticism is a popular tactic with some religious theists because it allows them to essentially define the territory of debate in their favor. They should not, however, be permitted to misdefine and misrepresent basic categories in this manner.”

I still am stunned at the presumptuousness of a theist calling an atheist public outreach program to argue with the hosts about what an atheist is, writing to an atheist educational foundation to assert they don't understand the definition of agnostic or atheist, and potentially going to Austin Cline's section to say that a person who has dealt in atheist issues for longer than I've been an atheist (and who has extensively handled this question particularly) doesn't have a clue about atheism. I would never dream of contacting the Baptist Convention to say they don't know the first thing about what a Baptist is. In fact, if I did get into a discussion with the president of a Baptist educational foundation (as J disputed with Matt D as well), and he told me that I misunderstood some aspect of what it means to be "Baptist," and dictionaries and reference sources largely supported his assertions--why wouldn't I back down and own up to my misconception? Austin Cline has a thought on that in one of his Atheism 101 articles:

"Another reason for insisting that only the narrow sense of atheism is relevant is that it allows the theist to avoid shouldering the principle burden of proof. You see, if atheism is simply the absence of a belief in any gods, then the principle burden of proof lies solely with the theist. If the theist cannot demonstrate that their belief is reasonable and justified, then atheism is automatically credible and rational. When a person is unable to do this, it can be easier to claim that others are in the same boat than to admit one's own failure."

I think this pretty well nails it.