And the Rock Cried Out, No Hiding Place

I have given the AtheismGREEN more thought over the past few weeks, and it has given me a different perspective on Atheism+

I understand more and more now that Atheism+ is a secular social justice group that just happens to have the word atheism in the name, but by and large, it has very little to do with atheism or skepticism and has more to do with woman's and gay's rights.

I support the rights of all humans beings, so in that respect I do not oppose them. What I do have some issues with are with the methods they employ to achieve the goal of equality.

So to that end, I believe I will leave Atheism+ alone for now.

Unless something changes in the future, I expect this post to be my final post about Atheism+

Atheism Green Continued

I have been giving Atheism Green more thought, and I believe I have thought of why environmental causes could be tied to atheism.

Many religious people believe a judgement day is coming, and on that day God will judge the world and destroy it in the process, save for the believers.

If you really do believe we are in end times, then why would you care the planet is getting warmer?

In fact, some may believe that climate change is part of Gods plan to end the world, so why fight Gods plan?

If people can blame religious attitudes for sexism against women, can people also blame religious attitudes for the continued rejection of climate change?

Atheism Green

I have had a recent idea, and I would like to use this blog post to flush it out.

Many people criticize Atheism+ for adding causes to atheism that are unrelated to atheism, and this gave me an idea.

How would people react to Atheism Green?

Atheism Green could go something like this:

It's Atheism, but Green:

• Atheism plus we fight climate change.
• Atheism plus we support renewable energy.
• Atheism plus we protest pollution.
• Atheism plus we fight deforestation and poaching.
• Atheism plus we use critical thinking and skepticism.

Atheism Green can speak out against Carbon Culture

Carbon culture - a concept used to describe a culture in which fossil fuel burning and hydrocarbon use are common and in which prevalent attitudes, norms, practices, and media normalize, excuse, tolerate, or even condone the use of gas, coal, or oil as fuel.

Atheism Green can speak out against Carbon Privilege

Carbon Privilege - the ability to burn or otherwise use fossil fuels in daily life without the need to suffer the negative side effects of the burning of said fossil fuels. 

Atheism Green can work together to reduce our Carbon Footprint

Carbon Footprint - the total sets of greenhouse gas emissions caused by an organization, event, product or person. 

Atheism Green can then work to get atheism organizations and atheist conferences to use more renewable energy and to reduce the carbon footprint involved.

Atheism Green can work to have conference polices drafted that make is easier for attendees and staff to reduce their carbon footprint.

Atheism Green can start a campaign to have big name atheist speakers stop using jets and other transportation that wastes carbon

So Now What?

How would the wider atheist community take to Atheism Green?

How would an atheist feel to be labeled a Carbonist?

Carbonist - adjective for a person who isn't working towards or currently isn't Carbon Neutral

Carbon Neutral - having a net zero carbon footprint

I think this thought experiment needs more work to fully flush out, but I do not feel it is without merit.

Actions Speak Louder Then Words

I was reading the NeuroLogica Blog today when I noticed something different

Here is what NeuroLogica Blog looked like today NeuroLogica Blog (Sept 6th 2013)

Here is what NeuroLogica Blog looked like on August 2nd NeuroLogica Blog (Aug 2nd 2013)

The relevant part is on the right hand side, under the heading General Science Blogs

Here is how it looked on August 2nd

Here is how it looks today

It appears that between August 2nd and today, Pharyngula was removed as a General Science Blog

I think this small act by Dr. Novella speaks louder then anything else said about Pharyngula or PZ Myers to date.

Echo Chambers

I recently listened to The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe Podcast #424 and Steven Novella had a nice interview with Cara Santa Maria. During the interview, at about the 1 hour mark, the topic of echo chambers came up, and what Dr. Novella had to say really struck a cord with me.

He talked of how anti-vaxxers will make websites and forums where the only info you receive is from other anti-vaxxers, which only re-enforces their beliefs about the dangers of vaccines, and if you disagree, you are a troll.

Dr. Novella said that he does not think atheism will turn into an echo chamber as long as we keep these 2 guidelines .

1) Focus on the process, not the conclusion 

2) Seek out the other side and listen to what they have to say

I have to agree with both these guidelines, they work as a safe guard against the echo chamber.

This did get me thinking about another topic, namely Atheism+

I do not believe Atheism+ follows these 2 guidelines, they seem to know what the conclusion is (feminism and social justice) and they do not seek out the other side to listen to what they have to say. In fact, they go to great lengths to ignore the other side.

They build forums that are "safe spaces" and what do they mean by safe space? Let me quote the forum for you

Atheism Plus is a collection of like-minded people using safe spaces to hash out ideas. There is no dogma, just a general consensus among participants that the particular social justice issues it focuses on are important to them. 

There are no membership requirements beyond a commitment to taking seriously the need to have and maintain spaces where social justice issues can be discussed by atheists without interference from those opposed to the whole endeavor.

From this simple paragraph, you can see that they focus on the general consensus among themselves, they do not focus on the process at all, the process has finished and the general consensus will not be questioned.

You can also see that they do not seek out the other side, they wish to talk among themselves without interference from anyone with an opposing view.

If that isn't an echo chamber, I don't know what is.

What is Truth and what is God?

I do know that some people do look down on Science Fiction as a genre, but I find this speech compelling.

Agnosticism, a way appease everyone and not have to argue, or a valid point of view?

I am conflicted when it comes to Agnosticism. Wikipedia defines Agnosticism as the philosophical position stating that the world is unknowable and certainty is impossible.

This position is entirely true, and also entirely useless to me.

If one wishes to get pedantic enough, one can state with all honesty that nothing is knowable in the truest sense of the word, but take this to it's logical conclusion and see how it breaks down.

Imagine meeting someone on the street and asking someone what time is it, and they response that they are agnostic about time and are not sure time is real or not so they therefore cannot give you an answer with absolute certainty. I press them farther and say I don't need an answer with absolute certainty, just tell me what time you believe it is, and they reply they cannot tell me with certainty so therefore they have no opinion one way of the other.

I hope to an outside observer you can see how frustrating this can be, and this is how I feel when someone claims to be an agnostic.

Saying you are an agnostic is making a factual statement about how knowable the universe is.

Saying your an atheist is making an opinion statement that the claims about the existence of god made by others are found lacking and not credible.

Unless you are some kind of uncaring robot, you will have an opinion about the existence of god no matter how loudly you proclaim agnosticism, and your actions speak louder then your words.

Do you actively go to a church or temple or mosque to worship?

Do you pray?

Do you live your life by the rules written in a holy book?

If it walks like an atheist, talks like an atheist, and doesn't worship like an atheist, why do we call it anything else besides atheist?

I can think of a few reasons why people would shun the atheist label and self identify as agnostic, but they are all practical reasons that make dealing with theists easier, and that feels intellectually hollow to me.

I'm not here to tell people that they can't call themselves agnostic, but I just wanted it know that, to me, hearing someone self label as agnostic instead of atheist is on par with a christian claiming to be non-religious because they have a relationship with god instead and that christianity is a philosophy instead of a religion.

I could be completely wrong about this topic, but at least I'm willing to state my opinion.

The Atheist Power Vacuum

We won the war, now what?

That seems to be the issue with atheism on the internet these days. Years ago, religion was either dominate or immune to criticism on much of the internet.

Those days are now long gone, and in most popular areas of the internet, religion has no pass and criticism is instant and blunt.

It was the hard work of atheists that made this happen. We had an enemy, and we united to fight this enemy on all fronts, and the good news is we won.

That just leaves the question, so what now?

We are like an empire that just defeated the largest rival in town, which you think would be good for atheism as a group, but instead, it just removed the one thing that kept atheists united.

Without a “Them” to fight, what does that mean for “Us”?

In my recent studying of Roman history, it seems clear that once Rome defeated Carthage, the internal power struggles in Rome became much more of an issue, and civil war was a constant threat. Yet, before the fall of Carthage, the Roman Empire was quite united.

It seems that in the face of a threat, people are much more willing to put aside small differences and join in common cause against the common enemy, but once the enemy is defeated, the willingness to put aside small differences is greatly reduced.

Without a common threat to keep atheists united, we are left with a power vacuum.

So we see the birth of Atheism+, as an attempt to create a new enemy. Instead of fighting religious injustice, they fight social injustice, and it seems to baffle the follows of Atheism+ why everyone doesn't jump on the band wagon.

We also see the rise of the unaligned atheists, better known as the slime pit by its detractors.

The unaligned atheists seem to have no desire to move atheism beyond the simple fight against religious injustice, and they reject all attempts to turn atheism into Atheism+.

So when people like PZ Myers and Rebecca Watson proclaim that atheism alone isn’t enough and we need Atheism+ (which they just happen to be unofficial, de facto leaders of), the unaligned atheists reject that and claim that PZ and Rebecca are trying to co-opt the atheism movement for their own pet projects.

This then gives rise to Thunderf00t and Justin Vacula who stand in opposition to Atheist+ and the unaligned flock to their banner. We see yet again, that in the face of a threat, people put aside small differences to join in common cause against the enemy.

And just like that, atheists have a new enemy, each other.

We can fall back into old habits and just cross out the word religion and replace it with the slime pit, or Atheism+ and its back to business as usual.

The players change, but the game stays the same.

Feminism is the radical notion that women are people

"Feminism is the radical notion that women are people"

I hear this a lot on different websites that debate feminism and other related topics, and something about that statement seems disingenuous.

If feminism is the radical notion that women are people, then is not communism the radical notion that workers have rights? Is Christianity the radical notion that God loves us? Is capitalism the radical notion that people are rational? Is Mormonism the radical notion that family is important?

To break down an entire political movement to a single radical notion seem to be, at the very least, dishonest.

Not only that, but then using this radical notion to smear others feels very self serving. Its a tactic I see far to often used by those who cannot argue based on the facts, and instead appeal to emotion

If you see a problem with "you are either with us, or with the terrorists" or with the phrase "why do you hate freedom?", but you have no issue with "Feminism is the radical notion that women are people", then you need to check your blind spot.

Google Trends

After watching a recent Thunderf00t video where he uses Google Trends to chart the popularity of PZ Myers, I decided that I wanted to have a look at few other people with Google Trends

Here is a comparison between Thunderf00t, PZ Myers, The Amazing Atheist, Rebecca Watson, and The Nostalgic Critic as a control.

Here is the results when comparing web search:


As you can see PZ does win out with Rebecca Watson as a close second

Then I compared YouTube search:


And here it is very clear that Thunderf00t and The Amazing Atheist are well in the lead.

And finally, I compared by image search:


As you can see, there is no contest, it is all Rebecca Watson.

I must admit, that does make me pause for a moment. Other then a tiny blip for The Amazing Atheist (which I think is related to a banana incident) Rebecca Watson is the only person to even have an average higher then zero.

It seems clear that web searchers prefer PZ Myers and Rebecca Watson, YouTube searchers prefer Thunderf00t and The Amazing Atheist, and by a very large margin, image searchers prefer Rebecca Watson.

I am not sure what conclusion to draw from this

The Pycon Incident

I have seen a lot of blog posts and reddit threads about the Pycon incident, I assume that if you are reading this, you know about the incident and I can avoid the recap.

The more I think about this, the more I am conflicted.

I don't want to think that every spoken word needs to be filtered, especially in a joke between friends. What crazy 1984 world would we be living in if we need to self censor 24 hours a day or risk unemployment or worse.

On the other hand, if I was in her position and I heard a joke that mocked Atheists, I would perhaps take mild offense.

However, I have no idea what the joke even was.

Jokes are on a spectrum, at one end we get knock knock jokes and why did the chicken cross the road. At the other end of the spectrum, we have dead baby jokes and holocaust jokes.

Where on the spectrum did this joke lay?

Was the joke something like "wow that rep is hot, she gets my dongle hard and I would love to fork her"

Or was it closer to "check out that hot ass bitch, hope she likes a dongle up the ass while we rape her and pass her around for a good forking"

I think the distinction matters.

Was this joke that no normally prudent person would think was offensive, or was it the kind of joke you apologize for right after saying?

If the joke was truly offensive, then I can sympathize with her. Jewish people don't need to stand by and hear a holocaust joke and say nothing, black people don't need to hear nigger jokes and stay silent.

If the joke was just juvenile between friends, then I have no sympathy for her. Just because some people want to bubble wrap the world, doesn't mean we need to put up with it.

So in the end, I have no idea what to think.

Either 2 men told a horrible joke that would make george carlin blush and this brave woman stood up to these men, and now she is paying the price for her courage

Or 2 innocent men were telling an innocent joke and someone who sees offense in everything decided that her twitter followers would jump on the band wagon and be offended with her.

I can't tell who is right and who is wrong with this, so I use no names to help avoid slandering someone who does not deserve it.

In the end, all I can take from this is; be careful what you joke about, be careful of the pictures you tweet

So more self censorship... Great, just what the world needs.


- Sent From My Blackberry

Equality and Valentine's day

"You can be equal and still want to be treated like a princess once in a while"

I read the quote above in a Time article named 'Valentine's Day: Why Consumers Aren't Feeling the Love'

The article had many other interesting facts about this holiday:

1) Men will average $108 on gifts for their spouses or significant others, while women will spend $53

2) Guys seem to spend handsomely mainly to avoid being in the dog house with their partner

3) When I asked eight middle-aged married businessmen at a Toronto airport lounge about Valentine's Day gifts for their wives, there were groans and eye rolls all around. Yet all were of the opinion that a gift was obligatory. "Just to make sure" was the most common reason given for buying a gift.

This article does not paint a very good picture of this holiday, especially for the men involved, but what about the women involved?

"It's nice, but it's not a big deal," said Isabel, 23. Still, she admitted the pressure is mostly on guys, and that she likes being pampered. "You can be equal and still want to be treated like a princess once in a while."

So let's break down the reasoning of this thinking. Apparently equality is fine as long as you sometimes get treated as more then equal.

Imagine if the roles were reversed

If women spent twice as much as men, and men said "you can be equal and still want to be treated like a prince once in a while", how would we react to this holiday?

I wonder...


- Sent From My Blackberry

How can a working theory be wrong?

I have been giving it some thought to what it means to have a theory.

For lack of a better description, a theory is a working set of assumptions which produces useful predictions about future events.

The best example I can come up with is how I learned to play chess.

The chess teaching set I got came with 2 sets of rules. The idea is that once you master the easier rules, it should be less difficult to move to more advanced rules.

The only major difference between the 2 sets of rules had to deal with end game.

Under the easy set of rules, you just need to capture the enemy king and you win. None of that check or checkmate, just simply take the king and you win.

We can call this the "Capture the King" theory of chess.

I can play chess using the capture the king theory, and up until the end of the game, you would have no way of telling I had a different theory of play then you.

I would still move pawns, still take your pieces and go after your king while trying to protect my king.

The capture the king theory of chess works quite well in almost every way, it just breaks down in end game.

Now realize that all theories are like this.

The theory of gravity breaks down at the subatomic and becomes unreliable. Does this mean the theory has no use?

Far from it. The theory of gravity makes many useful predictions about the natural world which prove true time and time again.

Just like with the capture the king theory, I can predict you will go after my king and protect yours. Even thought I am missing the point about why you go after my king, I can still predict that you will.

That is what makes the capture the king theory useful, I can base my play on that theory and be a competent chess player.

So just because a theory does not hold true 100% of the time, it does not mean it has no use or value.

We need to realize that a theory is only a useful set of assumptions for any given problem, and not the be all and end all of reality.

So when I hear people rally against the theory of evolution because it fails to explain the origin of life, I could only liken it to a beginner chess player throwing out the whole training course because it uses the Capture the King theory.