A Charitable Thought Experiment

What makes a good charity to contribute too?

Do you need to agree with everything a charity does to donate in good conscience, or is it ok as long as it's mostly good?

To help us with our thought experiment,  lets imagine there is a charity called The Lifeline Corps

The Lifeline Corps is passionately committed to eradicating poverty and caring for people who are struggling.  The Lifeline Corps is working to address the dehumanizing scourge of poverty and injustice and educate the public about what it means to live in poverty – and what they can do to help.

So far sounds like a good charity right? Let's keep reading

The Lifeline Corps is an international organization that began its work in 1882 and has grown to become the largest non-governmental direct provider of social services in the country. The Lifeline Corps gives hope and support to vulnerable people today and every day in 400 communities across this country and more than 120 countries around the world. The Lifeline Corps offers practical assistance for children and families, often tending to the basic necessities of life, providing shelter for homeless people and rehabilitation for people who have lost control of their lives to an addiction.

Still sounds mostly good right?

Maybe now you would like to know more about this charity before you donate, so you read some of there positions, and you come across a position about marriage.

The Lifeline Corps holds the position that marriage is the covenanting together of one white man and one white woman for life in a voluntary union characterized by faithfulness, mutual affection, respect and support. It makes this view known in its published Position Statements

The Lifeline Corps anticipates that some will assert that the arguments advanced in this submission in support of the institution of marriage apply equally to mixed-race couples.

 The Lifeline Corps maintains that for important theological, philosophical, historical, social, legal, cultural and anthropological reasons, the institution of marriage ought not to be redefined in this way 

 The Lifeline Corps’s position on marriage is based on its understanding of what the Bible and Christian tradition teach about human relationships and sexuality.

As the union of a white man and a white woman, marriage has been embedded in the culture and tradition of the western world since the beginning of its recorded history. Redefining it to include mixed-race couples may appear to be a simple solution to a perceived present-day inequality, but the notion of marriage as an whites-only relationship is so deeply rooted in our society that its redefinition may have far-reaching effects on the future development of our society that cannot be predicted, while to do so will offend the conscience-driven position of the vast majority of married persons.

Some of you reading this may be taken aback now. How could any charity that sounded so good to begin with turn out to be a racist charity?

Would you donate your money to this charity? If you saw a Lifeline Corps member ringing a bell near a mall, would you give him your pocket change, knowing that it goes to a charity that beliefs mixed-race couples are somehow less then white couples?

Let's take this though experiment 1 step farther. Instead The Lifeline Corps. lets call them the Salvation Army and instead of opposing mixed-race couples, how about opposing same sex couples.

Would that be ok for a charity? Would that make the difference, is it ok to deny gay couples, but you can't deny mixed-race couples?

And, in case you were wondering, all of the paragraphs above were taken from the Salvation Army Canadian website, all I changed was the name and changed references from gay marriage to mixed-race marriage

Do you still feel good about the Salvation Army?

My journey into skepticism - the night I saw a shadow person

I'm not sure how many of you what a Shadow Person is. A Shadow Person is believed to be a human-like spirits that take the form of shadows and are often seen only in peripheral vision.

My experience was a bit different. I was asleep[ in my bed when I felt that I woke up, but I could not move. the most I could do was just barely open my eyes so I could see my room.

What I saw was a shadowy figure walk into my room, turn towards me and lean down over me. I could sense this being just centimeters from my nose. I could feel the movement of the bed as they put there hands beside my shoulders as they leaned down towards my face.

It was a scary experience, and after only a moment I sat up in bed and this shadow was gone. If I was at a less skeptical point in my life, I may have called what I saw a ghost of some kind, but I was skeptical at the time, so I didn't jump to any conclusions.

Everything about the experience felt completely real and if I only trusted my senses, I would have no reason to doubt what happened, but something did happen that showed me this was only a dream or other hallucination

While I was paralysed in my bed and saw this figure enter my room, I could see a window on the far wall and in the window I saw the full moon. After the figure vanished and I was able to sit up I looked out the window and saw no moon, just stars.

This episode only lasted a few minutes so the moon would have no time to move in the sky so far, unless more time had passed then I believed, but if I cant trust my perception of time how can I trust any perception I had that night.

I decided that the moon was a giveaway that it was a dream. My brain knows the window was there and it was night, so it invented something to put in the window that would not look out of place. It decided a full moon would do nicely, but it had no way of knowing if the moon was really in my window.

So when I woke up and saw reality, I could see that it did not match watch I saw just a moment ago.

And as a skeptic, objective reality matters.

Atheism+, where the plural of anecdote is data

My understanding of the Atheism+ movement is that it was born out of incidents of sexual harassment at atheist conventions and in online forums.

I have heard about the elevator incident, the atheist girl on reddit getting rape jokes, the muslima, and many other such anecdotes.

And that is what they are, anecdotes.

I have heard time and time again that the plural of anecdote is NOT data, so why are charges of male privilege and rape culture supported by anecdotes?

It appears that even asking for statistics on sexual harassment is tantamount to "blaming the victim"

How can we as a skeptical community accept that?

If someone told me they were raped by a gray space alien, would it be wrong to ask for evidence?

Should we just accept that 100% of rape claims and sexual harassment are 100% true and accurate 100% of the time and not to be questioned?

It may be cold to say "show me the evidence" when we are confronted with a report of sexual harassment, but I didn't become an atheist to make friends.

Atheism is a response to those who deny reality and insist some kind of "God" created everything according to his plan.

I also notice that the request for evidence about "God" is treated like an insult and not something done in "polite" conversation, something very similar to sexual harassment claims

So which is it my fellow atheist and skeptics, do we demand evidence for all claims, or does rape and sexual harassment get a pass with only anecdotes and hurt feelings as the evidence?

It may be cold and indifferent, but objective reality matters whether you want to admit it or not.

Also, on the flip side, actual evidence of rape and sexual harassment cannot be ignored, or we are no better then the creationists that won't accept evidence for evolution.

As a skeptic, you must be prepared that everything you know could be wrong.

That goes for MRAs, feminists, A+ and any other group that hopes to have there "Tenets" based in reality.


- Sent From My Blackberry

Atheism+, revised

I have been looking into Atheism+ for a few weeks now, and I think I found my major stumbling block.

The 'tenets' of Atheism+ go as follows:

Atheists plus we care about social justice,
Atheists plus we support women's rights,
Atheists plus we protest racism,
Atheists plus we fight homophobia and transphobia,
Atheists plus we use critical thinking and skepticism

If I were to remake Atheism+, I would change these 'tenets' into rules and it would go as follows:

1) Use critical thinking and skepticism

2) Support equality of treatment for all human beings, unless this conflicts with rule 1

3) Support freedom of expression for all human beings, unless this conflicts with rule 1

4) Support freedom from religion for all human beings, unless this conflicts with rule 1

5) Don't be a (dick, cunt, asshole, your insult of choice), unless this conflicts with rule 1

I think you might see where I'm going with this.

Atheism+ seems to put critical thinking and skepticism at the bottom of the list. I would put it at the top of all the list and make all other rules or tenets subject to skepticism and critical thinking

Because without critical thinking and skepticism, how can you be sure your beliefs reflect reality?

And if objective reality is unimportant to your beliefs, how much of an atheist are you really?

- Sent From My Blackberry

RationalWiki disappoints me

I was doing some reading on the RationalWiki, when I came across the entry for Free Thought Blogs, and I found something that is not very rational at all.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Freethought_blogs

Under the section "Taking a feminist-skeptic stand", they mention the issues that arose with Thunderf00t, but I had to check I wasn't on Conservapedia by accident when I read the quality of the article.

Here is a direct quote:

"The vlogger Thunderf00t briefly joined Freethought Blogs in summer 2012, but was quickly fired after repeatedly and somewhat incoherently blogging that those pushing for protection for women at atheist/skeptic events were wrong, or overreacting, or whatever. As a result, a large sector of the angrier, less self-aware parts of the atheist community have decided that FtB isn't about free thought at all because something-something-something-evo-psych-something girls are stinky."

If this is what passes for "Constructive dialogue" at RationalWiki,
I'm afraid they don't know the meaning of the word Rational very well.

My journey into skepticism - how I almost became a 9/11 truther

11 years ago today, the world felt like a much different place. America was under terrorist attack and even up here in Canada there was chaos.

No one had any answers, we didn't even know if the attacks stopped or was every plane overhead a new attack?

In time, people calmed down, but the search for answers intensified.

The government was under pressure to get answers, and answers take time.

The first real serious movie I saw on about the attacks was Fahrenheit 9/11 by Michael Moore

At the time, the movie raised some questions I found compelling.

Why were Saudi nationals flown out of the country on Sept 13th? What was the deal with James Bath? Why did we attack Iraq if the terrorist were mostly Saudi and Bin Laden was in Afghanistan?

The second movie I recall seeing on the subject was Loose Change

That movie presented a vision of events that would lead anyone to question the official story, and perhaps suspect the government itself of causing the attacks.

But my flirting with Trutherism was short lived.

After Loose Change I looked for more documentaries on 9/11 and that was how I found the movie Screw Loose Change.

Never before did I see one movie so thoroughly debunk another movie.

I watched all 4 hours of Screw Loose Change, and by the end I was a changed man.

I saw how easily facts and anomalies can be presented to build a narrative of events, I saw how I fell for the half truths and outright lies.

This was my first official step into skepticism.

It was not long after my viewing of Screw Loose Change when I found James Randi.

And through the videos of James Randi I found skepticism and I decided to call it home.

I never did find out who made the movie Screw Loose Change, but whoever it was did me a great service.

I look back with a slight tinge of embarrassment when I remember the videos I watched over and over, hoping to find a glimpse of the truth.

I watched Alex Jones inside Bohemian Groove, I watched videos on the New World Order by enigmaTV, I even watched videos about the prophecies of Nostradomas and the Mayan 2012 predictions.

I can understand now why those videos left me wanting more, there was no glimpse of truth to find.

I only ever found 1 thing in a conspiracy video that made me pause

At the end of a DVD by enigmaTV video there was a half second image that was shown at the end of the video

I had to pause the video to even see what it was

It was an american flag with the stars replaced with stars of david and a caption that said "Who are you fighting for?"

That shocked me, nothing in the video previously mentions jews or jewish religion, so why the blatant anti-semitism?

That put a sour taste in my mouth and made me step back a little from conspiracy videos at the time

Perhaps I owe that anti-semitism thanks, it helped keep me from sinking too deep in the culture, which allowed Screw Loose Change to open my eyes and helped to make me the man I am today.


- Sent From My Blackberry

My journey into skepticism, The radio in my nose

When I was about 5 or 6, I can remember lying in bed at night and just listening to the sounds of the house.

Like you would hear creaks and bumps and other such sounds, and that was all very normal.

But some nights, I heard something different.

Sometimes while breathing through my nose, I would hear what to me sounded like faint whispers.

No words could be understood, but in my child mind, I had this image of a female news reporter and the idea came to me that I was hearing a radio.

The catch was that the sound was coming from my nose.

One night while this happened, I went downstairs to see my dad and I asked him if he could check my nose and see if he saw a radio.

Like a good father, he checked and he did not make me feel dumb or stupid for asking. He looked up my nose and told me that he didn't see anything and that satisfied me and I went back to bed.

In time I stopped hearing this "Radio" and I have not thought it for years.

In this, I can see a blue print for my life as an adult.

I experienced something strange, I did some investigating to find the cause, and when I find evidence that indicates its just my imagination, I accept that and move on.

If only we were all so lucky.



- Sent From My Blackberry