A few notes apropos politics and religion

There's been quite a reaction to Stuart Shepard's most recent stupid video for the FOF nuts.

Anyone who Rod Parsley is against, I'm likely for.

The Matthew 25 group has released a nice, positive video supporting Obama and highlighting his strength on family issues...you know, actual family issues, like education and health care, not just being rabidly anti-gay...

Obama leads amongst every class of religious voters besides white Evangelicals.

What a relief! Biblical "experts" (as if such a thing is possible or needed) on the apocalypse have finally decided that Obama isn't the Anti-Christ.

A win for sound science education! Californians don't have to dumb down their university academic standards to appease creationists.

Roy Moore may be one-upped by the idiot judge in Alabama who used his courtroom to invoke others to pray...

Corsi's "Obama Nation" trash gets shredded

Being the target of a sustained whisper campaign by Karl Rove & Co., in concert with McSame, Barack now has pushed back against the latest smear by Kerry smear merchant Jerome Corsi:

1. Here is Obama's response to Corsi's hit piece (full .pdf version)
2. Here is Media Matters' response

The supposedly most damaging material in Corsi's smear book is either false or completely distorted, and it reaches bestseller status through what is known as the "wingnut welfare" effect: the listing on the NYT bestseller is accompanied by the dagger symbol -- † -- which is described as: "A dagger (†) indicates that some bookstores report receiving bulk orders."

Conservative book clubs buy up these books in order to drive them up the lists in order to drive up media reporting. Forget the free market; capitalism at discount costs!

PS: Check out the new YouTube sensation: Baracky II

Focus on the Family poon video #2

The last time we saw this poon Stuart Shepard, he was against helping the poor (like Jesus, I guess). This time, he's asking God to smite the Democratic convention with rain. Olbermann had him as the "Worst Person in the World" last night:


You can see the YouTube video of his imprecation below the fold:

I mean, sure, people are starving to death and dying of disease all over the place, but why waste your time asking God to do something about that?

Confused about coffee?

I have been before. Is it good for you to drink it, or not? Decaf only? How many cups a day?

Here are your answers.

Summary: drinking 3 cups a day or less of regular coffee may actually be good for you in many ways.

Justifying the silence

This has been a wild week. We moved across town on Monday, picked up new furniture (baby stuff and a bedroom suit) through the week, helped my sister with her wedding on 8.8.08, and have been doing a lot here at the new place, with the help especially of my dad, who works like an Energizer once he's wound up...

I have a feeling that, with the baby coming so soon, it'll get a lot more quiet around here for a lot longer.

It's a little eerie to be on Google Street View and have such a clear view of the house:

View Larger Map

What I love the most is we're only about 2.1 mi from my workplace, and I can avoid the main arteries entirely (Garner's Ferry):



That's the back entrance to Hammond. The front entrance is just about one-half mile further:

Great atheist images

I've given you wise words before, so here are some hilarious images, courtesy fruitloop and her cool Believers Anonymous site:

Same image, different perspective:


I like it, and her 12-step program idea. We used a similar image at GF until Ryan made the cool logos we have now. Another good one from her profile:

See more of her work at cafepress...

The fear of reprisals among atheists

The conversation on the message board at GC is turning to the issue of making our membership directory there private to non-members. (It is now private) Charlie, the same guy I debated concerning alternative energy, has of course waxed poetic randroid-style about fear and courage and individuality. While I think comparing the "coming out as atheists" thing to a civil rights movement is fallacious, I do know of many instances of workplace discrimination and illegal terminations based on atheism. However, I don't like the comparison between atheist "movements" and civil rights movements:

Most important is that this isn't about ending some entrenched economic system or clear and flagrant inequality before the law. We have none of the same legal and moral authority that civil rights and abolitionist groups had on their side. And it was this very issue that became an argument a while back between D.J. Grothe and PZ when atheists today were contrasted to civil rights crusaders in the 60s. Ditto with gay rights groups, who are still denied marriage and have been targets of violence since time out of mind. We have to go back to the Puritans or Bruno to get that sort of comparison with atheists.

Honestly, I think that I could be fired if parents found my blog site and/or the extent of my Godless Columbia ties and decided to go to the headmaster with threats of withholding gifts. My school runs on donations, and they'd find some way to justify getting a new chemistry teacher. But, this sort of prejudice is not akin to the legal discrimination that other groups face based on race, sex and sexual preference.

If people want their privacy, they should have it, while not walking around worrying about being the victim of a hate crime like that at the UU of Knoxville. Now, on to the latest post:

I think everyone is making more of this than what it is. I don't think anyone is more out there than myself, and the negative backlash I have received has been minimal.

I think you should separate out two very different things:

1) fear of violence
2) fear of reprisals -- attempts to smear you, get you fired, &c

As for (1), you are a physically-large male with an agressive attitude, so it doesn't surprise me in the slightest that you neither worry about, nor have reason to, acts of violence directed against you for your lack of religious beliefs.

As for (2), you are lucky. Many of us work in places that we can easily be fired for minor offenses, and although saying, "I'll sue!" sounds good and all, at best, this will lead to months of no pay followed by (hopefully) reinstatement and some coverage of our legal fees. Given the conservative composition of the high courts and recent relevant rulings in areas of labor protection, especially Enquist v. Oregon Dept. of Ag. (ruling), I wouldn't hold my breath.

I keep a blog that my boss reads on a regular basis where I publish my unvarnished opinions on anything and everything. No backlash. In fact, it is often the topic of conversation at work.

Then you are obviously lucky to work under someone who isn't a bigot. Many are not so lucky. I don't think that the people here are worried about "people not liking me at work," but rather, some Evangelical type supervisor who would find a way to start putting undue pressure on you or finding ways to discredit your job performance once they learned.

People disagree with me, but they respect me. That is because I don't hide in fear or shame.

When I was at the University of Florida, I started the only non-theistic student group on campus and went on Hannity & Colmes to argue against the placement of a Decalogue monument in Dixie County, Florida. While we were there, people cussed at me from the crowd gathered around and said crap to my wife while I was on-camera. (Unfortunately, the satellite feed was cut off right as it was getting ready to be my turn to talk to Alan Colmes, who would've let me speak uninterrupted for a few minutes. I still wonder if Hannity had me cut off because I sounded half-competent and cognizant of the facts surrounding the other cases he referenced...)

Does that sound like I "hide" from being an atheist?

However, now that I'm working, with a baby on the way in about a month, the security and stability of my job is far more important than having my atheists.meetup.com profile public. In the question of risk versus reward, what is the reward? The real risk I face is in having a parent at my school find this site and rally a bunch of other parents to have me fired. Given that my school is run by donations and gifts, if even one "high roller" put pressure on them to get rid of me because, "We don't need no elitist bastard atheist teaching Johnny or Janey," I have little to no doubt that I'd be gone.

The real threat here is not getting assaulted or fired. It is being embarrassed. It is sticking out from the herd. It is being an individual.

If you say so. Sounds to me like you don't really care about the evidence of discrimination based on atheism in the workplace and school for others. You just choose to pretend all that doesn't exist or doesn't matter. If you feel strongly that it's about "being embarrassed" then that's all that matters to you, right?

I am with Seneca when he said that it is better to die on your feet than live on your knees.

Yeah because having a public membership directory of a meetup group is to "die on your feet", while having a private one to non-members is to "live on your knees"...

Believe me when I say that everyone of you is more likely to die or be injured in a car wreck than to be assaulted or lose your job as a consequence of being a freethinker.

So do you wear a seat belt, or is that also fear? Do you show courage and "die on your feet" by not wearing a seat belt?

It's about risk and reward Charlie, nothing more. Having a private membership directory to non-members is not "hiding in fear" any more than your wearing a seat belt in the car is "driving in fear".

The many motives of blogging

It seems that blogs bring to mind one of two sorts of person: 1) thinks they have really important things to say and needs a soapbox, 2) wants to "overshare" all the inane trivia of their life with a world who, by and large, doesn't give a fuc*. I don't know exactly how I stumbled onto a blog post about oversharing, but this led me to learning about Lena Chen. This led me to finding out things about her I really didn't want to know (NSFW: or see), but out of it all came a sliver of good, as she wrote something I find strong rapport with:

Part of the reason why I write about my life is because I am scared of not remembering anything about it. I have a terrible memory, no doubt an ironic symptom of childhood bullying that taught me the art of forgetting terrible memories. (Truth: I routinely have problems with recalling things that happened before the age of 12). Unfortunately for me, I never quite unlearned how to forget. Now that I am full-grown and expected to remember things like faces and names, I find myself standing around dumb-founded as all my friends recall events at which everyone but me seems to have been present. I routinely fail to recognize guys with whom I’ve gone on single dates, or even people I went to high school with. It seems I am a spectator to other people’s memories but never the one doing the remembering herself.

And it’s not just memories either. It’s skills like how to use JSTOR (thank you, high school debate) or how to swim (thank you, community pool) that I must relearn because I’ve somehow magically forgotten despite everyone’s insistence that there are some things, like riding a bike, that you remember forever. Well, trust me, if there were ever a person who could forget, it’d be me. In Ibiza, for example, this was precisely my problem. Here I was with miles of unpolluted ocean before me, and I was terrified of wading too far out because I hadn’t swum in years. I was always scared to go into pools as a kid until I braved swimming lessons during early elementary school. Then I promptly forgot and had to learn again, this time during a summer around age 10. I don’t think I’ve really swum again since. Eventually in Ibiza, I gave it a go at a shallow beach but I conceded defeat after several gulpfuls of seawater. This was a performance from someone who used to relish jumping off diving boards several yards above her head.

Although my ability to remember how to do things physically (ride bikes, swim, ride 4wheelers, play ping-pong, pool, &c.) is not a problem, I strongly agree with her motive of wanting to document her life out of fear of forgetting. I found myself last week in my hometown talking to a friend I literally went from K-12 with, and she reminded me of universal remote controls at Richlands Middle School, as well as other funny tales, that I had completely forgotten about.

Now I'll have to write a post just to explicate the details on that.

Blog-as-journal/memoir works for me. I must confess that I have this creepy urge to see how many people would read my blog after I died, and how long people would still find it on the web. In 2000 years, will the internet as it exists today still be archived somewhere? In a million years, will aliens from some far-off system store the entirety of the internet on little cubes and put them on a shelf somewhere?

The status of this blog being private has changed a few times, for a few different reasons:

1. I began writing a blog in Nov 2005. It didn't have many readers. One day, I wrote something on Sternberg and it got linked to, and from there, I had a lot of interest in keeping readers. Some of the original research I did has been incorporated into this article at Expelled Exposed.
   
2. A few people from my hometown, and relatives, learned of my site and I learned of that. I got nervous and made it private. I stupidly deleted a lot of my posts. A lot of this had to do with the fact that I was no longer religious. If you hunger for more details, here they are.
3. I obviously changed my mind and began writing again on a public blog. Once, I realized I was in trouble with getting my Ph.D. finished because of the time I was spending online. We see where that worry took me...
   
4. That trend was fairly unbroken until I graduated from UF and started the job search. Then, I decided to go private again, because I was afraid that parents at my new job would find this site and I would have to deal with a bunch of BS from it.
5. I planned to write less through the work year; I'm pretty much still in that same boat, and my writing over this summer has increased only because of free time. Once Seth is born, that won't be an issue.
   

Also, I think I have lots of really important things to say and I need a soapbox.

Question to Barack from Balko

In the same vein as my mention of HR 5843, Radley Balko writes a column asking Barack some questions, and one is directly concerned with his stance on decriminalization:

In your autobiography, you admit to using marijuana and cocaine in high school and college. Yet you largely support the federal drug war — a change from several years ago when you said you'd be open to decriminalizing marijuana. Would Barack Obama be where he is today if he had been arrested in college for using drugs? Doesn't the fact that you and our current president (who has all but admitted to prior drug use) have risen to such high stature suggest that the worst thing about illicit drugs is not the drugs themselves, but what the government will do to you if you're caught?

Bingo. The number of people in our country who have at least tried pot is staggeringly high, with at least 15 million people in the US having smoked marijuana within the last month. This while the overwhelming majority of those people go on to lead completely normal lives drug-free later one (I am one). Why ruin their chances to have good jobs and educational opportunities [Federal law prohibits people who've been caught with pot from receiving financial aid]?

It's far past time to decriminalize, for a plethora of reasons.

Meatlessness

Yesterday, Kristof of the NYT wrote a column about animal rights:

So, yes, I eat meat (even, hesitantly, goose). But I draw the line at animals being raised in cruel conditions. The law punishes teenage boys who tie up and abuse a stray cat. So why allow industrialists to run factory farms that keep pigs almost all their lives in tiny pens that are barely bigger than they are?

Defining what is cruel is, of course, extraordinarily difficult. But penning pigs or veal calves so tightly that they cannot turn around seems to cross that line.

More broadly, the tide of history is moving toward the protection of animal rights, and the brutal conditions in which they are sometimes now raised will eventually be banned. Someday, vegetarianism may even be the norm.

Perhaps it seems like soggy sentimentality as well as hypocrisy to stand up for animal rights, particularly when I enjoy dining on these same animals. But my view was shaped by those days in the barn as a kid, scrambling after geese I gradually came to admire.

So I’ll enjoy the barbecues this summer, but I’ll also know that every hamburger patty has a back story, and that every tin of goose liver pâté could tell its own rich tale of love and loyalty.

His colleague, Mark Bittman, gave a talk at TED that had a lot more moral force behind it:

I went for about a year eating very, very little meat. I gained a lot of weight. Although I wasn't 100% strict, since I would partake of fish and seafood on occasion, I certainly felt good about my decision. When people asked me why I was a vegetarian, I told them three reasons:

1. ethics -- I don't like to cause animals to suffer; they feel pain just like we do
2. health -- studies have been done showing that a plant-based diet is very good for your ticker, while red meat has been clearly linked to cancer and heart disease
   
3. the environment -- the amount of our resources diverted to raising animals for food is vast, and the efficiency of this system is low, compared to directly growing plants for human consumption

Now, none of those three things changes whether or not you choose to be a vegetarian, however, after reading Kristof I don't see how he can make the arguments he makes with a straight face while admitting to eating meat. He talks about the increasing role and rectitude of animal rights, and how his own experiences on a farm support that, but then admits to enjoying burgers and goose liver.

I guess it's like religion: they preach perfection while admitting to being imperfect with a straight face.

Back to me for a moment, this summer I've started eating some poultry again. For one thing, I am getting really tired of what we eat; for another thing, I've gotten really fat. Part of the problem is just eating too many damned carbs, but I think the bigger problem for me is the feeling of being full. High-protein foods are very filling to me, while low-protein foods leave my stomach rumbling an hour later.

Unlike Kristof, I'll not preach it if I'm not practicing it, but I don't know how much I did before.

The big issue for me is getting people to wake up to the environmental impact of raising cattle, but I am afraid that won't happen any time soon.